Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Eight Misbehavin' With Chris Kohler

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

For the first time, we welcome on our friend/Kotaku Features Editor Chris Kohler, as he helps us understand the joys of parenthood in this week's episode! Apu and Majula get baby fever but end up with a record-setting 8 kids that are really stressing them out. Could a human zoo be the answer? All that plus the terror of The Baron in this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! 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 all of our previous mini series about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsleeve, sign up for Talking Mission Hill today! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we learn the true meaning of winter. I'm your host, dinosaur bone-digging-up expert, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always.

Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and I need Tungsten to live. Tungsten! And who do we have on the line? Chris Kohler, coming up just six short of an Octodad. Oh, jeez. And today's episode is 8 Misbehavin'. Oh, I just had the most beautiful dream where I died. Oh, no you don't. Not till they're out of college. Listen, I'll die when I want to. Today's episode aired on November 21st, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh my god! Oh boy, Bobby. Pokemon Gold and Silver is released in Japan while the United States got Unreal Tournament for the PC. The first millionaire winner happens on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And The World is Not Enough is released in theaters at Pierce Brosnan and James Bond hit. So the game show ended, right? Because they found out that guy wanted it. He wanted it.

He was it. So they just got their millionaire and it was over. He was the first of many millionaires on the millionaire series that swept the nation in 1999. And now I think, so I do the retro gaming podcast, Retronauts, and we did a podcast about the year 2000 recently. Pokemon Gold and Silver came out in Japan in November of 99, but then October of 2000 for us. And I think now they're basically day and date with Japan, right? Oh, it's a global release now. Yeah, yeah. But they needed about 10 months to cook it, cook that localization up.

I mean, it's a massive thing to localize. I can see why it took them 10 months, especially if it was... I figure the practice back then for Pokemon Company would have been, we finish it in Japan and then we give it to you guys. And I think they threw us yellow as a bone in the meantime. That was the Christmas one for 99. Yeah, 99, that's right. My brother, he was more into Pokemon than me.

But when Gold and Silver came out in Japan, we were on the GameFAQs message boards trying to see all the secrets. And it was really easy to just say, oh, there's a peekaboo in this, you know, like it's the classic peekaboo rumor. Meanwhile, I didn't, I did not have a PC for gaming in 99. So I did not play Unreal. I did, but I was afraid to play multiplayer games until like Left 4 Dead came out.

So I missed a lot of them until 2008. I think for a lot of gamers, it would be shocking for them to learn that Unreal, the engine is named after Unreal Tournament. And yeah, the world is not enough. That's the one with Denise Richards in it. Oh, right. As like Dr. Merry Christmas or something.

Something stupid. Her name is Christmas, all for the end of the movie joke of she had just had sex with James Bond and wants to have sex again. And he says, I thought Christmas only came once a year. That's right. That's the only reason I knew that her name. All for that joke for that one joke. But,

uh, but anyway, yes. Uh, the client have to admire though. I think the commitment to that, to set all of that up for one terrible joke at the end of the movie, just for a joke to go out on your entire name is based on that. It's great.

It's a great groaner. I mean, I was dumbstruck in the theater. I did not think I would see in a James Bond movie a joke about the word come. I don't think I'd see that. This is despicable. What happened to James Bond?

James Bond is not making anyone come. He's a very selfish lover. That's all I'm going to say. Yes, I agree. I think so. Before we get too dirty here, let's introduce our guest, Chris Kohler. Chris, obviously, formerly of Wired, and Chris has been podcasting longer than us even. He was a podcaster in the pioneer days of 2005 and 2006.

That is actually true. Yeah, that was, wow. I remember the first time I heard about podcasts thinking, well, that's never going to work. And luckily, Jeremy Parrish, when he was at 1UP, started Retronauts. And again, I have this very distinct memory of being in the 1UP office and him telling me that he was going to start doing something about old. Again, this is 2005, 2006. So it's like, I'm going to do doing something about old. Again, this is 2005, 2006. So it's like he's like, I'm going to do something about old video games.

And I was like, wow, a bunch of people getting together and talking about old video games. No one's ever done this before. And it's a totally original idea. So, yes, I'm a super old podcaster and happy to be here. And just in awe of what you guys have put together, this cartoon empire cartoon empire of yours oh thank you and excited to be uh to be on the show and also chris is one of those uh what do you call him dads that's right yeah he's a dad and we've been accused of a dad we've been accused of being an anti-dad podcast but we are pro chris kohler so take that i know chris is a good dad and I read your Facebook updates all the time Chris thank you and you know I mean I'm she listen I'm sure I'm screwing my kids up in some way

that's gonna cause them to hate me soon enough it's it's it's fine you know it's just you try you know you try not to screw up your kids in the way your parents screwed you up but then the pendulum swings back the other way and I'm sure I'm just destroying them in some other way and you just gotta you take it day by day he's getting it he's getting into well my oldest i have two kids um you know my my oldest has just started getting into mario maker oh cool and um and he's just been like he was playing it the other day and he told me you know because he watches like children's youtube personalities of course who like play mario and then he wanted to play it and then he told me uh yesterday i bet

you that this youtuber played this game before you even did dad and i said chris i played mario maker 2 before it was out oh man it was just like that's impossible so we're telling him about what dad's job is and kind of blowing him away by this so it's super fun you know games press privilege you don't strike me as one of those dads that has like the entertainment syllabus for their child like okay at age three you'll watch this and play this. Then at age five, we're going to get you into this. I will tell you that that really rubs me the wrong way. Yeah.

I mean, I know some people did that and were like, oh, yeah, like I'm going to teach my child about the history of video games. And when they're four, they're only going to be able to play the 8-bit NES. And then when they're five, they're only going to be able to play the Super Nintendo. I'm going to do it that way. And that's just i i really just i want him to figure out what's cool and then once i want him to figure out what he's into and then for me as the parent to kind of come in and say okay what's the safe way for you to play this what's because because now it just sort of spirals where it's like minecraft roblox and it's like oh okay these are all online games like what do we do with parental controls how do i make sure that because it's like I'm not I'm not over your shoulder all the time watching what you do.

So it's like, how can I, you know, make sure that, you know, that it's safe and just, you know, listen and understand like what it is you're into. And it's we're right on the precipice of things getting really, really difficult. We're like he's going online. We can't lock stuff down. So it's like, how do we how do we deal with it it's too late now but you could always do one of those scenarios like in the movie the village like just tell your kid it's it's always 1993 and sonic the hedgehog does not exist and we don't go outside yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the sonic the hedgehog thing for sure he does not enter this house yeah no sonic in my house i mean is he does he know what you're you have quite a

collection of retro games chris does he does he know what those are yet he's not he does and he's completely uninterested in them again he's he's really he gets into his own thing and it's entirely possible that he will get interested in it and it's entirely but he's he's older and he's pretty i mean he's five and he's pretty respectful of stuff he doesn't like destroy things in the house but we just had daughter a baby who's six months old and um everything goes in her mouth she just everything everything she can get her hands on and she like she's threatening to just start you know crawling and walking and running around and like everything she can touch has to get crumpled up and destroyed and i'm like pulling stuff out of her mouth on a constant like a magician pulling one of those

multi-colored scarves you know it's like what did you get in there oh no she's got a stadium fence yeah exactly exactly so i mean it's got that's she's gonna she's gonna be the trouble for sure with all the stuff on the shelves it's fine i own a storage unit i can just box everything up you know it's fine one uh chris what's your know, personal history with the Simpsons? I would assume kind of similar to Bob and mine's. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, well, I don't want to lie, but I did watch the Tracy Ullman show when it was on. Like, I mean, you know, I watched anything on TV that was, you know, comedic. And so I definitely, definitely had my first encounter with The Simpsons watching the shorts

on Tracy Ullman. It's like when I did, I remember when the show was premiered, because I just turned 40. So I mean, I was eight years old in 1988, you know. So I mean, I had a vague understanding of like, oh, that, you know, those, those, those very weird, you know, little cartoon things from the Tracy Ullman show are gonna, it's gonna be, you know, because they hyped up that Christmas special and everything.

And so, yeah, I started watching from right then. And of course, you know, you're eight, nine years old. There's kids, there's a cartoon on TV and the kids say hell, you know what I mean? And that's awesome. And so I definitely fell in love with it at that point. I really enjoy watching The Simpsons. I'm not one of the people that became a huge, you know, adult fan and cataloging, you know, every single thing about it. But I got it. Come on. There's nothing wrong with that.

For a moment there, you know, in the for the for the years there when I was, you know, a kid and a teenager, it was definitely I mean, obviously, right. I mean, it was a huge, huge part of you. You had to be Simpsons literate to understand the pop culture of the day. Absolutely huge deal when, you know, Michael Jackson came on The Simpsons. It was a huge, huge event, right? I bought The Simpsons Illustrated magazines too, you know, like I really, I bought the first, that first book when they released The Simpsons episode guide, which, which again, as somebody who, you know, like I really that first book when they released the Simpsons episode guide, which which again, as somebody who, you know, likes to collect things, you know, I mean, I collected Mad Magazine as a kid. Oh, yeah. So to give to give you sort of an idea of the crossover there, like I really actively like collected as as a kid. I'll tell I'll tell this

story because it kind of kind of all goes together. Right. I remember I would have been like five years old at a flea market. And there were like five like mad magazines at somebody's booth. And I thought that these were like dirty books. You know what I mean? Like I thought this is inappropriate for me. And so I thought I was really getting away with something because I was sitting there browsing, looking at the humor in these things, even though it was literally mad from the 80s, you know. And my dad came over

and I just remembered going white, like, oh, no, dad caught me reading this illicit adult material. And I blanched. I'm like, I'm in trouble. And he goes, oh, do you want to buy those? And I bought this stack of mad magazines for a quarter each. And then I got super into it. So of course, you have this phenomenon of kids my age in the 80s growing up buying old Mad magazines and being super literate about the cultural figures of the 60s and 70s from reading Mad magazine. I knew a lot about President Nixon because I read this when I was in elementary school. Anyway, so I think that probably, the appreciation of that sort of quote-unquote

adult humor as a little kid probably dovetailed very well into starting to get obsessed with The Simpsons at that time as well. Yeah, I totally get that too. I mean, I was a mad reader in the late 80s, then I would always buy like the super specials that they would put out. I think the joke was in the show like 12 times a year. And a lot of it was reprinted stuff from the 70s and the 60s and the 80s. So I did learn a lot about politics or their take on politics and, you know, celebrities and stuff from that time. Like I didn't know Johnny Carson took a lot of days off until I read that magazine. There was a song about it. There was a parody song about Johnny Carson, like not hosting the tonight show. That's right. Yeah. There was like a poem.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'd learned about who the hot starlets were of like 1974. Like I, I learned who Farrah Fawcett was from reading old mad. Then watching Charlie angels,

Charlie's angels reruns, which were kind of rare to see then yeah yeah for sure well on this episode yeah this uh this is a dad episode and i was curious too if like you know do you reflect on the simpsons differently now as as a dad or like revisiting it it's so bizarre it's so bizarre to think that i am older than homer simpson is canonically right um and you start you a hundred percent there's a great line in this show that we'll get to when we get to it but you yes absolutely you start to look at instead of bart you know or probably more in my case lisa you know being the character you quite closely identify with you start identifying with homer and and all of you start to understand a lot so much more about

the motivations or the things that he thinks or you know what he wants to do on the weekends it is so funny how that that character suddenly becomes much more relatable and you realize like oops like oh i'm actually homer now whoops yeah i guess homer is canonically 39 because he started at 35 and they kept sliding it up as the writers are getting older like we cannot be older than homer but if you look at the arcade game the uh like the bio on homer says age 35 that's right yeah in march it turned 34 in the first season but they i think they they kept aging up homer so they were younger than him until 40 and i think that's when they're like homer can't be over 40 they just don't want that

and now the showrunner algin is 60 so yes yeah homer can't now he's like that flanders age right he is yeah speaking of the video games i will absolutely say that i i played the ever-loving crap out of bart versus the space mutants and Bart versus the world for the NES. I actually beat both of those games. No way. No way. Could I do it today? Absolutely not.

But it just shows you like how much I played and memorize those games to actually be able to finish them. Oh my God. I'm like the kid at recess who goes like, no way. Did you tape it? Yeah. We just did a podcast about that game as of this recording and uh just revisiting that through let's plays i have no idea how we even got past the first level i mean i it just reminded me that i didn't get past the first level by unfortunately i rented

the game i didn't buy it but uh well so let's talk about this episode i just off the bat eight misbehaving is a parody of the or a reference to the musical of the 80s it was a jazz review ain't misbehaving that's right which we talked a lot more about in uh when we talked about ron taylor the late ron taylor in our moaning lisa episode the voice of bleeding gums murphy was part of the original cast of ain't misbehavin so uh yeah there's there's a simpsons connection to it and i did want to get into all of the septuplet and octuplet trivia yeah just to get it out of the way because this episode is based on the the birth of the mccoy septuplets who were born in november of 97 and they were the world's

first set of fully surviving septuplets although two of them uh did do have cerebral palsy uh but um they were the product of fertility drugs by can you believe a religious family yeah that's the that was the depressing secret on all those giant not to get ahead of ourselves but the the giant family reality shows of the 2000s the secret was they all are crazy religious people wanted to get on tv and then we get to the the quiver full families which have them one at a time usually and they're they're sick freaks and cults and whatnot but uh chris has a lot i know chris you uh currently it's on hiatus but you had the podcast a good job bringing a trivia podcast i

know you love weird info about stuff like this i I do. I do. So I kind of went down a wiki hole, as they say, about a lot of this stuff. And so, yeah, the McCoy septuplets were the first set of septuplets to live. And what you have to understand about this is that prior to this, there had been recorded instances of people having five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten maybe babies. But I mean mean it's like a one in a billion chance that would happen now there's five six seven billion people on the world at the end at these points you know so i mean it's entirely possible that you know you could have a one in a billion chance would happen but like this this episode involves uh apu and manjula having

octuplets and it's just sort of like obviously we're talking about a comedy show she she doesn't know she has octuplets until they come out believe me if you had octuplets you would absolutely know very early on and and your life would actually be in like serious danger like yeah women who have these huge multiple births they they end up spending a lot of that time in the hospital being constantly looked after but the thing is the advent of fertility drugs which comes up in this episode that absolutely plays into it. So you have fertility drugs, which do cause people to have several embryos going on at once.

And now typically right at that moment, they would do selective reduction. So I mean, basically, you know, so sometimes parents are on fertility drugs. There's a lot of embryos. They're like, OK, we're going to reduce this down to a very manageable number here. Protect your life, protect protect the baby's lives, quite frankly, because like, it's not, it's not good for the babies to be, you know, gestating essentially, right. For the fetuses to be gestating in that kind of environment. Right. So it's like, so they do that, but there were some people who went on fertility drugs and were like, nope, we're just gonna, we're just gonna go with

all of it. Um, and that's their right to do that if they want to do that. You actually, too, you had the McCoy septuplets in 1997, and you had the Chukwu octuplets, octuplets, the first time octuplets were born alive. It was in December 1998. We don't actually hear very much about the Chukwu family. It was interesting, but it happened right after. Yeah, I looked into them a little bit.

I mean, well, first that they i think a reason they didn't get as much media spotlight is that they are a nigerian american family so as they're not a white family that it i think would be focused on by our racist media as much and my notes tell me that it was the most surviving octuplets because seven of the children survived infancy so not all of them so it's a it's a less fun story yeah so it was it is it is yes seven so one one actually sadly passed away within a week of being born uh but it was the first time that octoplets were actually born alive like that were actually survived for any length of time of course now later on well after this episode 10 years after this episode aired um you had the the the suleiman octuplets, which is mother became known as Octomom right in the news.

And they were the first set of octuplets that actually completely survived. And something else happened in 1998 as well, which is very interesting and put multiple births back into the news. The Dion quintuplets, they got a two point eight million dollar settlement from the government of ontario canada in 1998 and i know you guys were reading about the dion quintuplets as well and that's actually their story that inspired this this episode of this of the simpsons the actual storyline the the plot of it and i mean this is just fascinating right oh yeah i read this great washington post piece from last year that was kind of a rundown of a much bigger book on it. And it's just, I mean, it's an they started as tap dancing sammy and he worked 16 hours a day for seven days a week on vaudeville or whatever it's like so much child yeah like we didn't think people were children our children were people

until like maybe like 1938 i don't know yeah so what ended up happening so the dion quintuplet a set of five identical girls were born of course it is in 1934 in ontario canada no fertility drugs existed at this point this was one of those totally random one a million kind of things they all survived they were the first set of quintuplets to get to make it out of infancy basically they all survived they were born in a little farmhouse they warmed them by the literal fire in this farmhouse like it was it was really like kind of a miracle that they all made it. So the same kind of thing happens that you see with the McCoy septuplets, et cetera. People start sending them gifts. I think some companies start sending some stuff. A hospital sent them

incubators, which were very new technology at the time. I remember reading that very likely those babies would have died had those not been sent or they'd it's unlikely they'd all have survived. Probably, probably it is very unlikely. So the thing with the incubators and this is super weird, too, but this kind of leads into what happened with the Dion quintuplets. Incubators were brand new technology right in the 1930s. The idea that if you had a premature baby uh you would be able to put them into this machine that would help them you know thrive right so babies were not born in hospitals in generally in the 1930s they were they were almost all born at home so like how do

you put them in an incubator hospitals didn't really use incubators because again babies typically didn't even go to hospitals in the first place right and of course you know the you know, the medical establishment at the time was a little bit like, well, what are these things? You know, they were kind of invented by somebody. Should we be using them? So what would end up happening was if you went to like Coney Island, there would be a building that was like, come see the incubator babies. It was like next to the side.

So it was like, come see the bearded woman. Come see the alligator man. Come see the babiesed woman come see the alligator man come see the babies in the incubators and people would not give their babies people would put their babies on display in exchange for being able to have these babies in these incubators it was this it was this profit making thing wow so you'd go in you'd gawk at the little tiny premature babies in these incubators. And it was a sideshow. It was a tourist attraction. And it's bizarre to think about that.

It's so bizarre to think like, I'm going to put my baby on display for thousands of people to gawk at. For a lot of parents, it was the only way to get access to this new technology, the incubator, that would actually perhaps and generally did. They were pretty successful, I guess, at keeping babies a lot what a weird time uh hey want to see some sick babies yeah i got 50 cents i mean we were you know we're decades away from video games so i mean people just needed something yeah it's hard to think about it so then so the dion quintuplets are born they go in the incubators they got out of inf infancy. Okay, great. Well, as soon as they're born, the Chicago Century of Progress exhibition, which is like a World's Fair kind of thing. So they come in and they're literally like, hey, you have five babies and no money.

We will take your babies and we will put them on display at the Chicago Century of Progress exhibition so people can come see the famous quintuplet babies, you know, and they can go look at them. And the family is like, gee, what should we do? Well, the doctor that delivered them is like, you should totally do it. And the family priest is like, go for it. That doctor is pretty evil in this story. He's the villain, I'd say. He wants a cut.

Yeah. So they sign over the custody of the quintuplets to the Red Cross for two years in exchange for them basically covering all the medical costs, all the medical costs, all the food, the shelter, everything. We'll take care of your babies for two years and put them in the century of private distribution. But what ends up happening is by in 1935, when the babies are a year old, maybe less than a year old, they become wards of the crown, wards of the king in Ontario, Canada. And the government of Ontario, Canada becomes their legal guardians on a perpetual basis ostensibly this is to protect them from being exploited by any bad actors who would seek to exploit them for their fame the government of ontario then proceeds to exploit them for their fame and as bad a way so they build across from the little farmhouse where they were born they build a quote-un quote unquote hospital, which the doctor who delivered them, right, I believe is like running this whole thing.

Yeah, he runs it. Yeah. If they called it a zoo, people would freak out. So they call it a hospital. Yeah. And then at its peak, 3,000 people a day, they build this whole thing and they have an observation deck above the playground and the girls all live there. And then three times a day, they get sent out to the playground to play while people pass by on the observation deck to look at them. They exit through the gift shop. There's a gift shop selling anything you could make in 1934 that you would sell in a theme park gift shop with their faces on it and stuff like that. You buy this stuff. I saw the quintuplets. All I got was this lousy, you buy all this stuff and they're,

they're making, they're just raking in money while these girls are just like slaves, just, just child slaves in this, in this institution, like performing for crowds. And I read too, that like Ontario,

they were making a ton of money just from like upping their, their gas tax because they were getting so many visitors like it was directly paying for a ton of of local taxes for ontario just the the exposure of these kids like the the washington post article i read said the the phrase was like bigger than niagara like this was bigger than niagara falls these these quintuplets yep and they called it quintland it was a theme park was it called a quintland theme park that you go to to see the it was like it was the biggest like tourist attraction probably in canada at this point well by like age 10 they finally got free i think it was someone freed the kids and they really uh did you know it's not like they had a good time

of it afterwards either because their their their parents apparently by all accounts pretty much sucked. And they went back to their parents' house and their parents resented them and didn't like them. And they didn't have a sense. It took them a while to get a sense, I think, that this big house that they now lived in and all this money and all this stuff that they had was just paid for by their existence. And them being in Quitland for nine years, 10 years. And they technically had a trust fund, but it was stolen from by people like it was their money, but everybody was just picking away at it. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And so this and this one. And so they kind of came back into the news when the McCoy septuplets were born, because the surviving

women from the Dion family wrote a letter to the parents of the McCoy septuplets were born because the surviving women from the Dion family wrote a letter to the parents of the McCoy septuplets. And they were like, you're going to get a lot of people wanting to essentially exploit your family and make these people, you know, make your kids like child stars or whatever. Please, please, please, you know, try your best. You know, do not go down that road. It only leads to bad things. They were so lucky to have been born right before reality TV because I wanted to cover the media angle of this too. So they,

I mean, the writers of the show don't know what will happen in the future. Obviously coming, but they seem to see the wave. They are addressing the wave in this episode, but they couldn't, their parody couldn't imagine what would come next. Like had this been made 10 years later.

So like 2007 was a John and Kate plus plus eight and that was a show about sex tuplets right six kids at once they had twins before so it was technically eight kids but yeah six kids together but what it was like you're exploiting your children so uh corporations can subsidize your lifestyle through products that you then showcase on your show so the all of those shows and i overwatch a lot of them because people i know would watch or hate watch them and just like now we're gonna go play with these legos and then we're gonna go visit this place that you can go to too and here are the kind of pampers we use like it's all about showcasing products they get the products for free to use on their kids but they're also using their kids as like models for the

products essentially one and john and kate especially they just seem like very messy people kate is the first karen she invented the yes yeah she's a pioneer of karen's and they went through an incredibly messy divorce and i i really pity their kids the sex tuplets are like 16 now so i'm sure they'll have their own tell-all soon enough and we'll know what was really going on there but boy oh boy and well that's why it's funny then with the octo mom after them nadia uh suleiman with her it was really weird because i think she clearly wanted to be a reality show star too and she would appear on like daytime tv all the time but mainly to be yelled at and so like she was everybody turned on her she still

was a television celebrity but she'd get to be on like you know dr phil for dr phil to tell her she's irresponsible i think she had a brief stint in pornography as well uh she did uh in 2012 after the kids birth she did do a solo porn video uh this was after she filed for bankruptcy and won an avian award so who am i to judge and uh you know that uh i think it was two years ago the new york times did a 10th anniversary piece with her with the eight kids she had six kids before those eight kids also and then more kids after right i yes yeah yeah and uh but the new york times piece apparently it's behind a paywall so i can read it but uh apparently it seemed to say it was a normal healthy household and not bad so you know seems like she's better than kate at least i think if we're if we're judging parents of reality show

stuff by comparison i watched a 10 years later video with the the chukku septuplets and they they seemed pretty normal and not stars of a television show so that that probably helps them a lot you know different parents have different parenting approaches right i mean we are pretty we don't have super strict rules about you know bedtime and we don't have super strict rules about oh you you know as soon as you're done eating you gotta go wash your you know, when you're four years old or something like that. Like some parents absolutely do that. It's not our thing. I think as soon as you have eight children at once, heck, even if you had regular old quadruplets, I feel like you would absolutely need to become the sort of household that is all about schedules and cleaning up after yourself,

because if you don't, there is no coming back from that. It's just Lord of the Flies. I think at that point you have like a professionally made chore wheel. Yeah, you have to. And so, I mean, I think when you, when you do read the check-in articles on the McCoys or the Chukus or, you know, it's just sort of like, oh yeah, you know, we eat in shifts and we do this and we, you know, Mondays is the day that mom and these three go do this and you know it's all very scheduled because there is no other way to do it the simpsons will be right back. Thank you, sir! Whispity!

Bite my butterfinger! Remusseli! I hope you guys enjoy this week's podcast with our love eight relationship with our awesome guest chris kohler definitely follow him on twitter he does great work at kataku and just in the history of video games department and by the way if you enjoy this podcast you should know that me and bob are only able to do it full time thanks to the subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons all the support there is the way me and bob do this is our full-time job and five bucks a month gets you a ton of extras as

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Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, a huge number of awesome movies you can hear us talk about often for over four hours. If you're a subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for 10 bucks a month please sign up today a lot of depressing stories about octuplets after yeah uh that and uh i would hope the nasa bima petalon children end up as lucky as the chukwu kids who seeming to be pretty normal maybe it was for the best because uh we've all talked about apu of course but i think this this episode really kind of uh ruins his character

a bit in that like he has to be the guy with eight kids now like how many jokes can you write about that eventually they kind of wrote him out of the show a little bit because like they did all the jokes like he's tired he's got eight kids they can never grow up because he's in this reality. So yeah, what are you going to do? The rare times he'd appear after this is just a cut to him being incredibly stressed and unhappy. This is why you don't give characters kids in shows. You get one episode for it and then you don't know what you're doing with them after. And this is part of like a four episode arc with Apu where he gets married.

There's a Valentine's Day episode. There's this one with the kids. And then there's a fourth one where he gets married there's a Valentine's Day episode there's this one with the kids and then there's a fourth one where he cheats on Manjula in season 13 and that's basically all the Apu episodes that with this storyline that's basically all you get and then he's sort of like in the background there's a joke like in season 15 or 16 where it's implied that he has like changed his name to escape his family his name is steve barnes now or something like that all right yeah uh i mean i i remember hearing gene say on another commentary he's like i could undo all this stuff i could have manjula just take

the kids and move back to india they never did that but uh i mean now they've now it's a whole other thing and i i would also again suggest we've talked about the the problematic issues with apu before i would definitely suggest if you haven't if you're a new listener please listen to our ones for much apu about nothing and the two misnahasapima petalons with our awesome guest shivan bot who gave us a ton of insight into the the character of apu and what he represents i think those are those are really good ones. But I guess one other thing, the commentary for this one is incredibly unuseful,

but also entertaining. It's a good recording because obviously Gary Marshall's not with us anymore. So it's a bunch of funny writers hanging out with Gary Marshall for 20 minutes. So you get that at least. It's so great. Like he calls him, he's like,

I gave everybody their first job dan castellana i gave him his first job it's like hey kazaria didn't use an accent like this but uh yeah uh and god we're delaying this so much but i will say like i listened to this commentary back in i don't know 2008 2009 whenever this dvd set came out something that blew my mind and also you can hear a blowing matt selman's mind and other writers gary marshall not jewish yes yeah i blew my mind italian fellow i think that's where i learned it that he's uh that that's why fonzarelli was supposed to be masharelli his real name and then he's like i'm not jewish rosh hashanah is a good time people in people in new york just talked like this uh and so i like for a long time, I thought he was Penny Marshall's dad.

So I got over that fact. But I still thought he was Jewish until this commentary. Well, also hearing him talk, I can't not hear Paul F. Tompkins. Call me, Gary. It's perfect impersonation of him. And so it's just a bunch of worshipful writers hanging out with him. Matt Selman gets in one last dig at uh exit to eden exit to eden yeah the film and we'll do our little bio and then when we get to uh larry kid kill it's uh but also

there's not as much information in this episode no uh the behind the scenes unfortunately but yeah so i guess this episode begins uh of all places at ikea which i had not shopped at an ikea when i saw this i didn't do it until i moved to berkeley in 2006 i will tell you uh guys that uh so this whole ikea parody was in lisa the beauty queen right yo yes so that's where it premiered it's returning now they finally go into it but it is not a parody of ikea shop is a parody of store an ikea knockoff that was forced to change its colors and layouts in 1988 and then ikea acquired it in 1992 oh wow yeah okay i didn't know that but i will say i didn't go into an ikea until like 2008 2007 maybe and i think it's really classist when you make fun of people with ikea furniture because the first time i walked into

an ikea i was like i can afford a couch i can buy a bed right yep yep yep i i'm surrounded by ikea things now like five five different ikea bookshelves and and also my haskell couch over there my l-shaped couch billy bookcases are great and uh billy when i moved out west uh 10 years ago now i bought a bunch of ikea stuff and it's still holding together pretty good and i'm gonna throw it all on a fire when i move to canada whenever that happens that's well i mean people are so you know if you're really mobile you know it's really good to be able to buy super cheap furniture that you can literally just like throw away yeah i mean if five years on a couch is enough on a couch for me like i'm on nine and uh still holding together yeah yeah yeah yeah our ikea bed we got home from like a vacation once and uh got into bed and the bed uh broke it was like the sort

of the um the the rail that connected the headboard to the baseboard just ripped right out of the particle board like headboard thing and we had it for 10 years so i mean it was just you know very very slowly slowly slowly and then it just finally just collapsed. And we went and bought the exact same model of bed and put it in there. And you wouldn't even know. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it was like a graduation of buying an Ikea couch because before my couches were the free couches you see on Craigslist.

And yeah. Oh, me too. They were all like hand-me-downs. I remember like when I first lived with my first serious girlfriend after high school, I was like 20. And we were like, let's go out and look at couches. And I was like, a couch is $1,300? That's what I was sitting on as a kid? Yeah.

Now the IKEA, I really do like IKEA. I can't go there to buy a small thing and not leave without spending like $200 on stuff. Yeah. You got to watch out for that, for the second section of Ikea. Once you get all your furniture and they send you into the section that has all of the random baskets and kitchen gadgets and stuff like that.

That's where they get you. And lamp stuff I wouldn't buy. I wouldn't use Ikea kitchen gadgets. Lamps that don't look like lamps. Bad idea. Yeah, that's the room I poo went to. Yes, yes, yes. Those lamps do get you.

Well, also when I see like, I don't need a new lamp, but $9 for a lamp? I mean, also, the round number on things, it's an extra trick of being $7 feels cheaper. It seems free because it's not $10. And also, too, I've gone in there for the food just to like eat so the one i go to is the one in emeryville like if i go to uh if i go to a movie in emeryville and we're killing time until the movie starts and it's like why don't we just go eat some swedish meatballs and then once it's over we go walk through the labyrinth exit of Impulse Buys and spend at least 75 bucks on things. Gotta get your poop lease.

Yeah, oh, poop lease. Or a green table. I never heard of that. I just cleared off my green table to work from home from Ikea. So there you go. But yes, why don't we hear our first clip here about them going to not Ikea. You put it together yourself. All you need is me, Alan Wrench.

He's named after what he is. Cool costume. It's not a costume. They found me inside a meteor. Excuse me, where are your hamper lids? Hamper lids? Third floor. Help, I need

Tungsten to live. Tungsten! Ooh, look at all these clever pencil holders. Ooh, I want to get the crunk. You don't want something that overshadows the pencils. How about this poo-ply? Mom, no. Everyone in school picks on the poo-ply kids.

Even I do. Just hate them so much. Yes, I will have the plop in Lugan and don't skimp on the doodle munch. Those are all good Ikea jokes. Although I have no idea what they're talking about in 1999. I was fully confused

by all of it. I didn't realize the first dresser I'd have would be building it in 2006 after buying it at ikea that uh at alan wrench is i think the fourth living robot that that they have met in this uh scully years yeah does that include the the car i'm counting the car okay the electric car that uh can feel pain i i count that as a robot uh but yeah the the one that uh chokes skinner to death as well there's that one and uh they meet another one at by monty ficon all right yeah uh so it there's just something about a a robot screaming in pain for

that made the scully team really laugh. I mean, I like Allen wrench, especially like no human could fit in that Allen wrench costume. I don't think I'd ever even heard of an Allen wrench until I went to Ikea. They just never came up in my life. There's so, yeah, there's so much, this is extremely funny to have ever been to Ikea, but yeah, you're right. Like in 1998, had I ever been to an Ikea? Absolutely not. So I totally, totally lost. They were not in middle Americaica where i grew up no no or suburban florida either i think when i first came back to florida in like 07 or something i found out that there was one in orlando or like there was one not somewhere in florida

i think ikea has spread a lot more in the u.s but still still not that big also yeah that it made me sad to think lisa is bullying people but i do love her that it's over pencil holders the crook a really great out yardley says crook you know there's a deleted there's a hidden deleted scene joke in here that uh is that the swedish meatballs are actually made out of unsold shower curtains. It's a joke. Well, the food at Ikea is so cheap, too. Yeah, I don't find it bad. You can get an entire buffet dinner for like $3. The food at Ikea is excellent.

I will hear no argument. Oh, I meant cheap as in inexpensive. I love eating mac and cheese at Ikea. Just fill me up. Well, that's the idea, right? It's that they get you in with the cheap Swedish meatballs and then take you for everything you have after you uh fight with your partner which always happens at ikea you just load up on food yep uh you have some logan berries the classic this will definitely fit in our car yeah yeah uh the you have the logan berries with your arguments that's though they are wrong that you have lego stuff you actually just eat

utensils you can buy later in the impulse buy section uh that well i mean whenever i drink out of those glasses i'm like these are good pint glasses i'm gonna buy some when i get out of here and then they get you at the very end with like frozen swedish meatballs and like jars of the lingonberry jam and you're like well I never have to stop being at Ikea. I could be at Ikea every day if I fill my freezer with these. I'm turning my apartment into a maze right now. Yeah, they also get the blue trays right that the Simpsons are eating off of. I like seeing the blue trays in this because I'm like, oh, 20 years later,

you still eat off of the blue trays at Ikea. After a bunch of fun ikea jokes then apu and manjula arrive to begin the actual plot of the episode as uh baby fever strikes hello simpsons hey apu manjula you guys are still married oh yes sir quite happily pay up march say what you got there i don't know exactly it's from the room of lamps that do not look like lamps. Oh, little Maggie. Aren't you cute with your little bow? Do bow, Bjarne. Do bow, Bjarne.

Maggie loves baby talk. That was Hindi. Oh, sorry. So, have you two thought about kids? Well, sure we have, but the decision to have a child is not to be made lightly. On the other hand, monkeys see, monkeys do. Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach him to hate the things you hate.

And he practically raised themselves, what with the internet and all. I'm not really predicted just throwing kids in front of the internet. I i mean that's what raised me uh first tv and then internet tagged in oh man the the line you can teach them to hate the things you hate is it's so it's like oh ha ha ha and then you don't think about it any more than that like just just chuckle and move on because if you start to think about that line too much it's far too true and it's far too painful to consider well especially you think about like well what's homer teaching them to hate but this uh this whole season in the previous two uh show run by a dad with five kids so it feels like homer is mike scully dealing with a new parent and how naive they're being yes yeah no that's that's most of the jokes

in this episode is uh the experienced and over it parents reacting to a new parent like he's i mean scully at that point his kids were like he was at least 10 years into fatherhood so he had a lot of experience to just reflect upon while his co-workers were uh if they were even starting families then they were new to it like selman selman became a dad at the writer of this episode matt selman he became a dad after writing this like he was just guessing what it was like to be a new father it's a real rarity that maggie acts like a baby like this is just her being a baby also not aging at all in this episode either but uh right of course you know they we've said before that they don't get enough good comedy out

of marge i kind of like her as a putting foot in mouth uh well-meaning person yeah there's really good comedy here it's like sorry uh also in the background i caught range rover mom and gavin so we're seeing a lot of different parents in here what was he mad about this time you know he's just kind of like sneering at his mom like two poop please i like seeing manjula just get baby fever just right there which they've they would have been married like three months at this point maybe again if maggie never ages then it's hard to get timelines real fuzzy uh but yes they then start uh having some of that old sex and um i've heard good things that's that's where they get uh

they get in most of their bad indian culture humor of like talking about the ganges overpopulation oh calcutta like that they pretty much squeeze all of that unfortunate stuff there yeah i mean uh it's corny and it could be worse yeah uh but uh as they're trying to conceive homer gets a little tmi hey abu sitting in the ice cream cooler eh by chilling my loins i increase the chances of impregnating my wife whoa too information. Thanks for the mental picture. Why don't you tell us what you really think? Just stop spouting those hackneyed quips. Could you be any more...

Hello? Look, just give me some ice cream. Um, how about one not touching your ass? Oh, Montrula has begun to ovulate. Ew, thanks for sharing. More than I wanted to know. He's watching a lot of sitcoms. I know, he's Chandler-ing out.

That's what I know. He's like very, very 90s. Yeah. I love that they're making fun of like, here's what a bad joke would be here. Like the easy, that just is a must-see TV setup of, oh, why are you doing that? To chill my loins for this. More than I wanted to do.

Right, right. Like that's the punchline to every joke. So Homer has to throw like 18 of them in a row. I also feel like Scully doesn't really care about the power plant or Burns anymore. So like if Homer needs someone to talk to, not at most, he comes into Apu's establishment. Like, Apu has become a friend in his seasons. He's his closest friend. Yeah.

Like, they are doing so many things together. They cook out together. Yeah. And if you remember, like, go back to season two, the joke is that Apu is invited to them stealing cable and getting the boxing fight. Like, it's a joke that he's even there. Yes. Like, you invited the convenience store guy what the hell uh but now they're so close homer is like

very interested into their uh their sex lives and they had their wedding at their house of course uh there is there is a mention of the nuclear power plant later in the episode but it's it's it's so dismissive as to almost prove the point of not caring about the nuclear power plant anymore even by the way that it's mentioned we get to see the pnc pregnancy test that's a funny name and and it is also kind of scratch and win which fits with the aesthetics of a quickie mart i like that two really good jokes come out of this uh baby baby lemon and also pirates are wild later now i'm guessing that's not the reality of a home pregnancy test though chris right uh now having having never taken one personally um no and i

and it's also it's so funny because just the idea of of getting people's hopes up you know a slot machine sort of way raising their emotions and then and then smashing them down for a pregnancy test. Oh, man. Yeah, you're right. That's good. Not really. Not the real thing, though. I mean, you know, what's funny, though, is the obvious the obvious go to joke about the pregnancy test is that they're they're impossible to read, which every every other sitcom was doing the joke where they do the pregnancy test.

And it's like, what's wait, it's a line. Is that a minus meaning no baby or a line meaning yes baby? Wait, no, there's a second line. It's two lines. What's two lines? Is two lines no or is two lines yes? A red line versus a blue line. And that's the joke is that nobody can actually read them or figure it out.

Or you go diving back into the garbage can, know throwing things everywhere to try to find the instructions again to figure it out meanwhile this is this is what they land on which is good it's it's good actually uh chris the previous pregnancy test uh joke in the show i looked it up it's from season three and it's um from i married marge and it's the barnacle bills uh pregnancy test and uh the joke is you get a free corncob pipe but the joke they run with is like it's one color if you are pregnant and one if you're not but it's one in the middle that they end up on and that's when Marge leaves to

go to Hibbert's and Homer tells them the story of how they got married I was thinking that barnacle bill test because the second joke with it involves a pirate so I was like this is their second like pirate birth test since but in this case they went with the obvious sitcom thing that chris mentioned where it's just like oh what is it we

got to go to the doctor now and i also love her saying like all that sex for nothing and he's well that is a grim assessment yeah yes yes and so they then go to like a barbecue which yeah like you said bob it's so where homer invites apu to a barbecue uh george meyer mentions that putting bean cans to explode is actually like a a deadly prank he did at the boy scouts of just throwing throwing your can of beans in the fire and then you're hit with scalding beans eventually and i'm sure some shrapnel oh sure too yeah and uh another another great joke of homer just being like seen it all when he says decided and also though i really love that homer's understanding of sex is two positions yeah i mean

he's very he's a very tired man on top and underneath and uh though i also wonder how often apu has sex in sanjay's bed like is this is this the first time i wonder also where's sanjay at the birth of his like nephews sanjay's not even at his wedding like sanjay is written out of the series that's true i miss sanjay they still have time to talk about having sex in his bed but but yes instead homer helps by uh basically writing and directing a porno hom Homer, we have tried everything. Oysters, gravity boots, Sanjay's bed, every possible position. Really? On top and underneath?

Yes. Well, don't worry. I can help you. I'm all about ideas. Kids, come and get it. Now, this situation is guaranteed to end in pregnancy. I'm willing to play the high school joke, but did you have to cut the roof off my car? That's an Apu question. You're Greg. Uh, gee Betsy, it's such a nice night. Why don't we go all the way?

But Greg, my dad will kill me. And you have that scholarship to Ivy League State. Loosen up, baby. Tomorrow I'm shipping off to Vietnam. I thought I was going to Ivy League State. My mistake. Stay in the moment. Just promise not to forget me on your dinosaur bone digging up trip.

And that's my cue to exit. But Homer doesn't exit. He instead peeps on them. I thought the joke was going to be, oh, Homer's a creep, but I'm glad they didn't go there. He just is too enthusiastic about the wrap party. But, well, he does peep on them later.

I guess that's true. Homer's a little bit of a creep. This also made me miss Jan Hooks, like RIP. Yeah, I guess both of our guest stars are deceased yeah i suppose i should play i think we've given her the death jingle before we don't need to give her the insulting death jingle she's received it yeah let's save that for just gary marshall please call him gary thank you thank you uh yeah yeah that was also such a great joke when they cut to homer mouthing the words as they say yes. Yes, yes, yes. That's so good. That's so good. And he mutilated Apu's car.

Yeah. You know, like I was thinking about this and we got all the Indian stuff out of the way, mostly the insulting stuff. Like it doesn't matter that Apu is of Indian descent for any of this stuff after this. Like his race does not matter or his background doesn't matter

for any of these jokes or this story, which I like. Yeah, I'm glad of that. The positions thing is the closest. I'm shocked. i'm glad they didn't go with the hack thing of saying like everything in the kamasutra like yeah there's a kamasutra joke in the previous apu episode so it's not like they never did it but maybe that's why they're like oh it'd be repetitive to do that again and uh yeah then homer uh we get to see that they hit the jackpot they get they get a pirate which confuses them and they find out that the pirates are wild.

And so they win. That thing just messes with you, the PNC test. And that's where Homer is peeping in on them, too, which I get the feeling they are not in a first floor apartment either. So Homer had to climb for that. Then we cut to nine months later they just have to fully skip nine months and i love how ridiculously they just do it and just shrug and all the uh what feel like bad episode pitches to me yeah i love the yeah here it's a quick clip here

man the last nine months sure were crazy. I'll say, I learned the true meaning of Columbus Day. I enjoyed a brief but memorable stint as Sideshow Marge. I became the most popular girl in school, but blew it by being conceited. And then I learned the true meaning of winter. Just winter, not Christmas. A TV season is about nine months, so it feels like we just missed a season that they never made uh i think they should do that sideshow marge one i think you know crusty and marge bouncing off each other you got you got conflict there i think they could do something i like it yeah and also they the thought that they'd ever do a columbus day episode

though i think they kind of did to do that but obviously columbus day culturally insensitive to do now but then uh last year for a fat tony episode they did do an episode that was about like an italian street food fair that definitely is the kind that like replaced columbus day in most cities uh though bart didn't learn anything in that episode as far as i recall we we learned that uh fat tony loves to sing show tunes. So we get to see Fat Tony sing a show tune if you watch that episode. But there's a joke later in another episode where it's the flash forward and they show that Maggie hasn't aged.

Like it's the, they make the joke of, oh, and where's Maggie? Here she is. And they just pick up a baby, even though it's the one where Lisa's the president. Oh, right. joke of oh and where's maggie here she is and they just pick up a baby even though it's the one where lisa's the president oh right and then march has to say oh i'm glad we get to have maggie from actual maggie who's busy doing something oh but i felt like there's also also because you know we recently you know sort of went back and re-watched this episode and then just you know sort of let disney plus keep running uh and then it goes into the next episode, Take My Wife's Sleaze, which not to ruin a joke from an upcoming episode of Talking Simpsons, but that episode starts with another time skip joke

in which they say, oh, let's do this. Let's go to this restaurant tonight. Homer goes, nah, we'll go next month. And then immediately it's like one month later as they're walking into the restaurant. I do like that joke. Yeah, and EIEI Doe from a couple episodes ago.

That also is just like basically takes place over seven months too. Just like Naruto. Or One Piece. But yeah, this was the time it did bug me as a teen watching this because a baby ages in nine months. Like Maggie would be much different nine months later. But we just have to accept she'll be a baby ages in nine months like maggie would be much different nine months later but we we just have to accept she's gonna she'll be a baby forever so yes then it cuts to the quickie mart and like we said you know first off a woman i think any woman would know she has more than one baby inside of her but with all the uh the prenatal care you receive or should be receiving

like ultrasounds one sonogram would tell you yeah and but on top of that even if they entirely never went to a doctor i think a woman would feel that she has more than one uh baby in her uterus i think uh that seems pretty likely then they only do one joke about that this is very typical sitcom pregnancy stuff to me of saying like am i still attractive though i'm pregnant and the husband has to like worriedly go oh of course oh yes yeah they they say get one of those in there before they just dump the whole pregnancy and and be done with it and uh and i wish they did more with gil working at the quickie mart too yeah

yeah i did like him and then him injuring himself was nice too but i feel like the scene was written backwards because it's like she's got to break her water have her water break in the quickie mart he's got to say clean up on aisle three and that's got to be the joke you're right how do we get here that's where they started then the conditioner bottle came in also you know again sanjay where is he he could be running the store but uh gil gil working at the quickie mart i feel like that's a good b plot you got you got something there maybe he takes it over when you write up who out of the show officially um uh but yes apu finds out he has more than he bargained for oh my sweet husband say hello to your first born child you shall be the jewel of our lives oh Now say hello to your other seven children.

What? We had quite a discussion about the funniest way to reveal them to you. You have octuplets. It rolls off your tongue and into your heart. Octuplets. Apu, you should have seen your face when they showed you those babies.

Yeah, it looked just like that. Great. I love the drawing of Freaked Out Apu frozen in place. They apparently took time to stitch extra pockets and hibberts like doctor's coats. Oh, yeah. You're right. That had to take a lot of time. That was the funniest way to show him.

They went all out with that coat in a way they clearly did not go all out with her prenatal care prior to this that's true uh i also would think it's just unhealthy for just born infants to be like kept under a coat in a pocket yeah not good yeah it's probably not the healthiest thing but so they do reveal that manjula had been taking pills uh she was taking them secretly uh for fertility as was apu dosing her and the rest of the family that that seems to show that they would be more interested and interested enough to know that she does have eight children inside of her but they didn't i mean it's a giant plot hole it doesn't matter but i oh well for yeah what i liked about that that whole that scene a well first of all so i'm thinking to myself okay this is the late 90s

fertility drugs are a thing why isn't fertility drugs a part of the angle of this story like they they just conceived in the back seat of a car homer's crazy plan from from greece like worked but no it was fertility drugs so first of all hibbert takes out a giant size calculator and it's going over well that would you took fertility drugs and he slipped you extras. That would only account for five babies, as if there's a linear scale. And they ask who slipped him fertility drugs and Homer, Marge, and then Bart. Everybody but Lisa. Lisa abstained.

No, Lisa did not do it. So we have an episode in which lisa picking on kids at school and and bart is slipping people fertility drugs very odd yeah he's really invested in a poo's uh you know happiness as a father i guess i was i was saying earlier how uh i mean i enjoy this episode and i like the next one with a poo but i feel like this kind of ruins his character because again you have to reflect like whatever a poo joke you make remember he's a dad with eight kids i also feel like animation wise it's like all right guys you gotta draw eight people in this scene with a poo every time eight distinct people and they all gonna be moving around it's

it feels like a lot even though the idea is funny they weren't necessarily thinking like what would the animators do with this and how hard will this be for all of these distinct characters to be sharing the same scenes constantly well and uh the director on the commentary mike b anderson he points out like boy it was uh it's tough to design eight different looking babies like the only thing you can do is hair and and switch it up uh selman says that uh he just went to a website that listed indian names and picked the 80 found funniest and just went with that uh and also that the other writers were very jealous of him because you get character payments if you create a character in an episode you write you get like you it's not like a giant

bonus but you do get extra money if those characters appear in later episodes and and they're like you created eight characters and i think they were eight separate payments for each character uh which uh that is a pretty good scam on his part i think the uh the classic story of character payments paying off the most is the guy who wrote the one-off episode of cheers that frazier appeared in uh he got it until the series of frazier ended oh wow, wow. Wow. Wow. Okay.

Also, I got to say, Manjula not often gets started as a mother saying mommy's clear favorite. That's kind of bad on her part. She's already ranked them. Yes. Which, like, you've known them for, like, five minutes. What do you know? How can you pick a favorite already? But also, parents shouldn't do that but uh and also the

the overuse of fertility drugs that's actually what the octomoms uh doctor got uh his license revoked for oh wow yeah yeah chris is totally right like there's no commentary on this on like the ethics of fertility drugs or the ethics of having this many children that is not really a focus of the issue of this episode i think it would be if they did it again 10 years later well you know in the in the next clip kent brockman tries to make it an issue yeah that's true and it gets it gets shut down like in time i like his very loaded rhetorical question uh yes yeah actually uh let's give it a listen would you say you and your babies have a love-ate relationship? Absolutely, yes.

No, say it. We need a soundbite. We have a love-ate relationship. Yes, Kent Brockman, Channel 6. How would you respond to people who say this kind of multiple birth is more suited to, say, a possum than a human being? Who would say such a thing? Well, pundits, wags. I'm not the one on trial here. No one is on trial. This is a joyous occasion for all,

and the outpouring of support has been so lucrative. Yes, we have already received lifetime supplies of baby powder and Pepsi B. Free baby cola? Oh, poo hits the jackpot, and I'm stuck with these useless one tuplets gee sorry for being born i've been waiting so long to hear that and bart just accepts that hug he's like okay uh that he's but homer has been waiting forever for bart to apologize for existing

that's uh that's a good joke but yeah the way kent brings it up just so loadedly with the classic like you know people are saying like uh which is a weasel way of saying what you want to say as a journalist many people have been saying this yeah a lot of people have been saying that so people have been saying our podcast is the momentum of a runaway freight train you're hearing it more and more more and more every day oh i got to say, this Pepsi B feels like a joke about Pepsi One, which was a new Pepsi. It was basically like in the late 90s, they gave all of the diet cola brands,

like I guess non-feminine names, so men would actually drink them. And Pepsi One was one of the first ones, like Pepsi One and Coke Zero, things like that instead of Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke. Was it supposed to be like baby Pepsi?i pepsi for babies is that what they're i believe that's why it's called be uh pepsi for babies the sure babies love soda they just they suck it right up they they they told people back in the day you know because this this seems to be a lot of references

to um you know like baby strategies from the 1930s but like i believe seven up was originally like pitched as something you give to your baby give your baby seven up wow if your baby needs a mixer uh oh yeah oh yeah i just i just looked it up while we were doing this and there's literally just like advertisements a baby like a straight up a six month old baby in a diaper swilling seven up out of the bottle and they're like give this to your babies wow i would get that i would drink seven up when i was sick that's the only time i've ever had seven up and sprites like i guess you just drink these when you're sick and they do something well also you know those parents were giving their kids like a couple drops of whiskey and milk to put their kids to sleep so you know it's different they get

they and they gave that to the dion quintuplets i learned as i was researching this for this episode they gave them they gave them uh drops of of rum just to chill them out for once the uh i did read the dion kids they did a ton of ads too just like countless ads you couldn't get away from them like that uh and i think you know that i think meanwhile the chukku the kate's plus eights like they get tons of free stuff that way though honestly like the kate plus eight they are stars of a television show and they're getting paid reality prices like that's a secret of all those realities oh yeah yeah and like as a bonus their lifestyle is subsidized by corporations but still they're not being paid like what a Simpsons voice actor is being paid.

Yeah. Despite starring in a highly rated TV show. But in this time, in 99, when they did this, they couldn't imagine an America where they just go like, oh, they're the stars of a reality show. Yeah. The circus we see later is the craziest they could think of. Like when John and k plus eight way worse than honestly the circus in this i think yeah they truly could not imagine how exploitative it would get so then we head back to the uh apu and manjula's home and we get to see more of their

gifts including like uh really dating it that huge tube tv oh man just giant box. Imagine how much that weighs. Who could get that through the door even? We then get to see how the media quickly turns on them. How do you feel about this avalanche of free merchandise? Oh, the companies are so generous. Except the Q-Tip

people. They only gave us three crates. They can rot in hell. But the good folks at Sony, their giant TV will really help us love our babies. I'm here at Shelbyville Hospital, where a local woman has just given birth to nine, that's right, nine babies. Some say eight babies is a blessing,

but they don't know the joy of nine. Would you say you're on cloud nine? We're on cloud nine. Aw. They even have a better sound bite than us. Nine babies? That's barbaric. Non-uplets?

Now that's something you don't see every day. Let's get this stuff to the real heroes, the Shelbyville Nine. I found two cases of non-uplets born in history. Really? And of course, they're all very sad because. Yeah, they don't all live, I'm assuming. So like this episode was laughed by the Octomom case, but it could never, like the non-uplet thing

just feels like it cannot happen in this reality. It can't happen, yeah. Well, I mean, gee i i think it i think it could uh just just based on the incredible like medical technology that exists today to you know be able to keep babies that are but i mean the thing is it's like you know again with the chukwu octuplets like the one that passed away when she was born she you have to understand she weighed eight ounces oh my god eight ounces just Oh, my God. Eight ounces.

Just in case you don't have any scale for this. Babies typically come out weighing five, six, seven, eight pounds, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, once we have Matrix-style external wombs, sure. Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to make my face look red later in life by saying, I heard you on a podcast three years ago.

There are now non-uplets in the world. And you're sitting there holding nine babies. And it's like, I didn't know. No one told me this could happen. I think also it's so cruel. They take back. It's not only that they gave them free things and they're going to stop, but they take everything and and steal their ottoman or try to as well right right it's so horrible it definitely gets to the the truth the poetic truth at the

heart of it which is that you are going to be showered with gifts and help for exactly as long as you are exploitable and the second that you lose your flavor over the month status all of that will absolutely get revoked. Fortunately, I think for the people who do have, you know, both the McCoys and the Chukos, like they had houses donated to them. And a lot of that just really comes from like community efforts of people all kind of coming together. And that's kind of generally what happens when somebody finds, you know, excuse me. That's what you would hope would happen when somebody finds himself in a situation like this this that there would be a sort of a community grassroots rallying around helping somebody out that i think is what happened a lot with a lot of things they got donated is that you know it was it

was community and friends and extended family trying to help people out versus just sort of relying on corporations but it's true like they it's it's an exaggerated joke but there's there's such truth there i think that again is why everyone turned on the octomom instantly because they they felt she wanted it too much it felt too yeah too planned out you know what like honestly i think her uh her foreign sounding name didn't help i think that just also put a lot of the people are projecting a lot of things onto her i think in an ugly way yeah and again apparently this is the new york times reported oh doing doing good if her name was say like betsy mccoy and not nadia suliman

people would be probably a little more open to the idea of her having eight kids but we know how this country is i mean i think that's uh i don't think that was their intention but the family in this who replaced the uh the nahasapian fedlons are white as well and from shelbyville so it's i like that they're from shelbyville so it's uh i don't think we've heard a mention of shelbyville in a while on the show i think so yeah i i also like up who knowing he's so media trained now he's like they have a even have a better soundbite than us and they were more into saying it like there was no yeah they did the line right yeah they yeah they gave them what they wanted i i love how they demand to sound by like that's how the media uh just coaching them slightly off screen the same media that will destroy them soon enough there and after a mention of it like

years ago on the show we finally see a child sleeping in a drawer that's right that's oh i didn't even think of that kerny's son this was the first time i caught in the background how one baby is in one real carrier and the rest are in makeshift ones and i think implying that all they thought they were gonna have was one so they bought one thing for one baby and now they're overwhelmed with it I think one is in a lasagna pan, I think. Which also, I mean, in a way is child abuse, these funny jokes. Maybe that suitcase was comfortable. I've never slept in one. Well, also, they said on the commentary that they had more crying,

and they're like, well, they had to cut it and make it slightly nicer because it was annoying them. They're like, this is driving us crazy. What is this, Yoshi's Island? Hey. I love that game. I'm sorry. My favorite. top five game for me and it's a mario game it is i agree we're we're all on the it's a mario game team here yes we're all on the it's a mario game team absolutely they had to make that cry more annoying they said right because um in yoshi's island originally the the

baby mario cry wasn't so. And people just ignored the baby. And so they actually had to actively make it painful to hear to force the player to go and get the baby just to make it stop. It works. Which is how normal babies work. Yeah. They absolutely, like, when they need to get your attention, they'll make the most horrific shrieks. Not because their life is in any danger, but because they're slightly uncomfortable. But because it's the only way to get you to go over there and be like okay please stop what do you want i have zero parental instincts but when baby mario falls off of yoshi

all hands on deck to get that baby back as soon as possible yep that's right that's right yeah they are just tortured for a little while and that's where we get the the opening sound clip we've heard of uh apu having a wonderful dream where he's dead and manjula refuses to allow him to die like uh and that so that's some good new parent jokes there yeah yeah for sure yeah and then this episode we get two different callbacks to apu's consternation speeches yeah i i it's funny because a Pooh is generally like almost too genial, especially at his job. So seeing a Pooh be a little pissy is very funny. Yes.

Yeah. Bringing back, I can't believe you don't shut up is a really good one. I think they had the most fun with that, or they found that element of Pooh in the Billy and the Clonosaurus runner. That's the greatest one of those. But this one of ned i mean ned is a the perfect person to pick to be the annoying two positive parents it's really good it's just like uh bundles of joy like and also the cradle rash how do you get cradle rash when you sleep in a suitcase like he refuses to even listen to what Apu is saying.

And yeah, we get the I can't believe you don't shut up. And then we cut Homer and Marge at home as they reflect on the plot in bed as so often they do. Oh, look at that. Oh, a gingerbread house. Hansel and Gretel are set for life. You know, I saw Apu today. He's really frazzled.

Boy, that Hansel sure can eat. My corneas! You were saying? Apu told me all eight babies have colic. Although he thinks one or two might just be going along with the crowd. Eight kids. Hmm.

I'm sterile, right, Baby Doe? Yes, dear. From the nuclear plant. Beautiful. Now, is colic an actual disease or condition? Or is it just like a temperamental thing? Yeah, it's sort of a... Well, okay, I'm not a doctor. I think it's sort of a catch-all term for like

when a baby just won't stop screaming and yelling even though there is nothing technically wrong with it um and so you just sort of have this problem where no matter what you do the baby just won't won't calm down just super super fussy all the time for no reason that can be discerned basically some babies are just jerks yeah basically basically yeah it can really you know it can really wear on you for sure it's like you're not hungry you're not tired you're not in pain you're just just yelling homer's sterility had been previously set up and brother can you spare two dimes that's right oh yeah okay that's how he got the first annual montgomery burns award

for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence that is our our highest patron tier yes yeah and uh this viewmaster joke i had a viewmaster as a kid but i think i was we were like the last generation with viewmasters i had one and it felt like a hand-me-down from the 70s or something because they were all out of date all my viewmaster cartridges yeah oh we had a viewmaster uh projector too we were top of the line with the viewmasters yep you could you could project it right on the wall and things like that it was super boring i i love the chunk of moving it like it was reinvented in 1995 as the virtual boy they even kept it red it's true and the frame rate was almost identical it's true uh and uh yeah homer's satisfaction of being sterile is pretty funny i like that uh and then uh homer and also the fact that marge manages the the family knowledge

of whether or not he's sterile and why oh yeah right oh yeah she knows it better than he does yeah so homer and marge head over to apu mandulas they see a family in in peril here apu covered in baby bottles is pretty horrifying and apparently that's a real thing was that like a sharper image catalog thing maybe maybe i i have never you know it's entirely possible that's a real thing because everything is a real thing right like somebody did it i will tell you that that is not common i don't i don't even mean just the eight even the one even the one baby bottle uh strapped to a man's chest is uh not something that you see you won't find that in sky mall probably it's it it seems counterintuitive it'd be easier to hold

a bottle than have it rest against your chest but right right right i mean really what happens is you know with the with the one baby is just you will, there will definitely be days when as a dad, you will go into work and you will realize, you'll just look down at yourself and realize there's just like mystery stains on your clothes. Like you picked up the baby for a second. The baby decided that that was the moment to throw up the entire contents of their stomach silently, you know, all over your shoulder. And then you put them down and then it takes a while before you realize you just got yakked on completely or you sat on something or whatever it is the mystery stain just it happens it happens to everybody little barf ninjas sneaking around oh yeah oh for sure yep so well let's hear about something more appetizing like banana bread welcome to my nightmare i knew you had your hands full with the babies, so I baked you some banana bread.

Oh, hallelujah, our problems are solved. We have banana bread. Well, you don't have to be sarcastic. Oh, look who's here, the family with one baby. How do you manage? Marge, they've turned into jerks. What is that? You've been rude. Can I offer you something to drink? No, thanks. Marge, they've turned into jerks. You've been rude.

Can I offer you something to drink? No, thanks. Oh, poo. They're doing it again. Okay, break it up. Maybe you two should get a nanny. Yes, and what would I pay her with? Banana bread?

Sorry, sorry. It's just we haven't slept in days and we're running out of money. And banana bread? What the hell were you thinking banana i apologize apologize again as a token of forgiveness please take this baby i love margie's excitement of taking that baby she's like yeah another baby right now i'll take it very good acting on hank azaria of course doing the apu voice but him fighting with himself on whether to apologize or be upset like back and forth uh i i do really love that choice homer and ranch to me come off as very hollywood folks too just like

you two should get a nanny like yeah we should huh like where how do we do that now where who's got that nanny money but i mean they definitely do need a nanny but lots of people need nannies doesn't mean you get one for free but I heard they show up after leaving Flushing Queens and they're quite fetching that's true and yeah also this just made me hungry for banana bread me too

I got a couple of bananas yeah I know I feel kind of like I don't know I feel like Apu needs to dial it down a little bit here because like banana bread yeah that it's not going to solve all your problems but it is definitely going to make your next 10 minutes a lot nicer it lets you repurpose rotting bananas and that's good for all of us i got a couple i've been lying for banana bread already in this episode made me want to well i haven't done the quarantine thing of breaking bread yet so i need to i got a bread pan going unused all this time

but yes i think we thought i think we thought we were going to be doing a lot more baking bread during quarantine than we actually are uh owing to the giant industrial sack of uh costco flour that's currently in our garage um oh that's we didn't know we were it was the beginning of quarantine everybody was freaking out you know we out Anything we could get our hands on We were buying Eventually I was like oh yeah I can just buy bread Whenever I want and it'll be fine Yeah

Well I finished off my 15 pound bag of rice though I went through that rice pretty fast That's good But yes that scene ends and we immediately get Our guest star of the episode. Now it's time to play our very respectful Talking Simpsons death jingle for this guest. Death stalks you at every turn. There it is, death.

So yes, Gary Marshall, who passed away on July 19, 2016 at age 81. And previously we had just redone our episode about Some Enchanted Evening and Penny Marshall was the guest on that. So now both of the Marshall guests are deceased. So RIP Gary Marshall, but please call him Gary. Call him Gary. I mean, Gary Marshall, his voice is just funny. He's a funny man to hear say things. And I think he was cast on this because uh one of

his autobiographies had just come out and uh one of the writers i think possibly matt selman who wrote this episode was listening to the book on tape version he was like that guy's got a real fun voice he should be a guest and of course if you want to know about gary marshall uh he started with sitcom writing on things like the dick van dyke show the danny thomas show the joey bishop show and the lucy show and then we're going, and the Lucy show. And then we'll go on to create Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Mork and Mindy, and then directed movies like Overboard,

Beaches, Exit to Eden, Pretty Woman, The Princess Diaries, and then a ton of movies, really. The holiday, Phil. The holiday trilogy of Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve, and Mother's Day. And that's Gary Marshall, period. I mean, Happy Days,

we were not really around for the huge rise of Happy Days, but Happy Days was like a juggernaut in ratings. And there were like eight spinoffs of Happy Days. And it was a spinoff of something else. It was the biggest show for a time. And he was like the, man, I guess the Shonda Rhimes of his day is what I think so yeah I have actually I think I talked about this on good job brain once where we went over the all of these shows that were actually believe it or not spinoffs of happy days and there were a ton of them plus animated shows too a million of those

I gotta say like uh it's a despicable movie with a just disgusting premise but I have watched overboard about 50 times as a kid and i still have a soft spot for that just wretched movie that was yes anything over anything uh so like overboard um geez what else the money pit you know anything that aired on hbo all the time yeah it was like that was like you we know these movies like we're so familiar with them because they were just constantly available on television. And then you think back and it's like, wow, what an awful premise. I don't want to know all of the Dragnet movie, but it's all in my head because it was on HBO.

Yeah. Well, I think Gary Marshall, he did the, I'd never heard of it until Mike Scully said it on the commentary, but The Flamingo Kid, which Mike Scully said one of his all-time favorite movies. It's a Matt Dillon film about a young man from Brooklyn who gets a summer job at a ritzy beach resort thing, and he learns a lot of lessons there and maybe gets a little lucky. And it's a very young Matt Dillon. He's just a baby in it uh it looks okay it also looks like an hbo regular i would have seen if uh if we if my family had had hbo for a month one two years earlier i would bet and because he is such a funny guy with a funny voice like he was just like in mega mega minor roles throughout

his career i think his first big role was a recurring character on murphy brown like the boss he's so good yeah yeah he's so good is that yeah he's i think he's in a couple albert brooks films too he plays santa claus in an albert brooks movie that i've heard many writers on the on commentaries bring up is as so funny i mean his voice is just hilarious is one of his last jobs was a uh he played a movie director a workman-like movie director on bojack horseman and paul f tompkins got to meet him at a table read and his story was that how he was there in a red sweater because he was going to a christmas party afterward and he's like i'm going to a christmas party it'll be nice i have a red sweater because of that and we're listening to that commentary i had to order and it was only four dollars on amazon but i i ordered

wake me when it's funny how to break into show business and stay there the uh the book they're talking about here and uh i love his name because his name is Larry Kid Kill. Yes. And it's the cheapest joke. You could tell someone threw it out there for a cheap laugh in the writer's room and they stuck with it. And it's one of the funniest jokes in this episode. It's the best. And also, Gary even likes it.

He's like, you got two K's in there. It's a real comedy word. But yes, why don't we hear the wonderful voice of gary marshall mr nahasa pasa oh forget it listen you look like you could use some help come with me okay but you don't know who he is who cares there's only one of him what if your babies could live in a place with round the clock child care all expenses paid, full medical, dental, tutors, the works. I would say that there must be some sort

of horrible catch. The zoo? What? Everybody loves my zoo. You don't love my zoo? I dare you to look at a kangaroo and not laugh. I dare you. Well, they're usually funnier. That's so sad, that kangaroo and not laugh i dare you well they're usually funnier that's so sad that kangaroo yeah it's so miserable there are some sad animal jokes that are very reflective of my zoo experiences yeah zoos are a bummer i well maybe zoos are happier now i don't think i've been to a zoo

in like 15 years i've been to some recently and uh some animals are happy okay okay they even draw him to look like gary marshall it's one of those guest stars it's technically another name but they're just like just draw him to be him which he's also funny on the commentary saying like oh thanks for the nose you gave me and also just that cut to the yeah the cut to the miserable kangaroos and he's he's so proud of his zoo and when he takes him to the room there's a great sign of like danger oh no wait that's later but the danger infant danger newborns but uh the nursery as he shows it off it is like the description i read of the deon quince viewing area for their nursery and

the only difference is apparent in the thing i read it said that it was a one-way mirror that you could look in but they couldn't see you to make it seemingly less like a focus group yeah but instead it's uh it's just glass for apu and manjula there uh this is also when we get another guest who fortunately is still with us not too shabby eh they'll have the best of care and all i ask is that you let the local folks share a little glimpse of your blessing. But is it right to put such young children on display? Sure it is. Butch Patrick?

That's right. I was TV's Eddie Munster, and being in the public eye didn't mess me up one bit. Well, obviously. Hey, one question, Eddie. Butch. Yeah, right, right. If your mother was a vampire and your father was a Frankenstein, how

come you are a werewolf? Huh. I never thought of that. Doesn't make sense, does it? But what does make sense is putting your children in the hands of Mr. Kidkill here. Please, please, Larry. Larry Kidkill. Call him Larry. That's right. You know, they did a call me by my first name joke within there, too.

What does make sense is putting your children in the hands, or sorry, putting your kids in the hands of Mr. Kid Kill here. I mean, actually, the line is children. I'm sorry. Butch Patrick. One, I love that Apu knows the name. No one would have known the name of the actor who played Eddie Munster. It helps that he's dressed up as Eddie Munster when he shows up. But who knew his name was Butch patrick no one remembers his name he's uh he's like he's nobody's

favorite character from the munsters who likes eddie like that's like liking pugsley most on adam's family well probably if you grew up with the munsters you probably knew the name just i mean i feel like we're gonna get to a point where people are gonna be like nobody knew the names of the people who played the characters on rosanne nobody knows that they're like oh i know i know all of it right those like 60s show openings and show openings for a while were so long that you would see like the character and their name huge under them that's true we don't really get that anymore so we got it well they had like uh two commercials on their shows back then yeah like i could tell you the entire cast of gilligan's

island just based on seeing their names on the screen okay yeah that's true yeah eddie munster acts like he's sorry butch patrick acts like he's never been asked this question he's probably been asked his entire life because it doesn't make sense and it's a thing that always is why i like the adams family more than the monsters because the genealogy of the monsters makes no sense and they had to go i just like the adams family is mysterious and ookie they're not just movie monsters hanging out together it's uh i much prefer their sex weirdos yes yeah yeah they're they're attainable too well okay they're not attainable because nobody has a just a hand that moves around places but

most of us could be as weird as them but we can't actually be like a frankenstein listen that hands a guy under a table until the movies that really impressed us seeing that hand actually leave the box i think it still rules though those movies are the best they they they rule but but yeah butch patrick here it's also funny that this is they have him in this episode and i believe in take my wife's lease the neck is the next episode and that has yeah b dennis the menace in it so and uh funds yes oh yeah that's right uh though the funds not playing the phone actually yeah we've got we've got gary marshall here in and uh henry winkler in the next episode it's a it's a real happy days reunion here and ron howard

previously in the season you're right where is donnie most where's donnie most donnie most is left out yeah somebody somebody clearly here is being like i get to write all these simpsons episodes maybe i can meet all my childhood heroes too who is tom bosley alive let's check in uh mike i mean again mike scully he hired all his favorite musicians to do songs he did all the he did the things you would do if you were in charge of a tv show i don't blame him for it good for you buddy exactly he could never get springsteen on though he he wanted him so bad he's still he's he's the one guy who doesn't care about the cred of being on the simpsons he's the one famous person uh but yes they they also do a scene where

they agree to the terms in bed together mandula and apu and then butch patrick breaks in and approves the signature which they already did a homer in the window joke but now they also do a butch patrick breaks into the place he's looking for notary business he's very happy with his other side gigs he's got going on i think pretty much uh his job now is to go to conventions that are just full of like uh the celebrity conventions our our friends on the michael and us podcast they talk about those weird conventions that are just like all character actors you sort of remember from a movie and they're just all in a long line of signatures every horror convention is just like that it's like this woman was killed once in a

trauma movie uh 35 years ago and this is her job now yeah i i had to at one of my comic con jobs and she was so nice uh but i had to interview this woman who like she had just been in sharknado and her only other claim to fame of outside of of known horror movies was being in texas chainsaw massacre 2 and i'm like oh boy i don't know what to ask this lady i would pay 20 bucks to meet heather lincoln camp and i probably could oh of course i'd love to meet her now i that's uh that's on my level i could speak to her but i actually did i had an experience like this where we went and we covered when when wonder con used to be in the bay area and i went down with with wired one year to do you know talking head video type stuff and we decided to just talk to the celebrities

you know at these at these tables and uh one of them was john provost who played timmy on lassie oh and yeah we you know we talked about some some lassie trivia so very very very similar i know his name too because john provost is timmy and of course lassie there you go because nickelodeon had nothing yeah that's the only those eight million episodes of lassie we were the last generation to know who Lassie is because we were tortured with those Nickelodeon reruns. Yep. Yeah, hey, let me just say, tip of the hat to our friend Popperina.

You guys should watch his knickknacks on Lassie. He, I think, probably watched 150 episodes of Lassie. I was riveted to his 40-minute Lassie video. It's the story of lassie how it's in how every kid gets to age and then give away lassie but lassie never gets older on like 15 years of the show yep yep uh but uh so we come back from the break it seems like it's it's going great up when manjula are having they get a few seconds of them being like fun parents entertaining their kids. It's actually kind of sweet.

The one like a tiny bit of unintentional racial baggage I noticed upon this viewing is like the third act opens with like a bunch of white people gawking at these Indian people behind glass. I don't think that's what they were going for. But now I can't help but see like this is a little, there's a little bit of baggage here, here you know with the othering of these people and plus they they take away all the child's you know names yeah and turn them into star names instead of uh their their real names yeah no i i hadn't i hadn't thought of that the crowd that watches them in their performance is more diverse but when you see them behind glasses like all white people looking at them. I do like hearing Larry ask about like, how's the humidity? I know it's fine.

It says it's fine over there. Gary Marshall mentions too, that he does a bunch of ad libs, which he says is because he can't read the script. He's like, my eyesight, it's not so good. Well, then if that was an ad lib, they work it right in, right? Because he says, I know it's good.

It says it's good. And it pans right up to the humidifier that says good. It comes back down. He's so, yeah. They made, if that was an ad-lib, they turned it into something even better. It's beautiful. Yep, yep. And this Bob Fosse guy shows up a lot, doesn't he?

Yeah, he's got like this very flamboyant entourage with him, these two guys. Are the two guys different later that are like his sort of like heavies? Yeah, I's got this very flamboyant entourage with him, these two guys. Are the two guys different later that are his sort of heavies? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But this Bob Fosse guy, he was at least a beauty queen. Yeah. He was getting very huffy about how they weren't following the steps and the pivots. Yeah.

Step, turn, pause, pivot. No. Step, pause, pivot, turn, step, pause. Not pivot, step, turn, pause, pivot. And yeah, it's uh the bob fossey he was he was that fussy but he was a straight man as well like as we as we all learned from watching the bob fossey uh docu-series or auto biopic i guess you'd say the that starred sam rockwell it's pretty good it's on hulu pretty good on the commentary they also point out that

as the next thing is about to start, Bart does multiple playbill jokes in this episode. He does two times reading a playbill, but they just drop it on them that they actually are not just in a human zoo. They're in a performance. This is a great set piece, and I love all the reactions to the new baby's personas, too. It's all perfect.

Like, this captures i think this might be meyer because i feel this in other episodes he was a big part of but it really captures the what mainstream american culture is when you go to these things that like are like say a laser light show at a museum all these things are like we don't know where these people are coming from at the carnival or at the state fair so we gotta have the most unobjectionable like middle of the road things and so that's the presentation of all of them here in their personas really captures that and i also love that they are just motionless beings yeah moved around in boxes yes the contraptions and the strapped into these uh oh man it's and again like

i think if you watch this episode but have again if you've if you've never heard about the diana quintuplets if you've never heard about you know anything like this you would watch this episode and be like where did that episode come from this this is what a what a ridiculous plot. Who would even think of this? And yet it is true. It is a true story given the sort of very thin veneer of Simpsons-ality to it. But it is just history. It's bizarre. It's really not that far removed from it. And it would have taken the entire third act, but I wish they would have given the other four babies personas.

Yes. My favorite joke from this one is a Marge joke where Larry's like, oh, it sounds like one of these kids has a fever. And she gasps. Yes. Yeah. Actually. I do have that clip. Okay. I really love that one.

I can't believe we're going to see the octuplets. You already saw them. Yeah, but now their umbilical cords have fallen off. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the eight wonders of the third world. Welcome to Octopia. He can't talk, but man, can he rock. Say hello to the baddest baby in the whole damn town.

Animal! Welcome to the jungle. We got fun and games. We got different things. How can he rebel? He doesn't even know where he is. Uh-oh. Sounds like one of the babies has a fever.

Dance fever, that is. Let's hear it for dazzle she's no lizer but it works i do like that she can't even get caught up in like the narrative she's like that baby is sick i know and it's such an exaggerated take also yeah marge is the perfect audience like no no person has ever reacted to he's got a fever with uh with a shock they all know that they're about to say another thing i think they had to like license two or three songs for this just this little sketch here this yeah i they couldn't i wish they could have talked about it on the commentary but gary marshall's too funny so

they didn't but this is on my list of things to ask mike scully how much did this cost because i i wrote it down it's uh drop a beat by moby oh that was a licensed song that yeah crap then welcome to the jungle by guns and roses and then they will play rock in the usa by john mellencamp like that has to be a hundred thousand dollars and they're paying for all those to go on dvds and disney plus and stuff too yeah it's an insane amount of money they must have paid for this but it works 10 times better having all these specific songs here definitely and uh yeah that that it it then goes on to the baron the baron oh man i like that there's a heel character too you there has to be a baby you boo like there has to be one that these people have to boo a baby and it feels like uh the choice is like a world war ii too soon you know let's do like a safer choice like oh an evil baron yeah

uh and and yes they get an and the rest for the other four babies yes yep yep no personalities just like and these other babies we could we could not be bothered to come up with these these terrible thin personalities got half of the babies and we're done and lots of people throwing dazzle under the bus in these next few scenes oh yeah yeah actually yes let's hear uh let's hear what happens in the aftermath of their first show which oh yeah and the first show ends with their nurses taking off their nurse outfits to reveal like star spangled one piece outfits and they and then we'll be back in an hour hourly shows for these poor babies uh but yes here's here's the fallout how could you do this to our children i know the lighting cues were a mess don't worry the guy's been fired. Our babies are not circus

freaks. We're taking them home now. Hold on, Alpo. We got a contract. Not anymore. Laminated. You monster. Terrence, Christopher, will you show these two to the exit? A vec plays there. I'm afraid

there's nothing I can do. The zookeeper paid you off didn't he paid me off what are you crazy so we'll never see our children again well they might give dazzle back uh the buzz is she's got one more show to turn it around well if the police won't help us we'll simply have to take the law into our own hands. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people are doing that these days. That's a great reading of that line. He's like, I can respect it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can do that. And he's eating elephant grade peanuts. We just recorded an episode where an elephant ate a live gopher. That's right. I guess that means they're worse peanuts, right? To be peanuts that you'd only give an elephant it's true it means that they are yeah exactly yeah i'm calling him alpo it's a funny

mispronunciation i guess it could be seen as him being like uh racist perhaps but it's just him mispronouncing he has no time for either of no appu's names in this episode uh i uh gary even jokes on the commentary like i can't't say that name. No. Yeah. Unlike the government of Ontario, they just have Jess Wiggum defending the zoo in this case. And yeah, then we get to Homer and Apu, of course, have to team up for a zany scheme. A baby heist. A baby heist in a zoo. And the zoo at night jokes are funny, except like those koalas covered in blood are disturbing.

I did like that. Especially like they have ominous laughter at it. They're like, yes, we're eating flesh. And they break in. That's where there's the danger newborn sign. Very funny. Not only do we get a View Master joke in this episode but also color forms yeah master and color i guess oh right i guess they were big on chloroform jokes around this

time yes so uh that's that's a fun mix-up color forms and chloroforms if you want to know what color forms are it's uh just these vinyl stickers you can put on a background and peel them off yeah what if you could keep putting a sticker on different parts of a book and uh that's one of like a million things i remember from childhood that i now think like well just there's an app on an ipad that does that i don't need that you don't need to buy color for that was uh mario paint uh 25 years ago but you know what shrinky dinks you can't do that on an ipad i think it's time time for those to come back. You can put your iPad in the oven. It will definitely deform. It will fill

your house with toxic smoke. Kids, if you're listening. Well, I mean, what did Shrinky Dinks do? That's true. It smelled great. I love the smell. You'll be seeing all sorts of stuff. Oh, yeah. I don't want to let the... Sorry, I almost forgot about this. Speaking of things that happen to children, the wonderful joke about Butch Patrick coming in and saying, I was on TV and I turned out fine. Now, I'm sure that they always have former child stars deliver a joke like that when they come back. And I turned out great. Yeah, Butch Patrick, I. I mean, show me a child star who didn't end up arrested robbing somebody.

But he did. He got into some scuffles with the law in the 1990s that involved him robbing a limousine driver while he was a passenger in that limousine. You know, child star. He seems okay now, though. That's good. Yeah, I think this is like post-reform on this recording. Child stars have it pretty bad. I mean, he's, you know, your parents take all your money.

You have no real childhood. Like, there's just sad stories for all of them. And, like, I mean, like what Corey Feldman is talking about, like, that's even darker than most people think of that. Like, it's beyond. Right. Yeah. It's not funny to talk about, in fact. But yeah, that they're joking about here that like clearly he's fine.

He's walking around in his Eddie Munster costume at all times. What a normal man he is. Right. Right. Right. People need to know who he is. And I really like the joke. It's very dark, but they're passing the babies over the fence and homer's

about to leave and the gorilla is like holding the baby like please take my baby oh it's so sad and homer's just like this is getting weird like he can't he can't take how dark this is i think on the commentary matt selman actually is like close to tears on it he's i think it affects him more now as a parent than it did then i feel like there's a lot i feel like there's a lot going on with the with the writing here where i feel like they wanted clearly they are affected by stories like this and i think they one would imagine that they wanted to go even harder but they couldn't because it was the 1990s and this had to be very light hearted um but there's a lot of darkness in this episode that they don't really fully get into.

They approach it, but then make it at least something silly like, well, it's a silly stage show. It's not just mistreatment of the babies. And also they have to show that the baby's kind of like, or at least the Baron really likes being the Baron. And as far as I know, Chris might be able to let me know if this is correct. Like newborn babies just kind of sleep a lot least the Baron really likes being the bear and as far as I know Chris might be able to uh let me know if this is correct like newborn babies just kind of sleep a lot at first right if you're lucky if you're lucky so they're waking these babies up every hour to do these performances oh yeah no of course it would be incredibly harmful right to babies to be to be doing that right yeah well hey the Baron likes it so I think that I think it was no harm done then

yeah the bear I mean there are you know there's evil, the Baron likes it, so I think it was no harm done then. Yeah. I mean, there's evil babies. The Baron could be really evil. You don't know. It's a one out of, you know. We've all seen the Family Guy program. We know about the evil baby on that one. Exactly.

Exactly. Is there a baby on that show, Family Guy? I've heard. But so this episode then ends in a very ridiculous fashion of just that Homer, they obviously know there's no getting out of this. Like you can't break the contract. And so Homer just has to like pitch a ridiculous thing. And they're like, sure. It doesn't make any sense.

But I do like how like violent this ending is for Homer. And Butch Patrick has to be part of it, too. Does Homer do this every day to replace the is this his new job now he's really putting one on the line for a poo here i i have to think homer like almost dies after his first performance he sues the zoo and then they just let him go and just go like you know we're done the ending reminds me and i mean maybe maybe they do this a lot more what it immediately reminded me of was the ending of the homer gains 500 pounds episode where it's like well how are we going to resolve this and it's a really quick thing where you know uh burns is

making him work it off and he's like oh i'll just pay for the liposuction yeah this is sort of the like we've we've gotten ourselves in this horrible situation what is the like two seconds of of footage that we can uh resolve this but not really resolve this because then well then how does homer get out of this job we don't need to know uh but he he does suffer a lot though in this final clip he does hold it right there scumbags please mr kid kill look into your. I know these babies have a lifetime contract, but what if I put together an even better act for you? Something sensational.

It's not just you prancing around in a monkey suit, is it? Not anymore. You got yourself a deal. Quiet. You're breaking character. Are those real cobras? Some are real. Some are just robots filled with venom. Now that is a true friend. You know, if he can handle that, maybe we can handle this bunch. We'll do our best, Chocney Butt.

Okay, okay, don't panic, Butch. Release the mongoose i don't make you listen to all of his screaming homer there's a lot yeah into the credits right i think like there's been five scully episodes with homer screaming in pain over the credits yes yeah it's uh it's a good outro you just get to laugh at homer's pain and another expensive licensed song uh and i will say also the phrase robots filled with venom has been in my head since this episode aired it's such a disturbing thought it's so great that they they make sure in the playbill that are the ad that bart has they make

sure to tell you like hey some it's robots filled with venom it's not all snakes like that's pretty great but in that the mongoose can't even kill snakes it bites homer instead his writhing especially at the very end is like that is horrifying and uh and also i mean it's a nice happy ending of apua mand. But obviously later Epps implied that the kids did destroy their lives and they are obscenely unhappy. Yeah. They can't handle it. Despite what this happening says. You know?

That's not. Yeah. They said, well, we can. I'm sure we can handle them. But of course, nothing actually changed. and you know probably happened as they simply you know just decided to roll with it of life just you know being a disaster from then on yeah I mean I'm sure our parents were happy before we

came along and oh yeah they had so much more disposable income and dreams and dreams but Homer is dressed like Eddie Munster and apparently they have this thing in character what the character is is not clear. And they're in this weird Candyland world, too.

There's a Candyland set and also cobras, and they're both dressed up like Eddie Munster. And Kenny Loggins is Blair. It's so much of all these dissonant different things happening at once. Right, you can't imagine what led up to this moment in the act what was the setup who are they where are they what's the narrative snakes yeah it's at least a funny extreme image even if it doesn't make the most sense at least they leave you laughing but it is a weird moral that they're like well if homer can be bitten by snakes to help us maybe we

can handle eight children. But unfortunately for Apu, his hell will never end either because the children can never grow up. So he's just always going to have eight babies. Yeah, it was not for a sort of a what is in the end a very deeply strange, strange story of an episode it is a it's an interesting thing that they were so cavalierly uh given uh these eight children that they then have to always have in all previous episodes and i mean it seems like what you guys are saying having looked at this is that it's kind of like really hurt up whose character going forward in terms of the opportunities that he had yeah he's pretty much trapped to just be a dad and almost anything if he's gonna have any scene for uh that's outside of quickie mart it's only about being a dad pretty much i i mean they just stopped talking to the kids it's different

than on you know sitcoms or say soap operas are guilty of this too of just like a kid will go away they have the baby storyline and they're like oh the kid actually is five years older in three months now. I think Friends is pretty famous for that. Like they didn't age up the kid, but there's a child that has had on that show that just kind of disappears. Yeah. Ben, Ross's son, which that's a great, that's one of my favorite Friends joke actually, where Rachel is about to give birth to the kid she's having with Ross and his father, Ross's father says like i'm about to become a granddad and ross is like no there's there's ben and he's like i'm kidding i'm kidding and then he turns away and goes and we all know of course that frazier uh wished his son into the cornfield that's right yeah he totally oh come now he does not uh technically have a son in that show does he

i think he's i think he's with lilith yeah we just don't talk about it yeah uh but uh yeah you know this was a a fun silly episode even crazier than the previous focused on yeah and even though it's about a poo i wasn't just like pulling my collar the entire time and saying this doesn't age well yeesh yeah yeah i think it helps that we've gotten all the conversations out of the way first too yeah and i mean gary marshall goes a long way because he just is a funny voice he's just so funny to hear what uh i mean chris any any last verdict on its uh accuracy or not of fatherhood uh yeah well i mean i don't think this is that's oh, my child just stomped in the living room. So, I mean, it really totally. Yeah. No, it's not accurate to fatherhood.

For God's sakes, it's a it's a nightmare what they go through. But, you know, and of course, the complete and total lack of support, which in general, I mean, again, like I feel very bad when this, you know, because sometimes this does not happen for people. But, you know, I mean, what you what you would expect and hope from, you know, your your your friends in the community is a little bit more than banana bread. And we don't see it's just funny that we don't see like Springfield, you know, rallying around their their friend at all. And the only person who wants to help is Marge bringing over banana bread because you would kind of hope that their network or the people that love them would come together for them and help them out a little bit, which is certainly what happens, you know,

ideally what you would hope would happen when you have like a baby, when you have an baby, not just eight babies. And so definitely what happens when, you know, it's like when you have children, it's not that you can't do certain things anymore. It's that every it's that when you can't, you can no longer be spontaneous with those things. You everything has to be scheduled down. There is no like, you know what, let's just go out to dinner tonight. It's like, no, you can't do

that. If you want to go out for a fancy dinner, you have to like actually schedule in advance, get the babysitter. Everything is down to the hour you know what i mean it's that sort of thing that's your life becomes very everything becomes like a google calendar full of you know we can do this but not this not that and i was just thinking um apu and manjula have no like parents in town like uh when i was growing up and like as an adult i always noticed like oh yeah grandma will take the kids or grandpa will watch them while you guys have fun. So there's no like family in town to be like sort of a buffer for the child care. Right, right, right.

And that's certainly something that you, you know, typically, you know, people would live in the same small town that their parents were from and they'd have the kids there. And so now you have your whole extended family kind of helping you out. But, you know, these days, I mean, we move far away from both of our sets of parents so like we don't we don't have the the babysitting but like my brother and you know his his family you know they still live in connecticut you know some of my in-laws you know they still live in massachusetts here my parents they just go hey hey grandma and grandpa here's the kids bye um and it's like oh that's uh that would be nice i spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on babysitting every year. I mean, really

in the middle of the pandemic, I don't have to actually worry about having a babysitter over anymore because nobody's going anywhere anyway. So we're getting a lot of, you know, fun family quality time to spend together. And that'll be that's, you know, very precious. And I'll be so happy when it's all over. That's a good line to go out on, Chris.

Please let us know where we can find you, what you're doing online, where you work, anything you want to throw out. We can, you know, just check out your stuff. My Twitter handle is KobunHeat, K-O-B-U-N-H-E-A-T. My child started playing a game on my account. I know he thinks he's KobunHeat. And I have to tell him that he's absolutely not. And what else? I guess that's a good yeah find me on twitter and

then if i if i randomly vomit things onto the internet i'll probably put it there you know let me say i have been using your curry recipe and playing around with it i'd i'd been wanting to make uh you know everybody's cooking more and so i was uh starting to use your curry recipe and playing around with it it's been i mean that chocolate really was a breakthrough for me definitely that's really good to hear i'm so excited because so so basically like it's my it's my japanese curry recipe and it's not even so much a recipe as it is like taking the japanese curry bricks that you can buy in a store and doing things you have to understand like you know every Japanese family you know they all have like their own recipe for

what they do with those bricks and they don't just take them and put them in water and eat it like there's always secret stuff that they put in and so my this thing that I wrote on Kotaku about like how to make great Japanese curry at home was all about just getting people thinking about like here's some things that happen and like one of the major things is putting a bar of chocolate in there. And it just really helps like mellow out a lot of the flavors. And it takes a little bit closer to like what you would get if you like go to a Japanese, you know, restaurant. So I it's so great, because like that thing is going kind of viral. And especially with everybody locked up right now, I'm getting a lot of cool tweets from people who try it and love it.

And it's like really very, it makes me very happy. So I'm very happy to hear that. I've been making a lot of curry, Chris. I need to try your recipe because my Instant Pot has never been used more in my entire life. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I haven't done curry in the Instant Pot yet.

I know you can do it. I mean, you know, basically you don't really change the recipe that much. You just let it simmer in the Instant Pot when you're done for a while. yeah that's great good stuff yeah so thank you so much to chris kohler for finally being on our show and we're glad i mean it's our fault frankly because i've been talking to chris for years about being on the show but we got him on he'll be back of course we always like chris and everything he does but as for us if you want to

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only for patrons again that is patreon.com slash retronauts henry how about you hey follow me henry gilbert on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm sure to tweet about the cool things going on in my life maybe even some of that curry i've been cooking plus if you're following me on twitter please follow the official twitter account of this podcast and also our sister podcast what a cartoon that twitter account is at talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod stay in the loop whenever new podcasts go up free feed patreon secret stuff we're sure to tweet about it there at talk simpsons pod on twitter thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you next week for Take My Wife Sleaze, and we'll see you then.

And that's my cue to exit Homer! I just wanted to invite you to the wrap party And that's my cue to exit