Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Brush With Greatness With Alex Navarro

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Once more we've got Alex Navarro from Nextlander returning, and he's here to give us insight as a person who plays drums AND worked on The Beatles: Rock Band! As Marge rediscovers her artistic talent, Homer wants to lose weight, and somehow Ringo Starr solves all of their problems. So join us for discussions on water parks, weight loss, artistic talents, drumming ability, the word "genitalia" and so much more! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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Ahoy, hoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons where Ziggy never wins. I'm one of your hosts, the mop top with the big schnoz, ahoy everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where Ziggy never wins. I'm one of your hosts, the mop-top with the big schnoz, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and I'm 239, and I'm feeling fine! And who do we have on the line? My name is Alex Navarro, I'm from Nexlander, and I would be a great artist, except I don't paint sad clowns. And this week's episode is Brushed with Greatness.

Live from Mount Splashmore, the Tri-County area's funnest water recreation facility, it's the Krusty the Clown Show. Hey, kids! This episode aired on April 11th, 1991, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, boy, Bobby. Steven Seagal's Out for Justice tops the box office. Married with Children spinoff Top of the Heap debuts alongside this episode of Simpsons. And interesting lineup of timelines here.

Paul McCartney appears on MTV Unplugged this very same week I only know that top of the heap because I think at least the pilot got shoved into the rerun packages of Married with Children in my childhood that's the Matt LeBlanc one yeah yeah it was uh there was the pilot and also there was an episode that was the backdoor spinoff in which it was like, hey pig, it's my friend Matt Perry. Oh wait, sorry, Matt LeBlanc. And then

they went off on their own adventure and I think they came back at the end of the Bundys. They kept trying to make Matthew Perry work. Sorry, Matt LeBlanc. There's too many Matts. I like Matt LeBlanc now. He's a real he's a very bearish man and I approve of that change in his life.

You watch that Friends reunion. The women on the show are not allowed to age or gain weight or anything. It's just not how Hollywood works. But all three of the guys are like, I'm going to put on some weight. I don't care. I'm going to let my hair go gray. I'm going to get a paunch. I don't give a shit.

At this point, they're basically character actors, so they can just do whatever they want. Yeah, Matthew Perry just shows up. He's like, give me money. I'm Matthew Perry. You got me. Like, Schwimmer, he went behind the camera, I think. He directed some Simon Pegg movie about marathon running, as I recall. It's called Run, Fat Boy, Run, is what I'm thinking of here.

Alex, you are a fan of, of wonderful bad nineties action films. What's your opinion on this? The Steven Seagal out for justice. Oh boy. Out for justice is not, is what I've seen, but I've not seen in a long time. I don't remember it ranking super high in the Seagal sort of like tier list. I lean that there are actually good steven seagal movies it's that both of them are called under siege yes uh and above the law is watchable

in a very dumb way but there isn't much like you can you can laugh at the glimmer man i guess but there really isn't much else out there for you well now he just is uh to steal a joke from somebody else he he looks like peter griffin in a costume that's what he looks like now i remember at least under siege being pretty cool but though i mean it's just it's just die hard on a boat on a boat really is this the one where he says i'll take you to the bank senator i think blood bank i think so yeah okay hey you know what no action star these days would make a movie about killing oil executives, I don't think. So I wanted to point out, back to Married with Children, so Top of the Heap was one of three spinoffs of the show.

One was called Radio Free Tremaine. The other one was called Enemies, a parody of Friends. What? None of these took off. I think Top of the He heap was the one that actually got a series and uh yeah so uh such a popular sitcom they kept trying to spin it off which did not happen to the simpsons although there were things in development like the crusty show yeah we talked about in the past and uh yeah paul mccartney doing the hip thing of appearing on uh

mtv unplugged and playing some wing songs that uh it was a hit album that uh that christmas i believe but so 1991 how much unplugged had happened at that point because i feel like the big ones had maybe not happened yet maybe like 10 000 maniacs had happened at that point yeah i think it's i do believe it's early in it and it maybe even it's a special that i got retroactively called unplugged but i i was trying to look like, honestly, what I was doing was, this week in Beatles history, did anything happen in Beatles history that week?

And I go, okay, Paul McCartney did this. Did MTV Unplugged. You idiot, he was the best one. George Harrison ate a sandwich. I mean, the big Beatles history this week was that he appeared on The Simpsons. And we have a guest here who has his own connection to beatles history that's alex tomorrow hello yes hello yeah so i used to

work at harmonix music systems a video game developer that made the rock band series of games and they also made the beatles rock band while i was there and i will say just right now up at the top i they never let me meet a Beatle. As much as I wanted to, I was not there for any of the actual Beatle meetings. But I was sitting in the audience of that Microsoft press conference when Paul and Ringo walked out.

That's pretty, hearing them call the, Paul calls himself an android. They made me an android. Yeah, one of my favorite appearances of celebrities at E3 because they couldn't even spit out their gum. They cared so little, and I loved every second of it. They 100% did not care.

I do believe there may have been some kind of contractual obligation involved in them showing up and doing that. But you know what? From my understanding, they were not unpleasant about it. They just, you know, they were there to show up, vamp, and go. Yeah, they did their job. I mean, being a Beatle must be one of the craziest things to be like of anything, of any type of person alive. Being a Beatle has to be as crazy as it gets.

Yeah, I think there's a story that Dana Gould talks about sometimes. I think he met Paul McCartney. He explained it as if so when you meet Paul McCartney, anyone who meets him, it's the best day of their life. And that's what he experiences every day. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, you then must, Alex, know Beatles music inside and out, working on a game that like programs every part of Beatles into a video game. You know, it's, I do know a lot about, a lot more about the Beatles than I did when I, before I started that job. And I will say that there are three very specific Beatles songs that I now know so well I can never ever listen to them

again because they were in the first demo of the game that we were showing oh I see god that uh that that that sounds like torture yeah yeah and then there was a very good uh gamescom appearance where every person that's it's in Germany for those who don't know it's a big game convention in Europe and every single person wanted to sing yellow submarine every single one the Germans love yellow submarine that's uh man

we would like to sing the yellow submarine please Germans famously loving submarines what's up with that I guess what it was what's the Beatles knowledge between Henry and I it was what's the beatles knowledge between henry and i because with for me i somehow know a lot of facts about the beatles through references and through having parents that were boomers but they never tried to get me into the beatles they would just remark like oh yeah i had that album blah blah who cares and when it was i think

the year 2001 i bought the best beatles album which was one because it's got all the hits all the best songs and i think it's like the longest a CD can be. They just jam that CD full of hits. And I thought, for a second, I thought maybe I'll be a cool guy who likes the Beatles. It didn't really go far beyond one, but I did buy the Beatles rock band and temporarily became a cool guy who got into the Beatles again for another like four or five months. I grew up liking the Beatles just fine. I think I didn't know who they were when this episode aired when I was nine and my mom like, or eight and my mom explained the Beatles to me. She was a big Beatles fan

growing up. I think she actually did like Ringo. I think Ringo was her favorite growing up too. And then over time I got to recognize like, oh, this song in a, in this was a Beatles song, that song in this Muppets was a beatle song all this and and then you know in my teen years i think it was rolling stone put out like 100 best albums ever and i believe they put revolver at number one and i thought like well this feels like a homework assignment i better just listen to revolver and the less poppy beatle stuff and and and then no i'm a very smart rock boy who who listens to all the good old stuff that Rolling Stone tells me too but I mean I like the Beatles just fine I enjoy

them I'm not I'm not a super hardcore person I'm not counting uh we're recording this before the Peter Jackson doc comes out but I I'll be watching that I'm I'm looking forward to that yeah I'm interested in it and you know I'm for my, I was more of like a Zeppelin guy as far as like classic rock stuff went when I was growing up. But I always liked the Beatles. Fine. My parents enjoyed them. You know, it was more of it.

Like you said, it was kind of an in the background thing was like, oh, we have these records. But, you know, I think that a lot of people like to make a big show of, you know, they love the Beatles or they hate the Beatles. It's totally fine to just think the Beatlesles are a okay they're they're a good band i'm mostly a fan of mccartney's later stuff like the song he wrote for destiny that's his best song i think that's a real high point for him yeah i you know the the beatles are uh at least for our generation and older like they are just so ever present in life as you live it that there's a bit in a john constantine hellraiser comic where i always think about i think about the beatles where john constantine he just all of a

sudden just sings the start of yesterday and everybody sings it along with him and he just goes like why i can't remember like the last words a loved one said to me but i remember every fucking word of the song yesterday because it's just with you so much the beatles are inescapable too though also this episode is kind of doing the thing which i see viral every now and then these days are in the discourse of like these kids don't know the beatles like kids don't need to know the beatles i i'm sorry they don't i much prefer seeing that the mountain goats are going viral on TikTok these days than I'd want the kids to know the Beatles well in 1991 was very much the era of

the entertainment we were consuming was you know guided by people that were probably about 20 to 30 years older than us and they were very adamant about us liking their pop culture whereas these days I feel like that is much less the thing so we are forcing Ghostbusters on these yes they must know how is much less the thing so we are forcing ghostbusters on these

yes they must know how it's a serious movie that we uh it's gonna take us cry like it's meant to evoke emotion so the beatles broke up in 69 right uh yes so that was only 22 years before this episode so that'd be like if the band featured now broke up in what like 99 yeah i guess it's like it pinkerton's older than now than sergeant pepper was when this episode aired now so yeah just to put the time in perspective i wrote rivers cuomo a letter he wrote a song about it and he jerking off to it please matt sharp is the dreamy one yeah exactly yeah i know hey we're the the this is-sharp anti-cuomo podcast here. I agree.

Alex, do you recall watching this when it was new? I do. This was definitely the era. The first season I watched intermittently and knew I liked it, but I just wasn't watching as much primetime television at that point. The second season was the first one I watched every week. And I do remember watching this episode. Did you have to turn to your parents and ask them like you know who is this ringo star guy like like really who is this guy no i i knew i mean i had not listened to a ton of beatles at that point but i knew my mom's first husband was before she met

my dad was uh the original head photographer for rolling stone so at that like basically i was indoctrinated into classic rock like from the moment i was born like there was just an association there and like i said they own a lot of records you know and it wasn't like a forced education it was more of just like i don't know what these bands are that they own i want to hear this music and that was kind of how i became familiar with them you know the classic it wasn't the beatles as much in my childhood it really was the the classic rock band i heard the most was queen uh thanks in no small part to wayne's world but after seeing wayne's world i like got the queen's greatest

hits album the double cd for christmas and listened to it like in a loop over and over again i heard very little beatles growing up in fact when i got that one cd in 2001 i was surprised by the amount of beatle songs i didn't know like i knew i want to hold your hand that was kind of it because my stepdad listened to the classic rock station and i think the beatles was considered too old because classic rock in the 90s was 70s stuff right yeah maybe you got a little bit of late 60s stuff in there but it's at that point you're basically talking oldies i also knew the beatles very well because i was addicted to classic uh like oldie stations as a teen as a 10 year old like i listened to this one station all the time growing up it was

what was on when my mom drove us to school and drop us off and every day they would say like happy birthday to people and they would play the beatles birthday song say it's your birthday if i hear that song i just think about driving to school you know what i didn't know the beetle and they would play the Beatles birthday song. Say it's your birthday. If I hear that song, I just think about driving to school. You know what? I didn't know the Beatles wrote that until I was surprisingly old because I was walking with a friend through Target and one of those little animated frogs went off and it plays the birthday song.

And I was like, I hate that song. My friend said, the Beatles wrote that. And I did not believe him until we got home and got in front of a computer one and the simpsons is a show that loves the beatles probably did hasten my interest in the beatles because this just begins it they had every living beetle they could on the show they've done malta in the classic era they did more than one episode that is about beetle mania beetle side stuff and fandom like so much of it there's a funny bit on the fourth season season five it aired before production

uh the b sharps episode where hank azaria on the commentary says i always remember this is a dave merkin one because he the next showrunner after you guys was also a beatles fanatic and these beatles fanatics who make their own show of course one of their plans is going to be can i meet a beetle through doing this can i meet one of those beetles and all they pulled it off for for all three living ones at the time of this yeah yes in fact i think they said they wanted to record extra lines for ringo so they could have a scene with all the beetles together once they got paul and george yeah on different episodes but obviously that never happened and they ever get yoko on the show i don't think they did i don't think so i honestly if i'm yoko

i would have been like hey you guys are a bit mean to me you are you are saying i destroyed the band yeah but you know compared to some of the vitriol that i think was actually thrown at her like the bit with barney is maybe pretty softball comparatively she's yeah uh she's been through quite a lot that's true and alex we had been talking off mic about this but you said you have you have strong ringo star opinions and i'd like to hear them my strong ringo star opinions are that i i think people give him a lot of undue shit. I agree that he is certainly not the flashiest drummer out there, but he is one of those drummers that I think is just very good at figuring out what the music needs and doing exactly that. He is kind of rock solid at the tempo.

He is not like he said, he doesn't do a lot of flashy, flashy fills. He isn't out there like showing you all his, uh, his poly rhythms and whatnot. He's just there to get the song from point a to point b and i think there's there's absolutely a place for that in rock music you know like there's absolutely room for your crazy prog drummers and then there's room for a guy who just loves doo-wop and classic you know like uh blues music and just does that shit and i i forgot to mention too yes alex you you are also a professional drummer so you have real professional drummer insight into ringo which definitely the the joke i'd always

heard among beatles fans is like uh well is the saying that ringo's not even the best drummer in the beatles yes there's a quote that was attributed to john lennon that i think actually isn't something he said but you know like many other, it became true just by virtue of how much it got spread around. As far as I can tell, just from reading up on the history, everyone seemed to love Ringo. Like, I don't think anyone really had an unkind word to say about Ringo. Like he had a couple of struggles in the studio early on, but it was just because he was so different from Pete Best. And the one time I think they recorded drums without him after that was in the brief period where he quit the band before they all broke up because like back in the ussr that recording is

paul i think playing drums uh you know you look at the post beetle stuff like paul and john were so like cruel to each other and especially john like ringo did seem to just be the fun one of just like him and george are both just you know uh trying to say bangladesh together they're not they're not uh taking snipes at each other yeah like ringo like here's the thing if you didn't like ringo octopus's garden would never happen like that is like you don't let your drummer sing his happy little song about an octopus under the sea unless you really like that guy yeah i just remembered there's a mega diss on ringo in sideshow bob roberts where uh they're

saying sideshow bob is uh the ringo to birchbald barlow's rest of the beatles that's right yes right right up there with uh you were ronnie to his nancy sunny to his share ringo to his rest of the beatles exactly yes yeah that's a different guy's writing it i guess and that that sting and ringo they don't remember that they owe ringo for being their first beetle oh you know what i want to compliment alex on the mic here though too i just want to say congrats on all of the next lander stuff you guys are killing it definitely yeah we thank you so much we're so happy for you guys there yeah yeah it's been a wild ride these last several months but uh it turns out getting out there and doing it for yourself can be pretty rewarding i think a rising patreon tide lifts all ships so everyone get on

patreon yep sign everyone yeah cancel your netflix subscription that'll cover at least three patreon exactly things right there uh and uh and yeah you know my my mom loves ringo so much that more than once she has seen ringo's all-star band on tour wow which is wow yeah which is like you know a perfect touring super group of like yeah it's every the remaining living people who may made music in the 60s basically all just come together in a group and play music with Ringo Starr on stage and you know it sounds like a good time if 20 years from now Rivers Cuomo gets together with like people from Nirvana like Dave Grohl Rivers Cuomo and so on I thought he's kind of doing that already on cruise ships no now it's a it's the Weezer centric cruise okay

and they can all sing covers together of 80 songs lit is there yes i was able to at least count on my mom's knowledge as a kid watching this and she also told me like oh you know what's a great song uh rocky raccoon listen to that one and like i remember she bought the white album just to play f russ and also because i was so confused by the number eight belch number eight belch joke my mom had to like buy up in this pre-internet time she bought the white album to play number nine for me so i could finally get this joke by the time i heard that i could not take it seriously though just because of the simpsons joke i mean it is i don't think i would be able to take it seriously even if i had never seen the

simpsons joke it's just a weird thing these days i'm feeling like george harrison's my favorite beetle i feel like saying i i like his solo stuff a lot it's really good i think i think george for me is probably like the most just well-rounded talented one like you know he's got great solo material the songs he wrote for the beetle specifically are some of my favorites though again here comes the sun is one of those that I can just never listen to again because the demo ruined it for me. Oh, that's so sad. No, I would agree.

I think George is probably my favorite. The Simpsons will be right back. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener,

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Hey, I've been setting my drinks on these things. But is the world ready for a healthy Homer? Woo-hoo! Hey, what gives? These donuts are piling up. Yeah, Homer Simpson went on a diet. Oh, my God. And I just bought a boat. The Simpsons.

Tonight at 7, followed by Coach at 7.30 on Fox 29. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the break of the Beatles podcast we foolishly recorded before the Get Back documentary came out. A big thank you to our gear of a guest, Alex Navarro from the Next Lander Game Group. Everybody should follow their stuff that they do on YouTube on twitch their patreon all that stuff check out next lander and alex navarro always an awesome dude and if you enjoy this podcast you should know that it's a listener supported one that's only a possible thanks to the people at patreon.com talking simpsons not only do you support us doing this is our full-time jobs, but you also get to hear every episode of Talking Simpsons a week early and ad-free. You get to hear next week's awesome episode right now.

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So it's time to talk about the writer for this episode, Brian K. Roberts, his only credited Simpsons episode. You might be asking, where did Brian Roberts come from? Well, he was already working on the show at the time because he was dialogue editor on The Simpsons from the very first episode all the way up through Lisa's Pony. His job is basically what it sounds like, assembling the recorded dialogue into an episode length track. Although it sounds like based on the commentary, he did video editing as well. Early in the series, they could not afford ret retakes which is why there's a lot of clumsy adr and a lot of clumsy video editing of footage to make mouths move a certain way which is why it's going to be very hard to do an hd transfer of the

series if one ever happens because so many elements are just trapped in as a video edit they're replayed video edits from a different thing they aren't cells they're not full retakes like on the season one telltale head you identified a thing i never noticed but now i can't unsee of just like they paused apu like apu is like a still frame as other characters move around something was wrong with the scene so they just froze it on on the vhs tape or whatever they were using at the time i love hearing roberts on the commentary just it makes me want them to have on their other sound editors who can just tell their side of the story there are fun stories

i think roberts was saying how they were so unknown at fox they had to pay for their own food at the commissary because no one believed them that the simpsons was its own show they're like oh yeah the tracy allman thing whatever you still need to pay yeah this you can't get this turkey sandwich for free and And we ate at the Fox Commentary, by the way. That's our one brush with greatness. That was. I had a very good tuna melt made by a very friendly guy. Yeah, and I had a

good, I think, roast beef sandwich tasty stuff. We hung on that a lot as long as we could. No one was stopping us. Actually, we had to ask someone how to leave. That's true. Like, where do we go? We did kind of exhaust everything you could do there. But, I mean, hey, I'll always... That's one of the greatest days ever.

And right before everything shut down. Yes. It was a fun way to celebrate the world we used to know. So, not many other writing credits. This is very strange. On IMDb, he's also credited with writing a segment for a Playboy VHS tape. I'm guessing it's just someone with his name i don't think he wrote a segment called the wet dream i got yes i i gotta think

that's just an imdb goof him up yeah someone else's name brian roberts probably not him so uh he's also one of his few like creative creative credits that's you know he worked on something he created something he wrote something he is one of three creators of the 2014 canadian sitcom spun out which lasted two seasons and starred none other than dave foley what wow i didn't know this canada makes tv shows and lots of them are not shown here outside of schitt's creek well i mean when you watch him you have to see scenes of like you know the the whatever percentage of canadian content is forced upon it to make it get, you know, subsidized by the government. It's like kids in the hall happen. Speaking of Dave Foley.

So there's an interesting if sad story about this show. The second season was completely filmed and then further production was put on hiatus. And the airing of the shows was put on hiatus because one of the stars was hit with voyeurism charges because he put a hidden camera in both a house and a condo he was renting to people so before they could show even the second season they were like this guy is a big creep no one likes him anymore we're not sure if the show would go on we don't know if people want to watch the show so that put show was put on hiatus and during the hiatus dave foley went to work on dr ken which is what killed spun out dave foley was not coming back to canadian sitcoms yeah he's made once he's

got on another american sitcom the money uh probably comes in a bit faster so and the unlike on a canadian production they keep the secrets of their stars a little bit better i think so yeah so uh he started in post-production editing audio and video brian k roberts did but he soon rose to the rank of a director which is what he's really known for today so it'd be very tedious if i named all the sitcoms he's directed on but here are just a few of the american ones the george carlin show teen angel the hewley's sabrina the teenage witch the drew carey show and everybody loves raymond in the mid-aughts he moved to canada and now directs mostly canadian shows and i've never heard of any of them. And in his biography, he is credited with directing 350 US television episodes and 200 Canadian ones. Wow. So he's a Canadian transplant, just like you plan to be. Yes. It's the smart move. Do it if you can. It's very, very hard.

Even if you've got a wife waiting for you over there, I can speak from experience. But yeah, my guess is he didn't say how he was allowed to write this or what the process was as to getting this script approved. But my guess was it's the end of the season everyone is very tired they're working the longest hours they ever work in this time period and they just are desperate for any idea brian k roberts a below the line guy has a script he's trying to break into the entertainment industry in a bigger way they're like this this will do well and also as as we heard from uh in the ken levine bit of history uh many episodes back that he was very well established but took it for like all the free perks and and being like oh i can do all the baseball bullshit i want but most of their other

friends would not write on this non-wga cheap cartoon show and so even though you know sam simon and james l brooks know everybody in hollywood doesn't necessarily mean they're going to take a freelance script for like an easy payday i think ken levine said they were paying fox was paying saturday morning prices they weren't paying sitcom prices yeah which you know if you're the sound editor on it that that definitely sounds like they they decided like yeah this guy this is a lot of money to this guy but it's interesting that brian roberts didn't use this to springboard himself into writing more he didn't write for a long time and he just would go off to uh direct and stuff so i mean i think it was just a way to have some creative impact on the show and he was

the guy who got ringo into the production so And just hearing the George Carlin show thing, that was one of his earliest director deals. That tells me Sam Simon liked this guy. Yeah, and so did Al Jean and Mike Reese. Yeah, so a guy people like, they open doors for him, and then he cracked the door open. Like, all right, I guess I'm a director of stuff. Sitcom directors, there's an old saying in

hollywood bob on films the director fires the writer on tv the writer fires the director a tv director especially in the sitcom context is not like a movie director they are not as prestigious but they are needed and very important on set you know they get the shit done uh and so the fact that he's that prolific tells you that like well he can make this stuff like he's he's good at it and i think people only really know the name of maybe one uh sitcom director larry charles yeah because he also does a lot of writing or did a lot of writing yeah he was uh larry char uh and uh so you couldn't think of his name all right jim i almost thought of it but j Jim Burroughs. That's not Jim Brooks.

Yeah. Jim Burroughs. He's well, because he's known as like the guy who he directs your pilot and maybe your first five or six episodes to get the machine working in the actual like live action filming and then go away. Like most famously, he did that for friends like the friends all came together under burrows and then he's like well my like mary poppins he just flits away like my job is done and this story on the news radio commentaries are them saying like jim burrows wanted to keep working with us

he he worked on every other nbc show for like six months and then left but he kept coming back to us because he liked us on news radio like what jerry the dentist from the bob newhart shows i know he directed a ton of stuff too but you still you don't know his name i don't see i don't but yeah like i think this was definitely them giving an opportunity which really that's what these freelance scripts should be we complained in like season 10 or whatever they just handed it to like a former head writer of David Letterman. Like, yeah, like that's not who should be kidding. And in late Scully years, Al Jean just takes all those freelancer spots.

I know. What the heck? Like that. It seems to be much better now than like, you know, say like our Simpsons podcast pal, Julia Prescott. She gets one of those freelancer positions instead of somebody's friend from Harvard. You know, but in this case of somebody's friend from Harvard. Yes. You know, but in this case, I didn't hear Harvard mentioned in there.

So it seems like he's not a Harvard chum either. Yeah. So that is the interesting story behind Brian K. Roberts. Again, not really a writer, but going on to be a major sitcom director for a bunch of things you have really heard of. Well, other than the writer too i i did find the creation of this episode was actually a pitch from al and mike uh gina reese on this uh that this is from mike reese's book about where the idea came from quote al and i once pitched a germ of an idea

marge takes an art class and churns out depressing edvard munch like paintings and the family realizes she's secretly unhappy from that nugget jim instantly spun out the plot jim brooks instantly spun out the plot of brush with greatness in which marge is commissioned to paint mr burns's portrait so uh reese was using it as an example of how great of a writer james l brooks was that they started with this little idea of oh marge is secretly a painter and he grew it from there but i believe it was the writer brian roberts who brought in the ringo idea into it i think and we'll talk more about it but once they knew they had ringo they expanded his role immensely i think at first he was just supposed to appear in a dream sequence uh when

had like maybe one or two lines but then once they found out they had him they gave him a few scenes they took real advantage of ringo honestly i think they're hey you already said yes you're in the you're here right now when he saw the changes matt graining said that ringo quote uh he said uh it's a bloody novel so uh by the way lots of bad impressions throughout this podcast so get ready for. Ringo might be the funniest one to imitate. Yeah, I mean, I'm just doing Wacko Warner, really. Yeah, that's true. Though I also like Paul's like, you know, it's like this and then... The kind of faux bashfulness of his way of talking.

Yeah, I feel like George is the only one that you can't really do a good comedy impression of. Like, he's just a normal guy, you know? Like, everyone everyone else at least there's something you can do with that liver puddly an accent i you know i think another positive with harrison about why what i like about him there'd be no like life of brian or with nail and i and all these other films because he started a production company to make those movies and ultimately apparently he got like ripped off and lost a ton of money out of it but but who cares but he's a beetle he'll make it back he made he's like oh i lost six million dollars and then the next day apple check yeah they say wait a day yeah take a nap

uh but this this episode begins uh with a really great joke that i as a child I did not appreciate, but just the joke about the shameless promotion of people doing shows from a theme park. I love it so, so much. Just like the shoddiness of it that it's just like, and then Krusty just describing everything they did. Actually, I'll play the clip here. You know, today's the last day of our special week on location at fabulous Mount Splashmore! And I just want to say,

the people here have been super to me in Sideshow, Mel. The food, the grog, oh, they threw us a brunch yesterday with fresh fruit and the most delicious melon. Oh, yay, toey plots. And of course, the thing I'm going to miss most is those special, special Mount Splashmore water slides. God bless them. So much fun.

So many memories. Give me a minute. It has been a great week, hasn't it, Lise? I hope all you kids come out this weekend and really pack this place just to show them how grateful I am. I told them you would. Don't make me a liar. Okay, kids, it's time to... Thrill the Long with Frosty!

Yeah! I want to go to Mount Fastmore! Take me, take me, take me, take me now! Now, now, now, now, now! Mount Fastmore, take me there right now! Yay! This is a rather shameless promotion. Hey worked on me me too oh i love every second of that so much as a little kid i didn't realize like oh the full house characters don't just go to disney

world spontaneously that was like that was a paid promotion it's an edict from on high they go there yeah and so but this the idea of like the local clown goes to the local amusement park and just talks about like i love all these special water slides and then how how brutally like inelegantly it moves into just demanding you must go there i like the one verse of the song that just now now now now now and and jim reardon and his team this is one of my favorite animations this whole season too like the way crusty like eyes closed screaming into the mic and just going now now now just like i think they were doing like a jim morrison kind of pose there yeah and and i also love you know being a child in the 80s was knowing that

something was an advertisement and then just accepting it it's just like well it worked on me me too like this you know this commercial for ghostbusters or sonic the hedgehog like it worked on me now i do wonder how many kids actually had that healthy love of water slides because i feel like there are very specific regions of the u.s where like yes there was a water park everyone went to and then there were wide swaths where there ain't shit you know i there were water parks in my area but i actually unlike homer i did not feel certainly proud of my body and would not take a shirt off so as a kid i wasn't the most big fan of water slides on top of that i think this episode made me scared about accidents and water slides so yeah i love water parks i love

water slides i went to them a ton as a kid i went to them again when i was maybe like 26 was the last time now i'm worried my inner ear has changed too much i mean have you ever gone on like a swing set in your 30s it It'll mess you up. It doesn't feel right. You're right. So I'm just concerned if I were to go back, I wouldn't enjoy it. Also, just the thing I could never really accept of like, I know there's lots of pee here.

Like, this isn't clean water. Like, you just have to... There's really no getting around that. Yeah. It's a fact you must accept if you're going to be in a water park but i guess too the water parks in my childhood they were adjacent to like mini golf and an arcade which i would always go like if i'm going to spend i'm going to convince my parents to pay for one thing it's not going to be a water park out of those things and probably this episode made me scared

of them i think too there's another bit in here that until Frankie Yak, I never got. Because Krusty garbles his words so much when he says, oh, and they threw us brunch yesterday with fresh fruit and the most delicious melon. Ooh, we ate till we plot. But that always sounds to me like, ooh, gooey plots. Or like, it sounded like nonsense to me. And yeah, just like Jacques, he talks about gooey, ooey plots. Like, it sounded like nonsense to me. And, yeah, just like Jacques,

he talks about the presence of melon at brunch. Yes, the Simpsons writers love melon at brunch. But I guess now, you know, recognizing it as the word plots, this would be the first time they have written Krusty as Jewish, wouldn't it? I think definitely in his history in Krusty Gets B gets busted they don't mention anything about rabbis or any of that and he's selling pork products as well if i recall correctly he's not

really been in season two that much yeah pretty light other than itchy and scratchy and mark that's really it yeah but even then he's like a secondary party to it is not the crusty they wouldn't do a crusty sequel episode until season three really yeah well how long after this do they uh they do the rabbi reveal uh oh that's early season three so not too long yeah okay so you're planting the seeds here i i think it's so sweet too that bart and lisa normally so contentious they're bonding over this outright commercial just like it has been a great week holding hands yeah yes uh but yeah so they follow their orders they then uh talk about filler in this episode for 30 whole seconds i'm not gonna play it on here but for 30 whole seconds they

repeat will you take us to mount splash more but castlanetta's delivery of like no no like it's increasing now it is really great i do like the sequel to this joke more in Bart of Darkness where Bart and Lisa demonstrate they will be doing this if the transaction does not take place. And Homer, in a very business-like way, agrees. He's like, all right, we'll do this. Let's have chocolate milk. Celebrate with the ceremonial adding of chocolate to milk.

Exactly. It's great by season six they can just go like, look, you know we could do this. Let's not waste your time let's not belabor it but i think reardon and his team found a lot of very fun drawings and places to put them in for this i i think my favorite is homer hearing them while he's showering and he's just kind of covering up like even now go away no and mar just kind of tickled by it at the end when they're bugging him in bed it's just like oh my my kids like but yeah i guess the episode after this or two episodes

after this and uh three men in a comic book homer does it to bart because he's just like look i know this i know this usually works and i just do it but we both know i'm not giving you 100 bucks uh i would guess this trip though had to cost 100 bucks i think yeah i'm gonna say those tickets were probably minimum 20th i'm gonna say probably 35 to 40 a person then plus the gas there too you know plus parking oh god the part that's where they really get you the free uh two hour parking they homer then asked them the outright thing of like if i stop this if i say yes will you stop bugging me like yeah of course so and he agrees cut to homer getting ready they say on the commentary they really regretted writing in the script homer will have a farmer's tan the entire uh act one because

it it looks weird for me as a kid first viewing it read to me that homer was wearing a shirt not that he was uh not tan yeah and then you see him with his shirt off a lot in this episode he still retains that so it's not just an act one and there's something i think that's very subtle about his swimsuit i think it's supposed to be a parody of the classic uh smiley face the yellow smiley face which might indicate the last time he put on that swimsuit was the 70s ah okay the the smiley face turning into a frown that's a lame joke i think but the context of that of like yeah that's why it fits so badly because homer has gained all this weight since he was in high school but won't admit it and so he's like yep the old bathing suit still fits you know

a lot of this uh act one is about breaking down homer's denial about his being overweight like he doesn't want to believe it which uh you know this episode hit me in a lot of ways too because i i have been on a weight loss journey the last like uh pretty much all of covid and when i got under 239 as homer does in this i felt very good i'm like finally i'm back to homer's homer's good weight and i i'm still going down healthy and healthy but i'm just saying that this this episode especially was getting to me as uh as homer's weight loss problems i mean look there's there are plenty of episodes of the simpsons where homer homer fat is the joke that's it you know like and sometimes they are very mean about it and sometimes you know they

find an angle that is not just pointing and laughing at how big homer is and i feel like they kind of thread the needle on this one like they're walking a close line of like look at how giant homer is and also we are trying to like uplift him a little bit and marge is trying to uplift him a little bit but you know that's a it's a tough one it's a tough road to hoe these days because i feel like you know this is of an era when you just kind of made fat jokes and that was it one you know they're only gonna up it more like homer becomes such a food monster uh in the next seasons like he's at this point he's just like i'm a guy who likes pork chops and season three is just like he eats anything if you leave it alone. Soap.

Yes. Yeah. I also the way March says leaves little to the imagination implies of like, oh, they can see Homer's genitals through this doodle, if you will. Yes. Or genitalia. I also I get a good laugh at Lisa's like ears. Like somehow without the shirt his his fat is just

roaming it just he's bigger than ever without a shirt that's true homer is not a guy who wears an undershirt most days you know so that's why the farmer's tan also seems weird he's always wearing a short sleeve so if he's gonna have a farmer's tan it should be that not not an undershirt uh used to be called something else we don't use that word anymore it's an undershirt they then head to the theme park their first of many many many theme park jokes on this from the recurrence of it on the show the writers love going to theme parks in in california and also they struggle with their weight because they have free food all day in a boring writer's room. And this one, though, the sign gag of like, this park is not topless, so please don't go topless.

A cute sign. And I think the drawing on it makes it funniest, I think. Also, if you're somebody who's looking out for Springfield freaks, there's a lot in this theme park. There's a lot of weird characters in here. The Homer's Odyssey background mutants make a brief return in this episode because they have to draw so many people. Yeah. And all in bathing suits. So they can't reuse previous crowd designs they had done. It has to be all new people in bathing suits.

So it breaks a lot of the rules that Matt Groening is like, hey, the character can't have Lisa hair or whatever. If you look close, you're like, it's full of freaks. And I love that. I miss these rough edges like you see here I feel like I saw at least one from behind shot that I think was old Marge reused like her her down hair blue hair for sure yeah I mean also if you just draw if you're just like well I'm drawing a young woman I guess that it's gonna look like Marge on some level too just like if you're gonna draw any guy with brush hair like it's going to look like Marge on some level too. Just like if you're going to draw any guy with brush hair, like it's Bart, you know,

it just becomes adult Bart, which is a rule. Like Groening hates that. He really hates when anybody has Bart or Lisa hair. The first ride we see also seems intended to drown people. It's just a night, like a, just a 90 degree, just drop. Just like why the car is there is a mystery because you, you start in a car, then you just fall into the water i i did just recently go to a water park adjacent park i went to great adventure in uh in

no san jose i or san yeah and at that there was a ride there that was basically like as stripped down as a log for loom ride is it's like like no theming no nothing like the thing the boat doesn't even look like it's based on anything it's like you get in this boat it will lift you up around and down and then you get wet and it's over no one will talk to you there will be no music no colorful bears no sing to you no it's just the that's what this ride reminded me of just the most stripped down like okay you felt that you went down an incline and water splashed on you get off that needs to happen to another person get out of here and of course it's run by a rowdy teen of course which it filled me with so much like confidence of like boy this this 19 year old running this machine there they

all know what they're doing this was after i just saw that news story about the guy who saved all that money by eating two meals a day at great at uh oh that place because they have a meal plan of like if you pay 150 bucks a year you get two meals a day there and so the guy just he worked at a silken valley place and instead of going to lunch or dinner he drove to a theme park and ate a corn wow yep and he bought a house good for the body though no he took yours off his life but he showed them it's true yes he said you know eventually it did impact my weight it did he said especially once dip and dots were also allowed in the meal plan he said oh god everybody separates the both the lisa and bart see the sign for h2 whoa which i love the the graphic design

on that i love that the design h2o one is great looking i like the sales pitch where you learn what water is really made of that's great that's a great tagline they see it is a long mc escher style line that circles around upon itself which you keep drawing they said they based it on disneyland lines where you think you're at the front of the line but then you go past the turnstile and that's where the line begins yeah they have the sneakiest of line things there i i mean the the new rise of the resistance is one of the most like amazing line trickery there ever is you don't know where the ride is yes am i multiple times in it i was like am i still in a line or is this a ride now did this become the right actually space mountain is like that too you don't know

where you're going or when the roller coaster will appear yeah well and like the water parks are the worst about this though because like a lot of the biggest slides you got to walk up those stairs too and that's a whole line on top of that so like i remember the the water park i used to go to which was a water country usa in williamsburg virginia they had a couple of giant slides and those lines were probably a minimum of 45 minutes to an hour if not longer uh and and unlike it disneyland you have to wait there wearing just your swim trunks like oh yeah you're damp as hell bare feet on the ground certainly getting some fungus in the hair now it's why again these are all the thoughts i had of like well yeah mom and dad i don't want to go to a i don't want to go to a water slide place pardon lisa they're ready

for it they uh they then cut the line with very smart uh acting of lisa being a lost kid uh yardley does a really good job acting of of playing lisa playing a lost kid it's it's really good yeah this is one of those rare instances where it feels like bart and lisa are in perfect sync for everything they want to do like they are an actual team a duo throughout this yeah you know they they don't battle with each other in any of this one they when they're helping Homer or making fun of Homer together, they're all kind of in agreement on it. No, the competition is gone for this episode. Then we get a quick joke of Marge taking Maggie to the baby pool,

which Marge is scared that she'll go into the two-inch deep end. Water changed hourly. I love playing this every time you guys bring me on i think this is the joke they cut from the syndicated episode because i i always go back and i watch these off the the dvds when we do these and so it's just like okay what's the joke i don't remember and that's the one it's it's kind of weak but it's just like well what is marge doing well here's a joke yeah marge here's maggie in this episode once marge and maggie usually first on that syndication chopping block yeah i i i had a good chuckle at just them imagining like okay marge puts her hair under a swim cap what does that look like and it

impossibly contracts into her head uh which somehow i guess her hair comes back out the when she takes it off it must just sproing back into shape. There's definitely some sticks holding that hair up somewhere in there. There's an armature inside. Well, I mean, she already has that jar in there 24-7, you know, the money jar. Then Homer goes to H2O while eating a corn dog, showing, you know, the problems he already has. I like when to hell with this was a brief Homer catchphrase. I think we heard that in Bar versus Thanksgiving when he was trying to start the fire was that it yeah oh god i love to

hell with it i've said it so many times it's such a great just exclamation though also like corn dog my favorite walking around thing in disneyland like if i can get that red wagon corn dog it's like oh am i gonna have to be waiting in line for space mountain or the big thunder uh railroad then it's time it's corn dog time does it cost 15 yes but you can't get a corn dog anywhere else on the premises it's the best 15 corn dog i ever had also another thing that breaks the rules in this when homer declares himself line inspector and shoves past everybody uh an old lady says god bless that man very clearly yardley smith yeah yeah yeah but that's a thing they also don't do they're like after after a few times like yardley and nancy

they can't do uh non-children voices and yardley is really just not allowed to do anybody that is lisa i i like the bored teen running this ride because uh i haven't been in one of these in a while but i just love the go go straight ahead sunglasses on yeah uh there's a check out exactly they just have to remember every five seconds just say go and then uh there's a sign gag in the background that's not even a gag it just says stop if you have athlete's foot impetigo or a yeast infection maybe the only mention of a yeast infection on the simpsons might be yuck man uh and so uh the kids go in first part and lisa and uh yes if you were a gamer you know in the around the same time or uh two years later in virtual bart four years later that's how long they took really yeah man

i thought uh 95 man i thought I remembered it as a 93 game. That's crazy. Virtual Bart. Yes. This was, that was, look, I don't like Virtual Bart like any other Simpsons game from that time. They're all bad. But I, as a child, at least appreciated when they took something from the show and made

it a level. It was 94. I apologize. But yeah, the Virtual bart stage uh you basically go down the mount splash more water slide but you have to remember the path because there are dead ends that kill you instantly so it was just like you going through it memorizing which way you're supposed to go until you actually find the end man we booted up some of those simpsons games on one of the earlier next lander streams and i And it was a fun tour through my childhood of hating those games

and just being instantly disappointed the second I started playing any of them. It really prepared you for disappointment in life. You have this cover of Bart, your favorite character, and it looks so fun. Look, it's Springfield. And then you turn on those, say, the Space Mutant game or Bart vs. the World. Well, not to go too much into a sidebar but virtual bart and bart's nightmare bart's nightmare is better but instead of making one mediocre game they made six bad games for each

of those right and that was the problem uh you know at least i guess at least it shakes it up but you you i renting it as a kid you had the extra hope of like, well, OK, this mini game was bad. But this next one, when I'm where I'm Indiana Jones or Bartzilla, these these will be good. I just know it now. No, no, no. But never. But where do you guys land on the on the beat them up, the arcade beat them? I feel like that's the only one I can still go back and play and be like, yep, nope, still still all right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We actually did an episode about that with chris kohler and i think we decided that it is kind of the peak of that style of game and uh basically it does lose a lot

of value because you're not paying for it as you play but it's still 20 minutes of amazing sprite work and sound effects and all kinds of production values yeah i agree with that it's that teenage mutant turtles and x-men those are those are the heavy hitters of that genre oh yeah and then unfortunately street fighter and mortal combat got so big that was that's where the money was everybody got out of the brawler genre for the license thing sadly ironically the first time i played street fighter 2 at water country usa oh wow. So the smell of chlorine was rich on you as you were playing that. The smell of chlorine and the faint hint of sunburn, yes. Oh, that, again, just describing this, the smell of chlorine with sunscreen, like that just scents like bleh.

I have nostalgia when I smell chlorine. It just reminds me of childhood. It's half that and half uh gross sense to me yeah no then again that i worked at a movie theater so the smell of popcorn is not like fun movie time to me it reminds me of having unhappy job time but yeah bart goes down he also says what it was his season two catchphrase bitchin okay i have had stress nightmares of this like this like that movie the descent i could only watch it once because like something about you know monsters blood and gore and all that you

know it scares me fine it really is that tight in close base like in the movie the descent one of the climbers like freaking out as they're just stuck and being talked out of how to climb out of it like this thing of homer just getting stuck and just like you're in the dark water's rushing past you like what like it just horror a nightmare to me when i rode water slides i love the ones where you go into the dark tunnel and this didn't scare me as a kid i didn't think about the horror of this until i became an adult and was watching the dvds thinking no this i would probably just pass out from panic yes oh yeah claustrophobia is real folks well and then once you pass out like in homer's position what his face slumps down into water he might just drown at that point like yeah

yeah especially with all those kids down there with him i always wonder with that like the kids when homer gets removed from it the kids aren't there so i guess they had to be pulled up but yeah like when homer says can't breathe, too many children, like he's dead. He suffocated. And probably one of those kids did too. Too big to be human is what the engineers say. That's so mean. And yeah, I do believe that with the simple word, Roger, that is the first appearance

of canonical squeaky voice team. Like there have been teen guys who work at places this season beforehand like in the herb powell episode the manager of the movie theater don't have a heart attack old man but they don't have the squeaky voice team voice which we hear here also i i tried to look up in the news like oh are there any stories of people being stuck in uh that like simpsons real life thing the one i found from the summer of 2020 is depressing oh no um so i believe it was because during the pandemic a water slide was shut down this was in arizona an arizona man uh

broke into the closed water park oh i've heard about this swam around in the pool some and late at night went through one of the water slides and got stuck oh and oh my god uh the story is a policeman on patrol came by heard a man like shouting he said that the tube ended up being like a bullhorn like amplified his voice saying help the police went to get him and they removed a portion of the slide to get him out but he did not live until the point of them removing the side part so oh no yes uh the the uh the guy passed away so uh i have a less depressing story okay so my wife nina matamono sent me a story a recent story about a water park in australia that's recently come under fire because they weigh some people before they're allowed to use certain attractions yes uh it's

become a controversial thing mostly because if they weigh you and you're too heavy you have to walk past everybody to the exit of the ride so they should at least give you an elevator of shame like a private elevator yes the shame shoots uh but i was looking at this picture in the article and i was looking at what some of the uh weight limits were and these are in kilogram so i translated them this two-person ride called the tunnel of terror there's a weight limit of 396 pounds between the two of you and for the one person ride it was 198 pounds boy so most americans couldn't ride that no no no yeah yeah and uh so yeah it's uh the controversial thing but uh if they eyeball you and think you're too big they just say it's a safety issue so yeah and that's uh i i've been through that on the harry

potter ride where you uh it's the the harry potter potter ride that's like hogwarts you sit down in the thing and if they can put the thing down over you it's not weight necessarily but it is uh the size of your stomach pretty much if they can't lock it in place a green light doesn't come on and they just make you like i'm sorry you gotta get up and and i uh i've gone through that and it's not fun henry i was there and i objected to the entire process because they make you do it in front of everybody in line yes yeah and i felt so bad and they know they make you that you know that you are holding up the line and everybody's looking at you and uh it i now feel like that is fully intentional by jk Rowling and she wants to torture people.

I think she hates fat people and wants them to be unhappy. It just seems unrealistic to me because the size of people visiting an amusement park is usually pretty large, right? Most Americans, I'd say. Yeah, in America, certainly. You're also not used to that. No other amusement park is about. Apparently, the new Secret Life of Pets ride also has a, hey, if we can't get this thing locked in, you can't ride it type deal. But in that case, and I think they now have this outside Harry Potter as well. They have a test seat and they're like, hey, sit in this outside.

And if you can get the green light on, then you ride the ride which uh you know hey i hate it was so embarrassing and i hated it but i did feel a certain level of triumph when i did come back after covid and could ride that ride awesome so i that felt good but uh but yeah i i feel like you shouldn't make a ride that in humiliates overweight people on their vacations you know they can just say uh sir you've won a prize come this way and then that's when they kick you off it's free food special ride oh a free uh free churro oh boy uh but yes homer does not uh get much for prize the hell with this line inspector coming through please move to the right. Grab the hand rail, young man. Out of my way! I'm here for your safety!

God bless that man. Ah! Pigeon! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ah! What? Come on, you stupid toad! Ha ha ha. Hmm, looks like there's a jam in Delta Sector. Well, it's too big to be human. I'll send down a few kids. That should dislodge it.

Roger. Ah! Ah! Ah! Roger. No! Red, he's too ready. Red. You have that picture behind you on our stream here, Bob. That Homer scream, that's some of the best. Reardon and his team drew some of the craziest, funny-looking ever in this and reardon is like homer master like he's uh other guys draw other

characters better than him but his episodes his homer is the funniest he he jokes on multiple commentaries including this one about like uh he has a homer body type as well and he he goes like wow why do i have to direct all the ones about homer being fat because he also directed king size homer there's there's two bits of animation in here i really love uh i do like that homer but i think bart's face as he's going down the tube is also like some of the best like your face skin is peeling off your skull type stuff. Oh, yeah. And then the final shot of Homer, you know, the booing aside, the moment where Homer is taken out of the pipe and he's just sort of dangling there as the clouds just kind of go by. There's an almost serenity to it, even though it is like a very unfortunate situation. I just I love just the dazed look on his dead face. That shows that like he's not mad anymore. He out of energy like he's been stuck tired he's stuck there for like yeah

it's and hearing and hearing all the like boos like nobody nobody's happy he's alive like nobody's like yeah they saved him he's like boo you ruined it ruined the theme park. I wanted to go on the water slide. Yeah, then this bit of news afterwards of Hummer being the top news story. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie.

I had never heard the term, the saying, I use the term loosely, but that taught me in and I used it from then on. Great bit of Krusty being interviewed on his front lawn like an in trouble celeb like, hey, hey.

It's an isolated incident. We hear about Krusty tainted mayonnaise. Yeah, I love that. You know that question out of bounds. And also this, I think this is the last time crusty's

makeup is treated as put on his face because he's right he's wiping his forehead and it's removing i was curious as to what the average weight of the american male is and apparently men are getting taller and heavier every year and i think currently it is 198 pounds is the average american male okay so i don't know what it was 30 years ago, but I assume maybe 20 pounds lighter. I would bet. Yeah. I'm working my way down to that. I'll get there.

By the live show, people, you'll see it. Henry vows to be average. Average, I say. Yeah. But yes, as Homer is asking everybody for tips afterwards, like this is one of those things where an overweight person who has been in denial all this time that has to admit it. And just the family just goes like, just, I love, forgive us, dad, but it takes time to properly sugarcoat the response. Like, what a great line.

That is a line I have definitely used in my real life on more than a few occasions. Well, because if someone you love asks a difficult question, you have to go like, it takes time. It does take time. You know, for all the time I've spent in front of a camera and on a microphone, when I have to actually make the gears turn and figure out the nice response to something, there is nothing more obvious on this planet. I might as well be glowing. People are hearing gears turn as you're looking at you uh also the posing of lisa saying like forgive us dad for that line it would be reused in rosebud uh when when homer's saying like i'll never bear my butt in public again and lisa says, I want to believe that this time. Really, I do.

And then when Homer says he's going to show his butt again, she's like, I knew it. That was all added in post with this animation. These days, scales are more accurate, but no less cruel. And this is the feeling of getting on a scale after you've intentionally not stood stood on a scale for a long time you're then given the bad news i'm like i just love the the back and forth here by castlonetta in the reaction to it i i love this oh 437 150 bucks oh my god 300 150 oh my god it's 260 pounds. I'm a big fat pig. You do have big bones.

Marge, no one gains 30 pounds of bone. I'm going on a diet. From this day forward, I pledge there will be no pork chop too succulent, no donut too tasty, no pizza too laden with delicious topping to prevent me from reaching my scientifically determined ideal weight. As God is my witness, I'll always be hungry again. Don't shut up.

They definitely added that final joke in. I like that sound though the sound of homer's upset stomach remind that's pretty much the exact sound his stomach makes when he eats a chili pepper the insanity pepper i also i enjoy how clumsy his line is just a parody the gone with the wind lined uh always like this is the second time this season they parodied the exact Never Be Hungry Again speech. They were really high on Gone with the Wind at the time. I mean, you guys mentioned Dan Castellaneta's delivery during the... Can we go to Mount Splash more a bit?

But I think in general, this is just some of the best Dan Castellaneta stuff of this season. He's yelling a lot but it's like i just feel like there's a lot of really good homer character work in here yeah the more they make him yell as homer the more he realizes he can't do the you know uh more math that we version of homer so it's really slipping away it'll be completely gone by the end of season three i mean the amount of screaming and crying in this one is like this this is them on the other side of where we remarked so much in season two of like oh they added this scene of homer screaming because it's just so funny or oh they realized that uh dan sobbing and then instantly going like oh okay like it's so

funny that this is homer the entire episode like he's either angry or sad or screaming he screams so much in this episode i also just the seeing the scale move back and forth like you you hope it's going to be digital scales they're straight to it now yeah yes and they connect to your wi-fi network uh i wouldn't buy one like that i don't want that i i'll just input it myself i don't want my phone i don't want that. I'll just input it myself. I don't want my phone. You don't need a smart scale. No. Homer deciding he's finally going to do it. And now 260, that doesn't feel bad enough. You know?

30 years later, yeah. It feels weird that 260 would be too big for anything in America these days. Well, it even shows like, you know, five years later when they get them up to 300, that feels like they had to go like it's got to be at least 300 for homer to be the fat and now we're in the era of my 600 pound life and people on there upwards of like 800 even 900 pounds yeah yeah it's uh it's rough you feel bad for those folks i but i feel like those those reality shows though that's like how much does it help how much is it a freak show?

You know, or how much are they exploiting the people for it? Well, if they fail on the show, they could take advantage of the vast amount of fetish websites out there. Yeah. No, it takes me. I watched, it was the MTV True Life. It was about, like, I'm 600 pounds or whatever. It was about being overweight. But the one guy I remember in it that i was so surprised by was it was a guy who was you know that heavy but he was also gay and he said one

of the problems for him was that he was part of a fetish community that was really into his weight and he was kind of scared that he'd lose some of his romantic partners if he lost a bunch of weights like he it was for him it was like oh being this heavy actually is i i am the opposite of a virgin because of this because this weight so it was an interesting dynamic to see added to it but homer not so much in the bear community compared to this guy but i laughed at marge enters the room holding a mop and bucket, like she is so like the home keeper in this episode. Like another, when she meets Burns later, she enters the scene with cleaning implements as well.

And later she has her hair in curlers for no reason too. She's a real homemaker. We start act two with what almost feels like a treehouse scene of just Bart and Homer exploring a dark attic together. It's great because what scares Homer is the lights coming on and him seeing himself in the mirror it's not the lights going off that scare homer it's the lights coming on that's good and uh some jokes in there i didn't catch until the freeze framing including the show's second joke about gee your hair hair smells terrific yeah and also uh dr nick riviera's gym in a jar. That's good.

And it's a bunch of pills. Yes. Just a big bottle of pills. And yeah, this is when Bart has the reaction that child me did watching this episode. Hey, Homer, I found your weights. Oh, the glutamate maximizer. Hey, who's the mop top with the big schnoz? Don't you know anything, boy?

That's Ringo Starr. What is this? Hey, your mother must have painted this i guess she thought he was kind of cute what hey what the no no homer don't be jealous i was a school girl the beatles were very popular i had a crush on them like the story homer thinks that they had a secret relationship, I guess that he's, he's actually that jealous about it, which I guess this is the first time, you know,

we get to see this side of Marge, like certainly the artistic one, but also somebody who likes music and enjoys popular music. They wouldn't do a lot with this skill of hers. Really. There'd be a joke about how she painted the sailboat painting in the living room in the, I think it's the IRS episode. Yes.

And then in Pokemon in season 12, they finally follow up with her being a painter. And then also when Homer becomes an artist. Right. Yeah. He gets jealous. It's a story about how Marge is like didn't you did you forget that i'm an artist yeah it's almost like her yelling at the writers i mean it's one of the

darkest jokes we i've rediscovered in doing this in that irs one of marge uh saying like i painted that and just when she puts it back on the wall and looks at it she says like you had a lot of talent baby and just walks away like so i was like damn marge i think too definitely in the description of reese in his pitch marge being like a very 70s like bad art artist like i i do see i feel a little bit of margaret keen in here the big eyes kind of feel just the or you know the the cloying earnestness of the commercial pop art of the 70s for sure which yeah she's not an abstract painter she's someone that like looks at a thing and then finds a way to make that thing onto a canvas you know yeah i guess it's not too

far from uh the elvis on velvet kind of painting yeah yes and also that she was such a fan of ringo star she painted his face over not even the other beetles but she very clearly was like no ringo i'm into ringo specifically i mean everyone had their favorite beetle and you know it's it's all comes down to a person matter of personal taste now i will say that it is funny that ringo looks absolutely nothing like any version of homer so she has multiple types, it seems. Him and Bobby Sherman. Yep.

I do wonder, what did Ringo feel about how big his nose is? I will say, I am a man who is large of nose, and I appreciate the fact that that is replicated on this drawing. Also, I feel like maybe after season 9 or 10, they started becoming very flattering with their caricatures especially if the person was on the show like you're not going to see a ghoulish steven tyler on the simpsons these days like you saw in season three so that's true i appreciate these caricatures more than they would just run them through the simpsonizer in the future episodes i i would have hazard to guess that steven tyler did not even think of that as ghoulish he just

like no that's me that's just that's that's that's who i am and i love that drawing of him oh yeah yeah i mean now he's more cat than man i'd say he's more scarf than man also that yes yeah uh but yeah this this nose is as big as somebody's foot like it's the joke from uh the critic i'm like oh that's tv his nose is as big as my foot look at it yeah but but the i i also like artistically how they're able to render what a painting looks like in an animated world like there's this extra sheen to it that makes it look like acrylic on on a painting yeah but but yeah marge just she is explaining her paintings is is feeding homer the the joke diet foods of the 90s yeah and this is a big misnomer misnomer with diets henry you could probably speak to this

and that if you go on a diet you have to eat bad health food and that was the idea i mean we just did a garfield uh special where garfield's diet meal was a piece of lettuce yes yes yeah flavorless veggies steamed even so meaning i believe then the distinction was, well, these are steamed, meaning they are not pan fried in a ton of lard. That's why they're healthy vegetables. Because those were the two ends of the spectrum for many suburban white people cooking without any seasoning, which was like, well, I'm either going to fry this shit up in a pan or it'll be steamed and have all liquid drained out of it.

And I can confess that I have watched a lot of my 600-pound life because I find it very fascinating. And what breaks a lot of people of the healthier diet is that they've never learned how to cook. So they assume, like, I'll just make a bunch of salads or I'll be poking at a sad piece of unseasoned tilapia, and that's it. But it's like, no, you can still eat good food

and have it be less caloric. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the worst things I think about American society is that we have so compartmentalized this notion of the food should come to you. And like we don't I understand that it's also kind of wrapped up in this notion of like, well, the wife cooks, you know, she's the domestic she does all that work but like at the same time i just feel like we we as a society have done a real rotten job of teaching generations that like yo it's actually like yes it's a little intimidating but you can cook good food without having to be a master chef totally yeah i i'm hoping other uh this did get me cooking more of my own food again and and shaking things up and of course you know we've all heard the air fryer tales but that really did getting an air fryer did open up a lot of other uh cooking stuff for me but definitely like even using the air fryer for vegetables like you know broccoli or green beans like it makes it so much more exciting and same with these rice cakes it's like

there are you know tastier 40 calorie snacks you can have now farming that are commercially sold not just you know you have to go to a special store for it or whatever make it yourself yeah you don't just have to sit there and eat a plain food disc there is word there's actual decent healthy food out there that does taste good like on the my 600 pound life show the most extreme diets these people go on people who are like 700 pounds is they have a 1200 calorie a day diet you can have three really good 400 calorie meals in a day yeah yeah but but you're used to the high calorie stuff i think too one thing that really helped me was living in california because you know uh what what some may complain about being a nanny state i fully welcome that like if i go to a

restaurant they still have to put the calories on the on the menu so i know what i'm eating i can't just i mean really if i order a very high calorie thing i know it's not good for me but if you actually see 1800 calories written on the menu you're like ah shit that's a lot like you you have to go an extra step once you see that number uh but yeah i guess this is how it was then and probably this is a joke about the writers trying to lose weight and being told what you can eat now like no yeah no more free butterfingers in the office you got to eat rice cakes we've heard from bill oakley and we said this before but back in this time before, there was nothing to do in the office. So you just ate.

You ate constantly because food was everywhere. And he said he gained 70 pounds while being showrunner of The Simpsons. Yeah. Now, Mike Reese did the same, too. Especially one thing that didn't help him was that they had the Butterfinger deal. And so Butterfinger just sent them all the free Butterfingers you want. And that was the old formula of Butterfinger. and so Butterfinger just sent them all the free Butterfingers you want and that was the old formula of Butterfinger the actually good ones you know I had it bad enough it was not good for me when I worked in an office that just had a candy dish of just like you know I bet I'll think better about this listicle if I stand up and walk over and grab a crack was it

the same that the one that we worked at that had a free grocery store in the office? Oh, no. This was before that. That was even worse. I could just eat two tubes of the peanut butter filled pretzel bites and just to my heart's content. Oh, boy. Yeah.

The Silicon Valley free kitchens, one of the most evil things, I'd say. But yes, then Lisa connects with Marge as she often does with tales of their dreams being squashed. Hey mom, these paintings are good. While I know firsthand how fragile young talent is, I'd love to hear the particulars of how your gift was squashed. Well,

well. No, not another portrait of that bongo-beating Liverpudlian! But Mr. Schindler, I... Well, someone might have used this canvas to create a masterpiece. Instead, you soiled it forever. Now this is art. Thank you, Mr. Schindler. Oh, Mom, I can't believe you gave up painting because of one small-minded art teacher. I was so upset, I decided to send the portrait

to the only man on Earth whose opinion I could really trust. And what was Ringo's response? Hmm, I never got any. And I never paint it again. Maybe you could take a class at Springfield Community College. I think it's a very nice idea. Don't you, Homer? Do I have to do anything?

No. Great! Fine! Go nuts! Hmm, only 35 calories that's uh you know it's a trick you can put yourself into when you're like oh you know if i just put a little cheese on here it's not that much more it's like no no no you gotta you need to read the back of that packaging too on that cheese it's not just a little the guy who uh the professor liked or the teacher liked was painting a picture of weary willie this emmett kelly hobo character there's one very famous

painting of him but then there was like a ton of other merchandise memorabilia made of him my grandmother when she was still alive i think the last time she decorated her house was like 1978 so there was like a weary willie collector's plate she had. Oh, beautiful. It's perfect for the time. But her art teacher would love that more than a tribute to Ringo Starr. I also like any joke about old people not liking the Beatles. I just saw a clip from an old Sean Connery Bond of him just going like, just ragging on the Beatles. The Beatles. He couldn't stand them.

Because I'm so used to like, you know, my entire life, everybody's like, well, it's all agreed upon. ragging on the Beatles. The Beatles. He couldn't stand them. That's because I'm so used to like, you know, my entire life, everybody's like, well, it's all agreed upon that the Beatles are great.

But to see things from the 60s and see Frank Sinatra or Sean Connery just say like, those guys can't play music. They're terrible. There was that Steve Allen

or Alan Sherman parody song instead of Pop Goes the Weasel. It was, I hate the Beatles. Yes. Because, well, you also, it was about complaining that girls have bad taste in music and so these teen girls couldn't possibly like good music yes i mean it just lets you know that the generational divide

where every generation hates the next generation's music is immutable that is just it is the cycle of life and we will never shake it i don't like being on the other side of that cycle though it's and that just reminded me oh there's like beetle parodies characters in the jungle book too yes yeah the the vultures were actually supposed to be the beetles and they would have sang their own songs but then the beetles dropped out of it and so they instead made them a barbershop quartet but still drew them to have the beetle bowl haircut yeah and then the simpsons would go on to parody the beetles by doing a barbershop quartet but still drew them to have the beetle bowl haircut yeah and then the simpsons would go on to parody the beatles by doing a barbershop quartet the snake will fully eat itself once that barbershop quartet actually sings baby on board in disneyland i some i hope to see the fancy dan

someday sing that song when i'm there they haven't yet to my knowledge make sure you call them the dapper dance dapper dance sorry they'll slap you in the face with their straw hats fancy dan is a spider-man villain okay i was gonna say is that a wrestler it's that no no it's the it's the guy who fights spider-man with lassos fancy i like that lisa with the bluntness of a child just goes like oh how was your dream squashed and marge just has to grumble like okay fine here's a story of how i gave up my dreams to to be your mother i feel like every real artist has at least one teacher that they've had at one time or another that has if not gone out of their way to quash their dreams has maybe made them feel like less than yeah you it's something you got to either overcome or not as an artist or as somebody who makes things, which, yeah.

I mean, probably my response to that was that I was like, well, you wouldn't critique me if I wrote about video games. You don't even know video games, English teacher. That was my response to it, I think. Oh, hey, mine was an English teacher too. Fascinating. No, it really was. I had an English teacher who told my AP English teacher who wouldn't let me be in the next

second year AP English. And then I showed her by doing very well on the test to get in the next year. And then, but then she owned me extra after she's like, I didn't think you didn't have the talent. I thought you didn't work hard enough. And I was like, well, and I started to be in class with her another year. And it's harsh also when lisa suggests going to the art uh community college that guy 3002 on twitter uh he

didn't have too many clips from the original script but he's always a great resource for that uh but he did have this from the original script bart has this great line that i wish they kept in he reacts to it saying community college that's just high school with ashtrays oh i like that yeah i like very accurate yeah which uh would then just end up being the the plot of the series community which yeah it's uh i've sometimes considered like oh i bet i could learn something if i went to a community college class and he's something i was into these harvard writers trash a community college that there is that aspect of it yes yeah uh which uh you know at one point uh almost seemed

like we were going to get free community college but not by the time you're hearing this that's gone dare to dream a little smaller please smaller still hey you know what if i wanted a pizza with a large pizza with pineapple on it and they offered me sorry this is just politics complaining now forget it uh but yeah so i really love that lisa escorts marge to there like you can see that marge is leaning on her for emotional support it's really sweet i like that and this is in the early goings of marge sort of branching out from just kind of being the mom right like they haven't early goings of marge sort of branching out from just kind of being the mom right like they haven't done too many episodes about her sort of like finding

other avenues you know the the only one before this i can think of is the is the bowling episode and that's when she just contemplates an affair you know and it's yeah the the main joke is that she is ignored but there's no more much more to it than that this actually is like does march like to do anything like three episodes earlier when she met her pal she's like no literally there's nothing else in my life i had kids i met homer in high school we had kids and now i'm their parents pretty much it yeah no i think our generation of moms had to give up a lot of dreams unfortunately that's also what's like mine did yeah yep mine too yeah but uh but yes march first runs into apu which feels like a joke about how everybody in hollywood has a script they're all writing a script another mention of sanjay we won't actually meet him until homer at

the bats right and then i think he actually gets a line in dog of death in uh in the original script apu also says that he's having lunch with kevin costner next week to show his script so i'm kind of glad they cut that yeah yeah uh but yes then marge finds out there's a little problem with joining the class next up my mother would like to enroll in painting from life to be please whoa whoa whoa not so fast there pint size i'm afraid no one can enroll until professor lombardo personally inspects and approves their portfolio. Lisa, this was a bad idea. Um.

Ah, very good. Fabulous. Oh, even better. You have real talent. Hmm, do you really think so? My high school art teacher hated them. What? The man was a fool. But still, one must admire the force of his conviction. That I'm in the class? So yeah, John Lovitz is back. Playing Professor Lombardo, who makes just a few background appearances after this,

but won't have another speaking appearance until season 15. It's the Zip who came to dinner. And that's only for a joke where all the Lovett's characters are in Moe's together. Yes. But I love him as this endlessly, like the complete opposite of the teacher she had growing up. This is a guy who only praises things seemingly to the point that it looks like he has no taste. He doesn't know what art is. But you know i think that's good i people could use endlessly positive supportive and maybe stupid uh art teachers now and then for sure and i i just i really enjoy the love

performance here he is having such a good fabulous time with that character and you know i mean like all the love his performances are identifiably love it but this one feels the most like a character and it's just you can see i don't know it's just it's a fun effervescent kind of character i i love that he can't just the way he compliments even the guy in the story like the man was a fool but still one must admire the force of his conviction yeah uh and also like i really like the realism of when marge is told oh wait you can't just join the class it has to be approved she goes like lisa i told you this was a bad idea like she wants to just leave like it's very realistic of a person who you know

was so burned by rejection in her childhood that now she's like oh no this is coming up again i might be rejected again i want to get out of here and she has to be like dragged by lisa to it like that feels very real to me i like the design yeah oh sorry alex i like the design of professor lombardo i like any blue-haired characters on the show because they drop the blue hair after i know season three but he does to me look like an alternate universe smithers he's yeah i see it smithers without a wig on yeah but marge joins the group first we cut back to homer doing some of his exercises his sound effects as he's trying to move his hands is great as he realizes bart is robbing him as he can't move like that's so funny

though also yeah this is how this is my morning walk like Like I, you know, I don't want to run and put a bunch of stress on my joints, but I do, uh, do, you know, morning, uh, a walk every morning for about four miles with heavy hands and feet. And it really does help, you know, it's a, it's a good, good lower impact kind of thing. Oh yeah. No, I, uh, sometimes when I'm practicing drums, I will use a wrist and ankle weights and just play some fairly basic beats just to kind of you know sort of get the muscles going and then take that off and then it's like oh now i can play fast oh that's right that's like just like goku that's what i was thinking also when i walk around wearing heavy stuff i'm like oh yeah this is how goku trained this is how he became the strongest uh that's in the dragon ball comics

even none of the training is like learn how to punch learn how to kick it's just like put on a heavy thing and then walk or do jumping jacks like just make the thing harder so that when you take it off it becomes a lot easier uh and then we uh we cut to the class uh i think graining kai boshed a joke that he'd be in the art class yeah he said he didn't want a bunch of animators drawing themselves into the show all the time so he didn't want to set that up as a precedent and also it's kind of weird ended a long time ago that idea yeah it's kind of weird that they're setting up this idea of his this philosophy of art as a ridiculous idea but

this is how artists draw yes like you draw the basic shapes first before you add the details but to the writers they're like isn't this crazy i think the writer of the script of the script brian k roberts said i took this art class and they had this crazy idea where you break things down into shapes well my wife's an artist i know that's how you do it and i've drawn things too you draw the shapes of things first in the anatomy if you're just going to freehand it then you're probably not going to get the head or arms in the right place especially uh yeah i think on the commentary reardon has to go like but that is what we do If you're just going to freehand it, then you're probably not going to get the head or arms in the right place. Especially, yeah, I think on the commentary, Reardon has to go like, but that is what we do. That's how Bart's head is a cylinder, and then you draw around the cylinder.

Yeah, you draw the tuna can first. Homer's a light bulb, but upside down, and then you draw around it. That's the secret of it. But yeah, if you're not a professional artist, you would think like look at this crazy thing i love when he said even a rhombus rhombus yeah and i also i do like though that i think matt grating doesn't draw like that i think he absolutely does not he draws the eyes first and then the head around it there's no construction underneath which which makes it even funnier that he shows like all these things that become a bunny rabbit and the bunny rabbit is so specifically a matt graining ass bunny oh yeah that would not come from following those

rules which that's just so good that bunny has spent some time in hell then it kind of i really love how these like bounce off each other. Like you see Marge in class and then you end up with a Rocky parody, but you see Homer doing it in this, uh, all of those shapes, which the artist that seems hard as hell for them, man.

I love the climax of that because he's only able to lift the weight as the other weights are sliding off of it. Yeah. Good. Really murdering the cat in the process. Great, uh, great sense of physics there as they all slide off

and you can see it getting easier for him. And, you know, at that point, a Rocky III parody, not so old, you know, not as tired. They're still making Rocky movies in 91. That's true, yeah. The awful Rocky VI, I think, would have come out. Or V, V. V, yeah.

VI, Rocky Balboa, good by comparison to five, I'd say. Oh, yeah. No, I think literally anything involving Rocky is better than Rocky V. Those Creed movies are good. I want a third Creed movie where, like, I guess you'd have to fight Clubber Lang's kid next. That's all the other kids they haven't faced yet. I'm still waiting for the Rocky 5000 that space balls promised me i mean they could also do brooke hogan because there is that brief bit where hulk hogan shows up in one of those oh man god yeah you're right they could uh thunder

thunder lips jr he's he can face them you know there's lots of pro wrestlers they can put actually honestly what he should do in the next one is him it's donna donna getting older and he has to fight like a conor mcgregor stand-in and he's like oh this mma guy wants to or honestly you'd have to fight logan paul in the thing that's what he'd do that's that's god i i'm sorry i talked this into existence now but that's who creed three's enemy will be he's fighting a series of tiktok superstars in that movie honestly at this point i wouldn't be surprised if one of those like awful fixed logan paul fights was just them giving a million dollars to sylvester stallone to show up and just like get knocked out oh i couldn't i it

was almost too verhovian to watch but i did check in on the on a free feed i certainly wouldn't have paid for it to see to see donald trump hosting the evander holyfield 59 year old man fight i was like this the satire is fully dead now it's just oh yeah no more i listened to a recap at one point donald trump says i don't know why anyone is watching this he does say that that is amazing and and of course they you know sing uh everybody like salutes the president trump there as they're singing the star spangled banner it's uh i i mean you know lots of things get compared to uh nazi rallies in today but and that was something anyway yes this whole rocky thing, and then we cut back to Lombardo giving instructions to everybody. It's like, just one more.

Oh, now it's perfect. Like, so good. He sees Marge's painting of Homer, which, honestly, I want a framed portrait of that. I want that painting of Homer passed out with a beer. How have they not sold that as official merchandise? Money on the table. Money on the table there. Every real painting in the simpsons world should have a painting you can buy i agree

including nude burns and it should be full frontal especially nude burns there's not a lot to mr lombardo but i do like how he's endlessly effusive with his praise but when someone turns around him he goes i don't take praise very well that's so great just gets very mad at them i love that uh and then i also love his little like slides down his shades like bald adonis and such a great little just posing too uh but yeah this he runs off after he can't take any praise uh marge then enters in the contest they very quickly just go like oh and she wins the end like uh and homer is not embarrassed to have a picture of him passed out in his underwear on display in public he doesn't he's stoked he's a work of art now he's eating his rice cake

too on the scene yeah i love that he just i love he has a little look side by side like okay rice cake i mean probably this there's a bunch of free hors d'oeuvres that homer has to just be you know passing up he just can't can't touch him just chew chew on their rice cake i mean i definitely have had rice cake eating days where i'm just like i just need to move my teeth like i just need to chew on something that's why nature invented gum a big piece of gum i i need i need something i swallow i can't it the swallowing and chewing it's hand in hand in in tricking me also the saying as a kid last supper eat your heart out definitely confused me i had not one heard of the phrase eat your heart out or the name of the painting last supper we we were a pretty agnostic family so so i can definitely see how in the first

pitch when they heard this they this like ah wait a minute this is boring then mark just feels bad and what wins a contest we got to get mr burns in here and so mr burns just slams into the end of this act of like nope it's the burn show now and i think it's it's really them realizing the the true potential of burns and smithers because smithers is not just a lackey i think this is the first time he's in love with Mr. Burns. This is true Smithers in this episode, yes. Garbage! What matchbook art school did you flunk out of,

you ham-fisted, nearsighted house painter? Smithers, throw this on the dung heap! I'm sorry, this isn't working out. I quit. Well, Smithers, I guess that's what you call your artistic temperament. Sir, I must remind you that the dedication of the Burns wing of the museum is only six days away. Damnation, Smithers. This idea of yours to immortalize me in a portrait was as half-baked as your idea about me having children. Smithers, find me an artist.

Sir, I'm afraid you've systematically alienated Springfield's entire art community. The only one left is this Mrs. Homer Simpson. Who? Well, she won first prize in the Springfield Art Fair, and as the wife of an employee, she'll be easily intimidated. Excellent. Once again, the wheel has turned. And Dame Fortune has hugged Montgomery Burns to her sweet, perfumed bosom.

Somebody up there likes me, Smithers. Somebody down here likes you, too, sir. Shut up. That's Smithers straight up being gay for Mr. Burns. Yes. Yeah, and it's like this dynamic for the first time really figured out here, right? Because Smithers would be different in the Homer Gets Hair episode. He'd be different.

He's barely on the scene in the Burns for Governor episode. He's barely used. Yeah, he's just kind of standing around he's not uh yeah this this uh really figures out smithers as the character they love yeah like burns sends him on missions and and they fully commit to it after this once in blood feud that's when smithers tears his shirt open like just leave me enough to get home, to give all his blood to Mr. Burns. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero hub has all you need to know

about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer clearer your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie uh just to live just to let him save mr burns his life yes yeah exactly. But also, though, this is really very sitcom-y of just like, oh, you have no other artists left except for the main characters of this show. Who he doesn't recognize. Yeah, who? Yeah.

Which Burns should really say, not the woman who ended my governor campaign by feeding me fish on live television. They go back to the same house. Yes, yeah. But, you know, again, as we will come to to learn eventually he will never remember anything about any of these people and i do enjoy that like just the very suggestion of i found the artist there is an artist that will still do this it turns into burns plotting and sort of like menacing music underneath yeah he's uh wonderful like yeah he steeples his fingers he's he's as evil as

ever i mean they have to this also is them just like luxuriating and who mr burns is like this really is just act three is a lot of let's hang out with mr burns like what's he do all day what's a day for old old burns i also as he says uh as as half-baked is your idea of me having children as we learn it burns his air he has lethargic sperm and uh busy schedule so that's why he had kids that later he'll it will be smithers himself who suggests he choose an air but uh he's on his way there i also speaking of paintings i want every painting that's in burns his closet like every one of those burns paintings is amazing it's so full of abandoned art that smithers has to kind of push himself against the door to close it

and i i mean i feel for those every artist on the show it's you know easy to write in a script and there's a giant closet full of paintings of mr burns that he rejected it's another thing to be a animator who has to design like two dozen paintings of mr burns that look like they were painted by a real artist like they have to try and find every possible art style for variation i don't think they understand the pencil mileage involved with many of their jokes honestly yeah so uh at the end of act one, we had Gone with the Wind. As Act 3 opens up, Homer is good, the bad, and the ugly style, facing down his weight. And he gets great news.

He's at 249. Or no, he's 250, I think. No, it is 249. 249, yeah. And I love all his does and woo-hoos back and forth. And it's so sweet to me. When Homer comes in, he's like, look at the clothes are just hanging off me. He has to shove his thumb inside his pants. Even Bart is supported by imitating Billy Crystal. to me when homer comes in he's like look at the uh look the clothes are just hanging off he has

to shove his thumb inside his pants even bart is supported by imitating billy crystal yes yeah that's i i love that march tells them like kids remember what i said about being supportive of your father like oh great work dad and uh yes it's uh the fernando Lamas show impersonation of Billy Crystal's. Yes. Ten-year-olds in 1991 were absolutely rip shit for Billy Crystal. Every kid loved Billy Crystal. We all had those City Slickers posters, right? It was Billy Crystal, Ernest, and Urkel.

Yep. The Holy Trinity. I can't believe you put out an album of that. That's crazy. Yeah. All out of You Look Marvelous. Like, okay, I got it, Billy. It's like, I don't believe you put out an album of that. That's crazy. All out of You Look Marvelous. Like, okay, I got it, Billy. It's like, I don't know.

It's a fine little character to do. And of course, it's his beloved accent comedy of an Argentinian man that Billy Crystal loves. It's that and Jazzman, back to back, all the best but but i i only knew the fernando lamas show or you look marvelous as a child watching this because i had gotten so into pro wrestling oh geez that i had seen the snl appearance by hulk hogan and mr t being interviewed by billy crystal as fernando lamas and uh so i knew him from that it's like oh the guy who talked to hulk hogan and mr t only now did i know he was a real man based on a real man with the same name i thought he was just a made-up character well we grew up with lorenzo lamas is a huge part of our lives right

no not very similar people yes was he renegade i believe he was renegade renegade and also snake eater yes right right and i i did find a video of like some interview with lorenzo lamas saying like oh yeah my dad loved the billy crystal impersonation he thought it was so funny and then the weirdest thing was in it lorenzo lamas started imitating billy crystal imitating his father which just felt like too too hat on a hat for me uh but yeah then we find out uh homer's eating has is impacting the economy uh lenny do carl doing his best lenny impersonation they're so close they swap souls sometimes but clearly what obviously happened was they wrote lenny and the animators picked Carl and nobody caught that it was wrong. So, yeah, but the Lovitz impersonate reply of, oh, my God.

And I just bought a boat. So big and ridiculous. Yeah. This is why Lovitz doesn't do one line characters in the show. It just pulls you away like, oh, what's this guy's deal? And Rolling Donut was the donut brand of choice. They not land on pond lard lad until season eight which i i prefer lard lad with his big boy design but yeah that the pink donut man i mean that's one of my favorites like all the colors of the rainbow like that guy is very different by the time he's saying i just

bought a boat but uh yeah i guess homer homer this is the closest to a food monster joke they've done at this point of like, this joke would imply Homer eats about four dozen donuts a day. He's putting my kids through college. Yes. Very similar. Yeah. So now Burns heads to the Simpsons home. He does not recognize it from when he ran for governor.

And this is when he interrogates Marge. Well, don't people answer the door these days? Allow me, sir. Open up! Open up! Mr. Burns? Would you like to come in? Mr. Burns? Oh, would you like to come in? Mr. Burns would like to commission you to do a portrait of him. Have you ever painted the rich and powerful? I don't know. Just Ringo Starr.

Ringo's? He was the drummer for a rock and roll combo called The Beatles, sir. Beatles, eh? Oh, yes. I seem to remember their off-key caterwauling on the old Sullivan show. What was Ed thinking? Mrs. Simpson, this commission and all of its glory can be yours. But first you must look me straight in the eye and answer one simple question.

Okay, shoot. Can you make me beautiful? I don't think that will be a problem. I'm no matinee idol, you know. Well, maybe not, but I have the gift of being able to see inner beauty. Mrs. Simpson, you may immortalize me see burns is coming into his own they don't realize how old they can make him because for this joke to work burns remembers a 27 year old tv appearance and like that's old right yeah he would not even know what a beetle was no or a television yeah like yeah again he can

remember these sorts of things and things from his childhood but he can't remember the governor running bit that he did literally like a couple of episodes ago or any of the people involved uh i i love it's just like ring go like this is so so confused uh and and yeah that he thinks like he also remembers them appearing on Ed Sullivan as a giant mistake and annoying and like Sullivan ruining his show. Never recovered from it. Not as the thing that like changed America pop music forever. Yeah. But yeah, Marge also just that she's like, okay, shoot.

Like she's not intimidated at all by it. And that also, like, just his permission, like, Mrs. Simpson, you may immortalize me. That's all just so great. And I also love the bit, Homer comes home and he goes like, honey, I'm home. Oh, there's an original sentiment. Like, great. And Homer's just, he points and screams like another great shot. He can't stand it. Like, what the hell?

And he shoos Marge away and Marge convinces him like, oh, no, it's fine. I'll find his inner beauty. That's when Homer says again his wonderful bow. Oh, geez. The famous Homer doesn't say dough. He says bow. Yes. Yep.

First heard in roasting on an open fire. Okay. I was wondering. I know it was so recycled and it happened a lot in our season one recap. I can't name every time of it. That's a challenge for me that I must answer sometime. But definitely it first appeared in roasting. But in that one, he's banging his head on the racetrack guardrail as as sign his

little helpers coming in last he's like oh geez i love it's just such a great just sound uh then we also find out that burns does not love pets or babies disgusted by them and also after watching this i have to say burns does say well a lot he does he does say well well does anybody answer the door these days uh also i like that homer is searching for the funny pages just in his underwear staring at the newspaper that's just so great uh and then this is the second time in dead putting society they did the joke that hom loves Marmaduke. So this is their second bit of characters love the worst comic strips. But Burns' love of Ziggy is just, will you ever win? And of course, in a few seasons, Homer will reject Ziggy for being too preachy.

That's right. And so then we also get another shot of Marge happening upon burns in the shower accidentally so this way she knows how to realistically draw his penis later by by seeing him as a little kid uh when i first saw this i knew for a fact that uh in my head i bet if you pause this you can actually see him naked yeah you at least you do see his bony a little butt you do see that bony old behind yes and also it's like i mean all the specifics on him he's covered in the dot like he has the liver spots on his head they're all the way down his body he has one patch of gray hair and just like weird his spine is sticking out of his body yeah his curved spine is to such an extreme it's poking out yeah it's got like spines

and also more of that the smithers situation just like of course not smithers you you're more like a doctor we then also get a speech from smithers that pretty much just sums up smithers as a person just that he's like mart says like what do you get out of this because definitely in that homer gets hair episode smithers seems to be uh an executive trying to work his way up like he wants he hurts homer's job prospects to for self-preservation but in this one smithers doesn't care at all about a career at all like he's not an executive there he's just a lackey and happily so well and you can also sort of read that as you know

retroactively as smithers does not like the idea of anyone worming their way into burns as good graces that is not his and you know and while it is not as explicitly like this person is in love with burns in the in the previous episode like there's a protectiveness there that is already apparent and you know it's just here they make the subtext as much text as possible and just his way it's like he's my best friend too and then too hot yes it's calling me right now speak yeah it's really i think the first and only time a character asks smithers like what's the deal with you two yeah yep you know what i mean what's going on here yeah but then it's time for our big guest so originally or at one point in the script it was ringo appears in a dream which i think they at this point were like well the simpsons

can't just meet celebrities that's not realistic yeah uh cut to two years later to meet george harrison homer wins a wins a Grammy and is backstage. I think the dream was Ringo appears and he says, Hi, I'm Ringo Starr. Do you want to meet Paul and the rest of the Beatles? He says that to Marge. And I think that inspires her or something. They weren't really clear about what the original scene was.

When they find out he can do it, they write a lot of dialogue for him that he's not happy about when he comes to the studio. But yeah, and this is when we find out that Ringo answers fan letters in this next clip oh dear sally in response to your letter of december the 12th 1966 my favorite color is blue and my real first name is richard thanks for the snapshot you're a real cute bird love ringo pS. Forgive the lateness of my reply. Mr. Starr, tea and crumpets.

Just said it over there. Sir, if you'll forgive an old brick for his impertinence, your devotion to your fans is nothing short of remarkable. Well, Weatherby, they took the time to write me, and I don't care if it takes me another 20 years. I'm going to answer every one of them. Hello, what's this from springfield usa gear oh man it's so i think they said that he felt slightly uh weird having to say all these

lines like he's he's a 20 something liverpool guy yeah there's a funny story on the commentary about when ringo came in before he came in a memo was sent out, I think, from Ringo's people saying, here are the ways you can interact with Ringo. Like, don't ask him for this. Don't talk to him about this. One of the things was he will not sign anything. And the writer for this episode did not get that memo. So he showed up.

He unfurled a huge poster. Everyone else was mortified. But Ringo still signed the poster. Still did it that's good i feel like they have actually done a pretty good job here of capturing the spirit of ringo especially and even like adult ringo like i obviously i said i've never met him before but based on what i heard from people who had interacted with him and just kind of what i've seen of him in the media since in his post beetle daysatle days. This is just who this guy is. He's just a happy-go-lucky

kind of maybe slightly spacey but generally very friendly guy who is too rich but also not a huge dick about it as far as I can tell and just kind of is just sort of appreciative of the fact that people still care about him and his songs and what he likes

to do. And these letters he's writing back are not giving life-affirming advice or saving know saving anyone he's like here's my favorite color yes we do have french fries here's my real name all googleable things yeah that's what's so great too yeah my jet that to know that somebody in like 1968 sent him a letter like is ringo your real name and he just happily goes like actually my, my real name is Richard. Like, just reply with that. And also, he's very like, forgive the lateness of my reply. Well, we know as of 2008,

Ringo is not too happy to receive fan mail, although with peace and love, he tells you, please stop. Let's give that a listen here. The real Ringo opinion on fan mail. This is a serious message to everybody watching my update right now peace and love peace and love i want to tell you please after the 20th of october do not send fan

mail to any address that you have nothing will be signed after the 20th of October. If that has a date on the envelope, it's going to be tossed. I'm warning you with peace and love, but I have too much to do. No more fan mail. Thank you, thank you. And no objects to be signed.

Nothing. Anyway, peace and love, peace and love. I think one of my favorite sentences ever spoken is, I'm warning you with peace and love peace and love i think one of my favorite sentences ever spoken is i'm mourning you with peace and love i've never heard that before uh the way he sort of slides it at the end there has a real baba booey baba booey kind of like i'm just saying the line for you kind of thing uh the emphatic second one at the start is my favorite peace and love peace and love love love i like how he's trying to be friendly but he has had it i mean honestly that he made that pronouncement in 2008 is impressive

to me that he really was going like you know what if you get it before that date i'll sign it all right but this is it october 20th 2008 was he known for being especially receptive or something i don't know did this episode create that myth may maybe it did and i i mean it sounds like he this update seems to come with the understanding of we all know that i sign things if you send it to me but i'm not gonna do it anymore all right but ringo has his limits every once in a while he just says I don't want any more of this and I'm on the side of this and this is where it's going to be and you know whether it's signing fan mail or supporting Brexit Ringo sometimes oh boy oh and you know what Ringo was not too big for TV because in 1989 for a solid season he was Mr. Conductor on Sh shining time station a role later played by george carlin

and he starred in the movie caveman right yeah he he says yes to lots of stuff i i think too that he gets you know i bet he gets more stuff sent to him because i bet there are some beatles fans that go like well paul is much too busy he won't it, but I bet Ringo has lots of free time. Like he's, he's the more approachable beetle to ask for things. I would bet. Same with like, George is so serious. You're like,

well, I can't ask him and George, not George, but Ringo, Ringo loves it. He's a clown. Hey, clown.

Ringo, he's available. He reacts to it with gear, which is, you know, an old, old timey british like cool slang i guess cockney slang is it like but just so funny to say gear and then he and he went for it he's just like oh and just saying like oh me me first name is richard like you can kind of hear

him reading these lines as he goes like ringo is not a great actor but you know he's he's given it his he's given his level best and you know like i think the gear is the line he leans into but everything else there is just like you can hear him taking a breath right before he reads the next line yeah i just love it's from springfield usa that was it yes there's nothing more to it henry hello what's this yeah no i and i love the joke that, of course, is a British man. He is eating tea and crumpets for lunch. I guess. Weather B.

Actually, I shouldn't say it's lunch. It's tea. It's tea time. That's why he's having tea and crumpets. So we cut back home to Burns. Getting at his, him and Marge are pretty much sick of each other. She even says, like, I can't find your inner beauty when you're screaming at an eight-year-old girl. I've only got two days left, so I advise you to shut up in pain.

The second time he's told someone to cease their infernal tootling. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We then cut to Homer weighing in one more time. And I will say, you know, I, getting under 239 and getting a smaller belt really did,

it does fill you with confidence. I know it's a joke about Homer, but actually it does, it did make me feel good. And this is, again, a type of thing they wouldn't do too long after this. This makes you actually care

about Homer's feelings. Like you actually feel really bad for Homer in this little scene. Alright! Whoa-ho-ho! Woo! Woo! March! I'm 239 and I'm feeling fine! Look! I'm using the original notches that came

with my belt! That's wonderful, Homer! I'm so proud of you! Let me get this straight. You're pleased with your current appearance? Oh, why, my good man, you're the fattest thing I've ever seen. And I've been on safari. If you need me, I'll be in the refrigerator. Mr. Burns, I've had enough of your posing.

I can finish the portrait myself. Oh, thank goodness. Another day in this suburban nightmare and I would have needed half a white valium. Thank you for your gracious hospitality. See you at the unveiling. Homer, what are you doing? Give me that. No, Barnes is right.

What's the use? Don't you listen to him. He's just a mean little SOB. Oh, Barnes. Taking the gun out of Homer a mean little SOB. Oh, my. Taking the gun out of Homer's mouth. I know. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, once you start pouring the whipped cream back in your mouth, it's hard to take it out again.

You know, once you just have that frustration of like and just that Homer has this very small amount of confidence that burns shatters it just immediately and the way smithers joins in and laughing at him because you know he's not that smithers is that mean but he's like oh mr burns made a joke i better laugh with it that's that's how i read it and it's just so i like hearing homer sob off screen like you you really feel for him you never think homer is sensitive about his weight most times but here it's it's sad well and this is like one of the few examples i feel like i can point to from the series where like when they do the diet thing with homer one he's successful at it and you know it is actually like giving him some you know self-esteem and emotional uh heft you know but like the family is also being supportive like everyone around him that isn't mr burns and smithers is actually being

fairly supportive of like yeah homer yeah if this is what you want to do okay but like you know all it takes is that one knife that one little stab from from burns and it just shatters the whole thing and burns knows he's doing it like he's doing it to hurt homer like yeah and and burns doesn't see homer as a person or really anybody as a person. But yeah, I mean, I also love the shot. It's a crazy front facing Marge, but her gasp, like the zoom in on her of going like, ah, like that's so good. And yeah, Homer, Homer just giving up.

And then Marge also loses her confidence too. Like she's just like, I'm no artist. Like burns has destroyed them with just like one afternoon that's how awful he is and uh but they they also keep you aware of the ticking clock like homer says well at least you got to paint this by noon tomorrow like they don't have much time left and uh nowadays when you can get replies on twitter from your favorite celebrities which really has its ups and downs um it doesn't seem as novel but getting a letter in the mail from a famous person like that did that has to feel pretty special for marge here now now it's just like the the best times on twitter just when you buy like early

twitter of finding like oh this writer did a thing i like like bill oakley or josh weinstein you just go like hey that was a really great episode of simpsons i loved it growing up thanks or they'll at least like your tweet yeah they'll like on it but is this some sort of magic package or was there very good mail forwarding address technology at the time in which she sent it from her mother's house in the 70s uh let's say that it got sent her mom never moved out of her old place and then uh the mother forwarded it to there sure let's say that or i think that might actually be true i think that that uh marge's mom actually does live in their childhood house if i'm remembering correctly yet you know in this episode i'd say yes by season five when, when she's dating Mr. Burns, she's staying at the Hal Roach home.

Yeah. But this is the first. I would bet she's still living at home there. Though also, hey, Ringo, he's got all this money. He gets private investigators. Find this woman. I have to send it back to her current address. Weatherby is on the scene.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. You know, you mentioned the social media thing i think getting a reply from a beetle would still be a pretty big deal these days you know i think that still maybe goes above like say gerard way you know liking a joke you made about ass eating once which is something that actually happened uh uh or and let's not even talk about cameos the business i got one for my mom of jonathan frakes and he was a great guy just cool dude i love jonathan frakes just a great actor not

appreciated enough and uh my like a total sweetheart too he he was very nice in the i mean he's paid to be nice in the cameo but he he seemed like a genuinely nice guy uh who also like i mean i think i think my mom had a little bit of a crush on him back in the uh in the 90s so i i know who didn't that beard oh he was dreamy uh i'm looking at ringo stars twitter right now and it's very cute because he ends every tweet with uh six emojis uh in order they are uh sunglasses smiley face peace sign sun heart music sign music notes uh either cherries or broccoli and then a peace sign wow love it that's great uh that's great earnest emojis i love that you know and uh of course peace and love is in every tweet of course

it has to be it's like hall cogan signing signing his tweets with hh which james conn's ending sending every single tweet with end of tweet uh but uh but yes marge gets a letter i guess i'm no artist hello what's this it's for you marge from merry old england from the desk of ringo star dearge, thanks for the fab painting of yours truly. I hung it on me wall. You're quite an artist. In answer to your question, yes, we do have hamburgers and fries in England. But we call French fries chips. Love, Ringo.

P.S. Forgive the lateness of my reply. On Marge paint. I think you can do it okay homer if you think i can you know until the first time we covered this i just thought that's probably a beatle song and then i then i found out it wasn't yeah it's his first uh solo hit for ringo i alex would you say that is his biggest solo hit ringo's uh don't come easy it's the only one i can kind of name off the top of my head so i'm just gonna go ahead and say yes i my my knowledge of ringo's songwriting output is relatively limited outside of the actual beatles catalog but i have heard that song outside of this simpsons episode so i'm just gonna call it okay

yeah it's a 1971 song released as a non-album single it was produced by george harrison and co-written by harrison but he was not credited as being a co-writer so there you go it's like oh what's my favorite ringo song well the one george harrison pretty much just wrote for him just gave to him but hey those guys reunited is like hey we're you know paul and paul and john can just fight each other we'll just have fun together like that's at the video store i worked at uh in the late aughts uh you'd put on concert videos uh to kill the time like you could eventually you get tired of putting on movies that aren't rated r because that's you know against the rules of the place so i was like oh a concert film is just

listening to music so we put on a concert for bangladesh and the opening uh that the first song is don't come easy and it's harrison performing it with ringo on stage and the audience is just vibing so hard because this is the first time these two have been on stage together in like five years and after the Beatles broke up it's really great in Ringo actually fucks up a line in the song but they just go with it actually makes it more fun than he messes up the line in his song but look it up look up that performance from concert for Bangladesh is a really good one I don't think i've ever actually seen concert for bangladesh before i've heard so many jokes and like references to it but i've never actually sat down and watched it oh it's a it's a fun

concert film it's really good and lots of if you're into beatles mania like there's a ton of beatles favorites show like billy preston has a song in it too and tons of great performers uh in it like it was really a super show was that the joke in like father like clown when crusty won't leave he puts on that album and it's famously very long it is very long yes yeah and well and it starts with a 30 minute ravi shankar song which that's the funniest bit in the basically at the start of the concert uh ravi shankar is playing and he's he's tuning up and the audience applauds when he finishes tuning up because they think like oh his song is over so the beatles will get on stage now and he says like oh well if you liked us tuning up then you really

like this and he plays for like 20 minutes which you know was respectfully listened to by a crowd but i think they were getting impatient for the beatles to get on stage yeah yeah i will say that amid my very my parents various classic rock records and whatnot there were at least three ravi shankar albums and none of them could ever explain to me how exactly they came into their possession the i i think too another reason ringo would have said yes to this is that they had to pay him to use his the master recording version of Don't Come Easy so you know good payday for Ringo here as well and I guess for George Harrison too and Disney's paying for it for this very day that's true yeah I would guess they must have paid one big lump sum for DVD and streaming rights that let's who knows you know maybe 10

years ago they're like ah crap streaming all right let's just pay let's write eight million dollars of checks for all these songs well it's so it's interesting because you know there's obviously a number of shows over the years where like home video versions have been held up by music licensing like just about every mtv thing like miami vice very famously didn't come to dvd for a long time because they wanted to get the music rights for it. So at this point, they definitely would not have been signing contracts for home video releases at all. That would have been something they had to go back and do. But also, I could totally see Ringo being like, yeah, just pay me again.

Sure. Yeah. Give me more money by all means. For them, for the Simpsons, it's just money, not permission. It really and the DVD sales were so high for season one that they probably were like, ah, whatever. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there.

You see, our new Net Zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. Whatever we have to pay for the song rights will be paid back. Now that I think about it, that's probably why we're not getting any more DVDs. I mean, I'm sure they would sell well enough to justify the dvd printing and everything but i don't know if

it would justify all the royalties because they use a lot of popular songs true yeah and you know at this point disney is very in on the disney plus thing and i'm sure that they see having all that stuff they're collected as a big boon for them so with no more of those commentary tracks that might reveal secrets disney doesn't like getting out so yes marge paints through the night she keeps trying and trying and then is struck with an idea but we don't get to see what her idea is uh so we then cut to the fancy party mo and barney are there for some reason it's a fun background gag where barney is holding an entire bottle of champagne that's good i feel like that. And I would assume Moe just snuck his way in. And also, Barney is drawn wrong.

It's the blonde hair Barney in the background. Somebody used the old color palette there. So I guess Burns was too busy. Like they said, oh, it's in one day. You got to do it by noon tomorrow. So there was no time to check it. Nobody, whoever hung that up had to go like, hey, this could cause a problem. He seemingly shows up right before the unveiling

just to do the unveiling. You know, he's a busy guy. But yes, Burns, I also, it seems almost too hip for Burns to say, commemorating the man who ponied up the dough. I like hearing that from a rich guy. He's just like, yeah, you're doing this to respect me and my philanthropy. Like, you're here to compliment me well there was that story that

came out today wasn't there that was like uh uc santa barbara is building this awful new housing complex at their thing that was designed by a 97 year old billionaire who funded it and his instructions were that uh you have to use my design exactly like dudes with that much money just love basically forcing people to take whatever bad idea they have and just run with it they can do sim city in real life that's amazing yeah that's well that's right up there with burns is having to buy yale and airport to get it we could use an international airport i'm not made of airports and so another of my favorite just noises this is full of so many great noises the sound of burns pulling on the rope fruitlessly like like just that sound i i love that smithers has to

help him pulls down the rope it is revealed it is a nude portrait of burns and not a very flattering one and mr lombardo is shocked it's the first like i don't like this at all the first painting he doesn't like uh and so everyone's in shock burns is greatly uh insulted nobody knows what's going on here and then i have to think this speech by marge is 100 james l brock absolutely absolutely um hello my name is marge simpson and i painted this maybe you'd like to know what possessed me to do it well i guess I wanted to show that beneath Mr. Burns' fearsome head with its cruel lips, spiteful tongue, and evil brain, there was a frail, withered body, perhaps not long for this world, as vulnerable and beautiful as any of God's creatures.

Provocative, but powerful. He's bad, but he'll die. So I like it. Marge, a word, please? You know, I'm no art critic, but I know what I hate. And I don't hate this. Your painting is bold but beautiful and incidentally thanks for not making fun of my genitalia i thought i did so that is the grand debut of miss hoover mentioned twice at this point uh debuting with blue hair she go back and forth between brown and blue before

she's stuck at brown we do a whole bio on her and lisa substitute by the way but yeah it's funny that she is paired with hibbert and she is the one who has the best line they give to miss hoover and she's not identified as lisa's teacher just like random woman holding champagne he's bad but he'll die no that's uh that's a bob catchphrase there that's uh that's words bob lives by and i i love them too yes it was just if there's an evil old person and you don't like him, you just have to go like, yeah, but he'll die eventually. Also, hearing March describe him as like, perhaps not long for this world, meaning that when you look at him, you're just like, oh, he'll be dead soon.

There's a second. There's a brief reaction from Burns at that line when March is perhaps not long for this world. His eyes get really big, like, oh, I guess I i will die but it's like maybe half a second you see that it's great uh fortunately for burns he's a cartoon character he'll never die his his uh as we learn later he has the three stooges syndrome that prevents him from dying yeah oh but man the just yeah all of the stuff of hiding his penis in the shot like and just that line obviously as a child i did not know the line the word genitalia this taught me it and just what a perfect exit

line of like thanks for not making fun of it i thought i did that marge apparently drew his penis so small that she felt it was like well this must be uh i am mocking him with this tiny penis and burn saw it is like oh hey that's you, you know, you did right by my penis. Thank you. Actually, I can't think of too many other examples where Burns' penis is very specifically referenced in the series. Like maybe later in the show, they go back to the well on that one. But I feel like this is the most clear cut example of them being like, yo, Burns has that tiny dick. It's like an acorn, man.

And apparently there was a big battle to get the word genitalia on the air right before the family-friendly show, Top of the Heap, I take it. In that Fox was like, absolutely not. You are not ending the show with the word genitalia. This filth is not getting on TV. So they wrote a group letter all the writers together like it was signed by sam simon james r brooks and matt graining they delivered it to fox and fox said okay and i think the writer said he has that letter framed on his wall oh that's why they all went to bat for him that's great that's great i want to see

that like over something so silly like genitalia is such a fancy word it is i i don't know clinical yeah it it does not feel like a crude word to me i i i mean you know was this just fox being like extra dainty about it because of all the problems they've gotten into with married with children it's uh yeah it's such a strange strange choice i mean too we've heard the theories before that because they have a rule of the James L. Brooks that Fox can't give them notes beforehand, that the only notes they can really give are censor notes. So sometimes they go above and beyond.

As we know in Homer's phobia, originally they were told any reference to gayness has to be taken out of this, basically just trying to kill the episode. To know that there was that much of a fight over genitalia a word that just flew over my head as a child yeah i was like what nine years old when this came out like i don't think i even batted an eye at it you know and i'm sure my parents probably just didn't even think about it at the time either it just seems like he said just such a weird thing to like plant a flag in a hill over you know and it's crazy to me though too that burns is so easily won over by a big a little sitcom ending speech though like you should just be like no i'll never forgive you for this like you just humiliated me i spent all this money to be humiliated like fuck

you yeah but you know i i sort of get it like as as comically evil as burns is this is one of the few examples you can actually point to of a main character doing any work to try and humanize him you know even if that that that humanization is just you know a grotesque sort of like you know portrait of him that sort of like you know again willfully kind of mocks his genitals like it the fact that anyone would even say a nice thing about him and not just like just to sort of like placate his rich man ego i'm sure to him that was just like oh oh okay and uh and that nude painting would return in the mansion family episode from season uh 11

that's right when they go into the uh when they bart is exploring burns his mansion looking for stuff to steal and bart walks by the painting and so i guess at some point either burns had a copy of this made or it got moved out of this wing of his building to his home one of those two and one more thing about top of the heap the sitcom the failed succumb that would air after this the first episode that you would see after this was co-written by mike scully whoa wow who does as they say airing he's like i'll never get to write for the simpsons i'm not good enough for that now i didn't know that mike scully worked on that that's awesome man you know we just uh the last season two when we did a recording for was bart's dog gets an f and that

one that really follows the track of just obvious sitcom stuff like there's a problem with the dog and they go to obedience school like and if you say it just conceptually marge rediscovers a lost talent and homer goes on a diet that feels like very stock sitcom-y stuff but this is them finding new crazy funny things to do with it specifically thanks to the help of both uh things that they count on so much in every episode going forward burns being a funny crazy old man yeah and celebrity guest stars yeah the secret sauce to make this all more than a stock sitcom plot is burns he is the show's secret weapon in that regard and i was telling henry off offline before i think this might actually be my favorite episode of this

season like to me it is the perfect blend of the kind of early show earnestness that was just like the straight up sitcom and then also them kind of finding that rapid fire rhythm for jokes throughout the episode but especially once burns kind of walks in they can mine burns for so much that it's uh it it's a gift that keeps on giving for them this is when they discover like oh we love burns like this that's why like the next time it wouldn't be too long after this they'd be like blood feud you know and why don't we have burns hang out with them a lot let's do a lot more burns here that's why that one i think is my favorite season two but it's the very last one yeah it's the punchiness lets them get beyond that you know the last the last earnest episode is probably their best one and that's uh lisa

substitute but uh which comes right after this one but this one is such uh it's it's them figuring stuff out they're they're getting out of boring town for sure i i this is one of my favorite i think three men in a comic book is my personal favorite but for very personal reasons of nerdiness totally yeah but alex thank you so much for all of your your beatles insights yes yeah thank you alex uh please tell us where can find you online and more about next lander sure thing uh next lander is a streaming and podcast project between myself uh brad shoemaker and vinnie caravella formerly of giant bomb.com we play video games we talk about video games all that fun stuff we'll probably do some other non-video game stuff at some point but we're

not there yet you know right now we're just uh kind of getting getting into the groove here but we are at nextlander.com that will take you to our patreon if you want to support us our podcast and next lander podcast is found pretty much everywhere if you just go looking for it. And we're on Twitch at Nexlander and I'm on Twitter myself, Alex underscore Navarro if you want to hear me

talk about wrestling a lot. I love, you know, checking in on your streams, but also the, one of my favorite things is to watch, to watch E3 or other press conferences

with you guys like that that's so great because i i'm like oh i don't even have to think of the witty thing for me to say i can just watch wittier people say funny stuff about this it's actually some of my favorite stuff that we do because i just i as someone who grew up watching a lot of mystery science theater i sure love riffing And it turns out game company executives give you plenty of opportunities to riff. There is more serious than any bad actor. Who's the Coleman Francis of video games right now, I wonder? Oh, boy. Randy Pitchford.

Okay, yeah. I agree with that. That's why you paid the big bucks. You instantly thought up about that. Immediately. That's great. Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you, Alex. It that. That's great. Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you, Alex.

It's always great having you. Thank you so much for having me. This was a fun one to talk about. So thanks again to Alex Navarro for being on the show. Please check out Nextlander, everything they're doing over there. But ask for us if you want to check out more of what we're doing and get all these episodes one week at a time and ad-free. Please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons.

Sign up there for five bucks a month. You get just that, but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes all of our limited mini series most recent one we're doing right now is blabbing about batman the animated series that is 10 new episodes of a new batman related podcast where we talk about where the show came from in 10 episodes that are our favorites and clips and research and everything you come to expect from the talking simpsons network it's only behind the $5 paywall at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, along with 100 other bonus podcasts that you haven't heard if you're not a patron. We have a $10 level as well.

When you sign up for that, you get access to all the $5 stuff, of course, but also access to one super long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that podcast, Henry? Bob is talking about the What a Cartoon Movie podcast now you might know and you should know that we have a sister podcast What a Cartoon where twice a month me and Bob cover an animated series just as in-depth as we do an episode of The Simpsons we've covered so many awesome shows and at the end of each month we go super in-depth often over

four hours long on an animated feature film we call that what a cartoon movie and that's only available in full if you are a ten dollar and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons we've done over three years of them at this point covering so many films this month in december we're finishing out the year with film by satoshi kon millennium actress the month before that we did the Christmas classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a giant back catalog of over 200 hours of original podcasts about films as

varied as The End of Evangelion to Beavis and Butthead to America and everything in between. Check it all out. You can see a huge list of it if you go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So as for me, I've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast by the way is retronauts it's a

classic gaming podcast about old video games find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month henry what about you follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g much like alex i'm also tweeting a lot about pro wrestling i'm sure so please follow me there h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g also if you're following us on twitter follow the official twitter account of this podcast at talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod follow it you'll be in the loop about all the podcasts we do whether they're on the free feed on Patreon, whenever there's news about upcoming stuff,

you learn about it first if you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for Season 12's I'm Going to Praiseland. We'll see you then. The Heavy Hands don't work unless you move, Homer. I can't move, boy. Oh, really? Really?