Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Burns' Heir With Eva Anderson

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

"Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try." - Homer Simpson When a brush with the reaper inspires Mr. Burns to seek out an heir, he quickly finds one in the form of Bart Simpson. But as Bart grows more estranged from his family, we find the true test of a son's love comes down to whether or not he'll execute his own father for a Blockbuster Video gift certificate. Our guest: Eva Anderson Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talk King of the Hill, the What a Cartoon movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that nurtures your destructive side. I'm one of your host, the creature of pure malevolence, Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Henry Gilbert, and I remember the two E's enunciate and energy. And who is our special guest on the line?

Eva Anderson, I love kissing Hans Moorman. We all do, and this week's episode is Burns Air. Life lashing before little eyes. This episode originally aired on April 14th, 1994, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Cops and Robberson struggles against four weddings and a funeral at the box office, Turner Classic Movies, cable channel launches,

and the world holds memorials for Kurt Cobain after his, passing six days earlier. On the happier news, the Turner Classic Movies. It was seen as kind of a reaction to the colorization backlash at the time, I think. Yeah, it's one of those things I wish they would just turn into a streaming channel. And I know it technically is, but it's one of those ones where you need a cable subscription first. And I'm not opting into that first element of the subscription plan. There aren't a lot of them on Macs, though?

They're part of that library. I feel like you can get a bunch of TCM on the HBO Max. streaming app. They have a whole section. You have to be clear it's HBO Max, you mean not Max. That no longer exists. Yeah. No, that's a dead streamer. That doesn't exist. Henry, you're the

Max Master. What's the old movie situation on HBO Max? Oh, yes. Well, because Bob, where you live there, you're a maxless. You have no HBO Max at all. Yes, but you can still steal, and it's great. There are movies that are like in a section for like Turner Classic movies or

TCM movies section. There is that but yeah you don't get everything and there's not like a streaming pick on it or at least the last time i checked there wasn't and i think what tcm was i feel like i get a i see a headline every other year that like it's on the zaz lab slab right that it's close to being cut or shut down like the rumors keep swirling during the strike he fully fired everyone and then had to rehire them because he got yelled at was nice as Spielberg to do that yelling for us oh and then the first movie that aired on Gone with the Wind. That was the first film of Turner Classic movies, which was also the, you know, repository for all of the huge film libraries of classic black and white, mostly black and white films that Turner had purchased and said he would colorize. Ted Turner as a billion dollar mogul was ahead of the curve of like, oh, you should own these movies instead of licensing them all the time. And so he owned them all. And then that got popped by a bigger company and that got pop by a bigger company. And our reality channel owns all those movies, which is great. Which is great stuff.

Well, and then, yeah, Cops and Robbersons, this was Chevy Chase's first movie after the talk show failure, and it wasn't doing good. Yeah, I had to look at a poster for this to realize what it was. For some reason, I thought it was a Samuel L. Jackson movie. I think I'm thinking of something else entirely. But this is a buddy cop comedy with Chevy Chase and Jack Palance, it looks like. Yeah, it's him and Jack Palance in a buddy cop movie. Old guy yells at him. And here he is, Chevy Chase, the biggest star of the comedies in the 80s, getting scooped by a bunch of British.

people in four weddings and a funeral. Like the 90s are rough for old Chevy. And they're only going to get rougher. And yes, Kurt Cobain passes away. He was like the first famous rock star I knew the past away. I always remember like when Jim Henson passed away,

that was like the first time I as a kid knew a famous person died. But Kurt Cobain, I think we all remember seeing Kurt Loader on MTV announced or at least the clips of it afterwards. Like we weren't watching MTV live. You know, if you want to learn all about Kirk Cobain and Nirvana, there's a great museum in Seattle that I've, I think we've probably

all been to the Museum of Pop Culture. There's like a whole room. Oh, yeah. It's an amazing, like the Nirvana Museum presentation there. It's like a circle and you walk it and it's just their entire career. And it's an amazing historical piece that room. Yeah, I think at this point in my life, I was a tiny, tiny bit too young for Nirvana. I like the radio hits, but I was more a fan of what Weird Al did with their music. I lived outside Seattle. I was in middle school. And one kid really, really loved Kurt Cobain in my whole middle school. And he just taped pictures of Kurt Cobain to his shirt.

Oh. A new picture every day after he died. Oh, that's touching tribute. Yeah. And now his baby is now like an adult woman who's married to Tony Hawk's son. Is that right? Am I getting that right at that? Francis Bean.

And now lots of teenagers wear Nirvana tank tops. Yes. And that's the state of the band today. And Weird Al still performed smells like Nirvana at his show I saw this year. His outfit still looks great. His Cobain style outfit. But anyway, that's what happened the week. This classic episode of The Simpsons aired.

And joining us once again is comedy writer Eva Anderson. Eva last joined us for Season 4's last exit to Springfield. Thanks for coming back, Eva, for another great episode. Thanks for having me back, guys. I really appreciate it. Love this episode of The Simpsons. Well, we had you for another like crazy Burns one as well. We had invited you on to an episode, and you couldn't make it before, but it featured Michelle Pfeiffer, and it was so funny because you were working on a Michelle Pfeiffer thing.

Yeah. So you couldn't talk about the Michelle Pfeiffer episode. Exactly. Now, I just finished a show coming out next year for Apple called Margot's Got Money Troubles, which stars, among many others, Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer as daughter and mother. And Nick Offerman, the great Nick Offerman, Nicole Kidman. but I got up close and personal Michelle Pfeiffer experience

and she's very cool. She's the coolest. Oh, that's awesome. I was wondering if you asked about the afternoon of her life that she worked on The Simpsons. I didn't get a chance to do that. I didn't ask her about

any of her past jobs, but yeah. I wondered if she walked around in her Simpsons crew jacket like Susan Sarandon does. I wonder. I mean, maybe. It doesn't sound like it.

And this is a real classic episode of The Simpsons we're talking about today with Burns' Zeran. air, which is... It's also a big new episode for a writer. Yes, yes. We have a new writer for this episode.

So let's talk a little bit about Jace Richdale. By the way, recording this after the podcast. So Eva, not present if you're wondering why she's so quiet. She's not here. So Jace Richdale, a little bit about him. So despite working on The Simpsons for the entire Merkin era and then returning during the early Scully years as a consulting producer, this is his only credited Simpsons episode.

But he was one of three writers who joined the Simpsons when Kevin Curran's sitcom titled Circus went up in flames early in production. So he and Greg Daniels and Jonathan Collier went from Circus to Simpsons because the Simpsons needed writers. These were all funny guys. We talked all about circus in the critic episode we did with Will Minnaker about how it fell apart from just one very funny shouting at an executive. And yes, he obviously wrote a lot of jokes during his seasons, even though he's credited with one episode. In fact, he may be the writer who came up with the sticking together is what good waffles do joke I guess we were asking writers I think we asked

Bill Oakley because good waffles is inscribed on our wedding rings my wife and I because we love that joke and we stick together like good waffles but it might be Jace Richdale's joke where we're going to track this down before we die it is a great line and yeah he has all these credits on Simpson seasons when I looked at his just his Simpsons wiki page I was like oh right yeah he came back even though he didn't have a credited episode like he came back for the later seasons as consulting though who knows how many like days a week that was but still and he actually had a lot of experience writing for sitcoms before joining the simpsons so in the 80s

in early 90s he wrote for things like family ties and let's see what else do i have here valerie and amen and by the time he started writing for a show called i marry dora he became a producer so he was at producer level on shows before the simpsons so he had his foot in the door But the actual reason that he's writing for The Simpsons is that he worked on David Merkin's previous sitcom Get a Life. So he wrote two episodes in the second season. One was called Meat Locker 2000 and one was called Spuey and Me.

And he also worked on Merkin's sketch comedy show he made before The Simpsons titled The Edge. And yes, this means Jace Richdale was in the same writing room as Charlie Kaufman and Bob Odenkirk. Richdale, we've talked about it before, but on the Get a Life DVDs. It's like Dave Merkin and very few other people in the bonus features.

But I think Jace Richdale is one of the, few that's there for it to talk about background on it. And I just think of that Spuey and Me episode because Bart Gets an Elephant is spewy and me light as well. Yeah, and Jace is on the staff. And yeah, Jace was hired at the beginning of production season five. So I believe Rosebud is his first episode. He's credited with being a producer on.

So after The Simpsons, he writes for a few other short-lived sitcoms that are basically unknown today unless you care about the second Brian Ben Ben Ben Show, the one that's not Dream on. I know I don't. No. Well, I mean, one had naked people on it and one didn't. So you can see which one a young person would remember. One just had Brian Ben Ben and no old movie clips. I'm not watching that. But he actually created his own animated show after this. It was titled The Oblongs. And yes, he was more the Sam Simon to Angus Oblongs, Macaroning. And just like those two creators, he did not get along with Angus Oblong. So that show didn't go on for very long. It was just a season. But Jace Richdale was, I guess, the David X. Cohen or. the Sam Simon character who made it into a sitcom and we all watched all 13 episodes over and over again on Adult Swim in the early odds. I know I did. Oh yeah. It was a contemporary of the Mission Hill reruns on Adult Swim. Both had the same deal of being ordered to 13 episodes

and then none of them airing and then it's just burned off on Adult Swim. So it's funny that it was working with Bill and Josh in season five and six and then they split paths but both end up with their shows airing in the same place. They were WB buddies, although the Oblongs was two years after Mission Hill. That was 2001, so I don't know why WB was still making animated shows at that point, but they were. It seemed like they didn't give a shit about Oblongs the same way as Mission Hill, even though it was two years later, and they're like, yeah, maybe we'll spend millions

of dollars again. I mean, Baby Blues, like, was sort of a success, but then even that had seemingly an entire season that was color animated and then burned. Yeah, I guess, I mean, Peter Evansino, a guy who worked on the show, confirmed that. And I think other people have as well. So now we found Sammy, we need to find the missing baby blue season. Add some music to it, get it out there, deserves to be seen. So post oblongs, his only other work in animation involved being a big wheel down at the Good Family Factory.

So the Good Family was the Mike Judge show after King of the Hill that was essentially, let's make fun of liberals. And I have not seen it. I think we should cover this actually and the Oblongs on what a cartoon. and these are both things that we have not touched. I've seen a lot of the oblongs. I've not seen a second of The Good Family. I only remember the commercials for The Good Family. I've had the complete series sitting on my shelf over there for years and years on my DVDs.

And it's such a clever idea of The Good Family, like it is, instead of starting with the Beavis and Butthead character of Anderson and making that into King of the Hill, they start with Vandreason, right, as kind of the main dude and then grow out from there. And as like a Obama pill super liberal back then, I think. I thought, how dare he? There are greater enemies to fight than the NPR liberal, but now I'm thinking there's a lot of fun to be had a poking fun of, no, well-off Democrats. Sure, let's do it.

I should give it a chance, too, especially, like, there's only so much animated stuff of that level, too. It came right at the end of like, oh, yeah, we spend this kind of money in it. It's probably one of the last times that, like, rough draft would work. I'm assuming it's rough draft, actually. I could be wrong. I think it might be, but it was an ABC sit animates to come,

which is also very strange. Yeah, probably also why it, like, was barely aired. I feel like it was like a summer premiere that was hard to watch or like as in even find if you wanted to I felt I wanted to try to find it then Yeah it feels like it was buried But after working in comedy so long in the early 2010s He transitions away from comedy into serial killer base entertainment

Because he works on the original final three seasons of Dexter And writes a handful of episodes And I want to know to all you listeners out there In case you don't know, Dexter currently in its third reboot Since it went off the air So we had Dexter New Blood, then we have Jim Henson's Dexter babies, which is on the air right now. And then we have like, what if Dexter came back? I know we killed him, but what if the Dexter Resurrection?

That's another one. So there are like so many, my poor Michael Seahall. I mean, I know he's sleeping in a pile of money every night, but he can never not be Dexter anymore. It's so weird. By the next time, this current reboot, I'm like, okay, Michael Seahall, you must just love this that much. And it's crazy to me, like, I watched the first few seasons of Dexter and liked it okay. But I watched it because I liked him as the gay brother on Six Feet Under. Like, he'll always be that character to me, not Dexter.

Yeah. I originally watched Dexter with a girlfriend who had seen Sex Feet Under, and she kept saying it's so distracting to see him as a CERC. This is, that was my first introduction to Michael C. Hall. But in case you don't know, no offense to J. Strasdale, Dexter got really, really bad. And I think the writers might have been leaning into the campiness. But I feel like everyone who was watching it was just watching it because it became a trashy soap opera with murder.

the first, at least, season, very creepy. Dexter is just this very morally ambiguous, terrifying character. But then they kind of turn him into a Batman who kills. Yeah, yeah. That's what I remember feeling by the third season of watching. I also didn't watch it week to week. I was a wait for DVD viewer of Dexter. Me too.

But yes, he did work on Dexter. As far as I know, did not come back for the many Dexter revivals. And I'm not sure if he retired. I mean, that's entirely possible. He was born in 1958. But the last thing he worked on was the two-season Netflix dark comedy called Insatiable, where he was an executive producer. It's one of the many streaming shows I've absolutely never heard of, but it got two seasons. Yeah, every time somebody gets cast, like when I heard about the people who just got cast as Princess Zelda and Link in The Legend of Zelda live action thing, it's like, oh, they were in two seasons of this Netflix thing, or two Netflix original movies.

I'm like, I have never heard of these things. Yeah, I mean, I feel like at some point you could be expected to know if you watch enough TV. I could kind of know what every show is, what every show that's airing. Now, I feel like there's 10,000 streaming shows. Each one has a thousand viewers, and you might be one of them. But if you're not one of them, you have no idea what this thing is. When I saw one of his credits was The Man in the High Castle, that's when I was like, right, that was like a big deal for a small amount of time. And then now nobody talks about it feels like it also just ended very quickly.

Yeah, four seasons of that. At least it didn't go on as long as the Handmaid's Tale. Which I think is still a going concern. I think the last season, like it just, just ended. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I haven't seen a meme with, you know, the image of the women saying, this is what we're doing now on social media in a very long time. Though I guess they had to stop the man in the high castle because it was the dang television was that.

I get it. I get it. President is a Cheeto, and we're living in Handmaid's Tale. But that is what's going on with Jace Richdale. Great comedy writer who is seemingly a Renaissance man when it comes to writing for television. Yeah, it's interesting to see his pivot. I thought of my memory as like, oh, yeah, he's married to Jennifer Crittenden. Like, he was briefly married to Jennifer Crittenden.

Yeah, he was married to Jennifer Crittenden for, like, three years of the 90s. Seemingly, they met on The Simpsons. So it's just, there's a few, like, Simpsons love stories. That one didn't pan out, but Bill Oakley, I believe he met his wife via The Simpsons. Yeah, Rachel Polito. I mean, Al Jean is still married to Stephanie Gillis. I think they may be met on The Simpsons. So they're still people who are like, they're still happy together.

To paraphrase the Wiggum line about divorce. And yes, that is the story of Jace Richdale. But this is really, for me at least, one of the two most important Burns episodes. I feel like this and Rosebud, both in this season, are my favorite Mr. Burns episodes to the point where a lot of them run together in my mind for me. I sometimes forget, like, does this happen in Rosebud

or does this happen in Burns' air? Because there's a lot of going on. It's Burns thinking about his past, his life, his legacy, and exploring the character. This is back when old people thought they would die and were like scared of it. Right. It's live forever.

You know, one thing about Jace Richdale, I did want to ask Eva about, though. I looked at his credits and his 2010s, he kind of moved away from comedy and more into drama like Dexter and The Man in a High Castle. Like that's something, Eva, you're currently writing more for drama than comedy. Yeah. I'd say, is that an easy or hard thing to do?

I mean, it just takes like a, I started off in comedy and then I decided I wanted to have more options and wanted to be able to rate, like, genre stuff as well. So in 2018, I basically swapped over. But all good dramas are funny, ultimately. And, like, Dexter's was a very funny show. So him writing on Dexter makes perfect sense. Just, like, deranged serial killer show, which is very arch.

And, you know, every drama room needs a funny person in it, at least one. And or also just becomes, like, tragic drudgery. And despite what you, you know, there's such a cliche about everyone thinks of comedy rooms as like having a blast and laughing and stuff. But like drama rooms are also talking insane shit and like making up bits about the characters and gossiping. And, you know, it's drama rooms are also like social pits. So yeah, it makes sense that he would have made that jump at some point. We talk about the Simpsons writers all having dares of like eating Butterfinger Beebees or whether. Maybe they were doing the same in the Law and Order or L.A. law writer's rooms.

Oh, I'm sure. I guess fewer late nights thinking up sign gags when you're working on Dexter. You don't have to do punch up in a drama room, but you do probably have to come up with, like, really disgusting things to do to human bodies. Like, bring them in as homework. Where will the semen be found this time? Exactly. So many index cards on the wall. Yeah. I liked hearing Richdale on the old commentary saying how it was like graining jokes like he shouted out of him, you got to pitch some stories. And so he like instantly was like, apart becomes Mr. Burns' son. And like Richdale joked that like every time he tried to come up with a Simpsons pitch that he worked really hard on, those never went anywhere. But this one he just came up with off the top of his head is like the one he sold. And this episode is so good and crazy in Burns focused. I always think of it as a John Swartzweiler episode. So the writer's name always.

surprises me when I see it. Yeah. Yeah, just like the jokes on jokes on jokes or like the complete inversions of jokes. It's great. The Silverman, David Silverman, was originally going to be the director of this, but basically he was being felt he was spread too thin as supervising director on the season. They joke that he had like a nervous breakdown. On the commentary, like him and Mark Kirkland, who did take over his director, are kind of joking like, yeah, he kind of had like a nervous breakdown. So it's not like it was a rough time.

for Silverman that they can laugh at 10 years later on the commentary. The episode begins after a Pledge of Allegiance chalkboard gag. It's still crazy kids have to do that in school today. I think it's nuts we had to do it, but crazy kids do it today. I feel like soon it's going to be enforced at gunpoint. Yes. You have to say under God twice. That's what you have to. Actually, you know what? They'll bring back the Roman salute that you have to do while pledging allegiance. That'll have to be done again. Okay. But so, this is where Homer finds out. that he's won an award. Lousy job.

Nothing exciting ever happens. Congratulations, Homer Simpson. You've just won the employee raffle. Woo-hoo! What do I get? The job of industrial chimneys sweep for day. Woo-hoo! Yeah.

He takes a minute to consider it. Yes. The small beat is important, I think, in that joke. This gets a woo-hoo. Yeah. I really love this little, what a crazy opening that Homer is just saying, everything's boring, boom, he wins a prize at the start of the episode, all of it just to set up that Mr. Burns is an evil man who makes it an employee

raffle to be basically a deadly job of being a chimney sweep and going into chemical chimneys. And then Mr. Burns watches it while eating extra fancy potato chips. Yeah, a lot of the Burns episodes from this era run together in my head. And this also reminds me at the beginning of Burns for a coffender craftwork because both episodes begin with Burns being bathed by Smithers and reflecting on his life and his regrets. Last exit to Springfield was also like a top Burns episode. I think he's my favorite character.

That's true. Hey, you know what? That one starts with him watching that window washer fall to his death seemingly. It's him watching misfortune. He loves it. Yeah, you know what? Well, Bob, to show how far things have come in raising the stakes of Burns jokes, Now Burns is fully nude while being bathed by Smithers.

In season three, that would have been too silly. I think he's just getting his hair washed by Smithers in that season three episode. Oh, and by Snappy. Remember Snappy? That could have been a runner. Snappy the alligator. Homer is coughing while he thinks that the guys up top work even harder. A great joke.

I always like when Merkin episodes, I feel like, are extra negative towards like rich bosses. I always like, he always is biting the hand that feeds, which I like. This Bob is where really does run to. together for me like Springfield the Springfield gambling one as well and Rosebud all have like flashes of the life of Mr. Burns so does last exit like that has him watching his grandfather murderer man yeah what Springfield with the dollar sign has him paralyzing that worker with the bumper car crippled Irishman yes on top of his top hat so it's got a perfectly flat surface oh and the great timing of his slow descent but he doesn't have energy to pop up to finish his line that's also

great too so this is where we have a couple flashbacks one the first time he fired somebody when he was a baby similarly his first words then him making somebody dance with a slow loading like single shot handgun it's like a musket yes he's stuffing it with gunpowder and then finally we have a joke about him uh with some hippies on a green piece boat now as a kid i was only aware of wavy gravy thanks to ben and jerry's ice cream flavor that's how i knew him i think only in the past five years that I learned wavy gravy is a real man

and he's still alive. That he still is alive. I feel like the last time we cover this, I was like, oh, wavy gravy, definitely dead.

Like, nope, still with us. Watch him die by the time this episode comes out. We'll look foolish. But yes. It is such a specific detail

that he's playing, that he's been disguised as a famous hippie, not just, I'm not your hippie friend, you know, whoever, that he is like basically

Jerry from the Grateful Dead. He's just a, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The official clown of the Grateful Dead was because Grateful Dead doesn't perform anymore. Well, I don't like any part of that sentence. Official Clown of the Grateful Dead.

That's not for me at all. I bet. I wonder if that joke was submitted by Grateful, by Deadhead Simpson's writer, George Meyer. I wonder. Exactly. We'll make them wavy gravy gravy. Oh, you bet you'd like this, George. Eva, you've written in writer's room with deadheads, or at least like Mike Hanford.

He's a dead head, isn't he? Yeah, they did a thing at the sphere. Oh, really? I was just in Vegas and tempted to do the sphere, but I had two sphere choices while I was there. One, pay $100 to see a Darren Aronovsky movie, which I was like, man, I don't really want to do that. And then see Kenny Chesney, which I also didn't want to do. So I'm going to wait for a better sphere choices. What Darren Aronovsky movie was it?

It's made for the sphere. It's called Like Life on Earth, and it's a sphere-focused Coquina-Catsi kind of like it shows you images from around the world. I was wrong, guys. Fish was at the sphere, not the dead. When Henry was describing that, I was just imagining Requiem for a Dream being projected onto the sphere and thinking, who is lining up for this? It's a sphere-specific movie in the sphere's aspect ratio. You cannot watch this at home in your home theater. No, you have to pay $100 to sit in there, and I think it's very depressing.

I think a lot of it's about global warming. Yeah, see, that's what I heard. I was like, yeah, I don't want to pay $100 for that. You know what, if they should show the whale there because they need all the signs of the sphere to show the character. Hey, the wavy gravy flavor has since been discontinued. Here's what was in it.

Caramel, cashew, Brazil nut base with a chocolate hazelnut fudge, swirl, and roasted almonds. That's very busy. There's no gravy at all. This is where Burns reveals that he was also smoking harmless tobacco. Now, my mom explained the wavy gravy joke to me.

She didn't explain that that's a bong that Mr. Burns is holding there. I mean, I love that joke like harmless tobacco is a great line. well but and hey also this green peace joke here sam simon a good friend to the founder of greenpeace i think in the fast i've said he gave this money to green peace but the co-founder of green peace paul watson he has a thing called the sea shepherds where they're like the guys who kind of bother whalers and people who hunt dolphins and sam sim simon paid three million dollars for a ship it was called the

Sam Simon. And then it got renamed to the age of union in 2022 because a billionaire paid 4.5 million to improve it. So Sam Simon's name erased. He only got to have it be the name for 10 years. I'm going to assume that Disney still has to fund all of these charities because I guess they still have to give money to the Sam Simon estate possibly. I would assume so. Well, it's all going to Jennifer Tilly, right? Didn't she reveal that on her real housewives? Jennifer Tilly's the bottleneck. Yeah. You got to work through her. That's what funds her poker playing as well, I think. burns almost dies smithers comes in and sees i also love how that hippie says oh no our bees i got such a great bad hippie voice Yeah, it's like a double chong

That Hank Azaria is doing Double the intensity of a regular Tommy Chong This is where Smithers says Why Good Always Die Young when he sees Burns drawing I love it's a great drawing It burns beneath the bubbly water Like corpse is a real It's such a great drawing

But this is where Burns pops out With the rage at Smithers' incompetence And chokes him He was too weak to hold himself aloft with a With a sponge But now he's got the rage to strangle Smithers This is where Burns thinks about how he will have no one left had he died. Smithers, do you realize if I had died, there would be no one to carry on my legacy.

Due to my hectic schedule and lethargic sperm, I never fathered an heir. Now I have no one to leave my enormous fortune to. No one. You, Smithies? Oh, no, my dear friend. I've planned a far greater reward for you When I pass on You shall be buried alive with me

Oh Goody Boy you know They've been selling so many new Simpsons figures lately And what was it Super 7 Henry That one company that got the rights And they made a lot of obscure things They need to sell the little figure of Burns in the coffin

With a screaming panicking smithers Just to put on your coffee table Absolutely That, and it's, you know, wouldn't have moving parts or anything. You just have to open and close the casket. That's all you need. If they can make figures out of SpongeBob memes, they can do this, I think. The new guys, Jack's Pacific, they're more mainstream than Super 7, but they did make the evil crusty doll that says all the things and has the good evil switch.

So how much crazier is it to make Burns buried a lot with Smithers buried alive? I like that when he made whoever he has to make that diorama was like, oh, Smithers won't like it. Like he's screaming for help. He understands it's not going to be a great time for Smithers for a while in there. I like this joke because normally it's just Smithers is in love with Burns. That's the reason he does things. This one does imply that like Smithers also kind of is hoping he's betting on Burns dying soon and he gets some of the money. Despite what Burns thinks with his lethargic sperm, what he doesn't realize is there's a Rodney Dangerfield sound alike out there who is his son.

It's something we all fear. What if I have a son out there who sounds like Rodney Dangerfield? I'm in trouble. So this is where we then go to the movies. The Siskel and Ebert movie gets two thumbs up for Siskel in Ebert, which Roger Ebert's Life Itself, Doc, that's like the closest. There isn't like a Siskel and Ebert movie, right, Bob? When I saw Life Itself in Berkeley, the marquee said two thumbs up, Ciskel and Ebert.

So they stole the joke, but I really appreciated it. Oh, nice. Eva, have you seen that movie The Life Itself or The Book? No, I was an avid reader of Ebert's. We had one of his collections of reviews growing up, one of his big books. And so I read all those. And I really liked his weird blogs, you know, after he got sick. Or he just talked about there's a really long one called, We Don't Make Out Enough.

And it's just about what making out is like, it's crazy. He just posted it. I'm glad all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he just posted it on the internet, just being like, I'm just really horny stuff. Like, it was great. Yeah, I'm glad all of his work has been maintained because nobody else owns it for the most part. so you can read all of those old blogs.

And I will say if you're interested in life itself, the book and the movie are like two separate pieces. So if you like the movie, I say read the book, it's a thousand pages because Ebert knew he was leaving. And he's like, here's everything. Here's everything about my life, period. So they both stand on their own as really great pieces of work. And this is a weirdly important moment in Simpson's history

because this little joke about the THX promo, exploding glasses, breaking teeth, blasting open heads. this would later become a real THX promo and it's momentous because it was the first time the Simpsons were animated for the cinema on film 35 millimeters and if you watched movies in theaters at certain theaters between 96 and 98

you saw this a lot and I know I did it's always fun always a good time to see like a really good Simpsons joke before a movie it gets you in a good mood I think that was the plan here I was going to broke ass theaters that did not have THX sound systems because I never got see this in the theater. I'm so jealous, Bob, of you and the others who got to see it regularly. And no matter who wasn't paying attention during the trailers, the Abe going, turn it up,

would always get a laugh at the end of the THX trailer. Have you seen this Eva in theaters when it was playing, this THX trailer? It's very vivid for me. And I just assumed that they took this and then they requested the materials from Gracie Films and then they made it into a widescreen format. But no, this was reanimated. If you compare the two side by side, the drawings are a little cleaner. There are slightly different angles on characters. The pupils are the correct size that Matt Garaining prefers. So they really went all out to make this into a THX promo. It wasn't just a case of, oh, that's a funny clip. Can we use it? Merkin on the commentary makes it sound like George Lucas himself was like, I love that joke. That should be a trailer for it. I mean, you hear

these stories about George Lucas. That sounds believable. Like it sounded like he was the type who just if he saw something and thought that should happen, it just happened. Not unlike Mr. Burns, seeing a dog on TV and wanting to make him the new vice president. I like that ILM doc is such a great doc. The Ron Howard produced and directed by Joe Johnston one. So what I like about it is it's like some warts, a little warts, but they're still like, if you follow it a lot, you'd be like, they should be talking to Phil Tippett more about how Pistie was.

They're not doing that. But it's still pretty good. I'd say it's pretty good. But the YouTube account FT Depot in 2024 uploaded a full 4K scan of the 35 millimeter print of the trailer so you can check it out for yourself in 4K glory. It looks really nice. And I will say I definitely missed the THX noise because we rented an old DVD from the library. I forget what movie it was, but it started with the THX noise and the classic THX, you know, get ready for your sound system to kick in kind of moment. And I miss that. And I feel like before you see a

movie, you have to watch four commercials for a bank, two commercials for some kind of Ozempic, like Coca-Cola, at least give me 20 seconds of the THX sound. It's so soothing. Close second thing of the THX thing I get now is like if I see something in one of the IMAX branded theaters, you get like the IMAX countdown of like four, three, two, one. It's like, ooh, it's IMAX the coolest thing. But nobody thinks of like just noise that just means you're hearing a good sound system. Like that that noise works. It's a Pavlovian response. Insane. And also you could see this on a DVD, one of the earlier DVDs. They put out a Lucasfilm THX theatrical trailers, the audience. is listening on DVD DVD that featured this on it. It's like, that's how early it was in DVD of like, buy this DVD of THX trailers to show off how cool DVDs are. And Merkin said he had to fight for the head exploding, which that, when you see that

head explode, that almost makes me wonder like, no way if THX now I don't think would buy an official trailer of like our sound system makes your head explode. I don't think they would do that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was fun to think about as a TV. teenager when this was in theaters, that everybody and me are all watching a head explode before we watch this PG-13 movie. And no one is offended by the head exploding. We're all on board. And then, like, THHX is still around, but then comes another, like, thing that makes no sense if you

weren't alive in 1992 going to movie theater. Yes, this is why we exist. Now, Eva, are you aware of the toys trailers that were in theaters before, you know, the classic film toys, the one we're always talking about. We're buying it on 4K. We're screening it for our friends every holiday. The trailer that had nothing to do with the movie, and that's what made it memorable, to a point. I feel like this, everyone forgot about this maybe four to five years later, but this was a moment in pop culture. I saw that movie a few times in the theater as well. Wow. I mean, classic weird Joan Cusack performance cannot be completely discounted because of that because she plays like a baby. A woman. Is she a robot or is that a spoiler? I'm sorry. She's a toy.

Okay, yes, thank you. Yeah, she's a toy. But she just seems like she's like special needs. I saw it when I was 10 and I really want to come back to it as an adult. But it sounds like you enjoyed it, Eva. No. I don't know anyone enjoyed it. But I enjoyed her in it.

But it was like a very annoying Robin Williams performance. Just an annoying one. Just bad. And then it was like, you know, they're using the toys for like evil. There's military toys. I mean, mostly for animation fans, I think the only reason toys is known is because it's like, related to Aladdin came out the same year and it's like Robin Williams didn't like

that they advertised him being in Aladdin when he was like, no, that'll eat into toys. Toys is supposed to be my big family movie. Though I don't think whether he was in Aladdin or not in 1992, Toys wasn't going to do well in theaters, I don't think. Yeah, that's why he didn't want to be on the poster because he was throwing it all into toys

and then they put him on in any way and then they had to give him a Picasso. And then Dan Castellanato was the genie in the second. That's right, yes. The movie, though, it's really anti-gamer. So if you're into video games, you will despise it because it's saying the video games are the real problem. Kids need these wholesome toys.

But again, I have to watch it as an adult. But the weird thing is if you dig into toys, and we're spending a lot of time on this. But this is the point of this podcast. That it's weird that Mr. Burns is wearing this derby in the trailer for his air auditions. But if you watch the toys trailer, Robin Williams is not wearing a derby. But his character in the movie, or at least in the marketing materials, is wearing this red derby. So that is why Mr. Burns is wearing a derby in the trailer for his air auditions. Interesting.

Yeah, and the Toys trailer, you can also find it online. Like, it's just, it is Robin Williams out of character in a wheat field, just like doing Robin Williams' stream of consciousness comedy. Is he doing all the voices he does in his stand-up act? Yes, yes, he is. Yes, the rap guy shows up, Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up. We were speculating. Elmer Fudd does not show up because it's not a Warner Bros. brother's production so he can't do his own film so they can't right yeah john wayne oh he's

there yes eva you called it yeah i hate that shit it's not funny it's not funny who thought that was ever funny we miss him but this is why everyone turned on him they're just like wind him up and watch him go and it was always like the same six things over and over yep he just fucking what are you talking about like why are you doing john wayne it's like post nine 11 where the world has changed stop doing john wayne impression you freak well that's why they put duct tape over mouth for that stand-up. People were tired of hearing he's John one. A millionaire wants to adopt Bart. Is this goodbye forever?

Oh, miss it, son. I'm sorry, Dad. The Simpsons. Tomorrow at 8, 7th Central. Welcome to the break, everybody. failed to welcome you without saying the letter E. And I thank all of you for listening this week. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Eva Anderson, who was such a funny, great guest to have back.

She's always fun. Check out all of the new stuff she's got. You can follow her on Blue Sky and Instagram. She's Eva Faye there. There's links to it. And definitely check out all the great stuff that she's done. That recent series she wrote for Interior Chinatown is really good. And we thank again, Eva, for coming back on.

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this podcast patreon.com slash talking simpsons but yeah so now that you've had it properly set up the background for mr burns let's hear his pitch to the audience from the wide screen in a wheat field. Hello, I am Montgomery Burns. Ah! Now then, I'm looking for a suitable young male heir to leave my fortune to when I pass away. My vast, vast, vast, vast fortune.

Vast. Auditions will be tomorrow at my estate. And now, a feature presentation. Oh, very well. Let's all go to the lobby. Let's all go to the lobby. Let's all go to the lobby. Get ourselves some snacks.

This was my introduction to the Let's All Go to the Lobby jingle as a kid, too. I never saw it as a kid before this, I don't think. Yeah, I think this was around the time where it was coming back ironically. Now you see it everywhere. But it felt like there was a five-year period where every comedy did their Let's All Go to the Lobby parody. Like the Aquatine Hunger Force movie starts with a long one of it. So does the Run Ronnie Run movie. They both all start with a long parody of it.

This is also where there's one of the two deleted scenes that are on the DVD. It's a quick one that I get why they cut it for time, but it's a fun little joke here. Let me play it for you guys. Hello, I am Montgomery Burns. He's going to fire me. Don't worry, I'm not going to fire anyone. Except you, third row, second seat.

Your history. There you go. it's pretty good yeah i do prefer homer just screaming and no follow-up to that yes yeah he can never escape him he just screams from that i also just love like fast like his little pause of like did it all land for all you guys vast vast fortune always so then we head over to mr burns for a lengthy audition scene at the lily langtree theater named after a british socialided actress who died in 1929, friend of Oscar Wilde, she was. We see all the kids backstage who are trying out, though.

The poor Martin, he's about to get beaten up, and his mother looks, is colored wrong. Like, so he's having a hard day, Martin. What's wrong? Did they change her race again? She's the right skin color, but her hair's not blue. They forgot that she had season one blue hair. And Burns, I guess, well, first I thought it's like, is this like a Michael Douglas and Chorus Line look?

But it feels just like a general, like, Broadway audition look of his, you know, tied sweater over the shoulders thing. Yeah, yeah. That's what it's, like, just generic Broadway audition kind of scene. Like Bob Fawsey a little bit. Yeah. Though, see, he's not seducing any of the people he's auditioning, like Bob Fossy.

And I'm glad he's not because he's a children. Okay, so. And this is where some classic, I just love every minute of this, but especially the Millhouseisms here in our next clip. Well, I have nothing to offer you but my love. I specifically said no geeks. But my mom says I'm cool. Next.

Give me your fortune, or I'll pound your withered old face in. Oh, I like his energy. Put him on the callback list. Clang, clang with the trolley. Ring, ring, ring with the bell. Zing, zing, zing with my heart's dream. Thank you. Give the bully an extra point.

I propose to you that your heir need not be a boy. In this phylocentric society of our... I don't know what phallocentric means, but no girls. So much for Plan B. That kind of became Melhouse's catchphrase. My mom says I'm cool. Yeah. That's a very complex gay joke for Martin because, yes, he's singing a musical,

but it's a song about falling in love with a man, originally sung by Judy Garland. So it's like there's so many layers to this very complex gay joke. And also that he doesn't understand what kind of audition it is. That too, yes. It's great. And I love the costume design for him, too, because it's like, oh, it's the trolley song. So I'm like the trolley conductor singing the song.

He's not like in drag as her character from Meet Me in St. Louis. In the client, client, client, like, God, I just love that. Many years later is when I finally watched Meet Me in St. Louis. And it's impossible for me to divorce. Great song. And it's a wonderful milestone musical moment in theater and film. and yet I cannot divorce it from Jess. I always think she's going to get punched in the stomach

like after the first line of it. That poor woman. Also, yes, I don't know what fallacentric means, but no girls is another great line. It's just great lines all over the place here. This is where after Lisa has told no girls, that's where Homer is like, you're a last chance boy because that's the only kid that can do it.

And I just love that the way March says, this isn't the kind of thing I normally would think was a good idea. It's playing off of her season five catchphrase. I don't think that's a good idea. She's saying I normally would say that, but not this time. This is where we get a little Harvard bashing, which I do feel like Merkin, not a Harvard guy, comes into a room full of Harvard dudes. This feels like a little bit of his attempted de-Harvardifying it. I don't think Jace Richdale's a Harvard guy either.

I was looking into his background and no Harvard detected. How Harvard-y are these writers from Missouri in today, Eva? Oh, not at all. I mean, I did just work for David E. Kelly, who went to Princeton. Ah, okay. I don't know this. What is the Princeton equivalent of the Harvard Lampoon? Oh, I don't know. The Princeton Tickler? That's a good question. He was a lawyer. He went to law school. Ah, okay. Oh, that's right. That's, well, I should have figured that from the, like, 80 famous lawyer shows that he had written and created.

Yeah. He didn't start writing until he'd been a lawyer for a while. And I just love the line, the most expensive and therefore best school there is. I feel like that has entered my lexicon. While you two were talking, I looked up the Princeton humor publication. It is called The Tiger. The Tiger. See, a lampoon, that's like, that makes sense. A tiger, what's so funny about that? I don't get this.

This is why nobody thinks of these people. And many of them are just called the Nut. The Nut? Did you guys go to a school with a humor publication? We barely had a newspaper at my college to the point where they let me write for it. I guess I was trying to start my own lampoon because I was, I think, think the one and only guy who wrote comedy articles in the college newspaper, it didn't happen before me and then it ended when I left. So I don't think they wanted to pursue that anymore.

My community college I dropped out of did not have a castle in it where they wrote comedy, unfortunately. This is also where Marge has her Lee Majors' fantasy, which he can still fantasize about because he's also still with us, just like wavy gravy. I would assume this is a joke about how Lee Majors was a sex symbol in Marge's youth and married to Farrah Fawcett when Marge was presumably young at this time in the 70s. He still carries a torch for him. I like that they do the joke of everybody watching somebody daydream

but with Marge this time instead of just Homer that they're staring at. Homer gives Bart some advice. Hello, Mr. Kearns. I bad want money now. Me sick. Ooh, he card reads good.

So pick please me, Mr. Burns. It's Kerns, stupid. No, it's not. Disregard. Do he's the worst yet. That's it. Everyone out. Except you, one step to the left. Ah! The boot kicked him right in the butt. It kicked him right in the butt. I think Bart and Lisa are feeling a little upset right now. Isn't there something you'd like to say? They're serious.

Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try. You're right in the butt. That was great. Fantastic, Homer. The lesson is never try. We all needed to learn that when we were 11 or 12. Weirdly enough, despite how long that,

that Homer line is, it became a quote on merchandise. I know for the longest time, I had a garbage can, and there were Simpsons quotes all over it. The characters were talking and giving their quotes and word bubbles, and that was Homer's. The whole thing, like, you tried your best, even? Wow. That's good to see on a garbage can, too, because you're

probably, like, throwing away ideas or whatever or giving up on things. I mean, also, Homer's like, it's Kerr and stupid, like that, so Homer's a new level of dumb in this episode. He also, like, as you can tell Bart is struggling to read it. We don't see the writing, but you have to assume Homer's is barely legible as well. Oh, yeah. We've seen it in other episodes, right? I think Marchers stopped

having these sexy daydreams and start checking these index cards because Homer's giving too much control here. Too busy thinking of the Bionic Man. In another generation, Marge would have been reading the $6 million man fanfic wiki every day. It sets up a callback later that I only ever notice on like super close watch of like he in his very long setup for the boot he tells bart to move a little to the left bart will tell burns to move a little to the left at the end of the episode I love that very hapless look on bart's face as he's just standing there while all this machinery is moving into place yes it's it's so long he can move out of the way at any time and he just lets it happen burn says he's going to give it to the egg advisory board eggs have gotten a bad

rap lately you know which is a reference I guess the first we'll get a deeper one in stone cutters, but the American egg board, home of the incredible edible egg. Yeah, they're really trying to, you know, stop the misinformation about eggs and how they are full of good cholesterol. Now I think we're all comfortable with eggs. We're pretty pro-egg. Their plan worked for all having eggs every day. This is where I need to take this into my lexicon. Sometimes I make bad assumptions on this podcast, and I should just say, like, well, we'll see what the lab has to say about that. Or you're in front of a computer. Yeah. That could be your lab.

like well actually I think this actor is dead I think wavy gravy is dead we'll see what the lab has to say about that this is where Bart is doing some of his pranks where he reveals himself to be a creature of pure malevolence they joke that Mark Kirkland says that the pranks came in after animatic and they talk about how that's not very easy to do

there's another joke they had to change later that maybe that was what was going to make David Silverman have his panic attack, nervous breakdown as he described it jokingly Yeah, it does feel like this is the episode where the animators started winning some battles. Just a little bit. It sounds like maybe off screen it really was.

David Silverman had like a manic episode and they had to go like, all right, guys, maybe we're going to get sued if we don't do something now. This is where we get a cute little like reference to the Dickensian. It's Christmas Day. Love that joke. Kids love this. Kids understand references to Christmas Carol.

This is where Bart finds out he's going to be the air and he just knocks out Smithers with him. The Rock. It's also a great, great act break of knocking Smith is unconscious. Which endears him even more to Mr. Burns. Any violence towards Smithers. And so we start the next act with Bart becoming his heir. Just sign here. And your son will stand to inherit my entire estate. Woo-hoo! We're rich! Bart, get over to the mansion and open up all the windows.

You want to get the old people smell out before we move in. Dad, Mr. Burns hasn't passed away yet. Huh? Oh, right. So I guess you're an okay shape, huh? No heart problems or anything. Will I... Boo!

Oh! You, oh! I'm okay. Now that you've all agreed to reap the windfall of my death, I must return to my large empty mansion to rattle around and await the inevitable alone. Are you sinking what I'm sinking? Yeah. let's push him down the steps

No Homer's warm way of saying Let's push him down the steps That makes it even funny We're not very far from push her down son And Bart gets an elephant This is probably the episode that aired after, I'm pretty sure I think so, yeah

So Homer wants to solve most of his problems Was pushing, doesn't he? Just well also like That would kill Burns if he did that Also, Dan has had to act out so many heart attacks, but he does it great every time. They talk on the commentary. They say, like, it's such a cheat that he just says from the ground, I'm okay. Just to make it clear, Abe didn't just die.

And this is where Marge is pitying Burns just a little bit, though this is all part of Burns' head games we learn later. This isn't just an accident of Burns acting all sad to get their pity. And Homer is a little jealous that he doesn't get to Stocks, Boyardee, which his mouth movement's so off. I wish that unfortunately, this is one where there's not a copy of the script online. Try looking for him on the Internet Archive, but not out there. I think he said something else. I agree.

Because Jeff Boyardee, maybe the only joke that's not funny for me on this whole episode. It doesn't see. Yeah. I mean, does it mean that Chef Boyardee is real in this world or that Homer thinks Jeff Boyardee is a real person? He is real, but he's long dead at this point. Right, right. Ah, well, we'll see what the boys in the lab have to say about that.

We'll see. That's either our audience or Wikipedia at this point. I believe you. I've tried to make my new cat tray. This is where Bards is eating dinner. He's learning that Burns isn't such a bad dude or a booger man. He offers him some kind of gelton dish, which is David Merkin's way of getting in there. The fun fact about jello is made with hooves, which Snopes.com still says that's true.

It's made with gelatin. An animal byproduct rendered from the hides of bones. and animals, typically porkskins, pork, horses, cattle bones, and split kettle hides. Gelatin, it's like, it's a simple protein. You are eating hooves if you eat Jello. Bob, you're a Pescatarian. Would you say no to Jello? I just don't like Jello in general. I feel like after one spoonful, I understand the Jello experience. I'm ready to walk away from it. Not my thing. But now, I guess it's just sugar-free gelo. Probably still has gelatin in it.

It's a rare, jello is a rare thing for me as well these days. I certainly haven't made, I have never made jello, actually. Now I think about it. I've made jello pudding, but not jello. And this is where Bart starts to learn what's good about having a rich guy buy you things. Um,

I think I'd like to go home. Oh, if you stay, you can have anything you want to eat, even some sort of gelatin dish. It's made from hooves, you know. Anything, huh? Okay. I want pizza.

And I want it delivered by Krusty the Clown. Hey, it's Krusty the Pizza Man. All right, where's my 400 bucks? Hey, wait. How can you be here when your show's on live? I just threw on an old rerun. No one'll know the difference.

Children, remain calm. The Falkland Islands have just been invaded. I repeat, the Falklands have just been invaded. The disputed islands lie here off the cool. of Argentina. It's so good. I think to this day it's the most I've known

about the Falkland Islands and this really put them on the map for me at age 12 or whatever however old I was when this aired. If somebody asked you to imagine it, you think of where Krusty is pointing on that map. Krusty did teach me something.

He was ready to turn this into an educational show. Any sign of tragedy. It's so great that he was so invested in it won, it's like the Falkland War is something the U.S. was like barely involved in. It was a British thing. We were just, like, giving them some weapons and stuff.

And then on top of that, he is warning children about it in 1982 and, like, has a thing ready to go to explain the entire scenario to children. If you guys want to know more about the Falklands, it was a few years ago, but the very good, funny, British leftist podcast, Trash Future, which is mostly like a tech, anti-tech podcast, did a breakdown of the Falkland War. I mean, it's actually more deranged and it's crazy than it's pretty funny. how crazy that whole situation was. Yeah. You'd have to go back a little ways. Let me check out when they did it. And this is basically the equivalent of buying a cameo now,

including like the $400 price tag, not that different from a cameo price of some people. I guess they don't come in person. They just email you a video of them reading their phone and all that. But Eva, I don't know if you've ever purchased a cameo. I've been gifted a couple. My husband gifted me a very nice one from Brian Possein last year for my birthday. Oh, that's a nice one.

I got one as a gift from crap. Who was that weird New York senator who went to prison for fraud? The gay one. It's just Georgia. Yes. I got one of those for my birthday right before he went to jail. And also I bought my friend one from the lady from Target. Oh.

Oh, nice. The last one I got was a few years ago for my wife. It was from Dave Foley. Oh, cool. I tried to buy the doughboys one from Michael Cohen, Trump's former. And he waited. the entire like 30 days and then didn't record it. And then I was really mad about this on an episode of Do Boys because it was for their anniversary. What happens if you, if they don't record

your cameo, they just put money back into like, you get a credit. But every cameo is such a specific amount of money that there's no way you can get another cameo that costs exactly what the Michael Cohen cameo is. And if you go to like complain, you have to talk to some people called the cameo famio. I'm not opting into that. And it's hell. I had to do one of those like speak to the manager or Twitter like freakouts until they refunded my money, which they eventually did.

Well, at least you got it back. That's, uh, you can't trust this Michael Cohen guy, it sounds like. It was infuriating because he could have just rejected it outright, but he just didn't record it. And he was on our house arrest at the time. Yeah. He had the time. Well, you know, the purpose of our podcast is to explain things like the toys trailer and

the Falkland Islands, but also the movie Sliver. Yes, the 1993 erotic thriller, not a delightful rob to most, but to Mr. Burns was. It was kind of a hit. I was looking, I guess internationally it was more of a hit, and it was seen as a follow-up to basic instinct, although it's just the same writer, but also Sharon Stone is in it. And it's gone on to have zero cultural relevance. And then I think the movie is ultimately, I guess, can take some credit to introducing voyeurism to the world, or at least to the mainstream audience.

Like, here's what voyeurism is. Yes. I watched this movie. I went on a whole Joe Esther Haas I watched all of them I watched a couple years He's disgusting And his movies are terrible

But they're very entertaining Seems like a gross dude Who wrote a lot of gross things I mean showgirls put him in the ground finally He really was coasting on Some real weird shit For a long time And luckily he had some good directors

Making his stuff So he got away with it But It's a Sharon Stone Billy Baldwin movie Or William Baldwin And You can say Billy

He's Billy now. The Wikipedia framed it as like that it did okay in theaters, but it was like a VHS hit because people felt shame watching this dirty movie in the theaters, but enjoyed themselves at home for our rate of view.

And then also it almost got an NC-17 and they had to make cuts to it. And what you need to know about the movie is honestly nothing, but in the movie, Billy Baldwin has a bank of monitors where he watches the people who live in this building he owns.

After Showgirls, there's one he made, He wrote called Jade, which is wildly racist. And, like, one of the craziest things. It's directed by Friedkin and stars, like, Linda Fiorentino and David Caruso. It all takes place in Chinatown. Ooh. And so it's just got every single character that's not the two of them is, like, an insane caricature.

It's a very, that actually really put him, finished him. And, yeah, David Caruso, I believe he left NYPD Blue to be in movie. movies, and that's the first thing he made, and it was a giant bomb. And that's why in the first episode of South Park, we have Kyle telling Ike, do your impersonation of David Caruso's career, and he jumps out of the UFO. So in case you're wondering what that joke means, we're here to explain that joke as well. That's about the movie, Jade. I think the only other movie he did was that after that was like proof of life, which is only

famous is the movie where like that broke up Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, right? Like, that's the crazy. Oh, and also in the movie, I. know that as far as references go of what's on the screens, I do think Wiggum with his duck in the bathtub is a reference to them watching a woman masturbated a bathtub in the movie. According to Wikipedia, that is a scene in the movie. That makes sense. I didn't know that was a direct reference. But a nice reappearance of Jacques. Yeah, so Burns is watching Jacques have sex with Edna Craboppel. He's enjoying this. But I also like how they can't be

satisfied with doing a sliver parody. They have to sneak a taxi driver parody. into the Sliber parody. Yes. One other thing about the movie that, like, in 2024, Sharon Stone will go on to allege that she was treated improperly on the set by producer Robert Evans,

which I cannot believe that Robert Evans would ever be improper to a woman on a set. Like, it's hard to believe. Seems like a class act to me. Yeah, classy, classy guy. Eva, didn't you shop his estate sale the Robert Evans estate sale?

Very cursed item from it. I mean, that was one of the best estate sales, an auction. It was a Julian's auction house auction. They had, like, a lot of crazy nude photos that were in his house. They had a glass, like, top coffee table, which was, if you could chemically analyze the surface of that table, it would be incredible. A leather couch where you're just like, ugh, like disgusting. But I ended up with a framed photo that he owned of him with Francis Ford Coppola and Diddy.

And it's in my house. Wow. You need to excise that Exactly Or check if there's like a hidden map On the backside of it Some are horrible Ooh, it's the map to Diddy's Treasures

It's the map to all the loob Well also to bring it to another thing I've heard Eva mentioned on a podcast recently Homer's eating flowers Which I listen to you Talk about making a drink Full of Edible Flowers on the Sloppy Boys Oh yeah, he's not eating edible flowers

Those are tulips Those are not I didn't know this The tulips are inedible flowers If you go to like upscale supermarket. They'll usually sell you, like in the produce section, like a little pack of like edible marigolds and pansies. Those are two very edible flowers. And they're fun to like put into a salad, throw into, as I did, a cocktail just to like, you know, decorate the top of it.

Oh, an orchid too. You're allowed to have an orchid in a drink, like a teaky drink. But Homer's just eating fucking tulips. Yeah, I was looking up to see, can you eat tulips? and it turns out that they were mostly eaten by people in Holland as World War II was going on and they were running out of food. Oh. Starvation. Yeah, it won't kill you, but also don't eat tulip if you're not currently in World War II and out of food. Guys, don't eat tulips. Just don't eat tulips.

It's easy to not eat them. There's so many other things to have on your mysterious trips to Holland. You don't have to eat that. I also like that Homer eats it on the toilet too, like making it extra shameful. That's funny. My secret shixt. shame. This is where then Bart comes home and reveals all the other stuff that Burns has.

And I love when Lisa is the pedant about like it can possibly be bottomless. Bart seems to reveal that he's seen a corpse be thrown in there. Like Homer, he's seen Burns kill someone, right? And this is where the second deleted scene on the DVD is where Bart, which I totally get why they cut it because it's kind of needless exposition. Bleached hardwood floors and a bottomless pit. It couldn't possibly be bottomless.

Well, for all intents and purposes. I'm glad you had fun, honey. Now, go wash up for dinner. Oh, Mr. Burns didn't make me wash for dinner. That's a good way to get Pink Eye. Now, hop to it. Marge, lighten up. You want the boy to share a his money, eh, don't you, eh?

Enjoy your filth, son. How now? What's this? I do like Homer being bad at Pig Latin. That's a good joke. I'm never a fan of Pig Latin jokes, and I'm glad we're done with them. That's the only part of that I don't like. I really enjoy Marge's typical murmur turning into an angry growl.

Well, maybe I just really like the hand acting on Homer, like kind of does like an okay symbol to Marge as he's saying, Share A, his money, A? Does Jen Alpha know about Pig Latin? Can we talk in Pig Latin in front of them and confuse them? I don't know. Probably. I don't like saying the quiet part loud about the money.

I feel like then he's selling his child. And it's a little, like Homer's a lot of things. things, but it's a little gross. There's a little Epstein tinge to it. Oh. I suppose, yeah, Burns adopting a child as a billionaire. I guess I can see that angle to it, yeah. He's trafficking his

child openly. And then it's like, she's like Jessica Simpson's dad. It's like, I don't need Homer to be open. I want him to be like a little more clueless about all the levels of what's going on. I think he's mostly gone from the story, though, after this dinner scene. And then when he returned

of the mansion. He's briefly replaced by Michael Kaye, of course. Exactly. I think they cut it because Bart going like, oh, ho, what's this? Like, Bart understanding that he can get away with stuff now is clear in the next scene. You don't need him to go like, what's this? So in the next scene, Bart is flinging peas. And Lisa, it's her fault for getting in the way of her wealthy brothers peas. Homer, though, can't forgive Bart serving up the end piece to send his little helper. And this is where Bart runs off. Dan even plays Homer a little real. or he's like, Bart, you listen?

Like, that's a dramatic line reading to me. That's a real angry dad, not a goofy angry dad. But he gets a bunch of flowers thrown in his face and Homer's defeated by his secret shame. This is where Bart runs off to Burns. Burns goes like, maybe I'll even love him. And it's instantly disgusted by Bart hugging him. He doesn't understand like love or emotions.

And this is where Homer comes to the door. Bert, you're coming home. I want to stay here as Mr. Burns. I suggest you leave immediately. Or what? You'll release the dogs or the bees, or the dogs with bees in their mouth, and when they bark, they shoot bees at you? Well, go ahead.

Do your worst. He locked the door. I'll show him. When Homer pulls up, he runs over Bart's bike as well, which is a great little vision. He's going to get a train. Don't worry, folks. This is a huge cut, though, here, which just... Oh, I was going to say, well, we don't need to play the clip because this scene will show up in full when we get to the season seven clip show.

But now it's hotly debated. Should this be the robotic Richard Simmons scene? And if you ask me in the 90s, I would say, yes, why didn't they leave this in? These days, I feel like I'm more on Matt Grading's side where he thought it was funny, but it did distract from what was going on, and it's very long. But also now that Richard Simmons has passed, I'm kind of reevaluating how we treated him. And I'm thinking, you know, he was so harmless. why were we so mad at him? And I think a lot of it was probably homophobia.

I agree. And if you watch the classic David Letterman clips where he's having a lot of fun with Dave, but a lot of the Dave bit is I'm disgusted by this man. Yeah. That he's trying to make him like kiss a girl in some times. Letterman at least though didn't like stalk him and try to make him be on a podcast. No, no. Letterman had his own stalkers.

He realized why that was wrong. The robotic Richard Simmons, in and of his. itself is a fun clip. And I think the animators did a good job with like the crazy gesticulations and the liquid metal bit and all of that is fun. It also just feels like too broad. Robotic Richard Simmons doesn't feel specific enough for Simpsons. Richard Simmons jokes are like TGIF shows would have been doing Richard Simmons jokes in 94, right? Oh man. That was after my time. It would be have been directed by the great Stoney Sharp in that case. One of the best to do it. I mean, honestly, it feels like a sketch cut from David Merckin's sketch show he did before this, The Edge.

The writer for this episode also worked on. Right. Man, maybe that was just a bit. They wrote it for Wayne. No, Tom Kenny would have been playing it on the edge, I would bet. They wouldn't have the money for like a good CGI robot head explosion. It wasn't a live sketch show. So they probably could at least like, I don't know, K's, well, I was just watching Bring Everything Back to Eva's career.

But I watched the Comedy Bang Bang in season five. There's a head explosion that's insane. in that show in the fifth season where Jess McKenna's character's head explodes like that's a crazy one. At this point yeah absolutely I mean we got to give this guy some fucking dignity like it was

just like 90s homophobia rampant it's in everything like there's no comedy from the 90s it's not full of gay panic at this point right? Eva in your professional opinion would you have cut the robotic Richard Simmons or what do you have kept it in? It sucks

it was yeah that missing Richard Simmons podcast was bullshit. And we recently lost him. It was sad because people were trying to drag him back out of whatever place he wanted to remain in peace. And Polly Shore was like, hey, what if I use you to jumpstart my career? Wouldn't that be fun? Oh, God. I think, you know, it ended up doing its job anyway as like it got to be, I think they were right to cut it. And then Merkin and then Silverman could just take it on like college tours and play it of like, hey, here's the like the longest scene of Simpsons you'd ever seen for a few years, and then it gets to be immortalized on the 138th episode. And I like on that commentary, Bill and Josh were clearly two of the haters of that scene,

and we're just like, yeah, I remember nobody laughed at this in the writers or in the color screenings of this. See, Merkin got to keep the exploding head in THX, but he could not keep in the robotic Richard Simmons. Now, the real recluse we need to drag out into the sunlight is the creator of Calvin and Hobbs. he deserves it. He left us. By the way, he did the art for a new book and nobody cared about it. I think it was just like, well, we were begging for interviews and any sort of contact for years. And now you come out with this book and nobody cares.

That's right. I mean, even I didn't check out that, but I should have. What a weird guy in retrospect. Like, why did he? He's like, I want to be alone. It's like, okay, sure. And we've talked about it constantly for years. That's like, why he just quit Calvin and Hobbs?

Like, he had a good thing going. He's like, I want to be in Ohio and paint landscapes. You can do that. That no one will see. You can do all that. You just have to write a daily comic. He could have even gotten away with shifting just a weekly if you wanted to just do the Sunday strip. Or just put out books.

Like, you don't have to put them out daily, just drop a Calvin and Hobbs book every couple years. What a fucking snob. By the way, the book he released in 2023 is called The Mysteries. Shut up. I've got a mystery. Where's my Calvin and Hobbs? This thing you love, I'm taking it away. That's what he did.

Barf. We cut to Wiggum refusing to police the whole city, which this is like second episode in a row. In the elephant one, he gets all those phone calls and said like, sure, officer down. Nutcase. Like this is now just the stock like, what would Wiggum say in this scene and not do his job? Then comes what could be, if they never wanted to bring Lionel Hudson back again, I think this is like a period on his character I'd say. Yeah, it also feels like

a very funny mislead in which you think the third act might be the trial against Mr. Burns but the trial happens off screen the entire trial. They head over to Lionel Hutz, who's now has a side business and shoe repair. Damn, clots. Well,

you good folks can rest easy now because you've come to the very best in legal representation. Excuse me, is there an orange julia stand on this floor? I'll say you this one, it's almost full. Well, why don't I drink out of a toilet bowl? He'll be back. And as for your case, don't you worry.

I've argued in front of every judge in the state, often as a lawyer. This court rules in favor of Montgomery Burns. I find that he is clearly the boy's biological father. Judge, these won't be ready until Thursday. You know, we should really stop hiring him. All bangers. it's so great that March just goes like you know we should really stop firing him

it's just like yeah you should know where this is going at this point even you silly sitcom characters god I every time it's like Phil Hartman just the greatest and this time in the Phil Hartman career he's about to end his time on Saturday night live like his last episodes in a week or two or a month in about a month after this Bob you watch the Pee Wee Herman doc

there's some negative Phil Hartman stuff in there that made me like kind of bummed out about their friendship Well, I mean, based on that documentary, it seemed like Paul Ruman's a very intense guy who did make enemies or did shut people out of his life. And Phil Hartman was just one of the many. I guess Phil Hartman had a lot of, he invested a lot of his own creative talent into the pee wee character and the pee wee show. And he felt like he was shortchanged. And yeah, I felt bad that I assume there was never a reconciliation before he passed away. We also lost the great Lynn Stewart just a few months ago, Miss Yvonne. Thank you. Also Scott's mom on Comedy Bang Bang. One of the greatest ever do it. Like a tip for all you listeners out there, if you want to watch the Pee Wee Herman show, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Shout Factory just puts all the episodes online now on their YouTube channel, and we'll often have a 24-hour stream running, which I leave on all the time. It's great. But also, if you have Prime, they have, or Netflix, I forgot which one of it is. They think it might be Max, actually, has the original Roxy Theater show

with Phil Hartman that was like the adult version that came before the movie even, but came what was everyone's that class of groundlings and their kind of incredible stage show which was filmed for HBO and is awesome. There's a reason the Pee Wee Herman Doc ends at Paul Rubin's as himself like that it ends with the I'm the luckiest boy in the world scene from that like it's the greatest ever. I cry every time I watch that. RIP Savon like I said it last time but the sketch you wrote on comedy bang bang that she is in like always makes. me cry. All the listeners are all taking a shot right now. Yes. Well, honestly, now I probably can't watch it anymore. I think I've had to stop.

I've seen this episode like 30, let's say 70 times, I think, at this point. And the judge's ruling, I think I just pulled out how insane it is because he does rule that Mr. Burns is Bart's biological father. It's biological father. So that's really screwed up, despite, you know, fixing the judge's shoes and everything. That is, yes, it is so great that he proved that Burns and I love the cut to Burns and his team just shaking hands just like up we did it We pulled it off Eva you're a tiny bit older than us Are you aware of the sitcom Silver Spoons because a big chunk of this Bart's bedroom scene is inspired by the premise and the set design of that show I never watched it but yeah definitely it was on TV when I was a kid if you're wondering why the train is running through his bedroom that was a big element of the Silver Spoons set and

Silver Spoons is about child who finds out his father's this rich guy goes to live with him so So the premise of Burns' air is almost like a Silver Spoons parody, but the show had been off the air for, I think, like, seven years at this point. So not the freshest parody, but they only touch upon it a little bit. Interesting. When I guess Millhouse is like the Carlton character. Well, when I say Carlton, I mean the actor, the same actor who played Carlton on Fresh Prince was also on the Silver Spoons.

His name escapes me right now. His name is Carlton actor. Alfonso Ribeiro, I think. Yes, that's right. The premise of different strokes is kind of similar to. Those kids just get in a man's limo and end up living in a nice apartment in the opening, in a silent opening. I guess in a way, Silver Spoons is different strokes for racists. Like, I want to see all white people.

But it's all Little Orfinanny, right? Yeah, yeah. Different strokes was Little Orfinny for the 70s. Silver Spoons for the Reagan 80s. That's why Ricky Schroeder, a white child, a blonde Aryan is it? But his room looked like this. There was the train running through it. There were arcade games in the background.

I remember very little about the show as a kid, but I remember thinking his room was very cool. Oh, what, and then he'd go on to replace David Caruso on NYPD Blue, or he'd be on NYPD Blue after David Caruso. Oh, Ricky Schroeder, yeah. Fascinating. Or maybe he was Richard Schroeder at that point, who knows. Well, now he's like a manga guy, so we can call him Ricky.

This is where he's showing off to Millhouse with a line that one co-host may know very well. Cool train. Where's it go? It's me, but it won't be back. for three hours and 40 minutes. Once it had snow on it. Wow, Bart. Mr. Burns gives you everything you could ever want. My parents use that a love excuse to screw me out of toys.

Well, I'm sure you'd like to be along with your possessions. Um, Millhouse, if you stay a little while longer, you can have this blazer. It's a Bob Mackey original. Wow, a Bob Mackey! Oh, sorry, Bart. Bertholomew, you don't need him. I can be your schoolyard, chum. Yes, so this line, it tickled me as a kid because, you know, they said my name on the Simpsons,

but I knew who Bob Mackey was. You're not named Bob Mackey, and you don't grow up knowing who Bob Mackey is. You naturally learn this from people. So I'm like, yes, there's another Bob Mackey. His name is spelled differently. I'm aware of this fact. It's what every adult woman tells me when they meet me. I mean my mom's friends.

So the Friday after this airs, I go to school, all the kids are freaking out. They said your name on the Simpsons. and I was like, let me tell you other 12-year-olds who this fashion designer is and how it's not me. That's so funny. Have you heard of Cher? As you explained it, Nelson runs up and punches you in the stomach. Yes, exactly.

Luckily, they were all interested in my Bob Mackey knowledge, but this was very exciting for me as a 12-year-old. Did people become more aware of Bob Mackey, the designer again after like the Barbie movie? He's a big designer of Barbie clothes, or there's like Bob Mackey collections of Barbie clothes that are featured in the Barbie. film of

2023 I've been waiting so long to be the most notable Bob Mackey but there's a guy I think in like Tennessee

who owns like a haunted blues club or something or a haunted honky tonk I think he might be above me so I'm waiting

for these two guys to pass on and leave the Bob Mackey legacy to me is he an E Y or an IE that other

wrong like Drew Mackey wrong spelling get it right guys come on you're the only EY I know like our pal

Drew Mackey is also an I.E. Not an E.Y. This is where Bart, I do also love how Milhouse says, well, I'm sure you'd like to be alone with your possessions. Like, that's such a great line. The bit of Burns trying to play football. It's all apparently animated by David Silverman, which is why it has, like, great timing. It is very funny and one long take. Like, I love it. It's one of the few things he could work on before having his nervous breakdown. Just the timing of Burns in his leatherhead, oldie time football player outfit runs up,

is so tired, then it's almost a Peanuts joke of kicking the football, but it kicks smithers in the face and Burns passes out on top of them. Yeah, they both fall over on each other. It's very nicely timed out. Again, it's just like a single shot. That's great. Oh, and speaking of

animators being exhausted, then the next scene was another one that controversially, it was one they had to get talked out of the writers by the animators. Yeah, in fact, it's so complicated that it's even hard to describe it's basically like bart's versus a train on this mountain with all these switchbacks and the train in the bart's car constantly colliding and they had to tell the writers this would take weeks just to plan out we need something simpler and i think this is the

line in the sand that was drawn where after this point there could be no big changes after the animatic which the animatic is all of the layout drawings basically stitched together with the audio to give you some idea of what the show will look like before it's finally animated they did not want to do any more changes after that. And this was a step too far and things changed drastically afterwards. Thankfully for the animators. The fix instead of a very complicated

hard to time and animates railroad gag, the replacement, one Estonian dwarf pops up and says, you're kidding me. You're telling me. Instead, it's very creatively staged where the things flying over the wind, she'll give you an idea of what Bart is doing, but it's great that your mind has to

put together the rest of the image. He destroys Santa's village and nearly kills one of the elves who is being portrayed by Estonian Dwarf. That's what his wiki page is. That's one of the days he was not studying Lisa. I love Estonian dwarf. I wish he appeared more. He's really only in the Mercantiers to be a person to nearly die is mainly what happens to him.

I'm only Millhouse when he gets hurt. Yes. Check my medic alert bracelet. Will this Homer kill him? Is that why he no longer is on the show? Oh, that's true. You know what? No, he fully became millhouse. Every millhouse afterwards is he was trying to get his citizenship while posing his millhouse.

We head over and see the sign for conformco, which is the deprogramming place, a subsidiary of Mrs. Fields cookies. I love that before and after picture. It's a very funny picture. Yeah, it's like you will still have a blank mind, but you will be dressed like a businessman, which is more appropriate for this world. This is where they learned that he has worked on Jane Fonda, was a heartbreaker, didn't work on Peter Fonda. Jokes flew over my head as a kid. I mean, the joke is that, like, Jane Fonda had stopped being a radical by the 80s, but Peter Fonda was still being weird. I'm assuming that's what the joke is. I mean, that's when she's married to Ted Turner. Mm-hmm. That's when she became more of a conformist, I guess, right? Yeah, I'm not really sure what Peter Fonda did, though in, like, the latter, like, since we've recorded this, he has passed away. But in his latter years, he was saying, like, we should put Baron Trump in a cage. He was being very inflammatory on Twitter.

In the 90s, he was in the movie Uly's B's, which I only. know because it was filmed. Uly's Gold. Uly's Gold. Thank you. Wait, bees and gold, similar? Yes. Well, we'll see what the boys of the lab have to say about that. Boy, if I have to say that every time I do one of these, I'm going to run out that catchphrase. Yes, I know Uly's Gold because it was filmed where I grew up in the Jacksonville, Florida area.

And actually, at the movie theater, at AMC Theaters in Orange Park, they had a signed poster from Uly's Gold in the break room because I think they, like, did have, I don't want to say they did the premiere there, but like it must have screened there or something. So I always think of, with my first job, I think of Yuley's goal. Now see, I'm looking up this Peter Fonda thing and he tweeted this, I believe, in 2018

and he said that Baron Trump should be ripped from his mother's arms and put in a cage with pedophiles. If you tried that today, he would break free of the cage. He would kill all the pedophiles because Baron Trump is now the world's largest man. He's very big. Yeah, I think he is like in an amazing colossal

man situation. He's just living in a giant cave somewhere and they're just moving trucks of food up to it every day. I think so, yeah. Meanwhile, Jane Fonda still had an 87, still starring in movies about Tom Brady, very active actor. Still like doing political action, mostly about climate issues and general anti-Trump stuff. So the deprogramming didn't fully work on her, I'd say. And everyone's still mad about her.

Well, the wrong people are still mad about her. But it's funny to still see her name brought up in conversations. And then they have a joke about how Paul McCartney got out of Wings and he was the best one, which I wonder, did Paul and Linda McCartney see this joke when later they would record their guest appearance a couple of years later? I mean, it's flattering. Can you name any other Wings person? I can't. No. Boys in the Lab. Get on it. We see that seemingly this private detective guy has kidnapped Bart and is screaming at him and telling him that.

that he's homer's kid and we then see that while Quimby is cheating on his wife with a model of some sort then it turns out that for two whole weeks it's been a gruelly two weeks he opens the door and it's Hans Mole Man not Bart

but who you fully believes he is Bart Simpson. So good. This is my favorite joke. This is my favorite thing in the entire episode. Just the like mom, dad, I missed you. He's never been more lobotomized than he is in the scene. And we get to it at the end, but this is when I believe the name Hans Moleman

is coined. Oh, wow. Yeah, maybe internally they were calling him that like on scripts or whatever, but like Mard's saying it out loud. I don't think it ever was said out loud before. Definitely not when he dated Selma, right? Well, when he dated Selma, we saw his signature once and it said Ralph Mellish, which is a Monty Python reference and probably just a joke that a layout artist made or maybe the writer made. But I think it's like many things on The Simpsons, it's an attempt to troll Matt Grainning because when Matt Grainning saw this weird, disgusting background character, he's like, he looks like a

mole man. So they decided to roll with that, I think, and that's how he became Hans Molman. Marge's reaction to it as Homer starts kissing him all over his face. And then we go to Bart's and Burns watching

Insightly an episode about minting money and tycoon conventions. And it's a great joke of Burns loves the violence so much. that he's laughing too long and it's making Bart uneasy. And Burns has never seemingly ever watched television before with Is all TV this wonderful? It's interesting how subtle the turn is of what turns Bart.

It's just getting the ick, as they say. I'd like to go home now. And I love how, I mean, sure is doing great this entire season. But I love his reaction. Like, his laugh to what? That's a great turn too. This is two clips here, but it's, It's just, this is my favorite bit in the episode.

It is so funny as Burns now brings back the sliver cam. They weren't just an easy reference to the film Sliver. It's then used for plot purposes. I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you this, but I'm afraid your family doesn't want you back. I do not miss Bart at all. I am glad he's gone. As am I. It's probably my imagination, but something about them didn't seem quite right.

Really? Excuse me for just a moment. People, that was all wrong. Homer Simpson doesn't say bow, he says... Do! Sorry, MP, but I'm having trouble with this character. Is he supposed to have some kind of neurological impairment, like Rain Man, or Awakening? I mean, what the hell am I doing here? And his dialogue has none of the wit and sparkle of Murphy Brown. Hey, you know, we're getting into Golden Time.

A little showbiz lingo. I don't think we understood what that meant last time, but now, we know. We stayed on schedule on my last show. I don't go into Golden Day. That's basically overtime, correct? Yeah, that means you're shooting extra out. Everyone gets paid more. You fucked up.

But this is the show sharpening their knives against, uh, I'd say, say actually two different enemies, but the first one would be Michael Caine. Yes, and I guess Murphy Brown? Yeah, Murphy Brown won. When they say the Witten Sparkle and Murphy Brown, this is my belief. They don't say this exactly on the commentary, but The Simpsons, they submitted for the comedy category instead of the special animation one

in 92 and 93, and they lost, like, they didn't even get nominated, and Murphy Brown usually won it. It's like, it won it in 92 and 90, I believe. Oh, so this is a direct hit. Yeah, that's... This has none of the wit and sparkle of Murphy Brown. They are jealous of the success of Murphy Brown, yes.

I think we were confused why they were not in any categories in season four and season five, but that's because they submitted for a different category and did not make it in. But then season six, they went for Lisa's wedding. That's when they decide to start submitting for the animated category again. Yeah. The Simpsons becomes the Murphy Brown of the animated category from then on. This is the last time they could joke about Murphy Brown, dominating the Emmys because from this year

onward, Frazier is like Emmy King for the rest of the 90s. Yeah, we know Homer's actor is Michael Kane. I wish they would have identified who this Marge is supposed to be because they never say anything on the commentary. I'm just curious as who they were sending up with the female actor.

Well, I just like, is she supposed to be like Faith Ford from Murphy Brown? Like one of the minor characters? The Michael Kane one is their revenge for him turning down Homer and Apu. At some point, it seems like he must have They seemingly thought he was a yes because they wrote the entire. There's multiple scripts out there of Greg Daniels script for the Homer and Apu episode

where all the jokes that are with James Woods in the episode are with Michael Kane. We talked about it on that podcast. And so he turned them down, I would guess, later than normal. And this is their revenge of having, or maybe they even thought they could get him for this one. Calm down. I love the bow, but it's also a nice, subtle little joke that Burns knows that's wrong, but he has to check to see what Homer actually says. The thumbing through the script is very funny

until he lands his finger on the right line. And there's so many pages to it. It's like a hundred page script they're going through there. And also I like the little joke by Castlenetta that he, as fake Homer, he's doing his Walter Mathau season one voice. Oh, yeah, yeah. Frosty milk. That he's like, I do not.

It's what Mike Mitchell loves to do. I do not miss Bart at all. I'm sorry that one. I usually do it to make my wife laugh Yeah, yeah Just when they had no idea who And then Homer was just like violent Had no real identity

My wife thinks the Tracy Allman cookie thief short Is one of the funniest thing Just based on how weird the line readings are Like did you take those cookies, Bart? Somebody took those cookies Somebody Yeah, you're right, somebody took them So funny

And then the Estonian dwarf is already back he's posing his Lisa. I like, too, that when he takes off the mask, he has a fully lit cigar under the mask. Also, Burns mentions Neil Simon's first play from 1961, Come Blow Your Horn. That's the dinner theater he's referring to. I like that once he's reset, everybody,

he walks right back into the room where Bart was for our second little clip here. Yes, we'll just get it right. We'll all be back doing Come Blow Your Horn at the Westport Dinner Theater. All right, then. see what the old Simpson family is up to now. That's them all right. I can't believe it. I guess you're the only one I can trust.

Dad? That rib always breaks. Like Bart is extra stupid too that he's like, that's them all right like duh oh that rib always breaks like is another great light i think if my knee makes a noise was i bend over i'm like oh that knee always breaks the fact that he says it was sentimentality is very nice so now burns is fully uh i don't want to use the word grooming now but is turning bart into him that is what he's doing let's say dressing sure dressing yeah that's right i think you wanted to say grooming henry no no Bart is developing a mighty hump as well.

And Shira does a great delivery, too, of like, there is, like, sentimentality. It's like, you really are my son. This is where they're going to fire Lenny together in another classic Lenny scene. Now, you really are my son. This calls for a celebration. Let's fire some employees. Excellent. Okay, let's make this sporting, Leonard.

If you can tell me why I shouldn't fire you without using the letter E, you can keep your job. Uh, okay. Um, I'm a good work guy. You're fired. But I didn't say... You will. E! Let me try one.

Hey, hmm. Hey, the trail of donuts ended. Bart! Homer! What a coincidence! And a perfect opportunity for you to be. prove your loyalty. Go ahead, Bartholomew. You may fire when ready. I guess you should point out he's not just firing employees. He's executing them.

Yes. I think it's interesting that Mr. Burns doesn't just want power. He does, he's lonely. He is doing all this stuff just to have Bart around. It's just kind of a dimension that you don't always get from him. Yeah, he actually does want a son. As long as he, uh, he, is as evil as him. That's what he wants. He has no respect for Smithers because Smithers just wants to please him. He wants another version of him, not some sycophant. Who will beat up Smithers and knock him unconscious with a rock?

Weirdly enough, I was having an issue during this episode where I was on my non-work PC typing some stuff up in, I need to clean the keyboard. So whenever I was hitting the E key, it was registering twice, so every E was a double E. And as I'm typing out things, I'm like, man, a lot of words have E's in them. That joke was right. it's a fun challenge I love work guy Lenny is so fun

again another great cheer delivery there Smithers will later call it Lenny's carcass or Leonard's carcass so yeah he's dead Lenny died at the bottom of that and so did Smithers and Burns too seemingly I also love the delivery like gasp gasp gasp and then but Burns his gasp is a sarcastic one

like oh what a coincidence and Bart's briefly he's not sure what to do Burns lists all the things things he gets. Most importantly, a gift certificate to blockbuster video. So useful, especially these days. That was a good bargaining chip in 1994. Yeah. I went there all the time. I haven't done a tale of the tape in a while, but I just, this episode always sticks with me because I taped every episode off TV as a kid or my family did. And this one, we did it as a group activity. I can't take all

the responsible. You all press record together. All the fingers came in. Well, it would be like, No, it's your brother's turn to hit pause on the commercials. Like, uh, and I always remember this because we were taping it off TV and right when Bart says you're fired, that's when our tape cut off. So the ending of this episode was like one I only saw in reruns until the DVDs came out. Like we ran out. We were, I should have known we were playing with fire. We were like, ah, I bet there's enough tape left to finish the episode.

And then it cuts off at your fire. You never got to see it. but you watched it live and you had to carry those memories with you for at least a decade. As a family, we had to act out the moleman kisses without just for each other. In an oral tradition, pass it on. But yes, Burns is actually fired. Fire me. And again, like Bart tells him to move over and little to the left call back to before.

But Burns has to repeat his You Can Never Be my son. Like he knows he's in a TV show. And thankfully, Lenny is not dead. I like how Smithers tosses himself after him. I assume he, like, superhero style, like, caught up with burns in the midair somehow and, like, gripped him for safety. This is where, yeah, as they're screaming, Bart and Homer share a loving hug. And this could be the end of the episode, but they've got one more thing. For one thing, it does seem like that it's almost like a story note where they're like,

oh, you need to let Bart know that his family does love him and that was a fake family. It's like other episodes, I don't think they'd bother with resolving that. But the family also had no questions about why these actors wanted to study them. They just took them up on it. So let's hear the happy family wrap things up. Son, I know you're upset because you thought you saw us on TV saying we didn't watch you in our family. But those were just actors playing us. How do you know?

Because one of them hung out with me for a week trying to get my character down. Yeah, me too. That Mitch had taught me a lot about his native The point is the real Simpson family missed you a lot and we're really glad you're home. I love you guys. Right back at your son. Hmm. And now I want you to meet your new brother, Hans Moleman. Kawabunga dudes.

Give it a try. It's like kissing a peanut. Homer, I want that thing out of my house. Yeah, I guess we take it to face value now, but it was a new idea in 1994 to just want to kiss an old man's salty head over and over. One of the weirdest things he ever did. Kissing a peanut is such a wonderful description of it. And just a hilarious drawing of Hans Molman as part. And I love how Homer calls him Hans Mulman, not Hans Mulman.

He really hits the mole man. Yes. And Marge calls him a thing. She wants that thing out of her house. That Hans Wollman had been pretty much set to have his darker skin tone, but for this joke, for him to have become Fulia Simpson, he now has the yellow skin tone for the family as well. I also love any joke about how crappy old season one merchandise of Bart had him say

Kawabunga. And so that's when Han says Kalbunga. Yeah, I think Kalabunga was only said once sincerely on the show, maybe once or twice. And now any old catchphrase of Bart's, is now the subject of mockery. Like, I can't believe we used to say don't have a cowman. It was so great on the commentary for the first episode of season two, Bart gets an

half, where Bart, for real, says on screen, like, Cowabunga while holding his sled over his head, like, because he's going to go sledding. And on the commentary, Al Jean's like, oh, I guess we did have him say Cowabunga. I thought we never did it. And it was only on T-shirts. In Alan Siegel, his book about The Simpsons history, The Stupid TV, Be More Funny. he mentions how Bart would say catchphrases off of TV because he's a kid who watched TV

but that kind of that aspect of it just gets erased and it's like no Bart just says Calabunga because he's like a cool skateboard kid He created Cool Your Jets Man that's not an existing phrase We end the episode with many kisses to Hans Wolman but what a wonderful crazy episode of the show

bolstered by a lot of Burnsisms Yeah it's great that this is right after after Bart gets an elephant and both are just crazy gag pack episodes. And like this is one of the ones I will throw on when I'm bored or if I just need 20 minutes to kill. And actually I just did that in Montreal when I was visiting. My wife's taking a shower. I was like, I'll put on the Simpsons. I chose this one.

And I laughed as a Simpson civilian, not as a podcaster. I was enjoying it just as a regular TV watching guy. But yeah, like, again, it's like number two next to Rosebud for my favorite Mr. Burns episodes. This one in, you know, Springfield, the gambling one. one and last exit to Springfield, like those are both perfect Burnsy ones. But this is like, normally you think like, oh, if a character gets this hot in a sitcom

and they do multiple dedicated episodes in a season, you almost would be like, ah, they're really hitting this character too much. But in these classic Eric Simpson, I never think that about a Burns episode. Yeah, I mean, we're covering season 15 now. We're asking, where's Mr. Burns? Hey, Goober.

Where's the Burns? When we cover the episode Simple Simpson, the Spider-Man or the superhero parody, like when Mr. Burns is a villain and it's like, oh, they finally remember that Mr. Burns is like awesome and should, can be a villain of an episode. You did just do Where's Poochie, by the way?

Where's Mr. Burns? Yeah. When he's not around, everyone should be asking, hey, where's Mr. Burns? He is totally in our faces. Well, he's not a bad dude or a booger man. We know this. Like, no, another true classic episode for sure.

Yes, thank you so much for joining us again, Eva. Can you let's know where we can find you online and more about what you're working on lately? Yes, I'm off the Terrible X app, but I am still on Instagram, the terrible Zuckerberg app, as Eva Faye. I'm also on Blue Sky as that. And yeah, nothing right now, but keep an eye out for Margo's Got Money Troubles coming next year on Apple. That's my most recent project. And yeah, thanks guys so much for having me. This was a total delight.

No, it's so great to have you back, Eva. I only lightly talked about your sketch. That's my favorite sketch ever. I appreciate it. It's nice to bring back the ghost of Lynn because she was a very cool lady. I knew her since I was a child. And she had a very cool luau themed. Oh, that's amazing.

That's so sweet. With a lot of the greats of Los Angeles all showed up for her. So she was a really beloved figure beyond being just one of the funniest people who ever lived. That's wonderful. RIP to Lynn Stewart, Lynn Marie Stewart, the greatest. Well, thank you so much, Eva. love to have you back. Thanks, Eva.

Thanks, guys. Thank you so much to Eva Anderson for being on the show. And if you want to support our show and get episodes in advance and more importantly, add free, go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and signed for five bucks a month. You get ad free episodes and also access to a very long eight-year back catalog of full-length miniseries episodes covering things like Futurama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, and The Critic. And that five bucks a month also gets you new monthly episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill, and that's only happening at that $5 level, only at patreon.com

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You get extra each month, in addition to all the $5 things. For five or even six hours sometimes, we talk about an animated feature. film, its whole production, and go scene by scene through it. We are nearing the end of our summer of Disney 2000s animated features. We started with an extremely goofy movie. Then we did Lilo and Stitch, the original. Then we did Atlantis, the Lost Empire, and this month will be covering Treasure Planet, a very interesting production, to say the least, to wrap up the summer. And that's just the most recent ones we've covered. We've done so many Disney films. We've done all the Pixar, we've done all of the toy story films and other Pixar movies too.

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And never forget that Talking Simpsons.com is your source for all of our previously released free podcasts. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 15 Simple Simpson and we will see you then. Bart, this isn't the kind of thing I normally would think was a good idea, but you wouldn't have to live with Mr. Burns. You'd just get all of his money someday. This could provide for your entire future.

Congratulations. You've just graduated from the most expensive and therefore best school there is. Hello Marge, I'm Lee Majors. Will you come away with me? Sure. I've got to stop fantasizing about Lee Majors. Oh, one more.