Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Helter Shelter

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

The Simpsons need a new place to live just as your humble hosts are also moving into new houses, though with fewer hilarious results. After a hockey game leads to termites that eventually send the family onto a reality show, we flashback to the turn-of-the-century style of reality programming that Simpsons writers loved mocking back in 2002. Plus, we discuss the history of Oreos, Mutt & Jeff, and Squiggy in this week's nowoodnik of a podcast! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, a marjolicious way to start your Flanderific day. I'm one of your hosts, the Urkelows eater, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always? Mouthy American child, Henry Gilbert. And this week's episode is Helter Shelter. This week's episode originally aired on December 1st, 2002.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets tops the box office, Invader Zim ends, and United Airlines files for bankruptcy. Claiming that, you know, post 9-11, travels down, they're making less money. Is this why I have to pay money to select any seat

now united is one of the like gougingest of the i rarely fly them they have the cheapest fare and you have no carry-ons and i was like well i can have like a backpack i put under the seat that must be right and then i approached the plane they're like hey a backpack that's not like i'm not gonna put it in overhead and they're they they made me consolidate a bag it was oh come on they were very mean to me i think with united once they had something called priority boarding and it was like 15 and i thought if i can just get on the plane first i'll be less anxious so i paid for it and they never announced like if you have priority boarding lineup now i had to like just sit and be more anxious and be like when are they gonna call

priority zone one's already boarding and i was like i have are they going to call priority? Zone 1's already boarding. And I was like, I have priority. They're like, yeah, fine, go, go. They weren't even honoring. I could have just said that without even, you know, buying it. Man, here I thought Southwest was impersonal, but these United stories make me feel like Southwest is wonderful, Errol. Well, now we can all get mad at Pete Buttigieg. This is his fault.

Get out of your electric Mustang and do something. The infrastructure is crumbling. But but bob he's both gay and a christian and a troop and a troop i mean it's amazing he's a triple threat and i mean that literally and i'm sure those are all natural details not a carefully curated profile that someone would make up to be more electable that's a very real person but yeah united airlines a lot of airlines back then did go into bankruptcy and never came out of it but united actually did based on what i read it sounds like they just

used it as an excuse to lay off as many people as possible and be a much worse smaller airline sounds familiar uh but yes the united uh we talked about invader zim's history a whole bunch on the what a cartoon for it but yes it was another casualty of 9-11 that basically they renewed it for a new season then decided it was way too dark for the channel so they cut it down to basically 13 episodes five of which they never aired in america this was the it's december so this was the holiday special that they did that they made a big deal of actually getting to air on nickelodeon so that was the last one that aired on Nickelodeon in the United States. And the rest were saved for DVD only in the US.

You had to wait four years. A very long time. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. This is before I became a Harry Potter person. I did. I read the books. I sucked. It was dumb.

I regret it. Now we're all done with Harry Potter. But this was when I did not read harry potter and so i was just like why does everybody give a shit about this second harry potter movie who cares like and the second one kind of sucks anyway this is the last one that i saw because uh around this time i was dating a harry potter fan and we saw the first movie on dvd and we saw this one in theaters and that's the last one i ever saw and i feel like i missed nothing if you have continued to date this person into the release of prisoner of azkaban you'd gotten to see the good movie oh well I'm glad I didn't

but yeah I am also very tied emotionally to Chamber of Secrets and it's a secret aspect of why of the Chamber of Henry's Secrets is a reason I fell off of watching The Simpsons during season 14 I realize now it's not entirely about me not making time for the Simpsons or being less into the show it's that I got my first job this is the week I got my first job at uh newly 20 I didn't have a job until I was 20 I am working at AMC theaters now so Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets was the big movie that came out the week I started there. And I had to serve popcorn to a lot of kids on their way to see Harry Potter or dogmatically Christian parents who were insulted to be handed a popcorn bag with Harry Potter on the bag. And I had to deal with a lot of customer interfaces at that time. Well, I'm going to paraphrase the tweet in that 2002 was the year of disgusting little freaks because we had gollum and dobby oh dobby's so much worse than gollum yeah is that

little ghoul age well you know the 21 year old cgi on that thing oh i bet it looks horrid now yeah i when i think of a dobby i only think of the that photo from the last movie of dobby being held on the beach by har Potter. Oh my God. Is that like when they find E.T. in the creek? It is a little like that. Yes. Yeah. But yeah, Chamber of Secrets.

I remember how excited other co-workers were, like the other recruits at the AMC Theater in Orange Park, Florida. Several of them were like, oh boy, we're going to get to watch Chamber of Secrets a day early. I didn't watch it. I got to watch it for free the next week on a Wednesday. Me and my friends were like, hey, why don't we go see it? I wish I hadn't because that made one of my best pals at the time, it made her into a big Harry Potter fan, and that then pulled me in.

I was going to ask what brought you to the world of J.K. Rowling. It was that it was peer pressure and the friends were enjoying it, and it seemed like the cool thing at the time, jk rowling it was that it was peer pressure and the friends were enjoying it and it seemed like the cool thing at the time and i i fell into it and i mean i knew it was a children's book and i was 20 reading them and uh and it did make the world worse it made a world worse place the harry potter books popular it's it's one of the few times being a huge annoying snob in my 20s paid off you were on the right side of history there yeah i chased away friends girlfriends family members but i didn't get into harry potter and now you're laughing on the other

side of it you don't have any embarrassing harry potter tattoos oh no no but yeah i my work now has started at amc which often meant i was working weekends which included sunday nights there ain't no time for simpsons so i don't think it's entirely a coincidence that around is the time I was feeling that episodes were letting me down and weren't as funny that I also like well I also working most Sunday nights so uh and also like my parents are not recording the episodes for me so that's partially I think the job is also why i fell off as a regular simpsons i had a job around this time too but i think everywhere in my area closed down uh by seven at the latest on sundays so even with a job i was able to watch the simpsons and then i got a job at the university i was attending and

there was nothing going on on the weekends there was no work and jealous i i am a little jealous of that because you have my mc you well some days if you're working concessions, you get to leave 30 minutes into the last movie. But if you're there till close. But if you're janitor or till close or in the projection room, you're there until the last movie ends. Which when, or at least these were the rules when I worked there. That when the Return of the King was playing, which is three hours long, there were midnight screenings that meant

people had to be there till three in the morning and after to work the place. It was tough. Every hour was what, $4.75 in the bank? I think, yeah, I think it was $4.75. Oh man, we were at $5.15 around that time. Rolling in dough. Florida's minimum wage I think was among the lowest in the country. And usually, I bet it still is. But yeah, that's

what happened when this episode of The Simpsons aired and I was working at an AMC movie theater. And just a note to our listeners, you might be thinking, yo Goober, where's the guest? Well, we're not doing a guest for this one because we are building up a backlog to prepare for our move, which we will be moved by the time you hear this, but currently it is early July and we're not doing a guest for this one because we are building up a backlog to prepare for our move, which we will be moved by the time you hear this. But currently it is early July and we're trying to record a bunch. So there's no gaps in our schedule. Yeah. You know, it's hard.

It's we love our guests, but planning around other people's schedules on top of our own very hectic schedule we have ahead of us to get both of us moved out of state and one out of the country uh by the end of this month or the start of next month there's only so many available days but uh hey well it's still a fun one to talk about even with us and this episode's not so bad i'm gonna say i'm just gonna assume this is also going to be two and a half hours long with even without a cast oh yeah you listeners know how long it is yeah don't spoil it for me in the past uh but we have a writer's corner for two writers so i will say uh that we could be slightly critical of aljean in a fair way and i think in a way that he would admit that um you know he made some mistakes because when he took the show over again instead of giving these freelance writing slots to new writers he would often give them to very

old writers he worked with in a way i understand he's getting back in in the mode of a showrunner again and he wants people he can trust at the same time though he's denying opportunities to new writers and of course al jean uh is striking currently he's been on the picket lines he believes in you know paying people well and giving people opportunities but he did make some slip-ups and if go back to when he was running the show originally with Mike Reese, it's because he gave new writers opportunities that Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein were able to write for The Simpsons. They were only in their mid 20s when they started on the show. Guys like Michael Carrington and Adam Ilapidus, they got big chances. And once you have The Simpsons on your resume, it does open doors

as a freelancer. And I mean,id merkin also did this with his freelance jobs yes like so it's not just aljean's fault i think bill and josh their freelance guys as i recall were more like they were definitely colleagues of theirs but they were younger guys who were not heavily established you know writers they were like early career opportunities though i don't want to say that they like oh they hired unknowns like they they i think hired a lot of guys they did know but yeah i think that just from a certain point of view this is gene giving back these jobs like to hey you helped me when i was a young guy now you guys aren't getting as many jobs you used to or maybe you need to maintain

your insurance or some other benefits in the wga i've got an open script and you guys aren't getting as many jobs as you used to, or maybe you need to maintain your insurance or some other benefits in the WGA. I've got an open script and you guys are dependable writers. I get all of that. And that way of thinking, when you look at it with 2023 eyes, every time I see these names of people that I don't recognize who never wrote another episode, I think, boy, wouldn't a 25 year old writer who'd never written anything before or had maybe one script to their name maybe they would have really gone on to do something pretty great after they had their first simpsons job and these writers by the way are brian pollack and mert rich and if you're wondering

how established were they well this is kind of their last writing credits and it was 21 years ago so this is the end of a very long career for both of them and i assume they're both they're probably in their 40s when they wrote this and they're now like in their 70s that i couldn't find any real bios on them and no obituaries that's the that's the first when i've done the research on these guys like this it's like well they don't have a wiki page went to their imdb doesn't seem very updated but i can't find an obituary so i have to assume they're still alive and if not let us know but let's talk about both of them we could talk about where they were before they teamed up so Brian

Pollack he started his career in 1978 as a writer for the Jim Neighbors show he's Gomer Pyle by the way that is an old guy yes wow and then went on to write an episode of the Jeffersons and an episode of Facts of Life and Mert Rich before he teamed up with Pollock he did a lot less he was a credited writer on SCTV before uniting with uh Brian so presumably Mert is from Canada or just went up there to write for SCTV I don't know there's not the Mert Rich story I can read online this does sound like a Torontonian who then comes to Hollywood and has to partner with a united states citizen to do it but i mean definitely on um you know as far as bona fides go of uh of comedy nerdery writing for sctv is a pretty good one oh yeah so they teamed up uh pollock and rich and they would write a little bit for uh what's happening now the sequel series to what's happening it's sort of like their picard

and uh the love boats and then they would move on to a little show called Sledgehammer, where they meet another writing duo named Al, Gene, and Mike Reese. And have you seen Sledgehammer, Henry? Do you know about it? I know it as a title, and I remember it has a really crazy season two thing.

Yes, yes. So I would describe it, and I've seen the entire first season and in the depths of unemployment i did get the sledgehammer dvds on netflix and i watched the entire first season i i view it as like a lesser police squad and uh police squad is good and there are only six episodes and i think you get all the material out of that because even by the end of episode five you're like what more jokes can you do police squad which is why they kind of stopped and why they just made movies after that but you're feeling the same about uh look well yeah the

look well pilot too yes yeah uh so sledgehammer uh mostly famous for featuring danny elfman's first tv uh theme song so simpsons relationship right there that's interesting yeah but also the fact that it was an unpopular show so for for the season finale of season one, they decide to detonate a nuclear warhead and destroy the entire setting and presumably the characters as well. But that was surprisingly successful for them, that finale. So ABC renewed them for season two. So season two starts with a big shrug that's like, this is five years earlier. None of it makes any sense.

That is so funny. Because he has his partner that he meets in the first episode five years ago that's so great they could that's so great too they make it five years earlier instead of just saying like uh that was a dream the ending or whatever like that that's even funnier what a silly thing and i was following the timelines on imdb and it looks like aljean and mike reese left sledgehammer after season one because they thought it would be canceled that's when they went to elf man that's funny too because gina reese sort of leaves simpsons they're not around for all of season two because they think that it's definitely not getting a season two either

so they're relatively unavailable at the start of season two if i recall correctly that's so funny that they were they were just hopping around from thing this thing was though them on sledgehammer makes sense of you gina reese because they had previously worked on the lampoon both harvard and national and then on airplane 2 the crappy airplane movie and so now they're working on another very heightened parody show but a tv version sledgehammer yeah and it's still all on dvd it's even on amazon for like 20 bucks if you want all 40 episodes. 40 episodes? Yeah, two seasons. And yeah, like I found it just a little too corny, but I appreciate

the spirit, especially a show from that era on ABC kind of getting away with what it shouldn't be getting away with. 40 episodes is five years of a streaming series now. Yes. That's so many episodes. I'm at the end of Better Call Saul and it's like 60 episodes total. And that's long in today's era.

Yeah, that was like seven years of programming. Now shows get to be one season or five tops, but mostly just one. I see people posting about that My Life with Superman show or whatever, and it's two episodes, right? Well, so the My Adventures with Superman show, I watched first a couple episodes and I liked it, but it was originally supposed to be a Mac series. And then they, instead of fully canceling it, they basically sold it to themselves for it to be on adult swim, but it's also still on max. I don't know if they did a 20 episode order and then they're going to release 10 in a row and call it two seasons or what, but, uh, you know, that's pretty much every TV

series now. It's just that like in everything it's canceled in one season. I was seeing that too, because that new show show the bear is having its second season now yeah yeah it's getting some buzz and people are saying like oh the ratings are really up for season two and people are pointing out like this is why you do a season two of fucking shows that it might get more popular in the second season then people go back and watch the first season it's the story of a lot of sitcoms in the past, like Seinfeld and Cheers, which brings us to a nice segue

where Pollock and Rich end up on Cheers, a very successful show, and they work on it from season seven through nine and then move to Fox to write for these first season of Rock, as well as the Simpsons adjacent, The George Carlin Show. So quality sitcoms, I will say,

after, I mean, Sledgehammer is quality. So yeah, they have a good pedigree. Yeah, these are good guys. These are not like know tgif writers or whatever like gene and reese were actually but yeah no these these are incredible like credits like i but but also yeah i'm seeing it with the eyes of somebody who's seeing what the wga is striking over at the time we're recording this and i'm thinking like these these guys if you have cheers rerun residual money you should be set for life unless you have a debilitating drug habit or something yeah three years of just working on cheers and the royalties and just how much that was rerun

like in the 90s you are you're set for life yeah you never need to work again and so again it just feels like why take a script position it's a person who hasn't made it yet i it just it feels wrong by today's standards yeah yeah so after the george carlin show which sam simon created uh i did like that show a lot but there was only one season george carlin hated sam simon yeah i mean also probably sitcom schedule is not for george carlin like that's not something he could survive in either and after that they wrote uh three episodes of sister sister and the one of four episodes to air of the secret diary of desmond pfeiffer and yes you're supposed to say it pfeiffer well i didn't

know that because i've only heard jokes about it on the clerks animated series yes it was a series about basically abe lincoln's black friend or servant, if you will. It's like a silly secret agent show, except set during slavery. And it was definitely meant to be edgy at the time. And then it's funny that they parodied it on Clerks. But by the time people saw it on the DVDs for Clerks, the joke was like five years old and nobody knew it. And is Desmond played by Chai McBride?

I think so. I think that did come up in my research. He's a great actor i love that guy but i i wasn't gonna watch it was that show to show you how iffy and edgy it was then in the 90s people were like oh i don't know about this like and this is the 90s we're talking about here i do appreciate the spirit of uh these kind of shows even if they're incredibly wrong, because these upstart networks did feel like Fox, where they would show things like The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer and also like Homeboys in Outer Space. Just these weird concepts that was the Fox network in the early days. I do like that. Big swings and usually on something starring non-white people as well.

Something called Shasta McNasty. I'm sure I'm still not sure what that is oh yeah that's uh boy i was thinking that also like the dl hugley show or like all the original kings of comedy got their own sitcom in that same spirit too so i did want to add that they did uh create one sitcom with two other people that is upn's good behavior good has an e at the end and that's a one season sherman hemsley vehicle that nobody remembers also they're both associate producers on boat trip for some reason boy huh that sounds like guys brought in to try to punch it up at the end yeah can you make this more hateful

that you know i only have engaged with podcasts mocking it i've never actually seen boat trip because i heard you know it premiered as i was being out of the closet and i was like well i really don't want to watch such a mean series of gay jokes the entire time and and now both leads in it are uh controversial figures uh at the moment i think cuba gooding has been found guilty and uh horatio sands not yet in the courtroom yet but uh the allegations not so great they should have sank the boat with them on it save all the gay people though so after this episode they did very little imdb says that pollock worked on some true crime documentary show called

i almost got away with it that feels like an error i feel like someone has a same or similar name it makes no sense that he would work on that despite doing nothing like that before in his career yeah i get the feeling that they just both were like man we do have enough money now forget it like they just retire and uh mert rich is credited with something called on the verge of a wig out i look that up it's a warner brothers thing from 2007 back when companies were making short webisodes of new entertainment this This is before people made shows for streaming. They experimented with like, what if we made eight minute episodes of something for the web?

Right. And they're all lost. They're lost completely. This is on Vimeo if you want to see it. It's kind of like, what if the real world took place at like a beauty salon? Interesting. Kind of.

Well, you know, you talk about the strike. That's what that strike, the 07 to 08 strike, was also about webisodes. Exactly, yeah. That's the careers of Pollock and Rich. And yeah, this is kind of the end of their careers. And I assume they're very rich and now elderly, so good for them.

But this episode, I won't blame them for the third act. I feel like the third act was a rescue mission that failed. But not the best Only Simpsons episode to have on your IMDb. I mean, I would love to read that original script because I feel like, as in the very first draft they handed in to Al Jean, because I feel like this has so much shoved into it that feels like a rewrite of like, you know, they feel like rewrite jokes. There's a couple of jokes in it that I'm just like, this is somebody pretending to do a

Schwarzwalder scene. Oh, yeah. Like a house going down the river feels totally Schwarzwalder. What shocked me on the commentary, I forgot about this fact. This is actually Sam Simon's last contribution to the show. He pitched this idea to Al Jean because he just saw the reality show this is based on and Al Jean happily accepted the idea. So this is Sam Simon's, I guess, legacy the idea so this is sam simon's like his legacy

that's so funny too that he just pitched i always assume that sam simon basically was done after season four and did zero but it does sound like that him and aljean remained on friendly terms and that sam simon just said like hey here's a freebie for you what if the simpsons it sounds like basically the professional version of somebody at a party saying you know you should do a simpsons about this but the simpsons in a reality show but i i gotta say i i was taking count of this informally now i've done it for real so the last seven episodes of the show five of them are about reality tv in big or small ways. Large Marge, Bart does a jackass parody, basically. That's how Bart gets in trouble.

Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade. Animal Survivor is the TV show they're watching. Oh, yeah. Strummer Vacation. Taxi Cab Confessions causes the key problem to happen. And in the frying game, ends in a big reality game show is the big reveal at the end of it and then you've got this episode so yes five of the last seven episodes are all about reality tv i get it yeah i was getting sick of this at the time and based on the commentary it sounds like they don't

like this one and i feel like that's why they held on to it for so long because this is the last cell animated episode to ever air and it is is this like episode 18 of production season 13 or something it's it's not that deep it's not not that far from the end of production 13 they sat on it longer the episode code for it well it's dabf21 so i guess it is pretty far into the run it's late but it's december yeah it's december to well they did start the season at the start of november yeah so but i feel like they held on to this one for last for a reason they were not proud of it i agree with that not proud of the thing because if it's the start of december then that means you avoided the

november sweeps with this you're like you know this isn't for the november sweeps this this is for a descent more of a december episode but i remember starting this and thinking oh i remembered hating this and now this seems all right until that third act yeah but first i thought that this episode was the first ink and paint episode not counting the halloween special because the couch gag is about digital coloring oh yeah you're right but i think it's not even done digitally that one yeah it's a fake digital coloring yeah it's so it's it's very strange but yeah this is you can still find cells of this episode if you want maybe you can find one of lenny sue or lenny yeah though this opening what a strong start i love this opening yeah it made me think oh is there more burns in this than i remember but there's not why are they so hesitant on burns content around this time i don't get it but yeah just

they're too mad at reality tv you know this also reminds me of it feels like a scully episode because it's about like executives and tv ratings he was so obsessed with all of that stuff because he had been in tv for a while before he ran the show if lg hadn't said that sam simon came in with this pitch during his time, I would think that this was a pitch from the George Meyer Scully years that were all about this. And I mean, he even like buries George Meyer's joke pitching Al Jean does on this. But also this is another of the problems of the Al Jean era,

which is this crazy opening is all just a setup for the Simpsons need to do something they can't afford to do because we have jokes about it and so it's also we saw this with what is the spring shield episode called oh yeah papa's got a brand new badge it's also uh rich writers talking about their life experience like you ever hire a private security company and they just won't do a good job this one is like you go to skyboxes all the time don't you aren't they crazy it's i i've never done it but even aljean says he doesn't like doing it i sense a bit of defensiveness on aljean's part that he's like no i'd never pay for it i've only been offered it and like well i mean

i have a similar skybox background story that i too have to say like oh i would never pay for this but i have experienced it but aljean could afford it but i definitely get the sense of aljean is like lisa in this episode that he he feels very bougie being apart from the common man in such a clear classist way as a skybox like it makes him too aware of his class aljean likes being rich i would bet he enjoys it not being rich, but he's a little embarrassed by it. Yeah. Yeah. There's no Matt Selman on this commentary to make fun of him, is there?

He'd really been tweaking him on it if he was there. You're right. Yeah. We need that little devil poking the guys in there. But yeah, for an opening, Elver just gets smashed in the head while he's walking to work. Him continuing to whistle while- Croning.

Yeah. That's so good. And yeah, this also reminded me of the first annual montgomery burns award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence because in both cases mr burns has to hand homer a bunch of money to avoid a lawsuit so that way they can have money for a plot line or they can have something amazing for a plot and this is just it at like 10 times speed like in 30 seconds they've got their their settlement from burns there's no negotiation with burns no meeting with lawyers

they're just in the car oh boy skyboxes also production 13 which this is nearing the end of it starts in she of little faith they have skybox jokes in that too that they's sky boxes in the newly redone church so they say specifically this is inspired by the sky boxes that were at the then staples center now crypto.com arena in downtown los angeles it's not yet the g your hair smells terrific arena that joke is outpaced by reality reality. Yeah. Burger King, just $2.39 each with the purchase of any value meal. Cool your jets, man. Mmm, burger. Collect all four. And our Big Double Cheeseburger is just 99 cents. With two slices of melted cheese and two juicy flame-broiled patties.

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Hey, everybody, it's your favorite no wood Nick Henry Gilbert here. And I thank you for listening this week. Another one where we are preparing for our big moves which should be all done by now and that's why there's no guests this week but we super duper appreciate all of you guys listening to our chat about helter shelter and if you enjoy this podcast and also like me and bob having full-time jobs and being able to move cross-country for them then you should be a supporter at patreon.com slash talking simpsons subscribers there for five bucks a month get access to every episode of this podcast a week

at a time and at free and they get tons of exclusive podcasts each month they get a new episode of talking futurama and talk king of the hill us going super in depth into an episode of those shows just like we do an episode of the simpsons and they get all the previous episodes over 150 of them that we've covered up to this point of futurama and king of the hill plus every episode of the critic every episode of mission hill and many of our favorite episodes of batman the animated series please sign up today the five dollar level to see what you're missing at patreon.com slash talking simpsons but if you appreciate the a bug's death joke in this episode then you'll love all of the stuff we've been doing for this summer on our what a cartoon movie premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons yes for 10 bucks a month you get

all the five dollar things and our monthly coverage of an animated feature film this summer we have been covering pixar films four of them in a row we started with toy story 4 we continued on to the incredibles we then covered a bug's life and this month we're wrapping it up with cars a very important film to pixar's history that has some secrets that only recently came out about its production. Learn all about that and tons more if you sign up at the $10 level of patreon.com slash talking simpsons. We covered everything from Akira to a goofy movie in the last five years. We have so many films talked about often for over six hours including our longest podcast ever six and a half hours about who framed Roger Rabbit.

You, I know, are going to love at least a few of the films, if not all of them, that we've covered at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So please, check it all out for yourself today. but yes the staple center i've been there a number of times and yes i have been four different times in a skybox for your game industry bribe i know bob it was entirely for the purposes of previewing a video game it's like i needed to be in Disneyland to see that new Star Wars game. Yes. I couldn't understand it if I wasn't there. You know, everybody else, my defense is, and of course it's bougie and embarrassing to talk about, but my defense was everybody else who was senior to me at the games website

got to take all the great trips. They got to go to fucking Hawaii and Rome to see Capcom games. I didn't get to do those, but nobody wanted to take the pro wrestling trips i did i wanted to i loved it so that was the only opulent trips i got to take all year uh and for four years in a row the wwe video game would be shown in los angeles and they would have the summerSlam wrestling event at the Staples Center, which is where the LA Lakers play. And they got us a free skybox every time for all of us to sit in. This is very well observed of how it feels to be in a skybox. So basically you have a huge hotel suite with a TV that's showing the thing live on the television. You get the feed that's on the big TVs. And then if you go to the edge of it

then you can sit in your little box but everything inside of it is just so fancy and nice that i was the guy like you guys you're missing the wrestling sitting in the seats as everybody was behind me just like put down that lobster exactly yes it was really great i would never pay for skybox skybox is so expensive it's one of those things that only exists for rich assholes to expense their companies to pay for oh absolutely that's clients it's not for people to actually buy and i i took some of these things when i was in the same kind of jobs like um i had to go preview a new pokemon game right and i didn't have a car. So Nintendo sent a limo to pick me up to preview a Pokemon game to drive from Berkeley to wherever Nintendo's headquarters used to be in

the South Bay. Yeah. They were in like Redwood Shore. Yeah. Yeah. A limo. Now that's crazy. Wow. I have had cars pick me up, but they were in the executive level on a Lyft or Uber or whatever, but never a limo. But wow, man. I mean, the free food in it was great, though. And there was sushi. And there weren't massages. There weren't paintings. But there was tons of free stuff, though.

When really I think about it, like, oh, boy, all this free stuff. I maybe ate $40 of food and $30 of drinks. You bring Tupperware. I think on my first time I actually did stuff some things in pockets and then I realized like they're going to look down on me at this afterwards. Then I knew I was doing the job for too long that by the fourth time I was in a skybox, I was like, you're in a skybox. Oh boy. How nice. But yeah, this is accurate to Staples Center skyboxes of the era.

I don't get this hatred of hockey, though. Is it even... Just an American chauvinist opinion. Maybe especially in Los Angeles. So like, oh, I thought this was tickets to a Lakers game, but it's to a Kings game or whatever, especially. But yes, everybody in our first clip here, after the heartbreak of learning about hockey, they head upstairs, walk past all the schnooks getting punched in the stomach.

This guy looks like Rich Hall. He looks like a caricature of Rich Hall, which is who Moe's design is based on. He does have a real upturned nose. The big guy who's punched him, you're right. Look him up, folks. But this is when the family enjoys their opulence. Wow, it's so fancy. It's like Moby's house on Cribs.

Paint your portrait, sir. Can you paint me knocking out Larry Holmes? Certainly. Don't hit my face. Okay, where do you want it? I don't know. Work the stomach. Mmm. That takes me back.

Check out those non-Skybox losers watching hockey without sushi. If you can call that hockey. Hi, I'm just looking down his nose at us. Let's take Mr. Figgy Pudding down a peg. Otto, what are you waiting for? Get your ass on my neck. Get your ass on my neck. Yeah, so one thing I forgot to mention that you saw something

about the staples center now it's the crypto.com arena i read this hilarious tweet somebody was saying because the crypto.com arena is in creed 3 in the future people are going to see that and think it's satire oh right yes that's so true they have to put they put it in the movie because it's real yeah but crypto.com probably paid a shitload of money to be put in the creed movie that's so fun you're right people think like what a silly joke about 2023 did we get to the moby line that was it okay yes uh before he was pretending that he once dated natalie portman moby was known for his appearance on cribs the first episode of cribs and i think ozzy osbourne was also on that episode and i believe the popularity of that is what spawned

the osbournes like oh we want to see more of these people i think you're right yeah that i mean because sharon osbourne is one of the best managers in entertainment history that the second that thing came out like oh everybody loves seeing you around the house like well we could make this an entire thing and by the time this episode airs the osbournes are so big that they were a joke in this episode yeah and i was looking more into that it is i think to this date the highest rated program mtv ever showed on their network yeah wow that is amazing it was around this time i was working in uh retail and we were selling osbournes bobbleheads and other merchandise it was so big it was sharing yeah

you're too articulate yeah there you go now he can only do commercials laying down i think i just i just watched him in some playstation commercial i was gonna say he was in some video game commercial it's like you he does not have the capacity for this it's elder abuse yeah they can do it now uh but yeah the movie i was uh i was a regular viewer of cribs i liked watching cribs it was fun it's fun to watch the people who make music talk about their or television shows talk about their fancy houses and but it became a thing unto itself where like by season two or three i think it was one of the blink 182 guys but they went to somebody's house and then when he was showing off his fancy fridge he's like and we have a bottle

of crystal in here that's because i saw other people have it on cribs so i was like i guess i better buy that i think this joke from marge is even an adr joke so it's not like what they originally wrote but i like the joke because i mean it's it's like a joke about marge shouldn't have this information but if you actually see the episode moby has what seems like a very expensive uh dwelling in manhattan i take it but inside it is very very spartan so it's not opulent at all but i was skimming through it and i saw he does have an autographed a mac greening drawing of homer that's personalized that to me feels like that's why they adr that in there as kind of a wink back to like oh you talked about what a simpsons fan you are of ours so why don't we like give a little

a little pat on the back back to you mo Moby? Like maybe they were thinking they were going to get Moby on the show around this time. But there's a second episode with Moby in 2005, and that's when he has a very nice house. Yeah, I pulled up this episode, the first one. I didn't rewatch the second one. I pulled up the first one, which the only place I found it was on like an old Facebook video. Somebody up. Oh, that's what I saw, too.

That's how I saw it, too. And in that, I kept waiting for like, where's his secret fridge full of his brand of tea honest tea all right but i was like i realize now oh that's in the second one he did but yeah he's trying to act he's intentionally trying to act like oh i just have like ikea furniture everything looks cheap here but it's like this is a three-story apartment in manhattan with a skylight like this is a fucking penthouse like this i suppose this isn't a mcmansion in beverly hills but this is very rich moby and it makes it more annoying that he's trying to joke about how oh i'm i'm not like a one of these crazy rich musicians like yes you are your songs are in every car commercial you're

very rich well he bought a very nice house and larry holmes i feel like i should know more about him but i had to do research for the first time on this guy for his brief appearance in this episode and i don't want to uh you know speculate too much but it does sound like aljean has a story to tell about him that he's not saying where they he quickly says oh he was very nice and then just kind of awkwardly laughs and they move on i forget what the exact wording was but it feels like oh was he hard to work with was he hard to direct they they ask like oh how i remember it is like they say oh and larry holmes how was he al but as they're saying how was he i goes al just goes fine yes yes that's it it's a very quick fine that is incredibly loaded. Yes. But they've had trouble with boxers in the past, too.

Who was the boxer in Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes? That's Joe Frazier. Yeah, yeah. And he was having a hard time with those lines. So maybe it was the same thing. These guys get hit in the head all the time. Yeah, it's not their fault. Like, yeah, they're aging boxers who got, you know, the equivalent of a car crash to

their brain, like a hundred times a fight. A brief bio of him, very brief, because he's had a very long career. One of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. Still alive at 73. He's known best for defeating Muhammad Ali and former Simpsons guest Jerry Cooney in the early 80s. But Otto knocked him out. Is this one of the first Simpsons guests to have beaten up another Simpsons guest? Oh, okay. I think so. Was Andy one of the first Simpsons guests to have beaten up another Simpsons guest?

Oh, okay. I think so. Was Andy Dick ever on The Simpsons? Because John Lovett still kicked his ass. Oh, that's right. Man, I don't... Hopefully they've avoided Andy Dick. At the Mission Hill live show, I'm going to be talking about this every podcast, guys. But they in person told the story we knew that Scott Menville's character was almost Andy Dick.

Oh, that makes perfect sense. And when they say it in the live audience they said and it was almost andy dick in the audience i was in in seattle went good and they're like yeah we're lucky we didn't hire andy he was on the show season 18's yokel cord well there you go okay so it won't be till season 18 that another character uh this this beating up thing but at least Larry Holmes and Jerry Cooney got a lot of money for it. And that was a fight that intentionally promoted by Don King with heavy racial overtones. I forgot about that. So we don't have time to cover his whole career, but he initially retired at 86, but he kept coming out of retirement to the point where his last match was on July 27th, 2002.

So he was fighting before. So he recorded this and then he had a fight and then it was all over. That's crazy. Well, I mean, that's also crazy because what made Larry Holmes famous is that he beat Muhammad Ali in one of Muhammad Ali's final fights, which was depressing to watch because looking back on it, Ali should not have been allowed to fight. It was obvious he shouldn't have been allowed to fight and he's basically beating up a man with early Parkinson's like it's it's horrible to see and so that was the lesson to everybody that no boxer

ever learns because they run out of money and they got to keep fighting but everybody always said after that like look you don't want to end up like Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes always felt horrible about that he didn't want to beat up his childhood hero and apparently the only guy to ever knock him out was mike tyson oh wow i should realize those two fought each other but yeah i mean i'm sure there's a lot more to know about him but that's who he is and he has two lines and he doesn't give a very funny performance where he lets a child hit him in the stomach his delivery of that takes me back do you think they called other people before him do you do you think it was a different boxer in do you think it was mike tyson maybe it was mike tyson at first i think he was uh he was was he still fighting he was getting back into the

business then yes yeah he was the bite fight was 97 or something right yeah so he's he's on his way to his fight with lennox lewis which was the last serious fight he had i think i wish they could tell whatever story they were saying with their homes if this was a season three commentary they'd have just told it but by season 14 al jean has now heard enough back from people who hear the commentaries he's like ah shit i can't air the dirty laundry on the commentaries anymore you know if mike reese was there they'd say it yeah you're right al gene is too afraid he still has to work in the business he he's playing nice another very 2002 joke is auto after he gets his ass on mo's neck uh he says i

smell vinaigrette i'm getting closer or whatever that is a very 2002 joke because that the joke about vinaigrette was also in the 30 iron chef for futurama in which that was a new trendy thing now vinaigrette is the standard dressing you get on every salad every restaurant you have to ask for other things you have to ask for like the no i want 500 calories of ranch dressing on i think they'll kick you out now if you ask for ranch if you're not eating pizza they'll be like what the fuck that was a reason i didn't love salads as a kid because i thought salad meant you had to have i didn't like the the goopy sauce the dressing i hated salad dressing i i much prefer a light vinaigrette on on a side salad than a lot of

dressing i turned to mr paul newman for his light raspberry vinaigrette 35 calories per tablespoon that sounds delicious i've never tried this man even from beyond the grave paul newman's helping us out um well also the chocolate fondue they pour on everybody they call it fudge but it definitely looks like a fondue pot to me there was there was a chocolate fondue pot at least once in the skybox i was in we're not doing communal melted food anymore after the pandemic are we i bet they've made a comeback now actually i bet you the chocolate fountains came back i bet you you go to a las vegas uh a las vegas buffet you're seeing a chocolate fountain that everybody dips their fingers into even yes it's disgusting so yeah they they pour homer horribly injures many people and we hear that he just got the gum out of his armpits uh poor mo uh and then i hate this

joke about gummy sue it makes me sad i've i love that just they're happy about it because cletus is like a people tooth a people tooth is a fun way to put they i guess really it's just they hold on gummy sue so long her smile that's the part that makes me his family's expanding because we have uh cletus we have diabetes and now we have Diabety, and now we have Gummy Sue. And I thought Gummy Sue, apparently she doesn't say any more lines in the show after this. She's in the group shots, but not a regular appear. Her saying, I look like Britney Spears. This was a time to make fun of Britney Spears again, where we're mocking her. It's beginning of a mean time for old Britney Spears.

So we cut back everybody bart's getting like a shave from the the barber from the shorts i feel like it should be a fancy stylist not not like the regular barber you know we just recorded this we recorded lisa the beauty queen i forgot to mention the barber from the tracy ellman show is one of the judges that's very distracting yeah and there's like a plumber next to him it's like you just choose four random characters no one had oversight over this and especially in season 14 if you're seeing the shorts barber he is incredibly distracting yeah and is he using a strop oh here we're not seeing the strop he's we're just seeing the straight razor usage right there and marge is luxuriating in a hot tub homer's getting a massage i also love when lisa says

she can't take this she wants to be among the other folks that homer says watch your stupid eagles concert he forgot even what they're there for it is kind of a shrug but i do like when homer scene ends with him saying whatever and you know what the eagles they just announced a farewell tour which we'll see how much of an actual farewell tour it is but i was just i've talked many times about it i read an update about the elton john tour which he apparently did just have what he says is the official last stop of that uh farewell tour though he apparently has already said caveats of like well i did say this is a tour but like if i just perform in like one place like that's not a tour i'm not touring i just went to a place he's

five years younger than joe biden who was our president i think elton john can sing a song every once in a while right i think yeah well especially with all the modern medicine he's got access to and who knows how good the eagles are going to be on there uh well hearing them sing take it easy for uh you know a 700 ticket will that be worth it never cared for them did the big lebowski poison them on you i think i disliked them before that i heard eagle songs on the radio but i don't know when i first heard them or knew this is the band the eagles i think my parents might have had some there was an eagles renaissance in the 90s i think they had the big album from the 90s and they heard i listened to it a lot it was their big live album that was definitely a favorite of our of our parents generation and i definitely remember seeing the music video for

the live performance of hotel california a lot of times on vh1 and then of course there was the fun story about how they all hated each other so much that in their eagles tour at least back then that the stage would be specifically sectioned off to each of them having their section and no one was allowed to enter it's like a sitcom plot uh but so lisa heads down to watch the game and i'll also say when i've seen pro wrestling shows in arenas i actually enjoyed seeing the wrestling among the regular seats more than being cut off in the skybox i did actually prefer it but lisa heads down this is when she coaches a russian player the five hole actually is the accurate term for the spot between the goalie's legs so she's using the real one and this is when a an appreciative russian player

hands lisa a gift this is a joke you'll find me down with the real fans standing ankle deep in beer and blood. Fine, watch your stupid Eagles concert. It's a hockey game. Whatever. Hey, Kozlov, aim for the five hole. He's got an opening the size of Red Square. Thank you, mouthy American child. Pleased to take my hockey tree. Ooh, come on, Lisa.

It's time to go. But the game's not even over. They've already told the Skybox fans who's going to win. Yeah, go, Isotopes! I really like that they remembered that Lisa is good at hockey. I think it's the first time since Lisa on Ice that they called back to that. It's quickly gone after this, but yeah, it's nice to be reminded of that. I mean, also because her position was goalie as well.

She knows what makes a goalie vulnerable. When they hand her the stick and she holds it up, on my first rewatch of this was like wait is this an episode about lisa being good at hockey again yeah it's this has so many misdirects it's not even worth playing the unexpected act one jingle yeah it's like homer is crushed by a pipe so he wins tickets to a skybox and at the game lisa gets a hockey stick that has evil russian termites that eat their house and because of that they need a place to live so they have to go on a reality show it takes nine minutes to get to that also though the ussr has been gone for like a decade now and we're still having red square i mean i guess red square still exists but this is a very stereotypical joke i do like that skybox fans are so fancy that they get to know the final score before the end of the game it means every game is fixed i like that implication and that the ice otopes is a good that's clever it's clever

they're right to be proud of it on the commentary so then they head home bart is jealous uh which i thought like oh is this an episode about bart being jealous no nope it's it's just for the easy gag of bart having a memory ruined i guess guess. And I mean, the nail through the photo of Bart in his crotch is pretty fun. And his heart and his crotch. That's Homer adds more nails. One more nail. But then termites break out. So then it's like, oh, it's termites.

And I guess the player needed to be Russian because they are revealed to be Russian termites as well. No wood nicks. That's a Rocky and Bullwinkle joke, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. chin termites as well no wood nicks that's a rocky and bullwinkle joke right absolutely absolutely but hey i like because we just covered it on our podcast a bug's death that's great what funny timing to have a bug i mean bug's life was like a four-year-old movie at this point but yeah it's uh it's also funny because this silverman reacts to it because he had just worked at pixar when he came back on the series around this time

uh but yes we i wish i wish he was colored like flick but i would bet that was their legal team saying you can't color it the bug like then it's not a parody we find out why homer keeps hiring these people these are no ordinary termites what you've got here are russian no wood nicks can you save our house okay but in order to kill these bugs, I've got to live like a bug, think like a bug, become a bug. Why do you always hire the cheapest guy? I go by how funny the sign is. What a great explainer that all this time, Homer always hires people with funny signs on their car because he chooses them intentionally.

That's a great guy. It's one of those things like how the future now looks like Blade Runner because Blade Runner had such a great production design. I feel like I've seen so many stores with jokey names now, and I feel like this is the result of 30 years of The Simpsons. For sure, yeah. Everybody's like, oh, we all have to have a funny, silly name for things. I'm thinking of a nearby eye exam place that's called Sight for Sore Eyes.

That could be like a season three Simpsons store name. You know, I think it's not clever enough. Season two. Season two. Season two, yeah, sure. It's right up there with Candy Most Dandy, that kind of name. Howard's Flowers. You used it as your opening clip, the,

what a margeless way to start my flanderific day that's a very silly and how flanders should be saying hey your house is falling apart you know like you have a big hole in your living room he chooses to look at the positive side like he gets to see marge you're right he's he is complimenting her yeah and also i like that bark calls their home our crap house and so then they set up the tent they the the simpsons love jokes about fumigation tents and i feel like this joke for the circus it takes a little too long yeah i really feel like it should have ended when we hear the thuds of them passing out and just imply all three bullies are dead in the house dave merkin

would have let you assume they were dead. This shows you they're lightening things up. They're like, no, no, have them be taken out. But also speaking of things that I think are misremembered, Al Jean, I think, misremembered something that I cited on a previous commentary. On Bart versus Lisa versus the third grade, he had mentioned that they changed a line about james coburn to lee marvin because james coburn had died right around when it aired but i think he got it

mixed up with this i think the lee marvin was the original line in bart versus lisa worth the third grade and in this one this airs like coburn dies on november 18th this airs right after and you have a poison bottle with James Coburn's face on it like I can see why they were probably pulling at their collar like oh this joke means something different now yeah I guess I guess the history of it was they replaced it for the original airing but then they went back to Coburn for reruns in the DVD and this is not a very Dana Gouldy episode but the idea of James Coburn on a bottle of poison feels like Dana Gould to me that is definitely a Gould it feels like gould to me as well yeah but that story though isn't told on this one so i think on the third grade story he tells that was them

that was him mixing it up of which one he changed the coburn thing also i think this was much like their sopranos parody i think this was their attempt to go viral before that word was viral with another lengthy opening parody which in this case they do the 32nd version of the king of the hill opening with they don't really add jokes they just replace characters from the opening they didn't parody the song they got permission from somebody i mean i guess it was just fox asking permission from fox yeah and i also think i mean it's kind of acute is what i'll call it and i love king of the hill obviously we do the podcast about it on the patreon but i feel like it's also a slam on king of the hill where the opening happens and humber goes ah that was boring yeah yeah i i wonder the way he says that was boring

it could be read as him saying like i was a dumb idea to parody that but it could be them saying like oh it's boring to the king of the hill is a boring show actually compared to the simpsons and i think that's also why aljean gets a little uncomfortable when mike reese talks about on the record how much he hates king of the hill because aljean's like i'm trying to fucking work with these guys and get their song in my episodes why are you saying this shit and give me trouble i honestly i mean it was a popular show that had a following and i watched from the beginning but i think the impression was king of the hill is boring until it started airing on adult swim and people new generations were seeing

it again or seeing it for the first time and people were watching it again realizing oh this show is very funny and absurd and it's not the boring show i thought it was people finally are getting it even though mike reese i still don't think it's i think he was thinking about family guy when he called him a hank hill home with glasses there's no way he could have been talking about king of the hill the only reason i could understand him hating on king of the hill is that in a certain way fox executives decided to do king of the hill instead of a critic season three like i get it yeah budget wise they chose one over the other i would love it if they both coexisted but i think season one of king of the hill is way better than what season three a critic would have been we did the critic season two they

are running on fumes they really are yeah i think there's like five a few good men parodies and a clip show yeah and a clip show i think that was forced on them though sure but they were running out of steam and meanwhile king of the hill season one is actually like a maybe the best season one cartoon show ever had. Yeah, next to Futurama, I'll say. Yeah. Both very strong. I'd say those two 13 episodes are pretty evenly matched in quality. But yeah, they then they decide they're going to go to a hotel.

But this is when the brand producers convention is taking up every hotel in town. Another weird synchronicity. This is the return of ye olde off-ramp in not seen since lisa the beauty queen it's really weird to be recording this one with lisa the beauty queen because also mark kirkland directed both of those two and both episodes end with a joke about homer signing a contract right yeah also ye olde off-ramp in it was homer and marge's destination in the first aired episode it's where they go to have sex. It's such an important place in the series. And it's also where Gulliver Dark performs in Homer's Night Out.

Wow. Man, it's way more than I remember. Much more than the singing sirloin. The brand producers, I like that it is... Yeah, this is very funny. It's very funny, yeah, that they are using a very like they're talking about something important and it just says i'll be on it i'll tell you the truth we haven't had a great idea since raisin bran so someone stop him it's a great he's crazy he's crazy yeah it's like

he's been holding this in he's got to let the entire industry know we are flawed let's be honest everybody also was thinking of this because there's going to be a couple days where i need to stay in a hotel in berkeley to make moving out of this place a lot easier and i can expense it um so i've been looking at hotels in berkeley to stay in and yeah i was just thinking like oh man what if there's a brand producer convention here and i'd be fucked over lisa suggests going to a hostel i've told the story many times but I have stayed in a hostel once in in Osaka Japan and it was interesting there definitely were European tourists there though no Germans told me to not take my parks for granted I've said before but like I have never shared a bathroom with a woman it was strange to walk through European college girls like

primping their hair after the shower in the communal shower I was like this feels weird i've never been around a woman like this some people would call that a fantasy you know for me it was just like strange i was just like hey i know some people it would be the joke of saying this is wasted on me as a game look at them in there washing their bodies uh so then i was quoting the simpsons by the way yes that's one of my favorites. That's the best joke of the episode. Homer is so mad at her as he's peeping on her in the shower. But they then try going to a couple other homes before they finally get to the place that is the entire point of the episode. Why don't we stay at a youth hostel? I do not want another lecture from a German backpacker

about how we don't appreciate the national park system. I know. We'll stay with my very best friend in the world, Lanny. Hi, Simpsons. That's Lanny? Oh, I wanted the black one. Wow, Lanny, your apartment is stunning. So how do you afford such a sweet pad?

What the hell was that? Oh, I share a common wall with a highlight court. That's just the sound of the pelota hitting the front on. I find it soothing. Thanks for letting us stay with you. Oh, please. It is such an honor to host our favorite family and you came at an exciting time i'm chairing a meeting of the galactic un my apologies the paint is still wet on ambassador farfoon that fully for the highlight ball hitting

the wall uh it's great it's really that's why i laughed the first time i heard it because i was imagining lenny just closing his eyes and smiling as the ball comes flying at his head his i mean the look on his face as it's bad as it's bouncing off of his face in the glass over and over and it shows that the players are aiming for him in their way of like i hate this guy uh god i really love that joke it's also where the only deleted scene that's on the dvd for the episode and it is very short it's just marge says oh man i love this place lenny i should clean it sometime lisa says mom you're already cleaning and marge looks in her hand without knowing it has started like wiping up a spill uh but yeah i like that homer homer still doesn't know that lenny is not the black one um but But Lenny's apartment does look really nice.

It's right up there with Moby's multi-story loft apartment. Homer didn't have the Lenny white, Carl black thing on his hand. He washed it off at some point and he's paying the price. Calling Carl the black one is very funny. Yeah, and that he wanted the black one. So it's the opposite of racism too. Now, when Common Book Guy calls The Simpsons our favorite family, and that he wanted the black one so it's the opposite of racism too now when comic book guy calls the simpsons our favorite family that's a reference to what online people used to call the

simpsons and in like posts and stuff in fact i wrote the description that you see of our podcast on like different platforms and i included the phrase our favorite family as a reference to the olden days of the internet they would they would they abbreviate it as off wow so that's why that's why comic book guy says that because yes he isn't being comic book guy the character who knows the simpsons as other people in town he is fully being the online avatar who talks about the simpsons as our favorite family that's so funny but now we have more time to write the simpsons but you would see posts on news groups like oh i love the one where OFF went to Cypress Creek or whatever. I see.

Okay. Wow. I didn't realize it was such an insider term. I mean, I knew I definitely read it in articles and stuff. And I thought it was, you know, it's like how people say, like, you can't write the word Sonic the Hedgehog over and over again in an article. So you write the blue, the blue blur or whatever bullshit so i figured our favorite family was when you used it it was also just ironically of like oh it's what the new york times would put the third time but i didn't realize it was specifically about the online terminology definitely news group people and the springfield nuclear power plant uh website would

use it a lot though what's so wrong with Guy's home? I don't understand this at all. I'm looking around. There's no Ambassador Farfoon. I don't have the standees up yet. There's a Pete's dragon. I am afraid of that. No, I mean- Wait, why do you have that?

I'm noticing it for the first time. Oh, it's from the Electric Light Parade. Oh, okay. It's a special Pete's dragon. What's his name? Oh, boy. Man, I forget. I just named him Pete's dragon.

The dragon who belongs to Pete. dragon. What's his name? Oh boy. I forget. I just named him Pete's dragon. The dragon who belongs to Pete. Yeah. It was a gift to my husband after we enjoyed the return of the electronic light parade at Disneyland. There are two Thanos fists and I feel like you fill those with soda. They're meant to hold a cup of soda. I can't name anything. I'm just trying to name the most embarrassing things.

Howard the Duck is here. I love that. You're naming all the Disneyland things. Yes. I was, imagine, you know, six, seven years ago, they didn't sell Howard the Duck things at Disneyland. It was special to see it. But look, that's a fancier thing over there.

You can name the- Nosca? Yeah. No, the Lapidug thing. Oh, that's not Lapidug. Right, right. That's cool. But yes, look, I joke when I i say why is it shown to be so

weird that it houses full of trinkets and memorabilia but you set me up for this yeah no i believe you me we are excited to have a two-bedroom apartment soon to better spread out things and better display of our our toys i'm surprised they just made up a guy called farfoon and didn't just say oh that's a dalek or whatever right yeah yeah or like oh i just finished painting my twi'lek dancer but she's not there i at least it wasn't a jar jar joke like they did with him earlier oh that's true that'd be shittier yeah and and uh sadly i know all about high lie because my father loved to gamble on it oh okay i guess you can gamble on that too it was uh at least in the 90s a big thing to gamble on it. Oh, okay. I guess you can gamble on that too. It was, at least in the 90s, a big thing to gamble on. Really?

How do you do that? Just is it like off-track high-lye betting? Yeah, basically it's piped in, or this is how it was at the dog track in the 90s when I would go with my dad. They had a separate high-lye betting station? Pretty much. So, okay, you're sat at your chair and you're waiting for the next race to start. And basically you can get like three or four races in an hour.

What if you want to compulsively gamble more? I want to gamble my other gambling to end. Well, so in this pre-internet time, you have a little TV in front of you that's playing closed circuit live highlight matches, usually from a Spanish speaking country where they're playing it. And it's just, okay, which of these guys will score the most points in this match that basically takes less than five minutes. It's about the speed.

You get to gamble on a score-based thing that happens really fast, meaning you can really fit in a lot of gambling. I would see it in closed circuit, and then on a particularly sad night of a family trip, the day before our cruise, we have to spend the night in miami and all my dad wants to do in miami is make us all go to a live highlight game and we have to be there for three hours oh my lord yes oh my god well your dad should be happy to know that you can just not even leave the house and ruin your life with gambling you just pull out your phone uh

every app is there to take your money i believe he's doing that a lot these days with my inheritance staying it and these are the accurate a pelota is the ball used in highlight and a front on is the building in which highlight is played these are all real terms for highlight the coolest thing at that highlight game i went to was when you watch them in their little scoop throw it throw the ball that fast it is crazy like it is crazy to see and they show the like oh this glass is thick but they can still put a crack in it so lenny isn't totally out of danger being next to this highlight wall and by the way the peace dragon is named elliot elliot thank you when i saw footage of that movie i've

never seen it but i always thought that looks like shit like shit. Is it from 1962? No, it's almost from 1980. It's a late 70s movie. That's how behind the times Disney was. Yeah. The only most recent time I thought about Pete's Dragon was when we did Who Framed Roger Rabbit because multiple people worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit only because they had the experience of working on Pete's Dragon. All right. With the live action animation matchup. I with the live-action animation match-up. I hear the live-action remake is good as is the Jungle Book because they didn't just do the movie you like again

but worse. Interesting. Now they've decided that that's not how you remake Disney movies. After Lion King, like, make the same thing but much worse and longer. Yeah, longer. I want that fish looking like a real fish. Hideous. And of course, that makes billions of dollars oh yeah because people love trash i think the little mermaid wasn't i didn't hear that it

was like i'm not reading articles about how it was a failure like dial of destiny or the flash was but i definitely don't think it made lion king money the little mermaid i feel like over some some of overseas countries might not like that mermaid very much. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Or they're not used to seeing that style of mermaid because those kinds of people aren't in their movies. They're taken out. That's usually an excuse in international markets.

I'm not saying they're correct to think that way or anything. Every review I saw of the Little Mermaid remake was this actress deserves better than this shit. Like this is crappy and boring but she's not the problem but yeah so then we cut to them at moe's tavern they're killing time there homer wants to live there but there's funny acting on maggie as a mean drunk i like that and then at eight minutes and 35 seconds that's when the concept of 1900 House finally enters the story. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos.

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When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care which uh is the real thing when you know that it's specifically the 1900 house they're parodying it makes it funnier because it's 1895 meaning their parody is just five years earlier than the real thing that's a good joke this is a real show from the uk from

merry old england yeah so debuted in 1999 on channel 4 in the uk and it was about taking a middle-class british family and making them live in victorian times now that's the spin on it that is a little lost on americans like turn of the century americans imagine that very easily but in england when you say this is victorian era and you tie it to that dumb old bitch queen oh you got her yeah i'm down i'm sick of these fucking royals but anyway so it's about being in victorian london and they rebuild a house to have the gas lamps and the chamber pots and all this stuff and just like in the episode the only technology in there is the cameras that are installed everywhere to film everything while they're doing it.

You know, the Brits are way ahead of the time in terms of making fewer episodes of things because there are 10 episodes of this. Yeah. So it was 10 episodes in England, then squished down into four nights of an hour long episodes to air in America on PBS in the summer of 2000. So it was only two years old when this episode was nearing completion. And yeah, it was the family of Paul and Joyce Bowler, 17-year-old Catherine, 11-year-old twins Hillary and Ruth, and 9-year-old Joe. And they do empty a chamber pot on camera in the opening of it i watched as well nice

apparently according to aljean the dad got it the easiest because he still got to go to his job and then had to come home and do the 1900 stuff but everyone else had to stay home yeah i think that's bullshit because that shows that the british production didn't have the money to pay him to not go to his job for or to make up a fake job for him they're like well we really only had the budget for the house so if you leave the house to earn money it's just got to be your old job but yeah i mean there's shots of the girls brushing her hair and like i smell like shit and i miss modern shampoo and i'm shocked they did a million spinoffs of this of like different years to date they have yet to do what i think they should do the 2000 house which is build a house

now and put children now in it and they're like well this is how it was in the year 2000 you have dial up internet and no uh cell phones and no you're living like a 2000 no tiktok no tiktok no tsa or anything after 9-11 either actually, now I want to live in this 2000 house. You can do 9-11. It could be your terrorist attack. I think these type of, the 2000 house though, maybe it wouldn't work the same now because that's just what YouTube videos are. Just like a kid looks at an 8-track player or whatever like that.

You don't need a whole TV show for it. But yes, it is a very successful series that starts in England. And then on top of the spinoffs from within it, just like in this episode, a million reality show executives are like, oh, I'll rip that off. Let's make everybody go to a colonial town. Let's have it be a town full of kids. Kid town. They watch the British show and tweak the title. Which is a great gag in this episode.

But yes, the family learns about a reality show. Come on, guys, you gotta stay. Tonight's the big cockfight. We can eat the loser. Who wants to eat a loser? Dad, we have to find a place soon. I really have to go to the bathroom, and I'm out of tokens. You know, I heard of a new reality

show where they let you live in a home for free. Oh, yeah. The gimmick is it's a house from 1895, and you gotta do everything like they did back then. 1895? Forget it. We'd be too late to save Lincoln and too early to save Kennedy. You can save McKinley. It's not a time

machine, Moe. But I'm still not sure about this. Hey, if TV can give Michael Malley a home, it can give us one. Oh, my God. Michael Malley getting burned. I'd hate to be Michael Malley right now. Man, what a mean joke. I definitely have the thought of

every time I still see him in anything on TV, I'm like, wow, he's still getting work, Michael Malley. Old Mr. Guts. See, we have so much affection for him because he was the host of Guts

when we were kids. So we love Michael Malley. I have affection for Mo, to be fair. Mo! Yeah. I have affection the way he said

mo she's a very prolific voice actor now oh i didn't know that yeah i just heard her on the podcast the ride she did oh yeah yeah it's really great because uh she she went on our friends podcast right they're great they had her on because i believe her daughter it was a listener of the show and said oh they talked all about you on the show you should come on and she has so many funny stories about filming guts in orlando at universal and she does not pull any punches about like oh yeah we were treated like shit and we were non-union actors it was awful like i love that she was ready to just dispel any positives people childhood memories they might have i don't know what their deal with o'malley was though because he wasn't on a sitcom currently uh he had a one season sitcom in 99 and he was the lead on the freshly canceled primetime sitcom baby blues the animated one which recently aired its unaired

episodes on adult swim right right as of this as of this show's airing like it was one of those things like mission hill in which the networks that showed the shows would not finish airing like it was one of those things like mission hill in which the networks that showed the shows would not finish airing them so adult swim had new in quotes episodes baby blues had like a first season that apparently went well for them and then by the time the second season would have aired they decided like nah don't want it exactly this is what i wanted to bring up warner brothers is really doing this a lot these days but they were doing it 23 years ago because according to the comic creator the guy who does baby blues the newspaper strip there was an entire second season produced the only thing left to do was to score it it was just thrown away and never aired 13 episodes probably

like 20 million dollars worth of animation and voice acting and everything just never seen baby blues is not that good but it deserves to be seen somewhere people it's not sammy yeah people people made it and it hurts their resumes to not see yeah i it makes me sad but at least i know that today isn't so unique in how this happens because even specifically with warner the killing of shows would be like nah don't want to watch it like we'd have never seen mission hill could have ended up the same way it could have been like the unaired episodes of desmond pfeiffer if thankfully adult swim was able to just buy from warner and be like can we just pay pennies on the dot that's what bill oakley said he said pennies on the dollar for it basically

yeah i wonder did jeff martin who is co-showrunner of the baby blue show have say like oh michael bally's a dick let's make fun of him. You know, we have his email address. He's answered our questions before. We got to ask Jeff Martin, is there a season two of Baby Blues? Do you have it? Can you tell us anything about it? People need to know.

Yeah. You think we'd be the first people to ask about that? Maybe. Maybe the second. The first person to ask was the comic strip creator. But now this does happen with like literally every show. Now you hear about streaming shows not just with animation usually you'd hear this with animation because you need uh you to really get the scripts ready ahead of time like for instance mission hill thought they

were going to get six extra episodes so that's or five extra episodes so that's why they have five unproduced scripts the nowadays apparently with streaming shows they're like you start writing season two as soon as you finish season one and if you get canceled which likely will happen these are just incomplete scripts they paid people for they even do that with live action shows now we're like no start writing season two right now like before it even airs and will we cancel your show two days after it debuts maybe so but we want that season two script right now it feels to me like they thought that this the sign gags weren't funny enough so they added in the the michael bally joke later yeah because we get ads for fake reality shows which honestly aren't too crazier than what we have today which

is like tied to a bear uh mystery injection sucker punch sucker punch is basically jackass yeah no and tied to a bear is also a jackass sketch oh it is okay they did it in the most recent movie they did that and then mystery injection that's just youtube videos now like jake paul has probably done that like 10 times on his shitty channel but it's not their fault that satire so quickly outstripped reality in in reality programming but yes this is when the family meets the executive uh who explains how he just ripped it off from a danish production which now executives don't even try this hard they just have the algorithm tell them what to rip off they don't even watch a show to rip off what do people want to see let me know computer

but i hear that executive jobs are being replaced by computers now which is great i feel like they are the most replaceable by computers because they just turn on a computer and ask it what shows they should make yes i hope they all end up jobless soon enough if every writer is going to end up jobless i hope the executives do at least two again this was in the third season of barry not the most recent season a character gets their show canceled like the morning after it debuts and the executive just goes like well the algorithm says people don't like this and you're not eating food in this one scene and they say that the algorithm says that and then the character who just had their show canceled just explodes of like why did you give me nine months of fucking notes if this

is just gonna be the algorithm cancels us but yeah they speak of things that are different now oh boy yes i think it's like the third time dan casanova has done a cosby impression on here al gene loves his cosby impression and it's funny it's he's great at it it is funny i get it if you look at the timeline of uh what was happening to bill cosby in 2002 not happy things not this is around when the lawsuits were happening oh but little bill yes little bill no we were all distracted nobody i we are all guilty as a society for not paying attention to this stuff and just listen but i mean he was such a powerful man he could hide the allegations very well even when taken to court he got people to not report on it or people would

choose not to report on it because he was so powerful and on top of that it was a very misogynistic time where people like this woman's probably lying to get money like all women do it's horrible horrible to remember and yeah his second show cosby i mean second like sitcom cosby it went from 96 to 2000 but it was bill cosby and felicia rashad but as different characters and i love the cosby show but i couldn't watch that because it just felt too weird like i don't know you people they had squiggle vision episodes of that show too they did squiggle vision did a couple like there were episodes where i remember stopping on the channel because i saw squiggle vision i didn't watch the whole episode but like cosby's telling some story about how he met his wife or whatever and for the flashback they do it in dr cat style squiggle

vision it's crazy oh and by the way i just found this out felicia rashad who played claire huxtable uh fantastic actress uh i liked her in that show in the 70s she had a disco album when her name was uh felicia allen and the album's name is called josephine superstar that's nuts i had no clue she did that and it's on if you want to listen to it's all on youtube you said you mentioned that cosby show that he was just on at the time and that's why this joke is about like oh cosby's looking for work again that he's off tv and him also him complaining about the softcore porn i think is their version of the scold bill cosby that he is becoming at this point which would lead to hannibal burris's amazing joke that changed america but anyway that cosby show this is a funny story i've heard scott ackerman tell he knew a writer who wrote for that older 90s cosby show, this is a funny story I've heard Scott Aukerman tell. He knew a writer who wrote for that older 90s Cosby show.

And on Cosby, apparently a writer wrote a scene where Cosby's character goes to an ATM. And Cosby apparently took the writer aside and said, you can't just make up stuff. Like, these aren't real. Like, why? You can't just make up an ATM machine that spits out money. Like, he was literally so out of touch. He did not know an ATM existed. atm existed like i mean this is not a fantasy show son yes yeah it it was uh it was a funny story back when you tell funny stories about

bill cosby but anyway oh sorry i forgot about one thing oh yeah the writer i think is bill freiberger his name he wrote one episode of the simpsons we talked about it a while ago and i follow him on twitter for some reason and working on the cosby show was one of the first things he did as a very young person like just right out of college and he was like cleaning out his closet he was he was like posted without comment it was like a teddy bear with the logo of the show on it oh boy yeah that has to go that's go pretty cheap these days i think it's a collector's item they're not making that anymore i mean the harlan crowe can make that his next collection. Yes.

The Cosby collection. It's like, well, I got all the Hitler stuff. You know, he wants to work with another monster now who's a conservative monster, just the type of guy you'd like to work with. I need a statue of Cosby to remind myself that I hate him. This is when the family officially gets to move to 1895 after Bill Cosby fails. We need a family that hasn't been on TV forever. Let's try The Simpsons. I like what I'm seeing in there.

Stop it! I'll teach you to whistle on the Sabbath! They go to pieces over nothing. They're perfect for reality TV. Where's that kid with my latte? He's not coming! Is he? Is he? Welcome to your home for the next six months.

Oh, man, I can't wear this. I look like Buster Brown. Whoever that is. Oh, you look adorable, Lisa. Your school chums are going to be so jealous of your little outfit. God, I wish I had that little outfit. Yeah, those golden curls are to die for. There's a lot of good jokes in there.

Yeah, I love that mislead about how they're just jealous of bart and his little outfit i love that bart references buster brown and then admits he has no clue who that is like whoever that is it's also very quaint them complaining about the show being on tv forever 20 years ago oh jesus god they're not even halfway to where they are now but yeah it's them yeah it's more jokes than them recognizing how far they've gone or also i did like earlier i meant to say it the joke of homer just being unnecessarily mean to mo like mo's being so nice and homer's like it's not a time machine mo like who wants to eat a loser like he's just so mean but yeah bart's buster brown design is very cute and i also think that it could have been a crappy joke in something else of like where's my latte by a

character who's now becoming a hollywood phony but homer's sobbing and breaking down makes it makes it good again i do like that uh buster brown i had a moment in my very early life not knowing who buster brown was because um very briefly i had a great grandpa and then he died can you believe it folks because he was born in the early 1900s. But his nickname was Buster because he looked like Buster Brown as a little kid, because he was a little kid around this time period. And because of that, he was known as Buster for the majority of his life. But his little grandchildren couldn't say Buster.

So he was called Grandpa Butts. And so when I was introduced to him, I was told he was Grandpa Butts. And I didn't know what to make of I was told he was Grandpa Butts. And I didn't know what to make of these things, these words being put together. So this one goes out to you, Grandpa Butts. That is an adorable family story. Who died in like 1987 or something. Hey, to make it that long, it's pretty good. He was one of those relatives, the first time you meet them, they're on their deathbed. Oh, that's sad. You're like, don't get too used to this guy, kid. See, and now guys in their 80s

if they're rich enough they can look like harrison ford yeah they're they're starring in dialed destiny movies he they intentionally have a scene of him in his underwear just to show like hey this is what he looks like now he looks better than you look probably like he's it was their way of saying we can still make this can't we no they can't they shouldn't have made it it's bad simpsons related did you see this uh the conan clip that was reposted from the year 2000 where he's talking to harrison ford oh yes yeah yeah but what well i the clip of him saying hey well act wacky or whatever and he's like that one i saw that i was thinking about the one from 23 years ago in which he's telling harrison ford you can be indiana jones your entire life i can see it 20 years

from now indiana jones in the comfortable. And he's like imitating like an elderly Indiana Jones trying to get off of a chair. Harrison Ford is like laughing his ass off. And I'm like, this is what your life became. Wow. That's right. Oh man. I didn't see that part of the clip. It's worth watching man. And now Harrison Ford is yelling at Conan and making fun of him for not being on TV anymore, which is great. That him on the clip. I did see the clip of him on the podcast of going like, what the fuck is a podcast? Harrison Ford's a fun guy to see in interviews because I think he is grumpy, but he also knows people see him as grumpy.

So he plays it up. And on top of that, like he is a master stoner. So he also is like so checked out and just stoned. Oh, absolutely. Was it him who was asked about the red hulk and he was like what the fuck is that i don't know what that is what was he talking about okay so no no no well basically he's taking over a part that was played by william hertz okay in what in the marvel cinematic universe his character is the general who hates

the hulk whose name is uh general thunderbolt ross and he's in the movie the thunderbolts which means it's his team and he owns them and in the comic books they create a character who is the red hulk and the red hulk is secretly at least in the comics revealed to be thunderbolt ross in disguise and so the reveal would be that harrison ford who took over the role they didn't retire it because he's going to be the red hulk and so harrison ford is going to turn into the red hulk that's wow and obviously he would just go like what the fuck are you talking about is this the first time he's done a marvel thing i think it is boy all these old guys just destroying their credibility before they die uh michael keaton harrison ford william hurt robert redford yeah oh redford they

got him too red seemingly the last movie red for a real movie redford is in his avengers endgame i think yes yeah try to talk him into doing a real movie before he dies uh but hurry i think what isn't one of paul newman's last movies cars like that's uh yeah that's that's more dignified than a marvel movie it's just voice acting you know it took him like you know an afternoon maybe three afternoons but yeah yes the family heads over to their 1895 house uh and this you know is very similar to the opening of that show they get told about the testimonials they get told about you know this i mean befell an army helmet you'd like like that, wouldn't you, hippie? That feels like somebody trying to write a Schwarzwalder joke.

That's how it feels to me. But yes, we all know about testimonials now because it's a huge part of reality shows. But I think I first learned about it on The Real World. They always had the assigned testimonial in the testimonial room. It's interesting that like, this is not a unique thought, but reality shows became so popular that sitcoms just mimed the format without making any concessions to their people here filming us, except The Office just kind of barely. But Parks and Rec was let's have the appearance of a reality show, but there's no way this is affect the world in any way at all. Just like we have confessionals.

We don't know who we're talking to. I mean, it's easier joke construction for sure. And that if you get jokes and editing i mean dan harman did entire episodes of community about how he hated it and thought it was a crutch yeah yeah wasn't there just one episode where it was that format or is that they do it more than one they did two episodes no three episodes where yeah abed is the documentarian and everybody is talking to him and they cut away and if you listen to the commentary harman is very clear of like yeah we're showing you how easy it would be if we did the fucking office i could do the office

it'd be easy but what a nice agreeable man and yet turns out he's the easier guy to work with out of rick and morty like yeah i can't believe that uh he's the much more mature member of the staff but yes when marge gets to make her testimonial again they are so into talking about marge dying her hair this season like they they are so into talking about marge dyeing her hair this season like they i know it was used in scenes from a successful marriage but still this is like the second marge dyes her hair in production season 13 what was the other one okay apologies i mixed it up with a recent episode from season 34 oh okay because in season 34 they do a new joke about how marge it is revealed that marge dyes her hair that it went gray with age and that she has to buy you know new new hair dye so

that was a i got it mixed up with a season 34 joke my bad but yeah way they then head to the testimonial and have their first miserable morning behind this door you'll find the one piece of 21st century technology in the whole house. Oooh, please be a melon baller, please be a melon baller. This is your video confessional. You come in here to express your deepest feelings and darkest secrets. My hair isn't really blue. I need that tape! Good morning, ladies.

What's so good about it? It takes six hours to make breakfast now. Hey, you should see how much trouble Dad's having shaving with a straight razor. Finally! I'm no longer a slave to the Gillette Corporation. Why, it says here that President Cleveland has... Great foley on the blood fountains coming out of his face. You can really appreciate it by itself. Though this is the second joke this season of Homer bleeding a ton from his face after shaving.

Though this time it's not cute rainbows. It's just blood. Yeah, from the weed episode. And yeah, that is straight from the documentary, too, that the women are up at like five in the morning to make breakfast. The old-fashioned way. And so they get in a motor car that burns used in scenes from the class struggle of springfield oh yeah i mean some of these these do feel like it feels like a uh swartz welder impersonation but some of these do feel successful like the strange coal-powered car where you slow

down by shoveling less coal less coal less none and then to stop stop shoveling oh yeah and none and this is another great i actually really like this quickie mark joke here oh yeah very funny by orders of the reality channel i must make sure that you only buy items available in 1895 oreos sorry these are from 1896 non-scarring toilet paper dream on urkel o's O's. Delicious, but forbidden. I'll just take these tampons. I don't believe they had those in 1895. Yes, they did. Look closer.

Ooh, 23, screw. So Urkel O's. Apparently, they had a box in the rewrite room as a gag, and they reported that it had the most disgustingly perfumey smell they were horrified by the smell and that people would actually eat this cereal i wondered that us as 90s kids if we smelled it we'd be like that's just how cereal smells all cereal smells fake and and perfumey like this but to them it smells unnatural i mean because it is unnatural yeah i watched the commercial for oraclus have you seen this before no even back in the day no i don't think i did okay well there's a there's a

fun chorus it's like get hercules with hercules and then hercules in the commercial of course and he's like with this cereal i know laura will be mine or whatever but they can't portray the actress playing laura so he's looking at a photo of laura but you actually can't see the photo they wouldn't even pay for the rights or photo. Yes. Yeah. But it's like, it's just strawberry banana Cheerios, basically. I did read Dinosaur Dracula, the very good source on all out of print cereals.

He explained it, that it was not one of his favorites because it was basically fruit loops, but banana and strawberry only. And he hates fake banana flavors. So he says he never, he gave it a poor review. Actually, can you play the commercial? Okay. Oh, my, my, Pat. I created something that'll make you love me.

I got a great new cereal. Can I do that? So hang up your pants while the Urkelows run. We're Urkelies with urkelos strawberry banana fruit flavor so fine just one little bite and i know she'll be mine yeah it's a weird premise for a cereal i mean they didn't try very hard but also urkel's the mascot of the cereal but he's allowed to eat it and he's inferring that if you eat the cereal you'll help him get closer to laura i like that it takes place in universe like it's like

well steve urkel did make this cereal and he knows about it and the only reason he made it is that if it's such a good cereal uh laura will fall in love with him uh boy oh boy i mean he is wearing her down that's the so to get urkel eyes this to fall in love with urkel yeah i mean we were doing the urkel at the time i got the dance yeah no he it was quite a phenomenon it was what followed bart mania though i feel like it was like split between him and dinosaurs the baby like i feel like it was both of them at the same time they shared they shared a tgif night oh that's true yeah sometimes sometimes and it's actually a very good depiction of the urkelos box yeah yeah the first box it barely lasted for a year

but it lasted until the 1992 election and they did a special election box where urkel has like this uncle sam had there's a free urkel for president button inside you can get that's fun so yeah there you have it i like that they don't have enough celebrity branded cereals anymore no too many people get canceled you can't invest in people anymore no you know i see all this fucking mr beast food in my uh when i go to the grocery store i hate seeing that he cares all those people though what a good man uh so 23 skidoo i finally looked this up i'm like what the hell does this mean so 23 skidoo combines two earlier expressions the expression 23 from 1899 so people were just saying 23 for some reason just the word 20 yeah and also skidoo from 1901 both of which independently and separately refer to leaving being kicked out or the end of something so uh

this appeared in 1906 so there are several things that are too late for 1895 including the entertainer which we hear throughout well and also if you look up oreos it's not 1896 it's 1912 yes yes and i also this reminded me that oreos are a ripoff of hydrox which are now way less popular and hydrox are from 1908 i always thought that hydrox were the ripoff of oreos until until the internet age now i this this will sound like somebody being too much of a complainer but if the point is that this is 1895 and they're going to constantly bring up well this thing wasn't there then and they want to be accurate then it bothers me when things are like a decade off here i was like but your point is the joke is it's 1895. It's 1895 specifics.

Like, I don't know, find a cookie that was invented in 1896. You don't have to. Oreos are old, but they're not from 1896. Or make it like 1908 house. Yeah. And you can have more fun with it that way. Yeah, I feel like, I don't know, 1895 house. Put them in a cul-de-sac, I guess I'm saying.

But also on the cereal thing, Bob, I know you're more of a monster cereal man than me barely but enough uh you well you have like one bowl a year and i have i i never get it but i might try this caramella creeper gal caramella creeper oh no did the monster cereals go woke you oh when you see her you'll think that but yeah you haven't seen i'm being ironic you haven't seen this hit the hip dj who's joining the the caramel apple flavor to the monster cereal party i'm looking at her and i don't like the design i'm sorry folks but oh come on caramel creepers he's like a zombie dj i want a busty elvira type well unfortunately bob the cancel culture won't let you do that come on no i i would prefer an elvira type too but it's just it's too horny for our friend thad just shared a picture i'd never seen before on facebook by the way which was shocking

to see it's peewee herman is standing between elvira and tracy lords and tracy lords has her hand on one of elvira's boobs there's too much sexual energy in that photo that includes peewee herman yes he's he's enjoying it too much i don't want any of this yeah but marge exiting on 23 skidoo is a very funny joke and so we then have jokes about victorian era clothing and that it's impossible for women to wear especially though you know what if you want facts that are probably very accurate about victorian era sex read alan moore and eddie campbell's from hell comic uh that's their jack the ripper comic which it takes place across several years but basically in 1895 so since it's about jack the ripper and sex workers you will get a lot of

victorian era sex scenes in it that involve a lot of like underpants or girdles hiked up to do someone i learned a bit about victorian era sex from that is all i see but no no full suits of armor underneath the clothing that was not there if they'd you know if some of those uh women had been wearing it jack the ripper might not have taken their lives so they should have been wearing that full suits of armor we blame victims on this show no the from hell comic has a really fun conspiracy theory that Jack the Ripper was really an assassin for Queen Victoria covering up the bastard child of one of her sons or grandsons. Is Queen Victoria the villain in that Pirates movie that Aardman made? I believe so.

Yes. Yes. It's young Queen Victoria, you know, before she lived a long time for 1800s people. She lived a very long time. So yeah, the villain in pirates that's her like in her early 30s or something that's the other deal like victoria until queen elizabeth she was really special and that she lived forever and that her that queen victoria had one son and then she lived forever as a mean old spinster basically well spinster means she never had kids

but you know what she was spinster like in her behavior yeah oh yeah she was the villain that's a great movie by the way i love that movie i wish i'd have seen it in theaters i didn't watch it until we did chicken run it's about pirates protecting a cute bird i'm there for it that bird is so adorable polly is the cutest bird i love it yeah so many great voice actors in it it's it's so good and it has multiple jokes in it that then i was like okay whoever was writing for our flag means death watch this movie like it's full of jokes in it i still have to see that it's a good show it's a good show look if you're tired of taika waititi i get it i get it you can be tired of them but they're still good acting i choose to selectively absorb his media i've not seen a taika watiti thing since jojo rabbit you definitely

shouldn't make your next one thor ford i will i will not do that so yes there's a reason they called those old erotica back then bodice rippers because it's a lot of work to get down down to clown homer also references wuthering heights which was published in 1847. So accurate innuendo here. And also the Maggie and her baby cage is also a funny thing. Bart is getting sick of it. He misses his old comics and he's reading instead Mutt and Jeff, which debuted in 1907. Yeah. Ran until 1983, which is crazy.

But I guess like technically Dick Tracy is still running, right? Technically. And same with like Allie Oop and Little Abner. Those technically are still running right technically and same with like Allie Oop and Little Abner those technically are still running too yeah I had a neighbor that was old enough to refer to rowdy pairs of people as Mutt and Jeff like you two are like Mutt and Jeff is what he would say Buster Brown and Mutt and Jeff references growing up boy geez I like that Bart thinks the point of the comic is that they're both gay I get it they're gay that did make me laugh because i was looking at what is mud and jeff i've never seen it and i love those old-timey newspaper comics where

it's just 2 000 words on one page just giant word bubbles and i was looking at the description on wikipedia and it's about two mismatched tin horns i'm like okay what's a i'm not a tin horn what's a tin horn yeah exactly no i I read a couple from the early run and yeah, they are back when a comic strip was very huge word balloons and then very static drawings. Yeah. But then as Mark Kirkland correctly points out on the commentary, for no reason, the family changes their minds on being miserable like i mean i guess technically homer gives a speech a very brief speech but it's mostly about bill moyers who technically uh he had a podcast up until last year so he's still he's like 90 now i think he might actually have left public facing

media at this point bill moyers who was he was a standard of cable and PBS news stuff you know your usual you know rich liberal brainy guy in glasses who makes commentary on stuff like he's the most recent stuff I saw of his was just him going like you know upset at January 6th they're saying Asian American hate crimes need to stop now all that kind of stuff which ain't good things to say I'm not saying that's bad but it just seems like he pretty much stayed like homer said never left the public to comment on whatever was new in politics but yeah they all of a sudden the family decides to have fun bread tastes like clothes i'm so cold all of you stink so much this is great television yeah i can't wait to see which one of them dies first look we can't give up we're on tv and when you're on tv you dig in your claws and you never let go just like bill

moyers okay so while you were telling me about bill moyers henry i was feverishly looking something up because i found another synchronicity between lisa the beauty queen and this bill moyers is the last surviving person in that photo of lbj being sworn in whoa yes he's in that photo that is parodied when lisa is being sworn in as a new little miss springfield after andrew dempsey gets hit by lightning bill moyers is in that photograph the last person alive in that photo that's amazing yes man this is what happens when we record to two simpsons in the same day we know we notice all of the synchronicities that's crazy that they're bringing up bill moyers who man maybe that's who bart is dressed like in that scene there too so yes you'll hear all about that next week on the show but we're recording this one right after we did that one yeah bill moyers

scene he's just like uh larry holmes and then he retired but then he just came out of retirement to work immediately uh he felt he just felt the need like like homer said he once you get to be a tv personality you never want to stop doing that i mean that's how we'll never be even if pete budaj actually does like fail to become president and doesn't continue a political career he'll be on television as long as we're alive like Like he'll just be an MSNBC host or some shit. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games,

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Join for free at Rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Yeah, I don't know. Did you get this? I mean, maybe it's just because I saw the movie recently for the first time, but I feel like this is kind of a nod to The Sting because really the only song you hear in The Sting is The Entertainer and you hear it over and over again. And I'm like, well, that's from a different era of America and The Entertainer's from 1902, but I feel like Al Jean's on board, so you're kind of reaching for a movie illusion. I definitely think it's

a movie illusion. And same with the, I mean, the sepia tone that kind of comes over some of these scenes during it too feels like that's not exactly how that movie looks but it has there there's kind of a tint a nostalgic tint to the lighting of that movie right yeah yeah you know i think i definitely think it's a movie reference also because it's al jean and he makes movie absolutely it's like what do you play over an old-timey montage from the early 1900s well the song from the stinging, get that. It's free. Yeah, it's also a public domain song. So easy to use.

Now, the scene of Marge being yanked into her corset, we just had large Marge recently, but also her feet get really big. So I feel like two groups are being turned on too much by this scene. It's horrible. Yeah, I hate it. It's not. First, I thought I was just like, oh boy, more big titty Marge humor. And then, no, also, she has giant feet, too.

But the gag is her blood has to go somewhere in a very tight corset. But, boy, I feel bad for all those ladies back then having to wear those things. Though now I wouldn't mind just a cummerbund to hold things in place. But we then also have a Moe prank telegraph style uh full of very specific things including the golden spike which held together the union and central pacific railroad lines which that happened before 1896 so it's a fitting accurate thing to use it's a very dennis miller reference to uh make when you're talking about jamming something of a child's ass yeah boy now when you put it that way it seems dirty i do want to say

i'll give them credit for this because the history of bart's prank calls to mo in a new kid on the block he says i'm jimbo jones i live at 742 evergreen terrace come find me that is the end of those there are jokes in that style afterwards but from that point on bart cannot call mo and make prank calls so this is the first time he can do it because he's using new technology when homer in the spring break episode it's homer who does it not bart or bart does it from other locations or through some other media you're right they it feels like they made a pronouncement internally like no more of the prank calls and then they found ways around that pronouncement like like in oakley and weinstein they did one episode in which in homer the smithers burns type smithers in on the on the keypad on the phone he ends up calling mo

and then in i believe it's bart on the road homer prank calls mo yeah yeah that's the one yeah when and homer does the reverse yeah yeah yeah those are great plays on it i mean bill and josh they're very funny so i don't know if they violated this since but yeah they did stick to this except i, except I think in the Family Guy episode, which doesn't count because it's a Family Guy episode where Stewie says something very bad to Mo. Yep. When Bart is teaching him how to prank call. Again, consider that episode a Family Guy episode The Simpsons are in and you get less offended by it. But yeah, credit to Al Jean who was working for the show and running it in the era which New Kid on the Block aired. He remembered, we don't do these anymore.

And making it a telegraph instead lets it be a different spin as well. I like that. Also that Mo has a full telegraph set up in his bar to get telegrams and that he knows Morse code as well. Then we have a bit about canning peaches, except Homer eats all the peaches as they can them. Then everybody's happy. And this is when conflict has gone away. Lisa, Maggie is loving her wooden pacifier.

Bart's drinking cod liver oil all day. Now, today I have fiber gummy supplements. That's what I do to increase my fiber intake. And now people take fish oil in pill form, so it's not as gross. You don't got to. Yeah, I remember when my mom started taking it as her advancing age. And now I'm old enough to start having fish oil pills. I just eat lots of little fishies.

And then there's another bit I was like, oh, this feels like Dana Gould. Hiram Beatwife and Martha Take a Punch. These are Dana Gould names, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. This is when everybody is uh getting tired of the show because everybody's too agreeable which this again feels like just them saying oh if the family was all agreeable all the time you'd hate the show we need conflict if i could remove the tv cutaway jokes in this episode i would they're the weakest jokes like

elderly animal channel is yeah it's like it just sort of reminds me that animal survivor joke they did not too long ago where it's it's not great yeah you know in each of those versions it ends with a character eating another character at least in this way it's an attempt at a Schwarzwalder gag of the zebra just out of boredom was like I guess I'll eat a lion when zebras would not eat a lion I do like that because it's a long walk to get to it but that did make me laugh but we didn't need another parody here. It's just like the circus joke with the boys getting poisoned that it feels like the pacing's just all wrong. They've got a good joke that they didn't pace correctly. And much like getting Larry Holmes on the show where it feels like they got the fourth person who answered their phone when looking for boxers.

They make a joke about their next guest being easy to get. His phone has not been disconnected. Let's say hello to our guest. The show's getting boring. We're losing viewers. I have an idea. It's crazy, but it just might work. Like it did last week. On another show, we bring in the biggest

most famous star from a 70s sitcom whose phone hasn't been disconnected. Hello. Squiggy? Why is the guy from Laverne and Shirley living in our house? Because nobody's watching you clowns.

If you was to ask me, you're all too calm and happy. The essence of drama is conflict. That's why they gave me this taser. All right, this still isn't working. Fixing this show is going to take some original thinking. Everybody, pull out your TVs and start flipping around.

I think I've got an idea. Turn to channel 24. I just like the idea of this reality show about 1895 squiggy shows up in costume and starts tasing the main one of the main family members over and over and he's squiggy not they're not referring to him as david lander it is the character squiggy appearing in the show i mean squiggy does get killed here i feel like they really missed opportunity for lenny to meet squiggy our lenny from the simpsons that would be good yeah and of course the joke that comes up later of the corpse of squiggy sadder now that david lander is no longer with us yeah recently passed away in december of 2020 at 73

he had multiple sclerosis he learned that in 84 he went public in 99 and obviously on laverne and shirley he was Squiggy the counterpart to Michael McKeon's Lenny character from 1976 to 1983 and here's a fun fact for you that I learned recently Michael McKeon and David Lander put out an album based on Lenny and Squiggy called Lenny and the Squigtones from 79 basically doing Spinal Tap for 50s music and Christopher Guest played on that album as Nigel toughnall that's great yeah i mean the lenny and squigtones is also like i think they they made him up for the show because mckinnon was like i can just can't i sing a song i want to write a song but what one of the

rare times where a novelty album led to great nerdy cult classics of comedy and of course we just saw one of david lander's greatest movies he is smart ass in who framed roger rabbit because that voice is unmistakable he was a voice actor all throughout his life he's such a prolific voice actor like that's why he's so good in this episode like larry holmes is not a professional voice actor and just says five words david lander actually acts in the thing like the essence of drama is conflict the way he says it is so good like he's yeah he was also on a recurring character on the garfield specials he was doc boy right yeah he acted in garfield stuff into the 2000s like he was a favorite of

jim davis he loved working with him we didn't appreciate david lander enough we just called him squiggy everywhere he went when he was really like you know but i don't know he was a great actor he was really good and after his reveal of the of ms that he was suffering from his transition into voice acting makes a little more sense too i mean it's you know live action acting is very physically demanding and if you're stricken with that kind of thing then you're you don't have the energy for acting in live action yeah and of course mckeon had been on the show before he was in the auto show playing his character from spinal tap and also he was the weird howard stern shock jock in monty can't buy me love i forgot about that that's right yeah yeah stop the farting is what mr burns said good thing those lesbians were there to save him too

also when they pull out their tvs my brain just thinks like they're pulling out smartphones yeah but you can hear them clicking yeah i know but they but instead it's little tvs to check the channels to steal things which is pretty great why isn't this tress mcneil character lindsey nagle it's her attitude it's her personality it's her voice it's just not the design especially when it seemed like they had pretty much agreed that lindsey Nagel would be the executive for everything. But maybe this was one of the last times they thought, well, okay, Lindsay Nagel's an executive in Springfield, but if we're going to Hollywood, she doesn't work there.

It's a different executive. But then pick a different voice. You know, I've been feeling this a little bit and I love Tress McNeil, but like she shouldn't be every incidental voice in the show like hire one other regular female voice actress but yeah they then in a very big turn that kind of fucks up the whole rest of the episode they decide that the family will be kidnapped via a john schwartzwelder style giant claw that's attached to a helicopter that flies them away i was kind of on board with the beginning of act three because it did remind me of mountain of madness the rocket house the right

yeah i do get a feel of rock house and i think for season 13 production they animate it going down white rata rapids pretty well and i also laughed at squiggy when he snores he says hello you can't let it go it's it's a fun i'm glad david lander was game for that because the joke seems to imply that he just lives as squiggy all the time though so this is where aljean gets defensive on the commentary about he knows the third act sucks like he tries to be diplomatic because you know everyone is contributing to this episode but he does say you think you have a good episode but then you're editing and you're like oh this really got away from us and he but he does say that it was george

meyer who pitched a lot of these though he didn't say for this one but definitely when george meyer was high up in the chain in the later scully seasons that's where every episode ended with a giant conspiracy and a big secret like oh actually i found the secret to what makes somebody a bully or everything in the prisoner episode of the show like george my jocky elves the jocky which we found that wasn't that bad no but not well yeah you're right it wasn't that bad but when taken as a piece of well how do we end this it was a giant conspiracy it's like when you say five of them in a row you're like man i'm sick of this and it really this is technically that too it would be if the reveal was oh a secret government runs all the reality shows and it's

meant to destroy america or whatever but instead it's just they decide to rip off survivor and leave them stranded in a jungle instead i think it's not quite a conspiracy like dan granny i think pushes back on this on the commentary i think it's edging up towards that but they just end up on an island in which they were filming another reality show so i don't know if there's a big secret that's revealed other than like the the reality show people have stayed there yeah that they band together with other reality show people i mean the ending feels like one of those two big endings for them but i do like homer saying that he has to go off to the blacksmith to remove his tooth i I kind of like that.

But this is when the family learns their format has changed. Monsters, you turned the show into a survivor clone. Mr. Simpson, your contract allows us to do anything we want to you. I would never sign that unless there was a red sticker that said sign here. Uh-huh. That's what we used. Where do you get those things anyway? i've always wondered about those stickers too you don't see them as much these days but i remember them on contracts the reassuring they're telling you don't read anything else just put your

signature here i was feeling that when i just signed my new lease on something i was on a new apartment uh for me and my husband i was like uh by the third page, I was like, whatever. They're just going to screw me anyway. I don't care. By the way, yeah, as of this recording, I now have property and you would not believe the amount of sign here stickers I've witnessed in my life.

I'm glad to hear they're still using them, at least at Canadian realtors. For the new lease, I just signed everything digitally, though this was a more informal leasing as a renter, not buying property. I would bet I would be doing a lot more signing of as a renter not buying property i would bet i would be doing a lot more signing of physical documents in person for buying property for this you have

to have a witness so a notary has to watch you sign it you're paying someone to be a witness basically wow man you know that time ever comes for me my mom was notarized she could be my witness and then she'd do it for free i think the other time he was a notary was to send my grad school application somewhere where i had to be notarized man i forget the yeah it's very rare to need a notary for something unless you're working with like immigration or whatever so just like in lisa the beauty queen as well homer signs a bad contract that's the twist oh wow and the house crashes they barely escape it before it crushes in on itself. This is where Squiggy is dead. But Marge is much sadder about the strop.

The strop. The good bellows. I love that. The good bellows. It's them saying goodbye to their 1895 jokes because with the house gone, they can't do any more era specific jokes anymore. So Marge is listing them off really fast. This has a lot of Homer breaking down in tears too this episode.

Yeah, I think that's why he, on this time when he starts crying, he's just like, I don't remember the last time I cried this much. Lisa reminds me it was very recently when a tag chafed his throat, which I put on his shirt backwards. I don't like that feeling. I say it's worth crying more when you go to the gym and you have to take your shirt off and it's just like, it won't, it's become one with my skin.

Oh, yes, yes. I've been there. I've been there. But this is when the family is told they can't even be fed. They're going to be tortured even more than before. And how will they save the day? We come in peace. We take them your land.

We're not savages. I'm a paralegal from Cleveland. And I'm a nutritionist from Santa Fe. We were a tribe on another reality show, but we lost the final challenge. I just couldn't eat any more kangaroo testicles. So the show just abandoned us here. The weird part is, now I can't get enough of them. But now we're going to escape.

We're going to overpower your crew and return to civilization. Whoa. Marge, I think I figured out their primitive language. That's my homie. Is it so gosh darn hard to get cocktail sauce in the middle of the Amazon? Yeah, I mean, I do like how Homer immediately starts formulating plans to take over their land.

He's an instant colonizer. Using like Lone Ranger Tonto speak to them. Yes, but yeah, this twist of like, oh, where are the other reality show contestants that ran out of the throne? It just, that feels too predictable. It's just too predictable as Simpsons wacky ending. the fence the way that it stages very awkward she's kind of like standing around as marge is like standing in front of him and then in a very slow way he's pushed over a cliff to his death and the funny thing i guess the joke about it is at least and marge are shocked at what they've done but this is real this really happened i would argue it down to manslaughter because they just

wanted to do a fun silly prank of tricking this guy but somehow they didn't know they were at the edge of a cliff and he falls to his death but they do kill him like this is a real episode where they kill the guy i think that i mean they don't let the the show kill the bullies in the beginning and we know they'd be coming back but this guy i feel like he should be like in a full body cast at the end wobbling towards them or something it's crazy that they let margin lisa kill this guy i mean homer could get away with it we wouldn't think twice about it because homer has killed several people up to this point we've seen him kill so many times in non-treehouse episodes but i feel like the yeah i i to have it happen with with margin lisa that feels like an extra layer to it also when bart says i don't

know if it's just me but are you guys getting sick of wacky adventures? You don't have that line in the show. Like you're telling people like, oh, this sucks. Especially as people are getting sick of the third act. Yes. And every third act usually, but this one especially. Oh man. So this is where they all get confronted. This big action scene also feels like Al Jean ran out of budget for songs because this should be

some sort of song shouldn't it like i feel like there should be some song here as they're attacking everybody instead it's just like regular music and you know what i actually i thought about this when homer's holding up the rock they didn't kill the guy look he's right there oh well that's just that's just wrong they can't do that i think that's a retake there yeah i think when you were saying that he dies i was like wait is is he in the shot so there he is there they took it back i think i'd rather they committed to them killing him instead of having him there in the background for one bit i did think it was funny that this is a troubled third act but when homer's about to smash the helicopter and marge tells him no that's our only way out of here he doesn't throw it instead

he lets it push him into the ground and as it's like snapping his neck he's remembering lenny's apartment it reminds me of simpson safari when uh in the third act they forget what the episode's about and they're swinging on the vine and homer's referencing something that happened in the first act actually that also is a giant crazy conspiracy and a huge war that happens between two opposing sides in a jungle area i just like homer is not even present he's just like oh that lenny tried a crazy apartment and you can just hear the rock crushing his neck yeah actually i have the quick clip homer dies in this it's talking about death too homer dies here he's also dead jeez now we know what it feels like to be tormented

and yet I learned nothing. Ah! And now to wreck their precious helicopter. No, Homer, no. That's our only way home. Yes, but... Okay. Oh.

That Lenny sure had a crazy apartment. Oh, God. Homer's dead. He is dead. It crushes his head under the rock. It's great animation. And I guess this scene, it's not as fun as it could be because it's not silly violence or whatever. It's not over the top.

They're just throwing rocks and hitting the guys with sticks. I think they didn't want it to be full on. If Family Guy did this, there would be blood on the screen. Yeah. But they didn't want to kill anybody except for the guy. Even the guy they kill, they decide like, nah, we can't have that. I wonder if that was a retake or a late, when that came in. But yeah, the violence isn't enough.

It doesn't feel strong enough. Like there's not enough jokes about them smashing everything and it's just like oh the reality stars fight back against their controllers it's like i felt like i saw that in a million reality show parodies like that's the ending of the fucking mr show movie which was released after this but written before it i forget the name of the creator but they should have had him just like climb up the cliff and just dust himself off really neatly and then just walk over to where the helicopter was.

There should have been something there to acknowledge how he survived. Yeah. Yeah. Instead, he's just in a background shot. Yeah. So that would seemingly be the end, but they need to kill a whole minute or two in the episode before that. And so this also feels like Al Jean going back to his past.

He's like, well, in season four, we would have just spent that minute sitting on the couch watching tv until they explain why things happen but in this case they first watch a long law and order parody somebody had to have called dick wolf because it's just the music like they got the real music for it and the real logo i think yes yeah but then it turns into just to show you how times have progressed simpsons has been on long enough now that they're not parodying regular law and order which debuted around the same time as the simpsons they're parodying the first spin-off special victims unit making it about elevator repairmen which i feel like family guy would have done this joke funnier i don't know it's it's kind of weak i think I do like the guy saying, I think I'm going to be sick

when he hears the elevator button won't light up. And I like that Castellanet is playing him with a very broad Chicago accent like you'd see from a bad actor in a Law & Order episode. You're right. I do like that. But then the family needs to kill a bunch of time

before the ending here with a water hose. Well, here's the thing, Inspector. The button for five doesn't light up. I think I'm going to be sick. Oh, here's the thing, Inspector. The button for five doesn't light up. I think I'm gonna be sick. Oh, that's it. TV was the one good thing in my life, and now I can't enjoy it anymore. Hmm. I guess we'll have to find

a new way to entertain ourselves. What about books? Yeah, if we read books, we could form a club. If we formed a club, we could serve drinks. Hey, Dad, why don't we watch you drink from a hose? Good idea, Lisa. Hmm, the water's off. I'll use my eye to see what the trouble is.

Off again. Maybe I can hear what's going on. So, this has become a game of wits has it perhaps my other eye will get to the bottom of this i kind of like the giant shrug at the end where they're talking about like the plot of a new episode let's start a book club and then bart says why don't we watch you drink from the hose yes that's homer is pitching like i a bar, which is like, you did that earlier in season 13. And also when Bart says drink from the water hose, then Homer turns to Lisa and says, good idea, Lisa. That's a good joke too.

But yeah, this ending, I like that they let Mark Kirkland indulge for once instead of the writer. Yeah, it wasn't written to be this reference but mark kirkland turned into this reference because mark kirkland we interviewed him once just once yeah yeah he's a big silent movie fan he later made his own called the moving picture company 1914 he made that in 2014 i believe you can watch that online but when he saw what this uh this last scene was going to be he remembered that the lumiere brothers in 1895 had a short translated to the tables turn on the gardener or the sprinkler sprinkled and it is a 45 second short in which a gardener is pranked by a clogged hose and somebody unkinking it and the thing sprays him

in the face it's a 45 second movie but he staged this scene like that little short is staged because he knew the short when you know that background the ending is funnier because that makes it work better as a single static shot because it's a long static shot as it was in the original short he's referencing it makes sense but it seems almost like lazy a little bit if you're watching it without that context so i like that they let him indulge like it also fits like it's from 1895 like yeah that's that's also a great extra detail to it apparently this is a very important short because it is the first earliest known instance of film comedy the first film to portray a fictional story and the first use of a

film poster for promotion so this short 45 seconds long you can watch it all online very important for the future of filmmaking that's amazing it was one of those times we're hearing the commentary made me re-examine an ending that i would have thought was just them killing two minutes because they realized they realized their third act kind of sucked and they wanted to get out of it fast so they just had the characters watch television and i think the main joke here is that tv is so bad that watching Homer get sprayed with the hose is funnier than anything on TV. And I counted it before, but I'm not kidding. This is the fourth time Homer has watched reality TV on television and said, I hate this.

I want to watch something else. There's so many times like that's how much they hate reality television that they have to have Homer repeat over and over and over again how much he hates reality television. It feels like only now does reality TV feel like a threat to scripted TV again, where it does seem like this is the direction a lot of networks want to go for everything now. And especially people like Zaslav in charge feel the threat more than ever because it's like netflix still doesn't seem like they're gonna like pull back their scripted stuff even though they have many popular reality shows that people love but the way that hbo max became max and all of the reality shit is promoted right next to the prestige things and it's just all the same slop together that's made me go like god i really i am having my old early aughts knee-jerk reaction to seeing reality programming there's there's fuckboy island in my uh sopranos gruel

what's happening like yeah they're promoting uh succession right next to their newest you know 90-day fiance ripoff or whatever like the posters they make are so or you know promotional images they make for it are so tricky because there's so much stuff now if i see a poster that features somebody i don't recognize i'm like there's a lot of streaming shows that star people who aren't like stars to me so this could just be a real thing and then it takes looking a little longer to be like oh wait that looks like somebody acting for a reality promotional image not somebody acting for a reality promotional image, not somebody acting for a movie promotional image. But, you know, I think we all need to go online and buy the entire Columbo box and just watch that. We don't need new shows anymore.

That's what I'm saying. And if you get it in physical media, they can't delist it or take it away. No, you'll get a horrible box with 50 discs in it. You have to consult an almanac to find the right one. But hey, it's worth it because that's 70 movie tv episodes and it's all good stuff so just watch colombo over and in between simpsons yeah watch all which hopefully are on dvds not though that's the one show that won't get delisted from disney plus i'm sure disney plus is so lucky that hbo max exists because when they delist stuff it doesn't even

look as bad because max did it like twice as many so people don't barely even care that like a movie gets to be on there for seven weeks and they're like nah it's like earth and ed and willow both got sent to hell but uh hey the simpsons won't go anywhere except for that one episode oh yes yeah so actually possibly more to come invest in physical media that hey this episode with a cosby joke it who knows how much longer it's gonna again i'm saying this now and i've said it before i'm waiting for them to edit Itchy and Scratchy Land I'm waiting for that edit to come and we're gonna be talking about it within the next 10 years I think the only other possibility would be if Elon Musk gets increasingly worse in a way that is bad to regular people then I think

his episode could be delisted from Disney plus too like if he actually just stops winking and just becomes a a real public asshole i think that's when they'll get rid of it it feels like he's already there yeah i guess i guess what is the too far like he well he needs to do the kanye too far of of actually endorsing hitler yes exactly yeah that that is really the line isn't it you can say you hate trans people and all that stuff but you really need to go on joe Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, in a weird costume and say, I love Hitler, and he rules. You know, Hitler was- Don't isolate that.

Yes, yeah. Well, then even you know that's the too far moment because when Alex Jones hears him say that, he's like, well, now, wait. Yes. Like, even Alex Jones is like, wait a minute. I don't want to be, I disavow that. That's not me. Oh, you mean he was a good dresser, right?

He's like, no, no, Holocaust, it ruled. Again, don't want to be i disavow that that's not me you mean he was a good dresser right he's like no no holocaust it ruled again don't isolate there oh what an ending for this episode but yeah you know better than i remembered because i do think they have a lot of good stuff up until that third act and there have been even worse third acts in the show but aljean should uh not called it a day early on this rewrite i feel like after this they calm the fuck down about reality television don't they i think they do i was just you said that the five times it was referenced as major plot elements i was getting so sick of it in 2002 it's like i don't even watch this i don't want to hear about how bad it is from people that we now know their jobs would go on for at least another 20 plus years they'd be very rich and secure yeah and

well and that it was 2001 complaining about reality shows that then airs in 2002 so it feels even lamer which is why in the ronnie dobbs movie it's even worse because it's like three years late to complaining about survivors so when i'm looking ahead at our actual season 14 episodes that are coming our way in the new digital era there are certainly things that i remember annoying me but i am very happy that i think they are lightening up on hating on reality television yes we're done with production 13 and i'm glad it was very rocky you're right we're finally much like in the show where the house crashes upon the shore we have crashed upon the shore of production season 13

and it's time for the true digital era of the simpsons to begin with the next episode thanks for joining us everyone if you want to support the show and get all these episodes one week at a time and at free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up there for five bucks a month and you will also get on top of that over 150 bonus episodes full-length episodes covering things like the critic mission hill batman the animated series futurama and king of the hill and that five bucks a month will also get you regular length episodes covering things like The Critic, Mission Hill, Batman the Animated Series, Futurama, and King of the Hill. And that five bucks a month will also get you regular monthly access to both Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill, our sideshows. And we've been doing this Patreon stuff

for over six years now. So the second you sign up, you'll get access to everything you've been missing out on if you're not a patron of patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And we have a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you can access all of the $5 stuff you also get one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that Henry Bob is talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast where you cover an animated feature film super in depth just like we do an episode of the simpsons right now you're reaching the end of our summer of Pixar where we've talked about Toy Story 4 The Incredibles A Bug's Life parodied in this episode, and this month, Cars. We're doing a commentary on that, and there is a huge back catalog of us talking, often

over five or even six hours long, about an animated feature film. We go very in-depth into the making of it and scene by scene through it. Other recent ones have included Dumbo or Little Shop of Horrors. Almost five years total of them there at your fingertips check out what you've been missing for yourself when you head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons one more time patreon.com

slash talking simpsons and as for me I've been one of your hosts Bob Mackie you can find me on twitter as Bob Servo and my other podcast by the way is called Retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. And by the way, I have a book coming out years in the making.

It is my oral history of Day of the Tentacle. It's being released through Boss Fight Books. So find that at Boss Fight Books website or I believe it's also available for pre-order on amazon.com henry how about you follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g and as well if you're following me and bob on twitter where we tweet up a storm you should also be following the official twitter account of this podcast i had to talk simpsons pod and also at talk simpsons pod on instagram that's where you learn about new episodes going live, on the free feed, on the Patreon, if we're doing live shows like the one we're doing soon, at PAX West in Seattle on Saturday, September 2nd. If you're heading out to PAX, check us out there.

And you can even find every free episode we've released of this podcast at our official website, TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you again next time for season four's Lisa, the beauty queen, and we'll see you then. This place won't be inhabitable for another six months. But where will we live? Don't worry. We'll just hang out in front of the house beside these garbage cans.

The time will just fly by. Eh, that was boring. Let's get a hotel.