Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Dude, Where's My Ranch With Nina Matsumoto

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

We welcome back the award-winning artist (and our good friend) Nina Matsumoto for an ep about horses and novelty songs! After some unseasonable Christmas talk, we dig into a tale of how David Byrne helps drive the family to vacation with Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Will we play the "Take that, Lisa's beliefs" jingle? Listen now to find out (but the answer is "yes")! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, an emporium of woe. I'm one of your hosts, the Yusta Police Deputy, Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Lover of delightfully cruel hate songs, Henry Gilbert. And who is our special guest on the line? Hater of Dancing Maggie, Nina Matsumoto.

And this week's episode is Dude, Where's My Ranch? Look at those stupid city slickers with their fur coats and pointy hats. Oh my, those are elk. I still hate them. Go back to growth point. This episode originally aired on April 27th, 2003, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby. Identity tops the box office. iTunes Music Store is introduced to the world by steve jobs and the

final episode of clone high airs on mtv i was not in theaters i was not viewing identity uh was anyone watching identity i didn't see it even though i was watching movies around this time no me neither i didn't see it uh i i also always get it mixed up with i think it's called like room 13 or something it's the the stephen king john cusack movie where he's like a writer who goes crazy in a hotel room and identity sounds like that's the type of movie where a guy like sees a bunch of ghosts and goes crazy but it's uh apparently a an adaptation of agatha christie's and then there were none so is it just a straight up adaptation or is it just loosely based on it?

I think it modernizes it. It's not like one of the Kenneth Branagh Hercule Poirot movies or however that's pronounced. So then why not just call it the title of the book? Because identity just sounds like it could be anything. Now the studio

maybe they thought thought oh we need a copyrightable version of this instead of like because i gotta think there had to be like at least three and then there were none movies by that point uh i'm telling you guys there's a big shift in the adaptation in which uh reverse chronology is used and also a parallel story is taking place at the same time so they're juicing things up well maybe we should watch it at some point bob i'm adding it to my letterboxd watch list now i will do that as well sounds like james mangold saw memento and wanted a piece of that action oh he did uh logan yes and and the wolverine well and to a lesser extent, that new Indiana Jones movie,

Dial of Destiny. He also did that. Did you see that? Yeah, you know, it could have been worse, I guess. But he's 79. Let him rest. It's just sad. And the ending, oh, man, that ending sucks.

Like, the last 30 minutes, boo. Somebody had to direct it. You know, James Mangold directed Girl Interrupted, and I loved that film. It seems like he's done a lot of good movies. I even liked The Wolverine, which is the second standalone Wolverine movie.

I guess that's why they gave Logan to him, even though it's a totally different kind of movie. That's it. I do like The Wolverine 2. Probably the best we could hope for

with an adaptation of The Silver Samurai in a superhero movie yeah i've been showing bob uh the x-men movies uh starting with the the first two brian singer ones and i'm thinking of skipping three uh maybe watch it for fun and maybe skip the the two the first two standalone wolverine movies um and then just go straight to Logan. Although, like I said, I don't mind the second one. I think it's kind of fun. You know, I like the second one as well

because the character of Wolverine in the 80s was written to be a big Japanophile. He's a total weeb. He really is, yeah. So they take that into this movie. It's so weird. I've seen other ones where like,

oh yeah, Logan of course knows how to speak Japanese japanese but in that one i think he doesn't i think uh he it's like wait how does he have this history in japan and never learned to speak japanese the character of logan uh in the wolverine yeah the wolverine yeah i don't remember him speaking any japanese maybe they tried to get hugh jackman to speak and he just couldn't do it. Oh, yeah, that reminds me. Whenever we saw Australians in Japan and they were saying Japanese things with Australian accents and a few times I heard, Yeah, that's probably what Hugh Jackman sounded like. Though I didn't see Identity in theaters because I instead saw the MTV Films movie,

The Real Cancun, their attempt at making a real world style movie that released in theaters. So you saw this in theaters? I saw the credits rolling as I cleaned up the theaters. Okay, I thought you said you saw it in theaters and I was concerned. How do you even do a theatrical version of the real world uh it should have been a version of like the you know reunion episodes and just film people you already know but instead they're like they they just hung around with a bunch of uh sexy college students during spring break and filmed them having debaucherous fun and then called it a movie and they they tried to sell it

as like oh it's the i also remember after i left working in the video store i worked at the move at uh sorry i worked the video store after leaving the movie theater and i definitely remember putting on the shelf the unrated real cancun dvd for for rental as well which low point in mtv i'd say what a what a time though like that's how big reality tv was They could do theatrical versions of it. Imagine if Love is Blind had a theatrical release. You know, I'm sure all of these things were spawned by just how many copies that Jerry Springer Too Hot for TV VHS sold. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And as well, the Girls Gone Wild films. All of those films. You know, those classic films. Yes. I'm a scholar of the girls' collection. I'll wait for them to go on the Criterion channel. Yeah. Hey, they put like Freddy Got Fingered on there.

That's true. Barb Wire. Showgirls. In like 10 years, we're going to be seeing Girls Gone Wild pop up. If some of that footage is not evidence, let's say. Oh, that's true, actually. I guess they probably all are just... Can you tell what is illegal or not in that?

Criterion is going to need to see all those releases. And yes, the iTunes Music Store launching, as announced by Steve Jobs in his classic black turtleneck. And yeah, it'd be two more years before the podcast joined it, but I do remember how magical it felt pressing that 99-cent button and buying a song on iTunes Music. Yeah, I recall my first album I bought was In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel because I could not find it at any CD store around me. And it did feel weird. Just, wow, I'm going to download something. I'm paying for it. I own it, but it doesn't really exist.

And that's my lifestyle now. I hate physical media, with a few cases. But mostly I dislike physical media. Didn't you say they were just playing Neutral Milk Hotel at the hair salon? Yes, my very cool hair salon. I think they knew I was coming, or maybe I selected the salon because of what they do. Because when I was sitting there getting my haircut the salon because of what they do because when I was sitting there getting my haircut they were

playing pavement the pixies neutral milk hotel and arcade fire all like the all my favorite bands as soon as you step through the door they're like we've got this guy pegged we know what he

likes they they pulled the white 40 year old lover I hope they didn't go so cliche as to play cut your hair brought by pavement while you know they did not thank god i would have stormed out no i i bought probably at least 200 songs i would bet over the years on that and now they just live in the owned song section which seems so crazy because like all well for me i mainly listen to music now via youtube because i pay for the youtube premium and that's just where i play songs including

but the main things i listen to are japanese city pop 80s mix volume 17 or whatever just yeah what i listen to mainly are video game radio stations that play video game music and mostly for the sake of my bird just to give him something, some background music to calm him down. Yeah, I just listen to like the ambient like lo-fi beats to chill to sort of streams on YouTube

that we put on for Louie because he needs some kind of noise at all times. They are very chilling. I've chilled out to a number of those. And sometimes I can't stand the video game ones because once in a while there's going to be like really grating chiptune and it's not relaxing at all.

I'm going to say currently I'm in the podcast room, Nina is out in the main area, and Louis is in our bedroom listening to Rush. It's so funny when you turn on the radio for him putting away in the bedroom and it's playing like Notorious B.I.G. or something or Eminem. He just seems like a surly teenager

who shut himself away in his bedroom. Hey, that's what his attitude is. That's true. And yes, the finale of Clone High aired on MTV six weeks after it aired on Teletoon in Canada, on the sunny beaches of Canada as they say in the show. And I bring that up because we're all

big Clone High fans here I never thought we would get a continuation of that I would have been fine with the finale staying the way it is because it's like a perfect end to it but I always wanted another series or another season because I was like it could just

unfreeze them and then it actually happened the new season was good. And then another one came out and I don't hear anyone talking about it for some reason. Yeah, we haven't seen it yet. And this news item reminded me that on February 1st of this year, 10 episodes launched all at once. That's not how they launched the last set

of 10. They were doing two at a time. I don't know why they changed it. Maybe they were getting cold feet about this. But I think we all agree on on this podcast that we like one episode a week start with two give us one a week and uh it's not overwhelming no i mean the whole season dump i i also haven't watched it yet and i didn't hear anybody really talking about it on online i do think it does show that like warner didn't have a lot of faith in it or they did they definitely didn't advertise it much after i think that first week or first day maybe and i would bet

it would have just been thrown in the tax loophole dump has it not been for them wanting to stay at least a little friendly with lord and millerby are very powerful writer-directors in Hollywood. Well, I got to say, I like everything being dumped at once because I like to binge. But I've had to stop that behavior since I started living with Bob because he likes sipping his shows. And we like to watch a lot of things together now. I don't mind, though. It's good to savor it.

I'm a real show sipper. You really are. Show sipper. Always sipping. But that's what happened back in April of 2003. And joining us today once again is Nina Matsumoto. She was last with us on the episode about the Itchy and Scratchy movie. Welcome back to the show, Nina.

Thanks for having me back. It has been a while. We've just both been too busy working on our home. By us, I mean Bob and I not Henry's not included in this equation. No, Henry refuses to help. And it's really weird. Yeah, he can't live here until he he helps us paint. I have been working on my own home, though, lately.

Just but yeah, no, I this. And Nina, you got to be on one of the best episodes of season four. And now for the not the best episode of season four and now uh for the not the best episode of season 14 yeah this isn't great uh it's not the worst thing i've seen i don't think it's like the one of the worst ones of this season even uh it's just kind of dull it's it's mediocre i i consider it's uh not boring but inexplicable at times just where the story goes and what they hit along the way I don't it just feels like random ideas that were assembled with no real intent yeah I mean we're gonna talk about it later but it has one of the most insane segues into the actual plot

absolutely I hope you have your sound effect ready Henry yes actually there's several sound effects I haven't used in a while that are going to be on this one this is a four I have four jingles lined up for this episode we've always play the new sound one but I've got three others listeners stick around you're gonna hear three more jingles I will say the next two are funny this is just a weird not great one towards the end of season 14 yeah like we were uh Bob and I were like we just had it on the background while we were building um a bookcase and i was some of the parts made me go ugh and then he said uh he wants me on this episode and i was like what why this one this does not count as spousal abuse we're just putting that out here well i i think i made this suggestion uh partially because i i know uh uh Nina you well you both love

the character Lisa and also you do love western style things or have had affection for that in the past I don't want to say like but you you like cowboy stuff right yes but I have to clarify when I say I like cowboy stuff and and western, I mean I like the romanticized film versions of the West about gunslingers and all that. Not like ranches and rodeos and country music, although I don't super mind country music either. I'm not into that kind of stuff. So I've never been to like a dude ranch, for example, and I don i would want to for all the reasons lisa uh spells out in this episode and i think i've probably seen about a hundred hours of jonathan taylor thomas content probably more than that actually so you know i'm into him as well you're a jdt expert out of all the the home improvement kids he was my favorite

i guess he was my favorite, too. But it's slim pickings among that group. Because I said this when we had a Mike Morota. I usually identify with the bigger brother on these shows, but not on home improvement. But then it's like, well, I'm not a middle child. And what am I, the baby? No, that's my younger brother. I got nobody on home improvement to directly identify with.

So you simply can't watch it? I only watched every episode, but I couldn't identify. What if you were Al and you didn't know it? You know, I've grown a beard now into Al. I don't wear enough flannel, though. It's true. It's true. You need a nice big tool belt, too. I did watch Home Improvement once in a while. It was just one of those shows you'd always catch on TV and go, why not?

I don't think I had any opinions about the kids on the show, though. They were fine. I didn't care for storylines about them. I was never interested in kid plot lines, unless it was on The Simpsons. Well, Nina, you haven't yet started binging Yellowstone then, too, by the sound of your... I'm not about to start. I'm a Yellow Jackets watch started binging Yellowstone then, too, by the sound of your...

I'm not about to start. I'm a Yellow Jackets watcher, not Yellowstone. Yeah, we're waiting for that to come back. And hey, they're filming in our neighborhood. And you guys, I bet you could be extras on the show if you tried. Actually, right now, parts of downtown Vancouver are constantly being shut down at night because they're hard at work filming Tron Ares, the newest Tron movie. Oh, no.

That means you're in the same town as Jared Leto right now. Yeah, he's around. No. Folks, we locked our doors, okay? This is all we could do. We've called the police. He's only out at night. They're only filming at night.

Who knows what he'll do when he's deep in method acting nearby. But, yes, thank you, Nina, for coming back on the show for this episode uh but i do want to talk about a new director on the simpsons chris clements so this is the first episode he directed and he's still a director on the simpsons to this very day uh the last episode he directed as of this recording was season 35's murder she boats that was the taika ytt episode excuse me yes murder she boats it was an okay lisa solves a mystery episode it's basically a uh a murder she wrote parody on a boat full of full of geeky references so it's a big geek episode i guess the title is okay it covers both bases i think i saw bob watching this

once you did you did yeah what did you what did you think of it i forget i i thought it was okay i thought it was a little too much guest ass kissery for me oh yeah of course because it's like taika waititi you're so busy and successful how do you do it and you know to make up for that they kind of make him a little bit of a jerk but it's still it does feel like they're networking with him well it sucks that this is now a taika waititi episode it sucks that they're like they got him on the show but he didn't play a character when he's good at playing characters yeah yeah well at least they did understand they're like well he's annoying so let's at least make jokes about him being annoying and by the way i have turned yes i am part of the backlash of Taika Waititi of just like a little went a long way with him and he was my least favorite part and I loved

the queer pirate show that he executive produced and stars in our flag means death especially by the third season I was like I don't want to see his character anymore let's how about this character who never talks who's my favorite guy I honestly I don't mind him. Maybe because I haven't watched all the things he's been in. So it's not like it's oversaturation to me. It's like, well, obviously people like him. So of course he's going to get more exposure. That's just how things work. Yeah.

I mean, I haven't seen this film, but I hear the movie Free Guy is excruciating. And I hear he's one of the main reasons why. Really? I didn't know he was in that actually yeah I mean my knowledge comes from the we hate movies episode and they're just screaming and howling on that podcast well that's like one of many problems with that movie yeah I've seen clips that he certainly seems annoying as the Elon Musk type guy in it and I definitely got uh was really down on love and thunder the fourth

thor movie he directed and i actually didn't see jojo rabbit because everybody who talks about movies i care about said it sucks ass no it's great what are we what are they talking about it was awesome i heard bad stuff i heard bad stuff like it also holds a special place in my heart because it was like the last movie bob and i saw together in a theater theater before we were I ain't doing bad stuff. It also holds a special place in my heart because it was like the last movie Bob and I saw together in a theater before we were separated by the pandemic shutdowns. Oh, okay.

All right. Well, maybe I will give it a shot. It's okay to hate a movie, but hey, we're talking about Chris Clements. Taika Waititi gets too much attention in general. Let's talk about an animation director. I just told you, this is now a Taika Waititi podcast.

It could be. So Chris Clements started on The Simpsons way back in season five as a character layout artist on lisa versus malibu stacy meaning he's been on the simpsons now for 30 years 30 years wow wow that is a long time so he's a simpsons lifer i would guess does he have any other credits than simpsons uh we're gonna get into it so by season nine he moved up to being assistant director and uh even after he became a director he was still doing ad work on other directors episodes and to date he has directed 33 episodes and has done very little professional work outside of the simpsons one thing i will mention though for all of our video

game fans out there he was a character layout artist on the 1996 kids adventure game Creature Crunch. If I ever saw this as a teen, I probably ignored it. But it's essentially an adventure game with Ren and Stimpy style graphics. And I urge our listeners to look at a long play because there's some very cool animation and backgrounds in this game. And looking at the credits of who did the animation, it's a ton of super famous 90s animators. I don't know how they landed on this project, but it looks like a really good cartoon from the 90s. Oh yeah, I'm looking up right now.

It looks really cool. Wow, man, I never heard of this before. I'm going to look at that credit list as well. I'm looking this up after this podcast for sure. And the box is weird because it's just a photos of eugene levy and martin short really big because they do voices for the game well we just saw martin short and clifford yep we're recent clifford converts but one last thing uh yeah that is chris clements will he be on the show for another 30 years

only time will tell they they also joke on the commentary that it's not that he was busy there they was they made it sound like he was too shy to want to be on it he did not want to to be on the commentary which honestly it probably would have been a waste of his time because the commentary they got david burn for it and that's all they want to talk about yeah this is the era in which the substance commentaries are basically podcasts which are fine but you often don't get a lot about the episodes in the animation and stuff it's really interesting that al jean wants to have these commentaries where they don't actually talk about the episodes but then i pulled up the commentary he did for the deleted scenes that's on disc four and he starts it with a rather defensive bit about like you know some people say the show's not

as good uh or this was a downturn in the series but here's the list of awards we got this season so you know it's like what's this about this is about deleted scenes hey i mean uh i i can see why he would be defensive in his position but he is often the first guy to cite ratings in awards when anyone tries to push against the idea that The Simpsons is still as funny as it always was. But yeah, I also think it's funny that this episode, if I also can chart Al Jean's life, this is when his daughter was a teen,

and I feel like maybe a little of this girls are growing up too fast stuff in this episode is maybe rooted in that a little bit could be could be i also want to bring up our our pals on uh gayest episode ever because they when they covered the episode lisa drama queen the one that was the heavenly creature inspired one i i really like that drew got a quote from the writer of the episode, Brian Kelly, who did say that he is not a fan, that writer is not a fan of Lisa and Bart get crushes or have relationship stuff in the episodes.

And he tries to steer them away from that in the writer's room. And I think this episode's low points are an example of that's a good instinct. And I wish other writers followed that. And this is something that Yardley protested. I recall on an earlier commentary, they were saying this is one of the episodes where she tried to talk them out of this idea. And she was right.

I wish they'd have listened to her. Lisa the drama queen, by the way. Sorry. Did I do it again? Yes, you did. I wasn't going to say anything, but just like Lisa the beauty queen, you shot that the right in the back of the head. You replaced it with a colon. You know i'm like steve jobs i make these things cleaner i just take the word out and just you know if you're like steve jobs henry i would go to the doctor immediately oh i've just been drinking a lot of juice lately that's that's all that's

gonna okay oh that's all you need no but i also, I think, too, the stuff with women in this, this is an Ian Maxto-Graham written one where I just had to re-remind myself of what he said in the 1998 interview that was mainly remembered for him making fun of Simpsons fans. But it's also like three paragraphs is the interviewee, the interviewer, Charlotte O'Sullivan, voicing her own frustration at how he goes like, well, we don't really need women on the writing staff. Here's the quote. We make scatological sexual jokes. It's not like we sit around the table with our dicks out. But having a woman in the room, I think it changes the tenor, says Ian Maxton Graham in 1998. And that's like right as Carolyn Omine was about to get hired. Yes.

Yeah. I hope things weren't so bad by the time she came around but the commentary though is a funny one because img is there as is ken keeler uh for for uh understandable reasons though it's always weird to hear keeler outside of the futurama sphere of of conversation yeah i always love these commentary crossovers back when i was listening to all of these commentaries where, you know, oh, Algin and Mike Reese would be on the critic commentary, but it's like, oh, they're talking about another show now. I always like when this would happen. He even gets time in there to talk about how Comedy Central cut their budget and they don't have an orchestra anymore, which is pretty funny. The episode begins after an okay mime couch gag then we have something

that always makes me do a double take every time i watch this it's a christmas episode for like five minutes it is aired again like bob said april 27th yeah and this is why it will show up in the christmas collection on disney plus It's just so confusing. I mean, some commenter, when we did the, I'm spelling as fast as I can, that begins with, it's the first day of school or the end of summer, which aired in February, the person said, this isn't even the worst instance of that in this season 14.

And I was like, now I see. They do a Christmas episode in April april yeah it's kind of jarring to go from like this snowy snowscape to like a more deserty area or the woods where there's absolutely no snow and it seems like it's almost summery i guess we just have to expect that uh that six months pass in between this and when they decide to go on their vacation but i i was thinking about how on the Camp Krusty commentary, Al Jean is talking about Christmas songs and how he wants to write the song Schools Out for Christmas.

I feel like he must have been producing this episode at the time they did that Camp Krusty commentary. Yeah, it could be. And then, you know, Mike Scully had that joke about how Simpsons Christmas Boogie is based on the Taking Care of Christmas, the BTO, their own parody of Taking Care of Business. Yeah, those are both better versions of trying to write Christmas songs, but that's really just their launching pad for a different thing. But first off, we get some Christmas Carol bits.

It's strange that Snake is holding just a nondescript family captive instead of like i don't know the van houtens or uders family i feel like you'd at least get a good chuckle out of seeing a family you've heard of before that snake is holding captive yeah they could have landed on something where there could have been a character based joke but i guess all of they're all bound and gag so they couldn't say anything and uh it's it's aljean back to basics comedy here as we've had our first in a while releasing the hounds joke as Burns releases the hounds on them before they start singing. And I think it's a good joke that he says exquisite instead of excellent. I kind of like that.

Yeah. Exquisite. And also I'm saying, no, no, it's their Christmas, too. That's a good joke. Then we head over to Krusty's house, which they are very aggressive in letting the viewers know that Krusty's Jewish. I think just because they're worried that new viewers will be like, well, why are they singing a Hanukkah song to a clown? That doesn't make sense if you've somehow never heard the Simpsons before.

Yeah. Hava Nagila. Actually, Nina and I heard the song being played in person by a busker recently. And I was explaining to her that because of being poisoned by television I associate the traditional Jewish song Hava Nagila with an ad for the Yogi Bear cartoon that would air on Nickelodeon. I think I was just surprised that you knew the name of the song.

Yeah. Yogi and Boo Boo have got nothing to do but get into trouble weekdays on Nick. Yogi's a big galoot. Boo Boo is awful cute. Together they spend their days searching for food. Sing that along to Hava Nagila at home, everybody, and find the promo on YouTube. It's there. So are they Jewish then?

Yes. It's a huge part of the show. I think Hanna-Barbera are very not Jewish men. But I only think of it in a comedy context, obviously. I've never been to a bar mitzvah or a Jewish wedding or anything where that song would be sung. In proper context, I only know it as a comedy song. I went to a bar mitzvah once because I was hired to do Simpsons portraits there. It was one of two times I've done live Simpsons portraits there. It was one of two times I've done like live Simpsons portraits.

And it was not fun for me because it was just a bunch of kids running around and getting too close to me because they want to see what I'm drawing. And I kept having to say, get away because I don't want you to bump into my elbow while I'm making this. And of course they wouldn't listen.

So it was kind of frustrating. But hey, I got good money for it. Okay, hey, at least your time was worth it. Yeah. My drawing services were requested because the guy. Well, yeah, I guess he is becoming a man. The boy was a big Simpsons fan. And they had like a balloon sculpture of Bart there.

It was pretty cool. Oh, wow. Did they get to make you ride around in the little chair? But I guess you couldn't. It wasn't your day. No, I was like, I was kind of sitting outside of Oh, wow. Did they get to make you ride around in the little chair? But I guess you couldn't. It wasn't your day. No, I was like, I was kind of sitting outside of the whole room.

So I didn't get to see all the festivities. It'd be funny to see how good you could draw a Simpsons caricature while they're lifting the chair up and down. Well, that costs extra.

I offered. Chairs are hard to draw. Yes. Speaking of paying people, they didn't pay Jackie Mason to be in this episode because it's dan castellanetta for one little line here which i think they the first episode of the next production season is today i am a clown where he returns so maybe this got them to say maybe we

should actually just see if we can get jackie back. We could really do something with the return of Rabbi Hyman Kristofsky. And you were talking about this earlier, Henry. We forgot that he's in the show a lot after he comes back for Today I Am a Clown. I was completely dumbfounded going to his page because if you'd asked me before I checked it, I would have said, okay, he comes back for bar mitzvah he comes back for the episode where he dies and there maybe there's one in between or something 10 episodes he appears in before he passes away in 2021 not counting his original appearance so yeah it's uh that's that's a lot of jackie mason i guess he just really liked having him i mean he's a great funny voice i love uh he's very

funny and it's always fun to see stuff with crusty's cultural background i always like him uh i am i'm looking forward to that episode today i'm a clown we'll see we'll see how it holds up mr t's on it the real mr t yeah after after they savaged him uh season, in season 15, he comes on to play himself. I guess Krusty's still the only prominent Jewish character on the show. The only other ones would be, well, I guess, what about old Jewish man, actually? There you have it. All right. Does he count?

He's a pillar of the Jewish community in Springfield. I meant like a more well-rounded character. Not an insane man who just talks gibberish uh well uh well then we we head to over to uh the lawyer's house and Algin on other commentary says admit they do all these jokes about music copyright because it's a big part of what he deals with every day so he's just yeah but I always like these jokes about music copyright because it's a big part of what he deals with every day so he's just yeah but i always like these jokes about like i like knowing the facts of how you license songs or when they don't license songs and so i'm i'm fine with him making a joke out of it and a nice jab at disney don't do that anymore yeah from listening to the the office ladies podcast um they they often talk about how much it costs exactly to license

some of the songs they use and it's pretty insane it's like like tens of thousands of dollars well i remember when mad men it was getting all the headlines that mad men had a master's original beatles song in an episode that cost them like two million dollars or something just that one song oh my god was it worth it uh well i can't even uh it wasn't even like the best episode that season but i guess i mean i i remembered for the story at least well that just shows you that the creator of mad men had that much sway that he told amc no it has to be a beatles song can't be any other song it's got to be the real beatles song and they got to play it and they and AMC paid for it maybe they were like this is gonna be an unforgettable moment in television everyone will remember this meanwhile we were like uh wait which which

episode was that again what moment what scene I was too busy watching Breaking Bad which they they spent their music money well on mainly old, old West songs. But, but yeah, so we then get on our first clip here. The Simpsons are handed a cease and desist notice in person. Cease and desist. You are forbidden to perform that song without paying royalties to the

copyright owner. Nobody owns Christmas carols. They belong to everyone. Like grapes at the copyright owner. Nobody owns Christmas carols. They belong to everyone. Like rapes at the grocery store. Not true. But you are welcome to sing the many beloved public domain carols such as Oh, Tan and Bomb, Good King Winchester Sluss, Hey Zoo, Joy of Man's Desiring.

Those suck. They're worse than nothing. I could write way better songs. Go ahead, but don't use A-flat or G-natural. Those notes are owned by Disney. Oh. That's A-flat. Oh. That's better. Our music heads will have to weigh in. Are those notes correct? Bob, do you remember

when we were at Canadian Tire and we heard some, this was around Christmas time, we heard some really weird, obscure Christmas songs they were playing? Yeah, the one I remember, it felt like I was being gaslit or something. Marshmallow World? Yes, I was going to bring that up.

It's a Dean Martin song, apparently. Yeah, Canada, they're getting all of the songs that aren't played on American radio during Christmas time. Is that the, it's a marshmallow world in the winter, get yourself with a girl. That one? I think so. Okay. No, that must be another Marshmallow World song. Okay.

I'm just kidding. What else could it be there's only one marshmallow world song and henry i know for a fact you heard uh jsu's son of man's design or whatever uh during end of evangelion that's they play it during that movie yes i did just hear that public domain song in in theaters and also remind speaking of beatles songs it caused me seeing that in theaters it made me pull up a a fan edit of people always said that the calm sooster todd song just sounds like they wanted to use hey jude but obviously couldn't afford it and so they they was a fan edit of of hey jude over it and it does fit pretty good oh not that you mentioned it it does sound like a hey jude sound alike they didn't want to pay the two million dollars or whatever it would

have cost oh man for a movie it'd probably be like well and then if you want to use it too you also have to like paul mccartney and ringo star uh and the the both widows have to approve it you got to get a million bits of approval it takes all the work in the world and there's not a rap verse in the middle of hey jude like there is in that evangelion song right no they'd have to they'd have to make a new version of it uh i do like this bit about how all the all the great public domain songs which is why tons of pop artists do holiday albums because you really only got to pay for like one new song then you license three other songs and then the other eight songs are just public domain things like jingle bells

or good king wenzel sloths or you know a new favorite of mine the holly and the ivy especially annie lennox's cover version of it listen look up that old uh christmas song now when you listen to that are you thinking of harley quinn and poison? Because I am. On some level, sure, yeah. But mainly I'm thinking about how Jesus Christ is just like the holly and the ivy, as the song has told me to. Also, Marge clearly didn't learn her lesson from Lisa's obsession with thou shalt not steal. She's still stealing grapes at the grocery store. That's true, yeah. Actually uh i was thinking about the holly and the ivy going back to that that song upsets me because it tries to rhyme crown with grown and it's not working go back to the drawing board with that you need a very specific accent to make that

work and it's all about ranking trees i'm here having fun at christmas i gotta rank a tree now it's like holly ivy which one is better ranking a vine i apologize rank a tree now? It's like, hmm, holly, ivy, which one is better? Ranking a vine, I apologize. Not a tree. No, it lists other trees, too, that it says... The hollies are trees. Oh, yes, okay. It does say the holly is the only one in the wood that does, like, yeah, but I guess it is a old-timey

British accent that can rhyme around with grown. The Simpsons will be right back. What could make spring break more outrageous than ever? The Simpsons gone wild. Go crazy with the most out of control family on TV. You sure swallowed a lot of stuff as a kid. Yeah, as a kid. At eight, followed by an all new Oliver Bean tonight on TV. You sure swallowed a lot of stuff as a kid. Yeah, as a kid.

At 8, followed by an all-new Oliver Bean, tonight on Fox. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. We care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs.

Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Welcome to the break, everybody. It's Henryilbert here who goes home and worships nightly and a big thank you to our guest this week nina matsumoto we always love having her back on the master artist herself who has done our amazing artwork for so many great things and you should all be following her as space coyote on twitter or all of the cool stuff she does, the art she does for Fangamer

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That's patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Then Homer gets so sick of it, he's going to write his own song. He jauntily walks off. And it's more of this like, it is because we're doing this, it really is like wow 10 years they echo their plots all the time it's like homer has not written a song since the b sharps and he's writing another hit novelty song 10 years later he's good at it yeah yeah i mean we we forget Homer is capable of writing notation, composing music. It's amazing to see Homer actually writing notes on a piece of paper.

I'm like, wait, what? Yeah, and he can play the piano pretty well. The piano that only exists. I guess he does, you know, also in Lisa's sax episode, he can play the piano in that one. It's not like he never plays the piano. But first he writes an usher song okay yes i i have the clip here on on the commentary they mention like oh this ripped off an usher song and this is them talking about a simpsons thing that went viral in 2010 that was

recent when they recorded it and i found the video it was uploaded by user on YouTube, Tim Murphy. And listen for yourself if you guys think that, did Usher rip off the Christmas song Homer tries to write? Honey got a booty like pow, pow, pow. Honey got some boobies like wow, oh, wow. Christmas in December, wow, wow, wow. Give me tons of presents. Now, now, now.

Christmas in December. Wow, wow, wow. So there. Ooh, we've got us a great mashup. Yeah. Remember those? It's 2010, so mashups are hot news then. I think it's just they both wrote the most brain-dead melody ever.

I like that Usher song. I think it's just they both wrote the most brain-dead melody ever. I like that Usher song. I remember it. Did he sing it at the Super Bowl? I can't recall. Crickets. Well, you're asking Super Bowl experts, Bob Mackey and Nina Matsumoto. Guys, remember at the Super Bowl? What songs did he sing?

I was too mesmerized by his roller skating to remember the songs he was singing he did really do good roller skating on it but so i i looked into it more and there were just there were definitely news stories about it back then back when websites posted news stories uh about simpsons things instead of just it being a facebook post but nothing more came of it after the initial burst like as far as i could tell usher never commented on it either it was just oh one youtube guy says he stole it usher what your thoughts and he never responded to it you know it's sort of like how the chippendale rescue rangers theme sounds like

the macgyver theme it's just two geniuses operating at the same level uh it's uh this i i like them at least throwing throwing some stones at Asheron and it's funny so speaking of like Simpsons articles and music popular music Cypress Hill playing with the orchestra does not count as a Simpsons predicted it I've seen people say this

it's not a prediction when they pushed for it based on the episode yes no totally they're they're recreating a joke with the london philharmonic so yeah not a prediction they are saying let's let's let's act out the joke that we were part of 27 years ago or whatever i i think it's worthy of headlines to say cypress hill finally making a reality of a simpsons joke but yeah to frame it as simpsons predicted it that's that's uh well the classic lazy reporting on the Simpsons predicted it.

I guess that gets people to click on it more. Every time I, again, every time I visit my doctor for checkups, every time they ask like, oh, what do you do? And when I finally explain it, they say, man, the Simpsons predicts everything, right? Like it's every, all small talk is that. I say get a new doctor. I say change your response because I do, I say I'm a podcaster. And then when they say, what about? I say video games and animation.

Normally the questions stop there. You know, that makes me think there must be so many people out there now who have never even watched the show who just know it as that old cartoon because they don't know it's still on uh that old cartoon that that's uh predicts everything it's your doctor might be one of those people i you know i also think cypress hill owes bill and josh at the very least uh free tickets to those at least when they did it in portland bill oakley should have got uh free tickets to those at least when they did it in portland bill oakley should have got uh free tickets to it get the entire 1995 writing staff on a plane and the director they

should get him too but yeah i mean hey i'm glad for cypress hill if it gets some headlines and then sells some more tickets and same for the london uh symphony orchestra good good on them so then as homer's writing his song ned flanders breaks into his home to ask what song he's writing and uh i i'm really sad that we don't see ned after this i want to see how this novelty song has affected his life because he seems to be tickled by it when they cut to him later and his only reaction is singing along and liking it i was like boy this is intentionally avoiding what could have been like you know drama or conflict for a story they're just like nah not into that if this had a four-act structure like nowadays the the last few seconds would go back to ned i think he'd be the last story plot line before the credits roll well

also ned is being totally flanderized in this episode that he is just the friendliest perfect annoying guy in this like there's really not much depth to ned in this episode it's kind of like back to basics like the first christmas episode yeah yeah though in this case he's like he's just too friendly for him instead of outdoing homer with you know christmas decorations but yeah he's annoying in that regard i i also do like when homer when homer tosses him out ned hits the ground in a much more violent way than you i think that they animated it very funnily funny and homer saying i'm a patient reasonable handsome man but even i have my limits

the gags with the ice are okay i just like a return to the blandness of ned which speaks to his character which it's a popsicle in his favorite flavor plain not as fun as unflavored ice milk but uh still in that same lane that i always enjoy does licking that ice remind him of maude it makes him sad on some level i wonder sure on christmas sure then as many comedy writers learn homer funnels his anger into trying to make something funny and shifts from a christmas song to a novelty song and i do feel like this is the comedy writer instinct of like i bet i could write a hit novelty song too and we could talk about who wrote this song for the Simpsons. None other than Ken Keeler, who is on the commentary.

So just to note that Ken Keeler won the show two Emmys for his songs that he wrote. You're checking in from the New York episode and we put the spring in Springfield from the burlesque house episode. And this was nominated for an outstanding original music and lyrics Emmy, but it lost to the song. Aren't They All Our Children from the special The Concert for World Children's Day. Boo. Oh, come on.

Yeah. Talk about an Emmy bait song. Let's go. Charity songs should be exempt from that list. It should only be comedy songs written or songs written in uh fiction not just like something that aired on a special also i think i think hate should trump uh love songs songs about hate are a lot funny and i will point out something that shocked me the simpsons has not won in this category since 1998 with we put the spring in springfield. They've been nominated a lot, but they are always beaten by something else,

which is weird because The Simpsons often jeopardizes everything else in a category in terms of if they will win or not. It usually is the headliner of most categories it's nominated in. Yeah, I think it's good that they don't dominate this category, even though their songs are very good.

It's like, let other people have a chance chance to win who is a guy who usually writes or has often written songs again uh jeff martin was the guy before keeler yeah and he's been nominated but hasn't won the first simpsons song to be nominated for an emmy in this category was who needs the quickie martz greg daniels is credited with lyrics but i believe the room wrote the songs in merkin's era but he's just the writer of the episode so he's listed as the lyricist then we have uh we do the stonecutter song that lost as well to a barbara streisand concert what that should not count a whole concert senor burns was nominated the next year it lost to a tv version of bye bye birdie produced by abc come on also shouldn't count yeah yeah like one one little song versus an entire concert or

musical a guy wrote a new song for this it's not it's not playing old stuff that's man this you know i'm i'm not going to go over all of them but uh ode to branson a song we really enjoyed did not win but family guy beat it that year and i like the family guy song it's the you've got a lot to see song from the episode we covered on what a cartoon that's a deserving one i'll give it to that or i'll i'll respect that but that's boy it's well this is like the inverse of the wga awards we were uh grousing about on previous episodes like where simpsons gets all the awards and all the nominations pretty much every year for 20 years yeah so this is fine i think even

though i think it is bs that it gets put against those other kinds of uh musical specials i'm guessing family guy gets nominated a lot so many shows especially i feel like after it happened before the simpsons were doing it before but i do feel like after that buffy the vampire slayer musical episode that like every show was like we have to do our musical episode of shows so that that should just be what's in competition can i share a secret with you don't don't put this on the podcast okay because okay i'm just kidding oh okay you can put this on the podcast hey when guests say that we have to respect them yeah i am not a even though i like musicals i'm not a

big fan of musical episodes of tv shows so whenever people are like like oh you gotta watch this episode they do big musical and everything i'm just like oh i really don't want to see that well it depends if the songs are good or not. I mean, really. And also if the cast actually is good at singing or not. One musical moment is fine. A whole episode of it, I'm just not into it. And that's one of the reasons why I kind of fell off of watching Bob's Burgers

because they had to do a musical moment in every episode. And I got kind of tired of that. Yeah, me too. Back to Ken Keeler, though, he was not on the writing staff and he had not been for a very long time he left to work on futurama but he came in to write this and at the time futurama had just ended on fox uh i'm sure the episodes had not finished airing yet obviously but i'm sure his role was pretty much done on the show so he was a free agent until all the things fell into place for the direct to

video movies yeah it's it's good i mean keeler uh it's funny to hear him come back on on to the simpsons because he's he's not the gene era though i've only i he's one of the few guys that i see complimented uh who didn't work directly with mike reese in mike reese's book i think his uh honestly mike reese really respects ken keeler Keeler's knowledge and that he was a better student at Harvard than Mike Reese was, I think, comes up in his book. But I always think of Jeff Martin first when I think of Simpsons songwriters, but Ken Keeler's got more of the awards. He's got more of the gold to show. It's like he's got the Super Bowl rings, if I may make a metaphor for sports for some reason yeah until they win another emmy for this category he got the only emmys in that

category for the simpsons i like hearing him on the commentary too because he he mentions that like oh yeah if i knew david byrne was going to sing this i i'd have uh been too scared to write this song like it uh though also i think there are some there's a couple adr things on this and i'm like aljean wrote a worse lyric for this or something well like i don't want to say it was definitely aljean but now i'll say like according to the commentary uh ken killer worked very hard on this song to the point where he sat down with alf clausen and listened to some talking heads music and david byrne music and picked out like, okay, these are the instruments we need for the David Byrne parts of the song. So he was aware David Byrne at some point in the production would be part of this.

And that's, I don't know if the production house they use now for music is that hands on with the writers in terms of making these things special. It certainly doesn't sound like it. When I listened to the song, I thought, wow, I could tell they're trying really hard at this. It seemed like they were trying to make it a thing. Like they're trying to make it viral as viral things go back then. I bet that was their hope. I mean, like, oh, we made up a fake novelty song and then it becomes a real novelty song.

That's a big hit. Yeah. They probably wanted it played on the radio or something or that's what they were hoping for. I do love this song, though. I got to say. It is a real novelty song that's a big hit. Yeah, they probably wanted it played on the radio or something, or that's what they were hoping for. I do love this song, though, I gotta say. It is a good song. It's a real clever and stupid in a clever way Ken Keillor song with a lot of fun jokes and touches and many things like Homer spelling Flanders' name wrong, including things like lyrics about his views on birth control, things like that. That's my favorite line. Flanders tried to erect my song.

His views on birth control are wrong. Yeah. And just starting off with everybody in the USA hates their stupid neighbor. His name is Flanders and he's really, really lame. It's like everybody's got a neighbor they hate, but his name is Flanders. I'm explaining the jokes, but I just love how it is like very Futurama-y, where all the sentences contradict each other back and forth. I feel like I would hope Ken Keillor would have just said, hey, I'm too busy to come back full time. But if he's available, Al Jean should have tried to get him back for a season.

I feel like they could have used an injection of Ken Keillor in the writing staff full time. Here, I'll just drop in the two-minute full song right here so folks can enjoy some of the Flanders novelty song. Everybody in the USA hates their stupid neighbor. He's Flanders and he's really, really lame. Flanders tried to wreck my song. His views on birds control are wrong. I hate his guts and Flanders is his name. F-L-A-N-R-D-S

He's the man that I hate best. I'd like to see his house go up in flame. Excuse me. I've been researching indigenous folk music of Springfield, and I couldn't help overhearing your delightfully cruel hate song. David Byrne? Singer, artist, composer, director, talking head. And I used to wrestle under the name El Diablo.

I thought that was Philip Glass. Yeah, he wishes. Hey, mister, if you like my song so much, would you like to buy a tape? It's already rewound. No thanks, but I would like to sing it with you and produce it. Ugh, fine. F-L-A. His name is Ned. E-R-S. That's a stupid name.

He's worse than Frankenstein or Dr. No. You can't upset him even slightly. He just smiles and nods politely, then goes home and worships nightly. His leftorium is an emporium of woe. F-L-H. Don't yell at Ned. D-E-R.

His wife is dead. Everybody hates that stupid jerk. Springfield rocks with Homer's joyous loathing. Filling clubs with angry Valentinos. You don't have to move your feet. Just hate Flanders to the disco beat. Here's your perky peppy nightmare neighborino. If you despise polite left-handers,

then I doubt you'll like Ned Flanders or his creepy little offspring Rod and Todd That's us! Hooray! F-L-A. His name is Ned E-R-S. He's so white-brinded The smiling mustache geek who walks with God

Mass dismissed I also did like hearing Ken Keeler talk about the ins and outs of knowing the range and the keys that the cast can sing in and trying to write for that. I like hearing that little bit of insider info. Oh, wow. That's very thoughtful. Apparently, they had a chart of the range of each of the performers and what they could sing in. Oh, that's insane.

Yeah. But that's insane. Yeah. But it's smart. One, I keep forgetting Castellaneta is on the commentary too, though. Even he is pushed out by the big superstar on the commentary. But yeah, as Homer is singing around, I got to think Barney must be sad watching his old B-Sharps pal doing new songs than Lenny and Carl instead. Yeah, there should have been at least some B-sharps references. This is the era in which they are referencing the classic ones a lot.

So I'm surprised there wasn't a like, hey, weren't you already a hit singer, Dad? Or something like that. Didn't you win a Grammy? He's like, I don't think so. Maybe you'll win your second Grammy. We'll put your gold record right next to the baby on board one. So are we getting to one of the guest stars on this episode?

Well, okay, yes. It's time to stop. Let's stop making sense, guys, and talk about this guest star. Let's stop making noise and end the podcast. I don't get it. You see, there's a little movie called David Byrne and His Wacky Suit. Yes. Yeah.

We're talking about David Byrne, the lead singer of the Talking Heads, who is also a film director. He's done mo lists all the things he is known for. Yeah. I mean, I don't know a lot about him offhand, but there was one solid year of my life where I was really into talking heads and yet like you hadn't seen uh stop making sense right isn't that weird wow it is and we kept seeing it in the theaters and we kept saying like oh we should go see that and we never did and now it's gone never

did and there's no way to see it again yeah absolutely no way i'm gonna fuck with henry's brain it's talking heads there's no the the world has gone topsy-turvy oh god i added a the that's incredible uh no they i i watched that i watched stop making sense eight million times when i worked at a video store though i also did miss seeing it when it was re-released in theaters for a few weeks there uh this year yeah i wish i could have seen it. There's like one year, 2009 to 2010, I just downloaded a torrent of all the Talking Heads music and got really into it. And whenever I would try to play it in the car, my friends would be like, this is awful.

That's sad. But I mean, I guess they're an acquired taste. They're a little kooky. They're a little pretentious, I guess. But I dig them no me me too i've been big i also really enjoyed his uh film true stories maybe maybe it's also because i just love uh john goodman and he is in a major role in the film but it's uh it's really great john goodman singing a talking head song and it is my uh i love that moment i've i've watched

that scene just by itself a bunch of times his his version is better than the david byrne or the the real talking heads version of people like us uh but yeah they get they get him on it's a real love fest for him as they're talking about it they say that they recorded with him in new york in person when they went to go to do the actor's studio interview was a very productive trip for them. They did a lot on that trip. Hey, you know, when in town, you know, go talk to James Lipton, do pickups for old episodes that celebrities were on, meet a new celebrity, maybe harass Andy Serkis. Oh, that's later. Never mind. I will say think david byrne as a comedy foil has been used too much i

did like him appearing in the sack lunch bunch thing that john mulaney did a few years ago but i do feel like it's like i i've had enough laughing at david byrne making a silly song with a comedy person i could use a little less of it but i i do also like aljean has a funny joke at his own expense saying that he could probably fit into the giant suit that david burn wears cheer up al well he's also very tall it's not yeah he is he's if ian maxter and graham wasn't in the room aljean would be the very tall man i'm glad that outfit exists if only to have something to reference when someone is seen wearing clothes that are way too large for them. And this is also where a deleted scene is when David Byrne comes into the place.

Mo is naming all of his things. And then the deleted scene is Mo goes, I could go on. And then David Byrne says, OK, please do. And then Mo says, geez, you really called my bluff there. Easy on the eyes. Well, we don't know at this point that Mo is going to kidnap and mutilate David Byrne. That's true. Maybe it was that slight that if it was kept in, that would make you think more about why Mo murders David Byrne after torturing him.

So David Byrne, they got him on the commentary he also has a funny joke about how he approved his character design but doesn't like his all brown outfit maybe he just saw the line drawing and not the colors and so so yes in very simpsons of this era form a famous person walks in For no good reason into the bar and says Hey I just heard this song can I make it With you and Homer Just goes like ugh fine Yeah he's like I'd like to sing it with you

And produce it and Homer Looking this gift horse in the mouth is just irritated Though I did chuckle at how Homer Doesn't say like hey Mr. David Byrne he just like kind of shakes him a little Like hey hey, mister, if you like my song so much, you want to buy the tape? But yes, then Lenny and Carl are the new B-sharps. They're Homer's backup band for singing the song together.

What I do enjoy the Simpsons twist is it's not just stop making sense. It's the thing with two heads. That's true. Yeah, they do make it into the homer popping out of the suit that they can both fit in together and the specifics i like the specifics on the left oriam more than worse than frankenstein and dr no and i also like how david burn walks into the recording studio and takes the mic from homer and starts singing more of it and just takes over the song it becomes just a different kind of song whenever David Byrne takes over.

Also, the album art for their song, I like it too because David Byrne has half his face on the side and it looks like a hip, artistic choice. But then Homer just is right in the center of it with an angry look on his face, ruining the cool cover design that david burn had and everybody's enjoying the song from skinner to millhouse with otto and burns in between and uh then uh we see david burn dancing at the concert and uh there's some real good animation

on this whoever animated it must have been a talking heads fan some good uh herky jerky dancing is what we call it but this is where the the zero tension we were talking about comes in because they just cut to ned and everybody laughing at ned in a song is perfectly fine by ned even when a lyric of the the song is his wife is dead yeah it makes fun of his creepy little offspring and they're happy to be included too and then also great animation on a dozen choir singers are singing along to it all all in sync and uh that reverend lovejoy is i would think because he's also a flanders hater that's why he's having the the choir sing and this is happening this is not just a impromptu performance this is mass they're at mass and they're singing the i hate ned flanders song mass dismissed is uh that's okay yeah yeah not not great but it does

it does imply that they're just at a church service singing this song and uh and homer is wearing the suit with him as uh here as well for the uh the mass costume him and mass costume whatever the robes are called the mask costume yeah because it's a vestments henry vestments there's always all these cosplayers at the church i don't get it so then after all that we cut to the family very cutely washing dishes together i'd say this is the worst joke in the episode i don't like that it's bad because you're looking at a radio the funny part of the rocket man performance is how it's depicted with the various angles and family guy did it and futurama did it and they did it in a visual way simpsons is late to the party and it's just

characters looking at a radio maybe they were hoping they could get Shatner for this maybe they tried him again another another swing and a miss I mean it definitely I think Simpsons is better than a Shatner joke and if they're gonna do it don't do something that like I looked it up it was yeah because that Family Guy one was just two years before this so you're you're coming late to a joke that was not all that fresh when family guy did it but like you said bob the family guy one meticulously parodies the editing of that rocket man performance and i think even the zap branigan one does some of the editing tricks yeah and also it's really good how zap smokes the cigarette in the very specific way shatter did, it's a double parody because he's singing Lola or a parody of Lola that makes it into Lila.

And also, then they did the same joke with Shatner, actually, in that Star Trek episode that we did with Andrew Dupin. Oh, yeah, yeah. Except it was Eminem he was doing a spoken word version of. Right. Oh, sorry, yeah. Zapp Brannigan does that Shatner parody in a different episode, not in the Star Trek episode.

You're right. Sorry, that was me misremembering. But all that to say, it is well-worn territory. And if the Simpsons are going to do it in 2003, do it better, not worse, is my issue with this. We are the joke police. Do you know how not being funny you were back there? Are you aware? The title of the episode dude where's my ranch that's a fresh joke

that just feels like a shrug they're calling attention to like I don't know dude where's my ranch is it better than murder she boat that feels like a similar this title is so bad it's good in this case it's just kind of bad

who here has seen dude where's my car nobody just me huh henry more crickets here sean william scott superfan henry gilter uh it was another video store put on movie though not my choice it was a co-worker's favorite and i've so i saw it like twice and it's fine but it though is another of those like it's a stoner movie where they don't have the guts to actually have them smoke weed in it it's fake stoners in a pg-13 pot comedy give me bill and ted instead i'm sure we'll see on the cratering channel at some point yes it's a slippery slope as i've always said slippery slope in the two men looking for something collection.

And you know what else is wrong with that Shatner joke? It's too long. It's like 40 seconds. Yeah, and again, it's characters just looking at a radio. It's rough. No, Azaria does a fine job. I mean, he's a fine Shatner. Did they need to pad out the episode?

Maybe. And they cut a better joke I would have kept in. actually this joke isn't even that great but it's better than the Shatner one so as they're complaining about it still being on the radio Lisa says dad didn't you get any money out of this and then Homer reveals that he lost most of it producing a Yoko Ono CD. And then he opens up the Billboard magazine to see that it lost him a bunch of money. He's like, I guess it was John's songs that they liked. To quote Homer, give her a break. Her husband was killed. Well, even the Flanders song being as long as it is,

feels like it's padding out the episode. They need an entire act out of the way because they only have two acts worth of dude ranch material and as as we learn the secret from mike reese's book if you put a song in your script you don't have to cut that out and lose pages this is a load-bearing act one it really is uh so so yes after all of this, the family, well, I have my first jingle to play because for some reason, Homer having a hit song that he wrote during Christmas takes us in an entirely different direction. So it's time to hear a Little Herd jingle. I bet you didn't see that coming.

Because it's a big change after Act 1. I think it's even more of a swerve than what we saw in Tennis the Menace. Sorry, Nina. It's one of the biggest reaches. I was like, really? That's how we're going to segue into this next act? But I guess they're kind of self-aware. In that they have the brochures in their home even.

They don't even bother going to someplace yeah i mean i'd rather they write something funnier but i do like when they point out well i don't know we're just going to go to a new location and i love the homer joke the simpsons are going to bart's idea exactly it's like we know the structure it's like there's two suggestions that are brought up we'll go with one of them that's how it goes i guess there are a lot of um episodes where one of the kids suggests something and they decide to go for it well it's funny though it's bart who's like let's go to a place where there's no internet or tv like that doesn't seem like what bart would want though this list of things does also remind me of my well one when i went to las vegas last i was happy to see there are still places that have all these piles of brochures.

Even in our digital age, there's still the brochures in hotel and motels. I always loved looking at those when I was a kid and traveling. And they do give you ideas sometimes. Yeah. Though I actually did on my last Las Vegas trip, we did settle for a wax museum, which they passed by very quickly here. And it's totally fine. It was a totally fine hour and a half of my life. I've seen the pictures. I think they might be on Twitter still. You know, that's the big part of it. You just that I can't imagine how it used to be before you could take really great selfies with your phone. You know,

a wax museum in like 1985. What's so awesome so awesome about it with a polaroid camera you can't even tell that it's uh that it's incredibly accurate versions of katie perry and liberace no but um i do remember going to a wax museum in the early 90s with my family and uh yeah the cameras weren't better back then but then that kind of made for more realistic photos because not as high def yeah i i I think that's what I was thinking of where you could conceivably pass these off as real people. Like this is the entire cast of M.A.S.H. We're in this dark room together.

It was more convincing. But in HD, you can really tell how they put each little hair in somebody's head. I did go to, I think I did go to a wax museum in Vegas in the last 10 years, within the last 10 years. And it basically is just like a selfie museum now. Yep. It's basically designed for you to take pictures with the statues.

And it's very conveniently right on the strip. So it's easy to just walk in there off the street if you're just walking down the the the las vegas strip uh though if you can only pick between it and the pinball museum i say go to the pinball museum or the pinball hall of fame sorry pinball fame uh you know i i do have an interest in wax museum because um i think they're very well made it's cool to see like uh the sculpt up close but now they probably just 3d scan people so it's not as impressive like back then they really had to sculpt them i think i first learned about them from the an episode of uh reading rainbow do you remember that one guys of when when i never watched that show lavar burton got his own one done and he showed the whole process. I don't recall it, no, but that sounds creepy. But yes, as they're looking at brochures,

Lisa points out the Walter Gropius Bauhaus School, which is a real thing. I think Walter Gropius is the name you're looking for. You don't know about the Bauhaus School, a highly influential German art school? Of course. I looked all this up on Wikipedia. I knew as little as Henry did.

No, I mean, I'll give that. Ian Maxton Graham is good for obscure smart guy polls. He's really good at that. After the suggestion, Homer goes, and fight the crowds. But yes, the Simpsons is going to Bart's idea as they head off. But on their way there, David Byrne gets kidnapped. I still think you should have left that at the motel. What? It said take one.

Balloon ride, wax museum, the Denzel Washington Monument, Colonial Phoenix. Hey, dude ranch, and there's no radio or TV, so we won't have to hear your song. Sweet. Or we could go to Walter Gropius' Bauhaus Village. And fight the crowds? Forget it. The Simpsons are going to Bart's Idea.

This dude ranch is going to be great. A whole week without hearing that stupid song. You won't think it's stupid when you hear the extended salsa mix no no stop Flanders that's an hombre estúpido no no stop Flanders watch it mr. Byrne you'll slip on the Simon eyes Simon eyes can you take me to the hospital? Yeah, no problem. Wasn't that the hospital? Uh, you ever see the movie Misery?

Actually, no. Then this'll all be new to you. We really feel like that's going to be Act 2, but never mention it again. I wish it was. But yes, one thing, one unimportant thing thing i love terms like simon eyes old timey terms that are trying to turn a service they they graph the proper name a person's name onto a service near my old place in berkeley it was a dry cleaning place called one hour martinizing because martinizing was once i probably still is a service you can get to have your clothes

clean in a certain way but it's's an old-timey term like, hey buddy, I just had my suit modernized! Watch it! Yeah, what does that even mean? It just means it's a certain way of dry cleaning that was patented by some guy named Martin, I'm guessing. Get ready for

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We need to do that more. Got to bring that back. Also, yes, Al Jean loves the movie Misery. It's a great movie, but like... Oh, so do I. It's the second episode of The Critic. That's how much he loves it. Maybe they were going to steer this in that direction,

but then he went, damn it, I did that already. Oh, it's not too late. There's always a good time for a Misery parody. Misery has never been hotter. We've all seen the prequel, right? Yes? Wait, no.

With Lizzie Kaplan playing hot young Annie Wilkes, no? No. Play along, play along. Oh, sure, yes. Yeah, it was great. Oh, sure. Yes. Yeah, it was great. Oh, yeah. I've seen it twice. It's like a Stephen King world series, right?

And Annie Wilkes is one of the characters. I think that's one of the seasons is, what happened to Annie? Wow. Remember when she was young and hot? Yes. young and hot. Also, Stephen King did go through this where he did have a horrible accident and was saved by somebody off the side

of the road from death, but he probably did have a little moment of thinking of misery. Here's the thing. He was saved by EMTs. He was not saved by a van. A drunk hit him with his van and drove away. Well, that's not fun. No.

It's such a good book, though. The movie's really good, too. It changes a few things. It actually makes it a tiny bit less violent. Actually, a lot less violent now I'm thinking about it. Highly recommended. I heard in the book they change, like, I got to read that book because I do love the movie.

The only thing I remember hearing was different from the book to the movie was like they made his foot thing a lot more or more violent visually in the movie than in the book. Oh, no, it's the other way around. In the book, his foot is chopped off, not smashed against the log. Dang. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, I guess it is more violent visually in the movie because there's no visuals in the book. Oh, well, sure.

Also, I don't want to get you started, Henry, but sometimes I worry about how upset you are about how the Beast is getting written in the X-Men comics. And if the writer goes missing, I can't promise I won't turn you in. He wasn't a cock-a-doodie war criminal. You've got to keep an eye on that guy. Well, hey, now the thing, now it's over, I don't have to think about that. You might kidnap the new writer

and make sure Beast is written correctly this time. Well, let that just hover over him as he writes a new Beast and thinks about this. Ah, you know, look, I'm having fun. I'm not... Are you? It doesn't sound like you are.

It's, you know, hey, I think Beast is getting in through a much better thing right now thanks to his appearance in the X-Men 97 show. I think people are remembering why they loved Beast now. He is good in that, and that show is good. Yeah. He is good. I'm happy with it so far.

When I watch the show, I think, Beast, do you ever not reference something a high schooler was assigned? As it says in Mark Twain, yes. Have you read anything else that an eighth grader didn't write an essay on, Beast? I don't like how he always has to state what he's quoting. Yes. Everyone's probably just rolling his eyes at him like, yeah, yeah, we know. We've all heard of Danteante's inferno beast we know yeah well it was very impressive when we were 10 yeah i feel like yeah all right so after all of

that christmas and music stuff it's off to the dude ranch uh the letter i singular i do like the formerly wandering eye nudist colony like that gave me a chuckle not a bad sign character we then see it's owned by the rich texan and we have a joke that is now just how things are complaining about wi-fi access anywhere you go is like you know like uh i i go to a dude range and be like, yeah, but okay, seriously, how do I get online? Yeah, this is even pre-Wi-Fi, really. I mean, I'm sure there was Wi-Fi. You could technically do it, but it was not a public service yet at restaurants and hotels and whatnot. You had to go to the little business center in the hotel and plug your thing into a port.

It's so hard to go without the little business center in the hotel and plug your thing into a port it's so hard to go without internet these days you use internet for absolutely everything it's not just about like oh i need to keep track of uh what's on twitter or i need people to be able to contact me at all times like no it's like some people do all their their business on there. You pay with your phone. You need Wi-Fi to pay for things. It seems cruel now to deny Internet access. Well, 2003 was a different world, but thankfully for Comic Book Guy, there is lots of Internet. He has a smart fridge, which I didn't think existed in 2003, but I guess they did.

It's also funny to just hear about a business center that like, you know, that I think those still exist in hotels. But I remember on work trips having to go to the business center to get online. If when you couldn't count on Wi-Fi being in every room or the Wi-Fi being free in a hotel, which now if I actually had to pay for Wi-Fi as an extra in my hotel room, I would check out. Yeah, I mean, I still see these business centers in old hotels or, I guess, holiday inns. They're just generic, cheaper hotels. And they feel like they were all installed in 1998. And they're running Windows Vista or something. And they all have CRT monitors.

I hope they keep those CRT monitors forever. I don't want to see them go away. But so everybody's enjoying this dude ranch, except for one whiny girl. Welcome to the Lazy Eye Ranch, where we give you a week of rustic ranch living. Do you have an internet connection? Internet? Son, the only internet connection we got is a dedicated DSL port in the business center. Or you could patch in through the smart

fridge in your cabin. Hmm. If said fridge is truly smart, it will be filled with hot pockets and bologna by the time I get there. Goodbye. On this battleground in 1881, 56 Indians lost their lives and four brave Americans lost their hats. Those poor hats.

This whole ranch is appalling. It's built on a legacy of cruelty to animals and oppression of indigenous people. Just our way of making you all feel welcome. You're not listening. I never do you know uh it makes me feel like the the native americans their greatest enemy is not the beaver but actually white people but that'd be too obvious a joke i or i guess for them at this point they but yeah they lisa is only correct here i'm just like that that this is what the these dude ranches are

about and also i think it is accurate that they they would only count the lives of the dead you know white people in these battles with indians in quotes as as opposed to or hats in this case yeah well from this point on this episode is all about crushing lisa yes yes and then making her act uh viciously and uh and so well but now you mentioned anina let's hear the another of our many wonderful jingles take that lisa's beliefs because that's pretty much the rest of this episode is people crushing lisa's beliefs over and over again yeah you really must have hated this episode I would think so I would I don't think it's a mistake that she's not on this commentary she would uh she would have let them

know how much she did not like it and this episode also brings us what I feel like they were trying to turn into a new breakout character like a gill or a cookie kwan and that is that's cookie so that's one strike against him is that there's already a cookie kwan but two we have a character who dances when he's excited it's the rich texan and he fires his guns cookie doesn't do that he's just a creep who sleeps in beds with children which is right as they point out on the commentary is weird but and and also cookie is like he's the walter brennan type who they already did you just heard us talk about gummy joe on uh on the last exit to springfield they let carl weeder got get a key character in

it so good for him i i think that's nice but yeah there's not much new with Cookie. They haven't done already with this type of guy. I'm sorry. I just watched this episode. Who is Cookie? Cookie is the insane prospector guy. Oh, I didn't think anything of that guy. That's how not memorable he is. I just watched this episode.

I was like, who are you guys talking about? He's really trying to elbow his way in to be a recurring character. He does come back next season once in one episode, but's it really yeah wow i forgot that too well this is not a good attempt at uh breakthrough character well it's not like it's a cookie episode i think it's just someone saying i want to hear what cookie has to say uh we also get a kind of cute joke bart and homer are just friends in this episode it's not the usual bart and homer friend uh like bart asked for upsies and homer puts him on the horse and it gives him a nice little kiss on the cheek i think they're just a normal father and son here and then when they're trying to kill animals later though though i do like that the cowpokes are just like well he sure showed up

i i still have not ridden a horse myself. How hard is it? Were you ever just placed on a pony and walked around in a circle? I was. I think I was far too scared as a kid of doing that. I've done that and also I've ridden a horse through a trail during a class trip. That's it, though. I'm not a horse person at all.

I've never been a horse girl. I'm usually afraid of them. I think they're creepy. And I can't read their body language, and I don't want to get kicked in the face. So I don't like to approach them. Nina, as an artist, what do you think about drawing horses? Are they harder than other animals, as people I've heard say? Yep, they are.

Is it just weird angles? They have lots of knees? What's the problem? It's just hard to get a grasp of their anatomy. I did have to do an animated run cycle of a horse in animation school and then animate someone riding the horse. It's a lot harder than you would think. We know Nina's a big fan of the Spirit films, right, Nina? Oh, yeah.

Top four in Letterboxd i really uh we actually watched that that movie for animation school even though i'd already seen it before because a friend of mine worked at the theater and uh she got me for free and we were the only people there and i absolutely hated it i was screaming in my seat the whole time and i think i like skimmed through it to show bob like the gist of the movie once and even then i was I was like, I never want to see this again. Even though it is very beautifully animated, the story, and just the fact that Matt Damon is the inner monologue of the horse the whole time, and Brian Adams does all the songs in it, singing the most obvious lyrics,

it's just not good. What if Matt Damon was a horse? Well, we most obvious lyrics. It's just not good. What if Matt Damon was a horse? Well, we figured it out. It's not very good. And there's the obvious factoid that the history of animation started by photographing a horse to see if all of its legs were off the ground at some point during its run, basically. Also, I don't like how the horses have eyebrows in Spirit. Don't give horses eyebrows. Don't give animals eyebrows if you're gonna help it i liked on the commentary the the animators who

aren't chris clements are saying how they asked him oh that sucks you got to do an episode with horses in it that's gonna be hard and he said no the beavers are way harder to draw. Or he was more worried about drawing the beavers than the horses. So actually, speaking of guest stars, after Lisa is caught reading a book, Let's Go Home, and she's being miserable on this trip. We then get our big other guest star of the episode. Much, I'd say, less famous than David Byrne, actually. Hold it right there. Mama Rattlesnake will be mad as sore if you scrambled her youngin'. Luke Stetson, junior wrangler.

I'm Lisa Simpson, and you're the first person I've met here who cares about our animal equals. Well, if you like animals, you won't want to disappoint that pony over there. She's just aching to show you around. I'm sure she'd be happier without someone sitting on her back all day. I'm sorry you're not interested, because I need somebody to help me hang these no-hunting and free-to-bet signs.

That was a delicious meal, Cookie. What do we do with our garbage just leave it for cleanie my precious had to include that too a lot to talk about here let's start with the last thing well it turns out that andy circus was on the lot and matt selman kind of forced him to do some golem noises into a microphone and that's why he's making non-descript noises that don't signify what he's doing and doesn't really he's not like saying his own name i think he even says golem he does say golem yeah though uh maybe they're playing it like well that's just the sound of him clearing his throat that's his a hackum they just knew at some point in the future we're going to use this and it sounds like andy circus uh was just being polite but kind of didn't want to do this no i mean uh it was i'm glad matt selman uh can admit on the commentary like yeah i forced him

to do it he he just came by he's like i like the sim The Simpsons. Can I visit where you guys are making the show? And then Selman is like, well, since you're here, famous guy who's hot right now in 2002. Very hot right now. Could you do a little thing for us? Say the line, Andy. Another thing I want to point out, Lisa is reading the book Let's Go Home. That is a parody of the Let's Go series of travel books. They would be like, let's go New York.

Let's go Paris. Unfortunately, they paused the series of travel books. They would be like, Let's Go New York, Let's Go Paris. Unfortunately, they paused the production of those books during COVID and then the entire publishing line went to fuck. So the Let's Go series is over. Oh, that's sad. Because we're not going anywhere. We're not going anywhere anymore.

Actually, Let's Go Home was a tagline of the pandemic. Yeah, it's true. We already are home. That was fast. Nowline of the pandemic. Yeah, true. We already are home. That was fast. Now, here's the thing I want to say. Now, all the writers are men in their 40s or older, and I bet they were thinking, who could we get to play this crush of Lisa's? Who's the kid on TV? Oh, yeah, that tool time kid.

He's funny. And then he comes in. He's like, hi, I'm Jonathan, uh i'm 21 years old and uh i want to play luke i think they didn't know he was not a child actor anymore and he was actually at the end of his acting career because he was not doing anything at this time he was doing a few little things but like a few years after this he is done and then he comes back for some like last man standing fun but that's basically it yeah he basically retired uh after i was looking like okay what are his last credits like this is among his last credits before like really stopping though

he was on a couple episodes of smallville and the pom poco english dub too yes yes he was he probably did that dub around around this time actually but yeah i i mean um i think in their heads they're like oh yeah that cute kid from the sitcom and then he comes in and he's a grown man who's going to Harvard. He does a good job in this episode, though. Yeah, yeah. He's actually put on a character voice. They don't give him much to do, but he does well enough with what he's given. And here's the thing.

I wish I could tell you what he's up to now, but he's smart in that he lives a very private life. And he's seen about as often as Bigfoot. I think he's been photographed three times in the last uh decade and uh according to my wife quote unquote he looks like a podcaster now i yeah that's very true yeah i i'm gonna steal his fit he just looks like a regular guy yeah yeah normal guy i'm sure he's doing great living off all that like decades of sitcom money and uh whatever i mean you can't even find out like who he's married to if he has kids uh where he lives what his blood type is oh good for him how does he keep all that stuff secret well i guess no one's um looking into his life no one cares enough i appreciate he hasn't started talking home improvement yet or uh

a podcast about his experience making it but i know i think i i'm i think it's cool that he wants to just be a regular 42 year old man now and just live live his life oh by the way i brought up clifford earlier because uh yesterday was the 30th anniversary and there was like a special screening somewhere with martin short and the director q a right afterwards well in two years it'll be the 30th anniversary of The Adventures of Pinocchio. Hopefully, JTT will come out and do a special Q&A screening

of that. I feel like Bob and I will watch that at some point. We're watching almost a movie every day. I love Martin Landau when he's in that, but I think we should see Ed Wood first. For Martin Landau? Yes, Jonathanlor thomas not in ed wood i uh i'll keep an eye on your letterbox you guys are very active it's hard to keep up with you guys but yeah jtt uh i mean to

this day if you type in jtt in google it'll give you jonathan taylor thomas but yeah he was basically done he was a harvard student he was getting ready to enter the regular world of having been on TV for the past 20 years of your life and making a lot of money. It doesn't seem like he's a Harvard graduate. I bet they'd have had him on more if he was a Harvard graduate. I'm going to assume he graduated.

But he wasn't on the Lampoon. So you know what? He's dead to them. Also, though, this this lisa's crush i think he does it better than i thought joshua jackson did okay but he was pretty much just being himself as when he played the crush yeah and these characters are just so similar to each other i guess there was a bit more to the joshua jackson character because he was so like to the extreme in environmentalism it was silly but this kid is

just kind of normal we we find out he's a sellout later but uh oh and also on the commentary they they imply or they say that like that shia labeouf had tried out for the role before he got really famous apparently they were listening to child actors and they heard his voice on a cd like a demo reel and they didn't think he sounded right. What was LaBeouf doing back then? A little show called Even Stevens. What is that? It's basically where he made his bones before he became Mutt.

Yeah, it was a Disney Channel kid show. I remember that. No wonder I've never heard of it in my life. Yeah, that's where Christy Carlson Romano came from from the voice of Kim Possible hello hello uh sure I'll take your word for it also he was in holes around this time too we've all been in holes you shouldn't brag on the Andy Serkis thing too I just I wanted to put it in perspective how worn out that a Gollum joke is of just like when this came out, Return of the King had won its Oscar two months earlier. But or oh, actually, no, I'm sorry. Return of the King's next year, but it has been out.

And it just is kind of tired at that point. The use of Gollum for jokes. Yeah, I guess when they wrote this, that movie wasn't out yet, though. Well, now I guess he had two towers was the recent one. Yeah, so they were still in the middle but it doesn't excuse it i mean it just is it's it's a silly little joke but it does feel self-indulgent and it was the joke everyone was making i just watched the third futurama movie and for about 15 minutes of it fry is gollum oh right right i there's a reason i shoved the last two movies out of my brain as soon as I finished watching them.

Is Fry just doing the Gollum voice? Yeah, it's Billy West doing the Gollum voice. I mean, again, Bob, I just read your review of the Wild Green Yonder and I was like, yep, I cannot. Other than the last seconds of it because it appears in the Comedy Central show, I don't remember anything from that story. That's all I recall. But hey, the first movie is fun, and we're covering it this month on the Talking Simpsons Network, patreon.com slash talking simpsons. So after all that,

it's now time for some F Troop style comedy. I was thinking a lot about this, and I mean, I feel like this was a very common style of joke, and we saw it in Futurama, actually, with the episode where the bungalow roam, where the idea about Native Americans is they don't take their own beliefs seriously. They're only using them to basically rip off white people. And that is kind of insulting, which is why John Redcorn was such a great character on King of the Hill, because he sincerely believed in everything all the native american beliefs that

he believed in sorry to be repetitive with that sentence but the fact that white people would just be like oh that's indian nonsense or whatever would really piss him off yeah yeah no and in this case the just the joke is more on the tour maybe you could say the joke's more on the tourist of like yeah they're selling out their culture just to get money from tourists but and the tourists are forcing on it but also like the gag is well who stole your land well it would be that would be too obvious if you just like yeah you stole our land the people who own this land it's like no no the the land is gone because of beavers like that that's the sideways move on that joke uh though i did like seeing the himmerts pose as rambo and betty boop in the in their picture that is funny

but it just it just uh i mean that's why king of the hill was standing out above the other shows like this because they were like here is our indigenous character and he actually believes in this native american stuff that white people think is stupid, and that makes him mad. And also he blames colonizers too, which is not what's happening. He's always seeking justice. Though Homer, I like as a Homer being stupid joke, you people are guests in our country.

And I did think the, oh oh can we get one where i'm rambo my wife is betty boop and they have that standee there and it's bernice and dr hibbert getting their picture taken in it that is good though we still have to get a native american casinos joke for like the 80th time just on the simpsons let alone in in pop culture then we head over to a beautiful natural vista and that is where a marge happens upon lisa going on a little pony ride which at least they remember lisa likes riding ponies in this episode they sometimes forget this when bart gets a horse and lisa doesn't care this time at least they remember lisa likes ponies uh but in our next clip marge isn't so happy oh look i didn't gasp like that until i was 18 all right son we just knock over this dam and the noble native americans can

reclaim the land that is theirs no i wanted to die choking on food i'll save you so we we introduced the idea of marge not liking lisa having a a crush on this boy like i i at least love the framing of marge getting out from behind the cactus and then going back behind i know it's just like a quick silly little visual gag but uh the fact that it's a sorrel cactus means this is in this must be in arizona because they only grow in the snow or in desert. Oh, interesting. Well, then, hey, they should go to Colonial Phoenix while they're still there. Also, I like the idea of Colonial Phoenix.

It just means there's nothing. It's just an empty, it's just the desert. Yeah, because there were no settlers in the colonial eras in Phoenix. There were no white settlers there, rather. And, yeah, but marge this this setup of marge i mean i don't like marge saying i didn't gasp like that till i was 18 i feel like that is too sexually reference for this story with lisa i don't think marge is referencing having sex though i think it's just like i was never no i was never made excited by a boy

uh well all right okay i i rescind the without innocent and naive marges it's like her saying i never experienced excitement boy related excitement until i was 18 no that that does make more sense yeah get your mind out of the gutter henry yeah we know marge didn't have sex until she had sex with homer at the age of 24 when bart was born because then they because marge turned 34 in season one when Bart was 10. So, yep. Yeah. The math checks out.

Speaking of Bart, him and Homer just had, it's wacky adventures for Homer and Bart in this episode with all this beaver stuff. I mean, Homer being ripped apart by beavers and dragged by a noose to help him. Those are fun. That's cute. It's not hilarious, but I like it. Yeah. And his dream of dying by choking on food is also a very funny joke. The Simpsons writers seem to like going to the vicious beavers when it comes to depicting them.

Because I'm just thinking of the Mother Simpsons scene where they're biting and stealing the pants off the fake Homer body. Yeah. And, I mean, Nina and i love our instagram animal videos so we could tell you that beavers are adorable and all they want to do is carry around lots of objects and they just want you to get out of the way yes the japanese zoos love giving them uh cabbages and large carrots just to watch them carry them in their arms they are adorable they're not biting anybody's legs as they always are on the simpsons no i'd say this is anti-beaver propaganda leave the beavers alone also on the commentary there's a couple

tight we all know that matt selman it can be a little sneaky boy a little stinker on those commentaries i swear i hear him almost say something when somebody says like boy that beaver was animated well or something like that and i can feel like selman selman is ready to go into the gutter with that kind of joke but he does i think someone was talking about uh they placed the camera in a beaver den or something and maybe that's it someone was like that's not the only thing that's in there or something like that yeah he he was on better behavior with david burn there also as we cut to lisa with stetson again i think it's kind of funny that he's trying to hide the conservative realities of of going to a western vacation but it also is more of the

comedy of like a man has to lie to a woman like that's the the basis of this comedy i think luke is a good character and i don't consider this lying because he's just trying to protect lisa from everything that would bum her out uh yeah i wouldn't consider that lying he's just taking her to the things she'd like yeah that's why he's pissed off when he's like all right go this way go that way okay look at the clouds and even the clouds depict animals being slaughtered he He's like, God damn it. And Cookie is about to shoot a chicken in point-blank range with a shotgun, which, of course, means it's time to play the third jingle.

Everybody hates birds, right? Honestly, really shocked we don't hear the gunshot after they cut away. So at least they spared us that. It feels like it's missing. They really shouldn't have named this guy Cookie, because every time you mention him, I think, oh, was Cookie Kwan's episode? I don't remember that. I wish.

Might have been better. I want to see more of Comic Book Guy and what he's up to at this range. I think an issue is there are no side characters here. Well, they are, but they're only used for one joke. There's just so much more that could have been done at this dude ranch. And it just somehow becomes another Lisa has a crush on a boy episode.

And then there's like a whole side thing with beavers, which aren't usually part of a dude ranch. And, you know, the Marge being concerned stuff, it's fine. And I like Marge being sweet and innocent and trying to be a good mom, but it adds up to nothing it's just her being quietly concerned in the background she does not really

try to intervene in this budding relationship they just went for like a full like City Slickers parody or something like along those lines like Yurly Smith was in City Slickers so why not just do a parody of that you know we just talked about

City Slickers on another podcast just do a parody of that I've always forget well you know we just talked about City Slickers on another podcast and I I I always forget that fact I'm too dazzled by her other credits like Herman's Head and uh and Maximum Overdrive no one is dazzled by Herman's Head I was but I was nine but yeah Marge is warning her off. I mean, you know, when she hears like 13, like that is, I mean, I, maybe I sound like an old man here, but yeah, at least it's eight. I don't like when they write these stories for an eight year old. It's not, it's not, it's not my favorite. It's realistic though, for a little girl to have a crush on an older boy or man. It does happen. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, lots of eight year old girls did have a crush on 13-year-old justin taylor thomas so makes sense and they're not doing the analogy for a uh a grown-up relationship they're still acting like kids they're not doing a joke where it's like oh it's like they moved in together or or it's like their things have cooled down and they're not having sex anymore they're not doing those kind of jokes like they do with maggie on her what if maggie had a date kind of things right those are much oh don't remind me but this this is i i feel like a realistic uh in terms of the simpsons what if lisa had a crush on a boy and they've done it

before but it this seems the most like a real little girl style behavior and that she gets jealous and you know she always wants to be around him but it never go like he's not trying to take advantage of her we don't know what his thoughts are about her i don't think he's interested in her i think he's just trying to be nice and uh marge also uh knows she's being a hypocrite instantly of saying like you know i didn't marry the first guy oh well actually i did but you shouldn't uh and then we cut to them literally making beautiful music together uh in front of a gigantic moon it's a really good drawing of a big ass moon i love the giant moon i also love homer's little war games board he has where he's pushing

around the figures like napoleon and not to bring him up again but i love that he has a piece for cookie just sitting far away and not doing anything. Cookie is going to storm the battlefield. Homer's basically playing Unicorn Overlord with Cookie. Contemporary reference, everybody. This was being recorded in April of 2024. Very topical. Yeah, Unicorn Overlord.

I played half the demo. But this is when we have a joke that now they'd be complaining about tiktok but it is like kids growing up too fast comedy that then leads into like uh i'd say the my least favorite joke in the episode oh no they're making beautiful music together let's see move that there do a flanking there. Wind should be coming in from the south. Time it to coincide with beaver holiday. Oh! This map is useless! Useless!

Honey, I'm worried about how fast our kids are growing up. It's the beef hormones and the fluorescent lights. What are you going to do? But they're already acting like teenagers. Lisa's with that boy. And look at maggie we are the geologist analyzing this joke that we just unearthed from 2003 and it's not just maggie doing a sexy dance and pulling out a can of buzz cola for no reason it is a parody folks

a parody of a britney spears pepsi ad that aired during the Super Bowl of 2002 and then in perpetuity for about 18 more months. And in the commercial, it's Britney Spears basically dancing throughout the decades in different gear with different dancers dressed to fit the time period. And the thing that Maggie does while holding up the can of pop and winking and turning her head, that's what Britney Spears does at the end of that commercial. And if you look up Britney Spears Pepsi commercial, you'll see that still pop up. I hate this scene so much. If it was just this, I wouldn't think much about it. But the fact that they've released a figure based on this Maggie, this moment. I didn't know this.

Oh, no. I got to say, worst Simpsons figure ever it's called it's officially it's called maggie in pink jumpsuit and it's from uh neca's line of 25 the greatest guest stars uh thing i don't know why because part of that is the britney spears figure and then separately from that they released this dancing maggie figure even though it doesn't count as a guest star so i don't know why they did it. I forgot that it was from this episode because it's such a random moment.

The back of the box, it says she's doing a slinky dance because I guess it couldn't say sexy. But don't make a figure of a baby trying to look sexy. No, no. That's what she's trying to be because it's based on Britney Spears.

Who approved this? It's found exclusively in homes that get raided by the FBI. Go on to anonymous browser, a private window, sorry, a private tab. Look up the Dancing Maggie

figure. Too late. I did it in a public tab. They're going gonna deport me now think of a new name the figure does not come with the soda can so the reference is lost so it just sounds like you're selling me a sexy baby oh that's what they're doing terrible it's it's hideous i hate it i don't like it at all they were so into dancing maggie jokes this season because they already had her dancing to Sex Bomb when Homer put the sex mixtape accidentally in Maggie's room instead of the lullaby music so they already had her dancing to a sexy song already and now they're like no let's get even more obvious with Britney

Spears because they're because they're commenting on like oh Britney Spears was overly sexualized school girl aesthetic at the time and making girls grow up too fast was as was the complaint back then. And just like with the Vicious Beavers, again, in Mother Simpson, there was a dancing Maggie scene. Oh, yeah. The laughing parody. Yeah. Right. Oh, man.

And that one is much better because you're not trying to make her look sexy. Just kind of cute. But in this one one they are going for like a quote-unquote slinky dance that's what makes it terrible slinky dance yes i hate that term now oh it's terrible no i uh that that music video got uh remastered in 20 or music video that commercial got remastered in 2023 uh so you can read britney spears look back on it 20 years later if you want to and then there's a couple articles out there but i mean it it reminded me that how much money pepsi spends on being second place to try to

keep like coca-cola doesn't hire every big pop star to advertise their soda like pepsi they don't need to because they taste better it's true i wonder if there was like a bidding war between them to get britney spears to advertise her pop at least say maybe they did it to be obvious and also because aljean loves these uh song drops but at least britney spears got some money or somebody related to Britney Spears got some money for this joke kind of mocking Britney Spears or saying she's helping girls be too sexualized at a young age. Yeah, like I get that it is kind of a commentary on sexualizing these young pop stars too much. But like you said, we just had a Maggie dancing to a sexy song joke in this season why do it again i i gotta say it's a wink to the camera that makes me if they even just cut that out i'd be like that's not so great but the wink to camera for the specific joke that's what makes me dislike

it the most that it would just be a sexy baby out of context uh now we're talking for that we're talking about this for so long but the fact that it's a britney spears parody it makes me think all right this is not like you're just showing me a sexy baby for no reason you're trying to like what if a baby was britney spears pretty funny but without that it's just like hey this baby's gonna dance for i i just wish you didn't hike up her shirt yeah for this joke they didn't need to go that far and then make a figure based on it so you just be wearing her normal sleep suit like she is for the sex bomb joke a few episodes it's bad enough that they made it it's bad enough that there are thousands of these in landfills

right now well there's a ton of them on ebay if you want one yeah or i mean i'm sure there's a bunch just in prisons floating around so after this we then learn that there's going to be a dance at the end of their trip. I do like the joke. The stooped over fiddler is back. That's great. And he does come back. This, though, is when Lisa and Cookie both learn about the dance. Cookie is just, he's excited about dancing, but then dances so hard that he has to go to bed and can't actually go to the dance

but he's excited about bed as excited as he is about going to the dance and this is when Lisa overhears a phone call with Stetson thinking that he's got a girl and Lisa is heartbroken she runs off to bed to cry and for the joke to work Bart and

Cookie both magically teleport into the bed I actually love how it's drawn that it is an empty bed. It is fully an empty bed when she jumps on it. And then when Bart pops up, he's like, hey, you're the next bunk. That Bart just appears with no physical trace. Despite how much I don't like where this story is going, I thought this act break is very funny. Where there's a very tall bunk bed and cookie is is bunking with the kids Elisa at least is on the third high bunk bed which as a kid I never liked bunk beds I hated sleeping on the top bunk if we like stayed in a hotel with

a bunk bed in rare occasions I always feared I was going to roll out of it in my sleep I did once for a lot of a bunk bed in my sleep once when I was a kid. Jeez. That's scary. Apparently, I climbed back up in my sleep, according to the person below me. I just woke up with bruises. They normally have those boundaries, those walls built around the sides, right? But I guess yours didn't. I must have rolled right over them.

Okay. No, I've, you know, and it's not like I ever, I shouldn't even be that scared. the sides right but i guess yours didn't i must have rolled right over them okay no i've uh i you know and it's not like i ever i i shouldn't even be that scared i don't think i've ever rolled out of bed while sleeping normally so i shouldn't think it would happen to me anyway but yeah i don't think it would happen to me now i sleep like the dead in my bed i don't move and so after that commercial break lisa is filled with sadness and jealousy. And of course, she has to, we have to pit two women against each other as Act Three begins here.

I can't believe Luke has another gal. My name is Clara. I've known Luke for more than five days. Excuse me. Is this the way to the Lazy Eye Ranch? Yeah, it sure is. But a quicker way to the ranch

is that shortcut. Thanks, darling. See you at the dance. I look forward to it. I hate you. So Lisa meets another girl and hates her instantly. This is not the normal Lisa we're used to.

Women can't get along, folks. I think it's in line with her character. We've seen this before in Lisa's rival. I think when she senses a rival, she immediately becomes jealous and some of her more sinister side comes out. Yeah, but I will say that she is so indirectly responsible for whatever happens to clara that uh i feel like doing that on purpose to make lisa not seem as bad as she could be because she points clara in a different direction and somehow clara ends up in

the middle of a of a body of water and we're not sure how yeah wait because the water actually no they break the old dam while in between these scenes so i guess we should have seen her getting affected by the water then yeah it's true we really we i mean this is uh this third act is the sloppiest act of the whole of this of the episode so it makes sense i i do kind of like that the scary wood she is sent into is like they just drew the one from Snow White with all the eyes and the shadows. But I would think probably Arlie Smith complained about having to say, like, I hate you in a friendly way about this woman. I did chuckle that they keep showing all the things that say her name just so lisa can know that this is clara yeah the the necklace the stitching on the saddle the the ring that said clara it's a good trio of jokes though my favorite little visual gag in this that feels like a swartz welder joke uh is when the egg is put back under the rattlesnake and it's

just lifted up like it's a door bat and then placed back down nicely. Yeah, it's funny that Luke loves nature so much. He's not saying, oh, rattlesnakes are dangerous. We should kill this snake and its babies immediately. He's like, oh, there you go, little girl. So then we cut back to the beaver adventure, and they are distracted with model furniture. And for minibar jokes, I like deck of cards as the specific in there you know i don't hear that as much in many i was just at a hotel in january in new york and

there was a deck of cards and they were like 18 dollars wow i actually didn't know that was like a common item see i've heard of uh i definitely think of like m&ms and weird shaped boxes or and there's definitely there's a toblerone that comes out of the mini bar. But yeah, the deck of cards, that's a really good specific. I don't think about too much. I did take an $8 can of beer out of the fridge because a beer in New York is more than that. And I thought, I'm saving money by eating out of the mini bar. It's, you know, the place we stayed in for our for our most recent sketch fest trip bob i don't think

there was a mini bar in there and instead we each got a free bottle of wine or an included bottle of wine and i left mine behind oh it was free well it was it was great they they're just like do you like white or red wine here's a bottle like it was i guess we were paying for the room so it was at no extra cost the the bottle of wine wow uh well meanwhile i left my bottle i didn't open mine either i left my bottle of wine uh near where a uh an unhoused person who wants it could find it i hoped or child no no i'm sure no children ever found it bob certainly not but hey good good luck to them if they did i also have to think chris clements probably loved seeing in the script and then a giant dam breaks and beavers run everywhere as as the next thing they

had to design yeah i guess the beavers are just defeated after this because the natives return to their land look at their mail we get more f troop jokes. Treaty, treaty, bill, treaty, peace pipe aficionado monthly. That is exactly an F Troop joke. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, Thank you. See no app today. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only.

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might just be like one uh youtube account but there's someone who i think is a zoo employee who had a beaver at her home because it was like recovering from something and couldn't be kept at the zoo for whatever reason i don't think it's like a pet but it was like making dams in the house it was picking up toys and dragging stools and stuff and cushions and like just like trying to like make a dam between uh two walls that is adorable it's so cute it's so cute they can't help it their their biological instincts take over no matter where they are i mean i side with the beavers. On the commentary, they were talking about how, oh, apparently beavers are a real problem in nature because they just go about damning things. And apparently you can't kill them. Oh, no.

Problem? I mean, they're just trying to live. Yeah. They're building a home. I feel like it's rich comedy writers complaining about how, like, at their second home, they can't kill beavers that is bringing out property values then homer this is like a joke they've done four times before mixed together they're offered a thing and then it's revealed they say oh it's beer urine and then they're like ha no it's fresca and they spit it out so this is mountain dew versus crab juice again and it's also they did it better when better when Homer enjoyed drinking out of the bull testicle

instead of a coconut that he was offered as a missionary. Okay, thank you. I was wondering, I was trying to think if that was the missionary episode or if it was the buffalo episode, but it was the bull testicle. Yeah, yeah. Because the guy says, sure you wouldn't want a coconut? Those things are great. No, i'm good

i wish homer didn't go fresca after spitting it out it's like we get it you don't need that no i think uh they they did it way better with mountain dew or crab juice that's that's the reason why everybody remembers that one and not fresca or bear urine then we after the native americans thank homer and bart and that story's all over it's uh time for a good old-fashioned hoedown hank azaria sings it well and i like that the song is entirely about motel perks not not uh western jokes and regulations like don't forget the two drink minimum and and uh to sign up for the credit card there. Again, I hate that everything I interact with online is trying to sell me a credit card. It's like I'm already buying a thing on, say, PayPal.

And then they also say, but don't you also want a credit card from us? Or everything is trying to sell you five things. I feel like they've stopped offering them on flights. I don't know if you've experienced that, Henry or Nina, where they'll be like, oh, we have this credit card offer and the woman or man will walk down the aisle and just show everybody the credit card they could be signing up for. It's like, this is humiliating.

Everyone's not looking at them. Yes, yeah. It's been a while since I've seen that too. I always see those people offering credit cards in grocery stores or places like Canadian Tire. And whenever I see them, I just quickly turn on my heels and go the other way because I don't want to be bothered. And also because I'm a people pleaser, I don't want to say no to them. So I just pretend they

don't exist. I've also had that upsell thing just recently from like using the Cinemark app to buy movie tickets. And then after I buy a movie ticket, it's like, do you also want to sign up for a food delivery service? And I'm like, no, no, XX. It's like, I'm using you to buy tickets. Why must you squeeze me for another thing? But yes, we have a fun little song. And this is where we hear that,

well, we get a classic Southerners do incest joke, they can't resist that, as Lisa learns the truth. Dang it. Clara should be here by now. I'm sure she's just running late. Or she's not coming because she doesn't understand how special you are. Well, that sure don't sound like my sister. Sister?

You mean she's not your girlfriend? Hell no. They outlawed that in this state two years ago. Need help now? Come with me. Done something really terrible. Don't really care. Just totally caught up in moments. I have some sad news for y'all.

After this dance, I'm heading to jail. One of my stray bullets hit a Texas Ranger. But I'll be back in six months. Yee-haw! Blanks. They just don't feel the same. See, it does imply there that Luke Stetson would date his sister were it not for the laws.

He doesn't say it's gross any other reason, just it's been illegal for two years. Well, he is from New York city. That's maybe how they do it in central park West. I suppose. We laugh at him going to jail for six months for shooting somebody. But three years after this is when Dick Cheney shoots a guy and nothing happens to him.

The friend apologized. That's right. That was so funny six months seems too short for shooting a texas stranger yeah uh sorry i meant too long he would probably get like six days in reality community service and no no no financial penalty yes i love how defeated he is at shooting the blanks, though. That just doesn't feel the same. And then as I was watching this, I thought, oh, hey, here's another good reason for Nina to be the guest on this episode. It's obviously not the same guy, but they used the previous design for a coyote for a joke here.

The coyote looks just like the space coyote, though less red and spacey. Sort of. It's kind of a reach, though less red and spacey. Sort of. It's kind of a reach, but I get what you mean. This part was funny because the rabbit makes dolphin noises for some reason. It's more of a space land coyote. Yes. And here's the thing. Did Clara's horse die?

Ooh, I bet it did. I guess Lisa killed that horse. Yeah. Probably. It must have been washed away in the water and uh and drowned somewhere or maybe they found it elsewhere i don't know lots of animal cruelty in this episode well you know as i learned from when we did the uh rotel dorado movie horses can swim and are actually pretty good at it because they have gigantic lungs that keep them very buoyant uh but here we're talking about how this is a ragtag story i like that they at least remembered beavers flooded something so that caused a problem that they now have to fix

with beavers with beavers the beavers fix and they're the cause of and solution to this episode's problem speaking of animal design i think the beavers are much beavers, they're the cause of and solution to this episode's problem. Speaking of animal design, I think the beavers are much cuter in Mother Simpson. They're a bit too realistic in this one. Maybe they wanted to make them seem less appealing. Well, Nina, you know, artistically, as a master of the Mac reading style of art, you notice that as the series goes on and we get into these seasons they get farther away from the dot-eyed simple animal designs to get more into closer to real animal

designs have you noticed that i think like everything else in the simpsons they try to get too realistic they they start adding uh more realistic details and they're afraid to get or maybe they're not allowed to get too out there. Like, I've often complained about how celebrities are designed now compared to how they used to be. It's like a similar kind of thing. I think the David Byrne one's good. The David Byrne one's good. Yeah, I'm looking at the beavers in Mother Simpson and they are a lot cartoonier looking.

They're so cute. They're really good. I guess that's the point because you think they're gonna save homer but then they start uh biting him and stealing his pants also lisa doesn't even get to save the day in this bart gets the big hero moment of of uh creating the land bridge and lisa just gets to watch on because bart gets to be the hero here. All to set up another sort of sexist joke. But I do like, who are you, the Eustace police? That gave me a chuckle.

Yeah, you're right. Lisa doesn't even get a chance to correct things in this episode. That sucks. This really is a terrible episode for her. She corrects things by letting Bart win. Yes. It's a good thing Lisa brought

Bart here to do anything. Obviously, Lisa couldn't as a girl. But yeah, so Bart climbs up the tree, chased by beavers, gets them to chew into the tree. It falls down. Bart hops out like a cool action star and creates the land bridge.

This is when Clara acts normal for a second, but then remembers she's a girl. Run across! I'm sorry. I only sent you the wrong way because I thought you were Luke's girlfriend. Well, that certainly justifies attempted murder. You know, there are more important things in this world than boys. Hello, handsome.

What's up, cootie breath? Well, hypocrisy is always funny. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also I like that Bart is not receptive to it. Bart's not into girls. He calls her cootie breath. Yeah, it's an obvious joke to make.

The better joke is well that certainly justifies attempted murder like you could cut the scene there that's a good joke also i i do like that she uh is one lesson away and so that's why she's not trying to swim away she's learned some but you know what one lesson away can't risk it she can't try swimming in this to safety you know i don't know how to swim. I took swimming lessons when I was little, but I kept failing the orange class. I don't know if every swimming school uses the same system. Probably not.

But there's like a color system. I think you started with yellow and then it's orange and red and so forth. So basically, I couldn't pass level two because i could not tread water i took it i took it three times and it just got humiliating because it was i was getting the same teacher every single time oh and i was just getting older you know and then the kids in the class were the same uh were getting younger as i got older so i was like you know what i'm just gonna stop here i still can't tread water to this day. Actually, no one in my family, my parents can swim, but my siblings cannot. So if anyone wants to kill me and my older siblings, just drown

all of us. Surefire way. Nina and I are going on a long boat ride after this podcast. Nina, this is like revealing food allergies on podcasts. It's dangerous. i definitely took some like swimming classes at the y as a kid i i will at the ymca but i don't remember grades and stuff in it uh i think i did just fine in it though i haven't it's been a while since i've really swam any i like i would like to think i'm still an all-right swimmer like i i could definitely tread water and float and all that stuff i wasn't like competitively swimming or anything but i never had trouble with swimming i was a lesser michael phelps and i decided to hang up my goggles he just uh is too got to hollywood yeah yeah i mean all the all the sponsorships it's uh they'll just tear you apart out there but you're born those long limbs like him yeah

it just leads to a lot of tripping when you're walking down the street uh so uh so yes clara is saved we then cut to the next day and lisa gets her heart broken just to just to punish her one more time in this episode lisa clara told me about how you saved her last night did clara tell you anything else. Just that she felt mighty stupid for getting herself lost in them woods. Listen, Luke. It's my fault Clara got lost. I didn't know she was your sister, and I wanted you all to myself. You would do that just for me? That's despicable!

You're the kind of city slaker my family left Central Park West to avoid. You got a lot of chutzpah, missy. Goodbye. Oh, I had my first crush. And all it did was make me do terrible things. And then break my heart. Lisa, welcome to love. It's full of doubt and pain and uncertainty.

But then one day, you find a man you love so much, it hurts. Who is he? You, homie. Woohoo! In your face, imaginary guy! Marge is giving the task to make it seem like this episode was about something with this james l brooks light riff you're right it is wannabe brooks style writing except it does it has uh it lacks a lot of the actual heart of those type of lines though also too i i definitely don't think now they would write the ending of like lisa learns that

eventually she will get a man in her life and that will make her feel good. Like that they would not have that kind of resolution now. Also, the pedant in me was like, first crush. What are you talking about? Yeah, we've seen it. We've seen like quite a few crush episodes about Lisa. Even like the Simpsons movie,

there was a big plot line about her having a crush on a boy oh man that sucks that yeah actually they take this not so great crush episode and then they make it into her entire plot the only thing that happens to her in the movie oh boy they're making me hate the movie more well what they could have done is made a joke out of it and said like oh she was like my sixth crush yeah you know i hadn't even thought of that as also an annoying lie but you're right yes if we're counting cory as a crush then you know you already got that there and you got joshua jackson and nelson now oh god nelson lagdon olger yeah man felonious from trilogy of error that's right man yeah the the malcolm malcolm himself was also a crush for her frankie muniz uh that's i've i got it it took me a sec i was

waiting yeah so i think i was just like making a joke but this is her sixth crush then well if you don't if you don't count cory like i'm gonna I'm only gonna count like real people achievable quote-unquote people oh actually no there was uh the boy at the library oh that's right yeah he's uh man like no it's Langdon Alger right well Langdon's separate from the boy at the library right oh that's a different boy okay yeah we don't even see Langdon Alger he's just mentioned no the boy that the library is when she's like, if only someone could tame him. Yeah, that's right. You want juvenile. This is young adult.

That's right. Also, this twist here that he goes like, you would do that for me. And then he reacts negatively. It would be a clever twist on regular sitcom storytelling of like, you would do that for me. Oh, you're not so bad after all. And I have a happy ending. And then they turn into like, like no he actually is more insulted and hates it more never that would be unpredictable except the simpsons always does this to lisa so it is predictable yeah it's just more of kicking her while she's down and hey we're trying to find all the jewish figures on the simpsons

innocently of course i'm making a list luke stetson said chutzpah, and he's from New York City. That's true. I mean, I do like that it makes him like a born Manhattanite, and seemingly, I mean, if you're living in Central Park West, you're rich. It makes him sort of a sellout in the end for Lisa to like less. But so the family leaves, and this is where we get one last joke to close out the episode. Hey, let's see if Dad's song is finally off the air. Coming up next, Springfield's latest one-hit wonder, The Moe Sislak Connection, produced

by David Byrne. Moe, Moe, Moe, how do you like me why don't you like me nobody likes me we can spend another week at the ranch oh they can't be good for the struts and we talked about this on some episode, because some episode of something, maybe the Simpsons did a parody of more and more and more, or just played the song.

But this is a song by the Andrea True Connection. And Andrea True was a very well-known pornographic actress who pivoted to singing pop songs songs and i think because of that this was a novelty song that's uh that makes it a higher level of clever on this i i was trying to look up where it was used previously in simpsons it plays during a discos to dance he does after uh snorting sugar okay okay that's when we covered it. But just in case anyone out there is wondering what that song is. I mostly know this song from commercials. It's perfect for commercials.

You want more, more, more of something. They're talking about savings. I got to say, David Byrne's not bringing his A-game despite being kidnapped here. I guess he made fast friends with Moe or else this is a condition of the hostage situation. I think David Byrne was not. He is, you know, like how in Misery, James Caan writes a crappy version first that she rejects. This is him writing like, OK, here, I'll write a song and it's just a parody of more, more, more. Either way, David Byrne is probably dead at this point in in the simpsons world

and we can assume that because he never came back right yeah although he was mentioned in homer goes to college as one of the more notable nerds including orville redenbacher oh right right i forgot he was one of those uh though also it's funny on the commentary they joking not joking invite him back on the show. They did that with Stan Lee when they had him on the commentary. And Stan Lee did come back. But clearly, David Byrne was just being nice because he has not come back since this episode. Well, he seemed to enjoy his time on the show.

Yeah, he was having a good time. But, man, maybe he's just a busy guy. I don't know. Or he doesn't like doing stuff over Skype or Zoom and wants to only do it in person, but they won't fly to New guy. I don't know. Or he doesn't like doing stuff over Skype or Zoom and wants to only do it in person, but they won't fly to New York. I don't know. But all this say, if you hear on that commentary, it's like, oh, they must have got him back. No, they did not.

Still has not returned to the show. We'll see. He'll come crawling back. He's doing all these other comedy things there. That's why I was surprised he has not come back. But anyway, yeah, so a wacky, weird episode that starts at Christmas and ends with the car riding off into the sunset with the same Western music sting they use every episode with David Byrd in between. I don't, yeah, I mean, this isn't the worst episode this season, but it's all over the place yeah again uh to repeat what i said earlier two and a half hours ago that it's just a baffling collection of unrelated ideas i can't hate it because it just is uh you know surprising me with what it's showing me but it sounds like it is

just unused parts of episodes that were like oh this plot won't work and that plot won't work and they were just crammed together yeah like thematically it's not very well done like even the the two musical things in here are david byrne and britney spears couldn't get some kind of country singer some kind of country song to tie everything together yeah i thought i i will say this is not as unnatural as how weird Al shows up in the gay episode I'd say that's a more unnatural cramming in of a guest but this is close to it we went from talking about porn stars to unnatural cramming

I think it's time to end the episode and beaver dams master logs inside of beaver dams I'm tagging this explicit on the apple podcast app so that has been another episode of talking simpsons before we do our plugs nina where can we find you i know i can find you if i open this door to my right and walk about hello three feet and turn to the left but where can everyone else find you uh Since you can't walk into your next room and find me, you can find me online at spacecoyote.com

for all my artwork. You can go to spacecoyote.com slash links if you want to see where I am on social media. And I do stuff for Fangamer for a living. That's video game merchandise. So if you go to fangamer.com, sort by collection, sort by artist, click on my name,

you'll find all the stuff I've done. Most recently, I've done merchandise for Bloodborne, Silent Hill, and Ace Attorney. No, it's all really great. I always like the stuff you do, and you take on so many cool side projects over time,

including our always great posters. I was just putting up uh some of your posters uh to display finally on the wall i've been uh they've been set to the side i just bought brand new frames to to start putting them up i need to put them up in my recording room to remind me of my my glory yeah my youth yeah we need to hang up a lot of things still got too much artwork yep not enough walls but i I love being able to just turn and see Nina's great great drawings of ours to remember all the good times

we had but thanks Nina as always but yes this has been Talking Simpsons if you want to support the show and get a ton of bonus episodes full length bonus episodes head on over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up at the $5 level and when you do you get access to everything we've made on the patreon for nearly seven whole years that's episodes about

futurama king of the hill batman the animated series the critic and mission hill and that five bucks a month also gets you new monthly episodes of both talking futurama and talk king of the hill and again the second you sign up you get access to everything we've made since june of 2017 and it's all happening at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and we have a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you get all the five dollar stuff naturally but then you can also access all of the uh great movie podcasts waiting for you henry what's going on there bob is talking about the wetter cartoon movie podcast that we do every month as a super bonus for our $10 and up patrons at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Last month, we did our April live action tradition, and we covered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the 1990 classic that me and Bob have a lot of childhood love for.

And this month, as Bob teased earlier on this podcast, you will hear us talk about the first Futurama movie Bender's big score their big return in 2007 we are going into a Matt Groening feature film for the first time on what a cartoon movie and you can hear over five years of what a cartoon movies at your fingertips for 10 bucks a month and all the five dollar things Bob mentioned everything from Akira to a goofy movie, sign up for yourself to see it all at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. And I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter and Blue Sky is Bob Servo. I have another podcast, by the way.

It's called Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that where you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for $5 a month. And by the by the way hey it's my 42nd birthday this week so if you want to give me a little treat you can always head on over to boss fight books and buy my oral history on day of the tentacle i released that for the 30th anniversary of the classic point-and-click adventure game it is a comprehensive oral history you can find it on bossfightbooks.com or wherever you find books like Amazon.

You can get it for your Kindle. Just please check it out. And Henry, how about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G and also on Blue Sky, the same. And Talking Henry on Instagram. I'm always posting a lot of fun or also news things that are not fun.

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list of all of our previously released free podcasts. That's TalkingSimpsons.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 4's last exit to Springfield, and we'll see you then. Landers, I am a patient, reasonable, handsome man. But even I have my limits. Now beat it. You have worked so hard to make your business into a reality. But achieving your next business goal, that can be overwhelming. What if you had someone to talk through the options and the next steps with? Someone who wants to see your business succeed while giving you

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