Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Homer To The Max with Nathan Rabin

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

Max Power invades the show this week, as we welcome on the great writer and podcaster Nathan Rabin (check out his upcoming Weird Al book)! We discuss mid-season TV, replaceable voice actors, network retooling, cactuses, and the parties of liberal elites all in one joke-packed podcast! So strap yourself in and hear the Gs! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!

attention podcast listener we've got an exciting new podcast coming just for patrons of patreon.com slash talking simpsons talking futurama season two part one has begun exclusively for our five dollar and up patrons on the talking simpsons network that's the first 10 episodes of futurama coming to you once a week so just sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and you'll get Talking Futurama season two and all of our limited miniseries, including the entirety of Talking Futurama season one. That's 13 episodes.

That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product ahoy everybody and welcome to talking simpsons where you strap yourself in and feel the g's i'm your host the babe having millionaire bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who do we have today? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert and I wish I didn't know who Jeremy Piven is. And who do we have on the line? You have Nathan Raven, a.k.a. Hercules Rockefeller.

Excellent, and today's episode is Homer to the max. You only wrote my name. I wanted yours. Take it or leave it. Today's episode aired on February 7th, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. The AFC wins the Pro Bowl.

The first Mario Party game is released on the Nintendo 64. And Payback isn't running away because he's at the top of the box office. I can only relate to the Mario Party segment of this. I'm sorry. I mean, yes, as listeners learned from our previous episode, the Super Bowl one, we know nothing about sports. I believe the Pro Bowl is just a game. Everybody takes it easy. It's more of a function. It's like the All Bowl is just a game everybody takes it easy. It's more of a function.

It's like the All-Star game. It doesn't really count or anything. And everyone takes home a large bowl. It's the one where everybody tries not to get hurt. Yeah. That's the whole point, is if you get hurt on a dumb game that doesn't matter, then you're a family and everybody knows you will hate you forever. It's an exercise in good sportsmanship, if anything.

And, yeah, Mario Party the nintendo 64 game i played the crap out of it with my friends we broke many a controller because they basically had many games in it that seemed fine and nice of like spin the analog stick as fast as you can to make mar pedal, it destroys your N64 controller. They didn't tell you to use your palm, though you should have. But this game was the subject of a class action lawsuit in which they would later distribute gloves to people. Oh, it did fuck up my palm, man.

It did. Was it Wario that sued them for this? We all know Yoshi has tax problems, though. It's been documented. It's one of our less successful games. Yoshi has tax problems. And yes, Payback, the Mel Gibson film, which Homer will reference in about another season.

What even is that? Oh, you've never seen Payback, Bob? No. Well, okay, if you can ignore Mel Gibson's involvement, I think you, especially Bob, would really love it because it is a modern noir like it is you know a guy rips off the mob and they're chasing after him kind of movie and it's like it's a very gray movie like it has like a very blue tinge to everything but not Lee Marvin

some other great old guys in it it's uh I remember really enjoying it once upon a time and now the only scene i remember from it though is mel gibson being tortured because there's always a scene in the gibson movie that is your thing at a match he's a totally great old dude uh yes i think he played like a pretty classic uh pulp character uh and i believe that was the is maybe brian helmsman's directorial debut and then then apparently Mel Gibson kind of came over and finished everything. Ghost directed that. Do you ever remember quickly? It's kind of entertaining and very unsavory.

And that inimitable Mel Gibson. I actually remember one other scene that isn't torture. When the guy we were just talking about, Mel Gibson, shoots his briefcase and fucks up his clothes. He's like, oh, come on. Those are all my suits. And then he finds out that Mel Gibson only wants $30,000. And the guy's like, you're doing this for $30,000? My suits are worth more than that.

Kind of like a Dr. Evil ransom is happening. It was also kind of a star-making turn for Lucy Liu. Oh, okay. In that motion picture, you remember her. It's a remake of Point Blank, the great John. Oh, okay. That's right. That's the other thing, too. It's like, my God, it's got John Glover, William Devane,

James Coburn, and Chris Christopherson. That is some serious old white guy energy. And yeah, it was much, much, much, much worse than Point Blank. And also kind of creepy. But yeah, definitely an interesting motion picture. Adding to Q. I think it was Chris Christopherson who smashes Mel Gibson's toes when he's tied up. I'm sure they all wanted to do it.

Chris Christopherson had the honor. But they're like, oh, you're enjoying this too much, Mel. We're not doing this anymore. Kind of creepy. But on the line, we have the great Nathan Rabin, previously of outlets like The Dissolve and The A.V. Club, now doing his own thing at Nathan Rabin's Happy Place, and the author of the upcoming The Weird Accordion to Al.

Yeah, well, yeah, the very Simpsons-adjacent Weird Al Yankovic. Yeah, there's a lot of Simpsons stuff in the book. Three of my all-time favorite Weird Al Yankovic songs reference The Simpsons. Well, yeah, Nathan, me and Bob have been reading you for the longest time, probably in both me and Bob's former careers in the games press. We took early inspiration slash ripping off of your writing style. I would say it's an homage. That is good to know. People who are actually employed in the industry. I learned from me. If folks haven't read much of your stuff, your reviews of things, especially flops, are some of the best writing about media online, I would say.

Well, thank you. And you're also the man who coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl. That's right. I did, I did. That will haunt me for the rest of my life. And it's weird. I think I've kind of gone through a lot of different phases with it. And now I've come to peace with it.

I kind of figure you're very, very lucky to make any kind of an imprint in this world of ours. And to come up with a phrase and an idea that's sticky, that has resonance. I feel deeply flattered and deeply honored. At the same time, I've gone through a whole lot. I mean, I was angry. I had weird feelings. It's gone through a whole, I mean, I was angry, I had weird feelings. It's gone through a lot of weird permutations. And yeah, I'm a proud, but

confused and complicated papa. That idea and that phrase and that term. Do you think your coining of the phrase helped lessen the appearance of this trope? I think so. I think so. I mean mean i think i tried to shame people out of having just transparent transparent uh representations of this and i think i failed

miserably uh in the movie aloha uh are any of you guys familiar with the famously failed motion picture aloha oh yeah oh jesus fucking christ wait can I swear on this? Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, swear more. Well, Loa was created, written, and directed by Cameron Crowe, who wrote and directed several really, really great movies. But he also wrote and directed Elizabethtown, which I also

kind of came around on. And Elizabethtown is the movie that inspired me to coin the phrase Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I mean, I'd seen and recognized that archetype before, but this one was just so egregious, so shameless, so utterly, utterly false and fictional, yet self-indulgent. So the fact that Cameron Crowe, the man who created this,

or like the purest manifestation of it, later created Emma Stone's character in Aloha, who is the most shameless, ridiculous parody of Amanda Pixie Dreamgirl. She's also like the most Irish woman in the world. And she was cast as a quarter Hawaiian and a quarter Asian. felt like oh my god i have failed egregiously because cameron crowe wasn't shamed sufficiently to not come back with the biggest slash worst slash most egregious manic fix you can grow you learn nothing i tried to shame people i don't know that i see well hemmet stone has apologized for that part but not for that reason crowe should also apologize for that and the film itself. Nathan, you know, as a media writer and cataloger, I'm sure The Simpsons were pretty important to you growing up and today. It was incredibly incredible. I mean, I will go on record as saying that The Simpsons is my favorite television show of all time.

I think it's the best television show of all time. I think it's the best television show of all time. I feel like it basically defined the comic sensibility. Pop culture frame of reference for my entire generation and generations that followed after me. I actually had a column for Rotten Tomatoes called The Simpsons Generation. No, The Simpsons of the Decade. You can tell that it really, really caught on and that I, the writer, don't remember what it was called. It was going to be a book. And then the publishing industry very wisely said, oh, God, nobody wants to read about comedy. They barely want to experience comedy, let alone read about the art of comedy. And so the nice thing is that, like, I failed a lot. When you get to be 43 years old, when you've been in the industry as long as I have, you fail at a lot of things.

And it kind of loses some of its sting. So when I think about The Simpsons now, I think about the enormous pleasure and joy it has given me through the years. I think about the way it has influenced Riddle Yankovic and in turn, you know, been influenced by him. I have positive... I mean, Matt Selman, the Simpsons writer, once bought me the most expensive meal of my life. Oh, wow. He was like a fan. And being very wealthy, he and another Simpsons writer and Parks and Rec guy,

they would just travel around the country going to incredibly fancy restaurants to spend the enormous amount of money that they have. So they came to Chicago, where I lived at the time, and God, I forgot what the place was, but they had like 17 different uh entrees 70 different courses and it was amazing experiencing what it's like to be one of the rich people you know and i experienced that for yeah one magical magical evening like homer does in this episode yeah yeah yeah i went back to being you know cinderella they have an open invite to come to berkeley yeah i just take the bus back home i didn't want to ask you nathan uh because you

just talked about matt selman and meeting him how often has your career brought you in touch with people who have worked on the show in some capacity a fair amount you know i think you know when i did uh random roles such as the feature for the club that i really liked will harris is kind of killing it on their now yeah whenever i talk to somebody uh their simpsons appearance was very very important you know like when i talked to mark hamill uh i was as excited to talk to him uh about doing uh luke skywalker uh in dinner theater as i was to talk to him at star wars like yeah there's a deep deep deep connection there and i actually have a weirdo yankovic uh simpsons uh action figure autographed oh nice very very tasteful weird al yankovic shrine and the funny thing is part of me is like

oh weird al would like to see my weird al shrine probably have the same way that somebody who's being stalked would want to see a shrine of that matter i think it might impress him or it might deeply disturb and horrify him he's probably seen plenty of shrines in his day, in his 40 years. And I have thought about getting a tattoo. Oh, a Simpsons tattoo. I was doing amazing, amazing illustrations

to the point where I'm like, eh, if we sell enough books, I would totally get several. So you must have been watching this episode live when it came out then the homer to the max yeah oh my god i was i was obsessed i was obsessed with the simpsons and one of the kind of bashed uh highlights of my career definitely my time at the av club was this is fairly late uh in their run but they had a portland episode and it featured a patent

oswald and it featured references to The Onion, which was very exciting, but more specifically to The AV Club, which I wrote for. And yeah, there was a bit of like, oh my God, the show that we all worship, you know, that was like everything to us just referenced us. Like that is the coolest thing in the world.

Like it can only go downhill from here. Spoiler, it can go downhill from there. But it was unbelievably exciting. I mean, it was like, I unbelievably exciting i mean it was like i don't know it was like a background gag in bojack horseman uh they had something was written by a character named ethan raven uh who is a great uh raven who writes you know pithy intelligent reviews i was a answer on jeopardy so yeah, big, big, big honors when something that you absolutely adore, you get to be a part of even a little bit as an adult. Yeah, I was a big really AFI club then. I remember that gag on Portlandia, or the Portland episode of Simpsons. I mean, it was a crossover, basically.

Oh, yeah, that's right. I did think that was really cool. Like, they're reading what I read. And Matt Selman wrote that episode. And yeah, there're reading what I read. It's just like... Oh, yeah. And Matt Selman wrote that episode. And there was like a movie review. So I'm like, oh, yeah, that was my trip for a very long time. So they're not just making jokes about the place that they work. And this week's episode is so insidery.

Like, for me, I view this episode a little differently than I did as a teen watching this to an adult now who knows television production a lot better and the behind the scenes stories. Well, I love the idea that the television producers are so accessible that if you have problems with them, you can literally just go to them and they will have a conversation with you about it. I guess kind of the way of doing that now is Twitter. Yell at people online and tell them how much, whatever you saw just displeased them. I hope that it somehow gets to them and ruins their day.

They were very diplomatic 20 years ago. And yes, as any of us been cursed with a famous name or having a famous person. I don't know. Who would that be? Are you setting setting me up i didn't read at first i wasn't okay i realized uh no my name is bob mackie m-a-c-k-e-y there is a fashion designer bob mackie m-a-c-k-i-e i've known this since i was three because people let me know every day of my life and uh he was a superstar he is he is one of the giants there and he's still alive that's amazing yeah i believe he's in the 70s but i mean what came of it was millhouse saying and bart saying bob mackie in season six that's the most i got out of it so there's clips of

substance characters saying my name but after that no no glory and people still remind me on twitter every day whenever there's a bob m Mackie article look his name's like your name like Homer says it's funny if you look him up on Wikipedia which I totally did not just do the final sentence of the introductory paragraph is he was a costume designer for Carol Burnett on the Carol Burnett show during its entire 11 year

run impressive design costume for its spinoff Mama's Family I'm sure he'd be very very proud that you know he worked with that middler and diana ross and his work on mama's family spectacular costumes on that show i wonder if that's just counting him designing those costumes for the first sketch of mama's family on the brunette show they had a lot of really nice ball gowns that they all wore a little a little out of place but now it makes sense show they had a lot of really nice ball gowns that they all wore a little a

little out of place but now it makes sense i know surprisingly a lot about mama's family i'm sorry i watched a lot of it as a kid well for me the name henry wasn't one i heard a ton though i did hate the uh looney tunes henry that wherever that came from i didn't like that as a kid but also uh long time listeners may know that as a kid i didn't go by henry pretty much with anybody i went by the name max max gilbert i like that and so this episode came out when i am 16 and homer changes his name to my name in the show that's even weirder it's not just that homer has a name of a person on a tv show and then homer changes his name to my name so i have a name of a person on a tv show you know it's interesting now that i think about it because homer simpson of course

is the heartbreakingly vulnerable uh poignant character played by donald sutherland in the motion picture day of the Locust. Right. Have you guys seen Day of the Locust? No, I'm just aware of that. In fact, yeah. Incredibly, it's one of the most depressing, heartbreaking apocalyptic visions of Hollywood

in all of history. Spoiler alert, I believe Homer Simpson, who's just this very gentle, sweet kind of victim of a character, ends the film beating Jackie Earl Haley to death. Wow. And in a way, you're like, well, he kind of had it coming to him. Nobody should beat a child to death. So, yeah, I think that's kind of weird that Homer Simpson himself is a legendary pop culture character who also shares the name of a pretty pretty prominent figure and a

very important work of american literature but he wouldn't even be homer simpson if it wasn't for homer graining like it was yeah yeah for sure that was just a weird coincidence i don't know how they do it now but i heard in the past uh in interviews and stuff like they have to clear names of characters and if only like if if a very few amount of matches come up they have to change the name but if there's more than a few they're okay to use the name and i remember macarini talking in a commentary or something a long time ago saying uh when the show started they got a letter from a homer simpson who worked at a nuclear power plant and said the show ruined his life i'm guessing there are probably a number of managers

named michael scott uh yeah i'd be like mikey or something i have to figure out a way to get around There are probably a number of managers named Michael Scott. Yeah. Have to be like Mikey or something, or have to figure out a way to get around that. Well, and the poor people whose last name was Bundy first had a serial killer, and then after that, it's married with children. They were happy with the wrestler, I bet. Oh, King Kong Bundy, yeah, yeah. That's why people's names are Dolph now.

They're like, it's just Dolph, like Jimbo Dolph and Kearney. There's no Adolph. That's not a name anymore. It was like when Michael Jordan had a Hitler mustache. It was kind of like, you know, if anybody can get away with it, it's me. That was the weirdest. And it probably did, you know? It was like, I don't know why anybody in their right mind would have a Hitler mustache.

And I guess before we get into our first first clip this whole mid-season thing you know the idea of a mid-season replacement had been around for decades before this but i do think by 99 it became like a insider term that regular folks were getting to know from like tv guide or e-news or entertainment weekly would be like the mid-season schedule the mid-season preview like they'd they'd start using those terms for shows that used to just be a new show comes out in january it used to be considered a dumping ground but a lot of big shows uh hit it big in the mid-season like the next year be malcolm in the middle for fox it was a january show well and if i remember uh correctly seinfeld

uh what season replacement and had i continued The Simpsons a decade further, I definitely would have written about Seinfeld, which was very, very postmodern, very meta, and also spent a lot of time talking about the mechanics of television and the culture of television. I mean, you know, they had an entire season arc, not terribly dissimilar places as this particular episode. Well, this is an obvious fact,

but The Simpsons was a midseason show. It was not intended to be, but it ended up being one. And right before this episode aired, Futurama was the new midseason show, along with things like Family Guy. You know, as we covered in our recent interview with Mike Scully, they knew a slate of three new animated series were coming in the midseason. So midseason talk was really getting around in the simpsons offices thanks to that what were the uh what were the three animated series you got futurama family guy and of course the pjs yeah that actually kind of lasted that had a bit of a it's weird how that kind of disappeared the pjs because i felt like it did okay and

had a couple of seasons it was pretty well received and then it just kind of disappeared larry wilmore was like co-creator of the show and nobody ever remembers that related to him i was knowing what mid-seasons were just because i was a huge must see tv watcher and that's when i knew every show between Friends and Seinfeld would change in January. It'd be like... Sent to die on Tuesday. It's not single guy time anymore. It's Boston Common Time.

Starring that guy. I was such a nerd as a kid. I used to read Variety. And I wouldn't just read Variety when I was 11 years old. I paid a lot of attention to the box office grosses and also the television ratings. So there would be a long time when I could probably tell you what was in the top 25 in a related note i had no friends lost my virginity very late you're in the right place those yes very much you're you're among friends here you know friends and sex you get rid of those things you got a lot of time to memorize television yeah that's my

it's what matters but yes why don't we get into our first clip of the episode. It's time for the countdown to mid-season. The start of television's second most exciting season, mid-season, is just 200 exciting seconds away. Door. Locked. Phone. Unplugged.

Dog. Cat. Taped and corked. Perfect. It's America's Funniest Tornadoes And at 9.30, all in the family 1999 Oh, jeez, Daddy got me living with an African-American, a Semite-American, and a woman-American there And I'm glad I loved yous all

I love everybody I wish I'd saved my money for the first show. Oh, I can't wait. Look, Marge, I had a scorecard printed up at that all night scorecard place. So Nathan, did you ever cover Archie Bunker's place on your My World of Flops series? Because I was actually very, very successful. If I remember correctly, it lasted three or four years. Oh, wow. Okay. Danielle Wild wilderbois whose last name i totally cannot pronounce uh but she was the girl and she she went on to become a very successful songwriter wow a musician uh so yeah i guess for some reason that it fucking worked it was a very cynical idea

but the same thing is like there are a lot of shows that last for a very long time you don't really think about it uh but yeah so i mean if i remember correctly the new monsters had a longer run than the original monsters really you would never imagine that you would never imagine that because you know huge flop nobody cares uh the original monster is like iconic but you know a lot of times successful uh shows aren't as successful as you remember and the new shit ends up being successful yeah folks don't know about that are all in the family continued into being archie bunker's place as carol o'connor kind of became the creative lead over it the for a long time there were always this stories of

friction between carol and norman lear over the character of archie because who made him famous who who is the true creator of the role and i think carol o'connor had the power as the actor portraying the role he's like well there's no archie without me so give me more uh power over the storytelling that ends you up with archie bunker's place yeah i think it's kind of interesting watching this uh how much of this feels very very 1999 very very dated and also how much of it feels really, really contemporary. I was kind of watching this, I remember kind of the moments where you most feel John Schwarnor, though, to say he's like running out of money or something, which I thought he was pretty darn comfortable, I would think, into his... Well, some of these random shots at Lorne Michaels and Jeremy Piven, those really seem to kind of be coming out of nowhere. They're deserved, though.

I mean, they're prescient, and Jeremy Piven does deserve to be knocked down a peg. He should be in prison. Also, funnily enough, Woody Harrelson, who will appear later in the episode, well, not really, but they'll have a Woody Harrelson joke. He did play Archie Bunker in a live TV revival of Norman Lear's stuff. Yeah, they're making fun of Fox's world's blankiest blanks. Also, I got to give it to Harry Shearer. He's doing a good impersonation of fox video voice guy let me play a quick clip here just to remind you guys what that sounds like the simpsons season

premiere sunday on fox yeah that guy yeah but that uh sounds a lot i normally think of him talking about him married with children yeah but harry sheer is doing a good version of that guy voice, talking about the Fox. And also, I think Homer's midseason pennant might be his greatest pennant, though his XFL pennant is pretty good, too. I like his school pennant. Yeah. Go school. Go school. That Homer ranks shows as from very good to excellent.

It's the Jay Sherman scale. Or sorry, the Duke Phillips scale. Yes. I apologize. I was also thinking this is a kind of critique-y episode or at least the third act

feels a bit critique-y. Yeah, it does. But... I had the same response. I was like, is that a Schwarzwelder or the... Algin Marguerite.

I was like, yeah. I'm sure they had their fingerprints all over this bad the simpsons will be right back hope you're all enjoying this week's dynamic podcast with our special guest nathan rabin be sure to check out his nathan rabin's happy place and also his podcast and his upcoming weird al book all that information is in the description for this week's episode so be sure to check it out and if you enjoy this podcast or our sister podcast what a cartoon you should

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Isn't mid-season just a dumping ground for second-rate shows that weren't good enough for the fall schedule? You're thinking of all the other years. This year's shows are classics. There's the laughter family. That's animated. Networks like animation because they don't have to pay the actors squat. Plus, they can replace him

and no one can tell the diddly difference. And now, mid-season kicks off with Admiral Baby. We're taking the entire Sixth Fleet to Candy Island? Those are the Admiral's orders. Right. It's hard to believe someone that young could have risen to the rank of Admiral. Gee, I never thought I'd say this about a TV show, but this is kind of stupid. Homer finally realizes TV could be bad.

I feel like the parodies in this episode can be talked about the fact that John Schwarzwalder stopped paying attention to pop culture in 1986, which is why there are these very weird high-concept sitcom parodies, and also there's a Miami Vice parody in 1999. Yes. I feel like that's where the cutoff date is. I mean, Baby bob is coming soon after admiral baby so he was a little ahead of the curve on that one there was the look who's talking tv show in the late 80s too so i guess there was a tv show maybe he's goofing on that but uh why don't

we talk a little bit about ned's voice there appearing what that background is uh it's a long story i'll try to shorten as much as possible. But that there was Mike Scully doing Ned's voice. And he told us all about him doing that voice as kind of a tribute to the voice actor's pay dispute that had been settled just a few months before this episode aired. Short version of it is that when the end of season nine was coming, all the voice actors, the core casts, deals were up and that they were going to negotiate them together. And around the same time, the Friends actors had just negotiated big pay raises together too to have it all uniform because they knew they could do it better together instead of

like, I don't know, they could say, well, David Schwimmer isn't worth as much as Jennifer Aniston, which is true. It's true. Quick timeline is that on March 12th, 1999, was the first public news that the Simpsons voice actors were holding out for a raise. At the time, they were currently being paid $30,000 an episode, which is really too cheap for the leads of a show that makes a billion billions for fox to 1999 in the news reports on it fox was softly floating the idea of like well what if we did replace them they're just voice actors it's it's an all too common thing to do in the world of voice acting and i remember being online primitively online in in march of 1999 and being very worried of like, oh

God, the Simpsons voices, they're going to go away. This will be terrible. But by April 2nd came the news that they had scored a new deal to continue doing the show, which at the time Variety reported it as they would make 60,000 an episode in the next season, 70,000 in season 12, sources said. And that if the show would make it to the far-off year of 2005, they'd all get a million-dollar bonus. Going right to Scientology. I'd love to ask them if they got that million dollars.

I think they literally didn't just bring the money truck to their house. I think the money truck was made out of gold and diamonds. Then they got to keep the money truck after it was done backing up all of the money in the world. This might seem excessive, but think about how hard they worked. I'm sure the executives work even harder, which is why they're worth more. more yeah no uh harry shearer in interviews has been very honest about like i know this is the easiest job i've ever had but i am also grossly underpaid for what this thing makes people and well and so harry shearer actually it was funny that three weeks after the actors scored more pay was when the 200th episode came out and that's when they were doing their you know big marketing

blitz for it, and just like tons of interviews in Variety and Entertainment Weekly, all on the history of The Simpsons, talking about making the show. And so, of course, they're interviewing the voice actors, and they talk to them about their recent pay dispute. And the leastest diplomatic in the interviews

was Harry Shearer, who said, quote, I find it ironic that a cast deemed instantly replaceable weeks ago is now indispensable. A large number of working voice actors declined Fox's invitation to replace us. They are the ones who acted responsibly. We've been caught in an unpleasant fandango. An unpleasant fandango. I love that term. That's also the name of his jam band. Must play it a lot on the show that's i'd read somewhere but now when i tried to find a source on it i can't find it but i swear maurice

lamarche was one of the people who said like in 99 they were asked like you could just do mr burns and smithers right couldn't you do that and he's like no no i i won't do that uh and i i think it is thanks to fellow actors and so just to let you know how the timeline on simpsons pay went after that in 2004 they negotiated a raise to 250 000 an episode uh 2008 up to 400 000 an episode and then 2011 came a thing that would set the tone for simpsons productions for the rest of the decade, which is Fox saying they need to cut costs on The Simpsons. And so the actors went down to $300,000 an episode in 2011. In 2015, they were asked to continue with that amount. And that is when Harry Shearer briefly quit the show because he didn't want that. That's right. We thought he

would leave. Yeah, that happened in May of 2015. by july he accepted the terms and just went with it but i mean in if i am considering myself in the shoes of harry shearer and the fucking news corp executives are coming to me with like oh we just gotta cut pay somewhere we can't we just can't afford this little place is falling apart i i i'm with sheer of saying like fuck you but that's also when like you know al jean and other writers on the show are not being particularly nice to harry sheer saying that he was literally phoning in his performance which he has been for years like lit as in calling yeah yes fellow uh that harry here he does he i mean like it seems like i think even michael mckean is like

oh i've worked with him a million years he's my friend really tough to be friends though apparently it's also christopher guest too so i think the only friendly member of spinal tap is michael mckean he's a saint he's a lovely human being he seems very very nice but yeah so that's all the background on the simpsons voice actors that's when i saw that joke as teen i did have like a a knowing chuckle, and it also felt kind of edgy for them to joke about such a close-to-home production issue with The Simpsons. Yeah, well, I think the fact that they were willing to do that, and do that so often, I think was very, very influential. And I think a lot of other people to do similar sort of things,

probably most blatantly a family guy. Continually wink at the audience, let them know that you were forever in on the joke. But yes, anyway, after Homer reflects on how bad the midseason seems to be, he sees a show he really loves. Hey, police cops. That sounds like a lethal combination. Let's get this bank back to a hideout and we'll break into it later.

It's the cops. Where's the police cops? This isn't bad. Isn't bad? Tell me one thing mankind's ever done that's any better. The Renaissance. This is better. Let's book him and roll. And that's the end of that chapter.

You men saved my bank. I'd like to donate $40 to charity in your honor. But I don't know your names. Lance Kaufman. Simpson. Detective Homer Simpson. He's named like my name. That whole segment is so Schwarzwald-ery.

Sure. Stealing the bank to break into it later the uh throwing the goon and having him explode the the bank manager is like i'm gonna give 40 in your name and then they high-five each other uh although we were talking about john swartzwelder's uh references all coming from 15 to 20 years earlier uh this one seems very very influenced by beretta oh yeah catchphrases where i don't do the crime if you don't do the time you can take that to the bank and that's the name of that too oh okay yeah that's the end of that chapter is basically that's the name of that too i only know that guy for being

a murderer yeah he was also one of the little rascals and he was great in lost highway he was one of the little rascals and i believe he had a did he have like a cockatoo in that in that beretta show or something he didn't okay that's what i thought uh you know for his bird his positive bird portrayal all those cops had had their thing like a sucker or a bird or a lazy eye oh jack he's the one who has a sucker yeah yeah this uh is such a retro show to be a hit in 1999. That's why I can see why the executives asked for it to be retooled because they're like, well, this is just this is like a 70s cop show. We need something.

70s cop show meets an 80s cop show in 1999. They should have made Batch Patrol. But again, I think that the police cops is such a simple, such a funny joke. It's like a brown paper bag joke. But it's funny because, my God, television cop shows are so unbelievably generic. You know, I wonder if this mismatchedness is because, you know, maybe Swartzwelder, script-wise, he didn't give directions on design and he was thinking more 70s style. Could be. But then the animators were like no this is crockett and tubs we gotta draw them as miami vice characters a little bit of lethal weapon as well oh for sure well riggs in that particular dynamic though also it makes this like not miami vice or

say a team or other action 80 shows is these guys kill a lot of people like yeah their bullets actually hit people when they shoot them and when thrown yeah i think my line of the episode is homer's gasp it's a very long sustained gasp yeah i like it well because you as the audience the second the guy says homer simpson you're like you know he is named after him but the homer's gasp lasts so long in his stupid way of saying he's named like my name stretches out the obvious uh end of this plot point right in front of you it takes so long just like homer is very impressed with the show if he gets to see the guy catch a bullet throw it back into the man's chest and killing him, and then saying, arrest that guy.

And Homer sees a lot of new opportunities thanks to this famous name in this next clip. Wow. They've captured my personality perfectly. Did you see the way Daddy caught that bullet? That's not really you, Dad. He's just a fictional character who happens to have the same name. Don't confuse Daddy, Lisa.

Oh, Matt, it's just a coincidence. Like that guy named Anthony Michael Hall who stole your car stereo. Right. Coincidence. Another person wants to congratulate you for having a famous name. Hello? Yes, this is the original Homer Simpson. Who's this? The Debbie Pinson, who was the homecoming queen at high school?

Yes, I'm still available. No, he's not. Marge, that was Debbie Pinson. Debbie Pinson. No dating! Tough affair. Apparently, Debbie Pinson appears in another 10 years. Yes, I actually watched that scene.

In the season 20 episode, Homer goes to a high school reunion and sees that a guy who beat him for class president ended up being a very successful person and homer thinks you know if he'd won class president he'd be the very successful person not this guy homer then gets uh through a pasta sauce gets to see an alternate reality where he did get elected class president and in that reality he is dating debbie pinson but then when he meets Marge in this reality, he still ends up with her.

And they're just rich and married in that. Yes, I think that was smart of them of like, well, what high school girlfriend should we have for Homer? And somebody remembered that Debbie Pinson existed. Because he met Matt Selman. And it was Trace McNeil who voiced her there. So no stunt casting there for Debbie. She looks like your typical brunette uh high school cheerleader not not much uh interesting to her design i'd say but i like

the uh i like the running gag which keeps pushing it and you know this dynamic of my being a maternal figure to her husband uh and her very you know naggingly saying no dating i just somebody julie kavanagh lines just her delivery is so wonderfully understated it's hard to believe someone that young could have risen to the rank of admiral just the kind of common sense twist that she brings to it just absolutely kills i love homer thinking that he's like well i can definitely go on dates even though i'm married he's a polyamory pioneer in this episode though i mean facebook is this now of just you get to run into your old high school flames and find out how they are doing like you don't you don't need to wait for a famous tv character to have the name to

find out well and speaking of uh mocking fame the anthony michael hall joke that feels a little mean because look anthony michael hall was very famous in the 80s and he he became less famous in the 90s but you'd still see him on an odd episode of touch by an angel he was in that uh hang on he was in the dead zone you know everybody thought he was better than christopher walken was he in that like pirates of silicon valley thing around this time it was wonderful casting and he did an amazing performance and there was an lsd scene very well handled very artful i'm surprised you guys remember this because i i didn't remember it i only knew about it from just checking imdb of like what was anthony michael hall doing in 1999 and yes it's uh the real the top billed person in Pirates of Silicon Valley is Noah Wiley as Steve Jobs right and he's playing pre-Turtleneck Steve Jobs this is the

1999 idea of Steve Jobs yeah that uh Bill Gates is played by Anthony Michael Hall in the film which you know what if they do another Steve Jobs biopic, cast him again. He should play him again. They need to make more Steve Jobs biopics. There just haven't been enough. Not enough. It's getting better and better. I want to see Ashton Kutcher reprise that role. So I'm stealing a thought from a friend of the show, Jack Allison.

He notes that Ashton Kutcher is a big investor in WeWork, the giant failure. Oh, yuck. And he jokes that just because Kutcher is a big investor in WeWork, the, you know, giant failure. Yuck. And he, and he jokes that like, just cause he played Steve Jobs, he thinks he's Steve Jobs.

And he just throw a couple million dollars at WeWork and be like, yeah, wouldn't you want to help work out of an abandoned office? We give you access to that. It's funny that you're talking about the retooling after the pilot. I recently, for my column, my world of flops currently in his 13th year, access to that it's funny you're talking about the retooling after the pilot uh i recently for my column i wrote a flops currently in his 13th year wrote emerald uh which is one of my big white whales there is a hilarious sitcom oh goodness somebody thought that was a wonderful idea and it got greenlit for like 13 episodes robert yurek was his sidekick which was crazy

because i'm like dude you've been like 17 successful television shows including police cops what on earth are you doing on this nightmare uh and then yeah the pilot episode was half about lugosi being america's most beloved chef and television performer and then the second half was about him being a beloved and doting family man emerald lugosi kisses children tenderly to sleep at night and then have sexy banter with his wife. And understandably, the public said, oh God, no,

what a nightmare. So yeah, when they retooled it, he never went home because they realized this was a stupid idea to begin with, but we can make it a slightly less stupid idea. Was he allowed to say bam? He was allowed to say bam they they worked that into lots and lots of different things that's the one thing that he said

comfortably and naturally on that stupid show i thought 9-11 killed that show didn't it oh maybe i was supposed to air on 9-11 and they had to push it back and america wasn't ready to laugh at emerald legacity we've had one tragedy today. Yeah. You have that on your conscience, Osama bin Laden. You take a different accounting of things after that. You're like, this isn't television anymore. I need to see serious things like 24 that capture my anxiety.

Homer is really enjoying the fame of having a similar name. I mean, speaking of things that feel different after 9-11, the newspaper saying it's war on the cover. Yeah. And then nobody caring. That feels like definitely 9-11 reality. Oh, yeah. Well, like in the 90s, again, things were good.

You know, we had stupid bullshit to worry about. Whereas now we have incredibly important series, huge things to worry about. And yes, Homer is enjoying his fame. He even buys a new scarf that he always wears. And then they tune into a brand new episode of police cops at Moe's bar, but things have changed. Hey,

what's going on? That guy's not Homer Simpson. He's fat and stupid. Hey, what's going on? That guy's not Homer Simpson. He's fat and stupid. Hey, looks like they changed the character into a bumbling sidekick. No, no, he can't be. I know. Maybe he's just acting stupid to infiltrate a gang of international idiots. Yeah, that's got to be it.

You destroyed that drug shipment? Yes, indeedy. That was my insulin. Uh-oh, Spaghetti-Os. Simpson! Hi, Homer. That character's you all over. Come on, Homer, act all stupid.

Like you do on TV. Yeah, come on, dumb-dumb. Do something unintelligent there. Shut up! I'm not your clown. Don't diminish me! Gentlemen, I bid you fair... Jeez, what an exit! Oh, man. What's he gonna do for an encore?

Ooh, I don't think he'll be doing no encores for a while. He's just dead at the end of Act 1. Yeah, it's a very weird place to leave your main character. And then in the next scene, he's fine. Yeah, it's like, is he going to be in recovery for the rest of the episode? You know, there could just be a a 14 month time skip between these two scenes although we're re-watching this i find it striking how long it takes for them to get to max power i think when i remember like oh this is the max power episode they don't the word max power is

not uttered until well after 10 minutes into the episode yeah it's it's really more about television production than max Power or name changing. The new Homer Simpson is like what the worst Chris Farley scenes would have been. Like if you gave bad writers Chris Farley, like, well, what would you write? Like, well, he'd be a big dumb idiot who says add television catchphrases. And falls down. And falls down. The mouth movements are a little off on the toys for guns bit. I wonder if they toys for tots before and they're all that's a copyright name you got to change it

that's the only explanation i can have for the mouth movements being a bit off there on that honestly i think the executives in the universe made the right move to create a comical buffoon and change up the show it's i think it probably helped their ratings a lot to have a catchphrase spouting goofy idiot they shouldn't have aired the pilot though yeah in most cases they wouldn't have they would have just fully redone they would have just reshot the whole pilot poke holes at the uh plot of a 20 year old cartoon um but it seems like the pilot was a big sensation to the point where it made uh homer famous his name. So it seems like a bit of a plot hole.

That's something that seemingly didn't go well, and yet they would then go and change it. You would occasionally see pilots where things were different, and they still aired. Like, I remember Roseanne, the DJ, the littlest kid, was different, a different actor. And then in episode two, when they started the series, it was just the kid you know as DJ forever.

You know, my in-universe explanation for that is that the police cops was a huge hit in springfield they had very high ratings there but through the rest of the country very low ratings and so that's what they know they must have reworked it within a week actually yes the behind the scenes thing would have to be they have to have recast that before the first episode even aired so yeah it seems like just a dj situation or well i mean this whole thing is the uh the official trope name of it is chuck cunningham syndrome all right right there we go which is named after the happy days character who is seen in the first season and a little bit in the second season the older brother of richie cunningham who uh disappeared after that

never referred to again by the end of the series they were saying things like i have two children was what uh for me the ultimate example of that kind of character is probably don't realize this but the first year of uh garfield proper one of the characters in there was like a mustachioed friend of john named lyman so if you watch the first uh year he's all over the place and then you never see lyman ever again i love lyman yeah i know what what happened lyman is uh od's owner right in the garfield lore yeah i believe so i believe so yeah and then he just then he just disappears yeah him again i believe he did come back for like one panel in in a recent anniversary because jim davis was told like oh lyman you guys miss him like he i just though you know now that viacom owns garfield i think

lyman's gonna make a big comeback because they got to exploit every character in the Garfield library. In the universe. Also, just a quick thing on Uh-Oh SpaghettiOs. That was the catchphrase for decades of the SpaghettiOs brand. In our generation in the 90s, the giant O with legs and stuff, that was the Uh-Oh SpaghettiO guy. The O is the mouth, but it has a mouth. And then it wants you to remember 9-11 on Twitter. Oh, it did do that, too.

Yes. It wants you to remember 9-11 because it's what killed Emeril Lagasse. And he was a big, big fan of that. And now fake pasta can take over the world. You know, despite the catchiness of the commercials to me as a kid, and I'd usually buy anything TV would tell me to, I was never a fan of any canned pastas. Like, I didn't like SpaghettiOs or any of the Chef Boyardee raviolis. Even if the Simpsons themselves were on a Chef Boyardee can or the Ninja Turtles or Super Mario, I still was just, the idea of pasta pre-made coming out of a tin can, it just seemed disgusting to me.

That's right, because it is disgusting. It's more like pasta gummies than pasta. I mean, also, I was heavily in the blue box Kraft mac and cheese slash Kraft dinner for our Canadian listeners. I was all in for that. That was like a weekly thing my mom would make me and my brother. When the instructions call for one stick of butter. Oh, God. Instead of the fourth of a cup in skim milk that they have now.

I also think Homer's don't diminish me is overly smart for him, which makes it a good line, too, actually. I love the sort of battered dignity that he brings to lines like that, because he's such a buffoon. He's doomed to always fail, but he tries. And there's just like this glimmer of hope and this glimmer of possibility that he won't be a buffoon all the time. It's also a funny meta comment that Homer always is a television idiot, but only when they realize that he's just like a different idiot on tv does then it's it's funny in a different way that the things would that would happen to him normally in any other episode feel different now yes and we come back lisa brings up the very

real behind the scenes thing of reformatting characters or realizing season one characters that did work don't work anymore the chuck cunningham situation like there's also another great example is judy winslow on uh family yeah they erased her from existence uh and uh and also pretty much everyone in the first season is saved by the bell yeah i mean that was originally a uh a vehicle for hayley mills if i remember correctly uh and actually speaking of kind of the, I don't know, one of the most notorious elements of retooling, when Valerie

Harper decided to leave her television show, Valerie, that presented certain problems. So they're like, okay, we're going to change it to Valerie's family. And then they went from Valerie's family to, I think, just the Hogan. So when Julia, when she died, I was like, that was the first thing that I thought about you know and i'm very proud of her more and i like all

of her incredible successes that like they're like oh well you have no choice my name is in the fucking title what are you gonna do oh your name isn't in the title anymore it was uh it was not the nicest of it's not like how they uh man i forget the actress's name but on the newer kevin james show they killed off his season one wife and they're like yeah she got cancer anyway hey i just met leah ramini though the simpsons they make the joke of mr largo and capital city goofball which mr largo is a correct use i think capital city goofball was always a one-off yeah not a recurring character mr largo is technically in every episode. Yes, yeah, yeah.

You know, a better one would have been Dr. J. Lauren Pryor. Yeah, yeah. Or obviously the best one would have been Marvin Monroe, but at least at the time of this episode, within the show's continuity, Marvin Monroe is dead, so he certainly couldn't walk by the window. But yeah, when I think of season one characters that got dumped, who they seem to have big plans for,

it's J. Lauren Pryor, Marvin Monroe, and also Herman, who would still appear from time to time. But yes, the show Police Cops gets all of Homer's friends to look down on him. I really love them making a great joke about how poorly you can write a Homer goof up in this sequence here. Get ready, everybody. He's about to do something stupid. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen, but you seem to have me confused with a character in a fictional show.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my fondue is just about... There goes Albany! Uh-oh, Spaghetti-O-Hose! me my fondue is just about the return of the console from bart on the road yeah it's nice to see the lights again uh so homer killed everyone in albany new york apparently but uh but yeah i think that's such a great writing of, if they were to write a bad Homer scene of like, if you'll excuse me, my fondue. Homer is losing it. He's laughed everywhere he goes. And this, I mean, okay, in this scene,

the first joke here, I think has to be one of the darker jokes in the show too. Is that Homer Simpson too? People are laughing at me, Marge. Let to be one of the darker jokes in the show, too. Is that who we're simpsons to? People are laughing at me, Marge. Let's get out of here. Forget the baby's medicine. But her forehead's on fire. Fine, I'll be in the car,

driving home. Well, if it isn't that stupid cop from TV. Oh, yeah, I got it. That's all there is to this event. That's gross. Ah, yeah, I got it Your catchphrase is hysterical Please say it clearly for my answering machine tape Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs Worst reading ever How about an autograph?

Picture master? Come on, people, enough is enough Oh, it's never enough Not for them Once they get a taste of you, they want more and more and more Come on, people. Enough is enough. Oh, it's never enough. Not for them. Once they get a taste of you, they want more and more and more. That reminds me. Do you mind if my nephew kicks you in the belly?

Okay. Oh, the flash didn't go off. You got another one in you, Josh? That was a big laugh for me this morning. Especially, you think he's going to ask Homer, can you do that again? But he's more concerned about his nephew. Can you kick him again? One of my favorite moments in all of cinema,

which is the moment in The King of Comedy, where Jerry Langford, who's definitely a bit of a crusty figure, he's walking down the street, and a fan says, oh my God, Jerry Langford, I love you so much. Say hi to my cousin. He loves you too.

He's like, sorry, I'm in a rush. rush he's like you should get cancer i love her yeah how quickly you turn from adulation uh hatred i love that scene so much uh i just re-watched king of comedy because my husband hadn't seen it before so we watched it together before we went to see joker as was our responsibility as commentators we have to do your duty on joker yeah it was my duty so but well then once we saw it when i saw joker and there were scenes that were from king of comedy i nudged my husband like i remember that scene from king of comedy they just put the joker in it pretty nice batman is always somewhere in the background you got to find him oh god i mean that's again why martin scorsese's a producer on that it's just payola to be like we can just rip off your movie right martin like apparently he was supposed to executive produce it

but like that fell away which is kind of weird because i always feel like an executive producer credit can be very important i don't think steven spielberg earned his uh executive producer credits on 80s masterpieces but it could also mean you know i introduced you to an executive who said hello to this or i said hey this is great or i gave you early encouragement it seems like yeah it wouldn't mean a whole lot to to lose that so yeah i wonder there's there's got to be an interesting story there but yeah that you should get cancer such a great line uh and i think this too is probably based on the experience of any of the simpsons voice actors walking around somewhere now that everybody has a voice recorder with them everywhere they go they must be asked all the time of like could you say hey it's homer simpson i'm uh you're calling

me that and pictures i mean celebrities must be in hell now because everyone has a camera at all times. I don't want to tell tales out of school, but I remember I had dinner with Weird Al and my wife kind of at the very beginning of us working together. And it was great. I drank a lot of alcohol. He did not. And then I went to the bathroom. And while I was in the bathroom, I did not realize until much later, my wife had him

call her dad and say hey talk to you on the phone like jesus christ i would not want you to have done that while i was there because yeah i can imagine how unbelievably annoying it is to be like say your catchphrase do your voice do your thing it's like i appreciate the public adulation but he is very recognizable even though he's dropped his classic look and he has for the past 20 years. I can't imagine how gracious he must be to just deal with that all the time. Yeah, that's a challenge, I would imagine.

But he's very, very gracious. And I feel like when you're that level of famous, part of what you do, part of your art, is making people comfortable. Part of your art is taking photographs. There are a million different things that go along with writing funny songs and recording them and having that kind of a career. You know, I'm impressed with Weird Al's ability to reset what people think of when they imagine him, because I know in my head, if somebody said Weird Al, it used to be glasses, mustache, afro. And now it really is. If people say Weird Al, I think of like, you know, no glasses, no mustache and now it really is if people say we're now i think of like you know no glasses no mustache and flowing locks yeah yeah for sure you know and again i think just

in terms of like the focus of his music and his art you know in the 80s it was all about television and about uh food and then you know sort of as the odds have happened sort of his his new use his technology uh and that's great because that's you know that has supplanted of as the odds have happened sort of his his new use his technology uh and that's great because that's you know that has supplanted television as the most important thing in our world in part because everybody uses you know the internet to watch television uh it has corrected all the imperfections of the media there but uh comic book guy is of course playing the the worst type of fan that's uh any anger the simpsons has towards their fans they usually put it in the mouth of comic book guy i will say i was uh as a as a person who uh is more

empathetic than i was as a teen the joke of maggie being having like a deadly fever that's less funny to me uh so homer is starting to go crazy with his unwanted fame uh he orders bart to kill a cat which seemingly bart does and a flower and a flower well i mean bart corked in a cat earlier in the episode so it's a big yellow flower specific yeah specific murderous rage against one flower in his garden it was looking at him and uh i love marge's line of like homer you're growing insanity is starting to worry uh how many wives have said that delivery there yeah the julie has some really good flat delivery of crazy things in this you know it's it's funny swartz welder is is uh mike reese told us that swartz welder would often forget to write lines for marge and lisa and his scripts but marge is really funny in this one i wonder if these were additions in the rewrites

or if uh if swartz welder had him the first time yeah because lisa just does her lisa thing in this episode whereas yeah march has a lot of really funny uh understated uh lines reacting uh to homer and to the ridiculousness uh and then uh homer does the very easy thing of flying to los angeles and walking onto the set and having having a meeting with 13 producers just like that this is when it is so insanely inside like this is just all about what famous people talk about with each other or what television producers how they even make something. And it's just such a, it's a great gag about how, um, track is created of just that.

Uh, I like to, that the, the producers on the show, they blame the executives, but it's like, but you guys had a bad idea too. You're both people with bad ideas bouncing off of one another.

I love Frazier meets Titanic. I do too. It's another way. And this has commonalities with, weird house work where i feel like one of the most resonant themes in his music especially when i was a kid in the 1980s was this idea of show business is about money uh and it's all very very mercenary and people do whatever they need to do in order to make money and when i was a kid i'm like wow that seems like revolutionary you know like somebody was like you know pulling'm like, wow, that seems like revolutionary. You know, like somebody who's like,

you know, pulling the curtain back, like, oh, that's how the world really works. Because yeah, I feel like, you know, when there's this lie that people create television to express themselves in new art, when I think, yeah, this makes Mary a hash of that fiction. There has to be at least like five people that do it to tell stories.

But yes, Homer gets to meet with the writers. So I just want to know, how come you made your Homer Simpson character so stupid? Well, I can assure you it happened organically. It better have. The 13 of us began with a singular vision, Titanic meets Frasier. But then we found out that ABC had a similar project in development with Annie Potts and Jeremy Piven. Who's Jeremy Piven? We don't know.

So we slapped together a cop show instead. Police cops. No, actually, it was called Badge Patrol. But the network idiots didn't want a show about high-tech badges that shoot laser beams. So we asked ourselves, who's behind the badge? Police. Cops. Police cops. that shoot laser beams. So we asked ourselves, who's behind the badge? Police? Cops? Police cops.

Yeah, but why does the Homer Simpson character have to be so stupid? Oh, he's not stupid. He's a street-smart fish out of water in a world he never made. I'm begging you.

I'm a human being. Let me have my dignity back. Walks to a cactus. Let's talk about Jeremyeremy piven yeah this is pre-entourage he was still on ellen starring the famously very nice person ellen degeneres what a great lady no he was also on that larry sander show oh yeah in the 90s they were really trying to make jeremy piven a thing especially in the late 90s actually Actually, this joke, I think, is especially about how in 1998, Jeremy Piven slowly exited from Ellen.

Like he's, after she comes out, he's in way fewer episodes. And I think his, I read it as his management was like, get him off of this controversial lesbian show. He's got to grow his hair back. That did let him buy a nice new set of hair but so when this episode aired it was actually right after the premiere of first jeremy piv in fronted sitcom called cupid where he cupid he played the role of cupid yes yeah i believe he was a guy who's really good at dating, but he thinks he is the literal god Cupid in flesh form, right?

You'll have to listen to my Cupid podcast in order to find out. But I think they're making fun directly of Cupid. Also, Annie Potts was getting put in the lead in a lot of failed sitcoms at this time, too. It's just so weird like the eight million chances pivin has i feel like he's just so inside the industry like they just kept going like well pivin didn't work out of this thing and pcu what if we transition him to tv well maybe he can lead his own sitcom huh that didn't work well i mean let's just put him in entourage and that's when it finally stuck in the piv uh got to get

famous and we were stuck with him actually so cupid in the series i'm looking this up now he believes he's cupid sent down to connect 100 couples using his powers but he only connected 15 because that's how many episodes they made and this is interesting uh it was created by rob thomas uh not the hack songwriter behind matchbox 20 and the song smooth uh but the writer and creator of veronica mars yeah down and i zombie well co-creator because i know paul ryders co-creator party town those are some very very impressive credits and i had had a bit of a cult people enjoyed that uh television program and i also was unaware that jeremy piven is the brother

in law of adam mckay which explains why he's in all that adam mckay stuff and of course you haven't heard much of jeremy piven in the last two years because uh he a lot of allegations came out about him and he's he denied the first couple and then after about i think the eighth woman just stop responding yes he he kind of disappeared and uh good riddance i say not not to tip anything but part of me was like is bill clinton canceled we'll get to that in a minute yeah i do think so scott ackerman had the joke of just saying like jeremy piven was the one of the first people who got me too that everybody's like oh yeah no i believe that yeah no one was the same thing that moment could have existed so we used to expose people like james domac whose whole

mythology was i get laid constantly it's because i'm so smart and talk so good it's like no it's because you're a rapist yes yeah it's it's it's hard to think of most stars of the 70s not being all Me Too'd today. Though also, can you believe the set of Entourage was filled with sexual harassment? I can't. No way. I thought it would be very progressive and open. You know that Jeremy Piven's character is based on Rahm Emanuel's brother. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, this episode, because Schwarartzwelder is uh hates hollywood liberals this is the anti-hollywood liberal episode chicago politics though i'm more into anti-hollywood liberal every day these days but from a left-wing standpoint i should yeah definitely my problem is not that they're too environmentally conscious or that they care about the world too much it's closer to the opposite of that but yes homer i think actually does have a lawsuit on them that they just recreate a thing he did and put it on the show i always wonder like how many tv shows some line given to a character is to make fun of a person they met in real life like how many are just uh the settling of scores

but the homer simpson on the tv show it shows that they thought of a funnier way irl to do a joke of homer walking to a cactus instead of the very ridiculous dropping off a flagpole to land crotch first onto a cactus uh and yes bart identifies him as stupid and whiny now i think this is the last time we see police cops within the show. I have to think it lasted one season. Yeah. The retooling didn't take. It's not like Beretta or Mama's Family or Dead Zone, the TV show, which was on for six seasons. Wow.

But yes, Homer takes it to court. Let me down, chief. I'm begging you. I'm a human being. Let me have my dignity back. Nice, stupid and whiny. That does it. There's only one thing I can do. Your Honor, I'd like to sue the producers of Police Cops for $20 million for improper use of my name.

Court finds in favor of Police Cops. In that case, then I'd like to legally change my name. What name would you prefer? Any of these will be fine. Hmm. Hercules Rockefeller. Rembrandt Q. Einstein. Handsome be wonderful. I'm going to give you the only name you spelled correctly.

From this day forward, your names will be... Max Power? Dynamic, isn't it? I love it, Max. You changed your name without consulting me? That's the way Max Power is, Marge. Decisive, uncompromising, and rude. This whole Max Power philosophy thing I really like.

I mean, this is dynamism. This is being a go-getter. Homer has transformed himself. There was one thing that struck me in this sad thought that came to me in this courtroom scene. Lionel Hutz would have been here. And the lines Homer said would have been his. It would have been a longer scene, too. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I mean, Homer representing himself makes it funny in its own way, but like, this is one of our, if not the first courtroom scene in the show since Hudson's, well, since Phil Hartman's passing. I do like the gag of Homer. Homer seeming to introduce the next plot point, which is a lawsuit against a TV company, but then he's like, no, no, actually it's not that he's like oh let me shuffle my papers okay here's the other idea for episode uh and the the changing of one's name you know i've never considered it even though uh i am the third of uh my namesake and it's uh i am not a big fan of the uh the lineage of my name so i but i've still've still, even though I went by Max when I got a job in the professional field, I was like, Max felt like a child's name.

So to me it did. So I wanted to, I wanted to just feel like a grownup and I've gone by Henry ever since. Well, I feel like there's kind of this cult of self-improvement that we have in the United States. And I feel like this is kind of

a delightful burlesque of that idea, kind of taken to the irrational extreme that simply having a silly new name could cause people to think that you're amazing. It also reminds me a little bit of the episode where he has hair. Yeah. Similar, like, oh my God, this one change transformed. And I'm bald. So I have thought about like what

would my life be like if i had like a rich thick head of hair uh and i do think that you know people probably would maybe look at me differently maybe they would respect me more maybe they'd respect less but yeah i think it is an interesting idea that these very uh kind of superficial changes can completely transform your life i mean both this and that episode are about just how uh skin deep everything is in uh especially in the world of business and success like homers yeah that's true are no more less good or bad when he depending on what his name is and i mean it does also make me think to the modern billionaires of today who are just like rich guys who people treat like they're smart. Like, say, Elon Musk, who are just like, yeah, what a genius.

It's like it could be he just bought PayPal first. Like, yeah, the the Max Power name is is so funny. Hanson B. Wonderful would have been a good name, too. And I do think he probably would have opened the most doors with the name Rockefeller. That would. Oh, yeah. People would just assume you've got to be related to that family. There's a famous story about a con artist. My wife read a book.

I watched a movie about it as well, but a con artist who passed himself off as a Rockefeller and was able to do a whole lot of things with that, including, if I'm not mistaken murder some people but yeah if you look up clark rockefeller it's a fascinating story about how a name even a fake wrong stolen one can legitimately change your life and cause people to see you much differently

and then abe says a bunch of nonsense about where the name came from uh which is so superfluous that the no character comments on it and it just turns away it just moves moves on uh let's trade it for a mule that saves spring break yes yeah i this feels like a very gene and reese era kind of use of grandpa which is just like uh i think they need to identify like 20 seconds that could be cut out if they need to so they just have abe say some old bullshit and they're like well we can cut that if we need to uh then we learn of a secret tattoo of marge's in this next clip but this will be so confusing the mailman won't know what to do did you think of the mailman at all before you did this? Yes, briefly. And what about the tattoo on my you-know-what? Oh, honey, they have acids that can burn that off. But I fell in

love with Homer Simpson. I don't want to snuggle with Max Power. Nobody snuggles with Max Power. You strap yourself in and feel the cheese. Oh, Lord. And it doesn't stop in the bedroom. Oh, no. I'm taking charge. Kids, there's three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the max power way. Isn't that the wrong way? Yeah, but faster.

Ow! We should really put that in the corner. All the cruelty towards Marge. Not even getting laser treatment. The acids. It has to be acids to burn it off, which would especially be painful in whatever secret area she doesn't want to say in front of the children. But damn, man, Homer. Also, Homer, I think, is really overestimating and overpromising on feeling the Gs and strapping in.

Though I recently watched the movie The Human Tornado. I did a big rewatch of all of Rory Moore's movies in anticipation of My Name is Dolomite. And I was delighted to find out or re-remember that the nickname of The Human Tornado is about how good he is at fucking.

A sexual nickname. It's not about how, like, ooh, he's like, you know, fists of fury and kicks. That's kind of a similar thing. And the Max Power is all about Homer in the bedroom. That's what tornadoes are known for, right? Yeah, exactly. For being good at making love.

This is maybe one of the shortest Act 2s as well. I think it's like four minutes. But that's because it also has a really long Act 3. But Homer, I homer walking into the cactus is the right blow off for act two you need to you need to come back to the new reality of max power i i think they they picked the right place for a cut but yes we come back homer is theme song. Max Power. He's the man whose name you'd love to touch. But you mustn't

touch. His name sounds good in your ear. But when you say it, you mustn't fear. Cause his name can be said by anyone. Max Power

knows every little thing. You remembered my name. Well, who could forget the name of a magnetic individual like you? Keep up the good work, Max. Mr. Power? Yes, of course. Mr. Power. It's weird to see Burns appear in these seasons. He's just so not on the show anymore. So I was happy and weird to see burns appear in these seasons he's just so not on the show anymore so i was i

was happy and surprised to see him yeah you know they i think they've fallen out of love with burns right now they uh they've done so many burnsy episodes i think now they're they're they're sowing their oats somewhere else but yeah they this feels like a real like early years callback of burns now remembering homer's name and uh and the Goldfinger theme song coming in there, that's pretty great, especially the line like, because his name can't be said by anyone. That's a good reason not to fear. But don't touch his name. Homer is finding tons of new opportunities.

He also, I agree with him, monograms are out. You should just have your full name on your shirts with exclamation points and a pirate flag because each letter is as important as the one that came before it if not more important no as important so yes homer then meets a similarly powerful named individual the man knows what he likes. Just taking care of business. If you don't, who will, huh? Trent Steele. Homer, uh, Max Power.

Oh, hey, great name. Yeah, isn't it? I got it off a hairdryer. I like a man who can poke fun at himself. Ooh, hey, my one o'clock canceled. Have you had any lunch? Yeah, but I usually have three or four. So where to eat? You like Thai?

Thai good. You like shirt? March, this is Thai food. From now on, I want it morning, noon, and night. When did you start liking Thai food? When Trent Steele bought me some. Who's Trent Steele? He's Max Power's oldest and dearest friend. What's this wrapped in a banana leaf?

Mmm, smells like mint. Oh, I spit my gum in there. Where'd you meet this Trent Steele? Moe's? No way, this guy's a winner. He has a company that makes computers, or a computer that makes companies. Anyway, you wouldn't understand.

Homer getting invited into the Cool Guys Club just based on his name i i really do love the gag and like homer is clearly an idiot but this guy is so impressed with his name he's like you're so pithy and funny oh man which is uh how it works in executive boardrooms yeah yeah it's just about uh how well you can promote yourself. And also the light about computers that makes companies, it does feel like it's about what rich people were in 1999 and pretty much all forward of just like, they're not robber barons.

They're of things that you can identify like, oh, he's a plastic magnate or whatever. It says like, well, he's rich for a reason I can't quite figure out. We're inflating the tech bubble. I just go to venture capitalists and say i'm going to do something involving computers and be like here's a billion dollars knock yourself out no oversight whatsoever yep yeah it's god it as all three of us working in

the online corporate media field we've we've enjoyed so much of this kind of reality uh that we get to see a stinging example of every day that to say like when Splinter News gets shut down or one of a dozen other places. The world gets worse and worse every day. When you make a Patreon, it's kind of like making a company, right? With your computer. It's true. I love the reveal that Homer came up with it from a hairdryer like that. The pacing on that reveal is so great because they could have put that joke there the first time you hear max power but by delaying it by like two minutes to finally find out that it's just him reading a hairdryer makes it even more funny the reveal yeah it could be read as a homer

being dumb but also it could be read as a self-aware joke that trent steel is seeing it as. And Thai food seemed very outside to me in 1999, living in the suburbs of Florida. But man, now I have like, I'm spoiled for Thai choices around here. There are seven Thai food places here. Well, also like in the 1980s, you would see sushi referenced as something very exotic that only like the cool, hip, you know, dynamic people are into. Now it seems a little bit more mainstream. I'd say a bit more mainstream, though. Me and Bob maybe don't have the best measure of it because we are in the Bay Area bubble.

We don't understand how normal... The food bubble. Yes, food bubbles. Not monetary bubble, no way. It's more of a dome. And so Homer is now being invited into the Great People's Club. He seems to have also invited Debbie Pinson there, though I think Marge must have uninvited her.

And they arrive at a fancy house and they say everything. We're going to be spelling out everything with letters from now on. This is a weird bit here because they say it's in Springfield. Homer says this is Springfield's elite or gathering, but this is such a Hollywood party. Brian Glazer is there. And Lorne Michaels woody harrelson as well who i don't think spends a lot of time in springfield as established yeah actually alec and

baldwin already established nobody knows where springfield is like i guess maybe they've been told now by alec and uh ron howard that they should go there. It's a new hotspot. I like how they're so inside that they don't even specify that, oh, that's Brian Grazer and Jerry Bruckheimer. You're just supposed to know what they look like. Well, they just pulled out the Brian Grazer character model they used in the Alec Baldwin episode. I'm also surprised they couldn't just get Woody Harrelson. That's why I feel if you can't get Woody Harrelson, don't do that joke.

That's what I think. Though I guess this was before pot was legal. This joke feels kind of like hokey now. Like, yeah, yeah, pot. We all can smoke it anytime. This man enjoys pot. I believe this hemp gag here. I mean, he talked about like he was on some Tonight Show type thing and said, like, I wearing pants that are pot or made out of hemp and you can make hemp out of all these things.

And in 96, he got arrested for growing hemp in Kentucky. Oh, that's right. Yeah. If you, your stoner friends knew all about this guy. There are monthly updates in high times. But also like when he was one of the most at his highest in fame as Woody on Cheers, like he was one of few celebrities taking the unpopular stance of desert storm is a bad thing to do and we shouldn't do it like it uh which you know that seems extra gutsy these days his father killing jfk which which is totally a conspiracy theory that exists that's amazing yeah that's uh we all know it was Ted Cruz's dad. It's true, yeah.

And Woody Harrelson, the character Woody on Cheers is stupid. Yes. And he's the same as him visually, so he's probably living in that same hell, or was like 20 years ago. Yeah. That is true.

I like the guys on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Oh, yeah. They're going to play horrible, horrible people with their names for a period of decades. Charlie Day, do something stupid. Come on. Break the law. You can't read. But yes, Homer is mingling with elites.

And there's Ed Begley Jr. And this one solar collector can gather enough energy to run this colorful pinwheel. Wait, wait, I got it, I got it. Very nice, Ed. Your inventions continue to impress me and the entire nation. March! President Clinton! Oh, my Lord! I feel like Cinderella.

Me, too. Let's sing like Cinderella. Me, too. Let's sing the Cinderella song. Maybe later. Uh-oh. Here comes Lorne Michaels. Pretend you don't see him. Ah, Max Power. Trent said I absolutely must meet you.

This is fabulous. Anyway, Marge, how do you feel about the economy? So I said if this is the house of pancakes, how come I can't about the economy? So I said, if this is the house of pancakes, how come I can't eat the walls? Oh, you are too much, Max. I thought I knew all the players in Springfield. Or have you been hiding yourself?

Well, I spend a lot of time on the couch. Tell me about it. I like all the characters misreading homer's uh stupidity and sloth and bad characteristics as him being witty i love that yeah it's it's such an emperor has no clothes kind of thing i like it you it leads you to think like well if they accept homer for this how are all of them frauds are none of them them actually witty? The answer is yes. All celebrities are frauds and phonies, except for Stacey Dash.

And watching that gag, I remember thinking, oh, I think everybody in comedy has a reason to hate Lorne Michaels, or at least to resent him. But this particularly, he fired John Schwarzwalder after one season as a writer on Saturday Night Live, 1985, which I actually covered for My World of Flops. Interesting, interesting season. And then Harry Shearer quit in disgust

twice. Yeah. There were times when Michaels wasn't there. I think towards the very end of the 70s and then in the 80s. But I'm sure he has all sorts of reasons to hate Warren Michaels, even if they did not collaborate directly together. 70s and then in the 80s uh but i'm sure he has all sorts of reasons uh to hate more than michaels even if they did not collaborate directly together i feel like everyone who've uh worked with him

does an impression of him yes yeah well it seems like even the guys who like him are still produce shows with him they still make fun of him like they they all are just like well i'm seth myers and yes he produces my show but also isn't lauren a weirdo like always with his white wine and he's and his many uh blonde assistant women like are the the characters that are clearly based on him you know like uh dr evil and probably uh the most famous and then i know and then brain candy oh yeah mark mckinney played a character uh who was a obviously based on lauren michaels i gotta tell you that i felt like the stupidest dum-dum in the world that i didn't realize that was lauren michaels until me and bob were blessed to get to that brain candy 20th anniversary thing at sketch fest a couple years ago and mckinney played the

character live on stage and the second he said a word i was like oh that's lauren michaels they're making fun of him being a completely useless control freak who ruins everything i mean yes especially harry it's funny that harry is doing lauren because on that same wtf i referenced earlier about how Harry talking about his pay grade on the show, he also talked about working with Lauren on SNL and how Lauren is this kind of Svengali figure who made people think this is the only way to make sketch comedy. And Harry Shearer in the late 70s, he's like, I had already come from successful sketch comedy. I knew this is not how you run a show and this is stupid. And me being there to say this dogmatic approach to comedy is a bad way to make sketches, Lauren hated him for that, which I believe is true because they're still doing that to this day.

It's like, well, no, the only way to write this show is to rewrite everything at 4 a.m. on Friday night. Like, that's a great writing. And the success of the incredible comedy of SNL, I think, bears that out. It definitely works. Nothing's funnier. I have a friend who interviewed to be a writer on Saturday Night Live, and then he made it all the way to being interviewed

by Tim Herlihy, who I believe was the head writer at that point. And he said that what probably cost him the job was that he wasn't appropriately deferential about Saturn Live. He wasn't like, oh my God, this is what I've been living for all my life. This is the epitome. It's a job. It's a pretty good job, but it's just a job.

So yeah, I think there is this idea that if you really want to do well as Saturn Live, you need to kiss the ring of power and you need to make Warren happy. And he makes everyone on edge by withholding validation and approval and making all of his children compete for his favor. Yeah, I remember Jenny Slate talking about her experience on SNL

and that for the dinners they would have after the show, people had assigned seats and their proximity to Lauren was based on how much he liked them. And she couldn't change her seat. She wanted to sit next to somebody else, and she couldn't change her seat. It was like a really creepy story. I mean, it's a cult.

And we know these things because we were Saturday Night Live fans, so we read all the books. We all read live from New York and have seen all the specials so we know this but like yeah i think as i get older the less i like saturday night live and this kind of cult like atmosphere you read about these days feels even less useful because it's like you do all this to do like three good sketches a year maybe and one of those is just john mulaney showing up and writing one yeah not the regular writers like but i don't i feel bad for the writing staff anyway because it's just it sounds like uh post seth meyers it sounds like there's not really been a true head writer of the show

since then and certainly not a fucking loser like colin jost i hate that piece of shit but but but because there's no clear head writer it's just a messier show that also has a lot of sponsored content in it now really oh yeah they just had so anti-establishment is the spirit of lenny bruce coursing through every second of this transgressive subversive comedy i'm shocked to hear that i know you well i mean previously they were a campaign ad for somebody but now there's so many reasons to hate lauren michaels though at the time in 99 as a uh you know big snl fan especially as like the we were entering the will ferrell years i was like why are you mean to lauren michaels he makes a good comedy show i like the idea that

they all try to ignore lord michaels at parties and no one wants to talk to him uh and it's also i do think in the current atmosphere with lord michaels i do think it's crazy that even dudes who got fired like david spade and and norm mcdonald they're not blaming him, Lorne Michaels, right now in the current firing of people gate of SNL. They're blaming the culture or all this stuff. That's really sad to me because I think Norm MacDonald

is one of the funniest dudes who ever was on SNL, but he's also like 65. So, you know, it happens. He has the political opinions and the sensibility and the uh i think default hostility towards young people and aggression the idea that like people are being challenged people of his age and his generation and i think if you're a comedian you're kind of arrogant by definition you know you make your living going to places where people pay money

to see you and then your voice is amplified above those of everybody else around you uh so i think again kind of uh people especially people in power you know they have a sense of their own importance that can play havoc because you know society changes and a lot of times people do not change with it it's hard to change i agree hey look in 20 years i'll be i i'm gonna be struggling with changing society too trying to avoid having grandpa brain well actually 20 years like uh there's just no potable water and so i i won't have twitter to complain on the plus side we'll all be dead yeah i mean we can all look forward to that let's talk about bill clinton as well here i mean this is uh mike's class act all the way so mike scully uh we asked him about what it was like writing during

this impeachment since you know impeachment talk is all the rage right now uh and so what was it like then and he did mention that schwartzwelder would uh was really sowing his oats on how much he hated Bill Clinton. And that he would say, guys, I bet you $5 Bill Clinton is going to hang himself in the Oval Office by the end of this year. That's how extreme Schwarzwalder was getting. And now, yes, like you had hinted at earlier, Nathan, I think we're all kind of realizing like oh bill clinton's fucking gross like no he's bad this is a bad guy i i'm shocked at uh so many liberal folks just kind of had this blind spot on him and the more you hear stories about him like oh that is gross oh that's pretty bad too yeah i guess he wasn't i i think it hurt it that like rush limbaugh in the 90s also was saying these things

so i didn't want to agree that bill clinton was a sex monster so you just wanted to be like well yeah rush limbaugh is lying about this but a subtle idea of the enemy of my enemy is my friend you know but again i think at the time i wasn't crazy about bill clinton i voted for ralph nader uh in 1996 the worst opportunity that I had. Because again, I think even then it kind of sounds like there's just something really gross and wrong and compromised and creepy about him. And part of my frustration and disappointment with this is there's so many good things to make fun of Bill Clinton about. He's such a flawed figure. He's such a problematic figure. He's so lacking in self-awareness for such a master politicians

that to be like i like to do it and we're gonna do it in the outhouse like oh god please you do better than this simpsons in near the end of your prime for these shows he was mostly a vehicle for hillbilly jokes and the critic joke of fat lecherous hillbilly elected president that pretty much sums up their stance on it like eat junk food you know yeah these are very stupid things to make fun of somebody about and then he was overweight i mean that was the small hands orange man of its time like that yeah you know a lot of comedy they don't want to engage if you engage deeper than that then i think it's seen as taking more of a political stance so instead it's like uh we can all agree bill clinton has sex with animals right yes yeah no matter what side of the aisle you're on and i think that's the idea of kind of doing it in a political kind

of way where we're not criticizing his policies we're not satirizing you know his his political beliefs we're just saying this dude's a redneck and he likes to fuck and those are very very uh limited uh you know tools for a satire or amusement and yeah i felt like that's the part where this episode just just hits a bunch of really wrong notes and the both sides angle on it too feels like these were hollywood liberals showing off the like see we we maybe all voted for clinton but we can make fun of him we can call him a bestiality committing hillbilly but but then when it turns around to the other side like they post 9-11 they didn't make fun of george bush w bush once like though then again now they're making um very bad jokes about donald trump so i

i kind of prefer if they didn't do that. Don't mention any presidents outside the mediocre presidents. I haven't watched The Simpsons in a long time, except that I saw the clip that went viral for all of the wrong reasons about the squad and Donald Trump and their parody of Rodgers and Hammerstein. And yeah, I have the same thing. You gotta you know you need to tackle you know the biggest issue and problem in society but you need to not do it in such a horribly hack way that like you end up making people feel sorry for him and and look less look down on you because again i feel like if you know you talk to hollywood liberals you know i'm guessing people in The Simpsons

have a fuck ton of money. Oh, yeah. And it probably influences the way they live their lives and as the way it tends to. Are you saying Harvard graduate millionaires are out of touch, Nathan?

Yes, yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. And they've also been super fucking rich and super successful for 20, 30 years. So you're going back a very very long time to when you were doing the same shit that everybody else does well i mean that that clip with the

squad one of the things that bothered me most of all other than being not funny which wasn't certainly not that and feeling like a sub snl kind of trump jokes which i didn't think that was very funny either but it was that they took these, you know, very left wing members of the Democratic Party, like Ilhan Omar and Rashid Tlaib and all these people and we're giving them like the fucking Nancy Pelosi centrist bullshit. I'm like, no, they say different things. And I don't think they understand that they are not normal Democrats. And that's also why they're getting targeted beyond just being women of color who are easy to attack if you're a white supremacist yeah and there are specific lines i mean the line that you were leading to about bill clinton

engaging bestiality is uh how i've done it with pigs really no fooling pigs uh that's a line i would have cut out a censor you know it was like yeah that just it just it's not funny you're saying the president fucks pigs like that's a weird line to go it wasn't a monica lewinsky joke right too it's such a you're from arkansas so y'all must be you know illiterate subhuman pig fucker definitely yeah things to make fun of him about that to just go in this direction is sad and also not funny on the commentary they say they're not making a fat joke about monica lewinsky but i absolutely think that you're supposed to be i've had sex with pigs it's him saying monica lewinsky is a pig

which like is uh she got to face a whole lot of cruelty it was pretty awesome back in the 90s i hadn't even thought about that wow that takes something ugly and makes it even the uh what's also fun if you wanted to get really dark in this sequence oh no just imagine that at this party just off camera is jeffrey epstein he's hanging out with homer at this too or or harvey weinstein oh he's totally there yeah we met up there with jerry brockheimer and uh and brian grazer you know those were the big titans of hollywood yeah don simpson would have been there if he hadn't died thankfully a year a couple years before this uh and i mean also bill is being such a creep on marge like it's a disconcerting scene that he forced like literally

forced himself on it so like well it is a law you have to dance with me like yuck just invites her to fuck him in the tool shed yes that he's the way race spends most of his time i mean we just let's hear the clip i know you don't think you're good enough for me but believe me you are hell i've done it with pigs. Real no fooling pigs. Are you sure it's a federal law that I have to dance with you? You know, I'd change that law if I could, Marge. But I can't. Oh, shoot. Quebec's got the bomb. Well, I gotta go.

But look, if you're ever near the White House, there's a tool shed out back. I'm in there most of the day. Attention, please. Attention. I just want to say how thrilled I am with this turnout. I'm proud to share my home with Springfield's best and brightest. Hey, no problem. We've all been blessed with privilege and success. Woo! Privilege!

But with privilege comes grave responsibility. What? We all have to give something back to the world that's been so good to us. Give something back? Boo! Get a haircut! I'm talking, of course, about our endangered forests. This is where it gets kind of South Park-y, too.

Very much. Yeah. Well, I think Schwarzwalder and South park come from this same kind of you know late 90s nihilistic belief of like it's gay to care like which south park like straight up says yeah like or you have another uh self-serving agenda for caring about something no one would care about the rainforest if they didn't if they weren't doing it for likes or for attention. And it's like... Virtue signaling is what it's called. Yeah, it's early virtue signaling.

Believing in things is stupid and it makes you weak and a sissy. And look, I think I've been pretty clear in this episode that Hollywood phonies do exist. And there are a lot of fake people who do pretend to care about something, but don't really. And I think that is worth aiming at.

But I also think they could have shown that there are people that actually care and would do something, and they're not just doing it to feel better about themselves. Yeah, and I don't think real Hollywood phonies actually do activism like chaining themselves to trees. They have, it's sort of like the Lindsay of Arrested Development having just nice social gatherings

for causes she doesn't understand. They'd have a fucking party. Yeah, fucking A hey i mean the ellen thing recently is just like the kid that all the people complimenting her all the other famous people like yeah thanks for saying that ellen it was just like disappointment parade of just like even if you had agreed with her you could just say nothing you don't have to like give her a bunch of hearts back of like yes this is about empathy like look it's a famous people circled jerk but it kind of felt like this uh very disappointing a line if you reminded me a lot of teen america world place oh yeah like that is two-thirds of just a fucking masterpiece just it's so funny and so pointed and so satirical and when they're taking on american foreign policy they're taking on michael bay movies like it's so brilliant when they're like michael moore is fat

and he eats lots of donuts he's got crumbs around his face because he's such a fatty i'm like no that that isn't satire that's just cruelty you know that's kind of a similar thing when they're just like man you know the hollywood celebs are all such phonies and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, hey, you know, that's an exhausted topic. And then B, it's also very facile. You're not really saying anything insightful. You're just repeating something kind of cliched. When I saw the, I only watched part of her apology in quotes video, but she made a statement like, when people get angry, they tweet.

And I think a lot of this, with comics comics especially is they're not used to being challenged and they're upset that there is now a venue in which they can be challenged and made fun of and criticized when that was not the case 20 years ago with ellen it felt more like just she's she's rich and doesn't like being questioned in general especially when she you know she does have like the liberal bona fides of being a gay uh celebrity trailblazer in that regard and as a gay man myself like it at first was like i really don't like being mad at ellen but then especially when like she's smiling and hanging out with a man who among his many crimes worked very hard to prevent her and me from being married uh that i'm like no that is unforgivable this is not a racist uncle at thanksgiving this is a man who tried to destroy your life personally

directly you and like i'm not into that forgiveness of a billionaire shit yeah and i kind of feel the same way about bill clinton in 2019 where you're hanging around them you're paddling around with them like that speaks really ill of you and you lost to that fucking jeffrey epstein you know everything wasn't that unusual i think they put him behind a curtain somewhere yeah it's it's funny our uh our friends on the podcast michael and us they did an episode about what will probably be bill clinton's final public appearance that tour he did with hillary uh last year of like the speaking tour thing which uh seemed incredibly self-indulgent like and now i i'm hoping we never have to see bill clinton again like we've heard enough from you uh bill clinton go write your

shitty detective novel or your uh thrillers with james bannerman, yeah. Oh, the president's neck is missing. I also read My Life, his memoir. Literally, two of the 10 worst books I've ever read were My Life by Bill Clinton and The Art of the Deal. Literally, this is what a terrible book My Life is. Did you recently hear how Hillary was so brave at not divorcing Bill? It was not unlike having the bravery of standing by your transgender child.

It's very similar. Old people who are out of date and have way too much money. I will never be out of touch because I don't have money. It's hard to be apart from society and above society when you have to participate in society.

It's ironic you participate in society while complaining about it. That should be illegal. Let's get to the society. Make a living. It's ironic you participate in society while complaining about it. That should be illegal. Let's get to the trees. Yeah, sorry. Schwarzwalder has really turned me into a liberal hater today in this episode. But yeah, no.

So this whole bit with the trees is very much end of history nihilism too of like, why are you even bothering to save the trees? It's stupid. You're wasting your time. They'll be fine. You're a dork like Ed Begley. It's a do ed begley jr let's talk about him a little he is really funny in this it's it's really him i i guess based on his age in our uh curse on this

show i am going to play the anti-death to make him safe here real quick so yes ed begley jr he's you know a second generation actor he's a famous famous guy he's he usually plays the um crunchy hippie and left in liberal shows like in west wing he played basically bernie sanders who said he was who was doing too many purity politics and got to get a big speech about how he was preventing progress by being uh by expecting too much of the democratic party a great scene that has aged so well very good and also yeah i feel like he's the environmentalist that every famous person knows which is why he often plays this kind of role that he plays here and the joke about his electric car though in

this case the one that runs on his own self-satisfaction that's based on him being at a simpsons party at a science museum right and he couldn't plug in his electric car yeah and he was like what do you mean this is a science museum so they wrote that joke in to reflect that i think it was the season 10 premiere party or something like that or one of the premiere parties but you know these rich people chain themselves to trees which that's not what they do they would pay people to stand on at trees for them or they'd have a party to raise awareness about these trees but yes they they change themselves to trees the cops show up who are just as violent as the police cops and they're going to swab their eyes with pepper spray which apparently strength it that really happened and at uh with for people who chain themselves to trees in a 1997 thing in the bay

area the cops did there's pictures of this woman being held down and they have swabs they are putting pepper spray in her eye directly like they got sued over that so apparently you can't use that now i think pepper spray strength has improved so much that they, they can blind you without having to jam it directly onto your eyes. Yeah. I think there was some famous tree person who lived around here. Yeah. We had a guy in Berkeley.

Actually speaking of Hollywood celebrities who walk the walk, I was thinking about, I guess, Jane Fonda either just got arrested or is about to get arrested or has expressed her desire to get arrested like once a month. And actually in the 1980s, she fucking lived in a modest house with her husband, Tom Hayden. And be like, oh, OK, I'm a leftist. I'm going to live my ethics and values. And nobody gave her any fucking credit for it. and you need to hit her so whether or not you're like oh

i'm going to live my values and not be a super rich person or whether you marry ted fucking turner republicans are gonna fucking hate you yeah they're gonna see you as a phony even no matter how far you are willing to go for your beliefs and i think she's definitely somebody who has been willing to be hated by all of america uh for that so yeah again i think like despite what this says not all celebrities are phobias and not all celebrities are just pretending or trying to make themselves look good by pretending to care about the world and the environment i like ruffalo had a nice statement about the ellen thing of like no we're not forgiving this guy why the fuck would you so ruffalo's still still positive but yes the the ruffalo angry i don't think she would like him when he's angry

i just saw something about the berkeley uh tree person someone was living in a tree to protest the the chopping down of said trees for seemingly good purposes but also believe that the illuminati and the masons were conspiring to build this athletic center because the Grove is at the intersection of the School of Business and Alcatraz. So it's like dark magic. You know, those ley lines are real things, Bob. I agree with this guy. I'm shocked there wasn't a Jewish conspiracy

mentioned in there, though, too. Illuminati is, you know, I'm touching my nose. It's just like, you know what that means. But yes, as they're chained to the trees, the cops show up. Oh, Marge, I thought it would be fun to be on Springfield's A-list, but these people are nuts. You can't blame them for having a social conscience. Sure you can, bunch of no-good do-gooders.

Hang in there, Max. Saving the environment is a hard, grueling job. That's what I'm saying. See, Marge, this guy gets it. All right, what's going on here? We can't allow you to destroy these beautiful trees, which have the same rights you have. Man, I have really had it with you tree-huggers.

Tree-huggers. Something funny, nature boy? No, I just thought it was cute when you called him. All right. Max power. Eddie, swab this joker's eyes with mace. Swab? I thought it was a spray.

Okay, she's second. God, yeah. Marge, a lot of cruelties inflicted on Marge. A lot of bad stuff happens to her. She's punished for talking every time. And yeah, so Homer gets chased by the swab. He then runs with the chain so much that it tears apart the tree's trunk knocks it over and knocks down every other tree in the forest homer kills and he kills the bird too yeah that's the best gag he kills a bald

eagle not just any old by tossing chains up in the air uh it's a horrible way to kill a bird uh bob bob you've made me notice how much and a bird cruelty there is every buddy hates birds it's true though there's a good little also very swartz weldery joke of one cop can't catch homer and then two cops just run in a circle in the same way that's a good little gag but yes homer and everybody learns the lesson of caring is stupid in this uh tree killing finale this is terrible um so trent where's the party bus headed now what well i'm glad you changed your name back to homer simpson yes i learned you gotta be yourself. Good night, honey.

Good night. Oh, I almost forgot. While I was at the courthouse, I had them change your name. To what? Chesty LaRue. Chesty LaRue? Just try it for two weeks. If you're not completely satisfied, you can be Busty St. Clair.

I don't want to be Chesty LaRue or Busty St. Clair. Fine, Hootie McBoop it is. Good night, Homer. Sleep tight, Hootie. Let go of those. They're all just like Russ Meyer character names. Yes. It's a really weird ending after the trip they've been on.

Homer's like, you know what? I'm not this name anymore. We're not talking about the scene that just ended. and here's some funny joke names i'd write for you the end boob just i still have all those pseudonyms in my head though that he gives her chesty larue bussy st claire and hootie mcboob and uh then all of homer's he had there's a lot of good fake names in this episode chesty larue is a good one then homer gropes marge which is just like ah come on homer yeah just to larue was one of those where like i know that phrase i didn't necessarily know that it came from here i'm like i mean it's

like a mel brooks thing uh chesty larue definitely does sound like somebody who would be in a ross meyer movie with pandora kooks chesty larue does sound like a mel brooks like secretary character in one of his 60s or 70s one yeah you know that was a a funny episode that then kind of takes a weird off ramp into complaining about hollywood liberals but uh you know couldn't be more timely today i suppose yeah i agree i'm not a huge fan of the uh where it swerves into but i love all the max power stuff and i still have a lot of lines from this episode in my head like this is the wrong way but faster strapping infield the Gs and all of the fun pseudonyms. And the mid-season talk, too.

Yeah. There's a lot of great, like, super wacky Schwarzwalder stuff in here, especially the police cops thing. And lots of fun stuff. I did like this episode. Yeah, it's very good. And again, I think the first two acts of it

are really, really great and very, very funny. And I feel like it really falls apart at the end. But yeah, it's very, very funny. And I feel like it really falls apart at the end. But yeah, it's very, very funny, and I hadn't watched this in a while, and I was reminded why this is my favorite show, and maybe the funniest television show of all time. We're glad we could remind you then. Yeah, definitely.

Thank you so much, Nathan. Please plug all of your stuff. You've got so much going on, a book coming out, and of course your Patreon. You're writing so much wonderful stuff online still. My big things are on my website, NathanRaven's Happy Place. NathanRaven.com. N-A-T-H-A-N-R-E-V-I-N.com. That's kind of my main thing.

I update constantly. Got a column for TCM Backlot called Fractured Mirror. That's about movies about movies. I got a column for them called First and Last about the first and last films of filmmakers. I have a book coming out called The Weird Accordion to Al, the book. It's an adaptation of a column that I've been writing for my website for the last two and a half years, where I go back and write about every single song on every Weird Al album in chronological order. And I got this idea because I wrote his

coffee table book in 2017 in 2017 when i started my site really wanted to think about something good and wonderful instead of donald trump uh so i decided to immerse myself into the world of weird al yankovic and it's been really really amazing and we've got amazing illustrations by philippe serrero who does a lot of art for uh podcast stuff he's also a colorist for marvel it It's really great. We've got an introduction by Weird Al Yankovic, which I am very, very, very excited about. He's actually going to fact check it as well.

Oh, boy. And then, yeah, this is exciting. You're probably the first people to hear this. I've had a podcast for the last two years called Nathan Raven's Happy Cast. We are going to reboot it in about a month and a half. And I was watching the movie The Fanatic,

the John Travolta flop directed by Fred. I'm thinking about how much I adore John Travolta, about like he's just one of my favorite actors and people and icons in history and how much I love Nicolas Cage. So I said, fuck it. I should just do a podcast for me and my co-host, Clint Worthington, where we just talk about John Travolta and nicholas cage movies so in about a month we're going to start a podcast called travolta slash cage and in every single episode we and a guest will talk about one john travolta movie and one nicholas cage movie do that in chronological order and we're very very excited there's a lot of crazy funky cool, cool shit. We've got great guests. And yeah, I feel like this is a,

like your podcast, a good, you know, a juicy commercial idea that hopefully will resonate with people. So I'm very, very excited about that. Travolta slash Cage. That's great. And personally speaking,

you've been hugely influential to both Henry and I in the way that we cover media. So thank you so much for being on the show. It's been great. Oh, it's been a pleasure. It's been a real joy media. So thank you so much for being on the show. It's been great. It's been a pleasure. It's been a real joy. Thanks again to Nathan Rabin for being on the show. We are big fans of him, so make sure you check out

all of his stuff. But as for us, if you want to check out more of our stuff and support our show, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. If you sign up for the low cost of five bucks a month, you'll get access to all of our paywall podcasts behind the $5 paywall. That includes all of our limited miniseries and so much more but it also includes our upcoming series talking futurama season two part one will be happening starting in

late october running until the end of the year and if you want access to that you'll have to join us at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for five bucks a month and henry will tell you all about what is happening at the ten dollar level super long podcast every month often longer than four hours which is crazy but nice yes for all of our premium supporters at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons you'll get access to our monthly what a cartoon movie podcast where me and Bob talk about a different animated feature film once a month for up to four hours we've talked about most recently cowboy bebop the movie and if you sign up in october you'll not only get to hear that but our upcoming one the nightmare before christmas our halloween treat for all of you

so please sign up at the ten dollar level to get that and all of the previous five dollar benefits bob just talked about once more that's patreon.com slash talking simpsons so as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast every monday and occasionally on friday go to retronauts.com or look for retronauts in your podcast machine and i think you'll like it what about you henry you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g you'll get all the henry gilbert updates there especially whenever new podcasts for talking simpsons or what a cartoon come out i am sure to tweet about it and you'll learn about it there so please stay informed by following me on twitter h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g

thanks for joining us folks we'll see you next week for I Am With Cupid, and we will see you then. Oh, wait a minute. The family name is my legacy to you. I got it from my father, and he got it from his father. And he traded a mule for it. And that mule went on to save spring break.