Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Homer vs Dignity With Nick Wiger

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

This week's episode is one of the most controversial Simpsons ever, and we lean upon the insights of returning fave Nick Wiger from the great podcasts Doughboys and How Did This Get Played?! Homer becomes Burns' prank monkey for high pay and low dignity, leading to perhaps the lowest moment in Simpsons history. How does it fare today? How does it reflect the comedy of 2000? And what about The Noid? We discuss it all in this tapioca-covered podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where every day is pranksgiving. I'm your host, Financial Panther Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and I specifically wanted the anti-polio shot today.

And who do we have on the line? Hi, it's Nick Weiger, baby made of boom boom. And today's episode is homer versus dignity did you see daddy dance they all saw me dance today's episode aired on november 26 2000 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this day in real world history oh my god happy thanksgiving bobby unbreakable beats 102 dalmatians at the box office the gorillas music video tomorrow comes today is released and police have busted that scoundrel robert downey jr for possession of cocaine and methamphetamines stand to him the end of him. And it's just three months after he is released from prison. You know, I was going to see that dog movie.

That was too many Dalmatians for me. I was good with 101, but I felt like they were running out of ideas. I was seeing Unbreakable in theaters the first time. I was the comic book nerd who liked it. And I remember when everyone was hating on it. I was like, I like this. That's back when comic book movies had to be secret movies. You couldn't know.

Yeah. It was a, and, and Unbreakable, it was a covert superhero movie. It's kind of like they tricked you. You were almost expecting another ghost story on the heels of Sixth Sense, but it was like,

I too really enjoyed Unbreakable the first time I saw it. And then watching everyone kind of come around to Unbreakable to the point, honestly, the point where the end of it was split, right? Yeah, yeah. Is that the sequel? Where they teased, yeah, they connected it to the Unbreakable universe and everyone was like, yeah. And I was like, wait, everyone loves Unbreakable now? What happened over the past 20 years? This movie was like, people said this movie sucked.

I remember when it came out. And that people were like, oh, I want more M. Night Shyamalanamalan i was like i thought we all were supposed to hate him isn't that what we hate i don't understand what's going on it you know it is like it's like robert downey jr it's just like someone's been famous for long enough where we've seen the cycle of like robert downey jr being a punch line being this got this this guy who went to jail and and was made fun of on the simpsons and then is now the biggest movie star in the world again. It's fascinating.

Yeah, I remember when that happened, that he was on Ally McBeal at the time. Oh, yeah. They had filmed episodes and they were advertising them as he was going back to jail. And reading up on it, this was apparently the scared straight moment for him like he actually got he says the sober after that and that's when he he started climbing

back it's it is crazy that iron man was so big it turned him they got him for iron man and people were like well that's an affordable movie star but i and now he is the biggest star in the world oprah needed to grant him clemency first did that happen after this or before this i bet he did it twice okay after he got out of prison i think i remember watching like robert downey jr interviewed in prison like he's i don't know if it was on elfa he got two oprah stays of execution for his career that's good uh but joining us today for the second time is Nick Weiger of Doughboys. And how did this get played? Welcome back to the show, Nick.

A delight to be here. Thank you guys so much for having me. I know it will be a second to get into it, but you pitched me a few different episodes. And I had strong feelings about multiple episodes you pitched me, including this one. So, but yeah, a delight to be back here and uh and nick you were watching this episode when it aired the uh the first time in the year 2000 watched it live for sure probably would have watched this in my college dorm and then complained about it afterwards i know i was a complainer about this episode probably on a

message board or all tv simpsons the news group but coming back to it my dangerous opinion is I think it's very funny outside of 20 seconds there's a lot of things in this episode that made me laugh really hard there are some truly good jokes in this and it's it's one of those things where there were there were like even season seven and season eight episodes were the first time I saw them I remember like the the the Moe boxing episode. You guys probably know the title of it. But that one at the first time I saw it, I was like, that was stupid. Like, that's suck.

This show sucks. And then rewatching, I was like, wait, this shows this episode is great. It's really funny. It's got a lot of it's it's got, you know, a whole bunch of good jokes. This one has some moments that I find really uh uh like like annoying and and uh unfunny and and like i just i strongly dislike them but it does have some truly good jokes you're right yeah i uh so long time listeners this podcast know that i've often said uh in my memory that the panda love is the lowest low point of the show for me and it was the one i like before we got to

maude's death i said like well i'm not looking forward to maude's death or the panda love episode and i re-watching this one i also think there are some way there's more funnier lines than i remembered in it like i didn't remember any of the ones that really made me laugh and then re-watching i was like oh that's funny that's funny but i i still hate the the panda love scene and some other stuff and and also i think this is such a reaction to what was popular in comedy then oh yeah and it just feels weird maybe that was another thing i didn't subconsciously like at the time that i could tell that Simpsons that used to lead the way in comedy was now reacting to what was the new cool thing in comedy in the year 2000. It's like when the Farrelly brothers made a hall pass and it was just sort of like, well, we're not really making a Farrelly

comedy anymore. We're trying to make an Apatow comedy. And so it just, it doesn't quite, you know, it just doesn't quite click as way in the same ways as their older work. Yeah, 100%. And for me, and this might have also been an observation of yours, Henry, I'm trying to remember where I saw this, but this was another one that clicked with me. Yes, Panda Love is definitely a moment where I was just like, Oh, God, what does the show become? Just that whole scene? I just like and watching it again. I was just like, this sucks. I hate this. But the other one is there's a joke in an episode where there's a joke in an episode where Skinner the kids are locked down in the school. It snowed in. And Skinner has a joke towards the end of that episode that is, chew through my ball sack. Where he's like in a sack

of balls. And that was another one where he's like, I fucking hate this joke. This is not a Simpsons joke. Yeah, they shouldn't stoop to that level yeah yeah i also there's a very funny story in the commentary uh where writer rob lezebnik this is his episode and this was his first table read of one of his scripts people thought it was very funny until the third act in which the third act of that script was much different homer debased himself much further and it ended with him throwing pig's blood on the crowd.

Yes. And the whole entire room turned against him. And there's a funny story in the commentary. Matt Salmon said one person was laughing. It was writer Larry Doyle filling the room with what he called sarcastic hate laughter. Yes, yeah. So just laughing at how badly it was doing. But the episode originally ended with Homer throwing pig's blood on the crowd. And then we cut to 50 years in the future.

And it's Homer, elderly Homer, saying that's how Thanksgiving was later known as Splatterfest. And that was the end of the episode. Now, Nick, you're a professional comedy writer. Have you been witness to that kind of experience of a bad table read? Oh, yeah. I've had things tank it's fucking awful it's it's terrible it's a terrible feeling you usually know it pretty early on and then it's just like oh we have 11 more pages of this this fucking thing that just does not work i you know

i mostly work in variety and tv variety so it'll be like uh usually you know oftentimes like a sketch or something that'll be being read. And that'll just be like, oh, there's a premise to this sketch. And this premise is either going to work or isn't going to work. We're going to find it out pretty early. Like sometimes if it just dies on page one or two, you're just like, well, this is not going to work and we should just stop reading it now. But we have to go through the humiliation of reading this whole thing to just silence or

maybe an occasionally occasional polite titter it's it's it's really really really rough uh that's the that is the thing that terrifies people from even being creative just that uh i i respect you for even like uh being able to deal with that just always as your job the read that we went to everyone loved the script so we went to a good table read yeah that's that i mean that's great that when that when something kills it's just when something crushes it's like great that that makes the bombing worth it i i i think i can say this what i worked out with on a pilot with scott ackerman and he had a thing he was doing whenever a script tanks he would just like, that's going in the dump.

The greatest indignity would be like if you ended up in the dump and he would deliver it with kind of like a little bit of gravity. You're just like, oh, fuck. I got in the dump. We've listened to so many of these commentaries and you really feel like the table read, the bad table read is so traumatic that these writers remember 10 years down the road 20 years down the road because they always mentioned if it was a good table read or a bad one i imagine yeah it's like it's like a bad job interview right it's just like you know those stick with you just like i fucking tanked that one this was my big opportunity and i just fucking blew it and but but this is the added layer of just your heroes are there well and also these are late 90s hollywood comedy rooms that i'm sure a bit more jocular than they are these days i think probably a lot meaner insults are being said out loud to to people when a joke doesn't go well 100 i'd say that most of

the even the the rooms that give each other shit that i've worked in are good natured for the most part they're not just like they're like fuck you you suck you know they're they're they're not that nakedly competitive i just think of the the context to consider with this episode that is so scatological and and so gross yeah i i was looking up okay what are the top comedies when this was being if this was written in like late 1999, early 2000, like the top films of the year 2099, you've got The Clumps, you've got American Pie, Austin Powers, Scary Movie, The Tom Green Show, like all of this stuff. Yeah. Talking about chasing trends, I think they saw popular media and said people love it

when characters are just covered in cum and they just ran with that i mean you mentioned scary movie also there's something about mary just like they just discovered cum as a comedy vehicle it's true uh you said come before nick did on the podcast uh it's it's funny because what were the like there's also i think the the idea of an animal having sex with a person was kind of in the zeitgeist i remember like i think the second clumps movie what what you know nutty professor part two the clumps has a scene with a giant hamster having sex with larry miller yeah oh yeah right so i think that's a that was maybe another thing that got that was and it probably was in some some other things as well.

I don't know. It's it's it's a bummer because The Simpsons to me was for a while. So anything scatological or sexual, it was very savvy about how it used it. There's an episode where like they're they won't even like Bart is about to say at the end of the plus side, the king size Homer episode. Bart is about to say like, and I'm used to dad's butt releasing toxic. And Marge cuts him off before he can even say gas before he can even land the fart joke. Like that's how arm's length they used to play it. And now they're just like, a panda is going to fuck Homer. Yeah. They it's also worth mentioning, like especially that South Park into a lesser degree family guy was getting all of the press in 99 and 2000 of, like, Simpsons, Pass A, South Park.

Right. Like, South Park is getting the Rolling Stone covers. Matt and Trey are getting all the interviews of, like, what geniuses these guys are. And so, I mean, you can hear in one of the commentaries we already, for another episode we already did, you know matt selman a great writer like very funny guy but he is saying like we were feeling so crummy compared to south park we really wanted to like be as good at them as uh as covering like rip from the headline stuff i mean that makes sense in that if you're a contemporaneous with that that probably would get in your head a little bit and and i also think that like they were they even admit that they were being put in competition with family guy by fox executives who were telling

like hey this is a cheaper show than your show they're they work with us way better and so they took notes yeah they took notes and also like they're probably if they're watching their simpsons episodes air on the that night and then they see in the next half hour season one and two family guy is not as filthy as season five family guy but they still get away with there's some jokes in there that i could see simpsons writers going like why can't we do a joke like quagmire gets to do in these episodes like i have these dirty jokes in my head mo kind of has like a quagmire joke in this episode yep yep yep oh right yeah and uh and yeah this is all based on a book i've never read in a film i've never seen but apparently is very good the terry southern

book uh the magic christian and it's about a billionaire basically using his fortune to pull elaborate pranks on the world and i've never read it either but i heard it's very funny and the movie is uh peter sellers and ringo star who play Who plays which role? I believe Peter Sellers is the rich guy and Ringo Starr is Homer. Yeah. This sounds fascinating. I got to check this out. Yeah, I'd never heard of it before until, I guess I had forgotten about it when I heard it on commentaries before.

It definitely sounds like if you were a comedy nerd in the 70s, you knew about this thing, but it just fell out of favor it's not it didn't have the staying power of like monty python or sctv with comedy nerds yeah and the book i think it's a billionaire who basically teams up with a hobo to uh basically pull a ton of tricks on people but i do i conceptually i love the idea of what if a billionaire did fun evil things instead of like you know buying trips to little saint james or whatever like why can't why can't they do fun right evil things and not to get too much into a preamble but i do like how they're getting away from burns being a frail deluded

old man and getting back to him just being evil yes and i do always like to see that yeah and and i think they the burns jokes are pretty good in this episode and i do think comedically the pairing of homer and burns always works like they're you know with the when homer's the uh when homer is the smithers the cabin madness when when they're a duo they're they tend to have some really really great scenes and moments i also the the other thing that makes me feel this is very family guy connected is that the skull years not to say that they never have cutaways, but this episode has a lot of cutaways for this late in the series Simpsons.

Like there's a lot of thought balloons or watching TV or just like, oh, and remember that? Which I thought they'd kind of just given up on because Family Guy just owns that device so hard that they're like, ah, we're not going to do it. Yeah, no, there's a few of those. And, you know, one of the ones, not to get too far ahead of it,

but there's one, there's a Homer fantasy and the Homer fantasies are usually like great. They're usually awesome. And this was the one where I remember this, seeing this Homer fantasy, this Homer thought bubble that kind of is like, I don't know. I don't know if this one 100% clicks. I know the one you mean, yeah.

I'll just say it. Panther doesn't sound like Planner. No, it's not close enough. It was just funny when he said it once. I didn't like the fantasy, but we'll get to it. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I guess the episode opens at the return of the singing Sirloin.

It's the second and final appearance. It was first seen in Life on the Fast Lane, the episode with Jacques, the bowling instructor. And then this is the final one because I guess there are only so many jokes about singing waiters you can do. 260 episodes, I think, are how long it takes for them to go back to it. Yeah. And the design is a little updated, but it mostly is the front. I mean, the sign of it even is the sign gag is the same sign gag as it is in life on the Fastlane. Yeah, the joke of just like, yeah, singing waiters.

That's it. Home of ballads and salads? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I also think like the singing waiter idea, they kind of almost lose it a bit. When it goes to then a joke of them being in a mariachi band, in my mind, I always forget that they're still in the singing sirloin. Because I'm like, wait, are they in a mexican restaurant why are they singing in a like that's

just odd too yeah real leap there i yeah i don't i i did not i still did re-watching it i still felt like did i miss something here but i i do like conceptually that the reason they're there is it could have easily just been like it's for a birthday like a character has a birthday but they to make it a first a instead of a birthday that that's clever there's a first a crown yeah a crown made of a's i like that yeah i like the cake i the flashback i mean what i was okay with but i i like the breeding the hamster with a lizard joke more so than it being an Edna, you know, Krabappel Skinner hookup that he has to distract himself from. Yeah. But I think the overall, the idea of a first day cake is very funny.

And it's funny that Lisa has to correctly bring up, like, I'm never recognized for anything. And especially, I like Homer's little whisper, love you. Yeah. That's good. that whole sequence i think is very funny it was like uh what do you want a medal you gave bart one and then bart like has a medal and then and then that leads into the love you i like that but yes the uh in our first clip here the show gets into the gutter fast with uh some very dirty jokes yeah, an astronomy. How'd you do it? I just buckled down and studied. No, really.

Well, it all started last week in Krabappel's class. I was trying to breed the hamster with the lizard to create an unholy super creature when I saw an even worse crime against nature. Ah, head lice inspection day. While the kids are out getting their nits picked, we can have our own private cootie call. Ugh, you talk too much. Let's do it on Martin's desk. It is usually the cleanest.

Oh! I needed to get my mind on something else. Anything else. And for the first time in my life education was the answer mercury venus earth mars don't be tardy mercury venus earth mars jupiter saturn rain is neptune pluto that don't be tardy thing is so yeah uh i think skinner is not clever enough to use the term cootie call but but I do like how Martin's desk just has one pencil on it and he sweeps it off. That's good. Yeah, that's funny.

Yeah, I don't. It's just he's having sex with Edna and wants her to come. It's just like, so what are we doing? What are we having? Principal Skinner is just railing Edna Krabappel on Martin Prince's desk. When you think about it, this is too vile for the show. Yeah, as much as, they didn't really do anything with the two during Scully's years,

but they would do a lot more stories between the two when Al Jean would take over again. But I don't want to see them like this. Yeah, right. And also as an adult, the idea of like, one, this scene feels weirder to me thinking of like, Bart, a 10-year-old boy, is an unwanted and unintended viewer of a sex act. Like, that isder to me thinking of like bard a 10 year old boy is an unwanted and unintended viewer

of a sex act like that is weird to me and and then on top of that that the teacher the idea that the teacher and principal routinely fuck on the desks of children like that is very strange to me well it just also seems out of like maybe not out of character for mrs kerboppel but out of character for skinner yeah he's a, but out of character for Skinner. He's a little too buttoned up for that. I guess it shows her influence on him, I suppose. Yeah, I feel like he'd need to be talked into it or tricked into it or something. Or he would not understand why she was leading him to an empty room. But yeah, I really feel bad for Bart that he has to be...

He's a child. He should not be witness to this type of thing. But that's how he studies so hard and gets his a in astronomy and then goes straight to homer failing to pay for his bill throws the money at them and tries to run away i like that the sign of the singing sirloin like activates the uh trap door or like fix the slamming front door like a steel door. And also just the sound of Homer screaming like, ah, like just his throw. It's good. You know what?

Seems like this made me fear as a child for years that eventually one day my credit card would be cut up in front of me. I don't think waiters have that authority or ever did to destroy your personal property. No. You know, I think the joke of Homer throwing, like I've got many other valid credit cards and then he throws them at the waiter, which gets called back. I do like that. The thing that I'm confused by here is when they're singing about, they're like the waiters are singing as they're escaping. They're singing about the escape. But then there's a Mary Kay character who I get is just like, wait, are you supposed to be connected to the Mary Kay company somehow?

Or is that just your name, but you're also dressed in all pink? I was just confused by that. That was distracting. I guess they just needed a name that rhymed with away. I get it. Yeah. Mary, stop the Mary Kay. Yeah, you're right.

The name makes you think of the Mary Kay cosmetic, which distracts you from just the joke that's going on there. But then Castaneda, a very good version of Spanish eyes. Yes. yeah. Which apparently was made famous by Andy Williams, Bing Crosby, and Engelbert Humperdinck. Very Spanish men. Wow.

All of them. The Simpsons will be right back welcome to the break you financial panthers and a big thank you to our guest this week nick weiger so much fun having him back on everybody should be checking out the two podcasts he does every week that would be doughboys and how did this get played both a whole lot of fun we've been on how did this get played we talked about bart versus the space mutants i'll be like oh man i want to hear those guys talk about bart versus space mutants that's where it is go check it out there also if you're a fan of this podcast and want to hear every episode a week ahead of time and ad free you should go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons because that is what supports me and bob doing this as our full-time jobs if you're a five dollar and up patron there

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Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care as a smash cut to a funny visual seeing the family in a mariachi band costume including maggie playing a trumpet it's funny it is pretty silly but it's it's a funny visual i think yeah i just it's it's just again and this was this was uh your guys point earlier but the the mariachi connection i'm just like what what is this you i guess you

just wanted to have a mariachi joke in here but the it's like uh the manager also has like uh a hispanic accent by the master of accents hank is it but yeah it's so that also confuses it too it almost feels like they wrote it to be a mexican restaurant and then later they realized like oh wait we i mean maybe they even just did the commentary for life on the fast lane and they're like hey we can just go back to there i think a lot of it is just silly hat humor yes they're all wearing silly hats the the family is shamed by their lack of money and on on their drive home uh homer doesn't doesn't know why he's out of money blue spanish eyes teardrops are falling from your Spanish eyes

When did this happen? When did we become the bottom rung of society? I think it was when that cold snap killed off all the hobos. Dad, what happened to the back seat? I had to sell it for gas money. Which I spent on a novelty horn. Maybe we should talk to a financial planner. Financial Panther, eh?

Mr. Simpson, you're a dollar overdrawn. Get him, Sheba! I'm on board. Yeah, so Panther doesn't sound like planner like planner and also the joke just takes you to what you would imagine a panther killing a guy like that i feel like there should be an extra step there right yeah i i mean they i think i think once you see the panther you kind of know what's coming and it's not enough of a of a pun it's it's too much it's it's a near pun so it doesn't quite have the payoff.

But I will say the jokes leading up to that, I like a lot. It made me laugh. Dad, what happened to the back seat? I had to sell it for gas money. And then we see there's no back seat, which I spent on a novelty horn. And then we hear the horn. That's just like, oh, this is like a classic sort of horror stupidity run. This is great.

The kid standing on the frame of the car as the road passes underneath them is a very funny image yeah it's great that joke made me need to double check like wait was this a swartz welder script because that's a very there's a lot of jokes that when swartz welder isn't the writer of it i think like oh that's them saying what would a swartz welder joke be here and it would be homer selling the backseat for gas and i'm also really glad his novelty horn didn't do La Cucaracha. I thought it was going to be that. Instead, it's like, charge!

But yeah, so they do head to an actual financial planner. They go to Let's Get Fiscal, which is a pun on Let's Get Physical, the Olivia Newton-Jones song. Is this Lindsay Nagel or a Lindsay Nagel-style character? It's true Lindsay Nagel, yes. If it's a blonde woman without glasses, it's actual Lindsay Nagle. She jumps to a lot of jobs, usually an executive, right? Named after a former, I guess she works at Annapurna now as the boss of that, but Sue Nagle. Sue Nagle.

I think she was married to Dana Gould at this time. Yes. Yeah. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. I think she was a manager.

I think she was an agent for a lot of several writers dating dana gould would marry him then be in charge of hbo for years but yes that's that's why lindsey nagel is has the name nagel wow all this financial planning stuff like i that is weird to me like fine like plan for home these things like all these things sound crazy to me but uh i i also like that wigum wigum gets mad that his financial planner tells him he won't die the day before retirement his wife is very shaken up by that but uh but here's a quick clip of homer getting some financial advice well i see you have several mortgages, credit card debt, no savings, and you're supporting your father? Just give the word and I'll cut him off. I couldn't ask you to do that. Consider it done.

Based on these figures, I'm afraid you'll need to declare bankruptcy several times. Just look at this projection. Marge, your posture looks terrible. What's interesting is you'll continue losing money even after you're dead. Your grave sites will go untended and vandalized. Mr. Simpson, your intelligence profile indicates that you're too stupid to stick to a budget. Yes, go on. So let me put this simply. You need more money.

But how do I get it? I'm a financial planner, not a financial consultant. Sorry. Now, I'd like my feet to lose. I know you're not a deaf mute, Mr. Simpson. We've been talking for the last 20 minutes. Very ashamed, sorry. Feels like it was thrown in after the fact but it made me laugh every time

it's a great addition yeah and i don't know what the simulation is supposed to show just how badly they're aging i think it's funny though yes yeah yeah yeah i mean they've kind of got this uh yeah the the uh you know their their clothes are getting more tattered and their their health is getting worse you know the ends with the the call back to the uh card throwing joke but i like the joke that really made me laugh in this run uh re-watching it was uh mr simpson your intelligence profile indicates that you're too stupid to stick to a budget um i thought that was great and and yeah i mean like i i i don't know i mean this up through here this is all working for me like i i like i i guess you could maybe say that that sure

they could have a bigger justification like like the the the foundation of the house you know needing repair a bigger a bigger justification for why you need to consult a financial planner then i couldn't pay for a dinner that said i think that the whole financial planning scene is pretty funny and and i like that uh homer uh she should have seen that coming. She should have asked for the money up front. If you're working with somebody you deem too stupid to save money, then you should really insist on being paid first. And ultimately the advice of this professional expert is you need more money. Yes.

The only negative I have on a computer projection joke is that a thing that happens with a show that's as on as long as The Simpsons is that it's a similar joke that I liked better the first time in the projection of Lisa. She didn't get braces from the dental plan. I guess it's just less pixelated now. They have a higher resolution. Also, that shot of Nelson on the grave light, that also felt like a cutaway to me. But it also feels like they cut it short. I feel like when nelson starts coughing i thought he should like fall over and die i thought that's where it was going but that's what i thought was going to happen i was like wait did

i misremember that because i was like oh yeah then he dies on the grave but i guess not there and there's uh unlike most episodes in this season on the dvd there's no deleted scenes for this episode so wow i i don't know what's uh the deal is there you'd figure there was a especially from how they talk about it on the commentary sounds like they cut a lot of stuff so i don't know uh but yeah so cuts to the next scene uh smithers is telling burns that he's gonna have to take a little vacation and hammering the trap door button underneath the desk he keeps doing it even though he's talking i love that uh man all the burn stuff in this episode is so good i missed him because we haven't really seen him a lot in the past uh three years of the scully season really this is when they

discovered they could make him gross and not just they didn't have to make what the bill and josh seasons really perfected with burns was mentioning ancient things that have been gone for a hundred years and having burns say that and i don't think that's really scully's style like he's him and his team aren't as into that kind of reference but there are some good jokes there are some good old man jokes here there is the you know like he's like like wait there's a new mexico like i like that slow down maestro yeah yeah and then i also like he he said the king of siam like he thinks that's still the name of a country and that there's a yes yeah uh well that's he was

referencing the king and i right because he's saying you should you might as well make a musical about the common cats uh but i do like how smithers gets to have a moment he gets to like live out this very very small modest dream of his even though one man in the audience is very unhappy and it's it's a natural expansion of his established love of malibu stacy and toys and that it is yes it totally makes sense for the character of smithers that quietly he's been writing for a decade his own musical based on malibu stacy which uh you know i don't think there's been a bar musical yet, but. Yeah, I was looking that up and I don't know if this is based on a trend because I know, like in the 21st century, maybe like 10, 15 years ago, that's when every Broadway play,

every big play would be the Shrek musical, the Matilda musical. Every movie you've liked from the past 20 years will now have a musical, the Beetlejuice musical. Yeah, they tried, they made like a Dr. Seuss musical that was a famous disaster where they were just yeah they were just they they just were like okay to get tourists to actually come to these shows we need to have it be tied to an established IP like everything now yep uh it's yeah I mean I anytime there's a there's a cutaway to or anytime there's a scene that's a that's a musical of the Simpsons is i think that's i think they always pull off i think that's almost always funny re-watching it this time i wish there was more i was like man i want to see one other song from this yeah i also i will say unfortunately

that there's a new mexico is a repeated joke from the show i thought so in in season five's boy scouts in the hood when they are uh in the canoe and asking homer to read the map to them he's reading his crusty burger map and says there's a new mexico oh wow so we had it come from the angle of of dumb guy and now we're having it come from the angle of old guy yep yeah again it's like these are the same writers for you know 12 years there's you only have so many jokes you know i i'm not saying, like, these unoriginal writers. Like, I'm a little more forgiving than I was in my youth. I'll say that.

Well, I think also that's a, you know, you couldn't just as easily search the database of all the scripts. You maybe don't even have, you know, easily available digital copies of everything that's ever been written for the show to find out if that joke's ever been used before. Now you can just type it into Frankie Yak to see if you made that joke before right the sense i get that like it was just an internal policing that they they would count on people being the nerd of the show within the writer's room to remember like hey wait we said that like i i know you can feel that like bill and josh they were big experts on that and i know in mike reese's book he said that al gene was really good at remembering like hey wait we did that joke before like he right it was all just counting on it internally and uh though i also like that burns instantly becomes his evil

self he shoots smithers with intention of injury like yes it's that's so great just did he pulls out a fake gun that has the bang flag but he wanted it to shoot smithers and when it does hilarious that's great yeah it's it's maybe a little meaner to smithers than he's been in the past but also it's just like i i still buy it it doesn't feel out of character for burns and And they have a quick little joke of Burns walking around the plane by himself. Thinking the vending machine is a candy shop. Yes. I like this. That made me laugh.

Asking for two pounds of Bristol's toffee and don't wrap it too tightly. I'm hungry now. I just love the way he says that. He's such a like so childish too. Like I'm hungry now. That's great. It's very sweet. But then he made a powerful enemy by not dispensing the the old-timey toffee and so then we cut to homer and uh this was another

joke that really made me laugh the idea of homer regularly has lunch beers in uh in this quick clip wow i never seen you have so many lunch beers before, Homer. Oh, I concur. Where's the day calendar? I'm just trying to work up the courage to ask Burns for a raise. Or a highly paid internship. Something to solve my money woes. This must be some sort of cafeteria. Here's your chance, Homer.

Mr. Burns just Entered the room So yeah Them going like I've never seen you have this many lunch beers It's like You shouldn't have beers at work Probably during lunch In Homer's Enemy They point out he had three beers for lunch

That would make anybody sleepy That's right Yeah That's Yeah that's exactly what I was going to say. Speaking of repeated jokes, lunch beers instantly made me think of Homer's Enemy. I'm just like, oh yeah, they had this reference before,

but I guess they didn't explicitly say lunch beers, so it's kind of its own thing. The Word of Day calendar, Carl's Word of Day calendar, the three jokes that are there, that's one that stuck with me from this episode that I think about just like independently, not even remembering what episode it's from and this to me is so funny like i like oh like the first beat oh i concur uh and then they're like what like looking at him like that's a weird thing to say and he's like word a day calendar

holds up his word a calendar the word is actually conquer so he's like he's wrong about it and then the second word being entered is just like i i love that it's just such a great dopey sort of a dopey series of jokes i enjoy the way he pauses to give the word room you know just to prepare everybody entered you can you can you can feel the quote too yeah i of when like at that time in sitcoms there were a lot of like oh word a day calendar kind of jokes like i i feel like in a standard sitcom they'd be like oh i got it from my word a day calendar but to actually hold it up and then it's the wrong word he's mispronouncing and misusing that's that makes it 10 times better and and also accurate it says november 10th on that calendar and it will be

thanksgiving by the end of the episode so this takes place over like two weeks and it's actually was uh they timed it too like this ends in the thanksgiving parade and this aired the weekend after thanksgiving wow i think it's just this this this that that run of jokes it's just like kind of the like you were saying the word of day thing yeah kind of being in the zeitgeist and kind of being used elsewhere but the punch line would just be word a day calendar as opposed to it having other like you know other layers beyond that and i think that's what why i really like this one the lunch beers joke the other thing i like is that they just all accept the idea of a lunch beer they just call them lunch beers like we accept homer drinks lunch beers right but yes burn enters the cafetorium

which uh i actually did have that in school it sounds like an old man name but they called it the cafetorium no they did really for real yeah so uh at my suburban florida high school growing up we didn't have a place for plays or performances that that separate from the cafeteria so it was you'd eat every day. And then in one side of the room was a stage where things would be performed. And so it was always called the cafetorium because it's the auditorium plus cafeteria. So yeah, it was not a made up Burns word to me. Now I learned a new word. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, like, is like is this i'm curious i'm sure listeners will will

chime in as to whether anyone else experiences because i've this is the first i've heard of this i always just thought it was like a goofy invented you know malapropism from from mr burns i had no idea that there was actually a cafetorium anywhere in my catholic school the same room was a gym a church and an auditorium but we just called it one of those three things, depending on what it was being used for. Context sensitive. Why are these basketball hoops in church? I don't get it. They head over to the sneeze guard, which I guess

we're saying every joke they've done before on The Simpsons. They did do sneeze guard comedy in Lisa the Greek. We are really pulling people over as the joke police here. The sneeze guard comedy in lisa the greek and you're really uh pulling people over as the joke police here but i like the sneeze guard joke that one was was a rare i think early gross joke where barney just sneezes on directly onto it right and you see his sneeze and he's just like wow it works that actually was that grossed me out as a kid i think as a child i would turn away from the screen it was a big splatter if i remember correctly what do you guys have anything that grosses you out because for me it's still like boogers or snot like any like i i can take like a like a scatological joke or a cum joke but like a like a booger or snot joke i'm just

like this is fucking gross i don't want to see this i think for me i i think i've ascended above all of the body humor stuff where I can tolerate it for some reason. But for me, it's like jokes about very realistic instances of small pain, like a stubbed toe or a fingernail or something getting in your eye or something like that. Or a tooth thing, like little realistic pain from small areas of your body really make me wince. Or like when Homer gets his thumb cut off. That's pretty intense for me. I will say booger stuff does get me a lot i uh listeners have heard me gag on some podcasts i think but the our friends at the found footage fest uh bob got to see me uh hit my line of like they it was the r-rated night of found footage fest of some of the grossest things they

ever found of like including a live birth inside of a car. Yes, that's what started the night. And I think it was the wounds video they had that I was like, I am gagging. And I felt so embarrassed, too, because this is at a public place. This is at a comedy club where people are at their tables. And I'm like gagging loudly. And I just feel so bad but but it was still it was a fun night for all i still would i still enjoyed my time but night enjoyed by all yes

yeah straight up gore and wounds i guess is the thing you know there's a there's uh the i think it's homer he's attacked by a badger or a wolverine in an episode and he pulls up his shirt and you see all of his organs like his chest has just been completely like you know ripped open and that i remember being a thing of like oh god this is fucking nasty something like kirk van houten getting his sandwich arm sliced off is uh is not gross to me but like a more realistic kind of uh you know organ damage or arm damage or finger damage would gross me out but just like a clean cartoonish severing of a head or an arm i'm just i'm fine with that yeah that's fine it definitely see the barney snot thing was one of the most gag inducing ones for me as a kid i think i didn't like watching homer uh fall down

the uh the gorge and get so like realistically bloody like i didn't like seeing that as a kid but it wasn't like seeing barney sneeze. That was really gross. I feel like they cut down on the bodily fluid, like visible bodily fluids on the Simpsons after that. And, you know, they have a sneeze. The sneeze guard joke here is just a dialogue joke, which I do actually like. That's the sneeze guard. You have to lean under it to get salad or sneeze on stuff.

And the Burns views it as some kind of force field. Right. And his very touch wilts the head of lettuce. Yes. That's good. But Homer asks Burns for a raise in this important opportunity here. I'm a bored and joyless old man. Give me a larf.

A larf? Okay, let's see what's in the news today. Oh, what a larf. Hurl this at that. At Lenny? But he's a war hero. Well, let's see what's in the news today. Oh, what a love. Hurl this at that. At Lenny? But he's a war hero. Well, let's decorate him then. No. Not even for four dollars?

Ow! My eye! I'm not supposed to get pudding in it. No! That was capital. My lung is aching. I liked when I threw the pudding. Do it again. I'll make it an even eight. You're the boss. Ow! I mean, how? Let's keep the laughs coming, eh, Simpson? Let's say I make you my executive in charge of recreation.

No, no, better yet, my prank monkey. Will you keep giving me money? I can't have my little monkey running around in rags what are you doing man that's carl all the things that we're supposed to know about lenny and carl on this scene are very funny yes yeah it's a it's a very strange but funny act break why is carl so important it's it's amazing and more important than the war hero, Lenny. Why is Lenny? And what war was Lenny in?

That Burns refers to Lenny as that. He just knows he's a thing, but he knows who Carl is intricately to the point that he's being protective of him, which is very, very unusual for Burns. Yeah, I mean, I like Lenny being a war hero. I think that's very funny. I like my lung is aching um i like uh i here's the the only thing about this scene and i was

watching this with my wife and she had the same reaction is the the ow i'm in hell for me is like i feel like they could have gotten a harder lenny line there yeah i feel like that was like it's just just kind of a generic thing to say versus the earlier one ow my eye i'm not supposed to get pudding in it is like so sharp and specific that is much funnier yeah it's weird to have a weaker joke to follow that up yeah yeah and and this was in the era of uh lenny eye injury like he's previous to this one there was when the person at the fair is describing the rubber band flying off your newspaper and hitting you in the eye and then lenny goes like too late for lenny

and the spring in the eye right yeah the spring in his eye yeah they he i hated the spring in the eye that one also was uncomfortable actually i was more the one where he gets the coin in his brain and he pulls it out and blood splurts out this was the hurting lenny era yeah i also like that homer does it for four dollars like that's it four dollars the way he sets it up he should say like a hundred dollars but four is all homer needs i and doesn't even take it a second slot as soon as he says four dollars it's just a cut to him throw whipping the pudding which i think is great and and i also love uh that i do really like the joke construction that it's the backwards of how you'd write that normally where normally burns would say you're gonna be my prank

monkey no and then he makes up an executive title a flirt frilly executive title instead he says the frilly title first and then says no better yet prank monkey yeah i also feel like hey carl why aren't you walking lenny carl doesn't react at all to lenny getting smashed in the face he's a bad friend i guess it has been established carl doesn't like lenny and lenny likes carl also pudding should not hurt you this much yes that's true well he's not supposed to get pudding in his eye it's true it's a medical condition uh and so so we come back from the break, and Homer is starting his next prank with Burns. I like they did get away with a dirty thing there of comic book guy saying, I wish the real chicks went down this easy. And it also made me laugh hearing Burns say comic book fellow as comic book guy's name.

Maybe he should have a more oldie time way of saying comic book perhaps but yeah i i mean and he's also got just kind of the uh the weird like like a spaniard thing that he says um i i like the the of the dirty jokes for a comic book guy like when he's like uh he's like i'd like an hour on the holodeck with seven of nine like that was very in character and yeah i don't know i mean like this is it's it's interesting because i think of anything the pranks you know i think this one is a pretty good heightening but i think as the pranks go they maybe get less pranky and and that's partly why i think the episode runs out of steam they're they're like they're both less interesting and

then less actually being pranks they're more, oh, you're just doing something cruel to somebody. Yeah, this one does feel more personal, more targeted, not just a sort of broad area of effect prank that anyone who encounters it is affected. This is just targeting directly comic book guy, which is why I like it. Yeah, you're right. It's Homer is not the butt of this one. It's comic book guy who is. And it's it's to torture and almost kill comic book guy like he right later this season comic book guy has a heart attack but that's right but this feels like his

first episode i think so henry i think you would know more about this so as part of the prank homer eats spider-man number one in front of comic book guy and i was looking up the info on this i found an article in 2011 that said one copy of this was sold for $1.1 million, beating Batman's first appearance as the second most expensive comic ever sold. I assume the first one is Action Comics number one. Yes, Action Comics. If you can get a good copy of Action Comics number one,

that you'll probably get $2 million for these days. But yes, well, so here's a few things about this. One, yes, that is correct. That is how much it would go for but uh there is a difference between spider-man's first appearance which is amazing fantasy 15 and amazing spider-man number one and i love that they actually drew the cover to amazing spider-man number one like it is accurate that price difference here it's 20 000 on here and it is about which is the joke that comic book guy's reaction is mint versus very good versus

fair like that's quality levels if you could get a near mint edition of amazing spider-man number one which would be a 50 no 60 year old comic or almost 60 year old comic now it's worth more all the time meanwhile though if you go on ebay right now you can buy a poor quality copy of Amazing Spider-Man number one for $9,000. And I would be lying if I didn't say I momentarily thought about maxing out a credit card to have one. But yeah, I will say I also know that Al Jean from interviews is like, he is a big comic book fan. Oh, yeah. He got Stanley on the show later. He is.

And he especially loves the Stanley Steve Ditko era of Amazing Spider-Man. Like, I read an interview with him. Somebody asked him the question he's asked in every interview of like, hey, the show's different from when you were a star. And he compared it to like, you know, he grew up reading those Spider-Man comics. And as he got older, the newer Spider-Man comics didn't feel as legitimate to him. And so it was it was a fair comparison so i have to think al jean must own a copy of amazing spider-man number one

with all the simpsons money he's got all those royalties yeah he's got to have nothing but disposable income i think the that's an interesting way to think about the show and i think that's a that's you know and but also within that you're going to have different eras of comics, different runs of comics you're going to prefer to others. The same thing with a long-running show like The Simpsons. Let me just say that the only missed opportunity here for me is I kind of wish there was maybe a joke on what the cover of Amazing Spider-Man number one was in the Simpsons universe. I felt like they could have gotten a sight gag out of that or because they've covered Radioactive Man number one, but that was another direction they could have gone.

But just showing the cover, I was like, oh, it would have been nice if Spider-Man was saying something funny or something. It's interesting they went for pure accuracy. Yes, yeah. And also when this joke was written, I never assumed that they would be pure accuracy. Yes, yeah. And also when this joke was written, I never assumed that they would be owned by the same company now.

Oh, wow. There's not even a copyright issue now. Yeah, I like Comic Book Guy's reaction. If I saw someone destroy an Amazing Spider-Man number one, I would be very heartbroken by it. And that Homer's eating it. I was just like, oh, this is good. This is a good prank. And this is also a good Homer prank, you know?

And the comic then was only 37 years old. It's funny now to think of it as a 60-something-year-old comic. Wow. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care.

Did I mention that we care? I'll always remember how old Spider-Man is because I was 10 when I was reading his 30th anniversary comics. So I can always like, okay, Spidey's 20 years older than me. Right. But yes, I'm a big comic book nerd. I have to admit that listeners know this already. I knew this was your time to shine henry but uh but yeah so homer then is has his money just thrown at him and gets run over by a bicycle and uh that's when uh we get a classic kind of burns line of like oh smithers he doesn't know the meaning of the word gay and then smash cut to the musical. Actually, let's give that a listen.

Sold separately. Sometimes I feel like I've been sold separately. But out of the box I find you poseable. Lovable. You pose a bowl, lovable, just like me. This is better than a movie. Why? It is nice to see Smithers happy. I know the joke is his musical is very cheesy and tacky, but he's happy doing this. He's not being shit on by Burns or being unhappy in his life and it's the

perfect New Mexico couple the drawing of them is so perfect I do love it yeah I I agree with the note from earlier I just would have liked to see give me the little compressed mini musical let's get three songs in here why not yeah especially the Simpsons is so good at

fake musicals like and this was another good one but to just stop at one song i mean i that said i still like it i did in the same way i like checking in the betty ford clinic musical it's just like oh this is just a this is a fun number and a fun concept but yeah i like this a little i like this little joke it's a good justification for smithers getting away and smithers is a better singer than you think he would be like yes uh it it actually reminded me of i didn't consume anything related to hamilton until it was just the movie got put out last year and i am one of those people who think lin-manuel miranda is he's a fine songwriter i wouldn't cast him as the lead in uh this musical though i think it's better when other people sing

and so i'm like oh smithers is better than him at being the lead in his own music harry scherer out there yeah trust the smithers yeah stick to tweeting uh uh hey you hey look over here it's me your inspiration go out and get him uh i believe in you bro like yeah uh more lip biting pics please i think he's very sensitive to that now i think people all pointed out that he bites his lip all the time and now it's he's totally in his head about it i think yeah uh he's probably really sad he couldn't like actually perform at the uh inauguration and all that like that's all he lives for oh i'm sure i'm sure 100 but yes after that cutaway uh you're right nick homer's the the pranks just turn into humiliating homer not much more uh uh depth to them such as homer this is a thing of like i i kind of wish it was like okay

yes you can justify a humiliating homer but Homer, but the reason should be you're pranking somebody and humiliating Homer is the only means to that end. Like, it's just the here he's, it's as simple as I am a baby in a public restroom. Like, I am a grown man wearing a diaper in a public restroom writhing around on the floor and that's just a thing that that's like a that's like a youtuber level like shitty you know like some some asshole who would go on to you know box someone uh for a million dollars some sort of prank like this it just it just has no levels of low layers of thought to it and i just like i don't know you want to get homer on a diaper i'm sure you could figure out a way to to do that in a more clever fashion instead of and also when he says baby made a boom boom it implies do you think he actually pooped in his diaper do you think he's just saying he

i'm surprised that wasn't explored in this episode yeah yeah the the wealthy dowager coming in because the ladies room was full yes she shouldn't even be in the stadium in the first place but she's coming in like a filthy men's room i like how impossible that is i that did make me laugh i also did get a chuckle at one of the guys reacting to homer saying that he says not where i pee like that yeah that was good yeah the the logic of it not the greatest and he just gets a lot of money rolled to him so what are the people okay that's also why they have to end that scene there because what do the people in that bathroom see do they see the man in the diaper has money rolled to him and he stands up and goes like well goodbye my work here is done yeah uh but yes homer puts that money to good use giving the kids uh six

years worth of inoculations and implying that he never paid for them before homer was an anti-vaxxer i guess they also said they cut a prank that would have been burns buys a winning lottery ticket off of somebody and then puts it in a grave and makes people dig up a grave to get it which that's good but i guess that wouldn't demean homer which is the reason they're doing yeah maybe homer would be in the coffin yeah that's yeah if he was buried alive with the ticket maybe uh and they also comment that hibbert uh almost kills lisa gives her polio anti-polio it's an even bigger shot they uh they they remark on the commentary they're like boy this would have been a dr nick joke we've really degraded uh dr hibbert by this point oh yeah i didn't even think about this would have been more appropriate for dr nick we're about to record uh barth the daredevil very soon and i forgot that when he

was established his joke was that he was the anti-cliff huxtable a very serious doctor who didn't really have any jokes and never laughed and never laughed inappropriately right mart should be a little more suspicious that homer came into all this money i have to say she's a little too trusting e-solutions but yes all right i have all the clips for this next scene because now we need to really live in this i think a lot of this is funny i think i laughed really loud at hank azaria as the announcer uh expecting the lindy hop oh yeah, this is what pandas do. He's doing it. He's doing it.

I agree. I mean, we should play this scene, but I had a similar reaction. So here's the start of Pandemonium at the zoo. Hey, Dad, can I have some money for a panda cone? God, what do you do with the $68 I send your mother every month? Weekday, Dad wanted

a DVD player. Look at their proud, hopeful faces faces wait till they see that their rare chinese panda is nothing but a fat guy in a suit why do i have to do the lindy hop oh that's the heart of the bit now courtesy of an anonymous donor please welcome our new panda sim sim now sim sim is a funny name to give you like because it did yes it's a it's a two names in a row like uh you hear about pandas at the zoo but it's also sounds like sim sin his name so that's good but i like that but yeah and i also really dates it to have talking about the extravagance of buying a DVD player. Like, oh, I have a DVD player.

They were around 300 bucks around this time. That's when I bought my first one. Yeah, me too. My first DVD I watched, Fight Club. Fight Club was a lot of people's first DVD. Mine was, I think another one that was big with people was Austin Powers around the time. That was a novel DVD. Bob, you remember your first DVD?

I was a big Kevin Smith fan at the time. So I bought the Mallrats DVD and I had it for six months before I had a DVD player. So that was my first DVD. And Mallrats had a lot of extras, including an extended cut of the movie. That is awful. Those Universal editors were right to cut that yes kevin smith was so wrong less jeremy london in my movie less oh yes yeah uh yeah that was the first time i ever heard dvd commentary i think was a kevin smith one uh those were the day that

was the pod we've said it before it was our podcast before podcasts were listening to dvd commentaries oh yeah did they have, isn't there a Kevin Smith commentary where he's just saying, like, he's... It might be on Clerks where he's just saying, like, he's not saying, fuck Miramax, but he's saying, fuck something. Oh, that's... I know too much about this, Nick.

It's actually on the Chasing Amy DVD because they took the commentary from the Laserdisc and put it on the DVD, and in the beginning of that Laserdisc and put it on the DVD. And in the beginning of that commentary, they're saying, fuck DVD. It's Laserdisc. Laserdisc all the way. And then for the DVD, he recorded a little video intro to the commentary saying, no,

we know DVDs are the way to go. We recorded this in 1997. It's fine. We apologize to DVD. We're very happy with the format. But yeah, fuck DVD was on the chasing amy commentary that's so funny so funny no unfortunately he wasn't he wasn't negative enough towards miramax looking back on it yeah right but now he donates all of that money to uh good causes all of the miramax

money he gets no he's he's been very good at uh kevin smith has been very good reflecting on what he didn't know about the Harvey Weinstein. Yeah. But all right. I mean, this whole bit here, grading on the commentary is not a fan of it. He remarks that he said that most of the writers in the writer's room were very entertained by the Pandalove scene. But he saw it as one of those times where it's like, yeah, yeah yeah the guys in the writer's room get a big chuckle about this but obviously this is going to get cut from the final script that's that's how graining remembers it and i imagine he might have been around for some part of this

maybe a table read maybe uh seeing the storyboards but i don't think he ever saw the color animation come back he was probably working on season three of futurama at the time and splitting his time it's a whole different office yeah but you're right it is one of those jokes where you hear it in the room and you're like well that's we all had a laugh but let's actually move on and put something in the script we can't put this in the show but it made it into the show yes family saw this families at 8 20 p.m. after Thanksgiving. Yeah, apparently, too, this bit was inspired by the end of Trading Places. I forgot about that. Yeah, that's right.

I had completely forgot that scene that the principal from Breakfast Club also gets put in a gorilla costume and then put into a cage with a very excited gorilla. And that's where the scene ends. Right. So I think they were like, well, hey, if Trading Places did it, we can do it. Like, that was 15 years ago. We can do it in this. But I do miss divorced dad jokes with Milhouse. I wonder, I think as more of the producers got older and got divorced,

they didn't want to write divorced dad jokes. Well, this just hurts my feelings now. But ex-wife jokes are still fine i guess oh yes oh there you go i will say i looked at videos of doing the lindy hop from what i saw the it's a you have to have two people for a lindy hop it's not just a solo act but yeah but it's still two people or one panda. And I like Burns counting up to 25, Skidoo. That's a good joke. But then we get to, I do think is the low point of the show. A black day for the Talking Simpsons. I do think.

I think when I saw this happen, this was one of those push me away moments. Though I still watched episodes after, but I was less into it. And look, i was also getting older i'm about to graduate high school when this episode is when this season was airing so maybe i was like i don't have the time for recording every simpsons anymore i don't know but this moment uh i'll just play it something's wrong terribly wrong hey there's our resident bull panda ping ping-Ping. With any luck, folks, these two will become very, very close,

if you know what I mean. Oh, no! Mr. Bird! Oh, look, she's presenting. We thought this would take years to happen ping ping just asked sim sim to marry him and i think she just said yes you ain't going nowhere cutie okay so that's the worst part of it i think part of it that makes it even uh more terrifying and disgusting is homer bursting out from behind the curtain being dragged back in and him screaming oh my god yes yep yeah uh but in my head to make this easier i choose to believe that homer himself was not penetrated the costume was roughed up i don't want to believe that homer had a panda inside of him i don't want to go there as well i guess the costume is not roughed

up to the extent that that a hole was in the bottom half of it let's say i don't think it was anatomically correct yeah so i mean homer still was horribly beaten inside of that and uh i mean it was a sexual assault that happened to Homer by an animal that just is the fact of the scene no I was gonna say I did just similar similarly I this was a point this was definitely a point watching it live where I was like oh I'm just gonna start checking out on this show like I kept watching it afterwards but it was a real like oh that's that's that's a bummer like i could tell that that this that it was bad and it it bummed me out um i also the the other thing that that grosses me out about

the scene is just the dialogue she's presenting which i know is like a a clinical you know zoological term but just hearing it be described of like homer is prone over a rock and it's just like like oh she's she's presenting and then that leads to even though i like i do kind of like Homer is prone over a rock and it's just like, like, oh, she's she's presenting. And then that leads to even though I like I do kind of like the the the curtain joke that goes down, like the curtain goes in front of them and it's like the pandas are sleeping or whatever. You know, it has like some there's there's some funny graphic on that. I didn't write down.

But but yeah, just this is the whole tone. And what's happening is just like, oh, this is a real bummer. It's pretty ugly. Yeah. And it's that horrible things have happened to Homer many times in the show before, like when he's the chimmy sweet for a day at the Simpson. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Like that's not. So it's not just seeing something bad happen to Homer. Like we're all pretty used to it. But I guess the length of time it's taken and how they really rub it in your face that like this is quote unquote a rape i was gonna say yeah i don't i don't want to see a rape joke on the show i don't want to see it happen to homer yeah and i guess i mean again this is also how times have changed in what is mainstream comedy that like every like mall rats they they all had like a prison rape joke a million of them that's that's the ending of mall rats too when you see what happens to all the characters yep

yeah so uh it was just it's not saying it was okay but it was the normal it was unfortunately a very normal joke to do back then and and i'm very withgraining on the commentary that he's extra grossed out at mo's line that they have to give i mean if anybody's gonna say that i guess it's mo like he is the darkest character in the show but god damn i i will say the funniest thing to me in this is is the announcer because it did remind me of like going to zoos and seeing facts of life happen in front of you but a person has to pretend for the kids that that's not happening like i i went to a circus i remember going to a circus as a kid and there it's just this fun elephant scene and then an elephant just like shits huge just a giant fountain of shit and

the and the announcer who's talking as it's going is like, well, okay. Like having to cover for that. I like the spirit of that. That's funny. Ping Ping just asked Simpson to marry him. And I think she said yes. Yeah. In a different context in terms of what's happening, like that's just like, oh, that's a funny, you know, that's a funny ad lib to try to cover up something that the that's supposed to be a family friendly but it just it it's i don't know it's it's i agree the announcer is the best part of

the scene yeah not to go on too long about it but i think the best and worst part of the joke is just how much they're telegraphing this uh it makes it more interesting but it also prolongs the uh the ugliness of it all yeah it's just it just, it's so, it's also like that, that jocular humor of this time, I think is aged worse than most humor to me personally. So I, right. Yeah.

One not offensive thing I found in the scene is that it's a rare, Julie Kavner line, not doing Marge, not doing the voice of Marge. I was like, this is odd. You could definitely tell it's her. What was the prank supposed to be?

It was just homer was gonna get down there do the lindy hop which you know the the announcer takes in stride and and doesn't disorient anyone and then was he gonna just like take off his his panda hat and reveal himself to be a person and everyone's just like oh like what was the prank you know what nick i always forget the point of the prank because then that whole joke happens but we've just played the clip and it's burn saying wait till they find out it's just a fat guy in a suit yeah so the prank is disappointment yeah i guess and i guess burns just rolled with it that it's a funnier prank that that thing happens to homer like i mean it also is very dark that burns knows what is happening to homer it's not

confusion on burns part that lets it happen he just thinks it's so funny it's happening to homer so it's also like a further darkening of burns that he like thinks it's so funny it's happening to homer so it's also like a further darkening of burns that he like yeah it's like yeah i'm glad that happened i i had a good laugh at them electrocuting homer and seeing the inside of his suit and like that his that the there's smoke coming out of the eye holes maybe i just needed relief but i laughed really hard at homer escaping over the fence seeing skunks and then being happy and then telling the skunks to call somebody. Yeah.

Am I glad to see you guys? Like that's not how someone would react to skunk. You got to call. Yeah. I, there's, there's good stuff around it. I don't hate it.

I'll just say I, uh, last thing I'll say about it. I don't hate it as much as I thought I would when we'd finally get to it, but it is still, I think the lowest point of a joke they did for the show i bet there's worse jokes after this yeah i think it's a low they would recover but i think it was a mistake and uh yeah like just cover homer in like feces like do something i'd have been less disgusted by that like there's or

have him just be mauled you know like you could just the other pander could be territorial and just like fucking maul him and i think we would take that it's just it's just him getting fucked by a panda it's just like oh well and i mean in the next scene so after he escapes uh lisa finds him and she's like oh dad that reveal like and with him with the blanket over him she is comforting a victim of sexual assault like that's how it is posed and done like that. So they're doing more with that joke. I feel like 80% of this podcast is talking about this joke, but it's really weird that it's this extremely dirty and very punchy joke that is immediately played for sympathy when Lisa sees Homer. Just like, well, you can't take this seriously now that you just had this very, very dirty, silly joke happen. I really don't like that he said i

yes i may be naked and reeking of panda love just the phrase reeking of panda love i don't know that means he smells like the panda semen we had a commercial break to forget about that joke yeah uh but uh but yes in this next scene lisa learns the truth. So this is your mysterious new job for Mr. Burns. Yes, I humiliate myself for fistfuls of cash. Oh, Dad, you have to stop. I know. Well done, monkey. That other panda gave some unexpected zans to the festivities, eh?

Maybe for you. How come you didn't rescue me? Too busy trying to keep my sides from splitting. It's happened before. Monty say monkey do what could be better. Well, you could treat me with a little respect. Oh, shut up, you tub of guts. See, that's what I'm saying.

I like that, but I guess, but also though, yeah, making, it is the emotional way to go if they want to tell an emotional story to have it be like lisa trying to get her uh get homer his dignity back but then it makes it realer like lisa this normal more normal character is comforting her father after his assault and it's like it actually makes you think about it more which is like more uncomfortable and then later he's just completely naked in front of his daughter in about 20 seconds. Also very strange.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Actually, I have the other part of the scene with Homer finally quitting Burns. There's some funny lines in this too. Yes, I may be naked and reeking of panda love, but I've got to stop this before it goes too far. Take that back for 903 dollars

i retract my statement dad i mean screw you well well it looks like my monkey has evolved into a man a poor man what oh why did he have to say that extra thing? Forget about him, Dad. I'm proud of you. Oh, thank you, sweetheart. But what should I do with all this dirty, ill-gotten money? I better throw it in the garbage. Well, there's lots of needy kids out there. I see what you're saying.

I need to buy a gun. No, Dad. You could really brighten the holidays for those less fortunate. You're right. It's time to rebuild my self-esteem. Hey, what happened to... Oh, good Lord, what a week! That I should buy a gun is such a funny line. I love that.

I did want to ask Nick, as a comedy writer, Nick, how long does it take you to come across a number like 903 when you need a funny amount of something? Hey, you know, it's the whole specifics are always better, right? Yeah. That's two odd numbers in there, too. Yeah, that's truth in comedy. You say something specific. 903 is going to be funnier than 900, and 900 is going to be funnier than 1,000. I mean, I don't know if any of these things are funny, but that's just the rule. specific 903 is going to be funnier than 900 and 900 is going to be funnier than a thousand i mean

i don't know if any of these things are funny but it's just you're that's just the rule that's comedy math it's the understood comedy math yeah i the only okay i did laugh too at homer describing what just happened and then saying but i've got to stop this before it goes too far like yeah that gave me a little chuckle but and and also homer's reactions to a poor man but i think another weakness in this episode though is i don't think they're totally sure what they i mean i know it from the commentary but it sounds like they rewrote the third act a bit and it just oh yeah completely rewritten it sounds like just because it bombed so hard and they were just horrified by how much homer was the base even after the panda incident yeah i think they should have gone more jokey but instead they actually make it kind of heartfelt and i yeah i'm not sure like totally where they want to go with

it yeah i mean it's the i think this this this is really just the episode does not stick the landing at all i mean pretty far from it it just kind of falls apart the final sequence i think is pretty uh pretty weak and and you know again not a great prank not a great uh reversal when it turns out that homer isn't behind it i yeah i think going back to to to what you said earlier i think this is this this episode would not stick out in our minds collectively as a as a nadir for the simpsons if the joke had just been homer getting shocked by the trainers and like like that would have been like kind of a classic sort of homer gets you know he gets shocked a bunch it's funny to see him get shocked and you can still have him being comforted with lisa afterwards it's just him getting fucked

by a panda where just that that in and of itself is just like enough to lower this whole episode and everyone's uh esteem when homer i forgot to mention when homer escapes the panda we see that they are spooning too yeah homer's little spoon again a very like yeah also when homer about mary i think oh yep yep that's the exact joke it's something about me yeah i also recall when Homer is stripped of his underwear, I just remember like in his skull years, the animators are drawing Homer's ass wider than ever. Like he has very wide hips then. If you compare this Homer ass to his ass in Rosebud,

anyway, that wasn't a joke. You have to go off the model sheet if you want to draw a funnier ass i think uh but uh but yes homer then heads over to an sao short style place costington's uh last scene in the opening to trash the titans when they invent love day we talked all about their frank nelson style yes man yes oh yeah first scene in marriage to the mob he already had his best joke which is i had a stroke yeah that's funnier but the yes man just became he's one of those latter day and by latter day i mean season 12 you mean 20 years ago one of the latter day characters like you know uh jimmy jimmy the scumbag or the johnny tight lips yeah yeah for shauna oh yes shauna uh but yes even Johnny Tight Lips. Yeah. Or Shauna. Oh, yes, Shauna.

Even Gil, I feel like, kind of is in that category. Yeah, if you came to prominence after the death of Phil Hartman, I think of you as a new Simpsons character. But, yes, Homer is going to buy a bunch of stuff with his money, which I'm also like, you know what, Homer? You did earn that money, and you're still working for Burns. You're just not being his prank monkey so all you're getting is burns money anyway why like just pay off your fucking debts homer like there's some logic issues yeah i guess his his need for money isn't uh that obvious anymore yeah and he sees it as dirty money now like the dirtiness of it i i guess me now as an adult i just think like look it's

you quit that job if it after all that happens but you earned that money keep your fucking money homer right spend it on your family you always have bills at the simpsons residence but uh but yes he's gonna buy a bunch of toys he meets with the owner of costington's who reveals that that he has a shoe sniffing problem that he's ashamed of. Not allowed on the third floor anymore. That's all right. I like that. Though, I remember in Trash of the Titans, that guy was voiced by Shearer,

and it's Azaria this time. I didn't know he's a recurring character. Okay. He's the guy who said, Love day, but not so lame. His suit color changed, but they used the same character design. But yes, Homer is given the job.

That also is a real like big next step it's like homer quits he has enough money to buy toys and that he buys so many toys they're like you should be santa in the parade it's like that is right a lot of a to b to c there and the surprise twist of this episode is that is officially now the second simpsons thanksgiving episode right yes out of nowhere just like oh i guess about three minutes of this are about thanksgiving did they skip their thanksgiving meal that day because they had to go to the parade early in the morning homer is giving the job of chris kringle there's an okay joke that he like it's all right if him asking for lines and then not believing that it's merry christmas

that's it's all right but it's also weird that it's a rare like quick fade between scenes like you're used to they it that's not their normal editing technique on simpsons but uh but yes homer is uh leading or he's the last guy in the thanksgiving parade as it gets begun with a big guest star this uh not really big guest star but yes the guest star of the episode. Well, looks like another beautiful 80-degree Thanksgiving day, thanks to global warming. Isn't that right,

Lisa Gibbons? That's right, Kent Brockman. Our broadcast is brought to you today by Costington's Department Store, the thing downtown that's open, right next to the men's shelter. Rusty the Clown. Aw, Springfield gets the lamest balloons.

Are you kidding? There's Funky Winkerbeam. Over here, Funky. Look, it's annoyed. Avoid the noise. He ruins pizzas. Hey, lady, Santa Claus is going to be here, right? He just has to.

Something tells me he is. Don't touch me. Nothing gives you that right. Say, Lisa, do you like gingerbread? No, not really. Then you'll love this next float. It's an all gingerbread desk set. Oh, man.

All those jokes in a row. That was a really good run of jokes there. Yeah. Over here, Funky. Oh, sorry, Nick. Oh, no. all those jokes in a row. That was a really good run of jokes there. Yeah, over here, Funky. Oh, sorry, Nick. Oh, no, I just say it's really good. I like all the shitty balloons, and I actually think Lisa Gibbons is well cast here, and she does a good performance.

Her delivery of no, not really after do you like gingerbread is, like, really, really funny. Yeah. Yeah, I like this whole sequence. Whenever I think of the Noid, I think, he ruined pizzas. And they were ahead of the curve on Noid humor According to the commentary writers have been trying To get the Noid onto the show for like six

Years before this And now I think people are just comfortable with Noid humor And I like that I think what it'd be two years Or so before Family Guy does their Noid Joke of like looks like I got You after Adam West kills the Noid. Oh, that's right.

Okay. And you have recent experience with the Noid actually, Nick, don't you? We played Yo! Noid the video game for my video game podcast that I just played. And it is a, it's a rough play. It's just, so it's basically, you guys uh are probably familiar with this but it's it's basically like a re-skinned uh japanese platformer that i believe was like a ninja themed game oh yeah and they and i guess plays much better because they just re-skinned it and put in different art for the noid and a lot of it is just like the the art just doesn't line up with

like the hit boxes of the characters so it makes the platforming and the and the combat uh more difficult than it needs to be it wasn't a super fun playthrough even though i understand that its foundation is actually decent yeah as a kid i loved the noid i thought it was so cool anything that was a cartoon commercial i loved the character and it's it's so weird uh we i'm sure we talked about the noid before on this network but the end of the noid seems like a made-up story but it's true the noid ended with a uh an armed standoff with the police by a man with mental issues whose last name was noid and he thought the commercials were talking about him yeah it's uh and this all really happened it sounds like i just made it up and now i feel like i have to check it again to make sure

i'm not lying but it did happen every time yeah they were right you should avoid it's uh he's dangerous i i also just love when marge can like something like marge is usually written as a nag or somebody who cleans up things for her to be somebody who's super into the noise and funky winker over here funky I love that. That's one of my favorite lines and it might just be because, Bob, you've said it so many times that it's just so funny to me. Over here, funky! Not to linger too long, but yeah, when I was a little

kid and just because entertainment was such at a... It was a trickle back then and you would read every comic in the paper. I would read Funky Winkerbeam and not really be sure about you know what it was about like who was funky winkerbeen who are these characters i was more familiar with the crankshaft character the spinoff of funky winkerbeen better comic wait crankshaft is a spinoff of funky winkerbeen i'm almost positive it is i see i'm ignorant on all this because i my local paper didn't get funky or crankshaft like I I interesting because that was one i i i knew

of funky winker bean i think my paper just had crankshaft i didn't know they were connected it is indeed a spinoff crankshaft is like a big comic like i just this is just my own like hierarchy of just like like oh yeah there's like calvin and hobbes that's at the top uh but you know just underneath that is like your is like garfield and the far side and Crankshaft. You know, I put it at that same tier. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird. I don't remember saying that part. Visit dejaudan.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Yeah, it's a spinoff of not Beetle Bailey, Funky Winkerbean. And it's about an elderly curmudgeonly bus driver who was a World War II vet still alive in 2021. He's still alive. They didn't kill off the old crankshaft. And I can't believe Funky Winkerbean is still published. Like, there's new ones.

I actually read the most recent week of comics they've done, which at the time of this recording would be the last week of january and the weirdest thing is is that like there's a plot of them going to like a teacher's convention and it's really just one joke comic strips of they walk by a sign and then there's something written on the sign that is uh supposedly funny and i'm just like this is it it's just every for a whole week it's a character looks at one sign and it's a one panel joke i sorry i'm now looking at today's crankshaft and crankshaft is bowling in a hazmat suit because of covid okay at least you know that reflects reality that funky winker bean comic was clearly drawn before they had to think about like masks or like they're at a teacher's convention which i don't think those are happening right now this crankshaft comic has 32 comments on it and it was posted today oh my god i was just gonna say

how much covid do we want in our in our funnies like i just i kind of feel like that should be an escape and i kind of you know because i'm also just thinking forward to like next season the simpsons are we gonna get a zoom episode i guess guess we might, right? That's true. Do we want that? They did on the Halloween episode, they did a mask joke. And one of their online exclusives, they did do a Zoom episode too. But yeah, it's true. I don't, for me, there is a bit of a disconnect when I watch current things and I like see a movie that said, oh yeah i watched the um the hulu lesbian movie the

happiest season that's named it and then i watched it at the end my husband pointed out he's like look at those instagram pictures this is 2020 this is it completely took us out of it right yeah but yeah it is a bring down the muppets had that uh zoom based program and i don't want to think of the poor muppets having to deal with this yeah they should be immune to it i'd say that uh oh i did if nobody's heard of lisa gibbons uh in our listeners yeah no henry it's lisa lisa sorry yes uh important fact about her she is not mary hart no number one fact about her you need to know but she was an anchor on entertainment tonight and she had her own talk show and her run on both of those ended in 2000. And if you were a viewer of the famous program Celebrity Apprentice, I forget who hosted that, but she won in 2015.

Yep. She was the final winner on the Orange Buffoon series. Wow. Good for her. I went to a taping of Lisa in high school. Whoa. I went to a taping of Lisa in high school. I grew up in Southern California and my local, my high school's baseball team had a fundraiser because, you know, it actually was very common for,

for LA area high schools and middle schools where you would just take like a classroom full of kids to a taping and they'd pay the school like 40 bucks ahead for you to be, you know, warm bodies in the audience, laughing and clapping. So I went to a taping of Lisa and it was an episode about whether Hollywood glamorizes smoking. And it was just fascinating to be like it was actually a really shitty topic and a shitty episode. But it was fascinating to be in that talk show sort of environment and be like having to be like like be cued to be like, or like, oh, you know, like you're just supposed to play everything really big

whenever anyone says anything mildly controversial. But it was very fun. She talks about the issues. That's why she was taken off the air. Too controversial. Weirdly pro-smoking in that episode. It's funny to think she appeared on this thing right as she was leaving Entertainment Tonight

and her own talk show. Yeah, the timing, it's funny to think she appeared on this thing right as she was leaving entertainment tonight and her own talk show. Yeah. The timing of it is weird. I, well, I would have gone a few years before this episode. And before that happened, one of the guests who was on the show, and I think he was an anti-smoking guy from Hollywood was the, I'm forgetting his name, but he's the creator of the A-Team. He had a storied career in hollywood later became a

novelist uh but like i do remember seeing it and being like for the first time like oh this is the first time in person i've seen someone who like makes a tv show like it was like a big thing for me like holy shit is that guy i'm gonna look up his name real quick was it uh steven j cannell or frank that's exactly it yes steven j cannell was on the panel by the way he was an anthony smoking guy i had wikipedia open i do not know that i did not know who created the a team uh i i also on that noise thing of them trying to get the reference in there i did wonder uh nick you know you've written on shows that uh i i'm just thinking of how on one of the shows you you wrote on comedy bang bang there was a recurring bit of just referencing battle toads the video game and

even specifically like the toads names and i wonder wonder, I always wondered, like, I don't think Scott Aukerman knows, ever played the game Battletoads. So I, I always wondered how, what is the negotiation to get on a reference that not everybody in the room gets? I think if there was, great question. I think if there was kind of a consensus that everyone was enjoying it and laughing at it. And also I the battle toads just you know uh saying their names and their names are really gross i think it's spit rash and pimple i but i think just like this like sometimes this it's it's like the 903 thing it's like sometimes just the specificity even if you don't understand the source of the specificity is funny in and of itself so you know i hate hey i

don't know if those battle toads jokes hit or not but we certainly like making them they made me hey they made me laugh i i also i remember watching one that i had to pause and explain the joke to my husband to be like okay this one is about a very specific trailer for wally about how pixar had a lunch where they came up with all their ideas. But that's what I loved about it. I was like, well, I remember that ad and being like, boy, this is a really self-aggrandizing ad about Pixar mythology. So to then see Comedy Bang Bang, a sketch, just parody that so specifically, that's my

type of humor. Well, good. I think the show is often inscrutable, but it certainly would have people that would connect with. So I'm glad it was you. And I also do like that that orphan has the correct personal boundaries. Yeah. Like the joke, I think back then was that like this orphans overreacting to somebody

being nice to him. But it's like, no, nothing gives you that right to touch somebody else. You know, so many great jokes just crammed in we skipped the uh gingerbread desk set scene which is uh also another funny joke just the like the fantastical idea you can make anything out of gingerbread and it's a desk set with rotating pencils so uh homer then arrives as santa he's starting to throw out all the presents he paid for which i also feel like you know what if they're gonna let homer be santa claus how about they just give away presents they don't need homer to pay for them to get them i i feel like costingtons is really like they're protecting

themselves too much they could be a little more giving it's like when you have like whole foods has like a box at the at the check stand where you can buy an item and donate it and be like you fucking what you donate it why do i have to pay for it you get the tax break uh yeah yeah you're right they're getting the tax they're getting the charity tax meanwhile they're just throwing all the food they can't sell into a dumpster yeah that's locked at night uh the uh there's a good little joke i never noticed until this viewing that when Homer's throwing at all the presents, one present just bounces off Ralph's head like he does not go for the present.

That was good. And also Homer's marry everyone. That's all right. But yes, Burns arrives. And again, when I think of the practicality of the scene, okay, Burns shows up. They don't go anywhere. How do they trade costumes? How does Homer leave the thing that nobody sees it?

How does nobody knows it Burns in the outfit? Because shouldn't they watch him put on the Santa costume? Because he doesn't leave. Also, is it supposed to fool us, the viewer? Because when we see the shot of Burns in the costume, it's clearly him. Before it's clearly him, it's clearly him. Yeah.

There's a lot here that it feels like edited after the fact. Here's my guess, and this is not what they say on the commentary one way or the other, but my guess is they wanted to sell out Homer and be like, you know what? No. He took the million dollars and he did it, and it's just Homer did it. And then they decide late, all right, no, it's Burns. Let's just redraw these two shots that have his face visible. And you can see it's Burns.

And then we'll show Homer with them at the end. Like, I think that was their change. And Matt Groening did not veto the panda love, but he did veto the pig's blood. And it was changed to fish guts. Which is also disgusting. Yeah, also gross. I think I'd rather have the pig's blood. Yeah, you know, if you're giving me pig's blood and it's like literally just red liquid.

No chunks. No chunks. Yeah, I would definitely rather have that than like chum. But yes, Burns has an offer for Homer. Ahoy, ahoy, St. Nick. Thanksgiving. Uh-oh. Prepare to be boarded.

What are you doing here? I told you, I'm not your monkey anymore. Silence, monkey. Now that you're Father Christmas, we have an opportunity to bend this down over our knee and give it a pranking it will never forget. Here's what we do. Here's a float saluting the Native Americans

who taught us how to celebrate thanksgiving interesting side note on this float the paper mache is composed entirely of broken treaties they're good sports the answer is no mr burns not for any amount of money not for one million dollars oh so much money but santa can't be evil but it's so much money one thing i mean we're playing joke police and joke doctors a lot in this episode but one thing we didn't need was lisa going pranks giving oh no yes yeah were they playing that up as just an obvious stupid line i feel like march had been like i can read lisa or somebody should have commented on that line yeah yeah i think you're right. Go a little farther with it.

Tailing this clip, there's a little sequence. There's a little line. I can't remember if it was Lisa or Kent Brockman, but it's the line, whether you're Christian or just non-Jewish, everybody loves Santa Claus. I like that joke. That's good. Yeah. And I like any dunking on Chief Wahoo as well, who just got retired. No, no more Chief Wahoo as well, who just got retired. No more Chief Wahoo.

I wonder how many racist Cleveland fans are like, I'm keeping this forever. I bought up all their supply of the Chief Wahoo shirts before they got rid of it. Okay, here's again my new moral reading on it. If the fish guts were going to be thrown either way, because Homer doesn't stop Burns from doing it. If it's going to happen either way, then take the money. Like, then have a million dollars and give that to charity. Even if you don't want to keep it for your family, do that. But I guess that's also how I felt about Lisa turning down $100 million from Burns at the end of the slurry episode.

It's like, you can just take $100 million from them and give it to every charity you care about, Lisa, if that's really how you feel. But if you just tell Burns, like, no, I don't want your dirty money, well, it seems too much of a high road now, I guess. I guess they're trying to salvage a happy ending out of this. Now at this point, I kind of want the ending of Homer crying and throwing pig's blood on people and saying Merry Christmas. Yeah, go all the way with the disgustingness of it. Like, degrade Homer to the end. Like, don't, it's an extra, yeah, it's a heartfelt turn where they're like,

no, Homer actually learned a lesson. He got his dignity back. It's like, is that, that's not the way you've been playing emotion and sentimentality this entire episode. It's, yeah, I mean, I don't know. And they kind of of in the third act turn it into a homer and lisa two-hander where lisa is teaching homer valuable lessons and i i

don't know and and i think the other thing missing here is that mr burns is being such a piece of shit not that he ever really ever gets a comeuppance because you know he's he's a billionaire he's going to be completely insulated from any consequences but he does just kind of just gleefully get to do whatever he wants leading at to the end of this leading out to the the end of this episode and so it's just kind of like well he's just he just wins uh but homer decides he doesn't want to be a part of it i don't know it's not super dramatically satisfying yeah you know the moral universe of it like shouldn't burns at least like fall into the fits guts himself for people people throw something back at him? Like, all Burns gets is to torture people and laugh.

Like, yeah. Right. And you're right. Lisa feels like she was added as a patch to this episode. This episode was updated and they added Lisa because she just appears in the third act, like, now with more hearts. Yeah. Yeah. They nerfed the pig's blood.

Yeah. These are all gaming references by the way and of course i feel bad for the animators that they were tasked to be like do a giant parade full of every person in town and then it turns into the birds do that too yeah and make sure those fish guts are detailed you pigs. Oh, yeah, changing into fish guts is way more pencil mileage for these poor animators, too. Oh, God. But, I mean, even on the commentary, Mike Scully's like, I feel bad I asked him to draw these many people.

I'm sorry. But, yes, we have one final injury to Lenny in this last clip as well. What did I do? The doctor said I could take this patch off five minutes a day. Hey, that's just enough time to see Santa Claus. Ow! Why, Santa, why? Oh, no. Here come the ghouls. Hey, whoa!

Nice, buddy. Nice, buddy. Oh, not so nice! Oh, Dad so nice. Oh, Dad, you sold your soul. Not yet, honey. Dad, but if you're here, who's that on the float? Ho, ho, ho, Merry Fishmas. What's going on?

Let's just say Lisa gave me an early Christmas present. The gift of dignity. Marge is right to say what's going on that was my feeling too what is going on you know that also feels like in in i i guess the term would be treacle cutter but that homer says a very like you know ending a full house kind of moral of the storyline. Like, she gave me an early Christmas present. My dignity. And then they instantly get fish cuts thrown on them, and they're like, bleh. Yeah.

I will say, and you guys mentioned it up top, there are jokes in this episode that made you laugh, and same for me. For me, just the idea that Lenny has an eyepatch he can take off for five minutes a day, the take off for five minutes a day. The specificity of five minutes a day. And then Carl encourages him to use that to see Santa. A grown man is excited to do that.

And that logic just made me laugh a lot. As I slip off this mortal coil, eventually, I will hear the words over here funky in my head. As I cross from this life to the next also uh seeing the rusty the clown balloon deflate like that did remind me of you know i look i i picked the year i thought it was later but it was 1993 when the sonic balloon deflated like that oh yeah that did get me i was 11 when that happened i was like no sonic oh we didn't mention it in this episode but that was a reference to rusty nails the christian clown from portland that crusty is partially based on that's right wow yep how about that uh but yeah i

you know again i think instead of going for the heart i think i actually would prefer the ending where homer just is sobbing throwing blood on people for a million dollars like and even though it's kind of a canned thing to be like flash forward to the future and that's how blah blah blah like that's like writing a sketch that that's such an easy out for an end of something like flash forward to the future kind of thing but i i'd prefer that to just them trying to get a little homer lisa heart out of the end of an episode that really wasn't made for that. I never think I would ever say make Homer versus Dignity uglier, but I'm saying it now. It should have been grosser in the third act.

Yeah, it's so crass already and that it just seems unearned. But yeah, I guess my final thoughts on it personally is that I feared I'd really hate doing this one. I found like I think 50% of it like at least gave me like a good chuckle. And I just like you said, Bob, if it had just been Homer gets beaten up by another panda or whatever, like I wouldn't. And like you said to Nick, I would not remember this episode as such a dark point for me in the show. I think it really was. I had matured enough and just felt like I personally felt this is not a joke I want from The Simpsons. And you gave it to me.

And I'm unhappy. I totally agree. And all the burn stuff is great too. Yeah. Ditto you guys. It's really just one scene that kind of takes this completely off the rails for me. But rewatching it and knowing it was coming i was like you know what there's there's enough funny stuff in here where i

i didn't dislike it and panther does not sound like planet it doesn't they're saying it here now but thank you again nick for being with us for two whole hours we really appreciate it please nick let everyone know what you're doing i know you have two amazing podcasts and uh doughboys of course has a Patreon as well. Yes, thank you so much for saying that. Thank you guys for having me. Always a delight to be here and talk Simpsons. Yeah, you can check out my podcast, Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants.

And how did this get played? The podcast where we review terrible video games, the worst and weirdest. Sometimes it's weird games and sometimes it's just a notable game. You can check out both of those wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you hear in the free feed, yeah, maybe check out the Patreons.

And yeah, you guys have been great, you know, in this era of having to order delivery food on Doughboys. You guys have equaled the challenge of that change in format for you guys. It's been some of your best episodes in this last year for real. God bless you.

Thank you for saying, I mean, you're wrong, but thank you for saying, uh, well, but thank you so much again, Nick.

Thank you guys. So thank you once again to Nick Weiger for being on the show. Please check out dough boys and how did this get played to amazing podcasts. As for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and support the show, please go to patrion.com slash talking Simpsons. If you sign up there for five bucks a month, you get all these episodes one week at a time and ad-free and also access to everything behind

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you get all the five dollar stuff of course but also access to one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher yes bob's talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast our premium podcast each month where we cover an animated feature film in the same wonderful detail that we cover the simpsons or cartoons on her sister podcast what a cartoon you should check out recent ones about films like the ghibli classic whisper of the heart the dexter's lab ego trip finale film or even our five hours of discussions about the end of evangelion and tons tons more this month you're going to be hearing us talk about the ducktales movie all about shibui you know i love rip taylor so uh sign up at the ten dollar level to get so many great things

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Society, and we'll see you then. you haven't set aside anything for the future oh you know how it is with cops i'll get shot three days before retirement in the business we, we call it retire-ny. What if you don't get shot? What a terrible thing to say. Ah, look, you made my wife cry.