Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner? With Mike Carlson

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

As we get ready to review a review of food, we're again joined by Podcast: The Ride's Mike Carlson! He helps us suss out how Homer could ever be hired as a professional writer, the battle of Ann Landers versus Dear Abbey, the power of eclairs, and the fun of negative reviews! All that and J. Jonah Jameson references in this week's tasty podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

bling blong everyone our new podcast mini-series talking mission hill is now exclusively on patreon put on your spicy pants every friday with a new podcast covering each episode of the cult series from simpsons legends bill oakley and josh weinstein five dollar subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons can hear every episode, plus 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! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that specializes in pointless nostalgia. I'm your host, Pudding listener Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration

of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today? Henry Gilbert. And come on, give me lots of honey. And who do we have on the line? Oh, are you asking me what is my name? My name is Mike Carlson. I'm from Podcast The Ride.

I'm on the line. Excellent. And today's episode is, guess who's coming to criticize dinner? Pointless nostalgia. Exactly. And today's episode aired on October 24th, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. Jennifer Love Hewitt's Party of Five spinoff begins. It will be canceled within five months. And co-stars Jennifer Garner. The New York Yankees sweep the Atlanta Braves to win the World Series in four games, and in a very weird Halloween havoc in 1999, Sting defeats Hulk Hogan because he lays down in the ring and chooses to lose,

and no one speaks of it the next day on Monday Nitro. Oh, wow. Wow, that was this day? That was this very day the same day wow what's the story one of the i mean wrestling is full of strange stuff but that is one of the strangest finishes i think like top 20 top 20 i think yeah and wcw had a lot of strange ones and it yeah yeah so uh the the plot was they were writing a Sting versus Hulk Hogan match, which they'd done that before, but they were leading up to it. And then WCW had hired a new writer, Vince Russo, who is famous for swerves and surprising the audience.

And so it comes to the Sting and Hogan match on the pay-per-view, and they wanted it to look like it was a real thing happening, not two performers pretending. And so Hulk Hogan lays down and says, pin me and sting pins him. And then Hogan walks away and acts angry. And so you're meant to think Hulk Hogan or Terry Buella is saying, I don't want to lose this match, so fuck it. And he walks away.

And the weirdest thing is because they want to pretend that it was real. Then the commentators don't even talk about it the next night on TV. And it made no sense whatsoever. Yeah. Vince Russo was just trying to he was trying to like outsmart even the smart fans who like of course know how much it's a quote-unquote work which is fake so he wanted to like do like three layers on top of what you normally think of wrestling is blurring the lines between real and fake and it just was confusing yeah if you're an online internet fan like i was in 1999 you instantly go to a website who

re-reports what Dave Meltzer says, and Dave Meltzer says, oh, it's fake, and it's meant to trick you. And then you go like, well, duh, okay, fine. So it didn't trick you, and then the people at home who are casual fans who don't obsess about every detail of wrestling,

they're just like, what the fuck happened? I just wanted to see two men grab each other yes uh vince russo too smart for his own good you know so i'm not a wrestling fan as this conversation was happening i was just looking at pictures of jennifer love hewitt okay uh for research of course because the show was called time of your life yes that's right and uh i was just looking at like promotional stuff for it her breasts are prominently featured in all the PR materials. Yeah. But was she one of those orphans in that show? She was a girlfriend of an orphan, I believe.

There's like Scott Wolf, Lost Guy. Yeah, so she was Scott Wolf's girlfriend on the show. Lacey Chalbea. Yeah. Chabert. Chabert, yes. The first Meg Griffin. The original Meg Griffin.

It's true. Yeah. Was the dog one of the five? No, no. It was, boy, I think they had a baby in there, too. There was a baby floating around. Everyone wants to be closer to three? Closer to three. Thankfully, the song was.

I would like to do a podcast on Jennifer Love Hewitt's TV career. She's had a weird one. It's interesting. Ghost Whisperer, Client List. Now She's had a weird one. It's interesting. Ghost Whisperer, Client List. Now she's on 911 on Fox. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, we talked about

her handjob drama series, The Client List. Yeah. In an earlier episode for some reason. I don't think I've said actually, I don't think I've said the phrase Client List

yet on a podcast. This is the first time I'm referencing The Client List. I have made mention that i heard of somebody who did a guest spot on the ghost whisperer that she told people that she was actually being haunted by a ghost at the time wow uh that's i she was telling too many ghost secrets on television yeah or she i mean is to use a wrestling phrase she was living the gimmick

oh you're right yeah She was a ghost gossip. Jennifer Garner is lucky that show got canceled because if it had gone on for like two seasons, she couldn't have done Alias, I don't think. It was called Time of Your Life. That's like a no-fail title for a show in 99. The audience said, good riddance to Time of Your Life, says Bob Mackie. Was that the theme? Boy, I don't know if it was but

if it was what it gets i hope i'll look into it yeah that song is called good riddance by the way time your life is in parentheses let's never forget that bob you're just as clever as the uh the criticizing headlines in this episode of the simpson well i did work in the press for a time and uh yeah the yankees beat the braves i just as as a uh former resident of atlanta it made me sad whenever the yankees would beat the braves but especially a four-game sweep that uh that's sad but who cares yes exactly no i care but joining us today is mike carlson of podcast the ride one of our favorite podcasts hello mike hey thanks thanks for having me and yeah we last heard you in our when we were doing the end of season 10 with They Saved Lisa's Brain.

You guys have been killing it with the podcast The Ride the last few months. I mean, in general, you always do. But yeah, it's been great. Well, thank you. Yes, I mean, it's all, some are remote. We had banked a lot of episodes, so a of them uh you know feel like they're from early in 2020 which they are so you know it's as if nothing changed in the world when we were doing those because it hadn't yet and i have to thank you for bringing uh blue 32 into my life because

i wander around my apartment talking to myself a lot because i'm alone a lot now. And one of the things I say is, love, David, just like Blue32. Well, we have to thank our past guest, Jason Wollner, I think, for putting this. So basically, this is from a David Copperfield show that he was still doing it at the MGM Grand in Vegas, and I assume we'll pick up once this COVID-19 is done or when, I don't know, when a mayor just decides to reopen things,

which is, who knows, could have been happening by now when we record this, who knows. But Blue 32 is a little blue alien. I don't know if you talked about him on the show. Not yet, no. No? We're trying to book him. Well, he's, yeah, he's voiced by Rob Paulson, a tuned voice acting legend, Rob Paulson. He shows up in the middle of David Copperfield's Vegas show.

He's introduced as an alien that worked with David's father during World War II, which is unbelievable. It's a truly ridiculous jump for that to take. I hate to spoil things for folks who haven't seen it, but I'd never see a David Copperfield show when I was in town. But now that I know about Blue, I kind of, the next time I'm in Vegas, I hope to see him. It is a must-see show. It's a puppet.

It's like, I mean, it's like a robot, really. It's like a robot puppet. It's like 12 inches or bigger. And David pulls him out of like a little capsule in the middle of the tiny, like tiny-ish MGM Grand Theater. And they do like comedy together. And it's a lot of like Blue 32 calling women in the audience hot. And she's like, she's hot, David. And he's got like a New York,

kind of a New York accent. Look at her. I, you know, I don't know if I told you this the last time we met, but my theory is Mike Reese wrote that stuff or was a writer on that. Oh, interesting. Because in Mike Reese's book, which is really great, Springfield Confidential, he talks a lot about his career, not just The Simpsons, though. And that includes talking about his friend David Copperfield, and he shows funny pictures of them together and they've they've hung out and so i would totally imagine that in like you know 2005 or something mike reese gets hooked up with david

copperfield to you know write jokes for for his uh comedy puppet wow i mean the show wow that's i would love to know i i forget how long he's been doing this version i don't know when blue started i feel like it's around 2010, but I could be wrong. That might be wrong. But, God, I would love to know. Because, like, the credits for a show like that aren't listed anywhere. So it's impossible to know. Like, as a cartoon watcher and as somebody who knows the names of voice actors,

I was, like, immediately like, oh, that's Rob Paulson. But it doesn't say co-starring Rob Paulson anywhere. It'd be nice if they had credits at the end of Vegas shows. That'd be funny. I was hoping that Rob Paulson was just there live every night. Well, now this makes me want to add Mike Reese on Twitter and be like, did you write, is Blue your character? Did you do this?

You got to do it. Did you see Blue was on david posted on social media a picture of blue during quarantine no oh no i haven't seen this blue had a mask on oh he's he's being responsible and they because generally david they hide blue blue is not really advertised anywhere there's a tiny little statue of him in the lobby but they don't say like this is david copperfield's bizarre alien show so blue has been very much hidden there's not like there's a little bit of merch that looks bad but you would never know what it is or what it relates to so i was impressed that david actually posted a photo of blue knowing that he you know he's so secretive of him but i'll send you i think we retweeted it a couple weeks ago.

That shows the specialness of this time. He's like, I have to even share Blue with the world because I need to know. The world must experience joy by seeing my puppet. You're talking a lot about a fake alien, but this is what this is all about. Yes, look up the Podcast Right episode about the David Copperfield show. It's great. Yeah. Do you think Mike Reese has been to Moosha k i bet you oh 100 i mean mike reese you know he travels the world he looks like he has

an awesome life of just you know this lives in new york flies into la two times uh once a week to do punch up on simpsons i would think multi multi-millionaire and just goes everywhere around the world. So for a jet setter like him, I think he's definitely been to Musha K at least once. Oh, I got to get him. We got to get him on the show. You have him on like, no Simpsons nerd talk here. This is just about Copperfield.

No Simpsons talk. Does David Copperfield have a monkey island? Has he trained those monkeys yet? But I guess, Mike, we should ask, did you see this episode live? Were you still a regular Simpsons viewer at the start of season 11? I'm pretty sure I did. This episode's pretty familiar. I don't really remember when I stopped watching weekly, but I'm pretty sure I'm still watching this.

Honestly, I think I would have thought this episode was before the episode that we at Podcast Array did on your show the first time. So I think my memory of this one is actually, I think, better than it was for the last one, which is season 10. Yes. Yeah, this one was really memorable to me, too.

And I find myself thinking of a lot of the quotes from it a lot. I forgot they were all from this episode, but it's a very quotable and funny episode yeah yeah there's there's some really good stuff in here my i think my only negatives on this episode is i do think homer is getting meaner every episode and there's there's just some there's good comedy out of it but him being directly mean to lisa especially is like i don't like this but uh yeah i i do think this really captures uh being a professional writer it's uh it's a good look into that world and they got some new guy named al gene to write it of course we know who

al gene is uh but he's sneaking his way back into the simpsons this is another one of his second freelance script right uh after mom and pop arts and i think he's back full time at the official production season 11 as that begins this is a leftover season 10 when you know gene wrote it uh and that he had just broken up with uh just professionally with mike reese they're still friends on good terms but yeah but they weren't writing together anymore this episode about homer not working with Lisa anymore at a certain point, you do wonder how much he's plumbing the depths of his life for that. And also returning to the critic. Yeah. Also, it's just a critic episode. Yes. Oh, yeah. That's a good point. I would think this would probably, and on the critic, it would be, you know, Francis Ford Coppola and Spielberg and George Lucas.

They all team up to try to kill Jay Sherman. That would be the version of this ending there. Yeah, that makes sense. When did the critic end again? 95, summer of 95. So this was just a leftover script he had. Though, you know, boy, I think by late 99, he's working on those Icebox Critic shorts as well, though. Oh, yeah, you're right.

Maybe that's why he couldn't be full-time on Simpsons, though. Have you treated yourself to those Icebox Classics of the Critic, Mike? I vaguely know what you're talking about. They're a little short? Yes. They're basically, are they even two minutes long bear i think yeah i think uh we did a podcast about them as part of our talking critic mini series and uh they're so rough and not not great yeah uh are they commercial are they available for

me to watch somewhere yeah they put them on the dvd yeah and they're all on youtube i think yeah i mean every critic episode is just on YouTube. Apparently, Sony Pictures Entertainment does not care. Is there any talk? Will the critic be back? You know, they've asked. Mike Reese has been asked that, too. And he points out, one, that about half the main cast is dead, unfortunately. Okay, fair enough.

And also, movie critics don't live anything like the life Jay Sherman lives now. That's a good point. So it's kind of just lost to time. And though he says John Lovitz is in his ear every day telling him, like, reboot the critic. Make it a day. I don't believe that at all. That's interesting. You know, you could just make it.

It would just be a lot sadder. Yeah. He'd be a sad, lonely man. Living with Marty, who's a blogger. But not even a blogger. Those are now a forsaken profession. Yeah, I guess he'd be a Twitch streamer then, I suppose. Yeah, and the death of the newspaper industry and TV.

It'd be real sad. I mean, this episode is like 21 years old, and it's about the death of newspapers. I know. Or really, I guess this episode is about when newspapers were told, you have X years to live. It's not the death, but it's the beginning of the terminal case. They're in hospice newspapers right now. Yeah, wow.

And this one, too, I think the commentary is extra funny because there's too many writers in there and they're so they're being extra punchy and critical of like kind of needling each other like that's a bad joke it's it's a fun it's a fun commentary who else is dead other than uh duke uh the the voice of marty christine cavanaugh and um oh wow and and doris uh she was the first to go she's oh right right right right well so why don't we get started in the episode itself in the chalkboard gag i want to explain that real quick oh yeah i like did a deep research on this i'm like what is he what is he talking about but that now i know i mean you could talk about if you want to henry i've got the notes too so yeah was uh the last dawn was a book by by Mario Puzo from 1996.

Not a sequel to The Godfather, right? But it's in the Godfather realm. And then in 97 and 98, it had a TV miniseries. Two of them. I guess they seemed to be fairly popular. They must have been pretty huge. It's referencing it in this episode, yeah. Yeah, though it was like a year old at this point.

So it almost feels like too late to do a last don joke i don't know but uh and they were inspired i guess and the uh the couch gag too it's uh it's a fun one it's like a first i mean so i think it's the first real appearance of matt granny on the show there was a uh courtroom sketch artist that looked like him but this is just them saying here he is in his fun, you know, big fat party animal shirts. And he's going to write his name on the screen. Yeah. And that is a real thing that if you,

I'm sure we've all bought Simpsons merchandise and have seen a Matt Groening's signature right there, invisible. I've seen art my girlfriend did that has Matt Groening's signature on it's not hers but uh yeah i don't i was aware of him as like a nerdy kid and i'm trying to remember when did the figures come out were they a couple years later i think 99 i think i think the mcfarlane ones might be around the corner yeah okay i'm just trying to remember when like this cartoon version of matt graining like became aware like i have it in my brain and i don't know i think it's a couple years later

probably well this version of him like this isn't the i think they truly formalized what mac reigning looks like in the season 15 episode big fat geek wedding when he appears on screen and he's like that's right i'm mac reigning pull tug on my beard i'll give it to rip out some of my hair and then melis goes mr groaning and and i think that's what he's looked like ever since like so this version of him is a little different from that when they when they draw matt into the show right the whatever the tap to simpsons tapped out graining was like the eventual it's like early homer and later Homer. They had to evolve the design. Or I think that's the Groening. The season 15 one is the Groening that appears as that very fun boss fight in the Simpsons game as well.

Oh, right. Yes, yes. That's where you get to meet Zoidberg. But I think the thing with Groening's signature is i mean it's a contractual thing that he always puts his name on it but i i think it is that you know mac raining is a comic artist by the late 80s he knew all about what happened you know like siegel and schuster and jack kirby and steve gerber in the 70s like these these creative folks who got screwed over and get forgotten to time alongside their

creation. So I can see how he'd want to create a rule that like my name is next to these when they appear to avoid that. I just looked up our picture with Matt Groening. He was wearing a very nice dress shirt. Yeah, he was. Well, I wanted to see him wearing the crew jacket, at least. He wasn't wearing what we used to call the Lassiter so we don't call that no no i do think it's funny uh though that it's about erasing his signature and him drawing it back on because you know there there are artists who on covers or on posters you don't get to know who did them because mac grating signature is the only one there it's it's something that's really cool to talk about uh theme parks it's something that's really cool to talk about theme parks. It's something that's really cool at the Universal Hollywood Springfield because you go to that, the crusty secret room, and there's all those caricatures of Simpsons characters drawn by the artists and they sign their names so you know who did them. Yes.

Honestly, I didn't put that together. That's cool. That's an extra element. I love that room, obviously. When Matt Groening finds that room, he's going gonna sign every one of those things gotta keep him out he must not know that must be what the situation is i've i have heard through the grapevine that some artists who saw that in there were like they cried because they're like that's my name my name next to the next to the drawing and it's wow it really cool, too, just to see, like, David Silverman, you know, who is great at drawing the Simpsons style,

but him drawing a Krusty how he wants to draw it is so, like, extreme and weird. I love it. It looks like a character from Ratfink, the way he draws Krusty. Oh, yeah. rusty oh yeah the simpsons will be right back hope you guys are enjoying this podcast as much as a new comic of Mary Worth and a big thank you to our guest this week Mike Carlson from Podcast the Ride you guys really got to check out Podcast the Ride he does some great stuff there with his co-hosts and we thank him for being on this week if you enjoy this podcast Talking Simpsons though you should be supporting us on patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons

if you subscribe there for five bucks a month you get to hear this podcast a week early and without ads like this one and the same goes for talking simpsons sister podcast what a cartoon where me and bob do the same talking simpsons treatment to a different animated series each week not only that but if you sign up now you get access to our currently unraveling weekly exclusive podcast talking mission hill where me and bob go over each episode of the cult series from the simpsons legends bill oakley and josh weinstein and if you sign up you'll also get to hear the whole back catalog of exclusives as well where we do the same for the critic many episodes of futurama and many

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catalog of awesome stuff including iron giant spider-man into the spider-verse aladdin and tons and tons and tons more you got to check it out all of them 10 bucks a month for the what a cartoon movie patreon.com slash talking simpsons i would i do wonder, if they'll... I mean, I think The Simpsons will never go away. I'm sure you've talked about this. I think probably there'll be some version of The Simpsons for as long as we're alive.

Like, even if... Like, it might just be the same writers forever. It might be a 95-year-old Al Jean. Very possible. But I have often wondered, like, well, is there ever a situation where, like, The Simpsons gets canceled for two years and then it comes back and looks different? Like, I kind of want to see, like, different art styles with The Simpsons. If we're going to do it forever, like, why not?

I mean, things like the Flintstones lasted well into our childhoods, but at this point, they're basically vitamins and cereal because there are only 161 episodes and they stopped in the 60s right yes yeah i just had some flintstone vitamins this morning oh nice i well you know i think flintstones and simpsons is an interesting thing because the flintstones it did end but there was like a prime flintstones universe of like that pebbles and bambi keep aging teenagers they get married they have kids like so there was the classic flintstones universe and then in about the mid 90s i think well okay there were the flintstone kids as well barf but uh but but then i think by the late 90s that was when they're like let's let's reboot let's go back to the classic and maybe change up the animation style, too. Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting.

Actually, it's probably come out by the time this has come out, but there's a new Looney Tunes coming out that looks a little more like classic Looney Tunes on HBO Max. But then the new Mickey Mouse cartoons are a really weird modern style, and they're great. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I could see in 2060 if there's just, they give it to some new artist who does crazy things with The Simpsons. I think we should all look forward to 2060 for a variety of reasons, but this being one of the top reasons. And so the episode begins at the school, and we get to hear about the class field trip.

I hope you all enjoy your ride to and tour of the Springfield Shopper newspaper. Groundskeeper Willie and I will stay behind to remove all traces of asbestos and the word evolution from our school. Kick-stop Margaritaville! Oh, they're still here. Yes. Now I'd like to ask each child to pair up with a buddy so no one gets lost. Come to think of it, I haven't seen Uter since the last field trip. Uter?

I don't remember any Uter. Silly name, Uter. Dad, it's great that you volunteered to drive, but how did you get out of work? Don't worry, sweetie. Daddy's got it covered. I work hard for the money. So hard for the money. Oh, I something something money.

Come on, give me lots of money. Now there's an employee, Smithies. A smile on his lips and a song in his heart. Promote him. So hard for the money. Let our return table burn. Bursting into flames is the only way that scene could end you kind of you've gone that far you gotta have everything burn that's when they needed to actually build in a reason for homer to have

left the plant now i mean even then they were kind of like do we need to work in one scene where it says why homer isn't there but uh this explains how homer is able to have a new job the entire episode i guess because the the his he's still collecting a paycheck from his uh body replacement i think in about 12 episodes in alone again natural diddly that is when homer has the joke of like i think it's clear i don't that's right and i have you is this someone calculated how many jobs he's had i'm sure they have. There's got to be a wiki list or something. I don't know. At this point in the series, maybe like 50, it seems.

30 to 50. It's funny you talk about the jobs things. I think if you're talking just in season 10 production scope, which this is 21 in production, and I think five earlier is Homer gets the job as a trucker so they this is only five episodes after his last new job i do it's accelerating i do love the udder stuff because they're exploring the plot thread from uh the pta disbands when the udder is killed by the war reenactors on their escape from uh colonial springfield or whatever that was

um but yes i think uder did appear uh with i'm not sure if he had spoken lines between this one that one and this one but it's a nice pull and i love the scene coming up soon we just want closure yes yeah uder is seemingly dead now or presumed dead i i looked it up so his i forgot that this connects to the pta disbands but uders last uh spoken line actually was at the baiman sci-fi con yes he walks by wearing a futurama t-shirt and waves at lisa so that that was the last on-screen sighting of udder before this but uh i could see they're like what we're we still Uther? He was a one-off joke? Let's just kill him. Is Uther, does he not show up ever after this? Oh, he does.

He does, right? Even on the commentary, they're like, we made this as a runner for a little while, and then we just stopped caring. I love Uther. I mean, obviously they ate him in Utherbraten. Yeah, that's true. They hated Uther. Why did they hate him so much?

Yeah, I mean mean it just felt like the joke was up yeah we did every joke when he died in that episode uh as a kid i assumed it was just like mole man where it's like you'll die a bunch it's fine he's a weird character who dies in the pta this bands i love like they're all around him with using their phony bayonets as clubs and they have lifted them as high as they can and they're about to bring it down just hard cut there just so you don't actually see them smash uh and uh talking about going to margaritaville uh mike you've been to the real margaritaville have you not what a story um well i have been to i mean are you referring to the one at universal CityWalk? Yes, yeah. Yes. Well, it's not a video that's available online.

I have a version of it on my computer. I covered the opening of it for an internet channel. Oh, wow. So Jimmy and Jimmy played there, but I was not granted an interview with him, which is what I wanted, obviously. But I played. I was walking around with a guitar, and the Margaritaville PR people were very nervous. They thought I was up to shenanigans, which I kind of was. I was just playing.

I had written a song called Hiding Out in a Pelican's Beak. And I wanted to gauge interest among the Parrotheads to see if they thought Jimmy Buffett would record my song. And they all, by the way, they all thought it was great. And they all thought that I absolutely should show this to Jimmyimmy but it did not happen it did not yet at least he has his own outpost in orlando as well or did at one time didn't he oh he yeah well we oh oh oh well i think what you're referring to there is there's there is a margaritaville in the city walk in orlando but there's a thing called Margarita Village. Right. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.

That's what you were talking about. It's a whole, like, kind of hotel and, I don't know, some sort of community, you would call it, with houses you can actually buy. And about three or four years ago, I was on an email list, and they asked us Parrotheads if we could help name streets for this new subdivision, whatever you would call it. And before we had a podcast, Jason, Scott, and Anthony Gio and I, we submitted 100 different street names to them. And we were looking at some, I forget exactly who pointed it out, but there was a video online and we found out that one of the names we submitted, which is Dreamsicle drive was chosen and when we went to do a live show in orlando in october we

went and visited our street that's beautiful uh it was great uh the whole place was empty it all seems like a big weird scam uh jason sheridan was just creeped out the whole time he thought we were going gonna get arrested or something because it was like an it felt like a it felt like we were in some sort of movie where and i don't want to say a virus has taken everyone out because that's too real life but like say there was something where all of a sudden like a bunch of people disappeared from a suburb it's like walking around going i don't think anyone lives here uh i i have walked around a spooky empty florida suburb of just nobody lives there but it's it's empty it's just my hometown now i'm waiting for

the first margarita village murder like the like the first murder in that disney run town is a paradise florida or whatever or celebration florida yeah it's not gonna be hard to figure out who did it because only there's only about five residents it's like a game of clue yeah we but we went we were exploring the hotel which didn't seem like there were that many people and there was a woman in the gift shop that overheard me say something about jimmy buffett's playing the hemisphere dancer and she ran over to me and just was so fascinated why we were actually there. And then told us we needed to do our comedy show at their comedy club, which is called Bonkers. Oh, that's perfect.

So if Margarita Village still exists in a year or so, maybe we will go do a show at Bonkers. The return to Bonkers. I think you'd be one of their top acts you'd have there. Look, I would hope so It would just be an honor to play there I have kind of down low Heard that Jimmy pulled his

Financial investment in the place And they're just using his name And he actually doesn't own it anymore Because there were some problems So I would prefer I guess what I'm saying To play a place that Jimmy actually owns But I will take bonkers If that's what our option is.

So they head off. Fake Homer is also very similar to the one that looks like from the B-Sharps episode, I got to say. Except he doesn't have balloon arms. He has twig arms. Is it old mailbox head? Oh, so this one's a bucket. Yeah. Yeah.

I guess they're different. Marge built that one. Homer had to build this one. Marge yeah yeah it's i i guess they're different there's i i guess i built that one homer had to build this one march did a better job she's uh she i mean marge is an artist so they then are uh driving on their way there and we get this like surprising sequence i forgot this was the homer bleeping section here but uh i have a couple clips of that. Oh, you s***! You cut me off! Oh, yeah, s*** you! Dad, that's an ambulance. Oh, right.

S*** ambulance! Think you're so big with your s*** siren and your letters on backwards? So that, you know, as a nerd of the show, that one kind of bugs me because it's the first time characters have been bleeped outside of the context of appearing on television ah you're right yeah kent brockman was the one and uh dredrick tatum right dredrick tatum yeah and also uh when sideshow mel is saying like you think you're so like uh well he's whacked out on wow he saw us yeah he's

bleeped there but but yeah they're always bleeped in the context of being on television like there's there's never bleeps in the real world of the simpsons so that kind of breaks a rule but i mean it's not it's not not funny but i the rules the the canon of the show, it breaks it. I find it odd. I found this odd. I found it off-putting for whatever reason. I haven't seen the Watch This episode in years, but I was like, this is weird. I don't know.

I don't know if I like this precedent here. That Homer is like road raging and just like saying swears all over the place at an ambulance included. I mean, I like the ambulance joke. I just, I, for whatever reason, I was. I mean, I like the ambulance joke. For whatever reason, I was like, hmm, I don't know about this. And also Milhouse gets knocked unconscious in a classic Milhouse injury scene. That's why he's not wearing a seatbelt, so he can just fall to the ground easier.

I love that just flop. Quite a roomy car back then. I miss being a kid and you could just lay down on the back seat. That was good times. And then they arrive at the zoo, and that's also a real time killer like it's just uh that homer forgot what the plot of the episode was the zoo animals do come back for the finale so so are we to believe that homer said doe so loudly that uh animals decided to escape the zoo is that a very small polar bear got into the back of a very large moose and hightailed it. Yeah, I guess it's a child polar bear.

A child bear or a cub, as scientists would call it. Yeah, that's the right way to put it. There's some sort of child bear on the screen. When Homer arrives in the next scene, I'm surprised he's holding a zoo balloon and not a zoo pennant because this was pennant time on the show.

We were in the pennant era. Oh yeah, did they think maybe they did too much pennant humor? They're like, you're pitching me pennants again? It can be, it's a balloon. Come back with a balloon, kid. Pennants and stashes I think are funny things because of The Simpsons.

It's just a funny thing to see that someone would make a, I mean, pennants are so old when in our youths they if they sell them to you at a baseball game it's like look it's an old-timey pennant like and that was 30 years ago i think we need more a sandwich board humor it's time to bring that back i agree yeah i agree and uh and but they have to be ringing a bell as they're they're wearing that sandwich board though we finally arrive at the springfield chopper the first time springfield chopper been in the show a million times i'm glad they didn't make up like the springfield gazette or whatever and they just they go to a previously a heavily established uh newspaper

for the for the day i i believe that's where the the three-eyed fish story is reported on i think so yeah it was even in the first season the springfield shop yeah uh but uh but yes how did this uh this newspaper get built welcome to the springfield shopper established in 1883 the newspaper was founded by johnny newspaper seed a 14 year old boy who roamed amer America founding newspapers. If he's so smart, how come he's dead? Over the years, the shopper merged with the Springfield Times, Post, Globe, Herald, Jewish News, and Hot Sex Weekly to become Springfield's number one newspaper. Wow, a bustling metropolitan newsroom funneling scoops from all over the globe.

Hi, are you interested in a subscription to the shopper? Low introductory rates. No, please, you gotta help old Gil. What's it gonna take to keep you on the phone? Dance for you? But you wouldn't even see it. All right, I'm dancing. And this is our comic strip department. Who here reads Mary Worth? Let's move on.

Yeah, my local newspaper from my hometown just basically shut down last year. And it started in 1869. But the story is for all like little newspapers and big ones too, they're all just being gobbled up by like right-wing syndicates to become propaganda platforms. That's it. Because only old people read newspapers so they're getting their last audience while they're about to die yeah and then they'll move on to somebody else uh yeah well and also like i've heard a tragedy of all these newspapers closing is uh much less local reporting so if you're not in a major metropolitan area,

stories just get missed, like major events just get missed because who's going to cover it? There's no local journalist to cover it. Yeah, it's depressing. This is all really depressing. We're sorry. I could tell you what else is dead. The then artist behind Mary Worth,

because that was the son of the original guy. He died in 2003. He died like 20 years ago. Wow. Because the comic started in 1938. That guy took over in the mid-70s. He did it until he died. Wow.

And it's still running in the paper. I couldn't... When I looked that up, I was like, is Mary Worth still going? It's still a daily strip. It hasn't even graduated to being a Sunday strip. Graduated or demoted? Well, demoted, yes. The hasn't even graduated to being a Sunday strip. Graduated or demoted? Well, demoted, yes.

The manager would say graduated. Is Mary Worth King Features? Yes. I know that because when I was reading strips off the official site, I got to see a crown as it was loading. So I was like, I guess it's King Features Syndicate.

We talk a lot about King Features Syndicate because it was loading. So I was like, oh, I guess it's King Feature Syndicate. We talk a lot about King Feature Syndicate because it was based, the Toon Lagoon in Islands of Adventure in Orlando. There's a Toon Lagoon and it has all the different strips like Merryworth and we're obsessed with it.

We love King Feature Syndicate. Not to have a too long divergence here, but I loved your Islands of, sorry, the preview spot your Islands of Adventure. Sorry, the preview spot for Islands of Adventure that you guys talked about recently. That was a really good one. Thank you. Yes.

Jason's favorite place on Earth, my co-host Jason, his favorite place on Earth is Islands of Adventure. So we did an episode just about the preview center where you would go and see what was coming to this new theme park. And I think we did a little King Features in that one. I had that passport. But I prized it as a kid but did not hold on to it like Jason did. Jason, I've never seen something in better condition than this. Well, also, not to brag, but I got to go on a preview weekend to Islands of Adventure in April 1999. Wow, really?

For real, yes. I've never ridden Dudley Do-Right or Popeye because those weren't open on the preview week, and I've never gone back. Man, well, you got to go back. Well, the last time I was there and I could have ridden Popeye, I i was like i don't want to be the wettest i've ever been today like that's yeah that's a good point and you could have paid five dollars for one of those drying stations yeah did those work are those good they work yes and what i mean like they turn on are they good uh it depends i think you're still gonna have like your socks soaked but like your shirt may be dry and your hair may be dry okay uh but uh but yes the they

also in this joke here they were way ahead of the curve on the consolidation of newspapers too like they they they've smashed together far more now than than then i i also caught uh looking closely at the hot ladies on the uh hot sex weekly that they just reused two shots from the ion springfield oh okay bikini babes cool and i love the just the flatness of the response to homer's just like cruel like if he's so smart how come he's dead and then there's silence yeah homer is mean he's he's pretty mean in this episode and uh and actively avoids a comeuppance but uh they were making fun of mary worth as an ancient thing 21 years ago and uh still persists it's outlived so many of us i i did look up another another the artist who worked on mary worth uh

joe giali gialla but just he's interesting because he was still with us knock on wood at 91 what wow and before he worked on mary worth starting in like the 60s and before that he was an inker during and uh sometimes penciler but more inker for marvel and dc and like the golden and silver age like he inked on like gene colin and gil kane comics and wow this guy's a legend and then went to mary word it looks like he gave up in 2016 as an 85 year old man henry uh apparently it's done by june brigman and royman, the illustrators. The Brighman brother. Wait, the Brighman couple?

The Brighman couple. Brighman brothers sounds funnier. Let's have a little narration. And did you catch that they drew in the Mary Worth phone in the background? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great.

Her stern face. I gotta think that's an animator who's like, we can't miss the Mary Worth phone. I don't think the script said include Mary Worth I love all the Mary Worth jokes I just remember the one The rare Mary Worth where she advises a friend to commit suicide Yes

That's a good Suicide's nothing to laugh about The idea of a Mary Worth column about that is funny Oh and then we get a Dear Abby Ann Landers joke Yes Who are not real people no no i i have some uh info on them so okay ann landers that's the 1943 advice column the final ann landers esther lurterer did the column from 1955 to 2002 that that column no longer exists dear abby still exists and is written by the daughter of the original abby though neither

one of them is named abby now here's the messed up thing the second ann landers was the twin sister of the first year abby and she started her own column dear abby shortly afterwards to undercut her sister's famous column offering it at a reduced rate if they would only take her column wow it's like gallagher and gallagher too exactly Exactly. So Dear Abby is the underdog, the dark underdog that took out Ann Landers eventually. So not only undercutting Ann Landers, but outlasting her too. And they're twins. They are twin sisters. That's the craziest thing to me, that they are twin.

And then they like hated each other for 60 years. Wow. So they were sisters. They were. Because that's all I knew was they were sisters. I didn't actually know it was like a kayfabe thing where they were not real. They kept the names going.

Yeah, so one sister, Esther, she took over the Ann Landers column and the other sister was like, I can do that. I'll be, let's say, Dear Abby. So she started hers a year later and was like, hey, listen, newspaper, if you don't take Ann Landers,

I'll give you dear abby for cheaper so she undercut her sister throughout a bunch of newspapers that's why her column spread faster that's amazing wow and and i'll tell you what crazy as a little as a weird little kid i would read the newspaper all the columns i would read things like dave barry but i would also read ann landers and helloween's household tips. Wow. All right. I remember we've talked about Hellowees before because Marge brought her up. But I think, I believe my local paper was a Dear Abby paper. And yes, I mean, on some days, I wouldn't say every day, but on some days when I would

run out of comic strips to read and be like, I still want to have information in my brain, I would turn to the Dear Abby section and see what was going on that week. I don't think I ever read Dear Abby, but it's just because I didn't have easy access to it. I think one of them, I think they're Chicago originals, too. I think the Tribune in was like one of theirs first uh newspapers too all right well my dad actually works for the chicago tribune and that is not a joke so there's no excuse oh wow man he could have introduced you to to ann landers he's he might be good friends with her and i don't know i went to her funeral son was he that he meets gene siskel or was he friends with Gene Siskel?

I need to know this. That's a good question. I don't think, when did Gene, my dad started in, he worked at a more local paper until like the early 2000s. Oh yeah, so Gene Siskel, like he died right before this episode aired

in like August of 99, but he was the Tribune guy and Roger Ebert was the Sun Times guy, both in Chicago. Right, yes. I remember Gene Siskel died on a, of 99 but he was the tribune guy and roger reaver was a sun times guy both in chicago yes um i remember gene siskel died on a when i was a sophomore in high school which is like 2000 maybe now the uh well the deer speaking of death like yeah dear abby she outlived uh she outlived amlanders by like 11 years i think it was one. One sister, 2002, the other, 2013.

Wow. And which one is still, which column is going still? Dear Abby is written by the daughter of the original Dear Abby, who is the ripoff artist. Yeah. Right. But there's no Ann Landers column? Apparently Ann Landers is done, yeah. For most of history, there was only the second Ann Landers who wrote it until she was an old lady who died huh so the ip of ann landers is available it's

perhaps it might be out there it could be at ann landers tng all right i just want to keep that in mind for myself i feel like the last time i heard about dear abby was when there was some controversy over her like giving an answer about like hating gay marriage or saying that, uh, uh, some name sounded too foreign or whatever. One of them, I'm sorry.

I don't know which one it was. One of them garnered controversy because of the, uh, JFK, uh, was in office and they're like, what do you think of, or no,

he was running for president and they, one of them was asked, you know, what do you think about this? He's he was running for president, and one of them was asked, you know, what do you think about this? He's like, I'm not so sure about that. We all know that Polacks hate women because he believed in the Pope, right? Whoa, wow. So, by the way, Polack, not a good word, but I heard it a lot growing up because there's

lots of Polish people in my hometown. Yeah, you're stepdad as well, so you can say it. I'm allowed to say it. Well, also on the Ann Landers thing thing or after the anlanders thing is when homer pulls up the uh newspaper from the day he was born i this also is where i like pause like they drew a penis on baby homer it's very distracting i i thought that was a critic joke for a while i was like i remember seeing a joke like this about on the critic oh yeah actually there's like two other jokes in this that i remember being similar on the critic yeah no on the critic yeah the mom says we saved the paper from the day you were born yeah like is it

unusually fat baby born or something yes yeah okay uh look i'm not saying aljean ripped himself off but nobody saw that critic episode so why not bring it back i yeah i bet that is the rationale which is like yeah you know not as many people saw it so well this is also back like who would ever think that it would be released on a thing called a dvd and that people could watch it whenever they wanted or that comedy central would be run it in a few years over and over and over also that uh and uh then we uh head to the printing room where we find out that the uh zero percent goes into the recycling of them which i i really love that uh that that feels like a very like corporate back padding of just like a certain percentage goes in and when you

find out like it's a it's a very small percentage also that joke with the treehouse almost going into the grinder it feels weirdly paced it feels like there was like a extra editing on it or something i don't know it moves it moves too fast or that we were supposed to like hear a sound after they cut away oh i bet yeah but they weren't allowed to i wonder if it's like there was a time crunch and they were like just speed that up yeah yeah like we need to lose 10 seconds uh and then finally the plot really gets going as homer uh is introduced to the idea of being a food critic i so here's the thing when they show that homer is like a guy who loves food and can

smell cake like i know homer loves food but i always saw him as like a garbage dump of food like you just throw food at him and he'll eat whatever it is. He's not someone who has strong feelings about what he eats, whether or not it's good or whatever. But I like that Bart's at least proud of him and that he can hear pudding. That's good. All right. Now it's time to play the Talking Simpsons anti-death jingle,

which I use this time with the strongest of wards for our guest for this episode. Jim Pudgert, I ain't dead yet! Yes, Ed Asner as, sorry, I called him Ed Asner. Ed Asner as editor. Editor, yes. It's weird that this is an an al gene thing i've noticed that he and mike reese would often just not name characters where uh an oakley or weinstein or even america would be like let's give him a funny name they'd like start with a funny name

and go from there but i think it's just like just for sheer efficiency like who cares what his name is let's just keep going his job's an editor plus you hear the ed asner voice so you're just thinking lou grant anyway yeah so you just let it fly right through yeah is do you think the idea with was like it is just lou grant well you know he's he's drawn to have hair and lou grant famously does not have hair so uh you know and also mary tyler moore owns that character so maybe that's why that's what i'm saying they put some hair on it so the very litigious Mary Tyler Moore would ensue. Ed Asner, I mean, also, we are recording this like two months ahead of time, so we already have worries anytime we talk about somebody in their 90s on the show as being alive. But extra, like, I love Ed Asner.

I would never, I want him to live to be 109. It's not a curse if a podcast talks about this guy in his 90s and he dies. It's just the hand of fate. I hate to interject real quick. I saw Ed Asner at the Annie Awards because my girlfriend Lindsay Kaytai works on Infinity Train and I got to go to the Annie Awards

which is the animation Oscars essentially and her category was presented by Ed Asner and the guy who does Krang's voice from the original Ninja Turtle cartoon. Wow! Krang! I was thrilled. Yeah, I... Wow.

That's amazing to get... You know, we just did a Goof Troop episode where that guy's on it, and he's playing a con artist. Oh, that was one of the two con artists, yeah. and he sounds like southern krang like he's like oh boy it's very distracting southern krang honestly you just came up with a great turtle character uh but but yeah ed asner he you know he has a long history

with executive producer of the simpsons james l brooks like brooks was one of the showrunners on the mary tyler moore show which made ed asner famous as the uh the spunk hating uh boss at the tv news station but also when his show got spinoff uh when he got his show spun off from the mary tyler moore show brooks was also his creator and showrunner on that series as well, which went for like five years. Yeah, wow. Which I've never seen one minute of Lou Grant because it never... Mary Tyler Moore reruns were unavoidable, but I never saw reruns of Lou Grant. I forgot about that show. That was never like a TV Land or Nick at Night deal?

I think it is not a TV Land type show because it's an hour-long drama. Oh, you're right yeah okay so it's uh it also was you know kind of politically charged and and very of its time it is not timeless television like the mary tyler moore show is much more timely and also ed asner being a cool lefty dude he alleged that they canceled blue grant not because of bad ratings but because he was a vocal vocally against america's intervention interventions in central america in the early 80s and it was it was getting to be a bad thing for the news uh for for the network wow i didn't know any of that yeah ed esner he's a a strong left-wing guy i think also a slight 9-11 truther, but you know, hey, who isn't?

Hey, you know, look, John Cusack is a big Bernie guy. Does he think 5G created the coronavirus? Maybe. Maybe. Look, nobody's perfect. No, who knows? Look, what do we, maybe it did. Who knows?

And Ed Asner is Jewish. He's not one of those Jewishish conspiracy 9-11 guys so maybe it's a healthy conspiracy yeah no i think it's healthy but his voice the greatest voice like i love his voice like he's he's the up man to a entire generation yeah and he was doing up he started doing a lot of voice acting in the 90s. Yeah. Well, that's another funny thing about this, that this begins a Simpsons tradition of having people who have played J. Jonah Jameson do a voice of a newspaper editor on The Simpsons. Oh, yeah. Though they'll get much more overt about it in a few years after this episode.

They simply hire J.K. Simmons and draw the character to look like j jonah jameson and he talks like because al gene's a big spider-man fan huge yeah i thought so yeah i think in his first appearance he is just j jonah jameson and he asked for pictures of spider-man in later appearances also voiced by jk simmons they call him jj gruff so totally different from j jonah jameson right the very litigious marvel wouldn't come after them then but now they're all under the same umbrella so gosh you're right so they really i did this is crazy because jay jonah jameson could just show up on the simpsons legally yeah he'd be like i'm in canon i am the 616 jay jonah jameson why even write a parody anymore if you're on the simpsons so like bart could just show up in a post-credit marvel

movie sequence yeah i mean it'd probably take a lot of red tape at the disney corporation but yeah it's possible it's possible i think i don't know i think it's a great idea uh but yes uh ed has been really great here he's basically just lou grant i'm i appreciate that they hold back him saying anything like i hate spunk or whatever like that's that would be too bad that would that would be too lame uh but he's he's pretty funny in this first scene here as homer crashes the party so mimi this little shindig is our way of saying farewell to our favorite food critic what can I say except thanks for the predictable champagne, pizza that's hardly numero uno,

and ice cream cake which reminds us, why make 31 flavors when you can't get vanilla right? I wouldn't want to be married to her. I mean, again. Who are you and why are you ruining my retirement party? I'll have you know I wandered off from the tour. That's a good selfish Homer excuse. You can see the way he's eating that cake.

He's just taking scoops out of it with his hand. They cut to a reverse shot of the cake. You can just see the scoops have been taken out of it. Oh, I missed that. But also, she said it's an ice cream cake, so Homer's hand should be freezing eating it that way. How can he tear through an ice cream cake with his bare hands? I mean, he's Homer.

He's in full food monster mode here. But also, I like the background that is that Lou Grant used to be married to her. I'm just going to call the editor Lou Grant. That's easier. I think all of the other editors have names. She's very conspicuous that he does not have one. He's for sure lou grant does uh did disney buy uh mg what is mary teller more oh mtm whatever the cat one mtm do they own

mary teller more now so they could go back and retroactively put his name as lou granton you know i feel like uh this we should probably just Google this, but this, my guess is it's Sony. I think Sony bought the MTM library. That's probably right. I would like, they should just start rebooting things like the Mary Tyler Moore show. Just to have some young woman, like 23-year-old, just playing like, I'm Mary Tyler Moore. Yeah. Why not?

Let's roll in the slop even more than we are now. Mike was right to guess. All of MTM shows are now owned by the Walt Disney Company. Oh, my God. Hell, yes. Through its subsidiary, 20th Century Fox Television. Oh, wow. So, yes, just have Lou Grant on The Simpsons.

Jesus Christ. So, Lou Grant can show up in a post-credits Marvel sequence. Yeah. Or at least on the reboot of Mary Tyler Moore, they can wheel in Ed Asner and be like, I remember a girl too once. You're just like her. There were like three years ago, the whole cast of Mary Tyler Moore was still alive, I think,

except for Ted Knight. But now they're... What do we got? We got Gavin McCloud still alive. I think Gavin McCloud's gone, too. No, no, he's alive. Is he really? The Candy Candy guy? I would put a lot of money...

Sorry, Bob, you're having to just Google these things we say out loud. All I have to do is type in the name and the verb is is. Okay, damn. I was sure it was. Floris Leachman still alive yeah okay yeah and amos still alive with a very funny no line cameo and uncut gems that was the greatest that was so good but yeah so homer's tearing apart that cake he insists he's there for the tour and

then uh we get uh a little bit of an i feel pretty parody which i i think on my first viewing i was so happy it got interrupted because i was like i don't want a song no song please it's very like this is one of the worst parts of this episode for me because it stands out as being just very awkward it's because they couldn't get the rights to use the song for the parody but they decided to do it anyway so just to get a very off version where they're not hitting the right notes so i i don't know what it is and like i have to be told what it is. It's true.

It's true. Well, here, let's listen along and hear how they had to change it. Well, at least you like the food. Oh, I like food all right. I like pizza. I like bagels. I like hot dogs with mustard and beer. I get the picture.

I'll eat eggplant. I could even eat a baby deer. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Who's a baby deer on the lawn? I get the picture. Enough already! Sorry. Hey, listen. I just had a thought. We're looking for a new food critic. Someone who doesn't immediately poo-poo everything he eats. No, it usually takes a few hours.

Look, I'd like to give you a tryout. Write a 500-word sample review. If it passes muster, we'll put you on staff. Thanks for the chance. You won't never regret this, Mr. Editing Guy. I feel like this editor should be fired because the second Homer has that reply to poo-poo everything, I feel like he should be like, oh, no, you're not a writer. I'm not hiring you.

I think that's one of the reasons Homer gets all these new jobs is because somebody finds this outsider who's not so jaded by the business. Like, that's him. That's the guy we need. But it ends up being a horrible mistake. That's always the way he gets into these situations, like how he became an astronaut. Call me crazy, but I think you're just the right guy for this.

Homer is like a Forrest Gump type, really. Yeah, yeah. He's in the right place at the right time. Al Jean writes a clip show that's basically that exact idea. What is it? Is it a newer episode? It's like a season 14 one. Which one are you talking about?

The Forrest Gump clip show. Oh, Gump Roast. Gump Roast. Thank you, Bob. How could you forget such a memorable title? Gump Roast. I don't know if I've ever seen that. oh gump roast gump roast thank you bob how could you forget such a memorable title gump roast i don't know if i've ever seen that it's it's the last clip show and it's kind of dreadful because it was a 2002 clip show yeah it's weird i do it does have an in canon appearance by

kengan kodos though though as a clip show i feel like it shouldn't count as canon. Right. But yeah, this guy should not hire Homer. The next time he replies to him with like, you won't never regret this, like, no, you don't hire this guy. This is not a professional writer. I totally forgot that there was going to be a West Side Story remake in December by Steven Spielberg. Oh, right. If there are movies. I'll video on demand that starring ansel elgort oh that sounds like a mr show character uh that's that's uh spielberg's new muse he was the star of

the ready player one film as well yes oh yes that's right i've seen ready player one i went to the what do they call it the it's not the haven what's the name of the place do you know what i'm talking about oh the i know they gunned but i forget the name of the the place that it's set in it was on the tip of my tongue oh well uh the no simpsons and that because it was a warner production unfortunately but uh oh right i so i think the point they're making here is an interesting one about how he wants homer because he's not jaded and super negative and i think that the arc homer goes through being a guy who loves everything to then a guy who loves nothing it does it in part feel like a response by the simpsons to late 90s reviewers who were saying the show was on a downward slope you know and i yeah i was thinking

this of course in comparison like ratatouille it's funny when i think it's funny when any show or movie is like you know what we're gonna do an episode about critics and how they're mean yes yeah i mean like yeah but okay yeah that's just that that movie ends on a sour note for me that ratatouille movie um just like at at that point, Pixar was just untouchable. Everyone loved them. Why are you taking down critics, man? It seems so misguided. It was probably like one reviewer got to Brad Bird like 10 years prior,

and he's like, I'm going to show that guy. You know, I think in general, it's hard to take criticism. I get it. That's a stupid thing to say, Henry. Hey. One, when you're the Simpsons writers, you know, it's hard to take criticism, too. And I mean, I just read at the time of this recording a new interview with Al Jean, and I could feel his tiredness at being asked a question like, so, you know, the show's not as good now as it used to be. He's like, yeah like yeah yeah all right i guess i'm sure every day he's gone outside for the past 20 years

somebody just goes up to him and says still and walks away so i get why he's tired yeah i mean i guess i why why ask somebody that question well i mean if i'm interviewing lg and i'm not gonna ask that question we do get asked similar questions i'm like why did you say that yes that was kind of mean uh so you know i'm people go like oh why are you why are you virtue signaling so much on your podcast i think we finally virtue signaled enough that we've chased away the people who will tell us that we've been they're tired of it the common complaints i see are uh too political with the politic political having no meaning whatsoever and also they're mad that we ask for money not that they're paying it but

that we ask i see yeah we have i feel like there'll be and it's really a it's few and far between but it'll be like too political and i'm like oh okay we mentioned the name of a politician and then made a joke okay got it as if we did like a two-hour episode breaking down the uh the presidential politics and what's happening in the world but but of course if you're listening to this you're one of the good ones and you're a great listener and we love you and we we know you're you only say nice things yes Yes, and only write nice reviews on the podcast review part of Apple Podcasts. Or else you will do a podcast about reviewers, and you will make a point about negativity in reviews. So Homer starts writing his first review. He's got an old-timey typewriter in front of him, one without the letter E,

which apparently that is the most used letter in the English language. he's uh got a old-timey typewriter in front of him one without the letter e uh which that's apparently that is the most used letter in the english language that's what they say on the commentary that's why lenny had to say why burn shouldn't kill him without using the letter e okay it's similar joke similar smart guy uh thing there he's a good work guy uh and and homer just typing away i this this is again where the episode should end because at least they address like homer can't complete sentences at this point he could not write anything and so uh homer gets to hear the results of uh of his first editing Well, what do you think? This is a joke, right?

I mean, this is the stupidest thing I've ever read. What's wrong with it? Well, you keep using words like paschetti and mommados. You make numerous threatening references to the UN. And at the end, you repeat the words screw Flanders over and over again

It's so hard to get to 500 words. Oh look Homer. I'm sorry. No, you're right. It's a joke Ha ha ha everyone laugh at the funny joke. Ha ha I'll be right back with the real review. Still not clean. Think your failure's still on me? Dad, I'm sorry the editor didn't like your review. I'll help you write a new review if you just let me use the bathroom.

Still not clean. Still not clean. So I felt that pain the first time I was edited by somebody. It really hurts to be told everything you wrote is bad. Yeah, like all the stuff about writing in this episode stuck with me as someone who would be a professional writer for almost 20 years after that. And be in college for like eight years and meeting word counts and thinking, why can't I just write Screw Flanders? I'm at like 1,198 words.

Come on, that's almost 1,200. Yeah, I'm trying to think. I've had sometimes where somebody gives a note on scripts, and it just can ruin a month of your life. Yeah, you want to lay in a tub and turn on the shower at the same time just to get it off of you. Yeah, no, it hurt so much being edited early in my time that i like uh i had a dream that one of my first professional editors was like hunting me like

an assassin in the dream because i was so upset by by the edits i was getting it is nice once you work enough though you can learn when some editors are bad and like give bad advice yes yeah yeah who maybe have like i don't know 10 pages of draconian rules about a review that says like well don't say play don't use the word game every sentence must have an opinion that's how language works damn it most of life is just sort of like just desensitizing your brain to versions of disappointment and trauma pretty much yeah it's just like getting to you to the point where you're so like your brain is so you've been rejected so much in so many different ways that the next time it happens you go all right and you can't move on with your life You can't hurt me anymore. That is a life lesson I would give to a young person. Well, yeah, I was curious, you know, Mike, this is pulled from the experience of, you know, writing collaboratively in the entertainment field.

Like, did this speak to you, this stuff with Homer and Lisa? As far as credit, you know, a little bit of like, there's always times when I think if you collaborate on something where it's like somebody compliments, so if you're in a duo or something, somebody compliments an element of a script for both of you and you want to be like, I wrote that thing.

This compliment shouldn't be for them. It's just for me. So, you know, we all feel a little bit like Lisa sometimes, but I think probably not just in writing, everyone always feels like they're not getting the credit they deserve.

So yeah, there's, I mean, Lisa's obviously really not getting the credit she deserves here. But she gets kind of, that plot line for her just kind of gets lost in the episode. After the murder plot is set up, we forget about Lisa's, you know, she doesn't get what she deserves. And then she gets part of homer's revenge at the end yeah i forgot i forgot what how this episode ends and i was like oh this oh yeah i forgot okay this episode right right and i was

like i wonder how they'll resolve lisa and homer and it'll be like a nice moment then i was like oh no no it's just a third act of hijinks got it it. And yeah, Homer and Lisa writing together. One, it changes things up in the Simpsons household because I believe to this point they had rejected the family owning a personal computer. And this is when they finally decided it's 1999. A family at the Simpsons income level has a PC and lisa needs to be typing on a word processor i think bill gates broke their first computer when homer started hyper compute global mega nets oh yeah bill gates and his goon showed up to trash the place they have the internet income on computers now that's that's right so okay but the idea of lisa lisa seemingly owns her own computer like

that's in her room. Yeah, that's interesting. I remember at the time, I didn't have my own computer until I had a laptop in college. But I do remember that. There would be a kid who had their own computer. I was like, holy shit, you must be a millionaire. All that porn privacy as a teenager. You don't have to share the pornography with the family computer and try to hide it as best

you can. I don't know if you have the clip, Henry, but I love, I've always loved the phrase groin-grabbingly good to the point where that's in our Patreon description. Oh, that is good. I forgot it came from this episode. Yeah, yes, I do have the clip. This is some collaborative writing.

Okay, what restaurant did we review? Well, we went to Pate La Belle last week. How about that? Great. Now let me think. The food was... Not undelicious. The food is delicious.

That's brilliant. And I have this sweet, sweet chocolate mousse. Really, the only word for it is... Hmm, what's the English equivalent for I'd say Transcendent How about groin-grabbingly transcendent? Uh, I don't think so

We make a good team A groin-grabbingly good team 497, 498 words How about screw Flanders? Bon appetit. Both good. Both good. That's how it is in a writer's cooperation, too, of going like, how about this?

No. Well, okay. Both good. Sometimes a co-writer can just shut things down. You're like like all right i i think it's also like an insidery writer joke about how using a it's about being needlessly overusing words of like not unattractive when you could just say attractive or whatever not unblank yeah i feel like i have a bad habit in the last couple years of saying, it's not dissimilar to, instead of saying it's similar.

I don't know if it's just something I were like, you sound much more intelligent. Yeah, I think that was why I would ever say those things. It's not unlike, because if you just say, it's like that, you don't sound as smart. I think as people being on Line of Tendery and I am, I think we're automatically defending ourselves from comments that would come in to try to prove us wrong about something. So you have to make it as nuanced as possible. Yeah, that's true. Right.

Because if you're saying, oh, that's the same as blank, someone will be like, well, actually, there are several differences. And then they would tell you them in a tweet. That's true. So you have to use nuanced language. Yeah. I mean, that's why we pause like twice in this to check google for information homer still trying to shove him screw flanders he

won't do it it then cuts to homer getting approved he sells his first review he's got a a job as a i mean oh my god homer's probably making like100,000 a year being a food critic for a newspaper. A food cricket. Oh, yes. And I also feel like Homer should just be instantly fired for that stop the presses line. That's a great joke. It takes four hours. Whatever, I'll be amused.

I love he just throws that out in the shock on Lou Grant's face. It's like, well, no, go back. So we come back and Homer is now enjoying being a food cricket, as Bob put it. And in this next scene, the sea captain, Captain McAllister, he's back to his old job. He hasn't done this job since his first appearance. That's true. He has a variety of ocean related jobs. Yeah.

This is where he began actually i think he began on that that infomercial or the uh the sea shanty uh tapes i think frying dutchman came first i think that's because they created him to replace don rickles you could be right yeah i think you're right about that uh i have oh by the way mike have you eaten at the the frying dutchman at the springfield in orlando i have not because they have that one is not in hollywood is that right yeah hollywood doesn't have that yes i have not eaten there i've eaten i you know we didn't eat at all at the springfield in orlando i've only eaten a couple meals out at the one here uh the cletus's chicken shack and the regular crusty burger so well i would assume

you go straight for the doc brown's chicken renamed as Cletus then as a traditionalist. I know some people have a lot of fondness for that chicken. And then I've also heard some people say it is the same recipe that they had when Doc Brown's closed, which, of course, if you don't know, Doc Brown, outside of the Back to the Future ride, had his own chicken restaurant in Hollywood, which doesn't make any sense.

It's weird because Doc Brown lived next to a Burger King. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yes, that's true. It's right. And the Burger King is, I literally could, it's a five minute drive

from right here on my apartment. Wow. I honestly, I didn't realize until I was watching just the clip of Back to the Future like literally two months ago and I went, holy shit,

it's the Burger King I go to all the time. Was that house not there? Or was that just a set? The house is not. It's kind of like, I think it's sort of strategically shot. I'm trying to remember where the house is in relation to the Burger King.

It's right by the closed down Toys R Us, which is turning into, well, there's a Hobby Lobby there, and it's turning into some, I forget what it is, something bought it, which I've been wanting the Toys R Us to come back, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. So there's not really a ton of houses right there, but there's some kind of shack-type

things on the other side. It's a very industrial area that has a go-kart track right around there. There's batting cages. But I think they kind of strategically area that has like a go-kart track right around there. There's batting cages. But I think they kind of strategically make it look like the house is there. And so I guess Krusty Burger then

is your go-to at Springfield. I mean, the Big Pink Donut's the best food there. Yes. Big Pink Donut, for sure. It's very similar to the Grinch Donut they have now as well, i haven't had this if i'm going to universal chances are though i'm eating at city walk before or after so i i ate it bring filled right when it opened a couple times but i have not had it in a while

um so yeah i'm probably eating in margaritaville i'm probably eating at there's a new mexican restaurant there that i can't think of the name of. And also there's one other place, you know, maybe a Johnny Rockets. You know, on your podcast suggestion on my last trip to Anaheim at Disneyland, I ate at that Johnny Rockets. No, sorry. I ate at Ralph Brennan's and that was really good. You guys were right. Yes, shocked how good, we were shocked how good it was.

But anyway, let's hear them talk about food on The Simpsons in this next clip. Sure. This is so exciting, homie. Your first restaurant review. Marge? Shh. It's important that no one knows that I'm a food critic. Hear that, Rod?

Homer's a critic. Homer's a critic. Pass it on. Did you hear? Homer's a critic. Quit changing a critic. Pass it on. Did you hear? Homer's a critic. Quit changing the subject. There is Uta. Oh, we just want closure.

Here you are. One critic special. If anything appears to be moving, that's just freshness. Can you believe it, Marge? This job is the greatest. They're paying me to eat. Yeah, now if you could just get somebody to pay you for scratching your butt, we'll be on Easy Street.

Well, you little... That strangling's no different than many other ones, but for some reason it felt excessive to me in this setting. I agree with that. I felt the same way. I was like, oh, come on, Homer. It was like, was it because he was mean in the episode? And is it because i also the bleep swearing i was just like man homer is too much i can't deal with this maybe yeah i and also i

think homer should give captain mccallister a bad review that was moving food like that's it's it looked disgusting yes yes he's right yeah homer would be right to do it yeah but but homer so i think those other reviewers are right homer is giving two nice reviews when uh often when i pause the dvd to uh take a note there'll be deleted scene that will automatically play because i pressed it during the right time and the cut tag on that scene is while homer is strangling bart he says my butt itches and can somebody scratch it to homer and leads to Marge and Lisa? That's good. You know, that's why it feels so excessive because it just ends the scene. Ending with that butt-scratching joke at least adds something more to it.

I kind of wish they kept that in. Oh, they should have just sped up that other weirdly timed scene and left this joke in. Otherwise, it just feels excessive of homer simply strangling bart and that's the only joke uh seen it before it's not a good way to go out on a scene uh so this is an interesting bit here i didn't know until uh this episode i do believe this is the last line maggie roswell says as maude until she comes back after the after the unpleasantness yes which is coming up the season which is really extra confusing because we're recording this out of order but in the Ritalin episode Brothers Little Helper right before this Maude is clearly

not voiced by Maggie Roswell and has been replaced but this is the 21st episode in production yet last week's episode was 22nd in production so the timeline still works that maggie roswell would record this one and then quit over a pay dispute in as it said spring 1999 is when she did it okay so that all lines up this is maggie roswell's final appearances mod until she returns for posthumous mod lines in uh in season 14 i believe it is and we'll get more into her pay dispute i think in the mod death episode but let's just mark that here final time maggie roswell's mod wow and uh yes uterus parents are very funny design as well yes they're lederhosen they all wear lederhosen they just fly in from germany wearing lederhosen how else would you

know who they were yeah if they were just dressed in normal clothes it'd be boring right uh so then lisa uh we see the clever headline it must have have been written by Lisa. Cod is great. Scrod is good. That's funny. That's clever stuff. And Lisa gets to welcome to the humiliating world of professional writing by having her name taken off of something she worked hard to write, which I think that's how most writers on The Simpsons feel when they write a good joke in the rewrite room and no one ever knows

who wrote it. As someone who was very smug about my writing ability it made me mad that as i was continuing down my path of being a writer uh that funny headlines were no longer good because they were not searchable yeah so you can't make a clever headline it's got to be the first thing that will pop up in a search on google if you if you think of a funny headline about like playstation 5 revealed the person who writes playstation 5 revealed or playstation 5 release date that's who's going to click on it and now or i mean they'll just click on it because it's number one in google searches that's sad i didn't even think about that oh yeah it's uh online writing is the worst i mean it's it's all been ruined by uh well i'd say venture

capital investments uh investors who strip bare every part of a website, they're number one that's ruined websites. Second would be Google SEO results. That would be secondly what ruined web writing. Okay. So that's who I should direct my ire to. Venture capitalists first, I would say. Yes, always.

For everything. Well, that's true. I mean, look, they're already getting a lot of it. My ire, that is. I mean, me and Bob, yeah, we haven't said this up front, but I think long-time listeners know. We come from online media. Me and Bob have written more reviews than we can count, like Homer did here. And so this episode speaks to us in specific review writing ways as well.

And the pain of being rewritten or having your name not on something. I mean, I had, speaking of SEO, I think if you search best Spider-Man games on Google, my article is the first one you're going to see. But you wouldn't know it's me because now it's GamesRadar staff because fuck me for quitting that company.

Technically not inaccurate. Yeah. Technically not inaccurate. Jeez. It's a good time. I'm depressed. I'm getting depressed again. I'm sorry.

Hey, let's talk about something fun like Planet Hollywood. Oh, yeah. And I've got some shocking news about this scene oh yeah uh because there is a cane in citizen cane i was gonna say okay where do you spot that king the cane is in the when he's singing the song about charlie kane that's right the guy with like the straw boat hat and everything it's like clearly a very well defined cane in the frame for a long time yeah i i had mistakenly thought also that joseph cotton's old

man character had it but i i watched it uh this uh today yeah it's like it's so obvious i was thinking like does old man cane have a cane does joseph cotton's character it's like no it's the guy doing the song pointing the cane at everybody for like three minutes which which smithers reenacted like eight years earlier on the simpsons with a cane in his hand yeah so and i don't know i've never seen heart beeps but uh oh man okay mike have you seen heart beeps that's the andy kaufman movie right yes and burn it up no i have not so i've only seen like 10 minutes of it because it would be on comedy central and i thought like andy kaufman's great i watch it and it is unwatchable.

He's like a robot talking in this baby voice for the entire movie. Yeah, pretty much. So two robots escape and they want to start a family. And there's also a joke bot who is a Henny Youngman style Borscht Belt comedian, but as a robot who is an immobile puppet. So he's always just sitting down with like a jaw moving back and forth in a constantly smoking cigar doing like a borscht belt comedy and it's just it is so confusing it is just i i mean it's also any coffin's final film so it has his own death he's like i can't i can't be alive for these reviews. I mean, you've just described something that I have to see. Oh, no.

I mean, this is up there with Fuzzbucket, I think. Oh, man. Have you guys watched Fuzzbucket? Only clips. I think your podcast was enough for me. Yeah. No, it is. There's no reason to.

But yeah, I mean, I think I've been at a Hollywood, a Planet Hollywood once. I've been to like two Hard Rock cafes and they're much more ingrained in my memory, the experience of going there instead of going to Planet Hollywood. Yeah, I went to a Planet Hollywood, I think in Rockford, Illinois.

I think it was around there. And I remember just being so excited to eat with the movies i think they're getting the revenge though because at some point planet hollywood wanted the simpsons to do a planet hollywood episode right with the three guys being guests in the show but they would not give them free promotion yeah yeah they they had been promised like oh we'll get you arnold and stallone and uh schwarzenegger no all right yeah it's Arnold Schwarzenegger Sylvester Stallone and Tom Arnold no that's Chuck Norris uh upcoming guest on Bruce Willis yes Bruce Willis is Bruce

Willis yes uh but I Calvert the Forest now now Hard Rock I had eaten at the Hard Rock Universal like twice and I we we did the YMCA we did it all i went to the hard rock universal like in 99 the only prop i can remember is like the terminator jacket that's all i can remember yeah i hard rock is i am shocked hard rock is still so around i think it's the international popularity of it you know i think i believe that is right and i well i mean and i you're your co-host scott gerner he is a hard rock super fan i know yes i mean and we yes there's a lot of hard rock lore uh we've talked about it on our show they just they just closed down the hard rock at city walk in hollywood um and they're like you know disassembling uh like the eddie vetter eddie vetter excuse me uh ed Eddie Van Halen inspired guitar out front.

Oh, that's sad. The giant two-story guitar. And they're putting in a universal Dr. Toothsome's Chocolate Emporium. I think the closest I've been to a Planet Hollywood is like walking through the Planet Hollywood casino on a Vegas trip. I ate at the Gordon Ramsay Burger place that's next to the Planet Hollywood casino on a Vegas trip. I ate at the Gordon Ramsay Burger place that's next to the Planet Hollywood. Right. I think I probably have only eaten at a Planet Hollywood once.

There is still a Planet Hollywood at the City Walk in Orlando. It's now called Planet Hollywood Observatory. Huh. Interesting. There's a couple around. We have yet to do... We will eventually get to this episode, a Planet Hollywood episode, because it involves one of our favorite

rich guys, Robert Earl. Good old Robert Earl. Who is... He made the restaurant, the Earl of Sandwich, and he has many different restaurant ventures. And he has his own, like Scott became obsessed

with a YouTube show. It might not have been, it might be an actual TV show, but it's a show where he just like goes around and looks at the kitchens from the places he works.

And he talks like that. He puts his hand on people's back too much. Ew. As of like 2019, there were seven remaining planned in Hollywood. That's it. Boy, I hope in 2021 there's a chance to go to one of them. I hope they're not all gone.

The Orlando one I think was still supposedly doing okay, but I don't know after the closures. Well, I mean, is any casino going to reopen? Let's go back. let's stick with 1999 i don't want to yeah the good years that's yeah but here's the clip wow my first published article although someone else's name is on it welcome to the humiliating world of professional writing. But this is only the beginning. Welcome to Planet Springfield, the restaurant owned by me, Chuck Norris,

Johnny Carson's third wife, and the Russian mafia. Each Planet Springfield is filled with priceless Hollywood goo gaws. There's the coffee mug from Heartbeats. And there's the cane from Citizen Kane. Wait a minute, there was no cane in Citizen Kane? And there's that awful script from the cable guy. Let me see.

Stupid script! Nearly wrecked Jim Carrey's career! You next! I'm gonna get What? That had to be Al Jean taking a swipe at his former boss Johnny Carson Oh yeah, I looked that up So Johnny Carson was married four times

And he divorced that third wife 1985 When Al Jean was on the staff Oh, interesting That's why he was held to work for them because he was he had just gone through a divorce and he was absolutely miserable that's uh mike reese had that funny story about like they saw in the newspaper it was what like fifty thousand dollars or whatever needed to be paid to his ex-wife and they're like oh that's one of your

that's one of the writer's salaries and And that writer got fired the next day. Why were they so mad at Cable Guy? Oh, I think what happened was, I remember that being a fine movie. I don't know if it holds up today because the idea of TV is ruining our brain. Just turn off the TV, man. I think that's just kind of like a dated parable. But it was one of the first scripts that was like this guy is getting 20 million dollars to be in the movie and that was a big deal like it set a precedent that people would start making

that much money per movie and if the movie wasn't a success they would blame the actor for stealing all of that money and not earning it yeah it's interesting it uh it was the idea of like 20 million for this like whatever the movie was well and also it was it is very much a jim carrey movie where he's being crazy and doing all his jim carrey things in it yeah but it's not as positive or silly it's meaner i want to see the original version with chris farley that they were supposed to make that would have been better i think he's a better fit for that character for somebody that cruel and awful yeah i think so i as a kid i loved the cable guy i haven't watched it in a few years but i still feel like it's okay it's okay i may like it but that better than some of his classics i think though too we we talked about this with the the

mel gibson episode we did about what what's it's okay to make fun of as a bad movie if you work in hollywood and i think cable Guy is one of those approved targets. Like, you can say it was bad. Though it's extra funny because he's saying it's a bad script, and one of the producers on that movie was Judd Apatow. And so now you don't want to take a swing at that. And the director's Ben Stiller, so it's like you're pissing off a couple big, big names in Hollywood. Yeah, it just seems so aggressive for 1999.

But I guess it was just it was like it was just like a common reference for like oh the movie that did bad it's it's funnier too that they make it about like homer homer's mad that it hurt jim carrey's career not that it was a bad movie or that he felt he wasted money just that it's like it damaged the wonderful jim carrey i guess in terms of notability it was all downhill from there uh i mean outside of uh eternal sunshine the spotless mind i mean he just played dr robotnik which is uh you know fun but not like a prestige uh role he's got like a prestige show on showtime that i've never seen yeah oh that's right and uh he

plays like a mr rogers style character yeah is that it yeah okay uh you know he'd well after after this he like in 98 he did liar liar and that was that was like that was a big hit oh that's right yeah you're totally right about that i guess that was his like family friendly return to form and then the year after that he's like i want an oscar and he still he ain't got it i don't think he's even been nominated was he not i don't think he was even nominated for man on the moon not for the dark thriller the number 23 number 23 uh that uh also in the shots i i caught it this time the scan over the things like you've got an it's pat poster an earnest joke which in 99 is like let let that man die yeah leave him alone he's on his way out uh and but then basketballs i caught it like there's there's what looked to be giant baseballs held up on

something and that's when it hit me like those are supposed to be basketballs from the 1998 film of basketball which everybody should we just missed the summer of basketball. Yeah. Wow, I didn't even catch that. This was the first time I caught it. It's meant to be an attack. Again, basketball, you can make fun of, but, you know, Matt and Trey, they're still the golden boys in Hollywood in 99. You don't want to be too mean. Right.

Yeah, cable guy's safer than going after Matt and Trey. And then we go to a revolving restaurant, which you've eaten in one of those, Bob. Yes, I think my fiancé and I were watching Bob's Burgers, and I was like, you know, there's a revolving restaurant joke in so many cartoons. Why don't we go to one? And there is one in Vancouver, and we went to one. It's very nice. The food's kind of like middle of the road, but the view is very nice.

But they rotate extremely slowly where you can barely notice the rotating because otherwise you'd get sick yeah and so when we got up there and we ate we immediately googled who died in one of these and a child was crushed that's about it oh god oh god so don't play between the walls kids but uh yeah it was very pretty uh a bit overpriced but but it was worth the experience. But it's a vehicle for humor. I've only seen them used for jokes. The speed at which it happens. And I think in the next episode, there's another one.

There's in the Treehouse of Horror, the same revolving restaurant spins so fast it flies off into space. Was this introduced in Principal Charming? That's where Skinner took patty that's right well speaking of patty and selma you know we get to see them exercising in their underpants which you know i think they shouldn't be shamed of those bodies they should be proud those are some big seats they got they got big booties but we wouldn't appreciate those 99 oh the one fun thing about the revolving restaurant was that every time you got to use the bathroom it'd be in a different place because everything's moving around. It's like, where is that bathroom?

So it's kind of a fun adventure to use the bathroom. It's revolving. It's funny because The Simpsons lays so much groundwork for, I assume, any of us who watched it as kids. So because I like love a revolving anything. And I always wonder, like, is it because of The Simpsons? Like, is it because of the simpsons like is it because of the simpsons i have an affection for mary worth and king features like is it is that where all this stuff starts they've just like indoctrinated it in my brain when i was in third

grade or around that age it programmed us all yeah yes i think it did i mean to some degree i think it for sure did i think nothing in fiction takes place in a revolving restaurant unless there's a joke about the revolving restaurant. It's not just like a normal setting for a meal on like Ally McBeal or whatever was airing at the time. It's why people only go there for the hijinks. They hope hijinks will ensue. Right.

Yes, for sure. Then we get a very weird scene where everyone's fat for like 20 seconds. I like all the new designs. They did design a bunch of new versions 20 seconds. I like all the new designs. They designed a bunch of new versions of characters. I love Fat Burns. Yeah, Fat Burns, that he's never felt so jolly. His robust physique. The sound of him walking on

his broken shins is especially disgusting. I like Fat Ned and Maude. That's, I think, my favorite design of the fat characters. Yeah, that one, this is such a weird gag because it's just for 10 seconds or whatever. Yeah, you assume every, I mean,

you do see fat burns at the end of the episode, but otherwise everyone goes back to their, like you see Ned in like five minutes after this scene of him and he's back to his normal ways. You think this is the way the plot is going to go. Like everyone's getting fat. What happens next? But just like, no, it's just a joke for a scene he's back to his normal ways you think this is the way the plot is going to go like everyone's getting fat what happens next but just like no it's just a joke for a scene uh this is another one where i go hmm i don't know i don't think this breaks the reality for me uh yeah these well that joke the use of the word poo-poo and the bleeps i again say

mac raining was very busy with futurama and some things got through the mac raining would have canceled i think oh interesting so you so you think yeah graining more of a stickler for certain Matt Groening was very busy with Futurama and some things got through that Matt Groening would have canceled, I think. Oh, interesting. So you think, yeah, Groening more of a stickler for certain rules. Homer, I mean, especially the use of the word poo-poo, I feel like Matt. There was a fart, like an on-screen fart a few episodes ago. I think I always say, I think Matt Groening would have killed that, but he's very busy in launching the first season of Futurama when this production's happening. Interesting.

And now, speaking of going back to the 90s, in this next clip, we get to hear about two shows that were funny, just words to say in the 90s, and now both have their own unique tragedies attached to them. Oh, God. So it's kind of a bummer. Yeah. But why don't we hear it? Some of your fellow critics wanted to meet you.

This is Garth Trelawney, TV critic. You made them cancel Platypus Man. Homer, this is our theater critic, Daphne Beaumont. And the Cosby Mysteries, that show at limitless possibilities. Homer, please. Sorry. Jamie Kilday, farm supply critic. Just got back from the gopher poison show in Paris.

Let me tell you something, people. The days of clubbing them with a baseball bat are over. For you, perhaps. Listen, we've been meaning to have a talk with you about your reviews. Everything's a rave. Nine thumbs up? What the hell is that? I've given out my share of bad reviews.

Oh, the only bad review you gave was to a slice of pizza you found under the couch. It lost some points because it had a hot wheel on it. Oh, good Lord, man. You're a critic. You don't have to like everything, e.g. my latest review. We see John Deere has come out with this year's line of rototillers. Surprise, surprise, they're green. I say it's time to send John Deere a dear John.

Oh, that's classic. You don't have to patronize me. Okay. That's a great album. Okay. Platypus Man is the Richard Jenney sitcom, the late Richard Jenney. Oh, yeah. Someone was holding onto that joke for a long time because it went off the air in 95 yes yeah i uh and what's extra tragic is

i would this dvd came out in 09 i would think the commentaries were recorded after the 08 uh suicide of oh yeah like she's like that's the late rich the late Richard Jennings. She's kind of ashamed of that joke. Yeah, it's sad. It's sad. Well, Platypus Man, though, I did watch it on at least one episode because I was so ready for UPN to come out.

Like, my local station, they were getting UPN and they were airing the UPN ads all the time. And so I watched the first episode of that of the richard grieco show whatever that was called that was one season like john diamond or something i'm reading like the uh this lineup so uh platypus man was paired with pigsty and star trek voyager okay on monday night on upn i did not watch pigsty pigsty was the lead into voyager i must have tuned out for that one.

Was Richard Grieco Nowhere Man? I think that's it. Yeah, I think, yeah, yeah. I loved Nowhere Man. The Platypus Man was just like, it was Richard Jenney who was of the same generation as Tim Allen. It's kind of just him doing a home improvement show, except he's a single guy who is like a man's man, who a platypus man is. The concept of it is that he's a television chef, but he's a manly chef, not some wuss who cooks food. And yeah, I mean, it's not good. It's not great.

I mean, no one would ever watch it now. It's, I think, a lost-to-time show. And those Cosby mysteries. Yeah, that's a setup for some awful jokes some people could make, but we wouldn't make those. Yes, we won't go there. But he'll die in prison. It's very cool.

Yeah, it's pretty great. Yeah, but it aired from one season from 94 to 95. And then after that, they just put him back on a regular sitcom, which is what people wanted from Bill Cosby then. I do like what Friends of the Show, gayest episode ever, they call the Cosby Show the Felicia Rashad Show. So you can still talk about that show. You don't have to say his name. Okay. I'm going to steal that.

Let's erase him from history. And the farm supply guy being so femmy, that's kind of funny. I like that. That he's so from Paris. This digs into the two sides of being a critic in that this is a criticism I had of some of my peers when I was in the games industry. It's like, you guys are too nice. But also, I also enjoyed being mean a little too much. Because writing jobs do tend to wear you down.

So there are two sides of this conversation they're having here. No, yeah, I felt the same way. I think this has the perception that all critics are agreeing with each other that you have to hate things or else you look stupid. But I do think for us in the games press, it was you are pushed far more to be positive. Like you will get better reception from your readers if you're overly positive and it's easier to work with other companies if you're overly positive and i'm not saying people give good reviews for access or whatever but i'm just saying it's just the

spirit of like be positive it's fun they're games they get good reviews to go on to work for those companies also that yes they all get hired in pr to work for those companies sure that is what everything is especially headed to with criticism as far as online every movies and everything where it's like like you can follow the trail of like oh yeah this person gets to go to all these events because they're nice well it's like we want to go to all the theme park. We want Disney to invite us, but we're never going to go to Disney. They're not going to have us. We are irreverent, and we'll say something isn't perfect. Friend of the show, Jack Allison, I've seen him point out that more than one television

reviewer who really liked Lost got jobs with people who worked on lost as television writers so i i yes i've seen some of that uh discourse online as well it's something people say that's you know everywhere you go you're hearing it more and more okay so then we go to uh a king lear where crusty is just bad at his job and his he has a reference to Petticoat Junction, which in 1999, that show had been off the air for 30 years at that point. That was the one of the trio of rural shows that I never watched that was unavailable. Because it was Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and Beverly Hillbillies, all part of that universe. Yeah. That cinematic universe of Hillbillies.

Yeah, I never watched it either. It was loved green acres me too and i really liked uh beverly hillbillies but and i probably would have watched petticoat junction but who i don't know why it wasn't licensed the same it was hi was it not on nick at night i didn't watch it either but i watched green acres as a kid but i'm trying to remember i feel like petticoat junction was on nick at night i didn't watch it either but i watched green acres as a kid but i'm trying to remember i feel like pedicoat junction was on nick at night am i wrong if they if they got it it must it must have been after i was a regular nick at night viewer but and uh the the three sisters on that of course are betty joe billy joe and bobby joe that's the the that's who crusty is referring to right they were on uh they were i'm looking they were on tv land i guess oh okay so when they started tv land it was there but not on the regular nick at night

yeah perhaps that is it although i don't know there's another thing here that says they might have been a nick at night 1996 oh you know this is reminding me i meant to say this bit of trivia for the cable guy a fun thing to re-watch it now is just to see how most of the cast of Mr. Show is in it because it's a Brillstein Gray production. That's right. Yes. I think like David Cross is in that basketball game with Jack Black. Yes.

Yeah. I think David Cross is, I forget where David Cross is. Bob is, is Bob Odenkirk is his brother in the movie. And Matthew Broderick's brother. And I believe Kyle Gass is in it as well, not just Jack Black. He's just kind of watching TV, I think. I don't know if he has a line.

And I do believe Janine Garofalo was dating Bob Odenkirk at that time, and she's very funny in it as the medieval times waitress. She's the wench, the serving wench. That's right. Apparently I know the movie pretty well. I think I've only seen it twice, and it's all a Ferris bell for me.

But yes, Homer is ignoring King Lear to review the soup. Ha! Hey, lighten up! It's a comedy! No, it's not. It's not! Hmm. This pea soup is as weak as the acting and nowhere near as hemmy. Dad, that's so mean.

The other critics told me to be mean and you should always give in to peer pressure. But what if someone bad tells me to? Always. Huh? Huh? Whoa, this material stinks. I'm gonna have to punch it up on the fly.

Oh, I got one. How do you make a King Lear? Put the queen in a bikini. Here's another one. Knock, knock. Who's there? Juliet. Juliet who?

Juliet, so much pasta bazool. Romeo doesn't water anymore. Tough crowd. They're booing Shakespeare. That's a good... But they even shame themselves on the commentary going like, it's too easy to write bad jokes for Krusty. Yeah, I...

Krusty is so good. I still like... I feel like I like Krusty's bit in this episode. Maybe the best of everything. I don't know why. I like Krusty's bit in this episode. Maybe the best of everything. I don't know why. Okay. I like Homer. Homer's reply of like, as weak as the humor and nowhere near as hammy. Like, that is way too smart to turn a phrase for Homer, honestly.

But that's why I feel like this is a reworked critic script like Mike was implying. Yeah. You know what? I bet you're right. Jay gets fired for the thousandth time in his job, becomes a food critic, and Marty helps him. You know what? I bet this really is just one of those season three episodes they wrote and then just

reused it because the platypus man joke would would actually that would exactly fit writing into 1996 that would be that era and like a cable guy joke too yeah for season three and uh cosby mysteries is all fit for writing a script in 1996 right Right, and it makes sense. Jay would be maybe madder about Jim Carrey, or a character in that world would be madder about Jim Carrey's career being destroyed. I can hear John Lovett say those words about ruining Jim Carrey's career. Oh, yeah.

Though, you know, it's funny. When the critic first did their Jim Carrey joke, it was about how he's not funny and how a talking butt is lame. A talking talking but but i think they learned pretty soon like oh we want to be friends with jim carrey don't say jim carrey's bad at his job yeah homer telling lisa say always give in to peer pressure classic bad homer it's almost season one homer uh yeah actually that's exactly what he told part uh and then another like too clever headline for

homer nuts to soup that's uh that's a really clever headline because of course the saying is soup to nuts but homer is also saying nuts to the soup meaning it's bad i think it's a lisa headline yeah well that's lisa should be recognizing that she's good at negative criticism even if she hates it because she's really good yeah and then we get an italian stereotype i like hearing as as homer pisses off the italian chef dan castellaneta going like i chop are you good and jen just uh i it sounds like he says stramenghi but uh in the on freaky act it just says foreign voice noises okay i don't think there's any real Italian scholarship going on behind the scenes. And then Homer even takes his negativity home with him.

Who wants pork chops? Sorry, Marge. I'm afraid this gets my lowest rating ever. Seven thumbs up. You always liked my pork chops. Marge, I'm afraid this gets my lowest rating ever. Seven thumbs up. You always liked my pork chops. Marge, I'm sorry, but your cooking's only got two moves. Shake and bake. You like shake and bake.

You used to put it in your coffee. People change, Marge. My palate has grown more sophisticated. Oh, yeah? What's a palate? Oh, it's a special time in a boy's life when... Gotta go! And Homer did lose a piece of his ear in the last scene,

should be noted. I think we were still fascinated with the Holyfield Tyson 2 match. Yeah, yeah. Missing parts of ear humor in the late 90s were very popular. Mm-hmm. All the late 90s shows. We could visualize what a chunk of year missing was

and so it was easier to draw it. But yeah, Al Gino returning to old favorites like pork chops. That's true, yeah. He's remembering

when his old time he's like, we did so many great pork chop jokes. I mean, it feels nothing more classic than Marge entering the room

and like, who wants pork chops? It feels very down the middle of the road for Marge. Thanks, honey. Though at least she gets a good zing on Homer calling him stupid. But also in the world of games writing, 7 out of 10 is low. Yeah, that gets you a call from PR.

7 out of 10. Hey, what are you talking about? Assassin's Creed does not deserve a 7 out of 10. I was thinking of the P pitchfork music scale which i guess they go lower but still like anything under six i ain't listening yeah it's uh i think that's how people i mean that's why i like it eight i when we were working together on our reviews at my old website we would be like people think an eight is terrible like an eight is people just go like well why would i like people think an eight is terrible like an eight is people just go like well why would i spend money on an eight this needs to be a ten that's like that's

because people like equate that with like the schooling grades or like the how what an 80 transfers to if you're in school so when i was at a website called one up they use letter grade systems but those letter grade systems did not transfer well to Metacritic, which would turn it into a number that was false. Oh, right, right, right. And you have to live for Metacritic on these jobs, unfortunately. God, that's a lot of pressure. Yep, yep. Oh, let me tell you.

See, Homer is maybe having to deal with murderous restaurateurs, but he's not having to deal with PR departments emailing you every day. Yeah, Homer's not being blacklisted by anybody at this point that's true he holds all the power i we've heard like theme like the disney pr people i think are very much like this because we've never been invited on our podcast to any sort of disney events uh but i've just through other people it's like it seems like they are very strict i i've heard similar i've heard similar i think if you are her if like a part of you in a recording is saying katzenberg you're just off no they just cut you off even yes i i mean i i would imagine they probably didn't like it when we were talking about them lobbying the governments uh to install a republican government in anaheim

to give them favors yeah they probably wouldn't like that. I don't know if they'd listen. I don't think they'd listen necessarily, but I think they probably wouldn't like that if they heard it. Or their pre-COVID-19 coughing party they had one last night, just coughing each other's faces. Oh my gosh, and they made a big video out of it too. Oh, it's so fun.

And then people were like, oh my God, what are you doing? And then they pulled the video pretty quickly you can trace a thousand cases to that event alone i think so i think uh yes from all over the world those wonderful cases i uh but you know what if they don't reopen in time for that spider-man ride i'm gonna have to i i'm gonna become one of the mega people demanding things reopen yeah i look i've been calling for the immediate reopening of the economy so I can go and have a food item at the Pim's Test Kitchen. Oh, man, that burger's so big.

It's going to be the food is big or small, you don't know what it is, and I am willing, I know that the older people in my family are willing to get coronavirus just so I can enjoy the different fun foods at California Adventure. That's the cost of fun. It's the cost of fun. And it's what America is all about, which is why the old folks are willing to contract the disease. Interestingly enough, Disney has stopped construction. Universal is building through all of this. Really? Wow.

At the Epic Universe? They're just building, building, building? From what I understand, they are building everything they were already building. Nintendo Land is still going forward in Hollywood at the pace it was before. They're building like 24 hours around the clock.

Dang. Man. So Disney will probably have all their stuff delayed, and Universal will not. Man, that will only make the line at the Super Mario Kart ride even worse. That's right. Okay, but in the next scene, this is turning into a podcast ride. It's dangerous. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

No, I'm as guilty as you. But Homer decides he doesn't need Lisa anymore. So come to the Legless Frog if you want to get sick and die and leave a big garlicky corpse. P.S. Parking was ample. Dad, you're being cruel for no reason. What will people think? People will think what I tell them to think when you tell me what to tell them to think. Not anymore.

I don't want to be partners with a man who thinks like that nobody talks to me that way i'm homie simpson the most powerful food critic in town who will never get his comeuppance you hear me no comeuppance we'll be right back i i love that i'm sorry i love the fourth wall breaking because it reminds me of when he did that on uh smart line yeah yeah that was done but but that didn't in that case that was him doing it on a tv show he knew he was on in this case this is homer knowing he is on television in his daughter's bedroom i think i might remember this episode because i made fun of a friend because he quoted that line when this episode was new and he i don't think he'd ever heard the word comeuppance before and he said ker muffins and i i guess he thought the word was ker muffins so that was a big uh that's good i love homer saying he'll get no comeuppance because again that's him knowing he's in a script where obviously if in act two he know he should

know in act three he's gonna get a comeuppance but he is saying that none shall come to me it will never happen he's right yeah he's uh he avoids it until after the credit so i think homer's right uh though also i feel like critic had that gag too of saying like to the camera we'll be right back again more Again, another smoking gun. Jay Sherman talks to camera quite a lot, actually. Telling people on Fox you'll see a flaming horse's ass. And so it comes back, Homer is

writing again with some new partners. I don't need Lisa to write a good review. The food at the Gilded Truffle really... what's a good word? Sucks! That's great! Anded truffle really... What's a good word? Sucks! That's great!

And the bread was really... Come on, help me out here! Ruff! Ruff? I don't know. You've been pitching that all night. Chewy? Chewy!

That's inspired! Oh, I love that one, too. Okay, that's the best joke in the episode. Yeah. Back-to-back, though. We'll be right back in Chewy? Chewy? Yeah. oh i love that one too like okay that's the best joke in the episode yeah back to back the we'll be right back and uh yeah that is really great i also feel like uh mac rating would definitely veto the dog talking but it it was very funny especially because rough actually does work like the bread was rough like that that would work but i love i love that homer is now

taking on the stance of being the one guy at the at the computer in a writer's room who can reject it by going like you've been pitching that all night uh is this the what episode is it where the dog and cat are on their hind legs and they start like saying, I love you. The stampy episode. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, yeah,

it's not his first time talking, but it's, it's that. And I think in that case, it's accurate. Like what if a pet tried to talk this, he's just saying chewy with Homer's voice. I mean, that's Dan Castellana doing a dog voice.

And it's in the drawing of Santa's little helper's face when he says it is so funny, too. Yeah. But yes, Homer co-writing this with a bunch of people who can't speak doesn't work out so well. Homer, what gives you this review? You say the salad tastes like bark and the potatoes were very... This reads like it was written by a dog. Are you crazy? A dog can't type. Unfortunately.

Listen, you gotta shape up. Next week is the Taste of Springfield Festival. You'll be reviewing every restaurant in town. Remember, people have certain expectations about the LifeWave section. Really? Like what? Oh, I don't know. Astrology, Broomhilda, vacation horror stories, articles about chronic fatigue syndrome,

you know, chick crap. Broomhilda is a comic I didn't even know about until I saw this again. I didn't realize what he was talking about. I thought it was like another column, but no. Broomhilda is a comic about a witch that started in 1978. Yes, it's still running. Of course, of course, it's still...

It wasn't in my paper. I didn't... I only... I know it's a comic just because I looked up like, what is this word Ed Asner's saying? But yeah, I never had it. I feel sad. I mean, I was a big Broomhilda kid.

Oh, really, man? I liked Broomhilda kid. Oh, really, man? I liked Broomhilda. These are the, you know, we just had, we had our own page of the newspaper where I grew up, and then Broomhilda was not invited. Is she King Features? I don't know. Maybe she's not King Features.

I mean, you know, if I could see, I would have happily traded snuffy smith for broom hilda i'd rather i'd rather have that no i don't know who snuffy smith is oh see you didn't have snuffy that's the reason why we don't know about broom hilda henry uh she was part of the tribune content agency oh i see so more of this chicago tribune stuff here i see wow i didn't realize she was owned by the Tribune. Wow. And it's just funny to hear Ed Asner say Broomhilda as well.

Yes. The Tribune content agency also distributes Gasoline Alley, Love Is, and Pluggers. Oh, God. Wait, Pluggers? Pluggers is like... Wait, I think Pluggers is that super boomer comics like

if you're this you're a plugger oh plumber is like an old stick in the mud salt of the earth type i see okay i now love is i only know because of a simpsons joke as well like it is the two naked eight-year-olds who are married uh also they get a lot of uh mileage out of homer's bad author photo i really love it you see it like three times three or four times the episode it's funny it's very funny i do like that again this editor first off when homer tried to publish uh a review of a piece of pizza he found under his couch you shouldn't publish that like already now when he gets this copy back again he should be like homer you're fired you've been on a razor's edge this whole time.

This is terrible copy. You're fired. I think his editor just has a brain tumor, and it's like the C-plot we're not learning about. Yeah. He's going through some things. Well, you know, on Lou Grant, he was an alcoholic, actually. Well, okay, a Mary Tyler Moore that was recurring jokes

that Lou Grant drank too much. And then when they wanted to be serious on the Lou Grant show, they're like, eh, he doesn't drink all the time. We won't do that. It's not, unless they want to do a plot about him getting sober. It's just kind of a bummer. Yeah. Fun when it's a comedy. Yeah. Fun when it's a comedy. Yeah. So then we cut to the big action of the third act,

the restauranteurs deciding they're going to get together and kill Homer. And you've got several who have appeared over the course of the series. They do have to make up like Izzy from Izzy's Deli. I don't think we've seen him before. A real deli. Yeah. Yeah. I think Al Jean wrote this thinking oh yeah we have

so many restaurateurs really there's four yeah there's not that many and uh one has to be done by hank azaria the master of accents in this uh in this next clip we'll give homer all he can eat till he can eat no more then he'll get his jaws deserted this This will be Homer Simpson's last lanyard. Come on, you're going to kill him with the pastry? I've seen this man eat a bowl of change. This eclair is over one million calories. 25 pounds of butter per square inch covered with chocolate so dark

light cannot escape its surface. No, no, no, this is just a picture. But Homer Simpson will find the real thing both delicious and deadly. Ah, yes, death by chocolate. And poison, I'll stick in some poison. So many accents the uh i that frenchman is from the ship of lost souls by the way oh right and it's based on jean renault right yes yes from uh leon yeah so maybe that's how they got him there because the sea captain knew him from the honey bunch

and he's like i know i know this french guy he He killed the tiger, so he could kill Homer. I think George Takei rarely plays Akira. I think Hank Azaria did Akira five times for every time George Takei did him. But George Takei was just in season 10 as the game show host, right? Yeah, that's true. It's weird he doesn't come back for Akira, but I guess Hank just took him over. But now, can he do that now? I don't think so.

No. Yeah. I'm making my problem with Akira documentary. Yeah. I was. I honestly. It is funny. You're like, oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Uh-oh. That was my brain watching this. Yeah. In 1999, us watching it, we're like're like yeah it's a voice yeah i mean like he's doing a sulu but he's making it more japanese because the sulu was like yes captain but there's never like feels like doing a regular sulu is okay i don't know somebody can tell me if that's problematic or not but if i just go Yeah, yeah. Like he enunciated very clearly with an American accent in that.

Almost like overcorrecting himself in that show. Yeah, TK has such a specific voice that I don't feel that impersonating it is, you know, mocking a stereotype of a Japanese voice. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong if you if folks feel that way too but i but the inflection he gives on akira is much more of a japanese immigrant uh touch to it than just the george takei kept him oh my oh my oh my i mean now all george takei does is like like seriously he's a joke thief like Or whoever runs his Twitter account is a joke thief. It's whatever millennial running his Twitter account. I'm sorry, no, I think it's a Zoomer at this point.

Oh, yeah. He's got a hip Zoomer. But that's also that his last long yop, like, I'd never heard of that before. But it's a real thing they give you at the end of a fancy meal when he says like his last long yop that's uh i had to google that i don't i don't know like google it yourselves i it's it's a fancy thing i've never been at a fancy enough place pastry look good though oh my god it's i'm i am dieting right now and it really sucks to see that eclair on screen i'm just i i just want to eat 10 of them yeah it

looked it did look pretty good i think the only places i've had an eclair a true french version of it is at uh france land and epcot yeah i'm trying to think one of the one my last eclair was uh it's been a long time but it does feel like yeah that it was probably in the World Showcase. You know, I turn away from the French products. I give me an old American apple fritter, just a pile of fried dough and apple with no artistry to it. You just dunk it in a fryer. Yes, now, especially during this political climate, that's what I eat as well.

I just try to eat some American slop. I had an apple fritter recently and it and my thought just was like uh like this is just a ball like just an un unflattering ball of dough it's a fried heap it's just a heap yes yeah uh but yes homer uh is heading to homer heads to the food review place and he runs into his ex-partner. Homie, my woman's intuition is acting up. Something bad

is going to happen if you go in there. Oh, Marge, something bad usually happens to me when I go in anywhere. Oh! Oh! A bat! Now that's a new one. So, what are you up to, young lady? I'm reviewing the festival for our school paper.

Oh. Well, I'm glad to see my ex-partner is doing so well without me. Now Gene says that's what he does every time he sees Mike Reese publish another kids' book. It's a cute joke. And Homer being attacked by the bat again that's a very funny joke to me yes although it hits a little too close to home these days oh oh no with all of our bat base illnesses correct yeah darn homer homer carried it for can they still make a batman movie oh man it's it seems to uh the q ratings down on batman right now although

yeah they'll call it something different. Just like is like Hero Man or something like something generic. They're going to have to reshoot all that. But Matt Reeves Batman movie they're making. Actually, I guess probably shooting is suspended on that like everything. So, yeah, I think it's I think so. I think there might be like some secret product like productions that are secretly still going. I think so.

And then when the movies come out, they're like, no, no, no. This was all filmed before. Yes, I think that is what will happen. People are like, that time frame doesn't add up. And they'll be like, shh. Let us out. We want to see movies again. Look at the newspapers in the background, people.

But yes, so Homer, he's exploring uh the festival we get to see a fun joke about the egg beater being prepared like it's a sniper rifle that's fine i do like that the whisk and uh then we get to see a little joke about like giving up that's that's both villains laughing to themselves and also talking about someone getting so fat they just give up. It is a good sign. Homer's unfastened the top button on his pants. No, he's been walking around like that since Thanksgiving. I'm surprised he just doesn't give it up and go for sweatpants. He says the crotch wears out too fast.

Yar! That's going to replace the whale in my nightmares. Well, don't worry. The giant eclair will knock Homer off the food page and into the obituaries. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Wait a minute.

They're gonna kill Dad! Bart just, like, resurfaces in this episode. Yeah! Why couldn't this be Lisa finding it out? There really is a Bart. And, uh, well, well i also you know as uh it's a question many overweight men have to ask themselves like do you just get sweatpants or do you give up do you give up on that belt it's uh i've i've refused it to to this day but it's it's a it's a question we all must all ask you know you hit bottom

yes yeah i think that's not it's not not about a crotch wearing out in my case. It's more just like, will I just give up and wear sweatpants like my overweight guy in his 50s down the hall who gets high every day in my building? Or maybe he only knows happiness. We don't know it. You know what? He can be pretty happy. Honestly, he's a Kyle Gass man.

He looks quite... And that guy's pretty happy. Honestly, he's a Kyle Gass man. He looks quite like that. That guy's pretty happy. I mean, I've been wearing gym shorts and track pants since quarantine has happened. Well, I mean, when Bob isn't here, I am wearing just my boxers. I put on pants as a friendly motion for Bob. Right. That's a nice, yes, that's a courtesy.

Yeah. So, yes, Bart laughing and then heading off. It's a cute way to shove him back in. Then we get a funny visual gag of the guy pulling up butter and then poison and then the antidote and then quickly pulling the antidote out and then there's a really odd joke too of uh well okay lisa is telling everybody where to look for people and i think there was an animation screw up where she says you look for them clap break and then they run off i think it you know wouldn't it normally go okay everybody let's do this break and then clap then clap. But she goes, clap and then break. I think on the animation side, they had her clap too early and they just kept it in and put the sound effect over it. Could be.

I don't know what the rules are for that. Wouldn't you go like, all right, everybody, break. Hmm. Yes. That would make sense. I feel like the clap was animated first. Yeah. And they just had to go with it because that's not retake material.

I don't think so uh and uh homer is so heavy that his belly button turns from any to outie which i read happens to many people who go through pregnancy okay it eventually does shove your belly button out the other way i remember when uh laurie metcalf was pregnant as jackie on ros, she would show off her belly in episodes. I think that was the first time I saw a pregnant woman's outie belly button on television.

They broke barriers there. There's always those retrospectives about that moment on TV every year. Homer passes by two old Simpsons restaurant jokes, too. We get the Texas Cheesecake Depository and Finney's Q Butterfats 5600 Flavors of Ice Cream Parlor. Nice.

Which Finney's Q Butterfats, that's a universal Texas Cheesecake Depository not. Too dark to be a thick restaurant. It should be there though i'd uh you know luigi's i think is the most perfect one for there because hey you need like cafeteria style pizza available at every part of a a park so little kids can eat it you need you need to have the chicken nuggets and terrible pizza because picky little kids will only eat those things yeah i mean it makes sense that they they knew like okay what do we do well and what sells? Let's figure out. Because there's no...

Cletus' chicken shack doesn't appear in The Simpsons ever, does it? If they ever put it in, it would have been after they made it up for the park. So they just sort of were, like, combing through with a ready, you know, they knew what works in a theme park, what dad will eat. You can also see the stereotypes they can use in a theme park yeah yeah yeah though though cletus is like one of the most disgusting characters on the show who eats roadkill so uh one imagining him as a business owner that's crazy enough but second like how appetite he cletus is not appetizing to me the only reason i ate uh when i went there one time was just to have the Back to the Future chicken, along with that blueberry biscuit, which is pretty tasty.

That's what I love. Yeah, I mean, you could need a Krusty Burger there, but every joke about the Krusty Burger on The Simpsons is how disgusting it is. Yes. Yes, I think that is what is funny about Krusty Burger. They just talk about it's just disgusting, and then they sell it to you. Like, oh, I swallowed some of it. I've been tasting that for weeks.

You're supposed to, I guess, but then again, this is the same place that gets the Flaming Mo color wrong, and it's not alcoholic, so they fudge realities. Yeah, and there's no cough syrup taste in it, either. It's all wrong.

It's all wrong. It's all wrong. Yeah, it is shocking how wrong it is. There's so much that's right there. They get lots of stuff right. I mean, now that we have Star Wars Cantina, there should be a real Moe's that serves you actual beer in glasses and gives you the flaming Moe that's on fire. Yes, I think that Universal is behind when it comes to merchant food like they they open up a little tiki bar area outside jurassic world which is certainly a good step and a step in the right direction but they don't have any like dinosaur themed tiki mugs

they don't have like scott came up with this great idea that honestly would make universal millions of dollars is a is a mr dna like piece of sugar in one of the cocktails oh that'd be great like like people like universal i think is leaving a lot on the table as far as a merchant and food items i i spent 50 on a tiki drink to get my yub nub cup like of course yeah the simpsons i have a yub nub the simpsons merch at simpsons World is like what you'd find at Target. It's not good. It could be better. The Big Pink's the best thing they got.

And even that's like, it's a big donut. They have that Gabbo, the real life Gabbo doll in the room, the secret room upstairs. They should be selling that doll. Yeah, exactly. They should have every evil doll in the Simpsons. Yes. Nerds, I assume like us, would buy those things. I for sure would buy that Gabbo

ventriloquist puppet. Well, now that Disney owns Simpsons, I can't see them negotiating with Universal to get better things there. I don't see that happening. No, and that's probably I think there's a contract that runs out, too, so I don't think Simpsons will be around maybe past 2030 or something.

All right, this is our final decade to enjoy the Simpsons ride. I think very possibly, yes. Well, also rides barely last 20 years at Universal anyway, so you should just count on it ending in 2029 as is. My pitch is bring Back to the Future back. I mean, the ads are right there. Back to Back to the Future. Yes. Get in that

40-year-old ride and have fun. It'll coincide, though, with probably a Back to the Future reboot, too. Oh, yeah. I can't live to see that. As soon as Zemeckis is dead. Oh, God. Jesus. I think that's for sure he's basically said like until i'm dead it's not gonna happen and then they open marwen land

well he wants marwen land he's excited about that within you think they'll wait three months to even announce it after he's dead like do you think they'll be like let people have a morning period. No, I think it'll be within the 48 hours. Homer is about to eat the eclair. Lisa warns him. And Homer, though, he's pretty ready for death. Ooh, that looks scrumdiddly doodly dudly. A rude Frenchman? Well, I never.

Ooh, sweet. Dad, no! It's gonna kill you! Eh, I've had a good run. Don't! It's Lomfet! No! No! Whew, that was close.

Thank God it landed in that smoking crater. So, Uter is missing and Hans Mollman is dead. Yeah, Mollman will be in the Comeuppance group at the end there. That's right, that's right. I do love the twist that, like, the plot is not that Homer needs to stop dying. It's like he needs to be convinced that he shouldn't die.'s like dad you're gonna die i don't care yeah this thing is too delicious looking to not die for her so i guess the ultimate resolution is to be tricked into not killing himself yeah which is probably how they are used to living with homer at this point he'd yeah he'd rather yes he it is also mimics i think a certain like my my

father does not like eating like non-fat or something like that's a very offensive thing so i think it mimics also maybe it's a generational thing as well oh yeah rather they'd rather die than eat a low-fat something i think it's like seen as effeminate or whatever just like i guess maybe that is probably what it is. It's the Diet Cola situation. Yeah, they have to rebrand diet things and hygiene products so men will actually buy them. Right, yes.

I hope the younger generations aren't as worried about that stuff. And they buy products as they should with the correct branding. That's why we have Coke Zero and Pepsi One. That's why we have those. No the uh i mean homers freak out or his him caring about low fat i think that you know the perception in the 90s was you know low fat ice cream way worse than real ice cream low fat it's always the worst version of garbage like i i definitely had the feeling of like well if i'm

gonna eat garbage why am i eating low fatfat ice cream prime garbage sure yeah yeah the ultimate garbage uh and uh yeah mole man gruel that's what explodes there too which and the reaction of the cops uh to like thank god it landed smoking crater that's a good joke too there's a lot of good jokes in this a lot of good jokes hey this episode is not on trial i I like it. Yeah. I just wish Homer was slightly nicer because his final line here with Lisa is a little too mean. I thought it was very funny. It is. Lisa's like shock and dismay at what he says.

And then he's just like skirted over immediately. Take him into custody, boys. Attempted murder one. Now, boys, what would you say to some Belgian waffles? Actually, I was in the mood for some frittatas. Ha! Llewyn is frittatas. Oh, he likes eggs. Oh, Lisa, you saved me.

And after all the bad things I said about you. What bad things? Why? Lisa, the important thing is I didn't get my comeuppance and I never will I know honey the important thing is getting my comeuppance yeah I do like after all those bad things i said about it she's like what are you talking about what bad things why poor lisa she she gets a pretty harsh in this it's not the sweetest ending scully years are

not kind to lisa or march nope but uh but yeah, also for a show that was getting guilty of completely forgetting the first act by the end, the idea of having all the characters from even the first act, including the zoo animals, even I had to go like, zoo, all right, yeah. Weren't they happy to escape? Why did they want to get revenge on Homer? I guess they're mad he scared them with his dough, I suppose. Horrible freedom. And Burns is still fat in that drawing.

They even not only draw him as part of the crowd glaring at Homer, but you'd even see him running after Homer, too. So Fat Burns is still mad at him. It's got to be a Comic-Con exclusive figure, Fat Burns. I want that Fat Burns. Yeah, NECA really should start those Simpsons toys up again and give us what we want. Yeah, but you need to have shin-breaking action on him. You need to be able to break the shins.

Well, NECA's doing some just incredible things with poseability, so I think that's possible. Yeah, I think they could do it. I still have my prize NECA off-camera here. I look to it as I say it, my Bret Hart from The Simpsons signed by Bret Hart. The 25-year collection. That's great, man. Now that's five years old, I guess, at this point.

Six. Six. Ah, you got me. You know, I thought I remembered this as an episode I liked less, but re-watching it for this, I was like, wow, this is way funnier than i remember just joke after joke after joke i wish homer was less mean but it's just this is season 11 homer's saying get used to it buddy hey you're getting as mean as homer it was uh it was a much meaner time for comedy i think this in the post 9 11 years we'll be getting into soon they they

gotta they gotta keep up in the meanness race with Family Guy in South Park. Homer Campy is this sweet old man. Yeah it was a mean arms race. But I guess Mike any final thoughts? Nothing revelatory just that dog

I love a dog talking and that's I really was happy to be reacquainted with that joke when the dog talks. And I went back and I looked that scene up on Frankie Yak and I gifted just while we were talking, and they just give him a human mouth for that scene. They just drive him. They give him the human mouth chart. It's really creepy if you just have it on a loop.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. But, yes, thank you so much for joining us, Mike. It's been a long recording session, but, of course, you're part of Podcast the Ride. We love it. Can you tell people where to find you and also about your patreon which i am on and i love all the extra stuff so good oh thank you um yeah podcast ride is you know all the places podcasts are you can find us on twitter instagram at podcast the ride uh our patreon is just patreon.com whatever slash podcast

the ride uh me personally i'm'm at Fat Carlson on Twitter. P-H-A-T-C-A-R-L-S-O-N. That was my backyard wrestling name and it has stuck with me all these years. And I'm, yeah, I'm doing Twitch. I'm on Twitch now because why not? We were doing some stuff with podcasts right on Twitch and I do

some stuff alone. We'll see when this comes out how much I'm still doing it. I think it might all depend on if we're still inside or not but at the very least there's some good archives on twitch folks can watch yes uh we we have some we did a bracket of the best theme park doctors and i won't say who wins but you know it's because it's you know the doctors from the avatar ride dr seeker from dinosaur and animal kingdom doc brown from the back to the future ride i've never i've never been to animal kingdom so i'm gonna have to side with doc brown on this one yeah i'm backing him when uh when i last went to universal hollywood at the end of the studio

tour i got off and there was the doc brown impersonator there and it was the most excited i was all day like oh my god it's doc brown like it was the most excited I was all day. Like, oh my God, it's Doc Brown! Like, it was just a treat to see him. Yes. I don't think he's been running around since they took all the Back to the Future stuff out. I could be wrong. This was him in his 2015 Future Garb.

I love that. Yes. I think Back to the Future will come back in a way, whether there's a new movie or not, which there will surely be a new movie eventually, but I do feel like they sort of know they have like the nostalgia for Back to the Future

is so strong still to this day. So hopefully he'll roam around again in his outfits. Also, NECA making Back to the Future stuff now. Oh wow! I knew Bob Gale had been writing some Back to the Future stuff now. Oh, wow. I didn't know. I knew Bob Gale had been writing some Back to the Future comics, but...

Mm-hmm. So, anyway. Yes. Thanks for having me. Oh, yeah. Thanks for being part of this. So, thanks so much to Mike Carlson

for being on the show, and please check out his podcast, Podcast of the Ride. We love it so much. But as for us, if you want to support our show and get all these episodes

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free feed at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And Henry can tell everybody out there what's happening at the $10 level. One extra long podcast once a month month just for patrons at $10 and up that's right at patreon.com slash talking simpsons each month we do the what a cartoon movie every month we do a different animated feature film recent ones have included toy story 2 and the loop on the third film castle of cagliostro directed by hayo miyazaki tons of great stuff that you can only see if you go to the patreon at 10 bucks a month patreon.com slash talking simpsons so i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast find it wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and find lots of stuff there, but two exclusive episodes every

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Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for Treehouse of horror 10 and we will see you then Hey, I know how we can have some fun. I spy with my little eye something beginning with D. Dingus! God bless you, Nelson Muntz. I'm no hero. I just like to hit people in the head.