Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Dancin' Homer (Revisited) With Mike Carlson

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

We head out to the ball game with our returning guest, Podcast: The Ride's Mike Carlson! Mike helps us understand the magic of baseball, the history of small-town mascots, and more in this week's classic episode of Homer becoming a Minor League star. All that plus we try to deconstruct the weird editing of this episode's framing device, all in one nutty coo-coo super king of a podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

If you're in need of quality new tires and have been searching the internet for a good deal, look no further than your local Big O Tires. For a limited time, when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free on select set of tires. And because we know that tires can be an unexpected expense, take advantage of no credit needed financing made easy. They work with multiple lending partners, so the financing is tailored to you. Remember that when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free. Only at your locally owned Big O Tires, the team you trust. Good news, everyone. Talking Futurama is coming back for Talking Futurama Season 2, Part 2.

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Shut up and take my money. I hardly endorse this event or product. Ahoy hoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons recorded live on 4th Street and D. I'm your host, the gangly gentleman, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else isth Street and D. I'm your host, the gangly gentleman Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today as always? Why, it's Henry Gilbert, and this podcast gives me the duty to make a complete ass of myself. And who is our special guest on the line? It's me, Michael Carlson. And today's episode is Dancing Homer. Hey, Dad, look, you're on jumbo vision whoa hey everybody how you doing

look at me i'm homer simpson today's episode aired on november 8th 1990 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby chris isaacs released his song wicked games megaman 3 is released on the nintendo entertainment system and in theaters this week jacob's ladder and child's play 2 big not the biggest week in movie theater just in time for after halloween is child's play 2 i know right what the hell yeah it's it's two weeks after now like eight days after halloween they put out child's play 2 into theaters i i never watched any of the child's play films like unedited i only saw them on tv because the vhs boxes scared me too much as a kid we're on the same page like the the boxes themselves gave me enough nightmares and uh fear that just the idea of watching one was unthinkable to me as a child.

Yeah, no, I just said this on our podcast. I would think like Gremlins, I didn't watch Gremlins as a kid. I didn't watch Child's Play. I thought these were like snuff films. I thought these were just like real life footage of people being murdered. That's what I imagined. It was boxes of like Monkey Shines was another VHS box at the Blockbuster that terrified me. Yeah, you mentioned Gremlins 2.

I remember, like, I had the choice to either see Gremlins 2 or Dick Tracy, and I was like, you know what? If I see Gremlins 2, I'm going to have nightmares, so I'm going to go with Dick Tracy. No nightmares after that viewing. And a sexual awakening from seeing Madonna in that film. Yes, I came home with a new love for Breathless Mahoney. Look, I was freaked out by Dick Tracy, too, with the villains and the McDonald tie-in. Oh, right. Mega Man 3, that's quite a good video game.

I know there's some discussion, like, what's the best original one, three, or two? I personally like two more still. Oh, really? I was going to say, it's got to be three, but I just think it's down to personal taste. I had two. I don't think i had

three i have played it though i've had i've played those compilations i'm trying to remember what do you remember the what was the difference in villains in two and three well three has uh stall is wily but three also has a proto man yeah it's the big proto man one with his right i mean when he appears in the like little whistle sound comes on definitely there's there's more presentationally to it, and I think they clearly had a bigger budget and better graphics and everything. There's something about the Mega Man 2 level design

and the villains, like Metal Man design-wise and Wood Man. I just love their looks so much. They're so cool. Oh, yeah, Wood Man. Oh, I love Wood Man. 3 has Top Man, which is kind of weird. Yeah, yeah. My friend has 3 now that I think about it.

I also just love the simplicity in Mega Man 2 for me as a child. I got the buzz saws. I got to face the guy who's a block of wood. Like clearly that's where I need to take my buzz saws to. Yeah, Chris Isaac, Wicked Games. I just remember Chris Isaac was like, he was in movies a bit. Yeah. It felt like they were trying to make him a thing

i mean we mentioned madonna earlier i think he was trying to out horny madonna with that music video that's true yeah it was a real horny arms race on cable television yeah i would look he made me uncomfortable too just like the horror movies but yes our joining us today is uh mike carlson of podcast the ride thanks for coming. Hey, thanks for having me. And I will say your podcast is great. We're big fans. But as of this recording, I just listened to the last Patreon one, which is about Barney. And you said a very profound thing that whether you like Barney or hate Barney, that will determine what kind of millennial you are.

An older millennial or a younger millennial? Because that is the dividing line. Yes. I think I don't want to i don't want to take credit i think maybe jason sheridan actually oh who said that um i just i just yeah but he's right and i agree with it because it was like there is like a really pivotal like six months or something that divides what everyone's take on barney was because i was an i'm an old what when is millennials cut off like 81 is the

first millennial I think to 96 I think something like that such that's too big isn't it for a whole generation it should be smaller I think yeah so I'm I'm 84 so I'm on the older end of the millennials and my sister of course was it's three years younger than she was she liked Barney sincerely but also liked making fun of him with me so she might have been right in the middle she's 87 uh see yeah i have uh i have that kind of divide too with being the older brother my younger brother three years younger than me but he was 85 he was at the tail end of going like i guess i like barney but then by he liked video barney like he we can rip the videos but not but once barney ascended to a regular show i think a couple years later my brother was not so into barney then yeah i really think it comes down to

the concept is still kind of attractive of like a giant suit character a giant dinosaur character with other dinosaurs but you can tell we we had better kids entertainment everyone knew whether you could articulate it or not that this was not a sophisticated show this was a dumb stupid show that really wasn't giving you we just like you just watched sesame street like you can tell yeah it's better than barney so you like if at a certain point as a kid i'm sure you would be like i don't like like this as much as the better stuff. Not to get too far into Barney, but something you said about the show really surprised me and making me recontextualize the show where there's a tragic element of the Barney show in which it is about a paternal figure praising children. So it feels like wish fulfillment for latchkey kids or for kids with just too busy or emotionally detached parents.

What if a dinosaur said, I was special? I think I'll watch this program. Yes. It is interesting to think about it in that context because it does feel like kids that went to daycare, hey, wouldn't it have been better if a giant dinosaur was here instead of a burned out lady who was upset because it's just a tough job to manage children i think what i said because i would i've been doing a bit where i would be like oh that's a great macaroni painting michael like that's the whole show is just him

praising kids for like an art project they did and uh yeah and i just that was an excuse to of course do the voice which i've been doing for like 30 years or like 25 years. I think another thing for me as a kid that pushed Barney away was, you know, within a year of it getting big, Animaniacs did like a very long, like a full episode mocking Barney. Simpsons made fun of Barney too. The Critic. The Critic, yeah. Just that it was and i i think i i knew that the things i respected were making fun of it as just empty so i i like that and then

i think uh a couple years into it i even saw the people who work on sesame street were saying don't don't watch barney it's bad like this is i believe was in the documentary of the the man who played Big Bird that he Carol Spiney he was saying don't and don't watch Barney like there's a clip of him saying in the end two plus two really was four he was right but Mike were you were you there on November 8th 1994 this episode what was it yeah November 8th yeah I'm sure I like we were from Simpsons we were all in. We saw, I think maybe a rerun of the first Christmas special. And then we watched every week. We were, I was like, we were like day, like week three watchers or something.

Wow. The show. That's cool. Yeah, for sure. I, it's, it's always nice when to hear people like us who had parents that were cool with the watching of Simpsons and encouraged instead of our we we have two types of guests who watched it back in the 90s if you saw it in the 90s with the encouragement of your parents or in spite of your parents and you had to like wait until the syndication run started

that you could finally watch it before your parents came home from work but they had eventually given in by that point yeah yeah yeah well i mean i had a friend actually the same friend who had megaman three whose parents would not let him watch it and i remember like we were trying i was trying to help convince like his mom to let him watch and like i was like oh you know what we'll say some funny jokes that i heard on the show and that will convince her to let you what and she she will know this isn't some godless show but it did not work for many years and and how much simpsons merch did you have uh back then too i know you were a fan of a lot of you were owning tmnt toys around the same time yeah you know they didn't really i'm trying they didn't have a great batch of toys for the simpsons they had the burger king toys which i

had i had some a couple shirts but maybe they had some like kind of bendable toys somebody's gonna be mad if i'm wrong about this but i don't recall them like stocking good decent simpsons toys and toys r us for many years maybe until i guess the playmates line i i think there was an okay mattel line in like 91 that had a that had like bart man and bart and in the whole family but let me look that uh but we don't have to even talk about it anymore i'm just doing this for my own the i had the crappy bendy ones too that like i just hate those things weighed like four pounds they they were good at hitting brothers because they just they're just weapons yeah they're just weapons okay yeah these are your yeah these are what i'm dating like a really cheap uh board and yes i have i i see these i'd love to pretend now

that i was too like sophisticated and i knew these toys were not as good as like this the playmates turtles or something but i did not have them and i'm not exactly sure why and also i i wanted like out of all the episodes to pick well as a fan of theme parks is that why you wanted this kind of mascot friendly episode i yeah you know that's probably ties into it i would think i always i like the capital city goofball a lot which i guess plays into it i just remember like i was into baseball at the time which is funny now considering i'm the only sport i like is pro wrestling but i was like playing baseball these couple years and i think i even have in a school project somewhere that i'm going to be a baseball player that's my goal in life which quickly

i mean abandoned by i'm sure third grade so i think that probably all plays into me enjoying this episode were you a cubs or a Sox kid in the Chicagoland area? Oh, Cubs for sure. Okay. Yeah. This came around the brief time I was into baseball as a kid too. Maybe this spurred it on. I was never into baseball.

I was into basketball for one year of my life and that's basically it. So I still know nothing about it. But I did want to talk about the writers of this episode. so we do like a little writer's corner whenever we encounter new writers in our timeline of the simpsons so the writers for this episode are ken levine and david isaacs and perhaps at this point in history they were the most acclaimed sitcom writers to have written for the simpsons oh yeah yeah i mean if you don't count like brooks and simon right right showrunners they definitely isaacs and levine like which i'd always said levine because that's the name of a video game guy ken levine but it is levine so uh

they knew sam simon from their work on sitcoms they loved the show they wanted to write for it but the pay was very low according to a blog post by levine he says they were paying scriptwriters what you would get for a saturday morning cartoon because it was animated so essentially sam simon promised them like simpsons swag like jackets and toys and because they had kids and they liked the show they wrote this script the the secret of the up until the year 1999 was that the simpsons was a non-union show like on the writer's side it was not wga and until the 10th season and a big reason Fox kept it going for so long, we're like, well, we don't have to really pay the cut. Like, the actors are cheaper and the writers are cheaper

and the animation is cheaper. Like, it's every, they got that Saturday morning loophole. It's insane. It still blows my mind. I didn't realize that until a couple years ago that it was non-union until the last, or until season 10. Yeah, and we talked to mike scully about the whole thing in a really good interview folks should listen to yeah it's on our patreon our second interview with him we go

over like how the show was unionized so go back to levine and isaac's uh they got their start in writing on a 1975 episode of the jeffersons and after a bit of freelancing they made a big splash on mash and ended up writing 37 episodes of mash and i believe they were the showrunners towards the end like these guys in their 20s were the showrunners of mash that's uh man i that that is an impressive career already for them just to be to be running one of the highest rated tv shows that ever was yeah i ken levine uh early in like 12 years ago i was loving reading his blog yeah it's like he i just enjoyed reading him uh lift the veil on what it was like to be a sitcom writer in the 70s 80s and 90s in a way i could only really get on my beloved commentaries

for simpson he's like mark evanier and that he's had a blog he's updated every day for like 15 years all about tv writing levine and isaac's also so they would did mash and then they did the hated after mash and then they went to cheers from the beginning on cheers they won the emmy for the first year of cheers outstanding uh show outstanding uh sitcom or whatever that category is they would write 36 episodes of cheers would be on the show for the entire run outside of one year in which they developed a show for mary tyler moore called mary which is why in saturdays of thunder there was a joke about how mary tyler moore will spray you in the face with mace wow yeah they that's right they had quite an axe to grind with mary with the late mary tyler moore and i think she was was battling alcoholism at that time or she had been in

recovery. There was something about her that she wasn't at her best around that time in her life. That's too bad. I will say this is a complete side note. I'm looking for NECA toys to make some Mary Tyler Moore figures. I just want that into the universe. I want the footstool.

Just a little version of it. You got to get the full set like it's got to be all five of them in the first but who i mean do you have to go to the estate of ted knight to make a ted baxter toy well i mean i don't know that they don't have to have the license for the funkos but they do have ted knight's character from caddyshack and made into a toy at this point okay um so i don't know i think i feel like they could they could reach the knight estate and i assume that uh they know james l brooks and sam simon just from being in that world and so yeah lots of work on cheers and again like did we just record an episode about the cartoon

tale spin i think it's been available for a while on what a cartoon or other podcast but cheers in 1990 cheers was the seinfeld of its day it was getting at least 30 million people uh an episode and they were writing on cheers at this time and for the entire run so cheers was massive so getting cheers writers people who won an emmy for writing for cheers on the simpsons was a huge get you like regular yeah i uh you from reading levine's uh 2016 blog about it it definitely sounded like when they got their season two order of you know the full 22 instead of 13 that that like simon was just calling whoever he could to be like please we need more scripts like just come on in i know it pays shit but but please and they also wrote for uh wings because i think everybody in

the 90s had to do their wings time yeah uh becker and frazier and i mentioned before he's got a ken levine has a blog just search for ken levine blog and you'll find it he updates it like every day for the past 15 years and he has a podcast called hollywood and levine that just passes 200 episodes so i think we can get him on our podcast i think we can and hopefully only ask him questions about the two simpsons episodes like 0.01 of his career but yeah uh this episode is based on his time as a play-by-play announcer of minor league games he was doing while he was doing tv writing and he would later do play-by-play announcing for major league games in fact he wrote a book about doing it for the baltimore orioles in 1991 so a year after this

he goes into professional play-by-play and then writes a book about it so he must have been just freelancing then the or well i guess what over the summer he could live in la most of the time and then in the summer he moves to maryland yeah i mean these shows have got to go on hiatus and if you're writing for mash and then cheers you have to have money right yeah in that time period but yeah that is uh ken levine and david isaacs and there's a new director on this mark kirkland we'll talk more about him with a bargainots Hipped by a Car. But we have an interview with him on our Patreon as well. But he has recorded, sorry, he has directed now 84 episodes of the show.

It's so funny that Kirkland on the commentary, he's like, yeah, I'm at 43. And I'm like, holy shit, you've almost doubled that at this point. But yeah, I'll call back to it a couple of times for specific stories he told us. But in that interview, he discussed a lot about working on this episode specifically. That is interesting. But I wonder too, for Levine at least, that another draw for this episode was obviously not the pay, but was that on Cheers, he could indulge in baseball stuff a little bit because Sam Malone was a pitcher and everything. But this is like, no no this is the baseball show like i gave up at a certain point in my notes and

just like ah he says this is some this character is named after some other guy he knew in baseball like yeah there are five people in this episode that have two specific names all named after people he worked with in minor league baseball i i look forward to talking more about kirkland stuff too i love but levine his i really love on his blog post he had this one story i just love about how uh vindictive he could be or well okay this was about getting revenge on the actors on a show if you're mad at him he said to do the best way to do that is to write an episode that takes place in his blizzard because they have to under hot studio lights wear heavy clothes and pretend to be and like stand around a fire he's like he i think he

said he did it on mash specifically he was he was mad and was like you know what it's winter time this time that's gonna have to be was that the whole was that his whole pitch for the mary pilot to punish mary tyler moore the last six episodes were, she was completely snowed in. But this is an interesting first, an episode of a lot of firsts. It's also, I believe this is, okay, if you count Homer's odyssey is like, I guess Homer gets a new job there and then he becomes like, when he loses his job, he becomes like the safety guy for the town but this really is the first time homer is hired to a new job and it i i think it more

follows the uh regular template of homer gets a new job kind of episode and and it's the first time the family moves that's why the hank scorpio episode's called you only move twice because this is the first time the family uh sells everything and moves and it is the first time a guest star has played to themselves in an episode so a lot of firsts i just take all that for granted that's all just normal simpsons stuff and like homers there are so many crowds but this time they're drawn to be people they're not like these weird mutants in the background and mike too i wanted to ask because this episode for me is really defined by editing and post i i believe you have you know professionally edited things how how much do you notice that in this in this episode the uh the the editing

you mean as far as it being like kind of chopped up or yeah yeah um that's i kind of just chalk it up to like the first couple seasons of the simpsons i mean i i would be interested to watch it now again i just re-watched it but i watch it again to notice and and when you say professionally you mean edit clips of skeet porters falling on their balls yeah which i guess look it aired on tv i should put it down you know um but i sort of just chalk it up to like a little roughness of the first few seasons yeah i honestly think and we'll talk more about this as we talk about the episode that uh people like james l brooks and sam simon were so used to working with live action stuff that now that they

have the power to cut up scenes and sprinkle them around and recontextualize scenes by putting in new dialogue which you cannot do in live action for obvious reasons they had the powers of god and i think they took it too far in this episode because the bar scene that is like the framing device in the original script that is just the end of the episode that's where homer ends up so that was animated and they cut that up and reuse it to make a framing device and i don't think any element of that scene exists as it did originally not even the ending that's why none of the mouth movements work that's why they cut away to mo polishing a glass or the outside of the bar very awkwardly constantly that's why homer bites his tongue off screen uh it's yeah the the the framing device of this i mean the yeah as they they say what happened was it came back and brooks felt that it needed

a better opening and they just chop it all up and they i and then they add narration throughout the entire thing and i think they cut back to the bar at least once they do it too much i wish i think brooks uh i don't know if this this goes with the treehouse of horror that came a couple episodes before this they were worried that the raven was too slow and the kids were gonna pull away i think there's some bits in this that just should have been like silent i think or that would have played better with quiet but they they overdid and you can totally tell like the narration like from the beginning is such brooks kind of writing like it really is about how the way he talks about relationships or dreams or all these kind of homers a bit too clever oh this narration too Oh, way too clever, yeah. That's what you pay Brooks for.

But I would like to see this episode as it was intended because now that I know what was added to it, I just see that as being imposed on a better story. Yeah. Look, now I'm going to try to act retroactively smart. I am going to say I was like, well, this is an interesting framing device. You don't get a lot on the show. So is interesting it makes sense that they chopped it up because it's not

the normal simpsons is what like the first act is like disposable and gets you into the main plot and then the next two acts are the actual show usually yeah this this is this is kind of weird though because this first act is 11 minutes yeah it's a's a beefy one. It's half the episode. I feel like they had cuts at different times in this instead. Yeah, there were a few fades where they felt like they were act breaks, but then they weren't. Yeah. Well, this is like when they were just getting done with doing fades in Simpsons at its due instead of just like, you know, the hard cuts. Yeah.

The Simpsons will be right back. Hey, baseball fans, how do you cheer on your favorite team? Little baby batter, can't control his bladder. Homer's here to show you how. Boogie, boogie, boogie, boogie, boogie. Because when this athletic supporter gets off the bench, he scores big with the fans. There he is. The Simpsons!

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. We 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? If you're in need of quality new tires and have been searching the internet for a good deal,

look no further than your local Big O Tires. For a limited time, when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free on select set of tires. And because we know that tires can be an unexpected expense, take advantage of no credit needed financing made easy. They work with multiple lending partners, so the financing is tailored to you. Remember that when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free, only at locally owned big o tires the team you trust a big thank you to our guest this week mike carlson for making us feel like nutty cuckoo super kings everybody should check out what he does every week with scott garner and jason

sheridan on the podcast, The Ride podcast. It's so much fun. And if you're an enjoyer of this podcast, well, Talking Simpsons is brought to you each week by wonderful listeners like you who subscribe at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. You see, me and Bob do this as our full-time jobs and we can only do it thanks to the support of people on Patreon.

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in the Talking Simpsons style in Talking Futurama. That comes out at the end of each month we cover futurama in the talking simpson style in talking futurama that comes out at the end of each month and twice a month in fact starting very soon on the patreon we will be covering talking of the hill season two part one we're covering the first half of king of the hill for you guys at the five dollar level and you'll get the access to the entire back catalog of our exclusive to patreon mini series covering previous episodes of king of the hill futurama the critic the entire series of mission hill as well and tons and tons more you'll hear us talk about a jeff martin interview and mark kirkland interview we did those are only available behind the patreon paywall

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cartoon coming up at the end of this month ducktales the movie we're covering for over almost four hours long the month after that in april you'll get to hear us talk about shrek that's right it's the 20th anniversary of shrek and we have a lot of thoughts on that ogre rated film plus over two years of a back catalog of what a cartoon movies that's over 120 hours me and bob talking about films as diverse as aladdin akira a goofy movie kiki's delivery service end of evangelion and far many more than that please sign up for 10 bucks a month to hear everything at patreon.com talking simpsons i i do think that brooks kind of over overplayed his hand on this one i also wonder too if like you know by the end of season two simon was getting on his way out so i wonder if this was part of this power struggle near the end too,

because if like by the time the stuff started coming back in color, I think I I'm wondering if that's when Simon was kind of moving out of his slot. And so Brooks was kind of taken over more and was making these like edit calls instead. I just think not to go too far on this, but like I think these guys honestly thought like no one would notice but you do notice especially as you're watching these things on

better tvs too you can see like that's just a video freeze and a zoom in on a video freeze like you could tell so i think they're they thought they were being a little more clever than they actually were with a lot of these like reuse shots and recycled animation scenes in adr i well i'll say this i re-watched this on my phone uh maybe the 1990s still frames then don't look as uh so it looked perfect it looked just like i remembered it uh well at least now it's in the right aspect ratio on the i'm assuming you watched it on disney plus yes the uh the greatest place to watch anything it's such a of course it's perfect everything's perfect uh but uh actually why don't we hear a little bit of that tacked on opening so homer what happened at capital city oh barney come on homer we're dying of curiosity

look there's only one thing worse than being a loser it's being one of those guys who sits in a bar telling the story of how he became a loser and i never want that to happen to me please homer yeah come on homer well okay it all started on nuclear plant employees spouses and no more than three children night down at springfield stadium i never noticed that music until listening to that right now. That is a very weird choice. What was the music in the background? I couldn't place the song, but it was like a vocal song being played. That also feels very like season one Moe's Bar kind of choice, too.

Yeah, when we did season one, we noticed there's always a recognizable song playing to sort of contrast with the bleakness of Moe's Bar. Like an actual pop song of some kind yeah like they have like uh crazy i think yeah yeah wow really the bar scene again it's meant to be the end of the episode i don't know what they were going to say at the end but you could tell from the beginning that and i i think like mike reese said on the uh on the commentary like it was an old trick of so many episodes of the dick van dyke show start as a character telling a story yeah and that was just a trick to get you know viewers into the story i remember that on a lot of the dick van dyke reruns i'd watch i'd be like they always have to be like well five years ago i feel i remember on most of those dick van dyke ones it

seemed like a way to get out of having to write anything for their kid because they're like well we we had them have a kid but it's no fun to write kid stories so they'll just they'll start the story with dick going like well remember five years ago this happened yeah i that's is it just like a fairy tale opening where it's like the big book is there like is that just something that they get people got used to because i don't really know that you get anything from it at least in this instance it's not like it's it's not like it's uh setting up some like cool thing you're like wow how is this gonna happen i think like narratively it gives you the excuse to use narration and narration isn't always bad but it can also like kind of buttress a weakness in the story by like oh here's a clever thing a character can say when

there's no one speaking on the screen right right right yeah narration some like your purist filmmakers i feel like i think narration is bullshit i mean well that's what i learned from the film adaptation which was was my film school right of course when i think about not having that opening there just having a fun wordless open of auto like driving in and going like, hey, I think we lost him. Like, that's a fun, I think that's a funnier start to an episode than Homer reflecting on stuff. Yeah, I think your James L. Brooks overthought it. If we may critique this multi-time Oscar winner.

Yeah. I've been to a couple family game nights for a, it was my mom's work when i was a kid but it was for like the local hockey team but a few years ago my stepdad took me and my mom to the family day which was for an oakland a's game which was as sparsely attended as this game was but i think that's that's my only experience with family days i i now the thought of a business spending a bunch of money to take people to a baseball game at night that that seems unlikely yeah i mean i have heard i have heard a business like took people to like a theme like they'll rent

out a theme park but i think it has to be like obviously a business that generates a lot of money yeah i mean the joke here is that mr burns is being very cheap in that like no more than three children night basically and then if you see when he's greeting them they're in section z but still like burns like a year later would not do this for his employees or even sit with them you know and i guess i guess the implication too is that the isotopes is owned by burns as well yeah he's saving money in that way it is interesting there's a couple of things like lisa's i will get lisa's a little i don't know i will get there when we get there well no uh yeah in the next scene of them walking into the game i do i like that lisa is a nerd for baseball like

she's sounding like ken burns yeah his documentary being very poetic yeah yeah I mean baseball is the nerds game the sport for nerds I feel baseball is that yeah for sure and that's maybe why at least I flirted with liking it as a kid yeah and you know what the like reality has like outpaced the Simpsons satire of food but I don't know if you can buy a 72 ounce tub of beer at any event yet maybe when events come back you know we'll need it to deal with the trauma of being around people you can get uh you can get like a tub of that at howl at the moon like a but it's liquor it's not beer i've uh the only time i go well and obviously i'm talking about before uh i hate the only uh things i would go to would be you know wrestling events but if i bought beer i'd hate to get in those cups because i am certain i'm going to spill like 20 of it on

the walk there and it's just i i'm not a fan of buying beer and also then i just feel so ripped off whatever the amount of money i'm charged for beer i think it's two dollars too much at least well they're not they're not dealing with the constant amount of money I'm charged for beer, I think it's $2 too much at least. Well, they're not dealing with the constant amount of pissing Homer must have to do after drinking more than one 72-ounce tub of beer. I believe it's $2.50, though, for two of these beers. It is. That's crazy. They didn't do a joke about how expensive liquor is at baseball games. Even at a minor league game, it would not be cheap.

I know minor league games, this is like an ode to minor league baseball in general be uh it would not be cheap i know minor league games this is like an ode to minor league baseball in general and how fun that could be i yeah the bits in here about going to the big leagues uh were really got me at the time because my family had just moved to atlanta so i'd never been to a major league baseball game because i grew up in a town like arkansas does not have major league sports at all and so getting to go to the atlanta braves like turner field was a huge change for me yeah we had we had fly they built like i think a flyer stadium for the schomburg flyers like when i was out of playing baseball and then we went i'm trying to think it was probably some like school tie-in to go there

and i don't remember anything about going to these shows except once i saw bob dylan there and vince vaughn was in the audience and i blew my mind i was like oh vince vaughn this was like when i was 21 hollywood's vince vaughn yeah yeah in schaumburg there's some weird visual gags as they walk in that i that the the old man selling that kid the hat in the foreground is so odd they still haven't gotten the like the background people down right what i noticed about this episode is that there are so many crowds of people but not one recognizable character like in a future episode like five years later it'd be like well what is flanders doing at the game or what is sideshow mel doing like but there's no other character at the stadium that we know but the simpsons yeah it's yeah i i did notice that too i was like i

these are i assume never came back again like you couldn't find these character models in any other like audience scene in the next season so many scenes of the simpsons yeah we get weirdos like uh the gammels come back from no disgrace like home and the uh the wind fields yeah the wind fields we see them at capital city these season one nobodies that would just die in a few episodes from now there's a guy i did notice noted that when they're walking through by souvenirs there's a guy dressed like bart oh yes there's there's several bart hairlines in this too that are all just like all these these setup rules but i feel for so bad for mark kirkland that his first episode he's on it's like a lot of choreographed dancing and 800 crowd shots like so many crowd shots it's incredibly unfair for a person's first and it's uh i mean the commentary is really

something actually bob me and bob were talking about that before i just feel so sorry for mark kirkland because they're showing off this amazing work for a director's first job on this very complex show and all mac rating is doing is complaining about things that they eventually fixed yes like i told you guys don't draw those eyebrows you eventually listen to me and meanwhile like there's like 500 people on the screen that Mark Kirkland directed. There's even a bit of like when they do a close up on Homer and he's got the kind of you may notice in this app, the M of hair over his ear is rounded. And, you know, Mark Kirkland's like, yeah, we some, you know, we varied it back then. Sometimes do it sharp, sometimes do it rounded.

And then Groening's like, it was always supposed to be sharp. I didn't like it rounded. And then Kirkland says, but Wes Archer said it was okay. He's like, I was telling Wes not to do that. It's like bringing up, he's like re-digging up hatchets that have been buried. It's still like obviously really, he probably wakes up in the middle of the night screaming about it he drew more than one tear just one tear i told you one this animal winked no okay uh but i i also do really like the cute design of maggie and her hat yeah yeah

and in this episode burns is evolving into the burns we know and love but there's still these old traits like he still is doing the reagan uh thing of using index cards to like remember people's names and we'll see like another version of that way down the line in homer the smithers when they bring back the index cards but they're for him to remember his name yeah it's like everything is on me monty burns which is a kind of a similar thing to this, except that in Homer the Smithers, Burns is drinking beer with a teaspoon. He's not drinking more than one 72-ounce beer with Homer. Yeah, there's multiple things that Burns is off on, but I like, I have the clip for it,

but the next, the bit of a lost runner is always interesting to me. Like, they only do this twice. This joke twice twice this is really just a sequel to no disgrace like home of him not knowing who the simpsons are and them getting some joke out of that yeah i feel like it's these writers saying well this is what mr burns does we need a scene of him doing this burns is so much more uh hardy too and then they were just like let's make him the most frail man alive. It's important to note that a few episodes ago in Simpson and Delilah, his given age was 81.

So in a few years, he would be 104. So they aged about 20 years since this episode. He makes some old-timey references in here, but nothing compared to what he'll do in the softball episodes a year after. But yes, Burns meets the Simps in this next clip. compared to what he'll do in uh in the softball episodes a year after but uh but yes the burns meets the simps in this next clip lisa honey you're forgetting the beer it comes in 72 ounce tubs here i hope you'll space out the tubs this year homer what are you getting at well last year you got a little rambunctious and mooned the poor umpirege, this ticket doesn't just give me a seat. It also gives me the right, no, the duty to make a complete ass of myself.

Mm. Ah, the Gammels. Good to see you. You're an inspiration to all of us in waste management, sir. Well, take your mind off contaminants for one night and have a hot dog. Put a little smile on his card, Smithers. Already there, sir. It's a Simpsons. Ah, well, if it isn't the

Simps. Uh, it's Simpsons, sir. Oh, yes. Homer and Marge Simpson. Oh, and these must be Bart, Lisa, and Expecting. The card needs to be updated, sir. That's okay.

The baby's name isn't important. Let's go, Marge. I'm now noticing the organ music throughout the whole scene, too. I wonder if that was always there. They decided to goose it. Yeah, Burns giving away the joke of the title, although gay doesn't mean happy anymore, and simp means something different in 2021.

That's right, yeah. The Gamble family named after Tom Gamble, who was a friend of the writers who'd go on to be a writer for The Simpsons by season 10. Yeah, the Gamble family, it's funny too, no disgrace like home. He was fired by Burns, but this time Burns likes him. And he says to put a smile by the card that

pays off with the joke later of when homer gets banned on his card there's a bunch of frowny faces on there which clearly was him telling smithers to do i i again when i see smithers in this full-on assistant role role here i can't uh stop thinking about my new theory that I presented last in season one that Smithers is a parody of Jeffrey Katzenberg. Oh, right, right, right. Oh, interesting. Hear me out here, Mike. I'm talking about Quibi's own Jeffrey Katzenberg, which is that they say that Burns, to a degree, was based on Barry D diller who was the president of fox at the time and they based smithers on barry diller's obsequious assistance and any reader of disney

war will know that jeffrey katzenberg was barry diller's assistant for a time so i uh that's that's my theory i buy it completely but no one would admit to it like nobody would want to piss off jeffrey katzenberg and and say like yeah we've been calling him gay for 30 years there's there's also the whole like uh richard sakai smithers and james l brooks's burns kind of dynamic that too 100 yeah wow i i would love no one i guess no one will ever admit this to be a fact these to be facts right i just be like we'll have to guess you know i bet i bet if we asked jay cogan i bet he'd admit it he's the one who tells us all these in our interview he's just like oh yeah sam simon and grating screamed at each other all the time and he's retired now so he's fine oh okay well yeah ask him uh but uh but yeah so

the simpsons they they head off to their seats. There's some background billboard gags of like savings and loan scandals. Yeah, look up the Keating Five if you want to learn about what John McCain was up to in the 80s. Well, hey, Bob, I'm sure every person who was involved in that had real consequences given to them. Oh, yes, he was told sternly he had poor judgment. Well, the norms were at least upheld thank god uh and also there's a there's a billboard for mose which i have to think like when would mose spend that much money on advertising and offer a free well drink to a player no way also mo doesn't know how to make a well drink he knows how to open a beer bottle that's true and then bart goes off

to ask for an autograph i think i think this taught me as a kid like oh you could ask for autographs at baseball games i i didn't know you could do such a thing yeah i think the first time i knew this that that existed maybe was when we would go to like to the horse track and there you would like go and try to get the players to autograph the players i should uh that sounds stupid but you should go get the jockeys to get the their autograph and then they sometimes would give you their goggles whoa oh man you're gonna want to sanitize those no i would put them right on and get on a horse at the dog track you could just look at dogs like they there were no goggles to be given that's yeah you

couldn't get an autograph from a dog i guess you well if they put like their paw print in ink that would be cute uh but they you know if you show those dogs any kind of like warmth or anything it'll be no good as a dog i'll just slow them down any any treating a dog like uh any with any love will it will destroy its ability yeah that's true i do like the little gag that bart doesn't get his signature and marge being a great mom goes to get it for him and uh i i love the term mature quail as well that should we should have that instead of milf i like that and homer is not mad this baseball player wants to sleep with marge he's like way to go marge you still got it and even she giggles at it i like that it's good i love that and i think this is the first reference to

shelbyville yes it is i i triple check that the shelbyville reference like they uh in oh brother where art thou which they called it years before that was a movie uh in season two in that episode homer does go to shelbyville to look for the shelbyville orphanage uh for where his brother was but uh this is the first reference of shelbyville as the it's so it's the first for shelby bill and capital city the two top other cities in the whatever state springfield is in and they are the shelby billions yeah that's funny that's funny that is funny yeah uh and yeah that's it was at this point of the commentary we're grading like it just has the full digression complaining about homer's hair which i'm like come on man this is a when he was saying that it was an 11 year old

episode yeah like and they fixed the hair has been fine for like eight years nine years by that point so who cares yeah it looks fine was he wanting to do a george lucas like remaster like fix everything you know i think he just would rather complain i don't think he'd go to that well it's also like mac reigning is he is very rich but not george lucas rich so right right uh but yeah so uh we then get a jumbo vision gag of homer being on it and there's two things i didn't like about this as a kid even i knew that you couldn't hear the voice of somebody who's on jumbo vision like that bug right right uh and then also though doing an xyz joke like that's just a street joke like that's not they didn't bring a new other than homer not knowing what xyz meant

i think i learned xyz from this episode or at least everyone in my school did. Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's where I learned it. I did learn a lot of terms from this episode. Oh, yeah. I mean, Simpsons is probably like, I probably learned a majority of pop culture references from it. Yeah. I mean, the first episode air taught kids of the 90s Jingle Bells, Batman smells.

Right. Yeah, there's that. i should look it up but that guy's youtube video going through like do people say robin laid an egg or some variation of it in different countries it was a really interesting uh study this guy did look look at it just search robin laid an egg on youtube i'm sure you'll find it though also again to be further pedantic why would a minor league team in the year 1990 would have a jumbotron i i think not i that that's far too much money like you at turner field you'd be lucky to see a tv that big yeah that uh yes i the funding he would need is just springfield couldn't handle it we can blame antoine tex o'hara for his poor choices uh since you said it already that name is 10 times funnier to me now like it's these to antoine french o'hara irish and then tex but it's also a real

guy's name it is that they knew but yeah his name was already a joke name so yes burns goes out to throw the first pitch i really do love the design on the little like car that drives him to the mound that's a funny drawing and i also just love there's some great just like burns is and was like as well they might like that's just so funny and i never get tired of this in real life when they get someone who is frail or uncoordinated to throw out a first pitch because i couldn't do it i would refuse yeah but uh the the great the great fauci dr fauci his pitch it was mr burns's pitch oh that's right this was months ago even at this point but man i just thought of that wow yeah you're right like fauci terrible pitch he's an 80 year old man so i guess yeah same age as burns is here yeah yeah i forgot he was that old he's so well he seems fauci seems like he's in good shape

yeah yeah i'd assume he was 60 until i until i knew it might just be one of those things where since you see him in context of a very unhealthy man all the time you maybe you maybe think of him as like the picture of health that's a very good point i i also, Burns brings up Satchel Paige, who that's his first of many old baseball references. That does fit within the context of him being 81. Yeah. A later one doesn't. An 81-year-old in 1990 would have seen a player who had retired in the 40s, like Satchel Paige, a legend of baseball, played in both the Major League Baseball and the Negro Leagues, a big-time guy.

But for him to compare himself, I think that makes it even funnier that of all people, he says Satchel Paige. But this is another bit that, like, it feels like they sort of lost what they do with Burns. Like, when Burns throws it and everybody laughs at him and Smithers tries to, you know, lie about how good it looked burns knows he's lying yeah yeah yeah i think they would definitely change this to where burns would believe smithers or he would just be deluded or too old to even realize what's happening yeah to see him go like oh shut up like i don't know

that's that's too perceptive for burns he He should just believe whatever Smithers whispers to him. Back when he was like a young man of 80, he was much more perceptive. I like the idea, though, that like something like he didn't know or like age accelerated. Is there like the point? You know the episode where he is officially 100 and whatever? I think it was, was it Who Shot Mr mr burns part one they call him uh springfield's most prominent 104 year old man or something like that that's what skinner says uh like i wouldn't recognize uh springfield's most prominent 104 year old businessman yeah so and then and then

it was further solidified in homer the smithers where he after he punches burns he says i punched him in his 104 year old face oh yes yes maybe it was like you could like you could retcon it like it's a david brenner thing where he was lying about his age uh and then he obviously had just had some decline where he would just believe whatever smithers said yeah okay i would say how about like in the last episode of this season blood feud the uh the health problem he has makes him age 20 years oh yeah yeah there you go 23 years you're right the hypotherm her hypo hypo hemia it's a fake disease yeah that's it this is like this is like the level of like rogue one retconning tiny star wars things that were just like not thought of in the original movie and you really don't need to do it it's pointless

but like for whatever reason people like to do it and like to see it i love that at the end of rogue one where they've been using all these things like that look cool in the design the production design for that movie but once they get everything on the disc and they send it up to the to the ship that's when they're like oh we have to put it inside of this thing that looks like the prop from the 70s that's right yes yeah they're like well then they have to like it has to match up you know if we really examine this it doesn't really make sense together uh but i mean you know at the end of that movie there's a good 30 seconds of like darth vader looks pretty cool yeah you know i saw it in theaters and i woke up just in time for the ending. So it was pretty good. The last 45 minutes are good. Yeah.

Yeah. I'd like to see what the Gareth Edwards made the first time. It'd be interesting to see. He should get the Zack. If Zack Snyder gets another shot, he should. Well, and I don't want to get us off on the track. I'm all for as many cuts of every movie as possible. I want the Schumacher three-hour Batman Forever cut.

That's at the top of my list. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, and another thing I never, thanks to Frinkiac, I finally know. Homer, I never knew what he called Burns, but he says rag arm. Rag arm. That's what Frinkiac says. Okay.

Like, hey, rag arm. You throw like my, like, that's what he says. Like a girl or something? Well, then Bart says you throw like my sister. But at least what Frankie X says, at first I thought it was like rag a heart. But it's, well, here, I got the clip. I'll play it real quick. Oh, they love you, sir.

As well they might. You know, Smithers, when I was a young buck, my patented fadeaway pitch was compared by many to the trouble ball of the late great Satchel Paige. Spit on this for me, Smithers. One hocker coming up, sir. I think I could actually hear the air being torn, sir. Oh, shut up. Hey, Burns! Hey, Ragar! You throw like my sister, man. I don't know why they didn't stand out to me, but I guess that's baseball slang.

I guess, yeah. It's like your arm is so limp and unmuscled that it would be as like a rag. That feels like Burns would have said that because it's an old-timey expression. Yeah, yeah. like a rag i guess that feels like burns would have said that because it's an old timey expression yeah yeah i this did teach me the we need a pitcher not a belly itcher stuff i i definitely said that at baseball games i though embarrassingly i also i learned from watching pro wrestling things to shout at the and i my dad got mad at me that i insulted i there was a whole bit about insulting texas i think that the million dollar man did to somebody to Dusty Rhodes and so I just said that at a baseball game against against the Texas team and my dad was like stop saying that there's Texas people around you insulted Betty Crocker

in front of your father just something you said to insult the crowd yeah it was like it was the million dollar man saying well everybody from Texasxas is stupid like that kind of thing and so gotcha i was just repeating i was just doing what tv told me to do dad that's it's right most you were just trying to you were gonna get heat yeah uh but this is another thing that makes this feel like a weird episode that they can set aside two and a half whole minutes for for music in this episode yeah a lot of this episode is eaten up by admittedly fun music segments but it is this and the capital city song that are like just taking up a lot of real estate and uh the the this is uh a new voice for bleeding gums murphy in this episode it's uh

the the late christian singer daryl coley yeah who was born in our neck of the woods in berkeley california that's right and he died after our original take on this episode so he died in uh march of 2016 at age 65 and too too young too young but he's i mean he knows exactly what is needed for this like this is every trick of indulging and expanding the national anthem to make it as long as possible but the national i remember this i remember getting this joke as a kid or thinking i got it and i'm really trying to remember if i did or not because it is fun because like i guess i had i guess it's just baseball i was like oh i i know it's longer

sometimes they make the national anthem longer when they sing yeah according to the uh the the clock in the game that he sings for 26 minutes that's pretty great uh well now seeing this bit about the national anthem i just think like i'd be sitting for that whole thing though i i will say the last time i went to a baseball game that had that same a's game with my family i was tempted to sit through the anthem because you know it it was becoming the style but i was like i was just feeling intense peer pressure around me like i i don't know if the national anthem should fill you with dread of like well if i don't stand for this i might be beaten so i better stand

up i had a similar experience in that this is like the all the second wrestling show i've ever been to in my home in my hometown there was like amateur wrestling but the honky-tonk man was going to be there and he was there and he was like 60 and he did one move but uh we got in we got our seats and it's like they started playing i'm proud to be an american which is not the national anthem we're like let's go get beer now and we got up and got beer and coming back like everyone was giving us a stink eye because like you didn't put your hand over your heart over the non-national anthem being played it's like Lee Greenwood isn't like a patriot he's just some guy

this is definitely like I'm sure contributing to certain anti-Simpsons early on because obviously they were sacrilegious in regards to church and I'm sure like something like this too made people go like this is disrespectful to people that sing the national anthem yeah actually Fox Standards and Practices

told them like you can't quote excerpts of the national anthem that's like that's disrespectful but they're like we we don't get notes on this show so go away there's a good little gag there's some good visual gags in there like they mentioned that the the moon moving up uh kirkland credits to david silverman as his pitch it's a great gag that when they all stand up homer pulls up bart because yeah and he's he's forcing him to respect the national anthem in the night like 30 years ago and and also the gag that everyone is sick of it except for lisa who stands at attention excitedly the entire time and that does feel like another like new writers coming in to write for the show like who are characters oh bleeding gums because we never see him after this until he dies and he judges a talent show and then

he dies that's right yeah he likes that refried dog poop joke yeah also the guy right behind them who's looking at his watch he looks like first appearance sideshow Bob from Telltale Head. But after that whole song, we then get to hear the voice of Ken Levine as well as David Hoard, who is a broadcasting partner in Syracuse. Yeah, Syracuse University, who is, I believe, still the NFL announcer for the Bengals in Detroit or wherever the Bengals in Detroit, or wherever the Bengals are, I think, Detroit. I don't think they would allow this kind of indulgence,

like letting the writer voice a character, letting him name everyone after his friends. I think they wouldn't let anyone else get away with this. I think it was Levine going like, do you know what kind of pay cut I'm taking on this? Let me indulge everything. But also, I he he is clearly a very well practiced commentator of baseball when he says like swung out and missed strike three like it's like it sounds like a guy who has said that 8 000 times as a baseball commentator so it's

not it's not bad casting either yeah no i i it sounded authentic to me it's a it's a non-baseball fan uh yeah so there's a little joke that nobody else is at the game except for a packed seats in the in the employee section the 26 game losing streak that is an accurate baseball stat i looked up it is uh in major league history and this is a minor league team so it technically doesn't count that way but in major league baseball 26 games is the losing streak record set in 1889 oh wow so it's it hasn't been broken since then uh the most recent record that challenges that was a 19 game losing streak by the 2005 kansas city royals so uh man i just wanted to screenshot every crowd member you you did you had some good ones on twitter pub yeah just uh i mean

again we don't see recognizable characters we don't even see extras that we see again it's just like they're all unique some of them are mutants we've evolved beyond season one but there are some weirdos in the audience for sure very distracting weirdos yeah i i gotta you do you have these on your twitter is that what you said yeah i mean later there's a crowd shot of like uh when marge is at the capital city game and going up the stairs and they have to draw like everyone in this giant crowd there are like some weird psych gags happening including like an old couple hitting on a young couple in the front row it's very distracting uh it's funny because seeing those some of those like the characters in these seasons they look like the bootleg simpsons

merchandise well on kirkland he only has the first season to go on like he even mentions production wise he was working on this while silverman was finishing the 13th episode of season one like doing the the new scenes that changed up some enchanted evening like right right and uh so yeah homer uh gets seated or burns gets seated right next to homer in the front row and this also just feels like they're writing a burns that they would grow out of writing of this is a burns who's trying to appear like one of the guys greeting someone to a drink any of these things burns would never ever do it like even seven episodes later i think i think honestly once they're done with the governor's story they're like okay we know who burns is now yeah

i mean even if he's uh cynical about it there's like a degree of generosity you don't see in the future uh he i mean he's fully cartoon monster at a certain point uh but yes the uh homer 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. Care.

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Only at your locally owned Big O Tires, the team you trust. Burns actually get drunk together. I was double checking it. Okay, if you want to count in Homer's Night Out when he parties with Princess Cashmere, is that Homer getting drunk? I think he is a little drunk in it but i think i would say this is the first time homer got for real drunk in the series even if it's like trash beer a 72 ounce tub of beer is six beers and these men have more than one and burns

sobers up remarkably quick at the end of this at the end of this act rather that happened yeah burns his tolerance yeah it's insane for an old man it's crazy uh but it's i can't do i can't drink this much oh no one two two drinks uh it's sleepy time for henry i like during quarantine i stopped drinking as much and last night i had one beer and i woke up with a splitting headache that's how much my tolerance has gone down yeah no i had i think i had two drinks three nights ago and i'm like like my stomach is still recovering from it uh but uh but burns is putting us all to shame in this next clip beer here tough beer beer did you hear that mark delicious frosty beer bad lot of good it does me sitting next to

old man Burns. I suppose you want a beer? Oh, maybe, sir. Oh, no. Not a chance. Only idiots drink beer. Actually, I was wondering if you'd join me. My treat. Oh. Well, if someone of your stature can enjoy a beer, maybe

I'm all turned around on this subject. Wait a minute. We're not having a drug test tomorrow, are we? No. Uh, vendor, two, please. $2.50. The hair's off his rocker, kissing Betty Crocker. Good one, sir. Oh, well, I used to rile the late, great Connie Mack

with that one at Old Scheib Park. Little baby batter, can't control his bladder. Crude, but I like it. What do you say we freshen up our little drinky poos? Don't mind if I do. I really love how Homer is punished for getting along with Mr. Burns. He completely forgets that they were on the same page the entire time uh yeah he's uh and that burns like punishes him swiftly after i i wonder if this is just burns fucking with him the entire maybe yeah i mean it's a very just stock boss thing though like for any

sitcom of like the boss challenges you to drink and getting drunk with the boss kind of thing that that feels like it's pulled out of the the classic just sitcom tropes that uh levine and isaac's know so well i mean they often like like there's sometimes homer does endear himself to burns and then screws it up so i can feel like that's kind of a pattern yeah and he mentions uh connie mack mr burns connie mack stopped playing baseball in 1896 too old for this burns to have seen him and that uh apparently i i saw connie mack like that he was the longest reigning manager in baseball history like 50 years and that what also that like shiba park that hadn't existed it got renamed like 40 years before this episode aired,

and it stopped being the park for the Phillies in 1970. So that's how, even in 1990, that was an old reference. I think, too, as a little kid, this taught me what being drunk was. Or at least some idea. Well, my parents taught me what being drunk was. Okay. Well, that's just your parents being funny and they smell funny. Like that's that.

I think I like, I feel like, like Looney Tunes or something is where I, my cartoon, my cartoonish idea of what it was. Because I think I even said on that Barney episode we were talking about, I would like say, oh, Barney's drinking. Barney's drunk. Yeah. My parents never sang how dry I am. So I wasn't sure if they were drunk or not i you know i never noticed my parents were ever drunk until i was like 12 or something and they came back from a jimmy buffett concert oh man that'll do it i think i think that was the

first time they'd gotten like i i woke up to a rather hungover mom and i i didn't i understood at that point like oh okay but yes in the the next bit burns also references pie trainer who was the third baseman for the pirates retired in 1937 so he was old enough to have seen pie trainer apparently for for a long time he was called the best third baseman in the game but there have been some better ones since then i guess baseball fans correct me if i'm wrong here but uh i like the homer and burns together fun i like them doing the wave together like that's a really fun i feel like shearer is having a good time in in the role it's just uh you know i'm used to hearing harry shearer you know playing burns uh

very different these days by comparison he was only in his late 40s back then yeah the isotopes aren't doing so well we get a quick cut to the organ player which i here's another like editing theory i have in this episode i think the organ music and the organ player wasn't in their original edit of this and i think homer dances silently and i think they decided later like this plays better with music behind him and then we'll just cut in a shot of the organists uh because later he asked for like reggae music yeah okay i i i feel like it's that's a late addition to it but and and levine says that like when he was doing minor league play-by-play uh there'd be a lot of these like drunk oafs leading cheers and i was never

exposed to any sort of thing like this oh man we we definitely had a local uh guy at the at the minor league games in in jacksonville was the suns they had like sunny who was like a he was a some sort of bird i I can't remember. Recently when I've gone to San Francisco Giants games, like their character, Lou Seal, he has some fun antics. I mean, I know mascots, but not like just fans. Just a guy. That come like all painted up usually. And we'll just, if you got on top of the dugout,

they would escort you out. You'd be arrested or put maced or something. All the drunk guys were just scary to me they weren't fun they weren't dancing like this yeah baseball games yeah there is a question like is homer being paid or is he just being allowed to do it by the team owner like is there how much of an employee is he at this point but uh but his his drunken dancing which uh it is a very brooks line but i do like it like i felt an intoxication that has nothing to do with alcohol it was the intoxication of being a public spectacle like but too smart for homer yeah and uh we get one of 10 000 parodies of the natural whenever a baseball is hitting the Simpsons, you hear the theme from The Natural. For sure.

And I just need to watch the movie to get just to have the experience. Yeah, I've never seen it. I still need to watch it too. Like every time. Definitely. Okay, we make this oath. Before we watch the softball episode, we are going to, me and Bob will watch The Natural. Before we return to the softball episode in Season 3,

whenever that is. I make that vow here. Homer dancing around is all great animation. I love his... He dances... There's some bits where it feels like I am watching Fred Flintstone dancing, which fits with Kirkland's background. Kirkland did direct on Flintstone Kids in the 80s,

so it does fit. Wow. I'm just impressed on Flintstone Kids in the 80s, so it does fit. Wow. I'm just impressed with Flintstone Kids. You know, when we interviewed him, he wasn't the most proud of his Hanna-Barbera days. I mean, he knew it was like crummy Saturday morning stuff, but me and Bob tried to inform him like, hey, that was our childhood. We as adults do know that Flintstone Kids kids is not a good show but we watched it all the same talented people worked on it yeah this was something we came up with doing our

flintstones episode of the podcast to have just like that simpsons fully replaced flintstones in all ways in in pop culture like god flintstones are nothing now it It's yeah. That is a good point. It beat every, every record the Flintstones had. If you're going to make a joke about a cartoon family, you say the Simpsons, you'd never say Flintstones, but yeah.

Like I said on that episode, like once the movie with John Goodman came out, we all just were like, we can forget about it now that happened and we can forget about it. Yeah. It was not like an adams family like revival yeah i think the flintstones now are at the point where in the uh just released at the time of this recording animaniacs series there's just a joke about how they're nobodies now and they're just

hanging out with like secret squirrel and all these other forgotten characters uh but yes homer there's some great animation on homer's dancing and also some really good just like you know on top of all the crowds and shit that kirkland's team had to animate they also have to do like oh yeah slow motion baseball home run animation like that's not easy like i i love that kirkland on the commentary when levine is going like you know it's really nice in animation writing you can just say anything and they just draw it and Kirkland's like not so easy for us you know but yes Homer uh wins the game in a way as or at least he takes

the credit for it in this uh this next clip it's going going it's, it's out of here! Oh my God! The Isotopes win again! The Isotopes win again! The Isotopes win again! Well, that was certainly exciting. Yes. Unfortunately, Homer Simpson's shameless display of exhibitionism tainted the entire evening. I want him banned for life from all company outings. Those footsteps.

Hey, thank you. You're too kind. Company outings. Those footsteps. Hey, thank you. You're too kind. Glad you enjoyed it, but I can't take all the credit. The batter did his part, too. Excuse me. You, sir. A dancing fella.

I'm Antoine Tex O'Hara. I own the isotopes. Would you be interested in becoming our official mascot? Me? A mascot for a Bush League team? I should have slept on it. Or at least stared blankly for a while. Perhaps if I'd been unable to think of a nickname,

all our lives might have been spared. Get on the bus, Danzen Homer! Will you shut up? I'm trying to think of a name! I do like you go to commercial without him coming up with the name. Like it's just, I guess at some point somebody told him like, no dancing Homer. That's good. We'll go with that. But, but yeah, that's, that is the most distracting post editing to me because on, on, on my,

my 4k television, seeing a still of Homer zoomed in in on as he said as he's reflecting back on and i'm like boy this is this this is some shoddy uh editing by today's day more it's more convincing if you were watching it like on a broadcast signal with a crt tv it just it would just smear all of that away now you can see like that is a video still you're zooming in on digitally it's look in my career as an editor who edited people falling on their balls after a skateboard accident this is the type of thing we would do we would have limited amount of footage and you'd have to flip it you'd have to zoom in on it there were a lot of tricks that were very obvious uh though i i think too it's like the the the choice by brooks

here is that it needs more pathos like this i think in the if you take that out the act break a feeling is just like whoa homer got a job like but instead uh this adds much more like drama to it of homer going like oh i wish i hadn't have done that and i definitely it's a different emotional context they're going for that i think originally uh the script was uh going after and that's uh that's brooks got it's all brooks and yes we talked about antoine tex o'hara based on anthony tex simone which was a big syracuse guy like the another friend of levi and uh when homer does his dance the man who hits the ball is named bill mccloskey these are all people they know yeah it's crazy i mean hey you know they get you

you get your free uh tickets to life in a baseball game or something you know like he well i saw in levine's 2016 thing he also talked about how like a minor league team calls themselves the isotopes now for the last like 15 years because of this yeah oh we'll talk about that in uh hungry hungry homer that's when it officially happened so i wanted to save it for that but yeah in this in this in this uh obituary for tech simone that's like the fourth paragraph out of like 20 they mentioned that wow so it was a big deal for him and and it's a real antecedent of Rich Texan, the character here. Yeah. You can tell Dan's doing his Texas man, his Rich Texan voice,

but a little more relaxed. But, yeah, that was Act 1, and that was 11 minutes. That was a very long Act 1. They were in Capital City for, like, 90 seconds. Yeah, I couldn't believe how long that was, but I thought it was like the long act ones didn't start until like the seventh season or something. I really like how this second act starts

because it's Lisa commenting on something she had no idea where the show would go. Like, our lives have taken an odd turn. Like, Lisa, you have no idea what's going to happen to you. Yeah, I have a quick clip of that. Well, I'm ready to punch in. Oh, hey, cool, man. Our lives have taken an odd turn.

Did the team ask you to dress like that, Homer? Nope, this was my own bright idea. Come on, we got to hurry. Don't fill up on those vegetables, kids. Save room for your nachos. All right! No hold barred. Yeah, but I feel like that was the writer saying,

but this idea is pretty crazy, isn't it? Let's have somebody admit it's pretty crazy, but it's still within the realm of season two realness where this oaf could become a celebrity within the world of minor league baseball. A local idiot. Totally. I would love a pitch like everyone goes back in time

and tells everyone what they're going to do with the characters five years from there. Just like, yeah, Homer goes to space. Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay. Yeah. I think in the recently released oral history of the monorail episode, Jeff Martin remarked about how when they knew they had gone too far with having leonard nimoy uh teleport away and they're just like i guess this is just the show now

but uh but yeah i thought i seeing that line by lisa here i thought it was more of a of a scully years thing of lisa being the viewer at home who says we shouldn't do that that doesn't make sense for this show but here she's doing it like the the 17th episode of the series and uh and i have a dancing homer doll that's connected to the theme park i got it from the universal orlando oh yeah yeah how big is that um i got the one that's just a handful size like i'd say about a six inch guy. You know, I think of the souvenirs there and I just see lost opportunities. Like that is really cool. And like getting a Bort license plate is cool.

But so much of the merch there is just like things you could find like a target or something. They should have such, they should have super specific merch for like the most hardcore fans there. Everyone would buy it. Oh yeah. It drives me nuts. That drives me nuts. And Universal in general doesn't do that. Universal in general is leaving money on the table by not catering to super specific fans. Yeah, Disney's a little better at merchandising to the niches of niches and exploiting them for every dollar.

They're not as good about the TV stuff, but still, you can buy one tailspin thing at disneyland if you want to or like one rescue rangers thing right and they do have at least like online you can there's more usually in that in that realm but universal is like they just put out some like retro universal merch with like the old logo and stuff and it's like yeah more of this that's what everyone wants i i will say there's springfield i mean at first when it was just crusty land like that is kind of lame like well i don't i it's it was fun it's fine the crusty land exterior when they built out springfield around it it got a lot better uh and but i but when i walk by like a poster of like here's ahoy. That's funny to be on the shelves. Like you guys should be selling me ham ahoy.

Yeah. And honestly, there should be an adults only Moe's. Yeah. It should be full of dank and serve me beer in a pint glass in a Moe's bar pint glass. Like the number one thing, at least that they're showing you and not delivering on is that there's the full Gabbo puppet in Krusty's like, you know, celebrity room at the top of the food court area. I want that. Yes. Yeah, totally. I mean, honestly, they'd even have something as specific as dancing Homer instead of just a

Homer toy that, that shows me that there's the will there. There's the will to really cut cut deep with it but they they just don't do it as much as they could i i mean i wish every i wish every piece of springfield was as hardcore as that crusty room that secret crusty room right yes that's what we're looking for i mean mean, Disney has Simpsons now. We'll see what happens with there will be Simpsons in a Disney park, I think, within 20 years. Yeah. I wonder what happens with that universal thing. Like who gives like they they can't do it forever, you know. But then again, that Spider-Man in the Marvel world is like a decade older than the Simpsons stuff and that's not going anywhere. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's all, everything is,

I think everything in the next 10 to 20 years, I think is interesting just from who owns what and what will happen. I don't have any real predictions. I'm just saying, I think stuff will go away in the next 10 to 20 years. There'll be deals worked out. Well, honestly, in the next like two years who knows

what happens in in the theme park world every everything closes well i i'm glad i enjoy that you know that'll only bring up the the the asking price of my dancing homer toy on you yeah that's true uh so it's a win for me this collapse of everything hey anyway uh there's there's then a long you know every act has a long musical section and this one is just a montage of homer dancing it up and maybe when they're watching this when it first came back they're like well like this isn't that funny and that's why they add narration throughout the montage where i like the narration there if there's going to be a narration it should be there but you could see how it might not play as well without it i uh i do like the crazy drawing of the guy bringing the vhs camera to

the game like it looks so wacky that guy i think it's genuinely fun that shot of homer and bart dancing together on the dugout it's really sweet i just like that yeah that is nice and and also to show you you know the context of when they made this they do a Simpsons t-shirt joke in here. This was November after a summer full of 8 million Bart t-shirts being sold. And the two for 24 is a pretty good deal on a t-shirt. The better t-shirt joke is coming. Yes, yeah. I'm lucky to pay $24 for one wrestling t-shirt at an event.

Oh, yeah. Well, wrestling shirts. I mean, you could still get your, like, you can get like a JC Penny Marvel shirt for $10 wrestling shirts. Forget it. I actually just bought a,

a Simpsons Christmas t-shirt. I, I'm going to premiere to Bob soon, but for, for nine whole dollars on target. So it'd be a Christmas t-shirt boogie. Is it obscure in any way or no? No it was just like ah this is fun to wear on christmas day kind of thing honestly it's it's for a video call with my mom on christmas day that's the that's the real plan for it yeah that's nice and i have my young bucks christmas sweater as well i'm gonna be oh

yeah that's for night yeah that's that's for the nighttime fun but homer's dancing around and clowning is kind of fun it does remind me of when uh i did get to see the san diego chicken in my local uh place a few times at the suns games in the minor league team and they i always liked when they would fuck with the the visiting teams i i especially love the gag that like a visiting team doesn't give a shit about your local mascot and he's like hey stop this i'm serious and then and then homer had only just this time learned what uh where this unknown shine means he should have known yeah then we get a a bit about baby elephant walk the first time we heard

it by name you'll hear a lot of that in this episode hey they paid henry mancini for those song rights they're going to use it the whole time and there's a joke about wouldn't it be funny if people were jamaican well here it is they are it was 1990 just like what if a person was jamaican that's a sketch but it's not really much to that is there no yeah it's like well i guess it's respectful i like the organists uh she's got a lot of hunks on the wall oh i love the hunks yeah that's that's an extra little that feels like animator choice not in the script kind of thing of like adds adds extra flavor to her that it's you know it's it's the inverse of the joke of going into the dugout and seeing you know pinups on the wall in this boys club and here it's it's the inverse of the joke of going into the dugout and seeing you know pinups

on the wall in this boys club and here it's the the the lady with her speedo hunks all over the place there's there's like a cocktail on top of the organ too oh that's good and there's like clearly a baseball has penetrated that little area because there's like a broken part of the window oh i missed that there's lots of nice little details in the background. And that design is the same person as Mrs. Fiche, the organist for the church, too. I double-checked this. The same when in Bart's Inner Child, Lovejoy says, that's all, Mrs. Fiche,

and then he tries to play the entertainer. Same character design. The church organist has a has a darker inner life than we do homer has been having fun dancing it up but then the team loses one game that echo on topes lose has been like echoing in my head for the longest time topes lose he just seems so crestfallen but then they just reuse the strikeout animation too from earlier as homer uh thinks he's fired he actually gets a big offer you wanted to see me text homer now we both knew when you began doing this you weren't going to be here forever oh oh oh i get it you

can't fire the player so you fire the mascot you make me sick sick. Homer, I'm not firing you. I just got the word. You've been called up to Capital City. Me? In the majors? That's right. Wait a minute. Capital City has a mascot. The greatest mascot there is, the Capital City Goofball.

Yeah, but he's getting on in years, and he needs someone to fill in for a couple innings a night. Could be a big opportunity for you. I'll say why don't you talk it over with your family because they might say no i like homer goes into straight telling off his boss thing yeah i these episodes i think are really where dan figures out homer like his like he might say no like oh oh like those moments are when he fully throws away walter mathau i think for the best yeah

right yes and uh i i definitely think this is coming to from a place of hollywood writers who know from experience or from friends who are just like oh you got your big break and it didn't come through the feeling of what an opportunity and just turfing out on the first night it's like i it definitely becomes more of a hollywood analog there and then there's like a weird scene of what an opportunity and just turfing out on the first night like I it definitely becomes more of a Hollywood analog there and then there's like a weird scene where we go back to the bar and again it's the recycled animation but I don't understand the point of this scene

where just like Homer's mad at Marge but Marge is supportive of him but actually that doesn't he's blaming her for oh well having them take a chance okay yeah so he is blaming her for being too supportive because by going for that, it then disappointed him. I think it's too clever by half.

And then it ends with, like, oh, bite my tongue, bite my tongue, bite my tongue. Ouch. On a shot of the bar, like, all right, are you just reading stage directions now? It's kind of lame, yeah. Yeah, that struck me a little odd because I was like, oh, he's being really harsh to Marge. But I think they were, like, justifying it in their head like well marge was actually being nice and supportive but it's just it was the whole thing yeah it was like a little odd yeah it's just weird that not to be too i mean i like the episode but i don't like this framing stuff but

it's just like why do we hear homer talk about what marge does and then we see what she does it seems like how much did they cut to make room for this stuff yeah like it's also like a better to me it's like a better joke structure. I don't know. It just doesn't really line up to make it like, oh, here's the reveal. It just doesn't flow nicely. Yeah, it flows better to go from Homer saying,

because they might say no, about his family, and then going to the family. I think that's only shoved in there because they're like, there would have been no other cuts to the bar in this act act so they're worried the audience would forget there's even a framing device for i can see that yeah right yeah this this is the first reference to capital city as well which i didn't get as a joke as a kid my mom had to explain to me that capital city is a term for the capital city of a state but that their capital city is literally called capital city is a term for the capital city of a state, but that their capital city is literally called capital city.

And they would not actually go there again. Homer went there with Mindy in season five. That's where the energy conference was. And then windy apple, the windy apple. And then in season 14, Bart versus Lisa versus the third grade. That's another capital city focused episode.

I honestly think because Al Jean was revisiting this season for the commentary absolutely absolutely yeah there's you can really see starting i think really with it with season 12 them watching their own commentaries and thinking about it like i i think in season 14 there's even a joke by crusty that he's watching commentary he's watching old episodes of his stuff to do commentaries also in that episode the goofball appears in that but i i looked up his colorings all wrong he's like he's orange and red and and with a white shirt not voiced by tom poston yeah who wasn't dead yet at that point but no a few years to live i think but yes we cut to the family and they're deciding to move the first of many many many moves that the simpsons would do i can't leave springfield i was born here and i thought

i would die here it won't be so bad you'll die someplace else well what am i supposed to do about friends you'll make new and better friends dad But, Dad, we're simple people with simple values. Capital City is too big and too complex. Everyone in Springfield knows us and has forgiven us. Homer, I'd be lying if I didn't say that this scares me a little. But we all have a calling, a reason the Almighty put us on this earth, and yours might be to dance on dugouts. You mean?

Let's do it, Homer. Yeah, let's blow this pop stand and never look back whatever doesn't kill me can only make me stronger it's not that simple i've got to convince my supervisor to give me a leave of absence sure what would you like four years five years there you go yeah the first time on the show they explain how homer can have a second job but not be able to go back to the power plant. Yeah. Along with Lisa saying our life's taken an odd turn. This is another way the writers are building in like we can't just leave his job, can he?

And in like three or four years, they're not going to worry about like how he leaves and comes back. It's just like he's this now. Yeah. The logic. They were really worried about uh logic no in season two or even three they'd still have lines of like we can't afford this unless we do this and eventually eventually the writers were like do we have to do this scene every time they spend more than what they normally can spend let's just screw it homer has a 700 in his pocket you know when bart says what am i supposed to do about friends uh that was reused in dog of death okay yeah when bart says what am i supposed to do about friends uh that was reused in dog of death okay yeah when bart says like oh i'm gonna ask everybody in town and then homer

replies with like uh and i'll be here on the couch like that that's they reuse that shot for that extra line and it's it's a strange lisa line where she's just like uh i don't want to leave here i want to die in springfield why is she so biopic that's like uh it's it's the opposite of her big dreams but then later it's a very good lisa line where she's like well i don't have any friends so i'm sorry i didn't get to know you better so that that's a that's like a misunderstanding of lisa and a deep understanding of lisa both within a minute of each other yes that's what i earlier i was saying at least is a little off in some of these and that's like, Lisa wouldn't be like so worried about dying in a shit town. Yeah.

What about her childhood dreams of Vassar? Yeah. Right. I also think that Marge becomes less supportive of Homer's 17th new job compared to his first, but here she's very, I do think too, as a little kid watching this in 1992, my family made a big move and I was like, oh, I'm thinking like Bart here. I'm I, all the things Bart says about worried about losing all his friends. Like, I think I remembered, I remembered that in context of me moving as well.

And I did, I did get new friends better, perhaps. I don't want to, can't review my my friends in in atlanta to my friends in florida okay i did not want to do change anything about my life i would have been terrified i had a friend move away and i was very sad but then i got mcdonald's see it's easy when you're not doing the moving you just like also when you're a kid and like if you don't see another friend for a year it's like well then you're you're gone you never exist also this is right after treehouse of horror where lisa also has a speech about how simple the simpsons are like that seemed it seemed like a light runner

they were doing with her and also the supervisor thing it reminds me at the end of this season in blood feud we find out that carl is homer's supervisor so he got another supervisor after this that guy was fired for wanting to give homer five years off yeah actually that's what how does that work anyway oh wow yeah then we i also forgot there's a scene of them selling off all of their stuff on their front lawn so it's like well what this is a huge move like i i think too it's like this is irresponsible of the Capital City baseball team. They should have said, let's bring you up for a tryout, and if it goes, then you'll move here. Then you sign a contract.

Also, I noticed in this scene, it must have been so nice in the early 90s when you had the device of dot, dot, dot, not as a joke, where it's like, that could just be a joke in my thing. Just like, yeah, not. where it's like that could just be a joke in my thing just like yeah not uh i it honestly even in 1990 that feels beneath the simpsons to do a not joke it does feel like you know they give you got to give a they need to get like a payout like when conan left the tonight show or something like you know for cancer for egg you know you get the person to uproot the whole thing and move yeah they i mean maybe they paid for his move back and forth let's say let's say the capital city baseball team did that at least there was like this is me looking too much into the show but that's my job but there was like a

weird shot of like a marge saying goodbye to patty and selma and they're in front of their empty house with an open door and i'm like are patty and selma living there now we're like guarding the place maybe that's a good point maybe they're well, we haven't sold it yet. You just take care of the place until we get there. Lay down on the bare floors. I mean, why would Petty and Selma want to live in the same place Holbert lived? They'd never do that. They could smell him in every room.

But yeah, we get some quick scenes of everybody saying goodbye. Bart says goodbye to Milhouse by becoming spit brothers, which I like to think of this scene as the moment that solidified Milhouse as Bart's best friend. They had to write a scene of like, Bart says goodbye to his best friend. Who would that be? Okay, it's Milhouse. I can see that. Yeah.

Richard and Lewis left in the dust. They previously bonded over Butterfingers. Yeah, he was the first friend Bart had. So it does make sense sense it would be him. And then we get an elongated Pride of the Yankees parody here. Very funny 1990. I find this kind of tedious now, but everyone has done this parody by now. Oh, yeah.

I think I only got it when other shows did it. Like, oh, this show is parodying whatever that thing was that The Simpsons did it on. Because I'd never seen Pride of the Yankees. Like maybe Turner Classic Movies would play it at some point in the 90s, but I'd never seen it. Yeah, this is just yeah, this is one of those where it's like you've seen it a bunch. And I'm sure I saw it for the first time here. Yeah, I still have not seen Pride of the Yankees. And they intentionally make that Flash guy look like Babe Ruth.

So the Babe Ruth style guy can embrace Homer when he ends his speech. Well, let's hear the full Homer as Lou Gehrig speech here. Well, we have one quick stop and then it's on to Capital City. I can't believe it. Our baby sister in the big city. I'll call you every day. I'll call you too.

Look, he can use a horn. Oh, shut up. Some may say that I have been given a bad break in life. Little education, bald as a cue ball. Ten years on the same job with the same salary. But today, as I leave for Capital City, I consider myself the luckiest mascot on the face of the earth.

With the fickle fans already forgetting me, I was ready to take the biggest step of my life i think that probably plays better without his voiceover just homer waving and then he falls but i i think they're like no we need more voiceover to goose this that's that's my yeah it's an odd act break and fickleickle Fans is too smart for Homer again. It's just like, I don't know. I also included Patty and Selma in that clip because I did like that they're being played kind of real. They're actually sad their sister is leaving town and they're not going to see her all the time.

Yeah, they love Marge even though they're very bossy. Yeah, I feel like in a couple years they forget that patty and selma even like marge like they they're just yeah they become very cold they're just negative monsters in all ways and then act three opens with the first like written song for the simpsons yes by jeff martin it's his first song i i actually pulled up our 2019 interview with him where he mentioned that this was a big moment

for him in the writer's room. Yeah, and he was very tickled by his own line, people stop and scream hello. Like it's just a very psychotic thing to do. It's so great. Yeah, so he said

he found a niche for himself really early in, he was a new writer hired for season two and fresh off of Letterman and he's another another harvard lampoon grad like most of the writers but uh but yeah he said he found his niche as the songwriter on the show because they're like we need a new york new york parody he said he went home recorded the demo for it played it in the at the writer's room and he said

like sam simon said that's a home run. And like Jeff Martin says, that's one of the favorite moments of his career, just being praised like that when you take such a big swing with this song. It's not as obviously funny as some of his later songs would be, but there's a lot of subtlety to the lyrics. Oh, God, yeah. The lyrics are so, I didn't get them as a kid. It's only when you listen to a more

like especially the uh makes you feel like some nutty cuckoo super king that's my favorite because it's such a great joke about bad songwriting that the guy says like it makes you feel like a king but you have to continue on with the metaphor from king you're like well what's bigger than a king a nutty cuckoo super king yeah yeah that's also a perfect tony bennett line yes yeah yeah and listen tony bennett is 94 years old this episode goes live in like four months so we we can't control the the hands of fate uh i guess to be safe i should play our anti-death jingle i didn't know he was so old yeah he's quite quite old yeah so he was just singing the other day i saw him on twitter really oh that's nice so he was 64 doing this wow and he

claims this gave him a resurgence in his career being on a young hip show like this i do remember in the 90s he started appearing in a lot of stuff like i think he even had like uh an unplugged or something something like unplugged not actually mtv unplugged but i hope he had an unplugged on mtv well kids there it is capital city the Crosstown Bridge. Wow. Wow. There's a swinging town I know called Capital City. The Penny Loafer.

People stop and scream hello in Capital City. Kids, look! Street crime. It's the kind of place that makes a bum feel like a king. Wow, that's service. And it makes a king feel like some nutty cuckoo super king. Look, it's Tony Bennett. Hey, good to see you.

It's against the law to frown in Capital City. You're capable like a stupid clown when you chance to see 4th Street and D. Once you get

a whiff of it, you'll never want to roam. The Duff Brewery. Capital City, my home sweet, yeah. Capital City, my happy tall city. It's Capital City, my home sweet, swinging home. Capital City, yeah! capital city yeah i remember the comedy or the on the commentary too they mentioned like this was the first time they had to draw a guest star in simpson style and they were just making up the rules as they go like we've been thinking about that a lot because uh

well recently you know friends of the show i'll say nick weiger has been on our show and he just appeared uh in caricature on the simpsons and same with your and also your other friend mike mitchell appeared too that's correct yes i just this just happened i guess it's possible they could have toys but they would probably needed to have lines so they didn't have any lines but they were still simpsonified yeah i and it made me think about like how much you know that's 30 years after this episode aired how much has changed and how they've they've made so many new rules and traditions of how to draw a real person in simpson style but they're right they're just figuring it out for tony bennett here and mitch and Wagger are both in their early 60s,

so in 30 years, that'll be about Tony Bennett's age. I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous seeing them in there. Oh, yeah, of course. They purposely snubbed every Simpsons podcast. Yeah, what the hell? They could have at least done our pals Julia and Allie at the very least. Yeah, they're, I They could have at least done our pals Julia and Allie, at the very least.

Yeah, I guess, I don't know. Maybe they're saving all of you for something else. An epic takedown. Yes, yes, it's a diss, some sort of diss. We find out we were all drawn in a dunk tank. Well, one of the funniest jokes in this montage was Homer going street crime. Oh, yeah. They're just all watching

a woman get mugged and it's exciting for the family i did i did enjoy that sadly that actually happened in real life with me in my first uh one of the first time my family visited me in the big and it is not a big berkeley california is not a big city but it is bigger than a suburb and one of their first times visiting me they saw street crime out the window and they're like oh this is this is where you walk every day huh and then just a uh a rowdy young man came up and kicked an old lady right in the like nuts and oh my god yeah it was it was pretty awful to see but uh i love that drawing of homer after he says street crime like it's such a weird it's it's a bad it's technically a bad drawing of homer and i laugh at it it made me laugh and

there's uh like everything about capital city is like everything's very mediocre but these simple people are amazed by it like the crosstown bridge and fourth street and d and they're staring in awe at the army reserve statue and uh apparently ken levine and david isaac's met in the army reserve so that's where this comes from this is really propaganda yeah there's a there's a banner or a billboard for bancroft's english muffins oh yeah there that's in the time square shot it's really weird yeah they definitely drew like bad english person teeth on that drawing but it's it's so it's a weird one yeah it's really weird i'm not even quite sure what it is like she's got like maybe a kaiser helmet on i oh yeah you're i think i was just staring at the teeth i feel like the teeth are meant to be drawn in the

in the bad way they draw british teeth in simpsons but yeah so i i like too they bring up oh the penny loafer like they bring up which i'd assume is a brown derby yeah i was gonna say it's got to be the brown derby which i only that was uh how impressed i was the first time i went to universal orlando as a kid like the brown derby wow it's a it's a may it's a facsimile of this thing in hollywood i'm in the big city and then and then they have a brown derby at uh disney too in florida oh okay oh they got their own at mgm man that must have been replaced with the star wars thing by this point right i think it's still there really man well sure it'll become baby yodas or the child's Brown Derby. Yuck.

Yeah. The child's hat. The child's hat. You know what? Fourth Street and D is an intersection on the Fox lot. We should have went there. We should have found Fourth Street and D. Oh, man.

You're right. Yeah, yeah. The one time we went on that Fox lot. Now we'll never, they'll never have another table read again. We'll never have another table read. No. It's over. Seems pretty easy to sneak onto that lot. Actually, yeah.

It was pretty simple uh but yeah once the song is over there are like less than three minutes left of this story and i really should i really wish there was more time in capital city it it seems like really odd that homer only gets one try and he fails just because for some reason they're full of these aristocrats it's not stadium it's really not properly communicated yeah i was shocked i watching this again i haven't watched this for a few years and i was like i my memory was they were in capital city how like half the episode yeah me too and it just been five years and it just uh i wish there was more or they would have played off the upper crustness more of these people in the audience like monocles will be flying off but for some reason the goofball who will meet soon his antics are much more sophisticated than homers yeah it's uh yeah i oh yeah there was a bootleg

t-shirt joke too in the scene i like t-shirt emporium but i i think in general you know the late sam simon let me just say i think he made a mistake with with pitching out this episode especially it spends what could have been a special thing of like the episode where the simpsons move or the episode where they go to the big city they just use it up in the baseball episode it kind of is wasteful of story ideas that they would revisit in other episodes and it made it feel just slightly less special because they kind of already did it in season two you know yeah and half of this very short third act is them driving through the city yeah yeah it's i feel like uh it's one of those things maybe it was again like these big

name writers they have this idea and so they go with it but i think it is it's they talk about it on the way we was that there we did all these things as a first with Homer and Marge. We could have spread this out over many more episodes. I want to say at least maybe 90 seconds to two minutes of this episode are eaten up by reused animation. So I really want to know what was cut out. That might explain the pacing issue and why the first act is 11 minutes long. That wasn't on the DVD? You know, not in season two. cut out that might explain the pacing issue and why the first act is 11 minutes long yeah that wasn't on the dvd you know not in season two they didn't i think actually they didn't start

saving their deleted scenes like to use later until season six or seven well i think four is the first one oh on the dvds yeah like until they got the film roman i think that's when they started saving or had access to them klansky chupupo just chucks them. Like, oh, you delete, I throw away. But yeah, Homer, I also think it's, why is this major league organization setting them up in a motel? I thought they were moving. Yeah, right, right. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

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take advantage of no creditcredit-needed financing made easy. They work with multiple lending partners, so the financing is tailored to you. Remember that when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free. Only at your locally owned Big O Tires, the team you trust. It literally feels like a script, like when I was trying to write a script for the first time, and it would be like, I just got to finish this, and it's like, okay, okay yeah they're in a motel and then homer gets fired it really feels like uh the end is so thrown away uh and also i feel again homer says another very brooksie line of like we talk about it for years marge fell asleep before for the first time

ever marge fell asleep before i did like that's uh it's just too uh reflective of homer for sure uh but i guess it's that is the joke uh i don't think it's a sex thing that homer falls asleep first i think more it's just he's never he's usually too stupid to be restless with thoughts yeah yeah they drop off homer at the game they're gonna see him after when he's a big star and that's when we meet the Capital City goofball. Oh, you know what? I have to play the death jingle before it, actually. Here's the death jingle for our dead guest star here.

Death stalks you at every turn. There it is, death. So you have Tom Post and died in 2007 at age 85. A very long and storied history in television and movies people in 1990 would know him best for just coming off of the eight season new heart series playing the character george utley he's so funny in that role i in 1990 even it was a rite of passage to have him guest star on your tv show okay if you look at his imdb he was like a one or two episode guest star on literally 100 shows over 50 years like from 1950 to 2005 he would just be like oh and we got tom poston for this like one

offline or this one one episode character and this uh character is based on a doodle by the writer ken levine although based on uh freakish mascots like the Philadelphia Fanatic. Yeah, the Philly Fanatic. And I had no idea like the echo or like the wave that character had because like in my neck of the woods in Cleveland, near Cleveland, we have the Cleveland Indians, of course,

but you can't have a Native American man dancing around. That's racist. So you have Slider, another freakish mutant, a what's it, if you will. That guy just is the fanatic. He is, yeah.

They just rip off the fanatic and made him purple. That's like Gritty is also just, he's the fanatic if you chop the nose off. Yeah. And that 7-Eleven mascot reminds me of the fanatic too. Oh, God, that hideous, the mascot who's made out of all the junk food you can buy at 7-11. But I honestly think these things are mascots for teams that just are based on concepts or racist things. Because for a long time, they'd be like, ah, the Indian isn't racist. It's a proud tribute to the heritage of Native American people. But it's like, your mascot is tacitly admitting this is a racist idea.

Because otherwise, you would just use the mascot and the logo as your mascot chief wahoo that's his name yes for the philly fanatic they are left in uh you know a lurch there it's like well what like what is a philly like is it going to be a horseman like they can't they can't really do that so they getting a green monster to dance around that's just fun what was the cubs i mean it must have been a bear right mike yeah cub as a cubby this is embarrassing i really should know this they didn't really have him like running around though clark his name is clark no no this is from 2014 they announced clark wow yeah i they they really didn't have a mascot running around when I went to the games.

I will say when I started going to the Giants games and I'd see Lucille, I knew that he was a relatively new invention. And for me, it was for some reason, I don't feel I am more annoyed by a mascot doing the exact same things if they didn't exist when I was a child. If they did exist when I was a child, I did exist when i was a child i kind of grandfather him in i'm like oh that's san diego chicken having fun isn't that great but but if they're a new invention i'm like what are they trying to sell me here with his lucille this is bs found a picture of the 1908 just now the mascot which is terrifying and i've sent it to you henry okay so it's like every old halloween costume basically i want to see this oh god oh my lord that's like that living rat man in the in the city of new york these days i think they just yes exactly they taxidermied a corpse and just

shoved a man in there that's horrifying but like the the joke here which i don't think is that effective is that like this crazy looking character has a very low-key voice coming out of it i like you someone had to explain that to me before i kind of got it but i don't know maybe he needed to be even more low-key in this i mean tom posted he's playing in pretty low key yeah yeah i i i like that he's played like he's the he's the old veteran who's like showing the kid the rope this would be the scene in like any biopic of a musician of like it was my first day on the big stage and these you're getting shown around by the veteran like it's it's nice but and there are two little easter eggs in the scene when they're panning across the locker room so we see princess cashmere

in a locker and like a play dude pin up and then once we get to homer and the not the fanatic uh the goofball we see someone has homer's homer's night out picture of him in cashmere oh yeah i didn't notice that that's cool i love the viral photo made it to that i i only caught it on my third watch for this but i i think too i never noticed it until then because the goofball just draws your eye you're just staring yeah the whole time it's a it's a really fun design it is so evocative of these weird mutant mascots i love his the extra bit i like is he has baseball pants like that's our baseball underwear i guess or or just his torso is a baseball and then he has furry legs sticking out of it it's one of those two things uh but yes

here's here's the clip with the old goofball okay here are your tickets they're supposed to be good you're sitting with the players wives and don't forget to cheer for me i'll see you after the game when you're a big star art was strangely quiet later he explained he was confused by feelings of respect for me. At one last, wow. Oh, my God. I don't believe it. It's really you, the Capital City Goofball. Hello, Dancing Homer. Glad to have you aboard. If there's anything I can do for you, just squeeze the wheeze.

The fifth inning will be yours. Everyone is settled in. Had a couple of beers. The game is official. It's a pretty important inning. Wow, the fifth. It's also the inning I wish I had a zipper on the front of this thing, if you know what I mean. You're right, Mr. Goofball.

Hey, call me plain old Goof. So, what exactly do you have planned for us? Well, I get up, I dance, I spell out the name of the city, all to tune of baby elephant walk ah mancini the mascot's best friend well see you on that field i'll set him up you knock him down you know another thing hit me with this uh maybe it's a an intentional weirdness to it but if the goofball is getting old, another person can wear that costume and do the act. There's no need for a new person to come in and do it. It's like he owns the character, maybe, and he won't allow anyone to do it. You know, also, I think maybe the goofball is setting up Homer to fail on this night because he's he's acting all friendly to him but actually

homer is out to get him and so he's trying to make and he's like yeah baby elephant walk that's a good one for this crowd yeah yeah maybe you know i think that's another unexplored avenue i also yes i also thought that and i was like well they didn't do any they didn't explore it at all well because yeah the way they rejected it just it's so lightly dealt with it's just like and it's it's over like he's failed yeah that's it like yeah i i also do like just his eyes you're just staring at the eyes inside of the mouth the whole time and wondering like who is inside of this thing the uh yeah the joke when he comes back in that season 14 episode is that the goofball spent 80 million dollars to buy his way into the city council in capital city uh but uh but yeah there's also hearing that towel

snapping and all the footsteps like the sound design is still uh aggressive in these early lots of loud footsteps lots of background noise can be kind of distracting yeah it sounded fine on a phone uh and then dave glass is the name of the broadcaster another friend of levine's we get dave glass and dave rosenfield uh he's i i hope those guys at least send him like a christmas card or something as a thank you for that and uh and then there's another like after all of the crowd shots they've had to do, like, when Homer spells out the town, they have to, in the second act, they have to zoom in on the same crowd shot like eight times. After all the crowd shots they have to do, they then have to do, like, the joke is, it is a gigantic, gigantic crowd of people. There's a fun story on the commentary where you can see, like, how Gracie Films and Klaski Chupa weren't getting along. And Gracie Films found out that a layout artist worked for two days on that crowd.

And they got very angry saying, don't do that again. But then when it came back in full color animation, they're like, every crowd should look like this. So they wanted good results, but they didn't want to pay for it. Yeah. I like Kirkland putting that in his back pocket. And he's like, you know, now that we're all in the microphone, I'm going to tell you. But he says it in the nicest way because he's a sweet man. He is a very sweet.

He's one of the nicest guys we've ever interviewed. I do want to say that. I mean, you look at that shot. It's like, yeah, there was the same story on the Faith Off episode in season 11 that, like, somebody got in trouble because it took too long to draw a very complicated scene and it just it sounds like in some cases there's just this like quota thing like no matter what you're asked to draw it's expected to be in a certain amount of time but it's yeah that's not how it works with animation i think they would eventually learn more about the process after their klaski chupo problems were over and that's where they're in the in the most to the front row in the shot that's where the

winfields are yeah look for them in the lower right uh arranging some sort of uh like foursome i guess i guess so they're they're at least pitching it i think oh yeah i see this that is weird they're both in on it with this young couple honestly i'm shocked there's not more little jokes brought in there i i wonder you know there's definitely also a feeling you hear from graining and other people like that looks like an artist's family or whatever is drawn into the background i i think they're still discouraged from adding too many jokes but oh man there's on treehouse there was a story of how mad the producers got when they thought a joke got added in.

But it turned out to be a writer who submitted the joke. Yeah, this also, you know, watching this episode made me want to eat a hot dog at a baseball stadium. I really miss it. You know, I could make a hot dog at home, but it doesn't taste the same. Homer's right. Yeah, no, that silver foil.

Oh, God. And now the steaminess of those buns coming out of that uh that i'm sure very sanitary place they're still in oh yeah very sanitary well i mean you get a chicago style hot dog at those at those uh cubs games there's gonna be like at least four whole tomatoes on that yes uh a giant pickle hopefully whole full pickle. Maybe this was the first time I saw a joke about divorce as well on the show, this ex-wife section gag. I have a quick clip of it. Let's see.

Upper, upper, upper mezzanine. Hmm. Now these must be ours. These seeds stink. I think the player's wives would be a little closer to the action. Actually, this section is for the players' ex-wives. And then I found out that all the while there was this bimbo in Kansas City. Throw it in his head!

Clearly Bart. Yes, yeah. Nancy doesn't play too many adult women on the show after this. This is also, I mean, this is true about baseball players have lots of ex-wives though so do comedy professionals so yeah that's true i'm thinking there's something pulled down to that they're all living in glass houses on the simpsons uh but uh though honestly if i was i guess these have to be very bitter ex-wives to keep showing up to baseball games and such bad seats maybe maybe stop going move on with your life you know i mean before facebook that's where you have to gossip with the other wives oh that's

true yeah uh but yeah so homer it's time for his big performance there's there's some really fun drawings and uh of homer while he's waiting like there's a fight on the mound there's uh a guy catches it right next to homer you get to see some of the goofballs antics like there's some really good visual stuff in there but uh when it's homer's big moment it doesn't come together who just taught it a free ticket to a big league park but i was too tense to enjoy the game every ounce of concentration I possessed was focused on the task at hand. Red Hats, get your Red Hats here. Ladies and gentlemen, Capital City's newest sensation,

Dancing Home! Hmm. These do taste better at the ballpark. Uh-oh. There he is! I was graceful. I was witty. Brother, I was something. But they didn't care.

What is with these people? Why are they sitting on their hands? Mom, what's he doing wrong? I don't know. It was so quiet you could hear each individual smartass remark. This guy doesn't make me want to cheer. Gee, I really pity him, making a fool of himself in front of so many people. These cornball antics may play in the sticks, but this is just a joke. I kind of don't understand this plot twist,

but I guess in a way, it's just like, well, Homer is playing to a much larger crowd, and that only really works if you have a bright goofy costume to accentuate your movements i could see that that makes more sense than just this urbane crowd is too smart for homer like i don't know it feels it feels a little bit about like uh you know this the artiste in the big city kind of thing like i feel like if they had more time they should have played it up a little more like or exaggerated it to be like they why are any of these people at a baseball game you know yeah there's a there's a guy i'm looking i'm scrolling through now on my phone there's a guy who has like

kind of like an ascot type thing it's like it's not they don't fully commit like if the joke is like that capital city is so like upper crust it's like shouldn't they're not eating hot dogs they're eating something like they're eating caviar. They don't go fully all the way with like, oh, it's a this is not the type of baseball game you would expect it to be. Every character's not dressed like the Monopoly man or anything.

It's like 1990. Instead of buying the 72 ounce beers, they could be having little cappuccinos, you know, in those little mugs. That could be a joke. That's obviously a weird joke for a baseball stadium in a major city but like all right it's funny it's a silly it's like they don't go they don't go one way that hard yeah i don't think they figured out a good enough reason for homer to flop they knew homer has to flop because they're not going to live in capital city in the next episode but yeah i i think it could

work better just explain like this is where they need voiceover for homer to explain it more because if you take away the voiceover it's just everybody's being silent lisa and bark don't understand why and you just have the smart ass remarks to go on like homer can at least contextualize it a little better but it doesn't help that the one like uh sophisticated guy has like just one tooth that yeah right weird yeah these cornball antics it's like you're like a one-toothed tick i know he's he kind of looks like the eddie fitzgerald looking guy oh you're right but a little different but yeah the that's i think that makes it 10 times more

distracting that it's like this line should be said by it should be by a fancy upper crust guy not a dude in like a polo shirt who has glasses uh and that it is sad how homer is taken like walked off by goofball like that's some fun sad drawing there but uh i mean it could be too homer just missed his cue like he was like five seconds off and just by being five seconds off like you blew it it's over like i sure i mean also this thing not going over it does if i if i may talk up another podcast the ride when i really enjoyed was the the mighty ducks first game uh episode you guys did i love that one there oh yeah yeah there was they're not talking about wild wing no no the the other the guy who the dancing homer of that night was someone else yeah i mean that is the real life dancing homer there was this guy

that was gonna base he was basically like painted blue like he was like ice man or something and he had a guitar and the audience hated him and he like it was really like he cried in his car afterward it's so sad poor bastard we should have seen like he was gonna be he worked at disneyland and he was gonna be like the guy to pump up the audience oh so sad and they turned they turned yeah he was gonna be for the pair he was for the dads to to rock out with and have fun right they were going to feel comfortable with his masculinity but that shows you yeah if you don't you it is so much harder for those guys if you don't have a giant mascot like cartoonish outfit on top of that if you can see the face and the eyes of the person the connection is harder

at those type of things that's why clowns wear makeup because they're meant to be seen from far away which is why everyone is afraid of clowns that's right oh you're on it i never thought of that uh i i also i do like that homer part of him being destroyed is that he doesn't put on clothes he's just sitting with his ass hanging out in a jock strap for a while it's a great shot of him behind the frosted glass hard to do an animation like pre-digital oh god yeah another another great job you know there matt graining is ragging on this art the entire episode he should have at least complimented that to be like wow you guys drew that great like the blobby blue version

of homer and then you can still see like his ass cheeks in the drawing. Like that's a great, that's, that is great art. If I could have a sell from this episode, I'd want that one. They should sell this at Universal. Yes. A Homer Simpson jockstrap. Oh man. Sure.

Yeah. But yes, Homer has been let go. And we then get the very tacked on happy ending here. I'm sorry, young man. You're just not ready. Pick up your check at the front office, and for God's sake, put some clothes on. Well, I guess it's back to good old Springfield. But I can't go back.

Not after I've seen the bright lights of Capital City. I'll wither and die like a hothouse flower. Now stop it, you two, and don't look too down. I'm sure this is hard enough for your father. All right, Homer, you're having a good way to go your father. All right, homie! You're having a great day! Oh, what a family. My wife and kids stood by me. On the way home, I realized how little that helped. So that's it. The costume's buried now.

As my son would say, I'm one sad, ape-like dude. Whoa! What a saga. Hey, you guys are hanging out my every word. I've become the center of attention. Yeah, it's remedy. Tell it again, Homer. Okay.

I wonder why stories of degradation and humiliation make you more popular. I don't know. They just do. This is weak. It's weird. It's really weak. I really want to know because the the episode was always going to end in the bar but even this scene the lip flaps don't match the dialogue so i'm wondering like was was this this couldn't have been the ending like homer is cheered up like

what was happening in this final scene yeah a crowd does start to form around him like that's there in the animation including like richard sakai they just draw him in but uh yeah what would have homer have said in the original version to get people to give a damn about him maybe it was a more bleak ending and they added this slightly uplifting ending to give homer some victory i wish i wish they play more with it well how much marge sacrificed for this like she her telling the kids to not show how sad they are because homer feels worse like that that's an extra layer of emotionality you don't expect and i i can't help but identify with lisa in this where she just almost got to be a big city kid and now you're taking this away

from me and i have to now that i've tasted what the big city feels like i now have to go back to suburbia like it it makes suburbia 10 times worse than it was before maybe that makes them maybe that's character development for lisa this is returning maybe you can explain away lisa has growth as a character because she got to taste the big city life that's why she's more cynical from this episode onward right one night in a capital city motel room changed her life yep yeah exactly and that is such a brooksie turn of homer saying like i i only later i realized how little that mattered it's just like that homer would not be that clever it's a great line but does not belong to homer i thought that was the best line of the narration yeah now it's but it

does shit all over the efforts of the entire family makes it about well homer feels bad now yeah yeah it did uh it could have been played so much differently i think the i mean i i at least homer saying he buried it in the backyard explains well why doesn't he just go back to work with the isotopes is that he the failure is dancing homer broke his heart so much he couldn't go back to i mean i guess to after you get the big lou gehrig send off how can you come back like two months later like hey i'm back dancing homers here I think ultimately I would like to read the table read script for this episode it's got to be somewhere somebody has to have one of these or someone has scanned it I really want to know I

couldn't find it before this episode but maybe in the future we could track it down just like what was this episode before it was uh you know uh tinkered with yeah so tinker with I but I at least on the credits they play you uninterrupted the full minute of uh capital city which is pretty nice i i i mean if you get a brand new song sung by tony bennett like play play play it twice yeah i mean maybe again i want i want a remastered version i want a recut version of everything let's redo this episode let's do a godfather coda version of this episode that's the true version fully remastered from the negatives yeah this uh returning to this one it was fun to reflect on like childhood baseball memories and all that but i i now look at it too

much with like a producer's eye of just like why did you waste the concept of the family moves to the big city in for like two minutes in the baseball episode? Just have have the goofball come to town and and reject Homer. Do some like there's there's other ways around it that mean they don't have to go to Capital City for an episode. Yeah, I watched it and I was i was like oh good i haven't seen this in a while i will say i was a little bit disappointed well they weren't packing it with jokes as much as they'd be even by the end of this season like they yeah i mean and sometimes i go back to the old ones and i go there's not as many jokes but i go oh i had this story like you know like lisa's teacher or something i go oh this is a really sweet episode, but I was like, this one is, you know,

funny. I'm not trying to say it sucks or anything. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, interesting episode. Again, we want to see the original cut,

but Mike, please let us know where we can find you online and please tell everybody out there about a podcast, the ride. We love it. You guys have been doing great throughout this very, very long quarantine. So many great episodes.

So many episodes too. Yes. Thank you. It does. I, somebody just told So many episodes, too. Yes, thank you. It does. Somebody just told us we were about to hit 200, which I'm sure you guys are blown past that, right? Yes. We're probably closing in on 300 Simpsons at this point.

I think we just did the 250th episode, right? We recorded it. Yeah, yeah. As it was recording. Yes, yeah. So I think, yeah, we're hitting almost 200. So, yeah, it's crazy. But Podcast Riot at Twitter.

You want to hear about theme parks and then theme park adjacent things as well. You know, like shopping malls that have a roller coaster in it. Stores that sell can't like novelty candy. And then like mascot stuff. Certainly like anything with a character. You know, we just did a Barney episode because there was there is a barney thing at universal studios but it was a pretty good excuse to just talk about like barney and his the last character introduced riff a saxophone playing orange dinosaur who says like howdy hey everybody and i really enjoyed your looks at movies like fuzz

bucket and billy toppett. Oh, yes. Billy Toppett, the Lance Burton self-produced film that looks like a student, like a college student film made by like one of the most successful magicians of all time. And also, I love the Ivan Ooze one as far as like the weird side quests. I love that one. Ivan Ooze is a real real stretch but we like doing that now we're just doing the chris farley show but uh because you guys did father of the pride at the beginning of quarantine we never have to talk about it you guys talked about the entire series

never oh my god that is one of the worst days of quarantine i'm sure i i love listeners should just pick that one up because you can hear it you guys recorded it over the course of one full day and just checking back in with you as you as your minds degrade with each episode yes and then we made deals with each other at the last batch of episodes too that I didn't have to watch one episode instead I had to watch an interview with Peter Fonda on a Charlie Rose about Ulysses Gold. Scott had to listen to a long Bob Dylan song. Ulysses Gold filmed in my Jacksonville area neighborhood. Oh, wow.

I remember that film actually kind of well. At the movie theater I worked at in Florida, there was a signed yuli's gold poster like in an office there you're brushed with hollywood i think is his name yuli jackson i think so yeah i believe i believe it is i think it's the only movie that the home improvement mom is in also i think right uh yeah yuli jackson how about it some last minute trivia for all of our listeners out there yeah enjoy it but thank you so much Mike it was so awesome to have you back hey thanks for having me yeah

so yeah at podcast the ride wherever your podcasts are so thank you so much to Mike Carlson for being on the show be sure to check out podcast the ride we love it and as for us if you want to check out more of our stuff and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free and a bunch of other stuff go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up for five bucks a month, you'll get just that, and also access to everything behind the $5 paywall.

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only for patrons of that level or higher. Yeah, Bob's talking about our what a cartoon movie podcast if you enjoy us talking about the simpsons or on our sister podcast what a cartoon in this kind of deep detail we do it for an animated feature film once a month in the same way often for over four hours we talk about films as diverse as the end of evangelion wallace and gromit curse of the were-, and a goofy movie, just to name a few. You gotta sign up to hear them all. Over 120 hours, I bet, at this point, we have recorded of What a Cartoon Movie podcasts,

all at your disposal, in addition to all the $5 stuff Bob just mentioned, for $10 a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And that also includes the video version of our deleted scenes commentary that we have done for many of the seasons and we just did one for season 11 that i think you really enjoy if you want to see homer's butt you uh in a different way than you've seen before watch our deleted scenes commentary so as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you

can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast podcast, by the way, is Retronauts. That'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 bonus episodes every month. Again, that is patreon.com slash retronauts. Henry, how about you? I'm Henry Gilbert. Follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G.

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and we will see you then. There's a swinging town I know called Capital City People stop and scream hello In Capital City It's the kind of place And scream hello in Capital City. It's the kind of place that makes a bum feel like a king. And it makes a king feel like some nutty cuckoo super king.

It's against the law to frown In Capital City You're capable like a stupid clown When you chance to see Fourth Street and Deanne Once you get a whiff of it You'll never want to roam. From Capital City, my home sweet swinging home.