Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - I Married Marge With Chris Kohler

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

We welcome back our friend/video game historian Chris Kohler, as we take a trip through parenthood AND the early 1980s! Yes, this week we learn how Homer married Marge, as well as how Bart was born, how Homer got his job, and tons more in this classic ep full of memorable '80s trivia worth explaining. We'd tell you more about this podcast, but we don't want to be a "Mr. Blow-The-Podcast-for-Me" type! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking of the Hill, the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's feisty yet spineless. I'm one of your hosts, Bob Slobmackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today as always? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert.

You can read about me in the Society Pages. And who do we have on the line? I'm not always here, but it is my second time here. No, no, no. It's my third time here. It's my second episode. It's me, Chris Kohler, who often joins the two of you gentlemen on Retronauts and, you know, even sometimes various other podcasting things.

I'm currently Editorial Director at the video game developer Digital Eclipse, and I like talking about stuff. And this week's episode is I Married Marge. For you, a baby's all fun and games. For me, it's diaper changes and midnight feedings. Doesn't mom do that stuff? Yeah, but I have to hear about it. Were you like this when mom was pregnant with me? Actually, Bart, I threw up

more than your mother. This week's episode originally aired on December 26, 1991, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Happy Boxing Day 1991, Bobby. Mikhail Gorbachev resigns and the USSR is officially dissolved. Hook is number one in the box office.

While meanwhile, Sonic and Mario just battled it out for Christmas dominance of 1991. As well, if you were a Simpsons fan, maybe you were playing Bart vs. the World or Escape from Camp Deadly, which were the two big holidays Simpsons games. Okay. I was renting some of those. I knew better to not buy them. After Space Mutants, I was like, yeah, I'm going to ask mom to rent these. And Bart vs. the World, even more frustrating than Space Mutants. And meanwhile, not many places rented Game Boy games, so I didn't even touch Escape from Camp Deadly.

Same here. That's right, exactly. They could not rent a Game Boy game, so I didn't play Escape from Camp Deadly. I wasn't going to buy it. I actually did get Bart vs. the World, I think maybe for maybe Easter in 1992. It was like right after it came out because I had played Space Mutants and I really did like The Simpsons and I 100%ed Bart vs. the World. If you get all of the collectibles in every stage, you get the good ending where you get

to throw pies in the face of mr burns and smithers i believe at the end of the game and like i actually straight up for real no game genie 100 percented that game it is not good well that's why you're here today yes and like with all of these simpsons games i am quoted on the wikipedia page so look it up folks well because you were like the one guy in the aughts who was like, I am an adult who is playing these games now with, I'm not telling you if they're good or not from my memory. I played them now.

And that was an important resource. Nobody else was bothering to do that stuff. I was a pioneer in learning and writing about these games in the aughts. Yes. If anybody's listening, very important. I just said the game was not good however i would love to bring back all of the simpsons games as a digital eclipse collection so disney get on the phone with me we'll work it out think of all the enhancements to make these

games uh remotely playable oh my god the thing the thing in cowabunga collection of just watching somebody else play it and then just being able to jump in like wow that that would make bart versus the world or uh bart man meets radioactive man not versus but meets radioactive man that'd make it work a lot better i think it really would yeah and we mentioned hook uh people have nostalgia for that and i kind of think they're wrong i mean there's no wrong opinion but that could be one of them uh i saw it on vhs i just remember being very bored. And I also remember from that time period, the Addams Family was like the dark horse. It was this cheapo movie out of nowhere that everyone was talking about.

Hook was still popular, but the Addams Family was the heat from that holiday season, if I remember correctly. I saw Hook in theaters as well as Addams Family. I'd say as an adult now they're adam's family clearly better than hook but oh man i like i liked hook then i i had a good time with it i mean it was weird to sell a robin uh a robin williams action adventure film as you know hey don't you feel sad for your father like your father gave up all his dreams he needs to your dad needs to find his dreams again i just didn't like them eating all of that slop. All the goop,

all the, they were just eating slime. They ate cans of frosting like Bart wants to in this app. Yeah. But come on, Bob. Rufio, you don't love Rufio.

Everybody loves Rufio. I know people, like, chant that name and it's supposed to be funny, but I don't understand it. Well, he was, he was a Filipino-American star when there were few

in the movies. Okay, well, I'm racist now. Thanks thanks henry i believe we did not yeah in my family we only got the genesis that holiday season for the pack in of sonic we did not get super nes despite me being a mario fanboy i was late to mario world that's where we went in the 1991 uh christmas battle of the 16-bit system i was still holding strong with my nes i didn't get an snes until december of two of the next year which is because of street fighter 2 ah yeah that's the reason why so yeah the ussr no more it's uh that's uh nothing more to say about that there will be no more mikhail gorbachev puzzle games for the famicom yeah i mean i do remember like this is this is the this is this is what dates me, right? Like, this is the old person story that we're going to tell

our grandkids. Like, I remember being in school and like, you know, the teacher like pulling down the map, you know, because of course, the map was a big roll down thing that like rolled down over the chalkboard, right? So the physical sort of map of the world, and like pointing out like the USSR and telling us that that was going to change and go away and be broken up into all separate countries and sort of like blowing our minds the map changes now the map can change didn't know that was you're gonna have to get a new one yeah i graduated in the year 2000 and no map in my school reflected those changes made a decade prior yeah oh yeah well yeah, true.

Because they don't have to get a new one. The map guys must have been over the moon over that. Like, think of all the new maps we'll have to sell. It's a big payday for Ryan McNally. I think that's the real conspiracy. They were working with Gorbachev, pressuring him to dissolve the USSR for just that reason. It was not Reagan.

It's true. But joining us today, once once again you heard him up front chris kohler welcome back to the show chris thank you for having me back i must have been okay the last time oh well yes i mean you you offered us so much insight into uh the simpsons arcade game is arguably the best simpsons video game yeah and we just had a whole fun time talking about similar games uh from konami with you on Retro Knot. That's true. Literally just days ago.

Yeah, I'm not actually sure when this episode is going to air. So it may have been a few days prior, a few weeks or months prior. But yeah, we talked about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection, which similarly has those four-player side-scrolling arcade beat-em-ups from Konami from that era. We and my company digital eclipse we actually put together a collection of all the old konami games and it came out on august 30th to what i assume was widespread acclaim i don't know we're recording this before before anybody said anything about it i don't know we hardly endorsed that product yes yes i was playing it up on the switch i had a real great time mean, seriously, the the amount of extras you put in that of, you know, behind the scenes things and design documents and all that.

Like it is a as as me and Bob as work hard on research for old stuff. We have so much respect for all you put into and your team put into the Cowabunga collections extras. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We were we were huge fans and you know just just wanted to do it the right way but i guess now we're starting our grassroots program to get the simpsons collection off the ground yeah yep yep yeah i don't know who you talk to about those old acclaim games like yeah who ended up well here's the thing those games way back in like the mid 2000s or something like that. And I went back and checked the rights to them got sold at auction because when a claim went bankrupt, the rights to those games got sold off.

But the problem is it might've just been the publishing rights or something like that. It might not have been all the rights to the content, but like there was an auction and somebody for like, I think it was like $7,000 or something like that bought the rights to all of those games. Now, of course, they can't simply release them because they don't own The Simpsons, right? But right now, at this moment, I do not know what the status of those games are. Well, that's why that recent arcade stand-up machine that had The Simpsons, it had only the two that Konami owned.

But we wish best of luck to someone like like you chris to to find to find the answers to these things and maybe someday some yep yep also uh chris since this you know your real uh history buff uh i mean this episode is all about capturing the 80s or 1980 to early 1981 i guess very specifically no it has to take place before late november because that's when the reveal of jr's murder happened and uh well so but but bart is clearly conceived after the release or on the day of the release of empire strikes back which would have been in may late may so that would make bart born in like jan February I have some dates that are all over the place but they're uh they're authentic so god we can get to it later I'll just say it now actually Mr. Burns

either imported a Pac-Man machine or he got one of the first ones in December of 1980 so I'm placing Bart's birth at uh Novembermber of 1980 well okay but the that that empire strikes back date is hard hard to move around unless i mean march could have been yes that's that's are we saying that that was the premiere of empire strikes back that was shown in that episode they had gone to like they've done day one well it's a big line for it so it's i think it's at least in the first you know couple weeks of it i mean people didn't go to see star wars movies a whole lot there were lines around the block a month or two later so this but i mean that would push parts birth even later into like 81 instead of 80 so yeah but well also uh chris we call you on because of course bob and i do not have children uh yes

you're you you're a parent and i mean would you say this episode accurately captures some of the feelings of being of awaiting your first childbirth? I think, well, you know, it's different for us because, you know, we had our first kid in our. When? Geez, when was it? I have no idea. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah. So, I mean, we got married and, you know, got pregnant in our like early to mid 30s, basically. Yeah. So I mean, yeah. So I mean, we got married and you know, got pregnant in our like,

early to mid 30s, basically, right. So it's like, we had waited and we both had had our 20s. And I think that it's very different when you've had that decade. And then you're sort of like, okay, I'm now ready to have children like I've had, you know, I've had that I've had that period of youth, like I've thought about it, we have jobs, you know, it's like we both have jobs, we have the income, we have the income to spend on the child, it's going to be financially totally fine. We don't have to worry about that. We're not in that position that you know, a lot of people find themselves in of having to figure out Oh, no, am I ready for this? What are we going to do? Like, what's the plan going to be, which is the sort of the story that's that's told here so it's it's a little bit different but even so when you find out that you are in fact having the child even though you

had sort of planned for it it's like oh crap you know this is can we do this this is gonna be okay and um you know it it turns out that yes if you you know it's it's you know parents don't make children children make make parents right you're you're not a parent until the child is there. And it shifts all your priorities around in it. You know, you, you get your shit together like pretty fast. I don't know if I can say shit. Oh, you can say it. Say it all you want.

Well, it's also funny too, because I believe me and Bob are 82 children. You're from 1980. So you're the age of Bart pretty much. All kind of the age of bart of this episode except of course part is ageless true that's right yeah i know i mean i'm way older than homer simpson now right because homer simpson is supposed to be what 34 on the show 39 36 in this episode that's true yeah but he's the oldest they've ever said he is in a regular episode is 39 which as bob bob recently passed that at the time of this recording i'm two weeks away from

being older than homer uh so i've blown away the homer simpson line and i'm headed towards the brimley cocoon line that's that is the next number isn't't it? 52, man. Well, I think one thing that might be lost, the context that might be lost is, yes, 1980 retro. We all know. But this episode aired in 92, early 92, or sorry, late 91. I apologize. Written in like mid 91. It was a funny idea.

Like, let's be nostalgic for 11 years ago. It would be like a flashback episode today saying, let's look at the year 2011. Oh, the rise of LMFAO. Occupy Wall Street is marching through New York like things like that so for for adults watching at the time and they probably thought what a cute idea when I was a kid I was like oh this is a window into a time I was not alive for that I could not witness and that's why it was fascinating to me just like what were people doing around the time I was born? I'll never know. Yeah, yeah. They could see Empire Strikes Back in the movie theater and they got to be surprised

that Darth Vader's Luke's father, like all that stuff. Yeah, there was an episode of BoJack Horseman, which was released in like 2016. That was a period episode set in 2007. And it was so weird to me as an adult who lived through that time fully aware it had to be the same kind of experience for our parents when they were watching uh if they happened to watch this episode with us as my mom and dad did yeah it's funny the empire strikes back thing just because like i was born in 1980 so i mean even even as like a child and like once i was sort of sentient enough to know

what Star Wars was, the fact that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father was just something that was just known, you know, it wasn't it was just it was just part of the whole canon of Star Wars and all of the things that were known about it generally in the popular culture. So I mean, even I born in that early year, it was it was never something that I was ever going to be surprised by seeing the movies. And in this episode, well, actually, Bob has a whole director's corner for a first-time director on this episode. First-ish time, I guess, really. I do. So let's talk about the director of this episode, Jeffrey Lynch.

We were saving him for this episode because he co-directed Like Father, Like Clown with Brad Bird. But this is the first one he has fully directed on his own um and great director let's talk about where he started so his first credited work is actually at walt disney feature animation in the darker days of the early to mid 80s so we have assistant animator on the black cauldron we have key assistant animator on the great mouse detective and we have character animator on oliver and company ah now here's the thing he started at walt disney feature he is like best friends with We have key assistant animator on The Great Mouse Detective, and we have character animator on Oliver and Company. Ah. Now, here's the thing. He started at Walt Disney Feature.

He is like best friends with Brad Bird and works with Brad Bird on a lot of projects. I could not find out if he went to CalArts. Okay. I feel like there are a million smoking guns, so I want to say yes, but that was not part of his bio that I read on his website. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's not, but he somehow found brad bird and he

somehow got into walt disney feature in the 80s without being a cal arts graduate yeah you know sometimes with folks like suzy dieter who was another star simpsons director like you find out no not cal arts at all like and i like studied arts in ucla before moving into animation but everything you just described is like especially the first the first couple years of cal arts i it seems like unless you dropped out you worked on the black cauldron like i feel like cal black cauldron especially was only worked on by cal arts graduates or the nine old men you know yeah they had to staff up because of the don bluth exodus yeah bluth took them all yeah yeah so around like right before the time he joined the Simpsons, he was working in the world of kids animation.

So he did storyboards for things like Muppet Babies, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. And the only thing is there's no way of knowing how many episodes he storyboarded because it's one of those things where they just made credits for one season. So it says technically he storyboarded on like 19 episodes of Muppet Babet babies but it's only because there were 19 episodes in that order and his name was included on every round of credits yeah i know we we had that with our uh listen to our podcast of what a cartoon that we did on ren and stimpy with uh the animator legend bob jakes boarded on one episode of i think it was ninja turtles but through the crediting system imdb makes it looks like he worked on like dozens of episodes of ninja turtles yeah through the crediting system imdb makes it looks like he worked on like dozens of episodes of ninja turtles yeah that's but that sounds like a dude who didn't

stick around for the disney renaissance and uh was just like i'm out of here guys and just took took what he could if he was friends with brad bird you know brad bird was trying a lot of other stuff like here was for instance and we talk about this on the iron giant podcast like he nearly made a will eisner's the spirit animated movie like right like spielberg was getting interest and all that i would have to guess based on all the other stuff in his career jeff lynch was carving out space of like well once that uh spirit movie sells that's going to be what i'm working on for another year he is a brad bird bro yes yeah and also brad bros also uh worked on like one tiny tunes like storyboarded on one tiny tunes that's basically it i mean and then he joins the simpsons in season one he is a storyboard artist

on the crepes of wrath so he's in pretty early like mid-season one uh and then of course he co-directs like father like clown with brad bird starts directing on his own with this episode and counting like father like clown he directs 12 total episodes of the simpsons including the immortal who shot mr burns part one uh one of the best looking i think it's my my favorite uh episode and i think it's my as the best direction i think uh man yeah it's either it's either that one or treehouse four for me like Like, it's both of those, but it's so amazing looking. Like, yeah, he has some of the best movement and animation. Like, he has a great, I've even seen, you know, David Silverman when he's asked online about, I remember this as a Jeff Lynch story, that the moment in Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy

where Stacy Lavelle throws her glass in the fire and gets her passion back somebody asked online like hey David do you remember who did this and he's like off the top of my head it's got to be Jeff Lynch yeah that's such great action if you remember the scene in who shot Mr. Burns part one where Homer is uh graffito tagging Mr. Burns's office saying I am Homer Simpson the camera pull outs or is it a push and I think it's a pull out yeah well it's like a turn like it it is yeah it's like a zoom in but also the camera moves on him too yeah yeah he did that by himself like at home he wanted it to look so perfect so yeah jeff lynch great director his last episode he directs is curse of the flying hellfish and he comes back a few times to do storyboards on like

two episodes but that's basically it so he's kind of done with the simpsons by 96 it sounds like flying hellfish was a real passion project for him we talked in that one too that it's like big action world war ii stuff it turns him into like sergeant rock which if you're a dude of his age who loves all that kind of stuff of that era of comics you love joe cubert sergeant rock run and he straight up just draws him in in some sergeant rock poses in it so yeah and yeah after the simpsons the only other tv directing he did was for futurama and that's uh some early episodes like my three sons in season one and branigan begin again in season two he is the director on those episodes and that's it two gorgeous apps as well yeah yeah yeah so this should not surprise any of you uh jeffrey lynch

followed brad bird to the iron giant where he was head of story and then he began working with sam ramey uh you know about this henry right yes yes yeah he's i mean so the spider-man movies and sam ramey i'm gonna stop you right there okay thank you he started working with sam ramey on for love of the game okay all right he was storyboard artist on for love of the game a baseball movie made by sam ramey starring kevin costner and then he worked on the gift another ramey movie i didn't know this i thought he started working with ramey on spider-man but no he was in like the the bad weird ramey period right before between a simple plan and spider-man i don't like for love of the game and the gift i i haven't seen i never

i've never seen for love of the game and i haven't seen the gift in a very long time i remember liking it okay but certainly not on the level of even simple plan from the same era but sorry i interrupted you because i wanted to throw a curveball no no i i totally forgot i just know him as the spider-man guy but i mean as we learned to going deep into stuff for evil dead 2 for the evil dead 2 retronauts uh you did sam ramey storyboards his own movies a lot or he's very invested in storyboarding and he's not a shoot on the fly kind of guy he's like no he thinks up very intricate shots and i could see how like hire one of the best animation storyboard guys around in uh jeffrey lynch and for lynch it probably gave him tons more like respect unfortunately because doing the exact same

thing he did for simpsons or iron giant but doing it for sam raimi on billion dollar spider-man movies probably helped his resume quite a lot more absolutely and yeah those spider-man movies the three raimi ones whenever spider-man movies the three ramey ones whenever spider-man's on screen those are basically animated films like half the time like if he's doing his spider-man thing and that was what earned it so much respect for me early on of like of course i knew sam ramey could do a great job but spider-man when he's swinging around it's animated so beautifully and i believe lynch is heads up that department yeah and just spider-man does like i'm just seeing him the first time i remember just seeing it like look that's the

spider-man pose like leg out whip handed right hand whipping right left hand swinging like he took it straight off the page but animated it through sequence like it's just amazing like i if we ever dug up jeff lynch wherever he's at to interview him i'd ask him probably just as many spider-man questions honestly yeah i saw those movies for the first time within the past two years and the cgi holds up very well just because of just the staging and the posing and everything like that yeah even if the layers or the hd don't look as good as like oh that you know the texture map or whatever you can see this doesn't look as good it's like oh that you know the texture map or whatever you can see this doesn't look as good then it doesn't matter like the animation through skill and craft keeps

up keeps it up to date yeah so yeah he was second unit director on all the spider-man movies he would work with ramey again on oz the great and powerful which was going to kind of be his last movie until the recent uh doctor strange and the mom yes and then he also uh was head of story on the corpse bride so he worked with tim burton as well i didn't know that wow and then after uh around the same time as oz the great and powerful he's still a brad bird bro he is second unit director on both mission impossible ghost protocol and tomorrowland and he was also a story artist on incredibles 2 a movie that people assure me does exist and did happen it's quite forgotten but i i remember liking it fine i

remember liking it but again i've said it before the short bow that precedes it he left me such an emotional wreck i don't know if i could want it in a good way i love love love that short but yeah the ghost protocol that movie's great. That movie is great. It's the best Mission Impossible movie I've seen. And I think it is, action sequences are boarded like how they work, like they are boarded by an animation person.

Like they, story beats follow the correct way. Like it's, if you're a fan of Brad Bird, you get what you want out of that, even in live action with Ghost Protocol. And how about Tomorrowland? Can't speak on that. Don't know. I know it angered my wife, and I'm not hearing good things about Tomorrowland.

I never really heard much about that either. No, I mean, it's sitting right there on Disney+. I can watch it whenever I feel like it. Very, very expensive. Barely made back its budget. And I think, this is not the Brad Bird corner, but I think he's in movie jail with Andrew Stanton. It's like, all right, cartoon boys, no more live action for you it's true yeah though well now I believe Brad Bird is working on a thing with uh Skydance with a certain old friend of his yeah so

uh yeah yeah I mean the weird thing about Jeffrey Lynch is like he doesn't have a very big profile online like I couldn't find any interviews with him at best I found like excerpts from commentaries he was on like even on his wikipedia the text is just like taken from his website like jeffrey lynch is dedicated to helping clients around the globe like blah blah blah blah so like i don't know what he's doing he could be consulting i think he's doing like i think he's like into advertising as well but he still is kind of a mystery for being as talented as he is like i don't know a lot about him and i can't really find out much about him really yeah i mean he could just be you know especially once you're getting them spider-man residuals in the mail like you pick and choose what you want to do so it could just be like he just follows his passion wherever but i'm curious if he's currently working with brad bird on

whatever his new project is and if not then i would take that to mean like jeffrey lynch doesn't want to work full-time on movies anymore and just does what he feels like but i'm also surprised like yeah that he never really does interviews hard to hard to find though uh based on his appearance on this commentary for this episode he is quite a quiet demure man yes uh so yeah still still waters run deep with jeffrey lynch but that is the story of jeffrey Well, of course, this episode was written by Jeff Martin. It's a sequel to The Way We Was, but this is when it was perfected. Jeff Martin didn't write The Way We Was.

That was a Gene and Reese one. This is Jeff Martin who wrote the perfect flashback trilogy of this one, Lisa's First Word, and Homer's Barbershop Quartet. Those were the four. Those were the four through the three and then there's technically a fourth sequel to that written by jennifer crinton which is maggie makes three which is really the third of the kids being born trilogy yeah and what i like about his flashbacks are they are hyper specific to the year they take place in like this is all about what is happening in the year 1980 lisa's first word is all about 1984 and they are pretty good with finding things without the internet without you know encyclopedias or whatever just having been alive and adults at the time

they were able to pull the most popular topics from that year and put them on the show yeah it's so so impressive and maggie makes three in tribute to jeff martin's kind of style it does it is it's set in 1993 or so but 93 yeah it's it's uh vague ish but it's clear on that because he mentions uh crystal pepsi or something or crystal clear beverages and achy breaky heart or no that was uh that was the in barbershop quartet yes that's the yeah yeah oh and the stories of joe piscopo conquering hollywood yeah the though it's funny to hear on the commentary that is jeff martin you know handed this script that uh sam simon was telling them like this is inefficient you are giving away how they got married how bart is born uh yeah homer getting hired all in the same episode

and uh they in the 2002 commentary they agreed they're like sam simon was right yeah you should have saved these for multiple episodes i don't know the The fact that they're all, it is a lot tighter narrative-wise, the fact that all three of those things are so tightly connected, though. Like, it makes it more meaningful that their marriage and Bart's birth and Homer joining the nuclear power plant are all, you know, from a narrative construction standpoint, the fact that all of those things are inextricably linked is actually much stronger storytelling so i'm gonna say no sam simon you're if he's if he's if he's trying to if he's trying to stretch it out into multiple episodes i understand that but uh the fact that it just works much better narratively i think and i guess we don't need to talk too much about it but of

course this canon has been invalidated several times they They've done flashback episodes like, oh, Todd Flanders was born in 2016 and Homer helped deliver him and the kids are like toddlers and playing with iPads and things like that. He's meant to spit in the face of people who care about continuity as a joke, which I have learned to accept. Yeah, I don't mind it anymore,

but a part of me wishes they would do a flashback episode that is still in this continuity and not explain it just say yes here's something that happened in the 80s to the family uh let's forget that bart was born in uh 2012 yes yeah yep i did have to laugh in that uh that most recent season episode with the flashback to you know it was six years ago and marge taking uber to the the plant christmas party i was like wow that's it's uh but that's sliding time i mean well too you know sam simon another thing i guess he was incorrect about was he's like well you can't you know you it's if you give away the marriage or bart's birth on this you never return to it not true at all they've revisited these

moments many times and retold them for as as far as a story needed so i can see why al jean in 2002 was like i will never stop making simpsons episodes i shouldn't have given away three great episode possibilities in one flashback episode uh also on the commentary a general note i have on it is is that james l brooks is there so everybody's on their best behavior nobody's saying like oh we had to add this because of jim or whatever like and also director jeff lynch who's never on commentaries is on this one but he like says eight words like he seems very shy yeah they this is why you need we've said it a million times this is why you need animator only commentaries where they're not overshadowed by an actor or the writers who are you know always pitching funny

jokes like leave a little space for the the animators to be fun too well now there are zero commentaries so yes yeah yeah it's beggars can't be choosers anymore and and last last uh pre-notes thing i had is that so this is one where graining does not like the eyes he thinks the pupils are way too big and they all look too cute or stoned and jeff lynch says it's because they had a stencil template they were using overseas it just made eyes more of a uniform just bigness uh and i i dug into this so go back to our podcast on when flanders failed we talked about how acom for season two was the only overseas studio working on the simpsons after problem episodes like when flanders failed they

split it half the season was done by a different studio uh based in seoul korea that one was anavision and when i looked at all the list of anavision episodes for the seasons three and four and little five especially they're all the ones i think of as the cute episodes like they did camp crusty they did i love lisa and homer's barber shop quartet where the eyes are like big and adorable and i know they seemingly the people who make the show didn't like it but i love how cute they look in this episode well they're wrong yeah to dislike the giant eyes i love anime simpsons yeah i think i i thank anavision for their their great work on here even if they apparently got some notes back from grading.

The Simpsons will be right back. Every woman dreams of a romantic courtship. You're as pretty as Princess Leia and as smart as Yoda. Her wedding day. I do. I do. I do. Not next! And the arrival of her firstborn.

I didn't know better. I swear he was crammed with mooners. See Marge Simpson's love story on an all-new Simpsons next Thursday. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care.

Did I mention that we care? Welcome to The Break, everybody. It's Henry Gilbert, your host, who is at least as smart as Yoda. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Chris Kohler, who really helped us dig into both parenthood and 1980s nostalgia. and you guys should definitely check out all the cool stuff he's doing including that recent teenage mutant ninja turtles cowabunga collection of classic video games and please follow him on twitter at kobun heat k-o-b-u-n-h-e-a-t also you folks should know that the talking simpsons podcast is only possible thanks to the support of listeners like you who subscribe at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

Because subscribers there for just five bucks a month not only let me and Bob do this as our full-time job, but they also get a ton of bonus content. Every month they get two new episodes of Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill. Us covering a different episode of those series just like we do The Simpsons. And starting next month for two months, eight weeks straight, you'll be getting brand new episodes of Blabbing About Batman, the animated series. Me and Bob going back to the well of the classic Batman animated series, talking about even more episodes from there.

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a classic animated film this month if you love all this 80s talk you're gonna love hearing us talk about the transformers the movie the 1986 film in the month before this we talked about beefs and butthead do the universe where those two wonderful guys will end up in the year 2022 four years worth of what a cartoon movie is at your fingertips. The entire back catalog, when you sign up at that $10 level, you can hear things from Akira to a goofy movie, The Little Mermaid to Kiki's Delivery Service,

and a ton, ton more. Please sign up today at that $10 level to get all the cool stuff that we have to offer at patreon.com slash talking simpsons but all right this episode begins with uh I showed this to Bob beforehand, but in the Simpsons Uncensored Family Album here, which has a bunch of like, it's basically like you have the Simpsons Family Album for you. So a question, didn't they re-release that book? Because on the cover of your vintage copy, there is Naked Bart.

And now it's Naked Homer. I think they were like, times have changed. We don't want a naked boy associated with our product. Yes, that is absolutely what happened. Okay, I thought so. To my knowledge, the insides are the same. Yeah. But it was published before this episode, in 91 though, so same year.

And in it, they do have the Barnacle Bill, the sailor. They do have Barnacle Bill's home pregnancy test. They have a photo of their uh you know wedding at a casino clearly i think they had an outline for this episode with some specifics but they didn't have finished up so there's like as you can see here chris it's the lucky seven casino they get okay for instance and march does look pregnant in that photo she does yes yeah so they kept it they definitely seem to half know what they wanted to do with the characters yeah it's uh and of course yes the cover is it's called the uncensored family album and then on the cover bart is sitting on a

bear rug i guess uh as a reference that burt reynolds photograph of him on the bear rug well they used to photograph babies naked on rugs a lot yes yeah so i don't think we do this anymore yeah it's uh fortunately they cleaned it up it's homer's butt now as you said but i i wanted the i wanted the vintage experience i wanted the original one uh so i i bought it for myself but uh one one other tiny pre-show uh bit of information again more context needed this episode aired 30 years ago every child born on a sitcom was a blessing there was never any worry there was never any fear that it could ruin the family and tear them apart and or the financial issue so this was

an edgy fox style idea especially the idea of a woman uh having uh been knocked up getting married like and showing while she's walking down the aisle these are like this was edgy in 1991 but now it's just like look at it's like oh yeah i can watch like rugrats and see this yeah it's funny the yeah that they get pregnant out of wedlock though i mean now uh you know 30 years later some of it's like oh this feels you know conservative by today's standards including the general topic of like well you know there's there's there's other options if you have an unwanted pregnancy you know like they but that is never discussed right in this episode and it rarely is on on shows even today really and i i don't expect the simpsons to do the an abortion episode i don't expect that though and in these times you know that's the i i would say

the politically responsible thing to do but uh but any but hey that's just my opinion in this episode we start with and i guess this is also before the morning after pill which uh the simpsons mocked actually in a contemporary episode with the invention of that pill uh but anywho the episode begins with a very silly pregnancy test article bill's home pregnancy test oh my shouldn't we have gone with a better-known brand? But Marge, this one came with a free corncob pipe. Okay,

let's see. Ahoy, mateys, if the water turns blue, a baby for you. If purple ye see, no baby thar be. Well, what color is it? Blue or purple? Pink. Oh! Hmm. If the test should fail, to a doctor set sale. Well, what color is it? Blue or purple? Pink. No! Hmm. If a test should fail to a doctor set sail,

well, I guess I better go see Dr. Hibbert. Oh, honey, do you really think you're pregnant? Well, I have the same nausea and craving for pancake mix I did with the other kids. Yeah, and I have the same tightness in my chest and profuse sweating I always get. Well, I'll let you know. Homer's describing a heart attack. He's always just feeling it. Again, we're a year away from Homer's triple bypass.

And we're a year away from Captain McAllister or the sea captain. So we have this Barnacle Bill guy. Which I guess was also sung, the song of him was sung in homer's night out as well but yeah this is and of course you know a year later bart would have crusty's home pregnancy test which that feels like what it should be like which though i i love homer bought the one with the free corncob pipe that's that's the only you can hear him sucking on it in the audio too what a killer opening i mean just what a marvelous uh first couple of seconds of this show to just open on the shot of the ridiculous pregnancy test and just move through

these beautiful rapid fire just every iteration of jokes about it and the reveal of the reveal of the pipe the the sea shanty instructions the completely ridiculous they've never you know of course because pregnancy tests especially at the time were that ridiculous of like putting you know droppers into uh vials and things like that and it's not it's not just like peeing on a stick and seeing a little plus up here or something like that right it's this whole ridiculous thing and i it's it's just brilliant it's brilliant i also love hearing marge say no baby thar be yes yes there are good pregnancy test jokes on the simpsons i think for eight misbehaving chris there was the baby baby pirate no wait pirates are wild

boy pirates in the baby test yeah yeah and and you know for those of us who can't get pregnant we've gotten to experience a slightly similar thing with take-home covid tests these last couple years you know we can't yeah we get to wait around uh and and look for results as well no one is posting their negative pregnancy tests online that's true yes uh still coming up negative i can go to vegas all right nobody post that about pregnancy test uh marge walks off i guess this taught me a tiny bit about where babies come from though of course as a little kid i learned much more from uh watching the opening to look who's talking

which uh was quite would you yeah yeah we all remember it was a mix of that and learning all this filth from uh fox it comes like married with children got me the rest of the way after look who's talking oh sure yes yeah and sneaking uh sneaking uh watching dream on and things like that on hbo oh yeah that does some of the work too yeah so i like to that this plays for just a second of a regular sitcom of the kids worried uh but then bart instantly reveals like oh oh you got i smell a bun in the oven like he bart's been through this twice now of getting another uh sibling so he knows all the signs at this point lisa lisa's confused though but and he noticed that homer is twiddling his fingers quite a lot in this episode they're going twiddle crazy here jeff lynch uh is picking up some silverman traits here yeah with the twiddling fingers. I'm grossed out by Bart saying, you're a machine, Homer.

I was like, oh, eww. Yuck. But this is where Homer reveals he threw up more than his mother. I mean, I really like this joke about a dad saying, like, oh, I don't actually help. Like, just this. I just have to hear the complaints. It's still a woman's job in the 90s. A man isn't supposed to help with these things, which, of course, you, Chris,

you helped with those 9 a.m. feedings or 8 a.m. feedings. Yes. Yes. How much sleep did you get in the first year or so? You know, the kids always slept okay. We haven't really had a good night's sleep since 2014, honestly, just because when we had once the one kid finally started sleeping through the night, then we had the second kid. So, I mean, we're looking forward. I'm planning on maybe 2016, 2017 sleeping for eight hours and it's going to be it's going to be good. It's gonna be real nice. Well, you should follow bart's advice and race them

race the children and then they'll be sleepy and then you can get more sleep oh we try we try that is i mean that is something that happens it's like how do we tire these kids out like it's really it's a it's a psychological game of like what can we do you know to the children to like get them to be tired yeah so this is when a flashback begins which of course homer uses the same kind of framing that inspired the template for our own history intro to this podcast and in case listeners never picked up on it the reasons we list three things is because well actually i probably list two things in this i was disappointed but in the other episodes he lists three him or marge lists three things i was like oh shit he does two things. That's not it for the other ones, right?

We'll be explaining a lot of references in this episode. And I can start here if you want me to. Before I play the clip, let's get a little set up here. Oh yeah, so Homer mentions a few things. John Anderson, the candidacy of John Anderson. Never heard of this guy until this episode. Basically, he was the Ross Perotot of 1980 not nearly as significant uh so in 92 perot got 80 uh 18.9 of the popular vote in 1980 he got 6.6 he was a republican who ran as an independent

to basically take votes away from disillusioned jimmy carter voters uh despite being republican he was a republican in like the very traditional sense and that he believed in like a personal right so he was big on like abortion rights and civil rights and you know gender equality and things like that I don't know anything else about him but that's who he was he was a dud candidate and Homer was somehow excited about him yeah I saw the 1980 primary he was third behind Reagan and H.W. Bush like it was and I mean reading about it too with with him uh that guy like one he was he was not somebody who would inspire idealism either like that's that's so funny homer i mean in general homer framing the 80s as an idealistic time which is like the complete opposite of what the 80s were

it it sounded like too he was some people were hoping he'd take votes away from reagan because he was a former republican but clearly did not reagan reagan did quite well against uh jimmy carter who was smarter but also i mean hearing about that too i was like oh this sounds similar to today to like a loser middle-of-the-road republican who is like oh i don't like how crazy this reagan famous dude is i'll i'll pull it away it's like no the republican party pretty clear they want the crazy famous uh fascist like yeah I like that guy big fans and uh Super Tramp which Bart scowls at I like that for some reason he's aware of Super Tramp he doesn't like the mention of Super Tramp uh they were yes they were really big around this time they switched from being a prog rock band to a more radio-friendly band uh I didn't know

what the song was called I've heard it a bunch oh it's called The Logical Song which is which is strange it's from their 79 album Breakfast in america it was a huge album i think they had an album the year after that was that was also very big so yes homer would be a super tramp listener in 1980 yeah this is if this is the first half of 1980 homer would be listening to this song that had come out in 79 so he totally would be and and you know what i think it's a good pick because you listen to the lyrics it's about growing up and becoming cynical and like it's like when i was young i thought life was so wonderful that you can read the lyrics online if you want to more and if this matters to you here's some information this is probably kip lennon singing this and you light up my life

is not sung by the actual they they're just doing covers to save money yeah you know what in both cases i count on finding out who sang these sometimes from the UK credits because you have to credit the songs more clearly in UK broadcast credits. But they always just say the original singer of the song. Clearly, they are not paying for the masters on these, nor should they. I mean, it works just the same. It's much cheaper to just get a sound alike and pay the songwriting fees but uh but yes homer sets the stage for the 80s it all happened at the beginning of that turbulent decade known as the 80s those were

idealistic days the candidacy of john anderson the rise of super tramp it was an exciting time to be young. When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful. For several years, I'd been dating your mother and working at the local fun center. Homer, you're turning the blades too fast. The golfers are complaining. Slow down. That's better. Oh, beautiful. Keep this up, and someday you'll be the guy who hands out the putters. Yes, sir! I was 24 years old with a beautiful girlfriend and a job with a future.

Hey, you're supposed to be listening to my story! I thought it was over. You had a problem turning blades. You overcame it. The feel-good story of the year. It's not our fault our generation and short attention spans, Dad. We watch an appalling amount of TV. Don't you ever, ever talk that way about television.

So, I wonder if that bit there is that they're afraid, it's the producers afraid that kids watching this will be like, oh, long flashback, I'm out of here. I'm not watching. Very little Bart content, too. Yes, oh, long flashback. I'm out of here. I'm not lying. Very little Bart content too. Yes, yeah. Light on Bart. I love that the kids wrote it.

Well, also the reality of it, if my parents sat me down like, time to tell you a 30-minute story about your life, I'd be like, I'm all right. Right, right, exactly. I just got Sonic the Hedgehog for Christmas. Let's play that. Yeah.

It's a more realistic portrayal of the modern American family than is seen on the other sitcoms of the time, where in a flashback episode, we would constantly see these children just sort of sitting, sort of beatifically gazing up at their parents' faces. They tell them this long, winding story about stuff that no child would or should care about. I'm sure when I was a kid, I thought Homer's job could possibly be real. But when I watch this as an adult, I'm like,

Oh, Homer is doing the job that a simple motor could do. And he has to be told how to do it right. So he just sits in a small dark box and turns a crank all day. That's stimulating enough for him. I think that gave Homerer big arms though doing that job but also probably like it's basically solitary confinement you know that i would think that did more damage to homer's brain uh as as most things do i and yeah i forgot too that homer so clearly

says he's 24 i was 24 with a job with a future like it. And that again would fit that he was 18 in 1974 when they went to the prom. It's 1980s, 24. Also, you can see he's starting to lose his hair. The hair is creeping back on old Homer here. I'm pouring one out for all of the people who worked on this show who are like meticulously keeping track of the timeline and the years and making sure that everything lined up perfectly with the ages and the years and the hairlines and all that kind of stuff. And then found that that was simply not going to be tenable.

I love the fade in on the past. We fade from Homer's face to the giant Professor Monkey. Yes. It's very clever. I like that. No, it's great to return to Sir Putz a lot in general because they bring it bring it up on the commentary this is jeff martin going back to the place he had written all about for he wrote dead putting society the the episode where bart battles todd rod flan nope todd on on the uh the putting course you know that probably also led to homer's

darkness there that he's like so frustrated on the course like i i worked this course for years and i i can't win this game and you know what i appreciate the fact that marge lived at home until she was 24 because that's the same age i was when i moved out so so i appreciate that it's also funny that homer homer will not let them blame tv but he's still mad and he he forces the youngest who can't get away to listen to his flashback that's pretty great and then homer's bad at telling a flashback he's like he tells a flashback story to set the scene and then the kids are like okay i guess that was a quick story we're out of here like but how can homer tell the events uh he wasn't present for i ask you the the listener at home

yeah i guess he probably well you know that's what works better in maggie makes three though that they they actually right now like no you're making that up that didn't happen a homer resumes his story we cut to margin home and uh al gina admits on the commentary multiple times in this he basically pauses a screen for four or five seconds because they were short on time and the first time i believe is this one where if you have your hd tv and your dvds out you can tell a screen has had pause pressed on it and you can see a little bit of artifacting when marge's mom off screen says okay girls you can smoke now like just to just to pad it out just a little bit and you know what marge's hair is smaller too in the

past though i should point out when she went to the prom in 74 marge's hair was at full height so perhaps she cut it shorter in the intervening years and also of course no mr bouvier in these shots leading you to assume he has died between the year 1974 and 1980 oh no they we wouldn't have an answer on his death from lung cancer until season 30, I think it was. Fairly recently. Yeah. I think there was some comic book explanation that he died on a roller coaster or something like that. Yeah, that had been floating around for a while.

I think it's what Matt Groening liked, but he could never get it in the show, but he could get it in the comics that he had more control over. But yes. I also love the line, line like if you like being plowed by some fan lazy you can get a cat it'll leave less hair on the couch i think like a uh something running through this episode is homer is actively losing hair yes yeah it won't be around for much longer and you know what when homer now when i see the scene of homer honking his horn like an asshole to get Marge to come out, I just think of that jerk in La La Land, the Ryan Gosling play.

That guy, that movie sucks. Some people liked it, not me. I never saw it. Moonlight was right to win it. That's for sure. And so, okay, then they go to see The Empire Strikes Back, which opening day-ish, you know, was May 21st, 1980. So Homer emerges, if they conceive Bart here, then it had to be after that date.

And then if Bart is the normal nine-month period, wasn't born prematurely, then he would have been born in, you know, February or march ish of 1981 though bob i guess you have the the theory that uh perhaps they they had sex before this night and marge maybe got pregnant like a month earlier that's a month or two maybe i mean i don't know uh it's not it's not perfect they they tried though they tried to make it work hey i'm i'm just uh this is just getting hyper gradual they probably are like well Empire Strikes Back came out in the early 1980s, right? Yeah, we'll just do that.

Like, yeah, I get it. It was not easy to find that information immediately like it is now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I also love Homer. Homer guesses about the apes being our masters. That's also very funny. And that is what happens in the Rosebud flash forward. So Homer is correct about the future, he's guessing. So they go into the movie. very funny and that is what the true that is what happens in the rosebud flash forward so homer is

correct about the future he's guessing so they go into the movie this is when when they come out homer becomes the first spoiler wow what an ending who'd have thought darth vader was luke skywalker's father oh thank you mr blow the picture for me mar, you're as pretty as Princess Leia and as smart as Yoda. Oh, Homer. You light up my days And fill my nights With song It can't be wrong When it feels so good right

Cause you You You You You You No, you. Light up my... Our song. I bet the guy she was singing that about was real happy.

Actually, she was singing about God. Oh, well, he's always happy. No way, he's always mad. And a lot of that scene was, the singing part anyways, was mostly ad-lib between Dan and Julie. They'll have fun, sing along with the song, make a bit out of it. You could tell that they were on Tracy Allman together. They're used to playing off of each other.

They were so good together. And I want to make an extra compliment on this that I didn't notice until really looking at animation and knowing how it works. This scene of them singing together, it's 20 seconds of uncut shot. Like, so 20 seconds straight with no cuts in it is really hard to animate, especially on a TV budget. And then on top of that, it's two characters singing at different tempos. So Homer and Marge are kind of off key and they're a little different.

And like, there's some really great specific movement in the animation that even makes me think that maybe they did some full animation or at least like i'd say most of the layout of it on the u.s side instead of sending it to uh overseas to korea like it's just it's amazing looking like yeah i i love seeing and it's so sweet it's just a cute moment like and who hasn't missung a lyric and then go like, right? Like that kind of thing. It's just so natural. I love it all. It's very sweet.

And so let's talk about the song, You Light Up My Life. So the most popular version is performed by Debbie Boone. Yes, the daughter of Pat Boone. You know, when the Simpsons go to the Flanders house and say everything has a creepy Pat Boone-ish quality to it? That's Pat Boone. Yes, yeah. A very wholesome Christian singer. So Marge is correct.

She is singing about God. This song was written for a 1977 movie of the same name, originally performed by someone else. It's not about God. It's a love ballad. But when Debbie sang it for her own album,bie sang it for her own album uh you light up my life she's like i'm choosing to believe this is about god now i i decided to have fun i was like who who wrote you light up my life i want to look into this oh a guy named joseph brooks what is up

with this guy and i will tell you friends out there i won't say anything else if you want to have a bad time look up joseph brooks because because I'd say he makes Harvey Weinstein look like Fred Rogers. That's all I'll say. Really bad stuff. It's one of the darkest Hollywood tales I've ever read, and this is the man who wrote You Light Up My Life. So if you want to ruin that song, if you like this song, look up more about Joseph Brooks.

Dark stuff, but hey, it's a nice song. Yeah, it's very sweet. Sounds like I'm complimenting him now um well he's dead uh spoilers yes yeah this uh i before this scene the empire strikes back stuff like this this is before spoiler culture became a thing like a spoiler warning but just the idea of a guy who instantly leaves the theater and says the the ending of the movie in front of the people who are coming and. Like sometimes in my youth, I get so excited leaving a movie theater and I go like,

uh, and just want to talk about everything I saw in the film. And then my friends have had to tell me like, I know we want all talking. Shut up. We are walking by people who are about to see this movie. Though. My first thought as a kid,

when I saw that scene, the guy says, thanks very much, Mr. Ruin the Picture for me. That guy sounds just like Megavolt from Darkwing Duck. So that's when I realized that Dan Castellaneta did Megavolt. As a kid, I was like, wait, that sounds just like Megavolt,

the electric mouse character from who's not Pikachu, not that electric mouse. He was the original Pikachu. He was. How do you feel about Marge redefining You Light light up my life is our song that didn't stick yeah they never play it again actually yeah it just goes it reverts back to closer to you or close to you yeah yeah i i don't like to hear it every now and then i mean it's it's interesting that sometimes people who adopt a song as their song it comes very naturally and then maybe

sometimes you have people who are desperate to find what the song is and sort of, you know, grasp at straws here and there to try to try to find that song. So that's I'm not sure. It seemed very sincere. It seemed very sweet. But then you're right. It is close to you, isn't it? Yeah. Yep. Though really close to you does have worse personal connotations for them because it's like the song march dance to at prom with not homer with arby ziff yeah but uh and also we hear the imperial marches they're walking out which probably pretty easy for them to get because it was owned by fox at the time or i would guess the song writing rights the song rights were owned by fox then like the publishing well they pay nothing now uh yeah well

and did you notice in the background on the coming soon poster the first space mutants they're doing space mutant jokes yeah because the gags where they're up to like five and six in in uh the recurring scenes of space mutants i guess it rolled out in 80 like a lot of uh horror franchises around that time early 80s that makes a lot of sense and this is when uh they they park uh and uh they they head up to oh also that they took homer's car it's the exact car he drove in 1974 and way we was as well down to the license plate but now he has a disco sucks bumper sticker that's the the one difference between this car in the next seven six years but all right champale that's what's getting uh loosening them both up for their nice night uh in the castle what is champale we we have talked about it uh somewhat recently in season 13's half decent proposal yeah i guess not the first champale

reference on on the simpsons well no this is chronologically oh yeah i mean like uh sorry not the only is what i meant oh yes but from looking at what they're drinking and looking at old ads from the time and champail did get big in the late 70s it is a malt beer that tastes like wine or champagne specifically that's that's its thing champ ale Ale, A-L-E. And it was advertised as a thing to have with for sexy times with the LA. Like look up specifically the ones for pink champagne, the kind of rosé style champagne. It was certainly pitched as a date night kind of drink. If your date is too classy for Ripple or Thunderbird. So I looked up like, you know, it's it was certainly a cheap beer uh for its time and

technically it apparently still exists like pabst owns it but as i was like oh this will be funny if i could buy some champagne me and bob could drink it uh while recording it ain't nowhere in california at all as far as i can see i couldn't even special order it if i wanted to so uh and basically when i search for like well what's a drink like champagne just says just buy like the the beer bottle size things of rose that are like two dollars just buy that like it's it's the same deal it's like well i don't need that i'm good but yeah at this point i feel like uh i mean you know sparkling wine at the time probably commanded more of a premium price than it does today, where I'm guessing there's just like way more winemaking areas, places that have been cultivated for winemaking.

So you can get you can you can go buy cheap wine. Right. And it's like you can go buy like inexpensive, sparkling rosé if you want to. You do not need malt liquor that sort of tastes like rosé anymore. Yeah. But of course, that makes me want to try it right yeah yeah i'm sure it's maybe three dollars at trader joe's to get their version of champagne yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah i think it was something to do with like wine production in america wasn't where it is at now and then on top of that like i think there were new import fees for like european ones or whatever right right right this is a weird this is a world before two buck chuck oh exactly

ah come on i'll chug a box right now a box i think you have franzia uh yes okay okay yeah yes two buck chuck is two dollars a bottle sir yeah that is fancy wine i've classed up i pay at least ten dollars for a bottle of wine now very good i bought most recent cheap wine i got was i was like oh it's you know summertime i and here's here's a sparkling uh ten dollar rosea target that's like peach flavor and i was like that sounds like good summer wine and uh that was good i i had a nice time in that one more fun than i would have more fun than i would have had with uh pink champaign uh but but homer marge you're having a lot of fun here and so okay i know that they want to write characters marge is a good girl in quotes who wouldn't have

premarital sex but i feel like even if i if i was an adult watching this in late 1991 wouldn't you think it's weird that two adults who are now 24 and have been dating for six years never had sex once or or is it just that they got drunk and didn't use protection i think that's it and they really can't say that on a 1991 sitcom oh is are we to assume that was the first time that they ever had sex boy i mean well the way marge says join the castle club like that makes me but they don't literally say they never had sex before they they don't say that and i it is hard to believe that a couple in their early 20s dated for six years exclusively never had sex right yeah that's true yeah but i guess same with like how you can't talk about choice with uh with pregnancy you also

you don't want to talk about condoms on a tv show as well back then like you don't mention that kind of stuff so okay then i i withdraw my my criticism that this was it was the first time that they had had sex inside any sort of castle whatsoever not simply a mini golf castle but just anyone yeah that increases your chances of pregnancy tenfold it does it points out on the commentary that does seem uncomfortable like there's really the positions they're gonna have to get it in there it's not i'm just saying there's not a lot of leeway in there especially homer's a bigger guy you know it's just it's a tight squeeze in inside of there for for two. And you know what's funny? They'd follow up on this in that season nine episode, Natural Born Kissers, where Marge

and Homer go back to the fun center to have sex, though they get caught having sex in the windmill, not in a castle. But I would assume they had sex all over the golf course in their utes. Though as a kid, the gag about the hole-in-one for a free game and Homer saying this place is impregnable, whew, way over my head. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very dirty joke. Yep, very good, very good. What was the classic train going through a tunnel at the end of, what movie was it? Was it North by Northwest? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that, I think, three times in theaters. It gets a huge laugh every time.

And so it's that. So it's that, but it's a miniature. So it's like, it's just adding on to the sort of the squalor of their relationship of like having sex in a miniature golf course, drinking champagne, living with, you know, Marge's parents and just all of the sort of like things they have to go through. And, you know, finally they get there. The magic isn't even a huge train going through a majestic mountainside. It's like a golf ball going through the free game hole. And one of the light bulbs is broken. You know, just all the little details and the sad shabbiness of all of it

is just constantly, constantly hit. You know, the Simpsons invented their own one that not enough people use. The hot dogs on the conveyor belt. Yeah. But then we cut to Homer and Barney. And man, you know, I wish in all the flashbacks they've done of Homer around this age, I want to see Homer and Barney as slob single roommates living together. Like they got years there. It's so perfect.

Like they're two gross guys on a couch watching watching charlie's angels together and also the great design they reveal that this is where barney still lives that so barney moved out and barney still lived there like that's so great and depending on when they're watching it in 1980 the charlie's angels lineup is uh jacqueline smith uh cheryl ladd and shelly hack or tanya roberts and all i know about shelly hack is a joke on King of the Hill where Cotton Hill turns on Charlie's Angels and says, Ah, it's a Shelly Hack. That's like getting a shimp. So apparently he did not like Shelly Hack. I don't know if other people don't like Shelly Hack, but it's like getting a shimp. That's great.

Also a rare time where Nancy cartwright plays an adult woman in in an episode doing the voice here saying like thanks charlie oh uh also they're eating straight cookie dough from the the tubes of instant cookie dough oh yeah berry company sold which it shows how ahead of the curve homer and barney were of eating cookie dough because it was one of those things like people say oh you know you know, and then you have a couple bites, you make cookies, you have a couple little bites of the uncooked dough for yourself and all that. But it was actually very recent at the time Ben and Jerry's mainstreamed it. The Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream flavor was first sold in 1984 in their local Vermont area shops. But when Ben and Jerry's went national, it was 1991 where it became their biggest seller.

At one time, two thirds of all the ice cream of Ben and Jerry's sold was cookie dough. Well, it's giving you permission to eat the forbidden food. The thing about that is I don't like the quote unquote safe cookie dough. You need to dance with the devil when you're eating cookie dough. You need the risk of salmonella poisoning that's half the fun if i if i'm having a ben and jerry's cookie dough is fine but i prefer the spin-off of it half baked where it's like half cookie dough and vanilla but also half brownie batter there's too much going on there well hey i i love a jam ben and jerry's full of concepts

busy ice cream yes yeah well it's also just that that marker of early adulthood of you know moving out and getting your own place and doing your own grocery shopping and sort of looking at the cookie dough and realizing that there's nobody to stop you anymore from simply buying the tube of cookie dough and eating it in your home uh like homer and barney are going to bake cookies together anyway oh right right right yeah yeah yeah also amazing animation on homer's squeeze of the cookie dough like the way the cookie dough like squishes out of the top i don't want to sound too gross describing it but it's it's it's another another suggestive uh piece of imagery if you will uh and so this is when though homer and marge learned the truth that's the cookie dough dust off your holo skirts angels i'm afraid

there's been a murder in hawaii hawaii it is charlie hello oh hi marge i need you to drive me to the doctor, Homer. Why? What's wrong? Well, that unforgettable night we joined the castle club. Oh. Well, uh, Miss Bouillier, I think we found the reason why you've been throwing up in the morning.

Congratulations. No! No! No! Poor guy. you've been throwing up in the morning congratulations poor guy perhaps this pamphlet will prove helpful so you've ruined your life so uh where marge is calling from it's a place called burgers burgers and uh this is a reference to the third episode of the series homer's odyssey where homer gets fired and marge says uh mr burger said i can go back to my old job whenever i want to and then we have a very poorly drawn scene of her serving uh burgers on roller skates to auto in his car so they even drew from that little bit of march history yeah i love that they kept that like yeah that is so great

they cared this much about the continuity even to keep in the lame season one joke of burgers the man's name b-e-r-g-e-r oh burgers that's the yeah so it's not the word burgers twice it's a possessive burgers burgers which yeah that's that's from the same era as candy most dandy or howard's flowers like the season one sign gags they got they got better at it yeah then also i just love the cuteness i i don't know that mars says that homer needs to drive her there like she doesn't own a car like they just have homer's car so and she's not gonna ask her parents or her mom or sisters to drive her there for this uh delicate moment and speaking of callbacks too they reanimated the scene from Way We Was.

If you remember in Way We Was, Bart asks how Homer proposed to Marge and they show this scene, but they redraw Homer to be the design of Homer for this episode. It was a different design in Way We Was. But yeah, it's just great. I just love like, how did you propose?

Well, we learned she was pregnant. That was my proposal though. Homer does a real proposal too. they rewrite that a little bit and we pointed it out in season 13's jaws wired shut they would repeat the so you've ruined your life pamphlet joke as well like i think they just forgot yeah yeah as hey you know as our guest on that episode pointed out you're allowed to repeat you know if it's uh 10 apart, you can repeat one pamphlet joke. We can forgive it. It's not, there's worse sins in comedy writing.

So then we get kind of a sequel. Speaking of sequel scenes from where we was, we get a scene where Abe is giving terrible advice. His previous one had been telling Homer, this girl is way out of your league. You need to aim lower. You're terrible. This one is him saying, before she smartens up, you get her right now. Like the fish jumped in the boat for it. i don't know is it bad advice i mean it actually maybe they both sound like fantastic pieces of advice like you know homer actually did you know completely um you know fall ass backwards into a great relationship with with a good person and

Abe is just like no yes exactly lock it down I think it's uh it's good advice with bad intentions Abe's uh intentions are you've got her trapped yes yeah yeah and also views her as a fish to be killed right yes absolutely yeah but I mean Abe obviously does not think of relationships as a partnership that's partially why he's's single at the time of this episode. Yes. Yeah. Also, you know, in the previous one, it showed that Abe probably never cooked a dinner once after his wife left.

So in the previous one, their dinner conversation is over a bucket of chicken with no plates. This time, just an open pizza box, no plates. They just, it's like, okay, it's the pizza night. I'm ordering the pizza. We just eat it together and i love the design of like kind of old abe in a shitty home it just it's a great ugly ugly design homer takes marge out and this is when he accidentally sort of proposes in a sweet moment is this it what's? Marge, from the first moment I saw you, I never wanted

to be with anyone else. I don't have much to offer you except all my love. Will you marry me? That's the card. Give it here. Oh, Homer.

This is the most beautiful moment of my life. So, will you marry me? Yes! Woohoo! Woohoo! Yeah! your life so will you marry me yes it's very it's very funny when she says you know this is the most beautiful moment of my life and his ass is just in the frame you can see his butt crack yeah good couple inches of butt crack oh beautiful yeah and i also love that homer goes like that's a car give it here he's just ass is just in the frame you could see his butt crack yeah good couple inches of butt crack oh

beautiful yeah and i also love that homer goes like that's a card give it here he's just he his intention is i'm gonna repeat all of this back to you now like i you know i i think they handled the writing of that card really well too because it sounds just good enough it's like homer on his best day could write this but it's not too flor. And like, I don't read it as too smart or too good of writing for Homer, you know, just saying like, I, I,

all I can offer you is my love. Like I could see Homer on his best day when he's drinking less in his, he can come up with a magazine. Yeah. Like this it's, it's, it's, it is within his capabilities to do this.

And he just happened to sort of nail it and won. Yeah. I wonder if this was, they don't say it on the commentary, I wonder if this was James L. Brooks writing it or just somebody doing a James L. Brooks style thing. But either way, it works just fine. Which, by the way, man, James L. Brooks, how many dudes have just stolen his lines like, you know, you make me want to be a better man type lines and just pass it off as their own thing they've said i hope it doesn't work yeah so henry and i do not have children but we have both gotten married two separate people since the first time we did this episode that's true and i i did not have to propose even though i was planning on it i was planning on doing it later in the year

my wife of course lives in canada i'm on my way to be living there and we were seeing an immigration lawyer to find out how I could move there. And he was like, well, you could, you know, get in on economic merit. You can get in through testing or you can just get married. And then we left, we were on the bus riding back and we were just like, let's just get married. And it was over. It was, it was, it was that easy. And I was going to propose to her like that holiday season, but I was like, I don't have to think about it. I don't have to think about it i don't have to think about it anymore well yeah you know with my husband we talked through it just pretty naturally it did also just come up in conversation like well we could just get married it was also for some

governmental benefit which of course is why it looks attractive to to some people who don't give a crap about like jesus or whatever But, but then, you know what my, we, we had a kind of, you know, more practical conversation, but then a week later, my husband actually got on one knee for me and in front of the,

the Castro movie theater in, in on Castro street in, in San Francisco, which was really, really special. And that's, that's also why, uh,

the changes to the Castro theater make me extra sad these days, but, but yeah, I, I hadn't even considered that Bob that since the last time we covered also why uh the changes to the castor theater make me extra sad these days but that's right but yeah i i hadn't even considered that bob that since the last time we covered this we have both met and gotten engaged and gotten married uh to our to our spouses that bus ride was very special yeah no hey mine was too yeah i believe your wife did a whole cartoon about the the actual presentation of an engagement ring you did later on, too. Like, yeah, it was very it sounded very sweet.

I did some romantic things. Yes. And no butt cracks were involved in either. I wear a belt. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. My wife and I think we kind of knew that we I mean, you know, we both kind of figured, yeah, we're probably going to get married so i knew i had to propose like a little bit earlier than would be usual because if i was going to actually have the element of

surprise i was going to have to do it a little sooner because then it was because any later and it was going to be like all right well he's probably going to propose at some point she's going to be looking out for it so i had to do it before she was looking out for it so i think about a year and a half into us dating we went to disneyland and i was like okay i'm going to propose and i was trying to figure out how to do it but um i decided to do it uh because the little mermaid ride had just opened and we were gonna ride it for the first time so i proposed in the in the middle of the little mermaid dark ride and um i proposed and i proposed to her and she goes she's like is it a joke and i was like no no no no seriously she's oh yeah yeah okay sure yeah

yeah it was great i'm surprised that disney employee didn't stop the ride and escort you off because i just saw a recent viral video of someone proposing in front of the sleeping beauty's castle yeah and they like moved them away like no no you can't do this you're like that was like disney france or something it was disneyland paris i think it was one of those things where it was like they were up on it was absolutely the wrong very rude and the wrong thing to do on disney's part but like they were up on like a a platform that was for performers or so i have no idea that was that was ridiculous no disney we got off the ride and uh i actually we get off the ride and there's a there was a guy at the end of the ride like oh did you guys have

a good time and i'm like yeah we got engaged she's like what like we got engaged on this ride and the guy was like wait stay right here don't move i'm like okay guy disappears and he comes back five minutes later with with a stack of like those tickets that they give you if like a kid pukes on you on the ride or else you have a bad experience or the ride breaks down and it gets you onto any other ride and he gives our group a stack of these things and he's just like you can use these to just go to the head of the fast pass of any ride you want you can just ride for free have a great day, everybody. And so it was pretty cool.

It was pretty great. I didn't actually expect that that was going to happen. But yeah, so that was it. We had a good proposal story. So good advice to our listeners. Get on a Disneyland ride with your wife. Take off your rings. Yes.

When you get off, be like, we just got we're going to get married and see how many tickets that gets you. Listen, Disney has us over a barrel we need to get whatever we can from them yeah exactly any advantage these are line hacks is what we're telling you guys yeah uh chris your story reminded me that a nice thing that happened was when my my husband proposed to me this was not planned but once he did it we then like took a few steps away from the front of the theater and we were going to go get dinner or whatever. That was our plan that night. And then this man and woman come up younger than us and they're like, did you just propose?

My girlfriend just took a picture of you guys together for it. And do you want us to send you a picture? We're like, wow, that was so nice. Oh, nice. Yeah, we actually have a photo of the moment. Unplanned. Holy cow. A photo of the moment.

How great is that? Yeah, it was. See, we're talking about love. Isn't it sweet? Well, hey, it's funny, Chris. You bring up the Little Mermaid because it's key to choosing a name for the Simpsons in this next clip. Dad, if the new baby is a girl, can we name her Ariel? I'm sorry.

The baby's name will be Cool Moe D. Simpson. Ariel! Cool Moe D. Ariel! Cool Moe D. Ariel! Cool Moe D. You know, I had this very same discussion with your mother ten years ago.

Homer, I've been thinking. If the baby's a boy, what do you think of the name Larry? Marge, we can't do that. All the kids will call him Larry Fairy. Well, how about Louie? We'll call him Screwy Louie. Bob? Slob. Luke? Puke.

Marcus? Mucus. What about Bart? Let's see. Bart, cart, dart, eart. Nope. Can't see any problem with that. Wow.

I'll take that ring. Yes, sir. And how will you be paying for it? I don't know. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit dejaden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care

i love a cute homer i don't know but yeah i great gag on uh jeff martin's part to pick the most intentionally dated get names he could like because ariel the little mermaid first debuted in november 1989 and cool modi's biggest hit uh album was in 1987 uh the album had his song wild wild west which i guess is most famous as for a sample of it was used by will smith in his song that's he was uh very i guess in the news or just somewhat popular because he was on the 91 grammy album of the year it was uh quincy jones back on the block and had a ton of performers he was one of them and also i was reading like he was a rap pioneer he did a lot of like rap feuds and rap battles and one of his most famous ones with was with llL Cool J.

They wrote songs about each other. And Mama Said Knock You Out is about Cool Moe D. Right, yeah. Which I guess that would mean LL Cool J, I think, won that one. Yeah. I think, yeah. And also I love the blur as they run away. Like Jeff Lynch got away with something there

with how they animated the kids running off. It's great. It's a nice little touch about how Bart and Lisa don't hear much of the story. Would you think you, Bart, as a kid would be interested in how he was named? But Bob, you've never been called Slob, have you? Actually, no. Yeah. It's never happened.

Homer was wrong. But of course, Bob and me, we never had to think about this because we have inherited names, boring inherited names. The parents didn't talk about it i mean chris how names figured out was it about the best thing that couldn't be mocked with a rhyme of some kind we couldn't think of names we couldn't think of names we named our kids after after you know people in our family both of them because we just we just we we couldn't do it we had to punt both times i'm so sorry um it was just it wasn't something that if my it's like yeah it's like if if my wife had been like you know buying books of baby names and going through and

like you know kind of obsessing about like what are the hot names for the for the you know the 2010s you know kind of a thing and I was just also just sort of like, I don't know, baby names. How do you name a baby? And so, yeah, we we punted. I mean, they're fine. They're good names. They're OK names like they're they're you know, I think they're I think they're good. They're good, serviceable quality names that any any child would would hopefully be proud to have. Yeah, I inherited my name, but it's a name you can set your watch to. And I'm one of very few Bobs of my age bracket in fact like some people have asked me is that is that really your name it's like yes bob is a real name it is a real name people do have it stumped with 10 and i feel like by the time i'm about to go uh you know off to heaven there probably will be new bobs popping

up because now it's like you see older names are coming back like little girls named opal and uh gertrude exactly and boys boys named Sebastian and things like that. I think these old names come back every hundred years. It does. It does. There's absolutely a cycle. Yeah. And there's names that people...

I mean, when I was growing up, every girl was named Jennifer, right? That was just like... So many Jennifer's. That was the name. Everybody was Jennifer. Well, and every boy was Chris. That's right. That's true.

It's right. I'm sorry. Chris, Ryan, or Matt? I think that made up about 40% of the games press. Yeah. Yeah's right. That's true. It's right. I'm sorry. Chris, Ryan, or Matt? I think that made up about 40% of the game's press. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. God, I felt like I felt different as well having a, well, my name was Henry, but as

a kid, I went by Max, which also I did not know a lot of Max's growing up either. Okay. Now we can ask questions about this Max thing, Henry. Did you pick that name? No, no, no. It was an assigned an assigned name basically where'd it come from i believe it was a compromise between parents okay that my father's name is henry i am the third henry though really you're not henry the eighth no not yet the famous song goes but my mom wanted a smaller name like Max. And my brother's name is Sam, though actually Samuel. So it was just decided that as far as the government and birth certificates and all

that were concerned, I would be Henry. And also my dad doesn't go by Henry. That is not, it's not what coworkers call him either. So it's just like, all right, at school, you're going to be Max, which, and so everybody called me Max all the time. It pretty much is, it hasn't been fully sunsetted in my life like a parent will still call me that every now and then but since i got a real job with bylines and stuff i've been going by henry even with them and so that's just how it

happened i don't mind hank if somebody wants to like call me hank but i just henry was just the easiest thing i don't gotta change driver's license and max does feel like a child's name to me now i know there's adults names max but for me mentally i couldn't go by max because i'm like well i'm not a kid anymore you know that's that's so there's there's your story well i mean i switched from uh bobby to bob at the age of 12 i made that decision wow 12 yeah and it took me to double that amount of time my my issue actually growing up with with the name uh is that um my name is not christopher christian or anything like that my actual full legal name on the birth certificate and everything is chris and this is

because my grandmother you know named my was gonna name my dad christopher and uh then she was like oh no that'll be too hard for him to spell so she decided like just just setting the bar super super low uh she decided it to just name him chris because christopher would be too hard for the child to wrap his his brain around and so now i am chris also and of course what's interesting is going through school i kept getting into arguments with teachers who were just like well obviously that's not your full name what's your full name so i can address you by your full name i'm like it's chris and they're like no you're wrong it's like that's good yeah boy already setting up stress points at school that's yeah i mean that was me as well at school in that i wanted to be called max in class and so pretty

much every every new teacher and start of the year was like okay henry and then i just have to like raise my hand like please call me Max or I'm Max actually. And then took some teachers longer than others to get it, which, hey, it's a hard job being a teacher. They got 80 kids to remember the names of. I don't blame them, but it got to be tough. People that go by their middle names, they're hiding from someone. And I know one of them. My middle name is so boring. it's like it is an old

man's name it's uh i feel like i'm about to dox myself but it is it's lloyd with two l's like two l lloyd like that feels like somebody in 1910 has that name my middle name is wayne and that's a good one wayne mackie but yeah it is and also it's very funny that homer he just goes letter by letter from b to e and he's one letter away from realizing that it rhymes with farts and he's like nope can't see any problem and they let it and they just they they let it um they let you the viewer complete the joke in your brain which is the best kind of humor so uh this is when Homer and Marge, well, they don't have much money, so they head across the border. Clearly they're going into Nevada,

but they don't want to make it obvious. But yeah, which this also was, I believe I learned it from this episode while watching it with my mom growing up, but this is how my parents got married too. They met in California and they're like, let's just do it. They actually got married too they they met in california and they're like uh let's just do it they actually got married in uh carson city not uh not even you know reno let alone vegas they

got married in carson city but yes it's they it's it's a tradition in california to like if you want to just a quick one just go across the border into nevada it's much much less stuff you got to fill out for a wedding there yeah and uh we we head to shotgun pete's wedding chapel great design on it i love i love shotgun pete's design the uh the parody of the the classic cowboy uh scene in on main street vegas vic vegas vic exactly yep yep and they would return to the scene in season eight where the millhouse divided is that correct yeah but then they they in future continuity they like to think oh no they had a wedding and people were there like in the movie they flash back to the wedding yeah and like a dance at the wedding when i like this very desperate uh and kind of a sad

attempt at like making it work here yeah when they revisited it in millhouse divided and they show that right afterwards they went to a truck stop and Homer bought her a Carvel wedding cake of you're a whale of a wife. Yeah, fudgy the whale. Fudgy the whale. That's so good, man. And yes, that's Doris Grav's voice again, which they say on the commentary. It's a sad, dark joke where Jeff Martin goes like, she loved to smoke. I have to say about Doris.

But yes, here also we meet a Cletus, but not the Cletus. Well, again, so it's like a few years later, Barnacle Bill would have been the sea captain. I mean, you couldn't have a character named Cletus and not have it be Cletus the slack-jawed yokel. So again, we see the embryonic versions of some of these jokes, these characters that they like, but they've not yet assumed their final form. Apparentlyetus was the name jeff martin worked into the show because he had a softball coach named cletus yeah yeah i think

and then mike reese says like jeff is from texas because it's uh it it sounds like it was a bunch of you know east coast or west coast writers mocking the one the diversity of the room was well this white guy is from texas let's make fun of him as a southerner but yeah it's cletus and eileen aileen they're great and yeah so jeff martin is like partial co-creator of cletus like cletus the slack-jawed yokel appeared after he left the show but clearly him putting cletus in the air then it's like he pollinated the room with Cletus. And then the flower bloomed later. Can we talk about Ted Bessel?

Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So Marge clearly had a crush on the actor Ted Bessel. She says, you may not look like Ted Bessel, but you're just as nice. So clearly Marge, young Marge, even younger Marge rather, was a fan of the sitcom That Girl. Because that was one of Ted Bessel's most notable roles. He played that girl's boyfriend and then fiance, Donald Hollinger. I've never seen that girl outside of parodies.

I can't tell anything else. But when the mention of Ted Bessel happens, Jeff Martin says, oh, a little bit of an in-joke there. Ted Bessel is part of the Gracie Films fold because he would later be a producer and director of the Tracy Ullman show he directed a segment on like almost every episode of the Tracy Ullman show so that's why they say he's nice yes and a director

of Sibs so maybe he was an asshole or maybe he really was nice maybe yeah I like to assume that he was probably nice but I hope they worked with him that much it's because they like him at least you know oh yeah around this time he is directing on sibs the other james l brooks sam simon sitcom that uh was on hiatus at this point and would come back a few months later uh and then get canceled swiftly but you know somebody recently shared with us a bunch of episodes of sibs i feel like we got to watch him just for like completeness sake of knowing

knowing what the deal with was with sin uh dan castaneda and alex rocco are cast members okay i uh and then i see bessel died like sadly in just five years after this episode aired in 1996 but yeah it's like i guess i could see it both ways that either james l brooks likes him and it's a wink to his uh their friend or he just is nice and then it's like we all know secretly he's a jerk as a director but let's let's let's air it but yeah i think it's great that i think it totally fits for marge's character like she would have been like 13 or something watching that girl and which is a show about you know young romance so i could see aspirational 13 year old marge thinking like this is the man I want to marry I hope to marry someone as nice as him like I could see that it's it makes it extra cute and uh this uh the the exchanging of vows

Hank Azaria is so so funny as the preacher in this thing I gotta be sure to get this punched every time the 10th wedding is on the house hey this marriage is gonna last forever. No matter how many times I hear that, it always makes me laugh. Cletus, do you take a lien to be a lawful wedded wife? Yep. Done. Next! There certainly are a lot of stains on the ceiling. Marge, I'm sorry. I wish I could afford a better place. Homer, I'd be lying if I said that this is how

I pictured my wedding day. But you are how I pictured my husband. I am? Well, you may not look like Ted Bessel, but you're just as nice. Hmm. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God in this casino to join...

Homer. And... Marge. In holy matrimony. Beautiful. Do you Marjorie Bouvier take Homer J. Simpson to be your lawful wedded husband? I do. Homer, same question, names reversed.

I do. Then, by the power vested in me by the state gaming commission, I pronounce you man and wife. Here's $10 worth of chips. You may kiss the bride. Next! Same question, names reversed. That's such a great, great line. I think children need the red eyes in the picture explained to them.

Oh, yes. Yeah, it's true. Do iPhone flashes do that? I don't know i know well they do but they uh the iphone catches it and it removes it you know before you see it i mean i'm making that up but i'm pretty sure that's true that sounds right yeah i feel like i've seen an ad for iphones that say that well this reminded me too speaking of like personal memories that have changed since then like yeah my my husband and i we did not spend a lot of money on a big ceremony either

we just did it at but we did it at an important place we did it at city hall uh but we did you know at san francisco city hall uh for us that is where historical place for same-sex marriage as well that even has you know a statue tribute to harvey milk i believe it's also where he was murdered too in that building but that's you know that's less fun but what i'm saying is it's also where he was murdered too in that building. But that's less fun. But what I'm saying is it's just very – it made it a nice day. We got dressed up for it. Bob was there. I was. We went on tuxes.

We rented tuxes and bought an exchange and then returned hats, which my stepfather made the joke that I had a mini pearl hat. And then he said to us, you don't get that reference and bob let my stepdad know he did get that reference i said i have a podcast sir uh because i got married in january 2nd of 2021 it was outside uh in the backyard of a friend of the show ian boothby with a minimum amount of people required to be there because nobody had vaccines yet and uh that's my story and it was pouring rain but we had fun we had fun well the follow-up the next year we

just stayed in vancouver that was a great yes that made up for it great great time i mean as a preacher it's so cute like he's just so zipping him through it and also anytime i notice stains on the ceiling i think of marge marge is just statement of fact of like you sure are a lot of stains on the ceiling here and then of course they head home and their first night they can't even they they couldn't even afford a hotel room for one night they come back home the very same day to live at Marge's house I guess I mean there's no way Marge could move in with Homer and Barney like I would guess Marge off screen in a scene we didn't say like i am not living with bardy gumpel you're moving into my parents house if you're doing anything here no they get shut down by uh the i was certain that

patty and some were like they are not going to have sex in our living room like homer simpson is not doing that on their wedding night i noticed it was patty's silhouette and there's an important distinction that jeff martin really nails and that selma has a bit of more of a softness to her and patty is like just stone uh heart of stone yes yeah and that really plays out in the towards the end of the episode but there is a difference between the two characters yeah yeah that difference would grow over time but yeah this really sets it up that that patty is just she is the cruel one like and now we know she's unhappy because she has to be closeted yeah and she's forced in the closet by her family and society yeah so chris where where are baby monitors at these days is it just

webcams or i guess you haven't used them as much uh lately um not no not as much like in fact we never actually did a baby monitor we never i mean we are, the houses that we've lived in, there's not a lot of distance between the, where the baby sleeps and where we sleep. So I mean, they start crying or moving around or whatever. Yeah, you can pretty much hear it. You know, we don't need full on baby monitor. Although I mean, yeah, we did like look into some of the things that parents are using. And yeah, I mean, as you might imagine, the technology has increased considerably if you want that full-on 1080p you know view into into what's going on or any movement things like that baby monitors and then of course you have your people who have the nanny cams and and things like that yes of course they've been increasing in technological power i guess anybody with a

webcam that can twitch stream they're just watching the they're watching their baby all the time they're not twitch streaming it though i hope i would hope not get one of those ring cameras just stick it on the crib you know the kids got to learn about ring lights uh sometimes yes baby's stealing my mail the baby needs to be properly lit while while being lit too with a ring cam ring light you're he's talking about ring cams you're talking about ring lights they're both they're similar jokes but yeah uh and then for the first time in her life but hardly the last marge grumbles over a calculator about finances homer i guess too it's a mark of the 80s homer's like well yeah i'll just put everything on credit credit cards are not a dirty word anymore in the

80s everybody has a credit card right everybody's getting in huge amounts of debt for the first time too i love homer just anytime on the show if you look out the window your next plot point is right there and in this case he sees like they're right by the power plant with green smoke coming out of it right there clearly giving them cancer as they speak yes yeah yeah and the cooling powers were glowing on the horizon during the proposal scene yes yeah yeah and also foreshadowing many foreshadowing yes it's very literary and speaking of foreshadowing too it's the first of many scenes about homer being made sterile by the power plant as you said chris he he they mentioned it in the eight misbehaving one before homer is celebrating it he's like well we're not gonna

have more kids right and then of course homer uh at the end of season three though really it's like season four because it aired in august but at the end of season three the plant learns that homer is sterile and they give him the first annual montgomery burns award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence as cover for it homer's lazy sperm uh the is is right there but then comes this amazing oh man this bit about applying for jobs and everything that makes you nervous at a job interview. Like, this is so great, though. I've never had to do a group interview for a job. It's always been one on one.

I don't know how normal these group interview things are for people. I've never done this, though. Certainly works better for comedy is Homer gets to be the third guy in it who's the bad one. It works out great. Yeah, when you realize you're the comedy option in this group of three, it's not good news. Here's the start of the job interview here. Look what I got, Marge.

It's a baby monitor. Baby to Marge. Baby to Marge. Where? Where? Over. I don't know how we can afford all these things on your salary. Over. I don't know how we can afford all these things on your salary. Hey, why don't I apply at the nuclear power plant? I hear they pay pretty well. I don't know.

I heard radiation can make you sterile. Now you tell me. We only have two openings, so I'm afraid one of you will have to go home empty-handed. But it won't be my old frat buddy, Luke. How are you doing, you old alpha-tow? Smithers, you kegmeister, you! Hey!

Well, hey, I'm from the Alabama tractor! Oh, me! Oh, well, let's get on with the testing. Roll on. Roll on. Alpha Tau. Tau. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, God. The accent on the Alabama chapter guy is so good. Alabama chapter. I'm from Alabama chapter. I guess we're learning more things about smithers he was a kegmeister you know i chalk that up to him being deeply in the closet then or trying to prove his uh not that being gay means you can't be also a kegmeister but the type of gay man that smithers is who collects dolls and everything and it has a little dog

named herky i would think he doesn't say kegmeister to me uh so i would think that was him trying to prove how hetero he was being in the closet in college but yeah i mean it's so it's so funny the way homer is drawn on the outside of these secret handshakes and everybody's singing their songs he just looks so so sad and the way smithers won't even really talk to homer and goes like oh well let's get on with the testing yes he's just obligated to do this formality and then he's decided so we have a quick cut to bart uh in an ultrasound and a gag that he's mooting them and and chris this reminded me you discovered something

me and bob had never heard of before during your your search uh for your research trip at the toy museum oh that's right which one oh are we talking about the um the baby bart the baby bart merchandise yes that's right yes so okay so yes as part of researching actually ninja turtles cowabunga collection i went out to the strong museum of play in Rochester, New York, which has tons and tons of just stuff from the toy industry. I mean, they collect, you know, they have a huge collection of toys and video games, things like that. But they have all the sort of behind the scenes stuff. And they have Play Things magazine, which was like the magazine of the toy industry. And these are very, these are not well documented.

Not a lot of these are still kind of surviving. But there's these big, thick magazines are just for like toy toy industry people. And so I found a big ad an advertisement for a proposed product line would have been around this this time, you know, early early 90s for baby Bart merchandise, the idea that they were going to roll out a line of baby Bart branded really, I think the idea was they were placing this ad to try to see what toy manufacturers, toy or item or textile manufacturers might want to get in on the Baby Bart on the ground floor of the Baby Bart business. But yeah, that was something that they were considering. That was amazing to see that art. Because, yeah, I mean, it looks like the general design of Baby Bart that we'd seen in other episodes.

And it looks great. But, yeah, I'd never heard of that and and i i think you're right that it was probably just a pitch made in industry mags but there wasn't enough you know not enough people bit on it the bait the bait wasn't taken and it wasn't made i yeah i feel like growing up i'd occasionally see like maggie things if they were i think so yeah if they were trying to sell something to the under four or under three, the three and under demographic of toys for Simpsons, usually they just went with Maggie. But though I guess, you know, Bart is a more popular character than Maggie,

so I can see how they'd go with baby Bart. But yeah, it's like, to me, it does feel a little weird of like, how do you sell cute things with the hell raising Bart even in cute baby mode? He's not, he's still not even that cute too controversial to put bart on your child yeah that's true i just want to say thank you chris again for sharing with us that thing i'd never seen it well as i'm going through everything like just page by page looking for ninja turtles related stuff i just kept coming across like simpsons or like tiny tunes you know stuff that i'm like oh i've never seen that before oh nobody's

ever seen that before because it you know it never made it onto the Internet or whatever. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll just I should tell Henry and Bob about it at least. Yeah, you know, now we live in a time where key arts and all that stuff gets made available like instantly and it's archived on a wiki page. But back then, right, that stuff was just for industry eyes only. Then we have the second part of the job interview, which makes it clear that we're Homer to Ben on equal footing with these guys anyway. He absolutely should not have this job. What would each of you say is your worst quality? Well, I am a workaholic.

Well, I push myself too hard. Well, it takes me a long time to learn anything. I'm kind of a goof-off. Okay, that'll do. Little stuff starts disappearing from the workplace. That's enough. Next, there's a problem with the reactor. What do you do? There's a problem with the reactor? We're all gonna die! Did you get the job? Nah, they wanted someone good. Story of my life. Oh, honey.

Hey, come over here and kill our baby kicking. Wow. Kid, I won't let you down. I swear to you, when you come out of there, the first thing you're going to see is a man with a good job. Yeah, the doctor. And there's that song too which yes the second i hearing it just now i was like well i didn't pay for the dolly parton version no no it's a good sound alike it is it is uh and when homer like so before smithers to give us the hypothetical about the there's a meltdown or whatever homer is

framed in front of the window and every time i watch this i think he's going to jump through the window but no that's the other guy who jumps through the window the pyramid scheme guy coming up next i wonder if they they kept that framing in the background and originally had him jump out the window and then after the storyboard they're like no no i can't we can't have two window jump things they need to though i mean him running out the door pays off with a even better joke than in the next time we see smithers the fact that he ran out the door it leads to a better joke and i also love homer just lists his very real what the he's taking the stock interview question literally of like i'll list my real worst qualities like i'm gonna steal stuff i'm very good at very bad

at learning i hate all of the all of these questions i i i really hope i'll never have to be given a traditional interview ever again yeah because they they still ask these questions like name a situation in which you thought you handled it well or like or poorly and then you get the where do you see yourself like i feel like we should have moved on past these questions well you know hiring managers they're very they're probably doing this the the few the couple times i ever had to do it and i hope to never do it on the other side again either i'm doing a whole lot other work i got no time for this yeah and and and the boss who i was doing the interviews for he worked even less hard on talking to people bob you got to see that boss

give you like no time at all i think barely make eye contact with you yeah basically yeah yeah hey but you got that job yes yeah after three months of waiting for that guy to sign up was definitely worth it well me and bob though we were also singing the alpha towel theme when i got when bob got hired there yeah that's what's up that's important yeah no bob got about on got it on his own merits. But anyway, yeah, Homer's not getting the job. Again, that joke, the doctor, great gag. You know what?

The song 9 to 5 was released in November 1980, so I'm going to say officially not apocryphal for this episode set in 1980. We get a series of Homer bad jobs, him in the colonial Williamsburg-style place of, like, the kid saying, what a crappy candle like god damn what a good the way this one candle pushed their vacation over the edge yes yeah and this is the first time in the posing of the kid kicking homer while he's in the stocks i do think the kid didn't he kicked homer uh right in the bread basket i think i think he went uh and then uh homer stabs a woman or cuts her hand open at least like the

the way that woman screamed it still haunts me man and also they i was watching it with subtitles on and he was like our never doll it's subtitled as like our never doll knives like never dash doll but the way he actually pronounces it you can you can hear that the actual brand name is nev and then dash and then a letter r and then dash dolls like our nev r doll knives yeah yeah yeah i i also think those knives are a parody of the then very popular in the early 80s ginsu knives yeah i think so yep yep yep which when i was a kid those ads mesmerized me you wanted you wanted to cut through those cans, right? Yes, yeah.

I don't. My parents were never going to let me touch a knife, even a dull one, not ones that never lose it. But yeah, just seeing the way that guy cut through that tin can and then right to the tomatoes. I was like, wow, that's the greatest knife I ever heard of. Though even now when I've watched videos by food YouTubers of best knives to get, they don't say Ginzu knives, but they do say a Japanese knife is their favorite knife. They are the sharpest and the nicest. I do use a giant Japanese knife for all of my cutting needs.

Do you also still get a whetstone monster hunter style? No. Sharpen it? Okay. I don't. I don't go that far. I like to think homer killed this woman like she bled to death or at least he had to call this he had to call an ambulance

right uh then homer gets torn apart by dogs at the pitiless pup school which they hang on the very long which aljean sheepishly admits like yes it was to buy time we had we were five seconds short like i think that it feels to me the gag is homer is kind of just realizing what his job is yeah even after reading the sign he's surprised when dogs attack him i thought you said you like dogs like that's great and great animation out of being torn apart man and then yes homer then finds himself into a multi-level marketing scheme sure mlm and uh this i love too that homer's like i said it first i said it first about being getting rich today but you know what a trapezoid does seem like a better deal because obviously in a pyramid scheme everything's going to the top of the pyramid if it's a trapezoid you

know it's spread out more at the top i i'm sold on this trapezoid scheme i want to sign up right now for it it sounds like the guys at the top they share more and there's more more at the top. I'm sold on this trapezoid scheme. I want to sign up right now for it. It sounds like the guys at the top, they share it more. And there's more space at the top. There's more people at the bottom though, right? Well, sure. I mean, you know, it's a shorter walk to the top two of the trapezoid than the pyramid. I guess so. Yeah.

But then, of course, the man jumps out the window instantly, saving Homer from losing even more money every time i see this bit of marge reading the bills i think she's gonna say some guys are coming me too me too but that's in the front next year right yeah so they basically just repeat this joke we break thumbs is funny but some guys are coming is funnier and the first appearance of the repo depot the incredibly friendly repo man who says repossessing stuff is the hardest appearance of the Repo Depot, the incredibly friendly Repo Man, who says, repossessing stuff is the hardest part of my job. I mean, it is quite a low moment that Homer has to watch Marge lose her ring right in front of them.

You can see why Homer leaves. But speaking of season one stuff with Burgers Burgers, Homer's thing of using a stationary gag from the pen ofty and a long scene of a guy writing a letter that is season one simpsons right there it really is yeah well i think there were like maybe four scenes of people writing letters in season one yes there's a lot this this for some reason what i don't know why but this one is uh they just stage better i think they just cut to different angles yeah yeah i think i think it works a lot it works a lot better and and they say on the commentary they worked very hard in this letter homer writes that it they want to justify for the audience how bad it is to like you know even if

you're feeling guilty you probably shouldn't leave your pregnant spouse uh in the middle of their pregnancy no matter how much shame you feel yeah yeah i gotta think he's sleeping on barney's couch this whole time he's gone because he's selling his car so he's not sleeping out of his car so it must just be that he's back with barney but and i also love shut up with that pen scratching down there like it's that that loud to patty but yes homer leaves he puts a for sale sign in his car which i assume means why he doesn't have the car later on though now i think about it i can't think of an episode that's like how they got their first car and we've seen the story of how homer gets his blue pants that's true yeah that's uh an origin story we don't have yet

you know that's for our season 35 pitch we've i'll get in the dms this uh a couple simpsons producers see if they like it how homer bought his first car but yeah yeah, so Homer abandons her, though, at the sad end of Act 2. Dear Marge, by the time you read this, I will be gone. You deserve all the finest things in the world. And although I can give them to you, they will be repossessed and I will be hunted down like a dog. Also, it has become clear that your family doesn't want me here. Shut up with that pen scratching down there! I will send you every cent I earn for the baby.

But you will not see me again. Until I am a man. That is so sad. Oh, come on, honey. You know how it turns out. After all, you wouldn't be here today if I hadn't become the responsible head of a household. Hey, Homer, can we have a can of frosting for lunch? Okay. So, Chris, how many cans of frosting is it responsible to let your kids have in a week?

For lunch or dinner, because I think that those are obviously two very different meals. Yeah, the dinner frosting can is a bigger can. It is a bigger can. It is a bigger can, yeah. As an adult, you realize, like, I could eat a whole can of frosting. I would never do that of course i my my little brother actually he was closer to guilty of this than me growing up i i look i like frosting just fine as a kid but i wouldn't have even asked to and i liked eating treats don't

get me wrong but but it was my brother who if we were given cupcakes as a treat for instance i would eat the whole cupcake but my brother would lick the frosting off of the top of it and say and then hand my mom a clean cupcake and say here you can have the rest and he just my brother was a frosting only cupcake eater is he doing okay now oh he's fine he's honestly i see him on uh he he was always in better shape than me i have to admit and he it was all the frosting frosting gave me energy vitamins and minerals and frosting you know i was eating those carbs of the rest of the cupcake i should just been sticking to the frosting like him he was on was that some sort of keto diet uh i believe now my brother is like uh he's really into yoga i think so he's he's quite healthy these days yes

i also love that homer takes his Homer takes his disco sucks thing with him. He's got to make sure people know even when he's on the job hunt. Then they cut to the start of the next scene. If you pause and look at it, the letter Marge has in front of her is the letter Homer just wrote. It's all the same text. It's verbatim, yeah. Though I do love the very 80-yard line of, I thought he'd two-time you for a while first. Like, that's such a great line.

Patty rubbing it in extra. And then we see our first ever appearance of Gulp and Blow, which I guess is a Taco Bell-style restaurant since mainly they're eating tacos there. I think so. Yeah, I just remember it for its other appearance in which Sideshow Mel goes to work there. For the wonderful Mr johansson yes he's not the manager of homer yeah i guess johansson showed up after homer's time there but it's uh yeah the it's such gross food joke i i i'm trying to i was sitting here trying to think like what are they blowing what is the joke oh like like blow out of there like like run in

gulp everything down and and blow right out okay all right it sounded like a more vulgar version of like dine and dash yes yeah yeah it sounds yeah exactly it sounds gross but i'm like oh okay it's different kind of yeah yeah i love how julie goes gulp blow yeah oh the way she says it is so funny uh and also they joke about that it took them they were up late nights trying to think of gulp and blow is a funny name and aljean jokes it probably ruined my own marriage and yes aljean got divorced during his his first run oh no hey he's happily married now he's been married to the the same lady who also works on the simpsons for the past i think 24 years 20 i think it was 98 99 stephanie

gillis yeah stephanie gillis yeah early 2000s they got married i don't mean to sound like a stalker of algae he says these things on commentary we're his biographers yes uh i'm going to biographize gee okay so um also great sound effects on patty choking like like asmr people here but i feel like they're implying this is the last time homer ever had hair and it's going to be gone soon yes yeah fulfilling up people's meals so actually so again sam simon didn't even understand the scope of what was going on here because it's the story of how they got married how bart was born how homer got his job at the nuclear power plant and how he lost all of his hair you know due to the stress of all of those things as well so it's

really a four it's a it's a it's a four-parter yeah yeah i'm i'm shocked they didn't buy the house in this episode too and just kill kill that one as well yeah yeah you figure it would have ended with them buying the the house i don't know yeah this is a really good little uh morality play here because you know patty and selma all they've wanted is for marge to not be with homer here's homer left her and so but they also see that marge is in pain so they are weighing like what do we what do we do what do we do and the the way patty silences selma to be like hey shop don't be so stupid like it's so uh it's it's great you see that slelma actually cares

more about marge than she hates homer while meanwhile patty hates homer more than she loves marge but homer sends a few a little bit of money at uh to marge and uh this is also when we see homer sitting outside of the plant looking so sad and i gotta say i've every time i say all the colors of the rainbow i'm saying it like this guy i've every time i say all the colors of the rainbow i'm saying it like this guy and because this guy says it in the in the episode which he's supposed to sound like uh the tin man himself jack haley and this is the origin of where the donuts of the power plant come from so they're covering that too just like how do they get the donuts oh they're delivered okay that's the guy who's gonna buy a boat thanks to homer yeah oh yeah he was uh this is the last appearance of rolling donuts yeah yeah it's oh you know what

no when they take away the donuts in marge gets a job that's the guy with the chain trying to fight back people so yeah it's not long for this world yes yeah marge is still looking worried and selma realizes not only is it bad for Marge to stay up so late it's also bad for the baby this is when Marge learns the truth Marge what are you doing up you need your rest dear I heard a noise outside and thought it might be Homer

when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf of desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit desjardins.com care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? What the hell? Marge, I've got two and a half words for you.

Go put and blow. Yeah, what do you want? My husband by my side. You want fries with that? Homer? Marge? Homer! Marge! Holy cow, you're as big as a house.

Homer, come home with me. No, Marge. I just can't. I mean, look at me. I'm a trainee. They won't even tell me what's in the secret sauce. And I can't buy you a decent wedding ring. Any ring is fine as long as it's from you.

Marge. Poor Voo. Would you mind if I took it off now? The oil is burning my finger. Oh, sure. Then he eats it. I love that because it's such a sweet scene that could just end there but that it has to have the reality come in of march saying like this actually really hurts could you please take it i'd really rather you didn't yeah it's a nice move that she puts her finger in her mouth to sort of like cool

the burn after that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then of course homer eats it immediately yeah you can't and no time doesn't enter homer's mind like oh this is such a sweet moment maybe i want to save this onion ring he's like all right he just eats it yeah i think it's adr but homer says poor vu as he puts it on which is a reference to how they met over learning french like that she taught french to him it's it's so sweet they they pretty much never bring that up ever again how the french language is integral to their love story i also i i think probably probably pregnant people don't like being told you're as big as a house i think that they probably don't like those things yeah do we need to talk about uh jr so homer rips off his shirt yes he

finally thanks to marge gives him the burst of confidence he needs, and he rips off his trainee shirt. To reveal I shot J.R. Yes. So Dallas info. I'm sure we covered this on Who Shot Mr. Burns, but obviously that's a parody of Who Shot J.R., the phenomenon, the TV phenomenon on the late night soap Dallas. So J.R. was shot on Dallas on March 21st, 1980, during the season three finale, A House Divided. So this episode takes place between that date and season four, episode four of Dallas, which aired on November 21st, 1980,

which reveals the murder of J.R. Man. It was a baby. Homer couldn't wear the I shot J.R. shirt after they revealed the murder? The shirt would disintegrate at that point. I had a brief run-in uh in a way with larry hagman the actor who played jr because uh as soon as i moved away from ohio after i got my graduate

degree i got a job at a real estate magazine i had to wear like nice clothes to work there and we were like writing descriptions of houses that cost tens of millions of dollars that we couldn't actually visit we were given pictures of them and told to write about them and my boss gave me uh the dossier for the next thing i had to write up and it was larry hagman's uh mansion and i was like okay and i joked to my boss hey how about i put in this now you can shoot jr no no reaction at all i think they were concerned i was like no no no it's a dallas dallas joke remember who shot jr and they're just like okay okay man but yeah they did not understand pop culture references at this uh at this real estate company so yeah they thought i wanted to shoot uh jr ewing myself i bet that would have helped sell that uh that uh that house but put that in there

larry hagman did not buy my die by my hand okay but his 22 million dollar house i'm sure it's sold very well based based on my write-up so i helped sell larry hagman's house i also can't believe that cliffhanger lasted from march to november like i mean that's a long between seasons back then like it used to be like it end in may and start back in september like simpsons even did like end in late may start in august but march to november that's why it was remembered so well because it was this thing that had lasted for some people discussed it for such a long time before it was finally revealed yeah the season ended in march that's crazy yeah though you know what now in the streaming age like for if there's a big cliffhanger and say stranger things you might be waiting 16 months to

three depending on if a pandemic happens four years you might end up waiting that's right for a resolution that's again where they pause on it just in case they're like you know let's pause for another four seconds we can make sure everybody reads i shot jr on that shit. Speaking of timelines that don't exactly line up, I mean, Chris, you know this well too, that how exactly do you pin down a release date for an arcade game, right? Yeah, you basically don't. Well, there are, you know, the way you do it

is you look at what's being printed sometimes in like trade magazines and things like that. And you're sort of looking for the issue where it says it's coming soon versus the issue where it says it's already available. You know, sometimes it can be something like that. It can be kind of difficult. I mean, you know, usually a lot of it comes from the companies themselves. They say, oh, you know, this is our official release date for this. But a lot of times that can be, mean nothing really had like you know video games

arcade games even console games nothing really had released dates you know that were so specific back in the day so we know the windows we know the windows and everything is slightly different there might be order forms that you might be able to go back to and look at or yeah but also it might be regional i mean what's the release date is the date they first put a few units out to test somewhere to see if people liked it you know and then they went back and they tweaked it? Or was it when it went national and everybody could order it? Who knows? on November 22nd of 1980, Midway announced the acquisition of the game and manufacturing rights. So it has to be after that date. Presumably in December of 1980 is when Pac-Man started appearing in America.

Of course, it's also very clearly like it looks like Pac-Man, but they've also done a lot of, I feel like the Simpsons now, if they were just put Pac-Man in it, they would just go full on and just put Pac-Man in versus whereas this, it seems like they felt like they had to make some changes to it so it wasn't quite trademark infringing pac-man they definitely say on the commentary they wanted to

make sure they didn't they were told don't draw a pac-man or well what isn't there a bow on the hair and there is so it's technically 1982's miss pac-Man. But yeah. Yeah. But even less. I think Mr. Burns is a real gamer of this era. He's importing arcade games. He's got the money for it. Secretly, he was an investor in Midway back then. Like Burns was a prototype machine from them. Yeah. Although I don't know if it would have been a stand up cabinet from Japan.

Right. It might have more been one of the cocktail tables because that was sort of what was more popular so i mean who knows it's probably best to not think too too hard about it you know unlike the tv and music and movie references in this that they're very directive like this was a thing that happened in 1980 or something from 79 still listened to in 1980 in this case it really is just them going like i think i remember playing pac-man in 1980 yeah yeah that was there let's put that in there yeah yeah yeah well i mean it's all of a piece because video games weren't considered at that time to be the sort of cultural force that movies and tv and things like that were so there's less uh there was less study of them and so less information available about when they came out but But then also even to the people making the jokes, there was less of a sense of, oh, we have to nail our video game history here in the same way that they wanted to nail their TV or their movie or their music history as well.

And of course, now, you know, speaking of legal limbo stuff with Ms. Pac-Man, she's in kind of a weird zone right now where, oh, you're right. Yeah. now where oh you're right yeah like miss miss pac-man it's so complicated but there's like some series of lawsuits that complicate who even owns her and so in some recent namco museum style releases of pac-man the character has been digitally replaced with the character pac-mom so uh miss pac-man not currently appearing in pac-man games i i hope they sort it out because i hate seeing i hate seeing pac-man and miss pac-man broken up an important distinction though folks it's ms pac-man that's a feminist distinction from miss pac-man all right march uh as march says struck a blow for women's rights yeah yeah you know what that's that's what they learned between

episodes they learned that miss pac-man would have been a two years later when lisa was born in 82 so there you go they so they did learn that's true this yeah i also just love burns burns his reaction to playing it like that every uh it's same in the the burn sells the plant to the germans episode if he does beekeeping he still has to do these kind of florid speeches and so while playing miss pac-man he has said like now the hunter has become the hunted like and the way it's reflected in his crow in his bald fate head like oh so good and and this was the first time i caught this as i think an intentional joke everybody even grandpa is drawn younger burns is the only guy whose character model is the exact same. Sure. He is ageless as the old man. He's only 93 in this flashback.

Homer interrupts Burns' revelry. That's it. That's it. Come closer. Ironic, isn't it? The hunter has become the hunted. Oh, God, Smithers, I feel so alive! You the boss?

Yes. I'll call security, sir. Well, listen to me, Mr. Big Shot. If you're looking for the kind of employee who takes abuse and never sticks up for himself, I'm your man! You can treat me like dirt, and I'll still kiss your butt and call it ice cream! And if you don't like it, and I'll still kiss your butt and call it ice cream. And if you don't like

it, I can change. Hold the phone, Smithers. I like your attitude. Feisty yet spineless. Sir, this man not only failed the aptitude test, he got trapped in a closet on his way out. I don't care. I haven't been this impressed since I first laid eyes on a young bootlick named Waylon Smithies. You mean? Welcome aboard, son. I got the job. I got the job! Woo-hoo! Only in America could I get a job.

Who was that young Bill Gates Smithies? Homer Simpson, sir. Simpson, eh? I'll remember that name. What a great show. So first, Mr. Burns, not to say on the Pac-Man thing too much, but Mr. Burns basically invents new games journalism here. I mean, it's absolutely, absolutely like there is something about like that is where games criticism went much, much later. Like, whereas in 1991, magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly were still just hung up on graphics and fun factor and replayability. Mr. Burns, you know, absolutely captures the the sense of describing the game based on the way that it makes you feel and the

and the deep sort of, you know, that the hunter has become the hunted the narrative and everything. So I mean, well done, Mr. Burns really could have had a future in in video game podcasting. And then yes, the the the fact that Homerer again like just has this has this you know again it's it's one of homer's smarter moments where he realizes that the way to get this job is to say i will kiss your ass yeah to be feisty yet spineless yeah great he's unqualified but also a giant doormat yeah yeah and that i it also is just great it's one of so many times in the show where they realize like for plot purposes a crazy thing has to happen well the only way that happens is is because mr

burns is insane like smithers smithers describes the obvious reasons why homer shouldn't work there and burns is like no no you he should work here i i i see something in him it just tires him for no as as he said uh one of his changes of hearts uh they get unpredictable and this is the first mention of waylon smithers it is okay yeah i thought so they said on the commentary i wasn't sure if it was true though but yeah yeah actually i found before this episode aired in a simpsons illustrated months before he's called j smithers like j dot sm. Smithers in something so clearly they were throwing around something else but I like that it Waylon is such a great name that he has of course it is another kind of gay joke because the the puppeteer of madam

the the star of the 80s 70s madam uh Waylon Flowers was uh the portrayer of madam which basically is a drag performance in in its own way so it's it's making waylon gayer by by naming him waylon but and she briefly had a sitcom called like madam's place right right yeah so it's basically a horny old lady puppet played by a man named waylon flowers and yes god the line of like he not only failed this man not only failed the aptitude test he got trapped in a closet on his way out like what a good line uh man and so yes homer says only in america could i get a job one of the usual like uh america stinks kind of lines from the simpsons and of course burn swears he'll remember that name a name he always forgets there's a cute little scene of Homer trying to find Marge but she's already calling off to the hospital I love

him saying to Marge calling Marge's mother mom and she's like don't ever call me that like she instantly goes like nope this isn't sweet at all like like screw this I'm driving you but I don't like you but Homer arrives and this is when he finally stands up for himself as a man who makes money the only thing important that a father can do march march where's the baby right where you left it shut up hey listen fat boy no you listen this is my wife and this is my kid and i'm paying for this delivery so if if you want to stay, you better give me some respect. Homer, does this mean... Starting tomorrow, I'm a nuclear technician. Good God.

And tomorrow morning, I'm going to buy your ring back. Then I'm going house hunting. But doesn't your job start tomorrow? Eh, somebody will cover for me. Homer, that's... Oh! Step aside. I'll deliver this baby. Uh, why don't you let me handle it, Homer?

Oh, college boy, eh? Homer, for God's sakes, let him deliver this baby. Uh, why don't you let me handle it, Homer? Oh, college boy, eh? Homer, for God's sakes, let him deliver the baby. Homie, isn't he beautiful? Hey, as long as he's got eight fingers and eight toes, he's fine by me. Oh, Bart's daddy's little angel. Ah! Why, you little... He did that on purpose how could he he's only 10 minutes old so homer briefly uh gained so much confidence he turns into mo howard yes there's some real

three stooges energy with that college boy yeah he's he's gonna fight dr hibbert right there in front of his pregnant wife newborn bard is Bart is so adorable. I like it. It's so cute. I also, Chris, another father question here. How old were your kids when they first lit you on fire? When was that time? I think three. And, you know, it's not even that.

It's just that, like, my kid who is two now um is just like will climb up on the back of the chair and throw her arms around my neck and just like just hang on and pull really tightly and like legit just cut off my airway and it's just sort of like stop you know um they get to that they get to that point of like oh i didn't realize that i was actually physically harming you it's's like, please, please, no. Don't let them know your weak points. Exactly. Yeah, it turns out my throat, yeah.

See, as the Simpsons taught us, it shouldn't be the kid strangling you. It should be the other. I can't. I can't. Right, right, right, right, right. They briefly apparently considered having him strangle newborn Bart. And they're like, no, that's too far. Oh, they did? Yeah yeah I thought they were gonna

watching watching it I'm like is he gonna strangle the the baby with the umbilical cord what are they gonna do yeah I recall Homer strangling one of them as a child like was there a later Bart baby strangling definitely at least his first word that's what I'm thinking of yeah

definitely in that so he strangles a two-year-old okay well well we can forgive that well it's also funny yeah so homer says then i'll go house hunting with i suppose the implication that they get the house that they live in but of course we then find out in lisa's first word that by the time lisa's born they can only afford a small house the small apartment in like the immigrant uh like uh neighborhood of immigrant town i guess really ethnic town was not invented yet right right yes that's right newborn part he is he is very adorable i love his little smile at homer after after lighting him on fire i mean it does show bart's pretty smart that he can uh operate a lighter at 10 minutes old like that's pretty it's impressive yeah yeah yeah then it cuts to homer and we have a very sweet ending uh that is just like in the way we

was you have a sweet little ending that's instantly undercut emotionally, and I think to great effect here. Bart, Nietzsche, come here for a minute. You know, son, the day you were born, I received the greatest gift a man could have. As the years went by, your mother and I were blessed twice more. And not a day goes by that we don't thank God for all three of you. Homer, I'm not pregnant!

Yeah! Whoa! Excellent, Marge! Yes! don't thank god for all three of you homer i'm not pregnant yeah whoa excellent marge yes and high five that homer shoves all his children off of him onto the floor that's so great and and you know what i also love that marge and homer share the high five they are equal in their celebration you know like marge gets to have a kind of little dark joke too here. I just, just hearing Marge go, yes. That duality is true. I mean, that duality absolutely exists. I would not give up my children for anything, but I'm absolutely not going to have another one. Yeah.

Both of those feelings are very real and very true. And it is possible for them to exist side by side. You know, that's a parenthood is it's a it's a land of contrast as we learned today yeah yes uh but yeah it's uh you know it's a it's a sweet ending but done in by a great scene of celebrating not being pregnant and not having another kid and i think this is a great episode it's better than the way we was uh for its specifics and i love that i think you're right chris you know if you're thinking of saving ideas for a rainy day maybe it gives away too many but it's perfect for a three-act structure how she gets pregnant the wedding the birth like it works so much better to tell the story with those three beats in it and yeah i mean it's just a classic classic episode

yeah yeah i don't know if i like lisa's first word more but this is one is still very strong and it just makes me think of all the other opportunities they could have exploring like the dating life of marge and homer uh and again my pitch is write a flashback episode but make it take place in this time period and don't explain why just say oh yeah remember uh in 1980 when bart was born where here's what happened in 1982 or something. Or 1978 when we were dating and we saw some movie or something. They saw Superman. There you go.

Yeah. But, yeah, that's my pitch. Any final thoughts on this one, Chris? Killer episode start to finish. I mean, watching it, I was just so impressed again with, like, just how well written it is, how punchy it is. The moves from scene to scene. Like, there's so many scenes going on i mean right because there's like there's so much going on with all

of the different the three different things that are happening but it's so funny and so each scene is so tight all killer no filler like this is a really impressively written episode and we've even pointed out these moments of animation that are so impressive as well from the um you know, Henry, when you're talking about them singing along, do you light up my life? Or the little bit with her licking the hot oil off her burned finger, you know, all those little things. This is a great episode in so many ways. Oh, yeah. One, and Chris, thank you so much for all your parenting insights as well in this one. That was very, very helpful.

No problem. Yeah, the kids, they keep getting older and they keep getting crazier. And it's, but it's a, it's a journey. Well, Chris, thanks again for joining us. Please let us know where we can find you online and more about your most recent release through Digital Eclipse, the Cowabunga Collection.

We talked about it a lot on Retronauts, but in case our listeners haven't heard that, what's going on with that collection? Yeah, well, okay. So yeah, you can find me online. So hit up digit eclipse.com uh if you want to check out what it is that we've been working on these days find me on twitter at kobun heat that's k-o-b-u-n-h-e-a-t yeah so not only uh ninja turtles the cowabunga collection which came out on august 30th from konami and it's a collection of the uh the 13 games that Konami made for

arcades and home game consoles and Game Boy back in the in the late 80s early 90s about the Ninja Turtles but also we've got Atari 50 the anniversary celebration and this is coming out in November this is this is also a big collection it's got over a hundred games that Atari did from Pong all the way to uh the end of the life cycle of the Atari Jaguar in 1996. And then even some kind of homebrew stuff that happened even later. So it's looking at kind of almost like basically 50 years of Atari. And in this one, we've worked really hard to combine the playable games in the sort of interactive museum experience. And so you kind of just go, you can go through timelines, and you'll see digital artifacts and things like that flyer for pong or like you know photographs of the atari founders and then

like a game will just sort of also be in there so we're not like expecting you to sit and play pong for 30 hours like you know if you want to you totally can but you can you can play it for a little bit of time as part of your journey through atari history this sort of interactive timelines that we've put together. So we're really, we're really proud of that. We're kind of putting the finishing touches on it now, and it's going to be out in November as well. So two big releases for digital eclipse that I worked really hard on and

that, you know, if you're into video, you're interested in video game history are going to be two that you're going to, you're going to want to look at because we put a lot of work into all of the, you know,

they're, they're kind of like DVD sets, lots and lots of bonus features where there's, there's tons of historical artifacts that are presented alongside the games. It's much, much more than just a bunch of old games on a disc. It's really a sort of a historical celebration. So if that sounds interesting to you, please check them out. Oh, yeah. And Chris, just to let you know, Bart has said Cowabunga at least twice on the record.

So if there's a Simpsons collection, you can still call that the Cowabunga collection. Maybe it's like the Cowabunga collection 2. Yeah. Okay. All right. Just my pitch. Free idea. Just my pitch. Okay.

But thanks for joining us, Chris. Yes, yeah. I know. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again to Chris Kohler for being on the show. Please check out everything he does, including the newly released New Wish Cowabunga collection. But as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week at a time and ad-free,

please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Sign up for five bucks a month. You get just that, but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall that includes over 100 bonus podcasts, everything behind that paywall we've done for the past five plus years, as well as monthly access to our regular episodes of Talking to the Hill and Talking Futuramaama it's all happening behind the five dollar paywall only at patreon.com

slash talking simpsons and there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you get access to all of the five dollar stuff of course but also access to one extremely long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob is talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast if you've wondered how long me and bob could talk about an animated feature film if we do it just like we do the simpsons you're gonna find out it's usually over five hours long and super in depth and a ton of fun as we go scene by scene through a bunch of classic movies and do a ton of history research you should listen to recent ones that have included i believe this month you're going to be hearing us talk about the 1986 transformers film so if you are bart if you were born around bart's age i bet you

have some nostalgia for that one as well the month before we did the brand new movie from 2022 beavis and butthead do the universe and that was a ton of fun as well and there's a giant back catalog this next month we will be hitting our fourth anniversary of doing what a cartoon movie every month so you have dozens of movie podcasts to listen to if you sign up at the premium level patreon.com slash talking simpsons and you get to hear all the five dollar stuff bob just mentioned we cover such a wide range of films we just did a ton of disney renaissance films that's like the little mermaid and beauty and the beast we've done more grown-up films like south park bigger longer and uncut or akira and a ton ton more please check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpsons as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can

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up to date with there are new episodes on the Patreon, on the free feed. When there's announcements for anything going on with the Talking Simpsons Networks podcast, you stay up to date if you follow it there on Twitter at TalkSimpsonsPod. And of course, if you're looking for an easy to explore list of all of the free episodes we've released of Talking Simpsons or. And of course, if you're looking for an easy-to-explore list of all of the free episodes we've released of Talking Simpsons or What a Cartoon, head over to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com to check it out. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 13's The Old Man and the Key.

And we'll see you then. Thank you. There's a better life, and you think about it, don't you? It's a rich man's game, no matter what they call it. And you spend your life, put money in his wallet. Not to buy, but what a way to make a living. Well, it's getting by, it's all taking and no giving. They just use your money, And they never give you credit It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it Nine to five, yeah, they got you where they want you There's a better life in two dreams, I read, don't you?

It's a rich man's game, no matter what they call it And you spend your life, put money in your wallet It's a rich man's game, no matter what they call it. And you spend your life, put money in your wallet. Nine to five, working nine to five, working nine to five. Nine to five, working nine to five, working nine to five. What a crappy candle. You've ruined our vacation.