Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Homer vs Lisa & The 8th Commandment With Lindsay Katai

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

This week we welcome back Lindsay Katai, writer for Infinity Train and cohost of the podcast Teen Creeps! She helps us navigate the scary worlds of childhood religious beliefs AND early cable televisi...on in this landmark episode of Lisa's battle against Homer's cable addiction. Not only that, but we get the first appearances of Troy McClure and Drederick Tatum, so listen now, it'll only cost you your soul! Support this podcast and get hundreds of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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 maggots are your sheet and worms your blankets. I'm your host, the Poopsie the Clown memorabilia collector, Bob Mackie,
Starting point is 00:00:54 and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and before we begin, you're going to need five yards of sterilized cotton. And who do we have on the line? Lindsay Kaytai here and today's episode is homer versus lisa and the eighth commandment he offered to hook me up illegally to every cable channel for only 50 bucks boy what's this world coming to you know that's exactly what i gotta go today's episode aired on february 7th 1991 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.
Starting point is 00:01:29 Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. Queen releases their album, Innuendo. Never Ending Story 2 is released in theaters paired with the box office buddy, Bugs Bunny Short. And Saturday Night Live features the debuting players Adam Sandler and Tim Meadows. You know, as a kid, I was eight when this came out. I hadn't seen Never Ending Story on VHS,
Starting point is 00:01:56 but I made my mom take me to Never Ending Story 2 just so I could see that box office bunny short. Really? I didn't give much of a crap about uh never ending story 2 but seeing a brand new bugs bunny cartoon in the theater that got me to beg my mommy to take me i think everyone in this podcast was born in the early 80s and for whatever reason i know this is a uh big early 80s kid touchstone movie these two movies but i have never seen either one of them they were never shown to me none of my friends had seen them it was it's a weird gap in my uh 80s i guess night early 90s movie kid
Starting point is 00:02:28 knowledge oh interesting well the second movie came like it what 10 years after the first movie and it's not as good no no it's uh not as good not the same kid in the lead either it's the uh sea quest actor guy. Late, great Jonathan Brandes. There you go. I thought it was Darwin, the dolphin. Yes, Darwin the dolphin. Never Ending Story 2.
Starting point is 00:02:53 I would have seen it then. You know, I liked Never Ending Story 1 enough when I finally watched it as a kid. Because I was like, oh, I'm a nerd who reads books and eats sandwiches while reading books. The most it touched me was when the kid takes a break to eat a sandwich. And I'm like, I would do that while I read a book. On my podcast, Teen Creeps, we did a fantasy month in February. And so my co-host, Kelly Nugent, and I read The NeverEnding Story. And it is a phenomenal book.
Starting point is 00:03:20 I highly recommend it. Oh, neat. I've never read the books as a kid i need to read that this is a total ripoff this movie directed by george miller not the george miller that directed mad max fury road different lesser george miller entirely yes very different and that queen album innuendo it was the last one released where in freddie mercury's lifetime he'd be gone within a year of its release and uh and yeah snl adam sandler and uh like just when you watch like a 1990 snl and 91 and just see like adam sandler like uh in the background or like as a waiter it's it's very
Starting point is 00:03:59 distracting did he have characters when he started i I don't think so. Okay. Because I remember things like Opera Man and Canteen Boy, but those are much later in his tenure. I feel like that's like 93 or 94, yeah. I think he kind of had a Pete Davidson vibe where he was the stand-up-y guy who would come on as himself and do commentary. I don't know if that was right at the beginning. I don't know if he took time at the beginning i don't know if he like took time to uh
Starting point is 00:04:26 warm up uh with lauren and the audience and the writers before he was allowed to start doing that but i remember him coming on kind of as himself and having a bit of a stand-up feel but i i believe the critic would make a joke about tim meadows is just the black guy and just that's that's what people referred to him as on snl back then that's why tracy morgan when he premiered on the show i one of his first bits was identifying himself as the other black guy on the show but yeah that that's what happened this week in 1991 and uh but a big welcome back to our guest lindsey k tie co-host of teen creeps tv writer extraordinaire thank you for coming on
Starting point is 00:05:06 thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be back and you're last on for little big mom and this episode is not about leprosy so yeah very different which was a disappointment yes not enough leprosy content for me and uh by the time this episode comes out, it was a couple months ago, but I've just listened to your one of the teen creeps with Cruel Intentions. And that was a really fun episode. Oh, thank you. And just the energy of you and Kelly being back in the room together again was really special. Yes. And being with our repeat guest, Oscarcar montoya who joins us for every
Starting point is 00:05:47 movie we do now um it was it like i cried when we first got back together it was my first uh post quarantine post vaccine and i'm seeing my friends i i also forgot how much uh cruel intentions use the f slur in that movie i was really surprised as did we yeah no i wasn't that was not a pleasant surprise uh it was it was a little dark cloud on on such a sunny day otherwise uh lindsey do you recall seeing this one when it was new i didn't start watching the simpsons until I was probably 13. And so I was nine when this episode came out. So that's a resounding no.
Starting point is 00:06:31 But you're right in Lisa's age group, just like us, when this episode came out. I was, yeah. And I was equally concerned about how. I was there. I was enchanted with Cable. And I had a front row seat to this one on February 7th. I'm glad we're all of similar ages because this episode I think really speaks to an area you needed to live through just early commercial cable, like just getting cable for the first time and being able to channel surf through that many channels of all these things.
Starting point is 00:07:02 Like it's a very specific experience for the early 90s and late 80s and how nothing basically nothing had original programming and when they did it was the cheapest stuff you ever saw but it's the stuff that we all love like space ghost and mystery science theater and things like that just like the cheapest content they could make the most of at this time period well there was the Disney Channel as well, which we, when I was seven and a half, my mom's sister and I moved in with my grandma and she got us cable like right away because she had a comfortable retirement fund to dip into. And so we got the Disney Channel and they had things like Zorro and Wonderful World of Disney. So yeah, they hadn't.
Starting point is 00:07:44 And then Mickey Mouse Club. So I guess technically it was original programming. What a coincidence. We didn't have cable until I moved in with my grandma as a child. Before we lived with her, my sister would go over to visit and I was so jealous. She got to watch Fraggle Rock and I didn't. Oh, man. And she would come home to gloat about it.
Starting point is 00:08:02 I think my family, before they got cable, when I was like six or seven, we would have a babysitter that we would stay at after school. Who like this older woman who babysat, you know, like about a couple dozen kids in the neighborhood. And they had cable. So that was my first introduction to like daytime cable and watching Nickelodeon all day. And just the disappointment though of like oh god lassie's on now no not lassie yeah our friend pop arena on youtube has a great series of uh basically every nickelodeon show in order he does a video about you can see just the growth of cable in general and that channel specifically just to see
Starting point is 00:08:40 where cable has been and how it was not prestige tv until about 20 years ago yeah it was the dregs i i love that knickknacks stuff so much because he'll do a thing i thought i'd never seen before and then when i see it like it opens up a part of my brain that had been shut off since i was like seven of like oh i did watch that i watched that every day and somehow forgot that tv show and yeah i i think uh around by the time i was uh eight or nine that's when my my family got cable and i mean they could have afforded the disney channel but i think my dad is a very cheap guy and so he's just like we never six Six dollars. But he had the money for it. That's why, as a person who pays for like 800 streaming things now, the thought of being like, six more dollars for Disney Channel or 10 more for HBO,
Starting point is 00:09:35 I couldn't afford that. That would cost extra. Put us in a poor house, as my dad would often say. Wow, a very classic saying. Classic dad. Before we begin, though, this episode won the emmy for that year the previous year they won for life on the fast lane and i was looking to see what else was nominated and what is the opposite of a murderer's row a victim's row perhaps this was the clear it would be this was the clear winner the other things nominated were
Starting point is 00:10:03 uh garfield gets a life the final garfield special that's mostly about john yeah in his dating life yeah that one sucks uh also nominated was the first episode of tiny tune adventures i love tiny tune adventures not a great first episode also has some of the worst animation in the series oh oh that one yes that one sucks man the loony sucked at that one yeah the. That one sucks. The Looney beginning. And the last thing nominated in that category for Outstanding Animated Program was Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horror Show, a Halloween special that aired in late May. Late May? Yes.
Starting point is 00:10:38 What? Yes. I don't know why. Get up on the competition. I think it makes perfect sense. I tried to watch every claymation thing i could and i never heard of that one i never saw well next year they would famously lose to a claymation easter radio bart was the one they would nominate that's true i
Starting point is 00:10:55 i love the entitledness of the the writers even 10 years later when they recorded the commentary that simpsons won the emmy two years in a row and when the third year they lost to something else they're like I can't I'm still mad we lost that it's like you won two years in a row but Radio Bart is great uh yes no Radio Bart is great but it and now they do an amazing job of making sure that they absolutely shut out every other animated series when it comes to the Emmys so I guess that drove them there should be a section called this is the Simpsons section and so other shows I you know yeah I don't and it's not like I mean the Simpsons is amazing but they truly do like make sure that the rules change in their favor when it like they really play politics when it comes to when it comes
Starting point is 00:11:44 to that category I I figured they'd have a when it comes to when it comes to that category i i figured they'd have a disadvantage of the sheer amount of emmys that have to give out to all 30 executive producers on that show it feels like they'll be like we don't have enough emmys for all of you there's not enough gold in hollywood for now i i the last time i grumbled about the the the animation emmy was when there were lots of other good things nominated. But when The Simpsons beat the Adventure Time finale, I'm like, come on. This episode of Simpsons is good, but Adventure Time never won the Emmy in that section. And this is their finale, which is a very good episode of the show but most of the emmy voters are not feeling like taking the
Starting point is 00:12:29 time to actually watch animated shows and so the simpsons already has a leg up in that regard and then they also make sure that the rules are very narrow as to what can be submitted so i'm sure they were angry that adventure times finale was even a possible competition aljean needs a new emmy wing on his house it's like yeah how many how many does one need i uh but there was another thing i want to mention about the nickelodeon programming like now a sad thing i did recently was i fell down a youtube rabbit hole of like people have uploaded just like this is three hours of nick programming from one specific day in 1995 i'm like i just want to put this on and just watch you know eureka's castle straight into gumby straight into bullwinkle all those great commercials
Starting point is 00:13:15 all the commercials and crossfire that's i i remember commercials but i i guess too this episode you know speaks to a childhood view of christianity that yeah uh it got me at the time like i when i was eight i viewed hell as very real but i i wasn't raised particularly religious but if you ask my parents you know hey are we christians they'd be like sure yeah we don't go to church but hell's real and you should be scared of it i was like okay and i and i was i i had i had lisa's type of fear of it until until i learned you could be uh probably until i watched the first time i saw bill maher on tv i'm like i could be a smug atheist everyone will like me i'm a role model yeah this episode the last time we covered it uh like five or six years ago
Starting point is 00:14:05 my takeaway was the idea of stealing cable being a sin is just so laughable now I think it's like don't share your your Netflix password you'll go to hell yeah now I feel like yeah this episode I think it's it's fine it should have won the Emmy but I think like itchy and scratchy and marge that episode it's about too many things and they don't focus on one i think coming away from it this time i was like the most interesting thing here is lisa dealing with the idea of guilt and hell and how she overreacts and they don't really resolve that like the the episode should be about now lisa you don't have to get this worked up about this tiny thing that even the police don't care about but it's about just a lot of ideas about one subject but they don't ever have a message or stick with one and that's my issue with this episode well i do think the simpsons was um sort of a strangely
Starting point is 00:14:49 moralizing show the first few seasons where it was like there's a definite right and wrong and um church and religion are essentially good even though it has they have their ridiculousness and uh homer does learn like a few moralizing lessons and it's it's now like when they read the first bit of the pamphlet explaining like like that so you've decided to steal cable and the explanation is uh well cable companies are giant faceless corporations so it's okay and i was like yeah not more than ever yeah it is that's all i feel i was like that is absolutely right i well you know i think this episode uh has more than a few similarities with the blowfish episode from a few before and i think in both cases they're by a
Starting point is 00:15:38 freelance writer and it feels to me like they you had a freelance writer come at it. It's still from a more traditional sitcom direction of like, well, the issue this week is they steal cable or the issue this week is Homer thinks he's going to die. And then in the rewrite, the regular staff who's getting a little, you know, they're, they're more feeling the surreal stuff or the car, the, the bigger opportunities they have beyond just a normal sitcom script that's when it gets bigger and there's that's yeah these more ideas get shoved in even though there's not space for them to exist as much yeah yeah and i feel like it's not subversive at all no yeah they they but they get so close to it with like some of lisa's thoughts and like some of the things when they deal with religion like it gets close to subversion but then it almost feels like the subversion is that the church is right that they didn't subvert the church exactly yeah that it's it's very unexpected especially for what the simpsons uh like overall becomes and and feels and this is, yeah, it's a subversion of what it becomes.
Starting point is 00:16:49 Yeah, I think the best stuff in this, I feel it comes from George Meyer, the writer, the idea of Christian guilt and how children are, all this guilt is pushed on the kids before they can process it. I mean, Lisa almost has a panic attack because of this. And I feel like that is the best stuff in this, but it's not really commented on. It's just taken at face value. Like hey do you have a minute to help save the sea turtles to say that and it's a mom and and a little girl and and i said that and the mom said oh not today and the little girl went mom and it's like well yeah you we've taught these children to care deeply about the environment and so when an adult is like no no there are like levels and like i don't want to deal with this clipboard person and the child is like no i you taught me to care why aren't you
Starting point is 00:17:53 caring like you taught me hell is real you sent me to this sunday school and now you don't care it's like i i can't fit all these conflicting ideas because i'm a child yes yeah we covered captain planet for our other podcast series and to this very day if i have to throw out like a can or something i will find a recycling bin because if i throw it in the garbage can i know captain planet will be very upset with me and i'm literally killing the earth if that thing goes in the garbage can it's all my fault yeah i can't handle not recycling now when i brush my teeth and see water going down the drain i think of when captain planet told me like do you know how much water is wasted when you don't turn off the faucet in time
Starting point is 00:18:34 when brushing your teeth i was like i'm sorry captain planet i'm doing everything i can uh i always turn off the faucet when i'm in the middle of brushing my teeth. I don't need that water until it's time to rinse. But, you know, sometimes it's easy to just leave it up and not touch it. But I let Captain Planet be my guide there. The last thing I have thought on this episode before we really get into it is I think you can really tell from the commentary. Al Jean pretty much says it. This taught him a lot of lessons about ideas for future episodes that he he said you know we got a lot out of this commandment they deal with the commandments
Starting point is 00:19:11 for other episodes when homer the heretic is kind of a sequel to this episode so he's like oh dealing with religion uh just aspects of religion that's a plot for us here and also he learned the simpsons can watch tv for a while and that'll give us just things to fill an episode with like a simpsons i i mean these episodes were directed by rich moore who would go on to be the series director for the critic which is the simpsons watch tv times 10 that's what the critic is just The Simpsons Watching TV, the series. If you look at this as a proto-critic episode, it starts with a movie parody. They're watching parodies on TV all episode.
Starting point is 00:19:55 There's a bit of the critic in this episode. And yeah, Rich Moore, I just want to say, this is his breakout episode as a director. There's just so many. He is tasked with so much, honestly, too much. The writers are like, well, then it's a Ten Commandments. Then that goes into a North by Northwest parody. But like, yeah, you can see why he was series director on The Critic and Futurama. He's and why he's like now, like literally a multi-time Oscar winning theatrical director.
Starting point is 00:20:25 While he was at Disney, I think he's at Sony. He's working at Sony now. Whatever his movie is, it's not been announced. But he was one of those many Disney exits a few years ago. The Simpsons will be right back. Thursday, guess who's stealing cable? Ah! It wasn't me. It was my wife. My wife's idea. Yeah, yeah. On an all-new Simpsons Thursday.
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Starting point is 00:21:34 Hello everybody and welcome to the one where Wall Street gets arrested. And a big thank you to our podcast guest this week, Lindsay Kaytai. Everybody should follow her on Twitter. She is great great we love her podcast teen creeps and we super duper love having her back on the podcast thank you as always lindsey and if you enjoy the talking simpsons podcast you should know it's only possible because of support from listeners like you who subscribe at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for five bucks a month those folks get to hear every episode of this
Starting point is 00:22:05 podcast a week ahead of time and without ads like this one plus a ton of bonus podcasts each month we put out a new talking futurama podcast we're deep into season three going through futurama just like we do with the simpsons and the same goes for a giant back catalog of us covering shows like the critic mission hill and King of the Hill, along with many, many others. So please, why don't you go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons today to check out over 100 exclusive podcasts and all the other stuff that you get for supporting us. but if you want something as fancy as a free month from moe's you should sign up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons to get our premium monthly podcast what a cartoon
Starting point is 00:22:58 movie you see in addition to all that five dollar stuff your premium patreon level gets you our monthly what a cartoon movie where we cover an animated feature film incredibly in-depth sometimes for you over five hours we talk about animated feature films like the lion king the hunchback of notre dame hercules cool world shrek and that's just our most recent ones we have a giant back catalog that covers films as diverse as akira to spider-man into the spider-verse to beavis and butthead to america and more sign up at that 10 level to experience over 150 hours of additional podcasts on top of all the other stuff with so much new stuff each month that you get for that 10 bucks so please head over to patreon.com
Starting point is 00:23:44 slash talking simpsons to check it all out right now so it's time for another writer's corner we do this whenever there is a new writer on the show and today's writer is steve papoon it's a very fun name to say try it at home papoon exactly so steve papoon he is a freelancer in this season submitting a script uh you might have seen his name because he made most of his money presumably as the co-creator of the wild thornberries and honestly he has done really nothing since then so i feel like he's living off that thornberry money oh yeah i mean once they made a movie of the wild thornberries like he's free like oh i'm a millionaire now and it's he didn't seem like he got greedy of like i'm
Starting point is 00:24:39 sticking around i gotta i gotta create another thing and become like a $10 million isn't enough for me was not what he said. He got that Klasky Chupo money, baby. So only about 15 years in the industry. But, you know, he did win an Emmy for The Simpsons. So good on him. Yeah. And his first TV writing credit was an episode of Silver Spoons in 1986. So that's when he started.
Starting point is 00:25:02 Starring the now problematic Ricky Schroeder. He does not like wearing a mask you can't make him do it so he would go on from silver spoons to write an astounding amount of elf episodes and this is where he met obviously al gina mike reese staff writers on elf he wrote 13 episodes of elf that is a lot of elf episodes that's like that that's like he's a netflix show uh seasoned worth of elff episodes like yeah so many alfs and it's not what and there's like i think just five seasons alf it's like he wrote 10 of all al i'm looking at it now yeah there's four seasons 102 episodes he wrote 10 of al wow
Starting point is 00:25:39 yeah damn that's that's so much alf so from alf he wrote one episode of it's scary shandling show presumably also because of gene and reese well that connection and that it put him in the sam simon rolodex as well and uh adjacent to the gracie films productions yeah so from there he would be on a uh short-lived sitcom about ferris bueller there was the tv adaptation of the movie and uh that got canceled quickly so he would parker lewis beat it man exactly the better ferris bueller ripoff is parker lewis can't lose uh so he would go from the canceled ferris bueller sitcom to get a life so he wrote for the back half of the first season of get a life and the second season of get a life he wrote the episodes camping 2000
Starting point is 00:26:21 neptune 2000 health inspector 2000 and chris's brain starts working and you can see oh that's a good one you can see the most steve papoon interview content on the get a life dvds i could not find one interview with him it seems like uh either for simpsons dvds or get a life dvds only appearances this guy makes it's like when his old buddies who got him into the industry and got him jobs they say definitely to get a life special features feel like david murkin called two of his old friends who he liked working on the show and said come over here and and that's the spirit of papoon on this commentary on simpsons 2 and it has the spirit of al and mike called their friend steve like hey steve we haven't seen each other in forever come over here and record a commentary
Starting point is 00:27:03 with us and get a free lunch yeah it felt like a free lunch commentary to me uh so after the simpsons he would be a supervising producer on roseanne and this would hook him up with the immortal tom arnold so he would go on to play a major role in the two tom arnold sitcoms so he was co-executive producer on the jackie thomas show which was the show about Tom Arnold being a celebrity, but not actually Tom Arnold. Yeah, I remember giving that a watch on the first episode. I was that into the Roseanne show that I would watch even this, not even a spinoff. It was just everybody knew Tom Arnold was with her. And he created the sitcom tom
Starting point is 00:27:45 for tom arnold so i had no memories of that i did watch jackie thomas show did not know about tom that was a 1994 sitcom that he created and he would go on to co-create claghorn the ellen claghorn sitcom the last known appearance of ellen claghorn uh now she i remember seeing her in the audience in the 40th anniversary snl episode and the joke was could you believe ellen claghorn still exists like that it's just like eric there's claghorn she showed up wow huh interesting yeah i you know that that ferris bueller to get a life thing that to me feels like a guy had an overall deal with fox and fox was like hey we're gonna keep your contract going this year go over to get a life I think Ferris Bueller was an NBC sitcom oh well I and you could hear uh David Merkin bad mouth that
Starting point is 00:28:31 sitcom on the Get a Life DVDs where uh Steve Papoon is explaining how he got in the show and he brings up Ferris Bueller and David Merkin's like that show sucks that show's a piece of shit I love that I you wouldn't hear al jean say that about the competition yeah and uh so yeah after clegg horn he would go on to be a consulting producer on the pjs and teen angel before co-creating the wild thornberries and that's his entire career so again with jean and reese like they've ever he was it seems like he's a good friend of those guys that they meet him on alf then they work work together on Gary Shandling. And then when they're working on their Miss Begotten TGIF show, Teen Angel, they're like,
Starting point is 00:29:11 can we at least get our buddy Steve in here? It'd be nice to hang out with him. Maybe he'll help us find something funny about a dead teenager in this show. I got nothing. And I don't think he went to Harvard. That's my last statement because i googled every possible combination of steve papoon and harvard and nothing came up so i feel like he's not a harvard guy and clearly he's not looking for work because he doesn't have a linkedin because
Starting point is 00:29:34 i'm trying to even find his linkedin like that shows you a truly independently wealthy man who doesn't even bother to have a linkedin like most people who i look to interview i go like well are they still have a linkedin okay they're still active in the industry they gotta they gotta advertise themselves you know he got that sitcom money while the getting was good so who needs to work after the 90s i don't exactly i'm making all these sitcoms sounds like he didn't have any expensive divorces or drug habits so he just like boom big all just money in the bank hats off to you steve papoon for winning the simpsons their second emmy yes hats off to papoon but uh but yes this episode begins with a uh a long parody it's basically an snl sketch joking about the ten commandments film
Starting point is 00:30:19 cecil b. mills take some real good jokes in this. Oh, this is so good. Here, it begins with just the concept to me that not only do you have these, you know, ancient Hebrew people who have just escaped Egypt, but also they act like regular people, but they seem to have no moral guidelines, like the idea that there's no regular morality until the Ten Commandments shows up. They're like, well, yeah, my job is adultery my my job is stealing that's what i do like there's they they have no
Starting point is 00:30:51 moral compass without the ten commandments i like that and it really seems to work for them honestly yeah like the uh craven images guy sort of seems to expect homer to steal homer seems to expect the adulterer to sleep with his wife it just seems like very like i don't know kind of a peaceful society right religions mucking up all this functional functioning society the fact that jacques is in this does strike me as oh a freelancer wrote this because he saw the simpsons like oh jacques is a funny character that surely will come back several times right it's like well no and harry sure isn't even giving him the french accent in this uh this little sketch here i guess this is before france existed so in biblical times it's true this all checks out but yes then the party is ruined by moses appearing in our first sketch here
Starting point is 00:31:36 my wife sends her warmest regards oh yes she's a good woman. Very good. Thank you, my lusty friend. Moses is back. Quick, everybody look busy. The Lord has handed down to us ten commandments by which to live. I will now read them in no particular order. Thou shalt not make any graven images. Oh, my God! Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Starting point is 00:32:15 Ah, well, looks like the party's over. Hey, Moses, keep them coming. Thou shalt not steal. Oh! Sorry, Omar. Ah, that's great. I like him too saying in no particular order that the order of the commandments actually matters a lot to some Christians,
Starting point is 00:32:34 but that's such a great joke. It's only so he can reference the people that we've already seen. I need to call out these people specifically, so we're not going to read all the commandments. And they're all getting laid off basically yeah i love that i i underrated joke is the guy whose job is to carve graven images when he throws down his tools he goes like oh my god it's like he's that he's he his job is to make golden calves but when god tells him something he actually
Starting point is 00:33:01 respects it like he's like well that is my god i gotta do it yeah everybody really just uh goes with the flow in this society yeah but they and they also just accept like well party's over like now that i know this i i can't i can't have sex with wives anymore and of course that might be my favorite line of the episode as well looks like the party's over that was his job somehow and also just the definition of look busy is doing your sinning in those specific ways and of course it's phil hartman as moses and this is back when a guest would be a voice they'd have him do more than one character he's he's all over this episode too for in in a major way later but i i think i i get that in this one the casting of phil hartman feels to me like they they thought well hey hank and harry
Starting point is 00:33:53 they have to watch so much tv and there's so many like one-line characters in this maybe it was just them realizing hank and harry can't do every one- character. Like let's get Phil Hartman back in here and he can just do like six extra voices in it, including, and one will just be this one-off guy, some actor guy. We'll never see him again. Never see him again. When I was a kid and watching these biblical films,
Starting point is 00:34:17 I also took them as truth. I was like, well, this is when they filmed Jesus's crucifixion. The first time I saw something, some story of jesus movie on tv of course everyone was white yeah everyone's white blue eyes just how it was it's how it was back in jerusalem you know i thought my fair lady was filmed in the time period i i thought i also thought happy days was filmed in the 50s too when I first saw it as a kid.
Starting point is 00:34:50 I thought the characters, the actors had aged really well since then when I would see them in the 90s. I was like, they haven't aged a day. As is the crux of this episode, children just believe what they are shown. We leave the biblical times. We then you have another like the two amazing just panned down animation here like richmore and his team like this is not like you know early tv budget and time frame here like these they like to ship these sometimes in like eight months uh or i'd say six months a couple times you look at table read oh yeah uh to release air date yeah this has another hallmark of the thing i just note every time i
Starting point is 00:35:25 see it in season two i love it they give business to the pets like when homer's asleep in his hammock santa's little helper is like licking the lemonade like it's there's there's a little bit they treat the pets like they are pets and i think later when he's letting people into the party snowball two runs out yeah yeah it's such like great little stuff with the pets but homer has awakened to ned arguing with a cable guy ned has ned has not grown out of a fear of hell that lisa gets and he he is insulted at the idea of of getting any free cable uh he just wanted one arts and crafts channel which uh later we would learn is dad would get a satellite dish to lock out every channel but the davian goliath channel that's when that explains
Starting point is 00:36:12 the deal to homer i like that homer cannot even listen any longer to ned like telling a story he's he learns that he must get free cable chases after after the cable guy. He's voiced by Phil Hartman as well. And there's really good animation timing too. As Homer is asking Ned, the cable guy is packing up his van in the shot behind them. It's really laid out well. And that's when Homer rushes over. And then they do a North by Northwest joke for no real reason other than just to do it. With the music too.
Starting point is 00:36:43 Yes, yeah. Did not catch that yeah did not catch that did not catch that yeah it's the uh the exact shot to know of uh when uh when carrie grant stops the car and falls and then crumples right in front of it as it almost hits them that's like shot for shot the the scene for homer there they were having fun and uh homer then begs begs for some free cable and uh though he's having some second thoughts in this next brief clip so this is okay isn't it i mean everybody does it right what oh hey if you're having second thoughts just read this pamphlet so you've decided to steal cable. Myth. Cable piracy is wrong.
Starting point is 00:37:25 Fact. Cable companies are big faceless corporations, which makes it okay. See, the clown is a treasure that will last a lifetime. Cable. It's more wonderful than I dared hope. Just seeing Poopsie the Clown makes him cry. It's only $30 now. But that is 100% true.
Starting point is 00:37:47 It's a phases corporation. Who cares? You know what? Back then, you could have local cable operators. I don't know if that's true now. Have they all consolidated? But back in this time period, we had Armstrong Cable. What does that mean?
Starting point is 00:37:59 I don't know. I think it's mostly Xfinity or AT&T. Yeah, yeah. Or Comcast. I'm falling for their ads calling it xfinity or at&t yeah yeah or a comcast i i don't think for their ads calling it xfinity instead of comcast i don't think there are these mom and pop cable operations anymore by mom and pop i meant like just a few million dollars kicking around the local businessman instead of the the international businessman instead of the people who own nbc or well yeah i was gonna say at&t owns Warner Brothers but that's sort of not true anymore Lindsay you you got to enjoy that firsthand that oh yeah well and then watch
Starting point is 00:38:32 it immediately fall apart I'm glad we have a uh you know a TV creator on the podcast because there are certain things that are ignored by this episode because there's a lot of nuance to this obviously they can't go into but it's, just because I pay for cable and watch cable doesn't mean the people who make the shows get more money. Yes, yeah. Yeah, I don't give two fucks. If you have an actual cable subscription, just as long as it's getting them views i've you know on on the specific i mean like
Starting point is 00:39:07 if it was so widespread that people were sharing the like their passwords but i don't truly believe that every single person who doesn't pay for hbo max right now would pay for hbo max if they couldn't share passwords so i'm not as concerned about it. And I don't get paid per subscriber. I heard a crazy thing about Amazon Prime that like the, for their Prime video, the only metric they care about is if it's the first thing a person watches. Like that was, I heard that from another person who works in the industry of like all the, all the, the most important thing to Prime video is if it's the first thing a person watches with their accounts i don't know how true that is because hbo max believe it
Starting point is 00:39:52 or not not that communicative with the staff writers uh of a show that they produce uh particularly and again this may surprise people, particularly an animated children's show. They don't seem to... Infinity Train, one of their most watched originals on the platform, and I think that they maybe wish that it weren't. Wow, boy. And I think that they maybe wish that it weren't. Wow. Boy.
Starting point is 00:40:27 Well, I will say that podcast piracy is a real problem. And currently I'm petitioning Gavin Newsom to make it a felony in California. Yeah. Well, see, that's why we can be okay with that because we're not a faceless corporation. You see our faces. You see that. We put them out there. Think of my face and when
Starting point is 00:40:45 you think about stealing that rss feed you know that's you're taking that money for me not honestly though if you are stealing the patreon rss feed that's kind of messed yeah no hey that that is a crime that is direct that's very direct and you should go to hell for that one i'm gonna just say i'll say that right there um uh yeah the the this was also era of pamphlet jokes just yeah or so you're going to die was the last one yeah so now it's their second pamphlet no they're well no the third pamphlet because way we was has the uh so you've ruined your life with the no i'm sorry that was i married march you're right so that's season three so this is the second pamphlet also just that it could be a joke back then of like here's a guy's butt crack like we drew a butt crack on tv you never see you don't see that on tv it's so it's so adorable how
Starting point is 00:41:36 like just cute these jokes are where it's just like could you imagine home shopping uh you know could you imagine an infomercial these are all new ideas that we were just playing around with. I'm like, look at this crazy cable. You can watch wrestling. You can get our product. You can... I'm like, wow, what a world. And now it's like I was having to remind myself while watching the episode,
Starting point is 00:41:58 like, oh, yeah, these were all new ideas that people weren't necessarily familiar with personally. Yeah. Another strange thing is these channels all have identities, which cable channels do not have anymore. Yes. Yeah. Back then, you could have the joke about like, well, this is the channel for women or this is the channel for this group or this is the comedy channel. It's all it's hot. It's just jokes.
Starting point is 00:42:22 And now every channel is just everything. Like, hey, if you're still if you're one of those old channels that still exists, A&E or AMC is just like it's whatever. It's whatever they show. The history channels, whatever it shows. It's not it's not documentaries. It's just sci fi. It's S.Y.F.Y. Whatever. What does that even mean?
Starting point is 00:42:40 I don't know. Just shut up and watch it. I guess to the, you know, back then it was a novelty to see all of these when they drew it on screen married with children did lots of jokes about like the guy people watch tv but you rare it wasn't often you'd see it on tv like if they went to supermarket sweep they'd have to they have to build a set and do it on on married with children you you couldn't just draw the next scene yeah i don't think they go far enough in this episode where you're right henry on married with children or like another sitcom when a character will be watching something you'd see them looking at the front of a tv you'd see the back you just hear it in this one i think about half the time you actually see the parodies
Starting point is 00:43:16 in the future they would just show you all of the parodies but i think at this point they're like we don't need to show you all of them do we but it turns out yeah it's a cartoon you can do that and uh this was early enough in the series where the simpsons had a very strict budget where it was they like the writers were like well no the simpsons can't afford cable you know we're with us doing season 12 at the same time and just seeing like say an episode where homer empties their entire savings account to buy internet stock i'm like well i guess that uh they don't care about counting the bills anymore on this show but uh but here it's like marge and homer have negotiated before of like it literally having cable can't fit into our budget we just can't afford it but homer lets them know they can't afford it now family come here I have an announcement to make. The Simpsons have cable!
Starting point is 00:44:05 Cable? That's right, 68 channels, MTV for the kids, VH1 for us, 1,600 hours of quality programming every day. Homer, we talked about cable before. You really think we can afford it? Nothing a month? Yeah, I think we can swing that. Are you sure this is legal? Don't worry? Yeah, I think we can swing that. Are you sure this is legal?
Starting point is 00:44:28 Don't worry, Marge. Take a look at this. Mitt, it's only fair to pay for quality first-run movies. Fact, most movies shown on cable get two stars or less and are repeated ad nauseum. Hmm. I don't know. Marge. Hear me roar.
Starting point is 00:44:44 The Network for Women. In the next half hour, we'll show you how to cut your first aid bill in half by making your own Band-Aid. Oh, that's a good idea. Now, before we begin, you'll need five yards of sterilized cotton. I really like the design of the women's channel like talk show just the the the woman symbol in just going inside of itself over and over again it's so it's funny because it's it seems like it's going to be very like women's political issues and then it's like here's how to be the best housewife you can yes yeah you're right. The set design is more for like a feminist show.
Starting point is 00:45:27 But the joke as written is about homemaking. Yes. And it's hard to pay attention to because you're watching the show, looking at the characters. But I like the fake MTV rock buried in the mix when the kids turn on the TV. Right. It's nice like early 90s fake rock. And as a kid kid this taught me that vh1 was lame and for parents that's when i heard that joke i was like okay that's what vh1
Starting point is 00:45:50 is for i'm not i'm not old enough for mtv yet but soon soon i will be mtv that was another thing of like early cable as a kid the rare times nickelodeon would occasionally play like an MTV music video as part of like you know them trying to different programming and they scared me like seven-year-old me was like my mom loves telling the story of uh a Twisted Sister video came on and I was terrified terrified of it well they advertised up front it was twisted Henry you should You should have turned it off. We did this last year for our Talking Mission Hill series saying, you know, this episode is about MTV for Mission Hill. What does MTV have on now?
Starting point is 00:46:31 And it was like 10 hours a day of ridiculousness. That was what the MTV schedule was. Does anybody know what the VH1 schedule is now? It's a similar situation. Well, I can only guess behind the... No, it's got some other reality show it is almost like entirely the entire schedule is nick cannon presents wild and out whatever that
Starting point is 00:46:50 show is that's all of it is it's just wild and yes just like how mtv was just ridiculousness it's wild and out and then half martin and half fresh prince reruns that's all that's all vh1 is now what the hell man they can't that is that is unexpected transformation for vh1 i mean the joke like in the mid 90s mtv they don't even show music anymore well it's like now it's not even remotely related they don't even have the real world on anymore geez well yeah you sign up for paramount plus for the real world yeah yeah why are they supposed to give a crap about what they're showing on an actual an actual cable channel when they're trying to get you to transition off of it into the future if you turn turned on your cable channel you must be over 60 and so you're you'll watch whatever's
Starting point is 00:47:42 on i haven't had cable like like traditional cable, since maybe 2007. So it does blow my mind to know one channel can just be one show all day. It's like actually there's no programming and there's just like a guy sitting there smoking. And then somebody will turn the channel on. He's like, quick. And they like shoves Nick Cannon's welding out on. That was close. Where's the Martin?
Starting point is 00:48:04 We got an actual viewer you know i even tried to play the game the way cable channels wanted me to with watching like i have still i still have cable and it's like oh put in your cable uh sign in to watch you know vice because i want to watch the the vice dark side of the ring and it's on the vice website and i sign in and it still won't play like it just it doesn't and i just go like come on you're you're telling me to pirate this now like i did what you wanted it's even my password it's not a relatives yeah the cable login is always a little buggy that actually is how we have HBO Max because we have cable so that my boyfriend can watch wrestling live, can watch AW live. Very important.
Starting point is 00:48:50 We have the HBO add-on and that gives us access to HBO Max. But the cable login system is very scattered, very unorganized. You get logged out all the time you try to log back in it doesn't you can't find your cable provider it's just very it's a big mess i have peacock for that same reason of just like well i i have cable so i guess i have peacock i i don't know what i'll watch on it other than again the aforementioned wrestling if i feel like it but i was gonna say now wwe yeah i know i'd never pay for wwe because that's like it eventually just got too gross for me i'm like look i like wrestling but wwe it's just it's yuck but i i i'm more like like uh like mike your your partner i i'm more of an aw uh person these days uh but but yeah and then watching that's a
Starting point is 00:49:46 pain in the anyway i guess to get back to the show uh you know you know it's on cable a lot is pro wrestling and that's what they watch in the very next scene yeah mexican wrestling right yes yeah which the real wrestling that's that was a real treat back then in early cable of like oh what is on you know univision or telemundo and and sometimes it was you know spanish language lucha wrestling uh which you know uh homers joke that it's a real sport there it is still predetermined and a dance in mexico most i would think uh that the mexican wrestling audience is just as aware as most americans are that wrestling is predetermined but pro wrestling in mexico does answer to a governmental body of a sports commission
Starting point is 00:50:33 so it is slightly realer in mexico uh than it is here that that joke is slightly true but this like minute-long bit about just channel surfing, that really takes me back to everything I do now is just appointment viewing. It's like, oh, I heard about that show. You want to finally watch it? That's what TV is to me now. The idea of just flipping from a channel like, ah, I've seen that click, seen that click. It's very retro to me now.
Starting point is 00:50:58 We tried to give Netflix's play something, random play something button a whirl. And I thought it was going to be truly randomized and then it would sort of be like channel surfing. But it just recommended like very safe guesses as to what we might want to watch. Like we've been going through Next Generation slowly and it was like, what about, so we hit play something and it just played a different Star Trek show. Hit play something and it just played a different star trek show hit play something again it played a different star trek show it was just
Starting point is 00:51:29 like we truly like the metrics show that you would also watch this and i was like no play some weird 60s sci-fi that you paid five dollars for and now just threw up on your platform i want the weird stuff and they are not it's not what that button's for i think the best classic cable viewing experience today is pluto tv because they have all of these fake channels and yes if you turn into if you tune into one at like 9 17 like well here's the back half of a three's company you could have watched the first half if you were here at 9 p.m so like i do that maybe once a month just for the experience of the 90s and early 2000s like what's on i had a little bit of that the one time i turned on to be
Starting point is 00:52:12 after getting my new uh roku tv that it was like in i was like oh what's on to be it's like here is this elf and it's right in the middle of an alpha like okay i'll watch out is kind of becoming our favorite streaming platform i've been watching xena on good old 2b uh we found i believe tia carrera's relic hunter okay it's a weird world that's different than than Tomb Raider. Yeah. Relic Hunter, very different. Slightly. And different from Cleopatra 2525 or whatever the other. VIP. VIP, yeah. We watched an episode of VIP.
Starting point is 00:52:54 The other night we just went on a bit of a tour of those kinds of movies. We started with Diagnosis Murder because we had just watched a Dick Van Dyke interview and because he was making the rounds because of his Kennedy Center honor. And we're like, Oh, what is Diagnosis Murder like? And I said, let's put on an episode. If I like it, I will buy the entire box set because you cannot stream it anywhere. And so I found a season eight episode that was on youtube with uh chad michael murray as the teenage guest star and and it was like oh no this isn't good it's not murder she wrote relic hunter relic hunter not that great and then we went to vip and we're like oh this is actually pretty fun brian cranston is in the pilot episode he used to basically be the main employer dean norris also in the episode so the first uh shared
Starting point is 00:53:55 shared tv show between brian cranston and dean norris was in fact pamela anderson star vehicle vip oh gee all right i'm watching that first episode then. It was pretty fun. We didn't finish it, so we didn't get to Dean Norris's guest appearance because it was getting a little bit late. But we plan on returning to see what his character was all about. So then they're watching a bunch of movies together.
Starting point is 00:54:22 I guess the joke is that Bart knows the plots to these films he shouldn't have seen, I guess. Like, why would he have watched Wall Street or Jaws to that point as a 10-year-old? And calling all the characters by the names of the movies is good. Yeah, that's funny. I love that bit. It's so funny. Also, it was so subtle that it took me many viewings i guess it was probably when on the commentary they mentioned it i never noticed the plant growing in the background to
Starting point is 00:54:51 mark time until until many years into my viewing of this episode that's why marge brings home a plant yes from the grocery store there's a joke of watching c-span and being very bored by it uh which uh i actually here's a funny thing i so i was like oh is matt grating ever been has there been any simpsons content on c-span and uh you know c-span uh the website is very useful you can just search their entire archives of like hundreds of thousands of hours of video and two months after this episode aired they did a panel at a boston newspaper convention called dunesberry meets the simpsons where matt grading uh interviews gary trudeau and they they talk about being cartoonists together and so matt grading was on c-span not
Starting point is 00:55:42 long after this episode aired but that was the only Simpsons bit I could really find. All the rest were like some old senator named like Alan Simpson or whatever. I didn't ask for this. I can also see it being a bit in the show that they cut to C-SPAN and do joke reference to Matt Groening's appearance on C-SPAN. Where it's like, and now two old cartoonists talk to each other. But you know, at this point, Matt Groening doesn't like being self-referential that much yet. It'll take another year before they're like, ah, just reference it. Wear him down. Draw me in here. I really like the little observation that Homer, who stayed up all
Starting point is 00:56:21 night watching something, the pets just were like, well, it's a warm body right here. Let's just sleep on them all night like that. It's cute. It's cute. We see Homer wakes up. He's pulled, he's watching Davy and Goliath, which 10 years later, they'll do another Davy and Goliath joke
Starting point is 00:56:39 about them trying to. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie bring a pipe bomb to plant spirit yeah and they'd actually animate it stop
Starting point is 00:57:14 motion animate it yes yeah in this case off screen but homer gets up he leaves a big indentation in the couch that's cute and then uh reverend lovejoy it's uh i love that his speech means nothing to homer homer finds nothing comparable to his own life other than the mention of the word pizza reminds him he'd want to eat pizza i love that and uh pizza and so meanwhile we cut to the sunday school previously seen in telltale Head. And this is Miss Albright. This is the first time she got a name here. And well done by Tress McNeil. Tress is underrated in this episode.
Starting point is 00:57:52 They count on her to be like eight different women in this episode. Probably because they rarely had these many first appearing female voices in a Simpsons episode. But yes, it's time for her to teach the kids an important lesson in this next clip. All right, children. Now, I don't want you to get frightened, but it's my responsibility to teach you this. Today's topic will be hell.
Starting point is 00:58:18 All right. I've sat through mercy and I've sat through forgiveness. Finally, we get to the good stuff. Oh, hell is a terrible place. Maggots are your sheet, worms your blanket. There's a lake of fire burning with sulfur. You'll be tormented day and night forever and ever. As a matter of fact, if you actually saw hell,
Starting point is 00:58:37 you'd be so frightened you would die. Oh, Miss Albright. Yes, Bard? Wouldn't you eventually get used to it, like in a hot tub? No. Yes, Bard? Are there pirates in hell? miss albright yes bard wouldn't you eventually get used to it like in a hot tub no yes bard are there pirates in hell yes thousands of them oh baby it's just easy comedy of like children ask questions to a religious figure like that's funny i think the concept to me as a kid of if you actually were to see hell you would die of of fear like that. That one did stick with me.
Starting point is 00:59:06 I was like, oh, that does sound scary. And then you'd go right there. And then, but like Bart's reaction is also funny because like in the previous episode that Phil Hartman first appeared in his Lionel Hutz, Bart goes to hell. That's right. He's already been there. Bart has been to hell at this point. What inconsistency. i guess let's say he barely remembers it now it's a part of his concussion it's gone away it was a death dream
Starting point is 00:59:30 but it's a night it's a funny thing too that like bart he is just like hell sounds cool and also you definitely get used to it like who cares but the second lisa even hears about it would you think with how smart lisa is she would have heard of hell before today but this plays it like she didn't know the detail i see it is it is a different version of lisa it's weird to think of lisa as the christian the sanctimonious christian of the family when she would become like an atheist and then a buddhist afterwards yeah very true she is the moralizer so it makes the most sense for the plot of the episode even while it's kind of inconsistent with her like very cerebral high-minded uh analytical mind soon soon lisa will learn the lesson that morals exist separate from a religion in life and that
Starting point is 01:00:19 she she won't need to invoke god to to guilt people about things. This also is a real, like, Lisa makes people feel guilty episode. It's true. Well, it also is, I was thinking about this. It's, like, kind of in the beginning of the show, kids were still very much kids. They would have the kind of, like, meta jokes or the more adult jokes or like very precocious statements but there's still very much kids here where you know she's afraid of hell she takes it very literally bart is just super excited that he has an excuse to say hell the idea of being in a place with a bunch of pirates is cool it's like it's a very kid attitudes that it would kind of
Starting point is 01:01:05 drop off later just because of a sheer need to explore other things they it became less fun to them to write the kids as kids and they've i think it's also like probably writers came on who did not have kids it was a lot more common that absolutely every tv writer would have had a family and also been a man and then you know you go on i'm 39 i don't have kids yet i don't i think only a few of the writers had kids at this point i'm trying to think maybe aljean had had like little kids around this time i think so yeah and then uh yeah je, Jeff Martin I don't think had a kid yet. I should have done my research before making that statement. Well, they stayed pretty childless. They were mostly childless, though, yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:51 I mean, Mike Scully was the weirdo in his when he came on because he was the one who was like, can I go home to see my kids? Like, we're going to stay up all night like we did in college. What are you talking about? I guess that does fit the writing of the show. So I shouldn't be surprised. It's a lot of like literal frat brothers working together.
Starting point is 01:02:12 Yeah, they were frat brothers at Harvard like 10 years ago. And here they are again. But yes, Lisa is not as entertained as Bart is. I like Martin's, you know, so what you're saying is there's a downside to the afterlife. Like, that's a very funny statement. Not voiced by Roosie Taylor, by the way. That is a Pamela Hayden voice, Martin, because Roosie not always
Starting point is 01:02:34 available as the voice of Minnie Mouse and, you know, Baby Gonzo. Roosie's into mad. And, you know, also they spent their money on Tress and Phil for this episode. I could see them going like, what are are we going to spend the SAG minimum on Roosie Taylor as well? That's like, what, $700? We could do that.
Starting point is 01:02:53 For one line? One line. Yes. We could spend that on bagels at lunch. On one lunch. On one order from Islands, we could spend that $700. But yes, when they get back on the drive back i i love this section it's a really brief clip of bart but bart is really in his
Starting point is 01:03:12 element here so what did you children learn about today hell that's what we learned about azura's hell can't tell you we learned about hell unless i say hell can i hell yes bart you're no longer in sunday school don't swear yeah classic uh twister mouth oh man that's so the most twister mouth seen in a non-wes archer episode i think i was rich more like doing a tip of the hat to wes archer like sure as hell can talk about hell like you can't actually imitate henry you would die i think i was rich more like doing a tip of the hat to wes archer like sure as hell can talk about hell like you can't actually imitate henry you would die i know i'm trying to twist my neck in in the way it doesn't work work uh and also there's there's really good like subtle thing where when bart is saying hell over and over again there's a cut to lisa like she's uncomfortable
Starting point is 01:04:02 like she's she is all just thinking about hell this entire trip ride and here's part just going like hell and she's like stop talking about it yeah again in this in this viewing i just feel bad for lisa last time we did this i was like lisa don't be annoying about this this time i'm like poor lisa i know she can't handle this uh i mean what happens to her in the next scene is like she has a panic attack like this is a she's that it also speaks to how long ago was that like the parents witness a child just have like a straight panic attack from just anxiety and the parents just go like man what got into her anyway like doesn't speak to any you, mental issues that they should help her with. They're just like, ah, kids get weird, whatever.
Starting point is 01:04:47 She'll work it out on her own. Monkey shine. That's what it is. Yes. Yeah. But I guess before we get to Lisa's freak out, though, there is quite a first in this episode. Perhaps the most beloved non-regular character in Simpsons history, like a guest voiced character.
Starting point is 01:05:07 Though, like we said before, we've said before of the 200 something episodes that happened before Phil Hartman's passing, he's in 25% of them. So it's hard to even call him a guest, but. And in five years, this character would have his own episode all about him. I'm shocked it took him that long have his own episode all about him i'm shocked it took him that long to do an episode all about him but we're of course talking about the troy mcclure in this next clip hey anybody up for a little so-called pay tv dad are you sure this isn't stealing read the pamphlet honey hello i Hello, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such movies as Cry Yuma and Here Comes the Coast Guard.
Starting point is 01:05:55 But today I'd like to talk to you about a pleasant tasting candy that actually cleans and straightens your teeth. Oh, goody, a program like the advertisement. Wait a minute, Troy. I'm a little confused. Did you say cleans and straightens? There's no confusion, Tina. Just good science. Ladies ladies and gentlemen i'd like you to meet the inventor dr nick riviera thank you toy hi everybody now could i have a volunteer somebody with crooked yellow teeth so yeah troy mcclure and also dr nick a few episodes ago he was bart's crooked doctor now he's a tv spokesperson with his own catchphrase which the hi dr nick thing is almost covered up
Starting point is 01:06:31 by the music but that's also very important you're right yeah it's the first the first hi dr nick the call and response he's he's now an inventor of things instead of instead of a doctor but yeah well he's an inventor of a medical product that's true yes and yes this was the era in which uh infomercials were not like the newest thing in 1991 but i think between like 1989 and 1995 every sketch comedy one of the sketches in that episode would be an infomercial parody for a five-year stretch it was just the easiest thing to do and the perfect vehicle for jokes about the insincerity of selling snake oil to people yeah the infotainment style it's just like there there is a process to it all its own that is is special and an art to it but also it's like the most disposable garbage ever and i mean the best one for me is the mr show super pan sketch
Starting point is 01:07:23 oh yes the super pan that's probably the best one they ever and well and also the the clip show they did fantastic newness on mr show that's also a great parody of it and the idea that like well who would host it it would be i mean i saw eric estrada host one of these as a kid where it was like uh his yes his was him advertising you know these old slot machines are actually tons of fun. Buy them for your own family and it'll be a great thing in your den. I was used to seeing Eric Estrada do these things, but not Troy Donahue or Doug McClure, which as a kid completely lost on me, but it was my mom instantly knew who Troy McClure was making fun of. And I think he's based on these boomer writers' memories of these people in the 70s when they were washed up.
Starting point is 01:08:12 They were getting leathery. Their roles were reduced to like love boat appearances. I think that's what they're calling back to. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I was thinking of Troy McClure as he's basically like Leo DiCaprio's character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Like these guys who were hot stuff in the early 60s and now by the 70s, the drinks are pouring and they're getting fewer and fewer jobs. That was before movie stars were just immortal. Like I'm a male movie star.
Starting point is 01:08:40 Let me clarify. Like I'm sliced alone. I'm 80. Of course, I'm an action movie star. Set me up with something yeah it felt really cool seeing uh in the 11th season of mystery science theater they did two movies that had troy donahue in and i was like finally i'm watching the real troy mcclure in this stuff it's it's it felt special i actually had no idea he was an amalgamation of uh real actors i just thought he was a hilarious
Starting point is 01:09:05 invention i think and i think doug mcclure uh was a fan of the simpsons and was a fan of troy mcclure before he passed away yeah reese reese had said one of his uh doug mcclure's daughters told him that at first he was offended but then liked it and he apparently re-says that the daughters would call him troy mcclure behind his back sometimes what about troy donahue uh you know i didn't hear anything related to him in the show it's uh he probably thought he was above doug mcclure i think i think in the levels you know uh i think troy donahue viewed himself above Doug McClure, perhaps. I will say I had heard of Troy Donahue and was familiar with him being an actor. Not so with Doug McClure.
Starting point is 01:09:53 My apologies to the Doug McClure estate. Also watching this, it makes me, you know, there's a lot of sad things about Phil Hartman's passing, but for real, if he had lived to just the late aughts, he would have played Troy McClure in a live action sketch on the internet. It would have happened. It would have been funny. That's a funnier die gold right there. That gets the funny right there. It goes straight to funny.
Starting point is 01:10:20 I would click on funny. Yeah. I would click on funny. I'd click on funny. Yeah. And guys like Mike Carlson would have been, you know, as a stand-in right next to him doing funny things. Indeed. It's really sad. He would have done it so fast, man. The world was robbed.
Starting point is 01:10:42 I don't want to rehash this, but wasn't there talk of a Troy McClure spinoff? They had talked about it, yeah. I mean, you know, probably I would bet he was close to being done with news radio. Like news radio would have absolutely been canceled the next year. And once he was free, he could have done that, man. Imagine if news radio had been canceled
Starting point is 01:11:01 like one year earlier. I think news radio got a pity season. Oh, yes. They're like, Phil Hartman died. Have another season. John Lovitz is here. Give John Lovitz a paycheck. Great show.
Starting point is 01:11:11 But he did kind of make that show. Yes, for sure. Yeah, because I then continued watching to the John Lovitz season. And I was like, you know what? I'll do respect to John Lovitz. Love what he does. Just not the same. Not the same feel.
Starting point is 01:11:26 Everything is different. Oh, yeah. But that season does have its fan base, and I am glad for it and for them. There's still some good stuff in there. I like the wedding episode with the Johnny, not Johnny Evil, but the guy that, whatever. Anyway. The guy who's always standing
Starting point is 01:11:47 around walking yeah no it's it's Putty from Seinfeld and and Patrick Warburton Patrick Warburton words or names are failing me today I'm very embarrassed I one thing I noticed in this was that normally Troy McClure does not have a female co-host to bounce off of in in most when you think of these this this is a change up and i kind of wish he'd have stuck around because it's tress here and it's something i've talked about this before but it's something that gets overlooked in like comedy history for a lot of us is that we think of phil hartman is like well he appeared on snl and that's where he started but like he was in the groundlings with tress like you know i the the groundlings website is is very useful
Starting point is 01:12:26 in showing you like if you go to an alum's page it'll show you what shows they were on with other people not not like everyone but phil hartman was on at least three different shows in the late 80s or mid 80s with tress like touring touring shows so like they have not aware a natural she was a groundling oh yeah tress tresses a groundling like that. That's something I think about how, you know, for now, or the last decade, so many performers who were improv performers, they then go on to, you know, the podcast. That's their next thing. But back then, all of these improv performers, if you didn't get on SNL or didn't have like a bit part in a John Hughes movie like Edie McClure, then you became a voice actor like Tress McNeil or Rob Paulson or like that. And I mean, I know lots of people who are funny voice actors who also are today like UCB alums or Iowa West alums. Like they a lot of voice acting still comes out of that.
Starting point is 01:13:33 Tress McNeil comes from an impoverished background just like you, Lindsay. Yeah, I'm basically Tress McNeil. I would love to get in on that sweet, sweet voiceoverover gig but now I guess it's kind of the same now comedians do go to voice acting but it is a much more if you're much more visible like if you're actually a have a bit of a following as a comedian whereas if you're just like a job or voice actor it's much harder to get into cartoons. I think video games is now where like voiceover only actors get a lot of their work. Whereas cartoons, it's mostly going to comedians who have a lot of other things going on.
Starting point is 01:14:20 Those video games, those are some long hours. I know that. It's not the most glamorous then this scene is interrupted by an another amazing animation the transformation of the living room into hell just like oh my god just uh just an early peek in the simpsons animation quality this whole scene and also it's impressive that lisa sees the same devil that Bart did in hell, which seems to say this is real. This is actually the devil telling her what will happen. The devil giving Lisa a vision.
Starting point is 01:14:53 No, I mean, as a kid, it feels that real, the vision of hell. Like you and just her run out of the room screaming like the family should care a little bit more. But, you know know it was it was 1991 what are you gonna do we didn't have words for those things yes yeah come on lisa watch a little cable with us we won't cost you a thing except your soul. Let's find it to Lisa. Beats the hell out of me. Then we head to the commercial break. When we come back, Lisa and Marge are at the grocery store.
Starting point is 01:15:35 My first thought was, in a post-vaccine world, are people going to go back to eating just a random grape walking around the grocery store? I feel like that must have stopped, you know? Now candy. I didn't even think of that. I would graze on candy, but that fruit isn't washed. Oh, I don't know what's going on there.
Starting point is 01:15:53 My mom was a grape taker. Even before I watched the show that taught me you could grab a random grape and just eat it. I ate a grape or two as a handsy little child. I'd actually be, I would be scared to go to those uh to grab like want to say like a caramel square out of the fill the bag yourself ones that one seemed that for some reason maybe because it was wrapped up that felt more like stealing to me than a grape off of yeah it's like nature gave me these yeah right like well i
Starting point is 01:16:27 have to test if they're good or not whereas like a candy is uniform but like are these grapes disgusting are they mealy that's true i'll cut up i'll cut up this cantaloupe right in the middle of this grocery store aisle just to make sure it's good and then i'll buy it but i need to try a fruit first i will say like the target by me feels like a social experiment in which it is just the shoplifting store i personally am not a shoplifter but nobody's watching anything everything is self-checkout i just feel like somebody is just taking down statistics in the store and seeing what happens. When I've gone to that Target a few times lately, I feel like a dope for paying for it. I'm like, I could have stole this so easy. I've got my backpack right here.
Starting point is 01:17:13 I can fit everything in it. Here's my pamphlet. So you've decided to steal from Target. I feel like I should at least be allowed to steal one of the Gay Pride shirts. I certainly am not going to pay for one. They're not getting my rainbow bucks. i i feel like i should at least be allowed to steal one of the gay pride shirts like i certainly am not going to pay for one they're not they're not getting my rainbow bucks but uh but yes and this and this is the first appearance of the springfield grocery store as well this is uh they no funny name yeah just springfield all the comedies in that uh that shopping cart that's
Starting point is 01:17:40 the joke there you'll never hit anything uh but but yeah bob we were talking about it beforehand lee i i think we agree that lisa's a little intense here yeah and now that i like i can sympathize with her because just the idea of hell is in her head and she's trying to rationalize this with her family she does not want to be roped in or to see them you know go to hell but uh this just the shot of her screaming and just like it pulls back you can see the entire store just saying what is this little girl freaking out about it's like wow lisa you just turn it down a little bit i do really love the cashier's reaction yes yeah march trying to do right by lisa that's what march should have turned to lisa and said like you see the store doesn't care he says who cares
Starting point is 01:18:25 that means it wasn't stealing so chill out okay whatever the cashier says goes is this the first bronson voice cashier i think you're right okay it is it doesn't look like a bronson man but yeah i love is like two grapes who cares like just is so in in her excuse me i need a price check on two grapes that guy's giving march so much shit no i mean probably as a little kid watching this i absolutely agreed with lisa of like lisa feels this intensely and mar and the mom should listen to her march should listen because that's the mom and and moms need to listen to kids but yeah as an adult now i's the mom and moms need to listen to kids. But yeah, as an adult now, I feel for Marge.
Starting point is 01:19:14 It's like you're going through grocery shopping with your baby as well as Lisa and probably Bart's around there too fucking stuff up. And you're just like, poor Marge has it so hard. And now her dumb kid is trying to make her care about eating grapes. It's like, give Marge a break. And you can really feel for Marge how embarrassed she is even having to ask this cashier it. I like getting in Marge's head for a moment. Mom, what are you doing? What? What do you mean?
Starting point is 01:19:39 Don't you remember the Eighth Commandment? Oh, of course. It's thou shalt not covet graven images. Something about covet. Thou shalt not steal! Oh. Anything else? Yes, I ate two grapes.
Starting point is 01:19:59 Please charge me for them. Oh, two grapes? Who cares? Just charge me something, please. Yeah, okay, all right. I need a price check on two grapes. Yeah, you heard me, Phil. Two measly stinking grapes.
Starting point is 01:20:13 It's pretty mortifying. Yeah, I think it does bring me back. And I can't think of any specific examples. But, I mean, when you're a kid, you're taught this very black and white morality because you're a kid. And you don't have the opportunity to interface with too many things in the real world i can remember being very moralistic to my parents and them just rolling their eyes at me like what the fuck are you talking about it's true i can't i can't remember specific but i'm sure i gave some speech about like morals or ethics to parents and they're just like come on i know i know one time i was just like well smoking
Starting point is 01:20:42 is wrong so i hid your cigarettes and they're like, you know how much cigarettes cost? Give me my cigarettes back. That one is a little bit more, I don't know. I think you definitely have the moral high ground on that one. Whereas like pay for those two grapes is a little like, all right, well, you have a very simplistic view of the world. Settle down. Mommy knows better. So they head home. When Lisa gets home she i really
Starting point is 01:21:07 love the posing of her sadly looking at the tv and homer just pissed off trying to look around her head i so funny and but this is when uh lee this is maybe the second time homer is just sick of lisa's moralizing already he's like you know he has a point though in the speech though probably you know your responsibility as a parent is even if your kid is boring you with a dumb question don't don't show it on your face that you're sick of the uh they're even talking oh why not you think that has a long-term effect it might it might fuck with yeah yeah just become podcasters interesting yeah but That certainly never happened to me. But yes, Lisa and Homer have a bit of a debate here.
Starting point is 01:21:51 Dad, why is the world such a cesspool of corruption? Oh, great. Hi. What makes you say that? Well, at Sunday school, we learned that stealing is a sin. Well, duh. But everybody does it. I mean, we're stealing cable as we speak.
Starting point is 01:22:04 Oh, babe. Look at it this way. When you had breakfast this morning, did you pay for it? No. And did you pay for those clothes you're wearing? No, I didn't. Well, run for the hills, Ma Barker, before I call the feds. Dad, I think that's pretty spurious.
Starting point is 01:22:20 Well, thank you, honey. Friday night, live from Las Vegas, the ultimate matchup. About to knock the other guy out. It's Watson Tatum 2. This time, it's for money. Oh, boy. Only on the Blockbuster Channel.
Starting point is 01:22:39 How can one little insulated wire bring so much happiness? God, it's like three frames of animation, but Lisa falling off the couch onto her face on the ground as Homer stands up is very cruel and funny. Just like knocking his little girl to the ground because like, oh, a distraction. I also love how many times Homer kisses it.
Starting point is 01:23:02 I forgot he's kissing it more as Lisa sighs and walks off. And also great posing when he's like, well, run for the hills, Ma Barker. Like, very funny drawing for that, too. And, yeah, I mean, that's a dick move on Homer of just like, wow, didn't you steal these things from me? It's like, well, as a parent, you offered these things. You gave them to me. She accepted stolen property, Henry. That's also a crime he's i mean this would
Starting point is 01:23:26 really fuck lisa up if she wasn't too smart for homer in this case but but a kid who knows about the word spur spurious should probably know that hell might not be real and that exact same thought uh but uh let's talk a little boxing history here, guys. Well, this is a reference to HBO being your one-stop shop for boxing masters, correct? Even back then. Yes. Though Showtime was their competitor in it, too. But yeah, the home box office and Showtime, a huge part of their appeal was that they would have high-level boxing matches on. And now if it was the tippity top of biggest boxing match that could
Starting point is 01:24:06 happen that might be on pay-per-view but a lot of them including like mike tyson was a star of early cable you paid for hbo to see mike tyson knock somebody out in two in like two rounds this is at the height of mike tyson's popularity though okay so the design of the guy later does look a little more like marvin haggler but this really is a reference to what would have been the super fight of 1991 mike tyson versus evander holyfield okay i thought so because uh the history up to 1991 was through the end of the 80s everybody was looking for like who's the guy who can actually give mike tyson a real fight because most of his fights end very quickly and evander holyfield was coming up to be the next big
Starting point is 01:24:58 challenger for him and he was being built to be the next big challenger. And then in February 1990, Mike Tyson in Japan loses to Buster Douglas in the upset of the century. And that derails it all. Mike Tyson then has to come back from that and win some matches to get back to challenge the title. And not only that, then Buster Douglas loses the title to Evander Holyfield. So now Tyson uh he was supposed to face a guy that he could easily beat for number one contender but then that match had kind of a controversial win for tyson so then he has to face him again and it's like when is evander holyfield tyson going to happen when this episode aired it was planned for late 1991 that it was finally going to happen that wouldn't happen though
Starting point is 01:25:47 mike tyson would be in jail by 1992 uh yeah so uh the fight wouldn't happen until 1996 uh by that point tyson was a shadow of his former self and holyfield won it their rematch is the famous ear biting incident a year later thought so who knows if this has changed in a couple months since we recorded this but there are rumors that a tyson holyfield 3 could happen uh they're both in their 50s uh but mike tyson just in their prime yes yeah i mean literally it is incredibly irresponsible and should be illegal for people over, honestly, 45 to have a professional boxing match. But Mike Tyson had an exhibition match against Roy Jones Jr. That was a giant hit on pay-per-view, sold so many that everybody's like, you know what?
Starting point is 01:26:40 We could do Tyson Holyfield 3 three as an exhibition match which means they they're not really trying to knock the other it's not about to knock the other guy out but so it could happen uh holyfield tyson three could happen this year uh though these days to knock the other guy around these days uh what boxing is is uh yeah a famous YouTuber fights a guy who was a great boxer 20 years ago. That's pretty much what top-level boxing is these days. It's pretty sad. But, of course, this is the debut of Dredrick Tatum. What a fantastic name for a character.
Starting point is 01:27:20 Great name. Man, oh, man. It's really good i you you get the sense that george meyer was the boxing fan in the the office probably because just george meyer loves gambling as well and boxing is a fine sport to gamble on but yeah it's uh yeah dredd eric tatum perfect name anytime they he was appearing in episodes up to like a couple years ago yeah uh i would bet he wouldn't be voiced by hank azaria if he were to come back now probably not now so this is hitting everything that early cable was they've had the c-span joke they've had they all have a soccer joke later now they got a boxing joke and it's too bad there's
Starting point is 01:27:58 no american wrestling joke but i i figure cable wrestling was covered by the mexican wrestling yeah i'm gonna count that well it was yeah it's a two for one joke because you say oh this is real the joke is american wrestling is fake yeah and in the early 90s and late 80s i was watching wrestling on just broadcast tv oh sure sure it felt it felt broadcast tv too but i mean yeah the the history of pro wrestling very much like cable changed everything and it was you know you know, Turner Broadcasting Systems had, well, it was called Jim Crockett Promotions back then. And meanwhile, the USA Network in its fledgling days really counted on World Wrestling Federation television. It was much like, you know, a bunch of robots watching old movies on Mystery Science Theater. It was easy time filler.
Starting point is 01:28:44 You got two hours of first run programming right there. bunch of robots watching uh old movies on mystery science theater it was easy time filler you got two hours of first run programming right there for relatively cheap because uh like in some cases the promoters would pay to be on the channel because it was about promoting the live shows people would go to that's that's what those tv shows were and the wrestlers had no health insurance or workers rights yeah uh which which has not changed to this day. Still pretty iffy. When I hear Mike Carlson just say like, look, let's not think about that,
Starting point is 01:29:11 about to enjoy wrestling. It's kind of the way you have to think. Sometime. But yes, we then cut to the communal bathing area at the plant. I think not seen again until the episode mom and pop art in which homer is drawing lenny and carl nude in the showers it's just homer fully dressed drawing them while they're nude it's uh this you know it's a it's very comfortable that i like how comfortable they
Starting point is 01:29:37 all are in front of each other you know this is back when homer had chest hair as well and uh you know blow to toxic masculinity yeah uh well also this you know back then if you wanted to know who won a tyson fight you'd have to hear it on espn like afterwards you know you watch watch the still photography later on the news now the experience is like uh very recently there was the mayweather lo-Paul fight. And the way you watch it is you just, the instant interesting punch happens, it's on Twitter. And it's just like, oh, there it is. There's that punch. I was going to say, now it's not that you have to go somewhere to find out what happened.
Starting point is 01:30:16 It's you have to avoid somewhere before you do. Yep. Yeah. I kind of don't want to see clips of the Logan-Paul fight or the Jake-Paul fight. Yeah, I's you. I kind of don't want to see clips of the Logan Paul fight, but are or the Jake Paul fight. Yeah, but they show it to me all the same on that Twitter. Dang Twitter. I like how Homer is, you know, he's at least share his he's kind of showing off, but it's nice.
Starting point is 01:30:36 He's inviting all his friends over for for the big event. This is when we find out that Burns watches people shower. Yeah, camera. when we find out that burns watches people shower yeah his camera it's uh and i i like with this you hear smithers reply to burns asking who is that man like they don't even have the burns it's a running joke enough now that you don't even have to hear burns ask who it is and i think it's the first instance of burns being a little senile which i like it's we're getting into the burns that i like in which um well I'm sure you have a clip, but he wants to watch the fight,
Starting point is 01:31:06 and Smithers says, well, you are very wealthy, sir. He's like, thank you, Smithers. But it's like he treats it as something unrelated to the conversation. So it's like he's getting a little senile, and I like that. Oh, yes, this is great. He's Homer Simpson, sir,
Starting point is 01:31:18 one of your drones from Sector 7G. Excellent. I'm so keen on seeing Watson versus Tatum, too. I'd even go to an employee's house. I can picture it now. The screen door rusting off its filthy hinges. Mangy dogs staggering about, looking vainly for a place to die. Permission to speak frankly, sir?
Starting point is 01:31:38 Permission granted. Well, you are quite wealthy. Thank you, Smithers. Your candor is most refreshing. No, no, I mean, why don't you pay for the fight yourself? Ah, Smithers, a big title fight is one of those rare occasions that I savor the sights, the sounds, and, ah, yes, the smells of other men. You haven't lost the common touch, sir.
Starting point is 01:32:00 So, Homer, I hear you got the fight. Yeah, that's right. Eight o'clock, my place. Come one, come all. All right! All right! Hey, Mo, how come you never got cable for the bar? Well, it was either cable or the mechanical bull.
Starting point is 01:32:16 I made my choice, and I stand by it. He's still got a lot of slurs in his voice then for old Mo, like, stand by it. The bell of the mechanical bull never seen again no uh that'd be replaced by the love tester i think just uh they're very literal minded about these early episodes in which uh they're building in these scenes to explain things like why does burns need to be there well here's why why don't they just watch it at mo's well here's why so they're just building in these scenes in case you have any questions about like there's the fight must be playing somewhere else no you have to go to homers to watch everyone has to go to homers i remember watching this and uh as a
Starting point is 01:32:50 first time little kid and when burns describes why it's going to an employee's house to watch it my mom said out loud like he can buy it himself and then when smithers said it right after that i was like aha my mom's thinking just like the tv that that burns took it is just like oh thank you for your candor of complimenting my wealth that's pretty great too uh but but i guess unspoken by burns is that he's very cheap that's that's really why he won't do it i don't know i really felt that he just wanted to be in the sweaty presence of other men you know what i believed it and they avoided a smithers gay joke yeah two years later i was gonna say he would have had a statement about that i think i think that i agree sir or something like that that makes two of us yeah you know you're right i can't it felt like a very pregnant pause
Starting point is 01:33:41 after he says the smells of other men and then i kept waiting for smithers to say something else but he just like it was just a a non-gay compliment to burn great minds think alike sir yeah uh i guess yeah smithers not is not gay it's super gay yeah i i also i like how excited barney is for an excuse to hang out with homer you know he probably hasn't done it very much yeah yeah he is like total bros with hom Homer in this episode he's got his arm around Homer during the fight yeah it's cute he's so close it's adorable also this cable stuff it reminds me when I was a little kid I had an uncle and aunt who they were like very we don't own a tv kind of uh style uh they and when they came to visit us we had multiple tvs and i remember seeing my my uncle alone staying up at night watching tv because he's like i have
Starting point is 01:34:35 tv again don't like it it had a real like my wife's asleep let me watch tv i've missed tv so much it was uh it was real i i didn't realize, an adult, could want TV as much as me. That reminds me, in this episode in particular, just how much TV dominated my family. And that still when I go home, a TV will be on just to have a TV on. Yeah. That's pretty much all I do with my family is watch TV. And then Mike actually hates binging television. He doesn't really want to watch more than one episode of a show at a time.
Starting point is 01:35:10 He much prefers to like pace it out. Also, he just generally doesn't watch that much TV. So all of my binging happens solo. Oh, wow. I just visited my mom for Memorial Day weekend. And first time I seen her post-vaccine and it was, I'd forgotten too that like her process in the morning is. How we use electricity can be smarter, your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie well it's the morning i mean
Starting point is 01:36:03 the today show should just be on and it's just the Today Show just on in the background. And sometimes it's annoying. I'm like, I'm trying to talk. I don't like hearing the Today Show. But other times it reminds me like, I guess she did that a lot for me growing up.
Starting point is 01:36:17 Having that on when I was a kid too. Quiet, Henry Hoda is talking. Al Roker's there and no one else from my childhood because they've either quit the show or got uh canceled uh but uh yeah the uh then we cut to uh homer even inviting apu where the joke is that why would homer ever invite the stranger who works at the 7-eleven that's the that's the joke not that him and homer are great friends yeah Yeah, by the Scully years, he is just, hey, what's going on, Apu?
Starting point is 01:36:46 They host his wedding. Yeah. That's how close they are. And we don't see him. Yeah, it's hard. Like, when I watched it, I wasn't even thinking about that. I was like, well, obviously Apu is invited. And we don't see him, but Sanjay is introduced.
Starting point is 01:37:00 Yeah. The brother of Apu. First reference to Sanjay. And also that, like, like yeah apu works there 24 hours a day that's he's he's always there yes there's also just some there's some accent comedy in this scene but but mainly it's just the joke of like apu wouldn't is too hard working to quit his job until he learns it's the fight and the fight is so big that even he will take an afternoon off from his quickie mark job. And that crate of duff, that's a fun design on a big 24-pack of duff.
Starting point is 01:37:32 But yes, then we head over to Lovejoy's office the first time we've seen that. A great design. This is another example of what reminds me of the show being very literal-minded at this point, because it's like, well, Lisa needs this idea to boycott TV. Let's see her get the idea, not just to come home with the idea. I think Lisa should be smart enough to know, like, I just won't watch TV and I'll to prove a point. But she has to have Lovejoy tell her this.
Starting point is 01:37:56 And I feel like Lisa should be a smarter character even at this point. You know, I think Groening and the guys thought it was really smart and subversive that, you know, all of these shows at that time, the joke would be like, oh, look at the dirty reverend or he's such a hypocrite or some joke about that. So the joke here is that Lovejoy is just straight ahead with Lisa and gives her good advice. And I guess the closest thing to a joke with lovejoy is when lisa suggests like should i have him arrested he's like well on the surface that would seem like a great idea but remember only the commandment is why he says it's not a good idea it does make sense to me that she's going to him it's not just like oh i i'm getting the idea of what to do next it's i'm i'm seeking moral guidance because like you told me
Starting point is 01:38:46 this is a sin what do i do about it like you put this in my head so now i need you to tell me how to deal with it like how how uh far do i need to take this and getting my family to stop doing it and then i really enjoy the joke that it's okay to steal bread as long as you don't put anything yeah i do like lovejoy sussing out the like levels of like well that's not a sin but if you enjoy it too much that is a sin there's levels to it and that he thinks lisa is telling him like uh this how you telling me your debt your debt father steals bread it's very funny at least it's like well i don't watch him every day you might i also man lovejoy's uh clock is really cool i kind of i it looks like a 300 clock or something and you need to hire like guys to install it i i wouldn't i wouldn't buy it but it it looks really neat i can't say that i noticed it's a nice decoupage kind of clock uh and so then we head uh back to
Starting point is 01:39:49 this uh home and we have another very realistic to early cable uh era of one of the children secretly watching pornography and you have to uh you gotta bart needs to learn the lesson you gotta be real quick on that channel changer like you hear one footstep of that of an adult like channel changer in hand. You know, you got to stay focused and be ready that I certainly wouldn't have personal experience with that. I'm just saying for other people. Yeah. Was there a last channel button in 1991? Hmm.
Starting point is 01:40:21 And you I mean, at least channel down. Yeah. You have to do That's the fastest. I mean, I was not hosting viewings, but living with my grandma, as I explained before, she also had HBO and Cinemax. So as a curious little kid, you would know the content warnings up front tell
Starting point is 01:40:35 you if there's nudity. If there's not, you change a channel. If there is, you wait upwards of 40 minutes to see that nudity. To see one butt. Yeah. Yes, yeah yeah and of course watching things like the real sex series on hbo oh yes which uh not not interesting no not worthwhile i i saw a good uh pride to tweets about real sex recently i i uh i'll just steal the joke but it was somebody saying like you know these these young queer kids today they don't know the pain of
Starting point is 01:41:05 staying up late to watch a real sex in the hope that there might be one gay segment in the whole thing i never thought of that that was that was the pain of of like i i watched my fair share share of real sex because one time a gay thing happened on it i was like man maybe they'll talk to other gay people on it or Same with taxicab confessions. Occasionally you'd get, I think they'd have at least one homosexual giving a confession. Though those things always seem so fake to me.
Starting point is 01:41:35 They say it's real. They say those are real. The lawsuit is still pending. One that's showing on Top Head Entertainment is Stardust Mammaries mammaries reference to a film that we don't talk about anymore starring a guy who's we don't talk about woodsy allen yeah what's a good old woodsy allen yeah it's it's then a funny dynamic that homer is trying to tell bart not to watch something and then he's trying to get lisa to watch something like back to back i uh but also
Starting point is 01:42:07 just the the the cute thing that homer says like the porn channels only exist for married couples to watch together that's who watches pornography mommies and daddies who love each other very much yes yeah i think my parents were just so busy with working and you know hanging out they i think they never monitored my tv viewing but occasionally they'd be like, you're not watching anything you're not supposed to, are you? And of course, they should trust me. I'm eight. And I'm like, of course not.
Starting point is 01:42:30 You wouldn't lie. Perish the thought, mother. But yes, Lisa informs Homer of her new plan, and Homer ain't liking it. Hi, Dad. I think stealing cable is wrong, so I'm choosing not to watch it in the hope that others will follow my example.
Starting point is 01:42:46 Celeste, you'll hear from me on the matter. Thank you for your time. Hey, Lisa. Racing from Belmont? Horses! Sorry, I'd rather go to heaven. There's something wrong with that kid. She's so moral. Why can't she be more like, well, not like Bart, but gotta be a happy medium? Well, you know, Bart was looking at that racing movie today, and Lisa's losing a little respect for you. Maybe we should think about unhooking the cable. Unhook it? But I love cable!
Starting point is 01:43:21 Well, then maybe you should pay for it. Oh, look, look. Marge, I can't afford it. When I can afford to pay for it, I will. But I can't, so I'm not going to. Homer, I'm afraid that cable has become an evil presence in our home. Marge, I never put my foot down about anything. No. But I am severely tempted to do it over this.
Starting point is 01:43:42 No, Homer. Marge, I'm sorry. I think it's coming down. No, Homer, not over it. It's coming down, my foot. No, Homer. Marge, I'm sorry. I think it's coming down. No, Homer, not over it. It's coming down my foot. That's it, Marge. It's coming down. The cable stays.
Starting point is 01:43:51 The foot is spoken. And Homer making a convincing argument for piracy. Yeah. I can't, so I'm not going to. People that pirate things necessarily aren't going to buy them if they weren't pirating them. Yeah. necessarily aren't going to buy them if they weren't pirating them yeah you know there was a bit recently where the uh the aforementioned freak show uh boxing matches that are happening now uh the company that runs some of them triller uh they found out how many people you know stole it and they actually said like we are going to sue all of you for a million dollars each like
Starting point is 01:44:22 they they didn't follow through on it but their their real trick was like so they said we're gonna sue everybody we have your ip addresses we know who went to these websites and then they said but if you pay us 60 right now we promise you won't be part of that class it was like a ransomware lawsuit pretty much yeah but i don't think anything new has come of it but that yeah even to this day all these companies when they factor in piracy like they i'm sure every streamer is like oh we know how many people uh share accounts and each of those accounts would be a sign up for our thing so we're actually losing like 800 million dollars or whatever it's very silly yeah recently i've seen uh disney and
Starting point is 01:45:06 netflix and other companies toying with the idea of like should we try to enforce password sharing and i wonder if it'll ever happen yeah well you know these i mean the stealing cable the actual crime or uh the the criminality of it like that was a relatively new thing then because the the in 91 because the companies had were able to get the legislatures to make it illegal like a we the jail time kind of thing even which i i i wonder how long until they you know they start talking to local lawmakers about password sharing as well since having uh well actually i still pay for cable tv because they're like look it's uh we'll give you five dollars back on your thing if you technically still have cable tv but but all the streaming man i must spend i seriously think i spend a hundred
Starting point is 01:45:57 over a hundred dollars a month on streaming things and that's my fault because i sign up for too many things i'll admit it but i i was like i need to subscribe to two different pro wrestling channels i'm sorry it's it's 10 bucks it was the japanese one and the american one i gotta spend that mindy kaling had a very funny bit at a comedy death ray show before it was even comedy bang bang about a million years ago about the trailer they used to play in front of things like you wouldn't steal a car you wouldn't steal this and that and she's like well if to steal a car it just required me putting my hands on the car and then i immediately got a car that the other person got to keep their car. Yeah, I'd probably steal a car.
Starting point is 01:46:48 Absolutely. Yes. I will say for all that I joked that like, I don't care if you have an HBO Max subscription. I absolutely never pirate anything. And that is true. Yeah, I feel like I stopped pirating things when things became more accessible. also when i had you know uh beyond college student money just like well now it's actually easier to buy things and to look for torrent sites and to watch i make sure i'm seating enough you know well for me you know the barrier is of like would i pay four dollars for a rental or would i want to go to a website
Starting point is 01:47:19 that has 800 pop-ups and ads for uh and ads for yeah 18 plus only should play this game all over at live i'm like okay yeah i'll pay four dollars i don't i don't want to deal with all these pop-ups the only time i go to those websites is when literally there's no other way to watch it because yeah every like it's like why did you only put this on dvd once how is this not streaming somewhere yeah that's like that episode of diagnosis murder i was trying to watch diagnosis murder illegally i want to give you money for diagnosis murder why why and like i said if i'd liked it at all i would have bought it on dvd now i i became a real dvd connoisseur in the quarantine times because i was like i missed all those extras i missed the commentary
Starting point is 01:48:05 tracks more content yeah those streamers they don't got it even though like occasionally some things on disney plus have a commentary track but that was one of those mid-episode bedroom scenes to re-establish the stakes like for in a classic simpsons and homer showing feet and uh right up in the camera yeah people pay good money for that now uh homer homer putting over putting his foot down into camera was really well posed too apparently apparently jay cogan uh the writer had very specific instructions on the animatic for like no the foot goes down like this marge being like oh no oh don't don't don't do it she knows the foot has authority yeah oh my god oh marge it all it also almost feels like a treehouse scene of marge saying like i think it's an evil presence and she kind of looks side to side like
Starting point is 01:48:59 she's it's can you hear me saying this i guess you know the devil did bring it in there she's marge is feeling it now so we come back for the break homer is watching a bunch of reruns on tv including uh the here's a clip of the friendly itchy and scratchy shorts right of offering up lemonade and then there is a very quick joke that i never noticed until hearing it on the commentary i think you have to know uh i heard it too but yeah yeah the i was poor like you a little clip that's from a very famous infomercial of the time starring tom vu who uh was from a very poor vietnamese family and became like a real estate mogul and a lot of the infomercial is him on a luxury ship surrounded by beautiful women in bikinis yes yeah and you can watch these on YouTube now, but they were a very popular,
Starting point is 01:49:45 funny infomercial of the time that people would know the reference to. And I think SNL might have even done a parody of these. Unbelievably, that parody is still online. Really? Yeah. Is it Rob Schneider? No, it's Mike Myers.
Starting point is 01:49:57 Okay, uh-oh. It was from January 1990. Talking to my caller. It's from January 1990. It's called Real Estate. And he plays Dennisis woo not tom voodoo dennis woo uh and yes he does close his eyes slightly and yes he does do an accent and yeah that that's why i said i'm surprised it's still on the official nbc website when i searched
Starting point is 01:50:21 mike myers uh dennis woo real estate it's uh i i watched it but they're they're blackmailing mike myers they want to work with him again we'll take this down if you're in the sitcom mike leave netflix and come to us mike and we'll take it down the tom voob uh infomercials i never saw them at the time but you can jordan belfort the real guy who was the wolf of wall street he said he was influenced by these uh infomercials of you know and he the the pitch in them was really strong because it's you know a guy speaking from some level of truth that he was once a poor immigrant who then started buying cheap real estate and turning it around and his speech is you know i can see why it was comedy fodder back then too because he has you know a pronounced accent of of being an
Starting point is 01:51:13 immigrant and accents are just inherently funny it's funny to make fun of them right right no we all agree and it was the scam of like no i'm selling you my seminar i'm selling you the idea of coming to my seminar yeah the secret of how he bought all that real estate was he has very expensive seminars and he then uses that money to buy real estate and turn it around uh but and then tom vu apparently uh became a professional poker player and and won a bunch of money and uh he still unbelievably you'd think he would have one of those jordan belford a bunch of money and uh he's still unbelievably you think he would have one of those jordan belford style stories of like and he was arrested in 98 after whatever seemingly not he had no i don't you watch his infomercials and you're like this is has to be
Starting point is 01:51:57 so many levels of scam here but he never got arrested for nothing as far as i can tell and he's he's a free man to this day as as far as my research showed me of Tom Vu. But yes, if you listen. I guess it must all have been legal. That was the only conclusion. It wasn't multi-level marketing. It was just, you know, you come to my seminar and you do whatever you want with that knowledge. If you fail or succeed, it's not my fault.
Starting point is 01:52:19 I just gave you the knowledge. Jordan Belfort's mistake was that he didn't just do seminars. He also committed crimes on Wall Street. He didn't just do seminars about it. Jordan's Belfort, obviously, the plural of Jordan Belfort. That's more than one. Yes. And then you're in trouble.
Starting point is 01:52:36 Well, yeah, that's the real one and Leo playing it. That's the two of them together. now it's but yes if you listen closely in that sequence uh you can hear hank azaria the master of accents uh do do a tom vu impression there uh then but hey but hey that sequence ends with homer even being bored by soccer he's like you know what no we'll even watch soccer uh and then homer gets scared that the cable guy broke into his home to try to sell him a car stereo. His door wasn't locked in any serious way. That is scary. Such a funny line.
Starting point is 01:53:10 Just coming door to door selling stolen stereo. And as a kid, it did bother me that Homer could afford all those bars on his windows, but couldn't afford cable. I was like, wait a minute. He's putting the car before the horse. Very literal, child. I was. And I guess at the end of the episode, Homer returns all those bars because he's like,
Starting point is 01:53:29 well, I don't fear thieves anymore so I can sell it back. And then Bart briefly becomes a pornographer for a very icky scene. I mean, it was like just watching a bunch of you know 10 year old boys watching porno just i don't like it now it makes me feel uncomfortable i'm gonna say i love just him calling it top hat theater something very funny to me he made that cute little top hat yeah he actually built his own top hat i definitely you know millhouse's line at the end makes it all worth it it's a raid that's again when Martin like this is before they wrote Martin is too gay because he actually kind of likes watching what seemingly is a heterosexual porn they're all watching I guess also too you
Starting point is 01:54:18 know it was a realistic thing of you I I as a young man knew a fellow younger boy who uh was the stealer of pornography from his dad and the sharer of pornography with other boys it it was known to happen there were but you're either bart or the bart the friend of bart who had access like that same friend he was the first person i know who had the internet and part of him showing off the internet was showing off naked pictures of course download yes yeah so also bart is just copying his father it's true yeah he he learned that adults can break the rules like he he has to say it directly to homer's face like, I wish I could break the rules like you. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener.
Starting point is 01:55:13 At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. This set piece at the end, though, I really love. It's very like a French farce, all these opening and closing doors and people arriving and leaving. It's very fast-aced and funny and great oh man so i i love barney's very dirtbag move of arriving and like hey i brought beers but he's keeping one
Starting point is 01:55:52 of them he only gives march five beers one of the beers is for him imported generic beer uh just says brow on it's great that brow up who arrives and again the, the joke is Homer. Marge asks, who are you inviting? Homer says, just a few close friends. And then Apu, the guy who should be a stranger to them, just shows up. Well, and we don't get a line from him, but in these shots of everybody around the TV, like Jasper has a front row seat. Yeah, that's true. I assumed Abe brought him with him. Like Homer invited Abe and then Abe showed up. front row seat yeah it's true i i assumed abe brought him with him like homer invited abe and
Starting point is 01:56:26 then abe showed up i i also i do like how instantly offended up who was like what has been implied here and homer homer even suggested he might steal something and uh yeah so we see the commentators at the boxing match they're even lined up like the hbo boxing guys are i think this this commentator is the commentator from the dead putting society the british guy but with different hair yeah they were in love i mean it fits more with boxing but just the the you know uh the british commentator a very high-minded language for a very like lowbrow thing yeah but though this time it just it fits for boxing yeah i then uh you know these days boxing weigh-ins don't happen the same day they happen the day before so uh but that was the rule back then so it was accurate boxing weigh-in rules for
Starting point is 01:57:10 that and i like the guys fighting over who gets to dedicate like him dredrick dedicating the fight his fight as well to his dead manager and then fighting over who gets to use the dead manager like that's funny i like that bit a lot. That's just funny. And he's more of a charitable guy, Dredrick, in these early seasons. Yeah, I brought some imported generic beer. Oh, thank you, Barney. How many people are coming home?
Starting point is 01:57:40 Just a select circle of my friends. Oh, hello, Mrs. Homer. I brought an assortment of jerky. Oh, did you swipe those from work? Oh, certainly not. What has been implied here? Oh, no, sir, there is no love lost between these two warriors. In fact, we almost had a scuffle earlier today at the weigh-in.
Starting point is 01:57:56 I understand you have a special motivation going into this bout. Yeah. I want to dedicate this fight to my manager, Vinnie, who got me here and then passed away just two weeks ago. Any response to that? Yes, I would also like to dedicate this fight to the memory of his deceased manager. You can't do that!
Starting point is 01:58:16 I can do that by myself. You dedicate the fight to your own manager, man! This is just in college. Your own manager! I just want to call attention to the fact that I'm not watching this fight. When Lisa shows up to announce her peaceful protest to everybody, she learned, you know, it's not just about protesting. It's about promoting your protest. Like people need to know about it.
Starting point is 01:58:34 You can't just sit to the side while nobody knows about it. Otherwise, how is it going to be effective? Yeah. That's also what I loved earlier in the episode when Lisa said to Homer, like, this is the last time i'll talk on the matter it's like no it's not you're gonna be telling homer about this many times mo first arrives homer i love that mo says hey homer slam the door in his face and the next time homer opens the door mo will still say hey homer just in the same level like
Starting point is 01:59:02 he is unaffected by a door slamming in his face and i've never stolen a mug from a restaurant all right a bar i have have you every once in a while not anymore the closest i've done is when we went to alamo draft house to watch avengers endgame we got drinks that came in pint glasses with Avengers on it and they were just left out and we're like you can just take these like we did keep those I mean for me it was like I was in college already drunk it's like I could use another glass back at home then Moe even just hands in one as a gift which I also just had to like I I just gagged at seeing Homer. Homer drinks out of anybody you take the beer back from. You're drinking from Barney's? Ugh.
Starting point is 01:59:52 No. Seems clean. God. Horrible. Like blech. And then also just, it's all posed out so well. You're right, Bob.
Starting point is 01:59:59 This moves so fast away. Homer just throws the beer into the closet, turns around, instantly lisa's like blank judging faces like what yeah go outside go protest outside uh the arrival of burns is really great because uh mo is there homer greets him he sees burns behind uh mo he grabs mo like in in one move spins him and throws him and then turns back around and then like slams the door shut the way he poses against the door so i'm like oh god yeah yeah so there's so many funny drawings and just great great posing in here he throws mo off screen in about three frames mo had to just land in the kitchen or something yes yes uh but uh but yes homer has a bit of a freak out at seeing mr burns
Starting point is 02:00:41 he tells bart makes him admit that he steals things not borrows them for him to help him uh and then burns the reveal of burns talking and you think he's talking to homer yeah and then when it shows barney that's my favorite joke in the just just a dead-eyed barney who doesn't respond yes oh but uh but then homer actually talks to Burns oh hello Simpson we were just in the neighborhood and thought we'd drop by hello Mr. Burns would you like to watch the fight
Starting point is 02:01:14 the fight don't mind if I do oh Simpson good news I brought some munchies Smithers the Cheetos our event is set to commence cheese. Smithers, the Cheetos. Our event is set to commence in but a few scant minutes. The anticipation... You Homer Simpson? Yeah. Word on the street is that you have an illegal cable hook. No,
Starting point is 02:01:40 no, it wasn't me. It was my wife. My wife's idea. Yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, settle down, big fella fella just whoa we're just wondering if we could watch the fight oh sure sure be my guest i think this is the first of a recurring bit of homer when confronted by cops at the door instantly sells out his wife and family and drops down to his knees sobbing also i as a kid i didn't get it but the joke that burns spent like a dollar on a bag of cheetos when if he'd spent 500 catering the thing it would be it would be nothing to him like that that's a great joke too i would have loved it if in a callback to mo bringing a mug burns brought over a nuclear power plant stapler that's right yeah that'd be good i i like his electric pencil sharpener that's my favorite though or that homer seems to have stolen an entire computer yes yeah and the bag
Starting point is 02:02:33 of cheetos burns brings over is like a snack size bag like a bag your mom would put in your school lunch yes yeah cheetos not generous you'd have to buy a 24 pack to get that one that you could give home and also a very funny bit of lenny and carl diving off the couch the second they see burns that's great too uh and yeah it's uh it also you know very season two that wigum is not there with with lou and eddie and it was back then they still were with the reality of like well the the police chief wouldn't just show up and everything he's busy doing his job we gotta save Wiggum for official functions uh so Marge goes out and visits Lisa to give her some lemonade to show support Marge believes in Homer Lisa thinks Homer is just gonna stay in there and just enjoy the fight and I think it's
Starting point is 02:03:24 very sweet the way Homer you know they save the best middle seat for Homer because it's his party. Barney welcomes him with a big open. I'm like, hey, buddy, come here. Come here. Like maybe it's maybe it's a quarantine talking, but it also is like that just seems very nice. Just all everybody's friends hanging out, watching, watching a pay-per-view box and breathing the same air.
Starting point is 02:03:44 I know. Literally rubbing elbows. With everybody in town. Yeah. Yeah, all of your friends are in the same town at the same time. This is a super spreader event. Oh, yeah. Actually, yeah, Burns died after this event.
Starting point is 02:04:00 This was like People's Thanksgiving of 2020. I also thought... Vari variant came out of it when when burn sat down on the same couches as abe i was like oh it's his world war ii uh commanding officer sitting there right next to him as they're watching there's a great little joke of dredrick tatum saying he like it says he was in prison in springfield and then barney goes like hey a local boy like that's great he grew up in the mean streets of capital city so the world is growing for them and that's uh and that's when homer has a full-on panic attack at even the idea of of going to jail there there were those cable commercials that were like they found the one guy that they made an example of and sent to jail for
Starting point is 02:04:45 cable and the whole uh cable theft and the whole commercial was like i didn't think i'd go to jail for cable either but you will don't do it and it would end with like the slamming jail cell sound that homer hears in his brain but god the the pacing of that shot like it's full turnaround and then when he just stops looking at margin home uh lisa outside like boom like ah it's so good characters are having vivid hallucinations with their panic attacks it's troubling this family needs to be medicated medication that's the secret now though maybe this is after you know the capital city had been spiking the water supply at this point it could be after so uh but uh yes homer leaves the fight and forces bart to leave too i'm with bart of like no who cares i'm watching this boxing match it's going to be a really great
Starting point is 02:05:33 boxing match uh but homer has a breakthrough and lets everybody know excuse me i hate to interrupt you're judging me but i wanted you to know I've made a couple of really important decisions. Number one, I'm cutting the cable as soon as the fight's over. And number two, I'm not very fond of any of you. Well, back to the fight. Get out, boy! Dad, we may have saved your soul.
Starting point is 02:05:58 Tatum is reeling from the champ's exquisite haymaker. Yeah, at the worst possible time. Three, nine, one. Nine, ten. This fight is history. Stick a fork in it, it's done. A stunning knockout by a thunderous bolo punch in the closing seconds of the 12th round. And Frederick Tatum is the new champion of the world. Everyone to my place for blueberry squishies and microwave burritos.
Starting point is 02:06:45 The greatest fight ever and I missed it. That's the first time Burns tells a story that he'd have to be a hundred to have experienced that's gentleman jim corbett retired in 1903 yeah from my research here so so even in 1990 burns would have to be a hundred for that yeah it also just the comedy of like apu and burns talking to each other like you would not expect that i now see what apu's real plan was he went to the fight so he could then bring everybody back to the quickie mart to buy stuff from him it was a business venture for apu that makes sense but i don't know a lot about boxing but i think a 12 round boxing match is a very uh you know unusually long boxing match,
Starting point is 02:07:25 correct? Uh, yes, honestly, that's why it's the greatest boxing match of all time because some matches go the distance to 12 rounds, but they can be very boring. But if it actually goes to the full 12 rounds and everybody's swinging and having like huge punches every round, that's as exciting.
Starting point is 02:07:43 It could be. And even better that it goes the full 12 rounds, and then there's a knockout at the end, so you don't have the frustration of like, ah, it goes to the judges, a decision. That's kind of frustrating. Instead, at the very end, a knockout uppercut. And not just any old uppercut, a bolo uppercut,
Starting point is 02:08:01 which now it's time for a little history for a little history of this well so i wanted to find this out because the bolo punch actually is a term brought over from the philippines here and so i could actually ask my filipino husband answers about this so uh the story on wikipedia says that the bolo punch is so named because uh it was brought it was mainly a style of punch that is like kind of a wild under hook swing like goes like this kind of uh that was brought over by filipino immigrants in boxing because uh it was done like how you chop sugar cane with a machete that was the story and that that bolo wasolo was a word for punch in Tagalog. Okay.
Starting point is 02:08:47 And so I asked my husband this, and he checked this with my mother-in-law, and that is true to an extent that itak is used more as the term for like a close-up knife move like that, especially in a fighting sense like italki is more used but if you're in a different province bolo would be used in its place too so uh that is it's not just an old uh old wives tale of boxing it is that that is actually the uh the word in tagalog the the language of the philippines so there you go punching has a rich history yes yeah that's the the bolo punch was a a relatively new style of a knockout blow and it's not usually done uh not a lot of matches the fights have been won with it that's
Starting point is 02:09:38 why it's an extra detail of making this an amazing fight that it ends with a big bolo punch of all things also bob you spotted him before but the the arcade boss of uh moe's tavern from the simpsons arcade game he's in the crowd watching this box yes last seen in no disgrace like home in the waiting room yeah i thought so and uh and also another little funny drawing i love is when bart tries to walk off homer grabs him by the neck and sits him down. It's a very funny drawing, though, you know, if you take it as reality, a very violent thing to do. Homer then decides it's time to clip that cable in our last clip. Cable clippers, please.
Starting point is 02:10:19 Here you go, homie. Go for it, Dad. I beg you to reconsider. Tractor pulls. Atlanta Braves baseball, Joe Franklin. Hmm? Whoops. Third time's a charm
Starting point is 02:10:46 I as a kid I thought that was very ingenious that he clipped the show stops when he cuts the cable I like that but you know when I first watched this my family we lived in Marietta a suburb of Atlanta Georgia and we didn't think it was anything special getting atlanta braves baseball like we were living in turner land we didn't realize that it was special that people got tbs all over america and could watch the turner owned atlanta braves baseball outside of their local market and of course i really laughed at that bart is referencing all of the low effort cable broadcasting stuff like tractor pulls joe franklin who had a you know a very uh i don't know you know
Starting point is 02:11:31 joe franklin's fine but he's not like anything to write home about he's like a drier version of um he's like two steps below larry king yeah yeah yeah and he had a a talk show from 50 to 93 so 43 years on the air joe franklin i only knew joe franklin because he was a talk show from 50 to 93. So 43 years on the air, Joe Franklin. I only knew Joe Franklin because he was a guest on a Space Ghost, Coast to Coast. That was the one. And then later I found out that Billy Crystal in his SNL years would make fun of Joe Franklin for being a very bad host. He was just like, so what did you hear for? Looking up Joe Franklin, I saw people playing him on SNL more than I saw pictures of him.
Starting point is 02:12:04 Yes. Also, he had a face for radio, which was even funnier to me. Joe Franklin stayed as a constant of cable. They say on the commentary, Atlanta Braves baseball being a thing nobody would care to watch in 1990. By 92, I believe they were becoming one of the best teams in the league, though. They wouldn't win the World Series until 96, until after we left Atlanta. I mean, that was exciting. Again, the only time, the reason I care about baseball, even a little now, is because I lived in Atlanta when the Braves started doing really well at baseball. And that makes a kid, when you have a championship team growing up that makes
Starting point is 02:12:45 you slightly more interested in in a sport than you normally would be same with like i knew evander holyfield because he was an atlanta guy so in my my brief time as uh as an atlantan or really a suburbanite of atlanta it is a fine delta hub yeah i kind of cared about the san diego chargers for a minute when we were in the super bowl in 1994 i believe but that's how fickle kid fans are though once they lose and it's like well i don't care about sports anymore no more i can't be seen in this jacket well i mean as as a weird teen i would still sometimes wear sports shirts just to be like, please, I'm normal like you. I wear sports team shirts. Please.
Starting point is 02:13:29 I was a strange Bobby Hill style child and I was like, I like this mascot in these colors. Oh, sure. I don't know about this team, though. I was trying to make a boy like me. Eventually, I gave up on the sports shirts and started wearing Far Cry shirts. Far Cry shirts. Not Far Cry. Hey, it's a Far Side comic strip on my shirt. eventually i gave up on the sports shirts and started wearing far cry far side uh far cry shirts not far cry no just hey it's a far side comic strip on my shirt pretty interesting i'm already laughing yeah it's uh you're right bob uh the moral of the story is a bit ambiguous and
Starting point is 02:13:57 just like so lisa wins by guilting homer until he has a panic attack and then he admits like suffer like me yes yeah that's uh that i guess that's the moral of the story but uh as as a vehicle for jokes about cable television i i think it's a good a good one and i mean how can you not like the first appearance a episode that has the first appearance of troy mcclure yeah it's a great time capsule for what these early days of cable were all about and even though it's a bit unfocused i still find it very funny and great direction by rich moore lots of funny uh characters being tossed off screen i think it happens three times in this episode so uh yeah i mean uh it was uh i mean this is a time capsule and i like it for that quality alone just to be like wow i remember when cable was a
Starting point is 02:14:41 fascination now we have moved far beyond that to, this is a stone cold classic Simpsons episode. Thank you, Lindsay, so much for doing the show. That was so fun to have you back on. Wonderful to be back. Thank you. And you are very hard at work with podcasts and TV. I mean, what would you like to promote? I would love to promote um my podcast teen creeps we discuss ya pulp fiction so that's uh arl stein christopher pike all the point horror
Starting point is 02:15:13 books etc uh find us wherever you find podcasts and please please please watch the cartoon I wrote for it's on HBO Max it's called Infinity Train it is about a mystical sci-fi train with an infinite number of train cars each one with its own pocket universe it's a bit of an anthology series because it is about a different protagonist or multiple protagonists every season with its own arc um we are unfortunately done making the show now, but I'm extremely proud of it and loved my time on it. And don't steal it. No. Send Lindsay your credit card statement.
Starting point is 02:15:51 She wants to know. Please. If not, I will sue you for a million dollars. No. You know, we just had on another Infinity Train veteran. Justin? No, Madeline Kiripel. Oh, Maddie.
Starting point is 02:16:05 Yeah, it was really fun having her on with Toby Jones as well. That was a good time. Well, we'll all hold out hope for that book five movie someday. Who knows? I'm even less optimistic now that AT&T is spinning off all of its Warner Brothers properties. Perhaps Warner Brothers Discovery will feel very passionately about pushing Cartoon Network to make more. Not terribly optimistic, but I'm proud of what we put out regardless.
Starting point is 02:16:40 Well, Warner Brothers Discovery spent so much money on that great logo. They probably have no money left for programming. Yeah perfect the perfect logo everyone but uh but but thank you so much lindsey thank you lindsey having you back thank you guys i appreciate being here so thanks again to lindsey k tie for being on the show please check out her podcast teen creeps and also infinity tran on hbo max as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these podcasts one week at a time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up for five bucks a month to get just that, but also access to everything behind our $5 paywall. That includes everything we made behind that $5 paywall for four plus years.
Starting point is 02:17:18 That is a ton of podcasts that you have not heard if you love our voices. Our most recent miniseries we did behind the paywall was Talking of the Hill Season 2 Part 1. That was 11 new episodes of our King of the Hill Retrospective Podcast. And we have another miniseries coming up in the fall of 2021 for people on the $5 level or higher. And there is also a $10 level. When you sign up for that, you get all the $5 stuff, of course, but also access to one mega-long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob is talking about our what a cartoon movie podcast now you may know we have a sister podcast we do twice a month what a cartoon where we cover an
Starting point is 02:17:54 animated series as super in-depth as we do the simpsons now once a month we do the what a cartoon movie podcast where we cover an animated feature film as super in-depth as we cover the shows and that means going often over four hours talking about films like hercules and hunchback of notre dame during our summer of the disney renaissance we just did before that we did shrek and cool world uh the those were fun hateful losses in both cases but we had a lot of fun we've covered films as diverse as akira to a goofy movie to beavis and butthead to america tiny tune adventures everything else in between we are closing in on our third year of doing it over 130 hours of exclusive premium podcasts at the 10 level there at patreon.com slash talking simpsons that you should be checking out.
Starting point is 02:18:47 So as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And my other podcast, by the way, is Retro Knots, a classic gaming podcast about old video games. Find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro knots. Sign up there for two full length bonus episodes every month. Henry, how about you? Follow me, Henry Gilbert, on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Anytime you're looking for updates on my life, follow H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G.
Starting point is 02:19:12 And if you're following me and Bob on Twitter, you owe it to yourself, really, to follow on Twitter the official Twitter account of this podcast network. And that Twitter account is at talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod keeps you up to date whenever new things happen on our patreon on the free feeds whenever there's a poll whenever there's a change in schedule any of that stuff you stay up to date if you follow at talk simpsons pod on twitter so please do that already thanks so much for joining us folks we'll see you next time for another episode of our community podcast. Talk to the audience and we'll see you then. The End through the window. This is where Wall Street gets arrested. Mr. Speaker, if I could call your attention to the retroactive subsidy appropriations
Starting point is 02:20:30 override bill, I refer you to page 4,500. You must think people will watch anything. Live from New Orleans, this is the World Series of Cockfighting. Oh, son of a gun, we'll have big fun in the bayou tonight.
Starting point is 02:20:46 We'd get there quicker if I drove my dad's car. I don't know, Davies. Aren't you ready for church, Homer? Huh? What? Oh, okay.

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