Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Hurricane Neddy With Liz Ryerson

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

We're joined this week by musician/writer/podcaster/developer Liz Ryerson (check out her Patreon) and together we delve into the psyche of Ned Flanders. After getting some wadded beef, we suffer through a hurricane as Ned is tested like never before. Then we try nothing and are all out of ideas as we learn secrets about Flanders' past! Listen now to the podcast that love built! This podcast is brought to you by VRV, the streaming network full of cartoons, anime and more. sign up for a free 30-day trial at VRV.co/WAC and help support Talking Simpsons! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

this week's talking simpsons is brought to you by verve do you like streaming classic cartoons like doug anime like jojo's bizarre adventure and dragon ball super original cartoons like b and puppy cat even classics like freakazoid that you won't find anywhere else those are all being carried by verve and you get a 30-day free trial and service on Talking Simpsons if you just head to vrv.co slash WAC. Check it out. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where the animals are always the first to know. I am your host, butthole surfer, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today?

Henry Gilbert, and I'm using my main finger to record this. Who else is here? Hi, I'm Liz Ryerson, and I am making it my business to be a third wheel. Excellent. That's like all of our guests. And today's episode is Hurricane Nettie. I'm a surfer! Today's episode aired on December 29th, 1996, the last episode of 1996.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Today's episode aired on December 29th, 1996, the last episode of 1996. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy, Bobby. John Travolta's Michael is number one at the box office, letting angels walk again. The first E! True Hollywood story airs about Selena. And at the top of the billboard music charts is tony braxton's unbreak my heart oh boy that would stay there for until the end of time i'm guessing it was quite a popular one i remember in um john hodgman's book or one of his books somebody

wrote in with like scrabble problems and saying like my friend said unbreak isn't a word but it's in a song and then he's like well if it's not in the dictionary you're playing with, no matter how popular Tony Braxton is, it's not a Scrapple. Is he from Harvard or Yale? He's a Yale-y. He's a Yale-y. That's why he doesn't write for the same thing. He has the boorish manners.

Exactly. To be that much of a pedant about actual words, those are boorish manners. He's slightly playing a character. I know. I know. Is Selena the one who was killed by her fan? Yes. words those are borscht manners he he's slightly playing a character i know i know what is selena the one who was like killed by her fan yes by her number one fan who was also her fan club manager yeah that's so crazy because there was like a youtuber who this happened to like recently i can't remember that musician and i know we're doing her a disservice but i think the youtuber you're thinking of is christina grimmie She was shot by a fan like at an event,

but that's always something that, not that I am of Christina Grimmie caliber of stardom, but you never know who's going to show up at an event, especially if a famous conservative hates you. Yeah, that doesn't help. But the Selena thing, I remember that E! True Hollywood story because the weirdest thing in it is that the suspect in her, well, not suspect, the perpetrator of her murder, she was just giving interviews in it. And they just did an interview with her.

And this was like before the trial. Oh, my gosh. And it came to points and they were like, so what did you do? And she's like, my lawyer tells me not to talk about that. Oh, boy. Wow. Yeah. But that E! True Hollywood story, we talked a bit about A.J. Benza and our family guy. did you do and she's like my lawyer tells me not to talk about that oh boy wow yeah and uh but that

each rollywood story we talked a bit about aj benza on our uh family guys that was these mysteries and scandals not true hollywood story they're different shows henry different shows i don't know how you guys like have such an encyclopedic knowledge of all this stuff it's mainly looking things up on wikipedia and pretending we knew them all along. Don't tell anybody, oh shit, I just recorded this. I do remember watching John Travolta's Michael, and I believe Eddie the dog from Frasier, or at least a lookalike to that dog, is a major character in it. The second I saw that dog, I was like, something's going to happen to that dog. We watched that for some reason, you know, like when the teacher would be hung over and

put on a movie? We watched that in high school for whatever reason whatever reason and i'm like is this just because there's an angel in it by the way i went to catholic school it's like ah it's christian enough whatever it's the michael the one in the bible yeah it's right here on screen oh okay that's what is it see i don't even remember that movie at all it was one of two touchy feely travolta movies there was that in phenomenonon in which he had a brain tumor that gave him magic powers that he thought was from aliens and then he just died

from a brain tumor. Right. It was a feel good hit of 1995. The most depressing twist of all time. I thought I had magic powers but it turns out it was just a brain tumor. God, those tumors are always fooling you. It was on that set where he befriended Forrest Whitaker which would lead him to be the co-star in battlefield earth with him um another classic

cinematic classic so we're in la right now you might notice a different room tone don't worry you'll get used to it uh we have a special la guest liz ryerson i know liz from berkeley yes we were both on the mean streets of berkeley crawling with ms-13 gang members and roving bands of antifa but we survived to make this podcast. So Liz, who are you? What do you do? And you do a lot of stuff, right? Yeah, I do some like video game writing, video game journalism type stuff. I do music for games sometimes and also have done some game design. And lately I've been doing a podcast called Beyond the Filter, which we were just talking about earlier. It's kind of like the theme of it is a variety of different guests.

Like I'm a video game person sort of, but like I've had tons of different kinds of guests on there. And a lot of it is about sort of new media and things that are kind of unique to the internet, phenomena that are kind of unique to the internet. And one of the recent episodes I had Felix Biederman from Chapo Trap House. That's the episode we were talking about. And he's talking about his kind of history growing up on the internet um so you can definitely check that i also have a patreon um you know i'm not a not a big earner but that's okay i don't like

i'm not like i don't post content as much but you know it's uh i like doing a lot of different kinds of things and that you know especially things that other people aren't doing or talking about in the same way i mean whether there are no small Patreons, only small people. But I have to say, I love the Felix interview because it is very, it captures what the early aughts internet was like and how it sort of warped and mutated into the Chan culture that decided our presidents in a way. Yes. And well, and I know you are definitely a staple of something awful. Yeah, I still am. I'm embedded in that book as a staple forever. I also liked that Felix interview.

You both kind of talk about how Simpsons and also The Critic were really essential to your formative comedic minds as kids. Well, yeah, and he said he grew up in Chicago, a suburb of Chicago, and he was saying that grew up in Chicago, a suburb of Chicago, and he was saying that, like, you know, his family is, he's Jewish, his family's, and, like, the Critic was, like, their favorite show or, you know, like, a show that, like, they, which is interesting. It kind of goes back to what you guys were saying about the Critic actually being more popular in the Midwest than it was on the East Coast, which I find really interesting, but I feel like it's often that way with that kind of well new york seems so exotic to uh me growing up in ohio yeah yeah i was those hillbilly cops who were just like talking about the uh tamajam awaits well so uh how early of a simpsons viewer were you so i honestly don't remember like um because i'm a little bit younger than you guys

i i mean i remember the simpsons because the simpsons was everywhere like yeah when i was a kid like i was i think three or four when the simpsons came out i was it was like 90 or 91 i was like three or four and the simpsons was just around like we definitely watched it um you know at home but the the episodes that episodes that I really remember watching when they were new, when they came out, was season seven, specifically. Okay, yeah. Yeah, and I got a lot out of listening to your shows because I felt like almost every episode of season seven

kind of had this interesting kind of taking a facet of the Simpsons universe and twisting it a little bit. And that's why when'm, you know, when you when I was listening to podcasts, you guys talking about season four and everything, you know, that's the kind of agreed upon classic season. But for me, it was always season seven, because, you know, and when I look back, and when I sort of rediscovered the Simpsons, almost every episode that I remembered watching and really having a strong emotional attachment to was almost all in season seven, because I think I was like, just the right age for it, where I actually

understood like what was going on in the episode. And a lot of the season seven episodes are a little bit more like grounded in reality in terms of the story, while still being like, you know, funny Simpsons. I think season four the quote-unquote best season was the popular theory i ascribed to until the dvd started coming out and now i believe i said uh on a podcast i think six is my favorite with like seven being a super close runner-up i don't know how do you feel about that henry i'm i'm kind of there too i i think five to me five is the funniest season but not the best season because i do think uh you you convince me with six having like six has parts comment one of my favorites yeah it has uh who shot mr burns part

one which i think we said on that one is even if it's not what i would literally call my the favorite simpsons episode it is the perfect simpsons episode yeah i think six but seven is really close behind and i think it's it's because six was the best balance of like i think dave murkin brought the most humor like like laughs per minute to it yeah and then meanwhile you had six those started having more of the oakley weinstein influence of uh that you you really get head on in season seven and in season four as we cover not to be a broken record here but like everyone was leaving everyone was tired everyone thought the show would end. Al Jean and Mike Reese were developing The Critic. Not that they

weren't working hard, it's just their brains could only do so much with the show. And they do stuff like The Front, which still has tons of funny stuff in it, but is such a loose-ass episode. Well, in comparison, a lot of the episodes we're about to talk about, a lot of

these episodes are much more tightly plotted and less of the, like, twisting and going around, but much stronger, like, A plots in them. Yeah, in 7 and 8, they're so rarely a B plot, like, I think because they're so into the plot they're telling, the main narrative they're telling, they don't want to take any time away from that with, like, Homer having a tea party or something yeah well and i think the other thing i liked about season seven is i identified a lot with lisa as a kid because i didn't have i didn't grow up i didn't have the best family situation and like you know like a lot of people i feel like in some ways sort of raised by media i don't have the encyclopedic knowledge that you guys do but i the stuff that i was into like i really really was into and lisa i think was one of the first maybe the first

character and and i was almost exactly that age too at the time i think it was eight during season seven when it was on and there were several episodes about lisa like the one where she becomes a vegetarian like the lisa the iconoclasts so i think like her being kind of also the me sort of having a developing sense of like moral morals about the world and what things are right and what things are wrong and like lisa was always the mouthpiece of that in the midst of a show which is often kind of just nihilistic sometimes yeah well sure yeah even in season seven as well in an episode where lisa has less of a part she still is a good voice of reason like in king size homer it's constantly

jokes about exploiting disability and how there's even a comment about like employee disability is just it's a lottery for idiots which like i don't i don't like that view but then lisa she has to be the one to just soberly say like this is meant to actually help people please dad don't do this like this is a good program well and that's like the grounding that the show once i think lisa was that was my biggest complaint about the show because like everyone else i really kind of burned out on the simpsons you know around season 9 10 i think i i had a really hard time because like Lisa was such a big voice and it felt like she just went silent like in a lot of those episodes. Or she was a

punching bag I would say too, right? Yeah. It's like Meg on Family Guy or something. Yeah. She kind of fulfilled a Meg role where it's like she's complaining all the time or she's whining all the time. Or they perhaps in an effort to make her seem more her age of an 8-year-old they then not dumb her down but definitely like defang her a bit.

She's not the Lisa who throws red paint at the Keebler employees. That's right. Yeah, but it's the thing of like, and this is the thing that I come back to when you talk about continuity errors, when you talk about things that just break reality in the show.

It's an animated show and it like represents a lot of different things at once like there's a lot of different archetypes that are represented in lisa or or ned flanders or any of these characters so you know you think that maybe making them more realistically like kids would be better but it actually kind of takes away that component of the show like and for me like i it was really hard for me like i actually because i really liked the simpsons and i would talk to people about like like i can't watch the show anymore and they're like what are you talking about it's still funny and they would like you know joke about like episodes in season 11 and 12 and i just like i

that was like my first awareness that like something that i loved could just kind of turn really bad and i didn't really understand why i don't know i'm not and i like you that i loved could just kind of turn really bad and i didn't really understand why i don't know i'm not and i like you know i don't think it's it's it was terrible or whatever but like i think part of it is that season seven and eight really and eight to a lesser extent really set up these characters in a way that you really connected with them and related to them and it kind of hurt to just have that yeah wrapped up and i i think that some seasons that immediately follow this like or felt like they had to do damage control from what these seasons did which is an unneeded feeling and that especially there's instances of that with this

episode hurricane eddie of that they completely changed afterwards like oh we don't want to do this with ned felt like the kind of feeling after this episode aired. I feel like they gave the writers of the future seasons a gift in new ideas for these characters, but they were more interested in returning to the status quo. But I think we'll cover a lot of that as we approach those seasons for sure. Do you want to get into this episode though?

Yes. So we have a new writer alert. It has not happened in a long time, right? So this writer is Steve Young. As we go over in the past, every season needs a few freelance scripts per season because of Guild Rules. It's a way to give newcomers a chance to break into the TV industry. But Steve Young, the writer, went to the Harvard Lampoon. That's basically a Simpsons writer's room day pass.

Like, it gets you into the room for a day to write an episode. I want to go over the history of Steve Young. It's pretty interesting. So his journey began in 1989, where he wrote for the short-lived The Comedy Channel series, The Suite Life. It ran from 89 to 90, and it was a sketch slash comedy show featuring the singer slash actor Rachel Sweet. I didn't know who this woman was. And yesterday, I was supposed to do research for this episode.

I ended up doing it today because I went down a real sweet hole on the internet and her music is great it is like 80s bubblegum pop but it is like super catchy super great and actually she's she sang the first version of shadows of the night before pat benatar did and it's an interesting take on that but i have a i have a promo for her the sweet life show so there are so many things named the sweet life that exist it was impossible to find any Wikipedia entry, but I found a Comedy Channel promo. So even more history. Comedy Central exists today.

In the late 80s, early 90s, there was also the Comedy Channel and Ha! There was not a market for two Comedy Channels, so they smashed together to be Comedy Central. And I believe the first season of MST3K was a Comedy Channel show. That's right, yeah. I remember briefly going between

Ha and comedy channel. Like one had SNL, one didn't. I was watching MST3K. So this promo, you don't have to play the whole thing because all early cable promos, it's way too long. But you can see just the weird desperation and like, what is the show we're making? But I think I'm in love with

Rachel Sweet is what I'm going to say. Hi, I'm Rachel Sweet, and I bet you think you're funny. Well, we here at the Comedy Channel want to give you a chance to prove it. So just grab your video camera and show us how funny you can be. Dad, dad, dad. That's right. Send us your own homemade brand of comedy, and you might see it on the air during my show, The Suite Life.

Now, I know you're probably saying, sure, I'm funny, but how can I compete with Rob Lowe? I mean, his home video is exciting. How can anyone? Exciting, yes, but I mean, talk about tacky. No, that's not for us. That's enough. She's talking about the sex tape. Yeah, she's talking about the sex tape, so that's how old this promo is, but you can hear her on the

show like, why don't you make our show? By the way, you're not going to get your tapes back, and we won't give you anything for making comedy for us. It's not even like America's Funniest Home Videos. It's like, you make sketch comedy for us, and we'll put it on TV. It's sort of like early crowdsourcing. And when you think about

making it off VHS, like, how many of the people who sent that in had thought of like, I should make a copy of this before I say it again. Yeah, if you have two VCRs, which wow, you're a high roller in 1989. So that's the first show he worked on. We're still talking about Steve Young, by the way. The second show he worked for was one episode of Not Necessarily the News, which was a real Harvard Simpsons den. So Al Jean wrote for it. Mike Reese wrote for it. Conan O'Brien wrote for it. Ian Maxton Graham wrote for it. Greg Daniels wrote for it. Rob Lezebnik wrote for it. And one other Simpsons writer wrote for it. It was like sort of

Nelskovel too. So it was a real like pre-Simpsons Harvard Lampoon den of sin and debauchery. So Steve Young was also a huge Letterman writer, just like a lot of former, just like a lot of Simpsons writers. So he wrote for David Letterman from 90 to 93, and then wrote for David Letterman again from 99 to 2009. He also adapted the children's book, All of the Other Reindeer, which I heard is a good TV special. I saw that. Yeah. Because I've actually seen that book before. Okay. Yeah. People told me that TV special was good, but it came out like 20 years ago.

I totally missed it. It's a cutesy CG one to make it look like the flat characters of the book. And Drew Barrymore, I believe, not just was an executive producer on it, but it plays Olive as well. Yeah, she's the main character in that. And it's a bunch of clever wordplay jokes that it is a dog named Olive that wants to be a reindeer so

she's olive the other reindeer and i remember there's another one called like round oh yeah round john virgin they meet a person named john version john virgin who they're and he's always like round john version mother and child okay round Okay. Round John Virgin is not a great name to have. That sounds like a Reddit community. Oh, God. But yeah, it's just all about the misheard lyrics of classic carols. I do nothing about this. So these later things Steve Young worked on are not as high profile as David Letterman, The Simpsons.

He wrote for the six-episode variety show, Maya and Marty in 2016. It came and it went in a blink. It started Maya Rudolph and Martin Short. It was called Maya and Marty. It was a variety show. That is not a combination that I can picture together. It's a bad idea. It was a Lord Michaels produced variety show

canceled after six episodes. And the last thing he worked on was a ton of episodes of Harry, the Harry Connick Jr. talk show. What? I didn't know this existed either. Yeah, so that is Steve Young. But again, a guy who rode on a lampoon with all those guys.

And I'm sure he did a great job with this. But this also was an idea handed to him that was a George Myers idea. Yes, that's right. And so it just feels really like cheating. They're like, well, who are you going to get as freelance? Oh, this friend of mine who I just want to get a job and who will just give him the whole plot. He'll just write it. You can have heavy creative input about what they're going to do already. Yeah. Well, I mean, I would love to be a freelance. I'm not a script writer. But imagine if I was a freelance script writer who then the one of the

best team of Simpsons writers ever just said, here the entire like here's 80 of what we want to do in this episode now write that i'm like hell yeah fill in the blanks i'm sure it was more work than that come on i don't want to get uh steve young uh leaving angry comments oh and also this is a bob anderson directed one oh yeah he's great uh He's one of two Andersons not related that are directing The Simpsons at this point. And this was another George Meyer idea, I believe too. They really love that George Meyer on the I think this is still when he was like kind of

not working as much on the show. I think he didn't really come back until the Scully seasons because Mike Scully really counted on George Meyer. Yes. George Meyer is on the commentary for this and he's pretty fun talking about how this was partially inspired by a sketch that his uh friend jack handy of snl never got a right for snl which was about the classic uh elves who in the cobbler who they build all the shoes overnight and the cobblers uh sell all the shoes in time but in this case

the elves made them all terribly and they're just shitty shoes and the elves and the cobblers to go like well i mean thanks but i can't sell these they're bad does he have a nervous breakdown or i i think oh no yes that the last part of the scene is that the cobbler leaves the room and you hear a single gunshot off screen that sounds like a george meyer joke to me yes yeah well that, that's one of the things that I like about this episode is even in the midst of a fairly straightforward plot, there's all

these little bits and vignettes that are not even part of the main plot, but are really good. There's a lot of great set pieces in this. There are sketches within this episode that could exist independently, but they work well within the context of a full story well the way this episode starts i grew up in florida which is hurricane country and i definitely i don't know somebody who has struggles with anxiety

like uh there's not you want to get anxious about something it's knowing that a hurricane could arrive in three days and you're just like so is it gonna be here or not what's going on being sorry being an innocent ohioan i did not know the full scope of the damage a hurricane could wreak until hurricane katrina which i think was an eye-opening experience for a lot of people one and it's like wow a hurricane can do this also wow the government can fail us on this large of a scale uh live in the superdome we'll figure it out don't kill each other oh here's here's some bread some bread some bread yeah no in florida it was a lot of this kind of preparedness stuff though where i lived we were kind of in the uh the armpit of florida like north northeast florida so what happened

with every hurricane when i lived there was that it would seem to come towards us but then something about our placement on the earth meant that it either curved away to the right or curved away to the left it was a smell it was yeah i think it's maybe because you lived in the arm of florida and the hurricane was like no i'm not gonna go to jacksonville i'm gonna i'm gonna fuck up tampa apologies to all of our friends in stenchburg stenchburg florida i did the same things lisa does here with my dad of saying there's a hurricane coming i I think a hurricane is coming. Oh, Lisa, there's no record of a hurricane ever hitting Springfield.

Yes, but the records only go back to 1978 when the Hall of Records was mysteriously blown away. What is it, boy? Fire? Earthquake? Hippies? Hurricane! Somehow the animals are always the first to know. And the weather service has warned us to brace ourselves for the onslaught of Hurricane Barbara. And if you think naming a destructive storm after a woman is sexist,

you obviously have never seen the gals grabbing for items at a clearance sale. It's true, but he shouldn't say it. We better pick up some supplies. I've received the Frinkiac version of Marge saying it's true, but he shouldn't say that to some of my jokes on Twitter. But yeah, it's weird. It's weird. Like, the current Hurricane Now is Hurricane Chris. It's weird to have such an average, like, white guy name as a

hurricane. Like, it's Hurricane Steve. They're usually a little more creative with that. I looked this up, too, but NOAA is the hurricane naming a hurricane like it's it's hurricane steve they're usually a little more creative with that but i i look this up too but noah is the hurricane naming group okay and you can see what the next five years of tropical storms i think a tropical depression when you become a tropical depression then you are named and they go through the entire alphabet from a to w so every time there's a new one if they ever get to w on it it it's like, well, this is the apocalypse. The world is over.

Hurricane Xerxes is killing us all. And they also alternate feminine to masculine name. And though also it goes like some years A is masculine, sometimes A is feminine, and then they just alternate from there. So it's very egalitarian with the naming conventions of hurricanes. I've definitely heard that the hurricanes that are named after women tend to do much more damage because people aren't as prepared for them. I see. They're just like,

Katrina. Well, because they assume that it's a woman's name therefore it's somehow more harmless or something. It'll be a gentle breeze. And this starts with like Santa's little helper dying like that dog is gone if your dog flies away you're probably not seeing him it's the magic of animation henry it's true i'm looking at recent hurricanes now and there's like hurricane katrina the ones i

remember are women names like hurricane rita i've never heard of hurricane mitch he seems pretty friendly you want to hang out with mitch uh hurricane irma was this year too oh yeah i only remember of the ones before katrina big one was hurricane andrew that yeah 92 yeah i remember hearing about that on the news yeah it went through florida just before my family moved there we moved there in like late 92 and so already i was just worried like the whole time like that's a difference from when i moved out here i originally and by here i was just worried like the whole time like that's a difference from when i moved out here i originally and by here i mean california i originally had the fear of like what if an earthquake happened i'd never see it coming but then for me at least it kind of went

to the background and i just never think about it but when it's hurricane season there was a hurricane two years ago that got close to my family and that still lives in florida and i was super stressing out before i'm just like go go but my dad especially like homer is just like uh we can just hunker down everything's gonna be fine i ain't i ain't getting out of here i ain't afraid of no roller coaster i knew you were going i'm sorry we have to no you have to quote mr show at least once yeah per podcast law it maybe slightly reinforces sexism but i do like her just like it's true but he shouldn't say it's just it's just such a like a pointless joke like it's such a needless like why would the news broadcaster be saying that i thought we were going to get one of those technical difficulties uh cards i forgot they didn't

give him one of those well yeah that is funny. In season five, Kent Brockman has just completely lost, and it is like doing Alex Jones rants on the air about the Book of Revelation. He editorializes everything, even weather. Yeah, that's true. Then he headed to the Quickie Mart to be gouged. It's another great set piece. A lot of fun

food names, a lot of fun jokes about how people are preparing. I like Ke kerny worriedly looking around while filling a like a container with squishy that's great i like that the cat chow the the cat is crossed out and they're they're just carrying it like like sudden because the cat is somehow crossed out then they're going to eat it now it's hurricane chow even though there's a cat right on there and and then when whenna Krabappel picks it up, she like hugs it with like a security blanket, like, oh, okay, I got my hurricane chow.

I'm going to make it. Yeah, and I mean, this is not too far-fetched from like, you know, whenever there's a hurricane, people post pictures of grocery stores and everything is gone except for, you know, things like the creamed eels or the wadded beef. It's kind of a scary visual seeing Apu with his shotgun up there, though. Actually, he did that too during...

Oh, when was he shooting people from on top of the quickie bar? Thank you for coming. I'll see you in hell. It was very similar to a scene in Home of the Vigilante where Apu was on the rooftop with a sniper rifle saying, thank you for coming. I'll see you in hell. Afraid of anyone stealing from him. They're finally having fun with Kirk Van Houtenhound he's like let's just beat him up and

take his stuff it's like don't listen to that man and he just sort of likes like rubbing his elbow like embarrassed but i love when he says you all have a chance to be gouged that the people in the crowd are just like oh thank goodness i love how how easily the unruly mob is always swayed these episodes well they're being let in 70 people at a time. It'll be very orderly. But yes, here's them buying supplies. There's so little left. Creamed eels?

Cornmog? Wadded beef? Mom, let's just grab what we can and get out of here. This storm is making people crazy. The last pineapple. And plenty ripe, too. But I'm not fruit. I'm a kid. That's what the pumpkin said.

Hi, Lisa. We're going to be in a pie. That's a great Ralph joke. He's very excited to be in a pie. A pumpkin pineapple pie? I don't know about that. He's going to go to Bovine University and he's going to be in a pie. He's excited to die in fun ways, that Ralph. In food-related ways.

Yeah. And Lisa looks extra cute the way she's just sat there like, I'm not a food, I'm a kid. To be picked up by your head seems painful. Yeah, you know what? It does. Yeah. And they haven't figured out yet that Agnes is their go-to old lady with that voice. So it's Mrs. Gleck who's like the fill-in Agnes

until they figure out they want Agnes Skinner for all those scenes. Is she the same woman who says, Hello, Joe? That's Grandma Flanders. This is an episode or two before Agnes fully enters her real Hellion mode with grade school confidential. His excitement to be in a pie. And Marge's

marge's questioning of what wadded beef is what beef it reminds me of um potted meat which was a i forget which episode of space ghost it was but on space ghost he had a new sponsor that was potted meat and it was such a strange specific thing to be advertising it makes me think of canned bread have you ever heard of that oh yeah i can't believe it's real like how how expensive is bread you can't just buy a loaf and i like cream deals also reminds me of uh when i was reading video game news and reviews in magazines and uh snake eater came out, Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater. At at least one publication, Konami sent them a canned snake meat and they were all like, I am terrified to open this.

I am not opening this. Was it really snake meat or was it spam with a Snake Eater sticker on it? Maybe. Well, it wasn't like a branded snake meat. It was like from a real company that makes snake meat or packages snake meat. If you're eating meat, why be picky? I mean, it's all meat. The Simpsons will be right back.

Whether you're chewing on a hurricane chow or some wadded beef we hope you're enjoying this episode of talking simpsons this was the last of our recordings in la and we had such a great time in los angeles and we were only able to do that thanks to your support the support at patreon.com slash talking simpsons gave me and bob the financial ability to fly out to los angeles and stay there for a whole week and record with cool people like Liz Ryerson, Matt Burnett, Ian Jones, Cordy, Toby Jones, Allie Gertz, and Julia Prescott. And we want to do more cool trips like that in the future. And we're able to do that with more support at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. So why don't you go and sign up

there today? But it doesn't just help us out. You also get access to tons of exclusives there, including our most recent interview where me and Bob chat for a whole hour with Mark Kirkland. If you don't know Mark Kirkland, he has directed more Simpsons episodes than anyone. He is a longtime animation veteran who has a ton of stories to tell us,

not just about directing 84 episodes of the simpsons but also working in hannah barbara back in the 70s even he has a ton of stuff to tell us about the early days and the current days of the simpsons and you can only hear the full interview at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and the same goes for other exclusives like interviews with dan mcgrath who wrote for the show for six years and our exclusive podcasts like talking futurama where we go through the entire first season of futurama or talking critic where we went through the entire series the critic episode by episode the talking simpson style you can get access to all that at patreon.com slash talking simpsons if you guys are listening to this and our sister podcast what a cartoon you probably really enjoy watching cartoons and other streaming media don't you well have you

heard of verve that's vrv it's a streaming platform that combines all of the coolest things into one place do you like anime that plays on channels like Crunchyroll and Funimation, like say Dragon Ball Z Super or JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, a true favorite of mine? Or do you like some of the creations of Cartoon Hangover like Bravest Warrior and Bee and Puppycat? I fucking love Bee and Puppycat. Or even their most recent edition of Nick Splat, which has so many of the classic Nick tunes and live action shows you remember from Nickelodeon as a kid. That's Doug, that's Ah, Real Monsters, even it's all there.

If you go to vrv.co slash WAC, that's like, what a cartoon, vrv.co slash WAC, you can get a 30-day free trial of all of that, and it'll only be $9.99 a can get a 30-day free trial of all of that and it'll only be $9.99 a month after that 30-day free trial check out verb at vrv.co slash wac and try all of that out for yourself so then the national guard is escorting out the old folks which i guess to to fema camps people like when they hear my alex jones voice it's a good one yeah i i like uh abe's insistence that he's gonna die he was born in this nursing home he's gonna die and then he immediately caves that is the most depressing fact ever and uh homer is fixing up the place and i wonder i'd like to know from any science folks if like did it help that homer took the two doors off of his house maybe it lets the air flow through i like the joke that

he's boarding up a window with the door, thus creating a bigger problem. You don't want debris flying through your house, so I feel like this is a huge issue. And I also wonder if Homer's turning down hunkering in their bunker because of what happened to the shelterini that Ned had. Like, you should know by now, you know what? It's not so safe, even if it looks that way. I do enjoy how their idea of fun is auditing themselves while the hurricane passes. Well, this is one of my favorite lines when Ned asks Homer if he wants to join, and he's like, oh, I'm sure I'd be a third wheel. And then Ned says, no, it's fine.

He's like, I would make it my business to be a third wheel. And since this aired in December, I think it makes sense that the nativity scene is still up because baby Jesus could do some damage. Yes, though, as a Flor December, I think it makes sense that the nativity scene is still up. Because baby Jesus could do some damage. Yes, though as a Floridian, I will say hurricane season, the latest hurricane shows up is October. So for airing, it does make sense to have a nativity scene. Though, if the implication is that Ned has his nativity up all year round and never takes it down, then that's also pretty funny. So somebody mentioned online when i was looking up

this episode somebody mentioned the continuity error of the fact that their basement was on the outside of their house as opposed to the inside that's right i guess they could have two entrances like a storm entrance but it's also they make the basement ceiling much lower so marge can actually look out the window at eye level so the ceiling is like way lower than it normally is like if you go back to the chester Lampwick episode, it's like a 20-foot-high basement ceiling. You're right. The Lampwick one is the same basement

they'll be in in the Thomas Edison episode. That's right, yeah. Yeah, is this their second basement? Is this the extra basement they have? I think like anything else, if something needs to be there for a dramatic reason, they're going to put it there. if something needs to be there for a dramatic reason they're going to put it there and like there needs to be a scene later where they're you know dramatically

coming outside from from the basement for staging they had to change it in some ways i definitely i had one of those basements on the outside of my house when i was and i like we never went there because i don't know i was super creeped out by that basement but that's where you lock up monsters when they're chasing you yeah and then our basement was just filled with crap and like there was no it was not a fun place to to be in but like it's just the most inconvenient place to be yeah in florida we didn't really have basements because it's just a swampy ground underneath and then unless somebody was really rich then they could afford to like basically build a cement box underneath their home and fill it in as a basement.

Yeah, they have more of a storm cellar in this episode. That's the proper term. That's where the Olmec head lives, too. So it's pretty roomy, that basement. Maybe that's how they got it down there. There's no other explanation. Yeah, unless eventually they had to just take out the floor and lower it into the only other way. I hope Mr. Burns paid for that.

Then we have the hurricane, which I love when they don't do enough jokes with. This is the first time they've done a joke with the title since the Thompson. Yeah. From Cape Fear all the way, like four years, three, no, four years ago. Yeah, season five opening. I like that joke a little better because it's like, you know, they have a new identity and stuff. Whereas this, it's just kind of like,

I think because the story in this episode is fairly serious, like, they wanted to get in a lot of goofy jokes, like, in this little stretch of time

in this part of the episode. It's cute how the letters blow away. It's just a cute joke. Yeah. And seeing the normally happy clouds of Springfield turn into gray ominous

crowd yeah that's true and so in that mike reese book uh we just read that we interviewed him for our patreon it was called springfield confidential yeah he points out one of the jokes that nobody gets in the intro to the simpsons is that when you first see the simpsons it covers up ons so the first thing you see is the simps and that is supposed to be a joke in every episode that no one has ever noticed and i wonder if they're simplin yes right but i wonder if that's replicated in this opening segment yeah i i this also is where they fit in the only like hurricane damage jokes they can do two of the harmonica versus harpsichord store which that's beautiful i got i love that as a because harpsichords are like the most delicate instrument possible.

Like they aren't really easily amplifiable. They're very old, very fragile instruments. They're oftentimes like very, very expensive, which is why it's like so funny to imagine that Springfield has a store for just harpsichords. Only harpsichords and right next to the harmonica store too, which is so much more sturdy and affordable now i hope this has not come up on every la podcast we're doing but for the sake of this trip to make my life easier to not bring dvds with me i through itunes bought the episodes

we're recording um digitally and i had no idea they were the edited for hdtv episodes and it is sort of like when that elderly woman like wiped down that old fresco to make it look better quote-unquote better uh and when i was watching it uh today i ran out to the living room where henry was in our airbnb i was like they ruined this joke look at it and so the joke is the wind blows through the harmonica store and it plays harmonica music and then it blows to the harpsichord store and harpsichords get blown out the window you can't see that joke in the cropped version i'm i'm still mad i'm still mad you can't see the harpsichords fly out the window you can't see that joke in the cropped version i'm i'm still mad i'm still mad you can't see the harpsichords fly out the window just you see a window break but don't see

where they land to all of our fans listening if you're watching these on simpsons world please watch the four by three episodes i'm sorry liz i know oh and that was a great it's a great sound effect too yeah like for the sound designers on that so we need a bunch of broken harpsichords how do you make figure that out figure it out jokes that's you that's why we pay you one of the darkest jokes in simpsons has to be this electrocution to gone wrong that then goes right again clever staging to make this joke fast and work because in an execution you're not going to be in one brick room with the witnesses you're they're going to you're the witnesses. You won't be able to see them. They'll be able to see you in a different room with stadium seating.

But I have to point out that the warden that is pulling the switch will later come back as a character in four episodes voiced by Charles Napier. He's the voice of Duke Phillips. So for some reason, they pulled out that design to make into a character. The next time you'll see him is in the episode Pokemon, played by Charles Napier. Wow. I also noticed that there were several season one and season two characters in the witnesses section. Oh, yeah.

There's a big season one character coming up in this episode. Oh, I think I know who you're talking about. Oh, yes. I know who you're talking about. Just hearing, yay, as the guy is electrocuted, that takes it to such a different place. That feels George Myers-y to me. Well, that's like when you guys were doing the episode on immigrants and the episode about Apu. It's a thing of The Simpsons is like everybody in the universe is inherently swayed towards just horrible brutality

and just like the slightest change of whatever. It's just like everyone, the way that The Simpsons views humans and the mass of humans is very much that, I think. of whatever it's just like everyone the the way that the simpsons views like humans and like the mass of humans is is very much that i think the simpsons don't need much springfieldians don't need much provocation to become violent or nasty and every group of humans is a hive mind so they have all the same emotion and opinion about everything that happens another thing i had forgot about this episode because the ned story so dominates and i i think i got this mixed up with the other time they're in the basement this season in Burns Baby Burns, but I had forgotten that this episode had the Rubik's Cube.

Ooh, I love all of the words they make up in this scene. Top wise. Yes. Yeah, here, let's give it a listen. Why don't we do something to take our minds off the storm? Ooh, a Rubik's Cube. Let's all work it together Okay, start with diagonal colors

Use your main finger on the yellow side And your other finger on the orange side And turn it My main finger? Orange, orange You gotta start backwards No, no, no It's noisy right now

Alternate corners One at a time Spin the middle side topwise Topwise Now I remember why I put this down here in the first place i i love that because anytime that anyone tries to explain to me how to like do a rubik's cube i'm just like yeah that's the reaction that i have and i like puzzle stuff but like rubik's cubes i just i don't know't know. They're made to not be finished. Yeah. I think in some video games, some recent video games that are kind of like that,

which are only one person has a controller, but it's a party that's supposed to be telling you what to do. Yeah, well, Snipperclips for Switch is one of them. I played that one. Yeah, but I was making the Topwise jokes when I was playing that. Actually, at that Switch event we went to. Yeah, exactly. I was just like, no.

Because you do have to turn the middle part top-wise. No, top-wise. To do it correctly. Also, at the previous website I worked at, too, there was an internal joke between us that it was usually Brett Elston, our friend of the show, that he overheard two people in our group talking to each other, trying to give explanation of like,

OK, so if you want to publish this you need to go to this page and then go here and just have very complicated directions and brett would just walk by and be like and turn the middle part top wise spin the middle part top wise main finger and just how march just gives up like this is why it did to know that that happened once before and that's why she hit it in the basement too. That's a very common experience with Rubik's Cubes. I think I had one and had very similar experience. There was always one sitting around somewhere when I was a kid because they were always abandoned.

Like no one wanted to actually solve it. My family had a Rubik's Cube, but it was special in that it wasn't colors, but it was stickers of fruit on each different one that you had to make each side how exotic i i had a um a few like little toys like that as a kid and one of them was like you remember those sliding puzzles where you like i had like yeah it was like a frog with one tile missing is that how it works yes one tile missing i hate when those are in video games because i know like some people are like ultra geniuses and they know like the algorithm or whatever you use to slide them all i i like my brain can't even do one of those like i get one

of those right i think i did it once or twice as a kid but it was random yeah it was just like something to play with rubik's cubes and also simon those are the most frustrating exercises you can do like simon you can only lose it's a countdown to when you lose i hate simon yeah because it's just like it's it's basically evaluating you and your memory and you feel like inherently inferior yeah like if you only remember like seven then you're like oh my god my memory is horrible it's a good tool to introduce children to anxiety is what i'll say like this is what anxiety is like this also taught me about the eye of the hurricane which is i like that as a concept like there are some i remember the government would have these

planes that would fly in the middle of the hurricane and just kind of stay there to witness all the stuff that was going on around it and it's an it's an interesting visual it's just what happens with it being spun around uh clockwise and leaving an empty space in there that's that's funny i think i also learned what the eye of a hurricane Was from this episode It's weird how many basic facts That I learned from watching episodes of The Simpsons Like the Coriolis effect?

The Coriolis effect Aurora Borealis I actually knew what Aurora Borealis was before I'm pretty sure I did, I don't want to give myself that much credit though Homer tries to go out during the Eye of the Storm and he's pulled up. And I gotta say, Marge has amazing core strength to pull everyone back in from the hurricane.

It's funny how they're slightly spinning around a bit as she's pulling them in. It's very cartoony. It's kind of a deus ex machina little moment. It lets you focus on the Simpsons for a little bit, because this episode is so Ned-heavy that you need this opening to be like, this is how the Simpsons deal with a hurricane. Then it's going to all shift to Ned in Act Two.

So you at least need some family stuff together here. And you think upon first viewing this, like, Ned is fine. This is going to be a story about the Simpsons, if you didn't see the title in TV Guide or whatever. But when you see Ned's house, it's all like tarped down and everything. Like, he is so ready for this hurricane. And yet... Dear God, this is Marge Simpson.

If you stop this hurricane and save our family, we will be forever grateful and recommend you to all our friends. So if you could find it in your infinite wisdom to... Wait! Listen, everybody. The hurricane's over. He fell for it. Way to go, Marge. Remarkable.

There doesn't seem to be any damage at all. It just goes to show you that everything will work out if you have faith. It's all gone. Everything. Gone deadly on. Yes.

So, I think this is, like, this is kind of the key of why I wanted to talk about this episode here. Oh, sure. I was actually reading an article and talking about, like, the Simpsons' relationship with, like, Christianity and spirituality. And I think that line that marge says about we'll recommend you to all our friends kind of like i i think that's the uh the relationship that a lot of people in the u.s sort of have with christianity of like there's this kind of like you just kind of do it because it's because it's there but also like when she said everything will work out because you have faith

so this is kind of like where the story gets into kind of paralleling the story of job the biblical story um which you know ned references later but i think it's like it's very important to the show because and i think this is like shows what the difference between like season eight season seven is between the rest of this because this kind of thing might have been played as a one-off joke. Someone like Ned was not necessarily taken seriously as a character, but here it's like, it's like a straight up tragedy. And there is really no explanation for why this stuff has happened to Ned.

And I think that's like the core of like the story of Job too, is that there is no explanation why any of this stuff is happening. And it gets into it later, but I think that like it's weird to see something so serious like happen on The Simpsons like that. And I think that was one of the reasons why, you know, when I was watching the episode, I mean, at this point of the episode, I still feel like, okay,

like somehow this is all going to be resolved at the end. I wasn't thinking that much about it, but like, it just, it's kind of a weird, unexpected twist to suddenly, this is a Ned Flanders episode, and suddenly you like feel really bad for Ned because Ned didn't do anything wrong. Like, he did everything right. Oh, it's sort of the inverse of what normally happens to Ned because throughout the series to this point, he's been, he's experienced several miracles, like getting the fire put out on his house by God. God literally intervenes to save Todd from being washed down a river.

And the strokes of luck he has, like when he shaves off his mustache. So in Bart the Lover, Ned shaves off his mustache. And while Homer is suffering, Ned gets cast in a commercial because of his new look. So the joke is always like, Ned is super nice to everybody, and nothing but good things happen to Ned. So it's a real inverse of what- Except for the Leftorium episode. Yeah, and Henry was pointing out. Go ahead, Henry.

We were talking about this earlier. We've said it a million times. Bill Oakley said it in our interview that Oakley and Weinstein love season three. They thought it was the perfect season of any TV series. They wanted to emulate that on their seasons. And so you kind of end up with sequel episodes or thematic sequel episodes. And in broadcast season three, production season two. Thank you.

When Flanders failed is the similar thing of him being tested. And it actually is funny because that episode ends with what is the middle part of this episode, which is like, and then the town comes together and saves ned like at the end of yeah uh the classic christmas movie the it's a wonderful life it's a wonderful life yes like at the end of it's a wonderful life and well yeah i think this is why i like this episode so much as it's it's a much deeper episode in my opinion it goes much further and it kind of examines the character in a much deeper way that kind of like almost breaks the simpsons but in a good way but in a way that's like hard was hard for them to go anywhere after this yeah that happens a lot this

season and the scene of march praying in the in the face of a crisis is also very much like in homer defined where she's praying uh during the near meltdown like they'll give like it's all about bargaining these prayers like we'll give better food to the canned food drive. You know, just like, here's what I'll do for you, God, if you don't kill me. That's usually how the prayers work in the show. Yeah, it really falls to the there's no atheists in foxholes type of idea.

Like, they only pray in crisis. While meanwhile, as Fulmer would say in Homer the Heretic, he's a regular Charlie Church, and why doesn't he why why is this happening to him and it makes it even crueler when the zoom out is just like the entire town is fine somehow this giant hurricane came and then while it did blow away the boulderama and smash up the harmonica store in the prison seemingly four buildings were affected right well this does happen in store at least like tornadoes and some storms where like some houses are totally destroyed and some houses right next to it will be totally fine not as in as dramatic of a way like probably more people would have had their house yeah but it's it's exaggerating something that does happen and that

kind of randomness if you if you are a believer can definitely test your faith or even even if you don't believe in a specific God, but you believe in fairness or justice or whatever, you just go like, but why? Yeah. Because oftentimes this stuff is random. It's not just like that the Simpsons were... I mean, the Simpsons being less prepared probably wouldn't have helped. No. But sometimes this stuff is just random. Sometimes bad things just happen randomly.

That's part of the whole lesson of the story of joe too yeah though i have to i i've ranted about this before but i had a um class in community college which was literature classics oh like and and one of them and it was run by a very religious older woman who then said, well, the Bible is the first real book. And so we studied three different parts from Genesis. Sorry, the Odyssey. Gilgamesh, go suck it. She had excuses for both of those. I forget which.

It wasn't written by a white god. So when we got to Job, at least the version of Job we read in the class had it that God was like bluffed into it by the devil to make it like, come on, I bet the devil is telling God, bet this guy wouldn't believe in you if you treated him like shit, which I just didn't like that in that version of the story because it was, so God can be tricked by the devil. I think that is actually part of the story. I'm not positive about that. I think it's one of the things where I'm sort of taking the essential message of it rather than like interpreting it in a literal way. Because I grew up in a fairly evangelical sort of area. I went to church all the time. The church I went to wasn't super evangelical it was more sort of liberal but the the area around me was extremely christian and like for me like i definitely i i was like i was not uh i did not have a good childhood and and you know i wasn't a christian after a certain point in my life but at a certain point like i had a very strong moral compass and i believed that like you know you did if something bad happened to you it was because you had done something or whatever and that's the belief that like a lot

of these you know a lot of churches had a lot of people had and it's interesting to me now going back to realize like christianity is actually a little bit more complex than this yeah and there's more to this story it actually is kind of like it it's something that Slavoj Zizek refers to as the kind of the atheism of Christianity. Well, I can tell you, according to Spark Notes, which is my good book, it says, quote, God boasts to Satan about Job's goodness, but Satan argues that Job is only good because God has blessed him abundantly. Satan challenges God that, if given permission to punish the man, Job will turn and curse God. God allows Satan to torment Job to test his bold claim, but he forbids Satan to take Job's life in the process.

But he kills all of his family. Yeah. Which Flanders gets off a little better there, at least. Henry, that was the airbud rule, we call that. There's nothing in the rulebook that says I can't kill his family. But yes, Ned has lost everything. Oh, Neddy, it was terrifying. I thought

I was headed for the eternal bliss of paradise. Oh my gosh! Look at Rod! I have a headache. Well, sir, everyone's alive. Guess that's something to be thankful for. No, that kind of attitude's not going to get your house back. I'm sure your insurance will cover the house.

Uh, well, no. Nettie doesn't believe in insurance. He considers it a form of gambling. You know, it's kind of funny. The only thing that survived the storm were the family tombstones. They're all we have left. Well, call us if you need anything. I love that he's such a fucking goody two-shoes.

He considers insurance gambling. Yeah, and just in terms of how he overprepares for life in every instance, he has the tombstones already made for their eventual deaths. All of them. Like, maybe when he's an adult, Rod wants a different tombstone than the what his dad bought him but that's all that survived also though that uh they should be using todd's tombstone now because he went through a tree like he's dead i have a headache i like how his normally

poofy hair is flattened out a little bit when he's gone yeah like usually i'm not bothered by the cartoony stuff in in the show but like that is one example where this is in the middle of a serious scene and yeah and like todd would definitely be dead there's no question he would just explode upon impact to that tree and i like how happy so mod protected herself under the bathtub bathtub which is like they that's one thing uh in a hurricane they tell you like well your most secure one in your house is a bathroom because there's no usually no windows and hurricanes are germaphobic they don't want to go in there so it made sense there but then meanwhile next to her

is rod who is just happily reading upside down he's like hey daddy that's it's so cute and and then homer's such a fucking asshole it's just like well if you need anything we're out of here like this is this episode is kind of like has a lot of the traits in some ways of homer's enemy like the that where like homer there's there's this character who's this like very good moral center where these things bad things are happening to and homer is just this unrelenting fucking jerk and and yet somehow like things work out okay for him and like i feel like this is this doesn't go as deep into it as that episode does but it does get into it and i think that's a very like important part of the simpsons and it's an important part when you're talking about america

because we have fucking president donald trump now who is like the homer simpson character clumsily stumbled his way into the most important role in the free world super jerk and it seems like your attempts to resist him actually make him more powerful or just that the world is behind the reality is behind him it sucks i have to say though it's a really interesting choice that i like that uh ned uh rod and todd are still unflappable they're still flandersy but ned is the one who's wavering their they their faith hasn't wavered but ned's has well that maybe that makes sense because he's kind of been the the moral center he's the one who's protecting them and sheltering them and making them believe all this stuff so they believe it but he knows something else because he's had different experiences you know and yeah you know what i don't think we ever got to i would have loved

an episode about maude's childhood like explain what happened to her why is she the the most agreeable and nicest wife of all time she's very judgmental though that's true she went to bible camp to learn to be more judgmental well though she also she does she leaves that up to a vengeful god to judge that's right the thing that this also makes me think of is the show moral oral which is one of my favorite shows at a certain point it stops being a comedy which uh no one is prepared for really and that's like that's what um i i love that show because that show has like an episode at the end of the second season where it's just the dark one of the darkest like episodes and i loved that episode are you talking about the camping episode okay yeah oh

my god yeah i don't know if i should recommend that but i kind of want to it's it's a great piece of of art i would say i i love it and i also love it from that point on they kind of it fractures the show and they have multiple episodes that like take place during that episode and it just keeps repositioning things and then like its final episode like for real made me cry like it's it especially like i have father issues and so you have yes i definitely do too so when you hear stuff about like um uh you know what your dad just sucks like maybe just go go away which is a great lesson to learn for because usually you know tv shows try to try to make families feel like they can be the gap can be bridged yeah you can you can eventually come together with your dad like no probably not and uh as as actually

no spoilers for this episode but as flanders would also learn too i don't think it seems like he definitely did cut himself off from his family. That's true. He never visited them or talks to them. I doubt Ron and Todd have ever met their grandparents. We got new clothes from the donation bin. I'm a surfer. Look, daddy, Todd is stupid and I'm with him.

And now mommy's stupid. Looking good, Ron. Looking good, right? Looking good. Maddie, I know this has been a terrible day. But by golly, first thing tomorrow we're going to open up the leftorium. And before you know it, we'll be back on our feet. Down here at Springfield Mall, a storm-addled crowd appears to have turned its rage on the leftorium. Surprisingly, people are grabbing things with both hands, suggesting it's not just

Southpaws and this rampaging mob. Start looking in the back. Meantime, Springfield bowlers will be happy to hear that the Bowlerama is back in business at its new location, teetering over the Carter-Dixon Tunnel. It's great that the storm apparently did no real damage to the town, but they still decided to descend upon the left Torian. But you're right about that.

When Flanders failed, because it is a very, a very meta thing for mod to remember like this happened before and they'll come again to help us. Like they did a, what? Four or five years, five years ago.

Yes. Within the same year, based on every child's age. Yeah. I'm assuming that they just had stuff in that space and that it wasn't opened or something. Because that is kind of fun. Like, why are people raiding it if they've never had this store open for... Yeah. Well, everything should be closed in the mall because of the hurricane that day, you know?

Yeah. I guess it's another thing that, like, they need hurricane that day you know yeah i guess it's another thing that like they they need it to be a joke so yeah well it's it's great to say that like there is the idea of like after a natural disaster there is some looting or perhaps people getting some fucking stuff to eat before they don't die and who cares anyway this one the only looting that happens is apparently just at the leftorium and it's just so weird to be like that the crowd is storm addled to make them storm only one store i love that kent brockman just like tells a guy he's like try looking in the back there's uh i love okay so i

love the butthole surfers joke but just like with homer's ayatollah asahola shirts yeah they can't show the entire word butthole so they leave leave the E off, leaving that to your imagination. But I have to say, as a former butthole surfers fan, this is the era of Electric Larry Land. Yes, and Pepper. And Pepper, yes. I have to say, I like Cough Syrup as well. It's another great single, I think, from that album. But they were never more relevant than 1996.

I got this joke as a kid, and I felt so happy for myself because i had that album electric larryland which by the way worst album cover of all time oh boy it's hard to look at yeah it's uh well you can find it online but uh i borrowed this album from a girl i liked and i never gave it back so she's probably still thinking about that right now but yeah butthole surfers i know that they were very popular at the time but like hearing them mentioned on the simpsons is sort of like hearing tito puente mentioned on the simpsons it's like they are they were a very kind of weird uh almost avant-garde like edgy sort of underground band for years and years until they had you know until pepper in fact we were talking about the youtuber todd in the shadows who does pop song reviews he did a retrospective on the Butthole Surfers.

Find that on YouTube. He's really great. Let me look this up. I enjoy Rod and Todd's innocence at these shirts, too. They've never had a graphic tee before. Yeah. So just the idea of like, I'm with stupid. A shirt can say this.

Ha ha. Despite the amount of I'm with stupid shirts i've seen on tv shows i've only seen them in tv shows so i think i missed the real i'm with stupid era it might have been the 70s well no one wants to wear that shirt yeah it's like then your friend is stupid i figured they've been around enough to be parodied but maybe they'd only be at stores you would laugh at the idea of someone wearing it yeah and the leftorium when they're the sub and the stuff they're taking out, is what's seen

in previous Leftorium appearances, including the Statue of Liberty with the left hand instead of the right. I like that one a lot. And though, I guess not spoilers, but in future episodes,

the Leftorium will be okay. He does rebuild the Leftorium. It recovers. And Oakley and Weinstein, they were the ones who really brought back the Leftorium as's it's it's it recovers and locally in Weinstein they were the ones who really brought back the left orium as a thing in the show I think so yeah there was barely any left orium in seasons five and six David Merkin didn't

even know about it I don't even think they mentioned it yeah that's not important to him it's what's important is saying fuck you to the audience's expectation there is a cutscene in season seven's Homer the Smithers in which Smithers works works at the leftctorium for about five minutes oh okay it's so great it's such a great scene you never see smithers and flanders together also which so it was a real a real treat

that is a weird combination and uh oh then we get a quick little uh moment of lovejoy smelling a sandwich which i believe on the commentary they say is bill oakley's thing that he likes smelling sandwiches as he's picking them he's a pro sandwich reviewer online now hamburger sandwiches right yeah it's true yeah it's presupposed his instagram notoriety he would have now as a guy who eats fast food and reviews it he's reviewing mayo now henry oh that's true I think you'll be excited about that. Henry's not a fan of mayonnaise. I'm not a fan of mayonnaise either,

unless it's Japanese mayo. I like chipotle mayo. If you put something in it, it's better. It's true. Chipotle mayo is better. In his most recent one at the time of this recording was that mayo one where he points out something that confused me so much when I moved to California. On the East Coast, it's Hellman's mayonnaise,

but here it is best foods oh yeah and it's called it it's even more confusing because they still keep the same jingle which is it works for both though right yeah okay bring out the hellmans and bring out the best you're doing both at the same time oh but i like it better of bring then bring out the best foods and bring out the best it's bring out the hell yeah i like i like hell man it's because it's like they're a hell man hell man and they're bringing out the worst food condiments so it's true i am hell man uh but but lovejoy has some tips well actually yeah we're talking so much about how this is obviously job that also feels very meta on the simpsons that flanders will out loud say is this pretty

similar to job and then be told that it's not even though it's so clearly yeah reverend lovejoy with all it's uh happened to us today yeah you know i kind of feel like job well aren't you being a tad melodramatic uh ned also I believe Job was right-handed. But, Reverend, I need to know, is God punishing me? Ooh, short answer, yes, with an F. Long answer, no, with a but. If you need additional solace, by the way,

I've got a copy of something by Art Linkletter in my office. So instead of recommending the Bible, Reverend Lovejoy recommends an art link later book and if you don't know who that is he was an old-time entertainer he went from radio to tv and in fact that crusty saying i heartily recommend this event or product is something that art link later would have on like the game of life or whatever or like a board game but he wrote a lot of after his career in tv and radio he wrote a lot of like after his career in TV and radio, he wrote a lot of inspirational but humorous books, such as Old Age is Not for Sissies and Yes, You Can.

So in his non-entertainment years, he was an author writing kind of treacly, cute books. It sounds like Peggy Hill. Yeah. Didn't he release those Kids Say the Darnedest Things books? Yes. He was the host of that program. Oh, okay. He's the only host.

Let's forget that other host just trained oh you're right uh but they just basically transcribed funny things the kids said on that show which is now react you know yeah kids react to teens react to uh people react to things mario 64 where do they find these old people in the middle of nowhere like how do they trick them into this i did enjoy i never watched the videos but i always see the the gifts or the the stills but i do like the old people naming the pokemon oh yeah that was a cute one the first one i liked was handy kids like a game boy or an nes and say like so what do you do with this how do you turn it on and they have no clue i from my experience though kids like freaking love retro video games like yeah kids love atari a lot of kids love atari for some reason i think it's just because it's older than

them i think also they're they're trained on minecraft and they just associate those blocks with uh the the blocks of pixel graphics that's what i've heard from people that actually you know give kids old things and another of my favorite like needlessly complex Writerly lines is Short answer yes with an if Long answer no with a but So when I was a kid I really thought he was saying something there And I was trying to figure out What he was trying to convey there

And I realize now the whole point is that He doesn't care and he's just saying something random I could give you an answer If you want to hear either But I don't care. I do like how they leave it as like, his breath in. But I would guess it's like, yes, you did deserve this if you did X, Y, and Z. Long answer is no, you didn't deserve this, but maybe God is doing this to test you.

You won't like either answer, so I won't give you it. It doesn't matter what he says because,'s one it's not true because you know things sometimes things just happen randomly that's the whole like lesson of joe but two he doesn't even give a shit anyway so yeah he's like i've got something or other that'll make you feel better in my office i'm mad you're even here i don't want to be around you dad i. I don't like you. We'll see more of that later this season. So Ned turns to the only place he has left, the Bible. Why me, Lord? Where have I gone wrong?

I've always been nice to people. I don't drink or dance or swear. I've even kept kosher just to be on the safe side. I've done everything the Bible says, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff. What more could I do? I feel like I'm coming apart here. I want to yell out, but I just can't dang diddly do dang do damn diddly darn do it. Harry Shearer, you know, he gets a lot of guff for being a grumpy Gus, but he is so

good as Ned in this episode. Like, especially here, he could hear just his exasperation and just hopelessness in his voice. Like, it's a, it's a different side of Ned that doesn't come out often, but he, he delivers it so well.

It actually made me, I, I remember being sad, a little bit sad watching this. I mean, at the time I thought that it would be resolved differently, but like, you know,

the first time I watched it, but like, it's not something that you, it's not somewhere you expect to go with that character who's mostly just been a joke yeah and i think at this point so the there's a term in the simpsons community called flanderizing in which you exaggerate a character's characteristics until they're unrecognizable from what they went where they started and at this point ned is still the nice guy that is like unflappable will he'll be a doormat in any circumstance but he still has a great life uh and a nice family in the future he'll just be like a religious prick he'll be he'll be the the vehicle for all of their fundamentalist jokes and all of their like censorship jokes and things like that and also stupid sexy flanders that too that too but at

this point he is still the the nice the unflappable nice guy they don't really make him into a fundamentalist in most of the earlier not really i mean he does block out like cable channels he doesn't like secular things but he is not a vehicle for those kind of jokes it's normally like they put that on like lovejoy's wife and Maude Flanders, usually. Yeah, later, Homer, once Homer gets that crayon out of his brain, he scientifically disproves God, and Ned wants to destroy all of that information. Yeah. And also, when I saw that paper cut on his finger,

it still makes me just shudder. I rub my fingers. It's a very well-observed, drawn paper cut. I almost cut my finger off or uh she's all bandaged up over here yeah it's actually mostly healed now but yeah not not fun times uh and and also the way he just close this slams the bible closed and you get a light nice tease of what ned's problem is that he says like i want to shout out but i just can't ding dang diddly damn darn do it yeah you're right he's he is that he says, like, I want a shout out, but I just can't ding, dang, diddly, damn, darn, do it.

Yeah, you're right. He is expressing what his actual problem is. That's Chekhov's diddly. I'm sorry. That's an old joke. So then we then get what seems to be the end of Flanders Failed, which when I first saw that this episode is a 14 14 year old I thought this is a week why is this moment happening now there's there's half the episode left what's going on this is the this is why I love this episode so much this independently is it just even without the

episode surrounding it's a great comedy sketch I just love so the best my favorite thing about sketch comedy what makes it great for me what makes great sketches great is escalation. And the escalation in this scene is perfect because things start going wrong on a grander and grander scale as he goes further into the house. It's so great. Oh, but before they go there, when Marge says, something incredible has happened, and Ned said, did the rubble catch on fire? Yeah. And that shows you where Ned is at. That might be the first sarcastic thing he has ever said in series history at this point. But yes, he gets quite a nice surprise.

Oh, they rebuilt our house. It's a miracle. I started making some calls last night, and before I knew it, practically all of Springfield was offering to help. That was a fabulous, fabulous experience to have you. Fabulous experience. Sure. Hope you like it, neighbor. We didn't have the best tools or all the know-how,

but we did have a wheelbarrow full of love. And a cement mixer full of hope and some cement. It's wonderful. I don't know how I can possibly repay you, but if any of you ever need a favor, just look for the happiest man in Springfield. No, no, not me, friends. He's talking about himself, but thanks for looking.

I'm really sad he didn't become the next Disco Stu. I love that. I keep forgetting that that joke is in this episode because I loved that joke as a kid. I went to the wiki. He's never come back. I bet in season 34, there will be an episode

About him and his origins The happiest man in Springfield If they had given him a name If they had called him like Jolly the happiest man in Springfield He would have had a Disco Stu Like series There's got to be a B plot with like him and Hugh Jazz And a few other of the One Note Simpsons characters

And he's so happy He even thanks people for looking yeah thanks for looking and it's a great crowd scene including them pulling out a real bunch of old characters just to fill in all of Springfield with recognizable people we in our everything's coming up Simpsons as well for grade school confidential we talk about how that they are Oakley Weinstein are really getting used to like the Springfield as a collective of recognizable faces and what that means for it. And I, until hearing it as just an audio form,

like fantastic experience. That was such a weird line. Julie Kavner doing a non-Marge voice, which never happens, just doing walla walla crowd work. But yeah, then they go inside and uh the the problem starts start with him snagging his sweater on a nail oh no the first the first the first problem is the door is stuck a little bit and it is the perfect like what's gonna happen next like i just

i for this for this watch so i'm like every some some of the issues are just like well i could live with that but then eventually eventually becomes unlivable. Yes. When he sees that toilet, that's when he's like, is that toilet supposed to be there? I was like so, I think that was like my level of humor as a kid,

but I was so amused by the idea that someone would have their toilet next to their refrigerator. In the kitchen, yeah. I mean, it's the ultimate convenience. Yeah, saves a lot of time, but, and had this place stayed up I guess they just expected

Oh I mean yeah Ned's just going to have to use the bathroom In front of his wife making dinner He's just going to have to deal How much of the clip do you have? We kind of go straight to the That it falls apart Because the way things escalate So it's like the door is stuck

Okay that's a little problem The living and dining room is one room Perfect for entertaining okay that's not ideal but he could live with that ned snacks his sweater on a nail okay that's fixable the toilet is in the kitchen well that's a problem and then the load-bearing poster load-bearing poster which i again when i was a kid i didn't know what a load-bearing taught... It taught me, too. Yeah, and I thought that there was such a thing as a load-bearing poster, and then I was afraid to take posters off, which is really silly. But that's one of the most ridiculous jokes, because how can a place be built so that a tiny poster just holds up everything?

Holds it all together. And also the only room with electricity that has too much electricity the the way you might want to wear a hat i the way ned with his frizzed out hair is disdainfully looking backwards at apu is such a hilarious drawing i think that that joke was cut for syndication when i watched that but it's it's it's a really good joke and how he calls it like the room with electricity meaning there is no electricity in any other room this is the room with it and the great optical illusion you think it's a hallway but he gets i mean he's like literally shoving himself into

like a corner as he opens a tiny door and then they they they he said they painted the dirt he's like the floor gets a little gritty here and he's like well we painted the dirt pretty clever well yeah and and then he's like walks down he's like there's something definitely wrong with this and then like the doors there's this door that is like at an odd angle and like like no one would be able to build a door like one of my favorite things as somebody who does video game design is impossible architecture and i think like without even realizing it i think this episode like kind of like because it just i was so amused by the idea of like how could this house even exist like what what would this even look like and like obviously how could barney be in that room

yeah but it's i mean it's a it's a it's an animated show he must have built it around himself and just is like, oh my gosh. But the other thing that it reminded me of, which is kind of just random. I had played this game, Thief the Dark Project. Oh, yeah. And there's this mission in the game, which is probably one of the best video game levels that I've played. It's called The Sword. But it's in this mansion where the first floor, it's kind of normal.

And then the second floor it's kind of normal you know and then the second floor starts to get really weird and then the third floor the kind of like reality breaks and stuff like that and it almost kind of reminds me of that and that in fact there is like there's a room with electricity in that mansion and then there's also like a perspective trick that's exactly like the barney door and it's like it's just this tiny thing in front of you. That feels intentional. But yes, I think I have just a little bit of the last at the end of the house. Okay.

The floor feels a little gritty here. Yeah, we ran out of floorboards there, so we painted the dirt. Pretty clever. Oh, something is definitely wrong with this hallway. Come on in. It's your master bedroom. Ow, my nose. Well, I've seen about enough.

So, Flanders, what do you think of the house that Love built? Oh, shoot. The way it falls apart, too. Yeah. Ned should hate them because, like, had it just not fallen apart an hour later, it would have killed all of them. Yeah, it would have crushed his family. It was a death trap. He built a death trap for him.

I just love, it says everything about The Simpsons, that they think that they've done this, like, great thing for Ned. They're like, this is the house that Love built, and it just shows how much they fucking suck it's just human like they think that they've done such this great thing and like they totally just like almost made it worse like just completely insulted him with this entire thing but like he feels like he can't even say anything because it's like oh these people are doing this nice stuff for me but's like, it's like when somebody who normally does shitty things tries to do something nice and it actually just makes it like 10 times worse because they're being condescending about it. But I love the fact that he like right after he says the house that love

built, like is when it's like, there's like no love in the fucking world of Springfield. And the scene coming up where he fre freaks out i have to say i'm a huge fan of ren and stimpy not the creator by the way but i love scenes where a character has a long rant where they basically just have a nervous breakdown and this is fantastic and i think this is sort of like shades of the frank grimes scene we'll see later in the episode but i do love how everybody gets a unique dressing down by ned yes and i i will say before you play it um like this was very shocking to me yeah yes yeah i

was gasping just like all the other characters like even as they're building up it's like well no ned never breaks like he never breaks like that's not what happens and yeah and the one thing that's so he gets out of the house as a glass is where this one really got me it collapses he just like and he takes off his glasses wipes them off and the one of the frames falls out and shatters and that's what does it but bill oakley and josh weinstein i believe on the commentary they said that they wanted to capture what it's like when someone actually freaks out like this and what the emotion is like concern and awkwardness and just people are don't know

what to do or where to go and i think if you look at the crowd in this scene it's so perfect and when he approaches homer everyone gets out of the way they're like he's going to kill homer simpson as he rightfully should yeah homer did quite a lot of horrible things to flannery's time including you know he did intend to bash his head in with a pipe. Give his noggin a flogging? Noggin a flogging. But, yeah, actually, is this line of the episode this full rant? Oh, yeah, all 90 seconds or two minutes or whatever.

That's the joke. Calm down, diddly, diddly, diddly, diddly, diddly. They did their best, shoddily, iddly, iddly, diddly. Gotta be nice, hostility, iddly, iddly, iddly. Ah, hell, diddly, dingly diddly. They did their best. Shoddily diddly diddly diddly. Gotta be nice. Hostility diddly diddly diddly. Ah, hell diddly ding dong crap. Can't you morons do anything right? Ned, we meant

well. And everyone here tried their best. Well, my family and I can't live in good intentions, Marge. Oh, your family is out of control. But we can't blame you because you have good intentions. Hey, back off, man. Oh, okay, dude. I wouldn't want you to have a cow, man.

Here's a catchphrase you better learn for your adult years. Hey, buddy, got a quarter? I am shocked and appalled. Mr. Flanders, with all due respect, Bart didn't do anything. Do I hear the sound of butting in? It's got to be little Lisa Simpson. Springfield's answer to a question no one asked. What do we have here?

The long, flabby arm of the law? The last case you got to the bottom of was that case of Malamars. Malamars. Oh, that's going in the act. Oh, yeah. The clown. The only one of you buffoons who doesn't make me laugh. Poor Lenny. and hate filled but i um what was the third thing you said harmer you are the worst human being i have ever met hey i got off pretty easy there there are some crazy people on the streets in berkeley uh ranting and raving and whatnot and i feel bad for them and their mental health issues but there was a guy just like screaming at everyone who walked by just the worst possible things i couldn't cross the street and i was just like okay turn off my

headphones turn up my headphones and walk by him and i'm not gonna hear what he says so i walked by him and what he says to me is what is wrong with you and my my reaction was what homer says like wow i got up pretty easy so no slurs at all yeah speaking of berkeley there's that mcdonald's that's kind of near oh yeah which i call the mcdonald's of misery it's uh it's everyone is having their worst day inside of that mcdonald's and like i walked by it one time and a guy literally knocked on the window he was sitting in the window he knocked on the window and made sure that i got he got my attention and then just gave me the thing jesus for like no reason i only i avoid that mcdonald's at all costs. I've only went,

I've never eaten from it in the decade plus I've lived there. But I had one time someone come to town and she, I actually, I would call myself a picky eater, but I've gotten better. But she was a very picky eater who didn't want to eat anywhere but McDonald's or the only fast food place in Berkeley. That was my first time in there. And that's when I saw the signs that were like, buying food means you get to stay here 30 minutes and then you have to leave and it was just it was just such a scary incident i was like holy it's the most miserable mcdonald's i've ever seen don't visit our mcdonald's in berkeley don't visit the post office either that place sucks sometimes you gotta unfortunately but there's a better post office by me but they don't have the machine at

that one ah fuck the machine so the first thing he says, which I think is like one of the keys of this episode and kind of where it has similar territory to Frank Grimes, is he says, my family can't live in good intentions. Right? Like your family is out of control, but somehow at the end of the day, they still have this like weirdly comfortable middle-class life where they can do all this like horrible stuff and somehow waste all this money, lose all this stuff. And they're like, eh, we're still fine.

We're always the same. And like you see, like, you know, it's treated as a joke, but like someone like Ned is living in that universe and probably has all this anger about this just building up and building up and building up for a year yeah it's slightly again grimes like where frank grimes is freaking out about how such a mediocre man could just succeed so much and have

a nice house and everything like that and that is kind of like one of the the big themes of the simpsons that comes out like in this episode and in the grimes episode too which is also kind of it was very strange at the time like now we're living in an age where like like shows deal more on the surface with these kinds of issues like um you know we've had prestige tv and all that but at the time like a show like the Simpsons like really getting in deep on its characters like that I think that was pretty shocking and pretty weird but that's why's why this episode had such an impact on me. And then the other comment that he makes to Bart,

basically saying that Bart's going to be homeless when he grows up. I read something on the internet that said that that was kind of like a classist and mean comment, which it is, but that is the person that Ned is. Ned is like a suck-up to authority. And he sees that Bart is a rule-breaker, as he's like, well, then you have no future. You break the rules. You don't respect them.

We should point out that in a previous episode, being a drifter was one of his fantasies. Yeah, it was what he thought he was going to end up as, and he thinks that's pretty cool, being a drifter. Bart also sells that. Like, he makes that line funny because his because of his reaction being like i am shocked and above yeah like thinking like bar's acting as if he's a moral creature yes and also that uh harry shearer gets shit for as as aljean put it when he was about to

quit harry shearer literally phones in his roles these days like he doesn't live in la he just calls in from usually london or new orleans and but you in here in this scene you can hear the echo in the recording studio i love that yeah i love when you can hear the space they're in when they're when they're this loud yeah and and just his like uh they're best shot of italy italy italy like he's it it kind of reminds me of the subliminal messages of Kevin Nealon oh he's letting out the little words that he's actually feeling in his diddlies it's fun that for some for whatever reason Wiggum gets a kick out of him making fun of Lisa yeah what the hell because Lisa broke Ralph's heart that's why you know he's carrying that wound with him and

also the way Krusty just in a very very comedian way, saying like, that's going in the act. Instead of, I'm going to steal this, he says, that's going in the act. He's famous for stealing comedy, Krusty the Clown. I love the line, I don't know you, but I'm sure you're a jerk. Poor Lenny. I just got here. When he says the good intentions line line there is a man with a cigarette in his mouth and a blonde with a

ponytail. That's Bob Anderson, the director. He drew himself into the crowd. That's why that was distracting me. Yeah, I noticed that too when I was watching the episode. If it's a distracting specific looking person who's never been in the show before, you can bet it's an animator. But the animation in this is so expressive

and so memorable. While you were playing the clip, I could see it's an animator but the animation in this is so expressive and so memorable while you're playing the clip i could see it in my head including like the the things mo was doing with his hands and like just it's it's a great scene and then they they really delivered on this voice track by making it as expressive i may be ugly and hateful yeah what was that third thing is another like hall of fame line i it's it shows you what it's like to have like you think you've got a good comeback like well i may be um what was that third thing you said and then when everybody sort of parts yeah parts when you can hear them yeah just his and his march towards homer that's so great homer has like a very awkward smile on his face as ned is marching up to him well and you never see ned get mad at homer in in in like all all of Homer trying to being abusive to him,

like, taking advantage of him, stealing his stuff, trying to murder him. There was a much smaller version of this in Homer Loves Flanders. Like, he's very, very annoying. Yes, that's true. Yeah, but this is, like, that times ten. It's all the stuff that is built up of, like, the universe of The Simpsons,

all this fucked up things that homer has done he just like he just in that moment it's like and everybody knows it too like everyone knows yeah it's not like he's he's not saying anything that is untrue and he's like i'm not even going to be funny or clever or sarcastic i'm just going to be acidic yeah and objective and it's a true statement like you know what for ned homer has to be the worst person he has ever yeah like and so then ned marches off to his geo which did survive the hurricane that's right he i love that they still draw on his geo though that geo got smashed at last season in uh the immigrant store maybe he does have car insurance he must uh or he just has

enough money to buy another geo i don't know and then he uh he just runs off with even his family going like nanny nanny and then he turns on aloha oi which gotta say i searched hard for i think this is just an andy williams sound alike because i looked up the andy williams version of this which sounds the closest to it but it's not this exact master from the 59 Andy Williams. They probably pulled in a Kip Lennon or somebody similar to that to do it. Yeah. Sound alike.

And Aloha Oe, if you don't know, is the beautiful song about Hawaii and the end of their culture as they were destroyed by America. It's a beautiful song. It's so gentle. Sung mainly by white guys who made it famous in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Ned's drive to Comwood and smashing through the gate as he's humming happily is pretty satisfying. It's a good act break.

So we come back and Ned is ready to commit himself. I just attacked all my friends and neighbors just for trying to help me. I'd like to commit myself. Very well. Shall I show you to your room or would you prefer to be dragged off kicking and screaming? Ooh, kicking and screaming, please. As you wish.

No! No! I like that he's voluntarily committing himself, but his attitude is like, when am I going to ever have the chance again to be dragged away kicking and screaming? I'm going to take advantage of this chance. He did the screaming, but they didn't animate kicking.

His legs are pretty straight. That's a great scream from Harry Shearer. And it's for so long, too. Also, it kind of makes sense because he's just had this total eruption. But it's Ned, so of course he's trying to be be controlled about it so he's like in this incredibly like just emotionally devastated place but he like he has to be polite about it

as he's been committed we get to he's he's recognized i better call dr foster Call Dr. Foster. Is Dr. Foster here? Ned Flanders? You're sure? No, no, no. I'll come right over. And may God have mercy on us all. Darling, there's an emergency at the hospital. Where are my shoes?

Oh, I think they're in the den. In the den? Mm-hmm. May God have mercy on us all. So this is when the episode becomes inexplicably A sort of parody of the movie Halloween The famous slasher movie In that Dr. Foster is based on Dr. Loomis Played by Donald Pleasence in that movie

The star of Puma Man? Yes, the very same He was in The Great Escape too, who cares about that But I have to say that So in that movie, if you don't remember Dr. Loomis is who they get on the phone get on the horn when uh michael myers escapes from the mental institution to kill again and it's sort of a donald pleasance imitation of sorts we have a clip of donald

pleasance in halloween talking about michael myers i met this six-year-old child with this Blang, pale, emotionless face And the blackest eyes The devil's eyes I spent eight years trying to reach him And then another seven trying to keep him locked up Because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes Was purely and simply evil What do we do? He's been here once tonight that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil.

What do we do? He's been here once tonight. I think he'll come back. So yeah, so much like Dr. Loomis, Dr. Foster was dealing with an evil child. That's Ned Flanders. So he stayed with him for years, trying to make him less evil. And in the case of Dr. Foster, it worked. Yes. Yeah. Sort of. In a case of Dr. Foster, it worked. Yes.

Yeah. Sort of. In a way, in a way. It worked. The solution was not great, but I also have to say Dr. Foster is named after the nursery rhyme, and it's very short, so I'll say it now. So Dr. Foster went to Gloucester in a shower of rain.

He stepped in a puddle right up to his middle and never went there again. And that is the very clever origin of the doctor's name, Dr. Foster. I did not know. I had forgotten that. I was never taught that nursery rhyme. It must have been in one of my children's books. You can't expect a child to see the town

name Gloucester and expect them to pronounce it. It's spelled Glouch-sester. Yeah, I never knew how to spell it. I like that this episode definitely does not spare making fun of mental health facilities and professionals and their abilities. Because it's pretty obvious that Dr. Foster at first comes off as a professional, but it's pretty obvious that the methods that he practiced were not good. Well, and this institution is...

It seems like most of the references for institutions still in this were one flew over the cootie. Yeah, it's not very modern. Like, padded rooms are not a very common thing. I don't have, like, experience with, like, you know, modern mental institutions. But I know that it's not, you know, mental health facilities. But it's not quite like this. It's a little exaggerated. Their go-to jokes for this at this time were always the old-timey view of these

institutions like straitjackets and guys in Napoleon hats and padded rooms and things like that. It's not the most progressive look at mental health facilities, but I feel like it's a step beyond what we saw in the direct Cuckoo's Nest parody in... Stark Raving Dad. Yes. Yeah. I feel like this went too far

or they went overboard with it intentionally in the the futurama episode where fry gets committed to the robot asylum yeah where bender's like well if i'm here i may as well put on this napoleon hat gotta do all the parodies here so dr foster goes to the asylum at Comlin. That doesn't rhyme. Dr. Foster? Well, at least your memory is not crazy. Now, Ned, you may remember we spent some time together 30 years ago. Do you recall what you were like back then?

Oh, sure. I was a good little boy. Were you? Whee! I'm Nick Tracy! Bam! Take that, prune face! in case you missed the joke it's that young ned flanders almost says dick That's right. I never got that joke as a kid. And then when I rewatched it, I realized that joke and I felt so proud of myself. I'm like, I get this joke now. It's a complicated joke though.

Yes. That he's run out of Dick Tracy characters to reference. So he has to remix them. I'm like, nah, prune Tracy. And that he's, it does remind me of like bullying kids who are that when they're

that young that they're like they have to say they're being like why i'm bugs bunny punching you or whatever i was like one of my friends was kind of a bully and he would always do like wrestlers like oh stone cold steve off oh my god yeah did you get did you get the stunner applied to you? He liked to say So cute Very classy I like how Dr. Foster Is just passively writing notes As Ned is attacking children

But only intervenes when that one kid is almost murdered Yes he's about to watch a murder of a child As he calls him dickface I also find it like It kind of meshes with my experience with mental health professionals where he's like at least your memory is not crazy it's like it's a very uh condescending line that's such a great line at least your memory isn't crazy but it's like i i feel like anybody who's had experience with um not just mental health but

also like doctors physicians oftentimes they will be super condescending in ways like that, where it's like, well, what am I even getting treatment for? If you're just going to like fucking insult me or say something super condescending. Or just say like, no, the easiest thing is to do nothing. So, you know, it's probably nothing. I'm like, is it always nothing? Am I? another compliment I'd like to make is to Al Claussen because right before he turns on the movie, the way it plays a little bit of Aloha Oye underneath it is really cool. Actually here,

let me replay it real quick here. Where are you? Oh wow. It's like a minor key of Aloha Away. I never pay attention to those musical cues. That's very subtle. I like it. Yeah, it was really...

This was one of the first times I caught it when editing the sounds together. Okay, so now time for me to complain about continuity. But if Ned Flanders, as said in the season 10 episode of Even Ned Vegas, is a 60-year-old man, that does not work because he was a child 30 years ago when dr foster helped him that is not this episode's fault no i know i'm mad at the future episode not this episode because like i i saw i saw that on like a simpsons wiki too

it's like oh this is not canon and i'm like yeah because the that next episode did something really stupid and decided to make now of course he's not a 60 year old man it's conceptually i'm not i'm not annoyed by it it's an okay if it didn't invalidate canon and it was creating just new canon for nad that he's like yeah he's a 60 year old man who's never done anything in his life that's why he looks so young fine okay but when they've already had this episode, that's makes it so clear when he was a child. I just don't like that. I mean,

they've had several episodes and in fact, I don't know if they ever stuck with that. Uh, him being 60, it might've just been a one-off thing. They might not. For that reality, for the reality of that episode.

Yeah. I think they kill off Maude so soon after that, that you kind of just forget about his age and they just put him back in. Those two episodes blend together to me in just a slurry of pain and resentment. A little Lisa slurry? A little Lisa slurry. Then, again, this is another like

Hall of Fame worthy line and one I use many times in my life is when we see the parents. Well, I'm afraid young Ned is unusually aggressive, but I can't seem to find a cause for it. Hey, hey, get down from that bookshelf, please. Most of those books haven't been discredited yet. Would you please tell your son to stop?

We can't do it, man. That's discipline. That's like telling Gene Krupa not to go boom, boom, bap, bap, bap, boom, boom, bap, bap, bap, boom, boom, bap, bap, bap, bap, boom, boom. Lack of discipline. I'm beginning to see the problem. We don't believe in rules like we gave them up when we started living like freaky beatniks. You don't believe in rules, yet you want to control Ned's anger. Yeah, you've got to help us, Doc.

We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas. So these parents come from a one-off joke in Sweet Seymour Skinner's Badass Song when Ned flashes back to his childhood. I love, so that was written by Oakley and Weinstein. I love that they brought them back as part of continuity. It's like, okay, this joke has to be the reality of Ned Flanders' life and it has to inform why he is the way he is. Yeah, I think in another episode they would have just been like

who needs to remember that one-off joke about his parents we'll just make up new parents and do something with them but yeah i always thought it was a joke when the first time i saw it and when they brought it back like i remember thinking as a kid that maybe it was a little too far-fetched but it makes sense to me now like a little bit more but also i really like the line where he says where ned's trying to throw away the books he's like most of those books haven't been discredited yet yes yeah that's a great flashback line because so many psychological books of the 60s have been heavily discredited at this point but he won't know they're going to be discredited yeah and also and also his experimental

therapy which we're about to get into but yeah i've tried nothing and i'm out of ideas that i've i feel like i've of any line of this episode i feel like i've seen that one means it's great it addresses any kind of government uh handled problem yeah for the most part i want to go back to that uh sweet seymour skinner's episode so i found the line that introduces the flashback with his beatnik parents so So Homer and Marge are in Ned's office. He's the principal of the school when Skinner gets replaced. And he says, well, I may go a little bit easy on the old hickory dickory stick, but that's just because my dad was so hard on me when I was a kid.

So it all matches up. Yeah, the sing-songiness of like, try nothing and we're all out of ideas. So they had to make up a voice for her in in sweet seymour it's only his father who speaks in the flashback but it is dan and so it's dan just reprising the very extreme and silly beatnik voice bit a great animation on him doing the gene krupa imitation i love when they're when the animators are delivered a great voice track and they make the animation just sing based on that voice track it's great do you know who gene krupa is uh i'm guessing a uh no i don't actually he's a he is a classic drummer just at the time i i only know gene krupa because it's sort of a plot point in um that thing you do there the the drummer of the

one of the oneiders he is obsessed with Gene Krupa and wants to move to LA to learn his drumming. He was an American jazz and big band drummer known for his flamboyant style. Thank you, Wikipedia. Yeah, and now I hope every listener has that thing you do stuck in their head. Written by Fountains of Wayne.

Hell yeah. I do not like that song. It's catchy. It's like bad teenage fan club. I like teenage fan club, but I'm not. They've had better songs. The Minnesota Spankological Protocol is something else, man. The University of Minnesota.

Don't spank your kids, by the way. And spanking him for four months. I mean, this joke is a criticism of corporal punishment, right? Yeah. It is not pro-spanking. Not at all.

I know somebody who still spanks their kids and... Oh no, still? By the way, if you do spank your kids, don't weigh in on this episode. I don't want to hear it.

The only problem with the treatment was that it worked too well. You became unable to express any anger at all. From that point on, any time you felt angry, you could only respond with a string of nonsensical jabbering. Well, I'll be darned if they aren't.

Yeah, that's the stuff. You suppressed your rage for so long, it finally erupted as a massive public explosion. It sure did diddly-ed. All right, all right, just watch it there. I sure did diddly-ed. Alright, alright, just watch it there. I'm here to help, you know. Now, I'd like to try something. Is there any person

who makes you particularly angry? Yellow? You knew it was going to be Homer. Every viewer knew it was going to be Homer. It was really established during his rants. Yes, yeah. I also really love the animation of when little Ned is learned to suppress his rage of like, Oh, yeah.

He's little like, he's like, how do you feel? Nice. Yeah, he's like eye twitches. Yeah, you know it didn't really help him. Well, and that's the thing, like, I guess it didn't make sense to me at the time because I would have assumed like growing up in kind of a Bible Belt-ish area that Ned also grew up in a very strict family.

But it kind of makes sense now that he grew up in a family with no structure and then he had just like this intense corporal punishment. And it's like how somebody goes through the military. Like oftentimes, you know, people who have serious behavioral problems or something, they'll go through the military. And what it ends up kind of training you to be is this just kind of like merciless, like suck up to authority. And it makes sense that like, that's what Ned has structure with in his life as a kid. That's where, you know,

that's where he's getting some kind of response from people in authority around him. So he just kind of keeps doing that i guess yeah it really matches up with what we see of him as a character throughout the series and that he is very much about order and routine and being prepared for everything and just that i mean this is the struck this is the the spankological protocol gave him the structure to turn him into the ned that we know well and his extreme repression also yeah and his turn the other cheek attitude is also part of that repression.

I wonder if that's what drew him to Christianity, too, because he's not a Christian child in these flashbacks. So only the repression did. And it's also just a shocking revelation that any time before now when you've heard him say a diddly line or any of his dumb diddly crap that it's just what he is really saying is, fuck all of you. Like, fuck everybody. I hate you. It's so great that Foster takes this like, hey, all right, I'm here to help you.

Like, calm that down. Well, I mean, I do that sometimes too where it's like particularly mad about something and I'll be like, my gosh. You know, or just like... the other flanders at the uh the barbecue uh so jose flanders did get the spankological protocol because he's just a bueno ding dong diddly dee that's right but lord thistlewick flanders doesn't like doing the diddly so i think he's like even killed a googly do about that. So I guess we can't apply this too far

outside of Ned. That is the problem with making his parents hippies. Yeah. So then the family goes to the mental institution, which at Comwood, they stick in a few surprises that in my first viewing were like, whoa,

that's a surprising cameo here. But more history shoved in here. Mr. Simpson, Dr. Foster, please come with me. You folks are free to roam the grounds. Just remember, one of our patients is a cannibal. Try to guess which one. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Everyone outside of this room is against me.

I can hear you walking by. It stinks. It stinks, it stinks Yes, Mr. Sherman, everything stinks It was great to know the fate of Jay Sherman He eventually went mad This is after The Critic is cancelled Yeah, one year So the summer before last

Though the webisodes would invalidate this sea or maybe he just he got out of common and then started those webisodes are not canon uh those are those are like a death dream that jay sherman had an unhappy one that feels like uh we got into that slightly in our mike reese interview but this feels like a revenge uh for the crossover episode to say like you know what your character's canceled never seen him again we're saying he dies in a mental institution This feels like a revenge for the crossover episode to say like, you know what? Your character's canceled. Never seen him again. We're saying he dies in a mental institution in Springfield.

We also see Lucille Batsukowski, the babysitter bandit, famously from the first produced episode that was such a mess that it ended up being the last episode to air that season. And I was looking at this character on Wikipedia or sorry, the Springfield Wikia or whatever. Did she ever come back?

Like they had to bring her back on like season 28. After like season three, she stopped appearing in crowd scenes and that was it. I think that's like the memories associated with her are too bad to actually put her back on the show. But she needs to come back before Penny Marshall dies. Yeah. I think.

She's still alive, right? Maybe, yes. Gary Marshall. Gary's gone. Warm food. Warm food. Maybe Penny's not friends with James L. Brooks anymore. Maybe.

But they cleaned up her character design. I mean, if you look at how she used to look, she's a season one ass as hell. I'm showing everybody. That's Duckman. That is Duckman. That's Bernice. Yeah, the entire style is different.

And her just bizarre bizarre saggy breasts. It's a strange drawing. It's more of a, not completely squash and stretch, but looks a little bit more like that. She squashes and stretches a lot in that episode, too. In an actually very well-drawn scene, but all wrong for The Simpsons of her saying, I don't know what I'll do because everybody does what I say. It looks like a

scene from Family Dog or something. Not the TV series but the Brad Bird directed shorts. Well and a bigger problem with that episode also is the writing just doesn't come off right. I'm so glad that was not the first episode to air. It would have been we would not be talking about the Simpsons now

and also one of the guys who slams the door is john schwartzwelder yeah writer for the show who uh they're making fun of what a recluse he is though mike reese as he said in our interview he's like he's trying to demystify schwartzwell he's like look he's your dad's friend he's an old republican who wants to talk about baseball. There's nothing weird about him. I think Felix Biederman, I think, mentioned at one point that he's like, John Schwarzwalder is his favorite reactionary. If I had to pick one libertarian that's my favorite, it would be him or Steve Ditko, RIP. He's at least a funny libertarian.

That seems to be impossible. Lovitz is credited on this, even though that had to just be archival footage. Yeah, there's no way they got him. Do you think they called in John Lovitz to say it stinks? And then he'd have to approve. I don't think John Lovitz would approve of his character being in a mental institution either.

No, I don't think they got him. And we get a little Silence of the Lamb joke about a cannibal. Guess which one? I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's funny. So I'm sorry to take the Lamb joke about a cannibal. Guess which one? I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's funny. So I'm sorry to take us off topic for a second here. But if you listen, so Mike Reese has done a lot of interviews.

And I don't know if he said this during our interview, but I think on the Choppo one, the Choppo Trap House episode, Mike Reese was saying that John Lovitz did not want to do The Critic. He didn't like doing The Critic. But now that's all John Lovitz wants to do is The critic again the only thing people remember him for now maybe he like that's so that's so funny and i yeah listeners friends of the show matt chrisman and virgil texas they did the interview with mike reese and so after you've listened to our mike reese only then you should look up the chapo trap house i still haven't listened to that one. It's really good. Especially like they start off with a Homeboys in Space question,

which I will say we failed. Homeboys in outer space, Henry. They're not just in space. Wait, Homeboys from outer space. Oh, God. I got it all wrong. Yeah. Homer is peak.

Well, not peak, but he is definitely jerk-ass Homer here. That bubble gum, which he has to be for plot purposes, him just blowing the bubblegum in his face, just like, come on, Homer. This is the most obnoxious possible thing he could be doing in that moment. One thing, Henry, I have to apologize. It's Homeboys in Outer Space.

Presumably, they're from Earth, and then they went into space. I don't know the history of the show, but you were correct in some way. All right. Leave your comments at home, Homeboys fans. Ned is getting tested. This is another long clip, but it's...

This is probably my favorite lines of the show. Oh, that's it. You just can't insult this guy. You call him a moron, and he just sits there grinning moronily. Hi, neighbor. You know what your problem is, Flanders? You're afraid to be human. Oh, now why would I be afraid of that?

Because humans are obnoxious sometimes. Humans hate things. Well, maybe a few of them do. Back east, I can't find what Homer's saying. Did you write that? Um, did you like it? Come on, Flanders. There's got to be something you hate.

What about mosquito bites? Mm-mm, sure are fun to scratch. Mm, satisfying. What about, uh, fluorescent lights? Ooh, they hum like angels. You're never lonely if you got a fluorescent light. See? You like everything. No, that's not true. I don't like the service at the post office. You know, it's all rush, rush, get you in, get you out.

Then they've got those machines in the lobby. They're even faster. No help there. You might even say, I hate the post office. That and my parents. As he beatniks. Hey, that felt good. He just said he hates his parents. Do you know what that means?

Um, what do you think? It means he's cured. That's what I said. I think the Simpsons' view of mental health, between this and fear of flying, I think their perspective is the thing that's bothering you is always the most obvious thing. And in the case of Marge and Ned,

it's daddy issues. Yeah, and if you just say it out loud once, then it's fixed. By recognizing the problem, then it's all gone. In the case of Weig, right? Weis or Weig? Weig. Okay, in the case of her, she wanted Marge to come

back and have more therapy. That is true. She's better at it than Dr. Foster. Also, Ned must have been to the Berkeley post office because it's the most miserable post office I've ever been to. I think I went in there because I used to live downtown Berkeley. And it's that historic post office. And I think I went in there probably three or four different times.

And almost every time there was a shouting match happening in that post office. least one at least two of the times there was a shouting match between the customers and the people working behind their people working there i don't i hate being mad at cash yeah it's not it's not right and i've even i've gotten so mad there that i have to like i do the ned repression thing too of like don't get mad mad at them. They're working a shitty job. But how could you be less helpful to me? There's no way you could be less helpful. I definitely had experience with them like that. And also,

I mean also a lot of the customers who go there too. They're like Berkeley moms. Oh yeah, I've never talked to your manager guy and again like you Henry, I never like to get in like a server's face or a clerk's face or whatever

even if they're being rude to me because my theory is you've dealt with assholes your entire life and you can never give me the benefit of the doubt because why would you yeah in the case of me i had to get a passport and i i read all the stuff like here's how you get a passport you go to the post office you do this you do that and if you don't have a picture with you they'll take your picture and i was like okay cool and i'll go there And the woman is very surly. And she's like, where's your picture? And I'm like, oh, it's out on the website. You can take my picture for me. And she looked at me like, you're making me do my job. Come on, come on. I mean, boy, I was so ashamed. I was so ashamed and scared. I'm glad I came with my picture when I went to that same

passport office. i didn't even think of that being a problem it was more like you're making me stand up and it's like i don't i don't want you to have to stand up the website told me this ma'am i'm sorry i had a woman there uh literally go back and look for a package i don't even think she looked for the package and then come back and said it wasn't there and then i like uh called the like post office dispatcher she's like you have to call this number because it's not here because they never delivered this package. Yeah, that was the first thing. They never left a slip and they never did.

And I had to pick up the package before they sent it back, but they never left a slip. I only knew on the website. So I went back, I called them and they were like, no, it's at the post office. It's at that post office. And I was like, but they said it's at the dispatch. And the guy was like, he literally said, they always say that. And I'm like, so what do you want me to do? Because they're not going to give it to me.

And then like an hour later, I went back, different person at the counter. And she went back 10 seconds later, came back with my package. Wow. The first woman just didn't want to do her job, I guess. We have to say, though, also, it is kind of unfair to be too judgmental of the post office because they're they're woefully underfunded yes and the government's like this is a business that should make money instead of this is a miracle that we can send things across the earth yeah for like almost no money yeah no i don't want to it's just like that particular post because we might have some uh workers listening and again we don't want

to be dicks to uh to hard-working people but the post office is a miserable job and i don't want to be dicks to hardworking people. The post office is a miserable job, and I don't envy anyone who has to work there. Oh, I was just going to say, but the Berkeley post office on San Pablo, they're good folks. Oh, yeah, yeah. I get in and I get out, as Ned says. I also went to the Oakland, downtown Oakland post office, and the person there was very nice

the one or two times I went there. This is now the Yelp Review podcast. Four stars. But the thing, you miss miss these lines which kind of makes me sad but it the the first few lines of when they're giving homer like something on it on a card to read and he said the first like the first one he says i mock your value system and then and then like and then ned doesn't react and then he, proceed to level two antagonism. It's so clinical. And then Homer says, past instances in which I professed to like you were fraudulent. What does Ned say?

I guess I better work harder. I guess I better work harder. And then he's like, I slept with your significant other or spouse or whatever. But the other thing I like about that is that that weird like character of that other guy who's in there with Dr. Who just like pretends that he came up with Homer's lines. Like he's, he's like really wants to impress this guy for some reason.

He's secretly terrible at his job and just coasting and, but he can't, he doesn't want to be caught. So he's just like, uh, what did you think? Like he didn't do his homework for this experiment. He's just showing up, oh shit.

I remember when I first watched this episode, I remembered that guy all the time. And it's just a weird joke because it's so weird. But it's just making fun of these guys as mental health professionals. And I loved Homer's coining of the term, moronally.

Moronally. He's sort of making the word up as he talks moronally is his tempo to it yeah i also like i think one of the the times when when he opens up ned just sticks his head out and he's like hi neighbor and when when the window goes up he like follows it as it goes up and when the window goes down on homer it's a really up. And when the window goes down on Homer, it's a really good front-facing Homer on one, too. I like complimenting quality front-facing Simpsons. When they're not creepy and they look normal.

And I like the animation on the kind of satisfied smile Ned has once he finally says he hates his parents. It's like, hey. Yeah, that and my parents. Well, this is the thing that also, when I mentioned moral-oral earlier, kind of made me think of that. Because the whole,

the place that moral-oral ends up in is like the character realizes that his dad is a piece of shit and is able to acknowledge that. And while it is kind of, they're kind of making fun of how it's like, just admitting that you don't like your parents is like the first step out of like 100 and dealing with that kind of trauma yeah your childhood it's still like that's something

that is that is you know real and the ending of every moral oral is uh him learning a lesson but when it cuts to the dad's den he's he's putting his belt back on so it's like he just was beaten with a belt yeah yeah and then And then when that show ends, it kind of ends at the point and place where you realize this was not actually... Every lesson you learned was wrong. Yeah. I'm pretty sure all of Moral Oral

is on whatever streams, Adult Swim stuff, like Hulu. So check it out. They only have the first season on DVD and it's like the worst season. The first season is funny, but the second and third season are one joke. It's a lot of one-note jokes.

It's like, what if Davey and Goliath were weird? But yeah, eventually it gets more high concept after that first season. That's why I definitely recommend, if you can find the episodes, at least digitally, watch through the first season and get to the second season and the third season.

Also, it's like the only other non-Mr. Show place Jay Johnston ever appears. I miss Jay Johnston. He's the herky-tricky dancer. Yes, yeah. There are a lot of Mr. Show people on that show. He has no, yeah, he has, Jay Johnston, he has almost no scenes in the Roddy Dobbs movie either.

He had a deleted scene where his family is applying to be on a reality show saying, like, hot dog for a hot show. Are you talking about Run, Ronnie, Run? Yes. I tried watching that via Netflix DVDs and the DVD was too scratched halfway through the movie. And I was like, you know what? I'm good.

Run, Ronnie, Run. I'm okay. Yeah. Back to The Simpsons. Yeah. They head outside. Everybody's welcoming Ned. There's one sign that you can see for like one second that says,

Free John Schwarzwalder. Once again confirming that it's him inside. He's in there writing his Frank Burley novels. But we get Ned letting everyone know things are just fine and the whole universe is reset and everything's back to normal. Thanks, everyone. I'm all better now. No more storing up the anger till I explode.

If any of you does something I don't like, you are gonna hear about it. Yes, that's very healthy, Ned. And if you really take me off, I'm gonna run you down with my car. Ned, you so crazy. It says everything about me that I find Ned's line really funny

when he says he's going to run you down. I'm going to run you down with my car. I like that line. I don't really like this ending. Yeah, there's no way to get out of this story in a sitcom-y way, outside of Homer saying an inappropriate comment also his house is still like in yeah and i i don't know that's like a big one like you think that they would at least answer that in some way you have it's a yeah and you have to assume that

by the next episode he has hired contract in between contract real contractors have been hired and his house has been repaired because it's fine. I believe in the next episode, it's just the chili cook-off time and he's not thinking about that. He's about to go to jail for his fraudulent claims about chili. We'll see. And of course, You So Crazy is the famous Martin Lawrence catchphrase. It's also the name of his 1994 stand-up movie, stand-up special, whatever you call it. And he had, in season seven, he had been put behind The Simpsons.

He was the 830 slot again. But for this season, season eight, he's been moved off of The Simpsons Night Again, replaced by Nan and Stacey, which was aired next to this. The episode that I was just listening to of this, that you were talking about Martin Lawrence. That it happened to be Bart's girlfriend? No, you were talking about the Martin Lawrence running around. You said Martin Lawrence. Did it happen to be Bart's girlfriend? No. You were talking about the Martin Lawrence running around.

You said Martin Lawrence, right? Oh, yeah, Martin Lawrence. He's exhausted. Yeah, his running around with a gun or something in public. Probably wasn't PCP. I don't know. You know what's really weird is how he just all forgot that he got sued by his co-star on that show. I looked in that.

Tisha Campbell, while they were making season five she was suing him for sexual harassment and abuse and the settlement they came to was like to get her to appear on the two-part series finale but only she her requirement was i will not be in a scene with martin and so it's and that's why there will never be a martin reunion show at least not with tisha Campbell on it. They can bring back everything as a Netflix series, but not Martin? No, I guess not. Living single.

Though it's just weird that we let that go. It's another of those things like, well, wait. There was the SNL thing, too. Oh, yeah. Oof. Talking about women's hygiene, if you will. Though this is the usual season eight thing of them pretending everything has been reset but then really giving you a little eye twitch to say like oh no it's

not been reset but yeah in this case unlike other changes that were permanent like the divorce of the millhouse's parents or in later episodes edna and Skinner getting together. This is never addressed, never addressed ever again. Yeah, but I think in a way, in a not elegant way, Liz, they're sort of hanging a lantern on the fact that they didn't really fix a lot, where the run you down with my car is addressing that. It's like, Ned's not okay. And then that can also apply to Ned's house, Ned's business. There's a lot that's unaddressed.

But Homer says a quote-unquote very sitcom-y thing to wrap it up. Basically, that's all folks of the episode. But you know that it's not. And that's the thing. Season 8, there are a few episodes in season 8 in particular that I love, but kind of break the show in a lot of ways. And people have talked about this a lot with Homer's Enemy. That's the biggest example. Yeah, Henry was saying like i like i like your analogy henry it's like season

seven is them playing with the toys in the sandbox and season eight is them breaking all the toys but it's in these episodes they're able to do it and it's it's a really good because they they are playing with all the you know seasons and seasons have built up like oakley and weinstein are big simpsons fans like these are veterans they're they're building all this stuff that has been built up to this point and and then they're releasing it a little bit but after this like i feel like it's it's one of those things where they would try and do stuff like this they would try and do something serious but then they would treat it as a joke whereas this episode treats it very seriously so like you know ned losing his house that's not a joke it's not funny like and he does

like legitimately lose it ned loses his wife and like it's just kind of she dies in like a funny jokey way yeah but then they want you to feel bad about it he would be totally and utterly completely distraught he would have murdered everyone in town yeah he would he or he would be totally and utterly completely distraught he would have murdered everyone in town yeah he would he or he would have been borderline suicidal yeah that's not very funny i mean we talked to mike scully what was his uh thought what were his thoughts about that like almost 20 years later he regretted it yeah he felt that it was only a decision they made kind of just like snap decision of well we lost the anyway, kind of don't know what we're doing and we're going to do with her.

And then someone floats the idea of, hey, we should kill off a character this year. Who should we do? And they're like, well, Maude's not coming back. What about that? Yeah, I really believe that if handled better, that could have been a great springboard for more stories about Ned in a different light.

But obviously it was not handled well at all. Did the actress die? No. She wanted money it was maggie roswell and i think it was because like she had to fly in every time she recorded and they didn't want to pay for her flights eventually she did come back to the show because they did start paying her for that it's a billion yeah again they could have done like i remember like one of the classic examples is on the show News Radio when Phil Hartman's character died. They had his character died in the show, obviously. But, you know, it was like kind of a serious episode. And I remember, I'm not saying that show was perfect, but like I remember them handling it pretty well.

Oh, yeah. And I mean, it's a much more serious event than someone leaving the show because of money. But maybe they could have done an episode like it just it kind of goes to show like i think they cared so much about the the universe of the simpsons um like oakley and weinstein and some of those writers but like people after that you know it's maybe they just didn't think that people identified or cared as much on the outside as as they did and they didn't necessarily take as seriously some of the stuff that was like set up um because i think that if without season seven and eight like people's dislike of season nine ten eleven twelve like all that stuff wouldn't

be as strong and i think part of that is because they set up all of this stuff that that then is just kind of turned around in a way where it's kind of irreversible. It makes it even more painful when you see 7 and 8 move forward on some stuff and then an attempted regression in episodes that also just aren't as good as these, like objectively. Like not to say they're all bad, but when they're not as good and then they erase these episodes you're like well this it it leaves a sour taste yeah yeah i i do wish they would have ran with some of these changes but um unfortunately they wanted to quote unquote fix some of these uh things they saw as errors on the part of these showrunners but we love them we're still in season eight and this is a great episode thank you so much for being on the show liz problem uh please promote yourself you've got a patreon you got a lot going on the show, Liz. No problem. Please promote yourself. You've got a Patreon. You've got a lot going on.

You have games and game music and everything like that. Yeah, my Twitter is at E-L-L-A-G-U-R-O, Ella Guro. And I have a Patreon. Probably going to be doing some sort of video game-related podcast in the future. Oh, cool. It might have started it by the time that you actually listen to this. So check that out. Yeah, and I have a podcast, kind of sporadic,

usually once a month, called Beyond the Filter. And that episode that they were talking about with Felix Biederman is on there, a bunch of other people, some video games, some other media. I do a lot of kinds of stuff. And yeah, I do game stuff, game design, write about games.

So keep a lookout for that. I actually mentioned the game thief and i might be writing an article about that just because i was playing through that again so cool i'll check that out yeah thank you so much liz as for us we are supported by our patreon that is the talking simpsons patreon so if you go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can see how you can support the show and there are so many great incentives for you to support the show at the five dollar level we have so many bonus podcasts including all of our exclusive mini series like talking critic talking futurama interviews uh season wrap-ups community podcast uh deleted scene uh commentaries

from us on everything from season five onward and so much more to check out there anything else i'm missing henry what's the latest cool patreon exclusive that we have for everybody uh well the time of this recording it is the season seven wrap up where we go through all our favorite episodes and moments of the season and the news that happened during the broadcast time of the episodes plus we did a season seven deleted scenes commentary in audio form but if you go up to the ten dollar premium level you'll be able to see the video version as well to see all these jokes, some which were really great, some, eh, they're all right.

But there's some really great jokes in there that I'm like sad, like, oh, this would have, this one about serving size from King Size Home would have been forever. It would be just as memorable as any other one. It would have been a classic. And I asked Bill Oakley on Twitter, there is a cut joke from scenes from the class

struggle in Springfield where while Marge is at the country club, Homer and the kids are sitting in the car listening to quote unquote airport radio. So radio announcements from the airport. And on the commentary, Bill's like, Josh always wants to get this scene into a show. And I asked Bill, did he ever do

that? And apparently it was part of a never made Mission Hill episode. So that's my tidbit for you today, if you care at all. I'm sorry for wasting your time. As for me, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts. Find that at retronauts.com

or look for Retronauts in your podcast machine. It is a classic gaming podcast and we've been going on for 12 years and I think you know about us, but if not, check us out. I think you'll like it. Henry. I'm at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter.

Follow me there for updates about the show and new things that are happening in our world of The Simpsons. Thank you for listening, folks. We'll see you next for the mysterious voyage of Homer. I'm sorry, I took French. I don't know the Spanish pronunciation. We'll see you then. Wow. Infotainment.