Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Dead Putting Society With Mike Hanford

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

We all grab our putters for this week's episode as we welcome comedian and writer Mike Hanford from the band/podcast The Sloppy Boys! This is the first major Ned Flanders episode, as Homer becomes much angrier than usual while forcing Bart to play mini-golf. With Lisa's help, Bart finds inner peace and ultimately learns a lesson while Homer and Ned wear dresses. All this, plus the sound of one hand clapping! It's a weird but important episode, so listen along to learn a ton of historical firsts for this week's Mr. Putter-approved 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!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons where we embrace nothingness. I'm your host, the block-headed Bishop Bob Mackey and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today?

Hey, it's Henry Gilbert and I'm not perfect, like Ned Flanders. And who do we have on the line? And I'm Mike Hanford and my putter's name is Miles. Because sometimes the only way you can feel good about yourself is by making someone else look bad. And I'm tired of making other people feel good about themselves. Oh my god! mythical day in real world history oh boy bobby millie vanillie is confirmed to be lip-syncing by their producer madonna's justify my love music video is banned from mtv for being too spicy and home alone beats rocky five at the box office wow it's a crazy crazy time in 1990 musical controversy uh as a kid i only knew the

middle even the only thing like after it happened like obviously as an eight-year-old i wasn't watching it too closely but i think i had watched enough things that were joking about it that it eventually hit me like oh okay that they they lip they are lip-syncing and not really singing these songs lots of in living color sketches based on that premise that fed their entire season that year i think uh but yeah this this was the tipping point where their producer like finally admitted like fine yes see they they didn't sing it we demanded integrity from our pop artists in 1990 uh you know it comes around every now and then well now it feels like probably was like 14 years ago or something that uh what

ashley simpson got caught with the lip syncing thing on the cd started skipping on snl yes yeah well speaking of snl that's how i knew about that justify my love music video because wayne and garth did a whole thing about it that the music video and like garth garth danced like the guy with the bulge except they gave him like a two times as big bulge for it was the most times the word schwing was said on television that night and uh yeah Home Alone was like when a bat a Batman was the first movie I really remember like loving seeing in a movie theater as a kid in 89 but home alone might have been like the second like getting to see home alone in the movie theaters like that was so cool and exciting like it was it was macaulay culkin's

time and sylvester sloan going going into the past with rocky five uh flopping so this week on the show we have special guest mike hamford of the birthday boys as well as the sloppy boys both the band and the podcast welcome to the show mike thank you thank you so much for having me this is great i remember when i saw batman uh in 89 in theaters so that was the summer right that must have been the summer yeah i think it's like july or something i was upstairs i was sitting on the toilet and my brother yells up to me hey mike mom and dad said we can see batman and i remember like yeah not really even knowing there was a batman movie which is like Mom and Dad said we can see Batman! And I remember being like, yeah! Not really even knowing there was a Batman movie, but just like, my older brother's excited about it,

and I'm excited about it too. I'm not missing out on an opportunity to be on his side. I have a Simpsons-based memory about Batman Returns, and I had just finished watching my recording of Homer at the Bats, the softball episode. Is that the name of it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my mom said,

how would you kids like to see Batman returns? And we saw it. And then I just watched it again for the first time in, I don't know, 25 years. And I can't believe my mom took me to see that movie when I was nine or 10. It's so bloody and horny. Yes.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Uh, but yes, no, Mike, me and Bob, big fans of,

of your sketch group, the birthday boys. Thank you. Thank you. And yeah, your new Bob, big fans of your sketch group, The Birthday Boys. Thank you. Thank you. And yeah, your new podcast, The Sloppy Boys. Like, I am a Patron, as you call them. Oh, are you? Good.

I love The Patrons. Patrons beat anybody else in our lives. Love The Patrons. If you see a sketch group more than three times, they have to appear on your podcast. And we're proving it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I actually just re-watched all of uh all birthday boys and all of comedy bang bang uh with my husband he'd never seen it

before and it was uh it was so much fun now now i i recognize every birthday boy in in right right we pop up in in both shows do we did you have the dvds yes yeah yeah me and bob both yes in fact i think i bought them from your merch table when i met you in san francisco that you were telling me about yeah yeah before i say yes yes yes good good uh i where did you watch bang bang i don't think that's on is that on somewhere um well netflix yeah i watched it on Netflix when it was there. But yes, for me, my husband watched it. We had to sign up for a trial of AMC whatever as a bonus channel on Amazon Prime. It is so complicated. Right.

Yeah. No, I know. There are friends of mine who have writing gigs or something. They're like, it's on the Peacock After Hours. I don't know what that is i'm not gonna find out uh yeah but mike you know as uh you you have a similar you know childhoods to to probably a lot of our listeners you must have did you watch this episode uh when it debuted in like 1990 i am uh was just introduced to the simpsons when you texted me about this you said

you want to be on the podcast i said i've seen this little guy spiky haired guy on t-shirts the 90s i gotta finally watch one and i thought it was cute bart is not a minion first thing yeah yeah not a minion uh no yeah i i love the simpsons this the simpsons were like for me one of those things where it came on i'd watch it on sundays uh or thursdays was it on too did they switch to thursday this episode yeah yeah well i i would watch that and then all throughout the week i think it played like four times a day on between two different channels and it was just like i'd watch it all the time then go to school and have a friend that we just like quoted the simpsons if anyone quoted the simpsons they were cool and they knew what was going on and

uh you know they just said doe like that's not really the simpsons that's one thing one guy says um but yeah this this episode i definitely knew but i uh re-watching it i was like oh yes i remember all this stuff but i rarely go back and watch season one two and kind of three this one is pretty low-key even for season two it's very down to earth very sitcom-y and it wants to be a karate kid parody but that never quite breaks through right very sitcom-y that's a good like the idea of getting together and uh losing a bet and having to mow the lawn in your wife's dress felt very much like a 90s sitcom, which it seems sort of beneath The Simpsons or what The Simpsons would become.

Yeah, in the commentary, you can kind of hear them. You know, they aren't so positive about that at the ending, which is, that's something I like on the commentaries when they can say something like didn't work or if they can dump on it themselves. By the way, the birthday boy commentaries i i had not listened to those before until this uh this last year and i i love they're really great they are good okay good i remember doing those we watched for each season like we sat there and watched all episodes in a row and just talked over them and i can't remember

if they're good or bad or interesting or funny. I did like hearing about how Mitch broke his arm in that one sketch. Yeah, that was crazy. He then, I'm sure he talked about how like the doctor said it wasn't broken, then it was broken. He could have like lost his like movement in his arm, his elbow. I also can believe you guys recorded the season two one all day as you found out like you and you start your season two commentary by announcing that you have been canceled which like that i had to suck yeah we

knew that was coming from like the middle of the season though like the middle of the writing process uh there was like a new president of ifc came in and odin kirk was like look guys this will probably be your last season i don't see like just just because the way things work with new presidents coming or whatever he was like so you just have fun and do whatever you want yeah as uh somebody who you know went uh became a comedy writer and performer like did the simpsons must have influenced you uh you know to a degree right oh for sure for sure just like dumb people uh specific like very specific references i can't think of any good examples but yeah i remember watching the simpsons and being laughing at jokes that i didn't get

because uh they were you know referencing something i had no idea it was but knowing that it was funny and laughing because it was so obscure the reference and uh we we've also uh we we've heard before from you when you guys were writing in a group together, like you weren't working as a PA on The Simpsons, but two of your... Mitch and Tim were. Yeah, Mitch and Tim were. How many meals did you get from The Simpsons writers room? Yeah, a ton.

I mean, Mitch would, mostly Mitch. Tim worked at Gracie, So he would pop into the Simpsons a lot. But Mitch was like in charge of the dinners at the end of the night, like ordering dinner for the guys, the writers and then leaving. And they would order a lot and just have like so much left over. And Mitch would come up to the birthday boy's house where we'd have meetings and shoot videos and just generally hang. And he would bring like four pizzas and like subs and stuff and like all this crazy stuff like this is so great he's like i hate this job but like maybe this is so great uh i mean you get the you had a great position because you get all the benefits of it and mitch just has to suffer

at it yeah yeah i think universally endeared himself to those guys and eventually was a uh voice on the show that's right yeah and i think universally the worst jobs do have free pizza it's just a perk true so you don't go on a killing spree i think mitch mitch was also mitch and weiger were just on i think this past year for uh like a podcasting episode yeah they visually appear i don't think they talk but i don't think so yeah the the doughboys do appear on i was i one of these days we'll get the call to be yeah what the heck have you you've had i'm sure writers and stuff on the show right yes though not as many currently employed their writers more of the guys who are like you know one day a week guys if we have selman on that'll be our big pit approach to him like the majority

of the interview will be put us on the show why aren't we there i will read my spec script to you uh live uh so bart buys a golf club that's a terrible lisa becomes a tiktok star oh there you go there it writes itself but yeah also mike i i know you're well did you ever skateboard because bart did or i know you're you I know you're good at the inline skates. I know that. I got into skateboarding in middle school and a little bit of high school. I couldn't do much. I kind of maybe could ollie every once in a while, but I thought it was cool.

I just liked the look of it, but it wasn't a Bart Simpson thing. If anything, my skateboarding in the 80s and 90s was a Michael J Fox back back to the future thing ah that's classic yeah yeah so before we get into the episode we should start things off with a writer's corner because this is the first episode written by Jeff Martin and we interviewed him for our Patreon in February of 2019 so I'll keep this kind of brief but if you want to hear more from Jeff himself, that is behind the $5 paywall. We did that in February of 2019. He was one of our friendliest interviews.

Very nice guy. He was like a very, for being like an Ivy League dude, he seemed very, he's also been like in Hollywood for 40 years now. He was very down to earth and just like a chill guy. I liked him a lot.

So most notably, he was the roommate of Conan O'Brien because he went to Harvard and was part of the Harvard Lampoon. And this is something that I just kind of glossed over before with Jeff Martin's history. But we recently went over the history of Get a Life and David Letterman. And we were watching a lot of Letterman clips from the 80s and just realizing or just recalling how important David Letterman's 80s show was oh yeah Jeff Martin graduated from Harvard went right to Letterman the from the very beginning of Letterman 1982 and stayed there for eight years and the Simpsons

was his next thing he was there for every big moment on Letterman like all of these giant all of the major we we asked him about the Jerry Lawler Andy Kaufman moment that he was there for and and so many and the Sonny and Cher one. Listeners haven't yet. If you're a Simpsons fan, you really should hear our What a Cartoon We Just Did about Get a Life because it is a sister show to the Simpsons 100%. And Steve O'Donnell, I think he was the head writer for Letterman and he was the uh the harvard force to bring together a bunch of harvard people so this could not be accurate but i want to say the first david letterman writing room was one of the first mega harvard rooms i think so i mean you know meryl marco famously

she was the head writer uh one of the most like influential women in comedy in the 80s but yeah i think the steve o'donnell like the it was a pipe it became a harvard to letterman pipeline in 30 rock 2 at the same time not exactly but snl was starting to harvard up a bit at two so again he went from eight years of the best times of letterman to the simpsons he would write multiple episodes throughout this era and uh through season four production season four and homer's barbershop quartet which aired in season five was his last episode of this era and he would also write all the songs in seasons two to four so we talked to him about that so things like the uh capital city song the monorail song little jingles you would hear in the show he wrote all of those his first one was in the only

moron wouldn't cast his vote for monty burns he also would tell the tale like he he wrote the music for the monorail song though the lyrics were all conan and yeah he talked about in our on our interview like seriously listen on patreon he uh had on dancing homer how proud he was that he discovered his niche of like oh i, I can write songs. Nobody else here can really do that and work with Alf Clausen to make him sound amazing. So after 23 years, he came back to the show to write a handful of episodes. The most recent one he wrote with his daughter, and it's the most recent one to air as of this recording. So Yokel Heroes. He only wrote one with his daughter, and I think he mentions that in the interview,

that he is writing an episode with his daughter. Yeah, yeah, who's a professional as well. And yeah, I mean, it was a Cletus episode. And the name, he didn't create the character Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel, because that was after his time. But Cletus was in the writer's room because in his episode, I Married Marge, the people right before them getting married are Cletus. Cletus is the name of the groom. But it's not our Cletus it's not the cletus but yeah it put cletus in the in there in the minds of people but yeah so like 80 of the staff from seasons two to four he left the show and like most of those

people he got his own sitcoms and like most of those people they went nowhere so i mean i'm sure they were fine but uh how many sitcoms were there in the 90s that we remember? How many, you know, died within seven to nine episodes? Yeah, well, especially with a live action sitcom, like once you've had six air, most networks are just ready to cut bait. Especially back then when they'd be like, oh, well, that sitcom didn't work. We have 10 others we're preparing right now. Just get rid of that one and we heard from bill oakley himself uh future showrunner that in the 90s networks just wanted sitcoms because they wanted to eventually sell them into syndication so if they had to hit sitcom they could make enough of it and then make total bank on that in the future and if you came

out of this show out of the simpsons of you could take meetings as like well yeah he just wrote for the simpsons okay here's 10 million dollars Make me a show. Everybody was getting rich off that stuff. Yeah. So I can go over the shows he created right after The Simpsons. And odds are you do not know what these shows are. If you're in the comments and you have seen these shows or remember them, let me know. Both in 1994. So his first show that he created was called The Good Life.

He created that with his wife, Suzanne Martin. And this was a sitcom a workplace sitcom that had drew carrie in it a year before the drew carrie show right right if the show hadn't been canceled drew carrie might not have been able to sell his own show and his other show from 94 was hardball which was a baseball base sitcom all i could find that it had a pre-news radio joe rogan one year before news radio one year before joe rogan took the airwaves by storm one year before news radio one year before Joe Rogan took the airwaves by storm one year before he stole that role from Ray Romano Ray Romano could be talking about DMT and be the podcast king not Joe Rogan but he chose a different path and baseball is so Martin loves baseball like

he's a baseball addict other things Martin would do he developed these the animated series baby blues which is fine I'm sure we'll cover it on What a Cartoon in the Future. It's okay. It's not bad. It's fine. There were many worse Simpsons wannabes out there, and it was smart to hire a Simpsons writer to run your show. And then after that, in the mid-aughts, he created the forgotten Jason Alexander show Listen Up, which is also a sports-themed sitcom. Right.

Okay. alexander show listen up which is also a sports theme sitcom right okay that's not the only other jason alexander sitcom i remember was where he's like he's a agent or something in this one he's a sports commentator okay yeah i know it's a different show i get it's sadly other than uh julie louis dreyfus dodged it but the others didn't uh from seinfeld they didn't have too much success no one cared about the marriage ref or the michael richard show uh i love that marriage ref that it just came out of seinfeld having like a bad relationship with his wife like i wish i had a ref here to tell my wife she's wrong or a b movie oh god the b i love that if you go back now through like 30 rock in these

other shows that just it's it's seinfeld making a guest appearance just to hawk b movie like it completely breaks reality it's it's no good so let's not talk about jeff martin anymore his wife suzanne martin now she she's on fire because suzanne martin also a television writer and again they created the good life together a failure but she's created her own sitcoms that are very popular and also non-sitcom shows like The Client List and Hot in Cleveland. Those are two big shows that she created and she's still working on a lot of stuff. They're the talent family and their daughter, Samantha, she's done some stuff, but again, she is co-writing with her father on The Simpsons, the most recent episode, Yokel Heroes. Yeah, that Hot in Cleveland show, it's all on Paramount Plus

and when i saw i was like wow they made so many seasons of this thing and like as a kids in the hall fan seeing dave foley is like a supporting guy in the show i was like i'm happy to see him get work yeah no hey and uh he as we all know he needs the money and we'll cover it in this episode by the way we're recording this after we recorded the episode proper but in this episode dead putting society jeff martin uh like lays a bunch of eggs that will hatch in later episodes all dealing with the simpsons history including you know the births of certain children how long the simpsons lived in their house uh you know uh where ned went to school and so on he is he is laying the foundation

for future episodes about the history of the simpsons yeah jeff martin is one of like the top mythology makers of the simpsons like he actually really cared about that stuff I think he's one of the one of his best qualities as a writer on the show other than just his awesome songwriting abilities for funny songs is that he really is good at the family stuff like these fan like sarcastic family interactions or just like how a father talks to his kid it all just feels so real and martin talks so much on the commentary of like oh yeah that's for my real life or that's for like my dad said that my mom said that my sister said that he brought i think he's another of the guys who said like once you've run out of your personal experiences it's much harder

as a writer on the show and i remember from the commentaries uh mike reese and maybe aljean saying the writers were jealous of jeff martin because uh at the time i'm sure it's still true now i haven't seen him he was very very handsome yes yeah the most handsome of these uh nebbish writers if you if you see when they draw the writers in um the front he is the most handsome easily of the ones drawn and i i believe that is still true like he i think he was also the one who resisted gaining weight the best yes the healthiest simpsons writer but yes that is our little bio on jeff martin the simpsons will be right back Bart for the goals Remember what Vince Lombardi said If you lose, you're out of the family

On The Simpsons Oh, man Oh Thursday When you really care about someone You shout it from the mountaintops So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level

To tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Hope you're enjoying this week's podcast as much as a frosty chocolate milkshake.

And a big thank you to our guest this week, Mike Hanford from the band and podcast, The Sloppy Boys. You guys should check out all the stuff they do. They are so funny and awesome. Thank you so much to mike hanford and you know what if you enjoy our podcast talking simpsons then you really should check out our patreon because that is how me and bob do this as our full-time job going through the simpsons all the way thanks to supporters like you out there we are able to do this as our full-time jobs for five bucks a month you not only get to know you're supporting us but you also get every episode of talking simpsons a week ahead of time than it is on the free feed and that also goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon plus you have a ton of exclusives you get on that patreon you won't hear anywhere else every month

me and bob are doing talking futurama going through the third season of Futurama the same way we go through The Simpsons and you can also hear right now Talk King of the Hill me and Bob as our three month long mini series are covering the first half of the second season of King of the Hill in depth and we've done the same as a Patreon exclusive for Mission Hill the other episodes of King of the Hill and Futurama and The the Simpsons sister series, The Critic. So many awesome podcasts that are available to you at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons for just $5 a month.

But if you really want to feel the love of this podcast deep in your bosom, then you should head up to the premium ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get the many things i just mentioned at the five dollar tier but then you also get each month the what a cartoon movie podcast where just like we do on what a cartoon podcast we cover an animated feature film super in-depth i'm talking over an hour long of talking about the history very well researched about a certain film and then often for four hours total

we talk about the film scene by scene breakdown just like we do with simpsons this month if you sign up you're going to get to hear us talk about shrek 20 whole damn years of Shrek and there's a giant back catalog available to you as well over 120 hours of what a cartoon movies and you can hear our most recent one at the end of the month films as diverse as Akira Beavis and Butthead do America Tiny Toons I Spent My Vacation Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse and tons and tons more please consider signing up today at the ten dollar level to get everything that's awesome at patreon.com slash talking simpsons well this episode is a really it it is a quiet episode but it also is like a major episode for a major character in the series too yes that's the true debut of flanders and they even start introducing his more christian elements before he was just the neighbor who was the ideal suburban dad compared to homer now there's a little more to him.

Yeah. Yeah. Like if you, if you think of Flanders, if you saw him in say the call of the Simpsons or the first Christmas special, his whole thing is just, he has things nicer than Homer. That's,

that's all there is to him. And also the, the interactions Homer has with him are like, he's defeated by Ned's ability or just how much money he has homer is just like kind of he's the lower tier guy to flanders going like well how do you afford a big rv or whatever he's yeah yeah he's certainly not cruel to flanders bordering on like trying to bash his head in with a pipe you know that's it's a very different character dynamic in the first season. Yeah. And Flanders isn't yet like, so like,

hiddly huddly hiddly hoo, neighbor. Like he hasn't, they haven't gotten that far with him yet. I think we get a toodly doodly from Todd, but Flanders doesn't have the baby talk quite yet. Right. Yeah.

Over season two, I think we're going to mark out like every, he'll say it like once an episode and then every line will have a bitly bootly kind of thing to it and yes also him being christian was like this is the first time and uh this is the first appearance of his of his wife too and the first time it's the idea that he has two children though i technically both appeared separately but i i have a theory that they just misdrew his one kid in season one like one time it's tall and one time it's small that could be it there was some animation stuff in this that i love that you don't see anymore obviously because it's it's much

crisper now but like the opening actually i don't know how true this is do they still use the same opening like footage let's say, for newer ones? That has been changed since season 20, I believe. Yeah, that's when they did the new HD, well, new, the now 10 years old HD opening. Yeah, right. Because this, the opening, it's just crackly little animation, and the lines aren't very good. And I was, right from the get-go, I was like, ooh, this is going to be an interesting watch, because everyone looks a little different.

Even Homer's hair was like in the back of his head wasn't like pointy. It was like curvy. Yeah, it's wavy hair, Homer. And also like. And also it's distracting, too, if you're used to how their mouths normally move. They didn't season to like their mouth lines go beyond their ears or necks a lot of times yeah yeah and they have uh brow lines too sometimes yeah at their temples yeah it's a lot more lines on the face than than you had back then yeah interesting uh but yes this episode begins

uh well first there's a chalkboard gag referencing nancy cartwright uh i because it's like bart's chalkboard gag says i am not a 32 year old woman uh yeah yeah i guess it had just started coming out the like nancy cartwright was doing interviews i mean i don't think they like hid nancy cartwright as bart but i guess it was more that they were starting to cover it yeah and i think an episode later this season they'll actually include uh you know dan casaneta as homer julie kavner as marge just wants to let everybody know who plays each part because people wanted to know that's right yeah she's uh though actually the chalkboard is accurate when bart says i'm not a 32 year old woman nancy cartwright it actually turned 33 a week before week or two before this episode aired so she was that slow cell animation i i don't like being uh

five years older than nancy cartwright was in 1990 now i just i always i want to think of like oh it's she that she's always younger than me or older than me yeah yeah uh but yes the the episode begins with the classic simpsons lawnmower meant to be ancient even in 1990 and uh homer they they point this out on the commentary, and it's very distracting after they say that. But, like, Homer is so mad this entire episode. Like, he's never not screaming with rage. Snapping at everybody. Yeah.

Well, like, literally raising his fist at people multiple times to be like, hey. Threatening Marge with violence when she offers him juice. Oh, yeah. marge with violence when she offers him juice oh yeah uh but uh but yes bart's bart's working on his science work which is he's actually slightly more attentive than i was to my my tin uh the science project i had in fourth grade i actually just let my mom do all the work on it instead i thought that was a really funny joke of potato still uh just a potato uh it taught me too that those little you do two quotation marks to mean repeats i didn't know that as a kid it taught me that trick uh and also bart saying genius at work

which would turn into a favorite uh t-shirt in the series now available on our t-shirt store uh but yeah ned i'm sorry which which t-shirt is that the genius at work t-shirt that uh that is worn by the the nerd pointing out the itchy and scratchy inconsistencies right right right uh but yes then ned comes up uh invokes god for the first time saying like thank the lord for this beautiful day so he's lightly christian i mean he does well compared to how christian he'll be by the end of the season he's still he's he's almost realistically christian by the end of the episode there is a group prayer so they're amping it up slowly and uh i like homer sarcastic who told which

apparently is a favorite of the jeff martin family just sarcastic that's a good people need to say that instead of hey thanks captain obvious like just right right it's more passive aggressive and mean i like that i also like too this is their new the change in their relationship is ned is only nice to homer he he is telling him how to fix his elf crash so he's going to give him the time release capsules to fix it and homer is furious that ned is at is going to offer him help like and he's yeah that that is a full change on their relationship how it's been written to that point and yes bob you're right that's when he finds out there's no beer and march offers fruit juice and that he literally shakes his fist at her like don't

toy with me woman toy with me it's it's a bit intense to see homer be like that physically there's another bit later where he has the golf club in his hand and raises it while saying, like, I'll show you. Charlene is like, it's like Homer is this close to beating his family in this episode. He chokes Bart all the time. But that's cute. When weapons are involved, we're looking at a family annihilator here. His tongue, Bart's tongue goes a little squiggly. That's funny.

For some reason, strangling feels different than if he just punched. I don't think it would be popular. It's the time he punches Bart in the face every episode. Beats him with a club. But yeah, so Homer, he deserves a little break from all his work. They heads to Ned's den, which first time they showed that. And as I grow older, I now see like, like oh this is a sign of like extreme middle class luxury that not only does he have his den but like a foosball table and his own bar and all this stuff it's he's

got his own family crest behind the bar oh yeah i know they're like old old antique photos of the flanders family and and also like he has a collection of beer steins, which that's, they mentioned on the commentary, too, they're like, Ned enjoys drinking far too much in this episode by comparison to regular Ned, but it's still fun. And, you know, Mike, your podcast is about imbibing. What did you think of his home bar setup? Well, that's so cool i love like i had friends in uh like middle school and high school who were you know i actually had one friend who like his dad owned he and his grandpa like started a cola business and they were super rich and we went to their going to their house was just like their rumpus room was just that with

like the foosball and ping pong and like a bar behind the thing that's like the ultimate it's the man cave man yeah that's right this was the man cave before that word was uh invented more like a man's grave i would say but in this scene i love when uh i love when flanders is like i hope draft is okay like he's so out of the loop of like, yes, draft is what everyone wants the book. And Homer is very dismissive about his expensive imported beer. Yes. It's from Holland,

man. I also, there's such a funny drawing of Homer. Like even by season three, they wouldn't draw him this way. Bored Homer, like angry with his hands in his pockets. Like that,

that's such a funny drawing. Like I, just to see Homer having hands in his pockets, I feel like how often is Homer drawn like that that's such a funny drawing like i just to see homer having hands in his pockets i feel like how often is homer drawn like that like yeah and i will say for continuity nerds out there when homer says they've lived next door to each other for eight years that stays true in the season four episode lisa's first words that's right they move into that house right before lisa is born and lisa is eight so also written by jeff martin so he is building the history of the show yeah i wonder i wonder if martin uh just referred back to his his thing

like what did i say before was it eight years as we record this episode jeff martin and his daughter i think just wrote an episode like a new episode yeah that was the most recent one to air as of this recording yeah yes he's yeah yeah he had left the series for a while but came back and has been he's i think it was like his third he's co-written with his daughter who's who's also in the comedy writing world is she is she staffed there or they they come in i think they're freelance yeah they're they're freelance yeah i think i you know i'm not so totally sure on who's staffed now though now I guess that without a true writer's room it's like what is staff what is it now yeah right right whoever's in whatever

room can write anything I wonder if those writers now just get sent all the candy to their homes like how do they get free lunches now I I mean I guess they just probably order an uber or whatever and get it sent to them well that's so cool like i'm when i saw that on twitter or something people were posting about it i was like that's cool i wonder if i could ever write an episode of anything with my dad you got you got to get your dad working in the well you have him go to harvard first he needs to do that yes i need to get his application done i know i know i keep putting it on uh but yes in our first clip here we have a big first appearance in the series uh maude flanders voiced by maggie roswell who she had been a voice actor

in season one she did hell and love joy in season one and other sparse voices but this is her key character for sure it's beautiful say that's right this is your first visit to the Flanders homestead, huh? Well, we've only been neighbors, what? Eight years. There's my little popcorn ball. Kissy-kissy. Oh, hello, sponge cake. I thought you boys might be hungry,

so I whipped up some club sandwiches. Ain't she wonderful, Simpson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but aren't we forgetting something, Flanders? Oh, your beer. Is draft okay? Just put in the tap last week it's a tasty little lager that came all the way from holland well beggars can't be choosy homer views non-domestic beers is lesser than yeah yeah like maude is just cute and nice that's that's yeah she's pleasant she's not she's a little she's a little midwesty yeah yeah a little bit of a tinge in her voice sorry bob i think i cut you off there oh no no uh just saying yeah she's very midwesty she's very to the suburban

ideal which is you know the midwestern wife who provides get snacks ready for the husbands when they're in the house yeah the husband's home, get snacks ready. Man, I love the design on the club sandwiches. I've never had those little sandwiches cut that way. The crust cut off, yeah. I feel like Homer should... Finger sandwiches, are they called? I think so, yeah.

And I feel like Homer should be just knocked off his ass by a giant mug of imported beer because what is the ABV on a duff? Yes, yeah. Well, let's talk about that macho mug because i actually did a little research i yes i i've never owned a macho mug before but the thing that it is supposed to look like a giant beer stein it's not that they drew a regular beer mug wrong it's that it's based on uh jeff martin says that it was on the commentary that it was like based on a real mug his uh father-in-law owned and yeah it's uh and it can contain i've looked

it up i found one from 79 that has ziggy on it right looks exactly like it how much how big is it how much it can hold a whole liter it is a one liter mug so homer homer gets drunk like he is really drunk after downing no wonder he's so mad immediately afterwards that's true he's just plastered uh but but yeah the macho mug is a real thing i thought it was it's kind of distracting just it's like what what like it it's hard to read at first and then once you know it it's like oh i guess ned is like a mug collector and that's one of his specialty mugs is this one liter big macho mug and he knows homer likes beer a lot so he gives him the biggest one like he's the the perfect host

uh and that and he has a really good tap because me and bob worked at an office that was like oh we have a we have a beer tap and it like never worked i feel like it had to just spray foam out of it yeah not great like attached to a garbage bag it was just like yeah it was so disappointing they talked it up big time and also it was like you know they had an open bar but like you'd only you were never drinking for happy reasons at that no no wait what job was this? Was it a restaurant? No, sorry.

It was a video game website. Yes. Like an internet journalism thing. And they had beers at work? They basically just had a grocery store built into the office so you wouldn't leave. Yes, yeah. That's the trap. It sounds nice.

It was a classic Silicon Valley, like, would you want a Chobani yogurt that's like 90 cents at the store? Well, you can have one whenever you want. Or like the big jars of pretzels with the peanut butter inside. Like, eat them all day. Why not? And boy, did I. And didn't make that job better. But yes, Homer, there's some funny belch animation

on homer too i like that i think they that's how simple they are still at this point that they're like let's just draw homer belching like that's funny yeah you don't yes yeah it's definitely it felt like uh just exactly what you said homer belching was funny enough uh it didn't need to be a funny reason he's drinking beer seeing him go back was like oh the cartoon dad is belching we didn't see that on tv we didn't see the dads of sitcoms belching in 1990 yet yeah yeah how many times did danny tanner belch on screen never i don't even think tim taylor belched on home improvement no he didn't yeah yeah uh so then we get rod who had appeared before he was the uh he was the one handing home a home or a pork chop yeah for example he had like the weird mr simpson yeah he had a weird uh voice like that it's etched into my brain forever because i watched

that one a lot so that's season one yeah it's now rod has been fully rewritten as just like the meek little kid like that's who he is yeah and then later these kids are just instantly become so infantilized yeah yeah right right just as a joke about how protected they are by their parents in this episode he's like by the end he has like a pretty good sense of like what right and not right and wrong but like what he wants in life and what's fun and not fun yeah he's he is much more of an independent child than just like they i think by the fourth or fifth season they just love the idea of like well the jokes about these kids are that they are so sheltered that they would uh die in this world like what's the what's the joke it's a later season like a four five six seven season where I'm just remembering this cut.

Bart or Lisa says something very innocuous and it just cuts to the two of them being like, ah, and running away. Does that ring a bell? Lisa's babysitting them and they're afraid of a story she's telling about robots. Yes. Yeah. I don't like this story. And he sets it up. Oh, yeah.

And then Lisa just makes the state like she says, says oh that's it's just a ladybug and he's like ladybugs like that hearing the word makes them wrong uh though i also love them reacting to watching itchy and scratchy the first time that's another yeah but yes ned uh has a cute little moment with rod and that's when homer just can't take it anymore in this next clip. Hey dad, thanks for helping me with my science project. Oh, my pleasure, study buddy. Aw, I got the best dad in the whole

world. Oh, now you know how that embarrasses me. I know. Tootily dootily. Kids can be a trial sometimes. Alright, knock it off! Knock what off, Simpson? You've been rubbing my nose in it since I got here. Your family is better than my family.

Your beer comes from farther away than my beer. You and your son like each other. Your wife's butt is higher than my wife's butt. You make me sick! Simpson, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I hope you understand I wouldn't stay on a bet On for the road

That line really sticks with me Because I never hear a butt being described as high Like look at her butt is so high It kind of starts Like Homer in later seasons Every once in a while will comment on that Maude is Attractive and it's just a funny thing Like in the back of his mind it's like homer likes mod he it's this season in which he uh kind of uh sexually harasses her oh yeah that's right he stares down her her top

oh right and and that that grows to the point of him in by like season five or six he says like and his wife has a thing for me which he hides behind a mask of low-key hostility like that's a story homer tells yeah uh and the last the last uh the episode right before maude dies the joke is homer hitting on her like he's no so it's funny from the very first episode, Homer is mentioning that he is staring at Maude's butt and is comparing it to his wife's. Right, right. I guess it's also a very late 80s style of what is seen as positive on a woman's behind and its height, I guess. High.

High butt. I guess we weren't into shapely butts yet sir mix a lot had not told us about them yes yeah that'd be a few years from now uh but uh but yeah i also love that ned ned gives him just such an earnest like kids can be a trial at times and homer just explodes yeah that's it and that ned is just trying to connect with him i'm just like oh man tough being a dad does ned call homer simpson at one point or just by the last name yeah he's like i have to ask you to leave yeah done yeah so it's the next night i love i do love a cute little homer and marge in bed scene uh and then homer i mean you know haven't we all been in couples uh conversations and realizing

you're telling a story where you're the hero and then it's a couple as as your partner is telling you like well wait a minute what what about that you're like uh well no i'm still the good guy it's very well done i like homer just well wasn't what he said it's how he said it what do you say and just the way he leaves. Also, it reminded me of like this became sort of a runner as well where Homer exits the room and then has like his slam the door line to Marge. And this time it's like, I'm not perfect like Ned Flanders. And it reminds me, it feels like it's the precursor to him going like gumdrop house on lollipop lane and slamming the door yeah yeah no by that point marge actually gets like a funnier thing to say back to instead

of just marge doesn't do much more than groan in this episode she washes her hair off screen she does wash her hair yes yeah that was a weird weird thing like i was that a joke about her hair being big like that was that still just like oh talking about marge's hair is a funny joke i guess so i think they just wanted a reason for lisa and march to not be at the miniature golf course right right right they didn't really need to tell us that no uh yeah it's funny because we're doing season 12 episodes if a scene just starts with homer and bart somewhere you just assume like well homer and bart went to a place i don't yeah

they're little buddies i like that they i mean that shows you a different feeling back then they're like well we have to explain we got to justify everything homer can't just appear somewhere i would be screaming where is marge yes why is it what was she kidnapped on screen i need a text on the bottom to say where they are well that that at least like gave uh lisa a joke about winning like she was going to study for math thing because she's going to win a pro tractor and then homer's like oh too bad we don't have a farm which is a funny that's one of those that's one of those simpsons jokes that's like you have to understand how stupid homer is and what he thinks she meant uh which is what i like as as a kid i probably just thought like uh yeah homer's right they don't need a tractor.

As an eight-year-old, I did not know what a protractor was. Sadly, I would learn soon enough in school. I learned all too soon. But yes, Homer storms off and takes a walk. And meanwhile, Ned is fraught. This is another setup of what would be their relationship from then on. Homer is the only one who's wrong ned was only finally defended himself and now at night he's blaming himself for

not being christian enough not being truly christ-like to the insults homer was giving and saying that he like blew up or like he went off on homer it's like so not what happened and then he says like i i talk about flunking the old turn the other cheek test i became a snarling beast but this is also the first time in this next clip when homer uh when ned calls reverend lovejoy for advice i feel terrible sometimes i forget that we have things a little better than the simpsons i drag him over here he has a few beers, you can't blame him for erupting, and then I turn into a snarling beast.

Talk about flunking the old turn-the-other-cheek test. Well, Ned, maybe I'm not the one you should be talking to. You're right. Hello, Reverend Lovejoy? No, this is Mrs. Lovejoy. Just a minute. Honey, honey, wake up. It sounds like Ned Flanders is having some sort of crisis.

Probably stepped on a worm. Hello, Ned. Reverend, I'm sorry to bother you at this hour, but I threw a man out of my house today. I feel like I violated of my house today. I feel like I violated Matthew 19-19. Huh? Love thy neighbor. Oh, oh.

Matthew 19-19. Yeah, right, right. Well, you know, Ned, the good book says a gentle answer turneth away wrath. A gentle answer? Well, that is a Jim Dandy idea. Bless you, Reverend. Dear neighbor. That whole runner of just Reverend Lovejoy hating Ned Flanders, that grows into so many great jokes in its own awesome episode,

the Listen Lady one, where ultimately he saves Ned from baboons. I just love that. There's two visual jokes in this clip that I thought were great. I think I'm correct in thinking Lovejoy doesn't even take off his sleep mask when he's talking. That's great. He's just like, get out of here. And did you see what his speed dials, what Ned's speed dials were on his phone? Oh, yeah. It's like it's a reverend working home and then the recycling center and a bookmobile. I pause it on. That's so funny. The bookmobile and recycling center is so funny.

It's so it's it shows that Ned is a great guy, but like too great. It's almost annoying. Why would you need to speed dial the bookmobile? I also just love in 1990, the joke can just be like speed dial somebody can speed dial something like just yeah yeah just the technology itself is a joke the seinfeld ended up having a whole this is like year like in 97 maybe had like uh jerry was moving up the ladder on somebody's speed dial right like it was still happening in 97 uh i mean i don't think ladder on somebody's speed dial right it was like it was still happening in 97 uh i mean i don't think my family ever had speed dial when we got caller id

that was great uh that felt like wow caller id now every phone has them and all my calls are spam risk and fraud risk fraud risk i remember we had a we had speed dial on our phone but to access the speed dial menu like there was no screen on it that said you know typed out who you were calling so you we had a little you'd have to push like speed dial something else and then a number and then we had a little card next to the phone that had what the speed dials were like who's who's name it almost defeats the purpose let's uh, if you have to program something first. I also double-checked this.

Matthew 19, 19 is love thy neighbor. That is the scripture. It's a classic. And a gentle answer turneth away wrath. That is Proverbs 15. That's the source on that. Also, they note this on the commentary, but it hadn't become canon yet. But Ned and Bart both write with their right hand in this one.

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. I can see that in the screen cap here. Yeah. We're still a few, you know, it's the end of this production season. It airs at the start of season three, the first Leftorium episode. So it's not like they're messing up a thing that would later, that is true. They just, it hadn't been the rule yet.

This is another early runner of the stationary joke. Yes. From the noggin of Ned was Homer's suicide note on dumb things I got to do today. Yes. Stationary. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

So flippantly just saying like, yeah, and Homer's suicide note that was on a joke like Homer did try to kill himself in episode three. Yep. Yeah. In such a way that like he tied a rock to kill himself in episode three yep yeah in such a way that like he tied a rock to his ankle right yes yeah it's like he's killing himself the way a mob boss would kill somebody uh it was it was meant meant to be very retro just in a man i mean it's uh like homer will later say this is a lie but like it is lucky that he doesn't have a gun in the house on days like that but i feel like martin was was told like oh you know here's the running

gags of season one a personalized stationery and things homer is jealous that things are better for ned like so he's he's sticking with it but uh but yes then ned runs into homer as he's dropping it off and homer just screams at ned again uh but ned uh but ned gives a very earnest letter and i have to say i really love the whole family laughing at it together yeah that's so funny especially when marge scolds them leaves the room to laugh and comes back to scold them again yes yeah yeah that seemed like a weird editing thing or something. That was maybe a mistake. Well, I think they, you know, in the shorts, in like the Tracy Ullman shorts, Marge was written as such a scold that she was like, there's no burping in my house. So it could have been this Jim saying like, oh, it would sell out Marge's character if she just laughs at the table. So what if we write

her to leave the room but it does kind of break up the pace a little much there even lisa's getting into this though i love that i love the animation of bart and lisa just losing it and just bart slamming the table like yeah that's such a that's such a great like family moment too like it shows how they're more brash than like the flanders but they're still a family it's a it's i don't know that's such a very that's a very specific thing because we've all had moments with our families where we're like laughing about a whoever yeah that that brings you together that your family is brought together i mean i also just love the like here compared to the flanders who are brought together for like their and appreciation for each other, the only thing that brings them together is being negative towards somebody else. Neighbors forever.

Oh, no. That is great. I love you. Yeah. Here, I have a little of it, just because the family is just so, all the actors are just having so much fun here, too. Yeah, they're recorded together yeah there's there's a liveliness that like it feels you know most most cartoons don't have this kind of like energy to it of all the actors here and yet i feel a great sadness

in my bosom. Bosom. Wait, wait, there's more. I think that's terrible. A man opens his heart and you make fun of him. Neighbors forever. Oh, no. Ted Flanders. What a sap. Read the bosom part again, Dad.

Now, just a minute. Read the bosom part again, Dad. Now just a minute, bosom. Bart! And it's so realistic. Bart's like the little boy who noticed there's a little silence if I said bosom. It's Homer's line of, oh no. I don't know what it is about it but it sounds so realistic like you're saying they're in the room together that one specifically i can't put my finger on why it sounds real like neighbors forever oh no uh it's almost too clever for homer to make like kind of a mystery science theater like snarky riffing on the letter yes yeah uh but yes marge then says

that she wishes the family was as close as them which is when homer suggests that let's as a family growth thing let's just all go out for for mini golf and frosty chocolate milkshake so also another runner another old ass runner that feels like martin jeff martin watched all the shorts and he's like well the family occasionally would go places and then they'd have frosty chocolate milkshakes uh but they but yes they write there's another like little thing that they'd never do on the show now of um when lisa says she can't go and the protractor line bart is like uh getting up and shoves himself away from the table and walks away like it's this like mix of actions that i feel like now on the show or even like in five

years it would be lisa would say something and then bart would do something you wouldn't have two character actions true yeah shot interesting i i would never have uh noticed that and uh and who who amongst us was a mini golf kid as as a youngster i i i loved going to mini golf i yeah mini golf was fun i think this episode made me aware of mini golf for the first time and then i didn't do it until i was a teenager and no mini golf course was as cool as the one in this show yeah never they never are like they're not they're just like some boards that you bank around there's not cool like i don't know a big gorilla that you have to get in the mouth yeah you as a kid growing up you see these

pictures of like you know the famous one of like the giant dinosaur and and then you see cartoons like this that extrapolate for that one giant dinosaur that's in one putt putt place like and i i mean my local putt putt growing up in in both atlanta and florida they were nice and stuff and i think maybe one like had a castle or like a big ramp or something but never anything that fun but i still enjoy doing it i've been to places with like yeah big castle or big cool like statues around but you never like went through them uh and put it into them you have to go around them i i wonder if like the pandemic era, that's an outdoors, easily socially distanced activity. I wonder if Putt-Putt is surviving in this time better than most activities.

Well, they are raking it in right now. I've seen malls that have these weird, funky sort of glow light, or sorry, black light indoor miniature golf courses yeah yeah that are really expensive for some reason i yeah i will say about it um eight nine years ago for one friend's uh bachelor party thing in town in in san francisco we went to like uh you know this predated barcades i think barcades have pretty much replaced them but it was like you know adult uh indoor mini golf where like the you know drinks are everywhere and it's uh it was fun but also like it was just uh well especially because it's oh it's indoor mini golf in san francisco they could afford like space for five holes i think it was yeah right right right it was it was not

much but i will say as much as i loved putPutt, I think mainly I liked going to it because I knew when the game was over, we could go in the arcade and my mom would give me like 10 bucks of tokens to play arcade games. To get those tickets. Or go straight to the Simpsons arcade game. When you really care about someone,

you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? So, yes, they head over to Sir Put-A-Lot, which is a cute-ish name. They've had cleverer names.

Yeah, for sure. Another Jeff Martin connection. He would write the episode, I Married Marge, and that shows that Bart was conceived at this golf course. Yeah. In something, right? Yeah, actually the windmill that Maggie barely avoids is one that Marge and Homer canonically had sex in. This was still an era when Maggie would be almost getting into trouble and no one would notice her.

Yeah, that's also a shorts thing of like, instead of doing nothing with Maggie, the joke is Maggie almost dies and no one even knew it. She has to take care of herself. Yeah. Yeah. I like, especially that she,

that she almost gets crushed by that. Nobody cares that she's at the top of the ramp. Like Homer is a, Homer's not a good dad. I'm just saying, I'm going to say it true. I think you're right right i think we hit the nail on the head when we were talking about him choking his son several occasions uh but i also compliments to the director rich more and his team because like the designs of these uh that alligator with a boxing gloves is one of my

favorite like drawings in the show i just love his purple boxing shorts with his bright red gloves and his green body it's just such a fun combination of colors too i just i love that guy yeah and and the gorilla with the mortar board pretty great too professor gorilla professor uh but yes uh grading even said that apparently they got letters from parents saying that it looked like the gorilla was about to eat Maggie and it scared their children. Which I wonder how. I mean, I believe he got those letters, but I would figure in Bartmania they were getting blamed for everything. That's just like, okay, what else can we complain about with this show? Yeah, my child was scared because the cartoon almost got eaten that gorilla was too close to

a little girl they are playing the game homer can't get his ball in and he actually reacts the same way the the ape does which that's it's a funny i like that drawing uh and and homer says jack nicholson himself could make it which classic homer line joke that was one as a kid i'm i sure i had no idea what that meant no way yeah i still i have to triple check my notes every time i'm just like nicholas and nicholson nicholas plays the golf that i remember because nicholson Cinema he's a movie star anyone can use that that's not proprietary

and Jack Nicklaus you want less strokes yes that's advice for anyone yes they mentioned on commentary but Bart scores a 41 which is really good for 18 holes.

Yeah, I like the reveal of Homer. Well, they set up that six is the highest. Yeah. And he's like, six, six, six. Six plus six plus six plus six. I do like that the golf course is kind of trolling Homer because he hit it in the middle and it just puts it in the parking lot. Yeah, that's very funny. I love how middle and it just puts it in the parking lot yeah that's very funny

i love how homer and the simpsons in general like impo things that would never be in the real world are there just to make their shitty lives shittier like they have the toughest time with anything with something that doesn't exist a thing that shouldn't happen has to happen to him. He's just like, but I hit it in the middle. And then a pickup truck runs over the ball. Yes. And who wouldn't hit it into the middle hole? I feel like that has to happen to half the players at that game. Right, right. And they don't give you more than one ball.

That's part of the putt-putt scam. But yes, as they're tallying up the scores, that's when a challenge is made. Final score, Bart 41. Homer, let's see, 6 plus 6 plus 6 plus 6 plus 6 plus 6. Never mind. Hey, look. Wow, first prize, $50. Wow, free balloons for everyone who enters.

So, my little Bartley, thinking of entering the tournament? Yeah, he's entering, and once more he's going to win, aren't you, boy? I guess it's possible. Hey, I like that confidence. But I hope you're not putting too much pressure on the boy. My Todd's awfully good. Oh, yeah?

Well, I think the fruit of my loins can beat the fruit of your loins any day of the week. Come on, boy. But, Dad, I've never won anything in my life son this is the only time i'm ever gonna say this it is not okay to lose it's a really long first act yes it is i was like man is this have we been going longer than usual but it's just it's a long first act with a lot of clips but what a good line that shows off bart's personal self-worth that he doesn't even look at first prize because in his

mind he's like i'll never get first prize so just he's gonna get a free balloon he's so excited i liked how first place was 50 or 50 and then 25 and 10 and fourth place was half off of a snow coat uh yeah i'm glad you could read that that was almost it was hard to read that snow yeah i i'm thinking of all these like i paused so many times in this to try to find jokes thinking back when i watched as a kid they everything blew by me so quick yeah it was such a vcr show like it it hit i think that's why it inspired so many obsessive fans because to fully engage with it you have to tape it and pause everything and watch it like eight times. And then later there'll be jokes like the following people are gay.

And then you would need a VCR to read them all. You guys did a lot on Comedy Bang Bang. There were a lot of like pause the screen kind of jokes. Oh, yeah, yeah. We packed a lot of stuff in there. So sometimes like so much much even as a writer i'd be like whoa hold on we got jokes coming in all over the place it's a jeff martin like did you ever read the uh unauthorized uh history of the simpsons yes yes i think it's jeff martin who

says at one point there's just like too many jokes in the simpsons and jeff martin when he was the head writer was like okay just one joke per joke please uh yeah i i saw martin martin's one of the guys who was very uh up front of like this exhausted and broke all of us we had to leave after three years all of us wanted out and we all got like fatter uh it's it's hard to it's hard to turn down those writers room room snacks. That's true. Especially, they got all the free Butterfingers they could ask for back then. Oh, right. And also that Homer's threat is over frosty chocolate milkshakes, which they kind of stopped drinking soon enough in the show.

Well, this is such a different Homer where he is willing to take Bart out for a fun day and take him out for milkshakes. I mean, he's still abusive. But then I don't think Homer would commit this much to his son because in the second and third act he is just committed to training Bart yeah actually in season three Jeff Martin writes an episode about how Homer does nothing with Bart and how he's a terrible father but and also the thought that Homer would would take maggie anywhere with him for anything is like right now is she there uh just just for a series of quick visual gags with her yeah there would be one when homer pulls uh bard away and you get that like bard

like that is such a thing that just washes over you but just listening to it is so funny that they kept that up for years. And Bob, I cut you off again. It's okay. It's not okay. I think I hate Mike Hanford. Hey, you're not the only one, man. I'm with you.

I'm still a big fan. No. But yeah, so comes back from break. Homer is teaching Bart, trying to teach bart they don't touch on it too much but i guess it is it's clear that bart is actually pretty good at putt-putt and can get even better and homer makes him worse by screaming at him like he's a terrible terrible influence i i also like that uh santa's little helper actually takes commands, which in 10 episodes, it's about how he's the dog from hell and doesn't listen to anything.

But yeah, I like after he fails, Homer says like, okay, this time don't move your head and don't follow through. I like how, I like how Santa's little helper does bow his head when Homer says that. And Homer gets mad at it.

Like that has nothing to do. Just leave that alone. Even if the dog's bending his head down, that has nothing to do with what you're doing he's so he's mad at everyone everyone's failing him he's uh but yes afterwards homer gives bart another like uh as as march would say it she's warping him with this uh but uh homer tells bart that he must name his putter in this next clip what are you doing that putter is to you what a bat is to a baseball player what a violin is to the guy that the violin guy now come on give your putter a name what come on give it a name mr putter oh you want to try a little harder son come on give it a girl. Mr. Putter. Do you want to try a little harder, son?

Come on, give it a girl's name. Mom. Your putter's name is Charlene. Why? It just is, that's why. Now this is a picture of your enemy, Todd Flanders. Every day, I want you to spend 15 minutes staring at it and concentrating on how much you hate him

and how glorious it will be when you and Charlene annihilate him. Who's Charlene? I'll show you who Charlene is. Now start hating. You're going to hurt him. He seriously puts that up in the air to be like, I am bringing this down on you. The camera is looking up at him too.

Yeah, it's post terrifying. I really love Castellaneta's um delivery of like the guy that the violin guy like it's very natural i like that i i feel like in a few years they'd just be much stiffer of like this is the line just just say it and the first time we covered this one now we're five years ago we didn't know what the charlene thing was and then a thousand people told us so yes we know it's from Full Metal Jacket and that is what Private Pile names his gun that's right yes

this episode title obviously based on Dead Poets Society but has nothing to do with the movie just we know we just let you know we know the reference but it has nothing to do with anything which I'm getting mad like Homer I would be missing an opportunity to not

compliment mike on the amazing dead poet society uh sketch you guys did the either stiller came in for that one he was great ben stiller and frank caliendo you never thought they'd have such great chemistry together but they were i know caliendo when we were uh we may have talked about this in the um commentary but i know caliendo when we were uh we may have talked about this in the um commentary but when frank caliendo's in there was in there with us he at one point like we stopped down shooting for something or light had to get changed and he just was like going through all of his uh impressions for us and it was awesome i love watching people do impressions it's so fun to me he's a master he really is you know he really is but uh but yes i as bart is trying to be

angry he's staring at the photo and then todd comes in in the window posing exactly like it which i do have to wonder where how did homer get that photo of todd that is weird yeah did he just ask todd like hey i'm taking a polaroid of you right now he's like okay uh but uh but my question about that moment is where is uh was it rod or todd it's uh it's todd oh it's todd yeah sorry even i'm messing up where where is todd he's like out the window bart's room is all of a sudden on the first floor this is that time when the and also behind todd is like maybe a dartboard or something like he looks like he's also inside. It was that time when the Simpsons home made no sense.

Even when Marge steps out of the room when they're all laughing at the letter, I think there's some weird where is she-ness to it. Yeah, that's not. You're right. The doorway she walks through leads to a place it doesn't normally lead to. It's very weird. You're right. Even at this point like

in a couple episodes in bart versus thanksgiving they make it very clear bart's on the second floor that they've they've been clear on that up to this point it's not a thing they create later so todd must have climbed up his like tree to wave at bart outside the window uh well speaking of things i never saw as a kid like my mom never collected bacon grease so i did not understand what marge was doing with the pan in the can there interesting yeah yeah yeah i mean are just saving grease to like either recycle or use elsewhere like yeah my was yeah that forbidden can under the sink don't open it it's disgusting see i never i guess you know

my mom my mom cooked enough but never never with greet never saving the grease i think we probably very unecologically just poured it down the sink yeah just dumped it on your lawn i like i like too that homer just accepts is like yes i'm scarring him yes what what of it uh and that's where homer says that uh at at the center of all, the reason he's doing it is because he wants to feel better than somebody because he's used to always being the guy people feel better than. Yeah, that was a great line. You at least like you can pity him then. It doesn't, you know, forgive his abuse, but you can be like, all right, I understand where you're coming from, Homer. Also, in 1990, they got a joke about everybody gets a trophy. That's right.

And you know what? Like all millennials, Bart knew it was bullshit. Yeah, we all knew it was dumb. Like it was like, yeah, yeah, I got a ribbon. I know I didn't win. But yes, it's from everybody gets a trophy day. That's the name on the trophy. So it's they now now that's been it's from everybody gets a trophy day that's the name on the trophy so it's they uh now now that's been uh it's a very tired very tired joke now uh but yes lisa comes in and this is another like more subtle change not that lisa hadn't been smart the series up to this point but in this episode lisa has to be a genius at everything and underappreciated. Like, it's not just like, oh, Lisa's very musical and introspective, like she was, say, in season one's Moaning Lisa. But in this one, she has to be like, she knows, like, specific rules of chess, like the block-headed bishop.

Yeah. She can do geometry. She reads every book in the library. She is also, like, incredibly philosophical. Yeah. It's a real upgrade of Lisa's genius for this episode. Yeah. every book in the library. She is also like incredibly philosophical. Like, uh, it's, it's a real upgrade of G of Lisa's genius for this episode. Yeah.

And selfless too, because she admits dad doesn't care about anything I do. So I will help you because at least he's taking an interest in one of us. I like, I like that. She's like, it's moments like these where I'm glad that dad doesn't care about what I do. Maybe that happens later,

but, uh, no, no, it's here. Yeah. Such a funny line. I just love that. Like, love that like yeah she she both it's so heartbreaking but funny too that she she has gone through the emotional steps of her life of first being sad that homer

has no interest in her but then now going like you know what it's actually good he doesn't because he'd be worse to me. Right, right. It's more of a hassle. But it also speaks to much more dysfunction in the family, too, that your eight-year-old daughter is like, well, I'm actually better off without my bad father. Even though she is helpful, she's also very pedantic because Bart is going for an obvious chess analogy, and Lisa's like, well, you know, technically this piece is also bad.

And it's like, you knew he means pawn, Lisa. Yeah. Come on. She's one of those harvard kids definitely the harvard the the goody choo-choo's harvard kid coming out there uh but yes they they head to the library uh for thing that lisa reading card catalogs sort of becomes a runner like i think there's maybe like two of these before bats come out of the car that's right when the bats fly out that's like there's no more to do with this yeah uh and all our library friends never came back either that's also they died they were they were old they were pretty old yeah we don't do

these dewey decimal jokes anymore yeah also there they they were it was by like 97 it was almost dead like yeah they're that that tone you're saying lisa was like looking through the card catalog and being like doing little under her breath jokes yeah that does feel like a tone even if it's not card catalogs just kind of that that way of speaking and delivering a joke became something they do a lot the simpsons and and also there's a real season one joke of uh the give a hoot read a book uh poster behind her of crusty like which which was mentioned at crusty's um trial in in crusty gets busted oh wow uh it was the big it was the shocking reveal that he actually couldn't read uh but but yes lisa kind of ahead of the well i i guess what

tau and the art of motorcycle repair or whatever that uh maybe that had been published by 1990 i should look that up but it the the idea of like oh these western philosophy or these eastern philosophies they're only interesting if you can put them on like sports or something macho kind of thing that's uh it was it was part of the conversation back then and i like the the tau teaching it's uh it's an informative thing it's uh i i tried my best to embrace nothingness in my in my early 20s i was like nah i like stuff i like it too much like everything uh but uh but lisa tries to teach parts of meditation in this uh this next very cute clip i want you to shut off the logical part of your mind. Okay. Embrace nothingness. You got it.

Become like an uncarved stone. Done. Bart, you're just pretending to know what I'm talking about. True. Well, it's very frustrating. I'll bet. Bart, I have a riddle for you. What's the sound of one hand clapping? Piece of cake. No, Bart, it's a 3,000-year-old riddle with no answer. It's supposed to clear your mind of conscious thought. No answer? Lisa, listen up. Let's try another one. If a tree

falls in the woods and no one's around, does it make a sound? Absolutely. But, Bart, how can sound exist if there's no one there to hear it it is time it all makes sense to him in that it all unlocks yeah I'm pretty sure that blew my mind as an eight-year-old I probably never thought like that yeah uh but I just love I did think like the pedantic kid of like no

this is what the sound makes i'm trying to make it into the mic here uh they they credit george meyer for coming up with that and it's it's a it's a very real sound they get um bart there it does it does make the very muted sound of fingers hitting your palm but i this is where lisa becomes mr miyagi and the the parody begins but i noticed that like uh so this was something i was thinking about how if you were parodying the karate kid now which there's been many many many shows and movies that parody the karate kid they would do the music and this it I think it shows a real generational change that when they start the training montage of Bart and Lisa, they just do the original music that's more of like the fanfare stuff you'll hear later. It's not a parody of the, like, you're the best or whatever.

Yeah, I feel like not enough time had passed because that movie was only maybe six years old by this point, five or six years old, and there wasn't that nostalgia for that cheesy song so you wouldn't get immediate uh you know uh happy feelings from playing that or at least like i have a comical effect on the audience like oh that cheesy ass song because how many times have you seen that in a montage just used for humor yeah yeah well it's an easy like when you hear you're the best you're like oh that's funny i like that like it's not uh but i guess too it's like this is written by adults who were like you know 28 when kid karate kid came out so they have no nostalgia for it in that way right like south park family guy they they would be much more directive just like no it's the song it's not a karate kid parody if you don't hear the song

or at least a sound alike to it but uh but yeah lisa trains him in the in the snow or in the rain and uh there's a very distracting makeup free crusty that pulls them off of the pool table yeah he he i thought he was wearing like a prison outfit like on the crest of his shirt but i think it's just a pocket but yeah that was one of those uh i don't know maybe if they didn't establish who crusty was exactly but they must have at that point they they were following the season one rule of like crusty and actually i think they just took his prison graze from the drawing of him and crusty gets busted actually is herman there with him or who is that on the commentary they say it's herman but if you pause on the guy he's got two arms it's a herman like man uh but it's it's a low life yeah it is a low

life but there are there are a bunch of people in the i think when they start doing the putt putt tournament a lot of the extras quote unquote in the scenes are very odd looking yeah they're like people with like really lumpy weird heads or somebody who's like very tall it's uh i don't know they just didn't have like a uniformity to the Simpsons characters yet, maybe. Or they were just borrowing from other things they had. We are still in the era of background freaks. In our last live show that we did, we just did a gallery of all the season one background mutants.

In a way, I love those freaks now. I do understand totally why behind the scenes, like Groening and the other producers were saying, this draws your focus from the characters. we need normal looking people behind them but but it's fun like yeah i like the spirit of just like a an artist on the animation side said i want to draw a funny looking person here with a weird head like let's draw yeah remember bart bart or lisa had a friend that would always be sort of in the background. That kid would like the acorn head. Yes. Yeah. He's like an acorn top. Yeah. He was, he really looks, and he has like dot eyes too. I think the kid. Yeah. For me, it was the kid

with the pink sunglasses. He always like my eye goes straight to him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. After all of that training, we then get the most direct with the karate kid stuff of bart doing the pose on top of a garbage can and we even get to hear the flutes playing the uh the very stereotypical like uh japanese flute you know the asian flute right and also the background behind bart is very it's like a gradient uh which is very that makes me feel more like season one when they have like a gradient background. But, uh, and then Homer is just embarrassed by Bart. He doesn't even see it as training.

And I love how he's not just so mad at Ned, but he says he's going to mop the floor with your son's ugly butt. He's, he's really assessing the butts of every Flanders family member. He's got an obsession over there. Maude's got a high butt. Todd's got an ugly butt. Ugly butt.

I like that Ned, even Ned then is just like, well, hey, you may be right. And then he walks away and over and is like, oh yeah? And his chicken act out is so funny too. I love that. Though it also feels almost too clever for homer to say like uh the mating call of the loser right it's it's it's like a clever turn of phrase by

homer that he'd normally be too stupid for and uh ned tries to make one of those classic like politician sports bets of like muffins versus wind chimes. Marge with her famous wind chimes. Oh, no, wait. No, it's Maud. That's Maud's homemade wind chimes. Homemade wind chimes. And so Ned finally gets pissed off enough to accept a challenge and even insults Homer's ability to mow his own lawn. And he makes up a swear. It's the first funny Ned making up a swear to not say a dirty word with jack and nanny

and oh yeah yeah yeah and uh this is where they identify the turn that i think uh they were being nice about that commentary but i definitely get the feel that they would have not written this as the ending uh if they had had their brothers yeah this came in uh from jim brooks jim brooks his idea because he's not in the room they're they're a bit dismissive they're still you know nice and polite about it but they're like yeah we didn't we didn't really get this but jim liked it and then when they're in the end of the episode let's skip too far high when they're mowing the lawn they're wearing these like dust bowl fashions i don't quite get that marge's best dress yeah well they have wearing dresses no character would ever wear on the series marge is always wearing a dress yes yeah and only one dress

that homer could not fit into either like yeah right no on the commentary they call it out it's like it's very old-fashioned and also like as if you've ever seen a comedy before you know like they can't you're gonna see them in a dress because otherwise it would be a real cop-out if they if at the end they're like and neither of us wore dresses like yeah so instead they have to go obvious and be like yes they're gonna wear dresses i i definitely i think it was jim brooks probably thinking you know he wrote for mary tyler moore show or taxi and he was probably thinking like oh on those shows the laughs we would have gotten if you saw ed asner or danny devito wearing a dress uh right right the live in studio laughs we would have gotten but but it's different when you have cartoon characters who already are

colorful and silly uh wearing it doesn't it the payoff's not to the same right you can't put them in anything that's going to be funny i can't think of anything a cartoon character would wear in that show that would be like oh this funny bit yeah i can i can think of the one good joke on the simpsons it's that when marge goes to jail homer finds marge's wedding dress in the attic and he comes down the stairs but that's great because homer feels no shame yeah he's happy he's humming the the wedding march as he walks down because he's like yeah this is wearing a dress now i i guess at least it's the comedy of like homer just likes to wear a dress it's not and it's not about shame it's not the weird like a man in a dress out like that also just feels so

like retro just like a man in a dress who could think of such a funnier idea yeah uh that but uh but yes they decide to uh to make the bet it's uh it has also put into i do think it's at least kind of clever that their adjustment of the father of the boy who doesn't win out of ned's sensitivity is how they both end up in dresses. Yeah, yeah, I thought that was cool. It's at least a clever, like, rule on it. Yeah, yeah. And as they walk away, like, Ned is like, good gravy, what have I done?

It's like, you've made a bet, who cares? I guess he's that much of a weenie. Yeah, the most, like, there's no money involved. It's just a bet with a friend a bet with the most friendly of bets. They also mock on the commentary that right after that bet is made, Homer then loses all faith in Bart, and he says to Marge, like, well, it looked better in this or this. And on the commentary, they're like, Homer, you made this bet,

and you just did. And to steal a line from mike reese he says like did homer get those from claribel cow yes i like i like the writers like uh yelling at the characters that they wrote yes yeah uh i i uh but yes so they they come back from the uh commercial break for the third act homer is watching bart sleep and then screams at him as he wakes up like oh so good uh and then like he's like it's today and you better win also one more big threat to yeah and also a great like scream animation on bart like a big cartoony like take from bart i love that yeah which they don't i mean no way they do that anymore like the big like wide mouth of the squiggly tongue now i miss those squiggly worm tongues they're so much fun yeah but that it'd break the rules you can't There's just too many animation rules on the show now.

But actually, here starts another runner. Jeff Martin set up a lot of runners in this episode for his years, which are that Homer loves the worst comic strips around. Marmaduke, right? Yes. In this one, it's Marmaduke. Later, it'd be like Andy Cappy, Wife Beating Drunk. Rex Morgan, M.D.

Yes, Rex Morgan, M.D. Love Is, I think he talks about at some point he loves love yeah yeah uh i uh which yeah that's that homer it i guess as a kid it taught me like oh these are bad comics i shouldn't like these comics because homer likes because it's in a publication doesn't mean it's good that would always upset me as a little kid when i thought something was good and the simpsons would be like no this sucks i was like oh i thought yeah like anytime garfield was attacked on a show is not funny i'd be like but garfield i love it still sets you off henry it does uh garfield's my big eye lasagna loving friend he'd sell you out in a second uh for just one taste of lasagna, he'd sell me out. He'd send me to Abu Dhabi, for sure.

Okay, anyway, it's breakfast time, and this is when, as a child, I learned the word logi. It's crazy, Marmaduke. Eight hole. Aim for the octopus' third tentacle. Twelve hole. Bank it off the pink tombstone. Nirvana.

A state of bliss attained through the extinction of the self. Here you go, Bart. A lumberjack's breakfast for my little golfer. Mom, Bart is on a strict diet of complex carbohydrates. Steak will make him logy. Oh, well, what will make him logy? Oatmeal. Oatmeal?

Oats are what a champion thoroughbred eats before he or she wins the Kentucky Derby. Newsflash, Lisa. Bart is not a horse. Eat your steak, boy. I like that little bit there that Lisa says he or she wins the Kentucky Derby. That's nice. I noticed that. Inclusive.

And it feels outdated in that this was the era you would hear the term carbo-loading. And now we're all about lean meats and you know protein so i think marge's breakfast is probably better for bart's than just a big bucket of oatmeal uh it is pretty greasy though i don't know i uh i like a steak for the for the simpson family is pretty uh living it up for breakfast yeah you know marge marge really spent a little extra on that it'd be like at least a six dollar like new york strip i bet there was no close-up but i believe it was a steak them Yeah, you know, Marge really spent a little extra on that. It'd be like at least a $6 New York strip, I bet. There was no close-up, but I believe it was a Steak'Em. Oh.

So I learned the word Logie from this, which is funny, because a little after this, I got chicken pox, and my mom used the descriptor of, like, do you feel Logie to explain, like, his... And I was like, oh, like feel if he if he ate all that steak i think that when i when i something like that happens in my life i learn what a word is and i seem to hear it more often than i did you know when you like buy a new car or something you're driving around you see that car all over the place yeah yeah i think that's it logee's probably been

in your life but then all of a sudden you like knew what it was. So then you really heard it. I also love just Homer's hand motions. I like newsflash Lisa just to say it's opening up again. What an asshole. Even like that he's such a dick to Lisa who is clearly working to Homer's benefit to help Bart win. He still is like, fuck you. He wants this victory yeah so then we get a preparation montage at a musical sting similar to fanfare for the common man uh which is a tune written in 1942 basically you've heard it uh if you've watched like televised sports you've seen it and john

williams was very inspired by it stylistically for a lot of his like biggest hits so and this commentator uh i think we will hear him later in bart the daredevil right he's commentating over the wrestling match we don't see yes he commentates over the wrestling match and at the uh in the next season on the soapbox derby he's the announcer for that too they were kind of into this joke of the uh highfalutin announcer in a very lowbrow sport. And this guy, according to the commentary, I don't know who this is, but Jeff Martin based him on British golf commentators like Henry Longhurst.

So this guy died in the late 70s, but he was the official British golf announcer for the BBC. So this very, very articulate, very high-class guy announcing golf, this is what he's based on. You would think he'd stick around, but after a while, it would just be like if you had somebody commentate on these things, it was probably Bill and Marty or Brockman. Those would be the people who'd host it.

Bill and Marty. Yeah, they thought they'd have a runner with this British guy. The other guy they said he was based on was Ben Wright, who I looked him up. In 1996, Ben Wright would lose his job for commentating because of a homophobic and misogynist comments he'd make about female golfers in 1996. Wow. I think he also passed away kind of recently. He said something about lesbians are ruining the world of women's golf.

But yes. On the air like uh i believe it was reported on that he said it on the record for like some interview and not not like literally on the air but wow when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf of insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? But yes, Lisa, it's also a funny bit as they're about to begin. Like, Lisa's giving Bart encouragement while Homer is yelling at Ned one more time. Bart, having never received any words of encouragement myself,

I'm not sure how they're supposed to sound. But here goes. I believe in you. Thanks, man. Lord, we beseech thee. Hey, Flanders, it's no use praying. I already did the same thing, and we can't both win. Actually, Simpson, we were praying that no one gets hurt.

Oh, well, Flanders, it doesn't matter. This time tomorrow, you'll be wearing high heels. Nope, you will. Afraid not. Afraid so. Afraid not. Afraid so. Afraid not, Infinity.

Afraid so, Infinity. Plus one. Dope. Young Flanders has the honor and will tee all first. And that's one of the few times the show actually acknowledges the joke behind Simpson. You're right. And that Homer is a simp. And he doesn't quite get why Ned pronounced his name that way.

So he's like Flanders. Because you can't be a Ders. You can be a simp. It just hit me that homer is wrong god does let both their children win so he actually did listen to their prayers i thought that's such a funny uh like a funny religious joke of how like i've already done the prayer and i got to it first so i probably will get it i love that yeah as a kid that made that made logical sense to me of just like well if you both pray god can't favor you both like right right uh and and also yeah i love the well i noticed in the crowd that edna and skinner are there i spotted them i was like

what are they doing at this thing yeah they're they're i think they're but you'll catch them behind todd as he takes his first stroke in the thing. Checking out their students? Yeah, they're checking in. They're in faculty reasons. These extras are just all over the courses. They're way too close to the action. They're just standing on the edge of these holes.

Seems dangerous. Also, I wonder what's in it for Sir Putz a lot. Do they charge the spectators to be there? Because otherwise they have to shut down their entire course for the day like they're out of day's business doing this thing i assume it's promotion for the for the space i guess they're working with kbbl too like kbbl sponsoring it so yeah it's they're probably coming out on top uh but yes uh bart is uh nervous at first but then he goes kind of wall-eyed of just eyes going off in two directions yeah as uh as he thinks of that tree falling in the woods and that's when

ned again directly references uh karate kid by saying mercy is for the weak which is what the leader of the cobra kai says and then then it leads to another montage which again is just like i i actually really like this music in this montage because alf klausen just scores it to what's happening on screen and it like really follows like the emotional through line of jokes i really love that uh in in the course you can see the graveyard hole that lisa had been quizzing bart on earlier you see the pink tombstone she tells him to bounce off of. And I also really love the little joke that you think Homer is reacting positively

to Bart's performance, but he's actually being rudely negative and hoping that Todd is going to lose. It's really hard to see, but you can also see Todd's engraved putter. Oh, yeah. It says, To Todd, Love Dad. Oh, I didn't know it was the love dad

part that's funny that's sweet it's very hard to read and i mean if we were watching these on our st tvs even pausing it on that's one thing when you had those pause to get it jokes on your vhs you had to have a tracking be pristine you had to get you had to pause like five or six times to be like make sure no lines were over it on your tv yeah did you guys i watched this on um disney plus is that where you guys got it uh i watched it once on disney plus and then on my dvd i still have my ancient dvds yeah the the disney plus like they play it in that widescreen format and i hadn't really noticed this before but it's it's really like at one point maybe it was a scene at the dinner table something bart is in frame like just his nose up and there's a lot of weird empty space in the middle and all the care it's really uh

didn't translate well over to oh mike you got to get in the settings yeah you can change it to full screen it's it's buried too deep but you can watch it in its aspect ratio it took what like a year for that took him a year yeah and you still gotta google to find out how to do it it is not like right at the start like it should be but yeah i'll check that out like did uh as uh did you we've heard from other folks uh in the comedy world who they like said they learned a whole lot from the simpsons dvds or commentaries were you a commentary listener not really i would i'd hear him every once in a while but no no, I was, I was just like, I'd find myself watching the commentary and then be like, wait, I missed the joke. I was like, just watch the episodes. And well, so they head to the final hole.

The guy has, I love all of the lines the guy says about the final hole. Like it's like on the happy side of six strokes on the happy side of paw. And they, the face of the great emancipator. Like like it's it's very fancy i i like that a lot but yeah uh and then homer misquotes vince lombardi vince lombardi who is like the legendary coach of the packers who if you search like you can find a million inspirational quotes from vince lombardi they were all like you know winning isn't everything it's the only thing or whatever like those kind of things but he never said if you lose you're out of the family that is not a real vincent bardy quote at least as far as i could find uh i like that that's when that's

finally too far from our gc smacks him and that's true like she's had enough of this yeah because she's been wanting the family to be a unit the whole time even since like like when they read flanders's letter they're like yeah make fun of them but they got a good family going and this time she's finally like you have scarred bart enough to tell him like to his face you're out of the family so they're approaching the final hole the kids are all nervous that then leads to the boys making their own decision, which this feels very like early show for me. I think Groening kind of lost as he got older. As a man in his 30s who was like a new parent when this series premiered, he was still thinking like the kids. And he was thinking like, as a kid, I remember this horrible pressure from parents.

And I wish I had just said, screw this. I'm not doing this for you. Like, I like that kind of position like you did they they really lose this kind of uh kids viewpoint as the show would go on but it seemed it almost seemed kind of like easy to admit this might be a product of like it only being season two and needing to end an episode on time but it was just like yeah let's not do this okay yeah let's not do it uh like i didn't get a sense from from todd that like there was a ton of pressure on him as much as bart but obviously we weren't with him mostly it is funny that todd just goes like oh yeah no let's just stop yeah like uh but i can see it too is like a kind of statement about um why are all shows or why

are all these movies like karate kid Kid or any sports movie about, why is it always about winning? Why does a kid have to feel bad about winning? Letting the kids have their own drive in this is really good. But yes, here's where the kids make a decision. This is pretty tense, isn't it, Todd? Yeah, my knees are shaking. I got butterflies in my stomach. But I guess it's Bill's character.

Who wants to build character. Let's quit. Okay We decided we're equally good we want to call it a draw man Ladies and gentlemen, we have a draw You will forgive an old breed for crying. This is the most stirring display of gallantry and sportsmanship since Mountbatten gave Inja back to the punjabs. We're there, man! Yeah, all right! I like that, forgive this old Brit for crying.

And they each get 25 bucks. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, on the big checks, too. I was nerdily like, so wait, did they have to have those checks on hand? And then who didn't get a big check? I guess only for, yeah, they must have had a backup check ready. Because you'd think only first place would get a check. We are so out of the era of big checks and I miss the giant novelty checks.

Yeah. As a kid, one of my favorite jokes in the Happy Gilmore was when he just had the backseat full. His insistence that he get the big check for like fifth or tenth place and then he put them all in his back of his car that was funny that was a good joke also as a kid his whole thing of like when mount batten gave india back to the punjabs that quote it all just what is he saying there i didn't get that well it was so garbled to me as a kid it i he says it like he's crying. Yeah, and through a real thick accent, too. And through a thick accent. But then even in subtitles, like, I did not know enough about English history or India's history to know it was about Lord Mountbatten,

who was the final man in charge of the British colonization of India, who then left and gave it back to the country. That's nice of him. That's nice of him, yeah. If I got any of that wrong, please forgive me. I don't know Indian history that well. I'm sorry. But that is what is it in reference to. In 1947, Mountbatten gave it back.

Gave it back. But he says it so fast. And also, it's meant to confuse you it meant it's meant to be an incredibly deep reference to history no american gives a shit about because it involves nobody american if i had heard it correctly that's the type of joke i would have laughed at because i know that i don't know it and i'm not even supposed to know it yeah like yeah whatever this is a reference to it's funny like yeah they also talk about how abe lincoln is there the the the friend of every comedy writer it was definitely that hat it's crazy legs uh did i i forget did birthday boys ever do a lincoln sketch

no i don't think so we have we have a sketch uh and the show where the president is huge at the end. All right. Yeah. Is there a comedy precedent for your generation of comedy writers? I think the boomers love Lincoln. Yeah. I feel like the boomer, like Conan and Odenkirk's era, which aren't necessarily boomers, but they like Lincoln.

I don't know. I think a lot of jokes come out of our generation. We grew up with Carvey's H.W. Bush. That screams president to us. I guess we did grow up in the age of Oliver Stone's JFK movies. So you got Kennedy jokes, but they were Kennedy assassination jokes. Not really jokes about, well, other than Quimby. Quimby is a Kennedy joke.

But it's the same writers as the Lincoln lovers. We on the Sloppy Voice podcast, we were talking about a guy named, I think the Brandy Alexander episode? Yeah. A guy named Diamond Joe Brady. That's right. We thought to ourselves, like I said on the air i was like do you think the simpsons writers had talked about that they're like because they they probably knew about this weird historical figure and they do you think they named diamond joe quimby after him oh i can

confirm 100 yes that was the uh when when we did the first uh a few episodes ago on our podcast when we did the first appearance of diamond joe quimby originally just the name diamond j it was definitely a reference to that guy who was who was famous as a uh just a big big old rich guy yeah he was a big guy who ate a ton of food but yes somebody who listened to our podcast found uh bill oakley on twitter and oakley confirmed it wow that's cool yeah yeah it's uh that but the thing that it started with like oh the character is based on this like old robber baron guy and then the second the second dan castellaneta does his kennedy accent they're like no no forget all that it's kennedy jokes all the way right but yes it's a draw they uh the kids throw up their hands and it's uh the the man cries at it and uh then we get to the ending here i have one final clip i do like in

this that one of my favorite things in the early days is that they get to what seemingly is a normal sitcom ending that would be like well the moral of the story is this, and then a character fully rejects it and goes like, no! I'm not doing that. And in this case, Homer rejects Ned's friendliness one last time. Our kids showed us something today, huh?

By working together, we can both be winners. Thank heaven neither of us has to go through with that silly wager. Put her there, pal. Oh, so you're going to welch on our bet. What are you talking about? Neither boy lost. I got it right here in writing. The father of the boy who doesn't win has to mow the lawn in his wife's Sunday dress. But neither, I mean, we're both, I mean, you have to do it too. It's a small price to pay to see you humiliate yourself my best dress why do i get the feeling that someday i'll be describing this to a psychiatrist laughing it is so humiliating i'm never gonna look that dumb damn slander you know samson i feel

kind of silly but uh what the hey, you know? Kind of reminds me of my good old fraternity days. Oh, my God, he's enjoying it. That's a great last line. Yeah. Yeah, and it made me realize that Jeff Martin mined everything from this episode for his future ones because in A Streetcar Named marge uh ned says he played blanche dubois that's right because he went to an all-male school so another piece of this was

put into a future episode by jeff martin himself wow i like uh lisa's line there about um this is something i'm going to be talking about to a therapist years from now is like such a sophisticated joke for a essentially a kid's show like a cartoon that obviously it's not a kid's show but you know the little kids who are wearing the bart t-shirts in uh 1990 like nobody's getting that joke yeah that age group that should have been on the lisa shirt yeah the yeah uh that's that i mean if you saw kids walking around with that at the mall yeah do they have lisa shirts they they must have been some but that would be uh i bet that's like a high-priced uh vintage item there there is a future joke uh in season five about how lisa doesn't have a catchphrase right but in the early days they were trying to come up with a catchphrase

for lisa and the catchphrase on the shirts and the merch was a penny saved the pony earned that's as best as they could do oh my gosh well and also lisa's lesson here of embrace nothingness is her catchphrase in the simpson arcade game on when you pick her in the thing it's like embrace nothingness that's her uh but yeah i think as i i actually had pulled up some of my old simpsons merch not too long ago i had the original got it christmas 1990 original simpsons calendar and as a little kid i loved my simpsons calendar so much that once the year was over i was like well i have simpsons stickers too and i'm gonna put them all over it and like lisa lisa's one is just like i want a pony her sticker is

you couldn't buy lisa's sticker by itself but you get the whole family if you i clearly as a kid just wanted it for the bart stickers and meanwhile i think i i think i have something on instagram that i posted many many many years ago that's a lisa like a simpsons uh trading card oh while you're looking for that hold on just give me a second to like scroll all the way down it's okay while you're looking for that i'm just looking up old lisa merch i see a lisa simpson headband and she saying, show some flair with your hair. That is not in the spirit of Lisa at all. I mean, as a kid, definitely the boy merch that I got as a kid would only have Bart on it. Or maybe the whole family would like Bart in the center of it.

I also found the old wonky action figure of Lisa. These are the ones where they had the word bubbles you would just plug into their heads. Ah, yes. And Lisa comes with five phrases to Bug Brothers and the one that is advertised in the package is her saying, Al, quit it, which is not what Lisa said.

It's Barty says, Al. It's a trading card and Lisa, she's kind of smiling and it says, I'm going to tell mom and dad. Jeez. Yeah, it's so lame that is so lame how fun uh it's also i mean it shows you too how they were selling those to you know boys who were just like well what what does the sister say well it's things that annoy the brother like that's that's

she's not a character of her own it's just what bugs you as a brother right right what is her relationship to bart yeah she should be saying something about bart if bart's not there that's why yeah they should be asking where's poochie yeah uh but that episode is yeah it is a weird one but it sets up so many precedents that even if it is kind of a lame third act joke of just like bart well i mean homer even when march says my best dress it's like that is not your best dress it's like yeah it's like a pink nightie or something yeah lines to say but but it sets up so many things that like in this really jeff martin is i think one of the more underrated guys of his era who set up a lot of precedents and created

a lot of like running gags in his scripts yeah most of the historical episodes too most of the what uh historical episodes the flashback episodes like uh the birth of bart the birth of lisa he wasn't there for the birth of maggie episode but he probably would have written that one so he is like he does have a mind for like tracking what simpsons things happen when and who does what it is interesting watching these old episodes to see like what worked and stuck and what just didn't work or just didn't seem like the the marge with the dress thing like yeah she wouldn't make jokes like that ever again because it just doesn't like fit who she is yeah and same with like the uh the frosty

chocolate this episode is frosty chocolate milkshakes it has stationary jokes like all these like some of the last gasps of jokes that as they were writing them they go like does anybody like these now let's let's drop this runner but runners are funnier of just homer screaming at ned that's a good runner uh lisa looking at card catalogs funnier than a funny name on station oh that was a knee slapper in 1990. But yes, thank you, Mike, for being on the show. Thanks for having me. It's been a little while since I've watched like a full old Simpsons episode. I was watching some season sixes recently.

And this has been a treat. Awesome. Can you please tell us where we can find you on Twitter? And of course, about your podcast, The Sloppy Boys? Yes, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Mike Hanford. And The Sloppy Boys podcast, we do it every week. Every Friday, a new episode comes out.

We do Patreon episodes that come out on Wednesday. So see what the Patreon is all about. But mostly for the main episode, we take a cocktail off the international bartenders list. We've strayed from it a few times to have a little fun. But we try to make the cocktails and we talk about them and we have some fun. Maybe we play some music and we have a blast. It's so much fun.

It does make me want to drink listening to it. I have to listen to your non-alcoholic ones at sleep time because otherwise I'll wake up in the morning and go like, a mim does sound good yeah it can be it's it's dangerous maybe for some people we do have a bunch of people who have told us like i don't drink i haven't had a drink in years but like i love this i was like listening to you guys joke around yeah you do not you can be a teetotaler and still enjoy the sloppy boys podcast i will say yeah for sure and hopefully by 2022 we can see you and some of the other birthday boys touring in some capacity oh man if we get the sloppy boys to tour again that was that was such a bummer about the pandemic because we have so much fun doing that and then nothing the worst thing was no sloppy boys live shows that was the worst

i think yeah i think that's what um fauci has said on the record it was that and disneyland uh but no i i have i have friends who live in los angeles and have seen you guys live and say it's it's so great and i was just counting down the days like oh man i'm sure they'll come to town for sketch fest yeah right me and bob go to la like a couple times a year i we're gonna go see him and then yeah yeah but but when the time comes listeners and of course look out you guys have so many funny and good funny and good songs out there too oh yeah we got three albums check those out on like spotify or apple or wherever you do anything i don't know great stuff thank you and great stuff to you guys too this was uh this was great and you know a lot about not only just the simpsons but us tv making in general well thank you thank you

so thanks again to mike hanford for being on the show please check him out on twitter as mike hanford and also the sloppy boys the album the podcast and hey why not check out the birthday boys as well they've got dvds out there and they still hold up oh yeah but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week at a time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there for five bucks a month you get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that is all the bonus podcasts that we've made for nearly four years four complete years of this patreon for christ's sake and that includes our most recent mini series that's happening right now and you're missing it buddy if you're not on that patreon so that is talking of the hill season two part one 11 new episodes of talking of the

hill waiting for you behind the five dollar paywall and then it's all happening at patreon.com slash talking simpsons with so many other things too many things to name but there is a ten dollar level if you sign up for that you get all the five dollar stuff of course but also access to one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry you're talking about our what a cartoon movie podcast now you listeners talking simpsons probably know that also once a week we do our what a cartoon podcast where we talk about an animated series in the same way we cover the simpsons well each month for ten dollar and up premium subscribers at the patreon they get to hear us talk often for over four hours about an animated feature film each month if you signed up now you

get to hear last month's for march where we talked about ducktales the movie treasure of the lost lamp the month before that we talked about the studio ghibli classic, Whisper of the Heart and oh boy, in April you are going to want to sign up because me and Bob will be covering Shrek. It is the 20th anniversary of Shrek. It's time to truly deal with the, get ogre it and talk about Shrek.

A thousand years of Shrek. You can only hear the full thing if you are a $10 and up subscriber at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. In addition, you get all that $5 stuff Bob mentioned. So please visit it today to learn more. Patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And my other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. Find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. Find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts. Sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. Henry, how about you? Follow me on Twitter, H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. That's where you'll keep up to date with all the Henry Gilbert thoughts in the world. Plus, if you're on Twitter following me and Bob, please follow at Talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod is the official twitter account you want to know when new things go live on the patreon or on the

free feed or when we do a poll to ask if we're going to do shrek is a movie or any other news you'll stay up to date if you follow at talk simpsons pod on twitter it is your first stop for news on our podcast so again follow on, follow on Twitter at TalkSimpsonsPod. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next week for Season 12's The Computer Wore Menace Shoes, and we'll see you then. Now, keep your head down. Don't! That's you! I'm talking to the boy!

Keep your head down. Follow through. Okay, that didn't work. This time, move your head and don't follow through. Oh, man.