Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Homer's Phobia With Drew Mackie

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

It's time to get tragically ludicrous AND ludicrously tragic this week with our special guest, Drew Mackie from the Gayest Episode Ever Podcast! We explore Simpsons' most queer episode ever, we chat about how it influenced us both in our sexuality and tolerance, as well as how much we became obsessed with pop culture camp. Learn all about that and more in this very special episode, so join the party! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! If you're near Portland, OR, be sure to see our live shows on October 20! Ticket details at tinyurl.com/talkingsimpsonshalloween! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!

This week's episode of Talking Simpsons is brought to you by you. That's right, we're on Patreon now, so head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons. For as little as $5 a month, you can help our show and get all kinds of great extra content on top of that. We've got a ton of great bonus content waiting for you right now, so head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons today. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where it rains naked ladies. I'm your host, JNR Whiskey Liquor Lad Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today. I'm Henry Gilbert, and just look at these graphics. And who do we have on the line?

Tragically ludicrous and ludicrously tragic Drew Mackey. Today's episode is Homer's Phobia. Queer? Yeah, and that's another thing. I resent you people using that word. That's our word for making fun of you. We need it. Today's episode aired on February 16th, 1997, and as always, Henry will tell us

what happened on this mythical day in real-world history. Oh, my God! Oh, boy, Bobby, the final new episode of Gargoyles airs on abc repair work begins on the hubble telescope and christina ricci is chasing that darn cat in theaters nationwide wow so that was the goliath chronicles correct yes when things got bad i mean the budget was severely cut the writing was fine but they changed the premise of the show, right? Yes, yeah.

So Gargoyles, which we will do a What a Cartoon About someday for sure, our sister podcast. But I love Gargoyles so much. They did 60-ish, 65, I believe, episodes regular for first run syndication with a certain budget. And then ABC's One Saturday morning wanted to do another season but they kind of ended the whole show at the end of the syndicated run so then they did the goliath chronicles with a deeply cut budget and a brand new time travel maybe um they were facing basically the clan

but anti-gargoyle oh boy yes huh real. Yes. Huh. Real world issues. And, you know, that show almost had a gay episode, but they couldn't get away with it back then. One of the gargoyles was gay. Demona was pretty racy, I've got to say. And also, so Christina Ricci is in That Darn Cat this week in history. Yes. She would be in a John Waters movie the next year. Pecker.

Pecker. Oh, yeah. Classic. It's a good movie. I like it a lot. And Hubble telescope breaking, that led to a million jokes and a million things i think mystery science theater did that 500 times yeah and two years earlier was a major set piece in the movie yes yeah with the uh using the manos hands of fate to fix it but uh so we have on the line drew mackie drew in case our

listeners don't know who you are can you explain what you do, where you come from, and your history with the show? By the way, no relation. Right, right. Spelled differently. Mine's spelled the right way. Oh, no. Uh-oh.

I got to say, all you EY people, weigh in in the comments. Hey, I actually interviewed the other Bob Mackey once, by the way. Really? Yeah. He's a very nice person, but he spells it like me, so I like him more, I guess. Well, I've known who he is since I was three

Because people would remark that to me for my entire life The other Bob Mackie I'm in his shadow forever You're going to knock him out of the Google ranking at some point I mean he's getting up there I hope he lives a long life But I will soon be the only famous Bob Mackie If I have anything to say about it

My name is Drew Mackie And I guess I'm here because I'm gay. Yeah, that's the only reason. We ask that of every guest before they come on. I am probably here because of one of my podcasts is called Gayest Episode Ever. And it is something I did with my roommate is my co-host. He's a screenwriter named Glenn Lakin. And we look at gay one-off episodes of classic sitcoms. And we did a quickie little 10-episode season earlier this year to see if anyone cared, and it actually did pretty decently. So we're going to do an expanded second season later this year. That's great. I had been a fan of yours on Twitter and in just the social media space,

but I love that podcast you did. The most recent one you guys did was about the Harley and Ivy episode of Batman, the animated series, which was a really good one. Yeah, we're doing some bonus non-sitcom episodes in the hiatus. And we really want, we just wanted to talk about Batman, honestly. But fortunately, that episode is really, really lesbian-y. Yeah, I remember you have a, you make a good point that you don't think heterosexual female roommates hang out in their underwear all the time. I have been told that some women do do that after posting that episode.

People reached out and said, no, we do that. I'm like, oh, okay. Wow. Did they make a comic version of that that was even racier? Oh, yeah. I thought so. Bruce Timm. Bruce Timm was having some fun in the Harley and Ivy comics, for sure.

Yeah. Horny, horny, horny man. Horny little man. Hey, no, no judgment here. But, Juan Drew, what's your history with The Simpsons? I started watching with the 89 Christmas special And I was trying to think why I would have watched it And I can't remember because I didn't know who Tracy Ullman was

I think the commercials just must have convinced me that it was something I had to see And I've never stopped watching The Simpsons I have seen every episode of The Simpsons. Amazing. You're in the episode one club with me and Henry and 30 million other people. So it's an exclusive club. And if you were born after that episode, shame. Shame on you. Yeah, I think I'm the same age as you guys.

You guys are born in 82 or so? Yeah, we're both 36 as of this recording. Wow, the 82 club here. The perfect age for The Simpsons. I actually wanted to say a really funny, The Simpsons, of course, taught me about movies and you learn a lot about the world through watching The Simpsons as a kid

because that's the first time you hear various things. But The Simpsons is actually responsible for my first interaction with gay culture in a weird way. I was in a bookstore and I saw a magazine that had Waylon Smithers on the cover and being a child who liked The Simpsons, I walked in a bookstore and I saw a magazine that had Waylon Smithers on the cover. And being a child who liked The Simpsons, I walked over to it and was like, oh, I want to see this magazine.

It was a gay magazine. It was called Genre Magazine, which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist anymore. And the cover line was, is Waylon Smithers one of us? Oh, wow. And I felt a rush of shame and embarrassment because I knew I was not supposed to be looking at a gay thing. And I put it down and walked away. And in prepping for this episode, I was thinking about that. And I found it on Amazon.

Someone was selling a single copy of it. And I bought it. And it's being shipped to my house. And I'm going to frame it and put it on my wall. Do you know what year that's from? I'm just curious. 96. So I was in eighth grade or so. This was a very important episode to me as a kid

too uh because yeah i i am also gay like drew you're you're outnumbered here bob thank god for hiring quotas there had been gay content on the simpsons before and i had interact interacted with gay culture before and i think i knew to some extent that I was gay then as much as I wanted to recognize it. But then having this show deal with it, it made me think about it more and in different ways, for sure. Especially, I think I had actually seen a John Waters movie before this. But this episode had a huge impact on me. Right.

Which movie was it? It was Hairspray because it was aired all the time on Comedy Central. It was one of those Comedy Central endless rerun movies. And I love Hairspray. It's a great film. It's a great film. I watched that like eight times on Comedy Central, actually. But yeah, this episode, I'm sure I had some shitty beliefs about gay people being a kid from Northeast Ohio, a teen. I think my stance was at the time like, well, I'll never meet a gay person and I'm sure they're fine, but that's just not something that happens here. And I'm sure I did meet gay people and didn't know about it at age 14, but yeah, I just, it was a very different time

for me, but this episode did really make me think about it more. And I remember, uh, you know, after the episode aired, I would go online and read all the old TV Simpsons comments about the episode. And I remember one guy was like, I didn't tune in for a lesson in tolerance. And I was like, that guy sucks. So I think seeing those responses helped me be a little more open-minded. Like, oh yeah, Homer's wrong, and let's be nicer and more accepting and things like that.

And now I know tons of gay people, tons of trans people. My life is much different. But just thinking back to me being 14 and being like, I'll never know a gay person, but I'm sure they're very nice. I think I basically thought that too at one point, and then look what happened. What did this episode mean to you in first airing, Drew? I didn't really know. So I was 14, and I just started.

I went to an all-guys high school, which is not the place I should have been. But I did not really realize I was gay in a conscious way. So I think I just didn't talk about it to anyone because it felt weird and I couldn't figure out why. And that was most of my interaction with pop culture to that point in my life is like, this is resonating in a weird way, but I'm not going to investigate that. So it was a quiet little thing I had. The less investigation, the better when you're in the closet. It's like, no, I can't think about these things. is yeah i i think too this affected me

in deeper ways than i realized because the episode as a kid i grew up i identified with bart and here this story is a it's about their interaction with gay culture but it's also about what if your father thinks you're gay and is trying to investigate and also judge you for that fact i mean uh i am a straight person but i have to say I could identify with Bart at the time with the concept of a parent thinking you might be gay and sort of asking leading questions and maybe being concerned for you. I mean, I guess they're happy now

that I didn't turn out that way, but at the time they were asking a lot of questions I thought that were strange at the time. It's like this boy's into too many things that are feminine and not like sporty enough. So let's figure this out figure this out right but in reality it's pro wrestling and gladiator movies that'll really get you yeah exactly yeah i well no i actually i got questions like that from my dad as well about um the big one was my love of anime specifically ranma one half because just it had all these like girls and flowers and stuff in it, which

if I was getting excited by the anime girls, then that should be a positive for him in the not gay quotient there, Dad. Right. Yeah, my parents never asked me anything and I don't think it ever occurred to them I might be gay. It was kind of a surprise, but whatever.

I love my mom. She's great. The questions I would get, and I still get them today, but whatever. Yeah, I mean, I love my mom. She's great. But the questions I would get, and I still get them today, is like if I have a female friend, let's say her name is Becky. I don't know any Becky, so this will be safe. Like, oh yeah, I was hanging out with Becky the other day. Oh, isn't she just gorgeous?

She's just so beautiful, isn't she, Bob? Yeah, sure, like, okay. Just kind of, just check in with me. Like, do you still like women? Yeah, cool, let's move on. When I came out to my mom, her reaction was that I couldn't be gay because I am too much of a slob. So I'm busting down stereotypes here.

Way to go, Henry. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. But I mean, John Waters, too, this opened me up to his movies. I still haven't seen every John Waters film, but I... I don't think you like Pink Flamingos. That's the one I'm not going to watch. I don't want to see that i get it i'm glad he made it but i uh i'm mainly against the animal cruelty i can deal with the eating poop oh i didn't know about the animal i think

that chicken is killed oh yeah in the movie i assume that was the reason that you were being told not to watch that movie the poop eating yes that was why i wasn't gonna watch i didn't know about the chicken thing oh okay but cereal mom But Serial Mom was another of my, that's a really fun movie too, as is Pecker. I like that a lot. And there was one about sexual deviancy that had Tracy Ullman in it. I forget the name of it.

A Dirty Shame, which came out in 2000, either four or eight. And it's the last movie John Waters has directed. He hasn't directed anything in more than a decade. Yeah, he's getting up there, I guess. I mean, the last one I saw was, I saw Cecil B. Dementmented uh it was in a bar and the sound was off but i got the gist of it uh and he still i mean he well i don't know how active he

is like this year but up until recently he was like he hosts things he does talk he was at our like one of the many marches we've had out here. Yeah, he was at Sketchfest this year. Yeah, he came for SF Sketchfest in January. Our co-SF Sketchfest brother, John Waters. We're at the same rank as him now, believe it or not. Well, his casting I thought was great because, and this is a problem to this day still, that in this case, they cast a gay actor or, well, a gay man to play a gay man. And when that informs the choices that an actor makes and it lets him kind of run things by it rather than casting a hetero guy as the part instead it's the same with like this this comes up still to this day of casting people in roles it's like

gay roles or trans roles who are not that thing and so it just it ends up being at best uninformed and doing a disservice, doing the opposite of what they, I would think they hope to do in those kinds of roles. I mean, Harvey Fierstein set a precedent in the show for playing a gay character. It's funny to see just in the eight years since the show has started that a lot of the, a lot of the quote unquote gay jokes in the Simpsons up until now have been dancing around the idea of saying the word gay. Like we're hinting this person is gay. That is funny because we're not allowed to talk about this on TV. But now we

have an episode about an explicitly gay character where the word gay is said, the word queer is said. It's very interesting to see. And also John Waters loved this script and they asked Harvey Fierstein back for a later episode. I believe it was called Three Gays of the Condo in which Homer gets kicked out of the house and lives with three gay men he did not approve of the script he's like this is just all stereotypes i don't want to be part of this so basically it was hank azaria doing his birdcage character yeah right and scott scott thompson kids in the hall was the other grady that's right yeah right and he did a great job but i could see harvey fireslame being not as into this that script as john waters was into this script totally

yeah and john waters performance he kind of underplays it in a way that a straight actor might have taken this as an opportunity to really go wild with it and indulge in a lot of mannerisms he might not get to do playing a straight character. But as a gay person, John just played it like a person, which is the right way to go. And that's probably why this episode succeeds

as much as it does. Yeah, even in the animation too, he is just a normal guy. He's not the flamboyant gay man that homer wants and in fact the director was saying he had to give instructions to his layout people and his artists like no no limp wrists no none of the stereotype stuff you think of when you think of gay men in 1996 like let's just have him act like a normal person quote-unquote normal person right i don't want to put that baggage on him yeah like he is a lover of camp and pop culture garbage before he is a gay man the character of john like he has more to him than

just his sexual interests as well that also made me think as a kid like uh these are all things that i'm into what are they saying like as a mystery science theater loving kid i i love campy stuff and this episode told me this is the definition of what you like, Bob, at age 14. You like camp. I'm like, oh my God, really? This is who I am? Re-watching this episode for my podcast, and then again for you guys,

I am just blown away by how much I did end up like John. Like as just a nerdy gay man who likes like mid-century graphics and old vintage stuff that i shouldn't have an association with but i do and i also have a mustache um different sort of mustache but like yeah like that that's maybe as close as seeing a version of myself on screen than i've ever seen really i mean in 1997 i was online posting about box art of video games and things like that so that whole like how why do you like art why do you like art why do you like graphics why do you like boxes yeah it's like can i still like these things as an adult

the truth the truth is yes you can in fact my entire job is that so i guess you know you can see this now 21 years later this i think was way ahead of its time and it i think things have changed it shows you how much has changed and also not changed in america with regards to homosexuality and views on it yeah i mean they beat will and grace by a year i believe will and grace is a 98 show and i think they beat ellen to the punch in terms of having a um an important gay episode by just a few months yeah just a few months yeah her coming out and that was like a horrible i mean it was an important moment for television but it sort of ruined her career for a bit until our talk show comeback and laura derern's career too. She couldn't be hired. She said she wasn't hired for years after

she did that episode. Is that true? I've never heard that before. I guess she did kind of blink out for a little bit there. Yeah. Which, you know, also happens to an actress who dares to become 34 as well. That is true. Yeah. Those things coincided. But yeah, Laura Dern, I saw her say this in the last few years, she was on Ellen's talk show. And she talked about, you know, how much she loved being part of that episode and how she was honored to be in it, but also how coincidentally after that episode of Ellen, she didn't get work for a few years. And it's sad that stuff's like that. I guess one Debbie Downer on this i would bring up is this is a very like white and male view on queer culture yes say yeah it's progressive for 1996 broadcast television but i will say this also feels like sort of how much a poo about nothing was sort of an apology for all of the poo jokes i think this is sort of an apology for all of the gay jokes although they will they will still make gay jokes after this in, there's a really bad one coming up in an episode in the

future. But I feel like this is younger writers with maybe better perspectives on certain issues trying to be like, let's try to make this better. Let's try to make this view of these kind of people better for our viewers. And I think for 1997, it does succeed uh it is very much a 1997 episode though agreed yeah yeah i mean there's no there there are no lesbians in this there's no trans people there's not even even at the anvil it's all white guys too it's it's yeah there's no no even african-american or just non-white uh gay people drawn into it so it's just how it ends up but i think you know it's it's made by i think every person other than john waters i think every person involved in this was

a straight gay man a straight white man except for a couple ladies in the writer's room so it's it's to be expected but it's not i don't want to say this like makes it a bad episode or anything far from it and and it's but that's part of going back on and viewing these things too is like well it was a different time 21 years ago this was a very advanced first time but you can still want more and and expect more out of that stuff yeah this is a very long preamble but this is a very important episode a very special episode if you will it won the emmy for that year this won them the emmy and it taught bill oakley and josh weinstein submit the touching you know characterbased story, not your 3D animation episode, if you want to win an

Emmy. One interesting bit too, especially about how they cast John Waters, and they asked him if any of the script would be offensive, which is an important thing. Check in with the actors about this. And they said that the only thing they changed was that in the scene with the queer line that it was originally quote fag unquote so that was the second queer line not the first one i think it's both i think in just in the parts where homer said queer that it was fag instead i hate even saying that word but yeah well it's weird because queer had been kind of reclaimed as like a term used by the community and i'm not sure fag really has been reclaimed the way queer has so it would be weird that they would use it in the kitchen scene yeah i yeah i

wondered about that i think queer is a much better choice i we just read the bill oakley account of that on the no homers board i want to say what he might not be saying or what he might not be remembering is at the end where he says he's a fruit. And I think maybe that could have been the times he said he's the other F slur. Oh, that would make a lot more sense. It feels like it would fit better there, maybe.

In writing, it would work better. It's just, you said it beforehand, Bob, but I'm really glad Homer doesn't say that in this. Yeah. That would be heartbreaking to hear Homer say fag. I don't want to hear that. I would never want that to be on the record of the Simpsons episodes. And also, on top of that, this is a very hard episode to watch just because I don't like seeing Homer act like this.

This is an issue he has not had to confront yet in the series. And the way he acts is just very kind of disappointing. Even though Homer is the bad character, he's the guy you're supposed to laugh at because of his his ridiculous beliefs but i still like oh i don't want this homer i don't want to see i want the fun stupid homer yeah it's not jerk ass it's archie bunker homer and archie bunker is kind of hard to listen to in 2018 but like i think it's weird that it seems out of character to me because just a few episodes ago, you guys just did the space coyote episode, right? Yep.

He calls the GBM on the phone and you just hear Homer's, like you assume that that person is describing sex acts to him on the phone. And his rejection of that is actually very polite. Like he's not horrified. He's not grossed out. He's just like, no, I don't want to do that. And hangs up the phone and leaves. So there's examples of him encountering gayness before, and he's not as angry about it, I guess.

Yeah, same with he famously went to a lesbian bar and only left because they didn't have a fire exit. Or when he thought Mr. Burns was coming on to him, he's like, maybe a little curious. But the answer is no. Yeah, and also he thinks voting's a little fruity yeah no i i think they had to put a little they had to they had to scoop on a little extra homophobia on homer than i think he normally has i i don't necessarily up to this point as if you were as a kid i didn't necessarily see homer as a homophobe like i didn't think he

he seemed like a guy who's like yeah he's gays whatever like but oh also homer thought that a gay pride parade was a mustache festival that's true he's just he was naive at best but i mean other other shows i think um other sitcoms at the time most characters were homophobic just implicitly for the sake of humor like Like every episode of Friends, take that for example. Kind of impossible to watch. I'm looking forward to talking about that one in some detail. But yeah, it's so strange that even after Chandler got married, they still used his apparent homosexuality as a punchline.

Yeah. Over and over. Easy joke. Well, another good example of that, and I hate praising Roseanne now, but... You can still praise the original show. It's still very good. The original show is a very gay positive show. And in their gay episode, the famous one where Roseanne is kissed, Roseanne thinks she is very tolerant of gay people. But after she's kissed by Mariel Hemingway, she then starts

freaking out and she's like, oh, maybe I'm not as tolerant as I thought I was. That was an interesting course to take that with the character. And they had to do like a weird dance to get that on TV. I think the kiss had to be Roseanne being sort of kissed against her will almost, and then shot in a certain way where you didn't see both of their faces touching. It was like the back of Roseanne's head. It was like a very specific way they had to do it network-wise. Two gay people can't kiss and mean it.

That would destroy America. Yeah, I actually interviewed the guy who wrote that episode. Oh, wow. And that'll probably be out by the time this comes out. But he talked a lot about ABC's pushback and how awesome Roseanne and Tom Arnold both were about making sure that got on air and putting up a big stink and talking to news outlets about ABC's pushback and how awesome Roseanne and Tom Arnold both were about making sure that

got on air and putting up a big stink and talking to news outlets about ABC's skittishness about showing a lesbian kiss on screen. And it's a really interesting story and it just hurts all the more that that's not who she is anymore. Yeah. I mean, that show was such a leftist and Marxist look at working class families. I really hate that she turned into what she became. And now she's being killed off on whatever they turn it into. Allegedly, yeah. I heard she's going to be killed off

via opioid addiction. That's one of the rumors, which is a very working class fate to suffer. So it all works out. How do they even talk about it? It seems weird. If they mourn her extensively, that'll be weird because of the stigma

around Roseanne now. They also just can't mention it in an offhand matter in the cold open and never talk about it again. It's just going to be very weird. Well, the name of the show is Roseanne. The show is not The Conners. Right. I didn't watch a second of that new show because they got the point wrong. Roseanne was not the Archie Bunker

character of that show. She never was. She was surrounded by intolerance and she fought the just i mean she she needs help i hate even i don't even want to make fun of her it's just like she she needs help she's trouble i agree i don't want to talk about her because i'm scared she's gonna yell at me on twitter oh yeah oh yeah for sure so do you want to get into the writer of this episode yes part of our very long preamble this is all very important so we have a new writer alert it's been a while i believe ron haugi uh he did not go to harvard so how'd he get in he must know a guy i guess but he did start his writing career at the national

lampoon magazine when it wasn't just a brand you put on shitty direct-to-dvd movies like national lampoon's boob trip or whatever whatever they make i don't know what the latest one is it's got to be terrible so the first his first tv writing credit was one episode of the short-lived carol burnett show reboot in 1991 that only lasted nine episodes i remember watching this but it was only on for like nine episodes i think my grandma was into it because she loved the old carol burnett show so following his first tv gig he moved to the world of animation so he is credited for the story in three rugrats segments all pretty good rugrats that i remember and he wrote for seven episodes of in living color over the span of three years so i'm guessing he just submitted sketches to them as a freelancer and

they were all like character-based sketches like the homie the clown sketch or whatever so it makes sense a freelance writer for living color he wrote five episodes of rocco's modern life pretty cool and he wrote for seinfeld briefly as a freelancer, he wrote the story for the episode The Fusilli Jerry, and he wrote the episode The Marine Biologist. That's a great episode.

That's a fantastic Seinfeld. That's one of the best ones ever, the Marine Biologist one. Both of those episodes are about things getting stuck in holes where something was not supposed to be stuck. That's true. There's a trend here.

And that'll make sense when you hear what he works on next. He was a big, big part of Ren and Stimpy. After famous pedophile John Chris Feluci was fired and took a lot of the Spumco staffers with him, they reformed as games animation to make more episodes. Those are all very good, by the way. They hired Ron Hauge. He is not like a guy who writes cartoons via storyboard, although he is an artist, but he worked on the show from 92 until 96. So up until John Kay was fired until the end of Ren and Stimpy in 96. And also he is not per se a storyboard artist or a layout artist, but in one of my favorite episodes of Stimpy's cartoon

show in which Stimpy makes a cartoon, Ron Hauge made the Stimpy cartoon. That is his cartoon in Stimpy's cartoon show. i know that wow that's a big deal so the simpsons on the commentaries he's on a lot of them because he was on the show for 13 years he was eventually co-executive producer of the show they liked having an artist in the room so they could he could draw like ideas they were thinking of and sort of conceptualize it better that's got to be helpful i mean they really appreciate that sam simon sam simon was doing that from the beginning on the simpsons in his years that's right yeah he designed like mr burns and auto and a lot of big characters like

that just imagine if they had put brad bird in that room at the time but well i hear brad bird is a little difficult to work with so maybe maybe it wouldn't have worked out for him i would think perhaps so yes uh ron haugi worked from 96 to 2010 um and again he rose to the rank of co-executive producer no credits after that i have to assume he And again, he rose to the rank of co-executive producer. No credits after that. I have to assume he's just counting his money for the past eight years. I would think. Unless he went through a bad divorce or something, he probably is set for life.

If you're a co-executive producer on The Simpsons, you made pretty good money, I would think. But I don't know about that Ren and Stimpy background on him. That's amazing. Yeah, he's all over the games era of Ren and Stimpy uh writing credits like creative credits it's really interesting and those again those are really good episodes they get shit on a lot but I think the public downfall of John Christopher Lucey the Ren and Stimpy creator has helped the the post him episodes rise in stature and get people to appreciate guys like Bob Camp more as the, you know, good parts of him. Bob Camp did nothing wrong.

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or just head over to shirtsicle.com. Before we start the episode proper, one note on the couch gag that I wanted to point out. So very much, okay, again, this episode is very much a product of 1997. The couch gag for this episode is the Simpsons living room is an AOL interface that won't load. It's very important. It is very fixed in time because in December of 1996, that is when AOL adopted the flat rates in which you paid per month instead of per hour and that was the month everyone i knew in high school went on the internet for the first time and because of that aol services shit the bed hardcore so things were rough for a long time

after that but this was a huge moment in getting people on the internet the idea of a flat rate for web access was unheard of on this scale until this time. So I feel like this was referencing that specifically. That would have been about when my family got internet, actually. That checks out. Me too, yeah. We were on AOL. That sound of the clunk, clunk, clunk, it just filled me. It made shivers go down my spine of remembering horrible modem dial-up speeds. Though actually, ALL, I was never an ALL customer because my family, when we finally did it,

we went from zero to 60, basically, internet-wise. We had no dial-up internet. And then in 97 or 98, my dad gets a job at whatever Comcast was before it was Comcast. And so he's like, well, I work here. So here, Ethernet, Internet. We got it right here. Like we were the coolest kid on my block downloading all the porn fast for everybody.

I was stuck on dial up until 98, but then it was porn central with my Roadrunner cable modem. But so the episode starts with Bart's Lotto, which when I, quick tales of the Henry VHS, but when- We need a theme for this. But every time I would replay this VHS at home, before I had memorized the episode order of everything, this opening would confuse me. I'd be like, which one's this? I do not remember this Bart's Lotto thing and the Penny thing. It always confused me until they pick up the liquor bottle later. I'm really upset that no one has made a wiki for Talking Simpsons yet,

because all of these stories should be archived. Like every episode should have a tale of the tape of some sort associated with it. So I can't take credit for it, but my co-host has, who is a screenwriter, has a very interesting read of the lottery scene that Bart's running. So he's putting almost all round things in the dryer, like balls and pieces of fruit. And there's one pink shoe that doesn't really, shouldn't go there. It's not round. There's no explanation for why it's there. And the pink shoe pink shoe that doesn't really, shouldn't go there. It's not round. There's no explanation for why it's there. And the pink shoe is the thing that jams the dryer, disrupting the home literally,

and then also literally causes the dryer to become flaming. And I'm like, oh. I'm sure that was not intentional, but I'm like, I like that read. That's a good analysis. I enjoy that read. I'll buy it. That is so good. Glenn, I said your theory. That's a good analysis. I enjoy that read. I'll buy it. That is so good.

Glenn, I said your theory. They heard it. Happy? All right. Everybody got their ticket? Then get ready for today's Super Bardo jackpot drawing. Come on, Callum. And round and round.

Uh-oh. Come on, Kalo! And round and round. Uh-oh. No refunds. Force Majeure. Read the back of your ticket. Oh, $900. Well, we'll have to dip into the retirement fund again i love to hear all the bones cracking in homer's legs as he carries that water cooler reservoir out to the mailbox the sound mixing of all that is just like oh like the the sound of a breaking dryer and the sound of homer's like knees falling apart are both so hilarious i wonder if the vibrating uh dryer was a reference

to brother can you spare two dimes where uh herb bought marge a new washer and dryer because the previous ones were like racing across the floor and scaring the cats so now he's destroyed the one that herb bought them and the the fire breathing out of it is quite good too it gets really intense yeah this is uh this has some really great animation in this one uh that they mike b anderson his team did did very well they're actually referenced in um this document that we've been suggested to look up before by previous guest ian jones cordy the uh storyboarding the simpsons way and they mentioned a couple examples from this episode about how camera moves and exciting angles, like the fun way, the more intriguing way to do Simpsons than just like a flat reading or a flat appearance of the character. Yeah, this is a particularly beautiful episode.

And considering that it's a gay story, it didn't need to have like big action scenes. It gets at least two that I can think of off the top of my head. And the anvil scene. So that's what I want too. And I really love, we're not there yet, but I love John's store and just all of the things that are drawn into it. A lot of detail went into all of the kitschy things that he's selling there.

Right. And force majeure, according to dictionary.com, is unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract. That's the, in case you were confused, I was confused by that for a long time. I did not know what that meant as a kid. I'm sure that's in all of the contracts you don't read in iTunes and your phone and everything.

You just scroll to the end and hit agree. I asked my mom after this episode what force majeure was. So this is another thing that Simpsons taught me. Yeah, Simpsons starts a lot of conversations with parents with children, I think, including I would bet this episode made a lot of kids ask their parents what is gay what is a gay thing people do that i didn't ask that about this episode because i was old enough to feel shame and not ask my parents but i i had that though when i didn't necessarily watch philadelphia with my parents but i like watched them watching it like they rented a video of it i asked like

well wait what is being gay like it was after the scene where denzel washington's character gets hit on by a man in a grocery store and i was like well wait what's why is why is denzel washington so upset about this and my my mom explained homophobia to me then that was a that was a depressing thing. But anyway, so they lose $900 of pennies. So they are going to sell off their antique, which this has a real antiques roadshow vibe to this bit here, which the Confederate soldier. Yes.

Yeah. Well, just the assumption that you have this antique that you're then going to get priced by somebody. It antiques roadshow had been on since 79. It's in its 40th season now actually it's how did i never hear about until like the late 90s i i don't know i never heard about it either until it felt like in the late 90s every show referenced it like fraser had an amazing antiques roadshow episode

it's old enough to be on antiques roadshow how about that everybody no one's ever said that before now the uh the antiques roadshow episode of fraser was great because they have there was like this kind of like a liquor bottle statue that marge has but this bear that the father had and then they find out it's worth a bunch of money and when they get the they think it's proof that they're like the children of the czar and that they're related to russian czar and then they find out there was actually a piece that was stolen by a sex worker from a Russian Tsar, that that's who their grandmother was. Oh, really?

Oh, really. Niles. But so, yes, we head to Kakamimi's here. Great name, by the way, for a gay man's kitsch store. And the design of the alternative girl who works here is really good too yeah i have a crush on her i i think the artists were working on some of their crushes in this design that's the kind of girl who would work at that store absolutely absolutely i don't think we ever see her again though right i she looks like she only exists in that one scene as far as i can remember just

interact with skinner yeah yeah well because they don't want that to be where they introduce john but they do want to have that fun scene with Skinner. So they need to create an employee. But just for that scene, though, I would guess like John can't run that place by himself. I would think he employs a lot of like cool, hip 20-somethings who have their own kind of like Empire Records type fun adventures. I think this scene also, like counting John too, might be my first ever notion of like hipster identity because John kind of is that too. It's actually, looking back on this scene here, feels like a pilot for Mission Hill. It is in the same world.

Yeah, I can see that. Hmm. These campaign buttons are all partisan. Don't you have any neutral ones? May the better man win. Let's have a good, clean election, that sort of thing? No, but we do have some old shirt buttons. They're kind of kooky and fun.

Missy, you just talked yourself right out of a sale. Hey, Lise, check it out. Pogo stilts. These were banned in all 50 states. What happened? Poor Homer So you mentioned Mission Hill Henry I remember on the commentary

Josh and Bill were talking about How they wanted to do an episode About Lisa Discovering the joy of camp They couldn't get it to work I believe that eventually came out In Mission Hill When Kevin discovered

The plan 9 from outer space To get in that episode And got into it right? Yeah I married a gay man From outer space And that was very much About camp that episode That got into it right i married a gay man yeah and that that was very much about camp that episode that's a good catch yeah totally is his relationship with

wally in that episode is very similar to what they would have had in their original idea of like lisa hanging out with the gay man who teaches her about campy things it's it's very that that we talked about that actually a bit with the demograph the writer of the episode in our interview with him it's which i think he said is one of if not his favorite thing he's ever written yeah you're right so i love that skinner this is such a great lame skinner yeah it's a perfect skinner joke he's only in the show for like eight seconds and then he's offended by the idea of cookie shirt buttons yes Yes. And also non-partisan. No one would own a non-partisan campaign button.

You wear a campaign button to root for one side or another. May the best man win. I think Skinner is the perfect centrist in that way. He's very boring and non-committal. Spineless. And these kitsch doors, I've been to a number of these. And I've seen them as a kid growing up but i've been to a few too because multiple uncles on my mom's side most of my mom's side lives for these stores like and i love them too but my mom was just telling me like my uncle

howard came to town and they're like we're going thrift store shopping and they go and buy all of this stuff and look for and buy all of this stuff and look for all these kind of campy things i was just in portland and i went to two of these stores uh and i'll tell you the owners are not fun like john luckily at the one store there was a young uh female clerk who was very nice and the mean owner wasn't there the other store just like an old grumpy guy but i think it's like i've turned my hoarding into a business come on in a lot of these stores are like that i I wish there were more Johns of the world. That's most comic book stores too.

That too, yeah. I think these kind of stores make for a really weird cross-section of America where you have like kitschy gay dudes and also young hip people and also like real middle America people that are not kitschy and are not hip, but still like the same crap that we do. Yeah. I think they're in cases of like middle America folks, they just remember a thing from their childhood and they want to buy it again, even if they don't love the huge umbrella of campy garbage that we're obsessed with. I remember the comic book Hate.

It's a great alternative comic book. Around this era of the 90s, the two two main characters they open a kind of kitschy shop cynically like you dumbasses want to buy all this flintstones crap you're so stupid uh and the art the artist was obviously like looking down on nostalgia and looking down on this sort of kitschy stuff but it's a different take on this and uh those pogo stilts are why i was afraid to ever have a pogo pogo stick or stilts as a kid. I didn't want either of those things. I've successfully pogoed on a pogo stick, I think, like twice in a row.

Wow. That's it. You didn't die, so you're good. You don't have to do it again. I've had that experience. I stood on a skateboard once. That was enough. A pogo ball, I had a little better luck with those.

Did you ever have those moon shoes that were like trampolines in your shoes? They were horrible ideas. They didn't work and you fell constantly. Maybe it was just me, though. I think they were just there to shatter your ankles. They didn't seem like it. I don't think they're sold anymore. There's probably a reason. They're like jarts for your feet.

I don't know why my parents bought them for me. This seems like a very bad idea on every level, but they thought yeah, he could not die with this and uh they run into a robbie the robot facsimile the uh the robot from clank clank you're dead which the poster even is a great parody of the of the classic poster for forbidden planet right yeah robbie the robot which or not to be confused with robbie the automaton which we'll be confused with Robbie the Automaton, which we'll be seeing soon in the series. And that's not the Lost in Space robot either.

No, very different. They fought each other in a classic episode of Lost in Space. This is us doing the kitschy stuff right now. What are we doing? I was just going to say that I have not seen Forbidden Planet, but I only know about it through the opening song from Rocky Horror. Yes. Yeah, that was my reference for it which comes from a very similar energy is this episode too

like that rocky horror picture show is all about a queer celebration of these can't with a campy things of 20 years ago and uh and speak but to have it explained better, we've got John arrives on the scene. Homer, look. Look, a TV guide owned by Jackie O. Oh, you should see the crossword puzzle. She thought that Mindy lived with Mark. Give her a break. Her husband was killed.

Oh, I know. Wasn't that awful? Hi, I'm John. Can I help you with anything? Yes. I have something that I'd like to sell. Please tell me it's your hair. No. It's an heirloom my grandmother'd like to sell. Please tell me it's your hair. No.

It's an heirloom my grandmother passed down to me. A very rare old figurine from the Civil War. Please don't construe our ownership of this as an endorsement of slavery. Hmm. Well, see, here's the thing on this. It's a Johnny Reb bottle, early 1970s. One of the J&R Whiskey Liquor Lads. Two books of green stamps, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It's a very, very old figurine. No, it's a liquor bottle. See? Ah, that'll make your bowl run. Hmm. Well, I guess it'll always be a monument to grandma's secret drinking problem.

So yes, I want to explain one thing to our audience and to perhaps my co-hosts here. Green stamps. Do we know what that is? They are food stamps. No, I looked it up because I didn't know what this was. So this started in the 30s. It was a customer loyalty program. It's one of the first in existence existence You'd usually get them in grocery stores

Or department stores You would earn them through the amount you spent on things And then you would use these stamps to fill up little booklets And then you would mail in the booklets To purchase items from a catalog So two books of green stamps is a lot of stamps So that's a high ticket item So that still is worth something

Even though it's a liquor bottle and not a Civil War figure. There's a lot of whiskey left in that bottle, too. So grandma didn't have that much of a drinking problem. I think she's been refilling it with whiskey. Yeah. That's what I think. But this program went defunct in the late 80s. So I don't remember it all growing up.

No. And also, could you buy good stuff or was it crap like the Liquor Lad? I think it was all just like tacky stuff for your house, really, for the most part. Just tacky items. I'm sure these catalogs, you can look at them online. They're probably archived somewhere. But it would be something like that, like a weird Confederate tacky statue you put booze in. I love that Lisa rightly apologized.

Like, I'm sorry, we own Confederate flag memorabilia. This isn't us it's the grandmother i love that homer talked to john as if john might not know what happened to jackie o's husband yeah yeah and it shows just what it like a kind person uh john is when homer yells at him and he was like it wasn't that awful yeah i know wasn't that awful hi i'm john like that's such a that is a great introduction for his character that he makes fun that Jackie O is bad at a crossword puzzle. And then it's like, oh, about the presidential assassination. He's like, I know, wasn't that awful? That's such a cute way of doing it. And that he loves,

I love that he loves Marge's hair like that. Of course he would. John Waters would love that giant bouffant and also though marge is just her her deep denial of like oh no oh no no no no and she she's handling the revelation well that her grandmother had a secret drinking problem like i also like before that i forgot to mention it but her her justification of selling it for heat she's like that grandma would be happy that they had warm underwear and hot for heat she's like that grandma would be happy that they had warm underwear and hot water i don't think her grandma would be that old you know really i don't know her mom's pretty old so did you guys notice that the tv guide that they're

looking at the cover line is uh laverne and shirley too daring for tv that was great which is not how people actually felt about laverne and Shirley back then. No, they hated it for other reasons. Right after that moment, we get John explaining camp to both Homer and impressionable children everywhere. Okay, so maybe that thing's a hunk of junk, but look at what you're selling. 50 bucks for a toy? No kid is worth that. Oh, but this is the Rex Mars Atomic Discombobulator. Don't you just love the graphics on this box? No kid is worth that. Oh, but this is the Rex Mars Atomic Discombobulator. Don't you just love the graphics on this box? No. How can you love a box or a toy or graphics? You're a grown man. It's camp. The tragically ludicrous? The ludicrously tragic? Oh, yeah, like when a clown dies.

Well, sort of, but I mean more like inflatable furniture or last supper TV trays or even this bowling shirt. Can you believe somebody gave this to Goodwill? And that kind of stuff is worth money? Boy, howdy. Man, you should come over to our place. It's full of valuable, worthless crap. Well, if you're inviting me over. I practically insist. Shall we say five o'clock? The snacking hour? My heart is palpitating. You really get the feeling that John is used to being very patient with Springfielders.

You know, just very patient and understanding and tolerance of them being just belligerent assholes to him. Yeah. Why does he live there? I mean, he's brought, he says it makes him feel sick in a beautiful way. I don't think he grew up in Springfield. I do think he moved there for some reason. From Baltimore. Yeah, from Baltimore.

Well, I do think of that line so much in my adult life because my adult life is very much about liking boxes and toys and graphics. In fact, I was just in Japan at Nakano Broadway, which is a great indoor mall, many stories. It's all about selling you old toys, especially old Japanese toys, and just looking at the boxes and the robots and the graphics. I thought of this line a lot. Yeah. There's so many great... I was thinking of that, actually. When I was there, they had these Japanese reprints of classic Superman comics. So these are Superman comics of the 60s

reprinted in the 60s in Japan, but they had original art made in Japan of Superman. So it was a Japanese artist's manga-style interpretation of American comics at the time. Yeah, I mean, I would go into the used game stores not to buy games, but to look at box art for games from other countries. Those Japanese game boxes for like

Famicom and Super Famicom, they're beautiful. They're works of art. We did not get those here most of the time. We got like the shitty mall airbrushed version. Well, because the publishers looked at it and they're like, Americans don't want this art. It looks too Japanese and weird. Their eyes are too big. Yeah, exactly.

No, I realize now that this episode not only introduced me to my future life as a gay man, but also as someone who loves garbage. Just all this garbage.

I hope this episode made people more tolerant and accepting of gay people and adult nerds. Who wear bowling shirts. Yes, I don't own any bowling shirts anymore. Homer doesn't recognize his own bowling shirt either.

That was only a year ago, wow. That says his name on it. And I think that Ray Gun, the Rex Mars, is based specifically on the Dan Dare Ray Gun, which I think was bigger in England than America. But if you look up Dan Dare Ray Gun in it's box and graphics you'll you'll see the similarities there i like that they did their homework they based most of this stuff on real life stuff they did a really good job recreating it yeah just pause it all the stuff on his shelves are like whoa this these are all real things you see old duff memorabilia too yeah it's really

neat and the posters behind the um the the lady cashier too is just it's one for fud yeah it's amazing design like this is such dense design work in here of cockamamies i'm glad they returned to it so many multiple times in this episode because there's just great background in all of it i wonder if it's near the leftorium you know it's across the street it's a right across from that uh hunting place i bet the leftorium. You know, it's across the street. It's right across from that hunting place. I bet the leftorium's not far away. Which that is something, when you look back on it, this is a very sitcom thing of, it's the Simpsons' new best friend for a week, who you would imagine, John still lives here.

He lives in Springfield. Do they ever see him? Do they ever talk to him again? He should come back. It's been 20 years. It's also the unfortunate sitcom trope that I refer to as the magical homosexual, where straight people greet this gay person into their life, and he's lively and urbane and funny and makes their life better,

but kind of doesn't really get that much out of it himself. Yeah. Yeah. He's there to teach them a lesson and then disappear. I think he sees that, but it's his job to be the newsletter for them. Just like, hey guys, gay people are okay, right? Isn't this fun? Actually, what he gets out of it is touring their home and photographing it and treating

them like they're a tourist trap in a way. So John gets something out of the relationship. Okay, that's true. But so when he arrives, I also like that Homer has completely forgotten he had invited him over at the snacking. I need to refer to 5 o'clock more as the snacking hour. Snacking hour. Ding dong.

Classic. I mean, that says it all, doesn't it? Oh, man. You weren't kidding about this place. Well, I just love it. Do I know you? Oh, the color scheme and the rabbit ears. And the 2.3 children.

I mean, where's the high C? High C and flipper nutters. Oh, and pearls on a little girl. It's a fairy tale. Oh, I've got the exact same curtains only in my bathroom. Didn't you just die when you found these? Not really. They just had corn on them.

Kitchen, corn on them. Kitchen? Corn? Oh! The origins of Marge's curtains, finally, after eight years. But I have to say, this is very observational because when The Simpsons

came into being in 1989, they were designed to be very anachronistic. Like, they were writers who grew up in the 60s channeling their childhoods through this family, and they were sort of based on the Flintstones and things like that.

So it's great that John is touched by this family that's sort of stuck in time, stuck in another time. And I really wish they would have kept their rabbit ears in old TV. But unfortunately, now they have an HD TV. HD, it's just how it goes. Yeah. Are you guys aware of the curtains debate that existed before this episode aired? No. No, I don't think so.

So I used to read SNPP.com. Me too, me too. I think it was transcripts of news group conversations about The Simpsons. I'm not sure where that all came from. Yeah, the episode capsules would often collect things written on all TV Simpsons for each episode. Yeah, right. So leading up to this, there was a debate with that community about whether the vegetable on the curtains was corn or carrots. And some people firmly believed it was carrots.

And I remember following this because I read all of them leading up to this. And this was the episode that actually finally settled it once and for all. And all the carrot people were hurt and annoyed that they were wrong. Are we to believe these are some sort of magic curtains. Wow, I didn't know. I never noticed those curtains at all until a few episodes before this when Marge cut the curtains for the joke to distract Homer from Chili in Homer's Mysterious Voyage. So when she said they were corn, I was just like, oh, I guess that's what those are. never i it never hit me they're kind of ambiguous like they kind of don't really look like anything really and i wonder if that's i now read it as almost like a slightly scatological joke that it's in his bathroom corn bathroom it's uh

draw the lines there folks but the he marge's happy cracker snack platter is such another perfect detail of their lives. And this moment here is mostly just ask John Waters to give an opinion of the Simpsons, but he's doing them to their faces. Just like, you're all so campy and silly and dated and weird. I love it. I see. And Fluffernutter sounds disgusting. I love Lisa's reaction to her going like, and touching her pearls. It's like the first time she ever realized

it is weird for an eight-year-old girl to wear a pearl necklace. I took it as her being flattered that this cool adult was giving her compliments. I don't know. That's how I read it. It's kind of a funny understated reaction. I always wondered exactly

what Yardley was going for with that. Yeah, I guess it could be kind of ambiguous. And I mean, in design-wise, it was just because Matt Groening felt her neck looked weird if it didn't have anything on it, so they put that there to distract from the neck. Also Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rebel. They both had necklaces to make animation easier. That too.

But hey, it's a tribute and an animation-e uh move as well did you guys listen to the dvd commentary where they have john waters talking about the scene oh yeah yeah so yeah i like how he points out that like yeah the simpsons interior is garish and strange and he describes the simpsons bedroom color scheme as the gayest thing he's ever seen or one of the gayer things he's ever seen it's all like pinks and lavenders and purples yeah yeah but very mid-century like people would have done that like in the 50s and 60s and not thought that was horrible i love the the garishness of the simpsons house that you you really get to see in the real life simpsons house that they built that there was a recent like oral history of a great article

look it up of the real life simpsons house that they they gave away as as a promotional tool for the simpsons and when you just see there are the flat colors of the bedroom in real life you're like oh my eye humans aren't meant to live in this and the only reason that wasn't it didn't become a tourist spot is because the people who lived on that block were like no we don't want people coming which i get that but you know let us have some fun let people tour this place it's hideous it's it's it's an aesthetic abomination as neat as it is yeah i gotta say there should be just like i mean this should be at actually universal studios there should be a simpsons house you can go into yeah and walk around because i've been again i've been to japan you can you can walk through the ship from one piece.

They've got that you can do. Why can't you, like the Simpsons house. Come on, guys. Let's do it. That's a good point. The Universal does a lot of things right there.

They just need the extra space to build a Simpsons house to walk through. At least the living room. Pave over Waterworld already. Come on. Take out the minions. The minions have to go.

People love the minions. They're never going. I think the Waterworld stage show is a frequent reference now. I think so. I think we bring it up at least every couple episodes. It's inexplicable. I don't like it. You know, Marge, they don't give Marge a ton to do in this episode, but I like that there's a more subtle story here that Marge just likes having a gay best friend. She's never had it. Her reaction of John going like, oh, you, and then slapping her. And she's like, oh, yeah. And she slaps him back. She's having fun. I like that.

I think above all, she's just happy to have an adult friend, period, because she lives a very lonely life. And this is a very enchanting, cool guy with things like stories and ideas she's never heard about. As of when we're doing this episode i think the last one you guys did was twisted world of marge simpson yeah and that is all about how marge has no friends and no one wants to spend any time with her so coming from that it was nice to see her like finally like make a friend since ruth powers and then in her life she's probably never had a gay best friend too. John is pretty nonplussed by seeing Homer strangle Bart in front of him. Sorry, it's more Americana, you know? Classic child abuse.

Hangs out with the family more. And I really love Homer. Well, we get a great joke about Homer's bad musical taste, which was also in Homer's Mysterious Voyage. Yes. I have a clip actually by the way so a lot of these are real records like the new christy minstrels uh obviously the wedding of linda bird johnson is not a real album but i had to i had to get a clip of this the uh the ballad of the green berets by sergeant barry sadler he was a green beret medic let's say you're a world war ii vet it's 1966 you want to listen to music but you don't want to be too fruity about it what if what if a green beret wrote songs about tough army guys

you could just sit back and drink your scotch and fade into oblivion listening to this guy sing about army guys like you uh well here's a clip of what that is i'm into it fighting soldiers from the sky Fearless men who jump and die Jump and die Men who mean just what they say The brave men of the Green Beret All right, turn it off.

Yeah, it's like... That man has no musicality to his voice, so you know that he's straight and you're enjoying straight manly things. A man singing? Wait, he's singing about army guys, but he was a medic. Did he kill anybody? Probably through neglect. Sure.

Let's just roll with it. The Wedding of Linda Bird Johnson, is that... I don't understand that joke other than it would just be weird to have that recorded on an album there is an album called i believe the wedding of cheech and chong that's a comedy album okay um which could have been a parody of another famous like wedding album record but i remember i remember my parents having that and actually my i had the same experience as john like going through my parents records like, what the fuck is this? Who are these people? Well, I mean, that Green Beret song was also, it was part of the militaristic jingoism of the time of like, we were entering into Vietnam. It was time to celebrate our armed servicemen, as everyone else is calling them, baby killers who are invading another country to blow up children.

You needed a song like the green berets to let you low like no this is and i think the popularity of this song also led to john wayne making his green beret film as well oh i think so yeah only i knew this song not because i listen to oldie stations all the time but this wasn't really played the the Green Berets, but I knew it from a parody on SNL, Bob. Do you know the one? Oh, I don't. I don't. Maybe this clip will remind you.

Fighting soldier in Vietnam The perfect son to anyone He's one part man, one part machine He's one part man One part machine He's Ollie North The Mute Marine It's all about how Oliver North wouldn't play to the fifth during the Iron Contra scandal. Ollie North, the Mute Marine. Yes.

I don't actually remember that. That could have been in the bad 80s zone of SNL, right? It was close to it was from it's from the same i believe it's from the same william shatner episode as get a life that classic that's a good one uh so yeah who's that which cast member was singing there i can't play that was phil hartman himself oh wow okay so what like that was one of those youtube uploads of snl that are recorded off tv so it doesn't sound great sorry but it's impossible to play clips of snl anywhere we tried it it takes so long to do outside of stolen clips but so yes the mute marine i though that clip confused me when i

saw it as a kid because i didn't know anything about oliver north i didn't he was just poured into that uniform the christy band that album that's also another inspiration for the new main street singers which we talked about also in okay homer's mysterious voyage were you guys able to make anything of loony luau no that uh is just a simpsons specific thing it's not a reference to anything i don't think it could be just luau. I'm guessing it's just luau music, just like fun luau music. There was just a Hawaii phase of music for everybody. All these famous singers. Don Ho.

Yeah, Don Ho. That was his entire phase. Yeah. He opened the door to it so that every popular musician at least did some Hawaiian tribute. All these white people singing about how great Hawaii is. It was a good time. This is Homer befriending John and then falling out of love with him just as quickly.

John, do those records have camp value? Everything here does. You yourself are worth a bundle, Homer. I could wrap a bow around you and slap on a price tag. Come on, Homer. Join the party. I love his dance here as he gets into it. Mom, John loves Itchy and Scratchy as much as we do.

Maybe more. Yeah, and he collects toy robots. He is quite a charmer. Your father's certainly taken a shine to him. Homer, you are the living end. That John is the greatest guy in the world. Oh, Homer, you are the living end. Bro! That John is the greatest guy in the world. We gotta have him and his wife over for drinks sometime.

I don't think he's married, Homer. Oh, a swinging bachelor, eh? Well, there's lots of foxy ladies out there. Homer, didn't John seem a little festive to you? Couldn't agree more. Happy as a clam. He prefers the company of men. Who doesn't? Homer, listen carefully.

John is a homo-sexual. Good act break. Where did Homer think Marge was going with that? Homo. Sapien? Right. I guess, yeah.

Even hearing homo is not enough for Homer to get it. He is that stupid. I love it. By the way, George Meyer's original pitch for this episode was called Bart the Homo. And then Bart Goes to Camp was a working title, which I wish they would have gone with, but they said no one got the joke. Yeah, that was Ron Hauge's title, but the joke is great. I think it's great. Homer's Phobia is clever, too, but I also like Bart Goes to Camp. They're all pretty clever.

Homer's Phobia is definitely a memorable episode title. This is more Homer's journey than Bart's journey, too. Homer's dancing with him is so great. This was when I really paid attention to it, just the way Homer warms up as he's dancing with him is so great i this was when i really paid attention to it just the way homer warms up as he's dancing he's a little stiff and then he starts imitating the way john is moving his arms it's it's there's a story to his dance again they're preaching more acceptance of adult nerds john likes itchy and scratchy more than bart and lisa so cartoon obsessed adult nerds they're just like you and me and john's acting on

or is just uh it's fun it's he's so likable in this episode i'm glad that like he he is just such a likable great character and that's i think he needed to be as likable as possible for this era of television unfortunately flawed gay man yeah like you have to you have to be the perfect gay person for people to accept you. But they point that out at the end. It's like, if every gay man saved your life, we'd be in a better place, Homer. You know, I also see Homer's reaction to John and his going from ignorance to hate on him. I think that's kind of a commentary on, at the time, mainstream America. Take, for example,

Elton John. Before he came out of the closet people were just like this elton john guy is fun i like his even though his music is from the beginning quite campy and silly and you can definitely see just a gay energy to it but when they don't know he's gay you just enjoy it but then once people find out that part of the reason they enjoy who he is, is that he is gay. Then when they have that information, they're like, no, I hate this person now. But you liked them when you did. But he played at one of Rush Limbaugh's many weddings. Come on.

Did he really? He did, yeah. I did not know that. He cashed that check that was in the last decade or so. I think what's going on here is that a lot of times straight people don't even consider that something might be gay. They're just blind to what a gay sensibility is. It's a shock when they find out that the thing they like

had that aspect to it. It wouldn't even occur to them that something might be gay. Even Broadway. Why would they like it if they're straight? Yeah. Gay codings of things was not understood by the mainstream for the longest time. That's why like the documentary Celluloid Closet, when that movie came out, it was just shocking to so many

people because like, oh, that character in this old movie was coded as gay because they couldn't outright say it, but it's all right there. And then as an adult learning about how all the Disney villains are gay. Yes. Like, what? Oh, okay. I get it. Jafar just has fun, man. It's just fun, guys. So it was in 2010, Elton John was paid a million dollars by Rush Limbaugh to play at his wedding. Did he give it to charity?

Let's see. His bank account? I don't know. I feel like if that happened, I feel like social media should have shamed him into giving it to charity, but I guess that didn't happen. Or Elton John, you just can't.

I don't know if he did it at a time where social media was that advanced. It could have been like pre-Twitter. Right, right, right. Oh, man. What year was this? That was 2010. Oh, okay.

Well, here is a story from 2014. Just reading the headlines, which is all you need to read for news. But it's Elton John reveals the reason for his controversial relationship with Rush Limbaugh. Oh, no, I don't want to know the answer to this. I already pictured something horrible in my head. Apparently, they're sober buddies. Oh, great.

Look, the more I read into this, the more sad I get. So I'm just going to turn away. So what I like about Homer's homophobia in this episode is that they do not bring religion into it. Because that's sort of like, that's intractable. That's something you really can't get past with some people. Fuck them. Yeah. But his arguments are, you could tell he's trying to figure it out in the moment. Even he's confused.

And that's why they're all ridiculous. And it's sort of like, this is what America needed in 1997. And now, just like, well, what are your reasons? And Homer tries to come up with reasons, but they're all ridiculous. And it's sort of like, this is what America needed in 1997 and now just like, well, what are your reasons? And Homer tries to come up with reasons, but they're all ridiculous. And some of them Marjorie won't even like argue against. Like, I'm not even going to dignify this with a response, Homer. Homer's gut reaction just tells him he doesn't like it and he's having to cobble together reasons for it. I mean, this is actually an insight from Felix Biederman of the Choppo Trap House podcast that I really like that he said, when you try to correct homophobic people who are Christians on like, well, the Bible says this, so huh, doesn't that change your mind? And Felix's point was like,

no, they're a homophobe who reads the Bible. Just because you tell them the Bible says different doesn't, they don't need the Bible to hate gay people it's not going to change their mind yeah and pointing out hypocrisy is just a game that accomplishes nothing no one is is defeated by pointing out hypocrisy ever in fact they lean more into hypocrisy to own you and to troll you so that's the horrible age we live in and probably have always lived in i think so here's here's a dose of that from homer oh my god, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I dance with a gay. Marge, Lisa, promise me you won't tell anyone. Promise me.

You're being ridiculous. Am I, Marge? Am I? Think of the property values. Now we can never say only straight people have been in this house. I'm very sorry you feel that way. Because John invited us all out for a drive today. And we're going.

Whoa, Not me! And not because John's gay, but because he's a sneak. He should at least have the good taste to mince around and let everyone know that he's that way. What on earth are you talking about? You know me, Marge. I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming. Zap. So Homer thinks he was tricked. Yes, yeah.

What does Homer think a gay man would look like then? Because like any of us, if we encountered this person, we'd be like, oh, that guy's gay. Yes. No, I think it's just Homer's. this is playing up to homer's complete ignorance this is the same type of homer who doesn't realize his boss hank scorpio is killing people right in front of him yeah and i guess his only exposure his only exposure that he's aware of of gay people are very flamboyant stereotypes on tv yeah i mean homer i don't think thinks smithers is gay and even though carl kissed him

i don't think he thinks he's gay either so doesn't think that he's gay no yeah he homer homer is just ignorant he homer is an ignorant person in general so when he says he thinks homosexuals are flaming he he's surrounded by flaming homosexuals all over the place. Though this, I would say this is the most effeminate and flaming in quotes John is in the episode with the over the rainbow car horn and zap. His car is so cool, though, with the zebra stripe seat covers. It's a real badass. John says he based his character on a real life type of guy like this that he knows, which is, is, is a nice little tribute there too. As much as it's fun to dump on Homer for being an asshole. I do want to say that I really liked the way Marge handles this whole thing

because in what's the one where they go away for summer and Lisa makes friends. That episode. So I'm talking about summer four foot two. Yeah. So when they're packing, Lisa makes that comment about like my only friends grown-up nerds like Gore Vidal, and even he's kissed more boys than I have.

And Marge's response is, girls, Lisa, boys kiss girls, because she doesn't apparently know that Gore Vidal is gay. In this situation, she seems to have figured it out on her own, because we never see John tell her that he's gay. She reasons out that this is a gay person, and she's fine with it. And when she explains it to Homer, she hasn't asked Lisa to leave or anything. It's like a very good, it's not a taboo conversation to talk about a gay person in front of your kid, which is not how every parent would actually be about that.

Oh, yeah. I would think in 1997, my parents wouldn't want to talk about that in front of me either. I mean, there's a general fear, I think, of parents that even who would say that they are not homophobic, that if they even mention the idea that a person could be gay in front of a kid, boom, you just made that kid gay now that they know it could happen. And I think there are some parents that would be okay with having gay friends, but would not want their children to be gay or a family member to be gay yeah and i think actually going back to what i was talking about earlier with like my mom checking in on me i i think that that was like she did have like gay friends but i think being a boomer it's like well if my son is gay his life is going to

be awful so i hope he isn't i don't have anything against gay people but i don't want him to have to go through that that's kind of my mom, too. I think it's all of our parents, basically. We're all the same age and relatively the same background. Interestingly, there's the episode when Patty does come out, and Marge has a problem with it, because she's fine with gay people in general, but if her sister's gay, she freaks out.

That's true, yeah. I think I was recalling that. That is a really good episode of the, well, it's not Modern Simpsons, that was 2004. 15 years ago. I love the animation on John's zap. It's so great, him with that ray gun. I love the discombobulator. Yeah, and they get in his car, which is an amazing, giant 50s cadillac they we hear about annual gift man which people who know about japanese culture please let me know i i don't think that's true i looked at i looked it up they

just have santa yeah that's what i figure if they had anything it'd just be santa i mean christmas in japan is more of a romantic holiday correct well it's definitely seen as a day you give your girlfriend a gift like that's but it's not a thing, and you don't even get the day off necessarily in many jobs. That's for January 1st. The New Year's, that's it. I mean, when you think about it, it is wild that we have New Year's and Christmas Day so close to each other. Pick one or the other to have as a workday free. So, in the drive, John mentions Lupe Velez bought the toilet she drowned in at that store. So, she died a long, long time ago in Pasadena, but this is a story from the book Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger. Listen to the amazing podcast series, You Must Remember This. She is going through every Hollywood Babylon story and sort of debunking them or figuring out if they're true or not. She has not reached this. She took a break.

I'm sure she'll come back to this when she gets back from that break. But there is much confusion about how Lupe Velez actually died. It's assumed and generally thought that she had an overdose. But the idea of her overdosing and then drowning in a toilet is like very sensationalized. And it was made popular through the Kenneth Anger book, Hollywood Babylon. So that is the real person that died in this episode. Kent Brockman is not a real person. He did not die in this episode, but they're referencing a real person who did die in like the 40s, I think. 49, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the Kent Brockman thing, that's Rosie Ruiz, right?

Oh, I hadn't heard this. So, okay. There is 82, 83, somewhere around then, it's either the Boston Marathon or the New York Marathon. And this woman named Rosie Ruiz won, maybe won for everyone, or maybe just won for the women. And she had made like a dramatic improvement over her last marathon race. And she was stripped of the title a few days later, because they figured out that she cheated. And some people had seen her, I think, I'm remembering this from way back, she took the subway or something, dressed up in her marathon outfit. And people were like, I saw her. She cheated. And they took it away from her. And she maintains that she did not cheat and she was falsely

stripped of her win. But that is the story. I think it's just resourceful really i mean yeah yeah i do all that running i think she got greedy like don't don't get for if you're gonna cheat get like 14th or something if you're gonna that no one's gonna look into like to that person in 15th place cheats i don't know but first place you're just asking you're asking for uh closer eyes on on it. But wow, I'd not heard that story before, Drew.

Rosie Ruiz. The Loopy Valette thing is weird. They talk about that story in the pilot to Frasier. Roz recalls this story to Frasier. Yeah. Oh. It's a very pervasive story. And it's crazy how far the things that Kenneth Enger either misreported or just made up have become firmly embedded in popular culture. Well, Celebrity Toilet Death is always

interesting. Celebrity Toilet Death. That's my band name. That should be the name of the book. That's the Elvis one too. I mean, Elvis maybe didn't die on the toilet, but it's funnier to say that about a real-life person dying. Maybe not so funny.

Yeah, I mean, that series is great, so subscribe to You Must Remember This. She goes through every story. She'll go through all of them eventually, but you learn certain things like, well, I always thought Fatty Arbuckle was innocent and was railroaded, but it's like, no, it turns out he's a real piece of shit,

that Fatty guy. As she calls him on the show, Fatty Arbuckle. Fatty, yes. She's really good at enunciating, I gotta say. No, that podcast is great i love the one on the blacklist about the hollywood blacklist it could not be more relevant today the story of the of what how it really went down yeah it's terrifying and also her one like within that she has a special about the director of on the waterfront who who did name names and stab people

in the back and from reading and reading from Elia Kazan's book, he's also a total creep in that he was like, well, now as a theater director and as a film director, if I cast a woman in the lead role, she's supposed to have sex with me. That's just how you get to know each other. The Jean and Jane series is also just like me listening to it. Is anybody in Hollywood not a rapist?

Please, somebody. also just like me listening to it is anybody in Hollywood not a rapist please somebody well that's why this this camp stuff is the fun things to look back thank God thank God that was a killer tour man I never realized how many celebrities

humiliated themselves right in our own backyard this is a sordid little burg isn't it makes me sick in a wonderful wonderful way John Waylon I'd like you to meet the Simpsons I know the Simpsons Heidelberg, isn't it? Makes me sick in a wonderful, wonderful way. John.

Waylon, I'd like you to meet the Simpsons. I know the Simpsons. So this is your sick mother. Don't do this to me, Waylon. How'd it go? Tell me everything that happened. He didn't give you gay, did he? Did he? Oh, jeez, Louise.

You don't even know what you're worried about anymore. John's a witty, urbane person. Oh, and I'm not. Hey, Dad, look what I got. Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap.

So in that clip there with Homer saying, like, he didn't give you gay, did he? I really like that reaction because, number one, it shows how uninformed Homer is. But Bart's next line after he says he didn't give you gay, Bart says, look what I've got. Oh, you're right. So he's saying that the connection right there is that Homer says, like, he did give Bart gay. Bart got gay. That that's great i never made that connection i've seen this like 40 times this this was the first time that really hit me i also like well one the design of that diner like going to a 50s themed diner that's one thing but it is

within a mushroom cloud it's so great it's themed after the two atom bombs we dropped on japan so you can order the fat man and little boy plattersatters. It's so funny in a horrifying way. Such a great design. And again, I don't think we ever see that diner again on the show. No. They go to like a Wolfman Jack style 50s diner in a couple seasons. The design, and it goes by so fast. It's the giant pink mushroom cloud.

It's exactly the type of place John would eat at. And I love how he blew off Smithers to see The Simpsons. I know The Simpsons. I like that gag because it's one of the, I want Smithers to have a dating life and a love life outside of Mr. Burns. Yeah. And this is the first we've gotten the vaguest notion of that, right? They might have had something on the side?

You know, definitely on his vacation, I would assume on the Fire Island type place that Smithers is staying, he's at least having casual sex, but perhaps not a relationship. But we don't see it. And we do see him and John. I'm glad he at least got that one little moment. And also John, it gives him the sense that he does have a life outside of hanging out with the Simpsons for this one week. Yeah.

And boy, sick mother. And then I do also love that power of in a, even just a friendship of like, hey, I'm seeing you having fun. You lied to me and said you weren't having fun today. You blew me off. At least he got to wear a nice sweater vest that was outside of his normal like smithers outfit yeah business casual yeah it's it's fun i i like that moment it shows that like there's a gay neighborhood outside of the simpsons 2 and that smithers smithers is part of

it i wonder how like how committed they are like i wonder what the date i now wonder what the dating history of john and wayland is like have they have they gone on a few dates are they are. I now wonder what the dating history of John and Wayland is. Have they gone on a few dates? Are they kind of like a casual thing? What is it? John's too good for Smithers. I think so. That's my take. I mean, if I was John, I'd be like, well, this isn't a relationship between the two of us. You're in love with your boss, not me.

And he's married to his job. Exactly. He walks down the street saying he runs it's true you could never you'd never have a relationship with waylon as long as he's in love with uh mr burns yeah i guess they still have not ever given him any sort of love interest on the on the show i uh in the last season did they not do a story where Smithers openly hit on Mr. Burns and was rejected and then decided he's like done with it? I'm trying to remember. I do keep watching the show, but sometimes it's like while I'm cooking dinner or doing dishes or something. So my recall is not as strong as like this episode, which I've also seen 40 times.

Yeah. I remember there was a, there was a scene where Homer tries to set up Smithers with new guys after Burns rejects him. And there's a line that just felt weird to hear Smithers say of like, oh, I see, trying to butter up your gay boss by getting him a boyfriend, huh? I was like, that feels weird to have Smithers just say that. But I mean, not bad, but just not how they write smithers we get more of homer's uh fears coming together here and i i clip out a middle part here because it's the uh this it's mainly just played silently the store-bought snack cake scene which another very kitschy thing yes hostess snowballs and ho-hos yeah there's there's only two kinds. It's just there's only two kinds of SnorePod snack cakes. Can't buy Twinkies,

though that has its own gay idea to it. I don't like that cowboy hat. Bart, where'd you get that shirt? I don't know. Came out of the closet. Uh, huh. Homie, I can hear you chewing on the pillow.

What's wrong? Marge, the boy was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. So? There's only two kinds of guys who wear those shirts. Gay guys and big fat party animals. And Bart doesn't look like a big fat party animal to me. So if you wore a Hawaiian shirt, it wouldn't be gay. Right.

Thank you. I hope you realize this is all your fault. I mean, do you have to be so effeminate around a boy? Homer, I don't think there's a problem with Bart. But if there is, it's probably because you're not spending any time with him. Good night. I'm not sure if the science checks out on marge's advice there yeah that's the one bit i'm like that marge calls bart being gay anything wrong with him

as a possibility like that that does kind of go into what drew is talking about earlier too of like that marge marge is okay with a gay friend but a gay family member she feels weird she seems to have some other judgments for that i feel like there's two ways to read that line it could be march saying if bart's gay it's because you're not spending any time spending enough time with him or she could be saying that if bart is latching on to john it's because john is nice and john is engaging with bart in a way that homer's not so that something's wrong could be a disconnect between Homer and Bart, maybe? Yeah, or she's trying to own Homer by his own logic.

Like, if my effeminate nature is making Bart gay, he needs to be around you more often then, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. I definitely read, I read that as Marge just throwing it back in Homer's face of like, well, you're a shitty dad.

That's why if you think he's getting gay, then be around him and make him straight. though i drew i like your reading that it's john is just becoming the male role model for bart just through the homer's inactivity and not doing stuff i do like that though i i also love the little animation on the little feather one feather coming out of homer's mouth from eating his pillow did you notice that like he's he's literally biting his pillow yeah oh okay i forgot about that i'm sure that's not i i'm almost positive that's not uh intentional but watching it this time like the 41st time it finally occurred to me like oh he's a pillow biter i you know i read

that now well there's a great recurring gag in this that, like, Homer loves quote-unquote gay things in this. Until he realizes that they are gay, then he's like, I hate them. He loves It's Raining Men. That's his favorite record at most. That's right. Homer. I mean, Homer is a case study in toxic masculinity that is, like,

making him dislike the things he likes because they are gay. As we pointed out earlier, he's got a crush on Ollie North. Well, I mean, we want to talk about character histories. Barney's coming up later and they basically wrote Barney is in love with Mo most of the time in seasons one through four. It's true. Yoo-hoo! I think it's interesting that we're talking about Homer being out of character, but Bart being a little effeminate in some ways actually is really in character with something they've done over the course of the show, where sometimes Bart is like the Lisa in the beauty pageant

where he walks in the heels well and knows all the beauty tricks. Or the time when he, Bartina, he imagines that he's Bartina to seduce the warden to free Marge.

Like there is that, this kind of not really boyish enough aspect to Bart and this is kind of an interesting way to deal with that. I don't know if I would

call it gay per se but he's also got a real flair for showmanship Bart does in terms of the pranks he pulls and things like that jean and reese in their seasons really liked the fun of like oh wouldn't it be weird if bart knew these very girlish things that's kind of funny it's unexpected well and then in a future episode the uh the christmas episode where bart breaks his butt

i actually do like when homer comes in on millhouse and bart doing a very gay child thing of dressing up like girls and jumping around and then when homer says like what's the excuse here the non-gay excuse oh and then um there's that time when lisa is dating ralph and bart implies that he would go all the way with ralph to go to the crusty special yeah that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know how far I'd go.

It's there. You can make the character study for Bart. I just love his reading. I'm like, I don't know, came out of the closet. That's just great. You know what? In an episode about homophobia with a gay character, Martin is missing. It's true. Martin should be like hanging out with Bart and that should alarm Homer.

Go back and put him in. I would think Martin would want to have a tea party with him and his with his tea set be a lucky boy just like bart and though i have to say as an overweight guy i don't wear hawaiian shirts for this reason it's just like yeah it's what big fat party animals do i don't want to be i don't want that stereotype i don't remember hawaiian shirts ever being a gay thing in my experience. That might be a Homer-specific opinion. I don't particularly think that. I associate them with Robin Williams, who's not gay. Like, that's my first thought when I hear Hawaiian shirt.

Not that Robin Williams hasn't, like, famously played some gay characters, but that was, I just thought of party animals. Or somebody who's like, I'm cool. I wear a Hawaiian shirt. Hey. There are some very hip, stylish young men in Los Angeles who wear Hawaiian shirts. And they're young, so I cannot tell if they're gay or not. But I think it's something that loops around back to being a cool thing again. It's very weird. I'm jealous.

I don't own any Hawaiian shirts. I do, and I'm gay gay so i guess that worked out the math checks out i just wear anime shirts i don't know what that makes me but uh a loser probably so then we get the first ever joke about helen lovejoy's pubes in the show and i think the only one took eight years and hel Helen Lovejoy. Sure, she looks blonde, but I've heard cuffs and collar don't match if you get my drift. I don't, but I loved hearing it. You! I should have known. Well, good morning, sunshine.

Homer, John brought us cactus candy. Look, John, you seem like a perfectly nice guy and all. Just stay the hell away from my family. Well, now you don't get any candy. No, that's cruel. Take a tensy piece. No. Homer, what have you got against gays?

You know, it's not usual. If there was a law, it would be against it. Homer, please, you're embarrassing yourself. No, I'm not, Marge. They're embarrassing me. They're embarrassing America. They turned the Navy into a floating joke. They ruined all our best names like Bruce and Lance and Julian. Those were the toughest names we had. Now they're just you.

Queer? Yeah, and that's another thing. I resent you people using that word. That's our word for making fun of you. We need it. Well, I'm taking back our word And I'm taking back my son So Cactus Candy is real They're not logs They're more like pink squares But the box is very kitschy I have to assume it's made of cactus

But I really want to know I was a linguistics student for a while In my college years I want to know the etymology of What designated certain names as gay Like Bruce and Lance And things like that I want to know the etymology of what designated certain names as gay, like Bruce and Lance and things like that. I want to know, where did that come from? Where did it originate and how? That's a great question. I think that's just stuff that happened over time where those names got identified with, say, not tough guys anymore. I feel like the bruce one is both about batman being kind of gay uh but also

including that like not just the adam west show but also the which was extreme camp but also the seduction of the innocent uh fear in comic books in the 50s of batman was a gay fantasy and but also bruce valanche too i think in both those cases, it ruined the name Bruce. I was not alive for this, but I recall upon hearing old podcasts, like Johnny Carson would use, I met a man named Bruce or whatever as a joke about gay people. Oh, really?

Yeah. Like a man named Bruce did this to me, blah, blah, blah. And it was a big joke. And like the audience would know, yeah, you're talking about a gay person. You can't say gay on television, but you said a man named Bruce.

Well, I think more points to how homer thinks that what gay names are even though you can't get a more plain name than john like john is not ruining the name john for gay people or for straight people and that is this is the scene that has the word queer in it right yes okay like as a sheltered person i knew that was a kind of an insult you you could use and then i went to grad school and I saw there was a queer studies department. I was like, can they do that? Can you put that in a catalog? Is that cool?

And that's when I learned, yes, yes, they took it back. It's fine. Yeah, at my college, the gay resource center was like, I think the year I got there was retitled the queer resource center. It was like, okay, well, I guess we're going to go with that now. Okay, great, great. Yeah, you know, now in the year 2018, I really like that term for the gay community, the LGBTQIA community, all that. It's just queer is just such a – it's a fun word.

It's got a Q in it. That's a funny word. But it's also – I like it better as an umbrella term. I don't know how you feel about it, Drew. I'm completely fine with it now. And I've actually heard that in the same way that we talked about how initial representations of gay people on TV were very male and white, I have heard more than once that non-white, non-heterosexuals prefer the term queer. And there's a tendency towards that because the idea of a queer audience would be different than a gay. Like when you say gay, you're just

going to think of white guys. And when you think queer, you think it's a little bit more diverse. And I'm absolutely fine with that. Totally. Yeah. And I will say this as a cis gay white man, I hate other cis gay white men who feel, I'm not going to name names here, but who feel that like, hey, I got mine, so fuck everybody else. I'm comfortable enough, so now screw everybody else in the gay community. Well, as a straight white cis male, I have to say life is a struggle. It's very hard.

But I use queer because I don't want to make any mistakes. I don't want to exclude anybody. And I hope I didn't say anything stupid on this podcast. Let me know if I did. I'm still learning. But I like the word queer for the same reasons we talked about. I realize more letters are added to LGBTQIA. I'm sure I missed it.

And there's probably, yeah, that's also a mouthful. So queer is a great all-encompassing term that gets everybody in there. I love that Homer loves that song until he sees Bart is dancing to it. He's really getting into it, like walking down the stairs.

But that scene tells you like lisa's watching him so bart was like hey i'm gonna put on this wig lisa watch me do it like it is like he's doing a small drag show for his sister it reminds me of i think lisa's first word bart was sorry homer was walking home singing girls just want to have fun yes yeah so he's in the very girlish songs uh but that joke about cuffs and collars don't mix that marge is too innocent to know that it's about her dying her hair and that her pubes have a different hair color the only uh problem with that joke is it's inaccurate helen lovejoy's hair is brown yeah it's a grayish brand like yeah in what world does she have blonde

hair that's very strange it's true maybe she recently died it we just don't see her i mean hell hell and love joy is one of the worst people in springfield so if they're going to make a mean joke like that joke wouldn't i wouldn't like if john was making that joke about say maude i'd be like oh that's too mean to maude marge's reaction is like i don't but i loved hearing it just she's so excited to have a friend adult friend friend to talk to. It's true. Did you guys look up where the term cuffs and collars comes from? Like why that means what it means? No, no. So when we did the episode of my show, I actually didn't find this until now. It comes from this old term where men's shirts were just like the button down part and the sleeves.

And both cuffs and collars were detachable. Because those are the parts of the shirt that got dirty first. So you could reuse a shirt and just swap out the cuffs and collars for a clean pair and get more mileage out of like your one good like work shirt or whatever. And apparently the idea of them being detachable and somehow got translated into the top of the body and the bottom part of the body. I'm not sure exactly why the sleeves got associated with your pubic hair, but that's where that expression comes from. And I didn't know detachable collars were a thing until I look it up this morning. I'm going to assume it's before the age of washing machines and the idea that washing your clothes is an easy thing

that anyone could just do whenever. That's probably true. Instead of just getting out the mangle and getting to work. I prefer the phraseology of the carpet doesn't match the drapes just because carpet is a more pubic imagery as well, I think, too. Carpets on the bottom, drapes are above the carpet. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, though I have never thought about matching a carpet with drapes. That has never been a question in my life. The joke with the word queer, it's really great that the gag is that john is not

offended that homer almost called him queer homer is offended that he used the word that he wanted to make fun of him with like he's like i am offended that you would use that word game i love the homer tag we need it the innocence of homer's line that like if there was a law there'd be against it when there's like there are many laws especially then yeah to give you a time frame for this listeners this was six years before sodomy laws were struck stricken down in america like it was technically still illegal for gay people to just have sex it was was on the books. Not that it was acted upon all that much, but it wasn't taken down by the Supreme Court until 2003. That's something a lot of gay people wouldn't even realize,

that those laws persisted as late as they did. But so Homer takes part on a trip to straighten him out. We get a reference to R.I.P. Burt Reynolds there, is the height of straightness. You can't have a more straight man. Burt Reynolds there is the height of straightness. You can't have a more straight man than Burt Reynolds. Also, you see how toxic masculinity has poisoned Homer that he's afraid to even show the slightest affection to his son. I really enjoy when he starts shaking his hand in the car. If you're a straight person listening to this, and you probably are statistically, I want to point out that this scene of Homer overthinking every action and gesture to try to not seem gay and seem like the right tone of straight is what every gay person goes through before they just come out.

And even after you come out, you still kind of have to do that if you don't know who you're hanging around and how to present yourself because you don't want to get punched in the face or something. Yeah. But yeah, it's exhausting. That is why people come out of the closet. It's exhausting to have to like overthink every little thing you do. That is a great analogy there. Yeah, it's so similar. I mean, I just saw a tweet about that. I'm going to steal this Twitter joke, but it was about how you put on a different voice

on like the phone call with somebody who is say a telemarketer or whatever. Like I have, I have been in this seat thing recently where I am trying to plan something at a doctor or an eye doctor appointment. I I'm on my spouse's I'd like, all right, gender neutral term. I'm on my spouse's insurance. I don't want to have a whole conversation. And then when they're like, well well so what's their name and i then tell them a male name and i'm like all right are we in is this is this where we're at now what's happening now that you know it's a man like let he what please don't fuck me over and like like like not give me the thing i want just because you're a jerk yeah exactly it's you uh and it's just this guardedness you kind of are trained to be on at all times.

It sucks, but you know what is fun is a steel mill full of gay men. Yes, and thank you to Steve Tompkins. This is his idea. Yes. Secret best writer on The Simpsons. Oh, wait, right before that is the cigarette ad, which- Anything Slim. Yeah, I guess that is a gay, is it a stereotype?

I've never been a smoker, but is it a stereotype that gay men would smoke slim cigarettes? I mean, those are... They're just specifically for women. Yeah, they're marketed to women for, I guess, no real reason. I guess they're smaller. It's like diet soda for... Yeah, but the cigarettes are more feminine

in that they're slimmer. I see. But I don't think they can say low tar anymore or anything like that. I love in that drawing of the ad that it it is the you know sexual fantasy of two women having a pillow fight but they both have to have cigarettes in their other hands while having a pillow dangerous don't smoke in bed during a pillow fight uh but yes we head to ajax steel mill all right i want you to shake hands with, what's your name, fella? Roscoe.

Roscoe here runs this mill. He's going to show us around and let you get a firsthand look at real all-American Joes doing what they do best. Why the hell would I want to see that? You'll thank me on your wedding night. Hey, listen up I want all of you to say hello to the Simpsons Hello Has the whole world gone insane? Stand still, there's a spark in your hair

Get it, get it Hot stuff coming through. Dad, why did you bring me to a gay steel mill? I don't know. This is a nightmare. You're all sick. Oh, be nice. Oh, my son doesn't stand a chance.

The whole world's gone gay. Oh, my God, what's happening now? We work hard. We play hard, we play hard So dancing in front of a giant industrial fan Very popular in the 90s The guy is voguing He is dancing great.

The animation on the guy in front of the fan especially is great. The terror of Homer is so fantastic. I just like when he says, oh God, what's happening now? What does he think is going to happen? I don't know. He's just so afraid. It's like, why did you bring me to a gay still? Well, I don't know.

I want to compliment the animators who, again, we're presuming are mostly straight people who animated this scene. It's like, why did you bring me to a gay still? I'm like, I don't know. I want to compliment the animators who, again, we're presuming are mostly straight people who animated this scene. Making a sexy Simpsons character is actually pretty hard, but they did a really good job animating hot buff guys dancing with each other. Yes. Someone put a lot of care into this.

They really did. This is the one scene in which there are very stereotypical gay guys all in one building. Yeah, well, I do. They all have a very stereotypical voice being played very broadly by Hank. And Dan, like, gosh, there's spark in your hair. That was Dan. Oh, be nice.

It's fun. A funny story about this scene, too, is that when i worked at a video store job in berkeley that was when i worked with the first actually two trans people i'd never worked with a trans person before uh and one was a non-binary trans person and they well they had never seen this episode of the simpsons before, so when we watched it at work, they loved it. They especially loved the anvil and all the steel workers because as a non-binary person, I think they said

they really enjoyed that these were these giant buff dudes who then acted in a very effeminate way. I wouldn't even say they all necessarily act super effeminate. I kind of like that these guys were in there because they give you a counterpoint like they're not Smithers, they're not

John. It's like a third type of gay man that does... I mean, I live near Silver Lake and there's a lot of guys like that where I live. And blue collar-ish, bearish, like facial hair dudes. That's a real thing. It also has to be a big surprise for him and also the kind

of gayness he would fear the most I think, like would trigger him into freaking out like we see in this scene it's a great scene the one that betrays his idea of masculinity the most he doesn't he didn't realize this and the uh though i every time i love the hot stuff guy but every time i see him i'm like that's so dangerous you're gonna melt your skin i mean they work hard they play hard but obviously osha has not come by to see this this horror that's happening here uh hot stuff coming through uh my co-host says that every time he sees that it triggers his body dysmorphia oh i have used on via frankie net uh sorry via frankie act the ob nice gif when someone is being a jerk to me on twitter that's a good reaction to

being called like homer you're all sick homer deserves worse than oh be nice to him calling them all sick uh and that song there was cnc music factory's gonna make you sweat parenthetical everybody danced now usually all the songs with parentheticals are known by what's in the parenthetical yes yeah but it's gonna make you parenthetical. Yes, yeah, but it's going to make you sweat. And the rapper over it is Freedom Williams is his name. Is the U in going to make you sweat the letter U? It is the full U. They missed an opportunity.

Prince would have used the letter U. I will die for you or I would die for you. Exactly, yeah. Nothing compares to you. So we come back from the break and Homer, they rightly guessed that Homer's most homophobic friend is Moe Sislak. That is very correct. He's against all kinds of, what's the line he has?

I'm okay with almost all kinds of prejudices you can name. Your hero phobia sickens me. And the entire steel mill was gay. Where you been, Homer? Tire steel industry's gay. Yeah, aerospace too, and the railroads. Where you been, Homer? Tire steel industry's gay. Yeah, aerospace too, and the railroads. And you know what else? Broadway.

I always thought Biden'd grow up to be just like us. What happened? Ah, well, it ain't no mystery. Whole modern world's got a swishifying effect on kids today. And their MTVs and their diet sodas ain't gonna set them straight neither. You gotta do it yourself, Homer. And you gotta do it fast. But what would turn Bart into a man fast?

You have to think for me. Well, let's see now. Time was you send the boy off to war. Shooting a man fix him right up. But there's not even any wars no more, thank you very much, Warren Christopher. Hey, better yet, Bart could shoot a deer. That's like shooting a beautiful man. he's right homer after the boy bags a deer all the diet sodas in the world

won't turn him back like shooting a beautiful man really great and uh i think it's still i still see all that marketing of diet sodas not called diet sodas to this day i guess that there's still the assumption that this is not for straight men diet soda is for women and gay guys they just brought out a new diet soda for quote unquote quote unquote for men i forget what it's called but it's fairly new i forget what it is but it is very much a gendered diet product that is asinine yeah just like how they have to like gender soap to get your fucking boyfriend to wash his dick. You're a straight boyfriend.

Yeah, well, that's Coke Zero too. Coke Zero is basically... Pepsi Zero, Coke Zero. And Henry, you were pointing out when you were doing research for this episode, the most line, thank you very much Warren Christopher. We were in the middle of, like, a brief 10-year period in which there were conflicts. We were were sticking our nose in all kinds of shit but there were no

quote-unquote wars yeah and now we're kind of still in the middle of the longest war i feel like it's endless war that will never stop in my lifetime so it's crazy to have a line in here that is about how uh there aren't even any wars anymore thank you war, Warren Christopher. And he was Secretary of State or Defense. Secretary of Defense. Yeah, the not being in war, that is a very dated reference. What is not dated at all is the most statement that the whole world has a swishifying effect

on young people. Like that is something that has never not been said and it's currently being said in red states all over the United States. Yeah, every new thing has a poisonous effect on children in some way and will make them gay it's been or among other things it would make them but like they definitely said that about mtv for say having the real world or music videos that dared to show non-straight people

doing things or even straight people having too sexual of a time they're like well this is gonna gay up kids like it and i would i would suspect parents are saying the same thing about instagram and all that these days i think this is the first time i heard the word swishy to refer to something that was gay i think it's more of like a 70s or maybe 60s term which makes sense why mo would use i never really heard it in the 90s if they use it in la confidential i think it's the first time i ever heard it uh a gay lawyer's beat is described as a swish and i was like oh okay that's a new one yeah you know it might have been the first time swishifying is a great oakley weinsteinism as to so homer has decided bart's gonna kill that beautiful man and not be gay anymore and this

is the last time we spend some a moment in cockies, which is always fun. But dad, it's barbaric. How does killing a deer make you more of a man? It just does. Name me one gay Indian. Uh-oh, something's gonna die. Butt out, Budinsky. What would you know about hunting? I know this much. I wouldn't wear that hideous hat. Here, take this one. It was worn by Yale Summers in Ductari. Hang on to it, toy boy. You might need it when it starts raining naked ladies. But uh, Budinsky is a good gay joke, I think, coming from Homer.

It's a little too smart for him. Yeah. Forgot to capture right before, but I love how he says to Marge, he's going to grow up straight for once. So this reminds me a lot of a King of the Hill episode in the, I believe, the second season in which Hank has similar concerns about Bobby. So he takes Bobby hunting. Hill episode in the, I believe, the second season in which Hank has similar concerns about Bobby, so he takes Bobby hunting. But the resolution of the episode is that they go to this sort of nature reserve where the deer are very tame and they're fed, and they will just come up to you

and you can shoot them in the face. And Hank is just like, this feels wrong. We can't do this. So Bobby does not bag a deer in the end, and Hank is okay with that. And that they just package them for you afterwards. That's right. Don't get the buck even. They're just like just like oh we'll butcher it here no need you you know it's a bad idea when the the character written off the show eustace uh takes his son and they they go there and they get a deer and it's all packaged there for them useless so that doc tari reference i only got that as a kid because mst3k would bring it up i have never seen a moment of the tv show doc tarry i didn't know who yale summers was that he wasn't even the most famous

actor on doc tarry like he was not the lead actor on it yeah i looked it up none of the other people are famous either there's just nothing nowhere to go with that possible it's about like a wildlife vet veterinarian something like that yeah it goes on safari it's a safari show joel's last invention exchange is a bad doctory uh reference pun yeah doctory stool and it's a pun on dark tarry stool like your poop is gross because you're sick which uh yeah i didn't get that entirely until now bob thank. Thank you. It's not worth getting. They should have had a better invention exchange. Well, Frank had the right reaction to that. Like, whatever.

That was TV's Frank's reaction. So they take Bart hunting. And I like that Bart out homophobias them in this trip, too. Today you're going to be a man, Bart. You guys going to teach me to drive? Oh yeah, let a twinkle toes drive Betsy right. Hey, no boy.

You can't drive, you're only 10. You're going hunting. You ever been hunting before there, Barty? Nope. Something about a bunch of guys alone together in the woods. Seems kind of gay. That is a very immature attitude, young man.

I love Homer admonishing Bart. Yes. He's telling him not to be so homophobic on their trip to cure him of being gay. That should have ended the trip right there. They're like, okay, Bart knows to not be gay and he thinks that it's gay to do this and that's bad. So we should not go on this

trip i'm really glad as a family with at least one hunter and no one pressured me to hunt i think i made sure that was off the table very early in my life like i don't want to kill anything i'm against this and they didn't think it was weird so i'm glad that no one ever forced me to do this what homer is doing to buy i mean my dad was a hunter but i did not well my dad hunted before i was born but then he pretty much stopped so i never had to do it either my cousins my slightly more rural arkansan cousins did hunt and they enjoyed it but uh killing all those squirrels they were so proud of it but and ducks all this dead animals in place those poor ducks yeah uh this this uh commentary recording

of this episode of dvd happened around the time where Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face because it was just like hunting for the elderly. And I love birds, by the way, this sounds so cruel. It's just like, they just released partridges and cages in front of old dying men and they shoot them,

these beautiful animals. It's disgusting. I'm glad at least one of them got shot in the face for that. Well, we could happen every time. Yeah. You know, the presentation of that is also gross to me because it's like, if you just handed this person like an animal to carve up a living animal to kill

it they you think like oh you're a sociopath but if you do it at a paid thing with a gun and all this certain pomp and circumstance oh then that's not crazy yeah i mean i think that's what the king of the hill episode was commenting on hunting uh areas like that where just like yeah they just walk up to you shoot shoot them in the head. And so does Moe not want any gay man driving his car, I guess? That's part of his homophobia. A real twinkle toes. I think maybe it's an idea that gay men can't drive.

In Moe's mind, Bart's already gay. He's like, Bart is gay and he's not driving this car. Or driving a truck is a very masculine thing to do, so a gay man couldn't do it. Or that he values his piece of shit truck at all. Like it's not a nice vehicle, Mo. No. Well, we know gay men bring on the property value of a house.

They probably destroy the resale value of a truck. Well, also Mo takes pride in his rats too. So I understand that. Those aren't your rats. We should have just stayed at the bar and shot some rats. Hey, those ain't your rats, Bond. Homer, you ready to call it quits? Wait a minute.

Bart's not fixed yet. He hasn't even... Homer. Oh. Come on, don't take it so hard, Homer. You still got that other kid, Lisa. Let's take her out hunting tomorrow. Make her into a man.

Oh, she'd never go. She's a vegetarian. Oh, jeez, Homer, jeez. You and Marge ain't cousins, are you? No. This whole thing is my fault. I've been a lousy dad. Cheer up, Homer.

Christmas is coming early this year. They really needed a monster like Moe in the car for this idea to happen, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wouldn't have been Homer's plan to kill reindeer. You need Moe to control over it. Moe gets to be your ultimate homophobic bad guy in this um so the original third act based on the commentary was uh they don't give a lot of details about it but

homer was going to uh prove his manliness to bart by taking part in a tractor pull that ended up being like the world's gayest tractor pull and he would somehow dress in snm gear unwittingly uh because he thinks it's like safety gear or something like that. And they'd end up like grease wrestling. Yeah. I don't know how that would... And he was going to be at the steel mill too. I think so. Yeah, yeah. So they would go back to the steel mill. Yeah, they said that. Yeah.

But I don't know how that... I mean, they didn't give that many details. This seems like a better ending to me. This is a sweeter ending. It's a humorous idea to think that Homer, in his attempt to make things not gay, only makes it gayer. That is a comedic idea I like. And who knows how John would play into that ending? We don't really know. Yeah, yeah, that's true. John gets kind of left out in that type. This one lets John be the hero

and save the day, which I like. And their at the santa's sleigh place like poor bart this thing kind of got me a bit because i could definitely remember times where my dad wanted me to do something and i didn't want to do it and just the pressure of like come on you're letting me down i'm like oh god it's a very real moment in this episode this kind of zany episode yeah you feel bad for bart poor like more than you have before yeah sometimes bart you he's he's just a a mean little kid but not not here like it's you really you really feel for poor bart and also i feel bad for him that like him crying over not wanting to kill an animal like that still gets mo going like this gay kid crying about it like poor bart and they also have

a nice little shot to john talking about i'm glad they don't just have john show up for no reason with marge and lisa that you at least have the scene of them figuring out where they would have gone to kill animals yeah i think oakley and weinstein are very good about having these connective tissue scenes that weren't throw away there's jokes in them but they're also important for characters to need to know where to go next or stitching together seemingly unrelated scenes. And it makes sense because John is someone who knows a lot about Springfield. He's just very knowledgeable about the area and he knows that they astroturfed over the forest, which is why there are no deer anymore. Yeah, he kind of knows more about hunting than the hunting group in this

episode. Yeah. I mean mean john is just a smart guy so he would he's very unspring that's why he feels like an out-of-towner to springfield too just like oh you're not stupid like you're just not a dumb person john and you have uh like introspective abilities while homer gets abandoned by his friends he then gets to save Bart and show that he does care about him and is a good dad. Part of the plot of the episode is that Homer is worried he's a bad father. So sacrificing his body to save Bart is a good father moment for Homer. So I like that too. In a sense, yes. But also what he's doing to Bart, he's protecting Bart from the reindeer that are smashing into him. But this entire episode,

he's probably in his mind has been trying to protect Bart because a lot of parental homophobia comes from wanting to save your kid from all the shittiness that comes with having to be gay in a non-gay world. So it's a very interesting combination of motivations there.

Yeah, that's a really good point. Here's Santa saving the day. Son, there comes a time in every father's life when he must... Dad, are you hurt? Just my bones and organs. What's this? Look! It's Santa Claus!

Annual gift man. Those plastic missiles are a great touch, too. Look! It's Santa Claus! It's Annual Gif Man. Those plastic missiles are a great touch, too. I love the... We got to see him hit the reindeer in the face. That was a nice touch. And how those old toys used to shoot actual sparks. Yeah. Is that a thing? Toys that shoot sparks? Oh, yeah. You can watch old commercials for them,

but when I was at that Nakano Broadway place I mentioned earlier, the toys all there looked like death instruments like you can pick one up and kill somebody by hitting them in the skull with it just all like tint like metallic things with sharp edges just really heavy yeah how did the children survive well there was a culling of the week in the uh beginning of the century or the first half of the century rather our parents are the ones who survived that yeah they survive all the jarts and the slip and slides to make us. Homer getting tenderized. He's very realistically injured after it.

You're just seeing his... He's lucky he didn't break any limbs in that, I guess. He doesn't get out his inspiring speech. He's immediately attacked in the middle of it. There comes a time in every man's life where... That's pretty good, too. And also, Moe and Barney, what dicks?

They just abandon him and hide for themselves. Even though it was Moe's idea, they're there because of Moe. Breaking a lot of laws, by the way. And then they turn on their opinions about John

real fast. Yes, yeah. Actually, their reaction to John here is pretty great. You feel softer than before. I've been tenderized. How'd you know that thing would work? Well, the sound is just brutal, and I figured reindeer

would naturally be afraid of their cruel master Santa Claus. I mean, wouldn't you be? Is it okay to come out now, Mr. Gayman? Sir? I'll do anything you say. Anything. Aw, Moe.

We were saved by a sissy. Yeah, yeah, we'll never live it down. Oh, boy. It looks like it's suicide again for me. Hey, we owe this guy. And I don't want you calling him a sissy. This guy's a fruit. And a... No, wait, wait, wait.

Queer, queer, queer. That's what you like to be called, right? Well, that or John. This is about as tolerant as dad gets, so you should be flattered. Great. I think I caught, like, he's a fruit and a... Like, I heard an F sound,

so maybe that was them sort of saying, oh, this is what Homer was going to say originally. Maybe so. But I did hear, like, a little F sound. He's a fruit and a... No, wait of saying, oh, this is what Homer was going to say originally. Maybe so. But I did hear like a little F song. He's a fruit and a, no, wait, wait, queer, queer. I love John's reaction to just being told this is tolerant as he gets. He's like, great. He's very, he's very agreeable.

I also, Mo's line, it looks like it's suicide again for me. It's a great line. And is this the beginning of Mo's suicide jokes? I think this is the first. Yeah. They really, they really ran with those for the next like five or six years and maybe forever up to now. Yeah.

I think he gets very dark. Yeah. It's, it's a very, it's very, very dark joke, but it is kind of most catchphrase to the, they will go to much darker places with Mo and suicide.

I think once Dana Gould joins the writing staff, it's just suicide jokes from here to the end yeah i so i also mo suggesting that he would have sex with john i feel like that's showing some of mo's real intentions there anything yeah that he's that he's he's the one offering to have sex with him as payment which is like why why is that your first move mo you know i like how he looks around before he says anything with eyes darts it's also a very like murder she wrote explanation by john too about the the santa robot like well but how'd you know

that would work oh well here's the explanation like just in case you think it's weird viewers are cheap and you hear more of his fun laugh at the end too. I love it. Yeah. The episode wraps up with Homer sort of learning a lesson. And again, this is kind of a very terrible, I like that Homer can at least show that this is his, as far as tolerance goes for him, that he can tolerate a gay man on a interpersonal one-on-one level, but as a group, he is still disgusted by them, it would seem. Right. Well, Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you'd be set. Amen to that.

You know, Bart, maybe it's just the concussion talking, but any way you choose to live your life is okay with me. Huh? He thinks you're gay. He thinks I'm gay? Everybody dance now! So yeah, I think we mentioned this earlier, but I think John and the writers were hanging a lantern on this. John is there to teach Homer a a lesson essentially. And he sort of is admitting that to the audience. Like I saved your life and now you learn something.

Now every gay man has to do the same thing. John accepts. It's a more incisive comment than I think I've realized when all the times I've watched this previous, but like they're really making, they're really telling you that Homer learned the wrong lesson. Technically. I think that's a very Simpsons-y moment, too, to just be like, we're recognizing this is a

very special episode, and here are the limits of that, too. Homer had his very special episode with gays, but kind of learned the wrong lesson, and even admits that this level of tolerance that he could accept his son being gay is because he has had his brain bashed. That is true. It's a very cute moment at the end, though, when he's saying, you know, he's saying, no, no, call him queer. And John's like, or John. It's like, just don't call gay people queers. They probably won't like that. Maybe keep that down, Homer. And I like to think that Bart went through a whole episode's worth of emotional journey after this when he has has to now deal with they just leave

it's a great joke to end on but they so what does bart think of his dad thinking he's gay and what is his idea of gay as a 10 year old i really want to know it's i mean and lisa too like lisa lisa very aware of this as well up idea of what gay is well i think for bart it's just like it's a slur you tell call your friends as, if you see them kissing a girl, you say, that's so gay. That did just happen, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That was in Date With Density just about six or seven episodes ago. Yeah. Yeah. It's maybe something that, I don't know if other sitcoms really do this. We were talking about Roseanne earlier and I did watch some of the reboot just because I'm interested academically in TV and I wanted to see what they were doing.

And they have an episode with Roseanne has Muslim neighbors and they end up needing a Wi-Fi password in the middle of the night. So they asked the Muslim neighbors and they give them their password and Roseanne decides that like, okay, they're okay. And she comes around to being okay with those Muslim neighbors. But again, like this isn't 2018 that's not the right lesson like you shouldn't have to have something done for you to like learn that there's humanity in these people who are different from you you should just like try to accept the fact that everyone's human you should treat them all nicely only by doing a favor do you earn the right to exist in a person's mind and and if you undo that favor or

be less nice to them well then you've proven that you're not a human to them and they were right to have those views do right yeah yeah yeah i i wanted to like it because i love the show growing up it was very much about a working class rust belt family that's what i grew up in uh that had like money problems and then growing up and watching it again i was like oh this is super like progressive and leftist and again man why why did you hurt my feelings and break my heart well in a way aren't rust belt parents who were once democrats have now aged into being knee-jerk crazy info wars conservatives my parents haven't but you have a point yeah it kind of sounds like you're defending the roseanne reboot there i'm saying that roseanne accidentally made a trenchant comment about what an insane person she has become i i would not watch that show though ever well i would not i that show

sucks i i would not you're good you're good so let's wrap this up talk about the episode uh my thoughts are i mean as a straight guy let me know if I fucked up because I probably did. But my own straight thoughts are this is a very 1997 episode, but it was one of the first TV episodes on a broadcast network to sort of handle the subject matter. And I think it did it well. And I'm glad that John Waters got to check everything out and make changes. I believe there's one line that was taken out of the script on his command after Homer chews him out for like a second time, I believe John says, you know who would like him? My father. And John was like, no, no, no, take this out. I've been trying to work with my father for 40 years on this. Let's not do this. And I think there is a stereotype that like, oh yeah, gay men have disappointed their fathers. So I'm glad that he had some editorial control and ultimately that scene

never made it in. And that they listened too. Yeah. Yeah. And they were very open-minded and this was very important to have this as, again, a sort of apology for the many many gay jokes the simpsons has made to this point but uh this is about gay cis men and that's basically it and it's much more complicated than that no i i look back on this episode as a very important one to me personally i i think it was you know it wasn't like the gayest thing i ever saw but i it definitely made a big difference to me that my favorite tv show was dealing with this subject i look at it now and sure you can find flaws in it from its time but it was so head and shoulders above what was on network television at the time that and and their effort was there to make it as correct as

possible or authentic as possible with john water's involvement and you know the only thing uh the last thing i wanted to say about it was that rebecca sugar she's given many interviews about why she put gay themes in her shows and part of them is because by not having them in kids shows she felt the kids were getting the message that if you are this way, you're not normal. You're not being featured here. And it's just the message by withholding it. You're getting this message that you're not part of society.

And I do think partially having this idea that Bart could be gay, maybe told some kids at the time of like, well, if you're Bart, what if you were gay? Like that's, it's not the time of like, well, if you're Bart, what if you were gay? Like that's, it's not the end of the world. And Homer being accepting of that is, it's kind of a nice thing. I was just thinking of that recently.

Cause I, I heard Rebecca sugar in an interview comment on that same subject. I agree with that for those reasons. Like there was probably a lot of gay kids younger than us who were watching this show and it might've been the first positive, like depiction of gayness at all that they ever saw. And that, that's, it's a very powerful thing. Any other last thoughts,

Drew? Yeah. I want to, we didn't talk about how the censor initially rejected the script because there was a homophobic censor at Fox and they gave them like tons more criticism about this script than they get for typical episodes. And then eventually the president got switched out and they got a new censor and whoever read it the second time was completely fine with it. It wasn't homophobic and liked the episode. And I was very interested to look at, I'm like, what was going on on Fox with gay episodes at

the time? And the previous episode of a Fox sitcom that dealt with gay themes that I could find was Ned and Stacey, the Deborah Messing Thomas Hayden church sitcom that dealt with gay themes that I could find was Ned and Stacey, the Deborah Messing Thomas Hayden Church sitcom that was very mean-spirited. Oh, yeah. And that episode was the one that features Mr. Belvedere as a guest character. So it's a very complicated episode, but Mr. Belvedere, Christopher Hewitt playing himself

in a very Mr. Belvedere-like fashion gives advice to people. And one of the people in the episode confesses to having, is a guy confesses to having a crush on Ned, Thomas Hayden Church. And Thomas Hayden Church's response is to go get a gun. Oh my Lord. Super fucked up.

And that was, I think Ned and Stacey either got canceled right after that or after the next episode. Glad blasted the episode as being wrong-headed and awful, and it's super weird to think that Debra Mezzin used to be on that show. But this aired not that long after, same season. It's all 1997.

And even though it's dated in some respects, it is amazing this aired when it did, and I'm so glad that a bunch of straight people got it as right as they did yeah i want to say that uh i think netta stacy replaced the critic on fox so we have more reasons to hate it now uh well you know the president changing was that john matonin guy leaving i'm not not saying you can draw a line between those two things or

that when that was the president who left in john in bill oakley's story about the change in management at fox uh wow that ned and stacy jesus christ yeah it didn't say see is a funny show and it went really dark uh darker than you would see normally in 1997 but that one plot line really fucked up yeah i never heard about that, but Jesus, that's crazy. So, Drew, thanks for joining us. Can you tell us where we can find you, how we can support you, and what you're working on? So, gayestepisodeever.com. We're going to have

a second season coming up later this year. I think we're doing a King of the Hill. We're doing a few other cool shows that, if you like this, you'll probably like. I have a video game music podcast called Singing Mountain. I have a new movie podcast called You Have to Watch That Movie. I actually started a small podcast

network company here in Los Angeles with my business partner, Catherine Spires, who has a food podcast called Smart Mouth. I wanted to bring this up with you guys because she happens to be the stepdaughter of Howard Phillips. Really? Okay. I've met the man. I met him too.

I was listening to you guys talk on Retronauts about the weird Mario games episode. You were kind of bagging on Howard a little bit. You were kind of making fun of the way he dresses a little bit. I was like, that's so weird that they're talking about Catherine's dad, basically. I have to say, he had

the sort of Tucker Carlson look before Tucker Carlson had that look. But I saw him at a classic gaming convention in 2012. He dresses like a vacation dad now. He's dropped the bow tie. That's basically what he is now. He's cool. And then so Catherine and I started this little podcast

and we're called Table Cakes Productions and we're doing stuff with female hosts and gay hosts and just trying to give a different perspective on pop culture matters. So go check us out at TableCakes.com if you want to see what we're up to. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot, Drew. Yeah.

Thank you guys so much. This was great. Thank you for joining us. Drew Mackey. If you want to find him on Twitter, he gave us his Twitter address after we got off the phone with him on the record. So look up him on Twitter as Drew G. Mackey. That's M-A-C-K-I-E. The incorrect way to spell Mackey. But he was a good guest, so you know what?

Let's not fight about it. So as for us, we are supported by the Talking Simpsons Patreon. Things are growing great for us right now. We can use your support, though, to unlock more shows. If you want to help us out, go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And if you sign up at the $5 level, you'll get all these podcasts a week ahead ahead of time and ad free. And the same goes for our sister podcast, What a Cartoon. Also at the $5 level, there are so many bonus podcasts, almost too many to list, but I'll try to list them all here. There are bonus episodes of this podcast. There's mini series like Talking Futurama,

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I think we would have done it already by the time of this airing maybe it's next week if you're hearing this on Patreon it's next week

October 20th at kelly's olympian in portland but yes uh because of your funding we're able to do so much we want to do more so please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons even if you sign up at the one dollar level you will still get our monthly community podcast that is patreon exclusive but five dollar level gets you so much more so think about it if you want to support the show we'd really appreciate it thank you so much and if you give it the premium ten dollar a month level you get access to our monthly video which we have of which we have done say an exploration of every short from the tracy ullman years of the simpsons me and bob do commentary on those we did commentary

on all the deleted scenes from seasons five six and, and 7. I'm sure soon to be 8. Plus, our newest one, me and Bob do commentary and watch the lost clip show, Springfield's Most Wanted. And we unlock one secret that you didn't know about. And I won't give it away here. So check that out at the $10 level. So yeah, patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. You know you want to do it, please. As for me, I am one of your hosts, Bob Mackie.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. Of course, you might know my other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast. Go to retronauts.com and look for Retronauts in your podcast device. Just check it out, folks. If you like classic games, we do everything from the oldest games up until like PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360. We love talking about old games, and I think you'll love our shows. So check it out, retronauts.com.

Thank you very much, Henry. I'm H-E-n-e-r-e-y-g on twitter you can follow me there for updates on whenever simpson stuff goes live on the patreon or updates from our sister show what a cartoon where we go through a different cartoon in the talking simpson style every week that's h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g thank much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for Brother from another series. Give me a new day Give me a new day Everybody Here is the dome Back with the bass Pajamas live in effect And I don't waste time

On the mic with a dope rhyme Jump to the rhythm Jump, jump to the rhythm Jump And I'm here to combine Beats and lyrics to make you shake your pants Take a chance Come on and dance.

Guys, grab a girl. Don't wait. Make the twirl. It's your whirl and I'm just a squirrel. Trying to get a nudge to move your butt to the dance floor. So yo, what's up? Hands in the air. Come on, say yeah.

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Come on, let's play. Baby. Let the music take control. Let the rhythm move you. Let's play. Let the music take control. Let the rhythm move you. Well, it's been two hours. How do you feel? I don't know. I kind of want a cigarette.

That's a good start. Let's get you a pack. What's your brand? Anything Slim. Okay, that didn't work.