Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Grift of the Magi With Luke Savage

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

It's time for the final Xmas of the '90s, so we welcome back Luke Savage, writer for Jacobin and the cohost of the podcast Michael And Us! The school is closed thanks to Bart's broken butt, and that somehow leads to a parody of Furby almost destroying the holidays! Listen along for some of the show's weirdest celebrity appearances and one of its darkest jokes ever! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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

exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert and I brought my busy box. I'm calling daddy. And who do we have on the line? It's Luke Savage and now a word from your new god, me. Today's episode is Grift of the Magi. Funzo! Funzo! Funzo! Look Smithers, Funzo is coming. Today's episode aired on December 19th, 1999 and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, boy, Bobby.

It's the end of 1999 as Man on the Moon and a bunch of other movies are released in theaters. The hottest toy of this holiday season is basically anything related to pokemon and this episode almost to the day i believe off by one day marked the 10th anniversary of the airing of the simpsons christmas special in 1989 so it's fitting that there is a kind of christmas episode yeah it's like half a christmas one act is Christmas. That's all you get. That Man on the Moon movie, I liked it at the time because I was told by many smart people how great Andy Kaufman is. And I do think he's great, but now I can't disconnect that movie from watching the Jim Carrey documentary about him being a dick. It's a bad thing. I haven't seen that documentary, but I did see the trailer for it. And there was a part that really made me laugh where Jim Carrey is being interviewed and he's just really earnestly saying like, you know, at a certain point, I just realized that I had this, you know, this I was special. I had this talent.

And then it cuts to him just going like, you know, just like making a ridiculous Jim Carrey noise. Yeah, no, Bob has talked about, you have very good insights in how he feels like he's a first philosophy class student who's just like, whoa, my, my. Yeah, I mean, Luke, have you seen his political cartoons online? Oh yeah, well, I think there was a while. I think my co-host Will Sloan was an aficionado of those for a while.

And yeah, I remember them being, should we say a little reductive in there. But yeah, the Man on the Moon movie is like, it's a good biopic. Like it's made to win an Oscar and I think Carrie was probably pissed he didn't win. And it won nothing. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I had a weird experience with that movie because I was a huge, my guys were like jim carey and adam sandler i i've still never seen punch drunk love so this didn't happen to me with adam sandler but with jim carey you know height of my jim carey phase you know i think i'm 10 and when that movie comes out and this also happened with the truman show like i watch these movies expecting like liar liar or ace ventura Ventura. And instead it's like, oh man, this is like, this is like a serious movie. Like there's no, like this is for, this is for adults.

I don't like this. And then, and then, you know, at the end of that movie, it's just like really sad. So that was the first time I ever felt that Jim Carrey let me down, like by not, you know, talking out of his ass or whatever, whatever I was used to him doing. You didn't appreciate the Tony Clifton character? Yeah. I don't remember that one. It's been 21 years since I've seen it.

Basically, the character that Andy Kaufman played. But pretended he wasn't. And sometimes Bob Zmuda played him. Paul Giamatti's really good in that movie the the other weird thing about a man on a moon movie well that it has to it sometimes wants to play with the idea of what a biopic is but

then the other times are like no we need to have a scene where Danny DeVito says to him like you you just might be crazy but you also might be a genius yeah I feel like it's not a movie about a musician, but I think Walk Hard really ruined every biopic.

It's just like, well, yeah, it's just like, wow, this very insignificant thing is actually significant to your life and what I don't know about you yet. But R.E.M. did a good new song for the movie, though. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, one of their best. And yeah, the toy, I was hoping for a more interesting toy

because this episode is about the toys of Christmas, but it was just anything Pokemon. Like, Pokemon ruled America in 1999. Yeah, I think so. Like, 98 was the first Pokemon Christmas. By 99, they had even more merch. So, 96, it was Tukumiyomo. 98 was Fur furbies yeah so this is all

based on the previous christmas's uh phenomenon probably written like exactly right after that in the early months of uh 99 yeah but we into 99 like that was when the anime for pokemon it started to get huge really big the toys were big. The movie came out in theaters. And on top of that, like the Game Boy, they were selling the Pokemon Yellow game as well. Like that was our big one while Japan got Gold and Silver, the actual sequel. And so I was I was all over Pokemon. It completely took over my life. And actually, I mean, it might have been 1999 when, like, my Pokemon obsession started. Maybe 1998. But sometime after I'd gotten really into Pokemon, I was in the UK.

And I guess the Pokemon contagion had yet to spread to the UK. Because nobody knew what Pokemon was. Like, I remember going into toy stores and asking. Like, I remember remember like these these confused like uh clerks would be like uh okay yes we have a few pieces and then you'd go over it and it would be like they wouldn't have anything and they'd be like uh cookie monster and you'd be like no pokemon and they just have no idea what they they're like they hear like the mon and panic and take you to cookie monster but that that was the best you could do.

I mean, for some reason, maybe I saw a post about Pokemon earlier today, but I was just thinking earlier today, God, I wish I could have all the money I spent on Pokemon back. I would be such a rich man. All those first edition packs that I got trying to get the holographic first edition Charizard. Yeah, I was thinking of that.

Getting Pokemon Blue and then also buying Pokemon Red which was the exact same game with three different Pokemon so that you could get the Electabuzz and the Scyther along with whatever the Pokemon Blue exclusive ones were.

Just a trove of... Yeah, well, fuck the Simpsons. Let's just talk about Pokemon for now I have a different podcast for that you know that disconnect for British people on Pokemon I have felt that when I worked at a game website covering well lots of

different games when we come to Pokemon content we were a you know transatlantic publishing place where we had the San Francisco branch and the Both branch in the pokemon content we were a you know transatlantic publishing place where we had the san francisco branch and the both the branch in in in the uk and the both guys they had no clue like when we would pitch like our seventh pokemon article because they all did great the the brits were like what the what are you talking about this isn't about cricket. Well, I remember going back to the UK the following year and my cousins who had not been into Pokemon the previous year,

they had been into it, but it had come and gone. But I was still really into it. So like a swarm of locusts, Pokemon had descended on the UK between my two visits and had already like gone on to somewhere else. I don't know. Maybe it was like it was bigger in North America. Like I also remember spending inordinate amounts of pocket money, like all the pocket money I had, like I would save up for weeks to get like one VHS tape, which might have like three

episodes if you were lucky. Yeah. Then I would just watch like the same three episodes just like a hundred times i think the year 2000 is when the queen knighted pikachu it's gonna be sir pikachu sir pikachu you got you have to be the cool canadian cousin who comes in and just like you guys haven't heard of it yet but pokemon it's gonna be big uh well this is a fun way to start an episode all about remembering toys. But yeah, I guess let's officially welcome on Luke.

Luke Savage, welcome back. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Of the great Michael and Us podcast. And I think our most recent interaction was on an episode of your podcast where we talked about the Simpsons movie. That's right. That was a lot of fun. I would love to have you guys back i am also looking very uh i'm looking forward very much to you know your inevitably like five hour long treatment of that movie when whenever

you get to it in the chronology so it's a few years away yeah we have to prepare ourselves but it will be uh i don't know uh we're gonna break some file limit sizes on patreon with that one it'll be worth the wait we're gonna you know i think now we need to plan for five years in advance a five-year-long battle with patreon just to get them to allow you to upload a two-gigabyte sound file to Patreon. Now there's 200 megabyte limit here. And yeah, Luke, we also, yeah, we just had on recently your co-host, Will Sloan, for an episode, too. And we, you know, at the time of this recording, I just listened to your, Michael and us about The Office, which was really great.

Like it was- Oh, thanks. That one was fun. Especially, you know, reflecting on what The Office means as offices might go away forever. It's a really interesting point of view on it. Oh, it was a lot of fun to revisit that. And yeah, comparing the U.S. office

to the British office, which I guess is like a very obvious thing that people have done before, must have done. It was nevertheless pretty fruitful. And yeah, thinking about like the, you know, the show presents offices is such a terrible place. But, you know, as I recently learned doing some some commentary and kind of investigative reporting for Jacobin offices, as we know, that might kind of go under and that might not actually be might not actually be such a good thing. I guess we'll know soon enough. And also, this is a pretty political episode, I think, or at least about capitalism and also privatization of schools this one it was around this time a lot of animated shows and i have to assume live action shows were dealing with the corporatization of schools like especially in terms of like you know schools getting free

soda machines as long as they sell the right kinds of soda channel one news being put into homerooms and that was a program in which the school would get TVs, of course, but then you would have to broadcast this program every day for the kids to watch. Full of ads. With commercials. That was the important part on Channel 1 News that you'd get, which me and you watched a lot of in our high school and middle school days. Just like this is technically two minutes of news and then five minutes of Eminem and Sprite commercials.

And ads for Mars Attacks. I remember that one in my home room one i didn't see that one i remember thinking the uh soda machines and the like snack machines in my high school were like really really cool and there was something about them that felt i don't know almost kind of taboo because my elementary school which was a rural one you know in the 90s uh hadn't hadn't had anything like that and anytime you had like like we had like chip day and like i don't know i i think a couple times a week you get chocolate milk and things like that but that was like special and you had to like you know you had to like fill out a form and and like put a loonie in an envelope or whatever to get that

and it felt very like exotic, like this thing that is clearly not of the school, this bag of Lay's chips and it's like chocolate milk or whatever. But then I went to high school in like kind of a, I don't know, a middle-sized town and the high school actually had, you know, like the, you know, probably through some grotesque privatization scheme, like it had, you could get poutine for lunch in the cafeteria you could get you get all the junk food you wanted um i used to uh you know i used to get like a bag of chips and a bag of sour patch kids pretty much every day after school i was waiting for the school bus to come pick me up and i remember the cafeteria almost felt like this place apart from the rest of the school because of those machines it was like this is where i can exercise

like personal autonomy as a consumer of sugary snacks, you know? Yeah, when I was in high school, I was very much just like full of Coke machines and I should have been monitored. No one should have let this happen, but my meal for many a lunch was buying a can of Coke

and eating a hostess fruit pie, about 3000 grams of sugar. And for me, it was the Joe Louis. That thing was deadly. Joe Louis? What is that? Yeah, we don't know this. Oh, do you guys not have that?

Is that some exotic Canadian treat? I think so. When I talk to you guys in a year, the Joe Louis fad will have come and gone. And I'll still be in the thick of it. It's like a little chocolate sort of patty with like a creamy filling. I mean, mean delicious but delicious but deadly after school snacks being another thing like pokemon that like as an adult i think you know what if i could have all that money back well okay i had not heard in my experience with

in my experience with canadian sweets like coffee crisp and uh smarties i had not heard of uh i had not heard of the joe louis yeah i think as i recall when i watched this when it was new i remember liking it i think i might have felt a little like teenage another christmas episode kind of feel but i i think it's you know now i watch i think it's a it's a good episode for its time that is a nice encapsulation of the toy crazes of the late late 90s in particular a lot of very very funny lines that i completely forgot about in this episode too or jokes i remembered independent of this episode as well that was that was kind of what it was like for me i i probably haven't seen this one in i mean

conservatively 15 years but i remembered certain like disparate parts of it like like abstract from the episode itself which i enjoyed watching but as like taken like holistically i found it kind of disjointed and i found the pacing also very strange which like maybe shouldn't be surprising for a season 11 episodes and it felt kind of uh like more absurdist than an episode from season six or seven say oh yeah i was saying as a story it does not hold together very well in fact i think they gloss over that with the narration at the end it's like oh yeah you forgot about the school needing money where here's where it came from well that that that reminded me of was was family guy where family guy at a certain point like initially family guy

i mean i'm sure you guys know this but you know for the for the listeners um you know family guy initially kind of had a a structure not unlike the episodes had structure it was like a sitcom kind of you know type structure where there was like a beginning middle and end and at a certain point that gave way and was just like now we're doing like an ironic deconstruction of like this format where, you know, 10 minutes in the episode will just completely turn. And by the end, you can't remember how it begun,

but like family guy leans really heavily into the irony of that. Like it's very self-aware. And this episode at that scene at the end, I know it's jumping the gun a bit, but where they're just like, they're all just sitting around the table, like having Christmas dinner. The episode is almost like winking at you as it like ties everything up in this little bow just in the last like 15 or 20 seconds they have before the credits roll well yeah the so many

times the show i just gets to the end they're like oh we gotta wrap this up but this this one though uh at least they like tried to turn it into a cute ending and other ones i mean as the time goes on in the show they kind of just like the shrugs get more aggressive it's less spiteful than let's say mo uh but although i do i do enjoy and they were rescued by let's say mo i think it's a fun because who cares how they're rescued honestly uh but we'll also stalking the disjointedness this episode begins with heat wave jokes, which is like your Christmas episode begins with a warning to stay indoors because it's hot. That's unseasonably warm winter for the Simpsons once again.

Just like in I Love Lisa. Though in this time they explain it because it's the ozone hole that was over Brazil is now wintering in Springfield. The sunbeam chasing after Milhouse, trying to kill him. I was like, well, this is a wacky beginning to this episode. It's very anime. I think so. We're recording this in June, and I have heard that all of this inactivity from humans is

actually healing the ozone layer and healing. Nature is healing, as the meme goes. Yeah, though I've seen some folks bring up that like that. That way of talking almost sounds like eco-fascist in a way just like hey i'm just observing a fact yeah yeah i'm calling you a fascist now bob but no well also this joke here about robin williams the hairiness of robin williams that i this is my new thing of saying something is rug ratzy is saying something is criticky but this joke feels very criticky to talk about how hairy the late robin williams was was he like getting hairier over time because i think i was with goodwill hunting we were first noticing boy

he's a hairy guy i mean when did jumanji come out because when he emerges from the game as like the adult who you know is like the character as an adult is played by robin what's the name of that character alan is played by robin williams right he's been in the jungle and he's like he's gone feral and he's like all hairy i'm sure when i saw that i thought it was prosthetics like oh he's a gorilla man some sort of fantastical creature he can grow so much hair well yeah the the realization was like he's been bearded and stuff before but it's when you just look beneath his neckline or i mean also if you if you saw the you know the film fisher king like he does a full frontal nude scene in that and he's he is quite hairy in that as well so i have the most popular clip on mr

skin.com like robin williams full frontal nudity from Fisher King. That's got to be on Mrs. Skin. That's, you know, I really do love that movie. That's a really good movie. It's unsung, I think. I wish Terry Gilliam, you know, was better. Why must they all disappoint me by being older and saying things? So after all these warnings and Milhouse coming into the house, there's also a weird joke that feels like it's a lost joke about i feel like he should be saying something funnier when

he's talking about like the sun spot in his vision like millis should be saying something i've been like i think i'm okay that's uh that's a disturbing shot though just like his his charred corny as we're staring through yeah then it comes to the kids being bored. And it really hit me in this bit here of like, Scully years did a lot of board game jokes. Yeah. I think it's just the first time I laughed watching the episode was at the, at the, where she takes out the game of county seats.

And then the, like the zoning dial is like broken. Oh yeah. Oh, the zoning dial has been warped. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Just like all of the very, very boring board games you either got as gifts or you know your mom bought for you because they were on sale that are just like not no fun at all yeah like uh there's the scene with the with the egg magic kit in the super bowl episode it's like let's go to the closet and see what's in there for fun and when i was watching this i was like i don't think i don't think kids can get bored anymore i think it seems impossible now right yeah well they also wouldn't have to turn to the closet full of physical games either but yeah i i was remembering at least the two other times they did this joke set up in the scully years in the fair a carnival

episode yeah like we can play this hippo in the house they're like oh we lost the hippo and then yeah and the super bowl won the egg magic and But in this case, county seat seems to be about gerrymandering stuff. So, you know, I think it was the Republican Party that warped the zoning. Oh, wow. Can you say that? That's my pitch for Bill Maher. He needs to take that joke. It's not racist enough for him.

You're right. Yeah. The Mexicans and the're no muslims i gotta mock muslims uh that guy sucks okay but then then they get silly string out bart uses some silly string and somehow doesn't blind lisa by turning her into millhouse that's when she just leaves and and then lisa's cat uh lisa's classic catchphrase i'll'll be in my room. You're right. Just Lisa being the no fun character. That's her classic catchphrase. That was her catchphrase in Bark It's Famous where everyone's doing their catchphrases all around the living room.

And she says, if anyone needs me, I'll be in my room. And so with them free of Lisa trying to do anything, it's time for the boys to have some non-gay fun. There's gotta be something fun in my parents' closet. Wanna dress up like ladies? Uh, wouldn't that make us kinda fruity? What's the matter? Scared you might like it? I'll show you who's scared.

Oh, wow. This really hides my thighs. Sisters Oh, wow. This really hides my thighs. Sisters are doing it for themselves. Hey, where's the door lock? Oh, no. It's dad. What's going on? And I want a non-gay explanation. We're drunk. Really drunk really drunk oh thank god

so yeah i guess in 99 you're supposed to laugh at millhouse right but now it's just like well yeah good for millhouse not you know living under the uh the reign of gender norms yeah he's progressive try on some wigs if you want millhouse that's the though mill has a challenge of like scared you might like it and then bart's like fine i'll prove to you i'm not scared i'll put on a dress uh this feels like more of a callback to early series bart where they they would do jokes about bart knowing how to walk in high heels and all these like they they got a lot more jokes out of effeminate things being done by bart romancing the warden oh yes down i go yeah the this bart here uh who's i'm also glad bart only says fruity that that's all

he has to say though marge's green dress is not usually drawn to have like uh the the straps chest area oh yeah as well being visible like that it's more like just a tube dress that she wears used to be a halloween costume the thing that the thing that was funniest about this part for me was uh was that homer is relieved when by their excuse that it's like oh don't worry we're just drinking which is like 100 there's like there's that's a type of dad to be like oh thank god i am totally fine with 10 year olds-olds drinking, but 10-year-olds putting on wigs and dresses, that, no, no, no. Who owns all those wigs?

Are those Marge's wigs? Homer's wigs? When has Marge ever worn a wig? She just has hair that's always exactly the same. They gotta be Homer's wigs then, I guess. There's been a lot of wig humor in The Simpsons, though. That's true, yeah. Actually, they all

wear wigs after they go to the wig sphere maybe it was the uh free wig with purchase of large wig homer had those coupons homer's been shopping around with those wig coupons for a while i do think for a lot of uh gay adults there you do have these memories of as a kid you did something that you thought didn't seem gay and then you look at a picture of yourself like, a parent did not know I was gay when I did this thing. He's artistic. He's an artsy kid. Yeah, Homer is ready to beat them over looking gay in that way.

The Simpsons will be right back we hope this podcast is more funzo than it's all of the fun for you and a big thank you to our real great guest luke savage coming back our good good buddy from the Michael and Us podcast and writer for Jackabit and website. Please check out all of his cool stuff. Me and Bob just did a really fun episode of Michael and Us talking about video games. And you know, this podcast, Talking Simpsons, it's only possible thanks to the support of listeners like you at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. $5 a month, folks. Keep me and Bob doing this full time and get so much more than just our thanks for signing

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It's also pretty painful how Bart falls on that bowling ball there and it breaks his back like it's a good like celebration this sound really bugs me also very season one like this is the season they remember homer has a bowling ball and he has that he likes to bowl home and so after that it cuts to the general hospital and we see a shocking amount of Bart's butt. Yeah, just a dead on shot of it later when they open the trap door. Right? Yeah. It's you're not used to seeing his butt all this much.

Well, as we all know, after the nipple incident with Janet Jackson, Fox says you can't draw any butts on their shows anymore. 16 years ago we we lost butts cartoon butts forever at least on broadcast tv how can that still be the rule and then meanwhile this scene is on just disney plus you know destroying children everywhere with all of bart's butt it was the rule uh but then like in the afternoon in syndication you'd see like natural born kissers with bart uh sorry margin and Homer naked constantly and their butt cracks all over the screen. And also a very crazy joke of electrocuting Bart's butt to recharge the defibrillators. That's the kind of thing that like, I remember that joke, but I don't

remember it having been part of this episode. Like I just remembered it in isolation. And it's weird because it doesn't, it's not a joke that's connected to anything in the episode. It's just sort of happens. Same with like Bart having to wear the like butt prosthesis. Like, does that get any more mileage for the rest of the episode? I don't think so, right? No, after the scene with the wheelchair, it's never seen again. Like Bart's butt has very little to do with Christmas in this episode. He has a very resilient butt he heals very quickly yeah so i found out in real life if you break your coccyx you do not get a cast on it it's just you got to be careful sitting down for a while and hope it heals on its own and you're just going to be in a lot of pain for a while so mario's teaching us all the wrong lessons well he's just like bart

later he has really toughened up his butt bone mario has and also yeah that fan so they call it a fanny cast which i wonder if they censored that for the british airing of it i don't know i should look that up but uh british viewers who saw this like did they change it to bum cast what uh luke in toronto what is is Fanny the American version or is it the British version? That would very much be the British version. Nobody says Fanny in Canada. In fact, I'm not even convinced how many British people actually say that. I just want to know if they have to censor the theme to the nanny because she was out on her fanny.

That's a very different picture if you're in the UK. But then how do you rhyme it with nanny then? Rather, actually, fanny refers to a different body part part yeah right in british vernacular though i also had to well yeah i'm speaking of those same british people i worked with we would have arguments about british versus american vernacular when we're like well 75 of our readers are from america so when you use the term pants to mean underwear it confuses people then they'd be like well yeah well you guys don't know what a fanny pack is like i gotta edit that out or like

pants meaning like ridiculous right yes this is pants mate not every review can start with core blimey i'm sorry gotta draw the line here but also i think that viewing window i think you just need that to be able to poop, right? It's worth a pooping window, you're right. Not to be too crass here. I also think all those doctors looking at Bart's butt, they need to be investigated. Those people are a little suspect. Give this kid some privacy.

So yes, then they head over to the school and we find out that the school is incredibly unprepared for a boy in a wheelchair, which that feels like a good joke about the history of the series. When they designed Springfield Elementary, they just designed what looked like a school to them. They didn't think about all of the disability laws that a school has to respect with all the ramps it must build. I was still in high school in this area. It made me think like, oh, yeah, I've never seen a disabled with all the uh the ramps it must build i was still in high school in this area it made me think like oh yeah i've never seen a disabled student there are no ramps there's a second floor you can only get there with stairs i mean yeah yeah i just it's just if you're disabled don't go here this this scene it was it like there's a couple different

interpretations of it because it was unclear to me if this like in one reading of it it's like it's sort of like a pro-equity gag where it's like you know like you know public schools should be set up so they're accessible then the other hand like it almost also seems to be a commentary or like it could be a commentary on like government over regulation or something like that because when uh when they do make the school accessible uh skinner says something to the effect of like, we're like, we're almost in accordance with, you know, the Disability Act of 1975 or something. Then you see the school and it's just like there's like ramps just like out every window and just like ever looks like a theme park. It does seem like a joke about being too accommodating for a small percentage of people.

Like, I mean, every now and then a libertarian street comes out of the simpsons i also thought my perspective was that like uh they they were forced to get ramps but they have no money so they have to rely on mafia labor well that's the thing that made me laugh most in the scene was the idea that like like when fat tony hears the word astronomical and comes comes out from behind a tree i love the idea of like organized crime has got into like the equity business like that's their new hustle by the way joe montana one of four guest stars in this star-studded episode so many people i completely i always forget fat tony is in this episode bart stop fooling around principal skinner i thought public schools were required to have access ramps for the disabled.

Technically, yes, but the building costs would be astronomical. Did I hear the word astronomical? If so, my construction outfit, Valdazo Brothers Olive Oil, is poised to help. No, no, no, no. We're not building anything. How can you say that when construction has already begun? How did those trucks get here so fast? In order to avoid certain legal complications, the trucks are always rolling. Now for the groundbreaking ceremony.

Good Lord, do we really need all those ramps? Who's to say? Does a peacock need all those fetters? Look, you're getting a little philosophical for me. I suppose so. They say it happens in the autumn years. It'll be that as it may. Get your hand off my car. That's a great, I love that exchange of just saying,

well, you're getting a little philosophical for me, which is like that's what gangsters in movies do, of just saying those things. But in this case, he reacts to it like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry. They say it happens when you get older uh and valdez oh breath brothers olive oil is a great name i like that it's better than the legitimate businessman social club right yeah yeah nice i mean valdez oh that's a great just like fake italian air could be real italian name but a good uh unlikely italian name uh though you know watching this

stuff about all the disability things it reminds me of a classic michael and us where you guys cover the penn and teller show bullshit and they have a whole episode about how they feel that there's too much overreach and too many rules against uh for disabled people yeah i those those all blend together i don't even remember that that specific one but uh yeah that definitely sounds like uh something they would uh something they would do right up right up there with their like walmart is actually a force for good episode uh i remember in that one yeah they they talked to a woman who like has a very disabled daughter and she's like yeah i need handicap parking and they're like well i guess we agree with her but doesn't it inconvenience most other people we talked to this guy's like oh

that's fair that's fair uh but uh yeah so the construction begins the springfield elementary school is completely changed by having just ramps all over the place and then there's a time cut which is weird though because bart seemingly they said they should just have the previous scene start in uh the summer but kent brockman says this ozone hole is wintering in springfield now okay and i think like to let you know it's a holiday episode uh in establishing shots they draw the trees without leaves on them oh the trees are bare i think on the commentary matt sellman points that out okay just because it's such a cheat that they get to christmas from here uh but yes the ramps are revealed but it doesn't pay off to inaugurate our ramp system

here's the first of what i hope will be many disabled students bart simpson what the where's your wheelchair? Don't need it anymore. Doctor says my butt bone's stronger than ever. Ta-da! Well, at least we're prepared for the new millennium. My God, the whole thing's made of breadsticks! And paint and shellac. It's all itemized in this bill.

$200,000. Are you mad? I don't get mad. I get stabby. The good news is we need no longer fear vicious mob reprisals. But due to lack of funds springfield elementary is closed forever oh you're cheering now but someday i'm just gonna stop trying between this and i think the rat milk and the and the boking accidents he's had a lot of run-ins with fat tony was the rat milk a spring and the boking accidents he's had a lot of run-ins with fat Tony

was the rat milk a Springfield Elementary thing or no yeah yeah they were selling it in spring yeah you know he has more interactions with fat Tony I thought and everybody thinks that they murdered him on Bart's order as well yeah the murderer so that's the first fat Tony episode is incredibly is closely tied to Principal Skinner there's so many great lines in there him hoping that there's many more disabled students at the school uh the way the way homer cheers on part with like and and also bart's pride in his strong butt and the the awkward clapping of the other uh adults they're like yay i guess though when he says butt bone i wish it was a real twister mouth he doesn't do it oh i noticed that too it's like if they had permission it would be a twister mouth right but uh yeah i'm sorry yeah instead his head just goes left right

just like fast but it should it should be a twister they've been out they were outlawed five years ago wes archer was the last champion of the twister mouth and he's a king of the hill so bart can't do it but in spirit it is a twister mouth one because i mean it's perfect it's a perfect way nancy cartwright says it for a twister mouth to like butt bone like it's just a fun word butt bone and also funny visual of tony just driving off with a sack full of money this of money his classic sack full of money he loves to work with uh and uh yeah also this aired two weeks before the new millennium began so when skinner says we're ready for the new millennium it's the one probably the last time you can say that in the show also if you want to see a weird looking bart and the kids cheering look at bart he Bart. He looks pretty weird in that moment.

Will do. But yes, they eventually get Skinner to give up on life. And then a very short act one. It's just over in under five minutes. And you think it's going to be about Skinner. Oh, Skinner is ruined now. Now it's time for his story. He's pretty lost in all of this.

But Skinner here, like this short act one i wonder if fox had just demanding it back then because like a few episodes ago we're like oh the commercial at five minutes in that's pretty soon if uh if that was just how fox was deciding to program their commercials at the time i don't know and uh we come back from the commercial break the pta is meeting at skinner's house and you know i'm wondering if they're so heard up for money how do they afford those amazing refreshments i think that's the joke like uh they've got like professional like carvers there right they have a like a just roasted fresh turkey and an omelet bar like it's the it's another of those moments it feels very hollywood to me too it just feels like a a

hollywood meeting they're having a good oblique reading of that is that uh the tax rate is simply too low and that's why the school can't uh can't afford to pay for things yeah i mean they're spending a lot of money on wiggum and his uh dangerous uh police force so yeah they're running their budgets are running out all the parents get together and they decide to come up with an idea. As for the school, we are exploring various options to raise the $200,000 we need. I've got a motorhome I never used. Maybe we should raffle it off. Maybe you should shut up.

Well, okay. We can try selling liquor. I'm doing great. Please, sir, put some shoes on. What, you don't like my bags? People, these are all good ideas. No, they're not. They're terrible, terrible ideas. You're right.

It's hopeless. No one has that kind of money. What about Mr. Burns? Maybe he'll help us out. Forget it. He releases the hounds and every charity that comes to his door. Feed the children, save the whales, even release the hounds. Well, maybe we can pry open his wallet with a slick professional pitch a school play like there's so many surprising

things in this episode like i forgot there's like a little burn set piece in here yeah it takes a giant turn here uh to having a like this is one of these moments where it feels like oh an SNL sketch was written within this episode yeah I think Scully is not as into the very Harvard-y Byrne stuff so we don't see Byrne's as often in his stuff in his seasons rather yeah these are light Byrne's years that are usually more about him just being like super rich or out of touch, like not referencing things from like 1908 that only an Ivy League educated man would know of. It's too bad. That's my favorite Burns.

Yeah, he's more just a wacky old man in this appearance. Just like deranged and not in touch with reality. Well, also this PTA meeting, like I love Homer shutting down Ned, that Ned just like is very realistically defeated yeah and uh and he does have that rv he never uses anymore you know and he's he's trying to be nice and give away his rv uh but and then homer i mean i've also i've been homer at video game events in uh in my old days of like yeah you know i'm uh you got a refreshment table

i'm gonna go go straight there. When you're not paid enough to feed yourself, you have to subsist on those PR events. If they've got a second set of sandwiches that nobody's going to take home, I need dinner tonight, so may as well save a couple bucks. Also, I had an extra question about Moe.

Moe's Wonder Bread bag shoes are great anyway, but he is not a parent or a teacher and should not be there. That's a good question. He's just a fan of education. Sure. I think he's kind of. He's there to support the kids. He's a fan of education and just kids in general.

I think he's got a grift going where he's like, I'll help you. You could sell liquor through me. Oh, okay. And I'll skim a little off the top. I love, Skinner is about to say one of the type of lines he said a million times like those are all great ideas but we need to do something else but he just gets interrupted by march just fully shutting him down just like no they're terrible ideas uh it's also it feels like the first time in a long time they do a reference to releasing

the hounds too in the uh the trillion dollar bill one burns hits a button and tells homer like you should be being torn apart by dogs right now i don't know what to tell you yeah yet but that i think that was the last release the hound jokes but they haven't said the phrase release the hounds in a long time on the show he does get a trap door again too yeah this uh this is a very much an early show Burns at least in his like antics maybe not in his use of old-timey phrasing and also there's some real clearly ADR and Skinner's like slick professional pitch like the mouth movements are all off on it but yeah so they we head to Burns's home and we go to the stage where Burns had the tryouts for his heirs it's

it's the same setup. He's got this little auditorium. I guess that's where Death of a Salesman takes place. Yes, you're right. Close this play. I told you to close it, I say. So this I really liked because, I mean, I feel like a somewhat common experience a lot of us have is, that's kind of similar to this, is remembering our parents having to do really degrading like fundraising things like either for for our school or like extracurricular things uh or like and sometimes you know us kids having to participate

in them like i remember like i used to do uh uh like at age like 10 or 11 i was actually a competitive gymnast insofar as you can be one at that age. And, uh, like the gym had this thing where, uh, my parents had to, I think it was monthly go to these like bingo nights and like help run the

bingo nights. And this was like a way to generate profit, like for the, for the gym. And I've heard a lot of American public schools have like similar things where like, Oh yeah. We're like, we're like they don't they're they're so underfunded that like they have to figure out how to like how can we monetize the kids or how can we monetize the parents like raise extra funds anyway like any way we can yeah exactly i mean i went to uh private school for

most of my schooling and even then we were doing fundraisers like you're charging my parents tuition and i have to sell candy bars on top of that too it's like you could win a bike if you sell a million and it was a real like the rich get richer lesson for me because it's like i could sell candy bars door-to-door but the people whose parents are small business tyrants can just force all of their employees to buy them and they would always win the most like that kid's dad owns a dealership and he gets the n64 he has all the n64s he needs exactly he's gonna get a free car too i yeah i had to sell band candy in my uh public schooling it's and i think back to my parents like helping me well my mom helping me

sell band candy to her co-workers at school and i just think to myself like why like i if i was in the adult's position i'd be like why i pay freaking taxes like why isn't that buying the band of stuff you also have to have a small part-time job to help the school yeah as a candy salesman again it's uh i mean people are talking more and more about that you're hearing it all the time folks the the way but yeah like these schools in america so underfunded as like cops have every possible way to murder you at any turn but at least they have their tanks but yeah they and so in they also have to do fundraisers for for rich people i think on the commentary now there's a later one where they talk about how like these kind of fundraiser things

are how they feel as hollywood writers too because they go to things that they think are just like a school function for their kids school and they're like well since you're all millionaire writers give us some money for the school and what famous friends do you know and so uh yes the well here why don't we hear the play which is a parody uh well at least the title is a parody of The Iceman Cometh. And freeze. Now, who in Springfield will eat the poisoned broth? Oh, it could be anyone, even Mr. Burns. This play really speaks to me.

Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. I can't take Mr. Burns to the hospital because I'm too dumb to read a map. Oh, why did my school have to close? Hello, I'm Dr. Stupid. I'm going to take out your liver bones. Oops, you're dead. I never liked that Dr. Stupid. Mr. Burns, I'll be honest.

We had a hidden agenda tonight no the holiday season these children need a school charity yes i'd be more than happy oh it's doing that thing again i love the foley of them landing on top of each other it sounds like cold cuts yeah yeah it's like dropping cold cuts from the sky a lot of them landing on top of each other. It sounds like cold cuts. Yeah, yeah. It's like dropping cold cuts from the sky. It's a lot of meat just on top of each other. Yeah, that is a ridiculous joke that I love, that it's apparently just a malfunction like a TV going out of tune. It's just like, it's doing it again.

The thing that I laughed so hard at, like, Mr. Burns, when they're like, we had an ulterior motive. He's like, no! Because I love the love the idea like they're in his house like why does he think they're coming to put on a play for him if not to like ask for money or like ask for something but he's he's so surprised by this this is a senile mr burns not like evil mr burns he's just confused but he at least knows how the trap door works uh yeah the his his gasp is so great there's there's like three other great jokes in this episode of the simpsons loves a gag of a audience reacting to a canned line in the best way possible of saying like well i had an ulterior motive

like actually you're right kids what yeah everybody has such big reactions to these things i also my favorite line in there is burns just saying out loud like this play really speaks to me directly speaking to him because he's in the play uh bart is having a really good time playing that ambulance driver yeah i love the piano accompaniment too it's very it's very classy it's uh these kids are doing better productions and a lot of crusty sketches they do on the show i also the liver bones line is stuck with me for a long time all right and and the mop head design of the burns dummy is really great too it's uh the whole sequence is great and it's also at it's at minute eight when skinner says

with the holiday season coming up it's like like, oh, it's a Christmas episode. It's December 19th, everybody. Swear when I watched this the first time as a teen, I was like, oh, this is a Christmas episode. Okay. It confused me at the time. And this People's Court thing, I think, is like one of the big clunkers of this episode. It doesn't stick around for very long, but just like this had to be in some writer's head for like 15 years he's like now is the perfect time for my people's court parody in 1999 when the judge shows at the time

were like judge judy who would be like a character in two years the michael and us favorite judge judy i love i love the idea that like like they're complaining about daytime tv except that it's clearly teaching bart like conversational Spanish at the same time. So maybe it's not all bad. You know, maybe Bob, they were sitting on this Bumblebee man sketch in general feels like a real throwback on Simpsons. Like now the Bumblebee man isn't around in the background. Like for instance, at the end of season 10, he's there when senor ding dong shows up and he

exclaims like oh senor ding dong but he does not have like you don't watch many bumblebee man sketches in these days on the show so bringing it back for a people's court parody that feels like it could have been a joke thrown away in season four that they bring back now and they needed to kill 30 seconds or something. They gotta watch something on daytime TV. And they'll also, you know, that defendant is Bumblebee Man's wife,

as we saw from 22 short films. I guess they only had one Mexican lady in their packets. But hardly a fair trial at this. There's some clear bias at hand. Though he's still stuck between it being a limon or a carro fuerte. Fuerte.

Fuerte. Though this daytime TV joke, too, it feels like lost to time to me. Because in the 2000s, even, as a loser with my days free, I'd watch some daytime TV. And you're like, oh, yeah, it's all judge shows unless i go to cable but now i don't know do people even watch those judge shows i would think judge shows are still all over usk uh daytime television on network but you just stream a thing wouldn't you or maybe i'm maybe i'm being elitist here thinking everybody goes to youtube just to watch a long video of some kind well it's it's like, who even watches TV? Like it must be like older people

because everyone else is just watches stuff like on demand. Like when I was, when I was a kid, and this is partly like, again, like I grew up rural, you know, I mean, I only got like three or four channels. A complaint I've maybe made on your show before, I don't know, but like I only got a few channels and all the TV, like, I mean, you know, you'd get something that was like either cop themed or judge themed uh so it's like you had judge judy people's court judge joe brown and then the other kind of show was like

whatever you call like whatever the fuck jerry springer and mari are like it's kind of like weird like moralistic uh shows that are sort of supposed to be like they posit themselves as sort of being like therapeutic in some ways but they're but they're just like freak shows yeah yeah freak shows that are trying to act like they're doing the public good when they're just like look at these freaks i think the people like 25 years ago whose vcrs were flashing 12 o'clock they are the people now who are too old to figure out streaming. Yeah, no, I, I, I learned about those people a lot of decade ago when I worked at a video store that rented pornography. And I'm just like, who are you people? Like, get it. Why are you paying money to rent pornography for me? It's, it's all there. But, but a lot of them are guys over 50

who didn't know about how to or the whole internet just scared them away you know they they you know they they want to they like the story of like you know juicy jugs nine or whatever like they've seen one one through eight and they want to continue it and they can't do that online so they got the vhs you know maybe it's it is about the attention span thing that like online porn just goes too fast doesn't tell you a story and part of the porn experience is the conversation you have at checkout right talking to uh a weirded out cashier who's half your age was that one of those stores where like there was like a curtain like you never see this anymore i mean who even goes to video stores anymore but like like i remember that from video stores when i was a kid was like uh was like there

was always like a curtain. And I, you know, I never once went behind one of those curtains into the like taboo space. There was also at my local store that was not a major chain. There was also like saloon doors. Like, oh, it's cowboy town in there. What's happening in there? Some sort of sarsaparilla. You hear a big old clack.

So, you know, if people went in there. Yeah, no, mine, mine though was a very cheap store though i think that's how the guy even kept it open until like 2012 when video stores were dying uh he was a cheap guy but he or frugal let's say and one of his frugalities was he didn't have just porn sitting around because children would go to the store and you can't just have it there but he just basically put two walls up within the store of like or when i say walls i mean the shelving that we had for the dvds he just put two walls of it to block it off and so there was a little entryway and then we put like one of those you know curved mirrors they'll let you see inside. So you were told, like, constantly look in that mirror

and make sure no child walked into that area. And we were pretty good with that. But that's also why we would give the excuse of, like, well, you can't go to the bathroom because to go to the bathroom, I have to walk your kid by our pornography. Even just being aware of pornography would shatter them. Well, these are berkeley kids you hope they're at least a little less uh a little less sheltered than the suburban kids uh but yes that that whole sequence ends and we the kids get news from the tv as they often do

about how their school is reopening this time thanks to the magic of privatization i'm with jim hope of kid first industries which has generously stepped in to educate our children. That's right, Kent. You know, when public schools drop the ball, it's up to the private sector to fall in that fumble and run for the end zone. Will you be replacing the current teachers and administrators? Very much so, Kent. But they've already received an extremely generous severance package. Valencia?

These are juice oranges. Howdy, children. I'd like to welcome you back to school. You know what? I agree. Your old school was boring. That's why it failed, right? Well, we're not going to make you memorize facts and dates.

No, no, no. I'm going to find out what you really love in life and teach to that. What are you passionate about, partner? Boogers. Boogers. Boogers. That was great. You know, humor is a sign of intelligence.

You're not mad? Hey, I'm here to make sure that you get a kick out of education. He's rekindled my love affair with books. The specificity of the Valencia juice oranges jokes has stuck with me and whenever i buy oranges which is rare i'm like no those are juice oranges i'm not gonna eat one of those i i did not know that term until this taught me it so i i was learning as we i was also learning about privatized school now i want a blood orange because they just sound cool. I'm more of a, I just like a little Clementine or Halo, the tiny oranges. Ah, man.

A cutie. A cutie, yes. I hate those. I forgot to pick those up at the grocery store. I'm all out of cuties this whole weekend. But yes, Jim Hope there, a great name for the evil dude who buys the school to turn it into a factory. And named after a friend of the writer, Tom Martin, like in the next year will just become a tv writer it was like i guess a friend of his yeah you know uh tom martin we did talk about him because he was one of the 14 writers

of sunday cruddy sunday right yeah but this is for solo yeah episode yeah who he just had a bunch of live action background i think kind of went between cartoon and live action after this. And I don't know. Is he old enough to play the anti-death jingle or can we just be safe with? Oh, Tim Robbins? Yeah. He's only like in his 60s. You know what?

You never can tell these days. Let's be careful. Okay. Especially because we're going to have to play double death jingles in this episode. So let's play the anti-death one to be safe with uh tim robbins i don't know he's 61 i think this is an improper use of the uh near death jingle have people surprise you these days it's true i mean i guess we're recording this one like six weeks in advance so who knows we we really walked the line with ed asner who hopefully it was still around even

when you're listening to this one. But four weeks ago we had him, we talked about Ed Asner. It was more needed than true, but I always forget with Tim Robbins. I forget that he had broken up with Susan Sarandon like 11 years ago. Yeah. It's been a very long time.

I imagine them always as together. They're the Hollywood power couple to me. I just remember a mean-spirited joke from Family Guy where it's like, Hi, I'm Susan Sarandon. You might know me as Tim Robbins' mother, but I'm actually his girlfriend. Oh, God, man. That was a mean joke. She's still smoking hot.

Tim Robbins, you know, he's just as lefty as Susan Sarandon, and he doesn't get nobody blames the election of Trump on Tim Robbins, you know. Yes, it was Susan Sarandon's protest vote that single-handedly lost the election yeah how dare she how dare she tell 30 000 people to vote for jill stein that is one of my favorite like of all the unhinged like post 2016 things the obsessive focus from like donut twitter on susan sarandon is one of the most incredible uh like like i don't know micro pathologies that developed for liberals after the trauma of 2016 i i especially like like because it's kind of the it's kind of the like nader phenomenon where it's like shaming you know shaming nader voters or whatever but then i think there's something else

at work there which is that like the entire the entire Hillary Clinton campaign was just about like celebrity, like from Hillary's celebrity down to like, almost the 100% of Hollywood that supported her. And so I feel like in the Susan Sarandon, Antipathy part of what's at work is like, we had all the celebrities and like celebrities are the most important people in america and you were the sole holdout uh and and therefore like you ruined things for us like we needed 100 celebrity solidarity to win and you deprived of you know deprived us of that like shame on you i think like i think that's kind of what they're thinking my theory is that susan sarandon was a holdout in the uh hillary fight song celebrity version and because of that they want to destroy her she would not participate well so she was like the most famous no there were other

famous people but she was probably the most famous person in 2016 getting behind bernie who also didn't fall in line like mark ruffalo was way behind bern in 2016. But once June rolled around, he was like, yeah, look, let's all get behind Hillary. Like he, he dutifully got in line, but Sarandon was just like, no, I don't want to. I'm not doing that. A lot of, not to carry this, it has nothing to do with the Simpsons, but like, this is like very much, this is like fodder for my podcast at this point. But like one of the things that was really uh common to a lot of the celebrities who supported bernie last time was that they didn't just sort of grudgingly go

over to hillary they became like hillary enthusiasts overnight which kind of made you wonder like like did you do did you get what supporting bernie was in the first place did you get what it was about like seth mcfarland was like that he became like uh just like it was you know like it wasn't just enough for these people to be like, all right, you got to vote for the Democrat. I guess it was like, uh, you know, they became like full blown kind of, uh, you know, full blown kind of zealots. And, uh, I don't know, I think Susan Sarandon to go back to her, like the thing that annoyed liberals so much is that she like failed to show the same deference which like is was the was the whole uh was the whole point anyway yeah i think you know if i'm being nice to celebs like ruffalo or sarah silverman who really you know in 2016 jumped

off the bernie train and strongly endorsed her i think they probably would have said like they were just so concerned about a Trump presidency that they wanted to go just be so strongly behind the nominee. So I can get it, but I would at the very least, that's an honorable intention, but leave Susan Sarandon alone. Let her have her own beliefs. And how well did it work?

All those celebrities that were like, well, we have to stop Trump. It's it's like if anything all the celebrity support hillary had was like a colossal liability because it just underscored like what a what a like elitist sort of new york hollywood like you know brahman campaign she was running as for her ex though i i think i just assumed he was more famous than he actually is because he doesn't seem to be that famous. I think, I mean, he,

his career really peaked in the mid nineties because, uh, was dead man walking his big, uh, like Shawshank, Shawshank redemption. I was talking about like as a, as a director.

Oh, director. Yeah. Dead man walking. Yeah. That was a big one. Yeah. And Sarandon's in that,

but yeah. Uh, things like a Hudsucker proxy and, um, Shawshank redemption, things like that. But of course, Howard, the duck, Howard, the duck, he's in that. He's the, yeah, things like Hudsucker Proxy and Shawshank Redemption, things like that. Of course, Howard the Duck. Howard the Duck. He's in that?

Yeah, he's in Howard the Duck. He's the duck? No, he's the nerdy scientist who's friends with Howard. It helps him. They fly a hang glider together. But when this was happening, he was on the brink of things like mystic river and high fidelity and things yeah oh man as as neil and high fidelity so great as this patchouli oil parody of a human and then yeah i mean mystic river i know everybody loves like you know sean penn's intense acting in that but i think tim robbins is better in it or the like it he's the quieter choice of this just poor poor man scarred

by abuse in his childhood and it it coming to the fore in his adulthood the character in high fidelity like I love uh when John Cusack describes him as like his musical taste as being Latin Bulgarian whatever world music was trendy that week he's so good at playing like a particular type of like of like i don't know like faux sophisticated urban douchiness that you encounter he's got a real npr flavor in that uh movie yeah i mean you see you don't see tim robbins in much stuff these days i don't know i think he's still i did see a little hate for tim robbins in 2016 though when he he was one of the people who was talking about like boy those were some irregularities in the primaries in 2016 right and then people were uh calling him a useful idiot and of course a putin lackey as well so i think he's a bot he did rob Robin's got a little of it.

But yeah, I wonder if his politics came into any of this of him playing this, you know, evil, nice executive who buys a school to use it as a focus group. And especially I love how easily he goes just like, oh, very much so, Kent. They're all that we laid off every single teacher and faculty here. Well, this part of the plot I really like because, I mean, I think the episode is too disjointed to work as kind of like direct satire because it just keeps moving from one thing to another. But if we were to take any of it as satire, like I think the fact that, you know, kids first education conglomerate, they're not just like a sort of, you know, charter school company or something like they've taken their greed like it has another layer beyond it, which is like it's not enough for them to just buy the school. They then have to like

monetize like the school, like the school is a commodity. But then there's also the commodity within a commodity, which is like their ability to do market research, which is like very funny and also an accurate depiction of how these things work has a actual american city sold their school directly to a company yet i mean this uh they're now it's not fashionable for democrats to be into it anymore but in the school voucher waiting for superman era like yeah i think we got uh definitely bill gates they mocked microsoft later in this bill gates wanted to own every school and turn them into a factory like this well yeah actually and that's that's something that like i mean this isn't a real criticism of the episode but that's something

that like the satire here insofar as uh you know it it exists or has any coherence like kind of misses which is that like privatization stuff like a lot of it what it's really about like what what the gates foundation and stuff wants to do is like it's really just about making public schools into something that's going to train future microsoft workers and stuff like that like of course all the language is like we're here to make learning fun and awesome and rad and like high tech and modern but then you know it's really just like the the goal is to get the state to subsidize like the training of like, you know, the next generation of like Silicon Valley drones or whatever. And I guess that's not like fully clear in this episode. Well, it's also to break up unions, too, to break up the teachers union.

Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. I think, yeah, a lot of it's driven by like STEM focused lunatics. It was like nothing else matters. STEM, STEM, STEM. nothing else matters stem stem stem uh and yeah so the the kicking of books thing it then cuts to bart kicking books which i love that the family is all just sitting around watching bart kick books after presumably having kicked all of lisa's books i one of my favorite lines marge i think the only line march has in this she's like why don't you kick some books lisa

she's just happy to see bart engaged with his schoolwork i guess and i also like that they were the way bart describes the homework and he's like yeah but i'm still not gonna do it though then in the next scene bart does have a toy with him at school so he did do the homework he brought he brought his crusty doll there's not a joke with it but if you look at it in the wide shot you can see of all the kids that brought their toys part also has his crusty doll with him uh but yes the uh it's time for a uh focus group version of show and tell millhouse what have you got there my busy box it's got everything i'm calling daddy good for you not being bound by the recommended age. What are you talking about? Oh, jeez.

How about the rest of you? What do you like about those toys of yours? They're special. They're challenging. Very good. Now I want you all to imagine the perfect toy what would it be like it should be soft and cuddly yeah with lots of firepower it's i should be telescopes no periscopes no microscopes can you come back to me one thing i never noticed until now but the nelson thing i

mean he's doing the jack-in-the-box backwards but his thumb is also on it oh i just never noticed that before so it's wrong in two ways it's it's very hard to it's very easy to miss his tiny yellow thumb over the boxes it's the hand on the other side of the screen is yellow too yeah so yeah that joke is meant to just drive you insane because you're just like when's it gonna pop but it's also you know he's going backwards it holds on it for the perfect amount of time and i also yeah millhouse playing getting joy out of a toy that's too young for him i that's an embarrassing thing as a kid when you're still playing you're you're not playing the right with the right product speaking

of pokemon we were playing it uh when it was new we were like 16 yes yeah out of our age range i was the oldest kid at the one Pokemon video game tournament I went to. We drove home after that and we're like, we should probably not be in this. We got a couple of nasty looks from parents who were just like, you shouldn't be in this. I was in the Pokemon League at my local hobby store, which was called the Elder Dragon in Woodstock, Ontario. The Pokemon was like sufficiently like it had kind of moved on by this point but like some of us were still playing it but as i discovered when i went to to you know compete in the pokemon league which was like the car it was for the cards like the pokemon card game which like very few people actually played because the point was not to

play the game it was to own the cards um and you'd buy packs, and they were like 30 or 40% like those energy cards, and then you just end up with like insane numbers of duplicates. But as I discovered, the Pokemon League was really, it was like a ploy so that like the older brothers who played Magic the Gathering could play in the corner while

their younger brothers hang out and felt excluded. That's a good cover if people poke them on shame you henry just point to the corner of the box it says e for everyone everyone everyone i'm part of that i i also like the gag of millhouse's pitching that feels there's jokes in here that feel like the producers mocking how one writer pitches jokes in a room of you just like can you come back to me like that that's so good yes they start asking all the other things kids want in the perfect toy my favorite is like martin's demanding that there are accessories which are the thing no kid wants with a toy like

all you do is lose accessories i can't tell you how many like ninja turtle uh swords and size that were probably sucked up by a vacuum your mom was picking up uh ninja stars all day at your house in her feet you had to walk i feel bad for her uh and uh yeah then it cuts to them being watched and you know we've had some doppelgangers of her but now back in her official form again it's lindsey nagel as we know her yeah and gary colman even calls her miss nagel yeah just so it's very clear that this is nagel the lindsey nagel prime as i like to call her they they were so into doing executive jokes at this time i was just gonna say that like scully maybe he was just uh he's being a showrunner and dealing with executives more but it feels like so

many of his targets in these uh seasons are executives who tell them bad things to do and you just have to be angry at their terribleness i you know maybe it was too that matt graining had left the show regularly at this time and perhaps there was fewer cushions in between the executive level and the showrunner level and james l brooks is off making as good as it gets and things like that like his movie career is rejuvenated after that that's right he's he's uh probably workshopping the script for spanglish right as they do yes yeah so meanwhile he can't maybe scully's having to see the exact level a lot more yeah so as the uh the focus group continues uh we get some very unhelpful stuff from Ralph.

Be full of surprises. You should never stop dancing. You should need accessories. Now that's market research you can take to the bank. The money bank. I just wish those second graders would stop jerking us around. Fun toys are fun. Well said, Ralph.

But we're trying to come up with a name for a toy. Mrs. Fun? Not bad. Fun? Ralph, there are no right or wrong answers. Ralph but we're trying to come up with the name for a toy mrs. fun not bad right Ralph there are no right or wrong answers but if you don't pipe down I'm giving you an F the before teacher yelled at me too no one's yelling we're just brainstorming names Elisa any ideas Oh name with fun fungus funzo Attila the fun Lisa are you doing math just a few Venn diagrams. There's more under her chair.

Ralph is a snitch. Boo. Yeah. It does feel like we've been talking about this consistently throughout season 11. Like, just as you think there's going to be, like, a Lisa story, it's, like, swatted down. It's like, no, actually, it's a story about an evil robot or whatever. I guess technically Lisa's the lead for the second half half of this but bart's with her basically every place yeah well also you think that the episode is from this point on you think it's going to be about how bart's doing good at

school and she isn't but that's dropped like in 20 seconds as well there are so many ideas uh and i credit them for all of them but none of them really get developed enough, which is fine because it's very funny. But I feel like you're wasting all these ideas that could be episodes or at least like their own plot somewhere else. Yeah, I feel like if this had been an earlier from an earlier season there, like it would have just you could take any part of it and of this episode and then just imagine like an earlier season would just commit to it. And then that would be the episode. So like, I remember this as an, like, insofar as I did remember as an episode about like the, the,

the toys, like the specifically the toys, but they're only like, they're kind of like what introduced some way through act two. And then sort of like, I don't know, like act three, if,

if there even really is an act three, like they kind of briefly appear like any part of this episode could digress and become become something else because it's so uh so disparate and uh bart saying that the ironing is delicious is pretty fun especially his great reaction when lisa corrects him he's like there's no mo saying wow but there's a lot of that in general in this yeah so at first it seems like it's about lisa now being in trouble while bart is the celebrated kid but then instead a conspiracy is revealed now i conflated this with a later episode that would happen in the next year that's not a christmas episode but in the episode where homer becomes mr x sort of like the drudge report

guy he unveils conspiracy and that the flu shot is just a conspiracy to give you Christmas shopping fever. Right. So I misremember that as being part of this plot as well. I forgot that was the Drudge Report twist in that one. Yeah. And having flu vaccine controversy is not very good now. Ooh, you're right. I'm glad that episode aired 20 years ago.

But for some reason, I was thinking that was part of this. It's okay. By the time this episode of Talking Simpsons airs, I'm sure that there'll be a vaccine. We can hope. Delivered right to your door. Yeah. And it's an extremely poor one-way mirror that reveals the secret room that Lisa goes into. And I like when she picks up the noted suggestions i thought there'd be more jokes in it but really the only one is like ha ha is written down which is pretty good

but uh then the end of the act comes as a scary skeleton robot uh tells lisa i see you it's good it's a good mislead to think you make you think like oh the robots are evil now and they're going to kill kids or something like that there's an invasion of killer robots you that you don't make a toy connection here i think to the simpsons you know probably there was other people talking about it but it became like an internet thing later about how horrifying a furby without fur is oh yeah yeah yeah, yeah. But that's what that joke is. Yeah. I did want to ask Luke about,

because he's a bit younger than us, were you a recipient of a Furby? Because, I mean, Funzo, who we're going to meet very soon, is the Furby parody. They were around. Like, I would have, when I first saw this episode, I would have recognized this as, like, oh, yeah, that's a Furby.

But I don't remember them being, like, very big. I don't know don't know like like i don't know what i i mean i don't know pokemon had like a near monopoly at my school for like several years so that may have like we may have like resisted furby mania because of that there was a i did some research and there was a furby bubble from 98 to 2000 to 2000 so that was it that's basically it and i was too old for furby but part of me was like boy i wonder how they work and i kind of wanted to get one just to see how it worked because i was like i can't be doing all the things people are saying it's doing it's a from it's from tiger electronics i played their handheld games they're bad and it only cost 20 dollars it can't be that smart but i knew like the shame of buying a Furby. I could never recover from that. So yeah, it was it was a smart move by Tiger to, you know, take the Tamagotchi craze from

a few a couple of years earlier and then graph that onto basically a Teddy Ruxpin that just makes noise and like learns from you and closes its eyes. Yeah, I never had a Furby either. My little my younger brother, he was 14 when they came out so he wasn't there 13 it wasn't for him either I think also you know it was kind of a gender-free toy but I do think that re-watching some of the old commercials I think it was more aimed at girls than boys I guess like a deficiency of the Furby from like a market perspective compared to Pokemon was that I don't know how much differentiation there was between different Furbies. Like presumably they came in like different colors and had like maybe some different, I don't know, facial features, maybe accessorization.

The reason Pokemon was such genius is because like there was just no end to it. Like they're still making pokemon like you can just keep making them and you can like by doing that engineer continuous like novelty which is how you keep any kind of brand or or like craze going and i feel like you know furby was sort of like pokemon 1.0 like pokemon really like figured that out and there have been like new kinds of furbies and by that i mean people making a new craze based on one toy that are sort of furby like so the things i was thinking of that i was too out of touch to even know what these are but the things like webkins and hatchimals right like those were the big like oh it's a stuffed animal but it's like high tech and it does stuff and it's almost alive like those are the things that succeeded the furby yeah that

and i saw they did bring furby back like with a new thing with like led eyes that watched you and you could feed him through a phone app like he'd so it's like the amazon echo or whatever pretty much and i'm sure it's listening to you all the same as well yeah it's like jeff bezos just sat somewhere in a giant room with like a thousand tvs and he's just watching like he's just peering into everyone's bedrooms getting the furby feed do you still have that thing on henry is it no i unplugged it a while ago we we uh would now that we don't go anywhere we really have no need for it uh so yes lisa gets scared We come back from the break and she's called in the police who Wiggum should be watching Ralph in his bathtub.

Though, shouldn't Sarah Wiggum be doing something there? Why is it to them? I'm making the drinky, drinky motion. Ah, right. And I also like that Homer directly calls out what type of scary movie he's in for this. I enjoyed the funny reading where at first he's like, is it going to be one of these things? And then he starts to buy into it. At the end he's like, is i enjoyed the funny reading where at first he's like is it going to be one of

these things where and then he starts to buy into it she's like in the at the end he's like is it lisa is it uh and and another like march has very few lines in this episode but her next one in there is really great too yeah uh here i got the clip okay this better be important lisa i left ralphie alone in the bathtub, I'm ready to get out now. Over. This broom closet is not what it seems. It's a secret surveillance room guarded by a tiny evil robot. Is this going to be like one of those horror movies

where we open the door and everything's normal and we think you're crazy, but then there really is a killer robot and the next morning you find me impaled in a weather vane? Is that what this is lisa to be fair not all evil robots are killers listen when you see what's inside this i don't understand i could swear it was right here yeah right mop top and i'm ed sullivan really big shoe no no i can do it better really big shoe really big that's it that's good yeah

marge is only there to play devil's advocate for the robots that's really great she has this knowledge i mean i trust her i also like how cavner pronounced it as robits robits not all evil robits and uh that also felt that riff on uh doing it in a sullivan impersonation that feels like azaria actually practicing his voice like wait i knew better i knew better when that when azaria bleeds through into the character of wigum i really like that everybody thinks lisa's crazy and then it's time for jokes about overly pc non-denominational holiday specials which were very uh important to us back then i guess i don't know i think now they wouldn't even

know like name check a religion or a holiday yeah a winter holiday let's say a winter solstice celebration it will be that kind of that kind of humor has just migrated to like like aging stand-up comedians where like every netflix special is them just complaining about like political correctness like i feel like that's the only kind like that's the only place you still see that type of joke uh yeah crusty is having a very special special well folks that's the end of crusty's non-denominational holiday fun fest i want to thank my guests tay eleoni beck the dixie chicks merry christmas y'all. And Patrick Ewing as the genie. So have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwesi Kwanzaa, a tip-top tent,

and a solemn, dignified Ramadan. Now a word from my god, our sponsor. I see you. Give me a hug. That's the doll that attacked me. This Christmas, everybody wants Funzo. Funzo? I said that name in class. Funzo's soft and cuddly.

With lots of firepower. Yes! Funzo! Fun ha. Funzo. Funzo. Funzo. If you don't have Funzo, you're nothing. I do like the payoff of all the kids' suggestions come back, even Nelson's laugh. You're right.

Yeah. Oh, I didn't realize Funzo's ha ha is Nelson's ha ha. And it's on their notes, all the suggestions. One of them is ha ha. Oh, wow. That's an even better joke. He's still in his bed. it's on there it's on there uh like notes all the suggestions one of them is ha ha oh wow that's uh that's an even better joke he's still in his bed i i like how that girl in the commercial is legitimately hurt like yeah i didn't really hit me until i heard the audio isolated like she's like and uh yeah the so the celebrities in his thing are an interesting pick. Taya Leone, you know, Tom Martin, right before working on The Simpsons,

was a writer for the Taya Leone sitcom The Naked Truth. Naked Truth, okay. And she was just in Deep Impact a few years before this. Ah, yes, yeah. And she was still Mrs. Duchovny. Yes, yeah, that was in happier times for the Duchovnys. Well, also, this and Mission Hill did a Beck joke then, so I feel like Beck had finally made it officially mainstream enough

to be a reference on a show like this. Currently with Tim Daly of Wings fame. Oh. Taya Leone, not Beck. Oh, really? Wow. Okay, I was like, wait, okay. Hey, good for her. Good for her. And the Dixie Chicks were relatively new at the time.

They would actually guest star on The Simpsons in 2008's Papa Don't Leech, which was the return of Lurley Lumpkin episode. And this is before their run-in with Bush. Yes, yeah, yeah. Obviously. They'd probably be best known for that now. Meanwhile, that basketball player, they say best known for that now uh meanwhile that basketball player they say it's patrick ewing that is a bad drawing of them because the one key signifier of patrick

ewing other than his height is his mustache like his facial hair and he is facial hair free and i i looked up a 1999 like basketball card for ewing just to be sure like he still had facial hair then it's uh a real goof him up on there i'm not going to this show for mustache accuracy anymore i'm sorry i kept remembering that joke is it being shack i think because he's supposed to be a genie and shack had just been kazam so they make a joke about how they're terrified of muslims because crusty makes no joke about Ramadan. He just says solemn and dignified Ramadan, which in case you didn't know, the Ramadan is on a lunar calendar. So it happens apparently 11 days earlier each year, which is why in 1999 Ramadan did begin on December 8th.

But this year it started on april 23rd so who knows that another 10 years or so it might be it uh back at christmas time uh so ramadan inaccurate with mustaches accurate with muslim holidays it was correct for that for the 1999 ramadan yes and uh though i couldn't i should have looked up where when tet is i only i mean i think americans only know tet because of uh the vietnam war uh but yeah that uh the funzo ad also really captures how uh toy commercials were of our childhood like you have the boy and the girl perfectly costumed to look uh the right christmas morning way and uh so bart and lisa decide they're gonna have a spaz about it which that's a weird word uh're going to have a spaz about it, which that's a weird word. Inappropriate.

Yeah. To throw a spaz. It meant a different, well, no, it meant what it meant. It meant what it meant. It was just a word they were fine with saying then. And so they head off to Kid First Industries, which has a good little joke about a neon secret headquarters sign. Stolen from the Daffy Duck cartoon, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery. Oh, you're right. It's just a ripoff. And it was probably a lot older than that too like the the obvious secret

headquarters sign is always a fun gag uh but then we get our next guest star in this star-studded episode which unfortunately means i must play the death jingle the always respectful death jingle death stalks you at every turn there it is death so yes gary coleman who passed away may 28 2010 at the age of 42 and you may be thinking like well i remember him as a sitcom star not a security guard but i think we all forgot about gary coleman after you know the 80s were over but then a news story broke that he assaulted a woman at when he was working as a security guard right yes right so the story is like he was off duty of course but you know his parents stole all of his money his representation stole all of his money so he was left like working regular jobs and he was working as a security guard and at one point

he was out shopping for a bulletproof vest and a woman at the store noticed him and was like oh can i get your autograph and i guess he gave her the autograph and according to his testimony in court she was very rude to him and was mad that she didn't write something nice on the on the picture or whatever or on whatever he signed and then there was some sort of altercation where he eventually punched her in the head whoa wow okay so this this isn't just random humor about gary coleman being a security guard who does kung fu moves this is actually ripped from the headline yeah he had been working as a security guard i think after this it gave him some notoriety and at this portion of his career until his death 12 years later his career would

be like i'll show up and you can make fun of me. Yep. For as long as you can remember different strokes, I'll be there. I at least think the rip from the headline-ness of this makes their use of Gary Coleman better than, say, Postal, the movie's use of him. Or the video game. Or the video game, yeah. But it did become kind of like lazy shorthand of like, oh, and Gary Coleman's here. Eh? Eh?

Look at him. And by the way, not a little person in case you're wondering yeah they they they joke on the commentary here that they draw him as two feet tall and some but he's like he's four he was four eight uh gary coleman was like he was not i mean that's not very sure i mean it's not it's well this use of gary coleman too it reminded me of how avenue q the musical made gary coleman not actually him but one of the characters in the show is gary coleman played by an actor and the the joke is like gary coleman you work in our building as a super and uh but when i saw avenue q finally in like 2012 in on Broadway, it was still Gary Coleman in it.

But it had this like tinge of like, oh, that's weird. Why is it still Gary Coleman? I mean, we're old, Henry and I, and we're too young for different strokes. It went off the air when we were four. Like, I didn't see it. I knew about it through the what you talking about Willis references, but I had no idea what it even was. And I think I ended up seeing Webster more. Oh, yeah.

I was way more of a Webster kid, you know. The Flanders love Webster. They got the I Love Webster t-shirt. And Webster is much shorter than Gary Coleman, too, I think. Emmanuel Lewis, I should say. Not Webster. But, yeah, they also mentioned that he was a good sport, but he did say, you only get a few of my catchphrases. He's not going to give them to you for free.

But yes, why don't we hear Gary Coleman as he appears in this episode. Hey, it's Gary Coleman. But the menu said galaxy of prawns. Three prawns are hardly a galaxy. What do you mean your hands are tied? Let me talk to Mr. Kwan. I want to see how this turns out. The phone's not even plugged in. Alright, you listen to me,

Kwan. Hang on, I got another call. Yes, Mr. President. I can be in Washington right away. You people took advantage of trusting school children. How did you get past Gary Coleman? Let's just say he's a few prawns short of a galaxy. I'm sorry, Gary.

There's no longer a place for you here. What are you talking about, Ms. Nagel? That is so adorable. You're rehired. Sucker. I knew exactly what she was talking about. He does a good job. Yeah, yeah.

I do like that take on the classic catchphrase where it's like, oh, he always knew what they were talking about. does a good job yeah yeah i do like that that take on the classic catchphrase where it's like oh he always knew what they were talking about he was tricking us here yeah i you know the i think the line that has stuck with me most from this episode is this is hardly a galaxy galaxy of prongs i think of that whenever i get like uh chinese food with like shrimp in it or just any kind of like soy meat in it just like this is there's only five pieces this is not a galaxy yeah any fried rice or chow mein i order if it doesn't have enough meat i think how it's not a galaxy forgive me but a galaxy is not a recognized unit of like meat is it like where where does that come from it implies a vast amount yeah it i guess it it's uh feels like a parody of

maybe the flowery over-the-top language you'd get on a Chinese takeout menu that describing something, I suppose. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I understood there was like a vast amount. I just wondered if that was like a reference point that I was missing or like if perhaps, you know, in the United States, you just have a more exotic terminology for talking about like meat in uh in asian takeaway i think it's just limited to chinese menus but they're also pretty mean to coleman here just like the phone's not even plugged in like he's an insane person part and lisa are genuinely worried about him that concern look they share is very great like oh god this poor guy there's there's a lot of troubled and pitied looks at gary coleman throughout this episode which so coleman was a real good sport

for all these jokes about him yeah so jim hope then reveals what they actually were doing he even like directly mentions furby and tickle me elmo as what they're trying to make just to make it extra clear what they're parodying of the weird beat of this plot line though is like okay the kids uncover the big plot but also nothing changes the status quo has not changed at all just like when a funzo is still popular and no one cares you know it's true that's and is the school still owned by the company yeah it's not until the happy ending at the very end does it get bought back but yeah the well that's a yeah as a storytelling thing they reveal a secret twice they reveal that funzo is based on all the kids stuff and then they kind of like go away from that for a minute and then the next secret is like oh

and also the toys destroy other toys like i i think i feel like the first reveal is enough for them to want to destroy Funzo. But then I think they have to have the extra justification of like, oh, Funzo does evil things and destroys other toys. Here's the other secret. That's not even, it's just very obvious what he's doing. Yeah, I would feel like other kids would be pretty upset the second Funzo did that and

would get rid of it. But then again, we're talking about an episode where the timeline is that they focus group those toys and are able to sell all of them within like two weeks of uh of it maybe this uh maybe springfield's just a test market for funzo and it hasn't uh appeared in the rest of america well as always in the simpsons it's like springfield is sort of both like provincial backwater and also this like microcosm for all of america and it's like springfield is sort of both like provincial backwater and also this like microcosm for all of america and it's like unclear which of those it is in this episode uh yeah a test market like this would normally be a big city like san francisco or new york but uh and yeah i also like nagel the way nagel says like we did screw you a little like she can admit that and just like

here free toy for you guys they only get one funzo though uh yeah and then they must have given him that catalog on his way out so they'd know that bart would spend more money on all the uh the side stuff to the european voltage converter why not buy three i love i honestly all this stuff funzo says is so funny to me like the the delivery i it's azaria doing it i think we later go into play uh lingua a similar talking robot oh yeah it's actually pretty much the same the same deal except with uh with multiple languages and i want funzo's dream fortress funzo's lower back pain chair funzo's european voltage converter why not get three three it is and i just like why not get free and also like

it's all righty god so funny i uh and his dance i love the little funzo dance too this toy can do a lot of things i wonder what the the profit margin is on funzo i gotta think it's more than a furby is i gotta think this is like a 75 dollar yeah for all the features it does especially it can never stop dancing that uh but yes that's when it's revealed that funzo kills other toys in often very graphic ways impales their heads on pencils i think i i was really shocked at how realistic the choking of crusty is is. Like the way he pulls out. Yeah, the Krusty face acts like a man being choked, not a static plastic face.

The severed heads are like frozen in horror. The severed heads of the dolls. The Krusty face is like drooping because like the life is gone from it. So it's a drooping severed head. And the choking sound on Krusty, yeah, it's pretty extreme. in the choking sound on crusty yeah it's uh pretty extreme as well as the great extreme but uh funny acting of the doll's head on the pencils yeah dancing with

heads on pikes is very uh i mean uh this this is not going to play in peoria this this these antics what are they thinking and uh yes they also have a quick little joke about how microsoft you know destroys the competition internally which i think they were just being sued over internet explorer at this time that joke is like made me groan so hard because it's not even a joke it's just like yes bart like microsoft does there's nothing clever about that like i bet he spells microsoft with a dollar sign when he posts online in 1999 then it cuts outside the try and save where Lisa trying to enforce a boycott actually tells people how to or convinces people to break into the store and steal stuff. It's definitely parodying the toy crazes that were happening.

You'd see the horrifying videos of the battles over at Tickle Me Elmo. I think I'm old enough to remember before the days of like doorbusters there were no like we're gonna camp out to go shopping at five in the morning when best buy opens uh i just remember that being a fairly new thing in the late 90s the first time i remember seeing that was i think it's maybe an early 90s film but is there not like a thing in that uh that arnold's vehicle jingle all the way where he's like runs into a store and there's like all the parents, there's like a stampede is like, it looks like one of those black Friday videos. They're all going for like the turbo man or whatever. Oh yeah. That was like 96. So I think it was a reference

to like the power Rangers craze, right? Yeah. Yeah. They'll also like cabbage patch kids had the same thing in the eighties too. too like yeah so uh it's not a new phenomenon to have violent parents battling over one toy i feel like there were just the more news of tramplings or at least like one death though i also like that the the the person who leads the breaking in is lenny who is a childless single man what's going on with mo and lenny they are super excited to get this toy i also lenny is so great i love lenny but i like how he thinks he invented breaking a window just like look you just break the window and go in uh nope it didn't hit any of them you don't have to wait for stores to open you can just break their doors you know i wonder now what 2020's black

friday is gonna be like you know is uh it won't change in no way because we're stupid. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it'll just be the same. It's like coughing the cashier's face to get 5% off. Oh, God. Dark times. So, yes, they realize there's no way to stop it unless... So, who am I beating up?

Nobody. You're just going to break into everyone's house and steal their favorite toy. Thus saving Christmas. Now let's see. This will make three Christmases I saved versus eight I ruined. Two were kind of a draw. Dad, Dad, you're driving on the sidewalk. Sorry.

I just realized that's Frank. Joy to the world. lord is come let earth receive her king let every season's greetings peace out bar with a very 1999 peace out accent like that was that was fresh then which that's also that feels like classic though season one bar where he just says a thing he heard on television one thing about this we've been talking about all these ideas that um they should be full episodes or at least like plots and episodes the thing about homer stealing christmas is two scenes and then in the uh season 15 episode tis the 15th season it's the christmas episode for that season there's an entire like homer as the grinch stealing all the presents with a song oh yeah so i feel like like yeah that was a good idea except it's just two scenes of caroling

and antics but they decided like let's just make it a full grinch thing that was smart and in fact the promo art for this episode that you would see like in tv guide or whatever is like homer being too fat to go down a chimney oh so like they took those two scenes and made that like the the spotlight for this episode well homer in a santa costume made that like the, the spotlights for this episode. Well, Homer in a Santa costume, that feels like the easy sell of the episode, but even Homer's just like,

what am I doing here? Like Homer is confused. He's been called into the end of this episode that he really wasn't featured in. But you're saying like, it's almost 10 years to the day where the, the first one aired when he was also Santa. So that's right.

It's nice. It's like poetry right it rhymes i also like homer thinks he was getting called in to beat people up like i was his plan i totally missed that that was you hear a glaven just a quick little glaven that it's frank he almost runs it's not a cat it's frank well i think it's a cat and he was holding his cat homer busting into places to steal stuff it's good though for it to work they have to draw the funzos unwrapped which is like no shouldn't they be wrapped up under the christmas tree they they're giving them the funzos without as a prize

they're so advanced they unwrap themselves ah i see and uh yeah they so they collect them all in uh one evening homer sack can somehow contain like thousands of funzos in them. It's the perfect parody for the song Tiny Bubbles. Yeah, wrapping funzos in my sack. Oh, I didn't realize that was a Tiny Bubbles reference. Yeah, you're not a fan of Don Ho? I barely remember that song. Did the Muppets ever sing it?

Maybe then I would have heard it. I'm sure they probably did. It was Don Ho's signature song, by the way. Ah, okay. Tiny bubbles in the wine make me happy, make me feel fine. Ah, okay. Well, thank you. What kind of wine has bubbles in it?

I'm confused. Yeah, that sounds like champagne. But yes, the madness ends here, as Homer says, or Lisa says it, which Homer had a nickel for every time he heard that. But Gary Coleman won't let it go that easily. Well, what do we have here? Looks like the biggest ripoff since Webster. Please, Mr. Coleman, we can explain.

I'm listening. Your toy company is evil. Well, isn't it possible for an evil company to make people happy? Are you saying the end justifies the means? That's a very glib interpretation. Hey, don't talk to my sister that way. No, Bart, he's right. I did oversimplify. Perhaps, but let's not get bogged down in semantics.

I think what Lisa meant to say is... And so, Gary Coleman and the Simpsons argued long into the night. And then, as day broke, the spirit of the season entered their hearts. Let's just agree that the commercialization of Christmas is at best a mixed blessing. Amen. Amen. Wow. Lisa ends up on a very centrist take on this whole thing this is my favorite this is my favorite

uh bit in the episode because uh I love that like yeah at the beginning of that uh part it seems like gonna be like a pain to like nuance or whatever and it's like look you know don't be reductive like like do discourse properly and you'll arrive at like a real conclusion and the conclusion that they arrive at is a real conclusion and the conclusion that they arrive at is just like the most like milquetoast meaningless kind of thing that absolutely everybody would agree with but also like doesn't really like elucidate like anything yeah it definitely comes from their ivy league background of debate of just like well let's just all agree it's a mixed blessing yeah okay, okay. In conclusion, Christmas is a land of contrast.

Though this, I mean, in this era, this is about the centering of Lisa. Like, she's not as progressive as this show goes on. And when she is, she's a sellout occasionally. Yeah, yeah. So another death jingle. Is that button warmed up? I got it here.

All right. One more death jingle. Death stalks you at every turn. Ah! There it is! Death! warmed up i got it here all right one more death jingle so clarence clemens who is the saxophonist for the east street band the bruce springsteen band he is the narrator it sounds like they couldn't get james earl jones because he would normally be doing this well at the end you do know that bruce springsteen is mike scully's favorite musician yeah maybe he was trying to get to bruce through clarence but yeah he died if i can get clemens maybe clemens will tell bruce to finally do the simpsons you know but yeah he died in june of 2011 at 69 and

he had some minor acting roles so he was not just a musician so he had done some acting before but he had different strokes i saw and i had been on different strokes, I saw. And I just thought while doing this episode that this is the first Simpsons since Homer at the Bat to have two black guest stars, I think. Oh, I think you're right. Maybe, I'm not sure what the racial status of Cypress Hill is, so it could be muddy. Oh, actually, yeah, you're right. Definitely Cypress Hill changes that. Well, they very rarely have more than one african-american guest star and in this case they're both dead but still it's an achievement uh man uh yeah the uh he was an

accomplished actor he was also on uh nash bridges and the wire so and oh and bill and ted's excellent adventure he was in that too he's uh yeah I think I think it really was to get he was called the big man as the sax guy in the E Street Band and I I definitely think it was just Scully getting closer and closer as he could to Bruce Springsteen who still has not done the show I don't think he ever will maybe he'll do Duncanville that's uh that's Scully's priority these days yeah yeah but uh yeah having i mean the voice over here helps with this having a cute ending that it's all about a debate and uh the next the next scene it's like well yeah you don't see gary coleman wrestling a metal robot or like

skeletite skeletonized funzo at christmas every time, I love him dropping the elbow on it. But Homer doing like the very stock, like, gee, Mr. Coleman, my wife makes a lot of food. And, you know, it would be a shame if it weren't waste. Like, just try not to hurt his feelings, but also inviting him at the same time. Yeah. It's so funny. It becomes the classic Christmas episode that happens for so many sitcoms where like you know they befriend a homeless person who they invite to dinner or something in it that that happened in the clone high holiday episode actually they don't want to seem like a handout so they have to like gently like broach the subject

of inviting them to dinner and uh but yes here's uh here's the very happy ending um uh mr colman i've been thinking uh my wife always makes too much stuffing and sweet potatoes and all, and dog heck. Would you like to spend Christmas with us? No way. I'm having Christmas at George Clooney's house. Gary. All right, I'll come. And Gary Coleman was as good as his word. As for old Mr. Burns, he was visited by three ghosts during the night and agreed to fund the school with some money he found in his tuxedo pants.

Thank you, thank you. While Moe, seeing what the world would be like if he had never been born, pulled his head out of the oven and replaced it with a plump Christmas goose. Happy holidays, dear. Merry Christmas, Moe. out of the oven and replaced it with a plump christmas goose happy holidays there merry christmas mo uh listen i kind of banged up that jeep in the driveway what you talking about mo what you talking about everyone so much to talk about there to be started off with i love how homer becomes like very rural briefly like his sweet potatoes and all very funny but i mean the highlight of that has to be uh you know obviously not a laughing matter but just the the sheer darkness of the mo on christmas with his head in the oven with the no funeral sign taped to his back i think the darkest joke in the simpsons to

date i think it might just be the the only one i can think of like challenging it is when mo's teacher at the bar school like he drowns himself on screen there's no cure for cancer is there mo you don't have it do you the vision of a man with his head in an oven with no it's the no funeral that really does it because it's not just that he wants to take his own life but his commandment of not even wanting them to celebrate his life like not even to have a funeral he's that dark like yeah it's horrible and it's a it's a visual that sticks with you for a very long time christmas on christ yeah. It's also pretty funny to imagine what did Mo see?

What was the world like without Mo? What was this bleak version of Springfield without Mo in it? That's another episode idea. They just threw it out. Yeah, this ending feels like them throwing out two different episode ideas at the same time.

Well, yeah, Mr. Burns starring in the christmas carol parody is they could do that and in a wonderful life parody with mo they could do that but don't do either and deny you them just let you know that they went through it and uh people and they have changed their hearts because of it especially the ridiculousness of like some money he found in his tuxedo pair he just had a change of heart one of his unpredictable changes of heart uh yeah i mean for as much of a cheat as his ending is it's funny enough that i will excuse it also because like the plot was not very uh coherent before this it was just a bunch of fun

jokes so i do like the ending how the narration comes out of nowhere. And also the darkness of the Moe joke is just the cherry on top. And I'm impressed that they even bothered to explain why the school wasn't owned by Kids First anymore. They were able to explain that away. And I also like that Moe could just accept the niceness of everybody. But it says, like, I also ran into somebody's jeep sorry uh no i've never had i've never had a goose not even on christmas that uh i can't i don't know if it's more palatable than a turkey or not but uh but he even cooked it like old english style with the head still on the goose too this is a very random christmas episode that's half a christmas episode but i it

made me laugh it's a funny and the funzo stuff is fun yes uh all-time great lines i forgot is to be fair not all evil robots are killers i that will stick with me forever after this recording yeah i really enjoyed the experience of watching it it just it, it is kind of, uh, it is kind of sad when you think about all the unfulfilled potential, like how many individual gags or scenes, like we were just talking about could be entire episodes that would like actually be really funny and make for really funny, uh, premises.

Yeah. But at least they, at least they kept it funny with what they had in here. I, you know, it's, it's, they're still getting closer and closer to a Simpsons that just stops caring

about plot, but they stitched together funny jokes in this episode. So Luke, thanks for being on the show. Please promote all of your stuff, Michael and us. I know you've got a Patreon with bonus episodes on there that have been really good. So yes, please promote everything. We do. Well, yeah, cheers. We've been doing extra stuff during, during coronavirus

partly because i think we have a little more time to record and also because uh people seem to like it so yeah if you're perhaps a listener of the show but haven't checked out the patreon now would be a good time there's a lot of stuff on there uh if you're not a listener to the show you should be it's fun uh check us out definitely has a little bit of uh the flavor of you know what we just recorded and as much as i feel like even more so than usual like every time i every time i come on the show you know going back to these episodes is always like revisiting parts of childhood but this one even more so so you know my show is a little bit like that except very much like the early 2000s kind of bush era we came we we flew

pretty close to it uh when we're talking about the dixie chicks on uh on this one but um yeah kind of like looking at uh you know we spent a lot of time looking at early to mid 2000s kind of uh liberal conservative paraphernalia and kind of discussing it through the lens of current events but also just watching stuff we like, which we've increasingly had to do more of because there's only like so many Dinesh D'Souza movies you can sit through or whatever. What a shame.

I always appreciate it when you guys treat yourself to something you'll enjoy instead of hate. Well, that's you and me both. I think Will is more in the camp of like, let's just do every Dinesh D'Souza movie, which actually, incidentally, after this, I am recording with Will and we are doing a Dinesh D'Souza movie. So pray for me. Godspeed.

That's all that's playing in quarantine theaters now. You just go there and get sick and watch a bad movie. Oh, and also you do a lot of great work for Jacobin as well. Cheers. Yeah. Yeah. Find my articles at jacobin you can follow me at luke w savage on on twitter everything everything i do all everything in

the luke savage brand is aggregated uh there uh but thank you so much again luke it's always great having you back yeah always a pleasure guys so thanks so much to luke for being on our show please check out michael and us as for us if you want to support our show and get all of our podcasts one week ahead of time and add free, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And when you sign up there at the $5 level, you'll get just that, but

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Yes, if you want all that $5 stuff plus a bit extra. For $10 a month, you get the What a Cartoon Movie podcast. Our monthly exploration of a different animated feature film that we are doing now. We're closing in on our second year of doing it. So there's over 80 hours of back catalog if you sign up now you can hear recent ones like the black cauldron and space jam we had a ton of fun on those so get all that five dollar stuff plus a the what a cartoon movie if you are a ten dollar up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpson so as for me i have been one of your hosts bob mackie you can

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