Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - C.E.D'oh

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

A lonely Valentine's Day leads Homer first to grease and then an Alec Baldwin parody in one of the funnier episodes of season 14. As Homer steals the nuclear plant from Mr. Burns, we reflect on the show's many references to birds, Poe, Star Wars prequels, and much more in this week's podcast. Just be sure you brought enough oil for the whole class! Support this podcast, experience it ad-free, and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking Futurama talking of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more I hardly endorse this event or product product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we throw back our legs and pollute our britches with delight. I'm one of your hosts, the moon-faced simpleton, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? I'm Henry Gilbert, making lovely rope ladders in case of a fire.

And this week's episode is C.E. Doe. Children, so naive. What? Who's naive? I didn't say anything. So naive. This episode originally aired on March 16th, 2003, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, boy, Bobby. Agent Cody Banks beats Willard at the box office.

The very silly video game WWE Crush Hour is released. And the day after this, it's a moment of truth for Saddam Hussein as a coalition of the willing is looking for weapons of mass destruction. So many euphemisms. Let's go back to item number one, Agent Cody Banks. There were so many spy children in this era that we had to worry about. There were the spy kids. There was Cody Banks. We grew up with James Bond Jr., of course.

Much worse. Well, because James Bond Jr. let you imagine that clearly, though they said he was his nephew, clearly he was one of the many illegitimate children of James Bond. Yes. I know there were tons of action figures and stuff. I just was not on board with that, but I have not seen Cody Banks. It's Frankie

Muniz. It's Frankie Muniz, and Hilary Duff is the love interest in it, I believe. Ah, okay. Frankie, not doing so great these days, but he's hanging in there. Well, I think we muniz it's frankie muniz and hillary duff is the love interest in it i believe ah okay frankie not doing so great these days but uh he's hanging in there well i think we mentioned this before on the episode he guested on a while back but i maybe this is improved but his twitter was the most depressing twitter on the planet and it was all self-inflicted he was just oversharing depressing moments from his life though i heard the brain problems thing we talked about then was over estimate he said no it's not that bad people are making it sound bad people are still talking about

that malcolm in the middle reboot it could be around the corner i love that series we revisited it for talking simpsons a few years ago and i have a hankering to re-watch it again i mean there's only so much brian cranston material out there the movie it beat did you happen to see that one bob willard the remake of the killer rap movie no wait did crispin glover have something to do with this yes okay that guy is such an unpleasant weirdo i only like him in back to the future uh and actually i just saw uh the david lynch film wild at heart it is uh well it's a david lynch film that guy's a little weird did you ever notice that it's kind of a little he's kind of an oddball, that David Lynch. Well, Crispin Glover is in it very briefly playing a screaming maniac.

And I thought, well, they just filmed Crispin Glover. And they were like, well, it's time to start the movie, Crispin. And he's like, movie? So, yeah, I didn't see this. Did you see the Willard film, the rat movie? I did, though, because I was friends with people who had rats for pets. They were very cute rats, though. You're just doing a sped up version of like a

cat or a dog of like in two to three years you're going to have to say goodbye to them and it's going to be sadder faster but they they did not like willard because willard actually abuses his pet rat and he's not a good rat owner yeah 2003 film it is crispin glover in the main role like he directs some pretty bad movies he didn't direct this one but he did i believe direct the music video for his cover of ben done for the willard soundtrack oh wow i always make the mistake of thinking the michael jackson song ben a beautiful song by the way um i always make the mistake of thinking it's from the movie willard and actually it's from the sequel ben which is softer about how nice ben is and even if you haven't seen it if you're simpsons die hard you heard it in the band episode but yeah and then wwe crush hour is one of the sillier video games

out there it is taking the pro wrestlers and then putting them in a twisted metal ripoff and it's a fun video game to watch be played. This is the era in which we had a lot of these style of games to the point where they even made like a Twisted Metal Babies kind of a game. Yeah. It was kind of Twisted Metal for kids, but I was a minor when I played Twisted Metal. It was not that offensive.

Though, if you'd like to watch a TV show with a previous two-time talking simpsons podcast guest watch twisted metal on peacock to see mike mitchell he's very funny in it oh and i'm looking at the wikipedia page i'm also looking at the the list of people in the show and i i was not paying attention to wrestling in this time period so i i recognize very few of them but the story is there's a plot to crush hour and apparently v and apparently Vince McMahon has control over all the television networks, and he makes the WWE superstars feature on any TV show or commercial that he wants, and the newest thing from his twisted mind is Crush Hour.

So the plot of this game involves Vince McMahon inventing Crush Hour. I see. Well, unfortunately now talking about Vince McMahon forcing people to do things is not as funny as it used to be. And it's just a rip from the headlines. And hey, a commentary by Jim Ross. Oh, that's one of the funniest things about it because you will hear him say, Triple H uses fireballs. I only like when he's talking about Duckman.

And yes, of course, the day after this airs, it is George W. Bush announcing his zero hour for the thing we all knew for the previous uh i guess probably since the night of september 11th we knew what was coming the horrible genocidal war crime known as the invasion of iraq i remember uh watching some of this live and i believe i was at work and my manager called me to the back room to watch the big statue of saddam being pulled down like he thought this is an important moment and we need to come to the back room and check this out. This will be remembered well, I suppose, probably. This speech he gives, I believe this is the one. See, I don't remember.

I definitely did watch it live on TV and was sad about it. But now I can't envision it without just the cuts of it that are in Fahrenheit 9-11. Because his big speech is central to the film oh and I guess you can you can read this entire speech online it's all been preserved yeah there's a lot this is a big speech I guess it was a big moment to justify all of this war now of course Bob you just you do it without a speech and you just send weapons to people and you know you don't even need to talk to Congress about it and then when they use the weapons to kill civilians you're like I'm frustrated with that but here have some more

money grumble grumble nobody votes against it now it's uh that's this is a depressing time when we're recording this but uh yeah and you know we we covered c sorry we covered mr spritz goes to washington and we felt a little guilty about talking about politics but hey the episode was about that but now we fully regressed into the early aughts in the year 2024 because Jon Stewart is hosting The Daily Show again. So I feel no guilt whatsoever about being too fixated on politics last time we covered a season 14 episode. It's just the feel of the time.

This episode is certainly not as political as Mr. Spritz, but definitely has the feel of a 2003 television episode too so we watched this episode and then the very next day the invasion is made official in on television so good times and so one odd thing about this commentary is that i guess al jean doesn't really know what to talk about anymore on commentaries doing them for 14 years so he reads a few questions by one fan and i i don't know if this happens on other commentary tracks on this season i forget but i'm just wondering where these were solicited from yeah i wonder too and it's some british guy too which i also don't like hearing

i've already complained enough on this podcast about the overly uk-centric views on most simpsons wikis that don't get americanisms in it i'd also never even heard the term being a lovey before until hearing that yeah and they're not even to be slightly snarky about a 13 year old commentary track they're not even good questions they're just like whiny questions they can make fun of which i guess is the point of it where one of them is oh why was every guest you worked for such a darling to work with and just so wonderful and then the other question is is, oh, could you stop telling us to buy all of John Schwarzwalder's books every time you talk about one of his episodes? So they're just reading off complaints that were sent in. I'm surprised Al Jean didn't have one from somebody saying, like, you're too nasal on commentaries.

I've liked when he's been self-deprecating about notes on his voice on commentaries. Though they have all the space to answer fan mail because Dana Gould is absent from this commentary and he controls them when he's on the commentary. That is true. You could tell he was going to be a future podcaster. He is a great writer. This is one of the funniest episodes of the whole season, I'd say. Great script. But also, I think he really was

just a powerful fun force in the writer's room that they're like man we just love having this guy around he is entertaining and that's why we can always tell when a joke is probably his because i assume he was often the loudest voice in the room being a performer yes yeah it's still strange like he chose hey you know what i'm not going to be a Simpsons millionaire anymore. I want to be full-time comedian again. I mean, he did get to make his own TV show after leaving Simpsons as well, like for three seasons, The Stand Against Evil show, which I liked. I watched the first season. I should have finished that show.

Yeah. I mean, it ran for a fairly long time for what it was. And John C. McGinley is a great actor. Like he is perfect to be another of the many avatars for Dana Gould's feelings about his abusive father. Yeah, I mean, Dana Gould, we talked about him when we talked about his first episode, but he has the stand-up comedian sickness where any other kind of work will not do, regardless of how lucrative or stable it is. Like a Jay Leno before him, he must perform.

This is full of Gould-y type deals. And also, I mean, it's also defined by a man desperate for sex as well, which definitely fits in his au vu. Yeah, it's grounded in just marital problems, I guess. Though, yeah, I do feel like, you know, the animation in this is good. I don't want to be too mean on Mike Anderson, but there is some parts where I'm just like, oh, this is a little stiffer or whatever, but maybe i'm just in my head about it because listeners if you haven't uh gone to our one about avatar the last airbender that's in the

what a cartoon feed you really should because that was about how a year or two after this aired they kind of ransacked film roman of a lot of the animators who were getting tired of doing sitcoms like the simpsons and king of the hill and went over to avatar and so i was just thinking about oh man this is kind of stiff here these are future avatar animators who are getting tired of this i think it's because maybe we're also doing some of the best looking episodes of season four at the same time so it can't help but look uh like a lesser uh thing lesser product lesser yeah i do wish lauren mcmullen directed this again mike mike b anderson he's a steady hand you can count on him for good work but it's just that this has such a

great script i wish their best director of this season laura mcmullen was directing this episode but the the episode though it also feels like that was the other compliment i want to say about this one it feels like they remembered why mr burns is funny yeah yeah i i feel like was the last mr burns episode with his it was a hunk hunk of burns in love man i feel like there had to be another one in between but that's the last one that stands out yeah and i mean mike scully in his years he got away from the power plant because i don't think he was interested in those stories and also i assume he thought like well we told all of those stories but here is al jean back to burns figuring out like oh we can have a power plant episode it's been a very long time since that has happened in my memory at least in in this current substance timeline

and it's not just that they remembered like burns is funny and that him versus homer is funny but also they remembered to pull out the thesaurus because burns actually is talking like his extra old band guy again it feels like they remembered that bit from burns that they had not really used as much before this yeah instead of just using him for weird gross out jokes where the homer's his wingman they're putting burns back in the colorful tyrant role that he belongs in and it feels like the one of the last times harry shearer really tried. Just a little bit.

We're going to be charting his lack of effort over the years. So the episode begins with a flip book couch gag, which is cute and all, but I liked it more on the commentary because it was a launching pad for directors versus writers on what they think of the use of the couch gags and what they mean. Hmm. Yeah, that's right. Because if an episode has a lot cut from it, it will have a longer couch gag. But if very little is cut from it, it'll have a shorter couch gag. It makes sense.

But when directors see a long couch gag with the finished color screening, they're like, oh, they must have cut so much of my stuff. I must have done a bad job. When really, I think Al Jean is saying, well, no, the jokes didn't work. It's due to the writing. Yeah, yeah. I think the director, I mean mean it's sad to hear the director like finds out it sounded like at least the director on this commentary found out when it aired and didn't know i feel like you should be a little more involved and get to know that i feel like once they do their job

everything else is left to the post-production team leading up to the night it airs and this one doesn't even have that much deleted content in it though at least on the dvd there's only a hidden deleted scene not even an official deleted scene so pretty light on him yeah it's a fun little flip book one by the way that's director mike pulcino's hand if you're wondering who that is then we go to an in media res itchy and scratchy which i like that we're just hearing the end of the theme. Yeah, yeah. So this is very funny, but I think it does feature a hallmark of the Gene era, which is licensing songs when you don't really need to. Like, why do we need Bill Haley and his comments rock around the clock for about five seconds? Can't Alf Clausen do like a little sound alike or something?

It's not affecting things, but I just thought, why did you pay money for this? I know it feels like the kind of, just the the aljean sound effect thing but also the aljean some little lack of confidence because this is very specifically an american graffiti reference because they do the you know tie the chain to a car bumper and it stops the cops from getting them you see i didn't know this was american graffiti so i'm guessing they played that song in american graffiti as well yeah that's also ridiculous in the movie well it's not ridiculous in the movie but hearing when i heard rock around the clock i was like oh so this is happy days because that's the original happy days theme song but no it was like the key song of american graffiti which makes it even more ridiculous that happy days is like not only are we taking the whole

cast of like most of the cast of american graffiti we're also just stealing their theme song they're just erasing the serial numbers off of that movie but yeah i mean the joke it being an american graffiti thing apparently i haven't watched american graffiti in a long time i heard it has gotten one of those famously bad like restoration that george lucas didn't do a good job on kind of did it make everyone ultra smooth with ai or something i think i heard something about that yes yeah we got to re-watch it though before we get to summer of four foot two again in 2028 sure i mean i never watched any george lucas movies outside of the star wars movies he directed so i feel like i need to watch that in

thx before we we talk more about him and of course red tails as well bob you gotta see oh red tails that's right i forgot he got that out of his system but yeah you know this music budget uh they are they're spending but i'll tell you where they didn't spend money the animators didn't have to draw a new version of a skinless scratchy because i'm pretty sure they pulled pulled out the old designs from the front oh hey you know what that's a complicated design so i don't blame them but i actually i like this cartoon a lot so after scratchy's flesh is ripped off by the chain he is put on an ambulance the ambulance puts him on a plane he gets comfortable and then he realizes that on the plane it is buddy holly richie valence

and the big bopper and it plays out as you think it would play out that would be funny enough but the twist made me laugh out loud watching it yes it's so great that they like they give you enough time to spend with like okay they're making fun of one like the day the music died or what a funny way to end a cartoon set in you know the 50s but then they all turn into werewolves for no good reason yes to eat him that's so good but then the plane still crashes and i i just we heard a lot about the day the music died recently because it just hit another anniversary because it was February 3rd, 1959. I think it was like the 60th or 75th, whatever, however time works. Yeah, that'd be 65th.

65th, yeah. No, yeah, I used to think about that too much as a kid because I listened to the oldie station all of the time and my family got free tickets to go to a Buddy Holly musical. And I also watched the richie valens movie biopic that starred lou diamond phillips i mean i think we need to investigate the big bopper not much is said about his life that he had another song outside of hello baby oh it's a big bopper speaking yeah he would people forget he was a novelty act his whole thing was basically he was doing the musical version of what bob knew

her heart did where you would hear one side of the phone call you know it ended his life early but as far as being famous dying with those other two young singers probably made him more famous than he ever would have been i'd say uh but they also notice that when the plane crashes they use a car crash sound of like basically a bumpers hitting into each other. I miss that. And though the Itchy and Scratchy title card though feels off, like the text size is wrong. Compare it to pull up another episode where they have an Itchy and Scratchy title card.

The text is much bigger on screen. And usually they treat it like a Warner or a Looney Tunes classic where it's an original drawing that fits with the theme instead of just text. Yeah, there's like a little image to sum up what the cartoon will be about. Then we see that it's for this, again, an episode that aired March 16th. It's the Valentine's episode, guys. Weird timing. Couldn't they have aired this a month earlier?

I don't know. I mean, we had one recently that where it February, and it was the Back to School episode or something. Those two episodes should have changed places. It's easy to forget in the list of Simpsons Valentine's Day episodes that this is one of them as well. You know, I'm thinking, you know, we talked about the missing title card for Retrieved and Scratchy.

Maybe it's like Batman the Animated Series. After a while, they just couldn't afford to make original title cards for every episode they're they're losing it in the budget at this point but yes compare homer to how he is in the valentine's episode we'll be talking about in season four pretty soon and this homer not only remembers it's valentine's day but actually is making food for snacks for the kids and doing a lot of work to prepare a gift for marge too yeah he is extremely horny to kick things off. That's the difference 10 years makes. Homer, 10 years ago, he just forgets it's Valentine's Day.

Now Homer is so sex starved that he knows it's Valentine's Day and he's been counting the days. It's like, I don't think Marge and Homer were not written to be this long in between sex other than in the Simpson and Son Revitalizing Tonic episode. Yeah, unless it's a plot point like in Grandpa vs. Sexual Inadequacy. Homer and Grandpa vs. Sexual Inadequacy. There you go. This time when he distracts the kids, he instead of saying suckers, he says so naive, which was the opening clip here. But yes, Marge gets treated well and i do see something homer's sinister implications of drink up my pretty yeah i guess i mean homer has a loving relationship with marge but he also wants to

get her drunk to make it easier to initiate things i assume i mean it's a relax the plan is to relax yeah and get in the mood it's not like he's... Homer has nothing more nefarious plan than that, but the way he says it like he's the Wicked Witch of the West is funny. This is all thanks to 60 Minutes was so wildly popular, and I'm not being sarcastic, it was a hugely popular news magazine show. I think it's still on TV, but, you know, The Simpsons aired on Sunday, and so did it. And it got, like, 20 times the ratings because it was an institution. So they thought, let's have another 60 Minutes, let's call it 60 Minutes 2. It aired on Wednesday, I think, and then Friday. And this is the program which spawned Rathergate, which led to the departure of the trusted newsman, Dan Rather. Gasp. So on September 8th, 2004, Dan Rather produced dubious documents

which stated that President George W. Bush did not fulfill his obligations to the National Guard in the early 70s. Gasp. Oh, my dear. But CBS did not authenticate these documents and Rather eventually had to become the fall guy for the segment. There's a lot more info to be learned about this story, but you can just watch the 2015 movie Truth starring robert redford and kate blanchett wow i forgot that that

was a movie i forgot they made a movie about that you know honestly what a stupid gotcha to fall on your sword over where it's like hey guys i think this guy might be a little uh you know he might not play by the rules this george w bush after he's doing all of these things so i don't understand what they were going for. If he was found to have not performed well in his National Guard duty, like, OK, what then? He's still president. Yeah, no, I mean, I remember this time very well because I also look, I really didn't want George Bush to be reelected. I get it. And one of the big talking points of people you'd see on tv like say racist asshole bill maher

would say he's like and he didn't even go to vietnam blah blah blah like that was the that's how boomers like punched back at w and so i could see that rather thought they had the smoking gun here of like you know they didn't just be able to say because i remember hearing that in 2000 of like oh you know not only he didn't go to fight in vietnam like he should have he instead was a national guard reservist and then here they think oh and now i've got proof he didn't even do that and that's going to destroy w what a dumb thing to to risk your whole career on and i mean we all know how it went in 2004 they ran a guy who did go to vietnam but then people were saying well he he didn't he didn't do that much there did he and then that fell apart so the search for the perfect troop to be president did not end well well unfortunately in 2004 that's when Democrats then learned that there's no way to

outflank the Republican Party on the right with the military and they never tried it again also it's crazy to think of a time when like that a president could do a disqualifying thing or that they would say something that would be like well that guy's not gonna be like that is not a thing anymore wait until you see the amount of sick days he had at a summer camp like what was he doing this is again commenting on a thing we just saw the day we're recording this but i had for real forgotten that donald trump was like guilty like found guilty in court is civil court over sexual assault allegations i was like wow that you just forget it like it doesn't it's not a disqualifying thing anymore you just go like oh yeah i guess that is true and he has a mugshot and like it's just so that's why you don't remember

these things anymore and it's sad that should against him. And he's an awful person. I mean, now there are no surprises because the people running for president are 80 years old. And every element of their life has been aware to the public for decades and decades and decades. You just go like, yawn. Also, the branding of 60 Minutes 2, what I saw was apparently they changed it after a little while because they were confusing people. When it really should just be, it's another episode of 60 Minutes. Yeah. They thought people were assuming that, oh, this is the inferior one.

I won't watch this. But then they just called it 60 Minutes because, yeah, it airs on two nights. We covered Dateline Tuesday or whatever. There was a reference to that. Yeah. Apparently they told Homer on that show here's how to spice up your love life which that's a funny thing too because you would think he would read that you know in like a lifestyle magazine and not not 60 minutes too

so a good joke there too now the rose petals on the bed thing I have never tried that in my life look it seems like a fun presentation but how do you clean up after that and also feel like those rose petals they're gonna be an annoyance when the deed is done i mean this just seems like a thing in tv and movies maybe i'm not romantic enough but i feel like if you did do this you'd be like okay let's sweep all these up first and then we can do whatever we're gonna do yeah it's like hold on to that boner gotta gotta get out of the dustpan uh candles fine i get that music lighting all that but the pedals just seem but then again like i've you know i've said to my husband occasionally like hey would you want me to get flowers or something he's like like he thinks that is he would never flowers ever yeah

yes yeah that's fun or not gay enough perhaps also we were recording this valentine's episode the day before valentine's day so I've been seeing flowers at the grocery store. They're all at the front of my local Safeway. I feel like four husbands who walk in late. I'm like, oh, here it is. Or they walk in and go, oh, right. Oh, shit. I need one for my mistress as well.

Which bouquet says mistress, which says wife? But yes, Kavner plays a very good sleepy marge walking in here as homer is suggesting the very sexy fantasy of little red riding hood this again is where homer in our first clip here he is in the mood and marge not so much thanks for the love tip 60 minutes too funky Mmm, funky Hey there, little red riding hood I ate your granny And now I'm in the mood for love Oh, homie, I'm sorry

You know I usually bring my A-game to the bedroom But tonight I just can't throw the heat. But it's St. Valentine's Day. God wants us to do it. You're so cute when you're begging for sex. But I'm just too tired. Well, my special mixtape will get you going oh no that's maggie's mixtape and maggie must have gotten it's a funny joke i feel like it's over explained that switching of the mixtapes

yeah i think you should just say wait that maggie had or i don't know get to it a little faster also the way they animate maggie i think they originally boarded it out for her to dance to vogue oh you think so she's doing the vogue look up vogue choreography she's doing more than just a few not just the voguing hand signal she's doing a few steps from it well it makes sense that they would use tom jones again it's a latter tom jones hit it was fairly recent 1999 that's when sex bomb was released i don't remember it at all other than his jokes but apparently it did very well in europe it sounds like a very like euro trashy song if you listen to the whole thing though now who puts in the work to actually you know make a mix of things for the boudoir when really you just go to spotify search sex mix and then just first result you

need it more personal you know like what if you are in the throes of what i call love making and suddenly neutral milk hotel comes on and you didn't see that coming uh in more ways than one no i yes that song would not put one in the mood i would think now i'm thinking of the metaphor baked into the king of carrot flowers and i'm trying to please my woman what's going on here also if you're not paying for the the ad free version on spotify eventually you're going to get an ad and you gotta wrap up before the ad i would think but yeah so homer is denied it that feels like a pure dana gould line of you're so cute when you're begging for sex yes anything anything about a desperate husband let's say dana gould written all over it i do wonder if this comes a little from

we've mentioned it before his wife at the time was sue nagel the inspiration for lindsey nagel in the show she is a very busy you know executive lady i wonder if she was the more... I could see her coming home tired from a long day of executive producing six feet under and being the manager of Bernie Mac. Meanwhile, Dana Gould, full of energy, having written many hilarious jokes. He came home from all day of writing jokes at The Simpsons and he's ready for love. I love speculating about Dana Gould's libido. Let's get him back on the show. But also, I love how Homer says later when he's walking home, he's libido let's get him back on the show but also i love how

homer says later when he's walking home he's like that's supposed to be a gimme like that again is how love star husbands think of just like hey this is the expected night of marital intercourse it's like the landing on free parking of your relationship but so homer goes for a walk and this is another bit i love on the commentary that it feels like Mike Anderson is kind of getting a little back at Gene because he's like, you know, I was told don't lay out a scene with Homer just walking around. We need to get from joke to joke to joke. And yet here you told me to have Homer walk slowly.

Getting scripts are like Homer walks here. Then he walks there. It's like, well, what do I do? But yes, he walks by Snowball and their partner do i do but yes he walks by snowball and their partner making hearts with their tails a cute drawing then professor frank is having sex with a robot what's with this running joke we had it with quimby in the last episode this running joke of we have to hear these side characters ejaculating it's you're right this is two episodes in a row we've heard characters come it's insane yes so he hears the robot like he's having sex

with the robot the robot's head flies through the window says game over not not that funny but he sees in the clouds clouds that look like a couple having sex and then a plane refueling in the sky and this really brought me back to watching the mystery science theater episode the star fighters which i think maybe conservatively 13 minutes of that film in big quotes is just plain refueling footage but the highlight for me watching that episode in the 90s was it was just every sex joke they could get away with on cable tv in like 1994 right man that seat now when i see the refueling i think of dr strange love but yeah it's like such a it's a were they refueling in that movie was there a refueling scene that's the start of the movie over the title cards is similar stock a were they refueling in that movie was there a refueling scene that's the start

of the movie over the title cards is similar stock footage of plane refueling i see but yeah no that mystery science theater that's such a great one they got away with of the show meanwhile with movie references i assume that game over is a war games reference it could be it just seems like a generic video game reference and you know professor frank these Frank, these days, the true-to-life floivics on sex dolls have to be much better than they were what he could have invented back then. Yeah, their heads don't fly off anymore. I was tempted to do sex doll research for this episode, but then I realized every storefront I visit online for the next six months will be offering me sex doll replacement labias and and things like that so i chose not to do that i just know from trailers from lars and the real girl that's the only facts i know about it also from filthy podcasts of 10 years ago although i learned a lot more about sex dolls because the q anon anonymous podcast we had jake rokatansky and travis view on this podcast

but on their podcast they're doing a mini series called perverts and they did an entire series about sex dolls in the sex doll community and i learned a lot oh wow you know i'll listen to that to get my answers there just keep my google safe as well the simpsons will be right back pull air with mark strike out with homer collect all five free simpsons toys with every kfc kids meal on your marks get set collect welcome to the break everybody it's henry gil, and I hope you're enjoying this week's podcast by any means necessary. And a big old thank you to you listeners. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Because we are only able to do this as our full-time jobs, me and Bob, to cover classic episodes like ce dough

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to Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse, six and a half hours about Who Framed Roger Rabbit, so, so many more. You need to sign up at that ten dollar level to hear all of it for yourself one more time at patreon.com slash talking simpsons And then, so look. It's 20 years ago, 21 years ago. Jokes are about prison rape. These are jokes then so this episode has one in every act starting with this act i think they have to do that cutaway to get away with it the silhouette

they draw is a man having sex with another man from behind you see boy maybe i'm being charitable i didn't read this as a prison rape joke i just thought like oh maybe these prisoners are in love but then it turns out they're fighting so i don't know i don't know okay fine it's sex in prison you have to give me that yeah and there are a lot of questions to fall like sex in prison okay what what's happening here look consensual sex could happen in prison i'm not saying it can't you know that that was an ongoing plot line in the television series oz i watched and enjoyed homer though it is fun that he's like, oh, even there. Like, one, on his walk down Evergreen Terrace, he walks by a prison. And then, two, his reaction to seemingly, for all he knows, seeing two men have sex is that he's like, oh, like he's just jealous.

Yeah, Homer becoming very progressive. This is not like when he removed the family from the pride parade passing by their house. But, of course, instead, it's a man being strangled. And I have this clip is then followed by Homer looking at the billboards. But I want you to listen because I think you and I both know who the uncredited voice of the strangled is here. Everyone but me. Thanks for waking me for the bookmobile, Terrance. Oh, George!

Oh, Marge doesn't think I'm sexy. What am I supposed to do? Hmm. Suicide, eh? That's it! Thank you, outdoor advertising! You you saved my marriage and not for the first time i didn't i was listening closely i i couldn't make i was like harry sheer but i think you're you think it's somebody else i think that strangling sound is frank welker is what i think i think is he is he uncredited he is not in the credits uh it's carl weeder god is in there and maybe that could be him but uh let me i'll replay it one more time but listen to these choking sounds i think it i think

it's frank welker me thanks for waking me for the bookmobile terrence you know i mean it could be him maybe harry, well, that's too hard on my throat, so I'm not going to choke myself on Mike. But Frank stepped up to the plate. It sounds like Frank to me, but I could be wrong. But also, yeah, another thing in Dana Gould's scripts is suicide. He loves jokes about it. Yes, and I'm not made of stone.

Homer's seeing an ad for a suicide hotline and then going suicide eh yes it's great and he would have killed himself if he didn't see another billboard it's such a great gag that like homer sees a suicide prevention hotline and then sees a suggestion of like well if you lost some weight you're you probably have sex more and he's like suicide eh it's such a great gag but yes then instead he sees a suggestion to go to a an extension school which you know is exactly what he does in secrets of a successful marriage as well so you know but he but in that episode he becomes a teacher yes this time though in both cases he tries to take a class and then gets sent in a different direction you know what

now i'm old enough. I'm considering it because I feel like my Japanese lessons need to get more focused and I need to be in a classroom, I feel like. I'm hitting a wall of where apps can take me. You need a teacher to yell at you, to push you over that wall. And tell me that I'm not spelling kanji correctly, which I'm not. Your app won't say no, no stupid because it wants your money though this is also laid out again of homer is just walking and reading sign gags instead of them showing it

to us then homer heads into the classroom this also seems like them denying us an episode where homer learns to be a stripper like are they're tricking you of like yep homer learns to be a stripper in this episode yeah i mean i knew what the title signified but i didn't know what this first act was leading to and i thought oh are they going to do a full monty parody but no that's not it fortunately yes and they say on the commentary that this is a new thing for them at the time of filling the classroom with named characters instead of like randos but that seems like definitely how they do everything on the show now like it's always a named character in background shots yeah i feel like it's been that everything on the show now like it's always a named character in background shots yeah i feel like it's been that way on the show for a while pre-season 14

i say like from season like seven or eight onwards it was always like well who's in the class side show mel uh fat tony carl lenny even in secrets of a successful marriage it was all basically named characters in the class and then we see that the teacher is dr hibbert which is fun i think too because they rarely do jokes about dr hibbert being a black man but here they find fun puns or one fun pun and then we get to hear pitches for other fun puns i like that malcolm sex is pleasing women by any means necessary that's a funny that's a good line packed with so many references because i mean i didn't know this and maybe I should. I need to watch that very long Spike Lee movie.

But that's a reference to the 1964 speech in which Malcolm X called for freedom, justice, and equality by any means necessary. This is full of so many, like, little references that I missed before reading the wiki entry for this episode. And also, on the commentary, you can wikipedia because they get it wrong on the commentary they say one of the pitch names was crispus buttocks which they didn't say this on the commentary i looked it up the name seemed familiar to me and yes it is the first person killed at the boston massacre so the first person killed as part of the american revolution and he was uh black and native american but the wikipedia entry which is why you should never trust them always trust us it refers to this character as christ Christmas buttocks. Christmas as in the holiday. And I was like, no, no, no. Crispus buttocks. We have been finding so many flaws. I brought up that Cobb salad one in

our Mr. Spritz episode. You expect this on the dedicated Simpsons wikis. But yeah, I saw this too on the real Wikipedia page. And this needs to be fixed. And of course, we're never wrong. No. But yeah, Bob, you should definitely see the Spike Lee film. I love that film. I saw it in my teens. And it was a bit of a political awakening movie for me.

And on top of that, then I liked the movie so much. I was like, oh, then I got to read the autobiography of Malcolm X, which actually goes written by Alex Haley. Well, not goes written, his name is on the cover, but it's a great read for if you want to know anything about how racist America is. Well, I just watched Bamboozled recently, not one of his best, but I love Black Klansman. There are many Spike Lee movies I haven't seen, but I need to work up the energy to watch a movie as long as Malcolm X. It has been a very long time since I saw Bamboozled. In your letterbox, you mentioned how the digital photography which seemingly was very impressive back then that they even made a movie like that

looks hideous now you you kind of want to look for the little gear in the corner of your screen like why are you at 480p let's go to 720 at least but you can't do that there are bigger issues with that movie than the uh the resolution though but i'm glad i watched it did you know that michael rapaport speech in the beginning of it about how he should be able to say the N-word is pretty much him quoting verbatim Quentin Tarantino? I know there was some Tarantino commentary within the movie, definitely. I remember, though, thinking how crazy it was Warner let him put that Bugs Bunny shot at the end of the movie, the blackface montage. Yeah, there is a very long montage of like, here are all the classic blackface moments from Hollywood at the end. But anyway, enough about if we talk more about Spike Lee's career, I'll give you my opinions on She Hate Me.

OK, well, if I don't see the movie, I'll buy one of those famous X hats. And I'm sure everyone will love watching me wear that. You'll look like the coolest guy in Vancouver. Yes, I'm the coolest guy from 1994. But yes, this is where Homer gets a little ahead of himself when learning, and he gets rejected by Malcolm Sex. Well, I was here to win back Brandine. She been making eyes at that photographer what come to document our squalor.

Welcome to How to Strip for Your Wife. Dr. Hibbert, you're the teacher? Oh, yes. I put myself through medical school dancing under the name Malcolm Sex. I pleased the ladies by any means necessary. Now, let's start with a full review of the theory of stripping. Paleosexologists tell us that... What the hell are you doing?

Homer, are you already oiled? Three coats. That oil was for the entire class. Homer, take you already oiled? Three coats. That oil was for the entire class. Homer, take this quarter, call your mother, and tell her you're never going to be a stripper. Aren't you going to chuckle? There's nothing to chuckle about. Nobody loves oily Homer. That's a good, nobody loves oily Homer.

There's some good stuff in here. Also, another secret reference, that is a reference to the film the paper chase which snuck up on me i've never seen the film i know the the famous thing everyone quotes or they used to incorporate into like sketches and stuff is like look to your left look to your right one of you will not be here whatever the orientation of that law class by the actor john houseman as the character in the movie professor kingsfield tells a harbor law student james Hart, Mr. Hart, here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer. Oh, yes, actually, I have the clip.

Whoa. Mr. Hart, here is a dime. Call your mother and tell her there's serious doubt about your becoming a lawyer. Ooh, burn. And then Mr. Hart takes a very long time. It's why I don't have the rest of the clip because he seriously walks around silently for 40 seconds and then turns around and says calls the guy an asshole then hausman replies like that's the most intelligent thing you've

said in this class today now go back to your seat yeah that this spawned a four season tv series by the way which i also haven't seen that's how popular this movie was i've only seen the clips to be able to understand one single sketch on mr show that if you're a big better call saul fan you should watch because it's the first time on screen michael mckeon and bob ownkirk were together oh yeah you're right and i'm looking at the description of this tv series it doesn't seem to be a you know what happened after let's follow these characters it's basically retelling the film very slowly they they turn a 90 minute film into like it's four years in college in real time yeah it's sort of like harry potter where it's like well this is year one and also oil of oh yeah i like that i like that yeah if you need to have an oil of ole parody

that's that's the best you can do and that you inflation. Now it's a quarter instead of a dime. If you can even find a phone booth. So Homer slides his way into his next storyline, which this feels like the natural act break is him being cleaned up by the guy. Yeah, like wipe me down and sign me up would be, or yeah, the guy just making comments about you have to blot the oil. If you, Robert just pushes it around. I feel like that could have been the best act break that's natural act break time but

Homer goes from one film parody to another film parody now he is back in a Glenn Gary Glenn Ross parody and this is the basically unnamed Alec Baldwin character yes yeah which if you ever see Glenn Gary Glenn Ross in a stage production you'll be confused because this scene is not in it because it was written for the movie yet it's the only scene most people know from the movie it is the coffees for closers thing right yep yeah it's his whole always be closing abc it's such an iconic character that alec baldwin chose to live that as his entire life by the way the character's name is blake i didn't know he had a name one wikipedia entry said that because his his one of iconic replies is like fuck you that's my name that he should be credited as fuck you on imdb instead of blake which they don't say in the scene imdb would

not stand for that inaccuracy but yeah this version is like a three percent sillier one i gotta call a little bullshit on aljean on the commentary because they said like they didn't want to offer this to alec baldwin because they're like we don't want to just get an actor on to do the thing they're famous for doing and i was like i don't think i think you have done that al i think yeah they're not above that and all i think this is just too small of a character for that purpose i think he would turn it down and his area is doing a very good job in in this role of a three percent turned up version of this. Like the example is when he's giving his speech.

So in the movie version or in the original, he says, you know, this is my gold watch. It costs more than your car. And I have an 80,000 BMW in the parking lot here. Instead, it is a watch so encrusted with jewels it can't move and a car that only Steven Spielberg owns. And they kill the guy who made it i do like the cutaway to the watch where the second hand is just trapped between the two jewels and it can't get past one of them yes and if you want to actually own the watch or a version of the watch that is in the movie it's a rolex oyster perpetual day date which i saw on sale for 8 000 pounds online so it's a very heavy watch.

In dollars, I assume. Yes. And it is, yes. It weighs 8,000 pounds. Speaking of them remembering things that are funny, they remember like, oh, we should kill Mole Man on screen more. Why haven't we done that in a while? Yeah, throwing him out of a closed window was a nice touch.

There are just these little accents to jokes, like turning the Day of the Music Dad guys into werewolves, the window not being open, just him being thrown through the glass. And then when they cut to his fancy car, you see him shivering in pain on the ground. And I also like how Lenny replies to hearing about the man who built the car being killed. He says, like, I didn't mean that. That's a great little just like tiny line there and yes then at the end of the scene he sells them all his book which he self-published at kinko's which now if a book isn't self-published online i'm like wow that's that's 90 of books now my book that i wrote not self-published i can at

least say that his book is called megatronics the 48 tips to corporate success we found out his name is stark richdale which i assume part of it is taken from jace richdale former simpsons writer yeah i bet you're right i like that he says it is replaced god that's also great and i have to recommend if you want to hear like fun dissections of these kind of self-help books check out the podcast if books could kill they cover a lot of hack political books but they've also covered a lot of self-help books and you find out that they're all kind of the same in which it's like well here yeah here's some basic advice that like anyone would give you like be organized have a schedule find time to do things in and stuff like that but then they make like crazy leaps that don't make any sense to give their book like a

signature thing to it so they've covered things like the 48 laws of power and the four hour work week and atomic habits these are all just like terrible self-help books that again the information they give you is just like a conventional wisdom yeah get eight hours of sleep have a good diet make sure you get your stuff done on time and so on and so on i've heard that half of them are just like do the work and then things have happened it's like yeah we know this yeah then homer heads off his first lesson is to live every day like your last which i have to assume that for the rest of his life he starts every morning by crying that he's about to die. Good smash cut to him just crying on the curb.

Then Homer decides he's going to be proactive. He comes home, tells the kids whether to do more homework or not, tells Maggie to start talking, commands, basically orders Marge to have sex. And I just love Marge's's reaction of sounds good to me yes i wish there was more about this book because you could tell he's using the lingo for the book he's like hello success obstacles i'm home right because i've heard these books in a way they like to dehumanize people they're like oh watch out for time thieves yeah so you designate people like that's a time thief now i feel like I just get exposed to this dialogue through just memes online of just like the classic saying of you don't see me in the club while I don't see you in the bank kind of line.

But also I like that Marge, you know, Marge could take this ordering to have sex many ways, but just sounds good to me is such a creep. She's finally not tired. Homer has to take a break carrying her up the stairs he's like go on without me that's the act break i feel like march should doubt homer's stamina after that you know i mean i feel like it's gonna be 30 minutes before the activity can begin he's gonna need several breaks during that too then the next scene starts with the ruckus as homer is hanging up hooks and you, I currently do live like a caveman. Well, I'll say a step up from a caveman because I don't have a bowl.

My husband and I have a four segmented wicker basket that we put our keys into. My keys in one hole, his keys in another. What about the two other holes? That's for general like mail, like mail goes in one and then the fourth is left empty just in case we need it. We have a shallow tray, so I'm okay with living like maybe a more evolved caveman i do have a tray that now i just use for decorative purposes i previously in our old place did use it for keys which was it was a mixed tray and hanger with gg the cat from kiki's delivery service and it was very nice now i'm into the wicker basket era of my life

that means you're getting older when wicker seems appealing it does it i mean it sounds just the sound of wicker being moved and and have weight put upon it just feels reassuring to me they hang up maggie as well as uh donut to see homer's been doing it a lot and then homer begins to be an efficiency expert though this also feels like down even to the tom landry hat he's it's like the grime grimy episode yeah that's right i was also thinking of you only move twice yeah yeah which mike b anderson also directed by the way oh ho maybe i wonder if there's a few callbacks in here that feel like they could be the animators wanting to do callbacks not not called for in the script yeah because he has his tom landry hat on which he buys in cypress creek and wears when he's trying to be a better boss and there's a flow chart later

full of references or not flow chart org chart then homer though he covers up his poster of the swedish bikini team of the swedish efficiency team which bob i was scandalized to learn from wikipedia that that was americans and it was an american production those women weren't swedish i was always told there were many jokes about them i think that's how like dumb and dumber ends yes with a swedish bikini team joke and they're because they're stupid they're so stupid they're gay as many of the jokes in dumb and dumber is that true well they definitely they want to have sex well jim carrey's character does want to have sex with the woman they're helping. He does want that.

But maybe I'm not the only one who pointed this out, but the classic trailer line where Jeff Daniels is like, look at the butt on that. It's a couple walking away, and Jim Carrey's like, he must work out. So the joke is like, he is so dumb, he became gay. The Swedish bikini team also, I think I must have heard of them. I mean, they were advertised to us in our youths, but also I saw this on the wiki page and it stirred a memory. They were also used for a plot point, at least one on Married with Children. Oh, yes.

Yeah, they might have shown up in a few body sitcoms. Oh, yeah. This is all a big lie. I'm looking more into this, Henry, and we're investigating the Swedish Bikini team today. We're going to blow the lid off this thing. Yeah, American actresses wearing platinum blonde wigs. They were on something called The Adventures of Mark and Brian. What the hell is that?

I don't know. But they did make an appearance in Beer Fest and Boat Trip. Oh, of course. Man, Beer Fest and Boat Trip. But it's not them. It's parodies of them because they didn't want to pay the female models. Oh, of course. So it's just don't copyright Swedish and bikini.

That's open to anybody. I would hope at Beer Fest they actually cast Swedish actresses for proper ethnicity. I would trust the fine people at Broken Lizard Entertainment to do that. They go above and beyond. Now, the people who made Boat Trip, they don't care. No, no. Couldn't make Boat Trip today, that's for sure. I think so that's uh that's a movie about great men horribly trapped on a gay cruise that you couldn't make it today because cuba gooding jr is not allowed on a movie set oh my god that's a double curse movie because of horatio sands oh my god yeah okay well i forgot about his crimes yeah that's a crime boat it can't leave port

nightboat needs to take down this crime boat. Well, a crime boat could be about two sex offenders who have to escape on a boat. That could be Boat Trip Today. And it would star both of the same actors. Okay, so yes, Homer then takes a tour around the plant. Megatronics tip 20. Make your cubicle into a yubicle. Hmm, what next, Megatronics? Point out problems at your workplace to your boss.

To separate yourself from the herd, just tattle on the cattle. Hmm. I say Phantom Menace sucked more. i say attack of the clouds sucked more oh that's toxic waste i have to assume that glasses guy never appears again because he dies after no uh he runs to the safety shower which blasts fire onto him and uh you know the star trek joke is a little cheesy and lame i like that star wars bob not star trek did i do it again god damn it well it's still lame and you know they're fighting with the rods but we were at that point

we were still pre god damn it revenge of the sith thank you thank you we're still pre that so we we think could things get any worse you know if i was in this argument i'd say attack of the Sith. Thank you. Thank you. We're still pre that. So we think could things get any worse? You know, if I was in this argument, I'd say Attack of the Clones sucks more. That's what I would say. Yeah. There's no pod race to save us. And you know what? You don't have to feel as guilty hating it because you don't have to like reckon with the sad things that happened to Jake Lloyd. And I mean, everybody loves Hayden Christensen now, so we don't feel bad that his career was negatively impacted by it. Yeah. You don't have to think about the abuse of Jake Lloyd online or Ahmed Bass it's just it's okay to hate these people on the screen I'm hearing it here I you could tell that they added lightsaber noises

to it but I couldn't tell until this clip I was like oh they even asked Alf Clausen to write John Williamsey like music underneath it too yeah in my notes i have there here is alf clausen's duel of the fates now we live in a horrible time where people are excited for phantom menace about to return to theaters for its 25th anniversary it's coming back it's i better not see you log that on letterbox henry hey look maybe i'm gonna see madame webb tomorrow night but i'm not gonna go back and pay for phantom i mean i know your husband is eight years younger does he sincerely like those movies we were too old and jaded to like them no no my husband does not either he does not have the new slightly younger or basically if you're my husband's eight years younger than me if you're around that age or younger you might like phantom

menace now look i will say you're allowed to not like the Disney movies or any of the Disney Star Wars content, but it does not make the prequel trilogy good just because the Disney stuff also isn't good. And just because awful people hate The Last Jedi doesn't make it a perfect movie. No. But it's a movie I really enjoyed. It is. Hey, I would say it's the best Disney movie of the Star Wars movies. But yeah, no, Phantom Menace, I did see somebody point out to that if phantom

menace in this re-release can make 48 million dollars it will surpass rise of skywalker in the box office rankings so i think disney star wars haters are going to be starting a fan campaign to make it like number one in the box office when phantom menace is re-released i mean despite how rancid and insulting Rise of Skywalker was, it took us all by surprise. We all saw it. And it's like one of the highest grossing movies of 2019, which was a crazy year for Disney. Yes. Yeah. They've been chasing that year forever. But yes, we then also get the coffee joke. Coffee, cream, and stirs are in three separate rooms, which I think is laid out pretty funny. Although if you're strong and powerful like me,

you take it black. You just visit the one room. saves time that's efficiency yeah i think homer as he goes for the promotion and raise he's deserved for this morning i think he learns the harsh lesson that definitely i learned at my job that trying to meet goals laid out by a shitty boss is meaningless and you will be laid off anyway yeah yeah it's it's i mean occasionally hard work is rewarded, but really they're just like, look at this sucker. He'll do anything. Around this time, this episode aired, I was showing initiative working in the popcorn mines of AMC theaters. And all it got me was more work in the horrible concession stand. Yeah, and if you're not laid off at a job, you just inherit the tasks of other people who are no longer there.

I saw, this is just complaining about Twitter, but I saw a tweet, somebody saying that like, just make yourself indispensable. You know, I'm sorry it's hard work, but them's the breaks. It's like, no, everyone's indispensable. And then they get laid off anyway. Like, and everybody just has to make do. Yeah. Like just being at a job is learning every possible thing you can do there. And then you get laid off anyways. It's the

truth. Yep. There's nothing funny about that, I'm sorry. But here Homer learns the harsh lesson via eels. And now to see Mr. Burns for the promotion and raise I've deserved since this morning. Mr. Burns,

I've made a list of recommendations to improve plant efficiency. Oh, have you now? Well, huzzah huzzah! I'll just throw back my legs and pollute my britches with delight. But the book said you would applaud my initiative. And what book is that? The Ape Who Wanted a Big Bonus? Stop wasting my time, you corn-fed man-cow. Would you mind? Yes, sir. Aw, look at the little eels!

Electric eels! I didn't know Mr. Burns had an electric eel pond. Well, he does. All my life I've had one dream. Burns had an electric eel pond. Well, he does. All my life, I've had one dream to achieve my many goals. It's great to see the return of Burns back in a big way. It's unfortunate that he says man cow because I'm just thinking of the radio personality. Oh, yes. Brian Quimby is a big fan of our pal, previous guest.

Not a real fan. But I, at first, did not like the electric eels joke because i thought it was like too obvious and i think they're doing too many somebody gets electrocuted jokes this season but it's all just set up for marge saying i didn't know he had electric that's a great job it's it's a fun fact for her and like there was some older episode in which the trap door opened at the wrong spot in the classic era i forget but again return of the trap door in the office is good too i think maybe al jean is remembering these things about classic burns he's remembering all the great runners they used to have maybe it's

it's also because when they wrote this in 2003 he was doing a lot more commentaries then and also perfect line all my life i've had one dream to achieve my many goals yeah great meaningless super broad statement i thought it was going to be a runner calling back to you know your childhood dream was to do blank and you did that last year but no it's just like my dream was to achieve goals this is when marge also little clip here also feels very dainty to me because it's about a deep denial of a dark depressive episode mr burns has never given me a thumbs up or a way to be or a you go girl no he just steps all over everyone who works for him taking pleasure in making us feel small oh me don't let it get you down so mr burns doesn't

take you seriously big whoop who gives a doodle whoopie ding dong do thanks for trying but i'll be at moe's so my husband goes to a bar every night whoopty do who gives a bibble gabba gabba hey marge clearly a fan of the ramones with that last statement always love when the kids give each other a look of like this is bad like oh no it felt goldy to me because it's about a bad marriage being like laughed off with like gabby gabby whoop-dee-doo who gives a bibble is what i say so then we cut to moe's and another great gag that like moe doesn't know who mr burns is yes but he still suggests revenge regardless i also love how he kisses that brick. Yeah, sweet lady brick.

But instead, Homer thinks he's going to get revenge on Burns by lighting a bag on fire, has Lisa's college fund. Then we get, it's another of those like jokes rhyme 10 years later moments in Barge vs. the Monorail. They put a bunch of nuclear waste in a park and it mutates things. And this is an upping of that. Yeah, instead of one squirrel gaining laser vision and extra eyes and different parts, tentacles, this is the Legoland monuments coming to life. And it seems like a lot of writers... Legoland was a late 90s park, still fairly new.

A lot of writers had younger children around this time and were taking them there. So Legoland was a constant source of reference we thought we had block-o-land which it coexists with legoland by the way yeah i i like on the commentary gene also brings up them breaking this rule uh because they're like oh mcdonald's does exist in this world sometimes and i like when he basically becomes his own pedant i like i like that Gene. Yeah, Star Wars exists, but so does Galactic Wars. See, it's another of those. This is one of my favorite moments when I went to the D23 Simpsons panel where they screened the Lisa is a Disney princess cartoon.

When it was over, Al Gene said what I was thinking, which is Cruella DeVille does not have fire powers. He actually says a comic book guy statement here. Cruella de Vil does not have fire powers. He knows he's one of us. That's why he hates us. It's like looking in a mirror, like a funhouse mirror. Also, isn't it shocking every time in a non-Treehouse episode to see someone murdered?

Yeah. Like after a bad joke too because the capitol building runs away and he goes talk about your runaway government and he's just immediately killed it's it's a great joke about hating a bad pun i do like that when homer is hearing this also note that it says see montgomery burns on the door just in case you're a new viewer that doesn't know the setup for see montgomery burns that you're going to need to know for the the upcoming name gag this is where the second joke about prison sex comes in which is smithers concerned that if burns goes to jail he's too good looking yes so it happens later in the scene i will applaud them for ignoring the opportunity to do violence to a bird okay i was

gonna ask you this bob were you on first viewing on the edge of your seat because this scene ends with homer seemingly embattled with the idea of like do i have to kill this bird for my plan yeah absolutely whenever i'm watching any kind of media and a bird is there i'm like well how long until the bird is dead all you cat and dog people don't have to worry about that if if a cat or dog dies that's the point of the movie bob where do you rank the cuteness of this canary uh canaries are are pretty cute i do like song birds although they're not that smart i like smarter birds i like little parrots more than i do like canaries that makes that makes sense i yeah i was gonna say too the bit uh this is getting ahead of it but like how much does does a parrot like a mirror compared to a canary i wonder

well my i have an african gray parrot by the way they are too smart so they does a parrot like a mirror compared to a canary, I wonder? Well, I have an African gray parrot, by the way. They are too smart. So they won't stare at a mirror all day thinking it's another bird. Oh, he's too good for it. How's he liking his roomier condo now, too? He's having a great time. In fact, when I'm recording, I put him in the bedroom two rooms away, and I turn on the radio and open the appliance for him.

So he's got a nice music. He's got a nice view outside. He's living it up that's adorable i i just saw your your wife recently tweeted one of the cutest things about how excited she was that like he came up to her for scritches yeah their affection levels are growing between each other if this was harvest moon or stardew valley i could see the little meters above their heads uh but yes homer learns that canary m burns owns the company and he will be the one who gets in trouble not mr burns uh and this is where homer has to consider herding a bird uh seemingly and uh this also feels like them remembering oh thought balloons homer can talk to his thought balloon we haven't done that

forever either yeah they were kind of fixated on him talking to his brain for a very long time. I love the Alec Baldwin guy telling him, like, you learned absolutely nothing from my one hour class. But Homer asks his family for advice. And it also feels a little doubled up with the opening gag about him not wanting them to hear Marge and Homer have sex. And now it's like, oh, the walls are very thin. We hear everything in the bedroom.

Yeah, I thought there was going to be like, we can hear you having sex joke, but they avoid that entirely. Instead, oh, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, they do imply somebody sees them having sex. Oh, yes, yes. That's a great reference.

But Lisa just is like, yeah, these walls are paper thin and she punches through and she waves hi to them. That's good. But yes, Bob, it references, I think, one of your favorite movies. Yes, where ned flanders is the raymond burr character where at a certain point in the movie jimmy stewart's watching him but he's watching back and you just see in the darkness like the glow of his cigar i think he's smoking in that movie it could be a pipe as well gene even says like boy this is pretty creepy for ned for us this is more creepy

than they normally make him if you live in a big city or a city with a cool theater you got to see it on the big screen i've seen it like three times on the big screen i liked it on tv when i saw it but you have to see everything on the screen because you can kind of look at a different part of the screen every time to watch the little stories play out it's great i need to i still i have not seen it in theaters i've only seen i haven't watched in a long time again it's one of the many things i watched in the 90s to understand Simpsons jokes after seeing Part of Darkness. Not the first time they reference this movie. And so this is where the hidden deleted scene on your DVD is.

Click on one of the chairs in the menu if you want to watch it. But it's a little quick one that if you feel like Homer and Bart end up in Burns' office too soon. They do. Well, this gives you a little extra basically it's them outside of burns's office explaining that they're about to break in and get the canary and homer has a buzzsaw that he's gonna saw open the door and bart says it's unlocked homer and then just opens the door yeah because he's like he warps from the office to the bed back to the office i was like what was his bed scene for and it feels like he should at least say out loud like bart you convince me let's break into his office together like the the bedroom scene doesn't even end with homer actually making the decision you know home bart

tells him he should do it but homer doesn't go all right i'm gonna do it it's mostly just to set up a joke where it's inferred that ned watches them while they sleep and so they they set the bird free and don't kill him which is very nice i do you think there was any draft of this script where homer kills that bird or it flies into something it flies away and something grabs i mean there any kind of stock bird death joke could have happened here but i'm glad they avoided it instead it's a great joke about the canary islands and that he has to look at a globe to figure out where it is and he made it there safely okay and so then we again in a very 2003 joke burns is freaking out and he's bringing out color-coded terror alert warnings he's having either a maroon or vermilion uh alert uh the joke is they're very similar colors and so they then see that there's only a mirror left in there which those are some

funny drawings of burns looking in the mirror i like how i mean it's funny when they play him both as a evil billionaire and as a helpless old man where he is just as enchanted by the mirror as a canary bee he's like oh you've got quite the beak on you don't you hello there and uh yes he also a good line the canary was supposed to be my pigeon but this is when homer has to do an aggressive amount of hello jokes uh before burns gets it smithers it's an emergency maroon alert or even vermilion the owner of the plant is gone all that's left is this little mirror he used to amuse himself hello pretty boy that's quite a beak on you who wants a kiss? Who wants a kiss? Mr. Perns!

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is here for a surprise inspection Good Lord, that canary was supposed to be my pigeon I need to find a patsy, quick Hello Yes, yes, hello Now I need to find a patsy Hello You're quite the friendly fellow

But right now I'm looking for a patsy Hello You bumbling fool, I keep telling you I'm looking for a patsy hello you bumbling fool i keep telling you i'm looking for a patsy hello this moon-faced simpleton is continually interrupting my search for a patsy why hello why are you looking at me like that homer immediately forgetting the bit i mean i feel like this could be too smart for homer this plan he's concocting but he did read that book full of success win tips. Yeah, it does.

I was thinking the same thing, that Homer actually lies to Burns and tricks him successfully. Like, it's too, it is too smart for Homer to, I feel like there's missing one line where he's like, say that he accidentally made up that there were inspectors coming or something. Or like other people were there, he thought they were inspectors and what those people were could be funny i don't know i'm not writing a simpsons episode right now but it's it is a good parody of the classic lenny and squiggy hello entrance line that burns denies it to him five times yeah i was wondering i was like that feels like a reference but it's on the tip of my tongue but yes when you say if only we had someone who could blank and then the door opens it's them and hello what kind of idiot would agree to that hello though i guess they would say

hello levoyne that's what they'd say who he hey he was on this season earlier wasn't he david ellander yes as squiggy who i think was killed that's right he dies in the uh in the crashing of the reality house i don't think he introduces himself as his real name that's right boy this episode's so much better than that reality show episode yeah but most of them are yeah so then burns gives a speech you and me have both been in a meeting where a company party is canceled yes and i i love how quickly harry shearer goes through these moves from point to point to end up at. And the picnic is canceled after listing all of these things where that infers the picnic will just be you working. It's so good.

Shearer is really trying. This is a plus effort from Harry Shearer here. And so this is when Homer reveals his plan. And he has not only been made the new Patsy but also he is able to fire burns it also seems too smart of homer for him to look read a contract correctly and say nope it's right here in the contract i can fire you homer shouldn't be able to read this smacks of lisa to me that she's helping him out with this that's right so burns again has a great burnsy line get this bedlamite to an alienist which alienist is a very old-timey word for a

psychiatrist and uh bedlam was a famous mental hospital so if you're a bedlamite you are from there and the cocoon hatches a shark with a gun for a mouth also a good line all of this leads up to homer i love that he seems to have pity for burns and then throws him to what could be his death yes not really a callback just a similar joke where they use this song in another episode where people are chasing bird out of burns out of a public place where in the germans episode when he goes to mose they do sing steams na na hey hey kiss him goodbye to taunt burns as he leaves the bar here they're doing the same you're right well but it's an obvious choice when you're forcing someone out of something though it is it's fun that they toss him directly into a taxi cab to

get rid of him too but it is weird that the act break is very i like this episode the act break is very strange because it's just homer saying i want to crowd surf too and then he does safely and then we go to commercial so it's like it's not a joke i guess the joke is like i threw this man to what i would assume to be his death but he had fun so now i want to have fun i guess it's the joke is this is homer's childish way of thinking but when i see homer jump off of a balcony i expect some kind of pain gag and that he would crush the people trying to catch him because he's so heavy like that was the that's where i thought it was going. Instead, they carry him easily. It's very out of nowhere. Also, the Burns reference is a part of Paris where they were having their duel at.

The Shondons. Yeah. Apparently, it was like a military training ground in its day. I also thought Homer throwing Burns might have been a Lord of the Rings reference, but Return of the King had not yet released that year. It's the 2003 movie. Now, of course, they could be referencing what happens in the book, The lord of the rings reference but return of the king had not yet released that year it's the 2003 movie now of course they could be referencing what happens in the book the return of the king but i don't think so i really want to underline the insane thing that burn says that feels very

swartz weldery to me although dana gould wrote this or another writer because it's collaborative of course but when homer betrays him he goes so the caterpillar has emerged from its cocoon as a shark with a gun for a mouth it's really good yeah i wanted i wanted to underline that because it was very creative then the uncreative eat crud old man as he throws him no he crowd oh he does say crowd okay that's funnier i heard it as eat crud i was calling him crandall and so now uh when we come back from break, Homer is in charge. And I enjoy his first speech. Mr. Burns' reign of terror is over. And today begins my reign of terrorific management.

I thought he was going to say terror. Oh, I didn't think he was going that way. Unlike Mr. Burns, I will respect you, the working class slob, because we are all equals. And now as I ascend this crystal staircase to my office, I say, avert your gaze. It's immediately gone to his head. There is some funny commentary about being a CEO in this episode, but it eventually comes down to like, oh, it's a lot of hard work, which is not what I'm hearing about being a ceo in this episode but it eventually comes down to like oh it's a lot of hard work which is not what i'm hearing about being a ceo the line that comes later where homer

says you know you got to work till the till the afternoon like that is the only one that feels like oh this is about how it actually is to be an executive but yeah no it it's overestimating what executives can do i think or what they do do do what they do do yeah it's overestimating what executives can do, I think, or what they do do. What they do do. It's another just great, great speech. It feels also like a George Meyer or Schwarzwelder level. That's how good of a line I think it is of just saying, like, now as I ascend my crystal staircase, allow me to say, avert your gaze. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos.

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remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? And by the way, Wiki people, that is not a reference to Frozen as he's walking up this icy staircase. No, no, no. When I saw this, I was thinking, I'm not even a big Frozen fan, but I happen to be a California Adventure a lot when they were doing the live show. And I have seen it twice. And during Let It Go, she does walk up like the crystal staircase. I mean, I do love when Homer says, avert your gaze. They have the crowd to cover their eyes

they'd listen and do what he says and also who carl and lenny aren't fully clear on the fun line homer was saying in his speech of terrific management carl doesn't think he's in a comedy sadly matt lauer gave those a bad name yeah you know i was reading up on these because i remember the matt lauer thing and apparently his lock if you believe the victims and I do, his locked. But these are common in a lot of executive suites for like privacy reasons where it's like, oh, the group of people I'm talking to came in. I'm not going to have one of them close the door. I'm not going to get up from my desk and cross the room, close the door and come back.

I can just close the door from my desk. These were a very common feature in executive suites. I assume they still are, but I think now maybe they assure the guests, like, you cannot be locked in. Yes, the locking mechanism, that's the dangerous part. I mean, yes, now they're just used for like, no, they're just for laying somebody off privately. That's all.

Or, hey, you know, if you work in an open office, you go into a glass walled room that everyone can see into and you're laid off. You're given your severance paperwork. The worst, man. God. At least on a private Zoom call, it's just you and the person laying you off and telling you you can't go back to the office to pick up your things. But I like Homer and Bart using it to break walnuts.

That's a great gag. Then there's a weird side tangent on the commentary here. Oh, you know what? I just listened to it yesterday. I forgot what's going on in the commentary on this part. When they see Lisa wearing the green visor, they say, oh, you know, in the writer's room, they have a picture of Slimer wearing one of those for no reason that is as part of the writer's room.

For a while, they were obsessed with, according to them, the green accountant visor. And they had found an image of Slimer from the Ghostbusters wearing one of those. And that was the screensaver in the writer's room for a very long time. Slimer wearing the green visor. Yeah, I guess they were just tickled by that old-timey piece of headwear.

And Ghostbusters fans out there, find this for me because I did some digging. I could not find it. Now, they don't specify if it is a live-action Slimer picture or from the cartoon because of course there's like literally 160 episodes of Ghostbusters and or Slimer in the real Ghostbusters cartoons but if we're talking about live action Slimer unless it is a photo like made for like publicity stills or like I don't know like a calendar or whatever I think they might be

getting it confused with when he wears his bus driver hat and his appearance in ghostbusters 2 yeah you know what i'm seeing this now because i typed in slimer visor first of all i'm getting a lot of weird ai art of slimer causing 9-11 and i'm not kidding what jesus if hey all you folks out there if you're at a safe computer type in slimer wearing visor and you see well i'm seeing an image of slimer he's about to hit the twin towers slimer is is steering the planes into the twin towers from afar this is an odd concept but ai has created it for us thank you what the hell man i see in my results it was hurt by i guess slimer was in the ghostbusters movie that came out a couple years ago and that his appearance in that has messed up the image results for me well you know i'm, I'm going to be there day one for Frozen Empire,

and he better be wearing that visor in at least one of the many scenes he's featured in. You're going to get to see Annie Potts in the jumpsuit. That's good enough for me. That would have been fun in 1990. But what if she's a grandmother now? Oh, goddammit. I mean, also, though, I don't like, again, I say this without having seen the movie. Look, Egon in the real Ghostbusters is fine to be a guy who has sexual attraction but i think of

egon from the movie as a man who only collects molds and fungus and is an asexual being who would not have a marriage or family yes this is how i choose to remember that fictional character but of course now we're gonna see ghosts when each ghostbuster dies they will be an animated ghost in future movies they've already signed the paperwork though also on the slimer topic i just want to say again uh we're old enough that we didn't like when slimer took over the real ghostbusters cartoon yeah you know i was just thinking about this because facebook shows me a bunch of things it thinks i'll like and a lot of those are like well you like you probably like the real ghostbusters don't you and i'm like well yeah to a certain extent who doesn't

and then it reminded me that after a certain point slammer got so popular that he had his own like different segments in the show and they were animated like a yogi bear cartoon very odd but i hated them no i did too i last bit on this subject we actually talked about this a little when we did saturday morning all-star hits for what a cartoon which is a great great great cartoon a writer of the show scott garner and he talked about how they write they basically do a parody of slimer taking over the show with their teenage mutant ninja turtles action parody show in it and the extra fun was that he said maurice lamarche was a voice actor on both the real ghostbusters and the thing that was parodying slimer taking over the real ghostbusters that's great watch it on netflixer taking over the real Ghostbusters. That's great. Watch it on Netflix, folks.

There'll never be more of it. It's sad, but it's a great, great show. And I'm just glad this conversation led me to know that when you search for Slimer wearing visor, you can see four incredibly racist images of Slimer causing 9-11. Wow. That's fucked up. I did see a picture of Slimer butt. That was the most I saw of the like, oh, that's unexpected.

I'm tempted to post these on twitter but i i hope no one just sees them gets the wrong impression like i like this yeah more of this but okay so after uh homer is is trying to smash walnuts we then cut to uh burns and marrakesh which is unexpected this is like i feel like they even just use the redesign the designs from tree house three yeah merrick a very cartoony marrakesh weirdly in 2003 they were doing their midnight express parody which i think the simpsons has already parodied before which is not going to end well for smithers well i guess it does end well for smithers because he ends up liking it but burns just like well what do i do now a bunch of opium yes it's i mean it's funny to hear burns

say but first i'm going to do a bunch of opium which is an old-timey drug like so that makes sense but yeah you're right this is just it's when homer is arrested at the airport in treehouse or when well he isn't arrested he has to pay a fine of 10 american dollars uh but that was a parody of of midnight express as well but the yes so it's just to get ahead of that smithers joke in that movie's turkish prison horrible sexual assault happens in it in in this prison movie and smithers takes to it very well apparently which is a dark joke uh homophobic i would say too oh yes oh yes but you know hey 2003 everybody yeah burns is dressed like sydney green street in casablanca this uh this white sport coat this fez it's fun i do like that outfit he's got it's fun

then we cut to homer having seemingly his vacation ruined and then we zoom out to see he actually is on his vacation now the the business lady is voiced by tress like she thinks she's doing lindsey nagel but it's a new lady maybe they felt like oh lindsey nagel's boobs aren't prominent enough for this woman who we're going to do a boob joke with i i've said it before especially in this era i don't like homer sexually harassing other women or being horny for non-marge types yes him being asked to stop looking at my boobs and that he won't do it it's uh yeah baywatch was on at a bar and we were watching uh half watching it we're like is that carmen electra and we were trying to remember her role in The Simpsons. And it was Homer looking at her boobs.

And she's like, my eyes are up here. And he goes, I've made my decision. And that's the final joke in the episode is Homer's eyes glued to her chest. We've said it already. Homer is the focus of jokes by married men who can't get laid. So they're thinking about other women's they want to at least gaze at other women's chests they're too busy trying to make us laugh to have sex with their wife also the lab coat guy that's talking to homer i believe is the last of the male

worker on focus in i think is where they reuse that okay but yeah so then homer while he's on vacation then we cut to a very prescient scene about teleconferencing. I got a gold star at school today for my expose on toxins and gold star adhesive. That's great, honey. Hold it up to the camera. Homie, I know you've got a lot of work to do, but this really isn't the same as eating dinner with your family. Look, there's nothing more important to me than you guys. I think you're lucky to have the best quality pork chop.

Dad, this just isn't working. Lisa, I deeply resent... With a big bowl of applesauce. Hey, Dad, you said you were going to play catch with me tonight. Well, I have to work, but give the monitor a kiss. I don't want to do that. Come on, boy. You're not too old

to kiss your daddy's monitor. Hey, that's a printer port, not a finger hole. This was a new technology at the time for corporate types, but now we're all living in it. Henry and I are video calling right now. If only you could see us.

Fortunately, our editors are good enough that you didn't hear our skips. We actually did have one this episode. Yeah. I guess this was inspired by one of the writers. I forget who it was, but the showrunner was just constantly away, and he had to video call in, I guess, in the early aughts, and the technology was like this, where they could barely make out what he was saying.

Yeah. It's Michael Price. He credited it to a bad T1 line. I wonder if they have yet to resume in-person table reads. I think they are happening again. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they haven't gone back. But I remember like one of Bob Chapek's many good decisions he's made over the past six to 12 months has been everybody's coming back to work. Right. Right. Those we learned from the writer's strike. I feel like Al Jean spent six months of his year living in new york city because that's primarily where he was doing his picket line walks hmm oh

you know what i'm looking at this now and it's bob eiger oh yes chapek was the guy that eiger got rid of yes he came back i apologize i'm behind on my my ceos but as of january of last year that's when he said you know starting march 1st of 2023 you have to come back four days a week and i have to wonder if the simpsons staff is was doing that oh man well hey then it's time for us to hit up uh our contacts again and see if we can get back into the uh the writers room or sorry the the reading we need to get into the writers room yes yeah we only stood outside of it before looking out that's our next the next frontier no we need to hit up current writers though that's i gotta get back to blind dming matt selman and maybe one of these days

he'll give me a reply you know i i apologize that i forgot i got the bob wrong but you know i just chapek i'm just so close to you know him and his ideas and his philosophy that i forgot he's been gone for a while you know you love all bobs equally bob zemeckis number one bob bob gale second i would guess yeah yeah i mean they're kind of tied in my heart, but he didn't direct the movies. But yeah, I mean, now everybody literally knows how to do this. It's not just the thing only a corporate executive can set up. Also, yes, leave it to Dana Gould to put in a joke implying Bart fingered Homer accidentally. Yeah, gross joke.

And sorry, I was just what where bob chapek is today um some bullshit job uh in a field he knows nothing about so you know nothing new for him but he is he has joined mazimo today mazimo is a global medical technology company so they got him out of entertainment and uh his statement is i I'm thrilled to join the Mazamo board. I look forward to helping advance the company's growth by leveraging their core technologies in the consumer and consumer health spaces. So, you know, those are strong words and I hope he can live up to them. Jesus Christ, man. This is after in two of the fields in the video game related and slash journalism fields me and Bob used to be very engaged with.

There have been a record number of layoffs this year already and so i have been thinking about how one guys like bob chapek fall upwards to another giant job and never go unemployed after they make everybody get laid off and then second i was thinking about how in this episode we're getting the insight into it because the one tress mcneil large-breasted tells homer he has to lay people off yeah to fix the company i mean bob chapek has a job now but he's he's he's a guy who's like selling colostomy bags it's it's just insane that like i mean not insane it's how every literally every business runs but it's like how do we appear more profitable so the line goes up for stock it's just well yeah if we employ fewer people that does it every time that's the only

thing people know how to do they can't cut bonuses of course that wouldn't happen and it's gotten to the point where they're asking like do we do we need employees can we just have our own meetings all day while robots do everything and they're working on it folks executives easy to replace with ai by the way but we should start there that wouldn't happen but so yes homer also comes home late though i think to make him not so horrible he laid off robots not humans yeah which is nice don't tell me they can't cry and then we get a joke about obscure baseball players that they name which is funny because very recently shohei otani just became the highest paid baseball player in the world with a 700 million dollar deal yeah

they're mentioning uh tomo kazoka of the montreal expos uh by the way the expos are now the washington nationals if you're wondering and uh millhouse is pretending to be esteban yan or yan of the tampa bay devil rays both like i'm sure they were talented guys but not not your mvps does baseball have mvps get back to me yes yeah yeah it's uh there's tons of mvps you know also we're right after the super bowl here and i'm seeing that the most recent super bowl game is basically the most popular thing ever televised from the combined powers of football and taylor swift i think i need to start supporting another sport just to knock it down a peg i think i might have to be start becoming a basketball fan like why why aren't

more people watching basketball? Basketball does all right, but yeah, no, I couldn't. I believe the number I heard was 123 million, and that was just the CBS thing. It also streamed and was on Nickelodeon and, I believe, Univision or another Spanish-language channel, too. Yeah, if you add in the multicast, it is just like, oh, know 10 of all humans on the planet earth had seen it well bob i'm sure you were sad that your former bay area sports team the 49ers weren't able to clinch it in the overtime right yes i think i was like playing final fantasy 16 and i was like oh yeah the super bowl's happening i looked at my phone and it was overtime and i thought well that's probably exciting if you are watching this but then i saw san francisco didn't

pull it out i was editing the rebecca sugar episode we did that's what i was doing during the super bowl i also love a mean joke about billy crystal that's great yeah what's his deal like because nelson is like i'm the guy everybody hates the umpire no billy crystal and was he famous i mean i was just looking at his wikipedia yeah like he's a noted baseball fan. And that's... Yeah, of the Yankees. Whoop-de-doo. Like, oh man, he's the guy who likes the Yankees. What a great guy. Well, no, Bob, I was aware of this

because he was doing an entire Broadway one-man show called, I believe, like 100, 300, 500 Sundays with my dad or something about going to baseball games with his dad when he was a kid. Yeah, I was looking into that because with his dad when he was a kid yeah i was looking into that because his dad died when he was 15 so the play is named after the the potential amount of sundays he spent with his dad i also remember he was on a episode of conan in the early late show days where like he takes conan to the yankee stadium and it's just like them exploring

it and it's in general i just like a joke that's mean about billy crystal like and it feels like the show wouldn't be this mean to billy crystal now i don't know i mean i just saw when harry met sally for the first time and i think he won me back i don't want to look at anything he did past like 2000 but i'm on his side now well bob i got some jazz man clips to show you that'll change your i was aware of the jazz man also i was unaware though the until uh research for this i did not know that one of billy crystal's most recent things was that he adapted his movie mr saturday night into a broadway show that he started insane the movie that uh

nobody saw right yeah yeah it's a very unpopular movie turned into what must have been a more popular show but i'll give it to Billy Crystal. He watches out for his friends because his City Slickers co-star, David Pamer, had a major role in it as well. Oh, really? Okay. Where is Marv, the wet bandit? Is he floating around in that or anything? No, he should have been.

He's too busy. But David. Daniel Stern. That's who it is. I could name. How could we forget the brother of the classic Simpsons writer? But if you guys don't know who David Pamer is, if you search his name, when you see pictures of him, you'd be like, oh yeah, that guy. He was like in all those movies.

He's a classic 90s character actor. Yeah, this Mr. Saturday Night thing is a character that like Billy Crystal didn't like run him by us at all. It's just like, you like this thing, right? And we're like, what are you doing who is this because apparently he originated this character on like a comedy special and then like he snuck him into like an snl segment like you feel like he's really into this character nobody else is and then he made a movie billy you know billy crystal gets things done i feel like if uh if robin williams was still alive we probably have to see more billy crystal yeah you know i i feel like he and ben stiller have some things in common and

not the thing you're thinking of i'm talking speaking of their how they're both jewish but um they have characters they seem to be fixated on that no one really is into i'm not a zoolander fan by the way i think that movie sucks you're allowed to like it but when i saw zoolander i'm like you didn't you didn't check in with me to see if this character was fit for a movie. I mean, there were those MTV Movie Awards sketches, I guess, with the Zoolander character in them. Yes. It started as a VH1 fashion awards character. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. But I guess Austin Powers wasn't tested first before they rolled him out into a movie. Well, you know, our blank check pals just did a whole thing on austin powers and obviously there are many flaws to the career of uh mike myers but i do kind of miss a time when a comedian could be or a comedy professional could be that big that they get to call the shots instead of just like executives who say comedy movies aren't allowed to exist anymore yes yeah i agree i mean yeah like what's the new character this time eddie murphy or um wayne uh mike myers yeah instead you know what we get we get a film

version of burke kirshner telling a bullshit story about russian mafia like that turns into like you don't even you know what i'm talking no idea but it sounds awful no it's a terrible it was burke kirshner's not that funny and then he turned his most famous stand-up bit into a movie with mark hamill and i'm not gonna see it but so yes this is when homer says a line that does not feel like a joke when he just says bart's growing up without me he won't be 10 forever which is just said earnestly like i mean it could be a joke in that bart will be 10 forever because he's a cartoon but it's not said like a joke right i think it's just very expository remind the audience of the stakes kind of information where they they can't dress it up as a joke they have to just communicate that information in case you forgot like what the

dilemma is here there was a better recent episode about bart growing up well on the subject of bart growing up i actually did like this recent episode it's the one where marge has you know a fever dream from food poisoning from the most recent season but it's all built around her worried of bark growing up like she sees that his hand is bigger than hers and she's like oh no you're growing away from me and it's the emotionality works here the episodes seems to be suddenly about that when it really wasn't before yeah you're right it's for 70 seconds it's about homer missing his children uh but before it's about that mr burns returns knock knock mr burns where's mr smithers he's doing 80 years on an opium bust

i never saw a man take to a turkish prison so quickly how did you ever run this place you got to turn away your family fire your friends work until the wee hours of the afternoon. Simpson and I worked here for three score and twain. That's 62 years in the new English. Now, come with me. I want to show you something. These are the people in my life I could never find time for because I was too busy working. This was my fiancée, Gertrude. I was working so hard I missed our wedding, our honeymoon, and our divorce proceedings. She died of loneliness. Loneliness and rabies. Do you see why I brought

you here, Simpson? Yes. Yes. If I keep putting work first, I'll lose everyone I care about. Just like you did. Thank you, Mr. Burns. Thank you, Mr. Burns. Thank you for... So he shoots him.

Great little twist here where you think Burns is trying to either trick or be real with Homer, saying like, these are the things I gave up to be CEO. Are you willing to do this? But it's really so he can cask of a Monteato Homer into this tomb. It's great. And it makes it even better than like this it's you know it's a play on a christmas carol but uh it also makes it the reason they're in the graveyard is because he took him to the burns family mausoleum where he's going

to wall him up the rest of the uh action is very funny it's great also uh i guess we're never going to see mr smithers again because he's in uh turkish prison for 80 years he'll never be back on the show maybe his sentence was way for good behavior well based on how he's taking to it i'd say he behaved very well there then no of course yes a gay man loving prison uh kind of homophobic but you know 20 years ago and hey uh they're referencing like a 30 year old movie but uh yes the cask of amontillado scene again it's probably a book i read to get jokes into cartoon shows uh and by book i mean short story one of those books that they put in other books what are those called but it's a great

gag because it is burns being very weak it's like they remembered every good joke with burn uh i mean the setup is very obvious but uh him making it to the dawn and only having basically two rows of bricks built and still thinking homer can't get out and homer just easily walks over the bricks and and burns does not stop and just says you know keep using up precious oxygen and then homer feels so bad for him he puts a jacket on him and this is another one where i'm taking that wikipedia the real wikipedia page to task they say matt graining pitched that joke when they clearly see on the commentary it is dan graining somebody with poor hearing is listening to these commentaries because yeah it's not christmas buttocks and it's not matt it's not matt graining

it's dan graining get the wax out of your ears, Redditor or Wiki editors. See, I made a mistake there, but you know, you can't play me. I didn't put it on Wiki. Also, after the episode we just did in season 14, where Krusty remains a congressman, this episode aggressively

gets back to the status quo. Yeah, except so that they at the end of the show, they have the homers. 305th, everything is back to normal barbecue. But Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington was the 305th episode this is 306 after just embarrassing themselves with the 300th episode that's the 302nd episode you would think they'd get that a little more correct and i

know it must have been burning up aljean when that came back in color with 305 and they're like we can't spend the retake on making it 306 because he had to know it was three yeah they should have known they didn't don't point that out in the commentary but if you're going to be that specific i say get the numbers right you know aljean should have been pointing that out on the commentary and telling a funny story instead of reading bad viewer mail yeah uh we're going to stay tuned for the future commentaries in this season i wonder if they read anything else i can't remember i've only heard i listened to the other commentaries a billion times these these later ones of the like 10 to 19

dvds i've heard like once once or twice because they came out when podcast exists yes that's exactly the reason why uh but yes this is where uh burns is comforted by homer and everything's back to normal in our last clip what are are you doing? Scream all you like. No one will hear you. I don't know why you're trying to steal a plant bag. I don't even want it. Don't keep begging. You're just wasting precious oxygen.

Brick by brick, I seal his doom. There you go. Hey, Dad, pitch to me. From now on, my only ambition is to be the world's greatest dad. Hey, you nearly hit me on the head. Quit crowding the plate. You want a piece of me you see this is the stuff mom won't do with me yeah ow ow he bit me you son he bit me you little and no you're not hearing things uh the quality on

that ending song is very bad it sounds like it came from a cassette tape that was sitting on someone's dash for like decades but yes that is the harry nelson theme song to the courtship of eddie's father the sitcom based on the popular film sitcom only lasted for about three or four years i was never shown to me no apparently it got bigger in reruns than it did in its first run and i didn't i if you had to ask me before doing this episode who stars in the courtship of eddie's father i wouldn't have known it was bill bixby okay bill bixby yeah i just all i know from that is there is i believe a japanese maid who calls the main character mr eddie's father yes yeah it's uh

actually thank you for mentioning that bob because at first i was thinking boy that probably dates this show a little bit but the i then fell down a a wiki rabbit hole on that actress miyoshi umeki because she has let she led uh she's she's no longer with us, she led a very interesting life. She is the first Asian-born woman to win an Academy Award for acting. Oh, for which film? She was in the 1958 Marlon Brando starring film Sayonara. Okay. I assumed that if she was in a movie, it would have a name like that. Yes, yeah.

She was a great actress and singer. I watched a whole hour of her singing songs on Merv Griffin and similar shows in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And yeah, she lived a very interesting American music, and she learned to sing American standards in English and sing in English very well. And first got popular in Japan, then came over to the U.S., and then her singing made her famous on talk shows, and then she gets cast in this movie, and so she starts getting roles in movies. Now, obviously, as even by the 70s in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, the roles she's getting, you know, she's doing a great job in them, but they're not the roles you would give a Japanese-American actress today, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it is a shame that she won an Oscar and then they're like, I guess you can be a maid who doesn't say a lot in this sitcom about a guy. I watched an informative video on her history because she you know with michelle yo recently winning an acting award for best actress there was more

talk about the history of asian born and asian americans winning the academy award and so that that put her back into the conversation and yeah that courtship of eddie's father show was like one of her last it was she retired after it from from acting and but she she also did an episode of the donna reed show which is interesting because it's about donna reed in a liberal for her time episode is about trying to integrate this japanese woman into american society and about the difference in their customs and she's like well it's a different custom it doesn't mean bad or good and look i'm sure it's full of stuff that's poorly dated but it's interesting to see a donna reed in her sharing i was not expecting that from the donna reed show it's uh but yeah see that's

the size of the wikipedia rabbit hole i fell down with the miyoshi well i wouldn't have known that if you fell if you didn't fall down that rabbit hole so thank you all of that to say they play the theme song from that show over this which feels like classic aljean obvious song please yeah it's like as well but they're not best friends they're hurting each other and then the episode ends and this is before the woke mind virus took over and homer can still strangle bart he's still doing it folks james l brooks told us he's still gonna do it i wonder if they're they've after that they emergency added to a season season 36 script homer strangling bart just to make it clear as like it came down from on high from brooks like all right you get a strangling in that next script you're right and i

want to see that next season one should have one episode next season all strangling but it should be a super cut of all the strength that would be 22 minutes i think but yes that's the ending of the episode as the status quo is redeemed again. And Homer seemingly gets to keep his job after firing Mr. Burns, too, for some reason. Yeah, we're not. I mean, everything's back to normal. They had a barbecue. Don't ask any more questions.

But this was a really funny episode, especially by season 14 standards. Yes, I remember watching this and Mr. Spritz back in the day and thinking, oh, things are improving. And I think they do pick up towards the back half of the season, especially as we head towards Mo Baby Blues, a very good episode directed by Lauren McMullen. So I wish there was more, not political commentary, but commentary about CEOs. I don't know if we're having those conversations quite yet. This is verging on being post-Enron, but when it's being written, but there'll be more jokes about that kind of stuff in the future. But for now, it's a funny, what if Homer ran the plant episode and Burns gets to have a little fun. It's good to see him back. Yeah. And it's Dana Gould showing that he's not just an entertaining guy in the writer's room. He also can write a very funny script. But thank you all for joining us once again for Talking Simpsons. Thanks for listening. If you want to support the show and get a bunch of bonus stuff on top of that, head on over to patreon.com

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And there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you can access all the $5 dollar stuff naturally but you can also access one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob is talking about our super awesome premium podcast we're very proud of which is what a cartoon movie where like we do an episode the simpsons we cover an animated feature film very in depth we go into the history of the film we go scene by scene through the film explaining all the references what we love about it we have talked for four or five or even six hours about so many classic films last month we covered studio ghibli hayo miyazaki classic porco rosso miyazaki's tribute to aviation in the 1920s and before that we covered 1942's Bambi the Walt

Disney classic and we have so many other awesome ones in the past and another great one coming this month over five years of what a cartoon movie podcast that's over 60 of them covering so many things I'd estimate 200 hours of podcast conversation just about classic films including our longest podcast ever six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit everything from akira to a goofy movie as i love to say check it out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast is called retro knots it's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every

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whenever there's cool stuff going on, follow at talk Simpsons pod. And of course, head on over to talking Simpsons.com for an easy to follow list of all of our previously released free podcasts that's talking simpsons.com thank you so much for listening folks we'll see you again next time for season four's brother from the same planet Listen up, life obstacles. From now on, nothing's going to stand in Homer Simpson's way. Do your homework. Don't do so much homework.

Learn to talk. You, let's love now. Sounds good to me. Go on ahead. I'll just slow you down.