Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Brother's Little Helper With Drew Mackie

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

Returning guest Drew Mackie from the Gayest Episode Ever Podcast joins us for this season 11 episode all about pharmaceuticals! Travel with us back to a time when Ritalin was new and Mark McGwire was a respected homerun slugger. A time when you could steal a tank and blast a satellite out of sky. Listen to learn more, but be careful to make sure no air is in your syringe! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

bling blong everyone our new podcast mini-series talking mission hill is now exclusively on patreon put on your spicy pants every friday with a new podcast covering each episode of the cult series from simpsons legends bill oakley and josh weinstein five dollar subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons can hear every episode plus plus all of our previous mini series about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsley, sign up for Talking Mission Hill today! Alright! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's reduced class clownism by 44%. I'm your host, time burglar Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of the

Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always, king-sized flamer Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? Substandard Maggie Roswell replacement, Drew Mackey. Excellent. And today's episode is Brothers Little Helper. I'm having some side effects from the dope. It's not dope. It's something to help you concentrate. All I know is my testicles won't fit in my underwear. But get those oranges out of there.

Starting off filthy, today's episode aired on October 3rd, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby, on the WB, Angel and Roswell both debut. Muse's album Showbiz is released, and that's a favorite of mine. And pertinent to this episode, on this very day, Mark McGuire will hit his 65th home run of the season, which isn't the record that he had set the previous season, but this would be his final game of the season would happen the same day as this episode aired.

Probably before the episode aired uh yes probably directly preceding it so you could watch mark mcguire hit a dinger and then watch his cartoon self do the same interesting okay great timing on their part yeah but uh yes angel and roswell those were favorites of mine on the wb now this is me fuzzily remembering television it's very interesting. But what was Roswell? It was another of their teen dramas, except it was about what if these kids are aliens or are they not? Let's look at... Drew, were you a Roswell viewer? I don't think I stuck with it because even at that stage, I was like, I don't think I like this Katherine Heigl person because she played like the blonde female alien.

That's right. And I was right. I always get the lead male in it confused with Jack, the gay kid from Dawson's Creek. I think they're different people though. He played on Buffy. He played like Buffy's old flame who comes to visit her in Sunnydale,

I think in the second season. And his name is Brandon Fair. Ah, okay. I think something like that. And we're just like five days before the final fall episode of Mission Hill will air. Yes. Because it's October 8th, I believe. So important time.

I guess Roswell pushed it off the schedule. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. They- Into an open grave. I think probably they hadn't commissioned the pilot for Roswell when they bought 13 episodes of Mission Hill.

And by the time Roswell's first episode aired, they're like, this is the future. It's not Mission Hill. Sexy teens win again. Those darn sexy teens. The Mission Hill teens, they're too grotesque. They're too realistic. Too realistic. And man, that Muse album, I love that.

I was just piping away at some of my favorite songs to like, Uno, that's one of my favorites. I mean, I was not trying to avoid Muse, but I'm not sure if I've heard a Muse song. I'm sure if you played one for me, I'd be like, I've heard that on the radio. Well, you know, me and a friend of the show, Nina Matsumoto, at a karaoke night together, me and her sang a Muse song from that same album. So I know you've heard me and her sing a Muse song. That's true. I don't know if I recognized it, though. I guess, why don't we welcome our awesome guest, Drew Mackey. Enough history. Yes, Drew Mackey of Gayest Episode Ever, an amazing podcast. Well, thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here talking about a not specifically gay episode of TV. It's a nice change of pace.

Yeah, you were last here with us for Homer's Phobia, the season eight episode with John Waters. Very gay. Yes, yeah, quite, yes. And now we're not pigeonholing you as much. Who is straighter than Mark McGuire? It's true. Though there's some queerness to this episode, though, for sure.

There's some moments. All right. Three different not needing to be there gay jokes. They're not bad. It's just that this is the point in the show where like, that's kind of their go-to thing is make a gay joke. But now I've been really enjoying your podcast as much as I ever have. But the recent ones, like, I really loved your one about King of the Hills rodeo episode,

the gay rodeo ep. Yeah, that one's fantastic. It was earlier in the season than the drag queen episode, which is the first one we did. um hank for being a conservative has such a great reaction to finding out that someone is being gay he does it better than most characters on any sitcom in any decade remarkable and i i really liked your your insight into the clearly open relationship that dale's father has with with his partner as well and juan pedro yeah yeah i think he was juan pedro right yes juan pedro i was thinking of gary and mike or gary and steve gary and steve are their their

friends that they may also be having sex with yeah yeah uh but yeah no we're we're big fans uh of gayest episode ever and we always feel i feel so pleased hearing us get referenced on your show so and vice versa but also that my show would not exist had it not been for your show, literally, because we just ganked your entire formula. That's okay. We're kind of ripping off a Saved by the Bell podcast with all this. Are you really?

It's a cycle of stealing. Now, I was a big fan of the podcast Go Bayside, which was an episode-by-episode Saved by the Bell podcast. And that was one of the first ones that was doing the episode-by-episode thing. But she didn't have any clips on her podcast, but it's all still online and it's still really good. I have never heard this history before.

Who would have thought that Sabanabelle would be the primary mover in this chain of thievery? I know we're an anti-sports podcast, but I do think you need some context for Mark McGuire. I'll just give up front about why it was a big deal to have him on this episode. And the timing of it is so funny too. Like, so Mark McGuire,

like I actually had heard of him as a little kid because very briefly, I was a fan of baseball, like for like two or three years. I, as an innocent child who didn't know what steroids were, I just was a huge fan of the Bash Brothers in the Oakland A's,

which was Mark McGuire and Jose Canseco who were hitting home run after home run all the time. Not to be confused with the Bash Brothers in the Oakland days, which was Mark McGuire and Jose Canseco, who were hitting home run after home run all the time. Not to be confused with the Smash Brothers. That's Mario and Luigi. Much more fun. And, you know, in Major League Baseball, after the 1994 strike, you know, people were kind of bummed out about baseball. They were sad. And then here in 1998 comes Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, who are hitting home run after home run. And they are on track to beat the record for home runs in a season that was set in 1961 by Roger Maris. So it was close to a 40 year old record that nobody had gotten close to breaking of 61 home runs. And Sosa and McGuire were both on pace to do it. And that, and so it was just this over the summer of 1998, you watch

the competition between McGuire and Sosa. It was really exciting if you cared about baseball. And so McGuire would ultimately win that contest, breaking the record with 70 home runs this season. It was a short-lived one because in 2001, Barry Bonds would break that record with 73 home runs, a record that still stands today. Now, when I say the names of those players, you may think of them as guys who are synonymous with having gigantic muscles that are impossible without some sort of enhancements. and adult acne and uh receding hairlines and larger than average skulls some sort of uh rage issues issues yes yeah but uh but the thing was in in back then you just wanted to be excited about mlb and so you just pretended

that these guys were doing something different than the last 40 years of players who couldn't break the record were doing. And you just turn a blind eye because you want to enjoy baseball. Do all three of them have the asterisk next to their record? Or is it just Mark McGuire who's the one who got really scandalized about it? Honestly, actually, Bonds was more scandalized than McGuire. And Sosa, too. My only memories of this era of the uh the bat no not the bash brothers are they like the swing sisters or what do they give these guys a name

like these two guys you know i i think they were just in competition it was just like the swing siblings let's call them that yeah i just remember that uh a friend of mine was really into baseball at the time and i was like i think it'd be funny if sosa won because he is not the american guy he's like the dominican immigrant and he got really mad at me oh for saying that i would honestly that would have been good yeah it was like it i was a little stinker i was i will admit uh though i mean yeah mcguire and sosa were very complimentary of each other like that uh they they worked really hard to compliment one another but uh yes in the decade after sosa and bonds were caught with a paper trail to illegal steroid use and the purchase of them i think a much stronger

one than mcguire like nothing could really stick on mcguire though jose canseco had said like oh definitely we did steroids together like we did but perhaps there is something to it that mcguire was less punished and shamed than barry bonds and sammy sosa that the white guy was treated differently than the dominican or the african-american you know he had declined to comment for so many years mcguire but in a 2010 interview he admitted to using steroids at this time in his career which duh we all knew that and it was a bummer to me that like, again, when I cared about baseball, the Atlanta Braves were my team and it was such a sense of pride for them that Hank Aaron

had the home run record. And when Barry Bonds broke it, even though I lived in the town where he broke it in San Francisco, it really bummed me out because I was like, we all know this is fake. We all know it's, it just hasn't been know this is fake we all know it just hasn't been proven yet but we all know it and it just i i think it was the major league baseball mortgaging their future because they had all these happy memories then of all this record-breaking stuff but now you just look back on it as like oh yeah he was just a cheater and that's why you like wrestling because to buy into it you have to accept that it's fake up front, right? Yes, yeah. I don't think people should use steroids because, you know, there are giant health risks to it. But I've heard arguments that in non-competitive athletic performances, such as, say, pro wrestling, or if you're acting in a movie and you want to look like, oh let's say captain america you would take enhancements to look that way and if it's if it's not a competition then i guess who

cares in the from a competitive angle it's just again the health risk for them but uh you know if the rules are that you don't use it and then use it you are a cheater like in in a competitive sport so i don't i don't feel like there's much conversation there about it. I don't want Captain America to have back knee though. So that's my vote against it. Well, they got all the special effects to digitally remove the back knee off Chris Evans or whoever. The Hollywood secret. Everyone in Hollywood's covered in back knee all the time.

My high school years are coming back. But yes, okay. So that's Mark McGuire. Now let's talk about Ritalin. Oh yeah, Ritalin. Well, Now let's talk about Ritalin. Oh, yeah, Ritalin. Well, this episode is all about Ritalin. It doesn't really talk about what it is or really what it does. They're parodying a drug that doesn't really exist because Ritalin exists at the end of this episode.

That's like a bigger kick in the pants at the end. It's like, yeah, this is a parody of Ritalin, but also Ritalin exists. But what I didn't know until I was much older, and to put it like very bluntly, Ritalin is just speed for children. I don't think there's anything incorrect about that. It's like a little bit of amphetamine to get your kids to focus. But the things that Bart is doing, they need to tell you like what Ritalin is and does

and what's in it for you to understand like why Bart is acting this way. Because Bart is acting like a meth head, like a guy that's strung out on meth or amphetamines. But like as a young person watching this, I was like, I don't know what Ritalin is. I don't know what Focussin is. Why is Bart acting like this?

So, I mean, that's just, again, I'm putting it very bluntly. And if you were on Ritalin as a kid, or if you take things like Adderall, I really want to know like what's up with them. Did they help you? But this episode, I don't think it's an effective satire of medicating children. I don't think so either. But also, I have a science question that might make me sound very dumb. I don't understand how giving speed to a hyperactive child would make them slow down. Do you guys know how that works? That is exactly what baffled me when I found out what it is. Like, I don't think it's like purely an amphetamine, but I think it's like an amphetamine compound or something

like that. There's a huge wiki article I was scanning. Apparently like a small amount of stimulants can help you focus, but it seems like the opposite would happen with a hyperactive kid who can't focus. Like why would a stimulant help them focus? But for some reason it does. And I just find that inexplicable, but it does work. I also, I was not diagnosed with ADHD or ADD as a kid. I also didn't take these. I had friends who did, and in my anecdotal memory of what they told me, it worked to a degree. None of my friends had side effects to it, or at least that they told me about but now you know we're more than 20 years removed from how much uh ritalin and similar drugs were

given out to kids and i i tried to look up any studies and there weren't any conclusive ones that i could find that were like it either made things worse or better like it seemed pretty even from from what i had seen the satire i'm seeing is that, like, people prefer a quick fix to things like, oh, yeah, exercise will help you or, you know, therapy or things like that. People want a pill. I think the movie Brain Candy is very much about that. It's like, people want a simple pill to take and forget about whatever their problem is. But that's the only real satire I see in this episode. And, like, personally speaking, I don't want to be like, ADD doesn't exist or ADHD doesn't exist because they do. But I think often kids are given these

things because other solutions are much more difficult or complicated and society doesn't have the systems to support them. And I also think, especially with adults, like, I think 90% of my friends have said, oh, I have ADHD or I'm so ADD. It's like, no, you just smoke weed all the time or like, you're drunk all the time. It's just like, there are other factors to weigh in. But I think like this simple solution is attractive to a lot of people, but these conditions do exist.

And I think the other thing is to be all like a leftist jerk about this is that like, we built this system and if people can't fit into it, we don't say there's a problem with the system. We say there's a problem with the person. When clearly like the systems are flawed and not everyone can perfectly fit in to be the perfect cogs we want them to be to function and make a good economy or whatever purpose we want to have these people serve like i think that's something that this episode does not examine because it's

a much darker and much more difficult subject to tackle it's harder to make fun of children that way i i agree i think that as a society we just kind of throw a pill at a kid or also like, well, just buy a pill. That'll fix it. But I think it was likely that in the late 90s, there was a better understanding of that like doctors were aware of uh though it i think one thing i did see is that a lot of a number of high profile adhd advocacy groups were in part funded by big pharma to sell pills so there's also that the angle this episode comes at it from is definitely of a comedy of comedy writers, mostly childless. They remember their childhoods. And I think especially in particular, the writer George Myers case, I think he remembers being a creative kid and thinking, if I had been given mind altering drugs as a kid, I'd

be very boring today and it would have stamped out my creativity. And I wouldn't want that to happen to kids now you know i think i think that's the position they're coming from yeah though definitely they are mocking big pharma in here too that's part of it yeah i forgot about that element but i mean the south park take on this if you remember correctly was like yeah uh kids are bored of school because of course school is boring that's why you have to yell at them and hit them that was the south park message uh on this issue yeah that episode is timmy 2000 that comes seven months after this so you know people were making fun of you know when south park showed up oh south park's

always ahead of the simpsons because they produce so much faster but simpsons did a riddle an episode before they did so which one which one's better uh this one well timmy 2000 is also tied up in a lot of the timmy stuff of south park yeah that's named very well although a whole other conversation there is a king of the hill b plot about riddlin that i believe was earlier uh 99 it was in the episode peggy's turtle song where bobby is put on Ritalin or like a parody of it. I don't remember a lot of the jokes except Bobby takes it and he's sitting on the bus like looking out the window and a fly lands on the window and you can hear the fly like rubbing its feet together because he's so focused. And the hills go somewhere for some reason to come back home

and Luann was like, oh, I took one of Bobby's smart pills and she's like repainting the entire house. So, Luann is hopped up on, you know, Bobby's child speed. But I didn't get the joke until I realized what Ritalin was made out of. And they don't tell you that in the episode. Well, I think too, they have to make a focus in because like for legal safety too, like they can't say Bart takes Ritalin

and then these things happen because you take it because the owners of Ritalin would then these things happen because you take it because the the owners of Ritalin would sue over that so they just make up a thing that can do whatever they need it to and then just wink to the audience like you know it's Ritalin you know and then in the last scene they kind of do a weird endorsement for Ritalin where it does seem to solve all of Bart's problems yeah well though also let's not forget that because of the wacky out of left field ending to this episode,

Bart is actually correct. And so focusing is actually good in that it helped him realize this. The Sentence will be right back. Can a wonder drug make Bart a better student?

What's the big deal? Look, I'll even eat some. And all new Simpsons at 8, 7 Central, Fox Sunday. Welcome to the break, everyone. I hope you're not experiencing any side effects from the dope either. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Drew Mackey, co-host of the podcast Gayest Episode Ever. We're big fans of that. You guys should check out that. And also, if you enjoy this podcast, please consider supporting us at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

Talking Simpsons and its sister podcast. What a cartoon where we break down a different animated series once a week. Both of those shows are weekly and supported by subscribers at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons $5 and up subscribers. They're get access to every episode a week early and without ads like this one. Plus they get so many exclusive podcasts right now on top of Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. Every Friday they get an episode of Talking Mission Hill, the newest Patreon exclusive

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And there's far more on top of that to dig through in the archive. So please sign up today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. But if you really can't stop fiddling, you should sign up at the $ dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons our premium level gives you all that five dollar stuff and an exclusive monthly podcast what a cartoon movie where me and bob talk about a different animated feature film in the talking simpsons style what a cartoon movie is covered recently space jam the michael Michael Jordan commercial slash Bugs Bunny animated feature, and before that, Toy Story 2, Iron Giant, The Animatrix, Akira, Castle of Cagliostro, Batman, Mask of the Phantasm, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, Cowboy Bebop the movie, and tons and tons more. 70 hours of exclusive podcasts. If you sign up at the $10 level for what a cartoon movie at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. should we talk about the writer of this episode oh yes yeah this is one of the uh relatively few episodes written by george meyer he hadn't written one as the credited writer of an episode until

or since bart's inner child in like 1994 so it had been a long time since he had been a writer he turned in this first draft with a pseudonym on it because he hated it so much uh under the pseudonym vance jericho so in the room it was a joke that you blame things on vance jericho like if a joke is bad oh well vance wrote that one yeah yeah i feel like that's a long held in joke in the writer's room since this episode but apparently they massage his script into shape and this is the final result but yeah uh george meyer is a great joke writer i don't know if he is confident in like telling a story so much. Those are great ones. So I don't think he should be, you know, unconfident about it. But I guess he's more used to just being the joke pitcher or the workshopping guy. Like, I mean, it was a big deal for him to even come back to The Simpsons because he seemed like he was like a one day a

week type dude trying to sell his own series and then just came back full time to The Simpsons and in Scully's years. It's weird hearing that this was extensively massaged because even in the state that aired, it seems like the writer just kind of gives up halfway through and just like, okay, baseball, lol. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I like to see his original draft. I'd like to see if it was leaning or like going towards baseball or that ending was pulled out of their asses because they wanted a big guest star like Mark McGuire. The third act feels like a classic Simpsons, like, wacky third act. Second draft, for sure. You know, Meyer, though, I look back at his other written by ones, and a lot of them are about he was going through his own mental health issues during the working on this and

probably was, you know, maybe he's working through his issues with taking medication or not through the character of Bart. But I mean, previous ones he wrote, he also wrote Bart vs. Thanksgiving. He wrote a lot of episodes about Bart acting up and a reaction that society has to it. Bart's inner child as well. It starts off as a Marge episode, then it's a takedown of pop psychology, I guess. Which again, I feel like that's George working through his feelings about getting help for mental health as well and thinking they're phony, I suppose. But yeah, so I think George on the commentary that was recorded 12 years ago, I think, he was still

feeling pretty strongly about how he thinks that pills were over-prescribed to kids. I wonder how he feels now about it or how, you know, with time to reflect on how it's affected kids or not over the last 20 years, I wonder what he feels. But, you know, at least he's coming from a strong viewpoint in writing that. I like that. Now that you mention it, it's kind of weird to think about how I've never seen any sort of article or documentary or anything looking at what being on ADD drugs did to our generation, basically, because there was a lot of kids our age who were on that. And there was this worry that it would really fuck them up. And I have no idea if it did or not. I have no idea what the long term effects of being on those drugs actually was for those kids. They made us all into microdosing speed freaks.

If we've missed the documentary about it out there please in the comments suggest to us like but i i couldn't find it in my in my light google searching about ritalin effects but i guess why let's get straight into the episode which uh is named after a rolling stones song mother's little helper which is about taking value it's about how mothers who are having problems with all their kids are just the pains of domesticity, and then they take their little pill and just chill out. Yeah, I had an older professor in college, and he was telling us about, you know, adults in the 60s, they would always just dope up with sedatives after work.

Like, they were so popular. Well, I remember that great scene in Wolf of Wall Street where they're talking about, you can't even get these Quaaludes anymore. These were awesome. You can't even tell. That was the shit they were using then. I think the thalidomide thing that caused the babies with deformed hands,

I think that was caused by a sedative, a popular sedative. I think it was to cure morning sickness. Oh, okay. I think that's why it ended up affecting pregnant women specifically, but I'm pulling that out of the depths of my brain. I just know that there were a lot of sedatives that had a lot of side effects

they found out about much later. That's why they're all off the mark and people aren't. I mean, they find other ways to knock themselves out that are a little healthier, but not as much sedative abuse for people. Yeah, more of an opioid crisis now. I've never been someone who's into drugs, as weird as that sounds to say

as a 30-year-old. But it's really weird to think I'll never experience quaaludes because they seem so awesome when I hear them discussed in movies from that era and articles about the drug culture back then.

And they're just not available anymore. And there's part of me that wants to scour thrift shops for old purses that were abandoned in the 80s to see if they're just not available anymore. And there's part of me that wants to, like, scour thrift shops for, like, old purses that were, like, abandoned in the 80s to see if there were, like, 20-year-old quaaludes hiding out in there. I kind of, it's kind of a weird bummer that we just won't get quaaludes.

I want to see how that differs from, like, an edible or something, like a powerful edible. Exactly. I think that aforementioned scene in Wolf of Wall Street, I think that was just Scorsese bragging to the audience about all the drugs he did in the 70s and how he's cooler than you because you can't do them now. If you go to the thrift store, you'll probably just find old cans of Billy Beer in those jackets. Billy Beer? I would try Billy Beer just because of The Simpsons if I ever

had the opportunity to. We elected the wrong card. Bring back Billy Beer. So I feel the shadow of South Park over this just a little bit that there's some jokes that I'm like, oh, that feels like them going farther because South Park is pushing the envelope more. And so and and Family Guy to an extent, too. But I think it's more response to South Park, starting with Bart's like chalkboard gag about using pork as a verb. I'm like, boy, that that feels too dirty for Bart. I don't know. I don't like that. Should not be that aware of sex.

I was surprised that he knew the word testicle, to be honest. It's a clinical term. Maybe he'd have heard of it. Or maybe that shows that the focus in was already working, that he's learned the clinical term for balls. That is the retry I like. Yeah, that makes sense. That was not the first use of testicles on The Simpsons. More testicles means more iron. That's true. that's right uh so the episode begins with uh it's fire prevention day at the school uh learn baby learn as it said a reference to burn baby burn and i you know i think it is intentional continuity all the fire people are from the community fire brigade that was seen in homer the heretic which

uh meyer wrote yeah that was a nice poll i it it's we often make fun of the show for not caring as much about continuity at this time but this was this was a good poll those cute little ducks did not return though but they're so cute but apu is definitely their leader in this who is their leader has the volunteer fire department returned between homer the heretic and this because i can't think So cute. But Apu is definitely their leader in this. Apu is their leader. Has the volunteer fire department returned between Homer the Heretic and this? Because I can't think of a single instance of it being like a plot point. I don't think so at all. Yeah, no, it's pretty rare that they even have the fire department show up.

And if it is, I think they are just firemen. They're like nondescript firemen. There's no like firefighter, like Steve or whatever on the show. There's no like firefighter character they've added. Maybe there was like one in one off episode, but there's no like Wiggum ofcript fireman. There's no like firefighter, like Steve or whatever on the show. There's no like firefighter character they've added. Maybe there was like one in one off episode, but there's no like Wiggum of the fire department. Yeah. There's the hot guys in the bachelor auction, the bachelor auction who aren't getting auctioned off.

That's right. All those hunky there because the bachelor auction is to get them a new firehouse, but the, the firemen themselves are not being sold. I know there's an episode in a few years maybe like four or five years where uh homer becomes a volunteer fireman with some of the other guys to rob houses that are on fire because apparently that was happening at the time

that's that's good but not as good as the rashomon firehouse of uh king of the hill that one is really good bart is uh is really good. Like, knowing that he's going to get prescribed fake Ritalin in this episode, I was like, oh, he's not a bad kid. He's just really annoying. And then I'm like, oh, no, that's how kids got on Ritalin in real life. They were just annoying, and that's how people solved the problem. Dope him up. Dope him up. This kid's bugging me.

Shut him up. Principal Skinner, what would you say is the most important firefighting tool? Would you say it's prevention? Oh, absolutely, Lisa. That and the sand bucket. What's that stuff? Why, this is retarded. Sure is. And what's that? That's called a hose lengthener. You need one. What's this? Just read the label. It's a king-size flamer. Bart, will you go bother someone else? Look,

a fire engine. Stop that. Help, help, fire! Helmet. Can't you do something constructive? Sure, I can do something destructive. Just say the word and I'll drive this hoe in his back. I can make it look like suicide. Congrats to them for finding three naughty fire safety words out of all of them. They really went far. I did not expect hose lengthener.

That's my favorite. What is a king-size flamer, though? I tried to Google it and couldn't find anything that would make sense in a firefighting context. I think they are just making it up, but I think it's something to, based on how it looks, I would think it extends the spray of something and you use it on a king-size flame.

Yeah, that's what I presume, but yeah, Google doesn't know about that yet. of something and you use it on a king-size flame yeah that's what i presume but uh yeah google didn't google doesn't know about that yet i uh yeah that yeah actually i should have looked that one up to see if it was a real thing sure the producers were really giggling to themselves they got away with saying retardant on on television i also like that lisa beats skinner to being boring and saying like, is it prevention? Yes. Yeah.

And I mean, Bart should be arrested right there for saying fire in like that. He's going to cause a classic free speech arguments. And I thought it was really dark that Willie does a joke about just straight up saying, I will kill him with this and make it look like suicide like that is dark suicide by a backhoe yeah okay i guess the joke is how how it could never look like a suicide who would commit suicide with a backhoe see i presume that a lot of people in willie's family have killed themselves using garden garden implements sounds like more like a sideshow bob kind of problem

you know i would think willie's probably seen a lot of like you know double suicides of like each kills like a double murder suicide pact thing sorry this is dark i don't want what's going on in scotland kilt town is in trouble then we get some uh good old ralph fire jokes as he's sitting on Smokey the Bear's lap, though. Hosey the Bear. Sorry, Hosey, I forget. Though, okay, it does bug me a little bit that I wish they, I think there'd be more comedy if the bear costume didn't have lip sync. It's a little off that the bear has lip sync.

That seems like a mistake, like it came back that way from overseas. Though later after there's the big tidal wave of water, he kind of shakes himself loose like he's really a bear so maybe you're supposed to question if this is actually a anthropomorphic bear and not a guy in a shirt suit but yes also just jokes about ralph lighting fires like a very uh ableist joke from a different time and then there's a joke about dalmatians which i had a dalmatian growing up how'd you feel about these jokes Henry, about how inbred they are? They're correct. I mean, they are, or at least they're there.

So from birth till I was six, we had a Dalmatian named Jenny. I loved her so, so much. Passed away before she was even 10 from cancer. Sad. She also was very much the product of inbreeding and was deaf. But I mean, that's also like, I cherish my memories of Jenny. If I had any say in the matter as a, before I was born, I would have said, you know, adopt, don't shop with, with pets.

But yeah, Dalmatians were all the rage. You want to have a Dalmatian and they're all inbred because of the demand and puppy mills just make them. And it's pretty sad. Especially after the live action 101 Dalmatians movie in 96. I remember there being like a ton of Dalmatians everywhere and they were mauling children. Oh God. Yeah. They're inbred to the point of they can have weird anger issues, right? Yeah. Yeah. Temper issues. As the dog person, I was prepared to not like this joke, but the inbred Dalmatian is drawn so perfectly that it made me laugh. And you just want to hug it. You're like, I'm so sorry.

Just falls over. It's not your fault. But yeah, the cross-eyed drawing of it is funny too. The director on this, Mark Kirkland, he has a lot of interesting notes on eyes in general, including saying they try to never do cross eyes on the show because it looks too cartoony. But this is a rare time when the joke calls for it. Then we get another joke that I'm like, that's too dark. I get that Skinner is a Vietnam vet, but when he is celebrating that fire is used to kill Charlie,

I'm like, you shouldn't like napalm. Yeah, they come out of the gate swinging with very, very dark jokes in this episode. A little off-putting when you're actually breaking it down. I don't think we've been to the Vietnam as a joke well for a while either. But even when they did Skinner, the jokes on Skinner being a Vietnam vet are often more inward of like, he was a prisoner of war. He saw his friends die die they're not about him causing damage it's more about damage caused to him which he doesn't look back on it fondly he it was bad for him one time he used his green beret training at a very out of character cool

moment but other than that but yeah so the this intro by skinner is a little weird but the sketch itself pretty good i I guess we'll talk about the big change in this sketch but I'll play the clip this is a California cheeseburger territory yeah actually it's just them repeating a joke from season eight you're right and actually just like in season eight it precedes Bart doing a giant prank that gets him in a lot of trouble and causes the rest of the plot to move forward. I made a note of like five times in this episode, I'm like there's an exact

joke like this before. But why don't we learn about fire safety? Oh, what a great pot party. Wasn't it, man? Now for a regular cigarette to make the night complete. Oh, man, that's good.

Mad Dog, I've been thinking. Maybe we should get another smoke detector in case that one trips out on us. Oh, why bother, baby? One smoke detector's enough for Mad Dog. Now let's hit the sack. Whoa, check it out. Mad Dog's on fire! Stop, drop, and roll, man!

Ha, ha, ha! That's for Clyde's, baby. A little fire can't hurt you. But Mad Dog was wrong. The fire burned through the night and cost him the use of his pants, which just goes to show you... Sorry to break character, but these stunt pants are getting pretty toasty. Uh, roll, Neddy, roll! It's not working. It just spreads the flame. you sorry to break character but these stunt pants are getting pretty toasty uh roll netty roll it's not working it just spreads the flame that's so irresponsible incredibly yeah more than beefs and butthead even come on what's going on here because stop drop and roll does work that that's the joke that they're telling you it doesn't work when it does i'm kind of surprised fox let that on the air they wouldn't let a surprised Fox let that on the air.

They wouldn't let a lot of things happen on the Simpsons, but saying stop, drop, and roll doesn't work is permissible. Which the reason you stop, drop, and roll is because if you were to keep moving, that gets more oxygen on the flame, so it would grow. You need to go lower because there's less oxygen lower to the ground, so it'll hopefully go out less there, and then by rolling, you hopefully suppress the flame. A lot of friction.

And I just love the set piece is totally a 60s biker movie. I know these because some of my favorite mystery science theaters are the biker movies from season two. I look them up now because I had these on tape, and I have some of the DVDs like Hellcats, Wild Rebels, and Sidehackers. Or like the MST3K Biker Trilogy. They're all so funny. and i have some of the dvds like hellcats uh wild rebels and side hackers are like the mst3k biker trilogy it's they're all so funny side hackers that what does that even mean side hacker side hacking is like this biker sport and they sing an entire song about it exactly but it doesn't hurt to have a low iq yeah especially the line of like i was just at a pot party now for a regular cigarette because they can't they can come from doing drugs but they can't do drugs on screen in this haze

code era though of course that mod doesn't sound right because that is not maggie roswell it's like marcia mitsvin mitsvin gavin yeah yeah i don't her mod. There's like a little bit of hostility under the mod voice that Maggie Roswell does. It's kind of missing here. It's a little too cheery. That's it. It's just a little too flat. Mod is milky white hostility.

Is that what Homer calls it? Oh, yeah. You're right. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's missing. Does Marsha Mitzvah Gavin's name

not sound like something Professor Frank would say? It does. Gavin. Gavin Mitzvah. I mean, the issue for Maggie Roswell was behind the scenes. name not sound like something professor frank would say it does gave it gave them it's been i mean the the issue for maggie roswell was behind the scenes around the same time all the other actors got giant pay raises she was kind of losing money or breaking even flying into los angeles and to record her lines because she moved from la but was still doing the lines and they were paying her so little yeah yeah and she was she lived in Denver I think she still does I'm not sure but

she was like listen just cover my flight that's all I want they wouldn't do that so yeah like that's Maggie I'm on Maggie Roswell's side there like and she she was right not to accept uh bullshit non-rays especially when like I can get that she's like yeah she she was right not to accept uh bullshit non-raise especially when like i can get that she's like yeah she's not on the level of hank kazari or harry shearer so she shouldn't get like the big pay raise they got but how about 10 000 an episode how about that for one of your utility players also considering like i know you guys said that this was an episode that you don't think occurred in actual simpsonons continuity, but the Sherry Bobman's episode, she's a star in that episode. She does such a good job with that part. So good.

She's amazing in that one. Yeah. I mean, they wouldn't pay for like, what, a $300 round trip flight in 1999 every couple months. It's crazy. It feels like a principle. Like, no, she's screwing us. That's how they screw us i know it just feels like somebody in the production pipeline just had something out for her and just refused to do this thing out of that and so in the next episode you'll hear maggie roswell's last uh pre-death of maude lines as maude and just a bummer to lose her and lose helen lovejoy too like they and they too. And Miss Hoover, yeah. It just sucks. It's just a giant mistake on their part that will lead them down the road to what I would say is an even bigger mistake. Mitzman does okay. I don't think she's terrible, but yeah, you're right. She's a little too peppy. A little too peppy. Why did Maggie Roswell come back? Because Marsha Mitzman gave and stayed on

long after Maude died like at least a season and then something made it possible for her to come back yeah I think they eventually came to terms with her and got yeah whatever deal she needed she came back for

around like 2004 2005 I think it happened so she was gone from the show and they kind of just like rewrote her characters out of the show for the most part not not not wrote them, but just ignored them. Like you don't see Miss Hoover or Luann or Maude or does she play Helen Lovejoy as well?

Yeah. From reading her Wikipedia page, it also very much has the feel of like written by a family member because there's some cute stories in there about like, and she got to go to the Simpsons movie premiere with her daughter, and her daughter had such a great time. I'm like, that's an odd thing to write in a Wikipedia. I mean, I'm glad her daughter had a nice time, and it's cute in a way, but it made me laugh reading that. Did you guys look at the Wikipedia page for Marsha Mitzman-Gavin? No, no. What's her deal? She hasn't acted since she left the Simpsons, but her Wikipedia page is thoroughly detailed. So I also think that it's written by a family member if not by her herself or or a crush yeah or or her uh her secret

flame in the gracie studios perhaps yeah ned getting on fire in stunt pants and like it definitely has the feel of a george my written snl sketch as well the way he just goes like and not for mad dog and just going to sleep with his pants on fire is so funny. And I was thinking like for a long, I think before our generation, smoking in bed was like this huge no-no for people. Like they had to be told this, were we just like so doped up and drunk every night that we were just falling asleep in bed with cigarettes? Because it seemed to happen a lot and it seems crazy to fall asleep while smoking a cigarette right now. And people used a lot more hairspray back then too oh that's a big part of it oh yeah

well and their linens i think were probably a lot more flame uh flammable that's the word i'm looking for flammable flammable yeah and so ned is on fire he needs water but the hose is in use by bart he busts out of the gymnasium, riding the backboard of a basketball hoop, like a surfboard, which that straight up feels like a Butterfingers commercial. That's that shot there. At least though, we get a little insert shot of showing that Ned got splashed with big wave of water.

So he did not burn to death off screen. We know that as viewers. I have a Flanders family question for you guys. Seeing Ned and Maude in hippie drag made me remember Ned's parents who look like Ned and Maude in beatnik drag. Have you guys ever talked about the weirdness of Homer

and Ned both having mothers named Mona? To your knowledge, has this ever been addressed on the show? Oh, we never talked about that. Oh yeah. I mean Mona Simpson was named after Rich Appel's former wife, Mona Simpson, right? Yeah. I said former wife. It's the same thing.

Okay. So, Mona Flanders was Ned's mom, and she gets named in the one flashback we get when Ned, I think it's Hurricane Nettie. Oh, wow. Ned's dad addresses her as Mona as well. Isn't that weird that they both were named Mona? I never noticed that until we did that Hurricane Nettie. Oh, wow. Ned's dad, of course, is her as Mona as well. Isn't that weird that they both were named Mona? I never noticed that until we did that Hurricane Nettie one a while ago. I did not note that at the time. That's just like Martha Wayne and Martha Kent.

It's true. Yeah, I guess. That made me think of it. Yeah, so they were 50s radicals, the Flanders parents, or Ned's parents, and then Homer's mom was a 60s radical. So interesting, interesting backgrounds though of course at this point in ned's biography he's too old to have beat nick parents because he's 61 at the at this point in the series which i don't buy into ned should be late 30s early 40s but

yeah you know viva ned vegas has its own feelings on that. But now I'll never stop thinking about the two Monas. Yeah, it's the weird thing. Someone likes that name over there. You know, I could just see Rich Appel was like, oh, it should be Mona in this. And then like later he says, oh, that should also be Mona Simpson's name as well. I prefer Muddy Mae Suggins. Yeah. Skinner gets up as Kirkland points out on the commentary,

Skinner wipes off his eyes with both hands in an Oliver Hardy reference. Mark Kirkland is a big fan of the silent pictures. He made his own silent movie recently. He did, yeah. You could check it out on, search for it on Vimeo, Mark Kirkland's silent film.

It also has a bunch of other Simpsons animators in acting roles, so it's pretty cute. What is it called? Is it just called his silent film? Well, Drew, it's called The Moving Picture Company 20... 1914. Yes, it's called The Moving Picture Company 1914. That's the name of it. I definitely

didn't pause to Google that or have somebody feed me that line. No, sir. Thanks for telling me, Henry. And Weird Al is in it, apparently. Oh, right. I forgot that. Yeah. It's a fun little...

I watched it right before our interview with him, which, hey, you should check that out on the Patreon with Mark Kirkland. We got to do another one with those of him because we barely scratched the surface on his career. And so Skinner is pretty pissed off. Him punching the clown is a pretty funny uh scene there i like that yeah yeah this was the moment that reminded me of like just the pattern of george meyer credited episodes that usually at about the five to eight minute

mark have this question of like what do we do about bart like they all end up at this place bart versus thanksgiving bart's inner child separate vocations like except like and and even the episodes that he doesn't have the right writing by credit like this moment is very similar to a moment you come to in bart gets an f or bart the genius like they just have the the parents being told funny ways that Bart is a terrible student and then told how they're going to fix that. I guess he co-wrote, I mean, a lot of people wrote the Crepes of Wrath, and that was another

one where it's like, this has transcended incorrigible, we need to do something with Bart. What is the Bart solution? That's right. Do you guys think it's odd that Skinner's treating this like it's Bart's worst prank when he arguably has done worse things before this that didn't get him put on Ritalin? I don't know. It's a problem with a lot of these episodes as time goes on where it's like, okay, this has to be the worst thing Homer's ever done. This has to

be the worst thing Bart's ever done. And the movie tried very hard to be like, this is the worst thing Homer's ever done. Like it did, went to every length to do that. I don't know if it succeeded, but they keep trying to top themselves. So, I think Bart has caused more property damage, especially with the testing prank. Oh, yeah, yeah. From the military school episode. Or he ran over Chalmers with a rotting lawnmower, which was, like, more physical harm.

Yeah. Yeah. And got Skinner fired, though the destruction wasn't as much. Now, that also damaged the gym. Well, I'd also like talking about Bart's pranks, like him writing his name in the school, in the lawn of the school. Yeah. That was a pretty big one, too. I mean, it's tough to think of new pranks for Bart.

I guess, though, this is the most involved prank that Bill and Josh, they bring up on the commentary for the Sweet Seymour Skinner's Badass song that it was it was like advertised as Bart's biggest prank ever like he he accidentally got him fired and Bart meaningfully connects with an authority figure which is what the episode is about but I guess the difference between those episodes and this one is that Ritalin now exists in the real world so Bart can be diagnosed with ADD which they could never get to before like in a similar scene like this with dr j lauren prior their answers were different of how to deal with bart so you kind of can see how the writers perceived how teachers treated students you know i think in the in bart the genius or bart gets an f they were more calling back on their childhoods, but now they're imagining what is being done to kids

today. And again, mostly childless writers doing that in 1999. Your son is a ravenous demon, relentlessly gnawing at all that's good and true. Yeah, he's something else, all right. But worst of all, he drags down the grades of anyone who sits near him. Just look at this pattern. Hey, that looks like Bart. And turning to the 3D map, we see an unmistakable cone of ignorance. Put it away. Put it away. Very well, but there's no escaping the truth. Bart has a classic case of attention deficit disorder. You mean like John Leguizamo? How should I know? The point is ADD makes children restless and easily distracted. Hi, Marge. It's me, Homer. What? Time to go? Please, Mr. Simpson. I'm afraid I'll have to expel your son. Unless you're willing to try a radical, untested, potentially dangerous...

Candy bar? No. It's a new drug called Focusin. A drug? I know Bart can be rambunctious, but he's not some hyperactive monster. Give me an F! Give me an art! Good lord, he's gotten into the pep closet. I'd say he's coming out of the pep closet. It's like Bart, sorry, Homer's thinking Bart for no reason.

He's like, here's an opportunity for a joke. Oh, yes, yes, that looks like Bart. Yeah. That felt like they thought there was two, there was three seconds of silence they didn't want. So, they're like, can Homer say that looks like Bart there in the bingo card, basically, of the classroom? I love the cone of ignorance so much. And I do feel like, again, I feel like this is often misdiagnosed and or our brains are not fit for modern society, especially today. Like, I just feel like when your brain was designed

through thousands of years of evolution, it was not ready for phones ever, ever. It was never ready for a smartphone. We are not there yet. And I see lots of parents complaining about, probably rightfully so, like, oh, my kid can't get off the iPad. My kid can't get off the phone. But if I had that as a kid, I'd be the exact same way. Like, we are no better than them. Like, whenever I would go on a car ride, I would always bring a book or a magazine or a Game Boy. Like, I could not be bored for a second. I would not allow it. Yeah, no, I would probably have been glued to my iPad as well the entire time I had, if I had one as a kid. I mean, yeah, for me, when I think about how I was at my most depressed and felt like, oh, I don't know, I need to see a doctor about my depression. I mean, I do think I needed

help with it and that it was partially, you know, a thing in my brain and a mental health issue I needed to address. But I also think about how like that was when I was the most miserable at a job I truly hated and one I couldn't change anything about and that it was all like out of my hands and powerless like that. So I do wonder that made me think about how the extant things in our lives that you can't control leading to these feelings. And then, especially HR, perhaps, will be like, no, it's just your fault. It's only your fault. You were just reminding me of the exact same similar experience that made me start going to therapy, too. Yeah. Which, I mean, therapy helped, and I'm glad I went to it as well. But

when I look back on that and think about being told about hearing things about mindfulness or whatever from HR, who maybe that HR lady was just trying to help me. But I look back on it and it feels like just the cover of a company for a miserable condition they had that they didn't want to address and they just make it all your fault. Right. Yeah. Just something about it and so it in that situation i then extended to thinking like well this is a school that the school sucks and they could change the system or they could blame a kid and give the kid drugs and make it all his problem i mean i'm seeing a lot of uh recording this during a lot of quarantines are happening and i'm seeing a lot of parents

struggling with like keeping their kids focused on school work but i i can't blame them and i feel sorry for both the parents and the children like if i was a kid and it's like well here's a screen here's every tv show you've ever wanted to watch at your fingertips every video game is here too but also do schoolwork there would not be like a battle there i'd just be like glued to the screen period also burn on john lake guzamo there which yeah he's my, what made me laugh was hearing Skinner just go like, how should I know? Like he was just actively ignorant of John Leguizamo.

He knew what the name was, but he just didn't know anything about him. And it made me want to look up how long House of Bugging was on Sunday Night Live Talk. Ten weeks. Only ten weeks. And it seems like it looms so much larger in my brain as this thing after The Simpsons that I did not want to watch. That name is so iconic oh man john was i so i didn't see the pest in theaters but when i worked at a video store a co-worker was like let's put on the past i loved

it as a kid i'm like okay and then when it came on i was aghast and agog. I mean, it's one of the worst things. Like, an incredibly homophobic film, kind of racist, too. And just John Leguizamo is just so annoying, which that's the bit. It's called The Pest. He's supposed to be annoying. But it's just unbearable to me. He was better as Luigi. Yeah.

I've seen Leguizamo and stuff. I like he's. Baz Luhrmann uses him pretty well in movies. He's done very well. So, it's not even I think John Leguizamo is particularly like bad actor, but yeah, The Pest is a bad film. I didn't see The Pest in theaters and it made me think of like, wait, people probably did go to the theaters to watch that. I've never heard of that, but surely someone did. At least a million people i bet someone must have so when i start a revival theater i will look for a 35 millimeter print remaster in 4k that pest uh also i like homer's injection of a candy bar there that's pretty funny but uh i guess that's our first of the gay jokes in this episode of Homer saying Bart's coming out of the pep closet. Bart's really good at those batons. King Size Flamer is the first one.

Oh, yeah. Okay. So, yeah. Second is Bart coming out of the closet here, which I think Homer's like jokey reaction shows. Perhaps this shows how much he's changed his mind since Homer's phobia, and he's just laughing off the possibility that Bart is gay instead of being upset by it. That's a very generous read of that joke. Yeah. I think he's trying to zing his gay son. Yes, perhaps. But I mean, Bart is really like, he should lead the pep squad. He's really good

at that stuff. So then we head to the farm team, which I guess is a baseball joke as well. That's what you call the team where you have people trying out i had to look it up and i think that's the joke yeah it just is a similar sounding uh thing to pharmacy big farm yeah big pharma which i wish they blamed big pharma more in this but they do they're pretty mean to it but the the two doctors they are drawn to look like from the animation team animator named tim and daily and his wife so okay yeah i was i was waiting for the octo parrot joke but that's in another episode with these two characters oh yeah they i forget these are recurring characters uh sorry dre i interrupted you no i was just gonna ask so is lindsey nagel a character on

the show at this point she is right oh yeah yeah so, yeah. Yeah. That woman is not a proto-Lindsay Nagel, like the weird colored Lindsay Nagels that are running around before they actually name her Lindsay Nagel? You know, she seems like a cousin of Lindsay Nagel's, but in the Nagel history, if we're talking production order, this is a season 10 production one, but earlier in season 10 production was the Mensa episode, which was the debut of fully formed lindsey nagel yeah you really shouldn't have a tress mcneil blonde

corporate character because it's too lindsey like you know yeah i think deep into season 11 they they learn like oh this isn't a lindsey nagel type anymore it just has to be Lindsay Nagel of just like, it's similar to when they realized instead of just writing any old hayseed, that it has to be Cletus. They're like, no, no, this scene of a rube has to be Cletus, not just any yokel. They show off the pills to Marge and Homer, which includes a bit of slavery. Oh, right. That's amazing! And darling, check this out. They become your slaves. Yes, but it's not about slavery.

It's about helping kids concentrate. This pill reduces class clownism 44% with 60% less sass mouth. The only thing more effective is regular exercise. I almost like shake at the idea of regular exercise. It's a fun, I do like how it's just like, oh, here's the easy solution, but it's like exercise is actually more effective and is not a pill, but it's something that's hard to do. Yes.

Or hard to keep up with. I like too that the test they have is to put guinea pigs into school seats and make them pay attention in school that's the i think that is the biggest like attack meyer does on this like well what's the point of this drug that's supposed to help children well it just makes them better at like being a student not being a better like person by any other measurable stance but just you are a more obedient yeah you're a slave to the school system i love that like yes but it's not about slavery that isn't too close to lindsey nagel though i wasn't even thinking that but it's just her voice in a different

character a different blonde lady yeah at least they straighten that out they don't do that anymore i had forgotten this video game reference but it's a season 11 episode we didn't uh need it we were only covering the first 10 so i did not make a mistake in our pack this feels like it's a reference to the snowboarding levels from sonic the uh the snowboarding guy is stuff's all flying around i don't know what it is it's like the sonic level it's snowboard kids it's the snowboard kids is my guess too yeah and it has like crash bandicoube music. They just reuse the crash bandicube. Sorry. Uh, dash,

dash dingo music. Yeah. Yeah. I think even the design of the PlayStation alike as well. I, I feel like this reference, uh, it's,

it's more subtle. Nobody says it outright, but I do think it's a little bit of blaming those damn video games for making Bart so hyperactive because this is just a sensory overload of a video game, which isn't that different from what video games were then, I think. Though with that many sprites on screen, there would be slowdown. That's my picadillo. I think they're trying to approximate polygons just by the way things are shaped. It's a very strange, I don't know, conception of a video game on the screen. I think it's very interesting that they are blaming

the video games for ruining Bart's attention span when, number one, we'd all ruin our attention spans just with phones in like 12 years. But also, when I was a kid, I spent hours focused on video games. To beat Final Fantasy VI, you have to put hours and hours into that, and I can't do that anymore. So if anything, those video games

taught me more focus than anything else. And you read way more words doing that than you would have like out of a school book. You know, I think video games, they give you a specific focus, not maybe not what teachers would prefer you focus on, but I think it creates focus. I did this whole unit on video games when I was a teacher. I taught college writing in grad school and I read this book. I forget the name of it. I'm sorry. But it basically explained how video games teach in the context of you actually doing the action, which is much more effective than you're taught outside the context of what you're doing in school. You learn about a thing outside of the context of the act of doing the thing. So, it's like instead of learning to play basketball

by playing basketball, you read a book about basketball, and that's how you learn to play basketball. So, it's like, instead of learning to play basketball by playing basketball, you read a book about basketball and that's how you learn to play basketball. So, it's like those two different approaches. That's interesting. That is interesting. And also, to fully date this in 1999, we get a reference to Andy Dick as... South Park predicted he would die. Yeah, they still

still... Do I want to knock on wood? Anyway, Andy Dick is still with us now. He's going to be killed by John Lovitz. Yeah, miss me? Ow, knock it off. Homer, we agreed we'd discuss the medication with Bart. Medication? Some special helpers that'll make you a good boy.

I don't want to take drugs. Sure you do. All your favorite stars have used drugs. You know, does that count as a gay joke, talking about Andy Dick being flamboyant? I was thinking about that. It might just be that he has a big personality, but I had it in my head that he was some level of not straight. Oh, Andy Dick, yeah. I looked it up, and as near as I can tell, he's only ever been in relationships with women.

The women do sound fake. Their names were Ivone Kowalczyk and Lena Zved. Both their names look like they're acronyms for something, so maybe they're completely fictional, but I think he's actually just straight and weird. As far as I know, he has sexually assaulted men and women, correct? Yes, yeah. Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, I mean, he's guilty of sexual harassment that people in, like, 10 years ago just went like,

ah, well, you know, it's one of those things things like, isn't he silly type things, but he's, it's not silly. It's serious. But yeah, I'm now pretty much sworn off Andy Dick. But in the time when I didn't really think about those things, like 10 years ago, I recall him in doing like a WTF. And he talked about how like he's had, uh, he's had sexual relationships with men, but i don't think like long-term romantic things so he's he's on a broad spectrum of uh sexualities but also like a sex criminal too so fuck him well you just made me picture a lot of things i did not want to picture today sorry i'm sorry uh though yeah i mean andy dick they probably all thought he was going to be dead by the time they

did that joke that the the andy like by at this point he had been so there's some lip sync issues there that i think they may be my thinking is they maybe said other people and they were told like if they don't have a literal criminal record related to drugs you you can't say their names. Yeah, that's true. It is weird that they leave with Brett Butler also because she's not the biggest of those four people. Yeah, though, well, she was the freshest at the time because, like, a year earlier, Grace Under Fire was canceled because of her substance abuse issues, which she copped to. She's admitted. Yeah, she got better. I didn't know until looking it up that she just had a recurring role on The's admitted. Yeah, she got better. I didn't know until looking

it up that she just had a recurring role on The Walking Dead. Oh, really? Yeah. We did a Grace Under Fire episode, so I was looking about it, and she was talking about how fun it was to get, they made a mold of her head, and she was like, you're going to decapitate me, right? And they wouldn't tell her that soon, that she was going to get her head cut off, but she was very excited to have her head cut off on tv oh that's awesome man she's yeah i read you know she she went through some tough times but uh and that includes having to work with charlie sheen on anger management for 38 episodes oh no yeah yep and and yeah tim they it's so funny that they can you can just say like yeah tim allen drug addict like or

drug drug user and it's uh totally legal he can't sue you for it because it's true bart turns it down by uh saying like he has a good little turn on them of saying like drugs are not the answer and so they try to trick bart with some taffy bart uh obviously turns it down homer then takes a bite out of it and has a bugs bunny style freak out there's some david silverman ass drawings yeah yeah or the very least imitating david i think david silverman was at pixar at the time but maybe so it's either someone imitating it or he had like faxed it in did those wild takes break the reality of the show for you guys at all they're a bit much they are i just saw it as like a parody that's sort of like Homer turning into Popeye. Yeah, that's Deep Space Dome, where it's just like, I guess he could do this.

I guess it's not as extreme as having your face turn into Popeye or Richard Nixon, I suppose. Okay, you got me there. You know, our friend Thad might have some more specifics than this, but the specific, I think of what I think of these Bugs Bunny acting choices are from the Chuck Jones directed hair devil hair. But, uh, he like,

he like drink something. That's gross. Yeah. I think of him drinking something. It's gross. And like one of the episodes, uh, or one of the shorts with,

uh, the big red monster, uh, Gossamer. Gossamer. Gossamer. There we go. Thank you. Yes.

And just like, it's fun. Then Marge sees the real trick is to guilt Bart and use terms like, I thought you'd love me enough to do it. I wonder if that comes from the Scully Thacker household. Did they put that into action on their kids? Deceiving their children with love? Perhaps. The guilt works. If I was a parent and guilt would make a kid do a thing I needed them to do, I'd do it.

I think she is guilting him, but also she wants, she thinks she's helping Bart. And you can also read it as her being genuine about this and be like, can you please just do this for me? he says yes and it's sort of a sweet moment if you like take a step away from the guilt version of it i think they do play sweet music to let you know they're trying to be uh i guess tender with this scene i feel like the line we're still doing the wild takes in the background yeah though i think they have to yeah i think that line after of march acknowledging that she was using manipulation with guilt, I think is them guilty themselves. They're like, we did too sweet a scene.

This is too sweet for The Simpsons. Okay, undercut it and have Marge admit to emotional manipulation on Bart. Well, so I watched this episode with my co-host and roommate, because we are quarantined together and now we do everything together. And he's a screenwriter and his name is Glenn Lake and he would probably want me to say his name. But he picks apart stuff on a script construction level that I don't because I don't write scripts. And he said that he felt like this episode missed the opportunity to tell a more compelling story with Marge and Bart. That would

be more along the lines of Marge Be Not Proud, where Marge guilts Bart into taking the drugs to become a better student but when he becomes a better student and like straightens up a little bit she stops being her special little guy and she does not relate to him the same way that she used to and then that is like a more human and well thought-out arc and

there's traces of that in this episode where Marge like a little bit of that and then it just like takes a left turn into baseball yeah you know that is a tank town yeah that is a good emotional core for the episode that is kind of uh completely loses marge misses the elements of bart that the drugs take out of him yeah yeah that that feels like what they'd have done in season two or three but i I think, you know, at this time, I think they're emotionally there? Or will the audience buy it? Or is the safer bet to just do something crazy because we feel we can pull that off and our audience will be receptive to it anyway? And they're a cartoon.

And they're a cartoon, yeah. Though, like, nowadays, when they do an episode where they do land the emotional arc, everyone goes nuts about like, hey, the Simpsons actually didn't take the crazy route anymore. They told like a really fully formed story with a beginning, a middle and an end. And that's like the exception more than the rule. But people do get excited when one of those episodes still happens today. When they have an emotional core to it, it does affect me more like one of the when they did their non treehouse Halloween episode, Halloween of Horror, the core of it was that Lisa, like an eight-year-old would, goes to Halloween Horror Nights and gets really scared by it and is kind of traumatized. And she runs to her dad for safety. And that has, I remember that more than most modern Simpsons I've watched because that emotional response stuck with me a lot more than a million wacky jokes or famous people who guest star in it. Every once in a while, they still do them, but that one was the shining jewel of like the last decade of Simpsons.

So we come back from the break and Bart is now taking the dope as he calls it. Marge is defensive about that his testicles have uh increased in volume i i feel like matt graining wouldn't let that i i've said many times matt graining was busy with futurama season one at this time and things got through that drawing of bart's fake testicles like that i feel like he'd have killed that being a shocking reveal in 1999 like what and i mean it's I mean, it's a lowbrow joke, but I do like, back in the lunches you go. Yes.

After being smashed against Bart's junk. I would hope he's keeping them outside of his underpants. That there's at least, that's what I would tell myself. Like, well, they're outside of his underpants, so it's just touching his legs. You're not going to eat the orange peel, right? Yeah, that too.

At least they grow up. I'm trying to think about hiding oranges in my pants, and I think it'd be a lot easier to keep them in there if I put them in my underwear. Yep, yep. They would be kept in place. Yeah, that's true. Also, Bart has an unfurnished basement, so that's what he prefers. That's true.

You know, is he even wearing underpants? That's a great question. Let's investigate this further. I have to take these stupid pills twice a day. I'll trade you a Claritin for one. Claritin D? Nah, can't help you. I take hormones to lower my voice.

Now all I want to do is fight. What are you looking at? You think you got it bad? I got to wear a shock collar. Ew. That's rough. What was that for? I gotta wear a shock collar. Ew. That's rough. Ow! What was that for? I thought about a girl I like.

All right, class, who would like to read the daffodils by Wordsworth? I'll do it. No, thank you, Mr. Weisenheimer. Sherry? I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high or veils in hills. Hey, look at those dogs going at it. I want to see them! I want to see them! Lighten over a fan belt.

Dogs are outstanding. All right, people. We've all seen the dogs now. So, oh. What? You're still in your seat. Well, it's not like I never saw a dog before. That doesn't sound like me.

Could it be the drug kicking in? I am feeling an urge to straighten up and fly right. It does seem like Glenn's idea could easily branch off from here, know instead of bart going becoming like a speed freak yeah yeah but i guess speed freaks are funnier i well crazier anyway i so i like this little bit here of like all the kids comparing what their prescriptions are because the joke is kids are being given treatments for a number of issues that they couldn't before. I mean, as an allergy sufferer like Milhouse, I welcomed Claritin into my life. What Claritin are you popping these days?

You know, my allergies have calmed down a lot in my older years. So I don't use it. And Claritin's over the counter now anyway. It's true. You are so lucky. My allergies have never been worse than they have been this year. And this particular time in human history is not a great time to have like weird respiratory stuff happening all the time. allergies or is this a much worse thing and uh fortunately it turned out to just be allergies uh and is the joke that martin's voice would be much higher if he wasn't taking hormones i guess so yeah i also am terrified to think about what legal issue happened to put a collar on nelson

that it tech that also involves sexual thoughts for him too which is even creepy they found him too sexually aggressive. Very dark. Talking about things reminding me of Bart the Genius, looking out the window and seeing dogs going at it. Like that was, Krabappel said the same thing, like those nasty dogs aren't back again, are they Bart? In this case, the joke is like going at it does not mean having sex.

It means fighting over a fan belt. I did like that reveal. I have the note here. My God, Sherry is unattractive. She's an unattractive little girl. Drawn from right on looking straight on at her face. Not a great design.

They are those season one designs that could never be done today on the show. Like the pig nose, they're, they're pale for some reason. They're all purple. Yeah. It's really disturbing. They would never.

Yeah. They, they just get grandfathered in because they haven't designed other kids. But whenever they make up new kids, like an episode from last year where Bart teams up with a bunch of radical feminists, they have so many accessories and they have so much more line density to them that they look like from a completely different series than sherry and terry yeah uh also i was never told to straighten up and fly right i have only heard it been said on the simpsons and it was said i i checked frankie act it was said in bark gets an f it gets it was said in itchy and scratchy the movie and it was said this not, those two were to Bart. This other one, though, was Burns shouting it at Frank Grimes in Homer's Enemy. It's the name of a song, though, right?

Oh, it's, okay. Yeah, by Nat King Cole. Oh, wow. Yeah, cool down, pop it, don't you blow your top. Okay. Yeah. But it feels like something that must have been told to the writers when they were kids by teachers, right? Maybe you're just a good little boy, Henry.

Henry's rubbing it in. No, no. I got in trouble once, and I was just told, here's your referral. No one ever said put your nose to the grindstone either, but Homer says it sometimes. We then cut to the Krusty the Clown show, where he's doing a rather bawdy sketch for a kid's show, but you know, the rules were different then. It's more like a Benny Hill sketch than a a crusty the clown sketch yeah those are really big mel boobs yeah like he has women on his staff it's sillier to make it uh but mel is really into this uh this

act here is tina ballerina yeah maybe she's sued him for sexual harassment at this point it's almost too cartoony, but I like it. The Krusty face, the color change on his face as he's being choked, too. And one of those TV jokes that Lisa knows it's his associate producer. I like that, too. The rank of producer that guy is. He's getting strangled. And I love his reaction, too.

Like, you choked! Yes, she comes in on Bart, who is skipping Krusty to read. It looks like Bart stole Homer's reading glasses as well for this bit. Bart, Bart, Krusty just fired his associate producer. I'm reading. No way. The seven habits of highly effective preteens. Is this all because of the...

Joke, if you will. But did you know most people use 10% of their brains? I am now one of them. Before, my energy was all over the place. Now, it's concentrated like a laser beam. Well, this has been terrific. Let's do it again sometime. Are you standing up to get me to leave? It's from the book.

Hey, I'm not a time burglar. Memo to self, lock door. All right, I'll go. You don't have to be a jerk about it memo to self shut up lisa i do like time burglar like uh the sociopathics guides to self-improvement just like they're they're affecting your productivity i know that suppressive people these i mean this bit here with bart affects me way differently than it did when I was 16 or 17 watching this because when I now have had to go to workplace meetings with a time and management guy who said and did all these things and you have to take it seriously it's it's worth noting that my time management boss guy, he was a very fussy, older British gay man.

Oh, wow. And in a very specific British-y version of white homosexuality, he was like, okay, we're going to take a little break here and let me just put on some music. And it was... Yackety Sax. It does. It was It's a Sin by... Oh. Oh, that's not where I thought that was gonna go that's that's that's a very british gay thing yes yeah like a real lord autumn bottom well he also talked about he's like i'm so happy to be in the states i can buy banana republic here don't have

to import he was uh he was quite something that guy but uh pulling quite a scam on your company oh he was yeah Yeah, he's... But who's laughing now, Simon? The company let you go like five years ago, I saw on your LinkedIn. Good luck freelancing that time management shit. Make those PowerPoints in hell. I've never had to do a time management thing, but I am very clear about the existence of time burglars.

And having been someone, I have not worked in an office for like six years now, hearing something like time burglar reminds me of all those coworkers who would just come up to your desk and tell you a story about their family that you did not ask to hear. And you just have to sit there and be like,

I guess I have to listen to the story about this person's family now. Yeah, yeah. Actually, the time management guy's guide for that, he said like, stare at them silently until they leave. And it's like, all his answers are like, be rude to a person you have to keep working with. Mime a knife slitting your own throat in front of them. Those all would work.

Yeah, but then he doesn't have to keep working with these people. Maybe we should have tried that. But we also kept telling him, like, well, our problem with time management is that we have like four meetings a day and he couldn't say well don't go to a meeting but he was just like well try to get to the point sooner meetings and all of us in the group were just like laughing in his face like yeah right you can't these meetings have to last forever he this guy's getting roasted on the podcast well sorry he just had he had a similar the thing I was just complaining about before Basically, his stance was everything was your fault

Well, I'll bring up one of my enemies at the end of this podcast Oh, boy Stay tuned for that But The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a very real book First published in 1989 I read what several of those habits were They include be proactive and synergize So, hell

Sounds like HR speak, you're right Yeah I did the same thing I read the Wikipedia summary of it And then I realized that Reading the Wikipedia summary of a book Is probably not a habit of a highly effective person No, you're being super effective

You're just cutting right to the meat of the thing I mean, I got all the points So yeah, I guess you're right. And you didn't have to spend money on that book. I really like this choice they did in the show that by having Lisa come in, they are showing a difference between them because Lisa is a good student, but she is an artistic, creative student. If she was caught reading a book, it would be an important work of literature or something that would show that she's not just smart, but interested in art.

And Bart, meanwhile, is reading a book for managers. And he is like, the focus he gets is to become a great manager or one of those types of assholes. My question is, if the author of this book is so effective, then why is he dead? You got him. Did he die in a bike accident too? Oh no, that's super ineffective. I know. So I feel weird, but like that does somehow disqualify his expertise. It's like, well, you died in a bike accident. So how effective is that? Don't ride your bike when you're 80 years old, I guess. I mean, yeah.

I mean, his influence lives on to this day. day also it feels very 1999 to have a memo to self-joke which definitely norm mcdonald was doing those jokes like years earlier on snl i like how they even just put that in dirty work it's just like oh yeah also the character does the thing you do on tv hey everybody likes it just have this dirty work guy do it too then it cuts to dinner and we get a reference to master cards priceless ad campaigns like uh mother's love priceless are those ads really that old they've been around that long yes oh wow i haven't seen i haven't seen like this in a few years but i was still seeing memes oh yeah making fun of those like I'm like, no, this is 20 years old. You can't do this anymore. Yeah, I found a story from 2006 that was about how MasterCard

was not going to do them anymore, though I think they've since resumed them. And in 2006, they're like, this nine-year-old ad campaign. So yeah, it was from 97 at that point. I had no idea those went back that far. They're very memorable. They were a good ad campaign.

And I've never read a chicken soup for the soul book. Has anybody else been given one? No, but there are like, I mean, this is the era of chicken soup books when there was one for every profession or type of person. So, yeah. But there's not. I did a control app to see if there was a chicken soup for like the gay soul or the lesbian soul or the queer soul or if there is not so he can fuck himself they're very heteronormative books because they're super christian yeah multi-christian

bullshit you think at some point they'd be like well we could make money if we did like a christian positive like a gay one but no that's not something they ever did i think they would probably on their balance sheet be like would we lose a lot of customers if we made something for gay people? Yes, we would. So, I forgot that Chicken Soup for the Soul is one of those like, lightly Christian things, not as in your face as like, the five people you meet in heaven or those other bullshit books, but the airport books. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People are also kind of Latter-day Saints. He was an active member of also kind of Latter-day Saints. He was an active member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, and a lot of the principles come from his religious

background, apparently. The book itself is not religious, but there is that tie there as well. That definitely feels very Mormon-y, yes. Yeah. So, there are no queer chicken soup books, but you can also buy chicken soup for the beach lover's soul, chicken soup for the beach lover soul, chicken soup for the dental soul. I'm just looking at random ones. Let's see, what else do we have? Chicken soup for the pet lover soul. That seems great. Teenage soul. There's too many of these, but buy me beach lover soul for my birthday next year. Yeah, they had been around since 93. So, quite already very popular then. And we get a reference to bill buckner an

early baseball joke in case you don't know who bill buckner is he just passed away last year r.i.p he is a very skilled baseball player who sadly his career was defined by a single error he made in a world series game uh in the 1986 world Series in Game 6 between the Red Sox and the Mets. It was a grounder to first. All he had to do as a Red Sox was to catch that ball, and the Red Sox would have won that World Series. It slipped right under his glove, and so it went to a Game 7, and they lost. And he did not invest in a chain of laundromats. He invested in real estate in Boise, Idaho,

and he opened a car lot that was named after him. So Bart was incorrect. And on the commentary, they're like, this joke sucks. They hate that joke. It takes so long. Why is this joke so long? I think George Meyer says

you can see the sweat flying off of this joke. I like that, yeah. Is the joke that was all he was able to do after he fucked up so badly? Is that the point of the joke? It's he was able to do after he fucked up so badly? It's like a kind of a mediocre accomplishment for a formerly great baseball player, I think. The joke is that Bill Buckner was so heartbroken by his failure in the World Series that he could only reconstitute himself and get back his confidence by reading chicken soup for the loser like i'm guessing that is the intention there is no chicken soup for the loser soul uh not yet they should get

in the well now disney would sue them he'd be like hey you can't do that do i get a card no but here's a book called chicken soup for the loser that gave bill buckner the courage to open a chain of laundromats hmm my. My career has kind of lost momentum. I think it's the bright blue pants. I mean, you're not on a golf course. Well, I have been thinking about making them into cut-offs. I tell you, the kid's a wonder. He organized all the lawsuits against me into one class action.

That's got to save all kinds of travel time. You know it. Plus, he gave me this appointment dealie. Got my whole week in there. Sweet. Oh, this thing will do anything. Watch. I'll ask it how many leagues in a furlong. No, wait.

I'll make it say, what's the matter you in Turkish? Ne in war, dar dinay. And look at this. A cheese grater. Man, technology's amazing. A guy could do great things with a gadget like that. Well, if you want one, they sell it. Yeah, a guy could do great things. See, Carl's

effectively dealing with a time burglar. He's ending the conversation. I like that. Yeah, that's great. That is the joke. I could not understand what that joke was. I didn't know why Carl didn't want to know where the thing was from. He was kind of humoring Homer, like, yeah, boy, what a great gadget, Homer. And he's like, oh, I could tell you more about it. That was a great gadget.

It's like his cruel turn away from Homer. It's like, I'm ending this conversation. I don't care. I like how it even hangs on Homer long enough that he frowns, realizing, like, oh, okay. Which it is, like, maybe he learned that after the Thomas Edison thing. He's like, I have to shut Homer down now so he doesn't talk all day about this. And I like, too, that Homer has to make a note to himself to buy sunscreen for his sunburnt legs. That's a good one.

So we cut to home. Bart is tutoring a Navajo boy, which I'm not. That sounds so specific. It has to, like, it's a reference to something, but I can't place it. Same. I googled around couldn't figure out anything so uh please in the comments let me know but i i also like bart isn't tutoring him on like you know math or science or english uh literature he's just

teaching him about you know billionaire mindset like this kind of success win bullshit yeah it does seem like it's setting this up to be bart is becoming american psycho or something and then the third act is like no it's uh it's foil hats and crazy town and mark mcguire showing up and so then marge makes a pitch to homer i guess it is that marge's plan is to pitch seeing a sexy movie with homer as a warm-up for a night of of a snuggling i suppose i think yeah. A revival showing of Showgirls. Yes, yeah. Because it's 1999. Instead of going to a regular porno theater,

they see the film Showgirls. Yeah, the timing of it is very strange. I don't know. It wouldn't have been a current reference even when they were writing this episode. I do think it is super safe to make fun of that movie. Yeah. They don't want to step on any toes.

Oh, yeah. I mean, you're not pissing off anybody. Joe Esterhaus has put a movie, I don't want to step on any toes on oh yeah i mean you're not pissing off anybody joe ester house has put a movie j i don't think he ever came out of it and paul verhoeven also too but man we'll get to that i don't know if you have the clip for that scene but i think the most breasts on screen is like of the elizabeth berkeley character pulling up her top like when they cut away 80 of her breasts are exposed it is past the equator there should be a nipple at that point yeah yeah it's uh they'd never i'm shocked in 99 they got away with that under boob and then after i mean after the janet jackson thing they'd never ever get away with that plus all the all the ladies too have like very high thongs to be

they're all basically nude in those shots but yeah i mean showgirls was like four years old when this came out i think on the commentary they say they had been joking about showgirls internally for a while about how it's uh a very expensive softcore porn film but also just funny in its ridiculousness you know everyone makes showgirls jokes no one makes striptease jokes i want more striptease jokes it's boring compared to showgirls you don't get to have like acrobatic sex in a pool like you get in showgirls so you guys have both seen showgirls then a long time i don't think i have seen it okay so they did a screening at hollywood forever and elizabeth berkeley was there how it like you know it was really rough and now it's kind of had this

whole second life and people are rediscovering it. And a lot of gay guys do like that movie because either ironically or like not ironically, they actually just think it's like a good movie. But I'd never seen it. So I didn't go to the Hollywood Forever screening. I just watched it at home. My God, that movie has a horrific sexual assault sequence that's about two thirds of the way through the movie that no one had prepared me for. And it so takes me out of the campiness

and kitcheness of the movie that it like ruined the experience. And I never heard anyone ever mentioned that. It's like, oh, it's this whole movie, but there's this one horrendously awful violent scene. It's just odd to me that like that had not been part of the buzz around this film. Yeah, I assumed it was just, you know, campy fun.

I think I have heard about that scene, which is why people are not really pushing it on other people a lot. Yeah, it just, you know, can't be fun. I think I have heard about that scene, which is why people are not really pushing it on other people a lot. Yeah, it's, you know, I had forgotten that scene. It is a lot and tough. In San Francisco, I've seen at the attended one, but at the Castro Theater, there have been a number of screenings, like celebrating showgirls, even hosted by a local drag queen sensation, Peaches Christ. And celebrating, you know, the campiness of it, the just glisten of it.

And also like there's a lot of sapphic themes in it as well, especially like Gina Gershon. Like she did this and then bound back to back, making her like a lesbian superstar from then on so i i get the i get the queer celebration of it be uh and all of its campiness that scene does uh is very hard i do no i was just laughing thinking about marge really enjoyed the the friendship between the characters between showgirls she still had to see that awful scene yeah yeah well it's also funny that it is like i had forgotten like oh yeah it's just's also funny that it is like i had forgotten like oh yeah it's just all about eve like it is the plot of all about oh yeah yeah except as a softcore porn film and like i should say i'm a paul verhoeven defender like i think he's a genius

one of the best directors of big budget cinema and i think his film After Showgirls, Starship Troopers, is a timeless satire that only gets more true the farther we get in time. So, I'm not going to be an anti-Showgirls guy. You're allowed to do that. Also, you literally have just taught me how to pronounce his last name. I did not know it was pronounced the way you're pronouncing it until right now. I think we did an episode about one of his movies was it was a retronauts about robocop yeah yeah but i think one of our listeners wrote and said it's verhoeven verhoeven okay all right i'm gonna go with that yeah that was our showgirls corner yes uh but let's let's hear the simpsons versions of showgirls here you've got more talent than any dancer i've ever seen and you're throwing it all away.

Screw you. Screw everybody. All right, girls. Tops off. It's showtime. Why, this is the greatest gift any wife has ever given her husband. I thought you'd like it.

And I'm enjoying the friendship between showgirl and that seamstress. Hush down. Yes, hush up. You hush up. Quiet, everybody! Shut up or I'll pound all of you! That was fun!

We have to get out more often. I heard about a new bar where men dance with men. Does that sound adorable? Well, sure, if it's true. Is that Lisa? I like how Marge calls Berkeley's character showgirl. Yes, yeah, that's great. And it's nice to see a little fun moment between Marge calls Berkeley's character showgirl. Yes, yeah, that's great. And it's nice to see like a little fun moment between Marge and Homer just enjoying each other.

Yeah, and it's sweet how Marge pitches just the cuteness of the idea of men dancing with men and how Homer's like, yeah, it's true. The Homer's bent to the anvil at this point. He should know. He should know men can dance with men. In the next gay episode episode he does dance in a gay club so he completely understands by that point yes oh yeah he dances so well that it makes a lesbian even more of a lesbian uh also it's it's pennant season in the simpsons still homer

but i love the heightening of it homer isn't just holding a showgirls pennant it's a it's a stuffed bear holding it which on the commentary they're just like did homer make that did he bring it with them were they selling it at the giving it out it was for the revival screening yeah it's four years of nostalgia uh and uh as they arrive though lisa's hiding out front because she's been scared by bart homer wants to know if he's acting ray j funny or oj funny another slam on future guest star ray j johnson that feels like it's an algae thing no one else has heard of ray j johnson they're really mad at bill saluga the guy who plays that character from my hometown of youngstown ohio

that's how you know i'm from there and so is ray j johnson i think you're winning i think so i don't know he has like branson billions at this point. You don't own a theater in Branson yet. Not yet. We'll be doing this live in Branson for years to come. We can't swear when we're there, though. Oh, man. Well, okay.

Then I got to do it when I'm like in my 50s. I can stop swearing then. And of course, I will have to go back into the closet when we're performing in Branson. So Homer and Marge and Lisa confront Bart. He's covered in tinfoil and he's telling them about Major League Baseball. Close the door. You're probably wondering about the coat hangers. They're to block the satellite that's been spying on me.

Okay. It can read your electronic organizer from space. Even mine? Hey, I had Lenny's name on that. They have it now. And who are they, exactly? Who else? Major League Baseball. Marge, I think Bart's going crazy.

Oh, Bart, what's happened to you? Nothing yet, but the time draws near. Now let's get those fillings out of you. Hey, you found my needle-nose pliers! I have Lenny's name on that. It's very funny. That's a good island. He wrote Lenny's name in a document and saved it, in case he would forget. Also, the writers on the show all buy Palm Pilots.

It's a very of its era joke there is that what that thing is supposed to be i think so any sort of personal digital assistance yeah yeah this is post eat up martha yes yes yeah the newton did not work out so in universe though bart is fully correct the focusing has given him the concentration to see that major league baseball does have a satellite and know its location as we'll see later they should have let him pull their fillings out yeah he's protecting them he really is like also i would think lisa takes better care of her teeth to not have fillings you know but i like homer's like oh you found my needle nose pliers like that's that's cute so they take bart back

to the farm team i like how he he insists on running just to get some exercise and uh another of my favorite lines like so you said he was concerned about the satellites and their beams yeah that's really good and and their beams good good detail merge and homer choking the carboxyl group that causes that is pretty funny too i like that uh and then also just a little moment i really like the scientists are a couple like the like like oh that's a great idea smooch like just a cute little uh change to the relationship you give some history and i like that they hear the part's taking off the drugs he runs away they they mentioned on the commentary that they wanted to have Bart pour a whole container of pills

in his mouth, but the sensors wouldn't let him do that. He just gobbles handfuls of them. Which is still dangerous. That's an overdose, too. The bit of them injecting Valium and then one has air in it, that has terrified me i already don't like needles anyway but this joke added to my anxiety about needles at the doctor that's what the doctor always squirts out a little bit i know but like god it's still it makes me go like i don't know i i hate it homer is dead after this homer died like that's his death like injecting that's why in terminator 2 when linda hamilton

goes to all that trouble like putting drano in the thing it's like just have air you'll kill it's it is a you don't have to bother with i would i would do drano and air yeah a drug cocktail and yes but marge gets valium just like in the rolling stones song that's the namesake of this episode uh so then it comes back from break they are describing Bart over the phone and that's where We get a fun little Dennis the Menace Reference

Close the door Okay so you say your son is toe headed Button nose, mischievous smile And maybe armed with a slingshot Got it, we'll find him ma'am Looks like the kid who roughed up the Wilson widow Oh my little guy's out there In the hot sun without a sombrero. We should have paid more attention to these side effects.

It's all here. Erratic behavior, paranoia, diarrhea. I don't think he has diarrhea. But how do we know, Marge? How do we know? Sombrero out of nowhere. Great. Old Mexico.

That was such a weird line. Like, without a sombrero. They're there to protect you from the sun They're not just festive I guess they're better for you Than just like a baseball cap or whatever Yeah more sun protection Also Henry Your impression of Marge

Delights me to no end Thanks I learned it from Hearing the man on the writing staff Imitate Homer How'd you do that? Let's talk about tank rampages Thanks. I learned it from hearing the man on the writing staff imitator. Homer! How'd you do that?

Let's talk about tank rampages. That's where this episode is leading. So I have the true story of Sean Nelson. On May 17th, 1995, he stole a tank. Apparently, this happened in San Diego. This armory was just left open, and he was able to try to start three tanks. The third one started. And as he started able to try to start three tanks the third one started and as he started that tank someone noticed and you know called the authorities but apparently there were no keys to these tanks they were just push button starts oh nice yeah you got to make it simple for the arm for armed services i guess and uh he was killed by the police even though he

didn't kill anybody which i think uh they didn't have to kill him i don't think there was ammo in the tank and there was a big debate online as to and in real life you know as to why he was killed oh is it a conspiracy is it uh no a cop just like put his hand inside the tank and shot him in the back of the neck so yeah well i mean he was the one he's the only fatality that day yeah he didn't kill anybody he caused a lot of property damage and no one knew what his plans were but it was assumed based on where he was going he was going to like destroy the hospital where his mother died oh or something like that but an important element of the story was he was a meth addict oh and that caused this erratic behavior but uh lock your armory san diego yeah that's not san

diego there sorry direct can hear you trying to get in here. He was like crushing cars though, right? I don't think he was crushing any cars, at least with people in them. But did he know that the cars were empty? I mean, I'm just putting that out there. All I know is... Well, I guess he died, so you can't really ask. That's why they should have killed him. But what fucked him up was a median

strip on the highway. He like lost a tread trying to go over that. Well, if I was driving a tank, I would a tread trying to go over that well if i was if i was driving a tank i would think you could definitely go over median with no problem that's all these war profiteers they can't even give you a good thing which i like that line from burns going up later where he says it's time to start the profiteering and hoarding uh so yeah this this inspired so many things mostly in video games but also the king of the hill episode uh tanking it to the streets yeah i think it's a much more interesting and more intelligent use of

this story than just like a third act solution to get out of a storyline. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually baked into the story instead of saying like, well, what's the crazy thing Bart does the ending episode? It steals a tank. I heard about that guy stealing a tank a few years back. In King of the Hill, it's Bill, and it's like a mental health episode, right? Yeah, like Bill hits bottom, and he gets drunk and ends up stealing a tank. And the way they get out of it is, I think he pretends it was like war games or something like that. Yes, yeah. And also, yeah, it connects to the Bill character, too, because he's in the army. He doesn't have to have the ridiculousness of Bart here breaking into barracks and stealing it from a guy,

which also involves the dark joke about Gulf War Syndrome as well. Yeah. I like this little sketch of army guys is kind of funny here. I can't believe it. Sark said we're the worst bunch he's ever seen. See, I have to believe he's seen worse bunches than us. But he said, I know what he said. He was just trying

to motivate us. Well, it ruined the whole hike. Do you think Alex would mind if I asked Janet out? They're married, idiot. Why'd you have to yell?

You ruined the whole shower. I love that. He doesn't understand verbal abuse is just part of being in the army. I like that The Simpsons is a show where these two characters that we don't know who they are and we will never see them again, I'm guessing, can spend like 20 seconds just giving you an idea of what their lives are like. And it's not weird and it makes sense in universe. Most shows can't do that.

He thinks it was just a hike too. Like, oh, we went out on a hike. It's fun we cut to homer at the bar and he's telling a very random story about his dance background that honestly just feels like a repeat of the joke where barney said he has five years of modern dance six years of tap but we don't find out why he gave up tap for jazz yeah because that darn marge interrupts the story homer's trying to capture bart but uh not having much go at it we then cut to bart driving down the street in his tank singing don't stop uh which had previously been used in the show

as the theme song of the flita pita wagon that's right and uh though whenever i hear it i just think of the 92 clinton campaign like that's why i just see the dnc party and they're like celebrating and they're playing don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. What a corny-ass song to use. I feel like in 92 it had the slightest amount of hipness comparatively to now. Maybe not, though. Then Burns thinks the Spaniards are invading and leave it to the Democrats to leave it open for the Spaniards. Like, that's a very weird line.

I think it's reference to the Spanish-American War, which was fully concocted by the press like the hearst uh war machine and so burns totally buys into it yeah he doesn't read he just remembers like we're gonna have to fight the spain we're gonna fight spain again are we uh and then we get a uh a reference to comic books so i have a little clip here he dead a maniac cutting a swath of destruction. This is a job for the Green Lantern, Thundra, or possibly Ghost Rider. What about Superman? I guess they were trying to think of obscure superheroes for this joke. Yeah, yeah.

But Ghost Rider is now like, what, three movies? Yeah. And Green Lantern started a billion dollar flop. Yeah. So everyone knows who those two are. Thundra, I honestly, I don't think I've ever heard of her. I had to look her So everyone knows who those two are. Thundra. I honestly, I don't think I've ever heard of her. I had to look her up.

I don't know anything about Thundra. Oh, well, yes. Yeah. I'd heard of Thundra before, but she's not. I think they're thinking of somebody else when they say Thundra, because at least Marvel's Thundra is a villain. She's like in a villain couple with Absorbing Man. She first appeared in Secret Wars number four, I'm going to say, but definitely in the 85 Secret Wars miniseries.

I want to be at the meeting where they named Absorbing Man. That's a Stan Lee, Jack Kirby name. What's he do? He absorbs things. Absorbing Man. Let's move on. The thing I read about Thundra is that she comes from a future where it's all female is that is that the thunder you're talking about yes yeah she's she's she's an amazon alike yeah she's a femazon because they call the future of the earth dominated by women femazonia which

is another terrible comic book name oh god yeah you're right you're right well i i can see why comic book guy would be into her but at the core this joke, what I like about it is that it is about being a comic book snob who instead of saying like the corny thing would be to say, this is a job for Superman. Instead, you're trying to think of the most obscure comic book characters you can to sound cool. And so when Otto says Superman, comic book guy's like, please. He's a comedy writer, gives three choices three choices that's right i like the weird side universe where otto and him hang out they they did that like at least once before like when they were doing the slot car races yeah yeah i like that i would see a burnout like him attracted to hanging out with comic book guy i would i would think otto would

hook up comic book guy with pot or vice versa i don't think comic book guy could ever smoke pot i don't think he's too uptight to appreciate it okay the comic book guy must pot or vice versa i don't think comic book guy could ever smoke pot i think he's too uptight to appreciate it okay the comic book guy must be the conduit for pot for auto so bart runs over a bookmobile and then we get another great line praise from caesar i just i'd never heard of that saying before i got it from this episode apparently so did dan graney i think from from googling it apparently it's a it's an idiom that dates back to at least the 1800s in print but yeah i'd never heard it before it feels like george meyer showing off his harvard school in there i think uh and then so they smash through the playground we get a nice tiananmen square

reference apparently bart would have run over march and he had the gas to do so a fun dark joke uh i like how much does he like oh okay just to acknowledge it and bart's design has changed so much at this point they over the course of the episode first they had a line of like a cheek line so he's squinting more then his pupils get much smaller and now at this point his top teeth are jutting out the entire time uh as he's told to scud the school uh and i like i love the little like little jaunty move that jimbo does like scud the school oh yeah it's great it's a nice little like he's doing a twist or something and uh and i also like krabappel's like no don't please i think there's a little like a like a electron of undercurrent of like the teachers are also failing bart in this

quest to make him like learn more like krabappel is even more checked out than usual in this episode and then the it feels like a little too much padding of how long it goes like the long turn of the cannon and And then somebody says, don't shoot, not the church. Jesus lives there. And then long turn of the cannon, not the sky.

That's what clouds are for. It's like, I wish it was just a little peppier. Not the frame store. That's it. I like that one. I especially like that. Cause when Homer says it,

database is right next to him, which makes it feel weirder for some reasons to me bart then in a way that no conventional tank ever could shoots a satellite out of orbit with a shell bart is proven right he somehow not only knew there was a satellite but located it in the sky its exact coordinates and brought it smashing down to earth right in front of i mean he helped society but the rampaging was not necessary to get there it's weird he's also it's a real shrug of an end here as mark mcguire arrives to explain away everything as they i though i like on the commentary they even point out like really there's just it just prints out things? There's a printer inside the satellite? That's the end of your Looney Tunes, drugs bunny.

You're under arrest for astro-vandalism. And may God help you if that thing carried the Spice Channel. Major League Baseball? I told you they were monitoring my activities. He's right. This thing's got info on everybody. Addresses, credit ratings, what size baseball hat they wear. Surveillance beam disabled. Market research shutting down.

Doesn't that beat all? Hi, folks. I'm Mark McGuire. Big Mac himself. Who'd have thunk it? Young Bart here was right. We are spying on you pretty much around the clock. Do you want to know the terrifying truth?

Or do you want to see me sock a few dingers? Dingers! Dingers! Yoink. And he shoves it ridiculously under his hat. So I do think they are getting away with something extra here of having mark mcguire say do you want to know the terrifying truth or do you want to see me hit some a few dingers like i think somebody is making a comment on how no one wants to know the truth about how he hits home runs they just want to see it happen i think it was an assumption that they were all juicing yeah yeah i i mean scully talks about when mcgu came in to record, and he said he was the largest person he'd ever seen. He was just, like, gigantic.

Even for a Simpsons character, he's quite big. And I feel like they had to, instead of embellish, like, turn it down the size of his muscles. I want to believe that you're right, and they kind of were hinting at something that they couldn't say outright. But I also feel like they might have just fallen ass backwards into something that had deeper meaning, and it might just be a coincidence that— That's true. Yeah. Like how they didn't predict 9-11. Yes. Right.

McGuire, too. He shows—it's not just Mark McGuire. his real Cardinals uniform, which that to me feels like Fox called in a favor with the Major League Baseball because Fox was airing the World Series at this time. So it feels like a favor was called here. I like the idea, especially at the time, I like the idea of this baseball conspiracy because baseball was ruining Fox's Sunday night lineup for me personally and pushing the season into like November start dates. So yeah, I appreciated that. Watching Halloween specials in November. It's terrible. Yeah. We are just in that era now where they started November. Like this is the last like one for a long time that's on Halloween or before. Yeah. The treehouse we're doing in a

couple of weeks aired on Halloween and it's only because the Yankees swept the World Series in four games that year. I think if it had gone on to even one more game, it probably would have delayed the Simpsons. Yeah, well, that's a really good treehouse. I like the drawing of Maguire with the stuff under his hat, too. It's a funny drawing. And to get him to say yoink, I feel like they really were enjoying getting guest stars to say yoink. And he does the eyes moving back and forth thing that, which episode is it where Homer talks about a villainous dog?

Oh, that's the previous episode. Yeah, the first one of the season. Oh, that's the Mel Gibson episode. Yes, yep. Oh, thank you for not making me watch the Mel Gibson episode. Oh, we wouldn't do that to you. No, we thank our friend from We Hate Movies, Stephen Sadak, again, for taking the bullet on the Mel Gibson discourse for that one. So we come to the end of the episode.

One more clip here. Lisa gets to make a very pre-9-11 joke here about the military. And we get one last pill popped. It's good to have the old Bart back. Plus, you expose the disturbing unreadiness of today's army. Oh, honey, I'm so sorry we sent you on that psychotropic hayride. At least I got to see some cool colors. And Mark McGuire gave you an autographed bat.

Why is his arrow made out of glass? Who cares? That man can really slug. Well, I'm not giving my baby any more dangerous drugs. From now on, it's nothing but fresh air, lots of hugs, and good old-fashioned riddling.

You said a mouthful. When I can't stop fiddling, I just takes me riddling. I'm popping and sailing, man. They said that was a Ron Hauge pitch late, like post-animatic, the Popeye ending. It's a very weird gag, but, you know, I like Popeye. It's good fake lyrics.

Those are good rhyming lyrics. Yeah, and I think they break Bart's anatomy chart to have these longer arms to do the proper popeye dance and i dream of uh dangerously unready army in 2020 yes instead of super vigilance i could use them taking a break a little bit maybe but also this like last 40 seconds here is a real shrug to the whole thing that happened beforehand like they go straight from bart exposing being proven right committing a bunch of crimes and then they just kind of shrug and they're like, anyway, stop taking the drugs, and now we all hug each other. But also Ritalin is good. And Ritalin is good, and Bart just takes it. Assume from now on on the series, Bart takes Ritalin.

And I do like the drawing of them in the eye of the camera of the Major League Baseball. See, there's squalor index. Yeah, that's a good line, yeah. Oh, sorry. Just to be clear though, the whole Major League Baseball thing just comes out of left field from, so to speak, from nowhere. That's not like a reference to

there's nothing conspiracy theory about Major League Baseball. They just made all that up for this, right? Yeah. I don't think anyone believed that specifically you know that or at least somebody believed it to the point where it was known by comedy writers yeah i think it was uh my view on how this writing came to be was that they came up with bart will be crazy for a conspiracy theory and like well black helicopters and the cia and all that stuff

that's pretty rote or they're doing that on x files like people would expect that okay what is the unexpected major thing that would do it and uh you know also i wonder did the mlb twist come in there or did they find out they could get mark mcguire as a guest star and they're like okay then it's major League Baseball. I wonder at what point what came in. And if we get to talk to Mike Scully again, I'm going to ask him that question for sure. It's also weird. They should be thanking Bart for being right.

They should be apologizing to Bart because he was right. He should be a national hero. Yeah. Or at least a Springfield hero. It is a very rushed ending from a wacky hat pull of a third act. I now, Drew, after you told me your roommate and co-host's pitch, I am very much like, oh, yeah, if not that exactly, at the very least, a more emotionally driven third act instead of a crazy town. The Simpsons was in a weird place

though because king of the hill was on and it was doing so well in terms of storytelling telling down-to-earth stories and you have things like family guy being like wacky and vulgar and mean spirited and south park being political and also vulgar and mean spirited like i think the simpsons was figuring out like what are we now yeah compared to all these things especially in this era with all these new shows like chasing after them and their legacy and to be honest they kind of don't really figure that out super well for a while do you have any last thoughts drew there were a lot more gay jokes in this episode than i expected number one number two i learned so much about baseball thank you henry this is very additional i learned what a dinger is all all my

baseball research is is for it was not wasted i'm i'm so happy and everyone out there learned our opinions on showgirls yes yeah i warned people about the bad surprise waiting for them and that if they haven't seen it yet and before uh we asked drew to plug his stuff i want to say drew mackie and bob mackie unrelated yes he spells his name the correct way the way everyone thinks i spell my name with an I-E. It's not. It's not. It's E-Y, the incorrect way. When I was on here the last time, did I tell you that I've actually met and interacted with Bob Mackie?

Oh, I can't recall. How did that happen? I want to hear it again if you did tell it. I worked for People Magazine, and Carol Burnett was winning some sort of award and he went with her to the awards because they've worked together. He was the costume designer on the Carol Burnett show. And that's actually how he got famous was from going from costume design to actual dress design for celebrities. So I ended up interviewing them both together, just talking to them about like how they managed to work in Hollywood together for decades and still like each other it was very sweet kel burnett is the most charming person in the world and then um the that week i was going to the movies with on a date with a guy who worked for bob mackie and then i we ran into bob mackie at the movie theater wow i have to find him and

confront him because nobody who is my age or younger should know who Bob Mackie is. But it's surprising when I pick up food or give my name to someone like, is that somebody famous? And I have to be like, yes, here's the biography on Bob Mackie, a brief summary of his career to date. And then I move on. Just dismiss it as he did the costumes for Mama's Family and then that will satisfy their curiosity. Yes. And I love Mama's Family. I watched so much of Mama's Family growing up, and it really taught me a lot. Someday, will you be tempted to

go by Rob Mackey instead? Never. Never a Rob, never a Bobby, never a Robert. It's all poison to me. Just stick with it. There are also no Bobs our age. You're like the only Bob my age that I've met I think in my lifetime, so you should own it. It's true. All the lame white guy names are

dying, so all the Bobs and Garys and Steves out there, we've got to keep on hanging in. But Drew, please plug your podcast, of course. We can find you online. We've really been enjoying all of your recent podcasts, and we appreciate all the nice shoutouts you've been giving us. Yes. Oh, thank you. My podcast is called Gayest

Episode Ever. We talk about gay episodes of classic sitcoms. You can find it by going to gayestepisodeever.com or can find it by going to GayestEpisodeEver.com or searching for it on any podcast app you might search on. We do other weird stuff. We did a table read of my co-host wrote like a fake spec script for an episode of Golden Girls where they accidentally kill a man and have to process his body into meat.

So we did a table read where we got some of our actor friends to come in and just read through the script. And it turned out so much better than I even thought it could. And it was one of my favorite creative things we've ever done. So I think it's episode 50. It's called Glenn Writes a Golden Girls. I swear it does not suck. Oh, that's awesome. I'm going to check that one out for sure. And you do even more podcasts than just that one. Yeah, I have one called Singing Mountains about video game music, but it's on hiatus because it turns out TV nostalgia was a better market

to tap into than video game nostalgia. I don't know if you guys knew that TV nostalgia was a problem. I guess, you know, me and Bob cover both sides

of that street. That is true, yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Drew. And we look forward to having you on another one. And I promise

you won't have to wait until the next gay episode. Whenever you guys want me. Gay or not. I'll do it. So thanks again to Drew Mackey for being on the show. Please check out Gayest Episode Ever. It's great.

But if you want to support our show and get all of our episodes one week ahead of time and at free, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up at the $5 level. And you'll also get access to so many podcasts that are behind that $5 paywall. Everything we've done to date, and that includes over 100 bonus podcasts and so many things to listen to. But that also includes all of our limited miniseries. And the most recent one is Talking Mission Hill.

We're going over all 13 episodes of Mission Hill and some extras too on top of that. You can only hear it if you're a $5 patron on patreon.com slash talking simpsons and henry what is happening at the ten dollar level one extra long podcast once a month that is just for patrons at that level or higher that's right me and bob do the talking simpsons treatment to a different animated feature film once a month and that is the what a cartoon movie for ten dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons our most

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every month. And that's only happening at patreon.com slash retronauts. you sign up there you get two exclusive episodes that aren't available on the free feed every month that's only happening at patreon.com slash retronauts henry how about you hey i'm henry gilbert follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm sure to tweet out fun things and also politics things but you'll learn all about them there if you follow me on twitter h-e-n-e-r-e-y-G. Speaking of Twitter follows, really, you should be following the official account of this podcast. That's at TalkSimpsonsPod. At TalkSimpsonsPod, follow that to stay in the loop for when new episodes go live, either on the free feeds or on the Patreon, you will stay informed. So please, at TalkSimpsonsPod, follow that on Twitter. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next week for Guess Who's Coming

to Criticize Dinner, and we'll see you then. Shh! Oh, why'd you have to shush? You ruined the whole show.