Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Gump Roast

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

This week's pod is a clip show, and a famous one at that, so we didn't want to subject a guest to it. Instead, we go deep into the making of this Forrest Gump meets Dean Martin Roast parody, including the behind-the-scenes contract deals that made it possible. Plus we explain references to Austin Powers, Evening Shade, the People's Choice Awards, and so much more! We'll never stop the Simpsons, have no fears, we've got podcasts for years! 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!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking of the Hill, the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the only thing more exciting than an evening shade reunion. I'm your host, Mr. Warmth himself, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always?

Hey, Henry Gilbert, and,ie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Hey, Henry Gilbert and, heh, poop. And this week's episode is Gump Roast. Sorry for the clip show. Have no fears. We've got stories for years. This episode originally aired on April 21st, 2002. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened

on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my god! Oh boy, Bobby. The Scorpion King tops the box office. The Senate defeats Bush's plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

And Robert Blake is arrested for accused of murdering his wife or arranging the hit. He will later be found not guilty. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. I'm sure. Is that what the bird detective says? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Beretta? Yeah, that's what it is. Beretta's old line. When he was arrested, people expected me to know who he was. Sort of like when O.J. Simpson was arrested, my parents were like, you know the football guy? And I'm like, I was born in 1982. He was the Hertz guy when I was a kid and the Naked Gun guy. At least he was a Naked Gun.

Robert Blake didn't do anything to be famous in our childhoods. He should have started a kid-friendly comedy of the 80s if they wanted us to care about Robert Blake. But, yeah, it was. What was the story behind this? Now, this is all just me remembering things and possibly, you know, getting ourselves in the hot water here. But he was like, no, the gun I was going to kill my wife was in the car. She was killed by another gun. Yes.

Yeah. So his wife was shot and murdered while who then would say uh that robert blake paid him to kill her which he said wasn't true other witnesses i believe in the trial said robert blake tried to hire me to kill my wife or to kill his wife uh yes robert blake's defense also was like but i was going to the car to get where my own gun was i wasn't gonna kill her my gun was in that car but he was found not guilty i guess they did not have enough uh to to prove it i suppose but yes it uh some people believe that he paid a guy to kill his wife uh we did did not have a good relationship with i believe and uh we're not drilling in the arctic just yet i don't think but we are drilling

everywhere else in the past 20 years and spilling oil all over the place, too. Doesn't it feel weird to think about the drill baby drill era again? It's like, yeah, yeah. Republican reactionary grievances, conservative grievances in America are so far from being mad that you can't drill for oil somewhere like i mean in the wake of this of stuff like this with bush wanting to drill into the wildlife uh areas and national parks that then jerks like sarah palin would say like oh well does it make you guys mad that we'd want to drill in a park where we want to do a drill baby drill now the things that conservatives want to do to piss off liberals, far different than drilling for oil and killing animals. Though I guess, you know, there was that pipeline.

So Obama shut down that pipeline. Then Trump brought it back. And then it was really messy. I know journalists were arrested for covering it. So it was not a good time for democracy but again the democracy is on the way out that's why we're getting rid of democracy on our network because just get used to it's the future of living here in this country welcome to 2023 and uh yes in the scorpion king uh the rock's first starring role in something uh duane the rock

johnson what's he credited as the rock or i believe he was at this point in movies duane quotes the rock okay unquote johnson but for a period of time he was just duane johnson in movies and i believe now in current films he is duane of the rock johnson and stuff i think this is mostly famous now for the terrible cgi oh yeah very very bad cgi yeah it's and it also was you know now today with the mcu and how they plan out and tease things forever this was very inventive for its time because they make the mummy returns there's a flashback where the rock's in for just a little bit as the scorpion king and they fully did it to set up a prequel to come out the next year as a deal with the rock and so uh this was you know planning for the whole time and also it lines up with pro wrestling because the rock left uh pro

wrestling for months and months and when he came back he was slowly being de-emphasized on the shows and the fans actually turned against him because they saw him as hollywood rock leaving behind pro wrestling for greener pastures there's already a hollywood guy it's hollywood hogan yeah i'm just learning now this is the first of five scorpion king movies uh never to be played again by the rock oh wait oh right so he's there's been a long direct-to-video series of the the scorpion king yes starting with uh scorpion king 2 rise of a warrior wow uh starring who is playing michael cop copon he must have been cast for his ability to look like the rock and uh who else is playing uh the scorpion king uh victor webster these are all made-up names you know it's also interesting because uh the rock just starred in the black

adam movie uh the dc superhero uh or super villain maybe he plays both sides he's uh but the rock had been trying to make that movie for over a decade and it also is about a former egyptian royalty that then comes back to the real world with power. There's something about playing Egyptians, which The Rock has no Egyptian ancestry. His father is African-American, or actually, I believe, a black Canadian man. His mother, Samoan. So he has, I don't believe he has any particular roots to Egypt, yet he loves playing these, like, Egyptian royals. Yeah, I didn't know anything about Black Adam. Oh oh I love Black Adam was one of my favorites so that he

was a real uh superhero for the Bush era because he and it's why The Rock loves the character because Black Adam's like I can beat up Superman and if I feel like I'm killing somebody I just do it because I know what's right but Superman will not not be appearing in this film oh he's in the post credits of uh i'm sorry to say setting up what another superman yeah he's gonna fight superman in the next movie like he the rock bragged in a in an instagram post of him drinking rock brand tequila taramana tequila his name is brand uh drinking that tequila with henry cavill is his way of saying, like, I got Henry Cavill to come back, guys. That's right.

I know that because Henry Cavill not coming back for The Witcher Season 2. Yeah, yeah. You know, I've heard rumors that it's because the show was getting worse and he didn't want to do it anymore. I think they just went to the Hollywood claw machine and picked out a Hemsworth. You'll do. Yeah, yeah.

They get a lesser Hemsworth. They're like, you know, the wig does most of the work on this anyway to play Geralt. Geralt. I don't play those games. I've heard they're good. I don't care about the show, but I've heard the show is okay, too.

I have also heard that, yeah. I think I heard about how you don't know it because you stayed in a place with a Witcher-sized bathtub. Oh, yeah, yeah. I bathed in a Witcher tub. you bathed in a witch and i did stick my feet over the edge you sickos i know you're thinking about it but that that was for

private use yes twitter there were no photo ops there this episode you might notice we don't have a guest that's because they didn't have to work hard so we're not going to work hard scheduling guests is tough and so yeah we're also you know this is the final regular clip show of the series and i think we only had a guest on one clip show 138 that was our good friend cat but we you know part of the thing with clip shows is it's like well this is the thing we've already talked about a ton so this is kind of boring to talk about again and this is not as dynamic as 138 the best clip show ever yeah or even all singing all dancing in which uh maggie is threatened with a gun oh yes yeah sorry

there was yeah there's a clip show between the other two that's right yeah uh which at least had the style of you know what we did have a lot of songs on this show how about we play those you know i really hated this when it first aired. Me too, me too. Because if you were alive in 2002, you knew at that point in time, this is too late for a clip show. There are DVDs out. There is no shortage of ways to watch these clips. But I don't, like, I'm sure other series were still doing it, but it felt far too late. And this is not anything, like, super insightful, but that was my opinion in 2002. Like, how dare you?

How dare you how dare you like they on the commentaries for the first clip show on the dvd for the season four april fool's one i think they're saying yeah clip shows are pretty much dead you don't really do them anymore because audiences like will tune out like that was the thing they said on the sorta not really clip show behind the laughter because they were worried. Oh, no, no, sorry. That was in when Homer had the midlife crisis in the Edison episode where they show the clips and then they're like, oh, wait, no, we have to stop these clips really quick because we're worried people will

change the channel if they think it's a clip show. And I guess for more context, we should point out the Simpsons staff has always had like a battle against clip shows because I think Fox wanted four per year and they were able to work it out to give them one every couple of years and they usually got people at the end of their contracts to write them uh under duress yes yes the two of the big ones the Pennywise and Pound Foolish ones were so John Vitti could fulfill a contract and move on with his life uh and and david silverman just oversaw them and in 138 to do it digital just to like oh let's see how we can do it digital but and definitely

with another simpsons clip show i feel like it's david merkin delivering the worst possible episode he could and i think we've said it on that podcast that is the worst episode yes yeah and i i stand by it because it's just the most intentionally flat and uninteresting i think there's like two actual jokes in the episode that i would call a joke but yeah i mean the the economics of why they did it if you're if you don't know is because like back then in the the early seasons before they hit 100 episodes fox wanted it to get to syndicated as soon as possible and the executives are totally right to do that from a business standpoint because i was digging through the variety archives again

for for other stuff in this episode but there are so many stories when the syndication begins of like simpsons number one in syndication the biggest thing like it was a huge syndicated hit immediately and it made tons of money now it's the biggest thing on disney a huge syndicated hit immediately and it made tons of money now it's the biggest thing on disney plus is that correct yes yeah i thought so simpsons reruns are a huge huge money maker and so you know back then i think they certainly the rules don't work that way now but back then you couldn't create a syndicated package until you had 100 episodes that's why they'd celebrate 100 episodes and so if you're in season two of the simpsons and you're you're gonna make 22 episodes a season

you're gonna get to 100 a lot faster if there are some clip shows in there because a clip show gets syndicated for the same price as a regular episode so it's really just like the filler uh literal filler to to get some more money. It's safe to say that 21 years ago was the last time there was a fear that there weren't enough Simpsons episodes. Yes. Yeah. And I agree with you, Bob.

This was, you know, I think this was one of those final straws for me as a regular viewer of Simpsons. I wouldn't, it's not that I stopped watching the show, but it wasn't appointment viewing anymore and I wasn't taping it anymore and i think it was seeing a clip show that also had musty old references in it and as listeners know obviously a gigantic breaking of canon yes in this episode surely pissed uh elder teen me off quite a lot yeah and and looking back at this uh not to insult the writers of this episode, of course, I realized that in the eight years between Forrest Gump and this episode, they never did a Forrest Gump reference.

And I think that's because it was too obvious. Yeah. Homer was the dim everyman who got to accomplish all of his goals and do incredible things like go to the moon and meet former presidents and meet beetles and everything like that i think they realized that's too obvious a joke we're not going to do it and then to see it eight years later is pretty shocking i mean gene and reese did forrest gump stuff on the critic and it was okay but jay sherman was not a forrest gump style character yeah and it made more sense to have the critic watch clips from a forrest gump to movie

like that made some sense or him meet forrest gump style characters like that that all made sense but yeah i mean when forrest gump was brand new i would think uh guys the showrunners then were dave merkin and followed by bill oakley and Josh Weinstein. And I think all of them would, in that time, go like, this is the most obvious reference possible. We're not doing it. Every single show is doing a Forrest Gump parody. We're not going to do this. Mad TV just did Gump Fiction.

Oh, God, yes. Written by Patton Oswalt, I believe. I think so, yeah. That is such a YouTube sketch. Watching this again 15 years since I last watched it on DVD or whatever, whenever the DVDs came out, like 2009, that's the last time I watched this one. Watching it again, now I can see what they're trying to do. Yes, they're trying to make a really cheap clip show,

but I can also see them saying, these are the new classic clips because it's 2001 when they're writing this. Everybody is hopping online. It's way easier to see feedback about the show and it's all bad. Everyone is so mad at the Simpsons. They'll continue to be mad for the next 21 years. And this is them saying, okay, we're going to show you a few of the clips that you like, but we've picked out what we think are the new classics.

And for the most part, they're ones I see referenced more than any other post-season nine clips. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right that this was at least them capturing what were more popular post-season nine scenes to use. And I think too, it does help not only that they're not, I would bet Gene was thinking like, if we use clips we've already used in previous clip shows, that's really like a snake eating its own tail. So let's go with something more recent, mostly. Though another thing that bugs me about this episode is when you see a clip from a real classic, like the first clip you see is from, I think, one of the best animated episodes of the series,

Homer the Heretic. When you see that, you're reminded the show doesn't look like this anymore, which, yes, they lost people like Brad Bird and David Silverman, but i think too it was that budget wise they couldn't do it anymore oh for sure which is why now when they do little jokes about you know making clips look like old clips you realize that they can make the show

look like it used to but they refuse to i know and hey i get it it's for it's for us but hey you've shown us that you can do it could you at least do like just give us one episode that looks that way the square with that color theory instead of the like current color theory that feels weaker just like more homogenized too many shadows too much detail yeah oh god yeah can i just have a little less detail in the background but yeah clip shows are dead you can't it's also like the internet is getting started and so in april of 2002 you couldn't just google every line from the simpsons and find the video of it but it's getting closer that time is getting closer we're about three years from youtube and maybe four years from youtube banning all simpsons clips immediately the second you try to upload them uh now yeah i feel like the only official there's still a ton of simpsons clips immediately the second you tried to upload them. Now, yeah, I feel like the only official, there's still a ton of Simpsons clips on there.

There was a time where when Simpsons World launched, the only Simpsons clips you would see on there were the ads for Simpsons World, like uploaded by Fox to advertise it. And now I don't know if they're really cracking down because I can find most Simpsons clips on YouTube of, you know, famous scenes. They're still up there. Yeah, I think they are. I think they've held back a little bit on it for sure certainly certainly I've seen like old commercials just get to stay up like nobody takes them down and also this isn't YouTube but it's Twitch but Daily Simpsons History a really good Twitter account to follow follow them on Twitch

because without warning usually I'd say at least once a month they will just air a simpsons episode fully as it aired on tv like taped off of tv with the vintage commercials from when it first aired in the u.s and it's a ton of fun and the streams aren't archived but they get to play the whole way through they don't get taken down as an experiment uh while you were talking henry i just googled a random uh a clip i just typed in where's my elephant simpsons into youtube and there are two versions of it one was from 11 years ago once from five years ago and they've never been touched you know i wonder if those episodes that were uploaded in like four parts are i think those got taken down there was a big crackdown on those i i won't name names we had a

couple guests who i was a little judgy of of like oh you guys watched it in the clip parts on youtube you can't you can't at least find like kiss cartoons and steal it that way you can't just go to type in simpsons episode streaming into google that's all you if you write any cartoon name and then kiss cartoon after it you will find the illegal stream event like if you if you write any cartoon name and then kiss cartoon after it you will find the illegal stream of it like if you if you shouldn't do that because that's wrong but this is not interesting at all but i was doing some youtube uh curating of my own i was just like cleaning up my youtube account because i've had it for a long long time and i noticed that i have a bunch of playlists and a lot of those playlists are like the playlists of one episode of mystery science theater it's like

the final sacrifice one of 13 and then like the rest of them are in like a playlist they're all deleted now because every episode of msd3k is online but there used to be a 10 minute limit yeah right man and now not only are they they're either hosted by msd3k or not taken down by msd3k like i this is more esoteric side bs but I wanted to watch that Santa Claus episode. And first I was going to watch it on the Gizmo Plex, which I paid for the whole year of it. But like the app on my Google TV, my Android TV just wasn't working. And so I was like, screw this. I'm going to YouTube.

And I just watched a just somebody upload the whole episode on YouTube and I watched it. This is the place to say it. That Gizmooplex platform sucks. Good intentions, but boy, is it awful. I've had to pirate all the Mystery Science Theater that I paid for. Yeah, it's sad. I was happy to give to their second Kickstarter. And I fully support not only any creator I love going independent like that and not shopping their thing to netflix but also like mst3k in general i have so much affection for and i'll give it but gizmo plex

could be better there's just no two ways about it i i would rather the performers and writers have the money than them building a new platform yeah it but i mean is that what we both love and and kind of worry about with joe hodgson that he he likes weird little ventures like that like the gizmo plex like he doesn't that's just kind of the guy he is you know we wouldn't have mystery science theater if he didn't do that i don't know how we got here but yeah but but anyway yeah the simpsons clip shows there we go i guess if we're gonna uh say mean things about people we love as well like when you say oh this is too obvious of forrest gump that was how dan castellaneta and debla custa pitched it of like that they thought like hey you know he's kind of like

forrest gump we should pitch that and it's like because they're the dan is the star of the series they can't say that's too obvious and not do it they kind of have to do it i feel like if this was pitched as a non-clip show and i assume that it was yeah uh they would say no but they found a way to work that into five minutes of a clip show right yeah yeah they're like oh you know what so i have clips of almost every line said in the episode and that equals nine and a half minutes total and that that's counting the minute long song at the end of the episode so yeah they basically paid for half of it i'd say 40 new footage for this episode okay well that minute long song was well maybe there's three new drawings in it yeah that's true

you know what that shouldn't count so actually i guess it's more like 35 30 new footage in this episode so hey they get a cheaper episode they make dan castellaneta their star of the series happier by doing his episode it's uh you know i i see the reasoning for agreeing to do this yeah it just is very funny that homer uh is doing a forrest gump parody for no reason and because of that the episode is named after the first five minutes of this episode. And also, he has to wear the Forrest Gump costume for the entire preceding 15 minutes of the episode. Yeah, if I was them, when they go to commercial break, have Homer wear a tuxedo when you come back. Like, he doesn't need to wear the... But I guess, hey, you know what?

That costs more money in design, you know? And we're taking it easy, so... They've got a model sheet with homer in a tuxedo yeah it's true just take that one out you're right yeah it's uh yeah just for a also like a pun on rump roast to like oh it's gum plus to roast which it also lets them so when alf did a clip show late in its series also to pad out uh things for syndication and so alf wouldn't have to film with any of the other actors. It's just Alf and the actors can take a week off.

Al Jean and Mike Reese had left the show at that point. But they were asked to come back to write the clip show. Because it was a Tonight Show parody and they worked on the Tonight Show. It also flows very similar to the second two acts of this episode. Because it really is just the format of late night entertainment you have a joke about corny old jokes setting up a clip like and and also i bet that lets you write a little easier because like oh if this is a bad joke that's the joke it's funny that it's not a good joke i also think maybe they tried a bit too hard sometimes because uh i think it happens a few

times in which there's new narration over an old clip and I'm just like, shut up. Yes. Yeah. You can just let this play as it lays. Okay. But yeah, so here's the they talk a little on the commentary in the behind the scenes of this, though. Honestly, they're a little too jokey on this commentary. It's a loose commentary and dan castellanet is not even on it uh because he's

filming uh a season six episode of desperate housewives it's called boom crunch if you want to look up the episode that he guest stars yeah look that up he's not even a recurring character this is one appearance on that show man dan can't even get more than one appearance on it so yeah they're recording it that day uh probably at the Fox studio in Hollywood. While I'm assuming he's filming. Well, you know what? Wisteria Lane was on the Universal lot. We've all seen it if you've taken the Universal Hollywood tram tour.

But I don't know if he was filming the rest on the Universal lot. I think when we took the tour in 2018, they said Wisteria Lane. Yes, yeah. But we know it best as the Get a Life neighborhood. That's far more important than it's the get a life neighborhood that's far more important than it's the get a life neighborhood yeah but uh so yeah deb lacusta his wife and writing partner she's on the commentary mainly representing uh the the story of how it was written and all that and she mentions they came up with the homer is gump idea during a work stoppage during the actors negotiating new salaries and this is what

sent me down a little research uh trip i've talked about it before but uh the variety archives are very helpful in charting the timelines of the actors wanting more money uh and which i've said it before i'll say it again they should want more money everybody who says like well it's such an easy job they work like a day a week tops they should get a million dollars like yes because their show is extremely successful they should get a million dollars yeah if we got a replacement homer you'd be changing your tune yes yeah they are also key to the show when when they replaced even just even one of the side actors it is so recognizable they just kill off maude because they don't want to have a fake voice for it anymore but they say that they can't they wrote this episode during a work stoppage which was april 30th 2001 was when the news broke of them signing the deal that ended it so

it's the march april 2001 period that this happened so at some point forrest gump aired on tv and dan and deb saw it yes yeah well and they're thinking you know what if we actually get signed on for a new season i'm gonna pitch this but yeah so apparently what happened was we all know about uh as the joke goes nobody will know the diddly difference that's a reference to them in 1998 as a group the uh five key voice actors saying they wouldn't come back to the show unless they got a big raise. They were getting $30,000 an episode,

which makes sense when you sign the deal for the series in season one, but I'd say by season two, they should be making triple that at the very least. And so they get a raise up to $100,000 an episode for 98 seasons when they finally make the deal. And so that deal's come and due. It's time to renew for seasons 13 and 14.

So what happens is apparently they were scheduling a table read and the actors didn't show up as a way of saying, nope, we're not doing this until you sign a new deal with us. And so here's how Variety reported on how it ended April 30th, 2001. The collective voices behind long-running hit comedy The Simpsons are closing new deals with 20th Century Fox and Gracie Films that will hike their salaries to $100,000 an episode for two new seasons and with an option for a third season that will pay $125 per episode. In addition, the actors will be paid a million dollar bonus that was part of their last contract, but wasn't supposed to be paid until 2005.

The Simpsons will be right back. New from Kellogg's, no problemos. Yummy loops and chocolatey biscuits. Do anything to get your hands on them. New Bart Simpson's no problemos. There's a bit of Bart in every box. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

We care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Hey everybody, it's Henry. Welcome to the break and I promise that this break is not a clip show in this clip show podcast and normally this is where I'd be thanking our guest but we didn't want to subject a guest to

a bunch of clip packages to talk through and me and Bob had a whole bunch of fun starting out the year with our first real Simpsons episode talking about gump roast and its long-term effects on the series and you know me and Bob are only able to talk about a clip show of the Simpsons for almost two hours because of supporters at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons who are just like you listeners but they give us five bucks a month not just so me and Bob can do this as their full-time jobs but also to get a ton of extras and bonuses each month you get a new episode of talking Futurama and talk King of the Hill. Us going now into seasons four and three of Futurama and King of the Hill, respectively. As well,

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from four years worth of monthly what a cartoon movies i would definitely say it is approaching 200 hours of exclusive content in addition to all the other stuff you get at that five dollar level we have covered everything from akira to a goofy movie beavis and butthead do the universe to spider-man into the spider-verse and in between. Please check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. here's another key thing to why i think this episode exists later in the article in addition to the salary hike that will cover seasons 13 14 and perhaps 15 dan castellaneta the actor will also receive a first look production development deal with fox with writing partner deb lacusta castellaneta has written several episodes of the show one of which was nominated for a prism award which like that's incorrect they'd written one episode of this time they're talking about

days of wine and doses which is a prison war but so i don't think it's a coincidence that as soon as castellaneta with the other actors signed a new deal to return to the show that also involved a writing production deal with fox that they then buy a new script from uh castlonetta and lacusta i don't i don't think that's an accident no and i'm looking at his uh credits his only writing credits are on tr Ullman's show, of course, and then nine episodes of The Simpsons. Yes. Yeah. And he would get a consulting producer up to co-executive producer from this season onward as well. And I've heard that it's not unearned. There was a recent, I believe it was a Vulture article, talking about how the show is produced today.

And they were talking both to Ullman and some of the newer writers on the show. I think Christine Nangle and Brody Gupta. And both the newer writers said, and yeah, Dan is in the writer's room too. Like he's helping us with stuff. Like he's a committed, busy guy. It's not working on the show more than just as an actor. So I'd say he's at least earning those credits as as co-executive producer it feels to me like he is mr simpsons he'll do anything for the show yeah yeah that's

i mean he's the guy who's in every online short or whatever i mean he's he's the guy doing the trump impersonation in those those great online original and in the one video on the macarona youtube account it's him yeah yeah dan hey dan likes to have fun he's uh you know and follow your passion and any i mean they're making millions and millions and that made it so season 13 they made cumulatively i think two and a half million per season just for acting it was all the actors it also in that april 30th variety article it was al gene being announced that he was taking over that was part of their press release but i also gotta say in those articles i could see maybe varieties trying to be like let's hear both sides but they have some lines in there and i'm like what did the freaking executives at fox

write this they say though some have said that the actors barely do anything compared to say Ray Romano's work on Everybody Loves Raymond his schedule's far busier and he doesn't get paid that much per episode I'm like okay that some would say is real sneaky yes yeah any of those things are such like a sneak many believe uh you know I I'm always I always hate those articles that try to put labor, like, that they try to make anybody but executives on that shit look greedy. I mean, this is after also the railway strike news that was happening in the early December. I think Joe Biden should have shut down the Simpson strike. He should have forced them, like, sorry, you guys america needs more simpsons you gotta you gotta

break the strike come on man uh also when they signed that deal fox got a real give and take on this because so they give them all a raise and they give them that million dollar bonus that was contingent on the show continuing to 2005 which you can see how in the past when they signed the deal in 98 fox was like 2005 no way it's going that long we're not paying them all a million that that promised million will be nothing and then by 2001 they're like yeah shit it probably will go to 2005 let's just give them a million now but what they get in return for that is all the actors agree that if a simpsons movie is made before a certain date they will do it they can't say no to it so

it's a pre-agreement for the simpsons movie boy you know fox uh making those promises was like me taking out student loans where i was like 2007 that's a million years in the future we'll never get there then once it comes up they're like and yeah like a million dollar bonus is the least the actors on The Simpsons deserve. Though, yeah, everybody on The Simpsons deserves a raise. I'm glad the actors all worked together in concert to get a raise after they were inspired by the Friends people. The Friends cast doing the same deal. But yeah, if this deal that was reached during the writing of Gump Roast hadn't been reached, then there wouldn't be a Simpsons movie because I think that them signing that deal

in 01 for a Simpsons movie is why like a few years later, that's when Fox was like, shit, they'll never agree to do a movie again. They are contractually obligated, but we have to do it now. I guess we got to do the Simpsons movie now. And that's why we're probably not going to get another yeah yeah i mean at least the theatrical movie i think because the

movie's not in the actors contracts now yeah and if they wanted to do the con they'd have to pay probably i think especially to harry shearer they'd have to pay a lot of money to get him to do another movie the articles on it weren't too acrimonious a far cry from the articles i then read from two years uh sorry from three years later in 2004 during this stuff uh the arguments over renewals for 16 and 17 because that's when things got really bad though it got even worse the next time that's when harry sure quit the show briefly but one thing that bugged me reading the variety article was uh for the their next negotiation they get some off the record stuff from somebody associated with the actors that apparently the actors were united and not coming

back until they got the sweetest plum residuals they they wanted residuals and then it is alleged in the variety article that at least one actor said you know what guys let's just give up on residuals we'll get the raise and a bunch more money let's just let's stop fighting for the residuals and sign it and that's when the actors were like well if it's not all of us agreeing then i guess we just have to do it and so it implied that some actors were bothered that another at least one other actor got them to drop the residuals thing which year was this which negotiation was this 2004 one for season 16 and 17 i guess they didn't know they'd have at least 20 more years of work ahead of them yeah and i mean

i know for harry shearer at least from his wtf interview years and years ago at least in that interview he did talk about how for him residuals were a big deal because even getting highly paid for the simpsons that's just money one time when his kids should be making money forever off of simpsons reruns but it's what fox and i would bet now disney will never give up they don't want that i know i was a wtf listener because there's nothing more frustrating than a harry scherer interview and i think i remember mark going so uh the simpsons want to talk about that harry and he was just like oh you know i show up and they pay me and it's fine yes he will give nothing he does not want to show you he gets any joy out of it and that's it

i mean i get it i mean we read that interview of him from like season five where he's just like man i don't really like it like he he was hating on the show in season three yeah with the softball episode yeah anyway that's the timing of how this episode got pitched it was in spring of 2001 while the actors were trying to get a big raise yeah i forgot the commentary tells the story of how the episode was made because in my head i had the theory that it was pitched much earlier because Dan and Deb's last episode which was Days of Wine and Dozes that was pitched in season four but they were already making Duffless I had a feeling that this was like a season six pitch because of the Forrest Gump stuff but no it was written in 2001 uh it's funny to think that like you want to say like oh this is

probably pitched in 96 right that's why it's not it's not that stale yeah i mean the timing of it is just so weird because it's like it's not old enough for you to be nostalgic for it yet but it's not new enough as to feel recent or like uh exciting so it's just in this like dead zone of like really a parody of a thing from eight years ago it's weird to see forrest gump and austin powers parodied at once yes yeah at least but at least in that case that that joke feels like them admitting yeah can you believe we're doing forrest gump like that'd be as bad as uh as austin powers and we would arrest ourselves if we earnestly did in austin powers parody this episode contains a few apologies on their behalf a last behind the scenes thing i'll mention too is that uh the former twitter account that guy 3002 he had the

original script for this episode or a table draft for it he tweeted it out i have the archived tweet of it there's only like five times where there was something interesting that they changed the funny thing in his original thread about it was he said boy it was really hard doing the previous ones of these i want to take it easy so i'm doing a clip show script a deep dive if they if the writers could take it easy i'm gonna take it easy so uh so yes i will note uh where we're interesting the episode begins with a uh yes a forest gun parody i'll give it to alf clausen that he did a good fake of the Alan Silvestri Gump score. You can always count on him.

Not anymore. Right, right. Yeah, you're right. You could always count on him. I like seeing Homer stabbed in the eye by a feather. I think that's funny. Twice. And it's like right in the middle of his iris.

Like it's not even like in his tear ducts or whatever. It's like boink right there. What surprised me is that that went for a truncated opening and not the full opening because you want to kill time in this clip show but no they give you the truncated opening up front i guess more time for more clips i don't know yeah it's more time for more clips and you know animating feathers is hard i bet it's not easy the you know i'm this joke is better than what's in the original script where the feather had apparently flown off of a, this is the name of the character, Native American construction worker, who it fell off his headdress. And then somebody says like, well, I guess we won't call you White Feather anymore because his white feather flew off it. I'm glad there's not.

Yeah, I'm glad we don't know the origin of the feather. But yes, then we get Homer. Homer even saying chocolate like how Gump says it. Like, I hate that. I'm with Wiggum wanting to beat him with a club for saying that. Homer should be arrested. But here's at least where we find out that the show also doesn't like this reference. Want a chocolate? Hold it right there, Forrest Plump.

This town has laws against impersonating movie characters. Oh, behave! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Luke, I am your father. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Uh, it's shagadelic. What are you doing here, anyway? Waiting for my Luke, I am your father. Shagadelic. What are you doing here anyway? Waiting for my wife. She has a surprise for me. Hey, hey, hey, I didn't ask for your life story. Did you say life story? You know, I do like the drawing of Moe in a terrible Austin Powers outfit and being arrested.

With the fake teeth, too. Yeah yeah and his shagadelic like that fortunately wigum was nice enough to let them out right after this so they could be at the roast later in the episode yeah they've got some pretty good seats where yeah because we are right before attack of the clones and uh gold member. Right. Oh, God. 1990 to 2002 gave us two Star Wars sequels. That's right, man. Yeah. Well, Darth Vader's always right there. But I wonder if, too, this whole arresting people for doing movie references, they used to do it all the time on the show. But now Family Guy and South Park also do it all the time.

So I wonder if they're feeling a little more guilty about using it. all the time on the show but now family guy in south park also do it all the time so i wonder if they're feeling a little more guilty about using it yeah they're the ones who started it i guess i mean mad magazine started it but they were popularizing it on a non-sketch show yeah no the simpsons did like film parodies all the time especially in the gene years and then i mean too i guess it is after doing so much of the critic i can see that Al Jean's like you know what I don't want to see our characters dressed as other characters anymore I'm tired of it but then later in the episode when Burns approaches the the the podium or whatever they play the imperial march yes yeah that didn't they do that before with him yeah that was definitely the music uh

behind shots of Burns Manor and Mercaneers they did that a few times yeah uh though in this one that was alf clausen there too uh doing a serviceable parody of quincy jones's soul bossa nova the uh yeah which is a great song that's great i i do like homer's very adr did you say life story that would have been a fine clip show context as well just like you know what in sequence homer's life through clips like his baby homer to child homer to teen homer to yeah yeah i gotta say the clip selection is odd and they're really in love with mom and pop arts in this clip show yeah and and when you dish upon a star i you know with mom and pop art that has to be because gene wrote it and he knew that episode but i mean it's a good clip to make people go

like yeah that's a great clip but it also to me it reminded me of oh just great like it's they're showing me a great drawing from it and and as a kid yes and when And when I say kid, I mean 19-year-old. As a 19-year-old, I saw Homer dressed as Gump. And when they get to a clip before they're done with the credits, I think I really did fully check out that. I was like, motherfucker. I'm watching a clip show that's Forrest Gump. Well, earlier in the season in the Blunder Years, they start playing a clip of the Gorge Jump. And then Lisa says, Dad, everyone's heard that story. yes yeah so they do they do a clip show fake out they knew clip show sucks yeah they knew like uh man it's i also thought homer's voiceover of i ate what my

mother ate it feels so specific as to must i was like it must be a reference but google came up short for that like yeah i couldn't find anything and again i miss the original dialogue which is him going another wonderful day in the womb and i'm all naked and wet yeah that's such a great line but the chili gag is not funnier than what they came up with eight years before nine years before i ate what my mother ate and what she ate was chili it's like it also that doesn't fit for the characterization of mona simpson that she's a woman who ate chili and farted all the time it's like what homer as a baby in utero loved farting like it's just it's lame it's just it's a lame joke they don't know mona very well also did you notice they they ping-pong back and forth was with what homer and wiggum play the like first they have

wiggum say he doesn't want to hear his life story. Then they go back and Homer is going to tell more of a story that Wiggum wants to hear. And then Homer says, hey, shouldn't you be doing your job? And then when it comes back the next time, Wiggum's like, okay, I got to go. It's like, okay, so which is the one that doesn't want to do this? Like, why is it changing between scenes? Yeah, it's like the character's minds are white between clips. Yeah. Oh, also here's another cut that they did from the original script.

The undercover guy thing, not in the script, where Wiggum outs a guy undercover who's clearly going to get killed. In the original script, they do a fake flashback at this point of the Run, Forest, Run flashback from it, where Homer, though, doesn't have braces on his legs. He's chasing a kid who has leg braces but then it's revealed that he's doing it because that kid keyed somebody's car so homer's trying to catch him after he did that but then homer as a kid is so out of shape he can't catch up with the

kid in leg braces and that's the end of the scene i'm glad they limited the forrest gump thing to the first minute of forrest gump thing to the first minute of forrest gump and just that you just the framing device we don't have to see a flashback to him i mean it's just so complicated of like homer chasing a kid in leg braces but he's doing it for a good reason though also like wake me getting an undercover guy killed they just did a better version i joke in trilogy of error the year before right. But yeah, so then Homer cuts to a quick clip of his dad reading him stories, which is from the Kidney Trouble episode. The best part of that episode. Yeah.

The only one about not killing his father. And I'll give him credit, too, that, like you said, most of the clips after season nine. But then they give you the uh the way we was one though i'll also give them credit for they could have picked a clip that wouldn't mean they'd have to re-license a carpenter song and save some more money but they use the scene with the carpenter song so hey at least they did that and uh after that sweet scene it's then homer abusing marge in the dance sequence from the episode where she's kidnapped by a biker king i'll restate what i said a few years ago i love that he throws her back in time yes it's a very

funny joke and uh even though they they highlight it with the owner of the place saying like oh like i've never seen a man abuse his wife that much or whatever but also the animation of marge's hair being squished out from the spin is at least fun animation yeah it's a well done scene then comes uh i think my favorite setup for a flashback yeah and life just gets more exciting marge can we trade i don't trust these guys we've got to get home before someone sees us. You know, all this danger is kind of a turn. Okay. Then came the day that changes every couple forever. The day we got our elephant.

Just for no reason, a clip to Stampy. That's what's so great. And that's not in the original script, unfortunately. I think it's a great clip edition. It's a funny surprise, but it's not even the funniest thing from that episode, really. No, no. Just like Stampy arriving, a Jurassic Park reference, and then the pets could scare it away. Yeah, they could just go straight to, if I were to pick a clip, I'd be Homer saying like,

his pulling on his ear is cruel. Everything I do is cruel. I'd use that one instead. But yeah, just a great reference like yeah we also own an elephant that's also i don't think they break the rule of homer doesn't remember anything he wasn't party to i think every clip every clip that homer remembers is a clip of homer's memory at least after that we also get wigum wigum now wants to leave but then he decides he's going to eat all the chocolates instead.

And this is when Homer also brings up that Maggie shot his boss, which I guess they showed the shot of it in the montage at the end. But I kind of wish we'd have seen him get shot here too. So here's another big cut from the script though. Before the family pulls up, Homer then has a quick series of memories with Ralph and Disco Stu who show up with Bumblebee Man to be like, do you have memories about us? So he has memories about Ralph and Disco Stu, but not Bumblebee Man, who then asks, don't they stop? Bumblebee Man clips.

And Homer says, nobody really likes you. So we don't have clips i guess that's that's more following the forrest gump formula in that different people sit down next to him and he tells more of a story in the movie yeah they don't have time for other characters well they got it they got to get us to the to the roast you know i wonder too if this really is just aljean didn't want to negate the pitch of homer is forrest gump but he, all right, I'll give you four minutes of that. And then we're going to go to my idea for a clip show, which is a roast, a Dean Martin style roast. One that's dated in a good way.

So the family picks up Homer, which leads to a series of car memories. While I wait for my family, I'll tell you about the time my baby shot my boss. Hey, that's great, but I got to get going. Whoa, there's a whole nother row of these bad boys. Keep talking. It's time for your surprise, Dad. Yeah, hop in, Homer. Oh, the family car.

We've been through a lot together. So points off because one of these clips is of mo's car yes yeah he's homer and his memory is mixed up about what his car it was it's a funny clip yeah oh yeah also they're showing this is eight months after 9-11 and this episode was out of temporarily banned from the syndication package because this is the world trade center episode which they didn't do it for any like controversial things they're just like people in the syndication packages probably don't want to see homer go to the world trade center after 9-11 they're traumatized he can't use the bathroom all the jerks are in tower one or whatever right yeah

it'll we all were raw at that time in 9-11, so I get it. So that actually makes having this clip of Homer with the boot on his car more special because they're showing a clip you can't currently watch in syndication. I remember waiting with bated breath before the release of season 9 on DVD of thinking I had just a little inkling of like, but what if they don't have the episode in the season because of all the of 9-11 fears but fortunately that was that was misplaced and it's it's not a banned episode i think it was only out of syndication for maybe 18 months or even a year or so yeah yeah it was very brief but i still had a little fear of it of like uh which is silly to think now but yeah so we see a bunch of stuff with homer's car i i'm glad they replayed that buckethead

sequence because the animators really did work hard on that yeah all just first person animation through the bucket holes and and again this is from the previous podcast about it but that the animators got crap for taking too long on it they're like hey you guys took too long animating this thing i'm i'm glad whoever the director was on that brought it up as kind of like pulling out the receipts of hey remember when you can play this took too long but now it looks great yeah how do you like that don't write a scene like this in the future so after memories about the car homer and the family arrive now before we get there you have to put this blindfold on. All my other senses are getting sharper.

Bart, you had pizza for lunch. Lisa, you're extremely depressed. As if. Hey, Homer, do you remember this voice? Kathleen Turner? No, it's me, Krusty. And you're at the Springfield Friars Club, where tonight we're roasting you, Homer Simpson. Are the proceeds going to charity?

Hell no. Woo-hoo! So I think, too, on my first watch, I feared they were going to do a this is your life parody instead with the setup of crusty saying do you know this voice because that's how bob i've never watched a whole episode of this is your life but we all know the clip from our own childhoods of rerunning those black and white uh specials for the 50s does the duck come down is that the show say the secret word the duck comes down no no that the show? Say the secret word and the duck comes down? No, no, that's

You Bet Your Life. That's the Groucho game show. Which thing did you think this was? This Is Your Life. Oh, This Is Your Life, not You Bet Your Life. So that was not a Groucho thing. No, I thought, well, the one I think of is, I have seen the one with Victor Price appears

where they're like, do you know this voice? And then you hear somebody say, hello. Like, I feel like Mystery Science Theater parodied it a million times, and that's why we know it. Yeah, it's just like reuniting people from the past, and it was all about, like, showing emotions on stage, really. Yeah, which we don't need that for This Is Your Life. Like, reunions of things we're nostalgic for

happen, like, every five days online. Like, it's... And we love it. We we love it don't we folks every time we see the like 30 years of the ghostbusters or whatever thing i think this joke about kathleen turner is a little bit i think it's just a little i mean she does have a a sort of a gravelly voice she was she was on the show yes yeah isn't that i feel like this breaks one of their rules of like don't be mean to a previous guest kind of thing too which if they're going to be this mean to kathleen turner saying

that her voice sounds like crusty's i want them to be at least this cruel to previous guest elon musk very soon they better be that something next season and yeah the friars club roast they were mostly known for the Dean Martin things. And you would see TV commercials for, you know, getting them on DVD or VHS. But around this time, this is when the Comedy Central roasts were really exploding. Yeah, we were having a great time with the first one I remember, I believe, was the Drew Carey Friars Club roast that aired on Comedy Central, which I watched. And yeah, I'd never seen anything that profane on TV. And there is something fun about the format of it.

It's why, of course, because it's on Comedy Central, they can get into PG-13 to our territory. While meanwhile, at least from the clips I've watched of the Dean Martin roast, the fun was of them, of innuendo that gets up to the edge but not not actually like calling somebody like a cunt on tv and bleeping it like on Comedy Central Rose I I didn't I never like these I'm sorry I just I I feel like they were too mean and too edgelordy and it's okay if you enjoyed them but uh not for me and it's like some of the comedians I hated the most were always on them which is why I loved sure sure it was either gilbert godfrey or norm mcdonald or both they both did it who did the same bit which is like we're gonna tell clean jokes uh completely with no like no underselling it just like commit to the bit and then and then move on yeah godfrey

i think to that but his also one was he popularized the aristocrats joke that's why they made the whole doc about it because speaking of 9-11 the story is that they did the hugh hefner roast right after 9-11 like within a month of it and godfrey came on and did a 9-11 joke which was deemed too far by the audience and they were just in shock so then he's able to get them back by doing the full aristocrats joke as filthy as he possibly can but i liked it for a time but i think it was once it just became like let's find a celebrity who will agree to be made fun of on stage though also the other thing that bugged me was when i realized like they would have the celebrity but then they would invite on as like secondary roast recipients on stage of like hey we're not gonna do the b arthur roast but we will invite her to be on stage just so

if the one comedian can't think of enough jokes to make fun of like mike tyson with they instead can say like and hey you know b arthur she's a man like and then just do horrible shit like that i guess the old ones were funny because or interesting because everyone was really dressed up and they were all like completely toasted as well and they all knew each other when they got towards the end of the comedy central roast they were everyone was roasting people they fucking hated like the comedians didn't know uh charlie sheen or donald trump or davidhoff. It was like, this is a stunt. Yeah.

And these people will never talk to each other outside of this. See, that's why the Drew Carey one was good. I thought the Bob Saget one was kind of fun, but yeah. And of course, there's the funny story of they did one for Chevy Chase, and Chevy Chase came away from it going like, oh, everybody hates me, huh? Oh, wow. Everybody was mean in a direct way. They were not loving about it.

They were just like, fuck you. And I think Shatner came away with the same feeling of like, oh, you all hate me, huh? Like, wow. But yeah, I mean, the nadir of it is likely the Donald Trump roast, I would say. Charlie Sheen was close. And the roast of Pamela anderson at the very least she did have friends come on stage like tommy lee of motley crew her ex came on stage and made jokes about how uh about their sex tape and about how it was kid rock who gave her hep c not

tommy lee and that she he got all the heat for it or something but they are also from a completely other time now but oh last thing i'll say about the roast was i said once on a podcast that i thought it was great that somebody on a roast told ann coulter to kill herself uh because she was on stage and he's like it's not too late and you can still kill yourself and somebody said like hey you know i don't like ann coulter either but you shouldn should make. I was like, no, not you shouldn't make jokes about that, about a lot of people. Ann Coulter, you can totally do that. You should do it to her face every day. You should make jokes like that.

It's so interesting how people like that who were the trolls of 20 years ago, the conservative trolls, they've been outlapped a billion times. Yes. Yeah. They can't. You think Ann Clter's getting calls from kanye west for this stuff like yeah we are we are just a few weeks beyond kanye west saying you know well let's not be too mean about hitler guys honestly we cannot predict where he will be three weeks from now like or if he's even still alive but uh yeah the i did pull up a couple uh

commercials for the best of vHSs of the roast. That's how I learned about the roast. I didn't know, even though it's so obvious when you, especially the logo behind Homer. Yeah, man of the hour. It is the big circular Dean Martin roast style. But yeah, the best of VHS commercial I saw, it had two jokes I liked on it. One, they just had Ruth Bzy there in character as her old maid character from laugh in and they have a joke of her saying it's on sinatra's row she says like

and sinatra he gave away my hope chest and then he says i seen your chest lady it ain't got no hope but i'm nice whoever wrote that for him points to you and the other one was dean martin was roasting johnny carson and he said he's in your bedroom every night and that's why his wife left him but um which you know that's funny because it is about a real divorce you know i said these were classier but it's important to remember that all the men were monsters yeah oh yes yeah they they beat their wives they had people killed they they cheated they drank they uh bad bad men all their jokes about like oh this guy really likes the ladies it's like well he you know i feel like these are less than consensual things

they're talking about back in the 70s but so what's better the dean martin pg roasts or the filthy star fucking comedy central which which are worse it's hard to say but yeah they do seem to be dead now i i haven't heard of a roast in a while. I feel like Comedy Central, it would get them huge ratings every year, but I think it did get too expensive for them. And Comedy Central is about cutting costs now. You know, and we are in a time of sensitivity, I think,

which is good. I'm not complaining about it. But people get canceled for old tweets. People lose jobs for old tweets. When the brand of comedy was, I'm going gonna say the most offensive thing possible but of course you know i don't mean it yeah it was a contest that we were all part of which is why like michael liam black's feed was just like aids and killing baby jokes for

the first like three years and now it's just him being very online and very uh liberal kind of guy yeah but i mean we in the late aughts it was was like, which baby can have AIDS? Let's make the joke. That was every, we all thought that was the competition to write those jokes. They suck now. They're not. Times change. And, you know, I was thinking of Michael Ian Black as well because I was like, God, I wish you'd get off Twitter because, you know, Michael Showalter is just a successful film director now.

Not even of like his goofy niche comedy films. He just directs like real movies now like he he directed that gay terminal disease romance film of the of the holidays spoiler alert oh that's his movie he directed that yeah yeah i think michael liam black should leave twitter because uh david wayne michael showalter they've done me no harm yeah michael liam blacks is sninking up my feet every day yeah it's i i'm just so sad about it. He's on the right side, but he is one of those how dare you, sir kind of men. And also, he loves the McCain family.

He wrote the book with Meghan McCain. That's really when it all fell apart between me and Michael Ian Black. Yeah, you can be that annoying of a lib on Twitter if you just don't punch left. You know, it's like that's really, and he did. He became an anti-Bernie guy like others. And just, yeah, it's like that's really and he did. He he became an anti Bernie guy like others. And just, yeah, it's sad. I just and it's also funny because on Stella on state, he would do the darkest jokes out of anybody. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, like those were a product of a very different kind of humor. And I think that kind of humor still happens. We just don't film it anymore. Yes. And we don't celebrate it. I mean, yes, you can make dark dark jokes you can make fucked up jokes you can still find those funny but it's not proper to uh you know publicly be viewed as that kind of a person anymore so yeah you don't want to be the film making a joke like that or laughing at a joke like that anymore and you know in a context-free

zone like social media especially twitter that's one of the worst places to do a joke like that now like yeah i mean look at the the james gunn stuff that was like very much the kind of humor he was a fucking guy who wrote for trauma yes yeah he was of course he was doing edgelord humor then yeah but all right but yeah why don't we let's let's go back to jokes about the 70s which i'm also glad that bart and l Lisa are here to say this is a dated reference and who even fucking gets this in our next clip we're all here tonight for one reason

to keep Homer away from the buffet excellent that was at my expense what kind of a roast is this now I'd like to read some telegrams from people who couldn't make it. First, we have Mark Spitz. Who's Mark Spitz? What's a telegram?

Ah, forget it. I gotta get to the hot wings before the comic book guy. You know, Lisa, they say father knows best. That's true, Bart. Our father knows the best way to embarrass his kids. Excellent. But seriously, we've had a lot of fun with our dad over the years. And that Hibbert Nelson Burns thing seems random, but Aljean explains what it is. On the commentary, he says that on those old roasts, they would often reuse the same reaction shots,

often with people who weren't actually in the audience. I see. That's a great gag then, yes. Yeah, so if someone had a really strong reaction to a joke, they would repeat that reaction throughout the roast. See, you know, those roasts being pre-taped and then edited, it's like you could tell when somebody bombed because they either talk way less than everybody else or they cut to laughter that seems better than it should have

been yeah it's uh but to know on the old things like oh yeah he mentioned on the commentary he says like what uh gary coleman they're like they cut to gary coleman like wait why would he be here for this and also mark spitz basically the michael phelps of the 70s to the point where michael phelps overrode all of his records yeah nobody remembers i mean i don't know how much people even remember phelps now but uh i think his records all still stand yeah yeah yeah you're right yeah i think as much as anyone cares about olympic swimming i mean come on i mean they care when america breaks records with it briefly and if it's a telegenic guy which he was like you know goofy looking he's a fit goofy faced stoner which yeah there was a

certain likeability to phelps i as i recall his snl wasn't very good none of the sports guys are good in snl though they did write a good sketch for him where it was an ad for the michael phelps diet where it was basically like people getting very fat doing the carbo loading that michael phelps did yeah he ate like 12 000 calories a day yes yeah which that was a that's a that was at least a good joke that didn't depend on his acting also i also do like i gotta get to the hot wings before comic book guy that's a fun muttering these i don't know if they're just having fun but none of these clips really follow the the setup where it's like here's us having fun with dad it's like it's them doing the uh grift of the magi third act with homer stealing the funzos

it's them nagging homer and taking them out splash more and then it does not involve homer at all they're watching the the pokemon parody in tokyo they all have seizures homer just comes in and joins them maybe they wanted to see if they could give people seizures one more time with it i i suppose all three are clips that involve homer bart and lisa technically i mean the the pokemon one really is is uh stretching the definition of a scene with the three of them at yeah but i guess if we're thinking about the canonization of new classics i think the the pokemon seizure thing is now kind of a meme i mean it's mean more often than other things from that era yeah it's also interesting the mount splashmore thing is not in the script and the script does call out clips and this one though it being added afterwards that to me feels like them padding for time they're like

well these repetition ones are very good very good for filling time but i will say that the next setup does work and i like how it's a compilation of all things dan castellaneta kind of just ad-libbed yes yeah which doesn't that also feel like dan castellaneta like pitches it like how about a scene of me singing songs like how about that i oh you know one other thing i meant to mention in the good lines from the script thing instead of kathleen turner it had a better joke that i wish they'd have kept homer thought his voice was william hickey oh okay that's perfect but nobody knew who he was in 2002 see isn't that doesn't that really tell you the difference in this era simpsons versus the other they they would have definitely in a bill and josh season done a joke about the quite dead old man

william hickey as a bill and josh wanted william hickey to play uh don brodka on march be not proud but he uh the cigarettes came for him too soon it's's true. It's true. But yes, we have a long sequence of Homer's many songs. And I was just thinking of this song this last week when shaving my own shoulders. What do you do? Straight razor? No, the electric covers it just fine. Well, so I have very, I am not Mr. Hairy Shoulders, but I just have a sparse like 10 hairs that look weird in being there instead of i uh you know if i had hairy shoulders i actually probably would let it grow out but it

being just like your shoulders i want to comb them but instead when it's just a sparse uh amount of them i i do shave them off eventually and every time time I think of Homer's song. Well, everyone should know that I'm built like a satyr and that the hair is just from the waist down. I see. That's see, I have I have more upper body hair than I thought I would have. I was a late bloomer on it, though. But but enough about our hair. So, yeah, Homer sings a bunch of songs. Then we get, I think, a good fake out of letting you think there's going to be a guest star in this one.

And now our next speaker is Mr. Warmth himself, C. Montgomery Burns. I stand here to expose the criminal ineptitude of Homer J. Simpson. Again and again, he's brought this town to the brink of annihilation. Why are you laughing? His bungling has shortened your lives and mutated your children. Just look at all of his catastrophic nincompoopery. Poop. It's one of those rare times where Burns knows who Homer is and knows that he's bad at his job and it's here to bring him to justice uh so i bet you're wondering why is carl talking

when lenny isn't talking well that's another cut joke from the script so when he says bungling uh burns says bungling first lenny has a reaction of haha bung to then set up carl laughing at poop but i guess they figured out you know what carl laughing at poop good enough i never hear uh bung i always hear bung hole we're not talking about the bung enough yeah bung bung's funny enough on its own i i don't know why they cut lenny saying it or if they animated it or not but yeah it's just just carl the episode and yeah when when Krusty introduces Mr. Warmth I do think the joke is to fake you

out for just a second of like we got Don Rickles for the episode like that's even the name of his documentary that was his nickname we all know what happened with Don Rickles and the Simpsons yes it's a long long story they never made up but in terms of predicting classic clips this he's about to do something

stupid that has become a classic and especially in the era of elon musk yes oh god yeah i've seen that so many times yeah and other other famous stupid rich guys so there you have it i and i also love that homer just says it in the perfect way of like now if you excuse me i didn't i have to get my fondue and just turns to it. I wish, though, they'd kept a bit of them laughing at the city Homer destroyed. But, yeah, we then have one of Homer at the fire drill, which I was like, well, why are they doing that instead of, like, the actual meltdowns he caused? I'm surprised they have a fake meltdown instead. Also, I wish they'd kept kept the bit where Burns says,

you've won, all right. You've won more than you bargained for. And Homer's thinking that's a good thing. And then here's another cut thing from the script. They have Burns going off the stage because he says afterwards from the clips, Homer should be disemboweled and strung up like a duck in a Chinese restaurant, which offends the audience.

And they boo him off the stage. And Krusty then tells him, like, I told you, you don't follow the clips. You just let the next person go on stage. I guess ethnic humor was a hallmark of those roasts, right? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I was just rewatching Mr. Show with my husband, and we got to the classic episode, Please Don't Kill Me, which Dr. X kills a Don Rickles-style guy in Chicago that David Cross is playing because he makes ethnic humor. He's like, I do not like ethnic humor. I'm going to kill you.

And he blows up Chicago. I like how on the commentary for that, Bob Odenkirk kind of hints that maybe Dr. Evil was ripped off. I love that. Or sorry, maybe Dr. Evil ripped that character off. Yeah, yeah. I like him throwing stones at his old co-worker on SNL, Mike Myers. You know, those commentaries are the best for when they shit on SNL. I always love that.

Because they're all at terrible low points of their careers. Yes. So this was when it hit me of like, oh, right. In this era, Agnes Skinner just becomes Phyllis Diller. Like this is they already did it in the short stories one. She does the laugh. They even draw it out in case you don't get it. But in this case, she also has the J-Lo dress on.

Yeah, to really complicate things. And just to make it clear even more clear in the script it says phyllis diller laugh they they write that for agnes but yeah i guess uh did did you look up the the the history on the green versace dress of jennifer lopez i just saw that it was part of the 2000 grammys yes yeah it it was all the rage because of its revealing nature now again this is at the early era of internet pornography uh but yes it was exciting that a beautiful woman who is famous like jennifer lopez shows up in a backless dress that also shows all of her legs and most of the middle of her torso some inner boob yes a lot it was a great time for side boob and inner boob. Yes, a lot. It was a great time for side boob and inner boob, folks.

It was cutting edge. Though, so yes, it was designed by Versace. It actually got worn at another awards ceremony by Ginger Spice herself, Jerry Hollowell, but it didn't make the same splash as it would a month later when J.Lo wore it at the 42nd Grammys, February of 2000, and she was there with her boyfriend at the time, Sean P. Diddy Puffy Combs. Oh, I forgot they dated. I did too.

I'm seeing that she wore it again in 2020. That's right. During COVID, I guess. Right before. Oh, right before. Okay, yeah. Also, I remember her on stage with it at the Grammys because she's presenting with David Duchovny. And David Duchovny has the clever line of like, for the first time in six years, I know nobody's looking at me.

But they did a Versace fashion show where I think they had some sort of ad deal with Google. Because before she came out, they talked about the dress because they said it was why Google created Google image search because everybody was searching for that image in the year 2000 that they built Google image search just to narrow down to images of that dress.

So they're advertising it of like for the anniversary of Google images. And then they say, hey, but enough of seeing pictures of the dress let's see the real thing and out comes uh j-lo you know just a few years ago still looking uh fantastic in in the dress once more i mean uh obviously very beautiful woman it's surprising though how far butt technology has come in 20 years i remember a thread saying remember when we all

thought j-lo had a big butt and then it's like here are the new big butts yes big butts uh i i guess we can thank blame the kardashians for that i suppose they've they really popularized large cabooses and and remember the jokes on simpson like simpsons and other shows in the 90s were oh look at her big butt as a negative. Like, you do not hear big butts as a negative anymore. You know, no more of this guilt over butts. Instead, people are getting the BBLs, the dangerous BBLs. But, yeah, so the joke is that Agnes is wearing it.

And, yes, her and Abe have some comedy. Now, here's a couple that's been dating. Carbon dating. Grandpa Simpson and Agnes some comedy. Now here's a couple that's been dating. Carbon dating. Grandpa Simpson and Agnes Skinner. Sweet Toledo! What's keeping that dress on? The collective will of everyone in this room.

Excellent. You fruits wouldn't know what to do with me. I first met Homer in 1927 in a bar in Brooklyn. Little did I know he would soon become Mrs. Joe DiMaggio. Roll the clips. Now, look, is it a kind of homophobic joke? Maybe.

But I really do love the delivery of you fruit. Like she hits the F so hard on it. Just saying about like, oh, you say I'm ugly. You guys are too gay to know how to have sex with a beautiful woman like me. And honestly, for a woman her age, she looks good in the J-Lo dress. It's a really weird era for Agnes Skinner because it is the gross out comedy era as well because she went from like sweet old lady in her first appearance to like horrible battle acts before this and now she's like slutty grandma yeah it was what it was so the slutty grandma era you know on wwf television

at the time to let you know how deep we were into slutty grandma era they hired back two female wrestlers who were big in like the 50s to wrestle in their like 70s and 80s and the joke was they would appear in bikinis occasionally okay yes yeah they they were old carnies they loved being on tv again i'm sure they like the attention yeah well and one of them uh later was out it is like a full-on sex criminal and just her name is Fabulous Moolah. You can look it up for yourself. Is she alive? No, no.

She's quite dead, thankfully. Give this, Bob, because she controlled female wrestling across the United States for a few decades. That power led her to do horrible things to women who wanted to break into pro wrestling. We have to shut down all wrestling. I'm sorry. Hey, it's not bad. No, wait. Maybe it is still bad. Hey, it's not bad. No, wait. Maybe it is still bad.

Look, hey, all entertainment's bad, Bob. Even us. Yeah. So, yes, then they just for no reason cut to clips of Homer being hurt, which is always funny. Again, but they predicted stupid sexy Flanders. They knew future classic. Yeah, this replaces the gorge scene.

The gorge scene had gotten so played out, you know what? This one works better because not only do you get to see Ned Flanders' amazing butt, talk more about appreciating butts better these days, you also get to see Homer get hit in the crotch many times in a row. I feel like that part is not referenced, but the Stupid Sexy Flanders part is. The crotch hitting is so great, and then how Homer asked for another ride up the hill.

Yeah, and like we said the last time we talked about this, Ned's butt is a great drawing, but so is the grouse on Homer's face. That's also why people remember it, too. The look on his face is so funny, and that it's not him being like, Ew, I'm grossed out. He is upset that he thinks Fland face is so funny and that it's not him being like, ew, I'm grossed out. He is upset that he thinks Flanders is so sexy. Yeah, it's an off-model grimace, but it's so funny. Then we get the beach sequence from Dish Upon a Star again,

which it's really long. If it was up to me, I'd have cut half of this beach sequence and shown Maggie with the nail gun. That's good Homer violence, too. Yeah, where was that? This is not a classic clip. No. I forgot where it was from.

It takes too long, too. I felt it when we did the episode the first time. It's like Homer cycles back around. He goes up. He smacks around people on the beach. They get away from the beach. He goes up in the air again, and then he goes down again. It's like, I don't know. It was such a cycle like you could cut half of it but uh then of

course to let you know that it's the year 2002 we have a joke about hooking up hey abe you want to hook up after the show yeah to a suicide machine now Ha ha ha ha. Now everyone knows Homer loves his family. I'm sick of your lies. Secrets and lies. It's always secrets and lies. Homer, these people are professional roasters. Don't give them fodder.

Secrets and lies. So, yeah, we have the hottest topic of 2002, hookups. And then the hottest topic of 1992, suicide machines. Yeah, wow. It's a double whammy, isn't it? Man, yeah, hookup culture. Everybody was worried about this. What if people, I mean, one night stands existed long before people were talking about hookup culture like people have just like one time as sexual encounters

with people and then move on i guess it's really about branding just like the branding of the term friends with benefits it was like but people always like red friends they fuck every now and then uh with no strings attached like yeah now we have apps that facilitate this. Oh, man, it's easier than ever for people of all persuasions. Yeah, and... When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit dejaden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care

yeah suicide machine joke which obviously jean and reese loves so much they even made up the uh the dr kirkorian gag from uh the critic with that suicide machine there was a suicide machine joke in jaws wired shut yeah you're right yeah which just gave him sexual release yes yeah homer does come on screen and i double check this i know it just sounds like i'm saying well he said the name of the movie so it must be a reference but that line is basically said in michael lee's 1996 film secrets and lies uh which i've always been meaning to watch it does look like a good you know story about uh class and race relations in east london and full of great acting and all that but it's on hbo max now if you guys want to give it a watch uh secrets and lies it's very odd that the stakes don't come in

until after the third act break also i don't feel like a clip show needs stakes but they always have them in the simpsons clip shows except for like the troy mcclure hosted one yeah you're right the another simpsons clip show. It's about Will Homer and Marge divorce because they learn love is a lie or it's Homer in a coma or it's a gun. I mean, Dave Merkin's use of it for a gun being pointed to them at every commercial break is the best. It's the funniest one. It's so artificial. Homer's butt sticking out, by the way, is very funny to me as well it's a good drawing but but hey as long as we're being uh living in musty old references here how about

the smothers brothers now let's welcome springfield's original god couple reverend lovejoy and ned flanders Thank you so much. The camp town ladies sing this song, do-da, do-da. Homer Simpson's breath is strong, oh, the do-da. Hey, hey, now hold on there. The nice people want to hear the real words. But, Ned, I was singing the real words. Oh, let's just take it from the top.

The camp town ladies sing this song. Doo dah, doo dah. The camp town racetrack's five miles long. That's better. Homer's breath smells bad. Oh, those are not the words. words silence see-saw quips and comebacks look you weren't in dress rehearsal

so you're not in the show this can't be good for my pacemaker alright well let's talk about Sm other brothers first i love those guys i got to see them as a kid really yeah okay oh go ahead sorry no i mean my mom grew up loving them and my dad even tolerated them though you would think with their anti-war liberalism he wouldn't but i feel like they had like the narrowest slice of fame but it really carried them through the decades and they're introduced to me as you know the fun yo-yo and banjo folks and then later in life i find out like they're the most controversial comics of the vietnam era and they're pulled off tv i know and their show was only on for like two or three seasons it's

shocking that they got in that much trouble for it, yeah, they got their own show because they were just a staple of variety television, you know, from the 50s into the 60s. And they toured for forever, always on stage. And, yeah, they did like a carnival or, you know, a state fair basically in Florida when I was a kid. And my parents, my mom especially, so excited to see them. And even me as a kid, I was like, oh my parents my mom especially so excited to see them and even me as a kid I was like oh this is funny but obviously my in was comedy about brothers like the brother comedy of older and younger brother that's what pulled me in and and as a Muppet fan I also just liked old music which is what they played their musty old folk music were they on the Muppet show they had to be I think so okay yeah well they were on the simpsons yeah they you know they're on the commentary what

they're talking about how the episode is about to air like they had pretty recently done it yeah it aired on december 13th 2009 the episode is called oh brother where bart thou you know what when you're parodying i i know they've gotten up to like six times with Old Man in the Sea. But think of a different title. You guys already did Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Don't do another one. This is a slam-packed guest star episode. It's not just the Smothers Brothers.

It's Peyton Manning. It's Eli Manning. It's Cooper Manning. It's Kim Cattrall. It's Huel Hauser. Huel Hauser. And Jordan Nagai. Wow, man.

That is a busy episode that's by the way he was the little kid in up I'd look it up oh okay the up boy got it all right man the Smother Brothers getting overshadowed though I think I think I like it better that they're just part of a brothers episode instead of like the

boy that Cheech and Chong episode they did that's about how great Cheech and Chong are and they're just in it so much. I was like, this episode's not very good. Was that a Simpsons? That was a Simpsons episode, yeah. I must have missed this one. It's not good.

Okay. Basically, it kind of follows the same plot as the Siskel and Ebert episode of The Critic where Homer joins them as a third man in the act. I just remember, I haven't watched it in a long time. I remember thinking it was a lame episode. But yeah, of course, as kids, we also did love yo-yo man like i think that's where he got promoted the most maybe he did yo-yo man on like sesame street or something and that's where we saw it but if i may critique this episode more this is miscasting ned should be the one annoying

love joy that is the natural way their characters work so ned should be uh the younger smothers brother and love joy should be the older one at the base who goes like hey now now that's not the name of the song in terms of characters though ned is the more wholesome character yeah yeah though i think uh shearer does a good job of playing them saying lines they heavily prepared like they their delivery is not spur of the moment he is acting like they are acting and not great oh yeah it's both harry shearer voices i totally forgot about that and yeah also ufo lands oh yes yeah the ufo lands but i think that did annoy me oh man, man. I hated it. I hated it so much. Kang and Kodos appearing in a non-Treehouse episode made me so mad.

That was like, they draw it later in the episode, but at the time, I thought, this is jumping the shark. Kang and Kodos can't leave Treehouse episode. And then maybe like 15 years later, they uh them part of the simpsons canon right they're like in an episode officially yes yeah it's this is canon this actually happened yeah it is i mean they on the commentary well graining at least has a good joke about it about like no this one isn't canon it's a fictitious episode of simpsons but yeah it's like yeah it's they're all imaginary stories as the saying goes in superhero comics

like so what counts what doesn't count but i still say as as we've long said on the show that yes it can be arbitrary what's canon what isn't canon maybe people take it too seriously people like me but if they don't take it seriously at all then it does signal to the audience to care less about the show as well which you know you don't want to seriously at all, then it does signal to the audience to care less about the show as well. Which, you know, you don't want to rub people's face in it too much that you don't care about the continuity of the show. And honestly, I wish Krusty was actually killed with that laser. That would make it more clear this is a non-canon episode. Yeah, I forgot how it went and I was waiting for him to die.

It feels like hedging, yeah. The aliens do point out that the creationist view of history is correct. I do like that, yes. And they do the sign of the cross. It's a very W-era joke because George W. Bush was a born-again Christian. That's how most people learned about the extreme view of American Christianity of like, no, talk about people taking canon too seriously. They're like, you work backwards from the ages of characters in the talk about people taking canon too seriously yeah they're like you work backwards

from the ages of characters in the bible and say so the the earth is only 5 000 year old and i don't know if this is in the script henry what you have access to but i don't think this probe was a helmet i feel like they were reaching for something else and they're like let's make it a helmet also that one i don't know probe jokes 2002 they made a joke about how probing has explored all the limits in 1997 right or 96 the election one i think that was the writer saying these probe jokes are pretty lame but then they did them after that yeah the i hate a probe joke the only reason i like it at all is because mo accuses them of stealing his bit. Like, I just, I love, like, when he says word for word with his own crappy helmet that he was going to put on Homer,

that's funny. I did laugh at that. I'm glad Moe posted bail. Yeah, it was nice. He went in and out very quickly. And Hibbert left, changed out of his Darth Vader costume and put on the tux to laugh along with it. Then we get a joke about turning to Channel 3, which

now the joke is turn to HDMI 2. Like, no, no, it's on that HDMI. Do that one. I label my HDMI channels. Oh, yeah, you know what? On my Roku TV, it auto does it, actually. I think my Sony one does, too. It's like, I know this is a PS5. Oh, man.

Our Sony one in the bedroom, when the PS5 it actually i think my sony one does too it's like i know this is a ps5 oh man our sony one in the in the bedroom when the ps5 was uh attached to it we had to eventually do like a back end for it but like the second we turned on the ps5 it sent a signal to the sony tv that's like hey we heard your ps5 just turned on you want to go to the ps5 channel right now right which i get that they do that for convenience but it was very inconvenient i'm not ready yet like hey i was still i'm still on my xbox what's what are you doing here uh so i'll tell you what isn't in the script the choking montage that's not uh in in the script you know what it's hard to watch this much choking out of context yes and i i like

how john frank is on the commentary and he says when i joined the show i never like this but then i eventually got into what they're trying to do but when i started on the show i didn't know why you were still doing this another thing i think there are some secret dana gould bashing happening on this commentary you're right we love dana gould by the way but john frank says you know i took classes at the groundlings and it helped me you know pitch jokes and become a better performer. I was the guy known for doing bits too long and trying to sell jokes for too long. That's what John Frank said.

And I think it is. Who's the guy with the raspy voice? Oh, Tom Gamble. Tom Gamble. He says that you don't want to hire standups because they've had a few in the office and they just do their act every day and you hear it too much and i'm like that sounds like dana gould i have listened to dana gould podcast a lot for about 10 years and yes he does do the same bits a lot we repeat our own stories a lot too but we don't finally hone them into a tight 30 minutes yeah the the good and bad thing about

dana gould as a guy you hear on podcasts or commentaries is that his comedic persona just it is on all the time like he he always has a joke like i've heard on some commentaries he's turned it down a little bit and this is the sign of him being a great performer i don't want to just make this sound like we're like saying dana gould sucks or whatever but i could see that if you're working your nine to five job as a comedy writer and you're used to some comedy writers turning down the volume at a certain point and like eating butterfinger bb's instead is a guy who's always on maybe will tire you out yeah especially a lot of writers are probably introverts and they're like socially awkward and they uh they just want to get the day over with and if you're a prematurely old man like tom gamill who sounded old like 20 years ago probably you're even more tired of that but yeah you're right

they are vague tweeting about uh about dana gould there i mean dana gould's the most famous stand-up who's written for the show for almost a decade yeah there's i mean certainly guys like mike scully were stand-ups also i mean the way he's describing it as a negative this is also all the stuff that the writers on the commentary say they loved about working with conan o'brien that he never stopped would they have loved if they worked with him for more than 18 months though or if they didn't go to college with him yeah that's like it's our friend conan is this fun yeah i mean nobody who didn't have fun in that room with conan all the time would have the guts to say it now because they'd be like well i'm not insulting the most powerful man in podcasts

isn't it crazy that now conan is like he's not rogan level but he's close of like powerful podcast if he does a simpsons podcast we have to stop him we do he will become our enemy yeah it's i feel like it's just uh any day now the only reason he wouldn't do it is because it would probably be too time consuming he seems like he's tries to keep a cap on like 30 minutes per recording session for him which coward but hey uh you know if they wants to sign us to the team coco label uh you know we're we're listening yeah yeah i'll take uh i'll take the dirty money uh but yeah so seeing all the stranglings in a row also shows you how they increase in violence over time like seeing a bat well actually they're not back to back there's one

in between but two in a row of homer like not using his hands but instead a wire like that actually is even worse yeah and then bart like hitting it with the phone and they're both getting tired yes yeah it's it's really uh it's really uh a lot to see back to back they even talk about when we we used to go to colleges is what they say on the commentary way back in the day and we would show itchy and scratchy clips and the audience gets kind of tired of it after about 20 minutes yes yeah i mean it's it's long watch i i also like that they do use i'll make you good what a very recent clip but it perfectly closes out a sequence of homer violence and even then that was a clip in children of a lesser clod yeah they showed that as a clip uh right right god man that was

that was also just a clip show too or just a moment of it but so then after that we then get to hear that maggie has some memories too which is seemingly what's going to save the day we see only two clips of sweetness i think that even shows the like the writers were like we can't do more we don't want to have more than two clips of a of a saccharine let's show all the star fucking we've done so okay isn't that funny that right before all the We can't do more. We don't want to have more than two clips of a saccharine scene. Let's show all the star fucking we've done. So, okay, isn't that funny? The right before all the celeb bullshit, it's not Liz Taylor.

Like, yeah. Yeah, actually, they don't even notice on the commentary. They just mention, oh, Liz Taylor, wasn't she great? I guess they had to pay her or get the rights again or something. I don't know what was going on, but that's Nancy dubbing the daddy voice in Lisa's first word I think it is that it's a per appearance thing that they signed a contract of like I will appear in this episode

but you can't reuse my scenes so much and you have to get permission a second time and I think Liz Taylor for some reason and granted it's also worth noting in the script Jasper Johns, Britney spears and venus and serena williams are also both mentioned for the star fucking sequence that follows this they're

not in it and it does make me think that other people didn't agree to be reused in the clip show and all the clips you see of celebs in this are people who agreed with it and that Liz Taylor didn't but yes I have the clip here of the not Liz Taylor daddy here I hope you never say a word daddy Daddy.. It worked, Mom.

Maggie's memories have shown them humanity's inner goodness. These are not tears. We are vomiting from our eyes. Your baby's treacle has only intensified our loathing. Wait. Look at the screen. The baby continues to reminisce. Elton John?

That's my name. Well, not really. I do love the baby continues to reminisce. Maggie wasn't there to see Elton John meet Apu. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is where it all breaks down. But I like this as it's a kind of them dunking on themselves for how much they were overdoing celebrities especially in the like five most recent years of the show but also this montage really shows you how badly they were doing wow celebrity name back then and like the bad thing

is that not only do they show you this as them recognizing that they do it too much they don't do it any less after this like they they do it even more so you know there's we're coming up on strummer vacation oh that's a hey it's that guy a series of those yeah i'm looking at the uh the credits for lisa's first word and she is credited as special guest voice i don't know if that's a different designation than what they normally do i wonder yeah you know maybe that was i'm certainly as taylor well also she was getting on in years and probably wasn't replying to many people then but yeah i wonder if that special guest voice uh denoting to us or saying like now you can't get me again though though she did i'm sure they were recorded back to back but she in the same season was in crusty

gets canceled as well though they're also gene says different on the commentary like no she liked doing it but there is a famous story that she got mad with how many times she had to say daddy in in in the recording and how she was hitting on david silverman yeah yeah i would say silverman you know go for it man hey go for it the elton john one's the only one or the big one i want to bring up just because i did see elton john in concert for his last show that he did in san francisco at least that's how it was advertised we'll see if in a few years he doesn't want to do another billion dollar tour i think he he's going to get bored again. But during it, his third to last song is I'm Still Standing. And it's behind him on the video screen is clips of him appearing in, I think, almost every movie or TV show he ever appeared in.

And this clip is in there, too. Right. I think it's followed directly by his appearance on South Park as well. Oh, was that when he was not playing himself or just being referenced? No, he was at Chef Aid. Okay. Actually, it's the real Elton John at Chef Aid. But yes, they referenced him as singing this song about an elephant fucking a pig.

Yeah. Yeah. I think singing Love Gravy. That's right. That was a song. And you know what? They at least get to troll Justin Timberlake one more time by playing him saying word. I'd be like that.

He hated that. But the aliens want his phone number. They love it, yes. It turns out the day is saved by gratuitous celebrity appearances. Word. This child thinks of nothing but trendy Hollywood celebrities. We can learn much from this innocent one. Like Justin Timberlake's home phone number.

So I guess you can't destroy Earth since so many of your favorite celebrities live and work here. We will not destroy the Earth on one condition. You name it. I can't believe we're going to the People's Choice Awards. And tomorrow, the Daytime Emmys. Oh, it's Burt Reynolds and Michael Jeter. Could an evening shade reunion be in the works?

There's Shannon Doherty. Didn't you have a thing with her? Don't go there.'t go there there's a don't go there and there's also lisa saying as if in the car i think they know it's bad though i know well i mean they did they made fun of that type of writing with a sitcom called don't go there they got canceled uh but they mentioned shannon doherty i don't see a caricature of her and i can't make out a few of these the ones i did uh identify were brad pitt jennifer aniston drew carrie easy to pick out and then old character models like tom arnold michael buffer and bet middler and i think there's jason alexander talking to a black woman i'm not sure who she is

interesting yeah see i didn't uh thank you for looking that closely because my eyes were just drawn to the michael jeter and burt reynolds parody and michael jeter not long for this world i know it's so sad guys michael jeter was the greatest like you guys got to look him up if you know him is just the if you know him at all from evening shade which by the way as the way, as a kid, I loved Evening Shade. I watched it too. I had no affiliation with the South, but it was on after Murphy Brown or Dave's World or some CBS thing. That's why I watched it.

And I think now every actor on it who isn't Mary Lou Henner is dead, I think. But, but yeah, Michael Jeter, not only is he great in that, he's also great in the Fisher King. He's so great as this like unhoused friend of robin williams's

character who's a big like drag queen effeminate guy i really i really love jeter in that and just look up some of his performances on broadway like he is he was amazing an amazing dancer singer and he looks like a meek little man with a receding hairline who you wouldn't think is this amazing dancer which makes it even more impressive like yeah michael jeter the greatest i i love him he passed away suddenly at the age of 50 the next year just of a seizure oh yeah it's horrible yeah and i guess he was uh i believe he was hyp positive or he had aids but that was not a complication of his uh death he can't he like revealed that in 1997 i believe interesting yeah man i didn't

know that and that's sad that's uh but yeah sadly though yeah since almost everyone's dead you'll never get an evening shade like what a cast michael jeter burt reynolds mary lou hanner aussie davis uh was on the show um uh man that fat old white guy who was the villain in the muppet movie man what was that guy's name orson wells there's it just had a great cast the the old guy who played mark twain for years and years and years that old man okay sorry i don't want to get this wrong uh he was uh hiv positive in 1997 and yes uh he was gay and he uh was with his partner before they died. You're telling me a guy famous on Broadway who played a drag queen in a movie was gay? Yes. So, yeah, we end with a don't go there, which is lame.

But I also do like on the commentary that they use this for some real Hollywood whining session about how the People's Choice Awards didn't treat them as nice as they should have. They sit you like you're going to have a meal and they don't give you a meal. What the hell? It's honestly, I'm glad they're sharing these like very millionaire problems on there. It gives me a laugh. And then we get the last bit of the episode, which honestly, I think is one of the biggest impacts on the series this episode ever had, because this is the anthem of the show never

ending like ever since and they were commenting on it 21 years ago now uh i didn't know much about tv production at the time uh you know the first two dvds had come out and i knew a bit from there but even when i watched this in 2002 i thought to myself you wanted to do this parody but you couldn't afford the rights of the song yes and that always bothers me so it was fun to have that uh fact uh brought out on the commentary like yes matt sellman worked very hard on a we didn't start the fire parody but they couldn't clear it so instead they have to get alf clausen to write a sound alike and my brain just won't accept it i kind of love how dan has to sing like it should be you'll never stop the simpsons but he still has he instead has to sing you'll never stop the simpsons like just so billy joel does not sue them over and this is

teaching me about ascap rights or whatever you want to call it because even though matt selman wrote this it's credited to dan and deb in the credits sort of like how in faith off it's a john vd episode john vd did not write testify that was other people but he gets the credit because his name is on that episode man maybe that's why selman mentions it on the commentary that he wrote it so so at least people can know even though but yeah i mean the song lyrics are more of selman's very punchy like yeah the show used to be good it sucks now we've jumped the shark we don't have good ideas anymore like but they they doth protested too much like this literally gave the ammunition to the

people who shit on the show from then on and they've even done a few of these ideas they mentioned since then uh i can name a few of them uh marge becomes a robot arty ziffs uh he makes marge robots in the episode Hail to the Teeth. Artie Ziff making Marge robots is the B story in that episode. It really should be the A story. That's insane. The A story is Lisa gets Invisalign. Oh, right.

Yeah, you told me about that one because that's how they mentioned that she didn't get braces or whatever when they said she did. Yeah, yeah. And Abe did not marry patty and selma though he dated selma in romey old in julie a i hate that title in five years yeah is that crazy that that one i did remember i was like okay yeah wait he did date so that was the one i googled like wait he did date selma didn't he and yes and bar i mean actually bears don't show up a lot on the simpsons uh and they do an episode next season called the fat and the furriest or whatever and that's like one of the few bear

focused episodes and of course we have the bear tax or whatever from season seven but i guess maybe bart doesn't own a bear but homer fights one yeah that fat i remember that episode is like it's inspired by that guy making the anti-bear suit, the documentary that he did when he was on Daily Show. And also, I mean, I don't think Moe is, I mean, Moe does have a cell phone now because everybody has a cell phone on the show. But, and yeah, I mean, they draw Homer jumping a shark. Like, just so they know, like, yeah, we know we jumped a shark. We're not stopping. And, you know, the Maude Crokes one, that also made me sad me sound like, oh yeah, they know that we hate that that happened. And

you know what? I had totally forgotten to until looking this, uh, doing research for this episode to let you know how much impact this is that in the fan community of how you'll never stop the Simpsons. The something awful forum is named after this episode. Like it's called about the Simpsons on the essay forums. It is called marge becomes a robot and mo gets a cell phone that's the name of the the forum on something awful yeah you're you know they really have given the fans ammunition when uh when you know people did not like the new episode subject matter they can just reply with uh how about a crazy wedding? Oh, God. And something happens and do-do-do-do. It's Selman doing a great parody of failing to pitch something.

Also, in 2011, this song made a little bit of a comeback, too, because The Simpsons got renewed for seasons 24 and 25 then, which isn't that crazy that that felt like a lot of episodes? Yeah. So when that renewal happened in 2011 2011 dan re-recorded this song like they redid it it is wrongly said on the wikis that it's like twice as long it's a two minute version no it is not it's hosted on ew it's a minute long just as long as the one in this episode but i also think that based on what chris ledesma said in his blog post about it, I think Jim Brooks wanted to lighten some of the mean jokes at their own expense.

So it is a softer song about how you will never stop the Simpsons, but the message is pretty much the same. And again, they did that song in 2011. I like the sentiment and I like them making fun of themselves, but actually I like the version of this from Spinoff Showcase more, where it's wedding after wedding after wedding yeah identical triplets uh those kind of jokes i mean i guess they get to the point a lot quicker than making a parody of we didn't start the fire yeah i guess this one lets dan sing a song though so that's the difference yeah it is a tribute to dan really yeah well i guess too they can't count sadly they can't count on troy mcclure

anymore to host i mean i bet they would have done way more clip shows or even just the theme things if they were hosted by troy like man like even the non-simpsons treehouse trilogy episodes they did if they were hosted by troy mcclure they'd be 20 better just by fact of him being there. And, you know, it's just, yeah, the roads diverging in life. It's a sad thing. We would have had more clip shows, but also more Troy McClure and more Phil Hartman. I wonder now, especially since he has been co-showrunner for years now, if Matt Selman regrets giving so much ammunition and egging on fans with the perfect song about how the show

sucks or got worse and i'm like to to be fair to him and i know you're not being unfair to him henry uh i do want to ask him these questions but i'm sure when he was writing this he wasn't thinking well i'll be here for uh 21 more years and having to have these words thrown back in my face every time i go online yeah i think he well obviously everybody figured especially probably after the contentious negotiations with the actors you're definitely thinking this show can't go much longer uh that and then it turns into like no this is the anthem of the show that will never end and that even even after actors someday quit the show we've said it before the Disney's got really good voice AI that's only getting better that's gonna be real sad I mean I saw

people saying they liked it seeing that Indiana Jones trailer with the de-aged Harrison Ford in it like it's sad it's not there yet I think maybe the voice technology could be more convincing but uh boy the the live action stuff is not there for extended scenes. And I don't want it to ever get there either. No, no. Though I bet that movie will be better than Crystal Skull. Oh, I hope so. But yeah, the Simpsons made their own theme about jumping the shark.

They even end with, sorry for the clip show, which we started the episode with so at least they're honest about it and it was their way of saying there's no more clip shows this is the last one and they were correct yeah they don't need them anymore i just it's interesting that this episode that i really hated when it first aired it almost pretty much told me i shouldn't be watching the simpsons every sunday anymore uh had such an effect long term on the show just alone for the anthem of the show that never ends but lame lame forrest gump show yeah i shouldn't have started there i i am i am more forgiving to this now uh than i was before because i know like they didn't want to do this and they had to

and hey it gave their buddy dan a nice script to write so and it's fun and then guess what there's 21 more years of episodes without a clip show so yeah but at the time it was like salt in the wound of being a simpsons fan and being extra aggravated and extra online about how much you hated the show yeah with an antagonistic bunch of writers on the show too nudging you with stuff like oh you said homer jumped the shark we drew the drawing of it right here what are you going to do about that no homers you talk about it for 21 more years and we are yes we're doing it now it's our job yeah you'll never stop our simpsons podcast either they didn't know simpsons complaining would be a job in the future we got gotta make the ones that don't exist anymore

they're job creators for sure and we thank them for that that's off you do, the Simpsons but as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week at a time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking Simpsons sign up there for five bucks a month you can get just that and also access to everything

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Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 3's Homer at the Bat. And we'll see you then. at TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 3's Homer at the Bat, and we'll see you then. Homer's short Christmas show, Marge's fling, Homer's bro, Fodden well, Flanders fails, whacking snakes, monorail, Mr. Plow, Homer's face, Sideshow Bob, steps on rakes, Lisa's future, Selma's hubby, Marge not proud, Homer chubby, Homer worries, pot is gay,

Poochie U2 and R.A., hippies, Vegas and Japan, What else do I have to say? We've got stories for years Like Bart becomes a robot Maybe Mo gets a cell phone Has Bart ever owned a bear? Or how about a crazy wedding Where something happens And do-do-do-do-do Sorry for the clip show Have no fears We've got stories for years