Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Homer Alone With Karen Chu

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

This week for this episode about motherhood we're joined by special guest Karen Chu of Good Job, Brain! who helps us better understand Marge's need to visit Rancho Relaxo after a nervous breakdown. We get Troy McClure as our video tour guide and learn about omelets, blackhead removal, baby car seats, stealing lightbulbs, and more. When listening to this podcast, be sure to grab Clamato, Mr. Pibb, or soy milk! Support this podcast and get over 100 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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So become a patron and join us through the rest of 2022 for another great miniseries. Same bad day, same bad podcast feed. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons where our omelets have two kinds of cheese. I'm one of your hosts, Bob Mackie, the groovy mule, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today as always? It's Henry Gilbert and I ask for double baloney in this podcast. And who is our special guest on the line? Hello, I'm Karen Chu.

And this week's episode is Homer Alone. Kids, hurry up or you're going to miss your bus. No way. Never happen. We'll all be damned. This week's episode originally aired on February 6, 1992. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh boy Bobby Sean Connery and Lorene Bracco's medicine man tops the box office right said

Fred's I'm too sexy is number one on the billboard charts and Konami's x-men beat him up is hitting arcades okay the only thing i remember from medicine man is i had the cure for cancer but i lost it okay that's the line from the trailer that's all i remember and i assume uh is the episode of the critic a parody of medicine man it is okay uh jay's oil or whatever and lorenzo's oil it's kind of both of them but yeah the bit where jay goes into the rainforest to try to get in and he burns down the rainforest that that is from medicine man yeah which and hey lorraine brocco i i love lorraine brocco and her voice like you're just uh the scratchier it gets the better i i love her voice and yes i'm too sexy top in the charts that only

for like three weeks but it's been a novelty song. You'll hear in any, in, in corny movies and TV shows ever since. It's the fashion montage song, right? It's the makeover fashion montage. It spawned 500 fun dress up montages.

And now I think people will use it ironically. Can like, can you believe we're using this? Yeah, we're using it. Wink, wink. And so many people just using the term I'm too sexy for blank has endured to this day. And as for the X-Men arcade beat-em-up, I am using a very gray math here.

But it was hard to find a third thing that happened that was interesting this week. And you know what? It was, I'm sure, at least a few arcades, at least in the United States, Konami's X-Men was premiering. Well, none of us please try to do the Colossus yell. No, no, no. Because we'll destroy our vocal cords. But welcome to die.

Yeah. And we covered the pilot. This arcade game is based on, very loosely, the Pride of the X-Men for our Patreon. But it's a very weird space this exists in in which the fox cartoon premieres in october so nothing in this game looks like that right yeah it's full of 80s x-men and the fox show is the early 90s x-men so all the costumes are off it's not the group you would normally get but i play that game all the time like just like the simpsons arcade game from the year before but this is like one all the time like just like the simpsons arcade game from the year before but this is like one of the last time konami can really get big success

with this because you know street fighters out now and mortal combat too like this this is when fighting games fully take over arcades and fun colorful beat-em-ups like x-men are no more and i pay that six player one all the time the double screens and one screen is getting more faded than the other 1992 what a year so and maybe we'll get into this uh later in the show but I I did not grow up in America and so most of my knowledge growing up about the U.S. came from my aunt's VHS tapes of programming she thought kids would like. She lived in New Jersey, and she would ship the tapes to us in Taiwan. And so I remember the tape for 1992 was a good one. I remember she taped the MTV Movie Awards, the VMAs. And that was like my glimpse into like, what's hot in America and

Wayne's World. Wayne's world was really big and it was it i mean i guess it was big in my eyes because i was like wow this is like real america you know illinois where's that um and so to me that was a real big cultural touchstone 1992 wayne's world that one videotape no that's i mean wayade's world was a huge deal here too then yeah i i'd say it's a perfect capsulation of it and well i'm to the vmas that's uh that's that's smart uh like it just collapses all the music videos into like here's the best ones these are the ones that are the most important if you want to know about the biggest music yeah i think it was pearl jam was a big one that year uh yeah yeah that was that's like how I learned all about the music in 45 minutes.

If we sent a tape into space to let aliens know what 1992 was like, Wayne's World and Pearl Jam would be on that tape. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's perfect. And The Simpsons. Yes, The Simpsons too. But yes, joining us today, you heard her already,

but it's Karen Chu of Good Job Brain. And she's also a mother. That's why she's on our podcast. Yes. Thank you guys for inviting me. I, you know, to be honest, I feel really self-conscious. You have heard, probably heard my voice before on Futurama, Talking Futurama. I was, it's all time favorite show. And I'm embarrassed to say that I'm not as big of a follower of the Simpsons

not as much as I am a super fan of Futurama you've got me and Bob here talking all the time about like oh we have everything memorized that it's it's fun to have somebody who does know comedy and know the Matt Groening style but doesn't have you know childhood connection to this episode yeah yeah i mean around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a 40 year old white guy quoting mr plow so it helps to have some kind of different perspective than two guys born in the same year who lived in the suburbs watched the same television shows worked at the same jobs and now we're on the same podcast together oh well i'm'm happy here to give my slice, my little slice of experience. Well, yeah. So you didn't have access to The Simpsons much growing up then?

So I remember very clearly. I mean, obviously, in Taiwan, we heard about this hit show, The Simpsons. I was very young. And I remember it was a big deal because they were going to air it in Taiwan. And I believe it probably aired the first time around, it was probably dubbed, but it was a big deal. And the way they marketed was very Bart centric, right? This is like, kind of like Home Alone. This is a feisty boy, oh, American boy getting into trouble. And that was kind of the the angle and yeah it was it was pretty successful in taiwan but maybe i just you know it just kind of missed maybe missed the timeline for me i was probably into other things as well and you know it just

i never really stuck with it um and also dubbed versions are very strange i've always wondered that too you know our our pal nina has mentioned this with the the japanese dub of of simpsons she's she's checked out but uh it's i just wonder like simpsons is so full of american references that i i just wonder like how what kind of localization in every territory how it deals with like we've we've even talked with you know british or australian or irish people as guests who are just like they didn't get jokes in it even though it's you know a shared language that they're like oh yeah well we don't have like casey casem here i don't know what this this reference to his top 40 countdown is and i feel like a lot of the jokes are kind of wordplay you know play on

language puns and and that really doesn't, you know, you can't really localize that to another language. I do remember South Park airing in Taiwan, and that was dubbed. And that was I think maybe then we were better at localizing the content and all of the references became super, super, super focused on Taiwan politics, stars and celebrities. So when they name drop famous people, it would always kind of narrow down to like the Taiwan celebrity ecosphere. So it's really strange because they like, they're like, these are American kids who live somewhere else. Why are they talking about the mayoral race? You know? Yeah. I'm sure i'm sure the patrick duffy references from the early south park seasons are lost on most other countries but people love it yeah people love

it like they it kind of the the same sense and the voice talent is almost sounds identical it really kind of translate that irreverence you know in the aughts we in america i remember experiencing that in the opposite direction of like the the shin chan series uh came here and they intentionally were like you know we localize this just fill it right hire joke writers and we're gonna make jokes about like now and there's like i remember there's like a bill o'reilly reference in it for for one thing like just to make it all uh fit yes yeah that's for the for the english dub for for cranston cranston chan i feel like i'm saying it in the most like brutal american way possible i think they hired the evan dorkin comic book writer yeah dorkin wrote on it i remember that yeah but

but when you got into future a futurama that didn't pull you into simpsons or want to give it another try no i think by then sometimes it's like, it's like I miss so much. It's such a long series. I'm like so behind. I'll never ever kind of catch up. But you know, also like the premise of like the American family and the dynamics is just not something I was used to or I could relate to. Whereas Futurama, to me, is like a workplace comedy. And I was at the age when I started my kind of first job. So I could relate a lot more. I mean, not like I'm an alien or anything, but like, really, it was like workplace. You had like the boss and that kind of dude. And it's just like having fun. I speak for a lot of us, our first kind of jobs, you really find great friends when you're that young.

And you haven't really, you know, like things are getting real, but not that real yet. Futurama does feel like kind of a thing you can graduate from Simpsons into once you age out of all the characters of Simpsons. They joke about how there's really no teens or early 20s people in the Simpsons, like many of the creators have said this. And so then you'll eventually get as old as Homer, but in the in-between years, you're Fry's age. You're like, oh, I guess I'm Fry, or any of the other cast of the show. There's nobody 18 to 35 on the Simpsons, basically. Would you say then the life cycle is then at some point i'll probably jump back into the simpsons now that i'm a parent that i could definitely relate to marge and homer way more than

bart and lisa i do wonder i i wonder that yeah well because this this is an episode a lot about being a mom and so yeah we were curious like any of your motherly viewpoints on this episode or if what they get right or wrong in this episode, all written by men and mainly animated by men, many of whom were not parents at the time either. Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess before Ken answers up front, I want to hope that we have progressed as a society, at least here, in that the gender roles aren't as prescribed because we are now 30 years past this and i want to hope things have improved a bit because a lot of what's happening to marge is like well naturally you're the woman and you're a housewife a domestic uh whatever however i what's what's the proper way of saying housewife or homemaker homemaker i don't want i don't want to insult anyone the term now i respect anyone who's a stay-at-home parent by the way yeah stay

at home stay at home parent yeah but it's like if who's a stay-at-home parent, by the way. Yeah, stay-at-home parent. Yeah, but it's like, if you're the stay-at-home parent, of course, you have to do all this emotional labor, all of this around-the-house labor. You're not appreciated. But now I feel like I want to say I hope that things have changed. Yeah. You know, that's the other thing I was nervous about when you asked me for this episode, to show up on this episode and also watch Homer alone is, you know, I know the characters, I kind of get the general gist of their personalities. And I was a little bit nervous. I was like, man, this is an old episode. Is it going to be where the mom does all the work and the dopey husband, you know, like, like how, yeah, how, how deep into stereotypes are doing. And to be honest, I was so pleasantly surprised. And I think, you know, coming from the mom point of view, it's really surprising for me to hear that this was

completely written by or I mean, written mostly by men who were not parents at the time because they hit upon some things that are really, really sweet and some observations that I just assume a parent would incorporate into animation. Yeah, it wasn't all childless people on it. And I think too the writer, I will say the writer of this episode, of all the men writing on it, wrote the best episodes for women at the time. He seemed to be the best feminine viewpoint supporter in the episode. But yeah, I mean, when you think in 92 when I saw this, definitely the expectation in most American families, I still think, was like, well, yeah, even if Marge does not have a job job but I know in my family growing up the expectation

still was like well even if you have a job you're the mom so you do the grocery shopping you pick up the kids and take them to school you do all these things like that it's just in if you were to question it you're questioning the very nature of society and we don't have time to get into the politics let's just just pick up the kids at school you know yeah i guess one thing that's more rare now is that i mean the simpsons is basically from the beginning a parody of you know older sitcoms and that it has like the stay-at-home mom which by 92 was an increasing rarity now i feel like it's even more rare and none of my friends growing up had stay-at-home moms until i was in high school and it was seemed very odd to me i'm like

wow i've never met a stay-at-home mom before either uh so yeah it's but you're right henry even though moms had to get to work because the economy changed uh they still had to do all the mom stuff on top of that yeah because because most husbands even if you know i'm sure there were a lot of husbands who were like actively chauvinistic of just saying like no you're the woman you do this stuff but i think for some other guys uh fathers then they just kind of let the entropy of the situation just happen of like well look it's just the expectation I'm not telling you to do it, but. Hey, I just work here, okay? I don't make the rules. I think until you're in that situation, for a lot of people, for a lot of the husbands or male counterparts, it doesn't even really register, you know?

And it's not, I'm not, you know, it's not a callous thing. They're not doing it on purpose. It's just, I don't know, moms develop a invisible mental load and fear and worrying all the time. And not to say that like dads don't either. But, you know, I think this is where even like, like you said, honey, even when the moms are out working, they're the ones who have to, okay, let me plan out the schedule. Okay, I got to pick the kids during this weekend, we got to do this and this and this and this and this. Even if they're the ones who have to okay let me plan out the schedule okay i gotta pick the kids during this weekend we gotta do this and this and this and this and this even if they're not sending you know driving the kids physically they have to plan it in their head and that's something i learned as a mom it's just like all of a sudden it's like my my head it's just filled with planning

and worrying and i could see thatge, like throughout this whole episode, even, you know, we'll get there. But even when she's finally relaxing, she's kind of like, I got to be productive. I got to do all this stuff. You know? Yeah, yeah. It's hard for Marge to ever truly relax in the mind frame she put it. I think too, I like to think things might be better now. I was also, before I started really even prepping for this episode, I was thinking of this one and in general the unevenness of things because of a viral video I saw that was shared on TikTok of this sad older man in his mid to late 60s.

By sad, I don't mean he made me sad. I mean he's sad and grumpy he's making his own jalapeno poppers for uh because it's like it's game day they're gonna watch the the college football game and basically his wife is filming him making the jalapeno poppers and he's complaining like you know you could have made these and i want to watch the game she's like well i make them all the time you can just make them now preheat and he's just too complicated and he's just whining oven door he's he's whining the whole time about like and it's it's jalapeno poppers you like he is putting cheese into a jalapeno and wrapping bacon around it like it takes 10 minutes but he's whining the whole

time and his wife is filming him whining about it to share online to make fun of it but then the biggest drop in it is just at the end he says well i'm sure you felt tired from your treatment and he puts like air quotes on it and in the description she apparently has she's getting cancer treatments this woman like that's also why he he expected her to find time for that in between like getting medical treatments for cancer. I think she's trying to have her husband assassinated. Yeah, I think so. And rightfully so. Yeah.

And then I saw that shared alongside some statistic that like when women get terminal diseases at a certain age, they go through divorce more often because they see how little their husbands do for them in these moments. Oh, my God. more often because they see how little their husbands do for them in in these moments but oh my god so anyway that that reminded me of this episode when when i saw i mean i guess like the expectations put on women uh have not changed for some generations and that this one jerk like can't make his own and whines about making his own jalapeno poppers once while his wife is sick like terminally ill and he doesn't even realize she's like roasting him on social media with this video too but i once i once had someone i was i went on maternity leave um i actually had a really uh physical bad uh delivery and i was like i came back from maternity leave and someone jokling said oh how was your vacation must be nice and it was kind of like really like what is

it's 2020 you're gonna say that kind of stuff to me um but but Henry you tapped into one of my favorite subjects now I'll quickly just talk about it here and it's not necessarily a gender or a mom and dad thing is like I'm so interested in what they call weaponized incompetence, where and I see that mostly in work, like in a work environment where people are like, well, you do this job better. So you do it. I'm not that good at it. You're better at doing this. Oh, I don't know how to do this. So you know, you're better at it. You can see this in your probably personal relationships. I think me and my husband, I'm just better at filing taxes. And so that's the tax I have to pay in our relationship is being the tax person, which I'm okay with. But I see this at the workplace a lot.

And I see this in a lot of marriages and a relationship is the, you know, like Colin Pino Popper's guy. He's kind of like, why am I doing this? You do this more often and better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I first experienced that when I worked at a movie theater and was like uh you know you're better at washing out these things you know it's just like yeah yeah i've i've definitely experienced that at job or like i mean there will be a dynamic in personal relationships and at work relationships where someone will do something but they'll do a bad

job so you'll just say okay i'll let just let me do it i'll handle the dishes and then you become the person who is in charge of that and most other things it turns out it can happen over time yeah yeah i i i will say too this episode uh is is always stuck with me too because my mom loved this episode when it first aired she loved it she the rest of my life uh every now and then she will bring up rancho relaxo her love of rancho relaxo i mean i look back on it now as a cry for help that she was not having a good time i uh i will say my mom is much happier now she's remarried she's enjoying her retirement and and though also too like a part of her enjoying retirement is giving herself a lot of

jobs like she's doing a lot of like community work in her community just to like do something she's she isn't just playing video games all the time or whatever i would do with my retirement but but yeah to to this day i i told my husband about this before he spent a lot of time around my mom i was like no i'm telling because we watched this episode together. I said, I'm telling you, she'll bring up Rancho Relaxo. And she just did out of nowhere. Like, like she still she she loved this episode. But looking back on it now, when I was a little kid, I was like, oh, this is her trying to tell us something about how she was feeling at the time.

So there's one flaw in this episode and it's very minor. And I think they were a little worried that it's like, like oh it's an episode about a mom and about a woman uh let's call it homer alone yes and so whenever i see the title i'm like well which one is this oh right it's the rancho relaxo one it's the march has a nervous breakdown one and and then i think it's upon only upon this viewing like my 40th viewing of this episode that homer does the macaulay calkin hand slap thing but i think they're embarrassed that they even did it they linger on it for like eight frames and move on immediately yeah i think so too the the writer of the episode is david stern oh which is also

funny because he they joke on this in the commentary his brother is like the co-star in home alone like daniel stern he's the oh the skinny wet bandit in it yeah so it's it's almost a personal like uh a reference as well i think he's marv yeah marv that's his name yeah yeah that's amazing yeah i didn't i didn't know uh their family was so tightly knit back as a kid either i uh and and yeah david stern he's one of the best writers for for women in this era of the series like he he talks about it on the they mentioned on the commentary he saw this as like oh if i want to sell a story nobody is pitching marge stories all the guys are like yeah marge is boring i don't want to put so he's like well

i'm gonna pitch a marge story and he sells it instantly of like like yeah march has a nervous breakdown she's pushed too far and he writes two episodes about patty and selma early in the show too great sensitive episodes about patty and selma that don't treat them as just like hideous hags to be laughed at yeah yeah though apparently his original pitch was that march would go to an institute that would be it sounded more like a therapy thing but I kind of I prefer her just relaxing in a spa like Marge just gets to relax after yeah after act one I think that would have been too close to the fatherhood institute in Saturdays of Thunder and then Homer going to the mental institution and Stark raving that I think they had done like two kind of similar ideas with Homer before this I like it's just nice to see march relax yeah yeah she finally just unwinds one other thing i'll say folks you

listen to the commentary on i'm not going to bring up every time he said it but brad bird is on it and it's really cool to hear brad bird because because uh karen you might not know this brad bird was one of the key figures uh hires in season one to help the simpsons like formalize a look and come up with a lot of their like animation theory and he talks a ton about that on the commentary yeah he must have been so young oh he's a real well he is like a prodigy of animation like he seriously got started in animation at Disney at like 16 or something so yeah he's got a very long career Brad Bird did yeah and so Brad Bird's career is so huge that him got a very long career brad bird did yeah and so brad bird's career is so huge that him being a i believe his title was creative consultant but he pretty much

was just uh an all-hands guy around the office to be like oh no draw this this way or actually in our budget it'll work better if you do it this way like he was really helpful for that stuff and formalizing a lot of the the invisible craft of animation that as a viewer you don't really understand. But when he explains it, you're like, wow, Brad Bird did all that. And then occasionally animating a scene of Krusty the Clown himself. Yes, yeah. He loves Krusty. Yes.

The Simpsons will be right back. 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? Thursday on The Simpsons. Marge flips out on Springfield Bridge.

Let me through. I'm her husband. Well, that explains a lot. So to give her some R&R... Oh, hello. And welcome to Rancho Relaxo. ...the kids go away. Bart, you'll be sleeping with your Aunt Patty. And Dad's watching the baby. Are you sure that's wise?

I'll probably trade her for a beer in a nudie magazine. Homer's Alone. Sorry, honey. Mommy went crazy. On an all-new Simpsons Thursday. Karen Chu check out her awesome podcast good job brain we really appreciated having her on this week to help us talk about the parental story of this week's episode and you know if you enjoy our podcast you should know that Talking Simpsons is only able to be done as our real world jobs thanks to the support of patrons at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons for five bucks a month those folks get access to

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effects from the best animators of the time back at Warner Brothers. Yeah. Though I also bring it up because recently I've been really grumpy about this Roadrunner rules thing that went viral recently. I'm sick of seeing it. It's one of those things. What is it? Oh, okay. I mean, it's one of those things that goes live every three years on Twitter.

Sort of like the Did You Know Toy Story 2 was actually deleted and then saved which i'm not going to go into it now it's not what happens yeah let's listen to our toy story 2 podcast but so so yeah karen there was uh you know chuck jones legendary animator uh he he was the director of all of the classic roadrunner uh wily coyote cartoons in his autobiography that we wrote in the late 80s he did like basically a listicle of these are the rules of a roadrunner cartoon of like that roadrunner can only say beep beep or i see i see everything coyote buys is from acme or the roadrunner never leaves the road all these things which are it's a fun little, but those were not the rules when they were producing them. It was not like written down back then.

His co-writer on all the originals, Michael Maltese, never heard of them. He's like, I didn't know about these rules until he put them in the book. But people are sharing it around now, like these were the rules on the Roadrunner cartoons. They came up with in the beginning. Isn't it great that they produced all these cartoons

under these rules? And it drives me crazy. Well, he was the director who lived the longest and he spent the last 20 years celebrating himself yeah kind of taking credit for a lot of things that is kind of the the ups and downs of chuck like chuck jones brilliant the great but he lived the longest and so he did talk himself up a lot yeah this opening scene i mean we're only in the opening scene i'm sorry we've moved on yeah at this point uh i like this but i feel like they do a better version of this at the end of the season where they basically do the entire raiders of the lost ark opening there's no there's no roadrunner gag in this roadrunner opening they just run by as if the roadrunner cartoons are starting and then

they break a lamp yes yeah it's it's i like the more involved uh raiders opening you're right yeah but it's both uh hom Homer chasing Bart in his underwear. Yes. Yeah. It's Homer for some reason. He's going to horribly hurt Bart as well if he catches him. But then, yes, the great line about my mom, I think, really liked the who am I kidding line.

I think that was what pulled her in early. Cleaning up the vase. Yeah. Well, because she also, also i think by that point was used to like fake threatening something and then we all we all just kind of know like well no you're gonna clean it up we know this like yeah that's uh look i regret being a selfish little boy in my childhood i try i treat my i like to think i treat my mom very well now to make up for that but um we we were bad kids that we weren't we

weren't the best kids i i feel bad about it but they also talk about how they're recycling backgrounds that's more of a hannah barbara thing which is then fun to hear mark kirkland talk about how he actually worked on hannah barbara and all all their rules for that we cut to march trying to get the pacifier out of maggie's mouth and replacing the bottle. So yeah, I was curious, Karen, how realistic is this of the morning routine with a baby? Very, very realistic. Just for context, I have a daughter, she's gonna turn three soon. So she's still pretty, pretty little. And the baby, you know, the infant taking care of an infant is still pretty fresh in my mind. You know, my kid didn't have a pacifier, but

everything else, the whole routine, how quick and efficient, everybody has their own way. But after a while, you really develop, you know, the mom system. And I do want to note, and this is one of my biggest notes for this entire episode, is that they showed Maggie's feet. And I don't know if that's a common thing in other episodes, but that little detail, like when you're a mom, the baby feet are just so adorable and you love them. And they're just begging you to pay attention to look at them. Adult feets are gross. They're like meat bricks with like

sprouting you know mushrooms out from it but the baby feet is just so precious and and the fact that they have like little maggie feet popping out is just such a nice little detail um yeah i was also thinking that in a show from 1992 uh no other show would show these minor but very important moments of of a mother's day unless there was like a poop joke, you're not going to see a baby getting diapered on a sitcom in 1992. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Maggie has very cute little baby feet.

I agree. And they rarely are seen because she's in her onesie all of the time. Yeah. That's her standard look. I also really like Marge's, her no-look diaper change. Like she's kind of like looking for it. She's like, I've done this so many times. dead eyes forward like let's get through this and also she said tells maggie like when you grow up you can suck your pacifier all you want oh and also i love maggie's little

like homer belch like she she lets out a not a cute little baby belch but like a man's belch which is i thought was adorable you're right that could have that could have really become a a gross out gag for you know from either ends of the body and in which which is real life but yeah they they didn't take the shot i really i feel like it's more new dads i hear tell the stories of boy there's poop everywhere like i don't hear it as much from new moms the the poop everywhere things though i'm sure that's also the experience like it's just we have a new dad friend who's just like yeah it's like poop everywhere you just get used to it you forget you forget the poops even yeah yep but so then uh marge uh heads to the kitchen and this is when uh in our first clip we get to see just the kind of like like, insane life Marge has to live.

Extra mustard for Bart. Sliced diagonally, not lengthwise. Light mayo for Lisa. Cut off the crust. Double bologna for a home. Mom, can you sign this for me? Mom, where's my lucky red cap? Mom, I hate those pimento things.

They make me gag. Marge, I split my pants again. Ooh, could I have two sandwiches today? Make the bologna sandwiches, too. Could I have two slices of bologna? One at a time! One at a time! I mean, it shows how Bart, your hat's where you left it, behind the toilet. Homer, I'll sew your pants, but I'm out of bologna. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Mom. Don't!

I mean, it shows how taken advantage of she is, but it also shows how well she knows her family. Like, I know their sandwich instructions, but they're also demands. Yes, yeah. The staging is very great because when Marge says, that's enough, she's cornered by the family. It's a shot like looking up at her as the family is her she's pinned against the corner of the kitchen counter it's a great great staging to show just how trapped she is no i love i also love the little pause march says like uh diagonal a lot lengthwise from lisa like she has to you know she's been worn down with all these demands

i mean and i i was i did that too like i told would tell my, I wasn't a crust off kid on my sandwiches, but I would say like, no, it's diagonal, not lengthwise. Like it's more fun diagonal or whatever, you know, I, and that she has to remind herself like, oh, I'm going to hear it. If I, if I don't cut this, if I cut my, this sandwich for Lisa, the same as Bart, I'm in trouble. Like I gotta, I gotta remember it's all different sandwich cutting style. I have a quick question about the meat product. I love that she used her finger and poked out the little rounds. Bok, bok, bok, bok, bok. What are the things that she took out?

Pimentos. I assume they're like olives. Oh, okay. What are those? I believe they are olives. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. Although no bologna was ever served to me in that fashion it

was always just like the the the tube cutting of the of the oscar meyer bologna yes yeah just like the smooth meat paste yeah i never had that that feels more like a 60s 70s kid thing than an idea good thing yeah yeah but i i love the little sound of march poking around like there okay yeah you know i wonder if things are harder or easier for Marge once Lisa becomes a vegetarian and she I guess there's no more pimentos to deal with but yeah it's only pimentos now I also love the hearing it this way like all of them talking on top of each other so well done it feels like they're all in the same room to record it which is not always the case and in fact from I'd say I think even from like season six onward is pretty much not the case, or even four, really.

This time, hearing it isolated, I think my favorite is Homer saying like, Marge, I split my pants again. Ooh, can I have another sandwich? The cause and effect is right there, but Homer's not seeing why his pants keep splitting. Yeah, and then Marge,ge of course because she knows everything like it seems overwhelming and if you're not a parent watching it you're probably thinking oh my god how can she take this but when she cuts everybody off she doesn't say like i didn't hear you she goes like yes i know all your answers your hat's there here's the pimentos i can't make the sandwich now get out of here then we cut to marge overwhelmed with crap it's it's such a great design of her cat cat carrier in one hand baby in the other bag full

of stuff the dry cleaning she's going to pick up and then the way she gets her then going off balance holding the ball the bowling ball and handed to by homer i love that drawing and it's another great shot of the staging another great example example of staging in which she's like, you know, a skew because the ball is pulling her down and then the bus pulls up in the window. Like another problem has approached as she's being burdened by everything else.

The way Homer also just his little whiny, like, Oh, alley balls. That's that also does feel like a very, like I'm certain it is some point where my husband has asked me to like do something that would make it easier than i have my own like alley balls i'm like but i don't like that restaurant can't we go to this one it's like i've

i've been guilty of saying alley balls in our relationship at times but i just love how march just has to go just stop whining and hand it to me like i'll take it and also too i love bart's assurance is like never happen that they're gonna miss the bus it just leaves like i'll be damn uh which uh also i'll say to uh my husband as well sometimes i have been the one who says yeah the bus will make it it'll be fine and then and he's like no come on we gotta go and then it's like oh i i have been in the well i'll be damned i guess i was wrong oh well marge now on top of all her other problems also has to drive the kids to school which he doesn't normally do auto picks him up on the bus i love the shot of maggie chewing

on her seat belt uh though yeah i was i definitely made it my notes here like ask karen if this is definitely all the wrong things to do with a baby car seat in a car oh yeah when did they they i think they enlisted the child not the seat belt but like children aren't supposed to sit in the front seat i think that was in the 80s so technically march is you know not following following the rules but but that's already now yeah well so it's what a car the car seat in the back seat right that's the that center back seat and facing the opposite direction oh well it depends on what age so if they're newborn or infant really little they're actually facing the back um so so when you look back you can't really see their face because they're they're facing the other direction and then once they're

at a certain age slash weight then then you kind of change uh the car seat but it usually is in the back but then you know i can see if it if they put maggie in the back car seat then they're not going to have that interaction between bart and lisa The same way it ruins the staging. Yeah. I had to ask my husband because I, you know, my sibling, I have an older sister, and she's a lot older. So so, you know, again, once again, that's a dynamic that I've never kind of lived through. But my, my husband, he has a younger sister, probably by two years. So it's kind of similar to Bart and Lisa. And he's's like this is exactly what every car ride is like yeah I was like oh my god I'm glad I didn't have to go through that I mean yeah it's

just a microcosm of like you know what when you're in a car ride and I yeah my younger brother is three years younger than me so I we did this too of like you know normally it's you and your brother away from your parents and if what annoys if you annoy your brother or you or your brother annoys you you have to go seek out your parent to say mom he did this but when you're in the back seat it's like well she's right here so mom you're witness to this he just did this thing did you hear that mom like yeah it's i can see how that drives a parent insane yeah yeah i think for the most part uh my sister was in the front seat my older sister i was in the back seat so there was like a barrier there well yeah there was battles over the front seat as well uh is is me and my brother though yeah if it was mom and dad

in the front and then us in the back seat that was when it was like mama until game boys came around then we could just stare at the game boy and we're not annoying each other and yeah bart's faces are awesome uh they're all very david silverman e and in fact on the dvd extras you can pull up his original sketches uh for a couple of the faces like i think his under bite one is my favorite one like that his big toothy one uh but uh marge can take it no more and i just love her like get out yeah like i pushed oh we pushed mom too far uh-oh in this episode marge can summon the voice of the devil and roar like a lion that's how far she's being pushed in act one and so uh we get a quick shot of marge grocery shopping which is is really cool because they animated it like a wide angle lens, which is not, you know, it seems simple, but it's pretty tough.

I think my favorite of the things she bought, duck sausage is funny, but I like tree fresh imitation orange drink. That's a great one. I don't know if I knew fruit leather was real until my 30s when I saw it at Trader Joe's. I thought it was just a joke. Yeah. Well, because I ate a lot of fruit roll-ups as a kid, but I never had, like, officially fruit leather, which is a similar thing. Anyway, it's just pressed together in sugary. I never thought about that. Yeah, it's like, you know, as a kid, it's like, oh, is that the skin of the fruit? Am I eating the hide of an apple? instead it's like oh it's edible leather

doesn't that sound delicious to you want to buy don't you want to like chew on leather also like yeah karen how how easy or hard is it to to shop with a baby have you had uh like maggie breaks a whole jar of something here oh you know it's really fun i think it's one of those outings because uh thanks to shopping the invention of the little kitty seat in the shopping cart your child is contained and they can't run around you know and so that really is an advantage it's not just it's cute it's like you know especially if you're grabbing stuff with two hands like it's just so nice that the kid is restrained in one place. And they get to kind of, they're up there, they can touch stuff, they can throw stuff.

That definitely does happen when you put something in the basket and they throw it out. Or they want to help you put it in the basket. But the grocery shopping is actually pretty fun, in my opinion. That's cute. If I had a kid, I would just use it as an excuse to steal high-ticket items. Just like, this baby's always putting this fresh salmon in my basket. I don't know how it got

there. I didn't mean to not scan it at the self-checkout. The baby did it. Babies and old people are blameless. They can shoplift. Yes, yes. For sure. You know, look, hey, you didn't hire me to be a checker outer like if you were gonna make me do self-checkout some things will just not be scanned try telling the cops that

marge then goes to uh to try to get the bowling ball fixed too i love love the mall there are two different knicks who run bowling ball fixing places that neither can flush a ball i just love them passing the buck like i'm flushed a ball in years we didn't get to the big moment in the car here and i forgot that uh they mentioned this on the commentary but they were really into troy mcclure at this time they knew like he's he's instantly funny every time you hear him and that's why he's in the other two acts but i forgot he's in act one as well on on the radio here they used him a lot oh yeah he's he's the best we we love i don't basically zap brannigan karen i i don't know

if you knew that like yeah yeah yeah yeah i guess i guess we went over he was going to be cast as zap before he was unmurdered yeah yeah yeah it's sad and i i don't think i truly understood how cruel this prank phone call was until i got married and just put myself in that position yeah yeah this is awful no wonder this is what pushed her to the edge it's like we're gonna pretend a woman was murdered and snicker about it uh there's blood yes yeah here i'm oh yes they still they still they still do those prank calls i mean not to that extent but extent, but there's uncover like, oh, someone's cheating or they're always like, oh, why'd you ghosted this person? They're more dating centric, but they're all fake.

They're all actors. Yeah, I figure most of them, you don't actually call the people. You just call an actor to pretend. You get your PA on a phone and uh have fun with them in this case i think if they really did uh like traumatize a man yes i i would think probably there are youtube pranksters now who do just do this yeah people to say but yeah it's terrible at least they shut down those prank families they arrested all of them the horrible prank families! The horrible prank families. Here in our next clip, it's Marge's nervous breakdown. Oh, this miserable stress headache.

Feels like there's a rat in my brain. It's time for another Bill and Marty classic prank call. Hello, is this Mr. Justin Sherman? Yes. Sir, your wife is dead. Oh, God, no. Justin Sherman? Yes. Sir, your wife is dead. Oh, God, no! That's right. She just walked through a plate glass window. There's blood everywhere. I-I just talked to her!

Bart's making face! Where's my lucky red cap? Jelly balls! Your wife is dead. I haven't flushed a bowl in years. ah oh man that everything that puts her over the edge that i i think it's that a bunch of gross baby's milk flies on everything that ruins all of the stuff she'd spent her entire day doing is now ruined it's just like that that's the final straw and just to realize a realization like just no like is this my life this is it just like just screaming no to the heavens about it oh god it's really interesting that um the milk came back you know they introduced that in earlier in the episode i really didn't think twice about it and then when this happened i was like oh like that's that's that's a maggie thing maggie kind of like playing with the bottle um yeah it was it's such a good detail and yeah she just ruins everything and, you know, we mentioned this before,

but sometimes Matt Groening gets a little too judgy on animation on the commentary. Like he seems to not like Marge's freak out, but I love her popping pupils and stuff. It's great. Yeah, her hair. Her hair. Her hair exploding.

It's a wild take, but you need to break the character model to sell her condition, I think. Yeah, like this is Marge pushed as far as she can go. And also, yeah, there's a big bus behind her honking. Like that's also a great detail of something that makes her annoyed. And I now view it as, oh, that's a joke too. The bus says Shelbyville players on it. And I think it's meant to look like it's a sports team's bus that's going somewhere.

Like, that's why it says players. Oh, and they're like Shakespearean actors. It's a troupe of actors players instead. I like the shot of the miffed people in the Shakespearean garb as the driver gets off the bus. And this looks like the Springfield Memorial Bridge also looks like the same only bridge out of town that gets destroyed in bart's comic that strands everybody is it also the suicide bridge the portland suicide bridge oh i think it is meant to look like as uh as mac reigning calls it it's where homer tried to kill himself in the third episode yes and it's where lisa meets bleeding gums murphy that too because a lot of springfield is based on portland yeah

because he grew up in portland so it's a lot of uh he mac rainey grew up in portland yeah i did look this up i was like did anybody ever shut down a bridge like this in this way and what happened to them uh a man in 2018 in washington did uh and he was he was arrested though his nervous breakdown involved having a shotgun in his car so he uh i don't know what is his punishment was but it was a non-violent way it was it was turned down but that was the closest i could find this actually happened on thanksgiving on the bay bridge in the bay area where instead of a person having a nervous breakdown tesla's new self-driving beta had a nervous breakdown like the morning the morning it was launched a certain billionaire

let's not say his name was like hey guys try it now and then someone did try it on the bay bridge and there was a horrible pile up and people were stuck on the bridge for like most of thanksgiving oh man wow yeah that guy ruined a lot of thanksgivings man that's but yes we we then see arnie pie is watching uh we get the return of arnie pie i love arnie pie with arnie in the sky again he he denies you the good pun it should be pie in the sky but he's arnie in the sky it's a great wordplay we're seeing a bit of the resentment between uh arnie and kent brofkin that won't pay off until like season 13 yes yeah arnie and kent arnie is always getting big time by kent ken does not think highly of arnie i also love the cops are just like well i'm fresh out of ideas

like the flashing their lights all they got uh but this also is an episode of a couple of firsts and i have our first first right here it's the first appearance of a character who you wouldn't think would become this recurring but is a pretty major non-speaking character from here on out mr genie stop fiddling with the buttons oh now you've gotten chocolate all over everything this is kent brockman reporting live from arnie pie's traffic copter but i can assure you this is no mere morning traffic report. Hi. Face the facts, Arnie. An overworked and underappreciated housewife has snapped and parked her car on the bridge, refusing to budge. This reporter is now going to be lowered down in the Channel 6 Sky Harness for an exclusive interview. Huh?

Ow! Hey! Ow! What? Hey, sweetheart. what's the matter not getting enough of the good stuff at home oh man i like homer duncan on himself there i oh it's very visual but i i always love those sounds a kid may go hey ow hey hey and yeah mr teeny uh you can buy a number of different action figures of mr teeny he comes with the new crusty yeah the new super seven line of crusty which sadly doesn't get to smoke anymore disney took away his cigarettes but oh wow yeah karen they did a whole thing of uh

they they originally were selling the toy with crusty with his cigarettes and you know we've said this before but like yes kids shouldn't have toys with cigarettes in them i get it you don't want them to smoke but it's like this is an adult collectible these are toys for 40 year olds like what kid wants this i want the middle-aged clown mommy but yeah mr teeny comes with them and and yeah i think they just the idea of crusty driving around with his his chimp is just a funny idea but the writers and animators both love chimp humor it's the 90s it's it's monkey cheese comedy time i'm also curious i mean yeah crusty's a clown there are monkeys in like circus acts but is it also like a michael jackson joke where it's he's got his companion monkey with him i think yeah i think you're right yeah i uh and and yeah him like

getting chocolate everywhere that's a great line but and so mr teeny he appears a ton uh he's had multiple origins in season 15's broadcast news uh crusty implies there have been many mr teenies uh that we were never seeing the same one in the show uh and uh but then in season 17 in the episode bart has two mommies it's um uh there they seem to say there's only one mr teeny and he got like adopted from a french zoo and that his real name is like mr toots or he's louis toots that's his name. You're right. It was such a, not renaissance, but it was such a shining moment for chimps and apes in general in the 90s. Wasn't there like a American show where there's like a trucker and the trucker had a chimp friend named BJ? Yes, BJ. Yeah.

There were a number of monkey movies in the 90s. I think that's when the monkey renaissance came to an end. We had like Dunstan Checks in and Monkey Trouble and Ed. Oh, Ed, yeah. Mighty Joe Young? Yeah, Mighty Joe Young. Yeah. He was a big ape, but not that big.

Mighty Joe Young is like, you know, he's like a two-story tall ape, which is certainly a big gorilla, but he's not like King Kong. And Gunther from from futurama yeah oh yeah yeah gunther yeah and also marcel on friends friends yeah i found out because a friend of the show uh ian boothby uh his wife uh is the artist behind why the last man and uh they did a tv version of that for i believe hulu and And, of course, the main character has a monkey companion, but Disney does not use real monkeys anymore. They don't do it. It's like, no, we can't. It's not humane, and it's also dangerous.

Dangerous. So it's going to be CGI. Anytime there's a monkey in a Disney thing, we're not getting a real one. Any sort of monkey, chimp, ape, you name it. Not doing it anymore. That's amazing. That's a big detail in in the jordan peele movie nope um he actually explores the kind of the the tv 90s obsession with

chimps and how dangerous that that could be so that makes sense i'm curious what other simpsons changes did disney make or like rules like no cigarettes like are there any other details that they're they're not allowed to do or they took out well a big one was after the janet jackson nipple thing they weren't allowed to show like bare butts anymore like no no butts they usually had to if a character is naked they used to have so much fun drawing cartoon butts in the show but now uh you have to like obscure the crack of the butt i don't know if that's still happening i think it was like a reactionary period after nipple gates maybe they've eased up on it since then but on the commentaries they have said uh you know we can't do this

anymore and i remember uh cartoon butts would have like the mosaic over them on fox for a time yeah yeah which is too bad cartoon butts are funny kind of funny too yeah but i think i think that characters can still smoke on the show i just think it was the action figure that they couldn't sell or disney said you're not selling little mini cigarettes even though yeah even though it's for 40 year olds everything in that crusty set is a choking hazard no little kid is going to play with it also that yeah though i mean it's the same with marvel stuff like tons of characters who grew up smoking when i was a kid like wolverine are not allowed to smoke anymore which again it's for kids i get it it's i understand the only thing that's changed with disney's ownership is lots of quote-unquote jokes about being owned by disney yes yeah there's

there's a bit of that when homer learns that he's the one who's not given enough of the good stuff at home uh and so by the good stuff we mean uh empathy uh no snuggling as we all learn uh yeah so so yeah there's distressed mother please stay back tape uh homer finally approaches i i think too it definitely sounds like they recorded with a real uh bullhorn in the recording studio like it doesn't sound like an effect put on after the fact but and karen is you're pretty new to the simpsons so you might not know this but it's weird to see now a scene where police chief wiggum is smarter than homer because i think now he's dumber than homer or they're on the same level they're kind of on the same level like by the time you get to the movie wiggum is eating a donut off of a loaded gun yes yeah he's

wiggum is i'd say by the end of season five he's dumber than homer yeah that's fair but okay but here yeah he's giving uh homer instructions like homer homer has to turn to him and this is when uh homer finally talks marge down let me through let me through i'm her husband oh that explains a down. me yes it's me I'll tell your lover I love you very much and later tonight I think you and I should just wrap it up I can tell something bothering you but if you come out of that car I promise to do whatever it takes to make it better. Please, honey? Okay. Cover, boy!

You know, I laugh extra at this scene where Homer, after all of this happening, this is when I was like, I can tell something's bothering you. Like, can you, Homer? Like, you finally can tell something's bothering Bart. Had to take a nervous breakdown in like a public event, basically. And also, I like Nelson laughing at their snuggle code word, which they'd already been talking about it. But yeah, it's the Marge later will say things like, I'm going to snuggle your brains out to Homer. The ha-ha had been invented,

but I feel like this is one of the first times where Nelson is just on the scene where he doesn't belong. For no reason, he's there. Yes, yeah. And it's also great that Marge is instantly arrested and booked, and we get to see that Marge is 5'2", without her hair, and 6'3", with hair. So it's a little shorter than I thought Marge normally is drawn. and booked and we get to see the margins five two without her hair in six three so that's uh it's a little shorter than i thought marge normally is drawn to be

but uh and then yeah the the woman behind the camera definitely feels like a raising arizona reference yeah for sure i think they put it down in the commentary yeah uh and uh then we get a a quick this is only for two seasons in season three and four wigam and quimby have a have a bad relationship they're always in a power struggle this would go away karen after these couple of seasons but i think uh quimby got too corrupt to even have meetings like this and wigam got too stupid to remember he had a rivalry or this and this antagonism between himself and the mayor. Yeah, you're right. Don't you worry, Mr. Mayor.

This little bird will be cracking rocks by the end of the week. Wiggum, you glorified night watchman, let her go. But she broke the law. Thanks for the civics lesson. Now listen to me. If Marge Simpson goes to jail, I can kiss the chick vote goodbye. And if I go down, you're going to break my fall. Word to the wise wise quimby

don't write checks your butt can't go hear me loud and clear wiggum you bite me i'll fight back talk the talk quimby but do you walk the walk i hereby declare today to be march simpson day in the city of springfield they're like trained seals toss my fish and watch them slap their fins together. Now, in Flaming Moes, Quimby declared it to be Flaming Moes Day. And this is now March Simpson Day. I think in Los Angeles at the time, there were a lot of honorary days being sworn in or whatever you want to say. It's just like...

Randomly awarded. Yeah, yeah. Just to have like a public event and to honor somebody but i feel like it was happening a lot in los angeles around this time well i think too it was because people paid money to be like yeah you want it to as part of promoting us thing can it be this day or whatever like i was just thinking that when bob odenkirk got his walk a star on the hollywood walk of fame thinking like, well, this is interestingly timed for the release of the final season of his TV show, Better Call Saul. Or when you go onto Twitter and you find out it's some random day you've never heard of, like it's National Mustard Day.

And I'm sure the French's corporation had some say in that. Oh, my God, Henry, you're completely right because they just gave christina applegate a star and on the hollywood walk of fame and they they declared it christina applegate day but it's because the last season of her netflix show just started it's oh my god i i think those honorary days are meant to last only for that year you don't celebrate it the next year yeah they just mean it for that day yeah i also love the yeah it's a it's this tense pot boiler kind of uh political situation that then we're gonna quimby calls wiggins bluff and wiggins is standing there like like he's just like completely defeated when it's march simpson day and uh and yes i mean the

the great uh i also like that the politician is very sexist in talking about how he doesn't want to lose women voters. Just like, I can kiss a chick vote goodbye. I love, too, that after all this, Homer then thinks it's the end of the episode because he's like, well, all's well that ends well. And he also saw it on TV. So he's like, well, the TV told me this wrapped up. Not that Homer was like there at the event but it stays like oh time to go to bed but marge marge is still bothered and uh you know this is also a real staple of the gene and reese era of them running the show which is the tv tells them what

to do next like marge marge is left with no options what What am I going to do? And then the TV gives her an advertisement for Rancho Relaxo, which I love this commercial. Many years ago, the Spanish explorers discovered a little piece of heaven nasaled in the Springfield Mountains. They called it Rancho Relaxo, and so do we. Today, it's Springfield's only two-star health spa. Swim, play tennis, or just sit and stare at the walls. At Rancho Relaxo, you're the boss.

Remember, you can't spell relaxo without relax. I missed that. Springfield's only two-star spa. It's not actually that great. But all the rest are much worse. It is a staple of this era. You're right, Henry. It's both the TV giving you an idea and also having a scene with Marge and Homer in bed

checking in on the story. Yes. So they like these scenes and they do work. They do work very well. I love the conquistador is the guy going through all this stuff. Also, it's a great bit of, you know, in The Simpsons, usually in Springfield, they have like colonial, like English colonial things. But now apparently also in Springfield, there were Spanish colonizers as well.

Yeah, like the visual of the commercial is great because I love when he shows up at Rancho Relaxo. He dives off of his horse into the water with his armor on. And then he's sitting with the couple in the hot tub and he slips his hat down over his eyes. He's still in his full conquistador outfit the whole time or helmet rather helmet yeah i though i was always distracted the woman in a hot tub seems to be topless it's like they drew a topless woman there which i was like which hey i guess like you know it's uh it's a fancy spa maybe you can just be naked in it i don't know They found their throuple at Rancho Relaxo. I also love what a great terrible line it is. Like, you can't spell relaxo without relax,

which is like, it should be the other way around. You should be saying, you can't spell relax without relaxo, but that's not true. So they have to transpose the words. You know, and it happens a lot in the episode Itchy and Scratchy Land, but I love the way julie kevner says vocation oh yes yeah okay yeah not vacation but yeah uh kevner's kevner's

selective accent is good and she's she's she was born in la i don't know what that accent is it's yeah yeah but yes vocation okay marge then approaches homer with the idea of a uh her going on vacation homer thinks it's a group vacation which are only stressful i love that even homer is like sick of the running gag of are we there yet and he's like yeah the kids say this all the time i'm sick of it too i i wonder if this at all normalized for anybody like the idea of like yeah a parents can take separate vacations like if it normalized it for anybody because certainly to to my dad the idea of a vacation without him was wrong or just like well no the whole family goes

on vacation together i think only in my teens did my mom get to go on uh in my early teens we went on a trip to california without him because he didn't want to go to california and he finally approved of it look I you're hearing a not great partnership is what I'm describing here but um but yeah separate vacation is not a normal thing uh for my a lot of families growing up when I was a kid this was 30 years ago but this still holds true and that you should be comfortable spending time without your partner as well like you should have your own private time and private pursuits but you should also enjoy spending time with your partner engaging in things you enjoy to do with them.

I feel like that's like a very healthy way to be. And Marge is correct. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, yeah, that's a great point. It's kind of progressive for an episode 30 years ago. What I really love about this kind of interaction is that Homer is completely aware that he is the fourth kid. Yeah.

Right. I mean, he even admits he's like, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm a handful sometimes too. And I love that. I love that kind of self-awareness that he's not really a jerk. Like he just knows that he's whiny and sometimes immature and completely owns it. It's like, look, Marge, I get it too. But what are you going to do?

I'm no day at the beach myself. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I also love when Homer, you know, honestly, after everything they've been through in the Justice episode, I can see Homer going like, wait, this is how she divorces me.

Divorce is coming pretty soon after all of that, isn't it? I understand. It's so cute how march goes like i swear like she's she swears she's not gonna divorce it there's a very what i feel is a meaningful shot of homer falling back asleep immediately and march sort of just staring off into space and contemplating like wow uh i guess i'm doing this yeah yeah it's it's a great little moment it's it's not really a joke it's just like is spending with Marge, realizing she's getting to do what she wanted to do. And so, yes, we then see how the kids are being taken care of.

I kind of like now, you know. 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? Homer being the solo parent could have just easily been the episode but i'm glad they came up with the excuse of like you know what they should homer gets a break too and the kid all the kids are gonna go to patty and selma like uh i and but also like we said before uh david stern loves patty and selma and loves writing for them i just love how proud they are of their lack of interest in motherhood they're just like six months of maternity leave we're never gonna use yeah it's they're not mournful about it just like hey we got it coming to us and we're not having kids

so i mean this is a season before uh selma really wants a baby that's true yeah though now karen after your story there this also maybe does feel a little bit about guys writing a joke about how maternity leave sounds like a vacation to them. I don't know. Now after that story you told. I was, you know, when I first heard this line, I was like, oh, that's pretty generous for back then. Yes. And then generous that you also get maternity leave, you know, for not birth parents right now it's like maternity leave or paternity leave parental leave applies

to all kind of situations of of having kids adoption birth you know surrogate so i was like oh it's really progressive wherever i don't know what what do patty and selma do as their day job oh they work at the dmv so they have government jobs so presumably government jobs were good in 1992 and had good benefits uh how funny of course they did uh so uh yes they as as maggie's leaving she doesn't want to go and she holds on to the door and she is stronger than homer like that's a great joke too like she overpowers homer and bartolisa wish they'd have thought of that and then homer's gonna take care of maggie by himself and i i love his line of like god got her on the first bounce like that's though it's helpful that maggie is an indestructible cartoon baby as as we've uh by this

point uh uh karen in the show they've already done multiple episodes especially in the shorts the original simpsons shorts they did before it was a TV show. Maggie just was like a much more like a cartoon, not a real baby. She was like, like Sweepy from Popeye or similar ones. She could take damage other characters. Scale buildings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. In one short, she poked a fork in the outlet and liked it.

Yeah, she enjoyed it. Yes. Yeah. Or she went on a whole adventure that was like a two-parter but yes uh they cut to the train station there's another cute little in-joke uh they did this in lisa's substitute now it's in this one too if you see a bearded man waiting for the train a larger bearded man that is director on the show jim reardon who hates taking airplanes and loves taking trains so it's just a little cute reference to their pal which i like taking trains i'm looking forward to

when me and bob are living in vancouver and seattle uh i'm looking forward to taking that train right i'm planning on taking that train a bunch i love tree i will warn you though when you take a train sometimes there is a murder and yes you have to solve it oh well yes i'd rather be the detective than a suspect yes uh now i i love this very subtle joke because before i thought it was just like oh funny town names but it really shows you rancho relaxo isn't a bad part of the world in terms of how the environment is because to get to rancho relaxo you have to go through uh bad water and cattle skull testing ground so uh rancho Relaxo is the next stop after a nuclear testing facility, presumably. Oh, that's how they got it so cheap.

Oh, man. So Marge is getting radiation a bit during her trip to Rancho Relaxo. That's, oh, God. That is a dark joke. We have a cute moment of Homer chasing after Marge and asking all the things like a lost parents, like I, especially Homer as a, as a, a parent is lost. Like Karen, you, you identify with this. Oh yeah.

The, the pressure cooker, it killed me. That was, it was, it's like, don't just don't use it. Just don't. You don't know what you're doing. It's okay. It's fine. Now with the instant pot pot it's so easy but back in 1992 those things were like pipe bombs oh yeah now i feel more mature than homer because

i well it is the instapot pressure cooker but i have successfully pressure cooked a couple chicken dinners so i i feel like oh i'm a girl but it is in the instapot not the kind actually that's on the stove or whatever i would use but that marge is just like just don't just don't even touch it over day and also that like his clean underwear is in the dryer she just left it there it's like like i didn't put it away it's in the dryer like you'll you'll find it marge arrives at rancho relaxo she's listening to coma radio uh with a super set of song about clouds. Also, then we have a quick cut to Homer at home with Maggie.

And it definitely feels like the Al Jean era because Homer's eating a big sandwich. Al Jean, a big fan of big sandwiches. And sort of dumbing it down, but also insulting Marge with mommy went crazy. I've always loved how Homer says far, far away and moves his arms back and forth it's so great so this is the point of the show where I was a little nervous um you know am I going to see Homer completely failing and not even know how to take care of a baby you know I I assume no he's already had two other kids you know? And so this is where I was nervous. I was like, oh, no, is this going to be like, oh, ha ha, let's laugh at how the husband is going to fail and how neglected the child is. And so pleasantly surprised.

Like, you know, he knew how to do everything just probably in his own way and on his own weird schedule. He does it poorly. And I'm sure you could give some notes to his baby care, but he doesn't fail completely at it. Yeah. It's mainly that just Maggie misses Marge that much. Yeah. And I love that Homer wants to spend, you know,

Homer really likes spending time with Maggie doing the puppet shows and the different activities. I thought that was really sweet. Not like he's like, ah, you know, let me watch my TV and you're off in the corner. It's a far cry from other episodes where Homer forgets Maggie exists. He forgets he has a third child. Stitch face. So here's another big first in the episode when we visit patty and selma's house they often have uh even before this episode they would have a list of things like okay

what do gross spinsters do with their lives like these that's what the jokes are they want a list of things tongue sandwiches mr pibb clamato uh soy milk is a bad thing then uh yeah actually that was a i went to simpsons trivia in september and we won and that was one of the questions like what are the three drinks patty and salma have to offer and uh we just pulled that from our brains one of these they're all just supposed to be non-sequiturs that are not supposed to become like a running gag but one of them does big time which is their love of macgyver this is the first reference of macgyver in the series and it would grow they would mention it many times over which as bob has pointed out which is their love of MacGyver. This is the first reference of MacGyver in the series.

And it would grow. They would mention it many times over, which, as Bob has pointed out before, MacGyver goes off the air weeks after this joke. Like, it stops being a TV show. This is February. MacGyver's done in May. And I think now there is a MacGyver reboot.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it got canceled after one season. Well, syndication you know yeah this world that's true macgyver lives forever in that way this this perfectly captures uh being a kid maybe being a touch entitled but you're at a relative's house they don't have any of the channels you like it's really boring all the food is not the food that you're used to eating it just it just everything feels off and you just want get out, but you can't because you're a kid. But now as an adult,

like looking back, do you guys, you know, I'm looking at Patty and Selma's life. I was like, this, this sounds, this is a pretty good day.

You know, watch some divorce court. Yeah. Diver. Yeah. Drink some Mr. Pibb, you know,

that's maybe not the tongue sandwiches, but like it's, was like oh this seems like a really nice relaxing day after work yeah i mean a lot of the jokes about them early on are because they have no children uh and no families or anything they just have each other they do a lot of traveling around the world together because they have all that income yeah it's really great like their life sounds their life sound awesome honestly but they're obviously they're supposed to be like disgusting and also karen they partially they were created to make fun of one of the show's uh head writers sister-in-laws like that he did not like it was

literally it's like a jab i and i believe they are literally the sister-in-laws of jennifer tilly because the sisters of Jennifer Tilly yeah because the man was married to Jennifer Tilly so that's I think I we don't know this for certain yeah whoa yeah now uh Divorce Court uh I looked into this because I I know I've heard about it before and it's on TV and I just wondered like what why were they watching Divorce Court well it's the perfect thing for single middle aged women to watch in the afternoon around this time. That's the joke but also Divorce Court

is the longest running court show of all time. Really? Yes. No! I didn't know this. It's had four different syndicated runs since 1957. Whoa! The most recent syndicated run, I mean there have been like little breaks in between them but the most recent one started in 1999. Now the interesting thing is I looked up an episode online and something seemed off and until

the 1999 run they were all reenactments oh that makes sense that makes and that makes them even cheesier uh but 1999 reality tv is a thing now they're just you're actually seeing the ugly battles in court uh by 1999 people in general had lost a lot of their shame and so they're like you know what i i'm just gonna be on this show people are gonna see me air my dirty laundry yeah you could become a celebrity that way in 99 but yeah it's still running today it's not does not have the most episodes i think that's judge judy but uh it has the law it's been on the air the longest since 1957 that's when when it began. That is wild. Wow. Yeah.

You know, it says a lot about them that they want to watch Divorce Court, not People's Court. Like of all of the judge shows they could watch, too. Oh, and yeah, the MacGyver thing. It all came to a head in a 2006 episode. Kiss Kiss Bangalore, which you should forget everything about it. It doesn't have Richard Dean Anderson in it. But the Richard Dean Anderson appearance is cute, at least because it feels like he's like all right you've been joking about macgyver for you know four years at this point and i believe they found a way to

promote stargate his stargate series as well when he appeared yeah i believe uh patty and selma kidnap him yes in some way yeah and of course yeah these are seen as only gross uh spinsters would drink these things mr pibb and clamato mr pibb in 2001 uh it still exists but it got in 2001 a flavor change to what it still is today which is called pibb extra extra yeah extra which is supposed to be more intense and cinnamony uh but uh there's an entire episode of american dad all about the plot of uh there's a 2007 episode about them trying to get the original mr pibb flavor that one is really good i'm still watching that show then i i this one i tried to confirm but i could not find that mr pibb old flavor for a while still existed in

japan and it was called pibsan but i could not i could not fully confirm this people in japan let me know if pibsan still exists over there with the original flavor because i know i know japan still has zima which is long out of print here in america but mr pibb was a good pool they could have said tab yeah you know tab's the obvious you know because it was the first diet drink. So it's very coded women. And it's an easy joke of like, oh, these heavy women drink the diet drink. It's much funnier that it's Mr. Pibb because Mr. Pibb is like the alternative to Dr. Pepper.

Like, yeah. You go like, oh, you don't have Dr. Pepper. The prune soda. Yeah. Oh, and Clamato. I've actually had Clamato since we last covered this episode because I've had the Canadian version of the Bloody Mary, the Caesar. It's made with Clamato and vodka and some other stuff in there. And you know what?

Not bad. I enjoy the taste of clam with my tomato juice. It just sounds so gross to me. I don't know. Hey, you know, try a Caesar, get back to me. Well, I'm sure the vodka helps though too right yeah i mean vodka is kind of flavorless but i mean a cold seafood soup or a liquid clam pie you know yeah it's like it's like an alcoholic bisque well look i i barely even like clams all

that much it's uh they're low on my list of favorite seafood i love seafood i'm not one of those people like you the smell of like fish is gross to me or whatever but clams low on my list of favorite seafood. I love seafood. I'm not one of those people like you. The smell of like fish is gross to me or whatever. But clams low on my list. But Bob, it's not there are no pieces of clam. It's like essence of clam. Yeah. It's just like I mean, this makes it sound disgusting. But I mean, fish is the only kind of meat I still eat.

And I love the taste of like seafood. And it's like, yeah, it's like it's like a kind of like a it's kind of like a cold broth almost oh that actually sounds delicious it's not that intense of like a fishy taste but yeah i guess i would compare it to like a tomatoey broth but not quite as viscous but uh yeah you you just pour a bunch of booze into it and go to town all right the next time i visit vancouver i'll have a caesar i'll have one of those uh but we cut to marge in her new private room it does look nice so apparently in the original uh table read for the first draft of the script they felt that marge at the institute was boring and it fell really flat and so they pulled on their you know escape valve or break glass which is hire phil hartman and have him be Troy McClure. And Troy McClure hosting anything is so funny,

but this is some real classic Troy McClure here. I got the clip. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such films as Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die, and Gladys the Groovy Mule. But today you'll see me in my greatest role, your video tour guide to Rancho Relaxo Our tour starts in your very own room

Where Relaxo Vision offers you the latest Hollywood hits And after midnight The finest R-rated movies Europe has to offer Ooh la la Today's selections are Thelma and Louise The Happy Little Elves Meet Fuzzy Snuggleduck, and the erotic awakening of S. Chef Rodrigo, what are you up to?

A taste for yourself, Troy. That can't be good for me. It tastes too good. That's where you're wrong, Troy. This whole pot is only 14 calories. Oh, Gregory, where have you been all my life feeling tense then just push nine on your phone then the pound sign then 483 we'll do the rest presumably the rest of this uh special is troy moaning in the background how long do they stick on it yeah uh one little note here uh his movies he starred in uh gladys the groovy mule is a parody of both the movie gus which is uh don knots in a movie about a

field goal kicking mule and it's also the title is a parody of Sammy the Way Out Seal. Oh, okay. And yeah, they're both Disney movies, I think. Back when Disney just made crap, like, well, live action. Animal. Yeah, just we got an animal. We got a star. Let's put it together. It was that amazing thing when Disney Plus launched and they really did add everything, which included all of this live action stuff.

Nobody ever thinks about and they're like wow they all of these all the and we've never thought about gus before in our lives and they're here it is at disney plus don knots and ed esner i'm looking oh he's wow uh them with gus them plus a mule. That's box office gold. I also, this era of video tour guide, like it's such a great parody of it. And Troy is the perfect fit for it. I just stayed in a casino hotel room recently. And sadly, they don't have these videos anymore. I mean, it did have a video of here are the rules for blackjack, but it wasn't hosted by anybody. The cheese was gone at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas where I stayed. Sometimes you'll still see Mario Lopez walk through the pay-per-view.

You know, let's go through the movies. And you're like, oh. Mario Lopez is the Troy McClure of today. Yes! Wow! I mean, this is really based on when you stay at a hotel or resort. It's like when you turn on your TV, that's the channel it goes to. It's just like information about where you are.

And then no matter what channel you're on, when you turn on your TV again, it'll be back to that channel. Yeah. You know, when I've stayed in a hotel now the last few times, I don't even turn on the TV if it can't connect to my phone. I really just go like, what why am i even it's a tiny tv compared to my one at home and i don't want to watch regular broadcast cable disney got me you know if you ever go to a disney resort and you turn on the tv they upsell you on a bunch of stuff and i uh fell victim to the timeshare program which i completely love uh but that was all all thanks to their little uh advertorial videos i was like yes i do want a legacy gift for my family of disney vacations for the next 50 years you know that sounds great you know actually i did when i stayed in one

disneyland hotel a couple years ago uh was like our first trip right after things started opening up again and they were in the after the the vaccine uh that was when I turned on the tv I was like oh wow yeah look at the the Disney channel like uh it's like oh this is a storybook reading to a kid and then an upsell of something or like hey you go to the go to the kitchen here but the the joke about the finest r-rated films europe has to offer that's a joke about that in the 70s there was a a brief popularity of european sex films or uh sexual films like uh the erotic awakening of s is a parody of the story of o uh and oh the the other that's right oh yes and emmanuel and elsa the she-wolf uh all of these

things were big in the 70s i know about this because i worked at an underground video store and our mom and pop video store that stocked these and there were men of a certain age who wanted to rent these like the you know the stuff that's online wasn't doing it for them. They needed the story of O. They needed the French sensuality of the 70s and that kind of stuff. I also assume Rancho Relaxo, this two-star operation, they can't get you Basic Instinct, but they can get you these cheapo old European movies. The cheap European imports. You're right. They can't afford Thelma and Louise.

They can't get that. That's where they spend most of their money on, they they put it all on thelma and louise uh yeah i like i also just like that it cuts from troy mcclure's exciting thing to a boring dan castellan meta voice reading off the names of movies clearly somebody at the hotel yes and also i love i love his very full uh commercial pitch man thing of like that can't be too good for me it tastes too good i really love this episode not just for the march story because after act one which is a very good act i feel like every scene is 20 seconds long and we're constantly bouncing back between homer bart and lisa in march and it's like it keeps moving so

fast you constantly get everyone's perspective as their their lives are moving in different directions apart from each other and i think it's like it just keeps moving so fast. You constantly get everyone's perspective as their lives are moving in different directions apart from each other. And I think it's like, it just makes it so interesting to watch. Like, just it's so fast paced. Well, and also the Homer scenes and the Bart and Lisa scenes are obviously way more dynamic and hectic versus, you know, Marge laying on a bed looking at a list, you know. So it's really great pacing pacing i'm glad the conflict is over for march i could see you know some other writers when dealing with this they'd be like what and so march has no more conflict to the episode she just relaxes but i love that i love that she finally just is it though i and i and i really appreciate this part because she she did

what the hotel or what rancher relaxer told her to do to relax right she she completed all of them she did what's on that list hula hula so she did all that and it still doesn't hit the spot like she's still she's still not really relaxed and she's kind of like i'm following directions i'm i'm doing essentially the same thing i'm doing at home right which is being productive and it's and it's really nice to see that even given all of these options she's she's still she it's not what she needs and what she really needs is something that she has to ask herself what she actually needs that she gets that she finally gets yeah it's true she's still taking orders at

this point that's right yeah and so we cut back home we get a fun series of things with homer i figure it's probably bad for a full-size human to lay down on top of a baby though uh the way homer does for a joke here thankfully she's indestructible yes that's a good thing but uh also stapling a diaper i don't know, probably dangerous as well. I wouldn't think you'd want to do that. They're supposed to come with their own like Velcro. Well, maybe not a 92. I don't know.

Velcro? Not Velcro, but like the sticky pads. It's like frictiony pads. I mean, back then they actually did use, before safety pins, they literally had needles to put the diapers together. That's why safety pins were invented. Oh, that's why they're called safety pins. Wow. I think I first thought of that five years ago.

I was like, why are they safety pins? It's like, oh, because other pins aren't safe. I get it now. Wow, man. Karen here is sharing her trivia knowledge here with us. Oh, yeah. Inventions. I love everyday invention origins.

But, yeah. And Homer also does a fun hand puppet thing, which I love. There's some great just, like, squashy, stretchy animation of Homer battling with Santa's little helper, tearing apart the rabbit on his hand. And Maggie only claps when he gets attacked savagely by the dog. Meanwhile, Marge is really enjoying her uh massage you know i could go for a gregory massage soon i should i've never i've never paid for a massage but this does seem kind of nice an actual i mean i mean of course a real massage i'm not talking about the other nobody

thought that okay nobody thought that all right but we get another mexican med school reference which there's a lot of adr in this but i i kind of like that the guy's like i flunked out of mexican med school which lets you know he's probably not uh very good at massage or or at least is very uh has a lot of credentials let's say i think they're throwing massage therapists under the bus here it's a very valuable skill yeah it is it's very clinical so homer though is decided has decided that he's going to get back in touch with his bachelor of life. So he invites over Barney to hang out with him tonight. And this shows you how little, I mean, Barney is a drunk, but it shows you how little he interacts with Homer's family.

And that the last time he saw Bart, Bart was a baby. So he thinks Bart still is a baby. I will say now with friends who have kids, I fear becoming a Barney who's just like, you know, I just had this with a friend. Like, well, your kid's like six or something. She's 10 now. What? Oh, yeah. Sure she's 10.

A shocking fact about me. I've only held a baby once and I was sitting down. So don't ever hand me one. I don't I won't know what to do. I mean, I have no parental instinct. From other side hearing Barney say, like, can I hold't know what to do. I mean, I have no parental instincts. I'm sorry. From Homerside, hearing Barney say like, can I hold the baby? He's like, okay, but be careful.

It's like, you shouldn't let Barney hold the baby. I think that's dangerous. But I don't care. How do you feel about friends holding babies? Like, where's the trust come in? Oh, it's so weird because I, you know, I had a COVID baby. She was almost, it was almost, you know, a secret baby.

Not even secret. It's like some people probably didn't even know it was real because they've never seen any evidence of it. But by the time, like it was time for us to kind of meet people, she was a little bit too heavy and too old. My husband's like six, seven and she's got that tall jeans. So she's a pretty, you you know I wouldn't say happy but she is pretty heavy to carry around a growing kid yeah yeah I mean you know

don't don't fear about being the Barney you know I feel like you're there you're there for for parental support you're there for more more for hanging out with the parents so no worries there don't feel bad if I am around your baby, I will smell good. I promise.

Well, because I remember when I was a kid, being on the other side of it where you meet some friend of your family's that you don't see regularly, and they say, what are you, eight? And you're like, I'm 10 or whatever. And it bothered me as a kid, but now as an adult, I'm just like, yeah, look, kids grow up really quick it's really hard to keep track of uh if you're not seeing the kid all the time you know i live close to a university in berkeley and when we go on campus i'm like wow

who are these middle schoolers oh they're college students it's strange it's so weird like i can't you know me too with kids i can't tell you, four is the same thing as 10. Although I am, I am 40 now and we live in Berkeley too. And I love when I'm being driven back home by an Uber driver and they say, so you go to school here? And I'm like, yes. That's great to still get that question. I don't say, actually, I'm 40. I'm like, no, I just live here. But I'm like, I'm glad you confused me for a child. No, yeah. 20 years ago, yeah. i'm 40 i'm like no i just live here but i'm like i'm glad you confused me for a child no yeah years ago yeah yeah i went walking around the campus recently unbeknownst to it that it was like pledge week or something so like the frats and sororities were doing stuff and the kids were

you know the kids were in party mode but when i was seeing all these like you know scantily clad you know adults walking around i still was like you're all so young you're babies what are you doing with these drinks in your hands you were born after i voted for john kerry oh my god oh that's horrible to hear it's true though it's true yeah they're 18 now yeah oh anyway so so yes barney i also love barney's line of like someone smells sticky oh it's me yes but but yes uh barney and uh barney comes over as well as uh bart and lisa are having some scary adventures of their own in our next clip hi barney thanks for keeping me company no problem wow wow if it is a little part remember your? Hey, Harba, let me hold him.

Alright, but just be careful. Whoa! Someone smells stinky. Oh, it's me. Bart, you really shouldn't be looking through other people's things. Find anything good? I said before and I'll say it again hi caramba at least bang bang oh boy that's a blackhead gun you know for my research and i didn't want to do too much research but based on an amazon search blackhead guns aren't the thing they're selling now. It's more of a blackhead vacuum. Yeah.

It's like, yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't look that up too. Okay. Because I've, I've,

I've lived with three female partners. I'm about to live with my fourth and final female partner. And I've never seen a blackhead gun in my life. Yeah. I, I, I guess it's meant back in the, the old style.

It like would suction in part of your face and then it would cut it off with that or like it would lift it out we can get dr pimple popper on the show see that's like i hate more power to me if you love those pimple popper videos i can't watch it that very specific very specifically blackheads nothing else else. Oh, man. I feel so it's so fulfilling. It's so clean. Now, I just like watching the videos where a machine smashes things. It's the same sort of release.

I think, you know, I have those Twitter ads are getting weird now because I'm getting fewer promoted tweets from like famous things and getting weird stuff I got one of an ear picker that basically the same thing yeah it's like these Karen yeah and I was like this is too this is too much this a q-tip is fine but it's like yeah it's almost like a lab instrument and some of them like automatic

it's like a drill like a soft drill I was like no no it sounds dangerous for you to stick in your own ear there's some doctors do that for you you shouldn't you should never do that and some of them have like a little camera too yeah and i saw like the camera of like oh look at what's in your ear i was like i don't want to see yeah i want that to be a mystery to me and even with q-tips they're like use this for everything but don't put it in your ear forget everything you've learned and it'll show you the uses Like you can dry one tear with them.

Give yourself the smoky makeup look. But yeah, no, I'm thinking of, we probably saw the same ad, the one with the video camera on it, where it's like a guy pulls out a giant, like I would guess a bunch of earwax or something out of his ear. And the look on his face was like,

what? You know, you need some of that wax there for a reason uh a very very talented people who spend six figures on medical degrees they'll they can know what goes on in my ears i i don't want to know but uh and also bart learns that patty and selma are stacked or that they have they got big bras that's uh which uh you know don't i can see why he goes i carumbe at it but uh they then come in the room and they uh richard dean anderson will be in my dreams tonight and though again we talk about how we're supposed to be disgusted about them i'm somebody who has a

snoring problem and also sleeps with a sleep mask on so i was like i just feel i feel in common with patty though patty doesn't have a c-pap machine like me so my husband isn't kept up with my snoring the c-pap uh it's just a quiet white noise they exist in 1992 you know the first time i saw him in something was the late 90s so and they were like you had to have very severe sleep apnea i think they are prescribed a lot more now i don't want to say over prescribed because i i'm a big believer in my c-. I love it. I sleep so much better with it. But maybe some people are giving it that don't need it. I have severe sleep apnea, so I definitely did need it.

But are you sexually attracted to Richard Dean Anderson? That's the last question. No more than the average gay man, I suppose. He's still handsome. And yeah, I didn't used to sleep with a sleep mask, but it was something I learned once I moved in with my eventual husband that like, oh, yeah, I was used to living alone and controlling all the lights. But when someone else turns on a light, which obviously you live with them, they can turn on a light in the bedroom. They were allowed to, but it would wake me up.

And so I would get a little cranky of like, oh, why'd you turn on lights? So then very quickly, I was like, oh, yeah, just I'll put on a sleep mask. And you have the TV on however long you want. I've traveled with Henry before. And a secret about Henry is to get to sleep, he listens to podcasts at the loudest possible volume. It's like Marc Maron is next to you in bed. Hey, they could be louder. It's only mid-volume.

And sometimes the headphones come unplugged and other people can hear. And I'm like, who's talking in the other room? Yes. One time you thought I was dead. Yeah, I think I did. I think I did. Well, because the sound was so loud it woke you up. But it wasn't waking me up.

And you were trying to wake me up and I wasn't moving. And yes, look, when we room together, it'll be a different story the next time. It only happened once but uh i was surprised i listen to my own podcast to fall asleep when i really need to i usually don't have problems with sleep but um you know in a jam i'll listen to my own voice to fall asleep and it works what does that say about me uh i listen to podcasts but not my own uh when when i go to sleep obviously i listen to them when I'm editing and all that. I think it's because I edit.

And so it's like I'm not learning anything new. This is stuff I've listened to like 10 times already. And so I'm just kind of in a lull. I do have a question about the sleeping scene, right? So either Patty or Selma, only one of them has a snoring problem. Not both of them. Yeah, I guess it's Patty. Because Patty is usually written to be grosser than Selma.

But I love this sisterhood that the other person doesn't mind or is used to it and has no complaints. Selma's so used to it. And yeah, they're twins who sleep in the same bedroom even. They don't even have separate beds in their home. Yeah, I mean, in the scene earlier when Bart don't even have separate beds in their home yeah uh it's i mean the scene earlier when bart and lisa first show up uh patty goes i've been told i snore and they both laugh at that like they're both on the same page it's so fun uh man but yeah it's uh it is

very loud snoring which obviously if a woman snores it's disgusting and you it must be judged uh and then a very cute bit then is everybody's going to sleep we cut to marge just the way she goes oh and stretching out in the bed to herself like that that feels so nice i feel happy for her though you know for me well i i can compare this to a current thing because my husband and i are doing a brief long distance thing as he starts a job in another city and i'm going to join him later. And so we're in separate beds for the first time in a while. And I didn't do the stretch out. Like I still, I still just kind of stick to my side. Even before we got together, I do just sleep on a side of the bed. I never was a, like a center of the bed sleeper. Yeah. Same here. I'm still like on my half of the bed even when i'm not uh with my wife like

i don't take advantage of the it feels wrong it's like oh she'll she'll catch me if i'm sleeping on her side and then you can you'll have to make half the bed when you wake up it's nice that is nice well i carry it are you you more of a side sleeper in the bed are you used to stretching out in it oh i mean it's only thanks to that there's another person in bed that to keep me kind of in check i don't know i i feel like maybe when i'm asleep when i'm deep asleep i just i completely like throw a dance party in my head and i kick blankets i ruin you know the nice made bed i rotate like a clock hand you know and so if no one's there, I get to do all of that. I don't know that I'm doing it, obviously, but I'd wake up and I'm like upside down.

And so, yeah, I think I think the fact that the other person is there kind of makes me be like, OK, I got to stay in my position. But if I have one free bed, who knows? You know, I wonder if the CPAP also just kind of locks me in place because it has to be on a bedside table. So the hose can only go so far to on it. But then we cut to Homer and he's supposed to he's not just supposed to be tired. He is supposed to be read as a little drunk when he's.

Yeah, he's. Oh, because Barney, when you see him in the next scene, Barney is just passed out on the floor drunk and there's beer bottles everywhere. So Homer did drink a bit, which is not good when you're taking care of a baby the director said he should have just put a can of beer in his hand but like the drawing just makes him look tired you know yeah tired until hearing the commentary much later i always read it as just homer's exhausted after a long day of being a single parent but it does make sense of like yeah he invited barney over and they got drunk together. Like, that's what happened.

Oh, I completely missed that. I love how Homer, though, how he says, may your Christmas days be nice. He just forgets his song as he's singing it. But I think it's sweet that he calls Maggie his little pork chop. Like, that's adorable. He loves pork chops, though. so maggie then escapes she can't take it anymore i love that she as she's leaving she like passes by barney unconscious and and santa's little helper's just eating pizza out of the box like this is homer and barney when they were when they

were roommates together as as bachelors like this is now again as an adult I'm just like oh yeah it's the guys night I'll hang out with my friend for my 20s and we'll act like it's our 20s again for one night this did remind me of like how many times I was just able to sleep on a floor in my 20s that could not happen now oh I could now even in my 20s I couldn't do that now I always I was the friend who's like, guys, I got to get home. I can't sleep on your couch. I'm going, yeah. Oh, I can sleep in any position on any surface.

Like I just conk out. I only did it once where I got so sleepy at a party. And I'm not a guy who went to a lot of parties either. But where I drank enough, I get sleepy when I drink. And so like I was like man i really want to fall asleep but everybody's gonna want to talk to me i and in my drunk brain i think well if i hide in my friend's closet they can't find me and they'll let me sleep and so uh that only worked for about an hour and i was eventually found in and mocked for falling asleep in the closet but

didn't you have vodka red bulls back then no i mean i'm not an energy drink guy i just don't it'll keep it going in your 20s i should uh you know retroactively i know that now but we come back the third act is pretty much uh maggie maggie like in the shorts getting lost like this is like like in the old tracy ullman shorts this is just her on her fun adventure i love her jumping out at the shrub that she thinks is Marge. Like, Mom! Like, hey! And her disappointment.

That's so cute. I don't know if I discovered this the first time we covered it again. But yeah, the Home Alone scream. Again, it feels like they're so ashamed of it, they don't even want to do a close-up. Yeah. But I feel like they feel obligated to do it because of the title. It was just so big then too yeah yeah we are uh right before the fall of home alone 2 but by the fall i mean the autumn of home

alone 2 right lost in new york yeah i was so excited for that movie and uh and of course as a kid it was the first time where i was like oh sequels can just be a repeat of everything huh that's what all that's i just got old enough to realize that. Also though, Karen, yeah, I was curious on baby stuff, like Homer's 9 a.m. feeding thing. Like, is it a very regimented schedule of when to feed the baby? It's only regimented for the baby's own,

you know, their own clock, you know? And you kind of assign a time to it. And this is why you establish a routine. But with babies babies like they eat when they're hungry sometimes it's time sometimes it's not and so for me it's not not that rigid so i was like ah you know i cut homer a little bit i would figure you'd wake up from the crying if they were hungry before then anyway right but homer thinks he's tricked a baby when he goes like hey when he looks at his watch uh and uh, this is when Homer is left alone.

Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Oh, man. You want a bad night? Try sleeping on one of these. Barney, I've lost a baby.

It's the worst thing I've ever done. Don't worry, don't worry. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make you an omelet. Just help me look. Are you sure? I make them with two kinds of cheese. Come on.

Wow. Hi, Homer. I think I've got her. Come on. Barney, you I think I've got her. Come on. Marty, you're going to pull her arm off. The sooner I get her out, the sooner we can have omelets. Oh, man. I have to say, very observational.

If you've ever known a dirtbag or have been a dirtbag, they are normally very proud of like the one skill they have. That's a very low effort skill where it's like, oh my God, dude, I got to make you Mac and cheese. You haven't had Mac and cheese. So you've had mine.

And what they do is they boil noodles, dump a can of cream mushroom soup in it, and then melt cheese on top of it. And it's like, this is my homemade Mac and cheese. You've got to try it. But they're very proud of like the one, like a skill,

a 12 year old could have basically and then they're very single-minded on it like no no we're not ordering out i'm gonna make this like come on and yeah and i love barney's like posing on it like i'm gonna make you an omelet like he doesn't give a crap i'm gonna do you a favor it's just like how exotic two kinds of cheese you're gonna put shredded cheese from two bags in my omelet. I also just love how Barney slept on a conch shell all night. A conch shell all night. I was saying it the way they say it in the SpongeBob episode, conch.

But yeah, that he's. 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? He's just like, oh, do I sleep on one of these all night?

Like, it's also great they do a misdirect twice of like Barney killing Maggie pretty much. Like both things. That he either crushed her to death when he slept or he's ripping her arm off. That's also great that when he's pulling under the stoop of their front door it's water you realize it's water but the little blue around it looks like maggie's dress so it looks like

she's also like crushed under there yeah oh i see but they then cut to maggie on her adventures no human no adult is stopping a baby from walking around the mall no no uh and it's sweet that maggie's going to all the places she went to with marge in the first act yeah and i love that i also love the hairdresser like he is he a little too prissy maybe but it's it's funny as like when she says i can't even put a bag over it's like yes you can yes you can like just he's very insistent like yes you could you could put a bag over your head stop being dramatic no other woman in this world wants marge's haircuts uh and out of the pacing that maggie thinks it's marge until the woman turns around into shame and that's when maggie gets sad about it like it's it's really great then we get a quick joke that

is reusing footage clearly to save some time uh that so in saturdays of thunder homer calls the the fatherhood institute and they play cats in the Cradle and it makes him cry. And so this time he's calling the Department of Missing Babies. And that's when he hears the 1977 hit from player Baby Come Back. I think this is the third inappropriate hold music joke in the show, because when March had to call the mental hospital for homer uh they started playing the patsy klein song crazy yes on hold oh my gosh i love i just love when anybody starts sobbing too like that's great homer just destroyed by hearing baby come back but we go back to marge and uh and like karen said she's followed she She checked every box on her assignment. She's following the rules here.

But this is when Troy McClure blows Marge's mind. Bungee jumping, kayaking, calligraphy, cigar making, hula dancing. Hmm. I guess I've done everything. By now you've seen what Rancho Relaxo has to offer. Mm-hmm. But remember, we can't tell you how to have a good time. You have to tell us.

Oh. As I said to Dolores Montenegro in Calling All Quakers, have it your way, baby. Ha-ha-ha! Hello, room service? This is Marge Simpson. I'd like a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream and some chocolate chip cheesecake

and a bottle of tequila. Let's get out of here, Thelma. Okay, Louise. i wanted to have that there just so folks can hear just without seeing it how long marge has to exhale because that's how long it takes for her hair to submerge in the water uh but yeah that's uh calling all quakers not to get used with the other movie with dolores montenegro preacher with a shovel similar similar films in the simpsons universe now i would never say that i ever have worked as hard as a mother and i don't want anyone to ever have any sympathy for me but as a person who is self-employed and runs their own business

i can identify with the struggle of trying to relax and having to force yourself to do it. And I'm glad that I can do it. But sometimes I have to say to myself, no, you're going to relax. And the activity you're doing is not going to be helpful for your job at all. Because if you are self-employed and you are running a business like Henry and I are, sometimes you look at your life as like everything I do must be a stat I'm grinding in an RPG. Every free time I have, every free time unit i have must be put

towards my business and that can lead you to be very unhappy so i do have to force myself to do it but when i do i am like marge and i and i know how to do it you leave the laptop at home yeah and you grab the tequila bottle yeah exactly here here well what so so what you know i think it was very clear that march has very specific things that she knows will help her. What's your thing? I think it's, I mean, I think it's like just zoning out to playing a video game and not playing a video game for retronauts or anything like that. And usually, like the way my life is now, it's very odd in that I've been in a long distance relationship with my wife for four years now. It was supposed to be a close relationship, but COVID happened and it delayed our move

and I'll be moving to Vancouver shortly. So the way my schedule works is like, I'll work really hard for four weeks. Then I'll have a week with my wife, come back, work really hard for four or five weeks. So most of my free time is now like it's wife time. And that's when we go to restaurants, we see movies we play games together so that's the way for me to like disconnect from my job uh and it is tough because all the time i spend away from her is just working and i need to spend a lot of that time working but that's it and yes i do like to drink as well and you're working from home so there really isn't a delineation between work life and home life because it doesn't exist yeah yeah i'm

looking forward to soon living in a place where a two-bedroom can have one room that is the office so at the very least i can compartmentalize the work from home a little better of like okay this is the office room not yeah but you know for for me sometimes it's trips like going to on a usually based around either a disneyland trip or a pro wrestling uh vacation trip but uh the cheap way of doing it for me is definitely podcast plus video game like that is really just how i do it like karen what's it for you well doesn't that remind you sometimes work? Sometimes, sometimes. Podcast and video games. Man, I, you know, God, I have the same issue. Once you have free moment, it's just like, what else do I have to do?

What, you know, do I, am I behind on anything? You know, with, I'm a perpetual hobbyist, so I'm just into a lot of different things. And at some point, hobbies all feel, kind of start feeling like jobs. For me, I love going to Las Vegas. Love going to Las Vegas by myself or, you know, with my husband, but I'm totally okay. I find it also helps to especially if your job involves, you know, digital stuff like our jobs do, like, you know, uploading things, doing podcasts, it helps to have an analog activity. A way that prevents me from doing work when i

don't want to work is i will take a book and i will take that book to another location like a bar or a coffee shop or someplace and then i will make sure i don't look at my phone because if i'm like reading on a tablet i can easily go oh what's going on on twitter if i can just focus on the book i'll i it's like a healing uh like uh state for me just like okay i don't i'm not multitasking i'm just focusing on one story and i that rarely ever happens to focus on something like that and i think that the great part of marge's relaxation her her kind of you know her time in the tub is there is i love that she reaches the end of it. She knows when it's time, like, okay, now I'm recharged. She's not dilly and dallying.

She's just like, oh, well, I'm relaxed now. I feel better. And that's when she, she starts calling a, a Homer at home.

Well, it's like, oh, I'm ready to come back. That's it. You know, actually I was thinking one other thing I know Bob, uh,

likes to do relax. Cause it was, uh, your wife shared a very sweet photo of it during your last trip on Twitter of you, you at the used bookstore in that that like searching through all of those books like yes i love going to use bookstores it's uh it's a really cute picture she shared are you trying to find like a specific like a treasure or is it just like the browsing of it and seeing all the the old books i just love old paperbacks because A, they're cheaper than buying

any of those books on Kindle, but B, I like the idea that I might be the last person to ever read them. And a lot of these paperbacks you can buy for like $2 or $3 are 70 or 80 years old. They're just like, they never had any value because they're meant to be disposable. So it's a great way to buy a lot of old books without spending a lot of

money. You're not appraising them. No, no no i'm not collecting or anything it's just like but it's also so cool like this was printed in 1948 and i'm reading it now in 2022 and it will disintegrate when i'm at the end of this book this this binding will not last and and marge is watching thelma and louise which was less than a year old when this episode aired so yeah they they were doing a very especially with the lead time of animation they pretty much wrote her watching thelma louise while i was still in theaters and actually the inscription the inscription on my wife and my wedding rings

is from the simpsons parody of thelma louise oh right the good waffles stick together yes that's so sweet that's so cute in some way our connection is tied to thumb on the wheeze which is a good movie it's a great movie by the way mark kirkland uh the director of the episode he apparently chiefly animated the marge relaxation scene and he says that the lead animator on ariel the little mermaid glenn keen gave him very nice compliments on how he animated marge's uh hair especially yeah wow glenn keen himself yeah if somebody's gonna compliment you on animating hair and water it's got to be glenn keen like yeah it's great how the the beehive just melts and the the loose wet hair flops over the side of the tub too because she has so much of it she she never lets it down finally this is the first time in the show marge has let her hair

down we did see in the 70s flashback when she had her hair down in high school but this is the first time adult marge has literally let her hair down so then we cut to the uh twins at their apartment uh on homer's search uh they always make sure to draw this is a funny thing to care and they always make sure to draw that the hallway in patty and selma's apartment complex is infinite like it has no uh vanishing point they try to make it as depressing as possible and i think they're they're they're cranking the volume on this because there's a joke about it but i love just the buzzing fluorescent lights homer considers it when she says don't steal any lights and he kind of looks up like could i steal all of them uh but

homer also a rare clever move on homer he does not let patty and selma know that maggie is lost because they will definitely tell marge about it and get him in trouble though though i would think in real life if you lose your baby tell your spouse about that don get him in trouble. Though I would think in real life, if you lose your baby, tell your spouse about that. Don't try to handle it on your own. But obviously it's a comedy show. We know. Bart and Lisa, though, probably should figure out that Maggie is missing when Homer abandons them

the second he finds out that she's not there. We have the joke that Bart and Lisa are being made to rub their feet, uh then in a few episodes later Sideshow Bob hates rubbing Selma's feet so much that he part it's part of the reason he wants to kill her when pretending to be her spouse it's really sweet to see Bart and Lisa like this you know I mean I I just assume this doesn't happen at all you know there I think they were holding hands earlier uh oh yeah they're rarely united yeah they're rarely united in fear over this yeah with the common yeah they hold

hands under the table when they find out who they'll be sleeping with that's right yes yeah and then lisa tells bart he doesn't even know fear because she's seen them naked which is more more disgusting to her uh so uh so then we get a quick joke of maggie thinking she sees marge again but it's the squeaky voice teen in a uh beef eater outfit i believe it's called the with the giant hat and we have another appearance of the just stamp the ticket guy yeah he's like i just love hearing squeaky voice teen affect a bad british accent to say lube job while you white like he says white governor yes yeah lube job while you white homer is uh sobbing and this is when he uh knows that he's got a ticking clock to find Maggie. Yellow.

Hi, homie. I feel much better. Listen, Marge, how would you feel if I told you the dog ran away? Homer, that's awful. Oh. Well, I got good news for you. The dog didn't run away. Well, good.

I'm coming home, honey. You can pick me up at the train station in an hour. And bring the kids. Bye. Please, don't jump. I know you're going through some tough times. But you have your whole life ahead of you. Marge, Maggie was very young. It's not like we got so attached to her.

No. Marge, isn't life funny? One day they're babies, the next thing you know, they're off on their own. You the man who reported the lost baby? Yes. Can you describe her? Uh, she's small. She's a girl.

Bingo! Oh, Maggie! Not so fast. You want it on three counts of criminal neglect. You bought my baby. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah. Ha, ha, ha.

Sucks. Just don't do it again, you big lug. I love everything about it, but I especially love that Wiggum... Homer reacts like he's in a movie where Homer is a woman who kisses Wiggum. Of like, oh, you did it. But Wiggum, instead of being disgusted, he also has the reaction of like, oh, how can I be mad at you, you big lug? He actually is like, he likes it. He liked Homer kissing him.

It's sweet. he does the playful little jab to the jaw yes come on but yes this is a rare thing where wigum actually cares about the law even for a second like normally he wouldn't even know that uh somebody has three counts of neglect or any law really yeah also the return of the bow whoa geez sound effect of homer they've used it four times now in the show it's a sound al gene really just loves it's a fun they did it for karen they did it the first time in the christmas special the very first aired episode of the simpsons where homer's banging his head and goes bow whoa geez and they pull it over and over again they use it a lot which is so funny because he says bow and yes yeah and he doesn't say doe he is so funny because he says bow. Yes, yeah. And he doesn't say doe.

He doesn't say doe. He says bow. I also love Homer's reaction of like, oh, since I asked Marge if she'd be sad that the dog's gone, now I know she'd be sad that Maggie's missing. It's like he needed to do a test to figure out if she'd be sad. He can't just assume that. The big cone that looks like marge is a great design too yeah that's so cute it's it's adorable i was sad to i double check this look

they do great work at the universal hollywood i don't know if you've been to the springfield yeah yeah they recreate so many great things from the show and they have that ice cream parlor there but since marge the marge ice cream cone is only in this episode it's not at the park i wish it was though yeah i figured because uh it was only just for this gag yeah but yeah but it's some amazing thing like you're you're uh uh sounds like you're a big parks fan carol like will you the universal springfield is pretty great right yeah i i really like i mean obviously as not as a simpson super fan but i like the it really feels like an immersive kind of cartoon you know that the proportions are right and i think universal also has um the seuss the dr seuss land in orlando and that's really magical

as well like i really enjoyed it i think a long time ago that was like nickelodeon and that was kind of crappy but but yeah this i i really i really like these alternate like cartoon lands which is why i'm so excited for the nintendo land i mean oh yeah i've seen videos of in japan i was like oh my god it's gonna it just i love the idea of being in a cartoon we're in disneyland you're not in a cartoon you're in a you know in a curated idyllic 1950s like you know kind of neighborhoody or what people imagine to be fantasy and frontier and whatnot but like i love the idea of being in a cartoon i like how universal is at their best when they embrace that different zones are different places you're like now you're in springfield and soon it's going to be the nintendo i mean yeah the videos i've seen of nintendoland look amazing in a non-covid world i probably would

have gone on a trip to yeah with my husband to osaka yeah to see the one that's already here but soon enough it'll be in hollywood i feel like they shouldn't let kids in nintendoland because they haven't earned it no that's true i've been been playing Mario for 35, 37 years. Sure, let's say that. And you know what, kids, play them all in order. Then we'll let you in. You have to prove it. You have to beat this level or find the warp whistle,

and then you're allowed in. God, it's going to be so crowded. I can't imagine opening year, opening day, month, week. I think I read, this is a whole tangent here but i i think i read that they're planning to do some sort of like registration thing like they did with the when they first opened star wars in disneyland oh that sounds so much fun well like at the very least it'll prevent it from being just like wall-to-wall humans the most fun of amusement park is getting up at 7 a.m opening an app yes and reloading it a thousand times as it crashes to get on the ride that you paid money to

ride you know maybe once it's open in hollywood that's the time to go to osaka it's like oh everybody else is in hollywood now so maybe that but though i mean i've only been to tokyo disneyland and there are like that is not a place to go to for less lines. So I would bet it's probably the same at Universal Japan as well. But but yeah, so Homer's got Maggie back this time. He tapes her down to make sure she can't get away. Seems dangerous to tape down a baby in a baby seat, I would guess. In the front. Yeah. Yeah. In the front seat.

And so Homer picks up Bart and Lisa I love them just so clamped onto his legs and he kind of has to like kick them into the car to get them off him he's driving as fast he can Marge is on her train though Marge says she'll be there in an hour it's like man really that close in a train come Come on. That's not realistic, but I know it's a cartoon, but so then Marge arrives. And I also, another just great, great shot.

The photo that then reveals them in shambles, like, oh, it's, it's beautiful. The, the moral of the story in the end of this, obviously it works great in this episode,

but not if there's 30 more years of Simpsons. Every episode is them taking them for granted. And they didn't clearly did not learn a lesson from this they just learned that they're completely dependent on Marge yeah and she can't leave again as Homer says never leave again yes never leave again now it's it's more realistically played in the secrets is a successful marriage season six episode where Marge throws out Homer and the lesson Homer learns is like yes I'm entirely dependent on you. And this is a codependent relationship.

And if you don't take care of me, I will fall apart. I will die. It's a much darker episode. This, meanwhile, a very sweet. I've got the happy ending right here. Hi, did you miss me? Never need to get. Never need to get.

Never need to get. Never leave a guest. Never leave a guest. I missed you too. And from now on, I hope you'll help me out a little more than you used to. You got it, sweetheart. You have enough blanket there? Well, I could use a little more. And sometimes I want a little time to myself. And I expect you to help.

Mom, I think I speak for everyone in this bed when i say you have nothing to worry about now let's just try and get a little shut eye okay oh so sweet yeah especially that it's maggie who's the last to go to sleep that's that's extra cute but yeah again in a vacuum this is a great ending where everybody learned how much they took march for granted and they're going to help her and not leave her with as much problems to deal with but you know in a subtle way it does feel like bart is underlining the status quo of the premise by

saying you have nothing to worry about because the dynamic has to be the same forever so i think maybe that could just be a little subtle dig at the idea of like well no marge is screwed it's yeah they learn nothing and they have to continue their dynamic sorry yeah no this is just them uh accepting like oh yeah well this is what we all say now but obviously in three days we'll all forget and we get all back to our pattern and also we're a classic american family sitcom where the dynamics have to be the same for us to even have the show so yeah nobody leave no big changes and uh guess what your character is in a show if they if they didn't take it uh take march for granted many episodes would be different after this so but but i love

that marge at least marge got to relax and she got to recharge like that that's what's nice uh and it's just seeing the whole family together in bed too i yeah that's very cute and and i wonder if it's meant to be a reference to the first the first simpsons tr Ullman short also ends with them all in bed together too. Oh, right, yeah. It's a very weird drawing. Yes, yeah, yeah. This is drawn better, but it's a very sweet ending,

and I like that even Homer, Homer's desperate, never leave again, never leave again. It's played so well of a man who learned, oh, I screwed up. I need you really bad like i i love that too it's a it's such a sweet episode that also i can't not my final thoughts are just like i can't not associate it with my own mom and project my own feelings onto it too of course

especially since my mom still to this day references it but i hope it helped everybody learn that you know you can take people for granted in your lives and and sometimes they can be pushed too far if you if you don't recognize it i i'm glad marge finally got her her day to relax yeah i think that uh they should have submitted this one for the me i think i made i might have won instead of radio bar yeah i love radio bar but this one's more heartfelt but also it's like yeah i think about my mom I think about everything she was doing on top of having a full-time job. And now that I'm an adult, I can think of like how this makes me look at past relationships I've had where, you know, when you say to yourself, who am I kidding? You know it might be time to get out of that.

And so like you don't need to. I mean, most of the time women are the marge in this situation, but you can be a man and be the marge sometimes. A marge man. Yeah. You don't have to be a woman to take her for granted, but it helps. Those are my final thoughts. Karen, how about you? I was just so surprised how sweet this was and how it was really not what I expected from knowing classic show tropes, entertainment tropes.

And I love that there are sweet moments that we saw, the little details, but that it's so Marge-focused and it's not about the kids. The show isn't about like, God, how much work is it to take care of kids? There's a little bit of that but it's not like you know it's not like wow having kids is such a horrible life decision which which you know a lot of the harried parents and and they're so stressed out and that

isn't the case and i think you know henry it's like what you said it's the acknowledgement they need a little time to recharge and that it comes within. And I think that's a really sweet point that it's not like children are the devil. And we can all learn to relax just like Marge, too. And it takes time. Karen, I really appreciate getting all your parental insight into this, too. That a lot of stuff we miss are just in view from the outside of it. Yeah. I'm really, I mean, now that I'm a parent,

obviously I'm more sensitive where I see it more of how like parenthood is, is portrayed or what I thought was parenthood before I had a kid. And to be honest, it's like, really fun. And it's not as you know, it is hard at some points, but like, there's so much fun in that. And I feel like we don't see that much when we're showing parenthood in shows and movies. It's always like people being like stressed out, underappreciated, whatever, and not showing the good parts. And that's, you know, I just I really didn't expect that either of being a parent it's like oh this is really fun that's great you can make your kids watch your favorite movies play your favorite games as homer said teach them to hate the things you hate exactly

but thanks for joining us karen uh we know you're on the great podcast good job brains please tell us about that and also where we can find you online. Yeah, sure. I run a trivia, a pub quiz podcast where people work together. We make our own quiz segments. We talk about, you know, great trivia facts that are great conversation starters. You know, personally, I'm really into inventions and origins of inventions. And so yeah, that's kind of the crux of the show friends sharing cool facts with each other. So we like to invite you to our table and join in the fun. It's good job brain and you can find us on any podcast apps or service or good job brain.com. And I am on I guess you can find me on Twitter at good job brain. I have my own Twitter too. But it's like I'm not very interesting or active like you guys I reshare a

lot of the stuff. You know, Henry, I just I shared the the Kevin Conroy video that you found. That was great. But you can find me on Twitter. M O M O Momo Pesh P E, Pesh, P-E-C-H-E. It's a chrono. Sorry, I forgot what kind of reference it was, but it's an old video game reference. No, thank you, Karen, so much. We learned a ton. And yeah, all of the trivia facts,

like, you know, also you and Chris Cole are such a great trivia pair. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Talk about that. He's our resident Simpsons trivia MVP for all of our

Simpsons trivia questions. He's definitely our guy. But thank you so much, Karen. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, guys. Thanks again to Karen Chu for being on the podcast. Please check out her podcast,

Good Job Brain. Ask for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week at a time and at free. Please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month you get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes over 100 miniseries episodes that includes monthly access to new episodes of talking futurama and talking the hill and that also includes access to our new currently unraveling

miniseries blab about bat, the animated series season two. In that miniseries, we're going over our favorite episodes of Batman, the animated series, using our trademark style of clips and trivia and all the stuff you love from our podcast. You can only find that behind the $5 paywall at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you can access all of the $5 stuff naturally but you can also access one extremely long podcast once a month

only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that Henry? Bob is talking about our What a Cartoon movie podcast where we cover an animated feature film very in depth just like we do in episode of The Simpsons which often means talking about a film for over five or even over six hours long. last month we

had a bit of a halloween hangover as we talked about the laika classic paranormal we had so much fun with that stop motion spooky film and this month we are closing out the year with the holiday japanese animation classic tokyo godathers. It is a great time. We can't wait to talk about that one too. If you sign up at the $10 level, you get access to over four years of What a Cartoon movies, 260 hours of exclusive podcasts. In addition to all the $5 stuff Bob mentioned,

recent ones have included The Transformers, The Movie from 1986, Beavis and Butthead do The Universe, a bunch of Disneyney renaissance classics and a back catalog that covers everything from akira to a goofy movie check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpsons 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 is retro not so there's a classic gaming podcast all about old video

games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro knots sign up there for two full length bonus episodes every month Henry how about you you can follow me on Twitter at H E N E R E Y G also if you're following me and Bob on Twitter

please follow the official Twitter account of this podcast network at TalkSimpsonsPod and we're also on Instagram now so follow TalkSimpsonsPod on there as well and if you're looking for an easy to explore list of all of our previously released free podcasts for

Talking Simpsons and our other podcast What a Cartoon you can find it all at TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com Thanks so much for joining us folks we'll see you again next time for season What a cartoon. You can find it all at TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 13's Weekend at Bernese's, and we'll see you then. She's locked in the car and refuses to move. Would you flash your light?

Yes. Well, I'm fresh out of ideas.