Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Dog of Death With Andrew Jupin

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

It's time for season 3's memorable showcase of Santa's Little Helper, and we're joined once again by the fantastic Andrew Jupin from the We Hate Movies podcast! After we chat a ton about the show satirizing the lottery, we then follow the family dog on a journey from near-death to renewed life to murderous rage and back again to his happy home. So listen along as we announce "All hail, King Homer!" Support this podcast and get over 100 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking of the Hill, the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where our listeners are held in place with magnets. I'm one of your hosts, the untwistable podcaster, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always?

All hail King Homer. It's Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? Our special guest today. A gerbil getting thrown through a basketball hoop garbage can, Andrew Jupin. And this week's episode is Dog of Death. I know you're upset. Don't write I'm upset.

Bart, watch your language. Oh, you did. Sorry. This week's episode originally aired on march 12th 1992 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby warren baity marries annette benning my cousin vinnie debuts at number two at the box office but but can't beat Wayne's World. And Bill Clinton is now the presumptive nominee after Super Tuesday of the 1992 Democratic primary. I always want to say, especially when we have a movie expert guest here, I always want to

talk about what's number one in the box office. But it's been very boring the last month because it's just always wayne's world at this time like wayne's world it can't be beat well it's got the dark horse of my cousin vinny charging up the rear this is a cosmic sign though guys that i have been dancing around a wayne's world rewatch for like several months now so this is a sign to purchase that 4k and go back to aurora illinois oh man seeing it in 4k man i have that b Man, it's giving me the feels to rewatch it. No, we were just talking about it with a previous guest and friend of yours as well, Griffin Newman,

when we were trying to say, well, what's the best SNL movie? And he said, like, he thinks it is. I don't want to put words in his mouth. I believe he was feeling that Wayne's World was the best one. Well, well we can't count a corky romano so it's a bit unfair lord michaels didn't produce it so it doesn't really count no no uh but yeah my cousin vinny i just seen it for the first time as an adult i'm sorry late late 2022 it's delightful uh i think people have forgotten about it and for a long time people were salty about marisa tomei winning was it a people's choice award it was the oscar it was the oscar okay yeah it was a real award no wonder uh but she's amazing in that movie she totally is that was

like a weird because i think it was uh nicholson that presented it and they were like oh the rumor was like oh jack nicholson read the wrong name on the card or something like that but you're totally right bob you go back and re-watch that movie she's fantastic it's a totally earned Academy Award. I think people were salty because it was a comedic performance and the other nominees weren't and this was a time we were very serious about Oscar movies I think. Big time yeah I mean we still hate comedy honoring. Yeah yeah I feel like the reaction to this win set back comedy winning even farther, probably. I mean, on top of that, too, she was a relatively new actress, and the character she was playing was a little ditzy,

and that was part of the performance, and she's so good at it that I think people chalked it up of, like, oh, this dumb broad. She wanted more. They didn't understand it was acting. Yeah, they got fooled hard she's so good speaking of reading the wrong name at the oscars warren everybody uh marrying annette benning i forgot this fact about him because uh you know he's not been in movies for a while also i don't know where annette benning has been oh well she was in that captain marvel movie i mean is she in real things though is she in real movies she was in that Captain Marvel movie. I mean, is she in real things, though? Is she in real movies?

She was in a really great Mike Mills movie called 20th Century Women that I would 100% recommend. It's the movie he did right before Come On, Come On a few years ago. It's her, Greta Gerwig. I believe there's a Fanning sister in there. Yes, Elle Fanning.

Really, really, really solid movie with a total banger soundtrack. Obviously, i only watch marvel movies with people can assume based on how that was the only movie i could think of there yeah i didn't know they were married until uh as because i was not like a celebrity watcher until i remember when annette benning uh won the oscar Oscar for American Beauty and every movie like again I can't go back to that but but when she won it they they kept shooting I feel like there were jokes all night about like Warren Beatty being jealous or something like they kept they kept making jokes

about him all night you know American Beauty is the movie about how kevin spacey wasn't seducing an underage boy that's an important fact that's right uh but yeah i mean it was big news at the time that baby was marrying a woman just 22 years younger than him at the time but as far as i can tell they are still together i believe that's true yeah yeah at the very least if they are quietly separated it is not in the news i i think once you're in your 80s you're no longer us magazine fodder there's no pictures of you canoodling at spago on the front page did you guys see him debasing himself on the internet with this dick tracy thing i haven't watched it yet but i got the general gist of it like copyright preservation that's awful it's incredible i think well first off i think it's

incredible that with i guess the dick tracy estate or whatever that yeah the rules are it doesn't even have to be a movie it can just be a tv special where he just like puts on a bad costume and says hello i am dick tracy and he's just like old and like the suit was really kind of big on him oh it's pathetic it's very sad i appreciate that he's so callous and upfront about this copyright renewal special and uh honestly it seems like he thinks he will live forever because are you going to be him at 90 like training the younger dick tracy what's going on in this Dick Tracy 2 that you've been dreaming up for 34 years? Jesus. Three years.

It was quite old when that movie came out to begin with. It is one of those things like, I'm stealing this thought actually from Mike Reese, executive producer of The Simpsons. He said this about Elizabeth Taylor when he was growing up. He's like, Liz Taylor never starred in any movies when I was growing up. Like, who cares? And that is sort of how I feel about Warren Beatty. Like, he's, other than Dick Tracy and Bullworth, he hasn't been in a movie that was, in Town and Country, that was released in my lifetime. Like, he's, like, famous for being famous.

Totally. I would say give Ishtar a shot with him and Dustin Hoffman, the Elaine May movie. That's, like, a famously derided movie that like totally tanked. It's received a bit of a sort of like a reevaluation in the last few years. And it's really funny. I just knew it as the punchline. I've never given it a chance. Yeah, no, me too.

I didn't see it until I was probably 30 something, you know, during that, you know, recent reevaluation, probably with only in the last five years or so. When I started reading Mad Magazine in the late 80s my main takeaway was boy they really hate ishtar also what is ishtar yeah i knew it as a name from like also like tiny tunes and animaniacs i think they brought it up a few times too yeah definitely in that dick tracy special like leonard malton me and bob were chatting about it a little before and leonard malton looks generally concerned for warm baby he's like oh dear this is too bad and the warm baby is sure he is not old like he that when he read that uh la la land instead of moonlight he stayed on stage to say like they handed me the wrong envelope i did not misread

it i did not have a brain fart i'm not old him interviewing himself as dick tracy was his version of drawing the clock to show you how sharp he was you can't interview yourself if you have advanced alzheimer's though uh the one last uh fun fact about annette bedding and Warren Beatty's union though is of their four kids one is a transgender son who they are very supportive of. Oh very nice. That's cool. It's nice when you learn the inverse of a J.K.

Rowling fact about a famous person. And yep we're on our way to Clinton town. Bill Clinton is the nominee unexpectedly he is now the nominee but uh but nobody thinks he's gonna win soon to be mocked mercilessly by the simpsons but joining us today is andrew jupin of we hate movies of course andrew is here because he's a very funny guy but also i know for a fact

as a we hate movies listener he has a sweet little dog named marty yes and she's right here laying on the floor and i will say she very much um not so much in coat color but in like body shape very much resembles santa's little helper oh that's adorable yeah was she a mix total mix yeah she has like a brindle coat um she was a rescue so we haven't done those you know know, dog DNA. Yeah. That thing's weird. Yeah. I don't know if I can trust that, you know, especially with a mutt.

Like I wouldn't know what to believe. No, I, uh, meanwhile, I can't believe all these people send their DNA to these, uh, to find out their genealogy for like personally. And it's like that, that is certainly going to be sold to Pete, like every company possible when they, after they tell you you're like half scotch irish or whatever hey i had to apply for permanent residency in canada every part of me is for sale at this point there was no fluid they didn't examine really uh snout to tail there bob before they let you in permanently x-rays stool samples you name it this episode uh you know i have an own we had

two dogs growing up until after i was eight we were a cat family uh and so i i haven't had a dog since then but uh yeah this i think this really captures what it's like in general like the the pains of pet ownership too yeah you know yeah You know, yeah. Yeah, for me, I never had a dog. I always wanted one. My sister was allergic to every animal and almost everything until a certain age. So we grew up having alternative pets. And because of that, to this day, I've got a very lovely bird who is my best little animal pal, but still never a dog in my life. And maybe at some point in my life, there will be one.

But I do. I really love dogs. Yeah, we had dogs growing up we had a couple of dogs excuse me but i'm actually deathly allergic to cats so deathly is an exaggeration but you know i don't have long in a room before the sniffles start if especially a long-haired cat is floating around so we were uh sort of strictly a dog family although uh just like this episode definitely went through a couple of hamsters dying on me. Actually, I think we've got the hat trick. Three deceased hamsters.

Oh, jeez. One of which injured itself very, very seriously on stucco walls that my parents had in the dining room. You know what stucco walls are? Sort of like spiky, pointy. Yeah, it's like pointy plaster walls. Yes. Yeah, it was very it was

very big in like the 80s and 90s and the hamster got out of its cage and got stuck between the hutch and one of these one of these walls and cut itself horribly and my father was like well that's the end of this hamster right and we were like no surgery and when i tell you the money that was dropped on this little thing that wound up getting another like year of life out of it but man it had a little like uh neck collar and everything my father was furious that hamster survived a stucco crucifixion it did it really did bob oh that's my dad also had to be heavily talked into and guilted about uh spending money on pet stuff because he you know look i he i like a pet just fine but but you can just get another one at the store like it's not uh you had to talk him out of it though though that eventually that old cat

that we convinced him to get a good surgery on that it gave it another lease on life when that cat did finally pass away he was sadder than all of us see that's how it always goes they fall for them they definitely do but they pretend they don't that's that's how that's how old dads are that's right too are you a fan of clockwork orange as well for this yes and i you know as as much as one could be a fan of that movie, it's sort of a weird, I mean, I think it's a well-made movie that I do own on 4K and it is on the to watch shelf right in front of me here. So I am getting all sorts of reminders from you guys about stuff I keep meaning to rewatch.

So thank you. I think the first of many Clockwork Orange references coming up in The Simpsons. Yes. We're only, well, we're another year away from their rather cheeky reference to the topless woman with a pair of cupcakes. And we're pretty close to Bart dressed as Alex, right? Yeah, that's his Halloween costume in the next treehouse. Yeah. Yeah, they've discovered a new thing to reference instead of Godfather 2001.

Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane, yes. they've discovered a new thing to reference instead of two instead of godfather 2001 citizen kane this isn't it yes yeah it's funny because the origins of the story you mentioned that your family repaired the the ailing hamster uh this comes from john schwartzwelder who uh he had a little helper in his life but the family didn't pay for the surgery so uh this episode is a happier version of that tale yeah oh boy poor john it. Poor John. It's how it goes. Yeah. Well, especially like John Schwarzwalder was a kid in like the 50s, I think. So, yeah.

And also there's probably less medical advances then of like what could even save a dog. That's back when they made movies about shooting sick dogs. Right. We have the Kill a Mockingbird and Old Yeller. No, I was noting that this episode does feel like a real interesting middle ground for for simpsons i i think we've talked about this uh before when you're on two andrew that some people see season three is kind of a gray area of like oh well simpsons doesn't get really crazy until season four but this is one of those episodes that shows you that while

the pitch that sold on paper sounds more like a season one or two of like the dog gets sick and that they then learn to love their dog and not take him for granted in practice this episode is full of like crazy cutaways and some of the funniest like zaniest things they've done oh yeah absolutely i mean the entire setup the whole town being stricken with lotto fever i had forgotten that all of that was in this episode and it is just great all the brockman stuff really great brockman throughout this um i loved like the tan gag so much perfect stuff but then on the other side you're totally right i'm like sitting there watching the poor dog, you know, and my heartstrings are being tugged at quite successfully for a Simpsons episode. And also I was thinking about this.

We just did separate vocations. And in that one, I mentioned the long New Yorker piece about how it from 2000 where they're like, oh, it's really the writer's show. But I was thinking like this episode shows like it's really the writer's show but i was thinking like this episode shows like it's the animation does it so well like you could have this great schwarzwalder script but bad animators would make it crappy and i think that like i i think of schwarzwalder now as one of the best like gag writers for cartoons of his generation and and he had the right team for it and and also speaking new yorker in swartz welder's uh new yorker interview from a couple years ago this was listed along with like

five other episodes as one of his favorites he ever wrote like he named this by name one of his favorites yeah did he he did not write uh bart's dog gets enough correct no now i believe that was vd okay uh this episode blows that one out of the water whenever i watch bart's dog gets enough correct no now i believe that was vd okay uh this episode blows that one out of the water whenever i watch bart's dog gets enough i'm like oh this should be dog of death i'd rather be watching dog of death i'm thinking of all the great dog of death jokes yeah and yeah it's it's two this is directed by jim reardon who again one of the like top five best directors of the series to think him and in swartz welder are a great pair. But yes, this episode begins with a parody of Lotto Fever.

I don't need your crummy job, Mr. Employer. I won the lottery! Who needs employees? I won the lottery too! We both won the lottery! Why don't you win the lottery too? The State Lottery, where everybody wins. Actual odds of

winning one in 380 million. The lottery. Exploiter of the poor and ignorant. You know, I heard the jackpot's up to $130 million. $130 million? Did you say $130 million? Yeah. Wow!

And then everybody in the bar loses it as they all i mean what a great joke that barney knows the information to tell it to homer is then shocked when homer says it back to him and then homer also doesn't realize that barney reet was stupid and realized he goes like yeah and that gag you know great you know animation visual gag that's mo lighting the sign saying beer is the answer after criticizing the lotto that should be merchandise i think yeah i want one of those for my my upcoming study or whatever i'm going to build now these are writers living in california and every state has a state lottery except maybe utah i'm guessing in hawaii perhaps you know the lotteries were getting very big at the time.

In California, there's a lot more people. There's a lot more people paying into taxes and everything. And that's why this number is so high. But I looked it up. I always hear about this mythical Powerball. But I don't play the lottery. I don't buy lottery tickets. And last year, in November of 2022, the Powerball lottery amount was $2.04 billion.

Oof. Wow. That is an insane amount of money. And the people who don't win say, ah, most of that goes to taxes. Right. That's all you tell yourself. I don't know what a Powerball is.

I don't know why people worship it, but it dispenses money to one lucky person every year, perhaps? I don't know. I don't know how it works i get zero thrills from like all forms of gambling so you know every once in a while someone will give you like a little scratcher and a birthday card or something usually an older relative but yeah i don't know what a powerball is i do know that you know when i'm waiting for

my you know breakfast burrito at the deli i I will see an army of people on like Saturday morning or Sunday morning come in and they have like their little cheat sheets and they just like dictate all these different numbers. And they, you know, it's much like horse racing, which is kind of the only gambling I'll do being from upstate New York. You kind of have to be into it. But yeah, I don't know. Just no thrills about gambling at all. It's yeah. I only associate this kind of gambling with very depressing circumstances. Like I work at a grocery store and if someone was over 80, they were guaranteed to buy a lottery ticket. And yes, at the bakery, there would be a bunch of old people

drinking coffee, eating their donuts, scratching off tickets. I worked at a very depressing job at a bank. Every lunch break, people would go upstairs to the convenience store and buy lottery tickets. And in my grandma's final dying years, I would have to buy her scratch-off tickets. So there were no happy circumstances surrounding the lottery in my life. It's not a thing that you do when you're happy and doing well and don't really need that money, you know? No, you know, I grew up in a lotto-loving family. My mom and dad played the lottery pretty regularly. Well, so this, I mean, it's also how I charted this expansion of lotteries

on a state-by-state basis was when this episode aired, my family, we lived in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. And at the time, Georgia did not have a lottery. And there were a couple times during our time living in Georgia in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. And at the time, Georgia did not have a lottery. And there were a couple times during our time living in Georgia that we went to Florida for vacation. And when we were there, my dad was very excited that there was gambling there. He caught lotto fever.

He did. And when we then moved to Florida a few years later, my mom and dad, they was they they did it every week every single week which you know if you told them they would be taxed uh ten dollars a week for every year they live there they'd be like well that's how dare the government but if you call it a lottery they're not so mad about it did you guys have uh televised lotto drawings where you grew up? Yeah, yeah.

You'd see it on the local news. Local news for sure, yeah. They'd have the machine where the balls would be flying around. They'd pop up and the guy would pull one out. The machine was the most exciting part for me. I wanted to play with the machine as a kid. It looked fun. Yeah.

I always remember watching it as a kid. They would sometimes air it late at night, like around the 11 o'clock news or something like that. And we had this woman for the New Yorkork lotto and you'll never forget it welcome to the new york lotto drawing i'm yolanda vega like that was her catchphrase and just like you you ask anyone you know that grew up where i did when i did or around there they will know yolanda vega and her lotto catchphrase i know in my area area, the lottery show was called Cash Explosion. Literally, it could have been a Simpsons parody. Totally.

I mean, that almost is this commercial of a guy saying like, hey, who needs employees? I won the lottery too. Why don't you win the lottery? And we covered this in Lisa the Greek, but we have to remember that at the time, this was one of the very few forms of legal gambling you could do. Now there are so many different forms of legal gambling in every state.

I don't watch sports, but I know if you do, almost every ad is for some way to gamble on the game you're watching. Oh, it's far beyond that, Bob. now to the point where like you know espn in their news segments will have times for like this is all the fantasy football recommendations and this is what the draft kings over under whatever the fuck is like it's it is wild how even like 10 years ago sports betting was still like shh and now it's just like they're literally sponsoring you know college football bowls and ad slots in arenas and everything. It's like night and day. It's really crazy. It's a real sign of desperation in our society.

I do have some sad, progressive, lefty, anti-Lotto facts in this. But if you guys want a more thorough going over over that i would point people to our podcast pals at citations needed uh podcast they did a very good episode in 2019 on the regressive tax mostly against poor and non-white people in america that uh state gambling is and lotteries are it's uh it's very informative you won't look at the lottery again. Well, this episode is anti-lottery, I believe. Yes. I want to say. Yes, we cut to the quickie mart with people storming it, tearing it apart. I love this shot of Apu having to both be friendly to the people who were shopping there, but you can see in his face, he's like, you're destroying my store.

Please stop this. Thank you for smashing my product. Yes. An important moment, sanjay's first spoken line of dialogue he was seen in homer at the bat on the quickie mark team or whatever team up who was on but sanjay not a big character but his first line is in this episode yeah i you know i do believe that is sanjay but that's not that picture sanjay and homer at the bat does not have the mustache they i think they forgot to draw it in, but I think that's also Sanjay, too.

And yeah, Sanjay, though, is first mentioned by name in Homer versus Lisa in the Eighth Commandment, the stealing cable one, because Apu says, like, oh, the big fight. I'll get Sanjay to cover for me. So this is after a whole year, we're finally seeing the fabled sanjay on screen that should have been part of the commercial for this son we finally meet sanjay appears in the new simpsons i also like that he is going to be rot like he's like well i'm probably going to be shot at and death is likely so and i love the plea to uh don't sleep with my wife i can't promise anything it's uh i have to think up who has already had sex with his wife yes absolutely uh who is a real player at this

point he had already been with princess cashmere uh and yes a great great joke of homer being shocked at what bart's birthday is asking for for leases as well, and then making Bart feel guilty that he doesn't know Lisa's birthday. It's so good. What kind of a brother are you? Schwarzwalder really underlines the type of person the lottery appeals to the most. The person who can't even think about his family for a second, who has to run out and buy tickets the minute he hears about the lottery, and who thinks he's already won when he buys the tickets.

The biggest idiot. Yeah, Homer is perfect he hears about the lottery and who thinks he's already won when he buys the tickets the biggest idiot yeah homer is perfect perfect for the lottery uh you know you know i feel like yes my my parents pretty much stuck to like one one or two five or ten dollar tickets each week but if it was a big prize like where they really build it up for notoriety of like oh but it's you know over 100 million or whatever in the 90s that then uh they would i think buy an extra couple or whatever or even let me or my brother bubble in with the number two uh a pencil uh our picks for like here you guys get to your own picks too pencilingciling in just reminded me, did you guys have Quick Draw? Speaking of weird gambling things. It was a thing where you filled out a little bubble sheet thing and then got it scanned by a reader.

You know, these were at like restaurants and bars and things. And then on a television, there was a little channel or network or something that showed these little it was basically like a a grid of numbers and you picked where you thought these dots were going to land and they just would repeat the it was quick draw so they just played these games in rapid succession it was another weird weird it might have just been new york state lotto i don't know but it took my area by storm everywhere you went there were these little quick draw machines i'm pretty sure they don't know, but it took my area by storm. Everywhere you went, there were these little quick draw machines. I'm pretty sure they don't exist anymore. In Ohio, we had that at a pizza pub, but I didn't know how to play, but every TV in the pizza pub had the numbers on the screen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would be annoyed by those numbers as a kid for Keno games at a casino. It sounds similar to Keno, which is like a small lottery happening just in one restaurant. Right, exactly. Hitting it big at your ground round or something.

The Simpsons will be right back. Simpsons dog is missing. Here's a clip of their last loving moments together. Hey, how come he gets mean we don't? For the full story, watch The Simpsons Thursday. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there.

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brighter. Find our Net Zero hub at electricarland.ie welcome to the break everybody it's henry gilbert covered in 14 karat gold big thank you to our guests this week andrew jupin of we hate movies podcast always awesome to have any of the we hate movies guys on here me and bob are such big fans of we hate movies podcast always awesome to have any of the we hate movies guys on here me and bob are such big fans their podcast so we always love talking about the simpsons with them check out all the stuff they do on we hate movies regular episodes they do so many cool things on their patreon and keep an eye out for their live shows as well also if you enjoy this podcast you should know talking simpsons is only possible as me and bob's full-time jobs thanks to

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Yes, money. I mean, honey. Ooh, here comes a news report about the lottery. Hey, down in front. The whole state is suddenly in the grip of lottery fever, and Springfield is no exception. In fact, every copy of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery has been checked out from the Springfield Public Library. Of course, the book does not contain any hints on how to win the lottery.

It is rather a chilling tale of conformity gone mad. Oh. But there's already one big winner, our state state school system which gets fully half the profits from the lottery just think what we can buy with that money history books that know how the korean war came out math books that don't have that basics crap in them and a state-of-the-art detention hall where children are held in place with magnets magnets always with the magnets i'm surprised that's not mark uh that's not edna saying that line yeah i was gonna ask you guys is does that teacher have a name i is because it sounds like

julie cavner yeah it is i think she had another line in an earlier episode this season but they will eliminate her because when you hear julie cavner's voice you just think where's marge right yeah she yeah she was just in separate vocations i think that's her only other time saying it even even on the commentary they're like no that is distracting but that's just marge's voice there that's that's why we stopped doing it totally oh that's funny and uh yes they're they're talking about the lottery the short story uh which uh schwarzweller also referenced in the lastest gun in the west as well.

That was an episode he is the writing credit on. It might not be him, but I think he's a fan of that. And you know what? Right now on Kindle, you can get it for under $5. The Lottery and Other Stories collection. I love Shirley Jackson. It's funny to me that the entirety of The Lottery was put in a book for the Springfield universe because it's about 30 pages, the short story.

Yes. I love that the note that Brockman says about like all the copies of the lottery have been taken out of the library or whatever. It also speaks to like, OK, that's telling you there's other people in this town who are on the Homer level of like that dense. They would think it's a lottery tips book or something. I love that joke and uh yeah here's is some depressing real world facts on this which simpsons is joking about here this is they know this information and that's why they're they turn it into a joke about the funding for schools this uh i had to be explained to me as a kid in the 90s by my mom about why this is a joke about the schools thinking they get a bunch of money in the real world like the so this is just the california state lottery statistics here

but in 2022 reporting i saw that 1.8 billion of the state school budget comes from the lottery the california state lottery now it sounds like a lot but that's one percent less than one percent actually of the school's yearly budget uh and and also there was a 2017 audit that showed that they were actually holding back like 36 million dollars that they didn't even give the schools but here's another bit from the washington post reporting on it too about why that 1.8 billion doesn't even like it shouldn't even really count quote instead of using the money as additional funding legislators have used the lottery money to pay the education budget and spent the money that would have been used there

had there not been lottery cash on other things so that's the scam they slash school budgets and then replace it with lottery money and then they advertise and say like well no the lottery gives us money to schools and we all assume it means in addition to the the regular budget pretty scummy yeah that's how you engineer whole other generations of homer lotto fanatics it's it is a good strategy to create more lottery players yeah that's true i can talk about uh base six crap if you want to hear about it what is this shit you know what is this shit is a good question henry because uh this is a reference i believe to quote unquote new math which was basically the common core of its day.

This was kicked into action because, you know, Russia launched Sputnik. And there was a worry like we had in the 2000s, like we need to get these kids into STEM now. So we engineered a new kind of math to get them up to speed with other countries and, you know, how advanced they were. But it fell out of fashion in the 70s. And there is a great Tom Lehrer song about it called New Math. If you want a comedian to explain it through song and it contains the lyric, it's so simple that only a child can do it

because the joke is parents could no longer help their kids with their math homework, which was the case with Common Core as well. Oh, that's hilarious. No, I'm thankful I never had to learn that basic stuff. Like math, I was good at simple math. It probably would have confused me. And I believe now you math magicians out there, let me know.

But I believe the math that we all learned, all of us millennials on this podcast, was base 10. And now there's Common Core. And people are mad about that for weird reasons. I see. Is it CRT related stuff? No, it's just for Common Core. Now there's going to be parents on here mad at me but the point of doing math is not to find an answer no one has found before like when your

teacher asks you what's seven minus six it's not that we don't know the answer but you're just you're only learning like rote memorization common core teaches you like how numbers work in relation to each other i see yeah all right well yeah base 10 that again i guess that shows you how the programming worked on me because i was like well yeah well 10 i got 10 fingers i'll i can build everything around 10 that makes 10 fingers sound reablist much oh you're saying that's the norm well i'm speaking specifically about my 10 fingers that's all um i'm kidding i'm kidding also uh skinner's vision of the magnet prison basically it made me think of face off i was like okay they wrote the face off rip this off yeah that is such a great joke too about uh history books that know how the korean war ended my god we uh how long

in your schools did your maps have the ussr on it into the 90s like i still remember seeing a few oh yeah big time um i remember like even when i got to high school so we're talking like 98 or something um there was every once in a while a teacher would pull down a map and you'd be like guys come on come on i mean it was a pretty famous event you know well then i think i got it in the budget from the lottery to buy new maps yet i graduated in 2000 and i think most of the maps were did include the soviet union and all of the textbooks still included the soviet union but it didn't matter we never got that far we never got to the 1980s in history class you always ran out of time yeah yeah yeah it always

it bugged me i would read ahead eventually by like junior high i think i'd start reading ahead but i'd get i would get annoyed of like i i could chart out i remember being annoyed in several history classes of knowing like we have two months left in the year and there's all these pages we haven't touched yet what's going on uh though of course you can see why they probably don't want to talk about things that happen after world war ii it might yeah might make some parent we all these kids now don't get to learn about controversial things we have that too you're not special gen z we know we have racist parents too when you send your kids away for someone else to raise eight hours a day you don't get to decide what they learn, okay? Keep them at home if you want to decide what they learn.

Put in the work. Yeah. Yeah. So the lottery drawing day is here, as the headline says. It's also President Rockstar to Swap Lives. I missed that until this very time doing it. Now, if it was Clinton, it would make sense.

Yes. But it's Bush. You're supposed to be imagining a rock star banging Barbara Bush there, I guess. That's the visual imagery. Yes, as all of this is happening, too, Santa's little helper is walking around horribly pained, like, on death's door. They color his nose gray because he's sick. That's how they indicate a sickly dog. And it's so sad seeing Maggie poke

him in the eye. Yeah. Oh, and there's a good little sound effect there, too. Perfect foley. Yes. Yeah. And Homer is certain that he's going to win, and he's got plans, baby. So, what are you going to do with your share of the money, kids? Put it in the bank. Give it to the poor.

What do kids know about spending money? What are you going to do, Homer? Hmm. Hey, Homer, what'd you do? Get a haircut or something? Look closer, Lenny. Oh, I know what it is. You're the biggest man in the world now.

And you're covered in gold. 14 carat gold. Take a hike, boss. I'm running things now. All hail King Homer. You got to hear the full laugh yeah yes yeah i was just thinking i am such a sucker for an extended laugh like that burns in the shower oh that crippled irishman i i don't know what burns originally said but him saying all hail king homer is very

funny him just awkwardly saying that he had to have some of the line i'm guessing oh yeah the mouth movements are all off on it i i love he's like excited like he's like he's welcoming it like all hail king like he's not sad about it he's oh god i said this on twitter i do think this might be the funniest scene in the entire series the entire series it's really up there for me it's it's a landmark in the in season three i would say just uh and understanding how homer's brain works in that he's not only made of gold he gets bigger and covered in more jewels no well okay i definitely think though the the shot of the up pan shot of homer covered in jewels laughing is maybe my favorite like uh animated image in the entire series gotta find that original art it's got to be a very long cell and a very long background

and it's gonna be too expensive it's gonna it has to be at least uh thirty thousand dollars that's set up if it exists if it exists holy smokes to in perspective, there was a big Simpson cell auction late last year. And one of the ones in it, because I was like, maybe this won't go for too much. I'll keep an eye on it. It was the title card for Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers from the Steampamp sketch. And I was like, hmm. I bet I was like, if I could get this for $800, I'm going to do it. I tell myself it was 15,000.

I believe it was. It was definitely over 10,000. What are we waiting for? Maybe I'm undershooting that. It could be like 40 or 50K. That's if it exists. And if someone wants to sell it, maybe it's like Matt Groening might have it. One of the writers might have it.

Who knows? Wow. Also, just tell me, it's like he is celebrating that he's he makes sure you know it's 14 karat gold a worse level of gold like you'd want 18 karat or 24 karat as somebody with a 14 karat gold ring wedding ring i can tell you it's more durable yeah oh yeah no that's that's mine too i believe yes yeah and whenever i think about it i think of that scene with homer so maybe it is the most memorable scene in the show. I love all the stuff with Lenny too, right?

Just how just totally oblivious Lenny is. That's like an impossible level of being oblivious. What did you do different? Did you get a haircut or something? God damn. And then his answer is, look closer. Oh, that is pretty funny. And then he calls him the biggest man in the world like that's i that is such an interesting choice of words and yes the crowning moment of it too is that they cut away

to homer laughing he's not telling people what his vision was they just saw their father close his eyes for 30 seconds and laugh to himself quietly they're all very uh disturbed by i'm always a big fan of any variation on that when a character has a dream sequence or a fantasy in their head and we cut back to see what was happening in the real world and and so it's time for the lotto numbers to be picked uh as it's setting up this also shows you how deep the roster of springfield has grown by this point in season three that without naming characters they just trust the audience of like if we cut to a clown or cops you know who they are and this is funnier to you like no i mean it

works as a joke if you don't know who they are and you just see a tv clown and the cops being bad at their job because they're into the lottery the jokes don't work yeah no definitely but it's kind of interesting i never thought about it that way before i guess i just take for granted knowing these characters for so many decades now but it is it is sort of nice that thinking about how that would work if you don't know what the characters are it's still kind of great because what juxtaposition of people right like a clown with a dude you know with a bone through his head that just honks you know the cops it's the great uh wigum oh it's just 9-1-2 you know like yeah so you just see all these different people in this town and i think not knowing who they are you're like wow this is a really weird place no other 1992 sitcom went what

if what does a clown think of this situation let's check this out i it's one of my favorite things bill and josh uh amped up in their seasons too of just pointing out occasionally like chalmers would point out yeah why why are crusty or mel walking around in full makeup in regular life all of the time in their full costumes uh but uh so yes we we see santa's little helper is dying in the background collapsing and uh now it's time for the lotto numbers to be drawn i knew we wouldn't win well why didn't you tell the rest of us why did you keep it a secret if you were 17 we'd be rich no, you had to be 10.

And the final number is 49. 38. 49! Oh, my God. I won! I won! Ah! Ah!

Recapping our day's top story, the winner of today's state lottery is me, Kent Brockman. Can we get a shot of me? There you go. In other news, tragic mix-up today in Cleveland. Many people killed. Goodbye! Oh, well, we lost the money, but at least we've still got each other hey the dog's dead

i love that homer bought 50 tickets and somehow impossibly mathematically with 50 picks not one of them had 17 or three on it when the numbers when those numbers are said he tears them up because he knows like i didn't pick 17 once in any of them it's possible uh that's actually like anti-luck it's uh yeah i uh this is a side tangent i think of anti-luck as the story of i got to interview the the uh professional wrestler from ecw tommy dreamer once oh i remember him yeah yeah he's a fun and a local guy from the tri-state area uh yeah local to andrew but he talked about how at the time he had recently gotten uh there was 2008 uh salmonella outbreak among uh peanut butter in the united states look it up and he mentioned like yeah my whole family got it he's's like, I can't win the lottery, but it was like 10 peanut butter jars out of 3 million

and we got one of them. Oh, wow. And we all got it. That's classic Tommy Dreamer luck if you know anything about the character of Tommy Dreamer. I don't, but. Trust me, it's accurate for him. Also, I think it's so well acted but

homer is just like scary here like he's like why did you keep it like he's playing it as like he's in an oscar-worthy drama right yes throws that tv tray across the room he's just the way he points apart like no you had to be and you just see bart look sad there's no extra joke to it it's just homer he's cruel it's a really tough moment he takes grandpa as just a matter of fact grumbling as as the truth like you knew we wouldn't win and you didn't tell me and not to linger too long but it's a great twist that kent wins but harry shearer plays it so well as kent trying to remain professional but he just can't yes and i love is like uh can we get a shot of me yeah there we go

and it's just a frame from him like exclaiming seconds before and uh well also it's it's such a clever idea of like who would be a the worst person to find out won the lottery. And it's like a guy who is small town, very rich, becoming very, very rich on television. And you just can't like feel good about it or anything. It's just like this. Oh, this is the jerk who won. We all find out it was him on TV. I will say, though, that Kent is covering an accident in northeast Ohio more than most major news networks right now. Oh, yeah, that's true.

Train derailment. Hey, guys, there's aliens now. Look out. There sure are a lot of aliens. Shoot them down. Yeah, I think that is what this UFO stuff is. I think it's all a trick to distract us from this horrible accident

in east Palestine, Ohio,io right now that is the uh the events of white noise unfolding in real life am i thinking of the correct thing i think so oh yeah yeah the don delilo novel yeah it's a movie yeah um train derailment chemical explosion all that good stuff well speaking of news i just saw today it was like a video from the uh the white house press secretary saying like there aren't aliens these ufos are not aliens and somebody quote tweeted by saying like this is exactly what happens in an alien movie like this is what an alien invasion movie you have this scene in it of saying it's not happening. That's very true. And also she made reference to, I love E.T. just as much as the next person,

which is also something that a character would say in a meta-aliens movie. That's true. And then they say, I don't think E.T.'s coming. Yes, precisely. Then we all get nuked. I also like that Marge kind of thinks she's at the end of an episode by summing it up like, well, we lost the money, but at least we still got each other. Like she thinks the story, the episode's over.

And so, yes, we leave the audience thinking that the dog is dead, that Santa's little helper is dead. He's not moving. I mean, it's so tricky that like if you see it with commercials in between you don't notice it as much as on say dvd or streaming but when you watch it now it's like they have a freeze frame of santa's little helper not moving then when it comes back from commercial he's clearly breathing of like ah they tricked like it was very intentional to trick you that was a long you know 60 to 100 seconds for some audience members probably watching a lot of commercials in between i i love too that lisa is basically talking to the show with like it's not fair to toy with

people's emotions like that yeah and grandpa is more fighting off the idea that this is a senior moment yes him refusing to believe that the dog is not dead that is another great i mean honestly it it feels like people engaging in arguments online i'm just like no dogs wag their tails for hours after they die i'm tired of this conversation i'm going home like except they don't go home no that's true yeah they i uh i mean you you guys have seen the one of people saying like uh and look i have quote tweeted a thing that was a joke headline i thought was real we've it's happened to all of us uh none of us are perfect but the cover for it some people do

of well the fact that i thought this was real proves how bad things are right now or whatever it's like people can't admit that they get tricked by something or they're they're wrong it happens to all of us usually i delete it and then pretend i didn't do it you know that's that's the that's the adult way to handle things yep there's so much information no one's going to remember yep just delete it and then i'm gonna hide under a pile of coats and everything will be fine but uh yes the dog is very sick and just what are they going to do they're going to take him to the vet. And this is where there is another completely lost to time reference in this episode, which is the Ben Casey show. Again, when this episode aired, my mom said like, oh, that's Ben Casey.

And I had no clue. I still didn't know until probably this podcast and doing prep for it. It was a five season medical drama from the early to mid 60s and apparently ben casey was parodied at least three times on the flintstones oh wow he played the parody of ben casey was dr len frankenstone now you see folks this is when they added monsters to the flintstones remember when like monsters moved in across the street the show was almost over don Don't worry. But he was an evil scientist guy, but he looked

just like Ben Casey. And do we have the music? Because I know they just used the music. Yeah, yes. Here's the original theme song, which you can recognize when they arrive at the vet. There you go. Yeah, they didn't do a sound-alike,

so they just paid for it just to sell the parody. And the vet looks like Ben Casey, too. Yeah. Or the actor who played Ben Casey. A famously hairy man with large eyebrows. So they got it right. He was hairy by 60 standards. Was this dude a veterinarian in the show, or was he a people doctor on the show a people doctor oh got it he was basically robin williams harry if you look at his arms i gotta look closer there were 60 standards of

hairiness what's going on here i'm confused well i mean beards were uh seen as wrong then or just only thing for hippies to have guys men weren't in america weren't supposed to be shaved i'm basing this entirely on the one joke from planet of the apes where uh where heston's very excited to shave off his beard and then be clean cut again and then he asked the teen ape if he's like well you're gonna grow a beard he's like i don't go in for fads this guy uh on ben casey yeah i'm looking him up now vince edwards was the actor's name uh he has since passed away but uh yeah good little uh you know illustration of uh yeah this guy yeah it worked out uh he is quite here suit if i if i'm

using that word correctly i avoided using it look i only know it as a ten dollar word to sound smart you're right to avoid it uh but yes he's this guy is very dedicated to his animals uh he's trying very hard to save a hamster but then uh he just tossed i mean just the over the shoulder toss into the trash can pretty great pretty great i remember seeing that for the first time and i think at the time it was probably one of like the crassest jokes i'd seen in a cartoon and i just remember being totally taken aback like oh my god they could do that on this animated show i was i remember being totally blown away by this joke and none of the sound effects on the show are cans or library sound effects so they had to figure out what does a hamster sound like hitting a wall going through a basketball hoop

into a garbage can you know i'm gonna bet they got uh like a an uncooked pheasant and they hit it against the wall that that sounds like a similar pile of bones a chicken was too heavy sounding so i had to go with the lighter bird. Also, yes, I always think of Bob whenever there's a line about parrots on the show. They can't thank me. Well, the parrots can, but anyway. How often does your lovable bird say thank you, Bob? No thank you.

But he doesn't go to vets either because he's very healthy. The thing with birds, they're very social animals. So if they're sick, they hide it. So if they appear sick, it's too late. Oh, wow. That's sad. But he's been very healthy. They want to be so nice and just like not worry people or whatever. They don't want to be excluded from the flock.

Like, oh, you're sick. Get away from me. Oh, man. All those poor. These judgmental parents. Boy, they're cast out of the flock so easily. And you know what? This could all be solved in 2023 with a good GoFundMe, right?

Yes. Yeah, exactly. But instead, yeah, a twisted stomach is a real health risk for dogs, especially in larger breeds, which are actually bigger than a greyhound. A greyhound is not, I mean, it happens in greyhounds, not saying it doesn't. Though also, I got to say, I hate every time it's a malady, like a thing that makes animals sick, I hate Googling it because I know I'm going to probably see at least one sad picture of an animal with this problem.

But I learned about it for you listeners here. I looked it up. So yeah, it is one and only surgery can fix. Now, in some cases, you can fix it with a cheaper surgery, but it's likely to recur. If it happened once, it'll happen again. So if you're going to do it, you may as well go for the more invasive, expensive surgery that basically glues the stomach to the back of the dog so it can't move around to get twisted oh wow that's pretty wild stuff i would say also it's a wise investment if people don't know about it i don't

know how well known it is uh but pet insurance definitely the best like 86 a month i spend i did not know there was i i should have figured there was such a thing. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So then, you know, Homer and Marge wouldn't be on the hook here for $750. It is a very good choice of an amount of money. Like one that could be afforded, but if you pay it, especially in a paycheck-to-paycheck family like theirs, it actually can, like like fuck up your life and we found out in uh the the germans episode that ten thousand dollars could have changed their lives and this is basically ten percent of that so it's a substantial amount of money for the family oh yeah and i mean

too that that small amount of money changing their lives also leads to like another most like heartbreaking jokes in this episode, but, but I'll get to that later. But so yes, they, the family isn't so sure about how to handle this. Uh, as they leave,

we also see the second appearance of Mr. Teeny, uh, who is, uh, he, they, they just love a smoking monkey or chimp,

I should say. But, uh, Bart is wondering why they're leaving. $750. Oh dear. This is never an easy decision.. $750. Oh, dear. This is never an easy decision. It's an awful lot of money.

Well, I guess we'll have to talk it over. Talk what over? What's there to talk about? What are we going to talk over? Mr. Teeny needs a refill of his nicotine gum. I can't help but notice we're leaving the hospital. When's the dog going to get his operation? Uh, later.

First, I want to tell you about the most wonderful place in the world, Doggy Heaven. In Doggy Heaven, there's mountains of bones, and you can't turn around without sniffing another dog's butt. And all the best dogs are there. Old Yeller and about eight lassies. Is there a doggy hell? Well, of course.

There couldn't be a heaven if there weren't a hell. Who's in there? Oh, Hitler's dog and that dog Nixon had. What's his name? Chester. Checkers. Yeah, and one of the lassies is in there, too. The mean one.

The one that mauled Timmy. This old doggy heaven bit is great because bart it takes part of very long time to realize that homer talking about how great doggy heaven is is he is about santa's little helper you know the rainbow bridge mythology had not hit the mainstream yet it would have been so easy to explain it to this kid bart i think he was cute then. Yeah, he'd be fine. This is an amazing high wire act that they are doing with the writing here because it is so hard not to be totally heartbroken by Bart and what he's saying in the car, but it's interrupted by the Krusty and the Mr. Teeny needs his nicotine,

which is hysterical, just to think about a monkey having a smoking problem. That is really funny to me. And then on the other side of that of course it's the great of course there's a doggy hell hitler's dog you know checkers nixon like so you're not like totally devastated the whole time it's so amazing to just like sit back and think about how they balance that sometimes with with the jokes yeah i think it's also an extra gag that lisa homer doesn't know checkers but the eight-year-old lisa tells him it's checkers like obviously me as a kid i didn't know who checkers was same here yeah had to be

for my mom she explained it easily because uh you it was a huge deal in 1952. It was when Nixon was the presumptive nominee for vice president. And there were stories that he had misappropriated $18,000 of RNC money, which they would spend that on just flying one trophy wife to the RNC convention. That is nothing. and it was also at a time when calling out that hypocrisy because he's like i'm against graft in the elections or and then people say well didn't you spend this money he actually like was like oh my god i'm being called a hypocrite i have to buy television time to tell everybody I didn't steal money. And yes, it had a famous final line, and I got the clip here. Oh, good, good.

He went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white, spotted. And our little girl, Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. You know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog.

And I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're going to keep it. Ooh. Wow. He owned the liberal media here telling him to get rid of his dog. He's not going to do his dog while dangling his children in front of him like a human shield oh poor trish nixon it's kind of funny though i think between

i mean i think this episode was where i learned of checkers the dog and then i think there's a checkers joke somewhere in one of the uh on an episode of seinfeld too so it was like a weird pop culture thing you know still into the mid-90s talking about checkers the dog yeah i mean uh and then his presence on nixon's presence on futurama made a whole new generation aware when the mythology was well of course the worst president ever was nixon yes what a no question about it right what a nice time that was yeah they well and they wrote that right before w got elected and and then that even is like you know i still say i mean worst at being a president sure trump's

worst at doing the job and he's also a shitty but i i say w did more awful things than than trump did in his time look and it's just this is an argument about what piece of shit is a bigger piece of shit but i want to flush them both yeah it's it's so cute how bart is trying to comfort santa's little helper i mean just a sick dog even even a silly designed one like santa's little helper it's hard not to have a tug at your heartstrings and oh yeah it's so it's so cute the way Bart when he says like so you're just gonna let him die and when he says die he covers Santa's little helper's ears so he doesn't hear it it's so sweet it's a nice touch and there's also a great gag of Bart saying darn right I'm upset Bart watch your language the clip

from it which I think now that line is about about how we learned from John Vidi in our interview that they intentionally curbed Bart's casual swearing by season three because they had heard from friends that Bart was teaching their kids how to swear and their friends weren't liking it. That's incredible. But Homer decides he's going to do it because he just can't say no to that dumb manipulative dog uh with his eyes i mean yeah how do you actually look a dog in the eyes and say like nah i'm gonna kill you like i guess uh yeah i don't know that's a tough one i also

uh was surprised it wasn't a tough one for homer to say manipulative i think that was it's sort of uh it's a little bit of a pricey word for homer simpson i think i think that was it's sort of uh it's a little bit of a pricey word for homer simpson i think i think you can find the right word when he's angry enough it's true right oh yeah that's right we're getting close to like me and my trench into mouth yeah yeah that's true uh we have a cute little scene of homer asking birds for money which this also just feels like you know stuffing of like well we need an extra like minute well let's have burns let's have a little more burns he has a goon button mashing the security button yeah but no trapdoor button yet yeah i love i love how he the the way they animate him pausing

his finger over the button when homer compliments him and then he says my dog is very sick yeah no trapdoor and no tube. He hasn't invested yet in the infrastructure for that tube. And yeah, Homer is dragged away by Crusher and Loblo. Well, we'll see more of them. But Mr. Burns, I need to borrow some money. Please do go on. I know you're a good man.

And I have a dog that's very sick. Oh, please, continue. I thought maybe you... Oh. Well, thanks for your time. What makes a man endanger his job and, yes, even his life, by asking me for money? People like dogs, Mr. Burns. Nonsense. Dogs are idiots.

Think about it, Smithers. If I came into your house and started sniffing at your crotch and slobbering all over your face, what would you say? If you did it, sir. Exactly. You'd be fit to be tied. Dogs. Then we also have a new level of homosexuality from Smithers here.

As Burns described sniffing at your crotch and slobbering over your face, what would you say if you did it, sir? And I also love, it's great too how Burns says, exactly, you'd be fit to be tied.

A bit of a bondage joke, right? Yeah, I think so. I think so. He ends the scene just by saying, dogs. That's right, dogs. Which, he loves his hounds, right? Yeah.

You know, I guess he sees the hounds, not even his dogs, but as an extension of himself. Yeah. Yeah. It's killing machines that he loves. Not, not so much a dog. Then we cut to Homer thinking about doing it himself. There's something about the drawing of Homer with a smile on his face, reading a big book that says canine surgery.

That's such a funny picture. And Marge is saying, no. Just no. Yeah. When I was a kid, I gasped that this cutaway got me. I didn't realize they were cutting to Thanksgiving because they intentionally make it the dog colored flesh is the color of Santa's little helper. So the stuff flying everywhere for a second, I thought it was supposed to be. Is that the mislead?

Is that the mislead? It misled me. I'm not sure if it was the intentional mislead, but it did mislead me as a kid. They've parodied. So this is a parody of that Rockwell Thanksgiving painting. It's happened at least two times, one before this and one after this. One before this is when, I think in No Disgr no disgrace like home they're looking in at the families and one of them one family is very staged like that rockwell painting i think later in the series and homer loves flanders when homer

comes in through the window to eat their food eat their dinner i think it's staged like the rockwell painting yeah yeah oh wow just everyone getting completely covered in turkey. And the way that he is like hitting it like a sword, you know, just chopping at this thing and yell. It's so funny. With an electric knife. So it's like buzz sawing it and just flying everywhere. And also I like that it basically is the, it's like a reference the thanksgiving episode because everybody who's at the table is who was at bart versus thanksgiving like it's the the bouvier side on one side and and marge and the family on the other side like it's the same seating even and so homer says

maybe you're right and he again throws a new book in the fire uh there's there's a couple jokes in there the the obvious one is fahrenheit 451 is in there ha ha ha what a funny joke but the better joke is that bill cosby's fatherhood is in there yes obviously we all want to burn that book now uh but the but the internal continuity joke is even funnier uh because that was the fatherhood book homer was gifted in saturdays of thunder so the implication here is like homer's gifted in saturdays of thunder so the implication here is like homer's eventually went ah screw this and threw it away like he stopped caring about being a good father at some point and threw it in the fire burns for a long time

and uh so yes the family needs money lee uh marge just uh lets them know they're gonna have to change up the budget some uh it's also great that homer first thinks it's gonna be an insurance scam but and the way that he frames it too right he says what do you got marge insurance scam you know like they are just these like grifters on the run all the time or something i love it that's true yeah it's like they're bonnie and clyde like all right what you you got? Yep. Hey, another Warren Beatty movie. I know. You know, I've never seen that movie. Oh, it's good.

Yeah. You don't need me to tell you that. Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde. Now, I've seen Bunny and Clyde. Bunny and Clyde. Excuse me. I screwed up the joke even.

All right. You should remember their names. The girl is Bunny and Clyde is the guy. Right. It's a gender rewrite. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help

guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter.

Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. Okay, but this is Marge's new budget. I'm afraid we're just going to have to make a few sacrifices. Homer, you're going to have to give up beer for a while. Bart, from now on, you'll have to get your hair cut for free at Springfield Barber College. No problemo. I'm going to give up buying my weekly lottery ticket, and I found a way to stretch the food budget. Fried chicken night will now be organ meat night. Ham night will be spam night. And porkchop night will now be chub night. Chub? I don't even know what that is. Lisa, I'm afraid we'll have to stop getting you those volumes of Encyclopedia Generica from the grocery store.

But, Mom, next week is volume four, Copernicus through Elephantiasis. We all have to make sacrifices, dear. Maggie's baby clothes will have to last for a little longer. Marge, I've figured out an alternative to giving up my beer. Basically, we become a family of traveling acrobats. I don't think you've thought this through. The look of abject horror on the family's face after he suggests traveling acrobats is a great little

moment of animation there oh my god just jaws dropped they they can't like they it's it's new lows every second with homer so this was ripped from my personal headlines because at the time my mom was buying uh these these encyclopedias from the grocery store every week they would have a new volume and i guess they were maybe $2.99. They were like very cheap and to this day they have not been open since 1996 but they remain in our basement on a bookshelf. That's great.

I'd be sad if they were gone. If my parents pass away I'll be carrying them up the stairs. To the curb? Yes. No, yeah, for all the dumb things I bought, I never got those uh never got any encyclopedias i i loved at the library like school or other regular library going through those reference books and and learning history in the pre-internet world i did the um we had

what were they called like spyglass books or something. And each book was like a photo book that was like a specific topic. So it would be like boats or medieval armor or something. And it was literally just like a collage book almost, but they had like little blurbs about different items and locations and things like that. And I was obsessed with those.

And my grade school library had a bunch of them and like the local like Walden Books, rest in peace, would have them, you know, just like, you know, cars and space travel, just like these big kind of broad topics with really great photography in it. You know, the ones that I really was drawn to weren't just, I mean, look, was it fun to go through encyclopedias and just look up like, I don't know, the ones that I really was drawn to weren't just, I mean, look, was it fun to go through encyclopedias and just look up like, I don't know, bugs or, or then later as I learned clinical terms for genitalia, see what was in there. Sure. Yes.

But my favorite was that showed I was going to be a future podcaster was in like early middle school. I discovered these books that were basically like yearbooks for like news and entertainment for the year and i like you know i started with the year i was born 1982 but i just wanted to see like okay what was the highest grossing movie each year because it listed all of them and i was just like okay so that that was the highest grossing movie oh and then that like i i i just love learning all this information that you know again is is a google search away now you're reading the book version of vh1's i love the 80s that's right except mo

rocca wasn't there with his delightful comedy he's he had so many fun mo rock on the i love the 90s has a joke i never forget which is when they are talking about a lot of smores that's ironic and everybody all the other talking heads are dunking on it, like, well, describing how it's not. Some things in it aren't actually irony. Then Mo Rock said she had the last laugh on us all because by calling a song ironic that then has things in it that aren't ironic, it actually becomes an example of irony by having that i was like wow he's that uh i i'm not sure if that was the intention of the song but i like to think that and uh and yes chubb what is chubb chubb i know about chubb because i play animal crossing but chubb is a bait fish you're really not supposed to eat it but you can so it, very cheap. I don't think the grocery store sells chub.

I've never seen it shrink-wrapped. You're going to a bait shop for chub, I feel. It's chub and earthworms night, kids. Though there is another term for chub as well, I learned, which is the name of that. It's a colloquial term for basically, you know, those like tubes of Jimmyimmy jimmy dean sausage or similar cheap meat that have like the little crimp or clip on the end that's also

called chub but i i prefer to think it is the bait fish that they're eating okay yeah so it could be very processed meat or very cheap fish yeah yeah either one as a replacement for homer's beloved pork chops is sad. When I looked it up, I saw the Chub Fish, but yes, then I also went, I saw a listing for Wikipedia which described a chub or chub pack is a type of container formed by a tube of flexible packaging material. So that cheap tube meat. Also Encyclopedia Generica, a great, great name.

That's a great name. great yeah these were not high tier encyclopedias my mom was buying for 2.99 they're basically like a magazine series really uh they weren't even from the land of rand mcnally and also i like that maggie is like exploding out of her baby clothes because you know babies grow they they they do they go through clothes pretty quick they found a fun way because maggie can't expect express resentment they found a way for it to affect her so all the gags are just her exploding out of clothes uh and uh so they've decided they're gonna do it they take him uh saves a little bit of surgery as he's getting surgery they think that they're gonna

hear their results on him but it is instead a guy learning that his game cock is going to live but it'll never fight again he's like i'll show you he'll fight and he'll win which i didn't know what a game cock was this is so great because the point of fighting chickens is that they're disposable and they're going to die and you don't right no one would go to the trouble of surgery to save one so i i get it now that was on seinfeld little jerry they got too attached yes little jerry seinfeld also it's animal abuse arrest this man yes don't treat his animal and totally let him pay you we get to see a near-death experience for Santa's little helper. He's being called into the light. I love that God is saying, like, come here, boy.

Come here. Yes. It's sweet. That's a good boy. Into the light, boy. And then the doggy door joke at the pearly gates is amazing. It's great. And it also seems to imply that that's what also great, too.

Homer was lying about doggy heaven this entire time. And here we see his viewers like no it's real doggy heaven is a real place and says a little helper was gonna go there he was a christian everybody practicing you know he he's a christmas dog so that makes sense yeah there we go uh though i guess though he's he is santa's little helper he should be jesus's little helper hey saint nick right right but then again what does santa have the same letters as i'm about to go into a a whole uh church lady bit i'm gonna veer away from that but yes uh the ben casey guy resuscitates him and the whole family is happy and this also feels like such a swartz welder kind of dark realistic cynical joke

that like everybody's happy here and then they just say like two days later everybody's like this sucks like they they're all regretting uh the sacrifices they must make it's a really fun take because any other show at this time would have ended with he's okay we love him but in this show it's act two ends he's okay and everyone hates him because all of their lives were changed for the worst yes it also i don't know i was watching it through this time and i was like boy i am not happy with these simpsons right now it is so shitty what you are all doing your dog you are lucky enough to still have him remarkable recovery time from the surgery by the way i love that he bounds out of the the or totally fine um so yeah i don't know i was getting frustrated with them although

i love the gag of homer being envious of the dog food and marge just saying i don't think you want to eat that it's mostly snouts snout snouts is a great homerism yeah yeah you're right andrew uh his recovery time was so quick if your dog or cat gets surgery or gets you know fixed they are zooted out of their minds on whatever for hours and it's hilarious it's fun when your dog is high it's it's great take take videos and i mean for for slh especially i mean they didn't want to do dog cone jokes that will come later in the series uh as the lamp running away but but in this case uh like especially with stomach surgery the dog's gonna have to have a cone to not be biting at its uh stitches all day yeah yeah definitely but this is very inaccurate this cartoon um but yes the the family though is

very poor right now they're really feeling the the economic crunch i love this scene of when kent gets back this is another like my all-time favorite homer lines here yes i'm back kent brockman is not the kind of man who would leave a five hundred thousand dollar a year job just because he won a lottery hey Hey, I'm a journalist. Well, he's got all the money in the world, but there's one thing he can't buy. What's that? A dinosaur. Of course, I'm not the only one who benefited from last week's big payoff. Our state schools got their share, too. Here, lottery officials present Springfield Elementary with a brand new eraser. One eraser?

Oh, I'm used to my government betraying me. I was a nom. I surf for three... And speaking of lotteries, here are the winning numbers for this week's $40,000. Jackpot. 3, 6, 17, 18, 22, and 29. Oh, no! Those are

my numbers! If it wasn't for that dog, I would have won! Class, for tomorrow, I want you to write a report on Copernicus. No! That, uh, okay. First off, the way Homer says, a dinosaur, like he has to, because he's about to say, like, love,

but he's like, no, you can buy love with lots of money, it's easy. So he has to name an impossible thing to buy and uh this is the plot of jurassic park uh he's predicting here oh i guess yeah oh it's like it's it's very much a uh you know childish delivery it's definitely a thing a kid oh well i don't know a dinosaur you know you're right yeah he is a kid it's homer is a big kid when swartz welder writes him and in the previous episode we had the reveal that skinner was a nom right so they're really running with it now they're like yes a new angle on skinner this the second yeah in a in separate vocations andrew they that's why they have the line where skinner says like i saw some terrible things in nam but you have to question why he's he's doing that reaction to like uh somebody vandalizing the

school mascot and now that yeah okay but i love now that they have him like now turn it around of like he's an angry uh vietnam vet who's like disappointed in his government he's almost having like a rambo speech here really definitely it is it is the first the opening minutes of uh first blood yeah i guess though i suppose yeah when i say that i should say first blood not the other rambos that are like actually the problem with the vietnam war is that we didn't kill everyone in vietnam and now he's gonna fix that yeah you watch that 2008 movie and it's like here's some ways we could have won you're like oh boy that was the mistake of of uh yeah the rambo movies first blood is so different from the others very much so very very much so he's not riding alongside the taliban in that one the ultimate team up and because john swartzwelder is writing this i love these old

timey scenes he throws in because homer is dancing in a bar for money and they're making him sing not anything modern not even an oldie a song from 1844 uh either they love standards from that era or they really love it's a wonderful life when i hear that song

my first thought is it's a wonderful life yeah and i'm finding out now it's a minstrel song, though. Ooh. Well, okay. And let's just remember it being sung by Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart. Yeah. Oh, there's the great Mo gag where the guys are sort of like giving Homer trouble and throwing the quarters at him.

And he's like, hey, before that guy was singing for quarters, he was my best customer. That guy. Yeah. They mentioned on the commentary that guy in the for quarters, he was my best customer. Yeah, they mentioned on the commentary that guy in the script was called Sadistic Barfly. That was his official name. And I feel like in a few seasons, once Homer runs out to get his quarter, that's the joke, but I feel like a few seasons later

they would have a car accident noise or something like this. I love this shot too. It's such a great like this is the animators right here like it's this like tilted up shot of him running so it's like you know very it's such a uh a creative perspective to see homer running after that quarter as a kid it made me so sad and it's still uh obviously it this happened to a fictional character but that marge marge gets screwed worse than anybody because yeah because she didn't play her lotto

in one week one week after she doesn't win now i'm if they made it an amount like if it was a million dollars that would be like that would be too cruel they couldn't do that so forty thousand dollars is a painful amount of money to not win but it's not a million dollars and also you know she said she's gonna split it with her the gals at the the hair salon anyway so really it's more like she lost out on ten thousand dollars which again nobody wants to miss out on ten thousand dollars but uh it's an amount of money she can imagine yeah she can conceive of that much money and too that they're like they got ruined by 750 dollars and here they would have had the 40 000 to not even worry about that yeah

it's just sad it's totally cruel and and also we see uh maggie explode out of her clothes as well. And we see Bart get his hair cut by a different squeaky voice teen. But Mr. Laswell is a great manager name. I love that. Yes, definitely is. They always pick the great, just a name that sounds like he would be a manager at a Krusty Burger or a Barber College. I don't know how they are so good at pinpointing when a name works for a character like that to say it oh it's perfect Bill and Josh would tell us that that would be uh the one of those 4 a.m nights of like no that's not the that's not the perfect horrible

name Laszlo Panaflex we need we need another I think this is the first of maybe three. Mr. Blank, it happened again by a Spooky Boys team. Everybody's pissed at Santa's little helper. Again, even more so than the previous scene, Andrew, this was the one where you go like, man, the family's asking for it here. Just them all like this sad little dog. Not a little, but the sad dog who just wants to play. They all go just like, you know, Homer saying, I know you can understand me, but I hate you. Yes.

He can't understand you, Homer. That's the problem, man. He feels your vibes and you're making him feel sad. And now I feel sad. Yeah. But, you know, hey, they all learn their lesson. Lisa fairly lucky to find a book on the subject she needed to study at the bus station yeah yeah it's pretty lucky a third rate biography of copernicus what are they getting wrong also

i you know lisa it's it's an overnight essay you don't have to read a whole book in the second grade too like it's also a great i mean it's funny on its face just that she found the book at the bus station but also like when you think about it she definitely didn't just go to the bus station first so that is a laundry list of places she was looking for a copernicus biography yeah you're right yeah this is like her fifth trip to a different place. The family's going to bed. Now, as someone with a spouse, I have had these moments of like, oh, you mean tonight?

You say a little white lie like, well, did you take out the trash? Or, well, did you write that check or pay that bill? Like, yeah. Oh, you mean this month? I have written a check in my lifetime. to pay that bill? Like, yeah. Oh, you mean this month? No. I have written a check in my lifetime.

You know, I didn't really lie. We also see Maggie in her Crown Royal bag. Again, lost on me as a kid. I did not realize that fancier alcohols could appear in purple bags. Crown Royal is not fancy at all. And I question why it comes in a bag. That velvet bag tricked me into

thinking it's fancy. Yeah, it's like 30 bucks for a bottle. I don't know why it does. My parents would have that in stock in the dining room bar cart, so that one sadly was not lost on me. I assumed it was fancy until I started buying hard liquor, and I was like, oh, this is actually fairly cheap.

And it turns out to be what they mix every well drink with at bars the uh i mean the the bag is so fancy though it's got to be real velvet right i know this uh the crown royal bags actually came up recently and i was hanging out with a friend i hadn't seen in a bit part one of the subjects was how happy she was to not be with a former uh boyfriend and then all of a sudden another person at this at this grouping had a crown royal bag that they were using for like a raffle we were doing and when she saw it she's like oh no and we're like what and she's like uh my ex kept his crown raw it used the crown royal bag to keep his condoms. And this is a horrible, horrible reminder of this here. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. I assumed it would be that the weed went in there. No, it was condoms. Which also, look, I didn't want to dig more into this, but I was like, these were people in a five-year-long relationship. Why was he using condoms still? You guys should have a bigger plan, a better plan. Yeah.

I don't get it. But I didn't want to pry more. I'm just confused. Yeah. Well, that's why it didn't work out. Yeah, it did. It's like, well, with all the cheating I'm doing, I got to wear this condom. That should have been her tip off, I think.

Yeah. She's much happier now. She's much happier now. She's much happier now. Oh, that's all that matters. It was a funny joke now. But okay, so, but yes, everybody is passing the buck. They're not letting him out. And so, or they're not closing the gate

and Santa's little helper gets out. This is an important thing to catch here in most Santa's little helper scenes, though, that Reardon mentioned, Jim Reardon, the director, mentioned this on the commentary. A big rule for graining is that animals should not act like people they cannot emote like a person it's one of matt graining's biggest pet peeves uh in animation and so reardon is doing his best to stick with that while still having santa's little helper's face tell a story and like they're trying to keep it as blank as

possible so when he looks back it is so subtle how they have to make him look like a little sad without emoting too much it's it's probably i think a nice combination of i mean they do i think he is so nicely animated here i always love looking at santa's little helper but it is um yeah it's welker doing him here and you know Welker getting just the right whimpers you know like you know the whimpers you know when he's ill are different than other kinds of oh you're ignoring me and you're mad at me whimpers like we always joke around on on WHM you know with Welker and do this such a storied career golden toilet whole thing but he is totally deserving of it because like what you can just easily pass off as like guys just barking into a garbage can top like no he has a true art to

what he is doing and this episode does showcase a lot of that yeah welker sound effects here are doing so a lot of work he is worth every dollar bob uh did the investigative work on on seeing how that uh this the show literally stopped hiring frank welker to save money yes uh by season 13 right we're in the post welker world yes now now they just are like uh dan castellanet can just say bark what if jim cummings was a horse that would be kind of fun he's cheaper but we know he's winning the poo why was he cheaper than frank welker yeah he's honestly welker should be mad that that Jim Cummings is lowballing his bit, like underbidding him on these projects.

No, Frank Welker is such an undervalued thing. We're going to miss him when he retires at some point. He's not just Freddy on Scooby-Doo for 50 years. He's also... Every time you thought you heard a a monkey a parrot a lion a dog anything make a noise it's like no that was just Frank Welker that they didn't make it his total genius Mark Evanier the the comic and cartoon writer he had this great point about and he's done a ton of voice casting and voice directing he says that you

audition a hundred people and then you hire frank welker like that's that's how it goes over and over again but yes it's the next morning uh the family realizes he's gone homer thinks that uh he sees him but he's like oh wait that no that's just a horse i I love that. A horse is just walking down the street for some reason. Here, boy. Here, said his little helper. Oh,

it's all my fault. I called him a dumb dog. Oh, he's gone and he's never coming back. Wait, there he is. No, that's a horse.

And you know, this Peter and the wolf thing, it's, it's very well executed, but it feels to me like the show trying to prove something. You know, it feels to me like they're saying we're not just lowbrow, you know, jokes about cursing and sex and violence. Look at this nice little thing we put together for you. That's what it feels like to me, at least. Yeah, I mean, it seems intentionally pastoral to reference, like, well, you know, we could do Bambi. We can do that.

We can just have this long. And I love seeing Sam's Little Helper go on this many adventures, basically from all these famous stories of dogs or from movies. Like, the dog and the bear fight is amazing. Yes. It's all done. It reminds me, i was just watching all mystery science theaters uh for first time in a while and prince of space has the opening sketch

of crow and tom servo acting out dog and bear and basically describing this kind of fight and it's such a i uh that's a great sketch he saves a baby from a burning building, just like Jose Canseco. And also he stops for a second to eat a bug. That's a cute little moment. And speaking of Frank Welker, on the commentary, Al Jean says, oh, also Frank Welker has this trick that he does of like, he can do a dog and a cat fighting at the same time. They just do it in the episode. Like you get to hear it over when the dot chases another dot. That's him just doing

his party trick it feels like they wrote that in because they knew he could do it he does a great job definitely and then uh he hitches a ride on the michael jackson expressway yeah later we named the matlock expressway let's say it happened after 1993 we'll let you figure out why yeah it was it was part of sideshow bob roberts's uh big plan but yeah you're right oh right the mayoral campaign of course and it was before that the dalai lama express right right also you can see that on the map it says this is swartzwelder county uh which hardly has stuck in the show but bill and josh being the first simpsons nerds to write for the show when they their first episode in charge home sweet home diddly dum and doodly when they go

to the courthouse it is the county courthouse and there's a statue of swartz welder out front that's right is he holding the scales of justice or something or i forget what he's doing he has he's riding a horse and he has on like the uh the world war one german pointed helmet okay that's what i'm thinking that's right also that van it's uh that van of the dog catcher has a lot of tell tale stains on it that uh that make me sad and so yes the meanwhile the family is trying to figure out how to put up the right signs to fight him and we just have uh pictures of homer hurting the dog which this again feels like a graining thing the graining really doesn't like animal violence and i think the deal was that that's why santa's

little helper gets to bite back or punch homer impossibly in another picture i love this gag because it's so funny to me from the the angle of like why would you be taking pictures of those things it's so perfect like why presumably marge are you taking a picture of homer kicking the dog in the ass you know i mean i guess boxing like a kangaroo you want to document that but otherwise the timing of those you know pictures being taken is so great it's also great that when you see their photo of their lost dog photo they finally did pick it's homer right before like sans little helper is about to be strangled but technically it's he's not being heard in the picture yeah so then we we cut to burns his home and uh we get a rare burns and ned fl interaction. So recycling is our way of giving Mother Earth a great big hug.

Yes, well, it does sound like fun. I can't wait to start pawing through my garbage like some starving raccoon. Release the hounds. Well, neighbor, I see you've got your running shoes on. That's a good thing. Ah! Ah! running shoes on. That's a good thing. What's wrong with Krippler?

He's getting on, sir. He's been here since the late 60s. Ah, yes. I'll never forget the day he bagged his first hippie. That young man didn't think it was too groovy. I'm looking for something in an attack dog, one who likes the sweet, gamey tang of human flesh. Why, here's the fellow. Wiry, fast, firm, proud buttocks.

Reminds me of me. So Burns knows what human flesh tastes like. Yes, he certainly does. he's hunted men for sports uh so yeah i i really think that that is exactly what schwarzwelder thinks uh recycling is like that that is his legitimate belief uh in five years burns can't even say recycling he doesn't say it here recycling you're right it didn't register now it seems crazy crippler this dog uh he should be at least 23 if you think about it because 92 maybe he was around in 68 as a puppy this is breaking news folks because the world's oldest dog has just

been discovered uh guinness record holder boby b-o-b-i the dog is 30 years old. Three zero years old. Holy crap. This has been verified by the Guinness Organization. A fine organization. I don't know if they found out what kind of dog it is. It's like a Portuguese farm dog. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Got it. Like a brown farm dog. Yeah. And Bob, you shared with me the NPR reporting on it. And yeah, when I saw the other interesting thing with Jby is that like he was like the runt of his litter and apparently uh his he was buried alive with uh as a puppy i was just like well this puppy like throw it out i think the story was uh well where wherever they were in the world at this time it's like oh the dog had puppies uh bury them alive because we can't take care of the puppies but boby was hidden because boby was so small so when they got back after burying you know little puppies they're like oh there's one left we can't bury another one you're the one with the

mood so it was worse than you thought henry wow man yeah oh that's so it survived being buried this is like uh the uh like the the non-kill bill. Like, never buried alive, but still live to spite everyone. Totally. Well, if it was the other way, and Bobi was the one that was buried alive for being the runt of the litter, and then dug itself out of the grave, I mean, no wonder it's 30. That's a pet cemetery dog. It's been dead the whole time. You know, also in the videos of him, seems a lot more uh active than crippler it

gets around pretty good for 30 i mean 30 years that's that is an incredible age for a dog yeah uh also noteworthy in this scene is that in a reference to the previous santa's little helper episode bark's dog gets an f ned is wearing his assassins sneakers here oh right yes because the dog tears those up in the he tears up homers uh but homer is jealous of ned so yeah that's right yeah so in burns it was uh i think it was reared in who wanted to do that he's like oh since the script says burns can see he's wearing running shoes he's like well let's just put him in the assassins then let's let's go all the way. That's so funny.

I love, you know, got to appreciate the dog pound guy coming into work when he was clearly so ill that his entire body was green. He has hepatitis. Yeah, he looks like a Martian or something. Yeah, no, I like too that it makes sense that burns is so cheap that his new guard dog he's going to adopt he's not going to from the pound he's not getting a fancy killer dog from a kennel no no and then burns is slim like a greyhound he's both have visible rib cages so now but the proud buttocks saying, I don't see that on Burt. We know he has a bony old behind.

That's right. And he's proud of it, too. Then get some more continuity as the family's putting up the Lost Dog posters. They're covering up the missing Seymour Skinner poster from Bart the Murderer. I think this episode has the most callbacks to a previous one, with the episode not being about that. Because we have callbacks to Bart the Murderer, Saturdays of Thunder bart's dog gets an f uh there's got to be one more the goons burns calls into the room is the one who is going to beat homer up in blood feud as well uh maybe i mean those are just recurring characters but at least three callbacks which is not a common

thing for this show especially now and so burns is starting to train him he's very hands-on with training his killer hounds uh and that i i love smithereen his girl scout outfit and and the way burn says if that was a real if that were a real girl scout i would have been bothered by now which burns equates to being killed like he's it's phrased like i would be dead i would have been killed by now but I would have been bothered. We have a fun cut to Barney's apartment, which... Now, as an attack dog, you'll be expected to neutralize intruders. Want to buy some cookies? Want to buy some cookies? If that were a real Girl Scout, I'd have been bothered by now.

I know how you feel. I lost my dog, too. He's in here somewhere. This completes a story we'd heard before. When we'd seen Barney's apartment in another episode, the director of that episode, Jim Rich Moore, said he based it on another animator's apartment in their 20s. Jim Reardon on the commentary is like, okay, it's my apartment my apartment okay this is what

it was their apartment they live together right yeah yeah and he he even says like i don't think he says it was that messy but he does say like yeah we had the we had the that the table the coffee table that was like a cable spool they had that oh my god that sounds unpleasant and the barney's lost dog must just be eating garbage all around him and can't get free i like the mournful dog noise you hear coming from somewhere in the scene mournful and muffled yes it is clearly under something there's the great uh visual gag of homer proudly putting up the last sign ah that's that and then it's the building being demolished oh that's great and great animation of the implosion too it's really well done then we have a little moment of uh of burns

has to set it up with our adr saying why he's showing this video to him and again as a kid they didn't know Clockwork Orange this seemed insane and horrible animal cruelty if you don't know the reference yes big time but yes it's the Ludovico technique from Clockwork Orange right down even to playing uh some Beethoven music over it and uh yeah flew right over my head as a kid. I've said it before. The reason I watched movies like Clockwork Orange in my teens was because I was sick of not getting references on The Simpsons. So I was like, well, I got to watch this. I got to watch Godfather. I got to watch it.

Yeah, yeah. I watched The Natural for this show. I didn't need to. Oh, wow. That is commitment. And recently, too. Yeah, it really does suck. Everyone, my job is so hard.

Is there a, maybe you guys can solve this riddle because i was thinking about yeah like fairly confident this is the first place i ever saw a clockwork reference and then you know bart being alex for halloween like we mentioned is there a clockwork similar to this santa's little helper sequence with the eyeballs um is there a reference to that in Tiny Toons somewhere? Yes, Andrew. I was thinking of that. Where else have I seen this as a kid before I knew what it was? And I think it was either Tiny Toons or Animaniacs.

Something from that world of shows. Yes. All right. Okay. Yeah. I think Montana Max does it to somebody. Yeah. Oh, okay.

He makes someone watch Ishtar probably given the time period uh well i mean tiny tunes they did an entire a full episode long parody of sunset boulevard that was completely lost on me as a kid i love that show uh and yes yes, in the clips that they're playing includes Lyndon B. Johnson holding up a dog by its ears. Bob went already into the history of this a ton in our most recent King of the Hill episode we covered. Yes, LBJ holding the dog up by its ears for a photo op. The dog's name was Him. H-I-M. Yeah.

Oh, and by the way, Andrew, and all our listeners out there, if you want to see Tiny Toons make a Clockwork Orange reference, why look up the cartoon Slaughterhouse Jive in which Montana Max makes a character watch the film How to Make a Hamburger. Right. There we go. Thank you. Yeah, it's the cow is describing what's going to happen to him when it's killed. That's right. Man, that was some anti-meat propaganda in this kid's cartoon thank you oh man that's uh that was gonna drive me crazy and kurt vonnegut reference too nice bart's hair has grown back by the time we head back to the family so some time has passed of the of sans little helper being gone how we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hope at electric island.ie i love that homer cries hardest when he sees the pee stain and we took a whiz on the rug

and the whole family is giving up hope poor sannis little. I'm starting to think we'll never see him again. That was his dish, and that was his leash, and that's where he took a whiz on the rug. Homer, get a hold of yourself. Even if he has passed on, there's no reason to cry. Remember, doggy heaven? Oh, Marge, there is no such place or to put it another way there is i'm not giving up i don't care if i have to knock on every door in this two-bit town

i'm gonna find my dog and i'll be right here watching tv okay so that scene is interesting because that is completely tacked on i think the scene humor wise is so much funnier if it ends with homer saying like or to put it another way there is but clearly there was a feeling that the stakes are not properly addressed so they needed to have bart explain that he's not giving up and so they reuse the scene the scene is bart pointing at himself is from dancing homer when when he's telling the family he doesn't want to move. When Homer's like, oh, we're going to move to Capital City. And Bart's going like, I can't leave this town.

And Homer's reaction, though, is harder to pin down. I think honestly, it looks like it's from the next Treehouse of Horror, but that just wouldn't work with the production timeline. Any any shot of him watching TV because he's like kind of sitting up like looking at something on the tv so i don't know what it is but but they're both stolen from other episodes my first thought was saturday's a thunder but in the opening when he's watching the tv though he has on his uh undershirt so it couldn't be that but uh yes but it would have been funnier if they just ended with uh or put another way there is cut to the next definitely i love uh castellaneta's performance here because the way that he it's not like a marge you and i both know there is no doggy heaven the way that he says there is like as if he thinks marge thinks there is and he's breaking the news to her god damn it that is such a smart

delivery of of that line oh it makes it funnier that homer not only is so stupid but he also he is dumb he's also kind of condescendingly assuming he fooled marge along with the kids that makes yeah you're right it makes it even better i also with the reusing of that animation it leads to like a great rant on the commentary like draining is hot on this commentary yeah i think al jean said oh we like to do it i don't think you can tell that we reuse the animation and matt says oh i can tell i hate it i hate it when they do this we can tell you andrew these showrunners they like doing this a lot and we'll do it a lot in season four, reusing old animation to either make new jokes or to clarify something about the plot.

And it was harder to tell on an SDTV, but now it's easy to see how the video effects are sort of rock and rolling the animation and moving the mouths around. So I could see at the time how they thought they could get away with it, but we fooled them. And then Gene and reese do it even worse in the critic the critic is a big offender of that yeah i think in the critic i've actually noticed that a bunch um maybe because it's a more contained amount of episodes

that i've watched just as obsessively as the simpsons uh it's it's funny too uh graining calls out specifically the fox network saturday morning for using clips without being asked. And I found the thing that he's talking about, too. It was recently very helpfully uploaded. I'd never seen this before. So in my memory, this happened earlier in the 90s. But this was actually done in 1996, in the fall of 1996 on fox's saturday morning to promote two children the season eight premiere you only move twice uh bart hosts the morning and i i have a little clip

of it here only one more week until my master plan to take over fox kids is up and running next saturday morning fox is going to do things the bart simpson way see right now i'm redirecting the fox satellite here to springfield where i will be able to control all the tvs in america to make my very own fox kids broadcasting network whoa it's an awesome responsibility really i guess i could use my newfound power to work towards world peace or i could show simpsons clips including a special sneak peek at the season premiere well i think so yes i i would think though my one thought is that if that pissed off graining so much he couldn't have been happy that nancy cartwright then went whole hog and he was like yeah i'll record like an hour of new stuff as part for

this commercial like she clearly was cool with doing it and so what was it was it like he he would host the interstitials on the saturday morning is that what this was advertising yeah there was an era in which some of their late night cartoon friends would come on saturday mornings to do bumpers and the king of the hill ones are great there's a great king of the hill one where hank hill is talking to the silver surfer okay all right that's you just sort of kick something that's where that comes from yeah okay interesting all right it seemed like mike judge is more uh ready to have fun with them than matt graining did not agree to that but yes if you look up fox bart casting and you can see a uh basically like 10 minute long video of all of the clips uh they did and yeah i mean it's not very well done

clipping together of things to have bart say words but we should call this bart casting so many years into this it uh now you know let's do it if another patent troll squats on podcasting we can just say no no we've been bart casting this entire time there you go perfect come on uh and uh then we cut to santa's little helper he has completed his training the first person shot of him mauling burns is great what a great shot oh yeah especially though it is like full-on animal abuse like his little like he's punching a dog in the in the face in the soft nose yeah yep And then, like, the way they draw Santa's a little helper here, too, where it's like, he doesn't have a black eye, but there's just, like, some purple lining.

You know, he looks like they do a good job at making one of the most innocent dogs in television history look legitimately menacing. And we have one more scene of rich Kent Brockman here. Hello, I'm Kent Brockman. Excuse me, sir. I lost my dog. And I suppose you want me to buy you a new one.

You know, ever since I won the lottery, everybody wants a piece of Kent Brockman. Homeless, this and hungry, that. Gee, I'm sorry, mister. Sir, your llama just bit Ted Kennedy. Good. I hate to interrupt your longevity treatment, sir, but there's a sweet little boy at the door. Release the hounds. Santa's little helper it's you and so uh yeah again I feel like him complaining about homeless this and hungry that I think that Schwarzwalder uh his real feelings on charity yes uh what about this llama thing Henry you

were teasing it I've I've got some dirt about this hyperbaric oxygen chamber here yes uh both of these rich guy things it turns out is michael jackson bob bob finding the one led me to look up the other so this bit about the llama biting ted kennedy uh is inspired by a real thing with michael jackson the michael jackson did have llamas as pets he had had a lot of them on on his ranch uh they didn't bite ted kennedy but what they did do was annoy freddie mercury uh of queen this was a story i'd never heard before this which is that in the mid 80s um right before thriller freddie mercury wants to record for a solo album a few songs with michael jackson it's kind of like a trading songs

kind of thing and uh this is told by uh queen's manager posthumously after after freddie mercury passes away they have a falling out and they don't release the songs together and one of the reasons was is that freddie mercury just thought he was too weird especially bringing llamas to recordings to studios to to quote the manager he said that freddie mercury said to him can you get me out of here i'm recording with a llama was that part of that freddie mercury movie they made with uh mr robot you know i don't know if that llama bit was i didn't see that movie. It made me too sad. I don't recall any llamas in that terrible movie. They had to make room for hearing about the lives of all the people who aren't Freddie Mercury in the band, who are very boring people and I don't care about. This oxygen chamber, though.

So if you look at the image of Burns in it, it is a direct parody of the once famous images of michael jackson in a chamber that's very similar and the story behind that is he may have used a chamber like that to recover from burns he sustained while filming a pepsi commercial that used to be a famous story about him it actually happened pyrotechnics caused a fire and it hurt him and he might have used this sort of device to help heal himself at a hospital but as a little joke because we all know he's got a great sense of humor that michael jackson funny guy funny guy he uh got pictures of himself taken in the chamber and leaked them to the press to promote captain eo that was his idea wow okay even if it was bad publicity it was still like people are talking about me and what a weirdo i am and you know it's it's michael jackson he's in the news so that's why he did it he eventually If it was bad publicity, it was still like people are talking about me and what a weirdo I am.

And it's Michael Jackson. He's in the news. So that's why he did it. He eventually purchased one for his own use. But people that know him claims that he didn't really use it because using it too much is actually dangerous. Oh, okay. So he used it as a joke at first and then unironically he's like, you know what? I kind of want one of these though.

And that's where we get the joke with Homer, the tent that gives him sexual powers or whatever, that's the Michael Jackson in the chamber thing. That's only half true. That funny kidder Michael Jackson. Oh yes, if you want to find the song he did with

Freddie Mercury, it actually did get released in 2012 after both were dead. Weird. It's called There Must Be More to Life Than This, which, again, I didn't know about this song. There was a version of it Freddie Mercury put out by himself, but they released the version in 2012. Brian May actually is quoted as saying that there's there's three songs they did together but the Jackson estate apparently he had described it as walking through a river of glue to try to deal with the Jackson estate and he said the best they could get was this one song released so and also finally in breaking news that chamber was recovered in 2019 it was found the Michael

Jackson chamber they should tour it around the country climb in climb in do it was found the michael jackson chamber they should tour it around the country climb in if you can afford it i mean if i could afford it i'd probably buy a personal back to tank to keep at my house like that's what this sounds like uh you could be the most boring parts of that book of boba fett show oh my god you mean like 45% of the first season? Back to tank footage? Good Lord, what an awful endeavor. And so, yes, Bart is reunited with them. Yes, also too, that Burns doesn't, it takes one second for Burns to hear there's a cute boy outside that he's like, release sounds, release sounds, like just cuts right, doesn't even open his eyes. And so Bart is about to be murdered by his own dog. Also, actually, here's the callback. Another callback in here to continuity. Remember in the thing, Bart versus Thanksgiving, Bart is being chased by the hounds and he

has to find his way through a hedge wall and jump through it. He's doing the same thing here, but now he's stuck in a concrete wall and he can't get through it as before. So this is kind of a sequel scene here too. Yeah, I call that a reference. And he has Sandsville helpers jumping at him and mid-lunge at his jugular, he has flashbacks and he realizes how much he loves Bart.

I don't know if this is a bit of a meta joke. I'm always trying to figure this out. We see this flashback, this montage. I think part of the joke is, oh, we actually don't have enough clips is a bit of a meta joke i'm always trying to figure this out we see this flashback this montage i think part of the joke is oh we actually don't have enough clips of them having fun together because they have to make up a new clip of them you know getting pictures in a photo booth i guess but they keep reusing the same clips over and over so it's either a meta joke on how they don't have many clips yet or that slh is just a dumb dog that can't remember a lot so read it how you want andrew do you have any thoughts on this one i totally read it as yeah this is only season three we don't have a ton

with this dog you know i could see it going the other way too but i think it is kind of a little little navel gazing uh gag you know bob since you uh i think it is an intentional thing that because they double up a bunch of clips which i feel like rubs in the fact that like, yeah, we got to show some clips twice because there's only so many. The Frisbee will hit his head three times at least. And so he lands on Barden and starts giving him affectionate little kisses. It's very cute.

And then he also uses his new killer instinct to good use to scare away the other hounds it's it's great i mean a pack of rottweilers would rip apart a greyhound like but he's he's that just that scary but uh but yes we have one last scene here a happy ending with a lot of petting let me pet him again you already petted him for 10 minutes i know i want to pet him again. You already petted him for 10 minutes. I know. I want to pet him again. You can pet the cat. The cat? What's the point?

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Good, good. that cat was so ready snowball too i love the posing the posing of like it is a very real cat thing of like putting the tail and the butt up to be like yeah yeah give it a pat what's the point what's the point i love on the shot of homer saying what's the point the cat is on this like green chair that's next to the television which isn't always there i love a good mystery furniture piece that just exists for one joke yeah yeah and yeah everybody is so happy to pet santa's little helper they've all learned their lessons it's funny twice in the episode they're like oh they have to learn twice to not take santa's little helper for granted not just once twice uh and yes we get one last gag of no dogs were harmed in the filming of this episode a cat got sick and somebody shot a duck but that's it so i don't approve of that

bird violence hey you know what i never play this jingle anymore but it deserves it here everybody hates birds right yes the episode ends with the death of a bird off screen yes which i think that too is there they talk a lot about how in season three they kept asking themselves do we end with something sweet or do we do a joke i think this is the the other side of the coin where in separate vocations they decided no let's have a sweet ending bart listens to lisa playing the sax this time they're like and let's have one more joke a cat's got a puke a duck's gotta die the end stay tuned for martin martin would be next i think yeah i think so yeah it is that nice melding again though because what you're hearing you know the text is the joke and then what you're hearing is still just the sweet affection of the

family as they cut to outside the house and you just hear them being happy with their so it's oh man the way that they are so they make this shit look so easy and i know it is anything but uh so another great episode that i was happy to be on oh yeah i love this one yeah this one uh it makes me resent uh bart's dog it's enough number one because uh it doesn't do it for me. I'm always thinking of, well, Dog of Death is funnier and Dog of Death has burns and Dog of Death doesn't have this Tracy Ullman character I find unappealing. But yeah, in a vacuum by itself, it's a very strong story. There aren't a lot of stories about the dog itself because they're hard to do.

Even in the one about SLH goes away and Laddie comes in. SLH is off screen for most of the episode. It's not really about him, even though it's an SLH episode. So I feel like this could be the strongest one about the dog. And I'm going to go with that. Yeah, I think so, too. You know, they did do they've done some actually more with him in the last couple of years on the show. Yeah, yeah. With like him, him meeting his mom also uh his one of his original like owners

which is played by kate blanchett i believe like it's wow yeah but uh but yeah no this this is such a classic too because the entire first act of the lottery is just an amazing act one it is a real act one off ramp into then at the end of it, they're like, okay, now the dog's sick. Let's talk about it. But I just love, and I mean, like I said, the biggest man in the world covered in 14 karat gold. One of the best moments in the entire series to me.

Like, I love it so much. And one of us will get that art before we die. Hanging in one of our homes. It might tear us apart. Oh God, right. Yeah. Whoever doesn't get it is going to, will be too jealous. before we die hanging in one of our homes it might tear us apart oh god right yeah whoever doesn't get it is gonna we'll be too jealous uh thanks for joining us so much andrew uh we love we hate movies please let us know where to find you online and what's coming up for we hate movies this episode's going live towards the end of february maybe you can tease some march things

if you're able to yeah absolutely so uh new episodes of we hate movies every tuesday wherever you get your podcasts or you can go direct to the source at whmpodcast.com and then we have a patreon which you know we do a bunch of side shows on stuff about star trek star wars animation stuff that's patreon.com slash we hate movies and our newest endeavor is bulking up our youtube channel trying to have more of a presence there youtube..com slash wehatemovies. We do a weekly show every Monday at noon Eastern where we live stream box office grosses from the previous weekend. We talk about new trailers, you know, stuff we've seen.

So that's another thing that we just started a couple of weeks ago. But yeah, so it's been busy, but fun. And as far as what we have coming up, March will be our listener request month. That's where folks call in and tell us what to watch. And so we're actually, from the point we're recording this, in a few days, a week from today actually,

we'll be doing a live drawing on our live Monday show. So I don't yet know what I'm going to be watching and talking about for the month of March. But I can say this, the month after that, we're doing We Hate Movies Presents April, where we'll be talking monkey and primate related movies.

Even though it's April, there will be various, you know, stages of creatures like that. So I think the only one we have pinned down, Dunstan checks in. You can expect an episode on that and a We Love Movies episode on our patreon for the 68 planet of the

apes funny enough talking about planet of the apes earlier oh that's awesome yeah a bunch of what's going on yeah and I do want to say since the last time we recorded Andrew I saw you guys live and I have to tell our audience if you get a chance to if they're if they're in town please see we hit movies live you'll have a great time and I also hung out with all you guys

and you're all perfect gentlemen no one tried anything and i respect that yes yes no one got handsy it was awesome uh hanging out with you nina it was really really cool uh that was in denver um yeah we are hoping to have some spring dates confirmed uh hopefully by the time this airs so you can always find that information uh again on our website whmpodcast.com thank you so much Andrew thanks for having me back guys I love coming on this is great you guys rule thank you you rule

thanks so much to Andrew Dupin for being on the show please check out the podcast we hate movies we love it so much but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up for five bucks a month. You'll get just that, but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall.

There's over 100 full-length miniseries episodes covering things like Futurama, King of the Hill, Batman the Animated Series, Mission Hill, and The Critic. And if you're at that $5 level, you also get monthly access to Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill. Those are both monthly series exclusively for patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And we have a $10 level too. If you sign up for that, you get access to all of the $5 stuff, but also access to one extremely long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob is talking about the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, our premium podcast experience at the $10 level. You get all the $5 things Bob just mentioned.

And then each month you get to hear us talk about an animated feature film, crazy in depth, just like we do in Episode of the Simpsons, which often means we talk for over five hours, sometimes even over six, about an animated feature film. This month you're going to get to hear us talk about the first ever Batman Superman movie, world's finest their first meeting in the dc animated universe the month before that we covered the 1941 the disney classic dumbo and there's a huge back catalog of over 50 episodes of what a cartoon movie you could listen to everything from akira to a goofy movie beavis and butthead do the universe to spider-man into the spider-verse shrek south park all of it you can hear it for yourself

if you head over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up today and as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast by the way is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month henry how about you you can find me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm always tweeting up a storm there and also you should follow the official twitter account of this podcast at talk simpsons pod as well as following at talk simpsons pod on instagram if you want to stay up to date what's going on with new episodes on Patreon or say photos from our cool live show that we did

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But it'll be okay. We'll get him a new dog. One with an untwistable stomach. Oh, come on! I'm sorry, but we just can't afford it. All right, make him stop. All right, all right, we'll find a way. Lousy, manipulative dog.