Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Brother from the Same Planet With Andrew Jupin

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

In an episode full of movie references, we happily welcome back Andrew Jupin from the We Hate Movies podcast! Written under slight protest by the brilliant Jon Vitti, Bart gets revenge on Homer by teaming up with a man who was once Tom Cruise. All that plus addiction to Corey and a massive brawl all over town. We promise, this podcast is LESS painful than it looks! Support this podcast, experience it ad-free, 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 talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where our motto is Trab, Puke, Sip. I'm one of your hosts, the quad blaster Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Recruiter for the Springfield Communist Party, Henry Gilbert. And who is our special guest on the line?

Don't say revenge, don't say revenge, Andrew Jupin. And this week's episode is Brother from the Same Planet. Let's all congratulate Nelson! Thanks, Dad! Told ya! This episode originally aired on February 4th, 1993, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby, National Lampoon's loaded weapon one tops the box office,

the Buffalo Bills lose their third consecutive Super Bowl. And everyone watches Michael Jackson's halftime show. The one that transformed all halftime shows for the future. The one to beat all. And also, by the way, slow week at the movie box office of Loaded Weapon 1's rocking the number one spot. Good God. No, I know.

If you'd asked me, like, did that ones rocking the number one spot good god no i know if you told if you'd ask me like did this did that movie ever get number one i'd be like no way and i know it's like this is january or early february 1993 so you know it's dump town for all the movies but still like that's i i couldn't believe that i i think this is right before the National Lampoon movies really fell off. And this is an early starring role from one Samuel L. Jackson. The same year he's in Jurassic Park. Wow. Hold on to your spoof butts, dude.

Absolutely. And I'm not knocking that movie. I've seen it probably ten times throughout childhood and so on. But shocking, number one at the box office. I only remember it as watching it on Comedy Central because they would have to advertise it with like, it was just like how they did it for the movie Fatal Instinct as well when they did that in Loaded Weapon.

It's Loaded Weapon and Fatal, I remember Pendulet over-enunciating it to be like, it's fatal instinct. This is a parody movie. Loaded weapon one. That's how he would say it, right? And yeah, this is the last movie where Emilio Estevez is more famous than Sam Jackson, I would guess. Oh, definitely. Yeah.

I forget, was he too big to return for D2, the Mighty Ducks return? Oh, no, he's in D2. He's in D3, although in a limited capacity. But yeah, he's in that original trilogy. Maybe it's the Disney Plus TV show he was still too big for. They did a recent thing. Maybe he was thrown in the tax fire at this point. I think that was a, he was supposed to be in it more,

and then like something, something not crazy about the vaccine. And then he was asked to not in it more and then like something something not crazy about the vaccine and then he was asked to not be on it anymore because what's her face lauren graham i think is that the actress's name from um gilmore girls i think she's like the mom slash like bigger figure like adult figure on the show oh yeah she's in it yeah yeah i thought i also just read that like the sopranos actress drea de mateo, like, a non-vaxxer. She is not on sets anymore. And it has no more career, she says, because of it. Well, that's what happens.

Yeah, that's right. But that Mighty Duck show is still on there and not The Hobbit. Like, that feels pretty horrible, too. Sorry, not The Hobbit. Willow. Oh, Willow, yes. I feels pretty horrible. Sorry, not the Hobbit. Willow. Here I am getting confused and thinking it's ripping off. Now listen, so going back to the Michael Jackson thing, I guess, I mean, this was on TV when we were like around 10 years old,

so we probably remember it, but we probably might not remember previous Super Bowl halftime shows because, again, this transformed the halftime show into it being about a popular musician, perhaps one or two of them. And our friends at Podcast the Ride, they recently covered what Super Bowl halftime shows used to be like before this. And I completely forgot

how embarrassing they were. One of the ones they highlighted was basically, what if the entire halftime show was performed by children? Not just children, very patriotic children who are wishing our soldiers well overseas as they fight for our freedom? Question mark? In Operation Desert Storm?

I don't know how they were protecting me, but I thank them. That's brutal. The Simpsons the year before, they did the last current joke you could do about bad halftime shows before they became star-studded with the rock around the world tonight with the the space alien yes oh you know i if they like put that up

as a goof one year like they actually adapted it that would be awesome you know that would be awesome and then i also found out that uh the performers aren't paid for their super bowl appearances based on that podcast well Even still, like today? That's what it sounds like, their policy. Like, no, we are giving you exposure, Janet Jackson, David Bowie, Prince, etc. Janet Jackson in more way than one, Bob. I don't know if you caught that. Oh, unintentional pun.

Thank you. Yeah, the MJ one, also, I was just thinking about it because Usher this year was the performer. and he grew up a Michael Jackson fan and is doing Michael Jackson moves on the stage. It probably was a huge bit for him to be the lead of the Super Bowl, just like his hero, MJ. You want to say everything about MJ, talented performer, this, that, and the other thing. Never saw that dude on roller skates, Usher, all over that halftime show on roller skates. That was awesome. That's true.

There's a lot of things that Usher did that Michael Jackson didn't do, and vice versa, I'd say. I'm looking at the photos of Michael Jackson from this appearance, and it's the very iconic sort of like military style Michael Jackson, where he's got the kind of military garb on and kind of the Klingon bandoliers around his shoulders. Yeah, it was like a Muammar Gaddafi jacket almost. Yeah. Yeah. And yes, also that year at the game, the Buffalo Bills lost the third in a row, just as Lisa

predicted when they replayed the episode ahead of the super bowl they they was another of the times where they re-recorded the lines for lisa to say instead of the washington football team uh whatever they used to be called she she said the cowboys will beat the the bills and she was right and yeah wow so that's that's like not what's on disney plus now right that was just a specialty thing yeah unfortunately uh i have never seen from the many simpsons historians out there actual videotaped proof of those scenes and i don't think it's ever been officially released but you know we all remember me we were all watching the reruns each year to know lisa said a different team name for a

few years in a row there bob was there too absolutely yeah but yeah the the bills i mean you you grew up in the in the new york area but obviously the buffalo team is not your local team and well yeah i mean where i grew up actually so i grew up a little north of albany so sort of like right in the middle of the state on the east side. You had sort of like this influx of Giants fans, which was in my family. Dallas Cowboy fans, because like, quote unquote, America's team, whatever. But then also Bills fans. So it was this weird sort of like section, like this intersection of like football fandom where I grew up. Interesting.

Yeah. Well, but yeah, that's so that's what happened the week this aired. And joining us once again is frequent guest Andrew Jupin from We Hate Movies. Welcome back to the show, Andrew. Thanks, fellas. Happy to be here. I believe last heard on the Talking Futurama episode about the Star Trek reunion, but previously the last Talking Simpsons episode Andrew was on, I believe, is Dog of Death from season

three. Oh, yes. Yeah, that talking Futurama was great too though always happy to hang out with you guys no matter the uh cartoon we're chatting about that one was great because uh you know your Star Trek especially the the original series and same with I think this one ended up being a bet we we invited you uh just like this was the next one coming up but as I was watching like this episode has 800 movie references in it so it's perfect for our movie podcast pal absolutely yeah i mean the title alone you know referencing

a you know not obscure but you know public domain john sales film brother from another planet i wondered why that was on uh youtube completely with with no yep Yep. That is exactly why. Sorry, that's as far as the reference goes in this episode. Yep, that's it. I was saying to you guys, like, oh, maybe I'll try to re-watch it to see if there's anything in the movie that they also, like, pulled from the episode. I really don't think so. I didn't get a chance to re-watch it. I haven't seen it since college,

but John Sayles in general, underrated filmmaker. That's for free, in full, underrated filmmaker. Oh, yeah. And yeah, that's for free, in full, looking pretty good on YouTube, actually. So, you know, you got Joe Morton in that movie as the titular brother from another planet. It's an alien who comes down to Harlem and looks like a black guy,

and he walks around. It's a totally silent performance, too. He's just using, you know, facial expressions and stuff. It's a very cool movie. Yeah, it's just like, what, five, six years before he became, he was Miles Dyson in T2. Absolutely. You got to love that Miles Dyson dude.

That dude brought upon the end of the world, the humanity. Well, you talk about his silent acting. I don't know if I've ever seen anybody do better sweaty, nonverbal acting than him bleeding to death in terminator 2 not until that gif of i think jordan peele hit the internet was anyone that sweaty yes and somewhere in the middle there is uh bill duke in predator that dude's also sweating quite a bit in that motion picture that's true but uh but yeah this uh i i mean uh andrew do you do you recall seeing this one when it was new back back at 93 you know i don't i may have missed this one on the original broadcast i

remember seeing reruns of it you know whenever um before like before dvd but after after broadcast and it was actually interesting this is one i don't go back to often it airs like in the in the order on disney plus it's like right before the lisa and ralph valentine's day episode which i was just at so i was like dancing around it but for whatever reason i don't go back to this and i was glad watching it for this because i was like oh there's jokes in here that are great and the fight scene at the end is just an amazing uh display of like sound effect usage so i would say like maybe for me at least in my own head uh underrated episode yeah you know we all thought this was hilarious as kids when it aired uh in the 90s but little did we know it was a highly

controversial episode within the staff of the simpsons because uh john vd is the writer for this episode john vd possibly the best Simpsons writer. I mean, I don't want to rank them right here, but he's up there because he wrote things like Lisa Substitute, When Flanders Failed, Radio Bart, Bart the Lover, Black Widower, Mr. Plow, Cape Fear, just to name a few. He is like one of the all-stars of the show. And of course, we go back to Lisa Substitute. Very, very popular early episode. That's very successful for him. And it took a lot of work to make that

a successful emotional episode. And two years later, he is given this episode to write, which is essentially Lisa's Substitute, but with Bart. That was the original pitch. And his reaction was, I don't want to write this.

It took so much out of me to get Lisa's Substitute on the page. I don't want to write this uh it took so much out of me to get lisa substitute on the page i don't want to do it again and have to live up to that standard so his reaction was i'm going to make kind of a parody of lisa substitute where nothing is taken seriously and it's just full of gags and jokes and emotionally it's pretty empty and one guy in particular didn't like that a little man named j L. Brooks. In fact, he hated this episode so much that when the next showrunner came in, David Merkin, very funny guy, this episode was screened for David Merkin, and David Merkin was told, we do not want any episodes that are like this. Which is funny because David Merkin's episodes would be even more emotionless and crazy compared to this one.

John Vitti revealed a bit of this during our interview with him a few years ago. So this is on the commentary, the controversy behind this episode. But, you know, everybody has always liked this outside of the staff. And I think the commentary was their chance to take the blame for John Vitti and say, no, this was a great episode.

We were too hard on it. And then I guess other issues were that it had a very bad table read, a very bad screening read a very bad screening very controversial within the staff and uh but nobody outside of the simpsons writing staff understood that we just all thought it was funny yeah that was wild to learn from the commentary back then and when we interviewed i was just giving a listen back to our interview with john vd which was april 2020 when we did. Lots of time for interviews back then.

But, and I would tell folks again, that's one of my favorite interviews we've done. John Vitti was very honest and friendly and open about his time there. And also like, I would say too modest as well for the guy who wrote Mr. Plow. But yeah, when we asked him about this, he got even more honest than he is

on the 20-year-old commentary of just saying, basically saying he intentionally avoided the emotionality of this episode or even what would be called good dramatic storytelling. Intentionally, almost as a middle finger to being assigned it. He says that you could teach this in a, if you were teaching a comedy writing class and you had the script for Lisa's Substitute and the script for Brother from the Same Planet next to each other, you could teach it in a class of like, here's how one idea can be approached in two different ways from the same writer. That's great. I mean, so what was his beef with Lisa's Substitute? Just like, I'm a comedy writer. I don't like having to force this much sort of dramatic, sugary family stuff in my writing. Was that kind of it?

I think it's something that he never truly signed up for. I don't think it was even his pitch. And he had to do things he wasn't prepared to do as a writer. And it took a lot out of him. And then, you know, they were like, OK, just do it again, but with Bart.

And he said, no, I can't do it again, but with Bart. Yeah, it sounded like uh for to write Lisa's Substitute which he is very proud of he does not think that's a bad episode at all okay yeah he was like that took so much work to plumb the emotional depths to make it and also it was a high pressure one because they were having a Dustin Hoffman who was one of the most famous actors they'd had on at that point right and it's just like you better write the good episode for Dustin Hoffman and if he hates it that's on you so it's all this pressure so here he is asked do that again two years later when also

they're very open on the commentary of a thing we've talked about too everybody's quitting in season four all the writers are like this I they're proud of their work but they are sick of the late nights and the shitty pay. And they're all getting offered big money deals. Yeah. And John Vitti is forced to stay on the show and write these clip shows, which he's credited with pseudonymously. Yes. Oh, really?

Yes. Yeah. He's the writer of the 138th episode, Spectacular, and the worst episode of the classic era, Another another simpsons clip show but is that the one with the april fool's beer explosion no that's a good that's all right yeah yeah show though isn't it am i misremembering it is it is one third new footage at the very beginning to trick you but another simpsons clip show is uh i think made bad on purpose so fox would stop asking for clip shows yes yeah i like whichever one has I mean I think it is a great

it's one of my favorite Troy McClure lines now you know whatever it is we get to what we all came here to see hardcore nudity just Phil Hartman saying hardcore nudity is amazing it will make me laugh every time. That is a good clip show they use like deleted scenes

and Tracy Ullman clips you couldn't really see anymore but there is more internal controversy over this episode in that it used to be engineered around a guest star that said no right henry yes this was incredible to learn the first time i watched the the with the commentary and it's it is obvious when they say it because of the main character in this being a jet fighter pilot named Tom. But I'll just read directly from Mike Reese's book on the subject. Tom Cruise was an early fan of our show. Tapes of new episodes were sent to him when he was filming on location. And so we wrote a role just for him.

He was supposed to play Tom, the Top Gun pilot in Brother from the Same Planet. Cruise turned the part down, so we gave the role to Phil Hartman in what became a classic episode. Tom turned us down, but he did the mummy. Go figure. Yeah, and I mean, I assume Nancy Cartwright was not high enough on the Scientology ladder to make that work for her. I mean, what's the point of giving them all your money if Tom Cruise won't even show up on your very popular TV show? I mean, come on. Well, you got to hit that certain level, you know, and it's like you got Tom on the speed dial for appearances.

She wasn't clear enough yet to book Tom on the show. It's one of those things where for him there's a demarcation of what he will and will not do. Like he's not doing Marvel movies. And has he ever done television? Am I missing some huge thing he did for tv boy i know i i can think of two instances one where he would do he would he did some of those mtv movie award sketches with ben stiller because then he liked ben stiller's parody of him. And also I remember on the Rosie O'Donnell show, her daytime talk show, she would for years talk about how much she loves Tom Cruise

and eventually he did appear on the show. But that's like Tom Cruise did a talk show. He's done a million of those. And in fact, Tom Cruise doing a talk show kind of ruined his career for about a few years. That is correct. I was kind of just doing career for about a few years that is correct yeah i was kind of just doing a cursory glance here does not look like a role in a television show although interestingly

so you said this episode what 93 february of 93 so you're making this in 90 like late 92 probably i'd say may 92 or earlier is when it's written okay because i'm guessing he was probably then working on the firm or possibly getting ready for interview with the vampire around that time and he didn't give a reason huh he just i don't want to do it nobody they they don't they they do imply that this one sat on the shelf for a little while so this also could have been written in like even nine months before that and then they're like okay't, let's not assign a director yet. We could still get Tom for this. And then after maybe six months or some amount of time, they go like, all right, Tom Cruise,

just not doing it. And which if I had to guess why also Tom Cruise, I mean, Tom Cruise is a mercurial guy. He might just be like, I think that Simpson show is funny. Send me tapes of it. But he could have also been dancing around. We all know Tom Cruise has long been in search of an Oscar. He still hasn't won it. Maybe at the time he was like, if I could work with James L. Brooks, he might get me an Oscar. So this was part of him starting to be friendlier with James L. Brooks to try and get in a James L. Brooks movie. That's an interesting theory, Henry. Also, I'm looking looking here it would have been if he had done

the episode it would have been the one and so far as i can tell only time he would have done an animated project that's you know that is also interesting because and this is a i searched the internet for it and there still was very little about this but uh there was an interview we i cited it a ton when i did the research for our Roger Rabbit sequels podcast. And the writer of Roger Rabbit, or one of the writers of Roger Rabbit 2, did a whole interview about why it didn't happen. And he said for over a year, the full assumption in Disney was, we are making Roger Rabbit 2 that is set in World War II. And the pilot, the main character in this World War II movie with Roger Rabbit is Tom Cruise like Tom Cruise wanted Roger Rabbit

II hard for a good amount of time oh that would have not been great I'm just gonna guess maybe that wouldn't have been great I'd rather have that than Space Jam II though you know oh yeah just as a curiosity yep no that's that's fair yep I'd take a thousand

Roger Rabbit IIs over Space Jam a new yep no that's that's fair yep i'd take a thousand roger rabbit twos over space jam a new legacy is that what it's called i think so she was the legacy quickly ended uh well we'll get we'll get to the episode very very shortly but yes tom cruise replaced i guess by uh phil hartman i don't know if replaced is the right word if he was never there to begin with and john vd spent uh what he calls one very unhappy year on snl and he admits that if you had a bad sketch you would just put phil hartman in it because he would make everything better and that was his approach with this episode like oh i don't it's not going very well let's throw phil in there and everyone will love it that is kind of like your easy you know voice acting game genie was that guy what year was uh what year was vd on snl i sometime in the

late 80s i believe i can get an actual date i believe it was the first or second lorne year i think it was like i believe he was so yeah the the snl 80s snl couldn't uh sorry the first or second lorne return year obviously i mean in 86 or 7 but a secret on the simpsons is that like three years before they signed uh george meyer john vd and john schwartzwelder to be season one simpsons writers all were in the same writer's room on a bad year of snl uh in interesting yeah he was the 86 87 season so the return of lauren michaels yeah because that at least then you're working because that like cast that ran predominantly like 86 to 92 they even did a sketch literally about like those years and it was like a big sing-song number about how they were this great cast and they totally were

so at least he had good people to work with those few in between years there like eddie murphy's gone and what are we doing that's some that's some rough tv that you can watch there yes uh well i'm sorry but according to the simpsons the 92 93 season is so bad that bart misses joe piscopo yes yeah we'll get to it i have some thoughts about that it's so strange yes uh but but yeah okay so the episode itself uh well i i should also say i think another thing that saves this episode or makes this even better is that jeff Jeffrey Lynch is the director, and he's one of the greatest directors they ever had on the show, too. Like, Andrew, I talk about this every time we talk about Jeff Lynch, because I'm a Spider-Man freak, but Jeffrey Lynch is the animation director of all the Spider-Man special effects in the Raimi movie. Oh, interesting.

Well, that guy's got a good eye it's you know one thing you can say about those movies for sure the effects are solid stuff they hold up very well he had some like major uncredited role on iron giant correct henry oh yes yeah he was like second or third in command he talks a bit about brad bird and uh helping him on this episode him and brad bird very close if he wasn't busy on the Spider-Man movies, he probably would have been on Incredibles and gone to Pixar with Brad Bird. And then possibly worked on the Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol

with Brad Bird. That's true. That's a good boy. Tom Cruise keeps coming in this thing. That's right. Look at that. Honestly, I wonder if Jeffrey Lynch did uncredited storyboarding on the Ghost Protocol movie. Who knows? Maybe in season 50 when Tom Cruise is, I don't know, 70-something, they'll get him. Well, actually, you know what? Since you've been talking about Tom Cruise aging, I wanted to, with Andrew here, I wanted to throw this out here.

So in the news recently is that Tom Cruise is like beating around the bush of like Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. I feel like he's back to another round of I want an Oscar. And I think the way he's going to do it is admitting he's old. It's going to be one of these things where actors who used to be the hot young thing in their youth are just like, you know, Warren. Actually, Warren Beatty never admits he's old. Paul Newman in something is like, yes, I'm old now. Give me awards.

Sort of like Bill Murray showing up in Rushmore and you're like, oh, Peter Venkman is now a middle-aged man. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't think you're far off from that, Henry, because it was just announced like, geez, even maybe last week. Alejandro Iñárritu is doing his first movie in 10 years and Tom Cruise is in it. So well, last time I in your retu was uh around with the revenant there leo got an oscar i think maybe in your retu himself got an oscar in that movie but i mean that's you know that's it's a new directory hasn't worked with before

it's a dude who's no stranger to making highly acclaimed films birdman and so on so this this could be the path forward i mean in redo didrita did the impossible of getting Leo an Oscar, which people thought would never happen to him. Well, you know it's over for him if he plays, I don't know, the fourth Nick Fury or something. That's what he gives up, yeah. Yeah, he's like, oh, whatever. Make me one of those super guys.

That's how Robert Redford's going out. That's his last, unless he's in something else. Infinity, sorry, Endgame is his last movie role. He better hurry. Well, also, that's what's his face. If you look on, because we just did an episode on The Fugitive last night. And so I was on Harrison's IMDb. The only thing that's coming up in production is him taking over the Thunderbolt Ross role there.

You know, so that's, oh man, don't, just don't let that universe be your last thing. I'm sorry. I know people love that stuff and I don't want to get into it. There's a lot of it I like, of course, too, but for that to be Harrison Ford's last outing, I don't know.

Taking up the scraps from a deceased actor also, by the way. We deserved a Red Hulk that was William Hurt instead. Hell yeah, man. That would have been great. The Simpsons will be right back. Has Bart dumped Homer for a really cool dad? Where are you going? Father's on a picnic. Have a good time.

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? Wait a minute.

At all new Simpsons, Thursday. Hey everybody, welcome to the break. And we hope you're not here for revenge because we are here to have a good time with our good buddy Andrew Jupin from the We Hate Movies podcast. So awesome to have Andrew back on. If you enjoy his stuff, check out all of him on Twitter and Blue Sky and all the other places at Jupin or just listen to all of the amazing stuff they put out on We Hate Movies both on their free feed and on their Patreon. Thank you so much again Andrew. And speaking of Patreon if you would like to hear Talking Simpsons a week ahead of time and without ads like this one on it you should head over to

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covering every episode of The Critic like an episode of simpsons and all of our previously released ones covering every episode of the critic every episode of mission hill and many of our favorite episodes of batman the animated series so if you want to see everything you're missing out on at a five dollar level and ad-free shows you want to head over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons but if you want something even nicer than joining the Springfield Communist Party, you should be signing up at that $10 level at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Not only do you get all the ad-free bonuses I was talking about before, but you also get our monthly super premium extra long podcast, What a Cartoon Movie. Me and bob covering an animated feature film crazy in depth just like we do an episode of the simpsons often for five or even six hours long coming this

month us covering chicken little the not very good but funny to talk about disney film the month before that studio ghibli classic porco rosso and those are just the two most recent ones out of over five years and 60 episodes of What a Cartoon Movie We've Done. Over 200 exclusive hours of podcasts of us covering so many classic movies. Classic Disney, Disney Renaissance, Pixar, Studio Ghibli, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, all these kinds of great, great movies. Even some live action ones like our longest podcast ever, six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit all of that is at your fingertips if you head over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons today to check out everything you are missing out on but okay so the episode itself that while the first thing is a chalkboard gag which is brings

in some interesting history that recently got updated in simpsons so principal's toupee is not is not a frisbee now principal skinner from the beginning his design has a very intentional line on his hairline to make it clear it's a toupee and the entire run of the series has been them avoiding the incredibly obvious joke of the principal has a toupee this is actually blowing my mind because i don't think i've ever noticed that about skinner at all yeah Yeah, now I'm going to look up a picture of Principal Skinner. Yeah, it's something that's part of the design, but Matt Groening vetoed any toupee jokes. He thought that was the corniest joke to do.

You know, the toupee lands in a punch bowl, har har. There's a few tiny jokes in this series that hints at it. There's one joke, and I forget where it's from, but Milhouse shaves a dirty word in his hair, and Skinner is like, when are you children going to learn that hair is a uh privilege not a right oh i do remember that joke so you're saying the little because the part goes back and you can keep seeing yes yeah flesh like his scalp okay i see i guess i just never thought of that but now thank you guys i'm never going to unsee it uh well it's our job to ruin the episodes for everybody that's

part of our mission and in and in the simpsons comics like in simpson comics number two from 94 they have it's a plot point that skinner has a toupee but so but they never did it canonically in the show for the longest time until last year in season 34 they do a joke that I'm like, I don't think whoever animated it realized what they were doing and what it created. So Marge gets a Peloton in an episode. That's in season 34. Sure. That's what you do. So Marge gets a Peloton.

While she's on the Peloton, the instructor says, we're playing taps for you, Marge, because you killed it out there. And people are taking off their hat and putting it on their chest. And so Skinner's in one of the screens. He takes off his hair and puts his toupee over his heart. I'm like, you did it for this, for a background joke. You finally said Skinner has a toupee. Oh, that's amazing. Not in the office working on Hulu-rama, not knowing what's going on.

Too busy. Well, he's finally distracted. So yes, that, but yeah, that's a little updated history on Skinner's toupee. Oh, I love that. Wow. Also talking about characterizations being a little off here,

Nelson being a bully because he's a privileged kid with a dad who runs a soccer team. That is just not the Nelson we are used to. No, see this guy in this design will pop up a handful of times but it's not until season 16 where they uh retcon the story as to what happened to nelson's dad when he went out for cigarettes and never came back oh wow because isn't he also the coach at the beginning of the football episode or no yes he is okay because i remember i was watching it this episode just this morning and thinking like oh here's nelson's dad again wow for a guy that

you know skip town and whatever he's present at both of these uh team coaching uh requirements or whatever you know he's involved i guess in the football episode the joke is he's gonna take uh nelson to a strip club and then n says, I don't want to bother mom at work. He had a tighter family unit in season nine. Yeah. Though I still talk about personal canons as a kid, I always thought that Nelson's dad was secretly Barney because they had similar looks to them. Just like a Ralph Wiggum other cop uh theory there exactly yes yeah the uh eddie eddie yes eddie there we go i kept thinking lou and i was like

no that's the other guy yes distinct differences between um okay but great action on bark getting his head kicked into the uh with a soccer ball too like that. And also they get to play a little sound alike of Eye of the Tiger over Bart saying Eye of the Tiger. Nelson's just happy he hurt somebody and he's smoking. Then he finds out that he's going to Pele's soccer and acting camp. I love Nancy's delivery of like, thanks, dad. Like really rubs it in. Now, there are in this episode two sports figures named who would have very minor acting careers i'm not sure uh andrew if you're aware of the pele his little stint in

acting uh movies like i'm trying to find his imdb is very uh bigger than you think but it's mainly like appearances on talk shows and stuff uh sorry i'm looking at it now i is oh a minor miracle sorry uh oh minor miracle i don't know if i've heard of that he's in a john houston movie called victory which was kind of a big one yes that's it michael caine and like stallone's in it and pele's like the third guy or something like that wow i didn't know this yeah it looks like victory a minor miracle a hot shot and then like some some non-English TV appearances. Yeah, probably Brazilian television maybe, I would guess.

Yeah, I think so. Also, Hot Shot, Bob, not the Charlie Sheen movie. Hot Shot from 1986, which is, you'll be surprised to know, it's a soccer-related movie. You'll find that most of his roles are soccer related then all the kids leave soccer this also it being like bard at soccer practice it is very 1993 like every every kid in the 90s i felt like had to have at least one soccer practice in their life absolutely yeah it was the rise of the soccer mom that's right yeah ford wind stars flying off the lots absolutely not not american listeners might think like well of course yeah soccer it's bedrock of

our institutions but like not not to americans no no no no not at all yeah i think after 9 11 we just doubled down on football the soccer decade was over We doubled down on the recruitment commercials during the televised breaks during the game. That's for sure. Big time. And so, yes, this is when Bart is invited to go to a certain movie. Bart and Finn! Bart and Finn! Bart and Finn!

That's the R-rated movie they're going to be sneaking into. That's a great, that's a Coen Brothers classic for sure. I love that movie. It's a Coen Brothers classic, but I wonder what like repertory house they were going to. Because that movie was like 91. It had been out for a fashion. It's a great gag that like instead of the kids sneaking into Porky's, they're going to sneak into Bart and Fink. Which, though as a kid, I didn't know what Bart and Fink was.

It sounded so much like Bart, his name, that I thought they were taunting Bart in some way. I couldn't tell what it was. Why are they making fun of Bart? I would love to know what Lewis thought of Judy Davis' performance in Bart and Fink. Then in season seven, we have the episode Bart the Fink, a takeoff on Bart and fink that's

right that's the one with uh uh it's the debut of handsome pete that's right the dance he'll be dancing for hours i think it's also maybe a joke about just the mpa ratings in general because if you've seen bart and fink i haven't watched in about a decade but i looked at like a parental guidance thing last night to be like okay okay, why is it rated R? And it's like, they say the F word three times in the movie. There's some blood and violence. And one time John Goodman's character has a joke says, I have a topless woman on the, a drawing of a topless woman on the back of my tie and flashes it for a second. That's it.

That's the movie. It's kind of crazy and especially for the language component that is super light for a coen brothers script you know what i mean like three f's that's it pretty light i think steve buscemi will surpass that number of f words in like one sentence in fargo that is true no it's a great, I love that movie. One of my favorite, there's so many great things in it, but my favorite, I think, is that when John Turturro's character is told to watch the wrestling movies to know what he's even supposed to write, that he watches the same guy over and over again saying,

like, I will destroy you. Cut. I will destroy you. And just the look on his face as he realizes what he's in for us maybe this has changed with future releases when i eventually got around to watching this on dvd the dvd menu spoiled the end of the movie the the motif is basically what happens at the end of the movie so uh not not great yeah yeah man that sucks Yeah. I'm happy I watched it for the first time in a commercial free screening on IFC channel, which, you know, once showed movies.

But yeah, so they're going off to see Bart and Fink. Bart is then left stranded in this era before everyone had a cell phone. And, you know, if I ever say in my life the words, I'm on my way, I think of how Homer says it here. It's one that has influenced my brain too much. I'm on my way. And my husband doesn't get it. He thinks I'm just saying like, yeah, okay, you're on your way.

You got to sit him down. Why are you saying it so excitedly? So this at least gives Homer a slight blamelessness. He is not intentionally forgetting bart he is he just didn't listen when they left and told him you need to pick up bart he was too engrossed in wheel of fortune well it's his selective hearing with marge you know he can kind of turn that off as if he's got a hearing aid you know yes but i do love that it's just it's also weird afternoon wheel of fortune which is fascinating when you think about it.

So it's a rerun? Because that, I mean, at least where I am, that was like 7 p.m. Oh, yeah. You know, on ABC or whatever it was. It's just like, did he tape it? Is it a weird rerun? Is it a Game Show Network situation? I think that's probably a little before Game Show Network was a thing.

It's just kind of funny watching Wheel of Fortune and the sun's still up. no it was it's the seven to eight block of wheel of fortune and jeopardy that murph griffin has forever owned in our lifetimes that's right and then we get this joke which has always seemed like the weirdest thing in this episode i'm like i'm not sure what they're trying to say is it just a random non-sequitur or is it trying to say something mean about a feminist i don't know huh yeah i suppose there is a cruel reading to this of that a a woman singing the uh 70s feminist anthem of helen reddy's i am woman hear me roar uh looking like homer with a drawn in five o'clock shadow yeah i could see a mean meanness to that yes i i like to take it as more of the weird as on its weirdness but yes they have said they were getting a lot meaner because they were just very tired everyone was leaving it's why in about 90 seconds a nun

explodes yes that's right we're also uh talking about meanness too right before the nut explodes they also this episode has a lot of axes to grind with current television at the time yes dad where are you tonight on wings ah who cares this isn't funny! Homer Simpson! Homer Simpson! Pick up Bart! Pick up Bart! Trapukes up! Trapukes up! What have we told you about writing on the walls?

Go to your room. Yeah, the Wings diss in this episode. Wings, I think, probably at that point in its fourth season. And it's funny how, I mean, Wings was never a Seinfeld, but it was a very watched show based on where it was airing on NBC. And Frasier recently turned 30, and people were posting some of the original print ads on twitter and i saw like a huge uh tagline of the frazier ad was from the creators of wings so you were meant to think like wings is great ergo i will watch frazier right well you know what is it one

two three words must see tv bob if you had that you know put upon you but like axe to grind with that axe to grind with the 1960s show the flying nun just straight up saying this isn't funny that's just it's not really a joke as much as it's a writer's opinion about a television show no it's the wings thing is especially that came in late you can tell because they appropriated footage of Homer from three men in a comic book, except they added in to the window just gray water, a rain effect, because if it wasn't there, you'd be seeing Bart Milhouse and Martin fighting over a comic book in the window. They're fine. Yes, exactly. A great Castellaneta delivery. They're fine. But in this case, it's just to say wings is shitty like and that it's and mike reese i think must be the

one who had a real thing with this because a year later on the critic they would have a joke of satan appears on screen and he gets a phone call and he said uh hey the the people who make wings want another season and then he says there's limits to even my powers that's right if you look at the the writers on wings though they are now the the kings of this world of sitcoms they all went on to create gigantic things i think like steve levitan creator of modern family was one of them uh it just it's a murderer's row of future sitcom creators. Interesting. I mean, you know, I'm not made of stone.

I watched my fair share of Wings back in the day. It's a great cast, too, full of future stars. It's crazy that it didn't. One last fun story about Wings. Were the casting on it different for Tim Daly's character, we would all think of Batman differently because Kevin Conroy almost got cast in Tim Daly's role. And if he had done that,

then he wouldn't have been Batman of our childhood. That's right. That's a terrifying thought to think, actually. Jesus. I don't want that universe. No. But then Tim Daly was still Superman, so Wings didn't stop him.

That's true. Yeah. That's right yeah that's right that's fair and hey to bring it full circle to uh andrew you were mentioning the fugitive he also was the star of a fugitive adaptation as well oh that's right that was the 2000 i think or somewhere around there we were just remarking about that yesterday i haven't seen it but i have a feeling it might be in full on youtube also one of those eerie things the the creator of airplane comedy show wings one of them died in 9-11 in one of the planes that's right

but anyway but speaking of flying hey sally field is the flying nun um that that's harmless and inoffensive that how did that had 83 episodes across three seasons that's insane no no one dared show that to me as a kid and and also this not even nick at night stoop that low and this backwards reference again as a kid didn't get it didn't know it was the shining it wasn't until two years later a year and a half later when the simpsons would do the shitting did i get what this was referencing oh i love any time kirk van houten is trying to appear like fatherly to mill how they're like a disciplinarian you know what did i tell you like he's it's just such a great voice and the dude is just so pathetic oh it's awesome no uh yeah no he he cannot uh actually be an authority figure it's on it's unbelievable yeah

they didn't really crack that nut yet. This is, I think, a second spoken appearance. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. He doesn't even get a name for another two seasons, I think, too. Or it's early season seven, I think. And, yes, then Homer is getting all of these hints while Bart is almost dying in a horrible rainstorm. He's reminded of Brian Bartlett star, Bart, Bart, Bart.

And they even, again, this feels like them doing a couple of, several graining no-nos in this episode. Santa's little helper and Maggie basically speak here, which are both things Matt Groening says you are not allowed to do for a joke. Maggie's second word is Bart.

Her first word is daddy. And I guess we're talking about perhaps Homer was watching a rerun of Wheel of Fortune. Here he's watching a rerun of Bart Starr's Retirement from 1971. Yes. And hey, that was the football episode, Bart Starr, season nine. Oh, that's right. Homer can't think with all this noise. He goes to take a bath.

And this is when he finally remembers. Dad, hide your shame! Hey, homie, I can see your doodle. Shut up, Flanders. Hey, boy, how was soccer practice? Hey, Bart? Son? Here's my way of saying I'm sorry.

I know you're mad at me right now, and I'm kind of mad too. I mean, we could sit here and try to figure out who forgot to pick up who till the cows come home. But let's just say we're both wrong and that'll be that. Now how about a hug? One really cool visual thing I wanted to note alongside Homer's melting skull is when he's in the bathtub and he falls asleep and has the dream about finding the skeletonized Bart in front of the goal. Yes. When he falls asleep, we pan from the tile in the bathroom, which transitions into the netting of the soccer goal

against the sky. It's like this really cool visual transition within the same scene. Jeffrey Lynch. Yes, it's incredible. Like, that's, you know, a lesser show or a lesser animated episode. would just be like just have a cross dissolve we can do this easy like that won't it instead and that's much easier to fix

in editing but if you have a a long background on physical paper too you're not doing this digitally if it screws up then you gotta like do a retake. It is a bigger risk, and it looks so good, that transition. It's very cinematic in its execution. Also, A-plus sound effects here. The dripping of the ice cream down his head into the dripping melting of Homer's face. Primo sound design. Yeah, I also love any time a skeleton of bart has his hair line on it it's always funny too yes it's actually part of the the bone formation and they admit on

the commentary they definitely pressed pause on the screen and added the extra joke of flanders seeing homer's doodle but it's a great great line which so that i mean it's it does feel slightly slightly off flanders would just be offended to see homer dude instead of like jokingly saying i can see your doodle yeah he's very like locker room cool with it like yeah very un-flanders also lisa referring to his package as his shame. Really great. I do shame. Yeah. Though clearly he put on clothes before picking up Bart. The scene plays very differently if Homer is nude still while picking up Bart.

Very true. But yeah, the melting of his skin too is so great. This episode is filled with movie references, but I don't want to. There's lots of movies where skin dissolves, but maybe it's a Raiders reference. I don't know. It's not specific enough to be a Raiders of the Lost Ark reference. Visually, it looks like that was the inspiration, but Bart is not unleashing any sort of arc within the card. Only his rage.

I mean, again, this is now that VD explained it to us like this way. I totally see the dramatic emotional beats here like this could be played so much realer of bart is disappointed in homer and has good reason to be and we could actually engage with bart's feelings in this or we could have like a minute long snl parody and and they chose one over the other incredibly incredibly mean to snl at this time period which is funny because uh this is the time period where i was old enough to stay up late and watch it i began watching it in the early 90s so i thought even as a kid i was like what it's funny but this is the era in which the saturday night dead articles were being written uh things

like that i don't know if anyone was as mean to snl as they were throughout the early 90s outside of that weird uh the 80s slump sure sure yeah because even when you had like those fallon years there was like enough still going for it that i don't think people were as harsh like when when those people started like kind of falling off before they found whatever the next chapter of snl was which wind up becoming like amy poehler and seth meyers stuff there was that like are we running out of gas here but even still i think there was enough going that this yeah the early 90s criticisms were were pretty rough yeah because you started losing all of those people you lost like mike myers and well dana cartman was eventually gone yeah no it's well it's interesting to see this mocking of what was

like the era we of our age like loved like i think i definitely watched a little snl uh here and there on the coming central reruns up to the release of the wayne's world movie but after the wayne's world movie i was like snl is the funniest tv show ever as long as it stars this cast that simpsons is completely trashing here yeah and everybody remembers too like you know how cool ge smith looked yeah playing guitar like i always you know i was like a self-taught guitar player you know not great shakes or anything but man i was always like g.e smith looks cool as hell and you get to do that on a cool like comedy show every week to me that was like the dream job was leading like the snl band being the guitar player and i just was reminded

in my research on this that like he was already a big name guitar player like for hall and oats like he was the lead guitarist on on all of hall hollow notes his biggest 80s hits before going to snl that's pretty mind-blowing i did not know that about ge smith that's awesome yeah no it's uh but but yes this this snl thing i think i've heard forget where it was but i think it was lauren michael said in one interview once that like if he asked somebody who your favorite cast of snl was it's who was on it in when you were in your teens like that's that's most people's favorites so i get that and also i was also just thinking about where snl's at now where people i heard griffin newman say this about how when we were young they would make fun of tim meadows for being on the show for seven or eight years in a row you know and now everybody's on snl for 18 years

you know yeah you know what's funny about that the lauren quote about your favorite cast is i think to some degree that's a little bit skewed because of those comedy central reruns right like i wasn't really a teenager until the late 90s you know like you know whatever what that would have been 97 or something like that but like i was younger than that watching those comedy central reruns because it was like it was on immediately after school and you could watch like two or so episodes then like kids in the hall would come in but they were almost exclusively like that 86 to 92 runs so i was watching like you know casts that were doing the show when i was like two years old and loving that stuff then it was mixed with like yeah in the early 90s like bob you said watching

you know stuff live and then that was like farley and sandler so it was kind of like my experience with snl was getting like a double dose of these casts as like a big super cast almost like reruns and then the the current broadcasts yeah i was a big watcher of the comedy central reruns and you're right andrew it really was 86 to whatever the current year was uh there was never any of the 70s stuff uh to this day i still have never seen any of the you know eddie murphy or gilbert godfrey or god forbid joe piscopo era of the show i've only seen those sketches shown elsewhere like on youtube no god i remember it was one one summer and uh where of course i didn't go out and do things during my summer break i watched television all day but i oh yeah i remember for one summer comedy central

in their cycle got to the 80 to 85 run and if i ever saw like like Julia Louis-Dreyfus on my TV, I was like, well, this must suck. And I would watch anything else than that. It was such a disappointment every time. Or if you saw Jim Belushi stroll across your screen, look out. Yeah, or Brad Michael, the Mr. Louis-Dreyfus. Brad Hall. Brad Hall.

Brad Hall, yes. But yes, here, Krusty is hosting SNL, or sorry, Tuesday Night Live, totally different. And he is not having a good time. Hello, New York. When Lorne asked me to host this show, I said, Lorne, why me? I mean, I did just star in my first movie with Marvin Hagler and Tova Borgnine.

Yeah. Anyway, we got a great show for you. Well, actually, the last half hour is a real garbage dump. We'll be right back. Okay, so great little monologue from Krusty, but also Marvin Hagler's acting career. Again, another short-lived acting career. I think more than Pele, though.

He did a little more. He was in the movies Indio in 1989, Indio 2, believe it or not, in 1991, and Across Red Nights, also in 1991. And his last real acting role was, I think this could be a great fodder for We Hate Movies, but you'll never run out of bad movies. The movie is 1997's Virtual Weapon. Ooh, I was just clicking on that on imdb a detective duo hunts a criminal organization which is using an unknown liquid explosive material yep and it from looking at the credits it seems it was an italian production or some sort of mediterranean one which that there's a certain flavor to a mediterranean. Yeah, the director, Antonio Margheriti.

Absolutely. Yeah, marvelous Marvin Hagler, but not so known for his acting as opposed to his boxing ability. Whoa, guys, how about this, though? Antonio Margheriti not only directed Marvin Hagler in Virtual Weapon, but definitely both of those Indio movies. Wow. Oh, wow.

Using the name Anthony M. Dawson, by the way. See, they must have been like, oh, this has too much Italian stink on it. If people see this in the credits, they know this is a crappy Italian movie. So Anglify is your name, Antonio. Absolutely. Yeah. So Tova Borg-9 has never had an acting role, which it was really the joke. She was Ernest Borg-9's wife. I think mostly was a cosmetic spokesperson or had her own cosmetics company.

Yeah. Beauty by Tova. I remember those. Yeah. Yeah. She did not try to make a foray into acting. One thing I noticed about this episode, which is true of all of these old ones, like, oh, everyone is dead. Everyone mentioned is a corpse now.

Yes. Yeah. Joe Piscopo lives. I will say that. He lives. I don't think they let him out of Atlantic City, New Jersey. That's where he sort of has to stay. You know, I think the funny thing about, yes, Tova Borgnine did not act, but she did have a lot of television experience, Bob.

QVC up and down the board. Oh, of course. She would hawk all that cosmetic stuff on QVC, so she was like, you know, camera ready. But I guess camera ready only for QVC and a Krusty starring vehicle of some kind. I mean, I love his delivery of Tova borg nine like such a funny like they'll be like holy shit crusty did a movie with tova borg nine well and and it's great too because you would uh as a kid uh watching snl was how i'd be introduced to a lot of actors who i'd never seen their movies yet but they would be promoting a movie that would be it's whatever their movie was when they hosted

snl doesn't mean it became a famous movie so they'll name some movies and you'll be like wait who what this movie also back when like that was a big way to push your movie was like oh yeah get good word of mouth about the movie coming out host snl then you know now the internet makes that not matter anymore so it's just kind of funny when they are still sort of plugging stuff it's like come on guys and if you if you think the show was too mean to joe piscopo i i checked in to see what old mr joey p's up to and well folks he is uh tweeting about hunter biden's laptop and he recently had mr alan dershowitz on his podcast so uh i know they're in direct competition with us, so please don't listen. Yes.

We've got a feud going with anybody who books Alan Dershowitz because he turned us down. Yeah, he turned us down. He turned us down. Just watch Piscopo in dead heat with the late Treat Williams. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, man, he just passed away, didn't he?

That shows you what's going on with this universe, man. Piscopo. Still farting around. But yes, I also love the posing on Krusty that he is waiting for like on SNL, the opening. Everybody is told you have to clap. You have to applaud. And he's just waiting for like, ah, ah. And then also just the.

So VD says that he wrote a 30 second SNL joke that got extended for the episode in the rewrite. Because he says he doesn't want to come off as one of those sad old SNL writers who's just trashing the show at his new job. But the way he says, actually the last 30 minutes are real garbage, Jeff. Yeah, they were talking about how Conan actually had a great time on SNL and they released him from his contract to write on The Simpsons, I think. Or to write maybe the Look Well pilot or something. He was allowed to leave his contract early.

As opposed to The Simpsons basically threatening to sue Conan unless he paid, not The Simpsons, Fox, made Conan pay a big penalty to get to leave to host the late night show oh wow scumbags well uh well same with like they say it on the commentary that george meyer like literally quit the show in season four he's like i don't want to do this anymore i quit and fox told him you owe scripts you cannot quit oh man that's rough but uh also that that i i get that this is comedy writers saying

that like they know where the bad or the rough sketches are but if you look at the last 30 minutes of snl that's where usually the most fun wacky things are like that are not yes just a talk show sketch of like what if a crazy person was on a talk show which is 90 of the sketches on saturday night live exactly it's where they try out new stuff you know it's all the stuff that's like yeah that's probably weird for you know 11 50 but and yes some of the best stuff is found on there admittedly it's also like a lot of stuff that doesn't work but um yeah you'll find you'll find nugs or you would i don't well now i don't pretend to know what's going on with the program these days. Well, now the 12.45 time slot for a sketch is meaningless because all the sketches are on YouTube the next day.

And you watch them without even realizing where they were in a show as it was broken. That's true. They take a little break to G.E. Smith mugging hard for the camera. Jeff Lynch loves animating him just going, G.E. Smith got fired at 95 along with all the other people the big sweep of the uh though yeah i do believe vd when he says that i think it was mike reese who up to the snl hate because the next year on the critic again they would do an entire snl like trash opening of making fun of the sweaty guy is their most famous guy on the show now aka chris farley

but they just call him the sweaty guy i also do love the drawing of of crusty doing uh his his little weird mugging for his photo he's doing kind of doing the batusi i forget if it's behind you're right the palms are showing the back of the hand if you show the palms that's the correct batusi i talked about it yes we talked about it on the mr plow one if you see how travolta does the bat to see in uh pulp fiction does it wrong i do love that i mean one the ge smith thing animating him the way they do i mean because he was just that he was always feeling it you know like almost cartoonishly so feeling the interstitial music for saturday night live but then also those photos you know that they were using at the time that you know that whole vibe that aesthetic of what the host looked like in those photo sets when you hosted each week they nail it with crusty

doing that it's really great it's perfect art design we cut to a crazy commercial that gives part of this next idea though like though this is not the intention. But having this commercial show up here, it feels like an SNL ad parody, not a real ad Bart watches. Upon this viewing, I just really appreciate how mean this commercial is, where the child's father has not even been fully buried yet. He's standing in front of the open grave. Open grave. That's in my notes, Bob. Standing next to open grave it's so awesome and i i love uh also the hank and i'm sorry the hank azaria announcer just being uh quietly condescending with no he's not with uh and and then they're

playing catch over the father's open grave too that's That's so great. They teleport in a bigger brother. So the name of the organization is Bigger Brothers. It's a parody of the, I believe it's called the Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America. They were once separate organizations. They've combined into one. Matching children with mentors since 1904. Still going strong. I Googled it and I got the organization's headquarters in Canada because that's where I am right now. Ah, I like that. Wow. That's surprising that that thing's still going strong i googled it and i got the uh the organization's headquarters in canada because that's where i am right now wow that's surprising that that thing's still going on there

was um i remember like television commercials for it yeah no one tossing a football over a grave but that you know those commercials would come on not really late at night though which is kind of funny when bart calls it later and someone picks up i was like but if you're watching like this you know tnl tuesday night live like someone's there at that office to pick up the phone you know this was customer service in 93 people cared yeah there weren't robots or chat bots uh and i will say i only went to the wikipedia for this but there was no entry that says like scandals and accusations so i feel like they're on the up and up controversy. I was so ready when I went to their wiki as well to be like, okay,

where's the scandal section? Where's the, but no, there wasn't though. Maybe if there were scandals, then I'll give credit to their PR team for burying it and not having it appear on the wiki. Yeah.

It is. It is not the child story by the way. The, and then the way Bart says, I don't have a father. it feels staged to be like used in a commercial though was not used in any of the commercials i saw online that were archived for it though one way that it was advertised was i saw a full page tv guide ad again this is on the great daily simpsons simpsons history uh twitter account the the tv guide ad is ad is, it's a night of fights on Fox because round one,

Bart versus Homer. And then it's like round two, Martin versus Gina because it's an hour-long special episode of Martin and Gina called Martin, where Martin and his girlfriend Gina break up. It is an hour-long special

called The Breakup. I think I kind of remember that episode. I watched quite a bit martin back in the day do you do you remember uh that the episode also has on richard prior who is um you know he's doing his best but he's not uh he's not a young man anymore i i do not remember prior popping on is he playing himself yes yeah he's just being interviewed by by martin on the show yeah yeah okay okay now i don't i don't remember then then we cut to one more mean joke the big ear family now this is my go-to reference uh for any bad sketch that is just a one note sketch that but i believe i really think that mad about shoe from the sherry bobbins episode is a better go-to for a bad sketch and it was sometime during the pandemic i was watching

snl with my wife and we rarely ever watched it was sometime during the pandemic I was watching SNL with my wife and we rarely ever watched it. It was just on. And they had a sketch where like all the characters were different viruses and the daughter was COVID and she brought home a vaccine. And I was like, oh, it's the Big Ear family.

And by the way, we recently did Simpsons Trivia in Vancouver and that was our team name, the Big Ear family. We came in third, but there were two of us and the first place people uh there were six of them so you know there should have been exactly what would happen to chelsea and i when we would do bar trivia in our neighborhood we would come in second almost every time to the team that was like six

people and it was like hey that's got to count for something yeah you should get a handicap or something on it, I think. Put a little more bucks on that gift card I would always win. Both of the lines, like in this and the Man About Shoes sketch, they both explain what's bad about a bad sketch. In this case, it's like, this goes on for 12 more minutes. When you know a sketch is dead on arrival, like, well, we've got to finish this sketch. I wish we could just throw up our hands and be like, sketch over. We know it's failed. Instead, they're like, arrival like well we got to finish this sketch i wish we could just throw up our hands and be like sketch over we know that's failed instead they're like nope we got to finish the sketch that's one of the you know great things about doing improv it's like

oh shit this might not be working so well let's just wipe it and start completely over this this was the era though that i think snl was leaning into one note sketches and that was kind of the joke like this is the one joke you're gonna get and i remember that because i just saw wild at heart the david lynch film and nicholas cage is in that movie basically playing uh his version of elvis in terms of the accent and the affectation it made me remember a tiny elvis the sketch that he would be in when he would be on the show and the entire sketch was elvis's tiny and he'd be like look at that coffee mug that's huge he'd just be pointing out that things that are small to us are big to him and that's the entire sketch see when i was a kid i loved those types of tootsies the driving cat was my favorite sketch as a kid though i just liked it

like this is a funny puppet and i like they die every time even though you know as a as an adult with uh who knows comedy better now i love it as a sketch of just like you know how this sketch is gonna go every single time it's it's waiting for the turn of like obviously he's not very good who knows comedy better now i love it as a sketch of just like you know how this sketch is going to go every single time it's it's waiting for the turn of like obviously he's not very good at driving he's better than some cats but he's just he can't drive though it's how do we get to you know from the start of the sketch how do we get to the same clip of the car going over the cliff and that was always the fun with i loved that sketch and the you know like just those just add water sketches you know where it's you need the one thing And that was always the fun with, I loved that sketch and the, you know, like just those, just add water sketches, you know,

where it's just, you need the one thing, everything kind of stay the same and you're anticipating that. And that's the kind of sketch. So it's fine. I think why mad about shoe is a more successful riff on that stuff than the, the big year family is because, you know,

it does something that SNL does a lot too, is tapping into like other pop culture things. So it's referencing the Paul Reiser, Helen Hunt sitcom, Mad About You, whereas Big Ear Family is just, they're a Big Ear family. It also has that great tag, like, oh, you're not going to like our NYPD shoe sketch. Yeah, I know. Somebody in that writing staff believed so strongly in shoe puns that they wanted to use every part of the shoe pun. Well, they paid for that one giant shoe shoe they got to use it in two sketches that's uh no i mean it's like yeah if you again it's somebody who uh checks in on snl the youtube

channel every now and then during a season i i notice that like the style of sketches are like let's take for example like okay we've got pedro pascal well you gotta at least do one last of us related sketch or this case make him mario in a mario kart parody then you need to dress him up and drag in at least one scene and then you need to do one about how he's a tiktok guy that kids think is is hot and then you cast him as somebody from uh the biden administration boom that's your show you've finished your snl sketches or let's say you have touching on mando oh sorry you're right mando they would do a mando joke that's right andrew yes yeah i was gonna say or if you have uh let's say elon musk on your program you just wind him up and let him go he's hilarious as is he's hilarious every time no writing necessary

no it uh wasn't that funny to hear from our pal neil campbell when he uh was on the show that when he was on our podcast he talked about his uh you know his assigned job of writing the elon musk simpsons episode and then also he got to be uh he uh he was in the audience for the elon musk snl too so he's had to be partied unwittingly to elon musk's comedy poor bastard but uh but yeah no this uh i again when snl sketch is bad it's bad it helps it helps for snl that if they do four good sketches a year out of like uh 50 then that's all you have to remember you just remember when the good ones like and you think like wow snl was always funny but uh but all right so bart then goes to the bigger brother he seems to be showing off his rudiger character

he's been working on yeah doing a bit of character work here he was already trying out this voice in uh in streetcar when he's like got a pain in miguelova he's he's got a full costume for it uh even talking about the ash man which is a very british thing to say bart gets hooked up uh he he scams the organization get hooked up with the best guy which i have to say this woman running the she should have put peppy with tom from the beginning like she's like oh we saved this for very special cases like peppy needs it should be clearly one of these special cases she cares about. Peppy's checking in every hour, but as Homer has demonstrated earlier,

sorry, later in the episode, he will demonstrate that the clientele prefers white children. Ah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. She probably, she's got a racial bias that she was saving Tom for the saddest white child that comes to him, her.

That's right. White British sounding child apparently uh so yes uh this is where tom appears voiced by phil hartman and again oh yeah also who introduces the big ear family sketch phil hartman doing the exact voice he would do if he was assigned that same sketch on snl yeah i i did get a chuckle that oh oh, Phil Hartman is demeaning the show he's currently working on. Yeah. Doesn't it also like even when they've done new or more recent Wayne's World sketches, they still use his voiceover introducing Wayne's World. And it's it it gets me every time I hear it. I'm like, oh, God, it's just reminded.

That's kind of nice that they do that. They didn't like update it with current announcer Daryl Hammond. Yeah. Which no shade on that guy. He's made me laugh a million times over the years. But like, it's nice that you keep Phil doing that, which also. But by the way, you made me think, Henry, how often have we been doing new Wayne's World sketches? What's happening? Let's see. They do it for every uh like anniversary show that oh yes you're totally right and i believe they did it for an uber eats ad in the last three years or something

yeah okay oh that's coming back i wish i hadn't asked i guess i had successfully buried especially that uber eats commercial what was worse the u Eats commercial or now I forget which car company, but there was a car company commercial that was like Dr. Evil and his team reunited as well to advertise some car. For me, it was honestly the Sesame Street gang advertising DoorDash or whatever, where I think it was just the company

rubbing it in our faces like, yeah, they weren't for sale, we bought them. That's true. And now they're going to dance for us. just the company rubbing it in our faces like yeah they weren't for sale we bought them and now they're gonna dance for us uh uh but so uh as as bart gets assigned his uh motorcycle riding friend tom which uh martin's reaction is bart's dad has really pulled himself together that's a good line that slays me uh but this is when we get introduced to the B plot of this episode that I often forget is part of this episode. Homer is confronted with a bill.

He acts after Marge tells him that Bart thinks he's a bad father. And I did find there's a very noticeable reuse of old animation here, but I found where it was from. Bob, did you find where it was from? No, I thought maybe we had talked about this when we first covered it but i know it's it's very like early season two looking animation when homer's saying bad means good and to shake your booty means to wiggle one's butt it's it's actually late season one they pulled from season one which they never do because it's very noticeable this is when homer in life on the fast lane realizes he he forgot Marge's gifts and stands up and says, You know, it's such a beautiful day outside.

I think I'll go for a walk. So that's where the shot is from. But yes, this is where Marge sees the big phone bill, $378, which, according to an official government inflation calculator, is $800 in today's money. Oof. Yikes. But then we learn, for once, something isn't Homer's fault. Homer, do you have an explanation for this bill? Oh, what's that record club?

The first nine were only a penny. Then they jacked up the price. It's not fair. It's not fair, I tells you. No, no. Someone made $300 worth of phone calls to something called the Corey Hotline. Wasn't me. Lisa! Why didn't you ask our permission, Lisa? I did.

Dad, can I... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aw, honey, I know what you're going through. When I was a girl, I had a crush on Bobby Sherman. The point is, I want you to stop making these calls. All right, Mom. I promise you will never be billed for another call. Bobby Sherman! So there we go.

It is the Corey Hotline storyline, which this is the peak for the Corey character, first introduced when Lisa has the mumps in Bart's Dog Gets an F and asks Homer to buy her a bunch of magazines. Homer buys Teen Beat and Tiger Beat kind of things. And he asks, how many of these boys are named Corey? And so they basically melded together the two corys of the late 80s into one boy named cory for this i do love this uh it's a good visual gag of going from marge saying what's something called the cory hotline and lisa slamming the door and it's just a big

cory poster on the door yeah it's uh one and how much cory content of as we hate movies done i know you guys did the lost boys we did the lost boys and oh you know that's a good question we haven't done a ton we did a live show a live virtual show with friday the 13th final chapter so that's a cory feldman movie i feel like we did a thousand years ago rock and roll high school forever which i believe cory feldman is in also yeah we haven't done things like i don't think we've done a two cory's movie like a license to drive or dream a little dream or anything like that that's always like we say we're gonna get to it we never do and probably should have like 10 years ago at least um yeah a lot of separate cory projects

though i found one actually have you guys know of this uh cory hame movie called uh watchers no no it's cory hame comes across this like genetically modified dog and like horror stuff happens really cool like pre uh lance henriksen's man's best friend movie in full on youtube it's called watchers would definitely recommend it oh when they were making fun of the cory's here with lisa having a crush on cory both cory's were not in a good place in 1993 uh just career wise and then of course uh later in their lives they would be talking about how not funny things to uh that were going on in their personal lives that were causing the collapse of their careers but i mean corey feldman um corey hame no longer with us right

but feldman is still being very direct about the the abuse he suffered in his uh child acting career which is very very sad to hear but so it makes it makes these corey jokes feel worse than they did when it was just like yeah lisa has a crush on a cute boy that's that's what it is right yeah you know it always bothered me that he was cast as donatello in the the first ninja turtles movie then he came back for the third just why does donatello sound so skeevy yes yeah i i prefer the ooze donatello there's not many things i prefer about two over one but i prefer the ooze donatello yeah interesting i mean i like that uh you know donatello in that first and third movie sounds like he's kind of been smoking for too long

that's a nice flair to it uh but uh but yes this cory hotline uh bob you found a pretty funny thing guys kids kids today might not know hotlines were a hot business back in the yeah i mean now this plot would be oh lisa bought a bunch of like uh corey currency on the corey app to like unlock new coreys or whatever but in back in that purchases yeah i've heard parents talk about oh my kid bought like you know an apple gift card or they bought a lot of things in this game and now i gotta pay for it but back in the day you had to pick up the phone and call a number to hear pre-recorded messages. And the first minute, always very expensive. After that, smooth sailing. But hey, those minutes add up. And we found something for the New Kids on the Block hotline. Hi, we're the New Kids on the Block. We really appreciate all of your phone calls to our private

hotline, 1-900-9095-KIDS. It's great talking to you and sharing our personal thoughts you know we're not too young to fall in love and if you're one of the special callers you get to talk to us live a portion of the net proceeds will help to support united cerebral palsy so give us a call at 1-900-9095 kids under 18 get permission before calling two dollars first minute 45 cents each additional minute and remember we'll be loving you forever i would have hated to be the kid who had to say like the amount of money it costs and also to ask your parents the lesser kid got that was that joey who knows that's so funny i could again hearing that again i was like wow they didn't get an announcer to say it professionally and fast they made one of the singers do it uh it's also great that they refer

to it in a you know like commercial for it that it's their private hotline now again is it which which one of the kids uh or maybe it was all of them wanted to try to find like a charity reason for it like oh there's a charity don't worry this isn't just us trying to rob children a portion goes to muscular dystrophy i mean i'd like to see what that portion was if i've learned anything from the fabulous documentary telemarketers on hbo that shit's all crooked so like how much was what was it muscular dystrophy i think that's what it was was it a cerebral palsy on the cerebral pals okay was it okay yeah i wonder whatever cerebral palsy charity what was the cut from the new kids on the block private chat line no those kids got a free misprinted t-shirts from the factory no the well also yeah the telemarketers thing like that i didn't give

to those phone calls anyway and hung up on them. But now, especially when I get a phone call for like, you know, the police brotherhood or whatever. Now I know it's like, oh, this is an 8000. You're not even a cop calling me. This is entirely a scam. Yeah, you're a dude that was like smoking heroin in the parking lot before you came in to make this phone call. But yeah, the Cor coreys they did have their own hotline it's uh not as funny to listen to as the new kids one but there's the coreys shared a

900 number as well you can find a commercial for that out there too like it's it's not just the feldman or the hame one it's both coreys together and it's the corey hotline that's a bargain just one number i mean but yes yeah we it seemed back then and look i also i never called one of those hotlines i felt like i couldn't talk my parents into it my dad probably would have complained about such a phone call did i want to call the wcw hotline to talk to sting sure i did but i i wouldn't have asked so So not to say it was just for dumb girls who liked cute boys to call these hotlines. They covered all of the children. Or I thought some of the most evil as I grew up was the ones of like, call Santa Claus.

Those seemed the most evil, I think. Oh, I never did any of that. Call Santa Claus. And it was like some guy like Merry Christmas. Yes. Yeah. One of the worst. It was Santa.

I remember seeing this on the USA Cartoon Express. It was in the summer and it was Santa's like on the beach in like a baggy swimsuit and a Hawaiian shirt going like, kids, it's never too early to call me and tell me what toys you want. Then he gives you the 900 number. No one take this the wrong way. That is like the kid version of phone sex. to call me and tell me what toys you want and then he gives you the 900 number that uh no one take this the wrong way that is like the kid version of phone sex oh my god i was talking with santa yeah it's it's thrilling no it's but in here you know we think we're so much more uh

better but it's like no kids do this on with every twitch streamer they have a parasocial relationship with like that though we're so much better than the cory hotline we're 4.95 just a month period that's it but yardley smith by the way did not like lisa having a crush on cory stories i'm kind of with her i don't like i mean yes eight-year-old girls do have crushes on boys. Like, that happens. But it just doesn't feel, I never loved it for Lisa, her having a crush on a cute boy like Corey. Well, it's always kind of weird whenever, you know, and I feel this happens with Lisa a lot. Now I'm going to put myself on the spot and not remember a single other example. But, like, when they go against the grain of what you think the character would do. And, like, this does, it is one of those instances, not as severe as i feel they maybe do it in other times but like it's kind of not something lisa

would do like lisa is the intelligent simpson she's the one that would realize like oh that's a scam and it's gonna run up dad's bill and you know i'm gonna get in trouble it just seems so the antithesis of that character i mean yeah that she fell for an ad of like cory saying why won't she call me and she's like i have to call but i mean you know lots of people have addiction issues so it's uh that sure i guess the allegory they're working with is a drug addiction yes yeah basically allegory oh yes hey i think this episode taught me that word i think i learned it there too i mean i think about this line one every time i hear the word allegory and whenever i hear the name cory i just do these cory hotline bits in my head

because it's the simpsons is printed on my brain also i i love i never knew who bobby sherman was none of his songs are popular but i this is how i learned who he was and the way they draw lisa laugh like her stupid looking face is her arms that's such a funny drawing it's one of my favorite lisa drawings and if you look at bobby sherman it would be who uh marge would be into because he was the answer to the counterculture of the late 60s oh this clean cut nice man still exists to croon at us they kind of keep that going when uh whatever the episode is when you learn that uh marge was like a monkey's kid over the beatles it's that same kind of like well the monkeys were way more wholesome and cute this is back when it made sense that marge graduated from high school in 1974 instead

of 2001 as it is now that's right uh bobby sherman's still alive by the way 80 years old it's impressive yeah one of the few people mentioned this episode to survive the last three decades uh and yes also it's very uh smart lawyerly wording that lisa says you will never be billed for another call it's like she doesn't say i will quit right but just not from this uh this home telephone number and also lisa was a good girl she did what the ad said you ask your parents permission she asked homer's permission and he just said yeah that does also lisa was a good girl she did what the ad said you ask your parents permission she asked homer's permission and he just said yeah yeah that does fit this character like this will get us in the clear like make sure you ask your parents permission similar to like if you

go to like a website for like i don't know like a whiskey distillery or a winery or like a cannabis dispensary and it's like are you over 21 check this box before and if not get out of here like what do you think a kid is going to do every single time with faced with that decision on a website yeah i tend i tend to stick it to the man and choose the earliest possible date like yes i am 114 years old yes yeah i miss when you could put in 1900 as as your age on this year. Then Bart goes to a baseball game with Tom. It's tomato day. And this is when Bart starts setting up who Homer is to Tom. Your dad ever take you to baseball games?

Nah, his game was blackjack. He bet our life savings on a single hand. 19. Hit me. 20. Hit me. 21. Hit me. 20. Hit me. 21. Hit me. 22. If I ever meet your dad... The start of the game

will be delayed so we can introduce the recruiter for the Springfield Communist Party. Boo! This is better than dark day. The design of the guy from the Springfield Communist Party, he looks like he's from 1917 Moscow. The announcer's really setting up these people to hate him

because he says, you know, we're going to delay the start of the game. To introduce the game, here's this guy. It's like, no, he's the reason you can't watch baseball. It's a game delay, which is really great. i love the fantasy vision of drunken gambler homer as as is conjured up and also such a smart joke homer in the story busts after pulling four aces in a row in blackjack like it's that's how it goes from up one each time you can only pull four aces total it is like incredible luck and he goes over when he busts it's still only by one instead of you know any

other card it's so great is that um is that character design referencing anything like him because he's got like the it's like a brown sort of long goatee he actually looks like when crusty's pretending to be rory b Bellows a little bit. It's a Tennessee Williams type character, it feels to me. Definitely. But I can't place it. Yeah, I see that. Yeah, I wasn't sure if it's some sort of direct ref or what.

I do like how Bart's exaggeration of Homer is not really different than the Homer we know. This is a joke they would write for him. Yes, yeah. He does a very Homer thing in bart's fantastical lie yeah to david merkin season he just does these things like this isn't like yeah bart making this up doesn't and they then cut to lisa at hibbert's office i love the joke about a dated mash coloring book even better than how hibbert offers it to lisa but he's so entertained with it he walks out of the room with it he keeps reading

and it is it is like the most generic description of mash where it's like a hawkeye's antics irritate the other surgeons yeah it's such a i mean it's kind of a slam on mash too and i mean that's like the vast majority of mash that's happening at least a little bit alan ald is bothering somebody but by the way i read i remember reading Levine, who was a Simpsons writer. He also wrote on MASH. He had one of my favorite stories about how they would write MASH. If they were annoyed at the actors on any day, they would write an episode where it was a very cult-like. A blizzard breaks out because that would mean they'd have to all dress very heavily in coats on a very

hot set and it'd be like this is how we want to torture the actors this week it's uh that's amazing but yeah so then uh after or after hibbert leaves uh that's what uh she sneaks in a phone call at hibbert's office to listen it's basically her stealing like morphine from the hospital. Yeah. Right. Right. And then we cut to Bart is Tom's workout buddy. And this is another very strange cameo in this episode. And believe me, when I saw this, when it went live, I was freaking out because I thought, oh, this is really just an endorsement of Ren and Stimpy.

It's not really a parody. And yeah, Mac Greening says it's a tribute. They thought Ren and Stimpy was the only other good cartoon on TV. So to find out more about what's going on here and why it's so accurate, I reached out to Ren and Stimpy correspondent Thad Komorowski. He is the author of Sick Little Monkeys, the definitive oral history of Ren and Stimpy. So according to Thad Komorowski, he says, quote, it was laid out by Chris Riccardi after he was fired from Spumco. There's a dig in the audio commentary along the lines of, if it was

John Chris Feluci, we'd still be waiting for it. As I recall, the animation was done shittily on purpose. It was a little odd cognitive dissonance given all of those guys at Spumco shit on the Simpsons all the time. And there's some John Chris Feluci quote from then that says, we could write the Simpsons in our sleep, according to Thad.

There's some quote that he said at that time. And also in Ren and Stimpy, there are a few digs at The Simpsons in later episodes. And also, of course, Rough Draft Studios in Korea was animating Ren and Stimpy at the same time they were working on The Simpsons. So there's a lot of crossover there. But yeah, Chris Riccardi laid this out. Very talented artist. He was fired from Spumco for dating John Chris Felici's ex-girlfriend, artist Lynn Naylor, who is still around, still very, very talented. And then he was hired back to the show after John Chris Felici was fired. And we've covered one of Chris Riccardi's Ren and Stimpy episodes for our What a Cartoon podcast. The episode was called Hermit Ren. Very, very funny. But O'Carley is no longer with us, but a very, very talented artist. Well, it's amazing to learn it was Riccardi who did it because he is like one of the, I mean, everything is correct in how these characters are drawn, which you, Bob, you

were, I remember you making this great point of like three people know how to draw Wren correctly. Wren Hoek from Wren and Stimpy. Very, yeah, very difficult character to draw. And if you notice the big index finger that Stimpy. Very, yeah, very difficult character to draw. And if you notice the big index finger that Stimpy has in the scene, that's something that John Chris Feluci hated. And that is why Chris Riccardi put it in his drawings,

presumably, I'm guessing. I know the big index finger was something that he hated to see, which is why when he left the show, you saw that a lot in Ren and Stimpy. That's so great. No, and also in Lynn Naylor, who Bob mentioned, she's also very underrated in the story. Most people who are not John Crickfaloozy got none of the press when Ren and Stimpy got big.

So nobody knows these people who are also victims of a very abusive creator of the show, John Kay. But Lynn Naylor, she basically is co-creator of the show john k uh but lynn naylor like she basically is co-creator of the show like she she did all the initial designs and she she's one of the best like artists of her generation if you like character designs in the original one of batman the animated series like poison ivy for example that's lynn naylor who did it like wow that's amazing i mean i watched a decent amount of ren and stimpy in like that original go i never went to the any of the the spike tv reboot and there was like another good for that maybe yeah you're fine with the original 52 and hey you know it's coming back uh probably this year i'm guessing is that right yeah they're still uh and you could play as them right now in the

nickelodeon brawl to the smash brothers clone of nickelodeon games oh no yeah some how far back do they go with characters uh all the way back to the the first 91 it's like i uh my my husband downloaded the demo of it to show me everything in it it's like did you ever want to see rafael battle red and stimpy versus cora from the legend of cora versus garfield they all are there oh my lord yeah actually some uh some materials from the red and stimpy reboot were leaked on twitter within the past like three or four months and yes like with all these reboots one of the episodes is what if character gets cell phone because we got to do that with everybody i understand why it's just funny that that's the immediate go-to reboot episode what was the significance of

putting it in this episode and the fact that it's like on at tom's house like what do they say like tom's house is not an itchy and scratchy house you know like it's it's so weird to see maybe it's to show that tom is like rich enough that he has cable unlike the simpsons so they can watch nickelodeon maybe that's it that could be yeah he's opening bart's eyes to all new uh areas of animated programming and it's it's weirdly uh not to linger on this too long it's weirdly an ad for ren and snippy because the characters are shown a ren and snippy clip that could just exist in a ren and snippy episode and then they laugh very hard at it because it's funny they love it well done though it's also strange that like they didn't get billy west to do it it's like dan

castellaneta does the voices for both ren and snippy instead of billy west who was by the 93 he was doing both the voices on it because john k had been fired and macra stimpy instead of billy west who was by the 93 he was doing both the voices on it because john k had been fired and matt graining would work with billy west a lot uh in about let's say seven years from this six years i know also it's funny that on the commentary they are trashing john k uh and then within a decade of when they recorded that commentary they then have him do two openings for the show that that are hideous he did two couch gags and of course though that was before a lot of public revelations came out about john k they were not working with him after those things i want to make that clear

for listeners too uh though yeah i mean it's uh again our pal thad he is uh he is the authority on ren and stimpy stuff we've done multiple multiple What a Cartoon podcasts with Thad talking about Ren and Stimpy. He was one of the first people to talk about the allegations about John Kay long before it went public or more public in the last few years. Good for him. But thank you, Bob, for checking with him about that because the characters, they're our model. But even Jeff Lynch says they needed to get in people to get the timing right, though. The timing still isn't really like there's some long pauses that are like too long for Ren and Stimpy. You know, it's as close as they can get it with.

I mean, Ren and Stimpy were designed by the only people who could draw them. Yes. Yeah. But then we cut to show and tell, and this, again, is just such a great joke about government waste. Someday I want to be an F-14 pilot like my hero Tom. He lent me this new weapon called a neural disruptor. He's not dead, is he, Bart? Nah, but I wouldn't give him any homework for a while.

Very good, Bart. Thank you. Oh, don't thank me. Thank an unprecedented eight-year military buildup. Millhouse, you're next. I am Horsey. Wuss! Wuss. Screams wuss from the back of the classroom god i love the applause as martin i mean the way they animate martin getting zapped and falling is amazing but the round of applause from the class

oh god it's great martin has had a brain hemorrhage here and nobody cares it's like and again you compare this to how consider how edna krabappel was written in her first episode in bart the genius which john vd wrote she loves martin prince and thinks bart wastes all of her time now in this episode martin is seriously injured left on the floor and she's like great job bart who's next like they don't care yeah and uh on the gun it says property of U.S. Navy, so that's more like Tom Cruise-style character traits. Yes. The neural disruptor, you know, you hear more about the people do jokes about the heart attack gun, not the neural disruptor,

when I hear jokes about this. But, oh, Bart doesn't know what he's talking about with his eight-year military buildup. It's talking about 93, like that can't kick just you wait kid uh then uh we uh we're cutting back and forth real quick here we're like we then see lisa sneak in another phone call uh with abe and it's just so great how abe passes out to reveal the phone and then she gets on the phone another another great gag a nice little uh he's got a little framed photo of b on his wall i never noticed that his deceased lady friend there

and that's a kind of sweet little abe detail this this is the funniest cory call because you could just tell how little they have to go on with uh this actor just like he he ran out of just generic boy things to say so he's like let's see what's in the newspaper today and there's there's a big beat and you can hear the paper ruffling yes canada stalls on trade pact yes i love that too they've they've done that a few times on the show where they're like what's boring news oh well americans reporting on anything to do with canada's government like that's even more boring than about our Congress. Homer is starting to get suspicious as Bart leaves for a father-son picnic

with Adam. Have a good time, which is great. And this is when Lisa is finally caught. Lisa, I know I can trust you to inventory this Glee Club peanut brittle. Yes, Principal Scanner. Now I gotta slash 40% out of the budget. So long.

Science. Ah, music and art. What in blazes? Good Lord. That's a 900 number. Let's see what's in the newspaper today. Hmm. Canada stalls on trade pact.

Isn't it also great that Skinner can tell it's a 900 number just from the button presses? That's a perfect Skinner. That's great. It reminds me, it's a very spiritual joke to the dean in the college episode going, hello, that sounds like a pig faint yes yeah these school administrators are very uh knowledgeable about very specific sound effects yeah no uh hearing abilities like wolverine himself uh and skinner goes on a berserker barrage too here when uh he finds no he does't but he does get mad at lisa for for doing this

uh also inventorying glee club peanut brittle is another great boring skinner line i love that too um well then this this bit here about school budgets too like again it's like oh this is like 93 feels quaint now all of these budget jokes well also where were you in your neighborhood uh andrew they're they're they're turning every library into just like a uh uh they're just blowing them up at this point right you you joke but literally uh down the street here from my apartment in new york uh they they literally demolished a library uh like two years ago to build a new residential building that supposedly will have the library back in it like at the moment my neighborhood here in manhattan does not have a library you have to go a little bit downtown to the next neighborhood to get an actual library and

also our awesome mayor eric adams that sarcasm listeners he's awful did a thing where the budget was slashed for libraries so much that they're just closed on sundays it's it's uh it's dire straits for libraries these days folks well meanwhile like every every cop gets like 800 percent uh overtime pay yep absolutely you got to do it you have to do it well those guys got you know they're not gonna go home and look at their cell phones they gotta do it in the subway you know eric adams would call us eric adams would call us all waiters at the table of life that's true yeah because he made his haters into waiters uh so uh so yeah then uh we we cut to bart hang gliding with tom this is where there's a little bit and again you get the tiniest bit of an emotional through line that John Vini is intentionally not doing in the episode.

Bart feels guilty for just a second that Tom is being so good to him when he actually doesn't need him. And Bart, when he asks him to stop, that's when Tom says, Bart, i could kiss you if the bigger brothers didn't make me sign a thing say i wouldn't uh yeah that that dark joke immediately destroys any emotional emotionality in the scene yes yeah it's just in case you were feeling like oh bart feels guilty it's just like here's a joke about child molestation just to take you away from that yeah and that's why like that joke made me think oh was there some sort of you know right goings on with big brothers big sisters instead of it being like i don't know there's a regular like boy scout reference or something like that but uh

but then uh also we learned that there's an active volcano in the springfield area that we see that fly over uh and earlier i mentioned that very great pan from the bathtub to the fantasy sequence with Bart. There's a super ambitious zoom from the hang glider to Homer on the ground looking through the binoculars. Very cool. Yes, that is incredible. And it's a great play, too, on just how Homer can't catch Bart in all of these obvious things, but he can pull out binoculars and see from like 80 miles away that bart is hanging out with an adult man couldn't put it together with the father-son picnic but was able to eyeball them in the sky yes so also we get another season four

reference to froggert aka frozen yogurt only the simpsons called it that no one else in my life has ever called it that you know the only other time i think pop culturally that i heard it was on the television show lost oh there was a character whose name was neil and for some reason they called that guy frogert i do not remember why but i was like man a frogurt reference on a TV show, huh? No, it's in question how much potassium benzoate is in all of these Frohgurts we're talking about. And that's bad. So then Homer finally confronts Bart in another movie reference very quick like this, which I only got as a movie reference because they already in season two at the the marriage counselors have a who's afraid of virginia wolf parody because this this one is not explicit enough for me to always catch on to what's going on here but he's basically doing richard burton in that movie right homer's voice

shifts here and he's got his snifter of brandy as well the brandy and the liquor cart behind it i love i love whenever things that aren't there at the Simpsons house pop up for the purposes of a joke. And this really nice old-fashioned liquor cart behind him is beautiful. And this is when they start putting in the analogy of Homer is being cheated on and he is a jilted lover. Hello, son. Where have you been?

Playing with Milhouse No, you haven't You've been out gallivanting around with that floozy of a bigger brother of yours Haven't you? Haven't you? Look at me Dad, it just kind of happened You're taking this too hard How would you like me to take it?

Go ahead, Bart Have your fun I'll be waiting for you I'm sorry I can't do it Well, what are you going to do? Oh, you'll see. And what are your reasons for wanting a little brother?

Don't say revenge. Don't say revenge. Uh, revenge? That's it. I'm getting out of here. Welcome aboard, Mr. Simpson. I will say if you want easy likes on any election day on social media, you just have to post the shot of the clipboard with the woman checking off revenge. So good. Yeah.

Now, also on there are boredom, malice, spite, and profit. Profit is the most disturbing box to check. I feel if the applicant checks that box, you have to call someone. Because how are you profiting off this child? Very dangerous stuff. It'd be like that scene in Killers of the Flower Moon that's the funniest scene where the guy goes to a lawyer

and he goes like, if my two children died, would I get the money get the money and then the lawyer says you know that i need to report you because you're planning to murder your children he's like but can you like it's just that's a great great see uh no but bart i i also the way bart says it just kind of happened again, it's the it's a it's a dating analogy here. Yeah. So, yes, this is when the act two ends the same as act one of Homer now signing up at Bigger Brothers or Bigger Brother. But this time he almost won't won't do it because he thinks every kid is ugly or fat to do it. But this is when. OK, so this also to me me now that i know how john vd was coming at this this also feels like him intentionally crapping on the more heartfelt thing that could happen because homer could befriend you know a realistic to the late 80s early 90s inner city child but

instead they specifically parody a bad comic strip that was entirely out of date and canceled by the time this no longer existed by the time this episode aired. Yeah, Dondi, which I've only heard it mentioned on this commentary. No one has ever talked about it. I've never seen a collection in any bookstore, even a used bookstore. And yes, Dondi was a comic strip about an Italian war orphan. It ran from 1955 to 1986. And Pepe is based on Dondi in terms of his design. Very, very big eyes.

But just erased from existence, as Doc Brown would say, this comic strip. Yes. I'll tell you what, though. The Dondi Wikipedia page is a hell of a read. There were some real stakes in that comic strip. And also a lot of like funny enough how henry you were mentioning now i guess in the show's continuity marge graduated from college in 2001 or whatever don d kept becoming as the the strip went on he kept becoming well

they dropped the whole um like world war ii orphan thing and he was just an orphan but then oh after a while it was like oh he was actually a korean orphan from the you know korea conflict oh no now he's a vietnamese orphan from vietnam and they just would update where don and still just calling this kid don d maybe it was canceled famous vietnamese orphan don d perhaps it was canceled because we just stopped getting into uh public wars that wars at that point. Well, I've said this before in the Marvel comics, too. And the sliding timeline for the longest time, it was that the Punisher was a Vietnam veteran. And then that became tougher as the 90s went on for his age to match.

But then fortunately, starting in 2001, he could always have been a recent war veteran uh that it wouldn't be distracting you had a lot of opportunity to frank for frank castle to be a recently returned veteran for 20 plus years yes because even on that uh netflix show he was uh an iraq yeah yeah yeah totally that's, I mean, it's the same with like, you know, Tony Stark originally got trapped in his chest in the comics, like in early V like before the actually even the war was declared early fake Vietnam. Oh,

interesting. But, but yeah, I think too, this, this mocking of Dondi fits right in with them having Homer being a fan of, you know, Andy cap and marmaduke

this is just making fun of unpopular comic strips rex morgan md anyone that's right yeah he's got the cure for the daily blues oh handicap you lovable drunk uh and so uh but yes that that's it's also funny that when they're doing a joke that uh could be way worse based on its timing of Homer befriends an inner city child, they instead go in the direction of, we'll parody a comic strip about a World War II Italian war orphan. That's very funny. We cut to Lisa being confronted and we see the emotional core of this scene, but the funnier part of it is when they decide to really up the creepiness of Principal Seymour Skinner here. Lisa, the only way you'll lick this is one day at a time.

If you can make it to midnight without calling the Corrie line, you'll know you've beaten it forever. Midnight. Listen to your mother, Lisa. I owe everything I have to my mother's watchful eye and swift hand. Oh, there's mother now. Watching me. What's that, mother? Well, I have a right to be here.

It's school business. Mother, that sailor suit doesn't fit anymore. I think we should go. I love that Marge and Lisa just see all of see all of this like let's get out of here like we was this the first uh sort of like comparison of seymour to norman bates in the show yes and actually i believe this is what starts the adversarial relationship with his mother because previously he was a mama's boy uh and this really just based on this one little parody they thought this would be a funny kind of dynamic and they would develop that over the next uh let's say 33 years though though this is before

they this they find the even better component of agnes being like horrible like once they really figure out agnes it makes it even better but this they do follow this up in a deleted scene from the b sharps episode that's even creepier and i i'm honestly kind of glad they deleted it which was uh when skinner comes back from his b sharp tour it's uh agnes sitting in a rocking chair uh telling him like you didn't like basically asking him if he had gotten with any girls while on tour and skinner saying no i did not and she's like good good oh that's uncomfortable their big tour of sweden yeah exactly yeah i think it's dan castellaneta doing the voice like doing kind of like a witch voice for the for the character too yeah oh that's incredible again i didn't get

this joke as a kid i hadn't seen uh psycho yet but i had been to universal studios orlando which has a fake bates motel in it so my mom could just say remember when we went to universal studios that's that's what skinner's looking at when you so you you had seen that but uh like your mom didn't say like what the movie was uh it was referencing or well they did act out this was part of uh this is old uh universal rides well this isn't even a ride but it was like how they make the movies and it was like here's how they filmed the psycho scene and so we watch that it's like a woman in a big body stocking comes out and pretend to get stabbed that's how i learned what the movie psycho was but i didn't know about the hotel or the house uh in it oh interesting what a weird so where okay someone's in a body suit they're doing this because i know the house was of course like outside were you at like a

back lot thing it was this uh yeah it was an indoor filming location uh but then they kind of walk you through it and be like oh look, look outside. That's a fake model of the, of the, it was also about perspective because it was like built half size. It wasn't a full size model. They're like, but that's how they would use it to say, uh, that's how Hitchcock would make it in the movies.

It would be a, a model with forced perspective. You know, I thought they filmed a few of those sequels in Florida. You're right, Bob. Yes, they did.

Okay. That's a Anthony Perkins had to live in orlando for a little bit to film those uh poor man i you know i gotta tell you i uh you know because i am a total sucker uh as you guys know for disc media uh arrow films arrow video put out a 4k set of all those movies and i'm such a total loser i bought that thing and. And this past October, you know, Halloween season was approaching and I went through all of them. And like, while not, the fourth one I think is terrible.

Two and three, two I think legitimately good movie, three for a directorial debut for Anthony Perkins. Not too bad. I would recommend going back. Four is trash. Andrew, which movie is the one

where the framing device is him on the phone with the radio show giving his backstory which was that three that's four okay four yeah i had a soft spot for four and i don't know why maybe just the lore the baits lore which is now thoroughly explored in that canceled tv show yes which i watched two episodes of and couldn't really get on the trolley with that but yeah it's a lot of him being like oh because he is if i'm remembering it right he's married to a woman in the present day and he's worried that she's pregnant or something or you know worried about having a kid because he's worried that the kid's gonna be

like him so then he winds up telling like it is a prequel more than anything of his you know you see like how he eventually killed the mother and the boyfriend all that stuff they talk about in the first movie you see happen in that movie it's just a really bad made for tv movie though yeah you do see the cups of poison lemonade that killed mrs bates and her also it's funny to talk about perkins here because uh around when this episode was being worked on they also were trying to get anthony perkins to be a guest star on the simpsons when you really care about someone you shouted from the mountaintops so on behalf of 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 dejaden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care uh he passes away before they could get it he was going to play the uh the dentist in last exit to springfield the one who says lisa needs braces oh wow but that would have been really interesting oh that's too bad uh and so then uh we we cut to uh the inner city where homer walks by a sign uh with the crusty that's uh a gibberish thing but it's just like that shows you you're in the uh a bad neighborhood that it's a non-english sign i guess is the the though i i prefer homer seeing an unhoused man in a in a

dumpster saying just like oscar the grouch and he just laughs it off he thinks it's fun finds it delightful uh and then uh this is when he picks up peppy uh and he's gonna show him a good time he he buys ice cream with him. And here then instantly we have another movie reference here for no good reason. But, I mean, who could forget the grapefruit being shoved in the face? James Cagney doing that to actress Mae Clark in The Public Enemy. Yeah, 1931's The Public Enemy. I didn't know this was a movie reference until much later.

I bought a yearly Simpsons calendar and all the art was the movie references from the show. And this was one of them. And I was like, this is from a movie? And that's when I learned it was. It's the only, making it be the reference like this is the only way it makes sense that Homer says

grapefruit because like my man's not chowing down on citrus. No. That's why bart is wearing those pajamas that's what james cagney is wearing in that i love to you know when you watch the scene i i don't think i've watched the full movie the public enemy but i've seen the famous scenes from it and the the actress in the scene plays it uh so well or maybe she actually seems like taken by surprise by it or she's just acting so well when he hits her in the scene plays it so well, or maybe she actually seems like taken by surprise by it, or she's just acting so well when he hits her in the face with the grapefruit. But Homer reacting to his story with grapefruit is such a great addition to it.

And then this is when Homer wants to show off for Pepe. I just press this button and the door opens like magic. Why does it stop there? Because it's a stupid piece of junk! Well, I'd better get you home. What's the matter? I've spent every night of my life in the city. I have never seen the stars.

Tell me more. I want to know all the constellations. Well, there's Jerry the cowboy, and that big dipper-looking thing is Alan the cowboy. Oh, Papa Homer, you are so learned. Learned, son. It's pronounced learned. I love you, Papa Homer.

I love you too, Pepsi. Peppy. Peppy. It's like kind of the sweetest part of the episode. It's funny in both, but this again, to VD talking about how he denied the emotional thing. Homer and Bart both do like their new friendships with these characters,

but then they feel nothing for them after these scenes. They just flush it away. Right. Yeah, they're willing to abandon them instantly. But yes, it's one of my favorite Homer things of him smashing his garage door and then instantly going like well better like he just mood swing right back it was a great move uh move to show the door being smashed from the inside

yes great direction i love that there's there's some great stuff out here uh vd uh sorry jeff lynch talks about you know being inspired by uh Bird, who's, you know, consulting on the series at the time and telling him like Brad Bird gave him like confidence, like, no, extend this, play this, the whole thing, like do it from inside the garage. Don't go outside or have the reflection of Skinner on the window or the reflection of the house when Skinaters looking at it and he said that for the next scene where it is lisa going stir crazy brad bird pressed him to like no make it longer make it longer make it longer and they it's funny on the commentary the writers are hearing how the director was scared of like the producers are going to be mad at me if i extend a scene too much we're not supposed to do that if you're a director and then al Al Jean was like, no, make it longer. We were pressed for time.

Longer, longer. Yeah, I mean, a ton of responsibility is in the director's hands for a scene like this where the scene description is basically one sentence. And then he's got to find a way to depict that in a visually compelling way that will keep you interested in the repetition of the sounds that lisa is hearing and great posing on lisa freaking out too like and her screaming at maggie i also yeah i i get to pretend ever since this episode i've gotten to pretend to be smart knowing the term learned i've never heard it in actual smart real conversation i only know

it from the joke in this episode same here same here the way she structures the sentence like when she has her outburst at maggie is just so amazing must you be forever dialing that phone it's very like edgar allen poe sounding almost it's it's missing the word infernal that's true you make it fully old-timey i also that takes me back to the earlier in the episode when homer freaks out and says i tells you like like when he's freaking out about the record club that's also great but yes lisa is freaking out i do think that this is more about it being like in allegory uh for for drug addiction where it's like well if you just go a whole day without it

like obviously for lisa she could relapse and call cory again tomorrow but the within the episode the goal has to be make it to midnight and uh they it's such a quaint kind of thing you know like hearing marge say it again in the clip you played like it is just such a quaint marge thing like just make it to midnight and then you'll be fine you'll know you've beaten it it's like really marge i don't know and it's it's played very sweet the way marge it just feels like a regular sitcom a marge discovering that lisa isn't in bed and then thinks that she did call and then reveal like no she was calling to check the time to know that she beat the the now uh made it to midnight it feels just like a full house scene honestly like not not too different what was the purpose of those uh at the tone the time

will be like you're just nowhere that there's a clock or a watch or whatever but there is a phone that you could use yeah people using that for i guess it's like if oh i have a new clock uh what time is it i better call the time number. Because, I mean, you open any computer, you turn on your phone, the time is apparent. But I guess before that, who's to say what time it is? The television, I guess? That's true, yeah. Well, I guess in this instance, it's the phone company.

Yeah, I wonder, can you do this now of calling? If I wanted to, on my cell phone phone call a phone number to know the exact time does that is that even still offered at the tone the time will be 25 years too late for this phone number you know what i mean why did you do this they should leave a sarcastic outgoing message just look at the phone face that you dialed this from. All right. If you're under the age of 60, you should not be calling this. Oh, I forgot. We then cut to, I think it helped that Ren and Stimpy was in this episode because otherwise this beat would have been showing Itchy and Scratchy twice. But instead, it's just one Itchy and Scratchy cartoon.

Homer watching it with Peppy. It's an all right one. I like Scratchy sawing at his own tongue, and I also like that they're not eating any old meat. It is literally tripe and intestines. They are eating organ meat at the bowling alley. Ligaments is one of the signs. You know, I bet you anything, man,

you go to some of the tougher parts of these here United States, you'll find a bowling alley that's selling you this at the concession stand. You'll figure it out. And then Bart and Homer confront one another in a very uncomfortable sequence. Hey, Homer, have you seen my skateboard? I gave it to Peppy. Who the hell is Peppy? He's my little brother.

That's right. You're not the only one who can abuse a non-profit organization. Who needs you? Tom's a better father than you ever were. Come on, Bart. We had our fun. Remember when I used to push you on the swing? I was faking it.

Liar! Yeah, remember this? Higher, Dad. Higher. Whee! Whee! Push harder, Dad. Come on.

Higher, higher, faster. Stop it! Stop it! that uh john vd distances himself from that saying mike mike reese i think you came up with that yeah you know call me naive but it wasn't until the audio commentary calls it a a faking an orgasm joke that i realized like oh that's what that scene meant because i have a very vivid memory of uh you know watching this i think with my sister and she's a few years older than me and i laugh at the joke and she told me you don't know what that means i was like oh no bart is just he's he's playing up his love sarcastically and she's like no he's not and then she wouldn't tell me what it actually meant she pulled pulled the old line from Home Alone.

If you have to ask, you'll never know. Yes, basically. I was shut down in a very McAllister fashion. Yeah, well, classic, you know, older sibling move there. I mean, I was the older sibling, but I didn't get it either as a kid. Even later in life when it wasn't until the commentary either. Until later in life, I saw Harry Met the commentary either until like later in life i saw harry met sally or at least the famous scene from it or when harry met sally and that is about faking orgasms as a kid i did not understand the the concept at all and uh yeah it's like but but

having bart say it to homer is just like oh it's so intentionally makes you put you in a disgusting place at some point before the dvds came out but after i had seen the episode of seinfeld where they go into it in great detail as to what faking it is then catching this on a rerun i was like oh like i very much remember being like oh like elaine oh oh interesting oh that's weird. It's Bart and Homer. Even when I saw the Philadelphia where they have a homophobic version of the faking the orgasm joke, I still did not connect it to this. Yeah, that was not explained to me while watching Philadelphia with my mom. Me neither. It took a few years before I got it. But yes, the only thing that helps this scene is that Bart feels guilty when Homer runs off.

Again, it's like one second of emotion in this episode that he feels bad he did that to Homer. So then we go to a SeaWorld type place. It's Bigger Brother Day. Bart's wearing his lucky red cap to it for no reason. It's not for a joke later makes me think something got cut but there's there's no deleted scenes on the dvd bart only wears his lucky red cap for joke purposes uh and then this is when homer intentionally tells children the wrong fact about whales not being mammals they're fish

that's so great because it's just to like shit on tom you know is that true papa homer no the way that line is delivered but the no oh it's awesome and and then comes a reference to something that was only five years old at the time in simpsons history but was deep simpsons lore at the time oh is this uh the reference to one of the shorts yes the zoo short right yeah so uh in the simpsons shorts which uh you know and now it's been a while but me and bob did video commentaries for every tracy ullman simpson short on our on our patreon head back into the archives folks but in the last one of the second season of simpsons uh shorts it's one called zoo story where the family goes to the zoo and the main joke

is that the gorillas look just like them and that they're looking at the gorilla family. Homer has peanuts and Homer taunts the gorilla with, want a peanut? And then yanks it back. And he makes a crazy face laughing which they

basically draw on him here doing the same thing to a dolphin. That sequence in the zoo story ends with an unnamed brown substance face laughing which they basically draw on him here doing the same thing to a dolphin uh and that sequence in the zoo story ends with an unnamed brown substance being thrown into homer's face off screen uh yes yeah perhaps the only time you can see homer getting covered with excrement i would i would think matt graining's cover at the time would have been telling them like um it's dirt. That's dirt that's getting thrown at him.

Yeah. Yeah, just the gorilla through mud. But yeah, so if you're wondering why Homer has a really crazy face when he's laughing at the dolphin here, it's because they're drawing it to match or get close to the one from Zoo Story. It a little bit reminds me, too too of later when he would taunt, doesn't he taught one of the two elephants, either Stampy or the Apu's wedding elephant in some way? Oh, I mean,

he's very cruel. Everything he does is cruel to Stampy the elephant. Yes. Yeah. But no, I mean, well, they did a lot of like,

here you go. Just kidding. Here you go. Like, or yeah, or, or Krusty gets zapped by lightning while he's doing it with the scepter for Lisa. Oh, sure.

That's a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in this case, the dolphin steals the hot dog, and then Homer gets beaten up by security guards dressed as dolphins, which is a nice detail. But this is when Homer runs into Bart. Again again it's written like two exes meeting at a party but then the battle begins as tom confronts bart uh homer he's like the drunken gambler that's right and who might you be like again bart's uh exaggerations of homer were not that exaggerated right then homer gets punched in the face. And then comes something that they say on the commentary came in a big rewrite.

I wish I could find. I've found table drafts of later episodes in the season, but not of this one. But apparently this was a late edition. And it's another huge movie parody. Yeah. Suggested by Sam simon this entire sequence and it's wholly inspired by the very long comedic fight at the end of the 1952 john wayne film the quiet man and i believe uh al jean loves this movie so much that when he got married in ireland his honeymoon took place

in ashford castle which was one of the shooting locations of the quiet man wow that's impressive the the quiet man is a john ford classic i think it's a really good it's one of the shooting locations of the quiet man wow that's impressive the the quiet man is a john ford classic i think it's a really good it's one of the better i mean sure that it's not like my fifth favorite john ford john wayne movie uh you know what no i like it more than stagecoach it's better than stagecoach wow okay that's fair this always reminded me i mean i know it's uh you know based on on the john wayne movie but the fight in They Live, which is also, I think, kind of referencing back to this same fight we're talking about. That one that goes on for like five minutes. Yeah.

Beautiful long-term street fight. Oh, yes. No, I mean, hey, Keith David and Barry Fitzgerald, they're similar actors. No, I mean, the fight scene is fun i i watched the whole movie a while back i i only pulled up the fight scene in the ending for this uh to for this viewing but the fight scene i forgot the funniest bit is that about four minutes into it they both land in like they splash into the lake together and get out of it and he's like all right here i'll help you up and it is paced to make you think,

well, that's the end of the fight. And then John Wayne gets sucker punched in the face again. It's like, nope, fight continues. Just keeps going. It's a good, I mean, the movie is fun because John Wayne is like basically the son of Irish immigrants who goes back to his family estate

and meets a bunch of Irish people who are like, ah, there's Americans here. It's a culture clash of the Irish and Americans. back to his uh family estate and meets a bunch of irish people who are like ah this americans here and it's it's a culture clash of the irish and americans and uh and maureen o'hara's in it she's really great it's a it's a fun movie it's a good movie and the start of that fight when john wayne's throwing all those ninja stars i love the starfish throwing here it's kind of like an easy goofy joke but I do love uh Tom putting them back in the tank here you go boys and then they get eaten yes uh by like a dolphin or whatever flies by and Tom throws out a doe which is great he's becoming more like Homer the longer he's around Bart right this this whole fight sequence is awesome because jeffrey lynch is a great action

director he's having so much fun with this action sequence like this these fights the punches hurt the the action the camera moves are crazy like it's it's so much fun like homer uh the smashing around the antique shop amazing like there's also a shot in this that is a direct reference to the arcade version of street fighter 2 in the attract mode which was never on the home version there are just like two unnamed guys fighting in on a city street you don't fight as either of these people they're just two random guys i don't know what what they're doing in this intro but the staging of one of these scenes is identical to that so jeffrey lynch previously in i believe margie gets a job he referenced anime with the willie fighting the wolf scene and like the crazy

speed lines in the background so i associate this kind of like deep nerd reference with him from this era yeah if you've watched the opening to the game the guy who is posed like how tom is posed is a white blonde guy wearing a white shirt just like Tom too. Yeah. That's amazing. I definitely think it's the animators who were a little hit. Not to say the writers weren't gamers or playing video games, but definitely the specificness of the game reference. I wish Jeffrey Lynch has been on my list of like, boy, another person we haven't interviewed

yet that I'd love to. But like, I feel pretty safe in assuming that the 1991 released as street fighter 2 the original game is officially being referenced here like intentionally yes also being referenced here other than godzilla which uh is ken brockman believes it until he hears the name ip freely also being and also i'm sorry oh sorry second time homer falls down the gorge but uh in a crazy twist on that he can somehow fight his way up the gorge the other side of the gorge yes that's that's what i was thinking too like oh sorry i didn't mean to steal your fire oh no no because i was thinking that bob we were talking about in the monorail episode when we did it with chris wade

how we mentioned that like that they thought they wouldn't get away with Leonard Nimoy teleporting away because it was too crazy and Groening wouldn't allow it. To have the gorge, they bring back the gorge, which I feel like Groening only let them do if Homer was realistically injured by it. This time they're like, no, Homer can fall down it and then fall up it in incredibly cartoony fashion. That's how you know it's an epic fight. Because now it's a gravity-defying fight.

That's how epic this is. And this is when the fight reaches its apex in one of the... Turn up the volume, listener, because this is one of the funniest sound effects in the entire Simpsons series. This is even more painful than it looks. This is all my fault, Dad.

I didn't want you to get hurt. Now I need to find another little brother. And I need to find another big brother. My car is going to feel so empty on the ride home. And me? I have no ride at all. I already bought a giant ham for dinner. It's going to go to waste. Don't talk about food.

I'm so hungry. Well, goodbye. Wait. I've got an idea. An idea? Huh? It's very sweet. It really is a big screw you to believing any any emotional stakes

because doesn't bart say geez i'm sorry dad and that's it yep he says i didn't watch he's being put into the yeah as he's put into the ambulance that's it yes and i love that like just to underline how uh cheesy the ending is an idea that's right yeah well goodbye yeah no yeah as vd said uh if you're watching this with a dramatic eye the point of or the dramatic inclusion is bart and homer should be talking about their feelings with one another and apologizing i'm sorry i did this i'm sorry i did that and they make up right other than bart saying you know an idea or sorry, right before this, Bart saying, I didn't mean for you to get hurt. There is no emotional resolution. Like it all happens on screen, which VD says he did intentionally to avoid having to do all the heartfelt stuff he did in Lisa's Substitute.

It's kind of smart. You know, you're not going to hash it all out right after an emergency like that. And he's being carted away. And then you just play, just play you know cartoon reset rules it's very smart on his part and uh yes the sound of homer i would assume that's one of his vertebrae shattering in the fall i suppose though he's not or skull cracking yeah that's true i don't know this has such an effect on me as a kid that i think to this day whenever i see a fire hydrant one out of every three times i will think of homer bent backwards over it that little snap such a have they said how they made that sound i i know it's uh they they said they tooled around with the sound to find the right one and they they said the smaller and real more realistic it was the better it worked and that's why they went with it but now they they don't say where it came from either from a foley catalog or made specifically for the episode

because it sounds like the very beginning of someone breaking in a game of pool like just the very first couple like clicks of that god it's great it is so amazing i always love those those making of features about foley artists who are like this brushing celery over things or whatever slapping a side of meat for a punch one of the things uh in during the fight sequence that i love because anytime you can give me incompetent wigum it's great is his seemingly uh his idea that he's going to go take this call only because the aquarium still sells frozen bananas at the at the concession stand like lou's saying like oh there's a fight at the aquarium or whatever it is and he's like do they still sell those frozen bananas yeah i think so let's roll it's not even definitive he's like i think so he's like let's get there

we never see wigum after that he's eating a donut while he asks too like so it's not that he's even hungry uh yeah i i i do love that peppy and tom they don't think that they could be uh they're they're a perfect bigger brother fit for each other i i i remember bob uh that uh that uh your your wife did a very sweet drawing referencing this scene uh yes when i was mugged and needed GoFundMe because all of my shit was stolen, she referenced this scene with them sitting on the curb in front of the tire shop. It was me and my little bird Louie. It was over five years ago. I've gotten better. And I got all my stuff back through buying it again.

But, yeah, she, our very talented artist of the show nina did that for me uh when that tragic event happened in my life now i was uh i think of that sweet drawing every time i i see the scene i was like oh that's so uh i i mentally have replaced tom and peppy with bob and louis and better better characters i say so yes they walk off in the sunset together and then i guess to confirm to us that homer is not permanently injured from this um we we cut back home and again this is like al gene has joked many times like after all of the stuff they do in an episode if they can have like 30 seconds of sweetness then it earns back everything and you're not thinking about how mean it was but

i love this scene this scene of them hanging out and this just feels so loose of it feels like nancy and dan just having fun uh i i love this ending shot here another beer dad thanks son dad remember when tom had you in that headlock and you screamed i'm a hemophiliac and when he let you go you kicked him in the back yeah will you teach me how to do that sure boy first you gotta shriek like a woman and keep sobbing till he turns away in disgust that's when it's time to kick some back and then when he's lying on the ground yeah kick him in the rib yeah step on his neck yeah and run like hell. Apparently that shot over the house with that final bit of dialogue, that was all improv between Dan and Nancy. Oh, wow.

And then when he's lying on his back, that's all just them having fun together. Oh, that's super cool. And it's kind of great because that is like the Homer and Bart way of letting you know that they're fine you know it does in its own twisted simpsons way like it does have emotional resonance because that's like the level they can meet each other at you know and and that like oh what's the sweet moment of father son bonding teaching your son how to fight dirty like kicking someone in the back step on his neck like that's permanent injury there like step on his neck not even like the back. Step on his neck. That's permanent injury there. Step on his neck. Not even choke him.

Step on his neck. First, shame yourself completely in public. Yeah, that's great, too. He's like, keep sobbing until he turns away in disgust. It counts on your enemy having no respect for you and just wanting to walk away. That's when you kick him in the back. It's so funny. I couldn't possibly fight this anymore.

Look how pathetic this guy is. I pity you too much. I can't do it. I can't. Yeah, also, that Homer also says, I'm a hemophiliac. Like, that's his cover. That's also great, too. God.

Oh, man. that's also great too oh man no it's uh yeah that to be honest until if john vd told us laid out perfectly as a great writer why this episode denies you emotional uh resonance or anything this ending always felt like emotional to me or at least sweet like it's such a sweet ending it never makes me think like feel emotionally unsatisfied by by this great episode right yeah it's so natural this exchange and like sweetly funny even though it's about homer teaching you how to injure a man by humiliating yourself that you buy into like oh i guess there was a resolution yeah yeah yeah no it's uh this this is uh one of my you know uh favorites of the season just for the just for the action and the cruelty and the meanness they have.

This is a very mean episode, but I think it's one of the best they did in this season. It was crazy to find out that VD was told many times that this was not a good episode. And after interviewing him four years ago i've got a whole it gave me a whole new respect for it uh after we did that john vd fully vindicated one of the best uh tv writers period not just for the simpsons uh now retired but he has a great catalog of episodes of like king of the hill and the simpsons and others to uh check out if you haven't seen all of his work but yeah uh i don't go to this episode for the emotional content. In fact, I think that Lisa's story and the ending of that

is more emotionally satisfying, and the bond between her and Marge and getting through the addiction is a lot more meaningful than Lisa Substitute Part 2, starring Bart. But I come to this episode for all of the crazy jokes and the Ren and Stimpy parody. It just is a perfect

late Season 4 punchy episode full of very memorable things and great drawings and scenes thanks to jeffrey lynch oh man and imagine how uh how worse this episode would be if it had to go through like tom cruise's people to approve everything you know yeah but uh no i mean andrew any any final thoughts yourself no i you know i guess my one point of curiosity is like you know you're holding you know you name him tom he's an air force guy you want crews to do it you can't get crews was there anyone else have you ever heard before hartman just did it were they like all right well maybe this kind of next a-list get would maybe do

it and no i i never saw them think of anybody other than Tom for it. I think they just gave up. I mean, because I could see if they could find, like, I don't know, Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatever to replace him, but it's so Tom Cruise, it wouldn't really fit. There are times where they don't reveal what's going on behind the scenes,

where there will be a secondary character that's a new character for the episode. It'll be Phil Hartman or Hank Azari or Tress McNeil. And you think in your head, they probably had someone in mind that said no. And Hank or Tress or Phil did a great job. But I'm always wondering, who could this have been? I will also say another thing that just totally sort of shook loose here in my noodle is back during Pog Mania,

whenever the hell that was in the 90s when everybody was getting Pogs, I was obsessed with collecting all of the Simpsons Pogs. And I remember finding the Peppy Pog, and I had not seen the episode yet. And I was like, who the hell? I was going to say, did you quote Bart without knowing it, Andrew, but you did.

Who the hell's Peppy? did you quote bart without knowing it andrew but you did who the hell's peppy yeah i guess that's right i did not realize that unintentional reference but yeah i remember just being like what all right and i took it because it was like it did not matter if you recognize the character or you liked it or whatever you got all of those simpsons pogs and then later would see the episode i was like oh the pog kid oh okay is i mean it's so funny see when you see him on the pog probably the size of his eyes is even more distracting like his eyes are almost as big as tom's face in the episode yeah peppy's only other appearance was on a pog and that's it right i also love the gag that he uh tom that is has purchased even if it was bart coming over for dinner he's

just bought a whole ham that's going to go to waste yes just another great detail of like what's a thing that they could eat for dinner that if you think about what it is for just the two of them it's kind of also a little joke and i think that's very funny i bought a huge ham for like two guys one is a child he is living large with those nightly ham meals but yes andrew thanks for coming back on the show uh please let us know more about we hate movies of course we know but our audience needs to know you guys are have been going on for over 10 years and you do a lot of great uh side content on your patreon that i am a huge fan of especially the star trek series and the melro to a no series and so on.

Yeah. Oh, thanks, guys. Yeah. First of all, always awesome hanging out with you dudes. Yeah. So we do. We hate movies, which is the show that sort of started our whatever. That's our show. We talk about a movie, a bad, good or otherwise. We like to say these days and sort of just kind of like a rag on it for a little bit, but also try to give some insight into it. And then, yeah, patreon.com slash weatemovies. It's a whole family of side shows that we've come up with over the years, including, yes, The Nexus, where we recap episodes of Star Trek. We're still doing TOS and TNG,

although we're coming to the end of TOS and haven't yet decided what we're going to do. I know we don't want to make it like a TNG-only show, so we got to figure out where we go next. But yes, Melro 210. We talk about an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 and an episode of Melro's Place. We have a show called Once in a Lifetime that's strictly all talking about Lifetime movie network movies and adjacent-ish movies of that ilk. We have done some Netflix movies on there that people are like, hey, that was Lifetime. And it's like, well, it's a Lifetime movie.

Netflix just bought it. It's the same crap level. Yeah, all that and more. We're putting out a ton of shows every week. Patreon.com slash WeHateMovies and WHMPodcast.com. We're going on tour this summer or spring. Where are we now? Yeah, it's about to be

March. When is this going to air? March. March. Okay, cool. So in April, we'll be returning to Atlanta on 4-25, and then we're doing our Houston debut 5-14, which is going to be great. And then Austin, we're returning to for the first time in six

years. The very next night, what is that? May the 15th. So yeah, a lot of stuff going on. WHMPodcast.com will give you all the links and all the info to all the shows and everything now i could steer uh listeners towards a recent episode i really enjoyed your episode about the film safe house because i had never seen it i i found it online and i watched it with my wife uh we were very frustrated by it we're having a good time

in case no one knows it is a patrick stewart made for a showtime movie in which they could afford to rent a house and pay patrick stewart and that's kind of it pretty much it yeah uh that was a real it was a long time coming that episode uh we saw that like in college uh so you know over 20 years ago i i also really like uh what youtube show you guys have been doing of reacting to the the weekend's news and then biggest releases. Oh, thank you. That's very nice. Yeah, on screen live.

That's sort of our newest endeavor where we live stream on YouTube and Twitch every Monday at noon Eastern talking about, yeah, box office figures. And, you know, we react to trailers and review new movies. It was kind of my way to I left a film programming job that I'd had for a very long time. And I was like, what can I do to sort of keep my pulse on all of that stuff? Because I am like oddly obsessed with box office numbers and all of that kind of stuff. And so that's what we do. You know, I'm making it sound much drier than it is. It's still very much a comedy forward show. Yeah.

Mondays at noon Eastern. There's all sorts of archive episodes on YouTube dot com slash we hate movies. Yeah. Thank you for reminding me of that oh and one more compliment too uh though it's it's ruined it so i feel like we can't cover it now because it was too good but you're you're on your animation damnation one you're covering of the kathy valentine special also was so great oh god yeah yeah we can't we can't walk in the in the footsteps of giants by covering that one i'll tell you what though there's two other kathy cartoon specials that you boys are

more than welcome to take off our hands it says kathy gave it a shot to be like could i have a bunch of cartoons just like garfield and it didn't work out didn't work out you cannot kathy you shall not pass these three specials one of which is called like kathy's big score kathy's big she goes on some like vacation but listen the whole thing if they had a cartoon a cartoon my goodness garfield cartoon type thing for kathy it would have been her and this boyfriend irvin or whatever his name just like fetching for 22 minutes a week nobody wants to watch no irving's the worst terrible i was so as a kathy reader as as somebody who would read the comic strips every day and and would read kathy when she got back together with irving

and married him i was thinking like no no and on that, Andrew, have a nice day. Yes. Thanks again to Andrew Jupin for being on the show. Please check out We Hate Movies and everything we do because we love all of their output so much. But as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week ahead of time and ad-free, and also access over 150 miniseries episodes, head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up for just five bucks a month you'll get all of that which includes once again uh you know advanced access to episodes but also our vast vast catalog of miniseries episodes nearly seven years worth

of full-length miniseries episodes that you haven't heard if you're not a patron we've covered things like batman the animated series mission hill the critic king of the hill and futurama and that five bucks a month will also get you access to new monthly episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill. It's a great deal. It's only five bucks a month, and it's all happening at patreon.com

slash Talking Simpsons, and there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you can access all of the $5 stuff naturally, but then you can also access one mega-long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what for that, you can access all of the $5 stuff naturally, but then you can also access one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob's talking about the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, which is our premium podcast each month about an animated feature film. If you like all of the movie talk we did in this one, you'll love hearing us go super in-depth on to an animated movie, just like we do in Episode of the Simpsons.

This month, we are talking, normally we talk about some great classic films. Now we're talking about an important, historically not good film that we have a lot of fun talking about, Chicken Little from 2005, the Zach Braff starring Chicken Little. Last month, we did Hayao Miyazaki's 1992 classic Porco Rosso. And before that we did Bambi. We have done now over five years of What a Cartoon movies covering so many classic things, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, our longest podcast ever at six and a half hours. And you can check all of that out for yourself

if you go to that $10 level. And all the $5 things are included too at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons and as for me I've been one of your hosts Bob Mackey you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo and also hey Blue Sky as Bob Servo and my

other podcast is Retro Knots it's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games and you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Retro Knots and sign up there for two full length bonus episodes every month old video games and you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and henry how about you you can follow me on most social media as well as at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g or on instagram at talking henry i'm always posting up a storm there and if you want to stay up to date on everything

that's happening with the podcast as well if you want an easy to follow list of all of our previously released free podcasts head on over to talking simpsons.com thank you so much for listening folks we'll see you again next time for season 14 excuse me while i miss the sky we'll see you then More 10 Things! More 10 Things! More 10 Things!