Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Homer's Triple Bypass With Neil Campbell

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Homer has a bad heart and we've got a great guest, writer Neil Campbell who cocreated the series Digman with Andy Sandberg (now streaming on Paramount Plus)! Neil talks us through the Simpsons ep he wrote in 2013, his longtime fandom of the show, and his thoughts on this freelance-written episode that balances the drama of Homer's near-death experiences with cops shooting at mummies & people with legs for arms. So grab your defibrillators for our discussion of this heart-stoppingly funny episode! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that loves to tinker with your ticker. I'm your host, the snifter, report enjoyer, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Oily hidehaver, Henry Gilbert.

And who is our special guest on the line? Hey, it's Neil Campbell. I really dig you guys. And this week's episode is Homer's Triple Bypass. Homer's in the hospital! They think it's his heart! Oh my god. What? Five cents off wax paper. This episode originally aired on December 17th, 1992. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God.

Happy Holidays 1992, Bobby. Dr. Dre releases The Chronic, Kids Want Trolls and Creepy Crawlers for Christmas, and A Few Good Men defeats The Muppet Christmas Carol at the box office. dray releases the chronic kids want trolls and creepy crawlers for christmas and a few good men defeats the muppet christmas carol at the box office wow so people looking for a few good men not several pretty good muppets we we just did an entire five hour podcast about that muppet thing i don't think we'll do five hours about few good men yes part of this news story was an ad for our podcast yes yeah we do love that movie but yes it's the holidays me and bob were 10 during this holiday season i forget what amy got i'm sure game boy games were included uh but that's about it yeah when i was 10 i remember because this is the uh christmas i got my super nintendo i didn't get it

the launch year i got it this year with Street Fighter 2. So, memorable Christmas. Neil, did you have Trolls or Creepy Crawlers or any of those for Christmas? I never had Trolls. I think I was probably a little old for Trolls. Or perhaps not too old for, but they just were not something that I ever collected. But, yeah, 92.

I don't remember what gaming system I would have had, but I'm sure if it was Super Nintendo it was Super Nintendo Games is what I would have been excited about. And if it was still NES, there would have been those. That was probably a good bet for like an early 90s Christmas or birthday gift for me would be video games. And yes, the Chronic by Dr. Dre, a big moment for West Coast hip hop as well.

Like it was the gangsta rap existed before then, but it really popularized it for but you know before then new york was the the the hub of hip-hop but more people outside of los angeles were aware of the hip-hop that was coming out of the la area we were appropriate age for muppet christmas carol not so much for the chronic and i do remember uh some of the bad kids being into The Chronic around this time, like 4th through 7th grade. And I kept thinking, what is that leaf they keep drawing?

It's a cool leaf. No, yeah, I was much more into Gonzo than The Chronic back then. I would have been probably into Grunge. I probably would have been wearing a blue flannel. 92, yeah, Pearl Jam, Nirvana. I also don't think we had MTV, so we didn't have a 92. Yeah. Pearl Jam, Nirvana. I also don't think we had MTV.

So we didn't have cable until I was a little older, I believe. So I think I was a late comer to some of the, to Dre and all of that stuff. Cause I was probably just listening to like one rock station or something. I don't think I still, I have seen select scenes from a few good men, mainly to understand references in the critic back then. But otherwise I don't think I've seen the scenes from A Few Good Men, mainly to understand references in The Critic back then. But otherwise, I don't think I've seen the actual full film. I mean, you've lived through 30 years of Aaron Sorkin after that. Would it be as special if you went back to see it?

I mean, you have a performance of Jack Nicholson, who I hear is barely in the movie, but he's still there. And Tom Cruise. Yeah. I mean, it's a fun film. Rob Reiner directed it, it right he's on a real kind of hot streak around then uh i i enjoy the movie but yeah cruise noah wiley's got a small part in it you know it's there's a lot going on it's good that's like the first time cruise was like going for the oscar right like his big push for like oh i'm i'm for i'm not just a pretty boy

i can star in a serious film. Yeah. You know, I feel like William Goldman, and maybe I'm getting it wrong, was the one who was like, Cruise should have won the Oscar for Rain Man, not Dustin Hoffman. He's the one who carries the movie. So I feel like there was a bit in like 88 or whatever of, okay, he's stepping out of just pretty boy. He's in a prestige, you know, best picture winner, but maybe not one that was showcasing him as like the actor to get nominated as much.

I think the first big push was Born on the Fourth of July, if anyone remembers that movie. Oh, yeah. And then won best director even. Yeah. So that's what we were doing around the Christmas season when also we were watching this episode of The Simpsons. And joining us today as first-time guest, Neil Campbell. He is the co-creator of Comedy Central's Digman, as well as a writer and producer on shows like Comedy Bang Bang, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and many others. Welcome to the show, Neil. Thanks for having me, guys. I love The Simpsons. I'm excited to talk about it. Well, I'm sure we'll get into all of that. Neil, we've both been big fans of yours since the Comedy Bang Bang, the podcast, like years or at least a decade ago like some of my favorite

favorite bits on it i is is the timekeeper your most famous character from there definitely yeah i feel like i had always been doing these appearances we used to do like monthly show at ucb there's my sketch group called a kiss from daddy and we were paired up with the birthday boys not all every month but frequently do sort of like solo bits on there so i feel like a lot of my early Bang Bang appearances were me adapting a solo bit that could only ever exist once. And I was like, you know, I'm just not one of these guys that has like a character that's beloved.

That's just maybe not how I operate on this show. I kind of need a mostly like scripted bit that I, you know, just kind of talk around a bit and then present. Yeah, I did it on like an anniversary one and had sort of the half idea for it. And then, yeah, Far and away became my most popular character well we each have around around um three thousand words of notes per episode so we operate the same way great nothing is off the cuff that's dangerous yeah yeah i'm looking at you guys yeah looking at your scripts i so you see it reflected

my glasses my many notes yeah uh you know we've had on a couple times now Tim Kalpakis. Oh, yeah. Who is a writer on your show. And he helped connect us. And, yeah, we're also fans of Digman. Thank you. And the show aired on Comedy Central. And the first season's now on Paramount+.

Yes. First season is finally streaming on Paramount+. We have a great, like, I love the guys over at Comedy Central, and I couldn't explain why some shows on other networks get to stream the same time that they air on TV, and some shows that doesn't happen. But, you know, this is one where six months later, it's streaming, and that's how it goes.

And excited for people who maybe missed it as it was airing weekly, which is not perhaps how most people watch TV anymore. People who will be able to check it out on streaming now were quite proud of it. And I'm excited for more people to be able to see it. I think it's BS that people, I think more things need to be aired weekly. I'm tired of getting all episodes at once

and feeling like it's heavy responsibility. I don't want weekly. I honestly, I did like that. Like there's no complaint for me about airing something airing weekly it feels like what I grew up how I grew up watching shows and it was exciting to have something new to promote every week and all that so it that didn't bother me at all Digman is very funny it feels so much like your type of writing with so many great just like wordplay bits that I I love it's some of my favorite things you write like. Like I was just re-watching some of the episodes.

Like there's a thing of like, oh, wild goose is my second favorite type of goose after tame. Oh yeah, yeah. Just a great wordplay that I associate with some of my favorite Neil Campbell writers. Well, thank you. And it's fine.

I honestly can't even remember if I wrote that or if it was just once the show finds its voice and the room knows what it is, people are pitching on things from all angles and don't remember who came up with what. Definitely. We had a really terrific staff and animators, everyone who worked on it. I love working with, but, you know, people got into the sense of the humor of the show. Everyone on staff.

Okay. So when you and you co-created the show with Andy Samberg, was it always going to be animated? Because, you know, aside from one thing we'll talk about in a sec, you didn't have a lot of animated credits. Yeah. So Andy and I would talk at Brooklyn Nine-Nine about we both love and love animated comedies and just animation in general. And it really, yeah, came out of like, oh, it would be fun to work on a thing that is different from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which we also, you know, had a great time there, but we're two goofy comedy guys and we talk and we'd be like, oh, it'd be really fun to have something that really kind of where the jokes aren't constrained by, you know, budget and

physical production limits and sort of maybe family friendly confines of an 8pm network show. And so we just were like, it'd be really fun to write an animated show that lets us kind of blow jokes out to, you know, insane lengths and just have a lot of fun with that. And yeah, we just would talk ideas and all that. And then I think Andy one day was like, what about like a shithead Indiana Jones? And we were just like, oh, that could be really fun. And we just kept talking about ideas and the ball started to roll, I guess. And then, yeah, then we wrote it up and pitched it. And here we are.

And of course, Digman loves snakes which is very distinct yeah yeah that was that was a touch andy put in the pilot script that that really sort of makes it clear it's his own unique guy yeah yeah i guess we'll hear about it but it will be interesting to know how the simpsons informs your own animated show because i feel like if you were born in the wake of The Simpsons, naturally something you make has to be made in its image or at least follow the rules in terms of world building, joke telling and things like that. Yeah. I mean, it's it's I feel like I could approach this from like 20 different angles. I would say I mean, just in general, I would say Simpsons is probably the thing that like

shaped my sense of humor the most. Like it's probably discovered SNL around the same time, but I don't really remember, you know, I have a lot of friends who like Adam Sandler and like Billy Madison stuff was like a huge thing for them. And I saw all that and it definitely made me laugh. But I think even then I was like a lot of those friends who feel that way are a few years younger than me. And I remember even seeing like Billy Madison and stuff like that or listening to Adam Sandler's album and being like, this is really funny. It's making me laugh. But, you know, it's just not quite as sophisticated as The Simpsons.

And like I was already like a little too mature or something in my own mind. But, yeah, I yeah, I was living on in army base in japan as a kid and people were like there's this show the simpsons but we didn't have it on the one network armed forces network i had a friend who had like a tape of it and so i would like go over to his house and watch like taped off tv season one episodes whenever i could and it just became this like holy shit i gotta like consume this wherever i can and then i moved back to the states like a couple weeks before the season two premiere and it was just like so exciting for me to like i can now watch new episodes as the air which we could never do on the armed forces network

anyway yeah like i say the one channel six months a year it was like cosby shows at 8 p.m on sunday six months a year it was like roseanne's at 8 p.m. on Sunday. And I think it was hard for like new shows to port over there very quickly. So got back right before the season two premiere and just became obsessed with Simpsons. And yeah, I would tape it off the TV onto VHS every week. Really just, you know, memorized every episode essentially. I mean, not literally, you know,

but like just watch and rewatch. And when it would start to go into syndication or, you know, rerun on like 7 p.m. or whatever on the local stations would watch that, you know, just love it and feel like it more than anything shaped things. So anyway, that's a long preamble, I guess. But in terms of writing the show, there are times where I go like, oh, yeah, I, you know, Simpsons, I think, is the funniest animated show that's ever been. And I want our show to be super funny. It's we're not. I know other shows have other goals, but we are certainly not an animated show that's attempting to be like an exploration of some dark, serious mental health. Yeah.

Mental health issues or social problems or something like that. We're like a silly show trying to be funny. And but I mean, there are times we go like, oh, this is maybe like too much. Like, I mean, I'm sure every animated show does this, obviously. But like we go like, oh, this gag might be not even literally something Simpsons did, but too much like the rhythm of a Simpsons joke. And we kind of have to go like, OK, we always have to be our own thing and not just sort of become something that tries to do. Well, this seems like it could have been a 1992 Simpsons joke, you know, so. Well, I'm glad you brought up your Simpsons origin because normally if somebody is too similar to us in age and, you know, lifestyle, we stopped asking because the origin was always the same. So this was surprising.

While we were experiencing Bartmania in America, it was just a rumor where you were. I could watch the one VHS and I still was like never allowed to get like a T-shirt of it and not. My parents liked it and would be fine with me watching it every week but i think it was like okay but you can't have like a like that t-shirt is what like sort of the you know the the the less couth kids wear but uh yeah but so yeah it still is an influence i also still i'll try to be fast because i don't even know exactly what my point is here but like yeah you work in tv there's a lot of like breaking story what story and all this and there's a lot of like well here's a great model for how to break story and stuff and i there are times where i go like all these different models i i see of for story structure you know tv

or film or whatever they never they always you know there's some common types of shows and movies that that they cite as being like and this you know chinatown or whatever is a perfect structure or you know finding nemo or Finding Nemo or something. And I'm like, it is funny to me that I never see Simpsons on any of these. And that's my favorite show. So I don't know how much I should be like, yeah, I really need to write a TV show that's like Finding Nemo or whatever, which is a movie I also love. And it's no knock on a story structure that cites that or whatever. But I am just like, I don't ever,

ever see any, any of these things cite Simpsons. And I go, well, okay. That's that. Robert McKean ever wrote about the Simpsons. Yeah. Yeah.

There's no, yeah. I've seen, I've seen very few shows have the Simpsons format where you have an unrelated act one set piece that then sets up the story for the next two acts. I feel like they own that so much that I have not really seen anyone else try that. Or if they did, it was in a much more subtle way.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then obviously some episodes are, you know, differ from that and don't have the opening thing. You know, like it's not like it's without rules or anything, but all I guess I'm saying is it frees you up in a way. It's not so much like, oh, I want to emulate what The Simpsons does instead. It just makes you go like,

you can start to get brainwashed by like, we need to come up with the perfect story structure, you know, and that can really feel like a thing that gets discussed a lot in TV rooms. And there are times where I just go like, you know what? No one's ever citing my favorite show when they're talking about story structures. So I don't know how much I need to try to adhere to rules that my favorite show doesn't even follow. Well, I'm also curious on Digman, you know, after having now worked with the fine folks at Titmouse, including, I believe, series director Mike Mayfield, you know, what did that teach you, you know, production wise about now working on an animated series now behind the scenes?

And does it give you more appreciation or insight into watching The Simpsons now that you've gone through the whole process of an animated show from script to, to final animation. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think Andy and I both went in and we were like,

we love animation and we don't want anyone to feel like working on this show that we're just like, just make it look like other shows or, or like, no, no, no, don't do anything weird.

Like we just want it like sort of flat joke delivery coverage of stuff. Um, you know, we went in and it's like, we're like, no, no, no, don't do anything weird. Like we just want it like sort of flat joke delivery coverage of stuff. You know, we went in and it's like, we're like, this is an action adventure comedy. And we want to have fun with the adventure elements and, you know, bring to mind sort of that Amblin feel of things. And how can that translate into animation? And, you know, we are fortunate to work with a lot of super talented artists. And with Mike, obviously sort of leading the charge there. So it's not like I don't, I don't think we came in like, all right, whatever, just draw your little drawings. We had a lot of respect for

the process. And I think it was just sort of finding out like friends and other shows were very helpful about prepping me for what the process was like, like Andrew Goldberg on Big Mouth amongst other folks. So and even just like our producers and stuff were very good about holding our hands a bit through it. That was great. And then yeah, watching Simpsons, I go like, Oh, yeah, well, what are they focusing on here? You know, but even then, I think every show and winds up becoming its own beast in a different way. And, you know, I remember, kind of at some point, like, Oh, we're not going to have this thing that Big Mouth has, you know, in terms of of like a moment when we get to rewrite we won't have a room there that they maybe do

you have like a writer's room around for getting a cut from the previous season or whatever so you know there were just parts of the process that did differ for us but and you just kind of figure it out as you go along but you know i've probably just started to notice when there are crowd scenes and things how they do that that's why I mean my biggest thing is I watch Simpsons or new shows any any animated show I watched like Wish the other night and I was like kind of funny a big courtyard there and there's only three background characters all right there you go I guess no one likes putting in a bunch of characters the background of a of an animated shot we've become acutely aware after doing this podcast of every crowd scene in the Simpsons and how often mobs appear and how much work that is

for everyone involved except for the writers yes yeah it is i i think about it constantly as we work on season two like how many people are in this scene and do we need that many kind of a thing one last thing about digman i was that i just i really love the show the anime style i also think like the cast is great not just andy sandberg and the lead but also like uh tim robinson and tim meadows yeah and and mitra johari and so many great guests especially my number one celeb crush harvey guillen oh yeah season one he was great and yeah really i mean so fun to work with also a fun role that kind of the character reveals another layer to to himself and he you know was able to sort of keep the voice of the character but morph it into something else uh uh at that reveal and and i that was really awesome and yeah

harvey was great came to our wrap party and stuff which i don't know any of our other i'm sure people were busy and stuff but uh it was great to see him. And yeah, I'm such a fan of his. So I think we're bearing the lead here because Neil Campbell wrote a Simpsons episode. Before we talk to him about that, let's discuss the writers for this episode, two new writers for the Simpsons. And now we have a little writer's corner for our two new writers, Michael Carrington and Gary Apple. we are recording this without neil campbell recording this way before he's on the show so i wanted to point out one thing i do have a tale of the tape for this episode i didn't want to bore neil with it so i'm going to bore all of you listeners out there so henry talks about his

tales of the tape in which uh there's taping mishaps with the simpsons and this was like the first time in the history of the show to this point where i couldn't watch an episode live because i think like we couldn't get fox on my tv in my room quite yet and we had to watch it in the basement tv where you know the family room was but my sister was being tooted by a tutor uh because she had problems with math or something i forget what it was and i was a big VCR setter back then. I set the VCR to record everything on my blank tapes, but I neglected to look at how much blank tape I had left. So when Homer is doing his little puppet show

to show the kids how the coronary bypass surgery works, that's when the tape cut off. So I had to wait until the rerun to find out what happened. So whenever I reached that point in the episode, all I can think of is this is where the tape cut off. So that is my only tale of the tape for the entire Talking Simpsons legacy. That's the only one I can tell you, my one taping mishap. Again, I so regret that I even tried to cut out the commercials.

It made sense back then because it was like, when I'm going to rewatch these, I don't want to fast forward through commercials. Now I prize those classic commercials as much as anything else. So, yes, you heard my tale of the tape and Neil Campbell was not bored for 45 seconds. So we all won today. Let's talk about these writers. So, you know, based on their IMDb credits, it looks like these two parted as writing partners in the mid-90s so before that they wrote scripts for shows like

rhythm and blues which uh the only reason i know about this is because i recently did a writer's corner for the futurama writer david a goodman and he wrote for it otherwise that's all i know about it and uh shows like robert klein time and then after this they were writers and producers on the sinbad show and fox's failed get smart reboot. The reboot of the spy spoof show from the 60s. It brought back the original cast and Andy Dick. Andy Dick was part of this and it failed. Why? We'll never know.

Who could say? Yeah. It could be any reason. So here is how they got hired according to Gary Apple. So Gary Apple says this. Quote, Michael Carrington and I had just moved to Los Angeles to become sitcom writers and we love the Simpsons which was in its second season we wrote a spec script that involved Homer being a corporate raider Wall

Street was a big movie at the time and Bart counterfeiting school raffle tickets the script came out very well and eventually found its way to Sam Simon's office he met with us and was impressed enough to give us a script assignment and that is this episode so we've talked about their pairing let's talk about each writer individually so we have michael carrington uh notably the first black simpsons writer am i correct about this yeah we it's a big moment i think they they still wouldn't have a staff writer or i mean uh an in-room producer writer on the show uh who was black until mark wilmore yes so seven years later they would have a staff member a black staff member but this is a big moment for the show so

uh very notable and uh yeah mark wilmore the late mark wilmore was their first black staff writer but michael carrington first black writer for The Simpsons. And I want to thank the YouTuber Pop Arena, who does this great series called Knick Knacks, going through the history of Nickelodeon one show at a time. He reminded me with his episode all about the Nickelodeon game show Think Fast that Michael Carrington was the host of Think Fast. The second I heard that name, I'm like, that's the same guy. And it was.

I couldn't believe that when we did this the first time, I forgot that about him. Honestly, there were 8 million Nickelodeon game shows, and I was an avid Nick watcher, but the game shows were low on my list. But that Think Fast, as soon as I watched Popperina's great video that everybody should look up on YouTube, and saw some of the games i was like oh i remember this game of the opening lockers thing and all these weird trivia questions in it yeah they were always searching for the next double

dare and they never quite found it uh you have guts was popular legends of the hidden temple was pretty popular but they lost their game show branding uh as nicktoons really took off but michael carrington he was there during their game show era and he was hosting a show he gives off great game show host vibes like he feels like a game show host he's very charismatic on the commentary but yeah check out pop arena's knickknack series on youtube we love it it's a great history of that channel we grew up with so yeah michael carrington would also do a handful of voice roles on the simpsons and the critic so he was the drill sergeant in simpson tide he was sideshow rahim and he's also the stand-up comic homer watches and homer and apu where he's talking about how

black guys and white guys drive their cars he's uh he was great he's great in all those roles it's or it's interesting that three episodes after this we're like well the joke is that uh sajid rahim is is uh it should be voiced by a black man they actually get him to get a black actor to do it which is good yes even back then there was some light racially appropriate casting of characters and that was all michael carrington uh so following his freelance script on the simpsons we talked about working with Gary Apple on the Sinbad show and the Get Smart reboot they split

and then he is a writer producer on things like Martin the Gregory Hines show the Jamie Foxx show That's So Raven Corey in the House and The Neighborhood and his most recent script as of this writing is an episode of the TV series Barbie It Takes Two

so Michael Carrington had a bit of experience before this but this really recent script as of this writing is an episode of the tv series barbie it takes two so michael carrington had a bit of experience before this but this really launched him into the sitcom writing world for whatever reason i'm very aware of cory in the house because if you follow the twitter account wario 64 he always tweets out amazing deals on games that are on sale and he always points out when the i think the ds game version of Corey in the House is on sale. Right. So there are still new copies of this game available. I was impressed to hear that Carrington even worked so recently.

Because we talk about a lot of Simpsons writers from back then. Who, you know, their last script was like five, ten years ago. But The Neighborhood is like, it is a still continuing sitcom. It's the Cedric the entertainer and uh that guy from new girl uh show is still going on okay yeah i didn't know that was the cedric show it should just be called cedric with an exclamation point i think he had that already that's why they're they're trapped oh yes he probably did have a sitcom already okay so yes uh that is michael carrington and i don't know if we are going to bring this up on the show. Henry, do you trying to show off his bona fides for working with a black

director and says oh and you know i played othello in high school and he does a a very embarrassing uh voice for othello and he's this and carrington plays a spike lee character who goes like i haven't been this insulted since and i forget what the joke was but so uh carrington uh at the space mountain pre-show ride video for that was uh started in the mid 90s up until about 2010 he played dirk takiyak the anchor of the future like they basically they have like a video that says and the space mountain ride is about to launch what does dirk think and they interview the president who's like a robot it's it's some fun classic 90s disney uh theme park acting he does a great job yeah you can look this clip up online i don't know a lot about michael

carrington's acting career uh how he became a game show host it's he seems to have uh worn a lot of hats in his early career and i'm sure he might have had like an improv background but it's none of the backgrounds we expect from simpsons folks uh He and Gary Apple, as far as I could find, are not Harvard grads. I'm not really sure what their backgrounds are. But yeah, Michael Carrington, still out there, still working, still living down his past as a Space Mountain correspondent. I wonder, too, that if Apple and Carrington, them being assigned this around the same time as Bill and Josh worked on Mars gets a

job I think we're we're both of them tryouts for a writer your team to replace uh Jay and Wally and maybe they were like uh we're gonna get the Sinbad show you know he's really taken off the Simpson seems to be you know coming to a close yeah and it's in the fourth or fifth season well and of course they did go with the guys who did write for the harvard lampoon uh yes who also are the the best writers or some of the two of the best writers to ever write for the simpsons as well ultimately it was like well we have to hire the harvard guys right and that's what happened uh let's talk about gary apple so not as prolific as michael carrington he didn't stick around in hollywood as long so his last producer credits were actually in the mid 90s with michael carrington on the simbad show and the get smart reboot so from that point on he was a freelance

writer and it seems like he moved back to the new york area in the late 90s because a lot of the shows he worked on seemed to be new york based like disney's doug i know jumbo pictures was a new york company and pbj pb and j otter was another jumbo show and that's also in new york but yeah he wrote scripts for those sabrina the animated series pigs next door oswald and time warp trio his last script was in 2005 so he's kind of been done with that world for about 20 years now. Wow, that's really interesting. I mean, that sounds like it happened to many of the writers in the 90s, that you get tired of living in Los Angeles. You want to be in New York, and you take the writing jobs you can in New York.

I hope his move away from Hollywood and to be based in New York City made him happy yeah we've covered a few of these writers who uh and you know I don't blame them because I'm not cut out for this life they get jobs in Southern California in the LA area and they're like I hate it here I don't want to live here and they find a way to work remotely or they leave the industry we covered the the writer of the Batman the animated series episode on leather wings was one of those guys where he wrote the story bible for the series he wrote that episode he's like i cannot handle la we i have to leave and he did and he continued working for the show remotely so it's not for everybody totally understandable but i'm glad that uh that gary

apple it sounds sounds like they're they're still you know friendly at least but also like sometimes writing partners also like you know they've not all writing partnerships last as long as bill and josh and so since then he's been a writer of children's books and a writer of one-act plays and according to his very bare bones website quotes on stage his twisted holiday comedy musical christmas in hell was produced off broadway by the y the York Theatre Company in December of 2018, following award-winning productions at the New York Fringe Festival and the New York Music Festival. The cast album for the musical was released on J Records. So I take it he's in the New York area.

He's writing musicals, one-act plays. And he also wrote a parody of the Christian propaganda book Heaven is for Real. Are you familiar with this, Henry? Is that the Burpo? Yes, it is. So I can finally say this on a podcast. I love saying it. Colton Burpo.

It was the kid who was coached by his family members to say that he saw heaven when he had a near-death experience. And they made several movies about this. So he wrote a parody of that book called Hell is for Real about a child who goes to hell. And that's his most recent thing he's done. So he has become an author and he's dabbling in the world of musicals and one-act plays, but the world of TV was not really made for him, it seems,

if he got out of it that early and didn't want to be a producer after a few sitcoms. Well, it also sounds like yeah writing the kids books he moved more into the kid uh or you know which uh obviously is just as hard to work on his grown-up stuff but with none of the respect uh he yes exactly but maybe he also worked uh it sounded like he had dreams of broadway as well yeah perhaps yeah and he's still kicking around you know when when a guy's last credit is in 2005 you're like oh no what happened and then it turns out like oh career change happened and here's a here's a recent picture Yeah, and he's still kicking around. You know, when a guy's last credit is in 2005, you're like, oh, no, what happened? And then it turns out, like, oh, career change happened, and here's a recent picture of him, and he's fine.

So that is the story of Michael Carrington and Gary Apple. The Simpsons will be right back. Thursday. Will a bad ticker convince Homer to change his ways? Woo-hoo! Look at that. Lover fly. And all new Simpsons, Thursday on Fox.

Oh. cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener,

your home cozier and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert trying to fit an entire sandwich into my mouth and a big thank you to our guest this week, Neil Campbell, co-creator of The Digman Show. And he had so many cool things to tell us. Keep listening. He has some fun secrets about writing for The Simpsons. And we have so much fun

talking about sitcoms and animation and comedy writing all that with neil thanks so much again to neil please check out his digman series if you haven't yet it's on paramount plus the entire first season and they're working on season two and the tv show he was head writer on the comedy bang bang series is all on youtube right now you should definitely check that out and all of his great appearances on podcasts too thank you so much again neil and we're big fans of digman and if you enjoy the talking simpsons podcast like neil campbell does then you should know we're only able to do it because of support of listeners like you at patreon.com talking simpsons subscribers there not only get to help us do this as our real full-time jobs, but they also get tons of exclusive podcasts every month, a new episode of Talking Futurama

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you need to sign up at the premium level at the patreon because you get all those five dollar things i mentioned and then our once a month premium podcast what a cartoon movie where we cover an animated feature film just as in depth as we do an episode of the simpsons which often means talking for over four or five or even six hours about an animated feature film. Last month, we did The Emperor's New Groove, the very underrated Disney 2000 film. A really great time we had on that, especially because it has a very interesting

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slash talking simpsons so here we are 15 minutes later uh Welcome back to the show, Neil. We do want to talk to you about the episode you wrote because like the two writers on this episode, you also live through the Simpsons freelancer experience. Yes. All right. Shall I tell the tale? Please.

In case folks don't know, the episode you wrote is the Elon Musk episode. Yes, yes. The episode that I think you play a clip from at the beginning of the live Halloween show and the audience is angry about. I was hoping you hadn't heard that one. You shouldn't have listened to the show. No, no, I understand. Okay, I'll tell you my full experience because I was looking through my email to date some of this stuff. Oh, wow. October 2011, I get a text from my friend Harris Whittles. He says, tell your reps to submit you to the Simpsons. They're looking for new young people. Tell them to say Mike Scully sent you and it should go to Al Jean. Act now. I, you know, email my reps and I say, I quote this text from Harris

in full. I think text, I think Harris was working with Mike Scully on Parks and Rec at this point. That's what I was going to guess. Yeah. And so they go, okay, we submitted your materials. Didn't look up the exact timing of this, although I bet I, so then that was October, about a week later, yep, November 4th.

So they've sent over this spec script I've written, an original pilot, and one of my agents writes me back. And the pilot's name was Justice Island. I hear from one of my agents, Al Jean liked Justice Island. He will want to meet with you as soon as he has his budget set. Harris Whittles also texts me to say, Al Jean loved your stuff. I was excited.

I went, great. So then we set up this meeting. And I have a meeting with Al Jean. So this is Friday, December 2nd, 2011. And part of it was I was supposed to come in with ideas. It would be great if you came in with some Simpsons ideas, pitches to chat about. I bet I have a document for that somewhere, but I don't know where. So that might be the limit of my research. But I remember one of my ideas was this was before the Hunger Games movies were out, but I had read the books and I knew they were

making the movies. And so I pitched some sort of Bart and Lisa wind up in a Hunger Games like scenario type thing. Anyway, had this meeting December 2011 meeting. It was totally fun. I had a great time meeting with Al. Nothing but positive things to say about the experience, but then I didn't hear, you know, anything after that. So just went, all right, that's how it was going. And I think at that point I had December 20, I think I had just started writing season one of Comedy Bang Bang. So it was kind of like, oh, you know, when it rains, it pours in a way. It was nice to have this Simpsons opportunity, but I also had my first like full-time WGA writing job at the exact same time. So, okay. So that was December, 2011. Then I wake up the morning of September 12th, 2013, and I have an email from Al and it says, hi Neil, I interviewed you a while

ago. And I'm wondering if you would be interested in writing a freelance Simpsons episode. We have the idea laid out. It would have to be done fairly quickly, two weeks, give or take. Please let me know if you're interested and I hope you're well. I write back. I say, obviously I'm interested. I'm so excited. Whatever you guys need. And so then they send me like a, basically a four page story document. So, and by the way, yeah, this is the first time I've heard since that interview in December, 2011, the first thing I've heard is waking up one morning asking if I'll write a, you know, a freelance episode. And so I am super excited about it. And I believe this is also like the last few weeks before we're starting on season three of Comedy Bang Bang. Um, so I

have some free time. I'm not working at the moment. They send me the notes. It's about four pages of notes. And at the time, because Comedy Bang Bang was a sketch show, I didn't really know what like a network outline looked like, you know? Uh, and so I was like great here we go four pages of notes about what the story should be and they want an episode in two weeks and i wrote a script sent it in and again that was the last thing i heard for quite some time then now i forget the dates but at some point later my friend joe saunders was working on simpsons and he was like hey the table read for your episodes coming up uh and and he made sure I got invited to it. And I hadn't heard anything.

And so then I went to the table read and Elon Musk was there, you know, met Elon Musk and they did the table read. And, you know, the script was, it was still about Elon Musk as mine was, but it was very, very different. And it's not that I took offense at that. I knew, I know enough about how like The Simpsons works for someone who's on staff. Their script gets rewritten a ton. Someone who, you know, doesn't necessarily know the, is a fan of the show, but doesn't necessarily know the tone of the room in 2013 or whatever.

Exactly. Maybe isn't writing a script that they're like, we have to preserve this joke. I'm sure they're like, we can delete and change all of this stuff. And then the story changes a bit too. But yeah, when they sent me the notes, it was saying, you know, this is the script in which Elon Musk will play himself as a charismatic billionaire comes to Springfield. And so I had to Google who Elon Musk was. I'd never heard of him. I didn't know who Elon Musk was. I looked it up. He was, and I was like, okay, the guy who made a billion dollars off PayPal is now trying to use his fortune to make

clean energy projects was sort of like, I think, at the time, the headline about him. So and the idea for the episode was like, he tries to get Springfield to use electric cars, because and he tries to talk burns into it, because that would mean they have to use more nuclear power to power their cars instead of fossil fuels. But then he wants to replace the power plant. And you know, I think the actual episode winds up being a little different from that, but it still is about Musk comes to Springfield and has an effect on people. But there's, it's, you know,

there's a lot of the gags that like the, there's some gag about like a guy who always smiles or something. I don't know, that I thought was funny when I watched it. I was like, I wish I'd thought of that, but didn't think of that. And, you know, I don't think like, I think Elon Musk is in space at the end.

You know, that's, that's definitely. I believe he flies away at the end after yeah yeah so it sounds like uh neil it sounds like 20 years earlier the two writers this episode has similar experience in which they submitted a script then they met with sam simon and then they were assigned an idea and i'm not sure if they were given an outline they probably were but uh very similar experience even decades earlier. Yeah. It's the kind of thing, you know, in retrospect having now, you know, with Digman and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, like maybe that just is what a Simpsons outline is. Maybe it is just four pages of notes. I know every show has its own thing, but in retrospect, I'm like, oh, I think they probably just were like, we need a script in the pipeline. We need a script to like, for the

rewrite room to be looking at and rewriting. And we can find the story as we go from there and rewrite it. It's just nice a lot of the time to have a first draft in front of you. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they were hoping I'd write the perfect draft that they never needed to change.

But like, I know if we were ever, like by the time we have an outline on Brooklyn Nine-Nine or on Digman or something, it's like a long detailed outline. And there's, you know, the scene heading, the slug lines for every scene and what happens in each scene and stuff. And this was not that, let me be clear. I'm not complaining at all. I am so, so thrilled. I got my name anywhere involved with the Simpsons. I love it so much. It was such an honor to be a part of it. I'm just sort of letting you know, like, oh, this wasn't even like you had the full outline and wrote it up. It was it was like, I took a guess. And, you know, actually, for a long time, I after I saw it,

I was like, I shouldn't even go read my old script. I bet it stinks. I hadn't written on a half hour narrative show yet. I bet it was just so amateurish and bad and all that. And it probably is. It probably is in a lot of ways. But I did finally go look at it again last night. And I was like, you know what? Still has some jokes that make me laugh. You know, I've maybe been too hard on myself over the years. You know, just because they didn't get through the gauntlet of the Simpsons room. I was like, yeah, that's still kind of funny.

I should steal that for Dignan. And to this day, you're still writing Elon Musk's tweets, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, his exes. Well, now our listeners know. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

His posts on X. Our listeners now know how to write on The Simpsons. Tell your agent to tell Al Jean Mike Scully sent you, and then you're in. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I presume that they said it, that he was like, do you know this guy? And he went, well, oh, no, this is Harris's buddy, because Harris also somehow had received

word from Mike Scully, I guess, that about how Al Jean felt about it. So, you know, it was Harris, you know, looking out for a buddy. Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know the Harris Wh maybe slightly after was when Megan Amram was writing on it, too, and just starting to see names from people I knew from, like, current comedy as new writers on The Simpsons was really, really nice to see. Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of funny people over there. And I've only met a handful, I would say. And some I don't know. But, yeah, I think they have a really, really talented staff.

Well, wow. So I'm glad you, though, got to go to your own table read. And of course, back then, Elon Musk was appearing in everything. He was hardly, you know, the Simpsons weren't like being outliers of putting him on the TV show either. He did not have the open mic to reveal who he truly was. You had to do some digging yourself, your own research. Yeah. Well, my girlfriend wrote on SNL for a long time.

I also went to his SNL that he hosted. So me and Elon Musk and comedy have crossed paths with each other as much as anyone, I guess. Well, wow, that's awesome to hear what it was like to be a Freelance Simpsons writer. Because yeah, we always hear, even back then, even in 92, I don't know how much it changed by by 2013 when when you got the assignment but definitely they talk about how like guys like

they have like quote is not exactly the right word but they were like following what was I think a WGA rule back then yes officially Simpsons wasn't actually WGA till season nine yeah that is they have that similar freelance rule now yeah I don't know if they have that similar freelance rule now. Yeah, I don't know that. That was my understanding as well, I guess I'll say, is that it was, you know, well, there's this WGA rule. You have to,

if you have a certain amount of episodes, a certain amount have to go to freelancers. And then nothing else I've worked on have I ever heard that. And Digman's WGA and other webs certain were not at the episode threshold that we need to have a freelancer. But, you know, I've worked on a few seasons of Brooklyn that were 22.

And there were episodes that were technically freelance because like the writer's assistant wrote it or something. So maybe that just counted. But it's never been a discussion I've been privy to. Someone saying like, oh, we got to figure out who's doing the freelances and when those happen. And, you know, because we have to per WGA. But maybe that's just because it gets figured out. Well, I guess to talk about the episode proper, now it is crazy to watch it as a man technically older than Homer in this episode and be like, oh, these jokes about an out-of-nowhere health event

that then costs you a bunch of money, these are much more realer and scarier ideas to me than when I was a 10-year-old. Yes, and we're watching now, to me, a young man of 35 encountering these severe health problems. And I believe this is a James L. Brooks pitch, correct, Henry?

I think so. Yes. Yeah, definitely. It feels like a real, it's the kind of emotional core he really would like to pitch you to hear about in his stories.

And this one, it does feel a little like more of a, even though season four is the season of like, you know, Leonard Nimoy teleports away of, of fun insanity of Simpsons. This does feel more like an older season one of like, this is about the family. A thing happens and they all have to come together like it. Though it is also real ups and downs of like, you see all this stuff about Homer's heart attack and his worries about a surgery.

And then it's like the cops are shooting at a mummy. Yeah. And there's people who look like things. Yeah. The mummy I was actually when I was re-watching this for this episode I was like you know I was very aware I think as a kid of like the rules of like the devil and Kodos and Kang are only on

Halloween episodes. They're not part of the real world. And then I forgot I was like yeah but there was a mummy I guess in Cops on Spring episodes. They're not part of the real world. And then I forgot. I was like, yeah, but there was a mummy, I guess, in cops on Springfield, you know, kind of forgotten about. And it does feel a little like those like eighties,

uh, very special episodes. I was especially thinking of like, I think it's in season seven of family ties. The father on the show has a heart attack and he's like in the hospital and they're all the kids are talking around him. It's a, in,

in live action shows, those are usually used for like, you know, they'd be called awards bait or just like, you know, a chance for the actors to get really dramatic. On Comedy Bang Bang, you parodied another- Yeah, the Hey, My Name is Alex or whatever episode it is.

Yeah. Yeah, it is funny. I kind of feel like I just remember growing up, but people, I mean, Simpsons leading the charge, but making fun of very special episodes so much. And I feel like they kind of have come back and i was like oh i thought gen x like destroyed these like i that like everyone rolled their eyes at them so much in the 90s and like made fun of them so much and that they had died

of permanent death but uh it doesn't seem that way there definitely still are shows that will have a an episode that you could be like that is the insert issue name here episode or whatever yeah it does have the emotionality of something james l brooks would come up with and because he came up with it they couldn't say no and they were terrified to do it because they thought how can we make this funny so they get david silverman uh one of their best directors and one of their funniest directors to direct this episode and then they joke they gave it to freelancers because if they screwed it up you know they'd be in trouble but hey if the freelancers screw it up blame them so i think they were half kidding about that that might well be what

happened to me i yeah if elon musk gets mad at it they can be like oh this guy neil screwed it up man yeah this is aljean related about the michael jackson episode that like that that he co-wrote he said that was like the highest pressure he'd ever felt writing something is everybody's like if this script isn't liked by michael jackson you fucked up our entire i guess neil could have been the t-bor of the simpsons writing staff yeah exactly oh but uh but yeah i mean this this episode uh I do think Silverman does amazing animation. Like this is also the one with the best, if you've got your DVDs handy,

it has some of the best stuff on the season four DVDs of like animation showcases. Like they have a full, they have the full animatic for act one that Silverman and Rich Moore talk over that gives you a ton of insight into the process of it. Neil, I think you'd, you know, now if you were to watch it, you'd probably be like, how are the lines so thick? Like, this is a pre-computer animatic there.

Yeah, no, I was admiring the animation. I can't remember. So when I wrote the freelance episode, I like for a couple of years there, I got invited to like some Simpsons like rap parties and 25th anniversary party and stuff and i remember meeting david silverman somewhere along the way and really enjoying getting to chat with him just for a couple minutes um not much to say although i re-watched this a couple times that was really admiring how how great the expressions are and the poses and everything i mean also too because silverman is working with rough draft who are like the best studio they have at this time, who are doing great, great work. Yeah, even that like quick little montage. I know we'll get to it.

But like when there's a little heart in the inset box in the corner, like when he's talking to Burns. And then it kind of fritzes out and it shows like a heart card from like a deck of cards. It has like a weird little like surreal montage there as like the whole little inset box shatters. That's cool. I mean, to me, that is one of the animation highlights of the entire series 35 years of the show it's like in the top three if it might be number one just that little segment yeah that's it's great uh but yes the episode uh it begins with a cops montage cops was a pretty established show at this point it had been on fox for three years now and obviously you know uh there's there's been many smarter people than me who've written about how

the you know it it's influence on the perception of police in America and all that. Yeah, I mean, that was, I think, pre, you know, reality TV, like my parents liked watching cops. And I think my dad got my mom cops too hot for TV for Christmas once. So, yeah, I mean, maybe it's not pre, maybe that would still be about the same thing. But it did the way people are like, I know it's trash, but it's fun to see like these crazy people that people talk about, you know, Real Housewives or something now feels like the attitude people had, at least as I perceived it as a kid in the 90s with Cops. You know, I do like to check in on Cops because I just think it was a 90s show that stopped when the year 2000 arrived because everything i watched parodied uh cops futurama did the simpsons did more than than after this they would uh parody it there i mean uh mr show they had a cops based character the focus of the mr show movie was a cops parody right that's right yeah and i want to say cops

is currently in its 35th season it predates the simpsons by eight months and it has never left the air despite changing networks a couple of times so technically it has lasted longer than the simpsons i had no idea congrats uh in that it's funny that cops parody first what was the album the simpsons album not that they sing the blues but the one that had actual songs exactly was like where you were first able to listen like see my vest and stuff and like actually uh songs in the key of springfield yeah i think all i remember is like when i got when that album came out being like it has all of them but then i was watching this today i was like you know what i don't think it had the cops parody song on there it might have been maybe in the sequel ones but

yeah i don't remember it in the i get it's a fun it is a fun song that apparently they uh it's not in the animatic because this episode was short as a lot of their season four ones were they after they timed it out they're like we need two more minutes and so they they add the full cops Cops in Springfield. Bad cops, bad cops. Ah! Bad cops, bad cops. Bad cops, bad cops. Bad cops, bad cops. Springfield cops are on the tape.

But what do you expect for the money we make? Whether in a car or on a horse, we don't mind using excessive force i mean uh yeah you know i uh process wise i'm curious like one where do you guys find yourselves like in timing out episodes like when do you find out like oh we need more time you know that was another thing that evolved a lot through the process. We wouldn't send off an animatic until it was to time. We didn't because an animatic also would sometimes grow a bit.

I'm like between sending off the animatic and getting the animation back. Usually it's just stuff was like, well, this actually takes a little bit longer. And now we're a little bit long. So now we need to cut it down again. You know, I think there are also things like in our contract, like they are only supposed to do 21 and a half or 22 minutes total of animation per episode, you know, stuff like that, that we can't give them 25 minutes of animation to do and be like, we'll figure it out later, you know?

But yeah, we, you know, we start with like a radio play and then go to like our sort of pre-animatic thing that we look at that, that sort of has the story, the boards to it, the board-o-matic and then go to animatic. So we really try to get it edited to time in there but that you know is a thing we've never been at a point where we were like oh man we wrote this whole script and they did the board-o-matic and the animatic and now we're two minutes short we're definitely always like a little long and that was something we had to learn going through the process everyone was like animation goes faster so we wrote longer scripts this was the time when they could request

entire new scenes after the animatic. And after a few more years of that, the animation studios put their foot down and said, you guys have to hammer things down well in advance because this is way too much work on our end. Yeah, I mean, there's also like revisions and stuff we do that are sometimes substantial,

but that is just baked into, that is meant to be part of the process i also think uh in the in the montage the mummy one is is the funniest to me but i think low-key one of the darkest jokes in the show that i forget about is wigum watches a man kill himself and then he just looks at the camera goes cuckoo it's like wow yeah i was i was actually kind of impressed like that how that it's just like oh oh, Wiggum's a buffoon. But the whole point of it sort of seems to be somewhat anti-police. It seems to be a little ACAB-y in a way.

And I was like, well, I wouldn't expect maybe a room of Harvard guys to be kind of tapped into that in 1992 or whatever. And after that, we then cut to them heading to 742 evergreen terrace but it's not the simpsons house just a quick history on that as we saw two three episodes earlier was new kid on the block and that's where bart says their address is 1094 evergreen terrace and now this is 742 evergreen terrace is some other place so we're still a few episodes away from them finally setting 742 evergreen terrace as some other place so we're still a few episodes away from them finally setting 742 evergreen terrace as the simpsons interesting i was wondering about that as i watched i was like wait that is the simpsons address right and i was like the gag must have

been different it must have been a different joke that it was supposed to be the simpsons house they never and they changed it to like the snake thing and they never re-recorded but oh i guess i that my assumption was probably wrong as they probably just changed the play with fire to set it on the same street at all because you still as a viewer go like okay is it cops live are they going to hear the cars go past outside like why why set it on the same street you know cattle wrestling is a great comedy crime for them to use instead of like something you know serious yeah or depressing just and hatless is one of my favorite descriptors i love that descriptor yeah that's great but then we cut to homer eating in bed uh this makes me feel guilty about all the times i've eaten in bed

i i don't have as much pizza and fried chicken in bed as i used to uh pre pre-pandemic i'll say well did you bring an entire fondue pot into bed? Because the logistics of that seem like a nightmare to me. Close, but no donut, cops. This is Papa Bear. Put out an APB for a male suspect driving a car of some sort, heading in the direction of, you know, that place that sells chili. Suspect is hatless repeat hatless i can't wait till they throw his hatless butt in jail honey you really shouldn't eat so much in bed

it's not good for your heart my heart is just homie what is it just working the turkey through there it goes i also like they draw a big diet cola in the middle like it's a dot homer's still drinking diet that's a nice extra gag oh that this will be a quick tangent and you feel free to cut it but i had some like simpsons like trading cards or something like like i had them for a long time and they had like bat weird trivia on it and like one thing was it it's like was it trivia about the simpsons it was what uh like kitchen and utensil does bart's head look like and then it was like answer a meat tenderizer it was like yeah i guess i i could that doesn't really that's something you've learned from watching Simpsons. And then another one was, what is Homer's favorite snack?

And the answer was pork rinds light. And I was like, this seems like a bad joke. The trading card company guy made up. And like, I think for a long time, I just was like, this whatever tops guy, like, tried to write his like, pork rinds light, like thinking that was a joke. And then there's an episode where i saw it uh i can't remember which one uh but he's at quickie mart and on the shelf like that i can now see an hd on disney plus or whatever like pork rinds light is is a rack of snacks i was like oh damn i've

been blaming fictional tops straw man in my head for a bad joke for a long time or not a bad but thinking he was trying to add a joke and i was like nope he did his research it's what they sell at quickie mart yeah i think we noticed that we revisited a season one someone recently and we saw that in the background and we thought i guess that's a joke yeah i wonder if like an animator added it or if it was you know pitched or what homer homer being a fan of pork rinds was he became less of a general pork fan into season three i think i think they're like i look he likes he can he likes all food he's not just the pork chops guy yeah yeah but this one he still is it hasn't happened yet as we see in bed with him is all the food he likes which is where he

has his first heart attack it also feels like a sequel scene or maybe they came up with it during lisa the greek because that's the one where he has a heart attack on screen with a cut to his or a near heart attack on screen with a cut to his heart. And that's when he goes like a little beer. We'll put out that fire. It is. I mean, like you guys were saying,

if him being 35, 36, whatever, and being worried about a heart attack is so when I was a kid, I was like, sure, I guess. And it's not that people obviously,

obviously people have heart disease at all ages, but it is a thing now being clear of that age and being like aware that like, sure, I guess. And it's not that people, obviously, people have heart disease at all ages, but it is a thing now being clear of that age and being like aware that like, oh, that's, yeah, this feels like James L. Brooks was like, this would be, this is something my friends and I talk about. Let's do an episode about it. Like, you're like, all right, I'm not quite sure a 36 year old is talking about this or dealing with this as much as you think.

Once it comes back then, it was very normal of like a character has a problem for one episode and you never talk about it again you know now now in shows we're used to especially in in the you know more uh linear or like non-episodic shows like on streaming even in comedies if a character has a heart attack in season two this will be a thing that will follow them for the rest of the show or it'll be brought up yeah instead of just as a joke like the simpsons will occasionally do where homer is asked like dude haven't you had a couple heart attacks yeah it's like no right right it's not going to stop him from becoming a professional boxer exactly then we cut to the uh the breakfast table the next morning uh it's more cute stuff for the family eating together i i have also now that i've been married for a while i've also had uh you know i would love to

eat a bowl of oatmeal but i have occasionally had the thought of like should i pretend i see a bug in this to not have to eat this thing my husband is presenting to me they really got a hit this is like another time like the the one where they're playing mini golf isn't also ever like you should eat oatmeal and or lisa's trying to get him to eat oatmeal instead. Is that am I remembering that correct? Yeah, yeah. Homer says Bart is not a horse. Bart eats steak and eggs instead.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they had it out for oatmeal in Paraguay. They really had it out for around this time. I do wonder if it's a little bit of the Simpsons writers. You know, there are many times in the early seasons they all were talking about that they were all gaining weight, eating sweets around the office. And that, you know, there was in the pre we've talked about many times. Bob is this coin is about how, like, you know, they didn't have phones to look at. Just got busy hands.

You eat the free candy bowl. Yeah. Yeah. A temptation. I know. Well, yes. But you're such a healthy guy. Well, still, I had some some chocolate pretzels today.

You think I didn't i think bill oakley said he gained 50 to 70 pounds oh wow a showrunner on the show and then he lost all the weight as soon as he left the simpsons yeah i mean part of it is sometimes you're like i don't have time to go to the gym when you're in the thick of things and you leave you're like oh there's hours in my day that aren't consumed suddenly i think aljean got uh during the production of things. And you leave, you're like, oh, there's hours in my day that aren't consumed suddenly. I think Al Jean during the production of this episode was having walking pneumonia, I believe. Oh, jeez. Homer, by the way, this is... I feel like I rewatched this scene a couple of times.

He has like a watch on in this scene that I don't think ever gets used. Again, is this like a cut gag where he needed to check the watch? Or did they just go like, you know what? He has a watch in this scene. What the heck? Yeah, you're right. I think there must have been some cut gag where he had to check the watch or did they just go like you know what he hasn't watched in this scene what the heck yeah you're right i think there must have been some cut gag where he had to look at his watch and uh that footage was not retained because whenever a character is wearing a hat for no reason and it's never referenced we always find a deleted scene

later that where he's like using the hat for some purpose exactly exactly or if grandpa's in the scene even but but in uh you know there actually are a lot of deleted stuff on this DVD, but I have no answer on the clock one. Wow. Yeah, it's not even in the animatic. But yeah, there's also, I love Homer hearing the pig tell him that the best meat is in the rum. Yeah, that's one of those lines that I've had stuck in my head forever. But you know what? If you would put a gun to my head a week ago before I rewatch this and been like,

does the pig say that in a British accent? I would have said yes, 100%. He's like, the best meat's in the rump. And rewatching, I was like, oh no, it's a funny little voice that's not like a recognizable stock voice they use, at least as far as I can tell. But it's not British as I thought it was. Yeah, for some reason, I thought Homer was going to say, it sure sure is afterwards but that's another joke where food is talking to him much later on homer talks to his food quite a lot uh but and yes he has his second heart attack which is like boy

that's uh man that's heavy like what's wrong you know that feeling you get when a thousand knives of fire are stabbing you in the heart? I got that right now. Ooh, bacon. Homer, I prepared a special surprise just for you. It could only be one thing. Psst, the best mate's in the rump. Here you go. What the hell is this?

Nice, healthy oatmeal. Ooh, oatmeal. What a delightful treat. Oh, there's a bug in it. No, there isn't. Trust me. Dad, there's a bug on that. Meh.

Wait, sorry. Neil is thinking of the pig in the top hat from King Size Homer. So there is a British pig at some point in the show. Homer takes a bite out of him. Yeah, okay. That's the spirit? Okay, okay, yes. I was conflating the two and thinking a British accent said the best meats in the rump.

So we've cracked it so uh then after this homer has his next heart episode as he's so before they'd had the headstone of edgar allen poe get cleaned uh now they're stuck he's stuck in traffic behind the birthplace of edgar allen poe uh this is also the first time hans mole man dies like homer i think they can you can say homer doesn't directly kill him because he drives away from him after smashing into him so it's not like he fully yeah rides about the world maybe just it's it's manslaughter here you know it's funny i that the idea that of it being alan poe's birthplace i think even the first time it was re-watching i was like that's just one of those things that they totally nail funny americana stuff and like the the weird

incongruity of like trying to preserve history but also having it on like a big flatbed truck to transport it and you know and all that and then it wasn't like i was probably looking at the wikipedia for this or something and it was like oh it's a reference to like the telltale heart that homer starts to hear his heart beating or something. And I was like, Oh, that's why I said, I thought it was just another one of them, like nailing the, that funny Americana stuff, which is still true.

But, but it does go up in flames before it actually hits anything though. Yes. We're doing that joke at this point too. Love it. They did it before all the, every, you know,

like things spontaneously combusting is is just a comedy standard now but i i feel like i'm no i mean monty python had their like things have explode unexpectedly like so it's not like i can't say simpsons invented it but i do when i whenever i see it in stuff i think like oh it's like i'm a simpson yeah for sure and also i i had heard that they kept killing hans mole man this time because Matt Groening hated to see him and they're like all right let's just keep killing him on the street trick Matt that we've gotten rid of the oh I love Hans my mom had to explain to me that Homer being able to hear his heart beating in his chest was a bad thing and why that was like unhealthy I didn't i didn't really understand that i was just like uh the dull boy that's funny about nickabob but yeah homer is is not bothered by that at all but

this is when we get to our first clip because uh mr burns is the funniest guy and this is one of my favorite mr burn scenes again like underrated mr burn scene two here of uh have him watching homer eat donuts look at that pig stuffing his face with donuts on my time that's right keep eating little do you know you're drawing ever closer to the poison donut there is a poisoned one isn't there smithers uh no. I discussed this with our lawyers. They consider it murder. Damn their oily hides! Bring him to me! They consider it murder. I just love that. It is murder.

He's like, they consider it murder. You know, we asked the lawyers. Yeah, that little music stig, too. I just love that stuff where you just subtly go into genre mode. It's like horror, ominous musical stig there. Yeah, I love that stuff where you just subtly go into genre mode. It's like horror, ominous musical stick there. Yeah, I love that. Now bosses have algorithms to watch people at their office eating donuts. And the next scene, I do want to say that it's very funny.

So the animation, the voice actor really sells it. But all Mr. Burns is doing is basically Crypt Keeper style jokes. Where it's just like a big swerve into the obvious, you know, opposite of what came before. Yeah, I mean, I love that scene. Again, I know they didn't invent that, but it feels so much like Triumph the Insult comic does that sort of like,

yeah, I like this. To do this, you know, and that sort of reveal that you know he's building toward but like it's still fun but uh it also just reminds me so much of earlier in the season the the frogurt exchange yes uh that's good that's bad and then even kind of ends the same way where he's like he said something homer doesn't understand what it means right and he's like efficacious or whatever whatever words burns is saying it's sort of like the the frogger guy saying the the ingredient and homer being like huh and then like that's a bad

thing saying yeah it is it is very time very similar to that one yeah yeah yeah and they're always quick on the commentary to point out we are doing vaudeville jokes these are the oldest jokes ever told but we're just doing them because they're funny yeah i love it it's so funny to me that that by the way bob you mentioned the crypt keeper i should say like again on comedy bang bang you guys did uh one of my favorite parodies the the bookkeeper yes uh i love yeah i i believe i i think i voiced and puppeteered the bookkeeper so oh you're the puppeteer wow i seem to recall lying under a table for a long time so i think it was i think it was related to that he's he was related to the zookeeper as well his scariest

friend yes yeah the goalkeeper that was a funny funny image they did for that uh but yeah no this so this whole sequence here of homer's heart attack like this is this is another reason to pull up the animatic on the dvd because you can see that now the Simpsons animation process at the time was they would do the layouts in the U.S. and then send it overseas for full animation but David Silverman loved this scene so much that you can see on the animatic he does basically full animation in pencil test of Homer's heart attack like he he drew the heart or at the very least it is completed on the U.S. side. I believe he is the lead animator. I don't want to say he drew the whole thing because I don't know that. But it's his full animation in the animatic. And it's just amazing, even more amazing to look at when you see it.

Like if you know David Silverman's art style, you see the Homer poses are are David Silverman art. That's awesome. And typically Matt Groening, even at this point in history, wanted everything to be very tightly on model, but he was able to break the rules because you're watching a lovable Homer Simpson die in front of you on screen. So they're just saying, just draw him as funny as possible. We don't care what his hair is doing,

what his eyes are doing. And that's why as a kid, I love freeze framing through like Ren and Stimpy to look at every cool drawing. And this is another one of the things I would freeze frame through because nothing else in The Simpsons ever looked like this. And there were like you were saying, Neil, earlier, you see the heart from the suit of cards in that little picture in picture. But you also see all the other suits flashing by very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't pause it. I just was like trying to take it in.

And I was like, wow, that's really surreal and impressive. And I wonder if when it aired in SD, how much clarity there was to all that. details you could find but but you know when you think about i will say when you think about what what how james l brooks probably envisioned it of like you know this is an emotional story of homer is worried he's gonna die i don't think he saw a huge cartoon exaggerated like wild take when homer has his heart attack but that makes the show if homer had a more realistic just like yeah it kills over whatever that's not fun. Yeah. That wouldn't be fun. Yeah.

But yes, actually, I've got the clip here of Homer's death. You can hear all the wonderful lines Byrne say, including his fancy Harvard words he confuses Homer with. Relax, Simpson. I just brought you in here for a friendly hello. And goodbye. You're fired. But wait. Perhaps I'm being too hasty.

You are highly skilled. At goofing off. Now don't worry, Homer. You're the kind of guy I could really dig. A grave for... Your indolence is inefficacious. That means you're terrible! Mr. Burns, I think he's dead. Oh, dear. Send a ham to his widow. Mmm, ham.

No, wait. He's alive. Oh, good. Cancel the ham. No! And one thing to look out for is David Silverman drew basically one toe of the Homer ghost is still touching his body to show that he's not fully dead. It feels like by the next season,

Burns would be sad Homer didn't die instead of like, oh, good. But no, you're mentioning the Frogrit scene earlier, Neil. It has the same rhythms, but I still really like it because there's a point where Homer can no longer follow along with the bit because something confuses him. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love both of these scenes.

This is not a comparing them as no knock against it. I'm thrilled both both exist. It's also great. Burns doesn't feel at all, uh, at all guilty of killing Homer or nearly killing Homer. Like he. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas Strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service, there is

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that blame that number there's a line that maybe i'm forgetting and there is but that makes it clear homer does still have a job right like i know that's like the kind of thing like on dig i would like oh let's just write it and record it. Maybe we don't need it. Do people need to know he didn't actually get fired because he never quite says you're not fired. And then it's like, oh, you can just watch it and not care. You're like, yeah, I know. We're still going to work on there.

This is the episode. It's the last time we're seeing Burns. Come on. Yeah, I guess I guess up until this point they have uh kept it consistent where if they need to go somewhere as a family they need to say oh homer got time off or here's why he's no longer at the plant but then in season nine uh we have bart asking homer do you even have a job anymore right yes or maybe it's like season 10 or 11 i don't know the exact episode oh wait he asked it when uh Maw of Death episode.

Oh, right. When Homer's filming Ned. He's like, it's pretty obvious I don't. That's funny. So, you know, Neil, on Digman, I always like, I think a lot of those times it's Saltine who asks those questions. One of my favorites was when she asks Digman, like, so you kill people? I was like, yeah, I guess I do.

Yeah. That wasily altman wrote that episode and i feel like that i might be i might be misremembering it was quite a while ago but i feel like that was like andy a day andy was in the room and and uh just sort of riffing and and that was something that got that got figured out just kind of like everyone being funny and riffing on the scene and stuff but then we were like okay yeah i guess when they're that early in a series you're allowed to make these like pronouncements like oh yeah i guess he's never killed anyone or or you know he's back at it now so this is when homer is taken away in an ambulance this is where there's two big uh cut scenes which is on the dvd one when homer's in the ambulance the driver asks if

homer minds if he stops to pick up cat food and homer says sure but give me some beef jerky uh and then uh also in all of the silly characters in the um the waiting room uh you can see it on the dvd they mentioned on the commentary too but when sideshow mel says i'm telling you it's not gonna work and the cannon goes off and he's still stuck and exploded uh then crusty says who i really feel bad for his sideshow phil he's on mel's shoulder mel's on his shoulders that's good that funny that deer crossing gag i like it makes me laugh but i i also go like is this a joke on animated shows or something like deers would always cross where they show a sign and you're like i couldn't tell if it

was like a critique of of like something else or if it was just a completely invented gag of like oh that's just being funny that the deer are crossing there and the guy's making a little humorous observation to himself i like that it feels to me like a stupid guy who thinks like oh that i happen to see a deer right in front of the deer crossing so how do they know yeah yeah i just like how tickled he is while a man is dying behind yeah ultimately and we see wiggum with his uh stuck in his lockjaw which there's a they say on the commentary there's a funny celebrity story related to that one that's right uh this actually happened according to his brother this actually happened to wet bandit himself uh daniel stern uh because david stern his brother was a writer on the show and i guess they took this account of daniel stern uh because david stern his brother was a writer on the show and i guess

they took this account of daniel stern getting lockjaw while trying to eat a giant sandwich and turned it into wigum all right his drawing of his stuck open mouth is so crazy yeah now i could tell a tiny story here because we all remember skype before we did zoom and discord and zencaster we use skype and once i use use Skype to interview animation legend Don Bluth for a website I was working for. And that image of Wiggum was my avatar. Don Bluth, at that point, it was in his 80s. I think he still is.

And he was kickstarting a Dragon's Lair movie, turning that video game into a movie project. And I was talking to him about his history. And at one point, he's like, you know, people don't want what want what i do they want that and i was like uh what are you talking about he's like that picture that picture that simpsons thing they want that so he sounded very annoyed wow look at a simpsons image while he was talking to me uh via skype wait maybe you guys is there any truth that arrested development the bluths are based off of don bluth's family oh i never heard that i feel like i've heard that somewhere but i don't i don't know if that's apocryphal i guess if so they would have to be very mormon oh yes that's true don bluth is very is a very mormon man i know that much i i also you know one of my favorite arrest

development jokes about simpsons writers is when they i think they say like oh he's uh i think he says about julie louis dreyfus's character like she's probably dating simpsons writer one of those geeks so yes if you meet don bluth you know compliment his you know life in animation never show him a picture of chief wiggum all right good to know bad idea don't do it that's where we get the opening scene too where they cut away to patty and selma being uh nonplussed about homer's near-death experience we we know how they feel uh and this is when i as a kid completely so from thanks to this scene i thought defibrillators were things that recharge your heart and put more good heart things into it it was not a thing that like reset your heartbeat or whatever that it actually does i thought like oh so the more you zap your heart the better it is

and at what point did you were you corrected on this i'm wondering i think it was by the time i had watched enough medical dramas that where they use it in the correct way that i was like oh okay that's that's what it's for oh i mean also too i've seen enough medical dramas now that when i now see homer is zapped back to life marge immediately runs in and hugs him and it's for oh i mean also too i've seen enough medical dramas now that when i now see homer is zapped back to life marge immediately runs in and hugs him and it's like of course it's it's it's a cartoon and it's better pacing but i was just like no homer homer is uh he doesn't just walk out of after being fully resuscitated you don't just walk out of the hotel yeah it is funny it's stuff like that i'd like that you know on brooklyn at nine even we'd be like well you can't do something like this like people would be like this is what is this but there are

things just where it's like you know on digman where it would be like yeah you could just turn on the tv and it happens to be the thing you're talking about and i don't like if that happened on brooklyn 99 people would be like what that's crazy that like they should talk about this and you can kind of be like yeah they could just i think flip on the tv and it's the news story they were talking about and people don't mind an animation as much indignant a character can go through an entire gondola school and then exactly yeah during a cutaway yeah yeah time's relative but yeah so as homer comes back to life this is when he had his entire vision of his life which is at a ton of fun cutaways a baby eating pizza is always cute very just adorable i love seeing and i really like the silver mini touches are great because you

know they could have just faded to another scene of homer older but the baby floats out of the cradle or bassinet or whatever that is and then it morphs into a child version of homer and the scene changes around that version of homer that's very david silverman and very uh experimental simpsons of this era yeah that's cool it's also like again just on like a writing structural level i wonder if there was another gag it feels like the kind of thing that's like well a rule of threes if you're gonna say homer's life there should be a third thing and i was like oh kind of cool they just did too well neil you did guess correctly on this one from the deleted scenes uh there was a third though it's only in the animatic and the joke's not like the funniest but i do still wish they'd kept it because it would mean you would have seen homer a third animated transition of homer going from him as the kid to adult homer but basically the

third thing he remembers is he is stuck on an airplane that had an 11 hour delay. And they say, you know, as to make it up to you guys, we're going to give you a free viewing of Weekend at Bernie's. And I was like, woohoo. And that's so that's his third happy memory. That's funny. It's so funny. The stuff that they're snotty about the writers, like, you know, where they'll they don't make me hit a ton of stuff. But like Police Academy, you you know things where they're like you think i brought you that to make it because whatever that joke is where he's like well i

didn't hear anyone laughing yeah like i feel like there's multiple like shitting on police academy jokes like no police academy was painful and disturbing i'm thinking of space balls uh yeah yeah it's it is interesting to see what are the things that are okay to say are like bad comedy and what isn't you know yeah because every writer's room is filled with people shitting on everything you could imagine so it's like funny where they're like i can't be just super negative we gotta like pick and choose when it's like we think it's actually funny to sort of hit something it's funny later in this season they will have really mean jokes about saturday night live and on the commentary the writer john beattie who had worked at saturday

night live previously he's like i didn't write these scenes by the way and i wanted to be clear i'm not a bitter old saturday night live yeah yeah oh yeah yeah i think i got back this episode i think where it's the interview with lauren Michaels or whatever. Yes, yeah, that one too. Clearly there are people there where it's in their head, yeah. But yeah, also Homer's singing is meant to reference, except where his voice changes, but him singing is meant to reference the film Empire of the Sun, one of the last few Steven Spielberg movies.

Though that's your life, Neil, not really. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm like a young christian bale in many ways yeah but but yes he was a young boy growing up in japan though in during world war ii yes yeah not the 90s you know i watched that one all the time as a kid i thought it was a big famous movie because it was one of those like four or five movies we taped off of hbo during a free weekend so i've i have seen empire of the sun more times than a lot of spielberg movies that's way more times than always for example i was gonna bring up always that has to be the most obscure spielberg

movie yeah i haven't seen always i have seen a part of the sun that's been a while yeah there's it's fun it's a few blind spots of my spberg filmography, viewing filmography. I mean, he's only made like 40 movies. How hard is that? Yeah. Homer then, he asks Hibbert if he's any better or, you know, whatever doesn't kill me can only make me stronger. This is when Hibbert tells you, absolutely not. You are very weak.

And the bullying lasts so long. It's so fantastic. I love the performance and the Homer performance, especially like, stop, have mercy. Like, that really makes me laugh. More than anything in that scene, like, you know, hippopotamus oath and stuff, it's like fine and all that.

But yeah, that Homer performance and Hibbert performance was super cool. Yeah. When Marge kind of breaks it up by saying, can't you do something? He's pulling his cheeks out and looking over at marge yeah still in the act of bullying him yeah stop stop hebert who is normal who is written pretty straight at this time like this is you know later you know seven seasons from now they'll have jokes where he offers marge to help

to sell a baby uh but this is before he becomes that wild of a character yeah but yes this is when uh homer gets a bunch of uh of tests as well you know the radioactive dye one is cute though i the the the the fat jiggling one uh i don't think is a real the radioactive dye one i think is a sort of real test still but uh the fat jiggling is still not one yeah the radioactive die is a funny one where again just a thing you know sometimes you're writing an episode tv and you're like people will remember that amy once shot jake or something you know as you're writing like brooklyn i died and then you're like i'm not sure they will and i

don't know that we could reference this thing that happened once and then there's other things you're like okay but people know x y or z like about a character because we've established it deeply and it is funny in that radioactive diver i go like you know they just like knew that people go he not only works at a radio like nuclear power plant but it sort of is like a bad one that has leaks and he has radiation poisoning you know it like they don't explain there's nothing in the episode that shows that happening i guess that's radiation poisoning you know it like they don't explain there's nothing in the episode that shows that happening i guess that's all i'm saying it's just like uh you just know this about the world of our show don't you and if this was someone's first ever time watching

the simpsons they would be like why is that happening that's so crazy like why is this i is that going to be part of the ending of this episode that is his blood gloats without the injection you know i mean i've i've heard them say like as they realize later like oh yeah we just have a clown in full makeup just walking around all the time never saying why that is yeah yeah but for some reason that one really struck me as like a first-time viewer would be so confused by that gag i also love the angle on homer saying look at that blubber fly it's just like he's not ashamed he's not like oh i'm fat or anything he's just like hey excited yeah there's another deleted scene here uh that i think is kind of funny but also it and it's a fun riff on a recurring gag they had done there's a third again

this rule of three and there's a missing third thing here there's only two tests that's right uh so the third test is homer being uh doing you know going on a treadmill and then they're gonna you know measure his heart rate. And Homer's on the treadmill, and he keeps asking Hibbert, am I there yet? Am I there yet? Am I there yet? So I would have liked that one. It's a real callback.

This is when Homer learns, again, as a kid, these numbers were meaningless to me. Health insurance, like, mommy and daddy pay for your bills like now i understand this is a very real thing uh that has only gotten worse in america of just what how expensive health care is and how uh it's almost a death sentence for homer in this moment homer i'm afraid you'll have to undergo a coronary bypass operation say it in english doc you're going to need open heart surgery spare me your medical mumbo jumbo. We're going to cut you open and tinker with your ticker. Could you dumb it down a shade? Doctor, we'll do whatever it takes to get my

homey well. Good. I must warn you, though. This procedure will cost you upwards of $30,000. I'm afraid it's now $40,000. That's such a brutal gag that hearing it makes it more expensive. It nearly kills him and makes it cost more.

We don't need to get into the horrible state of health care in America, but I did look up the average cost of bypass surgery today. And in 2021, it was $123,000. Oh, yeah. Wow. That's a lot. It is a lot of3,000. Oh, yeah. Wow. That's a lot. It is a lot of money, yes. And it's just great in the next scene,

Homer just lists all the places that are better than America, which they say on the commentary, part of the joke is Homer shouldn't be this smart. He shouldn't know all these healthcare facts either. That's a good idea. This is also the second time The Simpsons has crapped on Paraguay. Exactly. I was thinking. Oh, thank you, Neil. Please. Please let us know. Oh, no. Little Miss Springfield,

right? Where she got her eyelash implants. Yeah. Not in Paraguay. Yeah. I think it's a country they know nothing about and they assume the audience knows nothing about. So, like, that country's bad, right? Yeah. Maybe it was on a list of, like, this is one of the few countries where they don't show the Simpsons.

They're like, okay, good. We won't get in trouble. Though also in the original animatic, Homer, when he hears the price, he instead tries to haggle with him on the price. I think it's funny. You're just the hard cut to black and Homer keeling over.

And also originally this conversation is them in the car, Homer and Marge talking about the uh different countries i think it plays a lot better in bed and also it's funny like it could just end with homer going you know uh paraguay they could cut there but they want you to feel something like marge then just breaks down in a realistic way yeah he's like this isn't funny homer you're gonna die well it's also you know you mentioned uh aljean before he was talking about how um he mentioned on the commentary too this is unique

pacing for them because normally they'd have a big like third act turn like all the stuff that happens in this up to the end like could be the end of act two and then something goes crazy in act three like they often make like big turns in act three but in this one they're like no this is a little slower pacing for them act two is just about homer figures out how he's going to get the operation then act three is the operation in terms of pacing it does feel closer to uh season two early season three where it just storytelling, no crazy turns or twists. I mean, The Doctor next up is pretty crazy, but it's playing it pretty straight. Yeah, it's funny because if I were just like sitting and going, I'm going to rewatch The Simpsons,

I'd probably gravitate toward one where I'm like, I know this just as some of my favorite jokes or like I feel like it does. I don't quite remember what they are. It's not one I have like set completely to memory so I'd probably just pick something I think is funny even if it's a little less uh less heartfelt or something but it is I've been re-watching some of four in prep for coming on to here and also after I listened to Copacus's Home of the Heretic episode and stuff

and there's something like that I do quite like about the episodes that are sort of a more cohesive, like all the jokes in it are sort of coming off of the spine of what the episode's about as opposed to just kind of more random gags that get cut away to or, you know, inserted in a way. If I was just sitting going, I want to put a funny episode on, I'd still probably pick one that's maybe a less heartfelt, story that that with a three-act structure and one where i'm just like this one will be funny and silly to me i mean the pacing yeah there's no big b plot for it and it uh even they don't like go somewhere for like other than the cops thing it really is just like the hearted problems begin like it like basically two minutes into the episode yeah also i like to think that when they got their dental plan back in a few episodes that's when they got full health insurance again too because this is never a problem for them anytime after yeah season four is where everyone's really worried about their their insurance that they get from the power plant no they then cut

to the merry widow insurance which i love that that uh that the neon sign is so funny. That's great. That performance is great, too, of the insurance adjuster guy. I don't know. He just makes me laugh the way he's so kind of good-natured about it, where Homer's like, my scheme or whatever. He's like, oh, sorry, haven't done this yet. Yeah, it really, really tickles me. It's funny.

It's the friendly health insurance man helping him out here. I have a quick clip here. It's that Homer tickles me. It's funny. It's the friendly health insurance man helping him out here. I have a quick clip here. It's Homer almost gets insurance. Now, before we give you health insurance, I have to ask you a few questions. Questions? Questions? Oh, my whole scheme down there. I mean, ask away.

Oh, good. Now, under heart attacks, you crossed out three and wrote zero. Oh, I thought that said brain hemorrhages. Uh-huh. And do you drink? I do enjoy a sniffed report at Christmas. All right. Here's your policy. Now, let me tell you something, Mr. Sucker.

Hold on there. You still have to sign it. Oh. I... Must sign policy. Sir, I'm sorry. We can't insure you i made an h no that doesn't count like an x hey we better get you to a hospital can i have a free calendar okay even gives them the free calendar yeah so good nature and plays out the end of that scene yeah that's great i feel like a snifter of port at the holidays is one of those things i don't even realize but i kind of wind

up quoting a lot in my life of uh or or like ripping off and changing the specifics but if like yeah you know someone asking about like oh do you drink or what you know like trying to act like the most uh that's very classy yeah a classy person yeah i have thought of that at checkups where they're like how many alcoholic drinks do you have in a week and i do want to write i enjoy the rip rare snifter report at christmas yeah yeah the brain hemorrhages aren't disqualifying to that guy's like oh okay all right this is just off the well related but not on this episode that another one of those things that i feel like has entered my lexicon is the episode where homer gets like a robo calling machine

and it and like frank tries to call it home and it like grows legs and tries to like roll out the door and he grabs it and snaps the legs off and he goes oh no you don't i feel like that is my the cadence for any time i need to say oh no you don't i feel like that is my the cadence for any time i need to say oh no you don't is just how i say it in my you know my life now it's oh yeah oh no you don't is yeah there are simpsons line readings that just enter your life yeah you're just like you forget you ever said them that way we missed one of my favorites which was uh hans moleman going now you've done it after his glasses fall off i love to the the layout of that uh to go backwards that it's such a giant wheel like his little face in front of his giant wheel it's it's

framed perfectly too we'll also talk about great animation they do like a a 90 degree camera turn like in camera turn on it it's great that that is not easy to animate that is just a big extra worky uh scene yeah i mean literally the other day we were like okay we want to do something and then it's like across the street to like pan like is this the most you know we just like have these conversations we're like if it's really you know and look i'm the one who brought it up at the beginning this isn't me critiquing someone else in the room. Then it's me going like, well, should we? Is this worth the effort? You know, is this a show-stopping moment or just us trying to connect to locations?

You meet with the director of the episode and be like, so this next scene is 30 seconds of slow motion gunplay. That'll be pretty easy, right? Yeah. It's just great to see a camera move like that at the end of a scene where two people are just talking in a boring office you're not expecting that kind of a movement to happen yeah yeah exactly also i just love homer's gloating just like let me tell you some of the mr sucker this guy's only been nice to him also as a boy as uh as now like boring adult things like i just think every time homer gets an ambulance, I'm just like, well, that's $7,000 or whatever. He's already bankrupted by this.

Even if he pays $130 to Dr. Nick for the surgery, like their hospital bills are gigantic anyway. Also a great joke that Homer just saw a vision of hell completely misunderstanding it. He's like, oh, it's so great. That's great. Sticking pitchforks in my butt. He has no

clue what it means hey bart went to hell first so yeah you're right if we'd have seen it it would have been too uh too uh imitated this is when homer decides he's gonna try to ask uh a bunch of a bunch of religious figures for it he starts with lovejoy i love that he admits i wonder if he had not admitted to lovejoy just being a total horny man and never listening to him. Would Lovejoy have considered it? I wonder. Or at the very least, like, again, now this is before there were GoFundMes. Right.

So Homer has to ask religious figures for it. Yeah. The season does seem to have a lot of interest in Homer's relationship with Lovejoy and faith and stuff. Yes. Well, it's also the grade that it's rabbi kristofsky of all characters they like yeah we don't need to make up a new rabbi we got we got kristy's dad we'll just draw him yeah it's the promise of uh watching uh what is it a fiddler on the roof i was gonna say yentl that comes later yeah should be enough to loan homer all

that money and who did it that was uh who did the voice again for, was it Jackie Mason? Yes. Yes. It's just funny that they still give him a little like, hmm? But they're like, all right, we're not going to bring Jackie Mason back and pay him to do another thing. But we kind of want a little audio response, I'm sure. They just grabbed someone else. I do feel like my cadence, I have said in my cadence, and I will watch it. I'm kind of like, and I will watch it.

And then Homer can't even fake being Hindu. He just like, he just, I also just love the sound. He goes, forget it. Like it just, the sound of him standing up. He's just like, all right. Well, all our listeners are waiting for this. This is the final appearance of Sajruddin Mubaradad. That's correct.

One of three. One of three. I'm honored you had me on for this one. It's a non-speaking appearance this time yes camp crusty uh blood feud and now this wow we've hit them all damn so this is when homer comes home and he's just about to give up on it uh and this is where he he has to tell the kids i uh oh wait well first he sees dr nick hi everybody are you looking for a way to slash the cost of your medical expenses? Boring!

Wait, this might be the answer we're looking for! I will perform any operation for $129.95! Come in for brain surgery and receive a free Chinese finger trap! Okay, Fred. You tried the best. Now try the rest. Call 1-600-DOCTORB. The B is for bargain.

Oh, Marge, we could do worse. How? Some dog could do the operation. Operation? What are you talking about? Kids, I have something to tell you. Oh, homie, I don't know. This might upset them.

Nothing you say can upset us. We're the MTV generation. We feel neither highs nor lows. Really? What's it like? That pose on Lisa's saying, and it's another of my favorites. It's a thorough understanding of millennials in 1992. They really did get us.

This may be highly controversial. I don't dislike the character of Dr. Nick, but it's never been a favorite character of mine. And I kind of think partially is almost, you know, like a Quimby or a Burns or Hibbert even, or whatever, like feels like they're taking some real archetype or aspect of like person that holds that role in society and exaggerating it or building and like dr nick i've never it just sort of feels like almost feels like an snl invention you know it feels like a sketch character or something it doesn't feel like and maybe i don't know in like early 90s la local tv was like whatever is like the accident days billboards now was maybe like, oh, there are these weird cheapo doctors who like do this.

And they're parodying something that I have no familiarity with. But there's something about Dr. DeGravity. Just like it just feels like was he made up for this episode or did he already exist? Like they just need him to have a risky operation. Yeah, I thought he had been here before this so yeah it's just it's just one where i'm like less clear on what he's tethered to in reality apart from just being a completely crazy character that i kind of feel like every other person you kind of can like connect the source inspiration to but yeah they never did a dr nick episode as far as i know uh did they henry i mean the closest is his segment in the 22 short films

right but there was never like let's learn about his family with comic book guy we learned about his struggles with uh the idea of being a father we would have never accepted that in uh like season four but it happened in season like 32 but yeah they uh he was introduced in bart uh the daredevil uh is that right henry yeah bart the daredevil oh no that right, Henry? Yeah. Bart the Daredevil? Oh, no, no. Bart gets hit by a car. Oh, that's it. Yes. Yes.

Thank you. He's Lionel Hutz's guy. And then he was used in infomercials on the show as like the authority figure that Troy McClure would talk to. Okay. So maybe it is. Maybe I'm just missing it. It's like by the time of this appearance, it's something he's morphed a bit, but that

it started as like, yeah, infomercial doctor. I think the problems with Dr. Nick is, or the thing that would make him less reusable, like so many other classic characters, though Dr. Nick is fun, but he is like, he's a very broad voice, broader than the average Simpsons voice. Two, as I said before with Hibbert getting like a worse doctor and they can give him crazy doctor jokes then it's like well then uh dr nick is you know less needed like they don't need him as much and then uh also by season 11 they've created a more up-to-date for 2000 uh ridiculous uh plastic surgery guy who's more of an la doctor of then as opposed to like a 1989 la doctor like like dr nick is and they and they legit kill dr nick in the simpsons movie though

they have since undone that he dies on screen in it that's funny yeah yeah it's just uh all these other characters have moments that i recall fondly and make me laugh a lot and i can kind of look at whatever yeah hibbert roger meyer or something and be like i know what this is born out of what like real life observation was the seed the germ of the building this character uh or i feel like i know and that's just one right there's a little more sent in from outer space but yeah i think dr nick just feels like a conduit for every bad doctor joke from the 50s yeah yeah the way he says okay fred like that's great that it's like he has a cutaway in his commercial and then he's like all

right we're good like he's kind of shooing away his friend who did the joke he's like yeah i love that and also they had a problem with dr doctor but because dr b was like somebody's real phone number and they got in trouble for it or something they had to change it a little more i don't like i mean how do you have you had to deal with real phone numbers or that kind of thing in in show production um the only things i can recall were on bang bang specifically if you said oh i think on any tv show but i think we did this sometimes on bang bang if you set a website, you had to purchase that domain ahead of time. And I feel like we had some gag early in Bang Bang, maybe,

that was about there's a site that collects all the flubs on Bang Bang. And I think we actually did have a site that listed some, but this is all vague memories that I'm blanking on a bit. Well, you know what? One of my favorite CBbb jokes very late in the series uh i think it's the second to last episode you do a freeze frame you have freeze frame gag your own of a running list of all of the mistakes in the show or like the continuity errors and when i paused i was like oh yeah that's true that's true like that that character did meet that

character before why did uh scott didn't come back into a time machine after this cutaway he just was back home like all this yeah i loved i love that you guys noted yourself i'll also bet a lot of those came from the editors who were you know aware became hyper aware yes the the mtv generation and it's not the same lisa will be the inventor of the word meh on the show later. But this is kind of, I feel like, the early version of that. Meh shows up in the crosswords a lot, too. M-E-H. Meh. She defines it, even.

The spelling and everything. That's great. They coined the term. Homer then has to explain to the kids. He makes it very simple or kiddified for them. They draw all the puppets on his fingers to look like akbar and joe from the macranix comic which i feel like that's totally out of print now like i when i wanted to read old ones i had to just buy like vintage books of it off of ebay funny yeah i feel

like i've had a big life is hell collection probably around here somewhere but i've had it for 20 years so it's that used to there was a time when the when the simpsons launched that was how he was labeled like for about three months they're like the creator of the classic comic strip is his own tv show you love la weekly's one panel comic in the back bart immediately jumps to his father being dead and and largely marrying like oh it's he's like for a while he's being realistic and this does feel like a very special episode kind of moment where the kids are all like crying on their father like are you gonna die like just but then homer turns it into a joke about abraham lincoln selling poison yeah great it's a great turn one of the worst things to tell your

children like nobody uh good ever dies. Only bad people die. It also doesn't create, like, how they would feel better if he did die. It's just plunging further into denial. So then Homer is in the hospital getting ready. Again, more time filler. Homer's saying, bed goes up, bed goes down. Great. It fills time.

Up, down, up, down, up, down. Perfect repetition gag uh and always remember from this episode onward ned only has one lung and one kidney now on that's how it is for that maybe he got another one donated back to him so sure i mean he has such clean living now i understand yeah he doesn't he could live without just with just one kidney and one lung and homer doesn't even care he's just like ah the like the ned says i give you my heart if i could he's like shut up even to that and another great joke that like the coroner i'm so sick of that guy yeah yeah that's good that's good followed by see you in the operating place yeah he does look like a sketch character uh nick you're

totally right be like the thing about the people he's trying to leave and the people are coming in uh yeah say you know where are the bodies jumping out the window feels like the end of a sketch yeah yeah no the the snl sketch roots of a lot of the writers on the show starts coming out there and those bumps like i got the window except it does you know on snl even you know they have great pace classic snl sketch has amazing pacing but sometimes you know a guy can't break through the window exactly right on live television here it's the exact time yeah exactly and uh homer homer is a little scared by all this silliness like again it's like totally it's just so funny to see like this insane character

dr nick jump out a window to leave. And then Homer is just like, oh boy, I'm worried about my heart surgery. We then have another scene of Ned praying and another great Simpsons specific, Sweating to the Oldies, volumes one, two, and four. Not three for an unnamed reason. Three does not make his list. That's so great. Sinful in some way. I don't know if either of you have seen this, but Richard Simmons was back in the news recently because Pauly Shore was trying to get a biopic made

with Pauly starring as Richard Simmons, and Richard Simmons came out of the woods or whatever, wherever he is now, to say, no, please don't do that. Wow. Wow. Wow. It seems like a lateral move for Pauly Shore to play Richardson. I don't know.

It's just like, well, obviously I don't, where does Pauly Shore get money to make a movie? Yeah, that's, I'm curious. Unless it's like a, yeah. Maybe there's like some interesting filmmaker, like, I forget his name, Sean, whatever, who made Red Rocket with Simon Rex. You know, if it was like, if he's doing it with Pauly Shore, I'd be like,

alright, alright, I'll watch that. I think he assumed just sheer enthusiasm would fund the project, but I remember not too long ago there was this investigation, like, what happened to Richard Simmons, and it turns out, nope, he's just living a private life, please leave him alone. And I think that gave people the

incentive, well, he's not dead, this thing still has milk in it let's get some this cash cow going for whatever few years he has left poor old man he doesn't want to leave him alone that's all he wants he gave he gave us so much joy for for decades let's let's leave yeah my my mom had sweat into the oldies i did it a few times with her it was it was fun now i i guess i bet i bet a full sweat into the oldies is just on youtube and i could do it right now and do that as my venture right yeah yeah yeah i don't know everyone you're seeing in that video is dead

now now just be depressed doing it all these vibrant seniors they weren't exercising enough i guess well that last thing about him though uh is that you know david letterman has that prestige talk show now that prestige interview show i think one of them should be richard simmons and just him aggravating david letterman that would be i mean that was always the funniest yeah yeah they were so great together yeah i would love it would be great to still take that format but it's his hour-long Netflix series version of it. And the comedy can't be as homophobic anymore because it's 2023. There are some challenges. Oh, then Homer is also told not to pray, which as a kid I was mad of.

Like, hey, the nurse should be saying that to Ned. He was breaking the rules. Aw. We come into Act 3. What a great line to start Act 3. And that's why God causes train wrecks like perfect line yeah like you're just wondering what did the hell did this sunday school teacher tell the kids to just that they happily accept like this justifies why train wrecks happen i feel like the sunday school teacher also used to appear a little more frequently and and sort of

faded away no yeah this is much more of a season two kind of setup of the kids this creates a lot of questions for the whole family how do the kids talk about what if homer dies well let's have it be a question sunday yeah yeah something error yeah uh and this is when they learn that homer will go to heaven if he if he was good as though as as lisa doesn't know this but homer already saw his vision of hell it has not changed so he's not gonna see heaven in his wonderful cloud but then it comes another of like oh right i always forget this is this episode this is like one of the best crusty scenes ever so basically they do a bunch of scenes of of characters visiting homer but they start with

the best one in this bit here of crustyy tries to cheer up Homer. Hey, hey! Hey, what's the matter? Oh, that's right. My grotesque appearance. Krusty, why are you here? It's part of my public service for my glug glug vroom vroom thump thump. Oh, well, I could use a good laugh. Well, there's nothing funny about what you're about to go through.

I know. I'm in the zipper club myself. You seem okay. Yeah? Well, I got news for you. This ain't makeup. Oh, wonderful. From then on, I love his little point to his face. It's such a great...

There's so many great little poses in there that seem very Silverman-y to me. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great scene. And we respect whenever anyone acknowledges that canon of Krusty not having actual makeup on his face. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. They don't always remember it, but we love it when they do. Like when he fakes his death in season seven and when he swims in the water i was gonna that was what i was thinking of i mean he's like working as like a boat captain right yeah yeah or whatever working rory bellows when he shakes off his rory bellows name when he swims in the water makeup washes off of his face to reveal his his light skin which is perfect like and that was again is as big old dorks i love that bill and josh when in their seasons they remember that stuff and it would

have been it's meaningless to a new viewer but for for the hardcores it was a really great extra detail yeah now is this uh also episode isn't there one earlier and maybe it was heretic was like you'll find out when you die he's talking to god he's like i can't wait that long it's like you can't wait six months is that this episode that like fans think it's a reference to or is it a later one in the season where he like dies it would be perfect it actually is basically six months it's more like four months since home of the heretic aired but it is funny to think like oh this is the death that the that god told homer was coming for him yeah yeah and he survived that death as well yes i'm also thinking this is

also the christmas episode for 1992 i believe the next week they just replay the uh the original christmas special just to be like have something yeah i obviously you guys know way better than me i kind of remember as a kid assuming an animated animated show will do a Christmas episode every year, the way they would do a Halloween one every year on Simpsons. But also just in general, it seemed like, well, that's how it goes. And then obviously the first episodes of Christmas one. And then I feel like, yeah, they would just rerun that. And it was quite a few years before it was like,

oh, Simpsons are doing a new Christmas episode. Like felt novel to me, but I can't think of what that was. Yeah, now it's one of our favorites. Yes,ge be not proud that was season seven so there was one in season one and then one in season seven that's why that one is so special to uh people who grew up with the show just because there wasn't any Christmas Simpsons yeah outside of the first episode that aired and now it feels like they realized the Christmas legacy of the Simpsons and they almost do an annual Christmas episode now or at least like every other year yeah i was gonna okay so yeah that was definitely something i was aware of as a child i'd be like all right new simpsons christmas time i mean you gotta put two and

two together it's gonna be a christmas episode right and then yeah haven't it be years before it was well it's funny and you know in shows where time progresses normally it makes more sense of like oh well it's this season's christ episode because, you know, it's Christmas again this year for the characters. But yes, I wonder if early in The Simpsons, they're like, well, but the kids never age. So we shouldn't do another Christmas. Yeah, we can't mark time too much here. Yeah, but not so much. Has Digman, are you guys working on a Christmas episode yet?

Or would that be a spoiler? No, nothing that timed to be around to air anywhere around when it would be taking place i guess i i would say there are perhaps date specific ideas in mind but knowing that they won't actually air around that time but oh but yes the full act out of crusty going thump thump to to illustrate that he at the very least horribly injured a person who sued him yeah if not killed someone and and this was his plea deal and they take the zipper club line from jerry lewis who also had open heart surgery and had the the scar interesting that's funny i didn't know that but there is something about that little turn of phrase that has felt a little like one of the simpson writers said zipper club i guess it it makes sense to me ah yes this comes from old timey vaudeville i guess

not vaudeville but you know yeah crusty the clown can be any old performer there is yeah how now the aged performers he would be parodying are people who were famous in like 1982 yeah and formerly crusty was the heart attack character because we saw him have a heart attack in crusty gets busted then he was identified by his pacemaker scar in camp crusty so that was one of just his traits that he had is a debilitating heart attack yeah that's right god oh man his heart attack is one of the best animated scenes in the whole series. I love that moment of him glistening, simmering. We have a few quick jokes. First, Abe has a good line of just saying,

like, I can see an upside to it of outliving your children. A very cruel line. There's another time later in the series where Homer has a similar, like, it's every father's dream to outlive his child or something. Yes. Also, I love the gag of the on tied to a lever replacing homer there's another one where a chicken replaces yeah which is also good but i kind of prefer the brick i don't know also you know barney misunderstands but it's inspiring how he is so accepting of homer theoretically transitioning yes i mean very very good. Intent of the joke,

but viewing this through 2023 eyes, it's a story about a man overcoming his prejudice and bigotry and transphobia. And yeah, similar joke with a poo where, uh, with, uh, not a poo,

but auto in the auto show where he wants to know if, uh, it's either Patty or Selma is a trans woman, but he's just curious. He just is like, I mean, that's not something you should do, but he has got an open mind.

So we're having similar jokes here. You can tell me I'm open-minded. Exactly. Yeah, I hope in 25 years people are watching Digman and be like, wow, they were ahead of the curve on this, behind on so many other things. But on this one issue, they got it right. Well, I don't know.

We could be in a theocracy 25 years from now. They're going to be pretty mad at your Ten Commandments episode. No, I love that Barney not only is accepting of it but bought a bought him a jumbo thong bikini because he's uh he believes in yeah that's what you do for someone yeah but get ready for las vegas style action at bet mgm the king of online casinos enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service, there is no better way to bring the excitement and ambiance of Las Vegas home to you

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Did I mention that we care? Meanwhile, also, Homer should probably not be drinking a beer right before open heart surgery. He probably should not be. Well, he can't pay for it, so I don't think he's drinking it. Yeah, that Mo's be drinking a beer right before open heart surgery. He probably should not be. Well, he can't pay for it, so I don't think he's drinking it. Yeah, that Mo's like, a beer ain't free. Like, even in this. And so then we also get to see it set up that Lisa is learning all she can about this, which I guess now she can just watch videos.

I did not want to do the research to see if, oh, can you actually watch open heart surgery videos easily online i bet you can i never want to see this yeah same i think once on some show no i remember and it still scars me to this day but it was it was a funny joke i have to give it to tom green when he had his testicular cancer he did a whole episode about it of his show like a special and he had footage of the surgery on the show and i was like and i felt he was he seemed to be presenting it like this is for medical information but i did feel a lot of it was like a prank he's like yeah we're gonna just show my insides be scooped out on live tell or on on television yeah i'm sure he was excited he kind of got to bring two worlds together yeah we then

cut to nick as well his reaction to blood seeing it as how i would be as well and this is when again what an insane cutaway this is here to people who look like this insert the retractor and crank it until the ribs swing open like a rusty drawbridge. Ugh, no! Blood! Next, make an incision in the coronary artery. And we are back with more of People Who Look Like Things. Oh, no! No! Someone taped over the end of this!

All we ask is to be treated with dignity and respect. And a new candle now and then? Yes, and a new... Oh, no! Love that performance, too. Both of those guys, the interviewer and the pumpkin head guy, both of you laugh. That's such funny performance. This is a favorite scene of both me and my wife. And we were recently at Tokyo Disneyland, and we rode the Beauty and the Beast ride. I recommend it. It's one of the newest rides there.

It's fantastic. Now, spoilers for the end of Beauty and the Beast. But when Cogsworth and Lumiere change back into humans, they both look very much like a clock and a candle. And at the end of the ride,'re seeing them celebrate you know the the reunion of beauty and the beast and i start laughing and i have to tell my wife i'm thinking of people who look like things that's so god that yeah i i love the designs of all of them like it's so ridiculous just it's paying over all these characters like and it's such a great just like little sketch in the show just

like parodying like a bad episode of donahue that has nothing other than just people who look like things who who want to be treated with dignity and respect now henry who is making the the latest action figures for the simpsons is it as a super seven or something they uh you know actually the most recent line of super sevens have been mysteriously delayed but yes that's technically who the uh the makers of the toys are now and you know it's really cool they've done poochie and all the troy mcclure's from the various educational shorts but if they really want to go out of business but have me finally buy a figure or two they should do the entire line of people who look like things like wave 11 people who look like things and they can all come

with accessories i would love this um you know what i would love i on like an early day of digman where we had it was some sort of um hr sensitivity training or something we had to do we were on zoom at the at this time you know it's like week one or something and a sort of icebreaker thing was everyone had to say a um like their favorite uh cartoon character and someone i think had already said homer simpson that's probably what i would have said and i was like well i guess like pound for pound who i laugh at the most based per screen time is guy incognito uh and uh so then the writers got me like a little enamel guy incognito pen but that's that's a guy if there was a figure maybe there is and i missed it but if there were a uh figurine of guy incognito i would definitely

be like all right that's the one i'm getting i think you have to buy an existing homer figure and then make the top head and the cape yeah just decorate it yeah bob has a wonderful enamel pin uh mo while he is making the the sound uh in the guess what animal this is. Oh, that's good. So here's where we get a very heartfelt scene here. And this is the bit where clicked for me. I forget when we've talked about this before, if it really clicked for me. But I had recently rewatched Terms of Endearment, the James L. Brooks movie. And one of the most famous scenes in the movie.

And it is is I just re-watched it again it's like man this is still making me tear up even though it's like you know it's the gimmick of yeah Terms of Endearment saddest movie ever all that stuff but when Debra Wingish character is talking to her children from the hospital bed her two boys like it is it's not only similar to Homer with Bart and Lisa here, but it's even posed the same. Like the camera is on that, the side of the bed. The kids are on that side of the bed in the same way. Like it feels like an intentional terms of endearment reference. That's funny.

I didn't, I didn't think about that as I watched it, but have you ever seen the movie A Monster Calls? There's a very moving scene, but that is like the exact same thing. It still kind of works. I was like, you know what? Still kind of got me again, even though I almost have to be like, in principle, angry at this for being such a ripoff of the Terms of Endearment scene.

I think the story is James L. Brooks wrote this scene for the writers because they were stuck and they knew, he knew how to do this sort of thing. And he basically said the entire scene out loud verbatim and they just were all writing it down because it was perfect wow that they this where bart like whispers what to say to lisa or they whisper what to say to each yeah right yes actually here i got the clip it is very sweet now marge if the unthinkable should happen you're gonna be lonely homie i

could never remarry darn right and to make sure i want to be stuffed and put on the couch is a constant reminder of our marital vows. Oh, kids, you can come in now. Bed goes up. Kids, I want to give you some words to remember me by in case something happens. Let's see. Uh... Oh, I'm no good at this. Bart, the saddest thing about this is I won't get to see you grow up because... I know you're going to turn out great, with or without your old man. Thanks, Dad. And Lisa?

I guess this is the time to tell you you're adopted and i don't like you but don't worry because you've got a big brother who loves you and will always look out for you oh great great scoring there too i love that yeah it's funny when i was watching this i was like you know a lot of times when like Bart is doing something that's like he's being a scamp or he's being naughty. I'm like, I appreciate this, but it's not like one of my, you know, the things that like I LOL at a lot, you know? And then I was like, this is a Bart being a little scamp and it makes me laugh.

But he tricks his dad into saying you're adopted and I don't like you. I had like the saddest moment it's it's a rare kind of like season one the promise of like bart's a little bad boy kind of uh type moment that still makes me laugh no i mean i also like that it then leads to bart then still saying a sweet thing to his sister but through his dad because it's the only way like you wouldn't say such a saccharine yeah yeah really really smart really no it's uh oh by the way that's another i i just like complimenting your work neil but uh another bit i liked on a comedy bang bang podcast was you got you got the specific of bart season one friends into a description of bart simpson once oh was i yeah

was i talking wendell or something i know yeah wendell richard and lewis yeah i i like that but neil you bring up the adoption thing or you're adopted and i don't love you that was another bit i was i was uh i i look through mike reese's book every time we do a mike reese run episode because he mentions stuff and he did mention in this a story i did not remember which was apparently that joke got them some letters from parents of adopted children who said they hated that joke and they're like we're you know people always make fun of you being adopted and your parents don't love you and it's really hard on our kids and apparently the interest mike re said that he had learned from then on that he

he'd always hear from executives like don't make fun of the adopted like that's that's too mean don't do it like he's getting in trouble this season uh neil we just covered uh marge gets a job i think it was where bart pretends to have tourettes and that got a lot of blowback and that line has changed in every rerun to uh rabies oh wow now how much do you guys mock the adopted on your show we've got a it's one it's like it's like one of these shows where it is you know early days and you could you gotta be like so aware of like all right are we gonna say someone has triplets or are we like then stuck with like they're one of triplets for a long time like if let's let's be careful about

anything we say suddenly becomes canon and you know we get the character just says they're 100 years old or whatever you're stuck with that exactly yeah yeah but yeah this whole scene is it it is very touching uh and i it's funny that uh maybe maybe since it was brooks who pitched the lines maybe that's when i this is just me all guessing maybe that's when I, this is just me all guessing, maybe that's when in the storyboards, like, well, if James L. Brooks, who wrote and directed Terms of Endearment, pitches this scene that's kind of like it, why don't we just pose it out like it is the scene from Terms of Endearment? Yeah. I mean, I directed an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and there's a thing where they're like throwing ham against a window. They're like doing these games and, you know, you just like want to figure out how to shoot it and you're like all right well let me

just make you know i think it i think it seems obvious but let me just think about what's something i've seen where someone throws something how did that get shot in case i should watch in case there's a something i don't you know remember and uh going back and watching where daniel day lewis is throwing the knives at cameron diaz in um in uh uh uh kings of new york yeah and uh i watched that i think i watched like in america when he's like throwing balls trying to win the et like it's just or maybe it was actually like a no it was like a stranger things episode where he's throwing i might I might have watched it in America too, but Stranger Things, like something at a fair where he's throwing darts at balloons or something. But just, you're like, it's a basic thing. There probably, it probably shouldn't overthink how to shoot it, but be like, no, no, let me go watch how Scorsese did it to make sure I'm doing this right on my Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode.

And so Homer is about to go under the knife. There's a lot of good lines from nick saying you know he remembers to wash his hands because he just he goes like oh that reminds me as he's telling people let's not get the law involved like also great i think of that line all the time when uh i sold a lot of things on ebay this year because i had to move and they're like well we need your uh your tax information to send you you know your tax form and i just thought let's not get the law involved like before i used to sell everything on ebay and we there was no mention of a tax or the government

knowing about this also hearing what the hell is that like i wonder if i i really can't remember when i got my tonsils taken out if it was right it was either right before right after this but i had a lot of anxiety about it as a little kid getting my tonsils taken out and and stuff like this of right before you go under and just having this like the last thing you think like that was something that filled me with anxiety like what's the last thing i see before i go to sleep maybe forever yeah it's such a great line to inspire anxiety i feel like a minority report has a similar thing where he's like getting his eyes taken out or whatever his eyes swapped out and he's already been sedated and then the guy's like you know you arrested me

and you're like oh what's this gonna lead to it similarly i think it's like oh it's just a scary thing to hear and then it it leads to nothing really but uh so we have a few little cutaways while homer's under the knife we see that patty and selma are already trying to introduce to uh march to a new man andre while but while homer's not even dead yet um great design on andre too i love he's a great skeezyzy guy with two necklaces and his hairy chest. Does he have a medallion in this design? Okay, I thought so. Yes, yeah. It's perfect.

It's just the type of guy Patty and Selma have probably met on the single scene. Yeah. I thought you'd be perfect for our sister. We also have a scene at the bar where they're having a moment of silence, which they joke on the commentary for timing purposes. They turn three seconds into six seconds and stretch it out just it's a little longer it's a whole load of footage isn't it henry yes yeah yeah oh interesting that's cool we cut to uh to apu regretting all the things he sold homer and i i always got to

turn on the closed captions here i can never tell what up who says but the closed captions say he offers him vodka what's vodka would you like some vodka with that but i never i guess i heard it as like hot gal or hot cow or i like i had no i never could tell what it said it still sounds like weird words to me we cut to nick uh he's hit the part in the video that was cut off if you watch it you see he says now make the incision, right? And then it cuts off into people who look like things. That's good. That's smart. I like that.

And this is when he flashes back to med school, which we learned that mainly it was about him writing illegal scripts, prescriptions. This is Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, where he went. Great. I love that. I believe that is a Bill Oakley joke. Perfect Bill one. That's so good. And then apparently this is a real thing that they got from their research,

which is you got to make the incision below the blockage, which Lisa shouts out and saves her father's life. Now, Neil, too, again, how interested are you in research for an episode? With your writing staff staff like if for a subject of of digman is some historical thing how into research are you guys i would say we're pretty it's never like oh well let's sacrifice like the pacing or comedy to like show off our research i i get annoyed when i see things that are a little too proud of themselves for the research they've done and want to share it but you know we try to like be accurate about, I mean, not just like totally like, who would care?

We never, I guess, say that, you know, we, we, a super small thing, but like in the second episode, the, the Italy one, where there's some, some backstory about like the map got to find the thing. Oh, what? It's the sun clue in Latin. Yeah. But like that, that the person who drew the map, like I think at first we wrote like, well, map Italy, Amerigo Vespucci or something like that. And then we were like, well, that would be not that anyone's going to really care.

But like the wrong timing for when we're saying this took place in the wrong part of the country, something like that. And we just, you know, we looked up a different like a Venetian map maker and have some name that i'm sure means nothing to anyone who ever watched the show i'm sure the venn diagram of people who know who that person is name i don't even recall now and who watched digman did not overlap but uh you know so so that was something we're trying to get in and like we ran all the latin stuff by someone who is like a classics professor. I just, I didn't want to be like, whatever, let's just do what Google Translate says. Like, yeah, I wanted to be like, all right, I don't want to get like people to get distracted by this. Like while they're watching, I want them to.

In this case, I think it was Mike Reese's dad who was usually their medical consultant because he was a doctor. And I think when they asked him about this, he was aghast at the very idea that this 35 year old man was going to have a triple bypass yeah like the same reaction i had rewatching david letterman had when he was like 65 like yeah i think his was even a quadruple i think yeah uh lisa saves homer's life by giving him the correct directions i i like i do like he's just exchanged like, thanks, little girl. It's one of these things where you never see these operating theaters outside of television and movies. And I think they only happen in medical schools for other students to watch procedures. They're making a joke about how it's like a movie theater audience and there are people making out.

But it is strange that Dr. Nick, this doctor for for hire is allowed to operate within the confines of this theater yeah educational purposes right it's just to get lisa in there but it is very strange if you think probably like the logistics i bet not too far in time from seinfeld going to where he throws the junior mint and the guy uh that's true i've had i've had a similar era yeah the wristwatch gag is is not unlike the junior. I think, honestly, if his wristwatch is inside Homer's chest, Homer's dead. He's probably dead. I was like, this reminds me of the ending of The Big Sick

where it sort of was like the non-doctor kind of cracked the case and said the thing that helped the doctor figure out how to solve everything. I just looked. The Junior Mint aired four months later in March of 93. Oh, man. All right, so Seinfeld ripped them off. No, no, no, no. It's all people ripping each other off.

They all went to see Dead Ringers at the same time or something. No, I mean, that was how you could, because The Simpsons took longer. You can see when their episodes after seeing goodfellas or whatever comes out and it's like you know six months after the live action show writers have seen goodfellas yeah but so yes then in our final clip here learn if the lead character of this series will live or not and we're all brought in a very tense moment i again aljean jokes on the commentary says like look nobody thinks he's gonna die no viewer at home thinks he's gonna die but uh but this is where we learn homer's fate good news the operation was a complete success Oh, that's wonderful. Dr. Nick Riviera, remember me?

Well, if it isn't my old friend, Mr. McGreg, with a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg. I love that so much. That is such an insane moment in the show that completely, he's just a ridiculous dr susie and character that should not physically be able to exist yeah that was definitely when i was a kid a favorite moment in this episode it took me by surprise because i forgot it was in this episode and i i it gave me a lot of respect for hank azaria once again because he plays this super broad nick riviera character just sounds like desi arnaz But then he plays just regular guys a lot.

So we heard him as the insurance adjuster and Mr. McGreg, the people who look like things host. I just like his regular guy characters where he's not doing a big voice. Yeah. God, just the... They credit it to Sam Simon.

It's such a perfect joke and such a ridiculous way to end the scene uh that does cut through the like you know we could we could watch the simpsons celebrating some more or we could meet mr mccraig and i'm glad they went with something as insane as that like they i mean they also joke they say this really in the monorail which is coming up soon after this one but they felt like they weren't being watched by James L Brooks as much. So they could just get away with crazier shit, but it's,

it's wonderful. So, yeah, so we have our final moment, which is mainly just visual. So I don't have the clip for it, but just, you know,

Bart goes, you rule intensive care. And we see Homer. I think it's a really good design of Homer. So Haggard post-surgery, like he, he looks like he's been through some stuff. I was noticing that design. Yeah. I was rewatchwatching i was like well that's that's he looks yeah

messed up yeah they rarely are allowed to add extra lines to the characters so uh he's in really bad shape here yeah and i like that his heart he has to pound on his chest just to remind you like nope you're good still you're good now you got fixed yep that this was where the last deleted scene on the dvd is because the original ending they had fully animated in color so this change must have come real late and very expensively up to the very ending the last shot of homer instead of him hitting his heart is he's eating pizza again and a call back to him as a baby eating pizza and march says where'd he get that and then the nurse shrugs and that's the

end of the episode and i i think it's a fun callback though maybe maybe you can see like why end your show with a shrug like it might be a week a week last scene of like like the end yeah yeah yeah i get that i can also see if you were like we just had an actual heartfelt scene and if hovers just like whatever i'm gonna keep doing this and make the same problem it's it's a little bit of like a middle finger to that too yeah it would have been mr mcgreg followed by a mystery pizza eating and then yeah end of episode not not as uh touching not not not as good as i'm landing that like james o brooks would have wanted yeah yeah it's much more sweet him being just accepting the love of his family and they're all like, oh, we're stronger together because I made it through it. And then you get a little, you know, callback of the Simpsons tune coming on. And we all know Homer will be the exact same person in the next episode, will not have changed his diet or lifestyle in any way. But, you know, he at the end of this episode, maybe you could fool yourself into thinking he's learned or grown or changed yeah exactly and this made me think and i'm sure i'm missing some instances we've seen him have heart attacks uh in

the future i i think the episode is uh lost our lisa where homer's explaining the sensation of having fun he's like is your left arm tingling so he's he's having a heart attack or some sort of heart issue and then in uh these are both lisa related by the way uh the old man and elisa when um elisa refuses the money from burns that's when homer has a heart attack and then in the hospital later he has another one when he when lisa tells homer how much the amount actually was yes when homer realizes it's not a five figure amount it's it's like eight figures that lisa turned down and homer at the end of the scene ends with, the episode ends with code blue, code blue, code blue. I think Bill and Josh joke of like, well, that's the last episode of the show because Homer died.

It's all a dream. Yeah, you're right. He has had many heart events since then, though as the show would go on and show you more future stuff, I just watched a new episode from season 35 where 60 years from now homer has finally died but he he makes it into his 90s in this vision there was a thing when i was a kid that like the itchy and scratchy the movie episode where i was like okay i know bart's bad but he's gonna grow up and be a supreme court justice and homer like it kind of reassured me like the they'll the and lisa i think is maybe president or something like i was like this'll i know things are gonna turn

out all right for these guys like i kind of had that in the back of my head like making me feel comforted by whatever other like trouble like or just like disappointments they would have i was like i wanted bart to be class president or something but you're like, but he will be a Supreme Court justice someday. I take comfort in that fact, yeah. Now we're only 10 years away from that future of 2032 that they imagined in that episode. And I guess next year-

Or I guess it's nine years now. I think next year we're hitting the milestone of living in the year in which Homer and Marge go to their 50th high school reunion and Homer solves the plunger on his head. Yeah, I just watched that episode, yeah.

You're right, it's 2024 that happens and we'll be covering that episode in 2024 as well. It's going to be a lot of fun. Dang. That's almost as big as being for the last episode that the Indian, the Hindu, what's his name guy was? Oh, Sajrudan Babar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's almost as big an honor as being on his last episode. Well, we should just stop here because it's over. What else is there to say? The show's over. Exactly. Without Sajrudan Babar, that is. We've completed the trilogy.

But yeah, this episode, just final words here. Great. Maybe it reminds me a little too much of the Poison Blowfish episode, and that was just pure sentimentality and not as much like wacky town visits, things I like. This one, like you said, Neil, not one I throw on when I want just solid laughs and weird gags, but those things are still here amidst some genuine hearts. So I do think this is a very strong season four episode. Yeah, no, I think the very special episode trappings of it, you know, kind of come through occasionally. But the I have so much fun with some of the health care stuff.

And there's some real insane things that come in here. And on top of that, David Silverman animated this. Him and his team animated this amazingly. Like it's one of the best looking episodes for a freelance one this was not them picking one of their like a team writers they're like let's put silverman on that they just it seems almost random that silverman was put on this episode of all of them but or maybe he just like said i have to draw this heart attack so give me this script but however it ended up with it it makes this pretty good script into a great episode thanks to the animation

yeah it looks awesome yeah it does have some great gags and it's a great performances too and yeah i mean it there's almost one thing i admire maybe the most about it in a way is like it just is like well what if they had to go through this like they didn't kind of like craft it around a narrative of like homer punished Bart and Bart is not talking to Homer or something, you know, and then finally kind of like comes and says something to him before his surgery in case that's the last time he talks to, you know, there's no like sort of invented struggle they're going through where someone needs to sacrifice something or whatever at the end to do what's best for the family, you know, which happens in a lot of episodes and which I

love, but I almost admire the slice of lifeness of this, of just like which happens in a lot of episodes, which I love. But I almost admire the slice of lifeness of this, of just like, Homer is having a heart issue. It's a risky surgery. Everyone's kind of worried and we kind of see them come through. It's sweet. So thank you so much, Neil Campbell, for being on the show. First time guest. Neil, please let us know more about Digman. That's currently on Paramount Plus. Yeah, it's streaming now on Paramount Plus. Unbleaped, you know, if you were watching a Comedy Central,

you're like, I gotta watch this again and hear the bad words. You're in luck. So yeah, we're working on a season two right now and would appreciate anyone who wants to check it out. We've got a ton of funny people who do guest voices, great animators, great writers, and we're quite proud of it,

as I think I said, and we'd be very thrilled and honored if anyone out there would watch it and check it out. No, it's such a fun show. I'm going to re-watch

some episodes with all the swears now to finally see the... I forget how many bleeps there were in the Shakespeare episode where everybody shoots ropes, as they say in the episode. I need to see that one uncensored to truly understand.

Yeah, yeah. Andy and I wrote the first episode on spec not knowing where it would go, and that one might have the most bleep. Well, actually, I can't remember at this point. We did so many rewrites and stuff. At a certain point, we realized things would be bleeped and picked and chose our moments. And we're really looking forward to season two. Thank you. But now people can watch all the show to be ready for season two.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And thanks so much for having me, guys. Like I say, I haven't listened to it. I'm a big fan and I'm always excited for an opportunity to talk to some of you. Oh, thank you, Neil. Yeah.

Thank you. That's so great. We would love to have you back. This was so much fun having you on, too, for such a big... And so much of your time, too. We really appreciate it. All good, all good. Especially after a long day. It's not hard to get me chatting Simpsons and going for a while, so all good. Thanks for having me. Thanks for your time as well.

Thank you so much, Neil Campbell, for being on the show. Please check out Digman. It's all on Paramount Plus right now. Go check it out. As for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get these podcasts one week ahead of time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. If you sign up at the $5 level, you get just that,

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