Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Faith Off With Eric Szyszka

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

It's football meets Jesus as we welcome back returning favorite Eric Szyszka from the We Hate Movies podcast! Homer returns to his college and is trapped in a bucket until Bart saves him with the Lord! And somehow that all lead to the big game being saved with a severed leg! Listen along to find out how that all connects in this faith-full podcast! Support this podcast and get hundreds 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 miniseries 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 $5 subscribers at patreon.com

slash talking simpsons can hear every episode plus all of our previous miniseries about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsley, sign up for Talking Mission Hill today! Alright! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where King Kong cold cocks Kato Kaelin. I am your host, the victim of comedy trauma, 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've caught additional seeding capacity fever!

And who do we have on the line? Well, it's this golden-haired little boy, Eric Siska. That's true, and today's episode is Faith Off. On my father's deathbed, he made me promise to... Long story short, go Springfield, you! Yes, thank you, Anton. Today's episode aired on January 16th, 2000, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened

on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby. Cleopatra 2025 debuts in syndication. The Dow Jones hits a stock market high that will ultimately be identified as the dot-com bubble's peak. And on the Dreamcast, Crazy Taxi is here giving us all the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why need a full soundtrack? You only need three songs, right? Yeah, three songs is all. That's all I needed back in 2000. You got your offspring. That game was a phenomenon, though. Everyone was talking about that game. I play the crap out of it.

Honestly, the advertorial integration on it was a big thing I loved about it, too. I wasn't driving to fake KFC. I was driving to real KFC. And Tower Records, right? Yeah, Tower Records. I think all the yum brands were in there. KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. When I moved to the Bay Area, I was like, oh, this is where Crazy Taxi takes place. But the taxis were very sensible. They did rip you off more than Crazy Taxis did.

Yeah. Now, should Sega restart this as Crazy Uber Driver now? There's been enough murders that we can call it that. The most recent time i played a crazy taxi anything was they rebranded like one of those clicker type games as it uh on your phone where you just like it's all about just pressing things until a number goes up high enough and then you prestige and then it's time to wait till the game lets you play it again those mobile games there's so many right there's like countless oh yeah there there's another one where you you could play as hall cogan but they had they made the deal like right before

he got canceled i mean the simpsons i shouldn't i ate too much pork can you unlock that sound bite i hope so that'd be amazing right little easter egg in the game right like you wrestle enough and then you go back to the it becomes like a a leisure suit Larry level all of a sudden. And the Simpsons loved Crazy Taxi so much they got sued for ripping it off. Yeah, Road Rage. The lesser of the Simpsons ripoff games. And what the hell is Cleopatra 2525?

Oh, you never watched that show? It's a late addition in the soft core syndicated content uh like it's uh it's basically like future xena pretty much okay yeah yeah with uh with a lot of cleavage and whatnot for for all the teen boys when you said softcore i was like okay so is this pornography and i guess it's it's a it's a step below pornography where they're actually still wearing clothing. It's part of that last run of shows that the internet fully killed. Like VIP? Yeah, VIP. Alias?

I mean, Baywatch was the king of it. But they all were meant to be sold to horny teens who didn't have access to pornography. Once the internet fully unfurled by the end of the 90s it's like who needs the embargo uh and boy it's a good thing i didn't find this show when i was 18 i think it'd be right up uh 18 year old bob's alley and uh that dot that dot com bubble never gonna burst that's not what bubbles do i love hearing when the dow was soaring it makes you feel good those numbers apply to me somehow yeah somehow yeah people are loving it oh but hey a big welcome back to our guest eric sisga thanks for having me guys i love being here and it's always fun to talk about the simpsons even though i usually get a uh ladder kind of episode although what was it

bart carney was pretty good but this i feel like season 11 we're starting to starting to go down a little bit there are some ups and downs we've been having a lot of fun lately this one is uh kind of all over the place there is some good stuff here and the first song in a while yeah yeah i think this i think this is an all right episode that has some really good jokes in it i remember and also though i i kind of noticed similarities to previous episodes of the simpsons in here of course i mean it starts out with like remember the better episode when he went to college oh yes that's that's never a good idea uh we didn't mention though eric uh from we hate movies the great podcast doing so much stuff

lately putting out so much content you've got sides uh side shows and of course your main feed and everything going on there what has been i mean so we're recording this in uh very late june you're hearing this in september what is the future of we hate movies right now eric well i don't well you know there's definitely no icebergs out in those waters so we're going to be just fine it's you know you there's no way to predict how anything's going to go these days but right now we in movies we've got obviously a lot of stuff going we've got a ton of side shows um over the covid quarantine we have been doing a show called melro 210 where we do an episode of melrose place an episode of beverly hills 90210 and we've been alternating and that has now sort of gone away with around 30 so episodes but we

are probably reviving it on patreon patreon.com slash we hate movies sometime soon maybe september maybe december we'll see all right yeah i was personally disappointed in the uh the hiatus for melrose 2 or no but i assume that when you were thinking of the idea you had march madness and that i mean you thought this would be over by now yeah yeah it was like oh yeah okay we'll do uh do this show for two weeks and we're back to it back outside touching everybody spitting each other's mouths exactly uh and uh this yeah i've been enjoying some of your recent ones at this time the europe i mean the the gleap glossary that that's really your baby isn't it eric and that's a lot of fun yeah it's a it's a star wars focused sideshow where i read uh entries

from the the essential guide to characters uh to the rest of the guys and they make fun of me for it pretty much and uh and also this episode's name is even based on a classic We Hate Movies episode. The face off is. Oh, right. There should be the slash in the title on this one, though, I think. I would like that. I would also like like face swapping would be great in this episode because, you know, this episode is doing so much that you could put in fucking face off and I wouldn't even bat an eye. There are too many premises. I think there's a lot of good ideas here that could be separated. give me homer with a bucket on his head for an episode and maybe

that's the episode i feel like every act is a different episode like bart is a faith healer is one act but on the title of this episode i saw face off once in a theater with a group it was in portland we were all you know drunk and or high we knew what we were in for and i sat next to a guy who was clearly there to enjoy the movie and he was having a bad time with people laughing at this very serious movie about face transplants face off was a uh i saw it opening weekend or near opening weekend as uh it was on my 16th birthday and it was i was like all guys, this is the start right before a whole, or maybe 14th. Anyway, it was the birthday of when it came out, and it was the beginning of a long night of playing wrestling video games and watching anime. It was started with Face Off.

Bad influence. Sounds like a pretty good day right there to me. I thank my mom for driving five boys to see face off and having to sit through face off i definitely saw it in the theater as well i mean classic film right yeah was a bigfoot pizza devoured that night how many metric yards of pizza that those five hungry boys chow down on oh my boys uh there's definitely you know i think just one bigfoot pizza with the cake like there was an ice cream cake though so a real quality birthday but yeah this uh i mean by season 11 eric you're you were you still on the simpsons train or had you had you uh stepped off i was still on it i

remember uh this episode i remember some of the other ones in season 11, but it was definitely when I started to completely tune out. I was getting towards the latter half of high school and I had my future ahead of me and I decided The Simpsons had gone on too long because it was such an important show to me and I just felt too close to it. When it started to falter i just i just walked away yes this episode is a couple episodes before a major moment in the show so uh which which moment is that the the loss of maude yeah i think that i think that was one of the things because it was just like they're making things like matter but it feels like they didn't care i'll say the murder of maude flanders yeah you know what? Well, this episode, if you listeners are tired of me saying Homer seems too mean,

I'm going to be saying it in this one too. So I'm pre-apology there. But God damn, he's so mean. It was a meaner time. Because everything else was so nice, we had to go to TV to see meanness, right? Yes, that's right. Yeah. I always have to remind myself, they feel, I think the writers felt they were in an arms race for dark comedy with Family Guy and South Park.

And they're like, South Park kills Kenny every episode. Why don't we have dismemberment on our show? It's far past time. I could see that. I think we've talked about frank mula before uh the writer yeah yeah but i did find an interesting thing about him i didn't realize so they i couldn't find like any frank mula interview i don't know if he's still like active uh but yeah so if you remember us talking about him he is the credit writer on i love lisa and the last temptation of homer i i think he was staffed sometimes and other times he was freelance yeah i have a little

a little note on him because like he's returning uh what is this uh six years later i guess yes yeah uh he came back to the show in 98 as a consulting producer meaning he just would come and visit and pitch stuff and then he was a co-executive producer for just this season and then nothing to do with the show since then so he was a big part of like uh late gene and re stuff and then he was a co-executive producer for just this season and then nothing to do with the show since then so he was a big part of like uh late gene and reese and early merkin left the show he got one of those development deals at fox that everyone was getting developed a show called local heroes in 96 didn't even air all of its seven produced episodes it was a partial jay moore vehicle in 96 and you can't watch it anywhere i tried to look it up like it's

somebody at least uploaded the opening of it on youtube one episode on youtube and i skimmed through it it is sort of a lowbrow like pittsburgh based sitcom i see yeah but didn't really go anywhere jay moore is the problem in this equation i think right i and he's but no one else in it is even slightly famous now so he's it had the uh the horny guy from herman's head not hank azaria but the guy in the head oh lust or whatever yeah okay right but yeah uh jay moore is a spice you don't want in your stew that's what i'm saying him being co-ep for just that turn i mean well i wonder if they were just feeling like oh can we you know get an experienced guy just to handle

some of the things to take the load off of uh mike scully and the other folks like i wonder i the best resource i could find on him was an archived local news story from south river new jersey whoa which that's near neck of the woods isn't it uh Eric? Yeah, I was about to ask, do they uncover a body? What was that article about? Frank Mula pulled from bog. Frank Mula apparently was an alumni of the high school in South River. And so it was a 2003 story about how he was coming back for their homecoming, for this homecoming episode even. Yeah, he was part of some very

good years of the show he was hired for season three and left and i believe season five so three very good years but no one ever really talks about him he doesn't give interviews he seemed to stop writing in 2004 like the last thing he wrote for was the bonnie hunt show yeah he was a co-ep on that show that's what he was doing when uh that south river uh article was written i also found out he has a master's degree from rutgers and so not a harvard man so get him off that staff not smart enough and and also so he got a master's degree became a librarian and then his dreams of comedy came to fruition because he sent jokes to joan rivers and joan rivers bought his jokes and he that was his entry into the comedy writing world and uh yeah the most recent thing i i could find

on kindle he has a self-published book pork chops of death which looks like a comedic detective story oh so just like john swartzwelder kind of of ripping off swartzwelder's uh bit here i think but uh but yeah i hope frank mule is doing well it's uh he seems pretty silent on the internet these days but not every writer needs to be on twitter we'll talk to him we'll find him we'll find his bodies in saddle river new jersey uh and and i also i looked up a little bit of faith healing stuff but mainly going to the wiki page for that made me uh angry and depressed because i found out that there in many u.s states are religious exemptions that if you refuse to treat your child with something other than prayer and a bad thing happens to your kid you're not like libel like you didn't commit a crime if you're

like no no we're gonna pray away this stabbing or whatever the perfect murder it's uh it's uh it's pretty scary and of course the those rules only apply to christians in america not not other types of prayer uh so that was a bummer to find out but i think we've all seen those faith healing videos or you know on like daily show or whatever yeah i got a i got a question for you guys have you ever heard of marjo oh marjo gortner yeah yeah yeah this was reminding me of his story which i read on me uh me and ben wister my buddy we have uh we well we took a step back maybe we're back now uh tj hooker podcast uh hooked on tj hooker where we we recap every single episode of TJ Hooker

because it seemed uselessness is our bread and butter. But Marjo Gertner was in an episode, but you're familiar. He was the world's youngest ordained minister. Yeah, in the commentary. By four years old. By four years old, he was ordained. God. Yeah, I think on the commentary, they some of bart's acting uh and maybe part

of his story was inspired by marjo gortner and um if you watch the show gravity falls gideon that character is basically marjo gortner wow well that's right i didn't even realize i i forgot on gravity falls how he's the same character as bart in this episode but they're both pulling from the same source there yeah let me read you guys a quick thing from his imdb bio i mean what a great story this guy's life is there's a documentary on it but so he preached gospel from memory performed faith healings and drew capacity crowds as he barnstormed through the bible belt marjo the name of a combination of mary and joseph eventually became disillusioned with what he considered a huge deception and withdrew from the scene entirely during his teen years but his

god-given talents for drawing an audience and public speaking were put to good use later on like starring in movies like 1974's earthquake 78 star crash two episodes of tj hooker and he was the cobra a character called the cobra in american ninja 3 blood hunt wow i'm looking at his imdb he was in hellhole 1985's hellhole and the the pickings are getting slim by 85 like earth when earthquake is your peak that's uh not a great sign on your career it sounds like he should have stuck this game in the bible belt for if he wanted to stay rich but yeah he would have been quite wealthy right i mean he would have had whole righteous gemstones type of empire so like i think they did an episode about this 20 years later but like one of the more popular religious kids of local notes was a kid named

okay i believe his name is colton burpo and he was the little kid who went to heaven and then came back to tell everybody about it but then it was apparent like oh your parents coached you into saying all of these things and I think there's even a sketch about it on the uh the Mr. Show revival from like five years ago that's right yeah yeah wasn't there a movie about that too yeah God's Not Dead or something or like heaven is for real yeah so yeah it's like kevin sorbo being like oh this little boy he's he's telling the truth i gotta tell the world yeah but again yes he's got a real like tim and eric named colton burpo that's so fake yeah yeah tim and eric made willed him into existence uh those poor children just forced to say they went to heaven after dying too after nearly dying they then have to say like no

you meant you saw god right yes yes uh but yeah these uh this uh but you're right this episode is all over the place because you would not know this is a faith healing episode for the first uh act or the third act really the first sequel the first act is a sequel to homer goes to college like eric said earlier but my issue is with this henry and eric like every time they do a sequel to Homer Goes to College like Eric said earlier but my issue is with this Henry and Eric like every time they do a sequel episode they don't watch the original and they get so many things wrong that everyone in the audience is going to be furious about because they're Simpsons fans

and getting a wizard did it a wizard changed Bobby Peterson into this into the crusty old Dean right Homer always saw him as it's crazy that's the same name I just assumed there was a new dean now i did too at first i thought that but upon closer inspection he is called dean peterson and peterson is on the mailbox i thought it's like oh bobby peterson must be in the episode

later or this is the president of the university but no it's a it's a guy with the same name but he looks different has different personality he's the only guy in Springfield that's actually aging like a normal person? Well, they do. They make a reference, too, with the security guards. They go like, oh, age that up five years. That seems to apply like, oh, five years ago he was at the college. But yeah, those security guards, too, they say he ran over the dean, which he didn't say the old dean or the the previous dean he's supposed to be and on the commentary too they cop to it like the animation

director nancy cruz on this she's she's great on the commentary so fun but she brings up like yeah people were upset that this wasn't the real dean and the old design. And then Scully goes like, it wasn't? Like he's surprised by it. It's not even not the old Dean. He's a different person. Yeah. Like my theory, my headcanon is, which doesn't really make sense,

is that when Bobby Peterson was run over and his spine was replaced with a steel rod, he became the crusty Dean that Homer always wanted him to be from watching those Revenge of the Nerds movies. I like that. I think that's a good, he's more Dean than man.

Now I, I, my theory behind the scenes is that if they were even showed, you know, and here's a character designed for the Dean, this is the old Dean we used. And then somebody said like, this doesn't read as Dean to me.

We need to have a crusty old dean like people expect to see and so uh they they just fully designed a new dean as well that's that's my guess on it but as as bart warren's in the chalkboard gag they are phoning it in so now i mean that when i saw the chalkboard gag was bart saying, I will not phone it in. That feels like a response to like specific critics they were getting in season 11. I think so. And also the couch gag. I just really love Dan's delivery of like, oh, doctor, I'm crazy. It's very rare to see a couch gag with dialogue.

When they saw it come back with mouth movements, they're like, he has to say something. That's what it feels like. The Simpsons will be right back. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter.

Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. We always love having him on to talk about Simpsons with us. You know, if you enjoyed this podcast, you really should know that it's Patreon supported. Listeners just like you help me and Bob do this full time. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Subscribers there not only get that satisfaction of helping us, but they also get every episode of Talking Simpsons one week ahead of time and ad free. You can be listening to the next week's episode right now.

And the same goes for our sister podcast, What a Cartoon, where me and Bob cover a different animated series each week in the Talking Simpsons style. And also you get access to an ever-growing list of exclusive to Patreon podcasts, over a hundred already, where me and Bob talk about The Critic, Futurama, King of the Hill, and Mission Hill in the same episode by episode style as Talking Simpsons. While you could hear us talk about the first 20-odd episodes of Futurama right now, and then in October, you'll get to hear the next installment of Talking Futurama where we finish off the second half of Season 2. So please, consider signing up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons today to get access to all that awesome stuff

but if you want to support us even better than the whiffle snuffs get support then you should go to the 10 premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get all that five dollar stuff i just mentioned and a ton more specifically our monthly what a cartoon movie podcast that's exclusively for you listeners at the ten dollar level me and bob cover a different animated feature film in depth in the same way we do the simpsons and what a cartoon but further what a cartoon movie we cover a film often over four hours of podcasting fun each month just about one film history and going scene by scene through it we've done recently 1995's Ghost in the Shell, The Black Cauldron, Space Jam, before that many

classics like Aladdin, Akira, Batman Mask of the phantasm spider-man into the spider-verse and tons tons more you will get to listen to over a hundred hours of exclusive monthly what a cartoon podcast right now and you get to hear the new one that comes out in september that's where we're going to be covering return of jafar in the same in-depth style. So please, if you want to go to that premium level, consider signing up at $10 a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. But yes, Homer then gets the mail. There's a funny gag of him reading Bill upside down his lib. But then Homer gets an important message. There's a homecoming parade?

A cocktail party? Then the big game between Springfield U and Springfield A&M. I hate Springfield U so much. You went to Springfield U. You hate A&M. So much. My old dorm room. Come on, Pete. Let's matriculate. You college boys are only interested in one thing.

Whoa, you're supposed to hang your necktie on the doorknob if you got a girl in the room. Or a ski hat if you've got a picture of a girl. My old roommates, the nerds. You working? Oh my, yes. I'm on a secret project that I'm not at liberty to divulge. Cyborgs! I invented a program that downloads porn off the internet one million times faster.

Does anybody need that much porno? One million times. He invented torrents. You're right, that's what it is. Or Pornhub. We got Kazaa not long after this. That's true. I mean, it is weird that theyhub uh we got Kazaa not long after this that's true yeah I mean uh it is

weird that they're hanging around their old dorm room I was about to ask are they meant to still be in college and apparently one of them is working on cyborgs which is is that an is that a college class requirement or is he working for you know NASA or some such I want to say it could be that they're all like working on their doctorates because if Homer was in college with them seven years ago, that could be something that they're doing now because when I was in grad school ten years ago and two years ago, people were just getting their doctorates that I was in school with. So you're in school for a long-ass time.

I had assumed they were. It's homecoming. They're just back at school just like Homer is. That's what I figured. They're there to see the wallet inspector. Why wasn't he back the show should just maybe should they they should just commit to being ageless like you know why why have time passed you know age this up five years i mean their children haven't been oh and also lisa points she's doing the only thing lisa is there for in most season level episodes which is to say why would you even have a homecoming you took one class like she's she's the nag who knows what this what's the problem with this story and

one of them is homer would not have a homecoming for a class he took once failed and then took again uh though then again i i think i understand why they would call him back for having one class it's because they're going to shake him down at the fundraiser so they're just emailing whoever they can the joke homer says when we see the uh fundraiser uh is very dark i thought uh because of me all the dorms now have security phones yeah just like what do you uh i think they're implying some seriously uh messed up stuff with homer there i my cleanest reading of that joke is that thanks to binge drinking someone needed to make an emergency call and they couldn't let's let's just say that let's uh though i i've complained before i don't like horny homer and him getting into all that porno i just don't like it

where i guess we're pro horny marge yeah were you okay with him drooling over the the porno torrents no that feels wrong to me. I don't like, Homer should be turned on by Marge and eating food. He should definitely, doing an mmm porno joke basically is just, I don't know. I don't like it. I agree with you. It's a bit much in my family friendly show. He should be more innocent.

Yeah, I like him better played as a big kid kid not as a horny dude who wants to download lots of porno i mean he seemed to be conceived as a as a big kid right and he's got such a wonder in his eyes at all times uh also i like that he misremembers the uh 70s classic film love story as his uh college years that feels like that again feels like a throwback kind of joke like that yeah they weren't all happy days march right yeah exactly these these are a lot of like you know pitches that would have been in season four and now they're coming back now i'm not i do like i mean i feel like this episode is a lot of what i call merkin energy and i think frank mula is bringing it to this episode uh no mula i remember he said one of the funniest things i ever heard on one of

the commentaries which was in i love lisa they have the vietnam flashback joke and graining talks about how a person wrote in after it and said i can't believe you did a vietnam flashback joke it's in such poor taste i served in vietnam and mula says you should have wrote back and said there wasn't a vietnam flashback in it and he was imagining it uh i i also did note though that uh the when they do these callbacks i think the animators are more into accuracy uh when they can get away with it than the uh writers because i double checked it the dorm room is exactly the same right down to the space mutants poster i did too yeah because they don't really we don't talk about space mutants anymore on the show there's never a space mutant joke it was when it's only the only

other time i remember it recently was when it was drawn into the background uh behind mel gibson in that episode oh yeah i also think that ski hat uh is probably used a lot more often than the tie in that in that dorm room uh but yeah so homer goes to uh the dinner with the dean and uh that's when we meet uh anton lubchenco who we've had in the opening clip there i it's definitely a joke about how i had to look this up because me and bob are not sports fans but it's definitely a joke about how a lot of the famous members of the special teams rosters especially kickers on nfl teams are often people with you know not native to the u.s with funny to american ears names right and isn't it so charming when you have that character go like i live in filth in

my old country and i come here it's just like and now we live in filth look at us now here in september 2020 who are we to judge anton for his lifestyle uh yeah i think you know these kind of jokes of this vague foreigner with anton uh they're they're definitely of the late 90s early yeah i prefer the jokes about communications degrees than jokes at the expense of poor russians i think he's kind of based on well the most famous uh non-us kicker i could find was hall of famer morton anderson who he played from the early 80s to the late aughts like that's because kickers can keep doing it for a while at a professional level because you're not taking the hits of the other people i i wonder if there's a

little anger on the you know if you're if you're a defensive lineman or whatever for the nfl you maybe have like a five-year career yeah i guess you don't get any glory either it's all the quarterback and the running back yeah and the coach the coach is the most important he wears the he has a tight haircut and tells people what to do oh no what about the owners oh they're the most important of all those beautiful owners after they give a presentation they reveal what it really was for was to shake everybody down for money which i gotta think is the harvard writers especially going like this this happens every time they go back to harvard yeah in commentary they are like this is like every dinner we go to as like professionals in hollywood and

i'm far far away from my college but they still send me like you know alumni letters i'm i pay i'll be paying 700 bucks a month to my college or the bank that put me through school until i'm like 55 they're not getting a cent more. I relish that they spent 10 cents to send me something to ask for money. I am also an older man with student loan debt still to this day. Man, I am feeling pretty good about my choice to drop out of college hearing these stories. Good on you. You did the right thing.

But kids listening, do that. Well, I don't know judge your own scenario but i think the harvard writers definitely should be hit up for money because skull and bones got them through got them staff jobs we know how it works uh they the skull and bone society after uh jerking off on those bones they give a call to every hollywood producer i mean to be fair that is a yale thing but i imagine harvard has its own dark society with like uh you know incest and uh sleeping in coffins just like just like yale does bones and skulls the bones and skulls yeah well and they

get a whiff and poof jokes in here which like the same with harvard harvard has their own acapella group but they're not as famous as the Yale Whiff and Poofs. Nothing is funnier than the word Whiff and Poof. You can't even parody it. The Whiffle Snuffs. When I looked it up, I had to make sure it was not like a parody of something else. Whiff and Poof. And it's a 110-year-old tradition, that a cappella group.

It's 1908 it got invented. That's insane. The closest I could find from Harvard is they have a jazz a cappella group that's insane the the closest i could find from harvard is they have a jazz acapella group that's been around for some decades called the din and tonics do you guys think in like 1908 like you start hearing acapella and you just like you think you're losing your fucking mind like you never heard anything quite like that it's like hearing an electric guitar for people right you're not ready for this but your kids are gonna love it oh god i was thinking about the future you know that they're not even

looking for i also uh i like that the way they do the fundraising is basically out of like a batman 60 uh an animus batman thing of just a open bag you put money into with professor rocco and chancellor knuckles yes yeah those are great character names particularly mr knuckles and uh then it's time for homer to get some revenge i love this outfit he puts on whatever homer puts on all black with like the with like the black beanie and he's sneaking around. Didn't he like steal Moe's car in this similar getup? Yeah. He's got a regular crime outfit now at this point in the series. He commits so many crimes.

Yeah, that's the same outfit he wore in 30 Minutes Over Tokyo where he breaks into Ned's house to steal his stuff. So when Dean Peterson opens his door, this bucket of super glue is going to drop right on his head. What the? Oh, real original. Who did this? Kappa Gamma Tau. Last in grades, first in pranks. Good evening, gentlemen.

Oh, that's it. You're through, Dean. Now who's the Dean? Sorry, Dad. It just won't budge. I tried greasing the bucket with bacon fat, but your father kept eating it. Couldn't you try a non-delicious fat? Oh, there's no such thing

yeah i think at that in the scene with the glue we do see the peterson on the mailbox yes yeah yeah and also that's when they cut to the the security guards which uh them aging up the photo where homer's holding a fish and it kills the fish by aging it up that's a pretty good and his clothes become more worn yes i did appreciate that giant beard now is that that's what they did with the dean it's like just imagine that dean from the original and just give him a big old beard now uh yeah i mean you know the homer running him over probably caused him endless health problems that we we kind of miss uh off screen he no longer has a spine remember that's right yeah i uh and he's

got to go easy on it so he can't live the healthy lifestyle and uh though i guess you know it's not an intentional callback but both that episode and this episode include homer running someone over and nothing happening bad to homer for that crime that is true homer should be uh i mean we say it a lot but especially at the end of this episode homer should be uh i mean we say it a lot but especially at the end of this episode homer should be in jail yes yeah or at least taken to civil court i think by the but uh also it felt like another throwback homer pours glue into that bucket for such a long time it it feels like the lighter fluid guy yeah the gag's so nice they used it twice that lighter fluid gag and

and also we get a little gag about the lost era of scrambled porn where the security guards try to change it to the library to watch people have sex and i'm like nah it's scrambled man one of my jobs in college was closing the library every night at two in the morning and it was such like a bit like revered like oh you're gonna catch people having sex even like the library administrators were like people are gonna be having sex up there so when you do your rounds you're gonna see some never saw a goddamn thing oh man i assume they would have given you like a somewhat like a water bottle to spray them with like cats yeah i guess i mean it would have been uncomfortable had i come across anything but thankfully it was just scrambled vision and i didn't see anything i uh when i worked in a movie theater i heard of it twice

people being caught having sex like on my shift by the ushers but i never got uh to catch that but fortunately it's so dark in those theaters you wouldn't have to like see anything hopefully but uh but so yeah homer has that stuck to his head and it looks like home bart's about to rip his neck off with it like it's a really uh painful looking position there oh and also sorry the dean like who's the dean now now who's the dean that's a great joke uh but so homer is taken to the uh dr hibbert who x-rays homer's skull and i can't not think about how basically one year after this episode airs well there was always a smudge over that right well he put his thumb he said oh i always have my thumb over this part of the x-ray and that's why i never saw it like

the crayon is constantly moving through the brain henry sure it's a magic crayon or perhaps the bucket interfered with the ability to see the crayon i think so whatever makes you sleep at night i just hate that crayon so much we're gonna we're gonna overcome the crayon i'm really i mean i don't even think that's a bad episode per se but the invention of that crayon i really kind of hate but uh though also like hibbert in this episode really takes a beating like for the integrity of his character i feel like it should be dr nick for all this stuff that all these crazy jokes they do with him he gets the final word in this episode right yeah because we do the whole like the the comedy tragedy victims and that that feels more

like a dr nick type of turf right yeah well though okay this was the moment it hit me that this episode is very similar in structure to bart the daredevil okay because uh well for one thing you've got bart who sees a cool show and And he's like, I got to be like that guy. He does a kid's version of that guy. And then it goes too far and leads to an injury. And then on top of that, in that episode, Hibbert takes him to the ward of children hurt imitating stunts they saw on TV. But the victims of comedy tragedies or whatever live rich full lives the tromities yeah yeah i i do really i did really enjoy that they just like live in an alley behind the hospital apparently and like the guy with the swordfish through but just standing in front of a

checkerboard on a table yeah just for no reason and hibbert just laughs at them and that's why they're there still they they make him laugh so much just to look at him same by the way classic one the guy drinking the water with all the bullet holes in him and it all sprays out i love that one i like too that when when that guy sees the curtain open that's when he goes like all right time to drink the water time for the show show time uh and i also love homer's reaction like what guys i want to see the freaks i think hibbert's running like a human centipede type of thing going on there like he's doing his own experimental procedures i know in other commentaries graining often will be moaned that

like hibbert was supposed to be the good doctor you weren't supposed to do bad things with him turns out that's not funny yeah yeah i mean it was we're already like two years past him offering to sell a baby like he's like he has connections to sell babies on the black market he started it's the american health care system so it's just going down down down each each year so it's accommodating for that i think the further we get away from his roots as a Cosby parody, the better. That's true. Yeah, you're right there. But yeah, so with no help from medical science,

Bart has a fix for Homer. Sorry, but these guys crack me up. What guys? I want to see the freaks. Okay, hang on, Homer. Two eye holes coming up. What, guys? I want to see the freaks. Okay, hang on, Homer. Two eye holes coming up. Easy. Too far.

Oh, man. I had to put in that clip so people could hear the gross sound of the two foley. I love that. That's one of the highlights of this episode for me. Great foley and animation on that. You can really feel the resistance of the bone once he hits it you gotta hope it didn't hit his i would i guess it didn't hit his eyes since he can see later but and they make a great point on the commentary it's like why didn't hibbert do

this why is bart making eye holes with a drill uh though i found uh one of those hidden deleted scenes you can only get in the menu that uh that is gives more context to this moment so homer is trying to watch tv and what's on tv is bikini bull riding okay and the let me just say the animators really enjoy drawing that on screen that's why it's on the cutting room floor uh yeah and so that's the thing that pushes homer over the edge like that's his last straw like i have to see that and uh that's when bart comes in with his drill okay some extra if you go to the menus on your dvd and like press up it'll go to the um crystal ball that's in the shot we had to work so hard in the obama era to see deleted scenes didn't we we love dvd menus back in those days you know you got to like solve a haunted house

to see a nightmare on elm street or whatever the fuck uh you know i think the simpsons were the last ones to care about making those things i think i think matt grady he always loves to make little you know yeah things like that for kids to enjoy. They're not intrusive on the Simpsons ones. I mean, they eventually would stop being obtrusive. Like Eric says, you have to go through like a house, like through this virtual world and open the right door to go to the episode. I do appreciate the lineup that the Simpsons were doing with their DVDs. We used to see all the different characters.

That was kind of fun. Yeah, though. I mean mean season two with the spinning heads that's bad like but they they learned their lesson after that uh well and also i feel bad for the artists on those dvds because they make those menus and i have to wonder how many people are just like me who just go like no play all i put this in here to hit yeah i don't want to see all the work you did. Your Easter eggs. And I really like the design of Homer with his two little eyes.

I mean, it kind of reminds me of, what, Mushmouth, I guess? Is it Dumb Donald? Oh, okay. I always think it was one of the Junkyard Gang. It is Dumb Donald. Oh, damn. I knew it. I am not dumb. I am a strong strong vibrant man i think if trump wore one of

those dumb donald hats uh i'd respect him more i think so you know that uh i'd be more impressed shape his hair into one of those hats how about that uh but yeah the the driving sequence here uh it's another one of those like moments where animators, I feel, are so underappreciated. Because it's easy to write in a script. Through Homer's vision, he drives a long way and ends up in a ditch. But it's another thing to draw an uninterrupted shot that is obscured by two eye holes and just see it through his eyes. It took one animator three weeks to do this one piece of animation that goes by in like 20 seconds it's pretty great though like him just driving

through shit and then crashing on that embarkment he almost runs homer almost runs over a lot of people in this episode is this mean homer or is this childlike homer where he's running almost running people over with the car? I think it's a childlike because he is not maliciously trying to hurt people. He just is very driven with his selfish goals. Yeah. I think there's a small degree of the old dad way of thinking of I'm the dad. I'm the driver.

My wife isn't going to be driving. Right. So I was looking up dumb Donald and we are an animation podcast so this is relevant I found a page from the fat Albert story bible about who dumb Donald is there's like three paragraphs wow a quote he is the master of the malaprop but his totally unconventional approach to living proves to be a godsend at times because he comes up with the right answer often out of left field and that's who dumb donald is when you're writing him remember that wow that's uh that's much deeper than i thought they wrote that character but i haven't watched that in a long time and i probably

won't anytime soon and unless we do a fat albert episode of what a cartoon but i don't see that i think they just take it down it'd be canceled already uh and i also had forgotten into uh that this episode the way they get to brother faith is through a wrong turn into a ditch like it's very uh it's it's not the deepest plotting they're like well then um homer turns off the wrong direction and they're in a ditch and it's in front of the place they need to be. At least the connected, there's some connective tissue there. Yeah.

But yeah, Don Cheadle shows up as Brother Faith. And apparently he brought this music with him because he had his own production studio at his house. He did music. So, yeah. At the time, he was famous, I guess, famous in quotes. He would be worldwide famous until Hotel Rwanda i think yeah but like boogie nights bulworth and out of sight were two recent or three recent movies he was in around this time yeah and he'd also had a recurring role on picket fences too and he was sammy davis jr in the rat pack movie and uh mike scully tells a story where his

wife julie thacker was a writer on the golden girls spinoff the golden palace and he was a cast member on that show and he was at the wrap party mike scully was and he was talking to don cheadle and he was like my career is over like where do i go from the golden palace uh you know there's a lot of actors who they don't go beyond that one season like they i think it really speaks to you know don cheetle's like acting chops and his uh stick-to-itiveness that he made not many cast members from golden palace went on to hotel rwanda exactly that's a different kind of hotel uh i i also forgot though that he did hotel for dogs oh man he's like he's the hotel guy you've got a hotel story popping in there i don't know b arthur saw hotel uh sorry

golden palace and went no yes yeah i think i think golden palace was a stealth ninth season for golden girls yeah that they just they couldn't get uh b arthur to come back but the other three still wanted to you know they want to still be on a tv show so uh and yeah also like it's it was funny too to see 2009 when i looked at his thing i I really hate that on IMDb his like top thing that they suggest is Crash. But like in 2009 he had Hotel for Dogs. 2010 was when he got cast as War Machine. And now he's been a mega star ever since then. And he took over War Machine from Terrence Howard.

But he's made the role his own at this point my classic bit about hotel for dogs is i want to see the movie but what's it about that's a classic joke i tell uh that's good you haven't been able to tell that joke probably in a decade no i think i told it on one other podcast okay well it's always a treat when you dust it off yeah uh but yes off yeah I got a clip right here let's listen to old brother faith brother faith's revival for the healing love

of brother faith good feel it in my belly now Springfield can you feel the power yes do you want to be saved? Yes! Now correct me if I'm incorrect,

but was I told that it's untrue that people in Springfield have no faith? Was I not misinformed? Well, I don't know why. The answer I'm looking for is yes. Yes! Now let's hear it for the Holy Spirit. No need to fear it. Just revere it.

He works in heaven. That's the 24-7. That's right. Check the Bible. Yeah, John 2-11. Jump back. Feel it, feel it. Wow, he dances better than Jesus himself.

What ails you, my son? I done sprained my elbow bone, so it goes in the opposite direction. The power of faith compels you. Kill! He cracks that elbow back into place, which I guess it means it was just a dislocated elbow. Yeah. I mean, this is accurate to, I've watched a lot of the faith healing super cuts where it's just like everyone getting smacked in the face. And a lot of times these guys just hit people.

Yeah. And they fall over. They just shove them over and then lift them back up i uh to prepare for this because i was like oh you you want me on this episode obviously this episode is kind of sending up like leap of faith with uh steve martin so i re-watched that the other day there are similarities he does do like the exact type of faith healing like we just saw brother faith do but it that's where it stops it ends because that's a whole movie and this is the five minutes of this cartoon or less than uh yeah i wish they would have pursued the brother faith character and maybe have bart to

see that he was a fraud later or something just like i forgot he was in this so little he gets two scenes in this episode and then we move on to the homecoming football game for the last there might have been a lesson of some type of morality we could have explored if we had gone in any direction whatsoever instead of 50 at once yeah as far as we know he his faith healing works and bart's doesn't for some reason yeah but why can't bart lose his faith in that way of see or realize it's all a scam and that i i it sounds like from the commentary that the football third act came in late so i'm wondering if the original draft made a bit more sense and use brother faith a bit more which i mean especially it's a real waste of don

cheetle to just have him for two minutes i mean he he makes the most of those two minutes they're really praising him on the commentary i couldn't and they're right like he's you know sometimes uh in a lot of movies like say your shreks a uh some voice actors just show up to be famous and don't really put a lot into it they're like yeah no i'm famous what but don cheadle really is like a voice acting there not just acting yeah he was really he was really getting into it it was great and uh i i looked it up john 211 as far as i can tell it's just describing jesus's miracles that's what john 211 is which i guess that me i don't know if that really means god is up in heaven doing it 24 7 i think it's just uh just general miracle chats is what he's about right john i mean john 211 fits in rhyming

as well so bart is most impressed that he dances better than jesus then we get a good joke about all the comedy k's that i i like that once he saves crusty crusty still is like i'm not converting from judaism but then you did your trick i respect it. Probably the last mention of Kato Kaelin on television was the year 2000. It's always great when you get one of those. I don't think anyone would have cared if his name was like Rupert Smith or something. Kato Kaelin, it's funny.

He also had like some good looks and there was like a TV approved type of personality behind him. You're right. Yeah, if that crime had happened in anywhere but la you wouldn't have that kind of bimbo or himbo himbo that kid that caitlin is yeah uh himbo is the new normalized phrase yeah i uh yeah i mean i think leno much like crusty loved kato caitlin as just a word to say right up there with Ito. Somebody funny names Furman. Man, Mark Furman.

That's just funny to hear. Classic cop humor. What a, ugh, boy. Pulling lots of pranks on that, on all those criminals, right? Yeah, he's a real prank master general of the LAPD. But yeah, so they come to Homer for his healing, and they're going to need some help. Oh, my Satan really jammed that thing on good.

I'm going to need a holy helper. Someone who believes. No. Okay, moving on. I need someone with the power. This golden haired little boy. Son, lay hands upon your father's burdensome bucket. Now proclaim, I have the power. I have the power. Oh, say it like you mean it, boy. I have the power. I have the

power. I see the light. It burns. Hallelujah. Behold, this child has the power. Miracle boy. I believe I had hair. Oh, here they are. I think there's some residual glue that put it back in. That's my theory. I love the here they are because it's so few. Yeah, I like when it's

addressed like no it's not like visual shorthand for a balding man he only has two three hairs on his head uh i and there's so many funny lines they give uh brother faith the cheetle just kills like burdensome bucket and just his incredibly complicated double negative at the start of that last clip i also like that his character's packing away snakes at the end of the night. Yeah, we missed the snake handling. Yeah, that's why Moe was there, right? Yeah, they must have met at the same parties, I would think. And yes, when they come back, Bart is really impressed by all this power.

Oh, yeah, and I love how Cheadle says, power. It's really good. Yeah, it's so good when he hits it, yeah. But then Bart is sold on the whole faith healing thing. On the commentary, they even recognize that they've done the recant on my deathbed bit a couple times. But I like how he wants to do it for the insurance

in case of sudden death. He won't have time to recant on his deathbed, so that'll get him in no matter what. I'd be lying if i said i didn't think that way at some point when i was you know i was raised around very extreme christianity though not myself but i still got some of that residual guilt so i i would think to myself like well you know you can just say oh yeah i accept jesus christ and i got i got 24 hours left to believe it in jesus but. We call that Pascal's wager.

That's right. I went to school. But I guess, yeah, if you get hit by a car, you lose that wager, don't you? Like Homer. If you get run over by Homer like he does in this episode. And yeah, the recant on my deathbed line, that was in Homer the Heretic, but also... The movie. The movie, yeah.

Where Homer says, why can't i worship the lord in my own way like praying like hell on my deathbed there's a surprising number of times simpsons has used the word deathbed it's a good expression you know and there's a lot of comedy there i guess not now but back in like 2000 you know it was funny to think of like olden time people going through maybe the 1918 pandemic being on their deathbed recanting in some old folksy way their last wishes yeah so bart gets sold on the whole uh faith healing thing and you're right because we never go back to brother faith seemingly he just is a normal guy or a he's all uh above the level he's not using this for a scam he's not getting super rich off of it it's not lisa should be trying to disprove him but instead she just has her arms

crossed like no i don't believe this yeah so the show is saying uh this is real it really helps people and bart is just bad at it right uh yeah i guess you're right the the power left at least it does have a line where she says uh something about like oh the the metal expanded from the hot lights in in the tent yeah she that's the most she does of dispelling it once once bart has his own revival church though she kind of just lets it happen it's true uh but yeah so bart is now saving kids on the playground. He gets the milk money out of Ralph's nose and the milk, which was disgusting. I'm getting queasy thinking about it.

And it also feels like it presages the Homer's brain crayon. That's where the roots come from. And this is where he makes Milhouse a ladies man, right? Oh, well, that's during the testify song yeah uh but i do like that nelson is you know he takes on the role of being the the one who spreads the news about like john the baptist or whatever but he does it by like i said spread it uh but yes here's here's the bit where lisa at least tries to explain scientifically how Bart did it. He really does have the power. Go forth and spread the word.

Spread it. Bart, I hope you don't believe your own hype. Number of miracles performed by Bart, two. Number performed by Lisa, zero. How can you believe all this mumbo jumbo? The bucket came off Dad's head because the bright lights heated it, causing the metal to expand. Heat makes metal expand. Now who's talking mumbo-jumbo?

Can't come up with an idea for my homecoming float. Do it for me. What have you got so far? Look at Mo dance! Aloha, Mo! That's nice, but maybe your homecoming float should have something to do with college. Yeah, you're right. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener.

At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer,

your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. I think Godzilla's bigger than Superman. It's not to scale. I love it.

That's a good joke. It's about a kid drawing Superman and Godzilla the same size and then being mad when you point out that that's incorrect. I'm also quite fond of Aloha Mo. Mo wanted to go to hawaii didn't plan for him uh so but how did we get from him attending a fundraiser at the school to now designing a float yeah i forgot how this episode went and it's just like homer should be upset with the school because because of the school he had to give them all of his money and also he got a

glue bucket on his head now he's excited about school again should be trying to wreck the goddamn homecoming parade like it's animal house in the third act he does on accident but that wasn't the plan you know yeah his anger towards the dean is fully gone now there in act one there isn't one there is just that one line of like and of course you're all going to help with our homecoming float each house or whatever like that. Yeah. So there wasn't any of that. No, no. It just suddenly appears. It just suddenly we're moving on to a different episode. Yeah.

I don't know what made him later think of doing a salute to hazing, why he did that. There was lots of talk of hazing in the late 90s, early aughts. I think it was because it was being recognized as a problem and being banned from campuses. The episode of Mission Hill that we did recently recently talked about hazing like oh yeah number one in college hazing deaths right that's right more but this is definitely mean homer for being into hazing yeah that's true that's true like which he didn't get hazed at all in that episode unless you count the post-credits uh little scenes they put over louis louis of him uh him getting bare-ass spanked in by uh animal house style by nixon right uh yes yeah that's right uh these again at least they you know the continuity is correct that springfield

a&m it was their enemies in that episode too that was that where sir oinks a lot was that's right sorry i didn't mean to steal that from you it was that he did found the school right yes yeah or he he was friends with the cow uh and he gave an honorary degree to richard nixon which i think that episode came out like days before and like not too long before nixon's death also bart's number of blanks Lisa has done that. I've heard them tell that story multiple times on the commentary where George Meyer just shuts down anything in a writer's room with that kind of pedantic argument of like, oh, you don't like the Rolling Stones? Number of platinum albums by the Rolling Stones? 20.

Number of platinum albums by other writer? Zero. I think it's because he also has a platinum album for something sing the blues too right yeah that's true he is a platinum uh recording artist but uh and that i think that i don't like that argument because it's like oh then the mcdonald's is the best food in the world or whatever like popularity uh is not a reason to not be allowed to criticize something uh yes we then go from the shot of godzilla and superman to a nice little life in hell reference is the name of the church sign that's cute and uh lovejoy is at his most boring in this next clip in his letter to the

corinthians paul instructed them to send ten copies to the Thessalonians and the Ephesians. But the Ephesians broke the chain and were punished by... I got two words for this sermon. Am I boring you, Bart? Well, to be honest, yes. Hey, I'm doing the best with the material I have. But church can be fun.

No, really. It can be a crazy party with clouds and lasers and miracles. And chili fries. A real preacher knows how to bring the Bible alive through music and dancing and Taibo. He's kicking it old school. Never give them an opening. See, we're doing a lot of punch up on this episode which is that's some funny stuff in it uh i think a good a good plot like get rid of the homer homecoming thing this could be lovejoy competing with bart's revival services and trying

to make his church more fun that would be great great. That would be amazing. It would be great to see that stuffed shirt try to compete with Bart's craziness. You get one scene of that, but just for a little joke about how pitiful he is. Which I did appreciate. But this, also, I finally caught a joke later, or not joke, but a scene later now makes sense to me. Homer says, and chili fries. He's eating chili fries at Bart's revival thing. I didn't catch that until just now. This is also a commentary on the whole evangelical movement and megachurches being kind of like carnivals.

And you just eat trash and consume trash. And now your religion is trash you go to the gift shop when you leave church yes yeah i'm sorry to insult people's religion but uh that's what we're about yeah the cartoons get me and me halfway to it though king of the hill had a really great mega church episode i remember what i think really captured the the feel of what those mega churches are like in the south like just how the glitz of them while still uh trying to appear to be giving the message of christ while uh still having tons of razzle and dazzle uh and uh taibo who remembers taibo that's like uh kickboxing

exercise yes billy billy blanks billy blanks yeah Yeah. Billy Blanks is a really interesting guy. I did a little look up on him. Still with us in his mid-60s. Hey, it works. Knock on wood there. He was a taekwondo expert who had appeared in some martial arts movies filmed in L.A. in the 80s. And by the late 80s, he started developing a, you you know in the age of jazzercise he was thinking of like what's my jazzercise it's i gotta do something with martial arts and so he came up

with taibo which is taekwondo plus bow um and it's genius i mean everyone was going to like strip mall karate back in the 90s that's true yeah i recall these commercials like being back-to-back with the commercials for how to dance like n-sync and i just remember the instructor going in at eight no lie baby bye bye bye and he's like miming the bye bye bye oh my god i i think i saw that i saw that a billion times my friends and i would all kind of goof on it and uh yeah apparently his big breakthrough was in the early 90s he started becoming a trainer to the stars with his taibo workout program including paula abdul and so that started opening doors for him to start selling his own workout tapes uh by 1999 when

this episode was produced the tapes and the dvds were selling like oh millions of copies uh it was it's still one of the best-selling uh fitness tapes ever made the taibo uh and uh from what i've seen billy blanks he has now lives in japan with his second wife uh and he's been there for about a decade though his children continue on his legacy he uh has a daughter who does uh taibo new taibo that focuses on like postnatal taibo and taibo for your core interesting uh well meanwhile billy blanks jr invented cardioki okay has that been outlawed yet uh you can't do it in an enclosed space anymore now illegal in 40 states. Cardio key.

You know, but your kids are going to love it. I watched it. I mean, it's just like you do, you know, aerobic dancing while singing popular songs while you do it, which I'm sure help your lung capacity and stuff like though i also wonder what the how that business even works now because the full videos like an hour long i could pull up an hour long cardioki on youtube right now and we just do it so they must do it and they must they must have to count on like just youtube ad revenue which has to be way lower than selling a 40 dvd to people yes big time uh but yeah so that's uh that's your Taibo lesson if you were confused why Bart started I loved his like not only is yeah he made his own soundtrack it's great you know that the cardiokis just kind of like sweating to the oldies right Richard

Simmons old thing yeah yeah that's true yeah this is a more modern hip hop version of it. But yeah, it's basically the same. And I also love, love Joy acting like a stand up comedian who just goes like, never give him an opening. I mean, I stole the show for me. So the kids steal a fumigation tent, which also poisons them. They have, I say it before, but this is definitely very Rugrats of the kids to set up their own kid version of a church.

But right before that scene, we do have a brief clip here of Homer being very jerk-ass. Ah, excuse me, neighbor. Yeah, I couldn't help but notice you picked pretty much all of my flowers. Can't make a float without flowers. Oh, sure enough.

But, uh, did you have to salt the earth so nothing would ever grow again? He-he-he-he. He-he, yeah. He had to. I love it. I love the salt the earth thing. I know it's mean Homer, but man. He doesn't even have to give an excuse.

He's just like, yeah. Uh, yeah. the salty earth thing i know it's mean homer but man he doesn't have to give an excuse he's just like yeah uh yeah i i mean ned's even meeting him halfway he's like well fair enough but did you have to do this i just love how homer treats his neighbor like like he's the romans in carthage uh he's uh i guess maybe he learned that from the bible as well he learns all the bad things from the bible uh and uh yeah so after that we get the big testify scene the big song from this episode the this song was uh actually the title track for the second collection of songs from the show oh it's the third okay well it is the name of the album right right so there was uh songs in the key of springfield 97 there was go simsonic with the simpsons 99 and then eight years later there was testify and then nothing

and they've done so many songs in the past like 13 years but uh yeah this was sort of like released alongside the movie soundtrack as well they just decided to put out a whole new album of tv songs i always forget simsonic i forget it's a good it's a good album it is i well because for me songs in the key of springfield that was played like i can remember a million trips to blockbuster or the grocery store with my mom and just me and my brother playing it endlessly so that one's lodged in my brain but by the time simpsonic came out I was driving myself and listening to my own Weezer mix CD. Simsonic has... Oh, does Simsonic have like a closing time on it?

Oh, no. You're thinking of the semi-sonics. So this is Homer singing closing time. It's a whole cover of semi-sonic songs. You got closing time. You got time to close up shop. I can't help either on that yeah but down a blank as well simsonic had all the sherry bobbin song it had the ramones singing happy birthday to mr burns like

all the stuff all the stuff they missed on the first one but also the things that were made between 97 and 99 like the canyon arrow song is on there too and i think the under the sea song is on there as well uh yeah they they, they've done so many songs since 07. It's too bad that they didn't, they have yet to make, I mean, I guess the record industry is dead. It was basically dead in 07 when they, it was on its last legs when they put out Testify and now you just don't sell albums like any longer.

And the cover even is the Simpsons because the title testify the Simpsons are wearing, you know, a religious garb of a, I guess, choir, you'd say. Inside the church, Bart is even doing like he has on the Daredevil cape and does the stunts. I'm like, that's another moment where I was like, wow, this is really similar to Bart the Daredevil, this stuff. And Homer's eating his chili cheese fries. And also, if you see in the background, too, Bart stole away the organist. She's playing the music. Yeah, this could have been another, again, this could have been the Lovejoy B plot where he is upset about this and trying to compete because Bart's like headhunting his staff.

Yeah. Okay, Springfield. Yeah. I was a sinner, a real bad kid What thou shalt not, I shalt did Neighbor's cat I tried to neuter Took a whiz on the school computer He took a whiz, oh yes he did But now I've changed, you can't deny Come on up and testify Testify, testify Come on up and testify I am misbehavin' Testify Testify Come on up and testify

My hip's misbehavin' Testify Got a nicotine craving Testify There's a cramp in my gliden Testify Testify Testify

Perhaps it's time to fight Razzle with Dazzle. Michael, Michael, roll, roll, roll the boat. Is he killing that guitar, Daddy? Yes, son. My glasses make me look like a geek. Now you'll get the girls you seek. We'll see you at Makeout 3. Watch the boy up the aisle.

He's got the power. So raise your voice and don't be shy. Test the, test the, test the fire. Test the fire, test the fire. Come on up and test the fire. and uh i gotta give it to nancy cruz and her team they really did a great job with uh songs are not easy to do uh in an episode where they have to do a football game an entire first person driving sequence and a song like cruz and her team did an amazing work with that you're right but whenever you mention all those other plots i get angry because it's like dealing with anton the the foreign student here to play football could be an episode all these things could be episodes

i'm just i'm missing the simpsons i lost by having this all condensed into one i think that the feeling at the time was well this show is going to be over soon so let's just put every plot idea we could think of into an episode because like what we're gonna have 20 more years to write f seasons i don't think so yeah i do like the final pushing on bart through the hole in the tent at the end it's a very cool shot very like technically cool i really like that shot yeah and then and uh you know nancy cartwright great job singing this song too bart doesn't get a ton of songs but she does a great job on that. I also like whenever I think I'm too pedantic or petty about this, I hear on the commentaries things like Matt Selman remembering a joke he preferred that they changed in the song. Oh, yeah.

It was the final line is like teacher's cat. I did neuter or I tried to neuter. And his line was teacher's pets meaning a child it's it works as two things you could think it actually means trying to neuter a person's pet or it could mean the teacher's pet is in the apple polisher of the group yeah like you're gonna cut off martin prince's nuts exactly i wanted the martin prince castration joke in this episode and instead selman's like he thinks it's kind of weak because it's just like it's just an animal cruelty joke there's no cleverness to it and uh also i have to

if i may pedantically point something out for this one joke to work the simpsons home is like three houses away from the church now for that because it just pans over from their backyard to the church with no cut or anything just like the moving crayon the church is also just floating around town and sometimes it's next to moe's sometimes it's there once we get to the episode where marge looks out the window and there's like three different things at the window we can stop pointing out locations because they admit like things just move around. Where a pokey mom is not too far away. And also speaking of jokes that remind me of things,

Lovejoy trying to play that guitar is basically the same as him trying to play the entertainer in Bart's inner child. It's true. He shouldn't try. I love this joke. I love the whole, well, maybe it's time to fight razzle with dazzle.

That's a great line and takes out a shitty guitar and plays it poorly and then even ned has to admit he's killing that guitar yeah i forgot that we cut back to him like that's it though yeah they've again another thing that could be followed up on that is not but brother faith and this like i could see uh yeah who knows what the original draft was but i could imagine a final act of this that is brother faith versus lovejoy right like that yeah i he could easily follow to that or like uh bart becomes very famous and then lovejoy recruits brother faith to uh work at his church and it's like a back then it would be a faith off you're right wow it actually would

work for the plot too yeah uh well you know hey it's not too late to bring just hire us to write a new episode for you guys with the same first five minutes yeah i'm available let's let's also make it again on this now no it's the three of us now yes let's also make it 2000 again can we do that oh god yes we could bart fixes a hurt hip uh somebody smoking too much and a pain in your glaven and then fixes millhouse's eyes i gotta think it's just for the performance but it does feel weird to me to see sherry and terry say they're going to take him to make out creek yeah i was like i i know often in this show i think they forget they're writing lines for 10 year olds to say to each other but we don't like horny homer or horny sherry and terry we're putting putting the hammer down on those two uh but then we see that uh bart's powers maybe

aren't all they're cracked up to be in this next clip. Thank you, Bart, for fixing my vision. Now I see with total precision. Song's over, Milhouse, but you're welcome. Nice doggy. Milhouse! Bury me at Makeout Creek. Milhouse gets pet cemeteried at the end of this act

i mean and that sound effect hearing it alone that sound effect of him getting hit is really hard yeah he's really hurt far more than a broken arm would do yeah and like the state of millhouse is not a uh a worry in this story just like i think we check in on him once right just at the start of the next act yeah there's a good cast joke there where it's just like i think we check in on him once right just at the start of the next act yeah there's a good cast joke there where it's just like oh i was i was trying to get a scratch and he like he like dug at it with a with a fork that had food on it and now there's ants crawling into his cast uh the ants crawling into his cast again another like a disgusting joke to me and i also do like the gag that he's that millhouse thinks the song

is still going and bart has to tell him it's not but yeah you know millhouse and football games and breaking legs their arms is uh it's been known to happen say but in the previous case it was burns breaking his legs so he'll come back yeah and also apparently make out creeks creek is a real place i guess that that's where millhouse wants to be buried i'm also confused like uh plot wise like bart bart was healing people correctly through the song but he can't heal them now i guess we're like he believe he those people thought they were fixed during the song but they were all not fixed actually either and they're all their problems returned the second the song was over he cured the cramp in frank's glaven the well after the song they kind of just give up on that whole storyline

wholesale yeah pretty much it just feels like the show is telling me oh this works yeah bart just uh suddenly forgot how to do it in the third act uh they they should have gone have at least another scene where like he sees that it didn't help anybody else and that even even ralph's nose is full of coins and milk again i just they really should have leaned into the whole faith as a con type of structure because bart would would take to that that like like like a duck with water, you know? He would definitely get into the faith game to make money, to do unsavory things, and the protection it gives you. I guess it really was they decided they wanted a football story more than a religion story at the end of the day.

After we see that Milhouse is in the hospital and his mother doesn't even know he's there, then football and college comes back in a big way in the hospital and his mother doesn't even know he's there uh then football and college comes back in a big way in the start of act three big game fever is reaching a fevered pitch as the fevered rivalry between springfield u and springfield a and m spreads like wild fever this is writing i'm sorry uncle Kent. I lost my thesaurus. Thesaurus. You'll lose more than this. In preparation for the big game, Springfield Stadium has caught additional seating capacity fever.

Woohoo! Go ask you. A&M is gonna kick your ivy-covered butts. Yeah, well, you went to a cow college. Oh, you're only calling us a cow college because we were founded by a cow. Avengers Silence. It then just silence. It's just, it's such a, like, I appreciate it for how odd it is, but like the weird, like, looping animation of Lenny just blinking after that joke.

Did they think it was a bad joke and they just wanted to linger on it or what? I think so. It's such a weird moment that I kind of appreciate. Yeah. By adding three more seconds to Lenny's silence it made it like twice as funny so i never heard these insults like cow cow college because i didn't go to a college and i my parents uh didn't particularly care about their college so all this college rivalry stuff is meaningless to me though it's it was a huge part of the south where i grew up yeah i have to say

i've worked with these people and people that still maintain college rivalries as adults are freaks definitely i don't even remember i don't think there was any rivalry to my small state university of new york at purchase college we had manhattanville which was nearby our campus but unfortunately there were no hijinks and pranks there was no let's go over there and kill their mascot type of stuff going on i i gotta think this it's really only cared about by the people who go to the schools with big college teams like one of those like few dozen schools with that in the ncaa well i'm from uh ohio and it was like ohio state versus michigan all the time and like if you were in ohio you would just, by law, you had to care about college football. So there'd be like Ohio State stores in the mall, and you would have to be invested in defeating the state of Michigan on the field of football.

And both states are awful. They're the same thing you know i would guess uh we're not going to be seeing that right now in september but normally in september uh in the berkeley area we do see folks who are wearing their berkeley gear ready to go to the games like there's there's folks who even care about it here even though like i don't know berkeley isn't a particularly fit i i know there's the play that happened in a berkeley college once. That's very impressive. What does Berkeley have? Hacky sack,

competitive toking, a Frisbee golf. Well, also like they mentioned, they mentioned like Penn state in here or Ohio and Michigan. Like I, I never heard about those growing up because it was the Southern colleges in my area. It was,

you know, Florida versus FSU or arkansas and alabama or really alabama and auburn that rivalry is so heated that people in surrounding states give a shit about it when you're like come on we live in we live in georgia nobody cares about alabama stop this bad shit is that just because it's like oh i need a spectator sport uh these guys i'll root for these guys uh well i do know in in the south at least there are not every state has a major nfl team definitely alabama or mississippi they don't and so the biggest football game you can see is the college football game and i mean i do think there is a degree of distaste for professional sports as opposed to college sports because uh some fans don't like that the players can get

rich off of it and instead they like a poor college student who doesn't get any money and it's trading concussions yeah uh and i think there's a bit of a uh of a racism angle to it too why some folks in the south like college sports more than uh professional sports but uh you know i again i'm not a sports guy but uh i oh the cow college thing though auburn of the two alabama schools auburn is an example apparently of one of one of those Cal colleges, which, according to Webster's dictionary, is a college that specializes in agriculture or a provincial college or university that lacks culture, sophistication, and tradition. So every other college if you're in the Ivy League. Yeah. I feel like anybody who calls another person's college a Cal college is an ivy league snob i feel like

the only people who make that assertion are ivy league snobs and i do like the joke about fever the over use of one word and uh i actually at the time of this recording i recently record i recently wrote a little essay and when i went back and i'm like boy i used regrettably like three times here oh dear it just had this is why podcasting you know you can't go back and I'm like, boy, I used regrettably like three times here. Oh, dear. It just this is why podcasting, you know, you can't go back and read the words you said. Yeah. You repeat yourself. It's our job to be repetitive.

Hard job. Hard job. It's the hardest job there is. All right. And so then we get in a we've heard this impression before, but this is the most we've ever seen of harry shearer's keith jackson impersonation who uh he called called a lot of college football games in his day uh here i actually have a clip of the real keith jackson so folks can get a sense of the homespun wisdom that they are parodying in this episode so we have an afternoon of what college football is all about

i think the michigan wolverines 10 and 0 ohio state 9 and 1 the buckeyes losing to michigan state 16 to 13 it's the kind of a week that you could really get yourself a set of white knuckles if you were a partisan to either one of these teams because the interest the fever if you will is so fervent it's almost impossible to measure for example the fever if i will i think i will keith i'm going i'm going with that word i also forgot i didn't mean for that to be the perfect setup for you you just mentioned michigan and ohio and it's for the michigan ohio game uh but yeah i think they had a ton of fun writing wacky i think really that's why this took over the third act because they loved writing this keith jackson stuff so much that

like i have uh it's like four minutes of audio is just keith jackson saying silly stuff uh like in this first clip well now we have ourselves a barn burner here today, welcome to the 117th dust-up between the snorting swine of Springfield A&M and the Springfield University Nittany Tide. Oh, doctor, break out the hickory switch. Okay, who needs another lamb rack? Pizza? Ham hock? Tri-tip? Do we have any food that wasn't brutally slaughtered?

Well, I think the ve view might have died of loneliness. Well, hang on to your hoop skirts, folks, because Anton Luchenko is going to be kicking higher than a mule on payday. Oh, Land O'Lakes, take that, ozone layer. What a glorious day to be that man's foot homer already out of control at this football game yes oh yeah uh though how much more out of control than a regular college fan it's a to a certain level it's not parody it's just a football fan acts uh and the the name of the school's team nittany tide is a mash-up of the penn state

nittany nittany nittany lions and alabama's crimson tide so named after the famous novel uh that that is the name of the movie because the gene hackman's character went to alabama and loves them yeah i love it when a movie takes a lot of time for character development like that yeah homer how did he even get that grill onto the stands there that's an impressive that he was able to pull it all the way there he is tailgating in the stadium uh and also the subcruel lisa only is there for mean jokes at her expense and another one here of just shoving meat in her face demanding she eat it homer should really know by now she's a vegetarian there's some uh there's some cruelty to marge too that i really enjoy oh my okay yeah this oh boy man all right this joke this joke of homer yelling at marge i really do not like it

wow he should have his foot insured by lloyds of london oh you just know what everyone should do don't you marge that's uh it's pointed on the commentary they said it's like oh this is the realistically observed behavior of alcoholics and that thumbs up to that if you've been around drunks yes yeah no it's very real and how an alcoholic acts well that's what's a mean about it like and it especially just the uncomfort the discomfort in like marge and lisa's face as they look at homer just like his anger as he nods over he's no anything just like uh and i mean there's darker bits to it too just hearing how scully he says like yeah i observed that from my family i believe he says the whole homer thing at the end you're like he gets drunk and indignant and then he eventually will come to find drives

that float and injures this like this he definitely belongs in jail he dismembers a man he partially dismembers a man or he and it ruins his career like anton should take him to court for uh destroying his livelihood uh they'll also yeah when anton showed up there i was like oh yeah he was in this episode like 14 minutes ago yeah also that lloyds of london joke like marge uh references how you know oh this uh dancer's legs are insured by lloyds of london or whatever those kind of promotional things that that insurance company would do yeah i just it's extra cool it's extra cruel because marge is very like tickled by her own little observation, and Homer's like, shut up. I know. Homer being mean to his wife in realistic ways is always a bummer to me.

At least, I mean, Dan Castaneda does a great job with that drunk acting there. It's really good. Acting. Also, that Lloyds of London thing reminds me how in the 90s, some WWF wrestlers tricked Lloyd's of London into insuring them to, uh, because Lloyd's thought like, oh, well, yeah, it's, it's fake wrestling. It's fine. And multiple wrestlers, when they got the injuries that all happened to professional wrestlers, they made millions. They're like, oh, I actually have health insurance for a change and can get off the road because i injured my back uh and uh yeah so after homer is drunk he's not too drunk to

notice the halftime parade beginning now ladies and gentlemen pour a little cider on those peepers because here comes the halftime. I forgot my float. Quick, pat me down. Okay, Lise, if they don't have to bully, what's your second choice? They'll have to bully. You're the miracle boy with the healing hands. Arr, ninja. Nah, I don't do that anymore. So I guess I'll have to see someone else about my crippling depression. Arr.

Arr. Wow. And I thought he had it all. I had the halftime of my life. And I owe it all to SU. An overdue tribute to halftime itself. I didn't look, but I got some real Hooray for Everything vibes from that crew. Very much so, yeah.

I wrote in mine, I was like, can't that officially be Hooray for Everything? They definitely remind me of the halftime show that came in the Bart vs. Thanksgiving, too. But a celebration, a halftime show celebrating halftime shows is pretty great. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there.

You see our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie.

Don't they hang a cow? Oh, a pig, a pig, because that is the A&M mascot. Sir Oinks-a-lot. He survived, I guess. Well, it's a pig in effigy there. Wicker pig. It's, again, very dark there. Same with the joke about McAllister revealing

that he's hiding crippling depression and Bart's just observed line of like, I thought he had it all. He's a restaurateur. He owns a boat. Two glass eyes and getting around fine uh yeah the also the way barco's like yeah i don't do that anymore that's that's how the episode treated it that is exactly how the episode treated that storyline of well

forget it and the interesting like so obviously hazing terrible terrible but the float right before homers again is like i'm gonna harp on it hanging the mask out of the opposing team i mean it's still violent and i'm surprised that everyone was enjoying it in the state it's well it is a way to build up jokes homers which gets booed should be like more ugly should should be the ugliest float by far, but the other floats aren't normal floats. It's as another, it's a tone mix up there too. There's a lot of it he has to explain, right? Yes.

He tells the crowd that. Homer's float is the joke, but we're doing a joke before the joke. So now it's just a train of jokes and Homer's joke is a little diminished. And yeah, tribute to hazing homer actually did i mean it's uh i guess it's you know boo worthy in that it celebrates a bad thing but homer didn't do a bad job with it he actually it's a very well-designed float with with movement even and i love how he's confused by the booing and he's just he i think he like says like boo

yeah i mean homer excels in cruelty and this is just a tribute to cruelty so that's why he did such a good job right uh and homer is literally drunk driving he is being played as drunker than usual the team gets on the field he does you know if i'm taking apart this as a crime scene, Homer does warn Anton, get out of the way. And the threat to Homer is not like, oh, I'm going to be jailed and taken away from my family because I just hit a man with my car while I was drunk. The threat is Fat Tony appears. Yes, yeah. You know, this comes right after Grift of the Magi, which also has a random Fat Tony appearance. It feels like back to back.

Like, what if we just got Fat Tony to beef this up a little bit? Fat Tony's the real police, you know? That's true. Yeah. The ice pick with the laser is fantastic. With the laser sight, I just really enjoy that. The laser sight on an ice pick. And now Homer goes like, oh, or what?

Oh, right, the ice pick. That's how they got Trotsky. Laser ice pick uh and now homer goes like oh or what no oh right the ice pick that's how they got trotsky laser ice pick homer too must have had a rush of adrenaline after running over anton because he is no longer drunk once it's over uh and yeah you just you feel so bad for anton his leg is pointed the wrong way and hibbert again hibbert appears and it must be that he is an alumni of springfield university but the person who like touches the leg and makes the guy scream like that would work better with dr nick dr nick should be the bad uh guy here i think and dr nick i could see like being able to give health coverage to uh you know a foreigner right without perhaps anton luchenko doesn't have coverage and

he has to go to dr nick you know maybe that's why he can't sue homer in civil court because he's not a legal resident of the u.s and he's he could try to sue homer in his home country but it's international law then anton's life is ruined by homer basically but you're not supposed to care about that you're supposed to care that homer uh might be killed and so uh homer is begging bart to do his thing in this next clip i'm afraid that leg is hanging by a thread jenko must return to game oh you're playing days are over my friend but you can always fall back on your degree in... communications! Oh, dear Lord.

I know. It's funny, Major. Luchenko learned nothing. Nothing! All right, do your thing. Okay, God, if you did give me a power, let it work now. Not just for me, but for my dad. Heal, heal, heal!

Oh, Doctor, with S.U. behind and seconds left, my supply of homespun sayings is lower than a doodle bug in Aunt Tilly's root cellar. So we'll... Oh, jumpin' crawdaddies! Is that Lubechenco coming back on the field bar did it and they're gonna try for a field goal a field goal 19 20 21 that would win the game i do like her counting on her fingers that's so great i mean it's crapping on marge a little for her ignorance but i i like that it it's also feels like a joke about how for viewers they have to make it extra obvious like just in

case you don't know the rules of football they either win or lose based on this kick so they over indulge with marge counting each number each of the three points it would go up. I guess it reinforces Lisa being smart with the eye roll. I do love the old jumping crawdaddies. I love Doodlebug and Aunt Tilly's Root Cellar. That's a good one, too. I went to college shortly after this episode aired for the first time, and I really took that communications major to heart. Oh, really?

I learned to stay away from it. I was a telecommunications major at first. Very different. It's a real major. I majored in English so I don't know if communications had anything. For me it was just I had the AP credits. I was like I'll just continue

in English and two years later I was sad. I dropped out. Well the lie of the 90s was you just need any degree. And that clearly didn't pan out. That was literally what my dad told me. He's like, please, you got to finish school. Just have a piece of paper.

It's so important. That's exactly why I have a cinema studies degree. Hey, you know, you put that into practice every day, though. I do. It's weird. Sometimes life works out a little bit sort of maybe yeah i mean i have a master's degree in critical theory and this is what i'm doing so it applies in some way and i'm still paying for it uh and also bart's healing of him is pretty

much the end of the first karate kid movie too all right he needs to blow on his hands though before he does it and rub them together yes i do love that trick that mr miyagi teaches of just the rubbing of the hands together to suddenly make like the chest hot which also though uh i mean the character if you watch karate kid part two it picks up right after karate kid and his legs fine after that so it really must have worked i love that that that pickup because it's just like no no we're still in the parking lot at the end of the first movie and does it like really pick up from the freeze frame at the end pretty much they go outside with the trophies and uh the bad uh um john crease the bad uh dojo master of Cobra Kai, starts beating on Johnny, and then he tries to beat Miyagi, right?

Is that where we get the honk in the nose? Yeah, that feels like it was the last time they were like, oh, we should have had a physical confrontation with Miyagi and the other teacher. Okay, that's the first thing we do in part two. He beats him up. Yeah, I think there was no time skip because Ralph Macchio was literally in his

late 20s in the 80s and they're like we can't let people think time has passed because he's still an eternal child in like a simpsons episode we forget all that and go to go to japan uh yeah i mean he forgot his girlfriend he's like ah see you later girl i i dated you in the first movie i'm done in love overseas those movies are fun and they have their faults we've covered a few of them on we hate movies by the way and so this episode ends with a big dramatic uh football moment which even uh you know all the other stuff the animators had to do in this episode they also had to do slow motion football action, which is not slow motion animation in general. Not easy to have, you know, 22 players on a field move in slow motion.

And they had to draw that body horror. Oh, God. Yeah. So Anton makes the kick and Bart didn't heal his leg. He just gave him the confidence to injure himself worse. So, yeah, but like, why like why did Bart's powers not work? They were implied to work. In this universe, faith healing works and is real.

Does God hate Russian people? Maybe so. Maybe that the God decided to not help Bart then. Yeah, instead it just tricked Anton into tearing his own leg off, which I believe they say in the commentary it just straightened on into tearing his own leg off which i believe uh they say in the commentary it was george meyer who came up with the idea that the leg flies off which would fit because he's also the guy who pitched that kurt van houten would lose his arm and this i wanted my sandwich sliced yeah the bloody stump on the leg is, I think the extra bit on there. I believe I gasped when I saw this in the year 2000.

I was like, the Simpsons did this. Wow. Though. I do like the gag of the guy picking up the leg and playing air guitar on it. That's pretty good. And then Hidbert being like, although how fun with it tonight,

they'll drink beer out of it, but I'll find it in the morning and sew it back on. See, if Dr. Nick says that line, you're like, oh, this crazy Dr. Nick, but then Hibbert seems to think that is medical science. That really devalues his character's intelligence, I think. Because faith healing is real in this world, he's like, well, with Bart's healing powers,

I can just sew it back on. And he's like, I don't have healing powers. So yeah, I mean't have healing powers. So yeah, I mean, this is real. We should all believe in it. The Simpsons are telling us this. But yes, I have one last clip here of the episode's very abrupt ending. My leg, it broke off.

Check your leg. Yes. Yes. Yes. Poor guy. He lost his leg. No, no, no. The fans will whoop it up with that leg tonight. You know, drink beer out of it and so on, but it'll turn up in the morning. I'll sew it back on.

Will that really work? Well, I assume so. As long as I have Bart's healing powers. Why won't anybody listen to me? I don't have any special powers. I am not a healer. Fine. More money for me. I think even on the commentary, they were surprised, like, that's what we went out on.

That's the last joke yeah uh i you know when you watch it again for commentary even the writers like we could have stayed later and come up with something yeah i mean so like what of lovejoy what of millhouse what of all the people bart supposedly healed like what what is their fate uh no he just we gotta end it bob it's just bam the end yeah no time if there was more time we should have seen like all the people bart healed now are suffering even more like just to show like oh these powers were never real bart could never actually do this and he's only realizing it should all be in the comedy tragedy room or whatever the dramedy room yes yeah you know uh but then they wouldn't

have had time for all the keith jackson And those are pretty funny. You know, uh, that it's shocking how much more time that character gets than brother faith through the name of the episode is named after. Uh, they also point out on the commentary that if you double kicked a ball like that, it would be illegal and would not count. But I guess it's like an air bud rule. You got to do it once and they'll put it in the rule book.

Yeah. The, an air bud rule you gotta do it once and they'll put it in the rule book yeah the the visual he brings up of describing people drinking beer out of a severed leg is so disgusting to me like are they gonna hollow it out are they gonna take the bone

out of it like I think so and you definitely couldn't reattach it then I mean for as much of a shrug as this ending is, I like how Hibbert has experienced this before. He sees like, oh, they'll just do these things, but then they'll show up probably. You know how several legs turn up.

I mean, I feel like this joke is because someone gave the note like Barge gives, like, boy, it's really sad that this character that you're supposed to like is now, you know, one-legged for the rest of his life and they have to go like no no no it's fine it's fine you gotta get that leg in a glass of milk real quick uh i mean also yeah all this stuff about losing limbs and i we've been too recently reminded of the reality of what really happens there if you watch that tiger king documentary oh good god yeah there's there's at least two different people in that who tell you what really happens if you lose a limb and how basically there is no reattaching it and you you

better just give up on it at that point that's a dark way to end this episode sorry uh uh what was his name uh john wayne bobbitt oh well uh he seems to be okay these days he went on a star in franken penis yeah uh that guy that joke also not so the joking about him not so funny now after that documentary about what a monster yeah yeah that's true i didn't see the documentary but i was doing a 90s joke for the nine or a 2000 a 2000 joke for a 2000 episode right here. Jay Leno would have really embraced that joke. Again, Bobbit, funny name. Bobbit's just funny.

If only it was Kato Bobbit. Oh, Kato Bobbit. What if Kato Kaelin got Bobbited? What would that be like? Kato Burpo Bobbit. We'll have to do a jurassic park of all these weird 90s so accidental celebrities bring them all back i mean come on but a fuko oh god yeah he's got to be there but yeah any final thoughts on faith off it's kind of a mess but i i do appreciate some stuff about it i just like eric said um they have too many ideas in this episode

and i feel like my own theory is they thought they wouldn't have time to tell them all clearly they've been proven wrong over the past 22 years but wish they would have developed some of these you know lingering b plots not so much keith jackson parodies yeah i think you know when even in these messy episodes there's still lots of jokes that make me laugh or good lines. I just wish it was more together instead of, you know, it's a bad habit to have on The Simpsons where a character says, hey, do you still do this thing? And a character says, no, that plot's over. I don't do that. Like, it feels like the characters themselves give up on the stories of the episodes they're in

but at least there's some good laughs in this uh messy messy episode yeah i agree i think there are some solid jokes in this episode i left a bunch watching it even though i do have issues with it and all the plots are it's like mr burns with the germs they all they all can't go through the door so all these plots are just like stopped and it's just like this lingering stew of an episode but it did have funny moments so it's funny you mentioned that that's the next episode we're doing is the mansion family yeah wow see look at that i thought i didn't like season 11 and i'm quoting it there's tons of meme moments in season 11 we forgot. Yeah, we just did Stupid Sexy Flanders not too long ago.

That's right. I've been re-watching season 5 late at night lately. I think I'm going to, maybe I'll jump up to 11, you know, try to find these meme moments. So Eric, thank you so much for being on the show. Please talk about We Hate Movies where we can find you online, your Patreon, of course. I don't know if you'll know what you'll be doing in September.

Again, we're in late June right now, but whatever you want to promote, please do it now. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me, by the way. It's always a blast to be on this show. It's a great show, and I love just Simpsons talk in general. We over on We Hate Movies. Yeah, you can follow me personally at E-R-I-C-S-Z-Y-S-Z-K-A. You'll notice it's similarly spelled to moe syslack's name but yeah you could find the podcast that i i host with three other guys at whmpodcast.com

and we just go through usually kind of bad movies sometimes good movies on our patreon feed we have a we love movies feature where we just talk about movies we actually deeply care about and enjoy. Past episodes have included all the Star Wars original trilogy, The Shining, and many more. We have a sideshow recapping television beyond the one I mentioned before on Melro 210. We have The Nexus where we talk about one episode of Star Trek,

the original series, and then one episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation in one 60, 80-minute podcast. We've done over 40 of them now, maybe 50. So definitely check that out. And we've had Glee Blast. We do a lot of stuff at that podcast factory just go to WHMPodcast.com I'm going to stop talking about it well thank you so much

as always Eric for coming on we'd love to have you back I would love to be back and thank you guys so much so thanks so much to Eric Siska for being on the show please check out We Hate Movies we love them so much and you can listen to a bunch of past episodes with all of those guys on Talking Simpsons so check those out if you want to hear more of Eric and the rest of the gang.

But as for us, if you want to support our show and get episodes one week at a time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. If you sign up there, you'll get just that, but also access to everything behind the podcast paywall that includes over 100 bonus episodes, all of our limited miniseries, including our most recent one, which was Talking Mission Hill. We went over the entire Mission Hill series and the not made episodes, the Phantom season two, if you will,

using the Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon treatment. And again, you can only find that behind the paywall at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, along with so many, too many to list, bonus episodes there. But Henry can tell everybody out there what's happening at the $10 level, and that includes one mega long podcast once a month that is just for patrons of that level or higher. That's right.

Bob is talking about the What a Cartoon movie. Me and Bob talk about a different animated feature film once a month in the same in-depth, analytical, and historically minded way that we do with what a cartoon and talking simpsons we have done episodes that often go over four hours long recent ones include the black cauldron and and space jam two animated classics and we have done a huge back catalog you'll get access to all of that if you are a ten dollar and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is called retronauts that's a classic gaming

podcast about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two exclusive episodes every month again that is patreon.com slash retronauts henry how about you please follow me henry gilbert on twitter at my account h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g you'll stay informed in my life if you follow that as well you should follow the official Twitter account of this podcast, at TalkSimpsonsPod. If you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod, you'll know whenever new episodes of this podcast go live,

whenever the ones for What a Cartoon go live, all of our exclusives on Patreon, and tons of other news. You will stay informed if you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We will see you next time for The Mansion Family, and we'll see you then. Bury me at Makeout Creek