Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt) With Alexi from The Y Axes

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

We're jonesing for some tomacco and joining us in our time of need is Alexi from the band The Y Axes! How does watching a Zorro parody send all The Simpsons to a farm? How many times can Homer be crushed by a tractor? And what type of fruit tastes like grandma? All that and more in this week's newest podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

bling blong everyone our new podcast mini-series talking mission hill is now exclusively on patreon put on your spicy pants every friday with a new podcast covering each episode of the cult series from simpsons legends bill oakley and josh weinstein five dollar subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons can hear every episode plus plus all of our previous mini series about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsley, sign up for Talking Mission Hill today! Alright! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that tastes like grandma. I'm your host, Gaptooth Bumpkin Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration

of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? I ain't no Tommy Toon, I'm Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? I'm repressing the rage I'm feeling, I'm Alexi Belcher. We all are, and today's episode is EIEI Annoyed Grunt or Doe. Now you can't tell me nicotine's not addictive. Lisa, there's absolutely no evidence today's episode aired on november 7th 1999 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby the second spyro game is released for the playstation fiona apples when the pawn takes the you know the one is released in record stores and jerry seinfeld gets engaged to the future miss jessica seinfeld who was 28 at the time uh not this is not the underage of age but teenage girlfriend this was the one after that but she was married to another man at the time she started dating him that's that's

a newman maneuver he's a regular scoundrel that that jerry seinfeld the uh jessica seinfeld actually was on her honeymoon and came back from it to date jerry seinfeld i mean can you turn him down i know 1999 you're hitching your wagon to the seinfeld train and she's she's enjoyed it ever since she's still they are still together, Jerry and Jessica. I assume Seinfeld was a billionaire but he's not. Can you believe that? I mean, yeah. I would have thought he'd be at the billionaire level, not like

just a paltry 500 billion or whatever he is. Yeah, that's about where he stands. Not invited to the secret billionaire island. Not a billionaire, but one sexy bee. Oh, yeah. The bee movie. The bee that made a woman fall in love one sexy bee. Oh, yeah. The bee movie. That made a woman fall in love with a bee. He was that hot of a sex.

Coming soon to what a cartoon movie. Oh, no. And yeah, that was what Fiona Apple's like sophomore album, right? Yeah, that title was like a poem in free verse. And we all judged it for that. Oh, no, wait, blank verse. I don't know. They're different.

You and I, Bob, were a little out of the Spyro demographic when that came out. But Lexi, did you play the Spyro games in the past? I wasn't really allowed to use my PS1. It was my brother's PS1. At that point, I definitely could play as much Tony Hawk's Pro Skater as possible. There was a Ready to Rumble boxing game that I was pretty fond of at that time. Oh, yeah. But, yeah, I didn't even get on the Crash Bandicoot, the Spyro, that whole art style I sadly missed out on.

I dabbled in that world of platformers, and I will say I think Spyro is a little better than Crash. I think so. Yeah. I'd say in that I was a Nintendo guy all the way so if I was going to play a younger audiences platformer then anyway I'd be playing the Nintendo one not the Playstation one I was a big Sony freak and a Nintendo

freak but I was not into these games and now they're huge again because the remastered one just came out in the past few years they just remastered all the Spyro games and all the Crash games for PS4 and they're like mega hit sellers because everyone who's now, let's say, 30-ish, they're the games that they cut their teeth on when they were 10. Yeah, I was definitely playing more N64 at that time as well.

Hey, welcome back, Lexi. You were on our Homerpalooza episode. Oh, for two years ago, and a FLCL as well for What a Cartoon. Oh, wow. That is such a long time ago. But yeah, I'm so excited to be back. And thank you for having me for an episode that has a musical montage. Very much appreciated.

That's right. Have the Y-Axis performed the Green Acres theme live yet? Oh, no, that's still live. I mean, we haven't had any live shows in a while. But Green Acres is definitely... It's planned. I want to hear a very synthy take on that classic tv theme oh yeah it's gonna be like super like onomatoguchied out

start start working on your jajaga boar impression now but but yes in case folks don't uh haven't listened to that one yet lexi you're a rock star yeah i uh i'm a rock star um i'm in a local band called the Y-Axis here in San Francisco and uh we have been uh hunkering down and just playing like little mini live streams and things like that and working on some remixes and new songs you know I predicted podcasters would be the new rock stars has not happened yet yeah you you thought in the last one two years ago we haven't achieved it just yet it's true we're less cool now y'all are selling out venues so i mean pretty much pretty much rock stars and

uh you must have uh been seeing this one when it was brand new right this season 11 classic yep season 11 i every time uh we talk about an episode that's like in later seasons i'm like i didn't realize i was still into The Simpsons at this point. But yeah, it's this is definitely still like in the beginning of the end for me. But yeah, I remember watching this one live and just loving the Tamako part so much. This was a very in demand episode when it comes to guests. We had two guests that wanted this one, but you asked first. So was there a reason this one stuck out in your head?

I think that as far as like season 11 goes it was just like one of the one of the best episodes of the whole season i really like the glove slap part as i keep bringing up uh the tamaco part the part where uh wiggum says this tastes like grandma definitely like all i can remember about like simpsons episodes is like these little bullet points of stuff that just like i'm like oh that was from that episode the shifty eyed dog was that episode i i remembered the opening of this one independent from all of the uh farming stuff like i completely forgot the zoro stuff was attached to this episode yeah same now when when i first watched this one i do remember liking it but i think it was the first time my younger brother three years younger than me so i was 17 he was 14 and i think he was telling me like i don't know

i think it was like the first episode he was like i don't think i'll be re-watching that one on the tapes like it i'm surprised you weren't like tearing apart your room uh citizen kane style when you saw the lack of continuity in this episode i mean yes look there is there's a major continuity flaw in this episode that does bother me but well it just bothers me in that this season 11 has way more callbacks to classic episodes than i remember like i'm seeing it in every single episode we do i'm like wow somebody bothered to remember this brand or this location from an old simpsons but uh when they do it if they get one thing wrong it actually bugs me more than if they just made up a new place where homer

grew up instead of going to the right place like yeah yeah i just remember this one is the one that lost my younger brother i think or he it he was uh and his downward slide he was lured away by the siren song of family guy that night oh god actually he was a bigger family guy hater than me i think my brother what was what was the season that had um had the loch ness monster in it because that is really the moment we just did that one that was uh season 10 late season 10 and uh we talked about on the episode but on the commentary the writers are like hey listen you write nanding it's hard it's tough we were tired it was hard wow yeah that was definitely for me that was the moment of just

going like i think i'm done with this show you know well we're not done with this show no no no matter how many pink dinosaurs we see uh but i guess why don't we start at the beginning here where it's the the simpsons go to the movies they they hadn't done a go to the movies sketch yeah in a little while on the simpsons and just in case everyone forgets the springfield googleplex is not a reference to google it was when the word google meant a number with 100 zeros yes so that was first seen i think in uh colonel homer yeah that's right that's uh honestly this is like a sequel sequence to Colonel Homer. Yeah. And you replace jokes about Ernest movies with jokes about booty call. Like that's the that's the trade.

Well, the Googleplex is written G-O-O-G-O-L, the actual way you spell Google, not the company brand name. And I noticed that around this time time i think somebody on the staff thought the 70s show sorry that 70s show would be an utter failure oh yeah this is like the third that 70s show joke in the simpsons so far they really hated on that 70s show yeah the the preakney's one i remember i think was in the 99 sorry 33 cent store a bunch of unsold 70 shows mugs were on the wall wow haters i really did appreciate the the shakespearean heat yeah title on the marquee that's a good one that was my favorite i think uh i well just to let you know like this is 1998 films is what this is all about like and that includes shakespeare in love saving private ryan man in the

iron mask the mask of zoro and they had just done a saving private ryan parody uh with the mel gibson episode correct saving irene ryan that's right so this is their second one it was it was a very popular movie yeah no i mean this opening the d-day thing which i think we just actually passed the anniversary of that at the time of this recording but uh the actual d-day not the film but that that d-day opening like it's so stuck with us like the violence in it like people had not seen that before and i guess they were you know it changed the way war movies were made from then on i think at least you know american ones they had to it wouldn't seem real unless like like someone's limb flew off in it yeah we mentioned like uh mel gibson really up the

ante with hacksaw rage which is all the gore and stumps and rats yeah that's i didn't see it i only i saw the one movie that won all the oscars and i won i saved so much time yeah oh man i i actually just recently watched the mask of zoro just completely independently of this it just happened to happen because i just remember there was this one line in the movie um where somebody says frankly don hector i disagree and like that just like sticks with me all the time did you know that anthony hopkins is in that movie yeah i didn't see it old zoro in that movie well he was following the pattern of you know many white men who played Zorro before that he basically was a character for white guys like the having a uh actor of Spanish ethnicity

like Antonio Banderas uh playing Zorro was actually very different for the time yeah and so there was also a man in the iron mask movie in 98 and then in 93 there was a three musketeers movie yeah and then there was another one like uh in the 2010s i think well the three musketeers are also in man in the iron mask it's it's about the three musketeers getting it's the older musketeers fighting the man in the iron man okay so there were double three musketeers movies that year there's too many i mean are they that popular maybe it's an international thing but like i like the three musketeers just fine as a kid but i didn't i didn't need to see like eight films about them i will tell you uh this may sound uh

brazen this comment or this opinion but i think the uh zoro from one piece the legally distinct zoro is now worldwide the more popular Zorro. He has eclipsed the Z-Guy Zorro as being the definitive Zorro for our times. And there is weird copyright stuff about Zorro in that three of the Zorro books from the early 20th century are in public domain. But the character isn't. It's this weird, like, muddy territory. It's sort of like Sherlock Holmes-y where it's like you can steal some things but not the name yeah it's very weird or like those old superman cartoons that those are in public domain but not the character of superman well it's uh with those

superman cartoons you can put them on i get i could publish a dvd right now and sell them with those old superman cartoons and say like hey buy these superman things but you can't you can't i can't make new superman things legally but zor that mask is or a movie i really like that movie maybe i liked it too because everything about batman's ripped off from zorro so zorro was like 20 years old when they created batman and so like i mean zorro has a as a cave secret fortress and leads a double life as a, well, I would guess landowning playboy. I wouldn't even say millionaire playboy from the 1850s, but he is Batman. And so, but I really liked it.

Like Banderas is just such a great action star. It was the perfect time for him to be Zorro. So charming. Yeah, such a charming guy. And Anthony Hopkins does fine too. And Catherine Zeta-Jones, like gorgeous in it. She's really good in it. Their fake accent.

Amazing. Oh, yes. Yeah. Quite a lot of accents go on. And the weirdest thing with that Mask of Zorro movie is it took him seven years to make a sequel. There was a sequel? Yeah, The Legend of Zorro. Oh, okay. The Legend of Zorro. And no, I didn't even see it.

Me, the biggest Zorro fan, I did not see it. No. All of your shirts are in tatters. That's how much of a fan you are. I carve them up with my own blade. Yeah, so the episode begins with a Saving Private Ryan parody that reveals to be a Buzz Cola commercial. And both Buzz Cola and Laramie being in in this i really like that they didn't just make

it a new a new brand or they didn't make it just a real brand they use the buzz cola and laramie cigarettes that they've had since the beginning of the series i i really like that they used those specific brands me too but they do use actual milk duds yeah there's no spring brown and butter there was no uh parody no no pair i i guess in that case you just need to think of milk yeah and how they would taste floating in fake butter i don't know i kind of want to try it now i am things are getting weird these days well you know at movie theaters it they've democratized those butter dispensers you can get to them on your own if you want and then fill up

fill up your milk duds box and you really don't have to wash your hands oh god oh no no no uh though i will say when i worked at a concession stand we were pretty good about washing hands i'll say you've got you've got the popcorn shovel you gotta clean that off every week yeah we washed him every night bob come on uh but yes homer goes and gets his milk duds in his lobby and uh and then when he comes back they all are watching together The deadly poke of Zorro! What? N? What does N stand for? No, no, it's a Z. I am Zorro. Z for Zorro.

I have come to return King Arthur to the throne. It's a history lesson come to life. No, it isn't. It's totally inaccurate. Wait, here come the ninjas. What part of stop cutting my dress off don't you understand? SP? The Scarlet Pimpernel. We're just, uh, friends.

She's lying. Slice her head off. Your honor has been insulted. This will not stand. Ooh, you don't want to get zorro mad you're pouring hot butter on my lash the first of many wrongs done to marge in this episode yeah it's a real homer's mean to marge episode of the show uh yeah previously in that season three episode homer being rude in a theater caused a big fight oh you're like no one wants to hear what you think or whatever was that what she said that's right yeah this time marge is a is a more meek person

than in that exchange unfortunately yeah i mean they have they have a lot more fun with homer being rude uh so like marge is not listened to and then lisa is not listened to throughout this entire episode you're right yeah they're both they actually back to back have a joke of Bart saying shut up and then Marge being silenced by Homer it's double I mean honestly this is just like a Saturday Night Live sketch about the Zorro movie in the start of this episode of Simpsons yeah they just wanted to do an entire segment that is just making fun of the mask of zora and uh and yes the they make a reference to i think the only thing people remember from the banderas mask of zora which is cutting away katherine zeta jones's

dress oh okay was that in a trailer or something oh yeah perhaps yeah it was all over the trailer yeah and uh yeah poor poor marge with that hot butter on her leg i feel like uh homer's losing milk duds he should be upset by that but uh then they head uh to the opera and i do love the sign of reserve for s pimpernel that's pretty funny and then the he challenges him to a duel the scarlet pimpernel runs away and i just think of how funny it is that the film they're watching instead of getting a big final duel the scarlet pimpernel runs away and then zoro's made the king and it's over yeah and the credits roll over the uh the crown being speared with a sword lots of funny credits and over the credits it's hank azaria ad-libbing a rap about zoro yeah he kind of forced them to make up funny credits and over the credits, it's Hank Azaria ad-libbing a rap about Zorro.

Yeah, he kind of forced them to make up funny credits because they're like, we just have to keep in this, you know, Wild Wild West style rap at the end of this. Lots of references to Curtis Booger Armstrong from Revenge of the Nerds. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Sean Wayans as Robot Zorro. I love to imagine the Robot Zorro and president van buren played by robert evans being in this movie uh and also one of the show's rare references to pro wrestling with stone cold steve austin also being in the credits and voice of the magic taco it's almost as good as talking pie that is for yeah yeah the well also that i wonder if that's a joke on how often in the script directions they'd be like,

wouldn't it be funny if James Earl Jones said this bad line? Like, that's why he's the one who says, let's say Mo. I think, yeah, yeah, the Simpsons have definitely done that twice in the past. And having King Arthur appear at the end, like, just to make it all the more impossible, historically speaking, like the, i would think the harvard nerds watching the man in the iron mask that is about how like in fiction louis the 14th or 15th replaced him his self with a clone or not a clone a guy who looks the same and snoke was never real uh but yeah the i would think about you harvard

guys are really mad at all of the uh inaccuracies in in so many of these films a really funny underplay joke is when they're leaving the theater you hear the fox theme that's great that is great yeah fanfare just to let you know this was a 20th century fox film i think homer and the family sat through the credits for the stinger scene oh Oh, man. Yeah. How many Zorro jewels do they have to collect now? Also, the guy in the background that Homer takes the glove from, that's the janitor in Vegas that beats them up when they try to steal their clothes. Oh, okay. Wow.

Getting work all over the place. There's a lot of smart reuses of character designs. They're like, do we need to make another janitor? We got a perfectly good janitor right here. That poor janitor, he never got his glove back. He loses that glove forever. Homer probably challenged him to a duel and he ran away. But yes, Homer, after leaving the film, he demands satisfaction.

From the Z to the O to the double R-O, he's a dude in a mask from the barrio. With his horse and his mask and his big old sword, he'll cut your butt from a 52-4. Move it, Q-Tip. Why, that little... He insulted your honor. Sir, I demand

satisfaction. Are you crazy, dude? i challenge you to a duel the dude is crazy will you duel or are you a coward would a coward do this bye my hero H is for Homer thanks Homer that's so gross yeah just more Bart has butter and ketchup on her dress now oh yeah that dress

is ruined yeah I was gonna say I think like an underrated or very subtle catchphrase for Snake is bye that's like the third time he's done that it's a good it's a good mime too that he's about to pull out a gun and then he he runs away they caught him unarmed for the first time it's uh i mean honestly it feels weird that snake wouldn't like kick homer's ass but maybe he's he's terrified well though it happens just like how it happens for

uh zoro in the movie hom Homer learned correctly from the movie. If you challenge someone to a duel, they are a coward and they run away. Watching it, I was laughing so much that Marge says, My hero. She actually just says what Olive Oil would say in that moment. Oh, that's right. Yeah. But Julie's read of like,

Thanks, Homer. That's really good the simpsons will be right back hey everybody hope you're enjoying this episode as much as a smooth and mild piece of tobacco. And a big thank you to Lexi Rose, our guest this week. Everybody should check out her music with the Y-axis and all the other cool stuff she does. And you know, me and Bob are able to do cool stuff ourselves thanks to the support of subscribers at patreon.com talking simpson if you're not a supporter yet you are missing out not only do you get the satisfaction of knowing

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we cover the disney bomb the black cauldron plus tons more over 80 hours of what a cartoon movie podcasts where we cover things like toy story one and two the iron giant akira kiki's delivery service a goofy movie aladdin batman mask of the Phantasm, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, and tons and tons more. Sign up. Ten bucks a month at patreon.'s bar i told you not to drink all those frescas before we got in the car mother please you're embarrassing me. No, I'm not. Seymour needs the toilet. His bladder's full. Full of urine. Yeah, thanks. It's just past the end of the bar,

next to the heavyset guy. Heavyset? What's that supposed to mean? Take it easy. Take it easy. I'm just saying, you ain't no Tommy Toon. No Tommy Toon, eh? Oh, that's it. You insulted my honor. I... You what now? I demand satisfaction.

Oh! I challenge you to a duel. A duel? Isn't that a little extreme? Here, here, have a free beer. Really? But you've never given anyone a free beer. I ain't never been slapped with no dueling glove before either.

Wow. A free beer. And I owe it all to a little club slap. Club slap. Baby, club slap. And then we get the song we get the song uh the just in case you don't know who tommy toon is he's a very tall thin man who's uh a musical theater legend and uh obviously the the opposite of a heavyset man i also like that it's heavyset is what pisses off Homer when that is a very nice kind of politically correct term

that Moe is using there. When I first saw this in 1999, I thought the joke was going to end there. Like, oh, it's funny. Homer is just singing his own little song parody, but then they just cut to the real people doing the Gloveslap song. They got the real ass B-52s

to sing what Georgeyer calls on the commentary a very expensive joke is that really the b-52s it is the the singers of the rocko's modern life theme themselves they really if they should have had frederick william schneider then they need they need everybody from b-52s for the full experience in the credits you do hear a little schneider they uh yeah they even bemoan on the commentary they're like oh boy we had to we used 20 seconds we asked them to record an entire parody of their song and uh we used 20 seconds of it i also really love the camera turn when homer starts to sing it's really good it's a needless bit of extra animation but i love how the camera just turns around him for no reason. I wonder what happened is that they found out after a certain point in animation that they were going to have the Gloveslap song.

And so they added that camera turn to get Homer in a different position. Maybe like a little flourish. Yeah. But also, of course, Seymour would be drinking lots of Fresca. That really fits for him. Fresca and Tab are the comedy sodas just in case you're writing anything I thought

Squirt would be the grapefruit choice for terrible choices you know what Squirt would be funny but Squirt is so regional that I think it would be lost on a lot of people like I grew up drinking Squirt oh no Squirt's in my town we I mean I lived in the part of the south that like

coca-cola basically owns like yeah but i i think fresca is even like more boring than like an rc cola too so it's like well fresca is just like just it's just tonic water right like it's not even flavored i think it's like a citrusy soda. Okay. And yeah, Bob Anderson and his team, just really fun, fun animation throughout this whole episode, like kind of underappreciated, I think. Yeah. Homer then does an entire Gloveslap song, which I'll just plug in here. Glove slap to a little old baseball. Get you to satisfaction. Glove slap, baby. Glove slap, baby, glove slap.

Glove slap, I don't take crap. Glove slap, shut your big eyes. and in my favorite gag in there is that he not only pushes kirk off of his mini golf ball but he then is going to hit kirk's ball at on the mini golf track to who that's homer outdadding him once again i do like dr hibbert taking his own shot yeah the hibbert uh taking his own medicine what was that medicine gonna do because it knocked him out like was homer being anesthetized for something that uh that also seems kind of dangerous to do it through a shot instead of like gas or whatever uh but yes homer then slaps one man too many satisfaction, your challenge is accepted. Huh?

I agree to the duel, sir. I choose pistols at dawn. Pistols at dawn? Oh, why did I have to slap a guy who says sir? You'll need a will and a headstone. Aisle six. Aisle six? Oh.

Dueling at dawn, how did it ever come to this? The National Weather Service says dawn is still scheduled for 620 tomorrow and to please stop calling. I bet that Southern Colonel doesn't even show up. Yeah, he's probably just a big blowhard like you. Sir, that is an insult. I challenge you. What? Homer, as usual, can't notice that it's his fault entirely.

I did enjoy the use of the Southern Colonel because I just love how the show pulls out these stereotypes that don't exist anymore and they're just people in the world like you know the hobos with bindles and things like that oh yeah i mean and and his area doing just foghorn leghorn yeah and like who is this random guy he was just stopping in the quickie mart for the afternoon i feel like he's on a road trip with his young wife. Yeah, he's on like a three month honeymoon together. Obviously, he's a very rich man to have such beautiful clothes and two classic style dueling pistols, as we'll see later. I do think it's important to note that the B-52s are from Athens, Georgia. So it's very possible that anybody challenging anybody to a duel would actually be thinking about glove slap when they're doing it

oh yeah they did they would know the glove slap technique uh very well in that area and you've mentioned it before bob but the simpsons love a smash cut to a headstone and they do it again oh yeah that's right i get a good i get a good laugh out of every time and uh homer also he's he's very close to slapping his own son with a glove which is very extreme well bart wants homer to die clearly at least two times in this episode yeah uh yeah homer is freaking out uh but he also makes a point to ogle the band's wife which they they do draw a sexy gal there as as his southern bell he immediately like pushes away all responsibility because he says he had a dream about a glove

that kept slapping people and he was to blame that's right yeah uh and also like it's it's classic see mike scully's homer to have him like at the sexy gal outside and then instantly beg march for forgiveness and say that was in the past come on and yeah they then homer needs to be snuck out and he hangs on to their old christmas tree which uh is like the third old christmas tree joke for the simpsons oh yeah they took it to the dump in the mr sparkle episode right yeah yeah and actually that same episode also featured donnie's discount gas as well yeah i forgot we don't see donnie though no sadly uh but yeah homer my favorite joke there is the uselessness of offering to shoot an old tree into smaller pieces while they hold it i guess worth a try i wouldn't be a gentleman if i didn't shoot it into smaller pieces that's so good

yeah and then bart on your dueling blouse and bart welcomes it on he's like yeah give it a shot you know but yeah we do go to donnie's discount gas we don't see donnie he's my favorite character with my favorite line uh i see lots of stuff did you see that no oh. Oh, wait, yes. The answer is yes. I wonder if that, there's so many ones in here that feel like an animator said, oh, this describes them at a gas station. Why don't I use this old setup? Yeah, because Donnie's Discount Gas, the only reason why they knew it was that because it was like eight tenths of a cent instead of nine tenths of a cent. Yeah.

You know, if it saved them time for not having to design another gas station then i'm good hey good for the animators too like that could be it there's a nice little sight gag in the background of bart overfilling the tank too yeah it goes by real fast but it's good yeah and uh homer gives a call to ned and then lets him know they're setting they're settling in for the long haul uh homer will not spend one uh extra dime to tell ned a compliment but uh this this isn't too long after the previous homer gets a new job episode and he's already got a new job in this one uh but they said on the commentary they'd been wanting to do a homer is a farmer episode for a long time and they couldn't figure out like a third act and the third act ended up being to macco yes yeah but uh but yes first off though they have to find their new home come on move it where are we going dad how should i know why are you driving so fast

because i'm trying to think what would sorrow do oh no Oh, no! Rural Route 9? That's it! We can hide out at the farm where I grew up. You mean Grandpa's old farm? Yeah, it'll be fun. Fresh country air, apples for the picking, sing-along hay rides. What a dump.

Race you to the swimming hole! Ha-ha-ha! Come on, Ma! Bring the young'uns! There's no leeches! Race you to the swimming hole. Come on, Ma. Bring the youngins. There's no leeches. Oh, oh, oh. It's a snake's toe.

Woo. The preserved horse skeleton in the front yard is very funny. A horse just died standing up and just rotted there for, I don't know, decades. But his bones all stayed together. They all fused together i i will say that uh as a more someone more focused on continuity back when this aired i was a little annoyed by this but thinking of it now we could retcon it into saying well after uh grandpa and homer stopped dropping and rolling the the fire department showed up and put out the fire sure sure and we're only seeing the parts of the house that didn't catch on fire okay yeah but yeah this bit of continuity only existed in that oakley and meinstein episode

oakley and meinstein episode rather uh and they never really referenced it again until now yeah yeah they at least treated that homer they finally remember like oh you know homer actually grew up on a farm for i guess till he was like five and then moved to they moved to the big city which is when his mom abandoned him yeah it's like really weird uh to kind of try to figure out what was homer's childhood like when you all pull it apart now he grew up in the 80s we all know of course because he's uh around our age now yeah he loves grunge he created grunge we'll see you guys in five years for that one. Ooh, boy.

Yeah, I mean, on the commentary, they cop to it, too. They're like, hey, didn't that burn down? And then there's a mysterious commentary silence after that. Yes, yeah, that's true. I always wonder in those commentary silences, like, what do they say? I was just watching, pulled out my old commentaries for community, and every time there's a silence i am trying to guess of like oh i bet they they just said oh this person didn't direct this scene and then silence and i'm like oh i bet that would break the director's guild laws if they said a different

director did this that could be and uh yeah you know now disney won't even just share these commentaries that's why you gotta hold on to to these DVDs just for the commentaries. Also, though, speaking of watching this extra closely, the screen pause on the establishing shot of Homer's house. I think it was another joke like of something falling off. Like it really does look like just somebody press pause on a screen. Huh. It looks weird and uh oh yeah and right before that there's a good gag of homer just pointing at a house and thinking he could live in it when there's

people visible show offs and uh jimmy carter does not seem like the dueling type to me either no but homer does fear him and history's greatest monster according to the simpsons you how you must fear him that's i think they even pulled out that same face. Like they just drew that same face again. Malaise forever. And this is the, we're recording a second episode today where Homer's bitten by snakes. So he's been bitten by snakes a lot. Are those snakes or are they robots filled with venom?

I guess it's a little bit of both. They're off screen. So we can't, we can't, we don't know. We have no way of knowing. Family in the background look kind of odd too. The way they're drawn kind of gives like back to that thing that you were saying where the, they had that freeze frame. The way their eyes are drawn in that shot.

Very weird. The family in the house? Oh no, not the family. Yeah. The Simpsons. Okay. When Homer's out there swimming in the swimming hole. Yeah.

There's a, there's a couple, there's some really funny drawings in this one. And also ones were like the family just looks a little too bug-eyed or a little too weird yeah they really love that drawing of the tractor on homer because it happens four times it's pretty great yeah just the the extra detail of the thing jammed into the to his chest along with the other stuff but yes the family moves into their new home holyly, we can't stay here. It's full of raccoons. Just think of them as cats with rabies. Hello, kitty. Oh!

Oh, yeah, you little scamp. Are we really going to live here and grow crops? Absolutely. This is our big chance. The Simpsons will be reborn as a bunch of gap-toothed pumpkins. I'll dig an outhouse. I'll weed the floor. I'll repress the rage I'm feeling.

That's my girl. Let the agriculture begin! Wow. That drawing of Marge's repressed rage is a pretty great drawing. I like that. Marge is getting the short end of the stick in this episode. She actually had a bee story,

which we can talk about later. That was cut from the episode. Oh, I forgot about this. You see remnants of it at the very end, and they don't make sense without the context of the full story right right uh you know another thing that didn't make sense to me was i embarrassingly misremembered this is like i was waiting for homer to say something about his raccoon wounds later oh but that's because there's a 2001 family guy episode where he's attacked by a raccoon in a dilapidated house and uh it pretty much just rips that off but they do top it by having a bunch

of feces leak into his raccoon it's in my raccoon wounds i believe he says yep yeah yeah i think they're like uh wanted uh i think they're like in witness protection in that episode, maybe. Yeah. Or on the run from the law. One of the two. Yeah. And they move to the it's more about country bumpkins than farming in that one. But both feature a dilapidated house and the father of the family being attacked by raccoons. So, you know, not to not to make this about family guy rips off Simpsons or anything, but.

The proof is there. But thinking of raccoons as cats with rabies, that's funny. That's a good line. Oh, man. And then the rat coming up later, the cool rat. Oh, God, that rat. That rat's got like a cool pompadour. I love him.

She's like, you'll be a nice, cool, and then they're like, oh, yeah, that is a cool rat. Hell yeah. I'm shocked they didn't just draw a comb for the rat to hold but i i mean i gotta judge lisa's sense there that at a certain point you realize there's not a sheep inside you're not you're not hitting body until you get to the rat size uh but i just i love the insane ridiculousness of a rat somehow being able to just grow constantly like that's not what happens with rodents they don't grow their hair endlessly they don't need crops they've got these

rats that grow wool that seems very profitable you're right just uh you can put them right next to the milking rats uh and also that i do like the gag not just the drawing of homer being crushed the thing homer being crushed by the tractor is funny but it made me laugh more each time bart ran in like just scared like oh dad like it's yeah i was gonna say doesn't he call him pa the second time yeah i mean bart immediately just leans into this whole like new personality he's not wearing shoes he's got overalls on he's loving it yeah he's well he probably the second he dug out that outhouse he's like i i love the land oh also the like go get lassie yeah last i mean i mean lisa that was one of my favorites yeah he could have just said go get lassie that could have just been the joke but i like how it's like oh he forgot his daughter's

name i mean he is in a lot of pain i don't i don't begrudge him and uh then comes a joke that boy i didn't get for a long time oh yeah yeah and it wasn't until so like whenever these would air uh when i was watching them back then when the episode was over i would run to my computer or run to the family computer go on to all tv simpsons the news group and then see all the references like okay what do they reference what don't i get what do i get and someone underlined this and i'm like this is the dirtiest joke i've ever seen on tv and it still might be for broadcast tv for for simpsons for sure it's their dirty i think it might be the dirtiest joke they ever did and did mike scully take credit for that when we interviewed him i think so they're they're on the commentary they're definitely proud of it i

i think scully did take credit for that one. And it was also, people were talking about it because it was one of the ones cut off by HD-ifying The Simpsons. And you could only really see it in the proper aspect ratio. We're, of course, talking about Sneed's Feed and Seed, formerly Chuck's. Yes. Which would mean Chuck's fucking suck exactly that's the that's the joke did you know that dirty joke lexi no i did not it's such a harvard dirty joke too you have to like take it apart and like use the rhyming scheme and like it's like a math problem to see the words fucking suck yes to ultimately make a fucking suck joke. Oh my God.

I appreciate that so much more. And I thought like this like seed shop, right? Yes. I thought they would just reuse the designs from that General Sherman episode, but it's not. They're all different. Well, I believe the clerk is the General Sherman clerk. He's not though.

I looked it up. Yeah. They just, okay. I thought he was. Oh, me too. This is why I wanted a Frankie act. I thought they would pull him out, but looked it up. Yeah. Okay. They just, okay. I thought he was. me too. This is why I wanted a Frankie act. They, I thought they would pull him out,

but they didn't. Man. And I really want to know like, what is the, like, where does this stereotype come from? Because it was in the SpongeBob movie. It was in,

um, like it's in a ton of stuff. It's like the two hicks on the, on the porch of like a store or like a building going, well, well, well to the city boy coming in like where does that come from i got these shoes from a hobo yeah my car is from guatemala i like

oh i want to see the story of homer buying shoes off a hobo but or well who knows that homer got bought them from him or stole them from a hobo you know uh but that uh yeah that stereotype i think it was a constant of like the 70s road trip movies these yeah guys all saw of like the anytime a city fella came into town it'd be that would usually be where they'd meet the folks because you'd have to stop at the local store to buy something and that's where that's where some guy with a giant belt buckle would yell at you and call you a fancy pants. And spit in a spittoon. That's, yeah, that guy,

I kept wanting that guy to sound like the guy who told Homer about General Sherman. And unlike that guy, he does not believe in these fantastical bees. He believes in science. He's talking about the soil pH. That's a superstition. Google says that the proper soil pH for growing tomatoes should be between 6 and 7.

So this guy's kind of right in this clip here. Actually, I'll play it. You're not going to grow nothing on the old Simpson place. That's why your daddy abandoned it. Oh, what do you know? Well, I know your soil pH is up around 9.6, and you need a 7 to 8 max. Oh, that's just superstition. You watch me. I'll grow something out there.

Not if you're planting gummy bears. Don't! Wow, Dad, this is the juiciest watermelon I ever tasted. Yeah, I hope I can grow some like that. What are you planting? Oh, a little bit of everything. Something will thrive in this harsh, merciless soil. And for those who face nature unafraid, it is they who reap the fruit.

I'm down. Paul! Move the handbrake! Oh, that's heaven. Doesn't he just walk off screen and that's when it happens that's right yeah the second he's off screen it falls on him i think that was something you just hear about happening like a common farm death was the tractor flips on you or whatever yeah yeah and uh and bart bart one of many young boys on a farm who watched their father die, crushed by it, saying, Paul.

I mean, that's, again, another great smash cut joke of like, this is the best watermelon I've ever had. Yeah, I hope I grow one as good as that. It's a very Lemon Behind That Rock moment. No, yes, yeah. And Homer's mix of seeds is really funny too. With the gummy bear. But you can see in the background

homer grabs tomato seeds and tobacco seeds that are just helpfully sat right next to each other and i guess why don't we i guess now is a good as time as any to talk about the horticulture behind this and the the real life tobacco grower yes so uh tobacco is real and was grown based on this episode. So this guy named Rob Bauer, he grafted a tomato plant onto tobacco roots and voila, he had a real live tobacco plant. And the two plants can successfully become one

because they come from the same family and that includes eggplant and deadly nightshade. The tobacco bore fruit. It became like the tomato plants that you eat uh but at the time bauer said he believed it had a dangerous or like lethal amount of nicotine but i don't know what happened that turned out to not be the case and he sent one to the simpsons crew after becoming semi-notable in the horticulture world based on this and they were afraid to eat it for about a

week but then they ate it and they said it was delicious so there you have it um so and they were arrow heirloom tomatoes to be specific in the yeah type of tomato and uh yeah he's on the commentary uh to tell this story rob bauer an oregonian which uh scully keeps making jokes with him just like you grow pot right don't you which i do i do think if you're an oregonian uh hip dude who grows plants you probably yeah pot as well and uh the article i was reading about which is now archived from like 2003 it points out that like one of the simpson staff members george meyer has a degree in biochemistry from harvard but he did not write this episode that was uh old uh who wrote this episode again ian maxton graham okay yeah he Okay. Yeah, he's from Brown. Yeah, he's from Brown.

They don't teach you this stuff in Brown. No way. I mean, George Meyer was very heavily involved this season, so I could see him pulling it out. I just forgot his degree was in biochemistry. I love asking that to Harvard people we interview now. Like, what did you major in? It's always something weird. Yeah, they have Bauer on the commentary.

They even talk about how he got to do a table read too he got to he got the you know the red carpet treatment for being a simpson super fan and i mean he he went viral as a simpson super fan before social media so that's extra impressive and there was a fight in the writer's room and tobacco was almost to back corn. And you're not going to graft a tomato onto corn. Not going to happen. Yeah. I'm glad they pointed that. They were able to win that argument of just like, well, it can't actually be paid.

Though they still saved their corn jokes. There's a couple of corn jokes they have time for in here. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's shocking to think about this, but tomatoes aren't far removed from poisonous things like nightshade and nicotine. Though when I hear nightshade, I can't not think of the nightmare before Christmas. That's why tomatoes are disgusting

until we turn them into things like pasta sauce and ketchup. You don't want to take a big bite out of a tomato. That sounds gross. I mean, today, if they reboot this episode, it would be Juul pods that are tomato flavored. Ooh. Taco Juul pods. Oh, man.

I would vape if there was like pizza vape there it is we're halfway to pizza they do that yet you know i think uh art vapes getting in trouble for having flavors a kid would like so they have to be unexciting yeah they don't they don't sell those in like liquor stores anymore or something like that there's all the stuff coming up with jewel pods they have adult flavors like licorice and medicine uh and uh then homer is uh failing at growing things we homer mentions that he's uh using his own fertilizer let's say on the only one man which i love marge's reaction just like she's, she's really grossed out by that. And then we get a reference to good old Oklahoma where corn is as high as an elephant. That's right.

That's where that rhyme comes from. And they have an elephant there just to gauge it. Which eats a gopher. Yeah. That's so weird. That feels like a John Schwarzwalder joke to me. It does, right?

Like you just like give it a live gopher as a treat. Instead of throwing peanuts to him, he's just like, he pulls a live gopher out of his pocket and throws it. It really fits with the stampy eating live things elephant writing. Oh, stampy. Old stampy. I mean, I had remembered at the end of this how an elephant smashes through a wall.

And at first I was like, well, how random that was. An elephant smashed through a wall. But at first i was like well how random that was an elephant smashed through a wall but you see the elephant first here not that it makes it any less random that a farmer has an elephant for measuring the height of his corn how else are you going to determine that but yeah that the elephant eating the thing again it i i guess that also fits with the elephant that uh that smashes that mouse to death at a pool. Oh, you're right. Yeah. They imagine very violent elephants.

So the family is enjoying their Dust Bowl dinner of thistles and tumbleweed. I like the way Lisa says them. Thistle. My thistle. My thistle. And then Homer realizes what every Marvel Comics book superhero does, which is get radioactive elements. Before you play a clip, I got to say, this is my favorite bit of this episode. I was just like clapping my hands at home.

I just love how it's just like, we're just going to waste time. And what better time waster than Lenny? Lenny and Carl in this episode. Yeah, you know what? I haven't played this in a while, but let's give this the line of the episode. That's the joke. More tumbleweed, Lisa? No, thanks.

I'm still finishing my thistles. Dad, if we leave for town right now, we could catch a dinner special at Krusty Burger. Sorry, boy. Going back to Springfield would be a coward's way out. Wasn't skipping town in the first place a coward's way out? Oh, you're right. I'm a coward. I made such a mess of things.

If only there was some magic potion that would make those crops grow. Wait a minute. Plutonium? Gee, Homer, isn't that kind of risky? Yeah, I guess you're right. It's not. Hey, Lenny, sending some outgoing mail? You know it.

I'll probably send some tomorrow. I hear that. That perfectly captures when you run into somebody in an office you don't really know that well. It's like, oh, getting a drink of water, huh? That sounds pretty cool. All right, see you later. I'll probably do that this weekend. I that or that's that's just goes to show you i also love uh lenny being having like the most unrealistic very very bad like tv or movie phone conversation where you just repeat everything someone says it's like plutonium isn't that dangerous oh i guess you're

right it's not it's not i also wanted to point out that uh carl's wearing a pink sweater which in season three would get him institutionalized you're right oh wow no pink sweaters at work it's also you're right and he's like not wearing his jacket for some reason it's a it's a jacketless uh carl there he's feeling free uh i also love that you do take just a second to just like stare blankly just to kill like two moments of television time. And yeah, that whole scene actually is completely needless and you could just cut to Homer having plutonium. Saying, oh, Letty sent me some plutonium. Yeah, but to waste the time of showing Letty giving him plutonium. That's like Seymour at the bar earlier like you needed to

have that moment to have Moe call him heavyset but it's like he has urine in his bladder yeah I just yeah it's a more casual Carl and then Homer you know in the next episode he eats toxic waste and in this episode he

brushes his teeth with plutonium I just realized though that like maybe carl is you know letting his hair down a bit because he is homer's supervisor we find that out in an earlier episode right that's right and with homer gone he's like oh my job is so much easier now i can be a little less uptight at this point they don't even care that homer's not there like that this was the one moment the episode you might be telling yourself like hey yeah wait homer i know homer's hiding and we all know that. But like he did he quit his job?

What's good? What's happening with this whole like job thing there? I'm gone for a month. They established. And Homer then use it fills the ground with plutonium all around them, which, you know, obviously in real life would probably give everyone cancer. I mean, Homer would die the second plutonium touched his finger, I would think. When was he just eating the barrels of toxic waste? That's in next week's episode, Hello Gutter, Hello Fodder,

which we've already recorded, but yeah. And so maybe that was like after they had him have like one taste of plutonium here, they're like, next week he eats gallons of toxic waste. It's almost too bright, but I really like the animation coloring of the green They're like, next week he eats gallons of toxic waste. Whoa. It's almost too bright, but I really like the animation coloring of the green around Homer and Marge there. And how much they're glowing at night. Yeah. Yeah.

The glow is, I guess it's the healthy glow of working in a nuclear power plant like Burns has at night. And also Homer saying a bunch of like 90s poster phrases it's pretty funny too i like that it's they're really taking it to the late 90s uh film industry this episode sometimes you have to break the rules to free your heart i feel like those posters don't even say that stuff anymore no it's usually just like uh like a character from the movie it's like the troublemaker or whatever uh oh yeah you'd have all the character posters like a character from the movies, like the Troublemaker or whatever. Oh, yeah. You'd have all the character posters like, here's just the poster of Rocket Raccoon for Avengers Endgame.

You'd just have that Inception trailer sound written out. It'll just be the words, blah. Posters do not need to have a catchy slogan anymore. Then Homer and Marge, I guess, have sex, too, because he's like kiss me and uh they then they wake up the next morning homer it thinks that it's going to be just like in the movies including he says grasshopper is i think he's referring to the beginning of the end okay yeah grasshopper is not a real movie amazing colossal man of course a real movie yes yeah and uh the the beginning of the end is one of many giant bug movies uh but it was that one on misty i can't yeah beginning of the end was on mystery science theater there's a lot of big like the deadly mantis was also that one i remember

yeah and the though the deadly bees they were normal so they were normal sized bees still deadly yes yeah giant spider one as well that was really good i think oh there were a couple yeah giant spider invasion and earth versus the spider and i think like that one the horror of spider island i think there were three spider movies yeah though the horror spider island was like a guy sort of turns into a spider and kills it was like a skin flick really for the most part yes an incredible that's one of the most most skeezy films they did were the horrors of Spider Island. Though one of their best jokes of just, no horror has happened for the first 60 minutes of the film.

And every time it's just women in bikinis lounging around, they'll just say, the horrors of Spider Island. But yes, Homer seems to instantly assume that everything will have grown big overnight it's almost like homer's pitching a different episode that this plot will be of like the simpsons fight giant radioactive plants or the plants are all invisible yes yeah great i mean oh man they do such a good job with the ridiculousness of like you never see the family

all looks to the sky and you see this like under nose shot that you never see of the characters yeah to rotate their heads that way facing the camera is like something that's never been done before on the show it was like almost unnatural to see how their heads are up and then moved down i was like this is just the angles they're never drawn at it's always unsettling to see them, like, front-facing or basically anything but three-quarters. Yeah, I mean, this was, like, front-facing plus up the nostril. Yeah. Though the Simpsons don't have nostrils, though, as we find out there.

They breathe through their skin. But, yes, nothing grew. And Homer, let's say, is upset. Oh, where are you? Honey, give it up. Oh, you're right. This farm's hopeless. Why didn't I listen to those inbred hicks?

I guess I'll just go hang myself in the barn. Homer, no. Let him go, Mom. Wait, Dad, you don't have to kill yourself. This better be good. Something is growing. A sprout. And there's some more. Something is growing. A sprout! And there's some more!

What is it? Carrots? Peas? Maybe it's okra! Who cares what it is? It's growing! I've saved the farm! Yay!

So yeah, just the darkness of wait dad, you don't have to kill yourself. This better be good. Let him go. Yeah, Bart wants him dead and then having lisa

say wait dead you don't have to kill yourself that oh my god i guess the next episode we do have a suicide attempt from homer it's true he's uh homer's more suicidal than i recall i uh and obviously self-harm is not something to joke about i know it was 20 years ago a different time but uh the other like the way bart just gets in the way of marge stopping him like it's it's like he's in a dramatic uh play i'm just like no let him go uh it's so at the end of that sequence uh homer like smushes two of those sprouts they cut to it really fast though yeah you kind of you kind of missed the joke it goes by so fast yeah at first i thought

it was a joke that like homer hurts his knees falling down when he says oh but it uh yeah they just they go to the green acres theme too fast like which i wonder what point that came in the green acres theme if uh if they're like oh this is a funny set of pictures but it only really works with the green acres theme yeah i feel like there was a montage first and then when they're deciding on music that's the perfect one to choose because if they were back the tractor yes yeah homer taking the photo under the tractor i think it's a final like the fourth and final tractor gag yeah bart's bart's making his classic under teeth mouth face that was like uh that's just an old dav David Silverman drawing from like a Butterfinger commercial, I think. But yeah, the cut to the Green Acres theme, like if in the script it said Green Acres parody,

you know they'd have drawn actual like scenes from the thing. But I think it definitely came in late just to goose the joke. It's a good joke. After the scene, Homer gets a new wardrobe. He is a colonel now uh yeah he's uh but it's different it's different than his colonel homer costume but he basically is yeah like a sugar baron yeah that's right he's a tobacco baron uh but he doesn't even know it's tobacco yet he's already just assuming like i'm rich now for sure texas tea sweetener uh and also speaking of jokes that seem familiar,

Homer makes a catsup versus ketchup joke, which we'd seen before in The Old Man and the Lisa. Who's out there eating hunts? I got to know. You're making mistakes. No thanks. Yeah, it's Heinz or better for me. I would always sneer at a hunts family if I was hanging out with friends.

We don't go with the hunts families. That's like, it's not Catholic versus presbyterian for me it's it's hunts versus hunts they finally they finally bother to cut them open now that it's harvest time which means like more months has passed like this episode seems to take place over six months i think and they find out it's not exactly tomato it is in fact filled with brown stuff that tastes bad the first taste and then you can't turn away from it and yeah they mentioned on the commentary too they were worried about the real life tobacco because nicotine is a poison yeah yeah I'm surprised tomatoes aren't poisonous I don't know how they escape so tomatoes and eggplants safe nightshade and tobacco don't eat them so much tomato hate bob i don't i mean i

guess i could have one like in a sand like even in a sandwich it's just this disc that flies out when you bite into it oh they're too slippery yes yeah i just love when vegetarians are like everything except for no not that i mean i like tomato products are fine too yeah i don't like eggplant personally i think it's terrible so i'm on i'm on the page with this this whole group being poisoned yeah just get rid of it i'm pro the eggplant emoji but uh but yeah bart's bart's reaction to it is great that he's like oh it is disgusting and then he kind of like stubs it out like yeah in the ground but i want more smooth and mild and uh i also like that uh in this next clip where they start selling tobacco, Lisa rightly brings up that that is too clever for Homer to come up with the term tobacco.

But that's pretty much only Lisa's job in this episode is to point out problems with the plot. To point things out and be ignored. Yeah. To say things like, we can obviously see them in the window. This house isn't empty. Or in this clip. Excuse me, Mr. Farmer Man.

I promised my son he could tip over his first cow. And I... Tameco? Yes, it's the latest craze. Try some, won't you? Go ahead, Ralphie. The stranger is offering you a treat. Oh, Daddy, this tastes like Grandma.

Holy Moses, it does taste like Grandma. I want more. Yeah, me too. We'll take a bushel or a packer. Just give it to me. He, he, he. He, he, he. Can I interest you in a mincemeat pie? There's enough tobacco in it?

No, but I use only the front. I was here first. Come on, come on, people. Don't push. There's plenty of tobacco for everyone. Have your cash or food stamps ready. Don't forget your mincemeat pie. You're scaring the customers, honey.

Yeah, there was going to be a B plot that was cut out inevitably about Marge selling pies on the farm. But what exists in the show is just more dumping on Marge with no real purpose. Just no one wants them. Shut up. You're scaring people. The pies do almost pay off in the, or they pay off in an anti-ending of it seeming to save the day and then not. But poor Marge, the one thing she could have in this episode they cut out like instead it's just being yelled at they want those uh grandma tasting vegetables

dead air with lenny and carl they were like that's better than march's plot to see lenny and carl have a mail a package and say nothing and uh man ralph and and clancy here are so funny i love that wiggum does not seem to recognize any of the simpsons family and just calls him farmer man mr farmer man yeah and uh and also like his terrible parenting like there's five great wiggum lines in a row here just like go ahead ralphie the stranger is offering you a treat it's funny because ralph gets all this bad advice and the simpsons immediately go into a black van with strangers that's true all these bad uh all these bad examples for kids on the screen and uh and that they both know what grandma tastes like which seems to say that the wigum's mom or maybe sarah's mom is a very heavy smoker that's uh i wonder you know kids today

are their grandparents as heavy smokers as our grandparents were when i when i think of the smell of specifically pipe tobacco i think of my grandfather yeah yeah i mean uh old people were very cigarettety at this time maybe we're we're phasing them out phasing them all out definitely same i have like memories of like my grammy smoking in the house i remember like running through the wisps of smoke and that was like fun which is very gross to think about now i i think boomer grandparents aren't as smoky yeah my parents don't smoke anymore i think my dad sometimes chews tobacco so that's relevant my dad my dad was a tobacco chewer very very disgusting and uh actually i guess my dad does smoke cigars but he's not a grandpa it's like five cigarettes at once i'm swimming and uh yeah that uh wigum normally you think he would as you know a food monster would welcome the chance to eat a pie but he's so distracted by tobacco uh also it is it is

a bit of a dark joke that part is just like, they take food stamps as well. Like, that's a sad joke. I forgot about that. And all the people like Jones in the line, like scratching their necks. I like that. Those designs are good, too. And so the Simpsons then get asked to get into a van with a bunch of strangers. But it turns out they're not just strangers. They're actually very dangerous tobacco executives

and they they point out in the commentary that Mindy and Emil are named after real Fox executives you've said it before Bob that they really hated executives this season yeah especially there I mean Lindsay Nagel should just be here there's somebody that sounds like her and has the same attitude like that should just be like she should just be an executive of everything, no matter where you see her. I think this was right. They knew they liked Lindsay Nagle, but they didn't want her all the time. And probably, I think seeing characters like Mindy on screen here is when they finally realized, like, it's just got to be Lindsay.

It's distracting if it's not. And one of these guys is just Drew Carey. Oh, yeah, you're right. It just looks just like the caricature of Drew Carey. Do you think they thought they could get Drew Carey? Do you think they were asking him? I mean, this guy has no lines. I think he says, not me, I'm on Sugar Busters.

And then he dies. Which one of them is Emil? I want to know who the chemistry one is. Oh, the Emil, that's the thinner man who I wonder too, since they're named after real executives they then have a line that seems to imply that mindy and emile have a uh you know romantic relationship was does that how they were i wonder if mike scully and other executives left a meeting i'm like man mindy and emile definitely have a relationship right oh yeah totally this was

just their way of outing mindy and emile on television uh but yes why do we hear from these wonderful tobacco executives that laramie cigarettes which they bring back laramie i'm so glad they didn't make it up yeah meet the laramie cigarette team this is. This is Mindy, JP, and Emil. Homer, we're in a bit of a pickle. Kids are crazy about tobacco, but the politicians won't let us sell it to them. Oh, dirty rat. Tell me about it. But there's no law against selling kids tobacco. That little M is worth a lot of money to us and to you. How much?

Well, let's say $150 million. $150 million! May I speak to my family for a moment? Well, let's say a hundred and fifty million dollars. One hundred and fifty... May I speak to my family for a moment? Did you see the way Emil's looking at Mindy? Hoo-hoo, they think something's going on there. Shouldn't we be talking about the hundred and fifty million dollar offer? Oh yeah, let's take it. Dad, it's a tobacco company. They make billions off the suffering and deaths of others.

She's right, Dad. They can afford a lot more. No, lot more i want lisa let's take them to the cleans we all agree that 150 million is an insult the least we can accept is 150 billion this is i mean you're so right like this is the fourth time lisa points something out they're just like oh yeah let's let's interpret this the way we want to. It even happens again later in this episode. You're right. Yeah, they really are dumping on Lisa here. I'm not saying it's not funny. It just keeps happening.

It's very funny, yeah. I'm glad that Marge is finally on somebody's page, though, because she's also been naysaying, but they've just been, like, you know, X-ing her out. But she's like, take him to the cleaners. Marge has learned she can join in the fun if she mocks Lisa. She's like, I – We don't win friends with salad you're right wow hey it was catchy and the van is so big it has a bathroom for four people and also uh instead of a no smoking sign there's a smoking sign on the i only caught that

on like my final viewing i'm like oh that was it's uh it's a very funny yes smoking sign on a door smoking in the bathroom i forgot they were in a van i thought they were on an airplane suddenly it's definitely like an airplane bathroom door too they they you lose a real sense of scale inside of this cavernous van yeah and i think i remember on the uh lisa the beauty queen commentary like cigarettes are the one vice you're allowed to make fun of because they're not going to advertise but also you come off as like mega preachy because we all know cigarettes are bad you're not going to say anything new about it so they found a new way to work in like you know anti-tobacco stuff into the show that's not super preachy yeah you're right

the tobacco it kind of it was it was an easy target not that you shouldn't target uh people who sell tobacco they are death merchants like but but you know there's there's there's harder targets to go after if you're if you're taking something to task i i know mike reese brought it up many times same on the critic they had you know the dancing cigarette and they could make a joke about how she now grew into the uh chain smoking doris that's right that's right but when they wanted to make jokes about bloat beer they had some problems yeah yeah that's true i guess when you turn your anti-tobacco stuff into a character it's it's a little it makes a little more sense yeah and uh and yeah that i do like that they are able to get around the law by making it a tobacco. But I would figure within six months, you know, eventually the laws catch up to it.

That is what happened with Juul pods and a lot of other things that it just takes a matter of months before the government shuts it down. Those damn electric scooters. If only those things were illegal. Someday. Someday they will be. I don't see any around here. So I think we've wiped them out at least. I think they're gone because nobody's allowed outside. of those things that were illegal someday someday they will be i don't see any around here uh so i think we've wiped them out at least i think i think they're gone because nobody's allowed outside

that's a big part of it yeah yeah jewel pods they're they're insanely rampant did you know that they were trying to like join the pharmaceutical industry they wanted to be like offering like um asthmatic medicine in those guys huh interesting i mean honestly attach if they want to try to dodge laws attach yourself to big pharma that's a smart way to get the government will leave you alone then uh and uh but yes uh asking for 150 billion they then get just thrown out and that's when they notice that the entire crop is just gone and uh they see that the animals wild animals have just eaten them all and homer fighting the cow and distracting it by saying uh there's a spaceship coming is really funny but it definitely this last bit of the episode breaks a lot of matt graining rules yeah he he was busy let's say

working on another show i've i've seen i say this every episode but i mean this we on that war of the simpsons we just mentioned on the commentary matt graining is in pain seeing general sherman wink to the camera and this this breaks those same rules like this was an angry cow that get his mad and tricked him yeah i mean we i mean i i think it's funny and we're in the talking animal season because we just had uh chewy oh yeah santa's a little helper saying chewy so i mean i'm for it i think macarooning has a lot of weird rules where he doesn't want a cartoon to be a cartoon so sometimes i think the restrictions are good and it makes them write funny stuff around the restrictions but i am pro big-eyed simpsons and he was anti-big-eyed simpsons that's

true i they were never cuter or more expressive those season three huge eyes are so adorable yeah homer gets some big eyes in uh in this episode well actually no it's the the animals that get big eyes in this one again i think breaking those rules they get really scary in this episode like that that blood-curdling scream that mars lets out right and then you see the sheep in the window yeah no nightmare fuel uh but yes you're right there's one more time for lisa to get dumped on in this episode as she tries to stand up to homer i'll be back we control the world supply of tobacco and no one can take that away from... Stop eating our future! Get stuck! Get out of here! Bad animals! Go home! Thank God! There's one left!

Look! A flying saucer! There, there. We had quite a scare today. But you're gonna make us millions. Yes, you are. You're about to launch a terrible evil on the world. You've got to destroy this plant. I know, honey, but what can I do as an individual?

I wouldn't know where to begin. Just burn that plant right now and end this madness. I wish I could make a difference, Lisa, but I'm just one man. I agree, but how? Yeah, that is a great scream from Marge. It's terrifying. Julie does great work this week, too. Yeah. But yes, Homer,

I mean, God, this whole Homer scene of him acting like he can't do anything. I'm just one man. I agree. I agree, but how? It's like a response to her grumbling, right? Yes. I mean, it works great at any time when you're like,

you know, I wish I could help. What would I even do anyway? But in this specific example, Lisa is like, you can destroy the one plant in the world of this. And Homer just keeps playing dumb and just like i just don't know how you know i'm looking at this season and i think the only real like lisa episode uh was the uh the food critic one yeah yeah like there's i think they just uh were tired of lisa at this point even then lisa yeah the whole season i think that's the only one yeah i'm just looking at the

entire list of episodes because it just feels like well they know what they want to do with lisa and it's this and honestly that episode is a homer gets a new job episode and lisa's in it for like five minutes and it kind of gets dumped out of her own ending yeah too not not unlike in the men's episode as well i think uh al jean liked lisa a lot more and you'll see her a lot more when we get to his episodes again it's weird because i think him and scully really both love writing homer lisa stuff because they are fathers of of daughters scully has like more daughters than al jean two five daughters five daughters far too many uh catholic yes yeah he's uh uh and the speaking being overrun by things the animals start breaking through the walls it's it's an intentional reference to the classic night of

the living dead yep i love seeing bart putting uh boards up on the windows as a horse is trying to smash through uh but that was our opening clip i gotta think mac raining hated seeing a cow scream to macco like i think he was too busy fighting fox yeah you know what fox is just uh fucking around with the futurama schedule so at this point they're like what about every other tuesday for futurama that's better better than Sunday right uh yeah you know what I bet he'd have had more notes if he knew this was airing next to a Simpson uh Futurama episode and uh yeah I do I really think that the the moment though where the cow says to Mako that's where it lost my 14 year old brother he was just like he he agrees with Mac grading that was just too far he also felt it was

too preachy he felt like felt like it was getting close to like South Park kind of preachiness. Though it's not really, I mean, it is anti-tobacco, but it's not really about how awful tobacco is. But all the jonesing animals are drawn really great. And that's where not only an elephant smashes through the wall,

but also an ostrich is there somehow. Yeah, that's where not only an elephant smashes through the wall but also an ostrich is there somehow yeah that's what eventually scares homer into throwing the uh the somacoplant the ostrich biting the camera again great great animation like ostriches are scary man those little chomps an ostrich can take out of you and uh we also get revenge of the Lisa the Vegetarian sheep. The Lisa sheep is definitely out there. Oh, yeah. Now that sheep has grown into a fiend for tobacco. Yeah, so the homer decides he is going to throw away the plant, and the tobacco execs get it.

I think in my first viewing, I almost thought the show was bleak enough that they just let the tobacco company win. And I'm really glad they didn't do that. And instead, they go as far as murdering all of them on camera. I wanted to point out that I was looking at the Futurama schedule, and I forgot because we had just done these episodes recently, that these were the last times they were on on Sunday. Oh, okay. So this was the last times they were on on sunday oh okay so this was the sunday this aired uh next to when aliens attack wow which is the uh which one is that again it's got a

generic title uh it's the independence day one right it's the lure episode the first lure episode yeah a single female lawyer yes yeah so it's funny homer points out a flying saucer and then the most flying saucer episode of the series comes after that. Or at least, I guess to that point. It was their big action movie season finale that wasn't a season finale because it aired like four episodes. In November.

That episode also has the joke about how they thought they were going to premiere after the Super Bowl, but didn't. Some sad remnants in there. But yes, we do get to, let's enjoy hearing the Laramie Cigarettes folks die. Give him the plant, Homer. No, I'd rather die.

Stop! Take it! Wow, what a lovely gift. Gotta run. So Mindy, how did you want to pay me the $150 million? Cash will be okay. Or stock. Did your company have stock?

Mindy! Mindy and I are just hammering out a payment plan. We'll talk Monday! Hey, props to Mindy on the grab. Booyah! Guys, we seem to be carrying a little extra weight don't look at me i'm on sugar busters uh i'm glad the sheep escaped safely though after that yeah yeah you make sure to show that it just

bounds away i think that guy was only drawn to be heavy just for the sugar busters line at the end there there's no other reason to have a heavy set exec one who doesn't look like tommy toon at all sugar busters is a real diet or was a real diet that i mean i guess it still is just atkins right pretty much yeah you're right yeah i when i read the details of it i was like oh yeah no carbs no sugar that's it's it's just atkins by another name and uh you know man i love them carbs really hard to say no to them but uh i've been losing a little weight i'm no tommy tune yet but we're all hoping to get into tune shape you're looking great getting getting in shape thank you uh getting in shape is called tuning up

i love that uh but on the yeah on the commentary they mentioned that they were kind of told to not kill the sheep which i i mean, I'm glad. It's okay to kill executives you name after Fox executives, you know, but it's not a sheep. That's pretty great. Yeah, I wonder what Mindy and Emil in real life thought of watching their characters explode in the helicopter. We killed animated effigies of you. Actually, I guess also in next season they blow up very specific looking execs again in the sideshow bob episode they turn into like terminators right they like reform like the terminator yeah and then

suggest uh what about dave chappelle what about him the that seems to be the end of the story and i really love this ending because i think several recent episodes of the show had kind of done like a shrug like and I guess Homer went back to work at the nuclear plant whatever the set piece they left in act one is still waiting for them it just comes back with a vengeance and Homer for once they punish him for forgetting the original opening it's like it's it's them kind of punishing themselves for how many times they completely forget that act one even happened. They had other episodes recently in our podcasting of it where they just go like, no, remember?

Didn't you used to do this? Or remember it started with this? But this, I think, is the best version of it because it comes back and Homer just has literally driven to his doom without even realizing it i don't remember why we left and that's another great shot when he says that like the way the camera oh yeah it's like this the car the camera is inside the car and he drives around the um trailer so you get to see it like move in shot it's really good it's a really well directed episode realistically though that colonel is waiting for months outside of his house he's just uh you know uh putting up shop there he's got his rv him and ned have probably hung out a lot actually i bet he's become a

a real member of the community there wow uh but yes the the ending comes and Homer gives some satisfaction. I've never been so glad to be home. I don't know why we ever left in the first place. Don't! Five, six, seven, eight. I say eight. Nine. And ten.

What is that intoxicating aroma? Could that be, I say, could that be mincemeat pie?at it certainly is why don't you put down your gun and have a slice don't mind if I do hey we do in or what where are my manners the bone stopped the bullet dad this might be one of those things you should go to the hospital for. After pie. Once again, Lisa is just, like, shoved away. You're right. One more.

I forgot there was that one last one of Homer just going, like, shut up. Shut up, Lisa. I did love, like, it's a gut laugh every time, but, like, Homer gets shot on screen. Yes, like, directly shot. There are so many times in Scully's seasons where he gets time but like Homer gets shot on screen directly shot there's so many times in Scully's seasons where he gets hurt like over the credits like you don't see it but you hear the pain yeah I think he even gets shot in one of the episodes where he's got to read like a written

statement yes yeah he it's it's where they're telling people to change the channel to NBC and then Homer over the credits in voice he's saying CBS rules and that was the Canyon era episode right yes yeah and And then Homer, over the credits in voice, he's saying CBS rules. That was the Canyon Air episode, right? Yes, yeah.

And just hearing Homer, they shoot Homer's body multiple times. He seemed to execute him and then shoot him four more times. But in this case, yeah. And also, Homer gets shot at the end of the hippie episode, too. Oh, you're right. Yeah, yeah. But with a flower, of course. Yeah, he's got a daisy embedded in his head uh but yeah in this case this ending of homer marge is seemingly saving the day with the pies and it would totally make

sense that they set up the pies multiple times here so then marge's pies would fight after being ignored the whole act they would save the day like the colonel would eat the pie and be like i'm not mad at all anymore i forgive you but homer stops him he goes like hey are we like homer's been writing from this for the whole time and then he demands to be shot it's a good ending uh and uh they also they on the commentary they called a comedy gunshot wound because there's no blood on Homer. It just rips his shirt a little bit, hits him in the arm. Lisa implies a hit bone, or he says a hit bone, right?

Yeah, Homer thinks the bone stopped it, which, like, that's bad, actually. Instead of saying, oh, it's just a flesh wound or the bullet's not stuck in there, bullets being stuck in you are worse than going out of you. You don't want that. You want the bullet out of your body uh but uh yeah homer demanding to be shot is is a pretty great ending and um also i forgot that this episode begins and ends it begins with the soldiers on d day being shot and there's a lot of blood there and it ends with homer being shot bloodlessly and uh they they are classic dueling pistols i like that they brought that in there too not not unlike the erinberg uh stuff but uh potentially non-lethal

you could you could believe homer went to dr hibbert right after this and got it got his arms fixed and he'll be totally fine for the next episode hey i mean i think homer has died like five times in these recent episodes he had air put in his bloodstream as well he uh he'll be bitten by a lot of snakes pretty soon poisonous snakes and then over the credits we get the extended version of glove slap which uh i believe is when we get to hear fred uh singing his bit too which i'm glad you know they spent all that money on it you may as well use it like there's there's multiple episodes in here i'm like boy you spent a lot of money on this music it was broadcast tv in the late 90s so people were watching it i would bet their budget on these songs cost more than the animation for an episode

of duncanville oh you might be right about that. Yeah, this is a funny, wacky episode. It's one of the crazier, meaner ones, but there's just so many funny moments in it. I disagree with my 17-year-old self of thinking this was a lesser episode. Your 14-year-old brother in 1999 is really getting in on this episode. I'm going to call up my 34-year-old brother now and tell him you made a mistake.

Lexi, any final thoughts? I just think it was a brilliant episode. So many gags. The visual gags are there. The jokes are there. And the side plot being cut of Marge, I feel like it still continues and flows really well because you get enough mincemeat pie for it to all work out at the end. And yeah, just a real standout for me just thinking about the few episodes I can remember after season eight. I'm like, that is a good one.

So Lexi, thanks for being on the show. Please promote your band, Instagram, YouTube stuff stuff anything you got going on i know all of our lives are on pause right now especially if you are performing live music but there are still ways to get into your stuff yeah um well thank you so much for having me i'm stoked to be here and talk about the simpsons one of my one of my cultural like touchstones like that's my like that's my life from you know being a little kid to now um you can find my band um on instagram at uh the y axes that's uh the letter y a x e s and please find us on spotify um if you like uh if you like pop music that's just a little bit like technical and also i don't know anthemic and a little bit of pop punk i don't know check it out you might dig it find us on all on all the socials, all the stuff. Awesome. Thank you so much,

Lexi. Thank you. Thank you both. Thanks, Bob and Henry. Yeah. So thanks so much to Lexi for being on the show. Please check out the Y-Axis. They're a great band and I hardly endorse them. But as for us, if you want to check out more of our stuff and get every one of these episodes one week ahead of time and

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more than three years but henry can tell everybody out there what's happening at the ten dollar level one mega long podcast once a month that is only for patrons of that level or higher that's right bob $10 a month subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons they get all that five dollar stuff and our monthly special podcast what a cartoon movie where we talk about an animated feature film in the Talking Simpsons style, often for over four hours. We go deep into the history of different animated films from all across the history of animation. Our most recent one was The Black Cauldron, the Disney flop with an interesting story behind it. Before that, we've done films like Toy Story 2, Iron Giant, and many, many more.

You can hear the entire 80-hour back catalog of our many What a Cartoon movies if you sign up at the $10 level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So as for me, I have been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, and my other podcast is Retronauts. That's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for five bucks a month to get two exclusive podcasts every month and again that is patreon.com slash retronauts henry how about you please follow me henry gilbert on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g

you'll stay up to date on all the stuff going on in my life plus if you're on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g you'll stay up to date on all the stuff going on in my life plus if you're on twitter you still haven't followed yet at talk simpsons pod you really should that's the official twitter account of this podcast and our sister podcast what a cartoon at talk simpsons pod is where you'll stay up to date whenever new podcasts go out on our free feed or on the Patreon, as well as any news going on in our lives, too. So please follow at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter and at TalkSimpsonsPod. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for Hello Gutter, Hello Fodder, and we'll see you then. Love Slap, slap, touch a big yap! Slap, slap, give it a slap!

Ooh, glove, baby, that's where it's at, yeah! Glove, baby, give it a slap! Slap, slap, Love Slap Love Slap, I don't take crap Love Slap, there's nothing yet Love Slap, baby, Love Slap Looks like you were saved by a Christmas tree. And somebody wanted to get rid of it in April. Flanders, you gotta help me.

Is there a southern couple parked in front of my house? Ooh, yes, indeedy, Homer. Looks like they're settling in for a long stay. I was afraid of that. Well, goodbye, my gentle neighbor. You know, I've always wanted to tell you how much... To continue talking, please deposit ten cents. Ah, screw it.