Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder With Will Sloan

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

For this story of bowling and fatherhood, we welcome back Will Sloan, the cohost of podcasts The Important Cinema Club and Michael And Us! Homer suffers from 15 minutes of perfect game fame, has altercations with Opie himself, and he decides to finally spend time with Maggie! All that plus unbelievably strong babies in this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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

exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today? Henry Gilbert. And I'd say you're having a severe psychotic episode, Bob. And who do we have on the line? I'm not the first teller. I'm Will Sloan. Excellent. Today's episode is Hello, Gutter. Hello, Fodder. Whoa!

This is the greatest day of my life! Homer killed a man this episode aired on November 14th 1999 and as always Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy Bobby the first medal of honor

video game is released for the Playstation 1 Will Smith welcomes us to the millennium with his new album i thought he welcomed us to miami that i think that was the previous okay all right and kevin smith's long-awaited dogma is released into theaters despite many catholics protests wow what a time to be kevin smith that i think was the peak of his powers that was uh yeah peak peak mainstream relevance for kevin smith the most kevin smith at that time used to show at like very prestigious international festivals and he would be mentioned in the same breath as people like

richard linkletter and jim jarmusch and quentin tarantino it just seems like such a distant time doesn't it it really yeah and now he's on our level. He's a podcaster and sometimes filmmaker. Yes. Yeah. I don't think you've seen the reboot movie yet, Bob. I believe, Will, you have seen it, haven't you? Yes, sir. I went to see Jay and Silent Bob reboot in a theater surrounded by my fellow Kevin Smith disciples.

The way it's meant to be seen. Oh, yeah. That movie was something else. The weirdest part to me was when they go to the comic con thing in there and they just walk by a bunch of like podcaster friends of Kevin Smith that are, they're treated on the same level as a, as a cameo by a famous person. But I guess to his audience,

they are known, but I was like, this must be somebody because they are not an actor i'm not seeing unless his daughter and wife are in it so it's a no you will not be disappointed my friend that's why i see kevin smith movies yeah it's like a family album right there on the screen and uh yeah that uh the millennium, apparently the Wild Wild West song is also on there. But I mean, it was released as a single during the summer. I see.

Yeah. And then Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor games, I've forgotten how weird they were. They're technically a Steven Spielberg game. I was thinking that. Like every 10 years, Spielberg will dabble in video games and often they will never just come out ever. But this is the one that did. And it was a fairly popular series, but also a very bloodless game about war it's like a t-rated war game where enemies fall

over but there's no like blood or guts i remember shooting off many nazis's uh helmets the helmets would always fly off from a headshot but no no damage to it well the medal of honor games they were they were released by electronic arts one of the many evil publishers and video games one of the worst uh yeah you know used to be activision was worth but i think they they surpassed activision but metal of honor was them working with steven spielberg to basically i think it was probably pitched as like saving private ryan the official video game and then it morphed into metal of honor but there was a time where you joke of like oh another medal of honor another omaha beach level snore then those games turned into call of duty all the developers from

medal of honor started making call of duty and then call of duty like turned into those guys quit call of duty and then made titanfall and now apex legend but uh it all began with that medal of honor it's true speaking of stevenberg, by the way, have you guys ever played my favorite computer game of all time, Steven Spielberg Director's Chair? Oh, I've only seen clips. I've only seen clips. You've seen the clip probably because Quentin Tarantino is an actor in that game. It's from the mid-'90s when he was trying to have an acting career,

and there's this amazing section where the conceit of the game is that you are Steven Spielberg directing a movie and the movie within the game is Tarantino as a man on death row or something. He really gives it his all. You've got to check it out on YouTube. I'm doing this when I get home today.

He's in a cartoonish 1930s white and black striped costume too. He should have like a giant ball and chain on his leg as well god i love the world of multimedia there's still so many things to discover in that era i think uh as well the um the actress from who's the boss and the mother from brazil is in that as well i think oh wow and it's done in that primitive like cd-rom style so it all looks like rotoscope animation oh boy yeah it's uh uh good old steven spielberg always with a like

he's uh he's still above kevin smith now but we'll see if it stays that way yes but our special guest today is uh will sloan from the fabulous podcast michael and uh hello will welcome back to the show thank you always glad to be here and uh yeah we've been really enjoying your podcast i uh you know this podcast comes out in a in a couple months after we record this but uh your recent ones have been so good we were talking about your bill hicks one before we recorded we i also i really liked your uh you're in luke savage your co-host the one you did about fear and loathing las vegas because that was a big movie for me when i saw it in 99 because i'd never seen a drug movie like that before and i had not read hunter s thompson's work but uh you

guys had a very good you know sober reflection on what it's like today as opposed to our memories of it. Michael and us podcast. It's a podcast where my good friend Luke Savage of Jacobin magazine fame, and I watch a movie typically very outdated, you know, perhaps an old political movie, but not necessarily and give it a sort of, I guess you would say leftist reading. And oftentimes, the movies are movies that we liked a lot when we grew up and perhaps don't like anymore, or just curious how they hold up. I will say, Will, podcasters always like to hear suggestions of what their podcast should be about. We love it, by the way. So I will say that we challenged Chapo Trap House to this. They have not done it yet.

I still want a podcast on the Funny or Die movie about Donald Trump starring Johnny Depp. That came out in 2010. We all saw it, and then we immediately forgot about it when that election happened. And it's got to be ghastly i actually think that might have come out during the election cycle in like 20 2016 and i remember that because johnny depp has had kind of like non-stop negative publicity for the last decade or so and i remember that being a very brief period when people were sort of like hey johnny depp's back yeah that we accepted like oh he's come back right and now we i think right after that we all remember like no no we don't want this then it was like the the bio of

him living in like basically the abandoned depp mansion with like wine stain teeth and just uh basically just like the richest uh hobo on earth but hey edwood's still a good movie yeah yeah fantastic yeah i guess uh well you probably saw this one when it was new right oh yeah this was around the time you know i'm i'm a little younger perhaps than some listeners so i think i started watching new episodes kind of around 99 2000 you know just as the golden age was ending and this was one that i watched when it aired and it was definitely that period of of like me watching these episodes being like these are still good right right you know um and this one in particular held a place in my heart because you got to hear the voice of teller from

penn and teller oh yeah yeah and the cast of access hollywood yeah and almost you know 20 years later that was the one and only thing I remembered about this episode. Yeah, it is. So obviously, Mike Scully, this is his third season of Showrunner. But this is a very Al Jean style episode because he wrote it, of course, Al Jean and Mike Reese ran seasons three and four. And this one does feel a lot more like it's from that era in terms of the references and

how it's written. It's a little less cruel than scully likes to be sometimes for humor and uh it does it's a nice change of pace from the ones that we've been doing before this i will say yeah yeah compared to like how awfully mean homer is in some other episodes as as a joke or say when he's you know there's no winking at mel gibson uh that we have to deal with yeah we did survive that uh but yeah and uh i think gene uh it's like this is like 10 years into the show 11 years we can now start being nostalgic for early simpsons at this time in history so there are like maybe six or seven references to earlier simpsons stuff in this episode that i've been fun to check

out upon this reviewing i'll say that i enjoyed watching this episode. I thought it had a lot of stuff in it. There were a certain number of laughs in it. I thought it was a bit of a mess. And one of the problems of it is I think it has, basically it aggregates together two different kinds of archetypal Simpsons episodes. So there's the kind of episode where one of the Simpsons has 15 minutes of fame. And So there's the kind of episode where one of the Simpsons has 15 minutes

of fame. And then there's the other type of episode where Homer desperately wants to bond with one of his kids. And they're kind of grafted one on top of each other, like, like, one of them occupies the second act, and one of them occupies the third act. And, you know, if there was any, if there was ever supposed to be any sort of emotional beat that was supposed to be here, as there are in some episodes, it doesn't doesn't really land. Although, you know, it's certainly better than some of what would eventually come on the show. You're right. It's kind of like a 15 minutes of fame story and then a daddy story. Like, I like that they at least kind of give lip service to well we've done these dad stories with the other two kids before have we ever done a homer and maggie story like and

they have done that like once in season three but yeah it's been a long time i just like uh i mean gene will take over the show but i think he's saying he was like no this is what the show should be about so it's more families focused we see more of the earlier traits of homer and it's not about like i mean i guess in a way it is but not as much as mike scully would do it's not as much about showbiz or tv executives like there are so many episodes in scully's run that are just about how bad executives are how bad television is and this is more about like homer than that because since we did our last aljean one i have developed the theory that i think aljean wasn't just a writer on these but i think he was brought in to be a a sub showrunner on these episodes to take

some of the burden off of scully like i i base this conjecture on us just doing at the time of recording the deleted scenes for season 10 and when it gets to the deleted scenes for the episode that aljean wrote he refers to jean to uh sc scenes for the episode that al jean wrote he refers to jean to uh scully is like oh let al jean explain these deleted scenes which those are the choices that a showrunner would make so that makes me think that uh al jean came in to help show run and just take the prayer because it's really hard to run the simpsons especially if you're not on a duo like say bill and josh were and it's not a crackpot theory because he's done it before like there were seasons where it's just

like okay alan mike you do too and you have your own staff so he was coming off of being a satellite showrunner with mike reese and so now he just kind of took over i think and this also is famously as they say on the commentary this is the famous al je Jean story of him coming up with the idea of this while waiting in line at Disneyland. This and mom and pop art were come up with at Disneyland. I'm missing Disneyland now just talking about it. Me too. I just went before all this happened. Yeah, me and Bob went in February.

We didn't realize separately. We have gone together. No, we haven't. Not yet. We've been to universal together hey bob and i have turned into theme park guys which i guess that's what you do when you don't have children if you have enough disposable income and no children it's what happens to you yeah i i could never go back to a theme park because they're all different than

when i was a child and i think it would just make me feel you know really really sad to not for example see the earthquake ride at universal anymore or the Terminator 2 ride. They've all been they've all been steamrolled away and replaced by, you know, younger, hotter intellectual property. And that would just make me too, too depressed. It's still very sad to me that I had to sacrifice. I didn't have to, but the world sacrificed the Back to the Future ride to get the Simpsons ride. I wish i wish they could coexist that was my favorite ride when i was a kid and uh yeah it's every i think every

ride i rode at universal orlando when i first visited is now at least gone once if not twice over or as has some minions content added yes yeah you know i think et is still around i think it still survived but well the whole thing about the earthquake ride is they were showing you on that ride how special effects are made. I remember it was hosted by Charlton Heston and there was a whole part of, like there was a whole part of the ride

where he would show you like, for example, how the earthquake from that timeless classic film, Earthquake, was accomplished. But now, since all special effects are just done on a computer you know there's no there's no point having a ride like that anymore except for you know old nostalgics like myself who want to spend a little time in the movie earthquake yeah i mean i think this also came to him as a kid story because you know gene is uh he's a hollywood dad who has to

fit in time with his daughter. Now that sounds like a sitcom, Hollywood Dad. I mean, this has a lot of Hollywood Dad to it, including having famous Hollywood Dad Ron Howard in it as well. But I guess we'll get to that in sequence. But yeah, that was just my theory that I think Al Gene was like a secret showrunner of his written episodes. And we've said other episodes feel like a leftover critic script. There's moments in this that feel like, is this a critic script too? But at least there's no references to like the 95 Oscars.

There's no Forrest Gump jokes. We're safe. By the way, before we start, I should disclose that I watched this episode in the wrong aspect ratio. I watched the remastered, quote unquote, 1.85 to 1 version, and it looked like dog shit. It was terrible. I don't advise that. Yep. Now we're finally safe.

We can just go to details, toggle that option, and get ready for 4x3 goodness. It took a lot of clicks to get that 4x3 set back on there but yeah disney plus has finally made it live but obviously though if you had like say a plex account to them you'd be fine there too but i would never endorse such a thing or the dvds which we both have oh yes yeah but yeah so this opening bit here it's uh i guess it's a koana squatzy gag right it is yeah oh okay i didn't pick up on that just uh well i think that's just what i mean gene calls it that on the commentary but i i think he just means anytime there's like sped up footage of time passing with like philip glassy music under it yeah it's it's glass like but not truly the the glass man but i like it i like a joke about hitting the snooze button

haven't we all done that is that a great observation it's like my life about hitting the snooze button. Haven't we all done that? Isn't that a great observation? It's like my life is on the screen. Though I guess I was most creeped out by Otto and his girlfriend having sex next to Homer. Is that a crystal? You know, it's not the same design as the crystal that he will try to marry in a few episodes. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, Poof. Sorry, not a Poof. Otto found a good match there.

Yes. Maybe a little bit out of his league. Oh, yeah. I think that's probably why she left him eventually. I mean, we know Poof found a good match. And yeah, after Homer sleeps for 26 hours, I like that the math actually works. He wakes up at 10 a.m. or two hours late and then plus another day for work. That's funny.

That's good. I appreciate any joke that is mathematically correct. And we also get to see that this is definitely a Maggie episode because it starts with a scene with Maggie, which would never happen in the show. Yeah, and you know what? I do like that the Maggie stuff is laid in throughout because I think it would have been an easy thing to get away with.

If it's like, okay, SAC 3 is about Maggie now. We didn't have to build up to it. It just is about Maggie. And they've done that sometimes without earning it. But in this case, they do earn it, Maggie now. We didn't have to, you know, build up to it. It just is about Maggie. And they've done that sometimes without, you know, earning it. But in this case, they do earn it, I think. You're right. I have to admit that kind of contradicts my introductory thesis. You're right that there is Maggie stuff that's strewn throughout the episode.

At least they did that. Well, we complained in the, or we criticized the, I should be more professional. We whined. We whined about in the Lisa Sacks episode that we wind we wind about in the lisa sacks episode that basically with four minutes left in the episode they're like and homer also wants air conditioning like yeah when it was it was never hot before yeah uh but only at the end there uh in this case they at least build it up better like there was one okay there was one joke in here that felt like oh this was lifted from his old unused critic scripts which is a where's waldo joke which like i guess you still had where's

waldo at 99 but 99 waldo was in hospice we can't find him anymore it's a pretty easy joke isn't it though it's kind of cheap like where he's looking for waldo and then waldo walks past him in the background it's kind of like the most obvious way you can take that joke find waldo yet again was the best version of that joke like seven years earlier but it's not trying anymore yeah but i mean they weren't giving away waldo on cereal boxes you got to pay martin hanford a fat five bucks to get one of those hardcovers will in toronto is he wally to you or is he waldo he is waldo we do show him the proper respect here that's good okay wally's just too phallic uh yeah the i do like homer at least complaining like get out get all these other people out of the way not not understanding uh the point of it it's kind of a weird joke that like so new

yorkers teleported to springfield and they're being rude that's uh what really took me out of this was for all of the early simpson stuff puts in this, the traffic guy is not Arnie Pye. Yeah, hey, you're right. It's just some random voice. You know, that's a mistake. The happy little elves get to come back, but not Arnie Pye. And then we get a joke that as of this recording is just like ripped from the headlines. It really is.

So we're recording this on May 29th. And on May 28th, there were, of course, the riots in Minneapolis and a police station was occupied and burned down. So when you see this on the screen a day later, you're like, oh, my God. But then they made it 21 years ago. Yes. It was a pretty shocking Simpsons predicted it kind of moment. We don't subscribe to that stuff. But yes, Wiggum pulls over Homer and it is a nightmare out there on the freeways today with surface streets jammed and the

sidewalks filled with pushy New Yorkers hey how'd you like your details magazine up the wazoo oh sure it singled me out all right smart guy where's the fire over there okay you just bought yourself a 317 pointing out police stupidity or is that a 314 no no 314 is a dog uh in no or is that a 315 you're in trouble pal that's uh that's i mean police stupidity always funny but i know that it's like low-hanging fruit to pick at like the fact that on the simpsons nobody ever seems to remember their vast relationships with other characters but i mean wigum pulls over homer as if he's never met him before doesn't know him but they were in a band together yeah yeah it's funny like we talked about it during that episode but like all these characters have to forget that they were in a world famous band together like whenever homer is in skinner's office talking about what bart did

they can't ever talk about the b sharps uh remember when we toured america and had a platinum selling album oh well anyway i mean the two characters who they often make jokes about that with are mr burns who doesn't remember anybody and also crusty never remembers bart um but i mean the the problem afflicts everybody in this universe uh you know they they do have a lot of head trauma in this world too many uh amnesia rays as burns would call them. Oh, yeah. You'd be the revolver. Yeah.

Oh, that's a good... I love that show. But yeah, we get Burns next. So I think, again, Scully has his own way of doing things. He has his own preferences. But I don't think he was very interested in Burns. So we see some good Burns in this episode and a fun joke with Homer. Yeah, I like that Homer insists he can't get in trouble if he isn't seen

i also like how long they take with him grabbing at the face behind him even explaining that those finally explaining the dots on burns's head as officially liver spots yeah we find out that burns has dentures was that ever canon before was that ever revealed homer homer the smithers like i believe the fangs today yes that's right all right that's why you guys are the masters yep we make the big bucks but we but we didn't know he had double dentures and the second set of dentures he can bring down like a cash register i just like any subversion of the he's right behind me isn't he joke uh futurama had that no i'm actually in front of you Yeah that's great I like that one Apparently that was an act out

In the writers room they would do Of he's right behind me So it's just some Writers room funnies there The Simpsons Will be right back. Announcing the biggest event in Simpsons history. The Simpsons Global Fan Fest.

It's a worldwide year-long celebration for every Simpsons fan. With contests, prizes, and great stuff that doesn't suck. What is it? Nothing. Want to find out more? Log on to our brand new website, thesimpsons.com, for all the Simpsons global fan fest activities. Grab yourself in and feel the cheese. And catch The Simpsons on the only network where you can see all new episodes,

Sundays on Fox. Hi, everyone. Sundays on Fox. please check those out and follow him on twitter and you know this podcast if you enjoy it talking simpsons you should consider subscribing on patreon because that not only helps me and bob do this full time but also your support gets you a bunch of extras first of all you get to hear every episode of talking simpsons a week ahead of time and ad free the same goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon that's the podcast where me and bob cover a different animated series once a week in the same way that we deal with the simpsons on top of that you get access to tons of podcasts that are only available to patreon subscribers right now we just wrapped up our talking mission hill podcast where we gave the talking simpsons treatment to every episode of the cult classic series Mission Hill from

Simpsons legends Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. And you'll get to hear the entire back catalog of the other exclusive podcast we did too, where we cover King of the Hill, Futurama, and The Critic in the same style as well. Please sign up today at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Five bucks a month gets you so much great stuff and if you want the fantastic pot of minutes equivalent of a podcast you want to go up to the premium level 10 bucks a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons in addition all that five dollar stuff you get our monthly what a cartoon movie podcast me and bob cover a different animated feature film in the same talking simpson style often for over four hours this month you'll get to hear our one about the disney flop the Black Cauldron. Such an interesting backstory on that film.

And the month before that, Space Jam, where we talked about the Michael Jordan Bugs Bunny team-up. And there's a huge back catalog that you'll get to listen to over 80 hours of what are cartoon movies from stuff as diverse as Akira, Spider-Man and the Spider-Verse, a Goofy movie, and a ton more. So please check all that out 10 bucks a month patreon.com slash talking simpsons i love that they bring back the classic workstation that they have not used in a million years of the tube arms and this time they increase they add in the tube legs for the burns has never been this strong ever he uh summoning some like uh real strangling power there the only time i i mean i'm sure they've appeared several times but the main time i remember seeing those two two barms was in that season one episode with jock yeah episode where

you see homer using the two barms and has homer ever used those in any other context after becoming safety supervisor he stops the tube arm job i think so yeah he i remember he used it to pinch a guy's butt well he used a robot arm to pinch a guy's butt through the glass but i don't recall him ever using those tube arms since then no okay though i have to wonder how burns burns has to be on a seat to kick with those two legs through the tube we don't see where smithers hands are oh i see he's probably enjoying that then i guess smithers is pretty good in this scene of just reacting to burns first being like groped by homer and then his uh confirmation to burns that it is legally binding he's got us there sir uh homer must have a pretty great union job that he doesn't just get fired from that

after being gone an entire day. But he has to pay for it by eating a teaspoon at a time of toxic waste from an entire 20 to 30 gallon supply, or drum supply rather. It's a death sentence is what Burns gave him, but somehow obviously in the wacky world, it's just the spit complete spitting in face of reality the idea that homer could eat 30 barrels of toxic waste and to have lenny just say out loud like one of those will give you a tumor like

you are dead right then a lot of good lenny in this episode oh yeah i mean to me the most memorable thing of this episode is this next clip I have of Homer. Homer leaving work. Oh, this is the worst day ever. Hi, Homer. What gives? Mr. Burns is making me eat all these drums of toxic waste. Jeez, that's rough.

There must be two 300 gallons in here. Yeah, and even a teaspoon could cause a fatal tumor. Hey, you want to come bowling with us tonight? Okay. Hello? Homer? Where are you? You promised you were going to have a tea party with Maggie.

Oh, Marge, I'm sorry. I can't make it. The cooling tank just blew and they're taking Lenny to the hospital. Oh, no, not Lenny. Not Lenny. Yes, I'm going to have to work late instead of seeing you and the kids which is what i really want okay sure kids turn off the tv i have some bad news about lenny not lenny oh all the lenny stuff is great and And we talked to the creator of Lenny, John Vitti. And Lenny and Carl were created just for people with faces for Homer to talk to.

Just like two named characters. And every joke about them since then has been like, these people are nobodies. They have no personalities. So the joke here is like Marge is so invested in Lenny, even though Lenny is a nobody. He's probably never talked to maybe two scenes with ever in the series at best i i can't i'm scrubbing my brain previous to this i can't remember a scene with marge and lenny talking to each other before there's that uh flashback of them in high school where he's wearing the bull shirt oh yeah he's doing gymnastics they're in the same audience but

they don't talk to each other either yeah that's the that's the that's the best i can think of too it's my sense that say season 9 season 10 season 11 these are when kind of self-aware kind of like meta jokes about the simpsons itself start to become more prominent in the show you know later on in this episode homer refers to maggie as the forgotten simpson um am i just making it up that like a joke like that about Lenny, you know, not Lenny probably wouldn't have happened in, you know, season six or so. But by now, the show is such an institution that it can make a joke like that. Oh, definitely. You're dead on about that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Bill and Josh, in the season seven and eight, they are definitely thinking backwards. And they are, you know, looking back on thinking backwards and they are you know looking back on

the life and they definitely have a meta episode like say the poochie episode but i definitely in our scully episodes we've done we've been talking about like oh another joke about how they have no ending or how lisa will say didn't we do that already or hasn't this happened like we're we're not too far away from saddle sore galactica where comic book guy as a character says out loud, you already had a horse. You did the Simpsons adopt a horse story. I think wearing the worst episode ever t-shirt too. Yes.

Yeah, that's right. Not Lenny is the thing that has stuck with me ever since this episode. Like it's just hearing it now. I think Julie Kavner actually like is really giving it her all yeah the drama of not letting and like the upcoming visual jokes of just her making these like cross stitches like get well lenny and the uh almost like senior photo of lenny with the rose next to it oh yeah yeah and they've seemingly like waited about they just killed like four minutes to get to the point of homer goes bowling

after work like that's the joke uh but that and also i like that you see that maggie is getting ignored by homer very early in this episode again like it's they at least yeah dot it all through for the most part the family is remarkably tolerant of homer in this episode uh you know oftentimes marge's patience is sorely tested by him but you know in this one like she she seems pretty nonchalant about the fact that he made up that huge lie just so he can go bowling with with the boys yeah she should uh she'll say later she's like well i'm just happy i'm relieved he's okay like but they try to cover it up homer should be punished on some level for lying to his family but not so yeah and i feel like every five years they remember homer likes to bowl because it

defined him in season one we just revisited season one so like all the season one merch in the album and everything involving that season is just like homer the bowler that's all he does he just loves bowling so much they just forget about it in season two and not until really pin pals uh team homer is bowling a major storyline yeah i you play the simpsons arcade game for example homer's like strong attack is a bowling ball and he fights a bowling ball boss and i think uh every every piece of merchandise mentioned bowling for homer at some point uh they they just completely dropped it as i think i just saw it as them going like homer is too lazy to bowl like that's too active for the lazy food monster that homer has become and how many jokes can you do about bowling didn't they just do them

all in one season yeah i i stand by my uh fan theory that after losing his job at barney's bowlerama homer was heartbroken and couldn't stand to go back there. I can see that. But yes, this time Homer is bowling again and we had some little funny jokes about making up your name at the bowling alley. Hey Carl, check out the overhead scoreboard.

Pooh. Homer, what wacky name do you want? Are Pooh and Ass taken? Yeah. Damn! Could my life get any worse? Simpson! Even for a boozer, you're fat.

Hey, guys, is it normal to see Burns' face on a bowling ball? Actually, I'd say you're having a severe psychotic episode. What a rotten date! Wow, a strike. Hey, if that's psychotic, then why am I taking these? You're polishing bone. Oh, the return of the Shino Bolo. I love that.

So many callbacks, which is not even an Al Jean episode. I wonder if that was an animator who was given the script it was and they just had a ball shining joke and then they someone remembered to draw on the shino ballo there but great i i would assume that millhouse has lost all of his scalp in there i guess is what he's saying but i also like they set up burns his liver spots and then it leads to a funny gag dots on the bowling never really think about those uh those weird spots and uh also homer's psychotic vision is it's almost too clever for him of like even for a bowler you're fat like that's a good insult

and uh yeah i wonder now if uh bowling alley is like i haven't been to one lately are there mods that prevent you from putting a swear on your screen oh uh there weren't when i went for the last time like seven years ago okay i wouldn't even know where my local bowling alley is now i there must be one around here yeah it's a once a decade activity for me it's a for it's uh it's supposed to be a fun like first date thing but listen i'm lucky enough to have a name bob i-O-B. I just fill those into those three slots and I'm good. You never bother with poo and ass.

No. The poo and ass joke also translates to arcade high scores as well. It still works. F-U-K. Yeah, so Homer starts bowling great there. Oh, I also do think it's extra funny that we go from a kid saying, not Lenny, straight to Lenny laughing's that's a good extra gag there yes homer is starting to do pretty good there we then get lenny warned not to jinx him which i think it's honestly too

sweaty how many ways he says split uh frankly i was impressed by how they used every bowling term to refer to ice cream. It was, uh, I, I took my hat off for this split. Yeah. Spare me your gutter mouth, Henry.

And Homer is pretty strong to throw a bowling ball like that at him too. And, uh, but Homer is doing better and better. Keeps getting strikes. Uh, he even does a Fred Flintstone style reference tribute of a, of tiptoeing up to the line and then

rolling the ball. Yeah, that's right. He was a bowler too. That's where they got it from, I guess. I think in season one, Homer is like 50% Fred Flintstone. This is a very minor point, but I like seeing Homer in those bowling alley shoes. The characters and their wardrobe are so kind of rigid and consistent that any little variation is very exciting to me. Yeah, and it's a good extra detail. I'm glad they cared to draw him wearing bowling shoes as he would be forced to wear on the lanes. As Homer's doing great at bowling, we then get a message from Krusty.

Kids, today we have to talk about Krusty brand chew goo gum-like substance. We know it contains spider eggs, but the hantavirus, well, that really came out of left field. So if any of you have experienced numbness or comas, send proof of purchase and $5 to Antidote, PO Box 14. This is Kent Brockman live from Barney's Volorama where local pinhead homer simpson is on the verge of a perfect game hey there was no accident at the plant dad just wanted to go bowling he shouldn't have deceived me but i'm just so relieved lenny's okay so i have the history of spider eggs and gum if you want to hear it yes so uh this is all about bubble yum

so bubble yum hit the streets in 1976 would you believe it was the first soft bubble gum just never did a soft bubble gum before never before that bubble gum was always hard and you chewed it to make it soft so this is the kind that cuts your cheek as happens to millhouse exactly like like the brittle hard bazooka joe stuff the stuff that's in baseball cards so people were like well how does it get so soft and kids were making up like oh there's spider eggs or spider legs in it and this pre-internet meme spread so far that the bubble yum corporation which i think is like the lifesavers a company owns them they had to put out a full page ad in 50 different newspapers saying we don't have spider eggs in our gum our gum is fine here's how it's soft because people were just like mystified like

gum that's soft well it's got to be full of bugs wow wow so this is just a callback to just a an old even then old urban legend when i was a kid though in the late 80s uh i would hear this too about bubble yum like people were still saying it but I would still eat it because I was like, that's bullshit. I was not a bubble gum guy, so I never much cared for it. I'm a spearmint guy. I don't like blowing bubbles. But I didn't realize that they had attested the gooeyness of it to spider eggs. It's like, no, we just got chemicals that are probably more dangerous than spider eggs for you.

And one other callback to early Simpsons is that brockman's intro is cut off oh yeah i didn't even think of that a reference to a bob and ray bit where a newscaster's like first syllables cut off when they cut to him and that is just an early simpsons thing so there you go yeah reminds me of how kind of trapped in amber all of the Simpsons cultural reference points and all their archetypes are to, you know, the early 90s. Because I mean, I know Ken Brockman is still a character on The Simpsons, but he feels like such a throwback to an earlier kind of newsman. I mean, I think news anchors probably look more like Megyn Kelly today than they do Ken Brockman. Like the whole experience of TV news looks so different than Kent Brockman. And yet, you know, in the world of The Simpsons, it's it's 1990 forever,

you know? Yeah. And even then, like when the show started, it was a lot of the writers filtering their childhoods through this modern lens. And so these are now like 50 year old references. Right. Well, a lot of times he would be like Edward R. Murrow, right? You would have like you would have like a person toto-person type tv interview show or whatever well and when we did is when we talked about his first appearance in our season one stuff we uh we mentioned the two of the la guys he was based on specifically and they're both dead long dead now hal fishman and some other guy like yeah they're very much stuck in time i wonder you know when you were saying that well i was thinking that this could end up being like how all of these

looney tunes characters or these classic mickey mouse shorts they're based on some old radio personality who's been dead for 70 years now like well it's funny you should mention that because most people don't know that foghorn leghorn was actually based on a character from the Fred Allen show. Right. Yeah. It's a totally forgotten phenomenon now. But yeah, it was based on a character called Senator Claghorn. And any audience in 1940 would have known that.

And actually, you know, I know they're reviving the Looney Tunes now. They're doing a bunch of new Looney Tunes cartoons. And I'm rooting for it. Although I do wonder, like, do today's kids even have the same relationship with like a Western gunslinger like Yosemite Sam? That's true. Or a hunter like Elmer Fudd? I hope so. You know, I hope today's kids can still relate to these characters. But who knows? You just need to tell today's kids that Bugs Bunny is the chungus.

And then they'll open for that. Oh, it's the small version of Big Chungus. I get it. Yeah, the Brockman cutting in thing there is, it tells me that Springfield does not have very much going on than a perfect bowling game. Which, I mean, it's not like those never happen. Or it's not like they're not kind of rare. But it's not like pitching a perfect game in you know major league

baseball for instance if you go to a bowling alley you'll normally see like here are the people that bowl a perfect game and there's like 30 names and like space for more people too i like that the episode kind of acknowledges how ridiculous it is yeah yeah and also that he gets to be a local a local celebrity just from that uh at this point brockman should know very well homer simpsons he's reported on him i'd say two dozen times at this point yes and also when it comes back to the bowling alley you can see lenny eating his banana split in the back yeah that's a nice continuity yeah he got a replacement i guess oh that hanta virus joke i'm like boy this feels different in 2020 now too the spreading of a virus through bubble gum that's feels different now they all go to cheer on homer we get to see what looks like a

bunch of animators cheering him on in the background they're just so specific and i'll tell you what al g never met a natural parody or sorry an other natural parody that he didn't like because he we did this in homer at the bat and i don't know if people even know this movie anymore. No way. No way do they know. I mean, I've only seen clips from it, the ending and the beginning of it, I think. Will, have you ever seen Robert Redford's The Natural?

No, I never have. Although I was, I'm glad you pointed out it's a parody of The Natural because it's one of those moments where I knew this is parodying something, you know, and it went right over my head. I think it was lost on a lot of the 1999 audience i think homer at the bat was the last time you could really do the natural parody because yeah well if you didn't see the natural or didn't hear

them mention it on like commentary so that's how i knew yeah me too the you'd see the posing on it the music is just so specific that it couldn't be just made up for that episode i i on the commentary aljean even goes like yes it's the natural again we use that music again it's uh it's really only when you want to do slow motion gags which is like murdering animators because they make more drawings for you the director mike b anderson kind of calls that out on the commentary of like this isn't easy easy, you know, slow motion stuff. I also think they use the natural because it's a Fox movie. And so they don't have to pay extra music or they really, they just pay themselves the music royalty rights to use it. That movie starts out with Robert Redford being shot by a woman who doesn't want him to be

the best baseball player ever. It's a weird opening that I only knew that ever it's a it's a weird opening that i i only knew that because it's referenced in in the show archer does a lengthy scene just recreating it wow and it confused the hell out of me until i looked up the concurrent scene in the natural also isn't joe don baker in that movie as babe ruth oh is he oh i think i could be wrong but i think he is if i'm wrong i'm sorry for spreading misinformation, but no movie with Joe Don Baker can be bad. If you're wrong, then Hollywood is wrong because he's the perfect Babe Ruth. He is perfect as Babe Ruth.

Man, so you're saying that all of the Pierce Brosnan, James Bond movies are great as well by that same logic? Yeah, everything the man touches just by virtue of his presence is a must-see mitchell final justice especially mitchell and final justice uh and so the family arrives as homer is about to finish it uh there it's a kind of cute joke how homer is just feeling bad that his family won't join him so lonely i'm so lonely we do a slow motion joke where Abe is actually moving as fast as he can, which clearly he's dying. And then Homer flings the ball like it's a shot put or something.

I feel like throwing the ball like that and destroying the bowling alley is disqualifying and his 300 shouldn't count. I think so. Stepping over a line docks you five points. What does destroying all those pins get you? Right. But it's a really good, I do like especially the animation of the shock wave on the dust that comes up from his throat.

It's really good drawings. And the single puny balloon after they turn the keys is very great. I know it's kind of low-hanging fruit to talk about the crowd scenes in The Simpsons, but it's worth noting that the crowd around Homer includes Herman from Herman's Military Antiques, my favorite character, Moe,

and also Wiggum, who we just earlier saw pulling Homer over, but is now right by his side cheering on his perfect game. It's never really... I don't think there's any intent behind putting people in the crowd. It's like, let's have familiar characters in the crowd but then you're like why is skinner at this courtroom trial why is crusty on this bus like you start asking questions and it leads to some fun areas herman especially should be in jail at this point in the series yeah well yeah because we found out

that he's he's zed from pulp fiction yes yeah and also the uh the counterfeit jeans ring i mean already he should have been in jail for that. But yeah, I felt like they should never bring Herman. After they made him Zed in the dark place they went with those, Junko Mike, I think you've gone as far as you can with Herman now. So we take commercial break on Homer spiking his bowling ball. I think the guy he hit lives in Frank Grimes' old apartment

between two bowling alleys. There must be another bowling alley below that one then. Yeah. A subterranean bowling alley. think the guy he hit lives in frank grimes's old apartment between two bowling alleys there must be another bowling alley below that one then a subterranean bowling alley and uh then homer reveals his uh bucket list which he had uh long before the 2007 movie coined the term it's weird to even think of it being called anything other than a bucket list to me now like no nobody remembers that morgan freeman jack nicholson movie but uh it's everybody uses the term now that was like the last jack nicholson movie too yeah you're forgetting about how do you know the uh james l brooks film that he made a small appearance in that's in the simpsons

verse that's right oh god i figured you guys if anything would be up on your james l brooks trivia i uh i definitely we we met him we didn't talk about how do you know though no i mean he was he was grabbing some fruit at the uh at the spread there we're like hey thank you sir i probably i think we were both pushed to shake his hand by our guest who was like who got us in there like no say hi to james l brooks but uh the nice guy nice guy yeah yeah nice beard good funny laugh i like it oh yeah we sat behind him the whole table read didn't we and got to hear his infectious laugh famous laugh yeah like that homer on his bucket list he has now seen stevie nicks three times already naked i should say i would hope through consensual means homer at the very least i hope he's not peeped on her homer is canceled and uh i also i do like the posing of homer going like

thank the man upstairs carl he just points sideways to carl i forgot about that joke that's a good love it yeah lenny and carl are like superstars in this episode i really get a lot he should i mean he definitely shouldn't thank Lenny. Carl was supporting him the whole time while Lenny was trying to mess him up. And then Homer speaks to Bart's class. Children, today's local hero is Homer Simpson. Mr. Simpson bowled a perfect game without the aid of steroids, crack, angel dust, or the other narcotics that are synonymous with pro bowling.

Thank you, Bart's teacher. You know, kids, my teacher said I would never amount to anything, and until last week they were dead right. But now I've achieved perfection. Any questions? Yes, Bart's weird friend. Will you be my dad? You've got a father. He's just a dud.

Next question. Yes, the girl Bart has a crush on. Do you think I could grow up to be a doctor? Hey, this was supposed to be about me. Now, any other questions? Pumpkin face? Headgear? Chicken pox?

Smelly? Lazy eye? Spiky head? Okay, class dismissed. Rock on! Hooray! Want to split the birthday cupcakes? Okay, so two things.

A Wendell joke, number one. And one thing I forgot to mention. Oh, yeah, that was a Wendell reference. Yeah, him being sick, but in a different way. Another thing I forgot to mention is that there are two uh uses of cupcakes as we learned from season one cupcakes are the currency of the simpsons world you're right so he's eating cupcakes in the beginning for breakfast or a muffin maybe and then there's talk of cupcakes here so they they look just like those ones in the opening look just like the season one cupcakes they're all the all brown

cupcakes of season one i forgot like yeah you pointed out in that there's even a simpsons video game where cupcake is a button yeah i think it's like bart simpson's cupcake mania or something yeah is it my imagination or having cupcakes like by this time sort of faded out as simpsons iconography they were very heavy heavily employed in season one oh yeah one was like cupcake uh the peak cupcake saturation for the simpsons yeah they i think they pretty much stopped with the only post-season one cupcake joke i can think of is the clockwork orange reference of homer of bart trying to grab the cupcakes to keep shocking him and that was uh bart simpson's cupcake Yes, that's a handheld game.

Okay, there's another reference to Bart having a crush on Sherry or Terry, which is interesting because in season nine on the football team, Sherry or Terry told Bart that their sister has a crush on Bart. So I wonder, you know, does this mean it's mutual, these feelings? I think they have not uh put

together bart of bart's many love interests in the show i don't think sherry or terry has been one no no uh just another way to embarrass bart i think but i'd like to know yeah and that's all i mean sherry and terry are around a lot through most of the series but they're definitely season one freaks who like trying to look as normal as possible here and i had never i call me you know illiterate i've never i never heard that book fear of flying until this joke here i mean we learned about it in the simpsons episode of the same name oh right yeah okay it was that uh but it's not a joke within the episode it's just a title joke right uh yeah yeah but we talked about just like a famous feminist book okay yeah

yeah i don't know why she's teaching it in her class she has a teacher's edition of it oh yeah so that implies okay so i thought she was just reading it herself because you know she's kind of a you know a kind of a liberated woman or you know uh you know i could imagine her being a sort of first wave feminist type you know know, an Erica Jong fan, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah, though. You're right, Bob.

It does say teacher's edition on it, which I guess in a, you know, in an English class, the teacher would have their copy of it and the rest of the class has their own. If there's a teacher edition, that would imply the rest of the class has their own copies of Fear of Flying. Also, Homer can't spell perfection. That's he's quite stupid there and and mill a donkey on millhouse's dad that's a great joke and it's even better homer calls his dad a dud which is what homer calls millhouse in uh the summer four foot two and then we have the

return of springfield squares from crusty gets canceled so another classic callback you're right a collection of stars that we have on Springfield Squares. I mean, I think they're almost worth maybe going through one at a time. Because Rainier Wolfcastle, Krusty, Sideshow Mel, these are obviously the people you would expect to be on Springfield Squares. But Princess Kashmir is there. A long, long ago throwback to season one she was the exotic dancer who i guess caused uh homer to be briefly tempted or to fool to be foolish and i think he was photographed with her uh but also itchy and scratchy are in there which is interesting because we were always told that

in the context of this universe they they were fictional characters. And here they are living cartoons in the world. They're not puppet versions of themselves. It's just the cartoons are alive and there. I don't like that very much. I think it goes against too much of the kind of metaphysics of the Simpsons universe. Yeah, I think there was on the commentary, they said there was a debate in the writer's room, like like should we have Itchy and Scratchy on here

but I guess somebody won. Somebody won a fight. I think that the joke would work the same if it was just another or like, I don't know, just a puppet or something or just another famous person.

Like Gabbo or something. Yeah, Gabbo would totally work there. Just do that. But they do bring back the goofball so that's true another old timer you know when you mentioned cashmere i think she's there because in the previous springfield squares one they did she was one of the sexy ladies that goes into

barry white's square as the tide starts rolling in and the crusty gets canceled joke about hollywood squares we don't learn if renee wolf castle hasle has made Help Me My Son is a Nerd 2. Yeah, he didn't get talked to. They should have talked to him. So, I mean, who here was a viewer of Hollywood Squares in their youth? Well, that's interesting. People may not remember that there were obviously two incarnations. There was the old Hollywood Squares, but then in the 90s, there was that revived Hollywood squares that had Whoopi Goldberg as the

center square. And I think it was hosted by perennial TV host, Tom Bergeron. That's right. So obviously I'm coming here from a certain level of, of knowledge because it was one of those shows that was on like midday, seemingly every day. So yeah,

I saw, I saw like a ton of it without ever really liking it i watched a bit of the revival too the only thing there well i remember two things from it one was gilbert godfrey's run of you fool you fool yeah fool runner uh and another one is this just strange picture that was going around uh in the wrestling twitter uh which was macho man randy savage was a square one week along with the puppet the bear in the big blue house oh my god and they're in squares next to each other talking to each other man this is like ready player one the version i want to see that's that's why i feel like they couldn't do that now like two in character people that are owned by different

companies talking to one another on a game show you'd never that kind of ip usage would not be allowed now and i mean they're lucky they got ron howard to come all the way to springfield for springfield squares a local version of it i guess he still lives there and they did correctly realize like ron howard was the best part of that episode and he was funny and yes oh yeah the alec baldwin and kim basing are not very funny he was easily in it yes oh yeah the alec baldwin and kim basing are not very funny he was easily the funniest in there it's a little random though that ron howard is in this episode like you know like why this episode why ron howard you know yeah i guess i mean it come i i assume it is that al jean later wants him to give hollywood dad advice to homer so they're

like he needs to appear slightly earlier in here it's also funny that they had his character design already but in that episode he wears clothes like there's only one scene in the previous episode where he's in a bathrobe the entire time but in this episode he only wears a bathrobe everywhere he goes and always has a drink yes he's also a drunk. Which, I mean, he's having fun with them at least. But yes, why don't we hear Homer on the, this is much more in this clip, the 70s version of Hollywood Squares that Gene had grown up with.

Okay, we'll start with our returning champion, Disco Stu. Disco Stu's gonna groove up some dough playing tic-tac-toe. Stu, we like to downplay the resemblance to tic-tac-toe. I can dig it. Hit me with the center square. Uh, Homer? Yes, Kent? According to Red Book Magazine, what is the speed of light?

Well, that, wait, uh, wait. Do I read from the sheet labeled jokes or answers? Go for the look. Stop tape. Make me center square, Kent. I'm ready. I can handle it. Dream on, drunkie.

Oh, that's it. You're going down. Stop it, you two. You're making Scratchy cry. Oh, we've got to stop putting these flavors of the month on. Flavor of the month? Me? Yeah, Homer.

You can't just ride one accomplishment forever. Why do you think I stopped acting and became a director? Oh, because you can't just ride one accomplishment forever why do you think i stopped acting and became a director oh because you weren't cute anymore i'll agree circle gets the square good night everyone oh they're right about that yeah he did stop being i mean as the hairline receded and the baseball cap went on that's more freckles emerged wait a minute you're telling me that ron howard is bald i you only found out when he got oscar nominated and he could not wear his baseball cap there we didn't tell you that's the secret of baseball hat guys it's a cheat if somebody is a baseball

hat guy and they actually have hair like i i'm mad at them but i mean ron howard funny guy but yeah yeah he's and he's at least having a good time in this too he's uh you know sometimes he directs a good movie not always but uh not often was he like oscar winner yet no no no that a beautiful mind that's like 2000 wasn't okay yeah it would have been i think right like right on the cusp of him winning an oscar and even that like that really should not have happened no absolutely not uh i do i always love the joke about how they don't have the rights to tic-tac-toe and they can't really talk about it just like no this is a different game that's good yeah i also like that they blow the lid on how it's all just pre-written beforehand and like charles nelson riley doesn't

just on the cuff make up for the statement those guys were too drunk to make jokes on the spot uh yeah listen to gobert graffi's podcast uh he to make jokes on the spot. Yeah, listen to Gilbert Goffey's podcast. When he was on the set of that revival, he would hear the stories of all the drinking and carousing and all of the anti-Semitism Pauline would go into when he got drunk. Oh, God. Yeah, again, Gilbert Goffey

tells the same stories a lot because he's an old man, but he likes telling the story about Pauline getting drunk going, the Jews ruined my career. I hate the Jews and that was him saying it not me yeah the Jewish people had a faith yes he died very sad and drunken that's unfortunate poor Paul and but so Homer gets thrown off Hollywood squares then we cut to a Penn and Teller magic performance in this next clip. Now, before my partner Teller hits the shark infested water,

I'll need to borrow someone's crossbow. I only need one. Now to save my partner's life, I'll need complete. Hello everybody. Did somebody say a perfect game? You idiot. You'll ruin everything! I'm doing a walk-on. It's a show business thing.

Oh, how y'all doing? Let's see. What's in the news today? Will you shut up? Hey, I thought you never talked. Uh, I didn't mean to. It just slipped out. Oh, God, now Penn's gonna beat me. Folks, it's all part of the act no it isn't don't leave me alone with him you've ruined the act i'm gonna kill you he'll do it i'm not the first teller remember springfield keep on swinging hey come here i just want to talk to you come here come here

guys yeah so i don't know if teller talked uh before this or since this but it felt like groundbreaking television when i saw this oh yeah this was a huge event and you know he just sounds like any other guy just a guy yeah i mean i don't associate penn and teller with magic or libertarian documentaries i associate him with coming up next on comedy central yeah mark tupper gets into sexy fun on dream on you know the Penn and Teller scene is funny enough, although it's an example of basically the last 20 years of The Simpsons. All of the celebrity guest cameos seem just a little bit random. Like, why Penn and Teller? Except that, you know, they'd never been on before.

And I guess they had access to Penn & Teller that week. Yeah, it feels like they had a blank spot in their thing of like, if we can see what celebrity we could get this week and Homer will interrupt them doing something. And Penn & Teller were around. But Penn & Teller are not key to this. And unlike Ron Howard, they don't even come back for a plot point. It's just a joke of Homer interrupting somebody.

This could have been any celebrity doing what they do and Homer steps on the screen. Although I guess Penn and Teller have an association with like Vegas showbiz. So I guess there's a tradition of like, you know, Dean Martin popping up on the Jerry Lewis telethon by surprise or, you know, some Rat Pack guy showing up on another Rat pack guy's

stage so it's like it's like that kind of chummy vegas phony showbiz archetype maybe that's an archetype i'm making up right now i think you're right i think well gene al gene and the other classic simpsons writers they they talk about how that the dean martin jerry lewis reconnecting was like a major on the telethon was a major moment in their lives like they'd never they never forgot it uh yeah for us it's when old becky came back to rosanne the penn and teller stuff too is they at least make up a good magic trick that you would think like they'd probably do this this seems like one of theirs uh though yeah the michael and us has a really great podcast about their show bullshit and the the libertarian porn tell a

show that it was oh yeah well penn and teller bullshit which i guess ran in the 2000s is kind of a testament to just how just how desperate people were for anything other than the kind of like official bipartisan narrative of the united states like people were were for anything other than the kind of like official bipartisan narrative of the United States. Like people were desperate for anything that seemed a little bit, a little bit edgy, a little bit looking at the world in a different way. But I guess nobody had really discovered left politics yet. The sense that well, there's got to be something going on that's that's not the official story. There's got to be somebody who's not just spouting the same platitudes that the two major parties are. And so Penn and Teller, who, you know, are basically just Republicans who swear, came in to fill that niche. Well, I mean, in the libertarian tradition, they are conservatives, except they want to have, you know, pot. They want to have drugs and they

want to work with sex workers, which, hey, you know, they should be have drugs and they want to work with sex workers which hey you know they they should be that's one of those things like oh i would agree that's why i started watching that show before i knew what their whole deal was on the show i started with like their i think it was their death penalty episode i'm like yeah i agree no death penalty good and then i think the next episode was about how disability laws go too far and actually they found a disabled guy who doesn't like disability laws oh boy that that episode sucked they have an amazing one about walmart oh yes this was at the height of people like walmart was the amazon of its day this was the height of people talking about the inhumane conditions that were going on at Walmart. And their whole thesis was, hey, actually, Walmart's great for communities. Look at this,

look at this person who, you know, with her minimum wage job is now able to support her child. And then they interviewed documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who's just like an independent lefty documentary filmmaker who made a very modest documentary kind of debunking Walmart and their big gotcha moment for Robert Greenwald is Mr. Holier-than-thou Robert Greenwald, he uses a non-union editor.

God, good. I just remember a few of the things that made me scratch my head as a like, I was running the DVDs of Bullshit Through Netflix and one of the things was like the anti-recycling episode it's like oh you only recycle because it makes you feel good but actually the jobs it creates are not even good jobs and then uh there was one about electric cars i remember i was at a friend's house i was like just turn this off because one of the things they had against electric cars was basically they're pretty gay

aren't they kind of gay and i was like jesus damn yeah but like i think like 80 percent of their episodes were really easy targets it was like kind of self-help guru stuff or sort of like fake medicine type stuff or a lot of stuff about god which you know penn is not in favor of he's not about that so like there's there's a lot in there it's just like very very easy stuff but the popularity of that show is a testament to the fact that the democratic party and the republican party particularly at that time they each had like like they were such codified systems of values you know to be a republican meant to be religious uh to be against drugs to be against sex work um and to have all of these sort of economic

values in addition to that. And so people like Penn and Teller come along, or like Ron Paul is another example, because they deviate in a couple of minor areas from the party line. They're for drugs, for instance. It seems like, well, this is really nuanced you know a really interesting thinker i will say my final thoughts on pen gillette is that i don't trust him because he's never had any alcohol or drugs but not for health or religious reasons so really i don't i don't trust anybody like that doesn't make sense no yeah um i respect pen gillette for picking former screw magazine editor al goldstein off the street when he was homeless and paying for his rent for

the last couple of years. I think if you're going to be a libertarian, you should at least walk the walk and pay Al Goldstein's rent. So to make a painful analogy, Penn Jillette was a Peter Bogdanovich to Al Goldstein's Orson Welles. That's actually a perfect

analogy. Thank you, I'm very smart uh so we come back uh to the simpsons home with uh homer heartbroken he oh yeah i meant to mention too he's wearing his pin pal shirt in that scene oh yeah which as we know john waters his character john had it on before so i have to think homer got it back from john after he hit it big in the bowling alley but yes when he comes home maggie's watching television and he's watching that she's watching the happy little elves of all things and they literally didn't make a big appearance since like a one-shot uh joke in like season three or like an appearance in season three although there was

like a happy little elves lunchbox in lard of the dance i looked this up by the way okay this is not off the top of my head i'm not a psycho uh but yeah like after season one they were just done yeah we we made a big point in our season one thing like you could watch the the writers get tired of making happy little elves jokes and they just anytime they were going to parody cartoons it was going to be itchy and scratchy they didn't need happy little elves to make fun of smurfs yeah and smurfs literally ended the same month the simpsons came on the air so uh and uh but maggie she's i'm i'm glad she's watching that instead of like uh i feel like a barney if she was watching like say barney that would be even more dated so and uh the then current teletubbies they get referenced later so

you can't see them here well something i like about i guess the earlier simpsons episodes is they didn't always make the direct pop culture references they would instead create these archetypes so you know rainer wolf castle it was a character instead of arnold schwarzenegger or the happy little elves were characters instead of um uh the the teletubbies or the uh smurfs or there's an early episode i think season two where they're watching a siskel and ebert type tv show with two movie critics but it's not actually siskel and ebert it's two kind of generic sweater wearing argumentative tv critics that's that's a really good point i think aljean when he took over in his years they they got more into it and it happens in these scully seasons too they got more into just they

are watching the thing that it is they don't abstract it in a way with uh with a parody version of it like on the critic they didn't make up people or they rarely made up people i think the only time i can think of them really making someone up was their jean paul la pope yes the the jean-claude van damme parody how did we that? And probably because the plot is Jean-Claude Van Damme trying to murder the critics. So I feel like that was just them covering their asses for a lawsuit in that case. But with the critic, it's a more kind of direct film industry media satire. Whereas on The Simpsons, The Simpsons are supposed to be this archetypal every family and the world around them is also supposed to be similarly, you know, archetypal universal. And so those early seasons are less stick more to that and are less weighed down by very current topical cultural references. Like references to the then new entertainment nightly programming, Access Hollywood.

Aren't we just forced? Oh, yes. I think we're now just forced to watch that before movies now when we go to the theater. Yeah, I've heard a lot from Maria Menounos. And Mario Lopez. But now I've been out of a theater so long, I would want to hear from Menounos again

about all the fun things I'm missing on TNT. Now, when I see Pat O'Brien, I think about his sex scandal from the mid-2000s. I had completely forgotten about that. That's the first thing I thought of when I saw him. I don't have clips, obviously, but he left a lot of drunken, sexually explicit voicemails on an unknown woman's voicemail box.

I don't know the relationship between them, so maybe it's fine if you leave consensual, drunken messages that are sexy, but they came out and they ruined him briefly, but he was having a lot of alcohol problems i saw a video of him talking about he was like drinking one night he drank 18 bottles of wine what yeah yeah that is insane that's andre the giant i mean that's obviously very tragic and you know my heart goes out to pat o'brien i do remember hearing that when that when that happened and hearing those voicemail messages and it added a strange new dimension to him. Because I mean, I think we

all know that to be a host of Access Hollywood is like the lowest way to make a living. And, and there always seems something about him, like, like, there's something, there's something sad and pathetic about like, a middle aged man with a mustache who looks like a news anchor and is talking about ah you know jennifer's pregnant again and uh why don't you know what does this mean for her movie career you know whatever and then then finding out that beneath that that uh exterior lurked like such darkness lurked such demons like he was like he sounded like bad lieutenant i don't know it added an interesting element of pathos to his character yeah and Nancy O'Dell

of course we all know her and she's very famous and popular I don't know what that is but uh her record is spotless Nancy O'Dell I mean she was the least of coast of Access Hollywood well now now when I say the word Access Hollywood I can't not think of our president fuck you're right yeah what which has nothing to do with this incarnation of access hollywood and unlike gabbo he was not brought down no sadly yeah like now it's just known as the access hollywood tape when billy bush recorded him yeah but uh at access hollywood though i found out i thought it was like it aired on nbc then but it was always an nbc production they just syndicated it that's where the money is and there's there's always been a deep connection between the trump white house

or between donald trump and nbc so whenever you see like msnbc talk about how much they they dislike him i just remember like well pretty much made him exactly who he is today so yeah also that i wonder if they couldn't get entertainment tonight when i see access hollywood in this that's what that tells me yeah or that uh access hollywood came to them i access hollywood is new i at the time apparently it actually is an intentional ripoff of entertainment tonight in that an old executive producer of entertainment tonight left and then just created access hollywood the same show and i think it's the bigger one i think that mario lopez is on access hollywood not entertainment

tonight so oh that makes me sad uh entertainment tonight is the venerable brand and so it will have my loyalty john tesh told me how to feel yeah they employed leonard mall many years so they're in my good books for that uh but here access hollywood of 1999 is letting homer know it's over burt reynolds apologized to the pope and promised to replace the windshield burt reynolds class act well now for our weekly segment yesterday's news featuring homer simpson are you as bored as i am with the antics of this warmed over fred flintstone i say it's time to put this one-trick pony out to stud. Woo-hoo!

First up, Mark Flanders. Homer. Dad, what she's saying is you've had your moment in the sun, and now it's time for you to gracefully step aside. Lisa, I know what's going on here. They did it to Jesus, and now they're doing it to me. Are you comparing yourself to our Lord? Well, in bowling ability.

So, like, Nancy O'Dell got the whole metaphor wrong. Not put him at the stud, put him at the pasture, Nancy. Yes. You set Homer up for a joke. That's all that was for. You're right. It doesn't make sense. Like, put him at the stud means we're going to send this horse out to fuck and make more horses.

And it's a champion horse you do that too not a not one who's over the hill so nancy odell shame on you but also i just realized because we were talking about nicholson that reference to burt reynolds like smashing the popemobile with a golf club is a reference to nicholson smashing a car with a golf club in a road rage incident from the uh 80s i forgot all about that yeah i remember some i now remember it as a Johnny Carson ish joke of saying, like, and he's not even the Jack Nicklaus who golfs like, what's he doing? There also would never be this mean to any celebrity on Access Hollywood. I have to think this is a strong amount of editorializing by Nancy O'Dell. They don't want to burn that Simpson bridge. I gotta say, I do find the Access Hollywood segment a bit disappointing because I feel like, you know, Golden Age Simpsons, Better Simpsons would have had more of a satiric angle on Access Hollywood. They seem to present Access Hollywood as basically like a benign or a good thing. from say Rock Bottom in season six. And Rock Bottom is another example

of the sort of thing that's like a kind of archetypal generic media parody that is obviously spoofing something that was relevant and specific to the time, like hard copy, but it's also very eternal. Yeah. Well, meanwhile, this Access Hollywood thing, they even have the logo on screen,

which that feels like- It's just an ad. Right? Yeah. It feels like a negotiation had to happen there and uh homer then in a scene that has haunted me ever since homer swallows his balloon accidentally and i like the joke after that like what was that about that was good yeah uh yeah you've lost over the re-emergence of homer's crush on maude flanders oh right yeah maude that is another gene callback i guess well they scully had done those jokes in season nine too yeah like the one you just said but yeah they there's a it's an awkward moment on the commentary

because they pause for a moment to be like wait yes this one is from before she dies because they they recorded that commentary after they recorded the death one and so they're like wait yes this one is from before she dies because they they recorded that commentary after they recorded the death one and so they're like oh is this a gross okay no no it's and then jean makes the necrophilia joke which is very funny yeah it's like actually it's from after she's dead and homer is feeling so depressed that uh he's told to talk to his life partner by marge so he goes to moe's and talks it out with Moe. Moe recognizes himself as Homer's life partner too. It's a label he invites as well.

And he's very proud of his, or actually disappointed in his three radishes. Yeah. Three radishes. I like how long it takes him to count. And then he just stops. He's a pretty bad life partner to stop listening to Homer there in the middle of what he was saying.

Basically this whole gag or this whole scene was just to justify the gag of what he was saying basically this whole gag or this whole scene was just to justify the gag of mo being his life partner yeah homer immediately leaves it was just the setup of the smash cut to mo uh just to be mean to marge it was really just to let it you know that homer does not respect marge or see her as a life partner uh and so homer then walks the streets singing the the end the doors song they They say on the commentary they were pretty proud to get in that because the Doors doesn't license their songs to just about anything. So they were able to get the Doors then. But it's not like a full Apocalypse Now reference.

No, not really. I just thought that it was a good pull for Homer's second suicide attempt on record. Yeah. And I was like, was like oh what building does he go into i forget but there's no joke it's just like springfield state building i thought there was going to be like a funnier sign there missed a chance there for a joke uh and it does feel very aljean that he writes a licensed song into the script that homer sings along to that you have to that means you got to get the rights before you do the joke pretty much this was

information i did not know until doing the research for this. And this could be wrong because it's from the fan wiki for Simpsons. But it's a British people. Tell me if this is true. It says that in the original airing for this in the UK on Channel 4, the entire suicide section was cut off. And Homer walking on the street, singing the doors, then goes instantly to the Ron Howard scene. Like, they cut all of it out for that Channel 4 airing. Yeah, I mean, it's all played for comedy, but I honestly think, as silly as this all is, they really wouldn't do this now.

No, no. I mean, I think these suicide jokes, like, obviously, we, you know, self-harm is bad, and I think it's fine. It's good that we don't as cavalierly make fun of suicide like we used to but it feels like it comes from the same place as the countless suicide jokes that are in looney tunes from the the 40s uh though and like especially the line of jumpers that are all going to jump off together yeah yeah uh it's uh it's pretty dark not not what i associate with an al Jean script, really. It feels like it would be a meaner Scully script.

I mean, he obviously survives, but it's not played with the same sort of sincerity as his Homer's Odyssey suicide attempt was, even though that was also a series of gags. Yes. Well, just like that episode, the cliffhanger for the end of the second act is a suicide attempt as well, which I have a tiny clip from that.

Well, world, this is it. You know, I always thought you'd die before me. Now, as I prepare my soul for an eternity of fire and poking. Yeah, less chat, more splat, pal. So maybe they added that bit that that guy shoves homer so it's not homer it's even darker if homer just steps over the edge and it's his choice yeah i think maybe that that that does feel like a uh a real choice there like okay uh homer can think about killing himself but we can't actually have him say well it's the end for me and then jump off. He's got to be like shoved into it.

And I agree that that's how it should be. And I'm not quite sure why. I mean, if Homer makes the decision and then changes his mind, it does feel too far for Homer. I don't know. And yes, then they come back from the commercial break with a gigantic cheat that Otto is bungee jumping at the same time homer jumped off just slightly off screen right and uh homer then grabs onto him and they're pulled deep into the bowels of the earth for a very cartoony joke going by chuds and then uh and another subterranean group

and then mole people yeah i really like those mole people because they look like straight out of like the Fantastic Four's mole man group. I assume that they were a direct reference to the movie The Mole People, which had just been a mystery science theater a few years before this. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. But then with their earthquake machine, and of course, they're all drawn to look like Hans Mole Man, who we'd seen earlier in the episode. So it begs the question like did hans escape from this group of mole man he's clearly their king he's got lines and everything right that's him that's got to be him well i just assume that's like his twin brother or that all mole man look

like hans mole man though maybe that is a bigoted on my part towards mole man henry come on uh so homer flies back out of the hole smashes his head on the uh the manhole cover on his way out and that's when he runs into ron howard once more along with uh ron howard's family which are accurate though not voiced by them is that a young bryce dallas howard yes the uh the kids there that's they've got bryce dallas they've got jocelyn and page and they've got reed those sound like rich people names to me. The kind of rich people who go to special zoos even. Oh, Lord, you saved me.

I guess you had some higher purpose in mind. Hey, look out! Oh, dumbass. You trying to get yourself killed? Not anymore, Ron. Now I'm looking for something to dedicate my life to. Something noble but easy. Daddy, stop talking to that bomb.

Look, I'd love to help you out, Homer, but I'm taking my kids to the zoo. That's great. Even big stars take their kids to the zoo. Well, it's a different zoo, containing animals you've never heard of. Daddy, we're missing the Phantastopotamus she only sings twice a day that's it kids are the answer i'll dedicate my life to my children really you have children oh well look here's some money no i don't want your pity or your money usually when you say that you give the money back but you would know you know i actually kind of wish he was even more of a jerk uh because like ultimately ron howard is on the right in most of his interactions with homer maybe not in having a secret rich

person zoo but like ron howard has such a reputation as being like a like a nice guy in hollywood uh like i kind of wish they leaned into the unlikable aspect of him a little more like like they seem halfway there yeah they they want to make him a drunk and he's he accepts on the scale of negative portrayals that celebrities do on the simpsons he's he's more on the negative side than a lot of the more fawning portrayals of people in the show but yeah they could go even farther with it but like he's not going to be mean to his kids i don't think ron howard would be cool with that joke but i do like the rich people zoo joke though now i think about

what's what's actually in the cages of rich people now you know what i'm saying oh boy and uh phantastopotamus a great soussian name for an animal i do enjoy that one and the kids are all designed to be freckle face and redheaded just like a young opie was on the on the andy griffith show uh this has little to do with the it but i do want to tell this story about bryce dallas howard i saw recently okay i would i would guess you uh haven't seen the mandalorian uh will sloan uh no i haven't well did you know that bryce dallas howard directed an episode of it as well i did know that so i didn't know this so uh and her episode is a good episode it's it i would say

it is well directed uh but you know for tv so they do this making of special on disney plus as well that i was clicking around in and they have a bit of it's a round table of all the episode directors and so she's there too and they're telling their stories of like you know they talk to dave filoni and he's like oh when i was a kid i grew up in star wars meant this much to me it's so great and they talk to like two other directors and when you get to her i'll give her credit for not trying to pretend she's normal she tells the story of like well of course i was introduced to star wars because when i was five i met george lucas when him and my dad we all flew to tokyo together and hung out with akira kurosawa

so that's when i was introduced to star wars i do know that a year or two ago she made a documentary about dads that played at the Toronto Film Festival. Oh, boy. One of the dads in it is her dad, Ron. Oh, that good old Ron. To be that wealthy. I bet he asked, like, draw my kids into this show and I'll do it. You think she got one of the Simpsons jackets as well?

You think she got the gift to guest stars? I wonder, honestly, if I had the power to like, if I were offered a chance to be on the Simpsons and I had the power to mandate them to draw my family, I would totally do it. Yeah. Yeah. We don't,

we don't go to that rich person zoo. I just want to mention that, that she had to let us know that like she, she met George Lucas and Akira Grisella at age five on the same day. So she's probably really bored too i bet yeah like dad uh let's go let's go to the rich people zoo in japan now so uh we then go to homer making this huge change of heart to have a completely different third act unrelated to everything from before her they they're that like i said they laid in the maggie stuff that's true yeah but

but the stuff about him being famous for scoring a perfect game is basically over at this point. Yeah, his 50 minutes are up. And then I do like that this script feels like that Homer first has to talk to Bart and Lisa to explain why this episode won't be about him helping Bart and Lisa. They both have to deny him instead because those episodes have been done before. And Nelson has usurped him. I love that joke. I like that. Yeah, he's domed him in the dad's... I forgot in all of our bits about research for fake games in The Simpsons, I forgot about this one. Bart's playing on his regular PlayStation

there. There's some weird ninja things happening on the screen. It's three pictures of ninjas that just pop in and out so not not their best fake video game design there and uh lisa asked for three words that have y is the syllable which homer homer can't think of one of them and just backs out yeah that does uh that does is a setup for a great lisa joke uh uh wordless lisa joke coming up oh that. A big laugh for me soon. So yes, as we mentioned before, Homer gets very meta and calls Maggie the forgotten Simpson. By the way, I like that brief joke where you find out

that Nelson has become Bart's surrogate father. Instead of his bully, he has now been accepted as his father figure who literally has a small recliner and a pipe and a smoking jacket and a smoking jacket yeah uh and yeah maggie is woken up by homer and i i do like the the crazy drawings she sees of homer are pretty funny in this i i very stedman-esque there in those scenes then to truly place us in 1999 homer plays dress up of a Ben Currant character. I've been so blind. I'll lavish my attention on Maggie, the forgotten Simpson.

Maggie. It's me, Daddy. Daddy's going to spend a lot more time with you. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. Where's Maggie? Yes he is! And I'm gonna be running! And I'm gonna be running! And I'm gonna be running! And I'm gonna be running! Where's Maggie?

Where's Maggie? Hey, where is she? There you are. Hi Maggie! I'm Homie Womie the Teletubby. And I'm all man in case you heard otherwise. Let's see what's on... Tummy vision.

Don't be scared, Maggie. Danny won't drop you. So yeah, Teletubbies reference. I totally forgot that controversy from the late nineties where, where one of the Teletubbies was supposed to be gay, or at least that's what the whole religious right thought it was the teletubby who had a triangle um on him yes tinky winky the uh the purple teleta he was purple he has a triangle headpiece and

controversial episode in particular was that he walked around with a purse and uh the other characters learned to treat him normal like yeah he carries a purse oh well like that that that was the plot of it and yes uh piece of shit jerry falwell yeah had he was very upset by this and got to be on a lot of television to complain about it which uh you know i paid off for him in that way i got him on tv but i like that his he talked about it too much that basically all his obituaries mentioned teletubbies probably more than jesus christ i think so and i will say uh this will make sense in a second so i will say a rite of passage in uh your early 20s is to take a bunch of recreational drugs and then look back at your childhood and be like, that show we watched was like so messed up and stuff.

So now my want to feel old moment is seeing people on Twitter who are in their 20s now saying, the baby was like the sun. Whoa, that was weird, man. Because people that watch the show are now out of college. So there you go. It is growing up to just think back on those things. Yeah, I mean, mean i as a teen

seeing clips of it i was like this is pretty weird and and i rejected i reject its britishness of course as as an american but um and that phenomenon of taking drugs and thinking things are in childhood are messed up became the show robot chicken yes yep yeah still very successful every joke on that show is that when i look back at the scenes from it now i definitely think the you know the bbc funded creators with that character they were doing queer coding in kids entertainment like but in a good way like so i am saying jerry falwell was correct that it was using a metaphor for homosexuality but that is not bad it's actually good that they did that but and i think it's too

bad that in the late 90s they basically had to just play dumb because they'd get in more trouble if they said like yeah duh of course it's a it's a metaphor for being gay uh now fortunately you know at least as far as north american cartoons are concerned for kids they can be a bit more explicit with fictional queer characters like in shows like steven universe adventure time yeah so that's that's how far we've come not that the jerry falwells of the world still aren't mad about it but they don't get on tv as much i guess well jerry falwell jr he's got his own stuff going on what a mush mouth jackass that guy is yeah that story well one day he'll be dead just like his father yeah we can hope we guys but look search up that story of him with that pool boy jerry falwell jr and the pool boy well

sometimes you find a pool boy and you let him live with you and you fund him and he's just a friend with your normal thing to do with him and your wife and you're all friends that's all uh anyway uh yeah homer that also homer's saying that i think that might have been like a last minute retake or something because it his voice sounds from a separate recording and the teletubby stuff like started early 99 and this aired late 99 yeah maybe it was a late edition you're totally right it could have been a little too uh late to make it into the original draft it definitely felt fresh when he did that, but Homer's obviously being a homophobe saying, I'm all man in response to that.

He learned nothing from his time with John Waters. But I do like the shot of Maggie being terrified and Homer electrocuted in front of her. And another good joke of her, Maggie is the strongest baby on earth, but more so later. She's like Bam Bam in this act. Yeah.

To even hang on to that clothesline, which I love her defeatedness when she realizes she'll never outrun him. Hanging by one arm. And apparently Al Jean said he uses this episode as precedent for if he wants Maggie to do like a superhuman thing, he will like wheel out this act and be like, look, she did it in this episode. It was fine. I would say that doesn't count in rules court.

I'd say like, if you can't cite one from before season 10, it doesn't count, Gene. As Homer is spending time with Maggie, the very good dark joke of cutting to Lisa, closing the blinds on him. Yeah. Gut laugh in my house. Much of that.

So she just has so much disgust in her eyes looking at him we got to homer taking uh maggie swimming lessons which uh that is a late addition in the show you know we're just gonna do a swimming thing for the last three minutes but the uh the no stepfather sign is pretty funny and also the they don't do more with it you just get to see him in the lineup that millhouse is there too you just have In the baby swimming class. Yeah. And also I like the design of Homer as the creature from the Black Lagoon design. It's nice.

Yeah. Yeah. After their failed swim together in the pool, Homer thinks Maggie is asking him to go to the beach when she's really just pointing at a butterfly. And I feel like it's a bad idea to take a baby in the ocean but google results were mixed on it it's like if they're over six months getting the salt water near your baby but i feel like if you're gonna go in the ocean with your baby you never let go of her and you definitely wouldn't ask her to walk to you into the water there should be some sort of rope or a buoy perhaps involved and uh

homer as he's trying to convince her to join him in the water he's pulled out in the riptide uh i like his maggie call aquaman thing uh unfortunately the timing on recording this it's uh tragically similar to what happened recently to wrestler actor shad gaspard so it was kind of a bummer seeing this uh section here but uh you know riptides are dangerous folks take them seriously you know the ocean a pool is so much safer just just stick to the pools that's what i say homer should actually be really mad at the springfield local government and coast guard that nobody's guarding this beach and he's just alone no active lifeguards we'd even see a sign saying no lifeguard on duty come on and uh so yes homer starts drowning and maggie heads out that's a great idea we'll swim in the ocean see maggie the ocean is just like a bathtub except instead

of rubber duckies it has barracudas and moray eels Nothing to worry about, just a little wave. And this riptide is certainly nothing Daddy can't struggle against. Help! Help! Somebody help! Current! Too strong! I know. If I sink to the bottom, I can run to the shore. Funny animation of him underwater. i'm enjoying the logic though he gets tired underwater has to sit down uh and then he pops back up to struggle some more that's uh yeah the the the animation on homer struggling is at least pretty funny and then when maggie

decides to swim out into the water again impossibly no baby could swim like that and then that's it's playing the music there is a specific song it's the title theme to the documentary victory at sea yeah i only got that from the commentary it's a 19 early 1950s documentary about world war ii i don't know if will might have seen this being more knowledgeable about documentaries than us it's apparently a famous one unfortunately i have not uh that's uh yet another film reference that's gone right over my head. I'm sure it's a non-biased account of how we won the war and beat the Nazis. It's a good song, whatever that documentary is about.

It's a nice song. They could have just told. It's interesting that they paid the money to use it because I feel like if they just told Alf Klassen toen to rip it off he did not a fine job with it and it's not like i mean if the natural goes over your head this one is really you have to look up online or hear a commentary to know it and uh what they after maggie saves homer they fortunately instantly address the impossibility of what happened mr simpson you're going to be fine although you do seem to have swallowed a number of shark eggs actually that was before and that's weird it's a sweet a parent's life is in danger a child can summon superhuman strength well all i care about is that my little girl loves me that's sweet it's a sweet little moment there honestly i feel like they don't even need the next bit it's sweet enough to end that yeah i i guess i only got upon my second

viewing of this for this podcast like i guess it's an inversion of the thing where you're the parent gets the superhuman strength and the kid is in danger. So you're right. Yeah. Well, I don't think Homer has done a lot to earn loyalty of Maggie on this episode or the loyalty of anyone. It is a touching penultimate scene. I think Homer is making the assumption that Maggie loved him so much because he clearly in her acting, her choice to go into the water to save him is more of like frustration and fed up that she has to save this idiot uh who from his himself once again she's a bit like grommet on this episode right yeah

that's a great comparison and uh yeah the also homer homer in his personal time he eats all the shark eggs he feels like and does not want your judgment on that choice uh that's he couldn't swim he was full of shark eggs there maybe there was no riptide it was just the shark eggs but i and i like that they make it even more insane the description because they could have said like well you know in in salt water you float more and it makes people lighter like they could they could try that but instead they just say it's it was a rush of adrenaline to a baby to be able to save him uh though i also asked where did how did marge and the rest of the family even get there did homers yell from the water uh from the beach like call 9-1-1 that's

true suddenly there's uh there are people when there weren't before yeah oh well uh but yes we get one last scene here i like father daughter bonding good girl maggie you knocked down all the pins but you stepped over the line just a little bit so i'll have to give you a five and that gives you a final score of 295 looks Looks like Daddy won, but 295 is awfully good for a baby. Yes, it is. It's very good, and you're a good little baby. Yes, you are. It's a sweet scene where Homer is a bit of a jerk, and also Maggie can save a man from drowning

and also bowl a perfect game of bowling. It's so funny. Yeah. It's a cute joke that you see Maggie bowling with Homer in like the way you'd be like, oh, for a photo op. But obviously she can't really bowl. But she apparently had gotten a strike every other time, 12 times previous to that. It's a cute joke.

I like it. Though Homer has to be an asshole one more time in this and screw his daughter out of a perfect 300 game we need one more the natural reference as he bats away the 300 balloon that fell from the sky yeah again denying her the uh the ability to surpass him i mean that you know i don't think it's meant to be a season one reference but in the moaning lease episode homer is distraught that bart has gotten better than him at something and so similarly he's trying to prevent maggie from beating him in a bowling uh at bowling that's what your family does they hold you back it's the most important part of family

but nancy's maggie voices she's really that's very cute noises nancy cartwright makes as uh as maggie yeah i mean it like uh gene does rely on the homer and lisa homer and maggie stuff a lot because you know it's it's a emotional thing that works a lot of times and often it's very treacly but i i kind of like this as a nice like uh palate cleanser from the kind of more negative episodes we've been having recently yeah more cynical ones it's nice to have a little bit of sweetness after a while i also like seeing a little bit of personality in maggie you know uh she is the forgotten simpsons so it's nice to see a few different shades to her yeah it's it's tough because any scene you write with maggie it's just

it probably dies at table reads if you do it because it's just a bunch of stage directions not people saying funny words and then maggie does this and crawls over here and and also you have to like well we'll let the animators be funny with this like if you're a writer you're like no i have to write every funny thing not trust an animator to draw funny maggie stuff uh but i i you know if if it was just aljean going like maggie is underused as a character, so I'm going to write an episode around her relationship with Homer, then that's smart pitch for an episode. So, yeah, this was, I think this is my favorite season 11 one we've done so far. Me too. I really enjoyed this one.

And the not Lenny thing came out of here. We can all be thankful for that. And perhaps the secret affair that's going on behind the scenes. And yeah, we heard Teller's voice and that's not nothing. Yeah, exactly. So Will Sloan, thank you so much for being on the show. Please tell us all about Michael and Us. You guys have a Patreon, so many great

podcasts and bonus ones as well. And we're both big fans of you and Luke Savage. Well, I would definitely direct your listeners attention to the episode of Michael and Us that we had with you, Henry and Bob, where we talked about the Simpsons movie. We had a very great discussion about it. So when Henry and Bob eventually get to the Simpsons movie and they do their, you know, 27-hour frame-by-frame dissection of it, like, this will be a nice little appetizer for that, a little preview. And, yeah, and you also uh you have another podcast too right

yes it's called the important cinema club and it's a straight up film history podcast uh you know from uh trash to art to everything in between and uh god two podcasts is a lot for one man to have isn't it it's it's a lot yes yeah but uh we we all manage and yeah And right now it's easy to get way ahead on podcast recording. I kind of have three. Yes, yeah. I mean, that's just what the economy is these days. This is how you make your living. If I have too many moments of free thought, I think like I should just have another podcast.

These thoughts are wasted. This could be written down and recorded. Yeah, you got gotta figure out a way to monetize literally every part of your life but thank you so much well thank you well thank you my pleasure so thanks again to will sloan for being on the show please check out michael and us and the important cinema club but as for us if you want to support our show and get every episode one week ahead of time and at free please go go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And when you sign up, you'll get just that,

but also immediate access to everything we've ever done on the Patreon behind the $5 paywall. That includes all of our bonus podcasts for the past three plus years of Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. That includes, of course, all of our limited miniseries. Our most recent one was Talking Mission Hill. We went over the entire Mission Hill series with the Talking Simpsons treatment. And there's a new miniseries our most recent one was talking mission hill we went over the entire mission hill series

with the talking simpsons treatment and there's a new miniseries coming up this fall just for five dollar and up patrons and we have so many things going on there over 100 bonus podcasts at this point and growing every week at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and henry can tell everybody out there what is happening at the ten dollar level That is one mega long podcast once a month, all about a movie. That's right. If you sign up at $10 a month, you get all that $5 stuff, so much stuff. And you get access to our monthly What a Cartoon Movie podcast. We talk about a different animated feature film, often for over four hours, the history, scene by by scene all of that some recent ones we've done have been space jam the warner brothers classic commercial

plus uh the pixar's first sequel toy story 2 and tons more if you sign up now i think you'd have over 80 hours of what a cartoon movie content in your back catalog and a new one each month so please if you sign up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons consider going to the premium level of 10 bucks a month so as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast find retronauts wherever you find your podcast or go to patreon.com slash RetroNauts and sign up there to get two exclusive episodes every week that are not on the free feed. Again, that is RetroNauts and the Patreon is patreon.com slash RetroNauts. Henry, how about you?

Hey, I'm Henry Gilbert. You should follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. I'm sure to tweet tons of fun political movie thoughts on there plus you should be following on twitter the official twitter account of this podcast if you haven't yet you're missing out at talk simpsons pod we'll keep you up to date whenever new podcasts go live on the free feed or on the patreon as well as our many mini series and any other big news that happens in the talking simpsons world so please on twitter on Twitter, follow at TalkSimpsonsPod. Thanks so much for listening, folks.

We'll see you next time for 8 Misbehaving. We'll see you then. Oh no, not Lenny! Not Lenny!