Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Insane Clown Poppy With Drew Mackie

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

We welcome back our pal Drew Mackie from the Gayest Episode Ever Podcast for an early season 12 episode all about Hollywood dads! After a book fair, Krusty learns he has a daughter he never met before (played by Drew Barrymore), leading the clown on a strange journey of fatherhood with Homer as his guide. All that plus the debuts of Johnny Tightlips and Frankie The Squealer, so listen or go suck on a lemon! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

Good news everyone, Talking Futurama is coming back for Talking Futurama Season 2 Part 2. Fresher than a summer ham, this podcast comes every Friday and if you sign up at the $5 level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can hear each episode as it goes live. That's right, sign up today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for $5 to hear Talking Futurama every Friday throughout the rest of 2020 and also all the previous episodes we've done so far. So head over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons now or we're gonna clamp you! Shut up and take my money! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where our mission is to get down with the clown. I'm your host, techno-thriller junkie Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always?

Why, it's Henry Gilbert, and it's going to take a lot of fireworks to clean this one up. And who is our guest on the line? Adorable little hamantajan, Drew Mackey. Today's episode is Insane Clown Poppy. This watermelon won't know what hit it. I love our Tuesdays together, Dad. Today's episode aired on November 12, 2000, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God! And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh, boy, Bobby. Final Fantasy IX is released in the United States alongside Blues Brothers 2000, the video game. Oh, a duet of pleasures. Also in theaters, Little Nicky is released. And we're just a few days into the official recount of Florida Votes. Oh boy, that's going to go well. These are all like Talking Futurama flashbacks I'm getting. Yes, yeah. In between the two episodes of Season 12 and the timeline that we've done,

the 2000 election has happened with a whole lot of stuff going on, including Hillary Clinton got elected to the to the senate as well uh but obviously everybody's watching florida checking on the hanging chads and at this point in the timeline the florida supreme court supports a recount and i think in about two weeks it'll go up to the supreme court and we'll hear what they have to say and as of this recording we don't know who won yet. Oh, yes. I mean, Dangerous Don could flip it. Oh, sure, sure.

You never know. It's mid-December right now. We don't know what will happen. I mean, recent at the time of this recording was even the conservative judges at the Supreme Court were presented with one possible way to throw it out. And they're just like, no, no, we're not doing that. They can't even give dawn that much and uh the curious thing about that blues brothers 2000 video game is it came out over two years after the film was released in 1998 they had to spend all that time modeling

john goodman accurately and final fantasy 9 i know we can talk a ton about that but bob you just did a whole retronauts about it there is two hours of final fantasy 9 chat waiting for you on the retronauts feed to check that out i did the episode back in november of 2020 so uh it's on the feed check it out all my thoughts are there preserved forever and you know this is what people played when they couldn't get a playstation 2 but also like playstation 2 had no games on it i guess you were playing final fantasy 9 on your play that was me that was me when i got sick of snowboarding i played this i actually subscribed to the retronauts patreon specifically to listen to that final fantasy 9 episode because i was doing like work uh outside i needed something to listen to and nothing seemed as good as that and i enjoyed that so thoroughly i think i'm going

to replay final fantasy 9 oh thank you yeah because of quarantine, I actually had time to replay a 50-hour RPG. So now's a good time for it. And, you know, Little Nicky was the film, I believe, the... No, I think Big Daddy was in between, but it is a subsequent Adam Sandler film after the one with the co-star of this episode of The Simpsons as well. People that like Adam Sandler, they think this is the downfall, is little Nicky. I am a weird Adam Sandler fan in that I was the perfect age

to like him on SNL. I was like 11 or 12 when he was at the height of SNL. And I like Billy Madison. I don't like Happy Gilmore. I don't like the Waterboy. I don't like Big Daddy. But fans of Adam Sandler like those.

They don't like this. Wow. Yeah, I like Happy. Happy Gilmore is my favorite of his, actually, of the pure Adam Sandler like those they don't like this wow yeah I like happy happy Gilmore is my favorite of his actually of the pure Adam Sandler ones I mean if you ask me like what's the best Adam Sam film that stars Adam Sandler now I'd say uncut gems because I think I film rules but um but yeah little little Nicky I think was the too far moment for a lot of people it was also like very self-referential like characters from other ones would show up and i think too it was his character was too mean like it was a mean little nicky and

and they make you waste a lot of time with him torturing his friend who they put in the movie and make there's i remember on the making of little nicky they talk about how that one like friend of his adam whatever they they make him kiss a man in it just as a joke that they could write their friend who they always call gay a scene where he kisses a man. Is that the grandma's boy man? Oh, no, that's Nick Swartz. That's the other guy

they painted it call gay all the time. Wait, I have a thought about the featured guest of this episode, Drew Barrymore. I think Wedding Singer is the best Adam Sandler movie because Drew Barrymore is the anti-Adam Sandler in almost every way. And somehow her earthy peacefulness mellows out his crunchy hardness, and he becomes a lot more tolerable when he's

paired with her, which is why they work together so much. You're totally right. I do like that movie, but I don't consider it an Adam Sandler movie, and I don't know why. You're right. She softens so much of... i think she's his best movie wife like every every other movie wife he's given even jennifer aniston it just feels like they're trying to fill the void of drew barrymore like 50 first dates is like a tragedy film that they turn into a comedy through concept and yet they she makes it work about as good as any she has this like i remember in 51st states she has this line that like shatters the reality with tragedy if she says what happens if i get pregnant i wake up every morning and i'm pregnant like that's gonna drive me insane

oh god that's terrifying that's some real body horror but then later in in the happy ending of the movie she does have kids with him so she does go through that like a couple times. But she falls in love with him every day. That's the comedy of it. There's no one like Drew Barrymore. She's a magical creature that I don't completely understand, but she can do things that no other person on Earth can do. And now she hosts a talk show in the world's largest studio. It's huge.

And I guess speaking of Drew's we i didn't even realize this we have a drew on this podcast this any relation drew mackie to drew barrymore i'm just curious no first of all i assumed you guys asked me because my name is also true does that oh that never dawned on me at all until right now yes no but uh but yes drew mackie of the podcast gayest episode ever no relation no relation um no relation but she's a big figure in my life because she's been the most famous drew my entire life and nothing i can do can ever like compete with that drew because she has been consistently famous my entire life um and also she is responsible for people asking me if i have a girl's name because because she's the most famous drew people assume that drew is a girl's

name it's really not it's she's like the only girl that has that name most of the drews you meet are boys not that i would mind having a girl's name it's just weird that people make that assumption because she's so famous yeah she's been i in preparation for this looking up drew barrymore's career, I was like, she has been famous since I was born in 1982, the year E.T. came out. She has been, and also, I wonder if she gravitated to this episode because she is the child of a famous person. Though really, like, it's her granddad who was much more famous than her dad. But yeah, there's something about her, like, I mean, just just looking at her life she was the tragic tale of a child star but she turned it all around yeah it's but reading some of the stuff that happened in her at 11 for her i'm like who let her host snl and the answer is her parents who were derelict in their uh jobs but yeah. Well, yeah, in the mid-90s was her,

or I guess early 90s, was her transformation of like, she started starring in like sexier movies and she did Playboy. She flashed David Letterman. And then this time in her career in the late 90s was her transition into, you know, a comedy actress like

i've never been kissed and all that and also that she she figured out what you're seeing margot robbie figure this out right now and if you can be the hot thing in hollywood but especially as a woman your shelf life ends pretty quick you got to get into the producing side as well drew barrymore started her own production company she is a producer on the charlie's angels films like she's and she still produces stuff to this day that is going to protect you in the long term if you're a woman in the fickle world of hollywood margot robbie is one of the like most gorgeous creatures who has ever existed but even for her eventually a new hot young thing will come around and if you don't produce your own movies you're your sol and getting getting Drew Barrymore was quite a get for the show because the movie Charlie's Angels just came out like a week ago.

Oh, right. As of this airing. So a huge movie, huge movie. At the time she was working with Matt Groening as well. The previous year, Matt Groening was a producer on the Olive the other reindeer that's right special which at its curiosity company along with uh the flower production company drew barrymore has worked on it together and dan castellaneta is a voice in it and futurama's christopher ting did the music so production was going on in 99 so i think that's probably when the simpsons producers were like well hey

mad you're working with drew all this time. Offer her a role on the show. And they actually first offered her the role of the au pair in Becky in a couple of production episodes earlier. So we're still in production 11. This is the final one of production 11 we're going to talk about. Next week's episode, well, two weeks from now's episode, Lisa Treehugger is the first of production 12. This is the end of 11. That's interesting that she would be offered the role of Becky because I think she's actually not a bad voice actress for someone who primarily does live action stuff.

But her skill is in playing kids, like cute kid characters. And I think that's why she does a decent job here and why she did a decent job in all of the other reindeer. Yeah, yeah. She's much better with the innocence thing. I mean, the character of Becky does fit the type of role she was playing in like 1992 yeah like you know and like poison ivy 2 or whatever yes yeah exactly uh so maybe that too was her going like i've moved beyond that era of my career now i'm i'm not the killer sexy girl who

moves in and steals the husband that's not me anymore it's interesting she's great as sophie though this is i i looked it up sophie appears on other episodes but not voiced by drew this is the only time she played her surprisingly voiced by natasha leone i i like that casting i think she's great yeah i mean natasha leone is a great i mean she's a really great actress i like her as a voice actor she plays smoky quartz on steven universe one of my favorite sporadically appearing characters she totally fits for sophie and natasha leone is also one of those actors i'm constantly like wait really she's straight really like i at least this this was according to my research she is like only straight i'm still drew barrymore openly by

and for a longer time than a lot of famous actresses are. That is true. Yeah, she came out publicly in like 2003, but I feel like I heard that she was bi way before that. Yeah, I feel- I think I did too. I feel like in the 90s she did interviews of like, oh, I love hugging women or women are hot. Like, yeah, she's, I feel like I knew she was bisexual before Angelina Jolie. I knew, I heard that she was, but- Yeah, me too. But, but again, apparently natasha leone straight i

just i don't get it you're hearing it here first folks have you guys heard any of the episodes where natasha leone plays the character i have not uh i watched a little bit of her in the e my sports episode okay how does it sound she's good i mean she's uh pretty much just doing her leone voice okay now but she's she's good at it and i mean it fits for the i guess leone doesn't have as much innocence to her as sophie does like like as drew plays the character i think it's interesting that she comes back for episodes that aren't really framed around sophie so sophie didn't appear for like decades and then all of a sudden she started appearing again and in that esports episode she's just one of the springfield elementary kids and they act like they're always

friends with her and natasha comes back to play that character even when she's just doing minimal work in the episode I can't imagine what prompted them to be like you know who needs to come back and be part of the regular crew Sophie I feel like it's a moment of someone remembering Sophie like hey doesn't Krusty have a daughter oh yeah Sophie they they have no distinct women beyond Janie and Sherry and Terry. Girls in class. So I'm glad. And Allison Taylor, who talks sometimes. She's another one who's a one-off star who gets folded into the recurring Springfield Elementary kids. I think Sophie's too distracting to just be in a scene.

That's true, yeah. She looks like Krusty. It's like seeing Kent Brockman's daughter around. You're like, well, I know who that character is. They started to bring her back more often, too. So I'm talking to you guys, having completed an entire watch through of every Simpsons episode ever this year. I started in January and I just finished a few weeks ago. So I spent a lot of fucking time with the Simpsons this year.

I ill-advisedly decided to make a super cut of every LGBT joke ever on the history of the Simpsons. And then I spent all of last year in quarantine watching every episode of the Simpsons to get all the gay jokes that ever happened. And then put them in a video and now it's on YouTube. And I guess I can die now after this, after we record the podcast. It's really great. I hope if you listeners haven't seen it yet, it's a great afternoon viewing. Like it, there are more gay jokes than you could possibly imagine over 30 years of a show. Two and a half hours worth of gay jokes. And it'll only grow over time.

Do you hope to update it every season? I will when the season's complete. And people have already been tweeting at me and being like, hey, there's a gay joke in this episode that aired in part of season 32. I'm like, when it's done. I don't need to do this on a week-to basis thank you it's a it's a living project yes it will be it's like the thing i shackled myself to for the rest of my life or until the simpsons ends which we'll see you outlist who you may need to find a successor for this project season 80 but um little brockman girl

shows up more and more often like there's just weird decisions with the Simpson staff about like, Hey, this character needs to show up more often. Like the Frank Sinatra kid, you know who I'm talking about? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

There's an episode. I'm like, Oh him. He's back. Okay. Jessica love joy doesn't talk, but she shows up a lot more and someone's making some weird decisions behind the scenes there.

Well, in our season two revisit, we're definitely keeping an eye on like, okay, this is the time period in which these episodes were being watched by the writers again. And that aligns with the return of certain plot elements and characters where it's like they saw Carl from Simpson and Delilah. Let's bring Carl back. He was fun.

Harvey Fierstein does not want to come back. So they get Scott Thompson instead. There's like lots of little elements you can tell like, oh, they were rewatching these at the time. So in that case, you can directly trace it to like events in the writers lives. Do you think they were just rewatching them in syndication like we all were? Maybe it's that. I think it could be. Well, I also think this is a real Hollywood dad episode and it could be more of the writers

were getting adult or older children. And they're like, you know what? We could do more with Krusty's Hollywood daughter. Like, let's do stuff with that i or also it could just be you know i saw the first time she really got another speaking role was the 2016 christmas episode so it could also just be a response to you know people saying uh there's not a lot of uh important women on the in the show or you could you could beef up the female quotient in the cast perhaps i i It could be a response to that as well.

I could see that. Also, that Christmas episode is not bad. It's all about Sophie, who's raised not Jewish because her mom's not Jewish, learning about being Jewish. And it's something you don't really see in a sitcom that often. It's kind of a nice thing. I will check that out this holiday then. Man, Drew, you are now more informed on us than Simpsons just from having watched

all of the last 18 years of the show after this season. I'm going to be flashing to the future a few times. I hope it's not too obnoxious but i couldn't i can't not do it now because like those are the episodes i've seen most recently and my brain's just really kind of turning to mush with the simpsons right now i want to hear about it yeah well because i think of this episode too not as sophie's debut but as we'll talk about him later but this is a breakout episode for two uh characters i think of when i think of modern simpsons recurring bits like the disco stews of modern simpsons but that is true before we begin i want to do a writer's corner for the two writers of this

episode john frank and don payne uh they made their debut with the halloween episode but there was so much to talk about in that episode i saved their writer's corner for this one so john frank yes professor frank he is named after john frank i think his name was established in But there was so much to talk about in that episode. I saved their writer's corner for this one. So John Frank, yes, Professor Frank. He is named after John Frank. I think his name was established in the 22 short stories about Springfield episode. You know, I think in the script in season two, it was John Frank just as a funny name. Okay. I read one interview with John Frank about it.

Like, hey, why is it named this? He's like a writer friend of mine put it in the script in season two so but i guess the first time it was said was uh professor frank i think so make you laugh i'll make you think that's like that's like jailbird was never said out loud but they knew him as jailbird okay so i must have gotten bad info because i don't know where i read it but i read that it was a coincidence and that doesn't seem likely at all that john frank would join a show with there's a character already named john frank that that seems false right oh yeah yeah i i swear i read at least one interview where frank john frank is

like yeah that's named after me there were some characters on the show named after people they knew like uh dr julius hibbert was named after julia hibbert who was julia sweeney now so yeah there there were some of that in the air back then. But yeah, Frank and Payne, they became writing partners right out of college. Frank wanted to write for TV. Payne wanted to write for movies. And they agreed to pursue whichever side of the entertainment industry responded first.

And that was television. So some of their first scripts were for forgotten 90s sitcoms like Hope and Gloria, Pride and Joy. You say those words to me, I don't know what they mean. I've heard them before, but not in that order. I was a sad little gay boy who watched hope and glory on like saturday nights on nbc because uh that was what that was my social life so what it was hope and gloria

cynthia stevenson and jessica lundy were mismatched friends and uh jessica uh the guy the dad from veronica mars was uh like the schlubby ex-husband of Jessica Lundy. I'm trying to think of Jessica Lundy. Jessica Lundy was in the Tom Arnold movie, The Stupids, and she plays Jerry's girlfriend with a really annoying laugh on Seinfeld. Okay. Yeah. I remember that show vaguely now.

Oh, Alan Thicke was on it. He played a dumb talk show host. Oh, yes. Now I remember it. Now I remember Alan Thicke playing basically Alan Thicke. I think they wrote one of those. Pride and Joy, I don't know what that is. It sounds like competing detergents.

Pride, Joy, Fab. So yeah, they would go on to become full-time writers and producers on Veronica's Closet, which was famous just because it was put on Must See TV Thursday. Yeah, I see that. That was another show about taunting a guy who's straight and calling him gay all the time. The Wally Cox character. Wait.

Wallace Langham. Wallace Langham. Wally Langham, yes, from Mission Hill. Mission Hill, the lead at Mission Hill. Wally Cox is a much older actor. That's why I was confused. Who was gay or gay. Well, I guess gay.

And so they went from Veronica's Closet to the very short-lived Brian Ben-Ben Show. Four of nine episodes produced aired. And in the interim between those things, they would write a few episodes of men behaving badly. So not the best sitcom work they're doing for these shows. Man, yeah, this is not the pedigree of a simpsons writer in in usual cases but not to say i think these guys are bad right i think they're funny funny writers but uh it's interesting that this this was their background prior to simpsons i i agree it doesn't seem like a good pedigree and i think it kind of shows i i'm surprised this episode led to lengthy simpsons careers for both

of them because i don't think this episode is very good oh i actually like this episode oh no well i'll be in the middle here we can we can fight it out but i have a i have a quote from pain saying how they got into the series it says quotes uh my partner and i were actually working on one of a long string of failed sitcoms and most sitcoms are failed sitcoms on the day a show was officially canceled it's kind of a tradition for the writing staff to go out to a restaurant eat a nice meal and drown their sorrows on the way there a writer named jace richdale who had also worked on the simpsons told my partner and me that the simpsons was looking for some writers Wow. So at the failure dinner for the Brian Benben show, they run into Jace Richdale, who recommends them to work on the show. And that's how they make it onto the show. Wow.

It's just luck like that. And if the Brian Benben show had been slightly more successful, they might not have gotten a job on The Simpsons. And by the way, Brian Benben, great name. He was the lead of Dream On. And Drew, I loved your Dream On episode of Gayest Spot. A gayest episode ever. Thank you. It gave me a fun chance to look back and remember that Brian Benman is kind of hot.

I watched that show as a kid for the eight seconds of nudity included in every episode. I didn't know that because I only watched the reruns on Fox where they cut out all the boobs. Oh, that's right. That was my experience of watching the reruns on Fox. But my family got HBO as the last season of the show was airing. And that's when I was like, oh, there's boobs all over the place in this thing. And I also didn't know one of the women on the show, Dani, was a lesbian, too. That was interesting.

Oh, right, right. First gay SNL cast member that we know, I think. So more on Frank and Payne. They would remain writing partners on the show until season 15's The Wandering Juvie. And both would still write episodes on their own after that and the split was amicable between them yeah it's it sounded like pain got eventually what he wanted to work in movies like i guess you know eventually these writing partnerships you you do kind of just grow apart well also it is especially i know in the Simpsons writers room, but on most shows, if you are a pair of writers, you split a check. You are getting paid less than the average writer because you're sharing it as a writing

pair. Yeah. So they would both write their own episodes while Payne was screenwriting. So his first film was 2006's My Super Ex-Girlfriend. I don't know what the movie's about. It's very confusing. It is not a good film it's very sexist movie honestly i was making a joke about the very obvious title like hotel for

dogs oh yeah it's right there in the title i i get you i get you you're funny he would also co-write fantastic four rise of silver surfer and also thor and thor colon the dark world yes yeah as uh as the superhero guy here i'll just speak to those that like okay rise of silver surfer is both better than the first fantastic four film it's a sequel to but it's also a giant mass and trash and uh the first thor film i never thought they'd make thor work as a movie so the fact that it did is really good and then uh the second thor film again i wouldn't blame don payne but it's like one of the worst mcu movies but it's just because like it has the most boring villain they ever had in the whole series in any mcu film who is who is the villain

in that movie i can't even remember it's like an elf or something it's a dark elf uh who is played by dark elf yeah it's a dark well yes they're from one of the nine realms and i see uh they get what ultimately ends up being so they get a red mist that then they say actually this red mist was one of the infinity stones and it's uh it's the reality infinity stone so they can go through different realities and at about the 40 minute mark in the film loki shows up and the film comes alive it's like oh thank fucking god loki's here to be fun i mean ragnarok is the third thor film so much better hey he only co-wrote these movies outside of the first one i mentioned nobody writes some mcu film it's it's it's true the most uh controlled by executives films there are so i i wouldn't blame don pain at all ff movie

he wrote the best thing they did in that was that the first movie was like, oh, we're PG-13 thrills and we're going to show you Jessica Alba in her underwear. And the second movie, they're like, you know what? Kids like the first one more, so we're making this PG and we're not going to bother with the needless underwear bits in this second one.

And unfortunately, Don Pay pain passed away in 2013 at age 48 of bone cancer and then two of his episodes would air posthumously white christmas blues and labor pains so those aired after he passed away and i believe one of them was in tribute to him there's like a little in memoriam thing yeah after the episode i think they inserted him into the pan across the um they they drew him into the show at some point too, posthumously. So, I mean, I felt really sad talking, thinking back on our interview with Dan Graney. And we asked him, you know, like, oh, what's the, you know, you have these new writers in there, these young writers. We asked what it was like.

And he said he used that to just say, like, you really missed his friend, Don Payne, who he thought was a really great writer and misses him in the room. That was sad. John Frank, though, still alive and still writing episodes for the show. His last one was season 32 is the seven beer itch. And more importantly, neither guy is from Harvard. It's still incredible to me. Payne went to UCLA and Frank went to Emerson. And also not community college dropouts or anything no no still

good colleges and also a note about pain I think pain is one of three now dead Simpsons writers along with Sam Simon and Kevin Curran who is also the voice of Buck the dog and married with children right right no because he was a writer on the show yeah yeah

so hey everybody this is Bob Mackey you just you probably heard me talking earlier so why am i introducing myself i don't know but uh as of this uh recording right now it's february 18th we recorded the original episode insane clown poppy on december 11th of 2020 and i remember saying in that episode oh it's odd that only a few simpsons writers have passed away so we had sam simon i think i believe i i think i i mentioned him and also j michael mendel who i might have mentioned of the few regular simpsons writers who had passed away since then but since that episode was recorded two additional simpsons writers have

passed away uh the first one was david richardson who passed away on january 18th of 2021 and uh he was the writer of homer loves flanders and a writer regular writer in season five so he passed away towards the beginning of the year and then uh after that uh sadly the the writer mark wilmore who was a writer in the teen years on the simpsons who also wrote for the pjs and uh a lot of stuff in living color lots of stuff with his brother uh larry wilmore uh and also mark wilmore was involved in one of the uh the classic writer's room pranks we've heard all about matt selman yeah that's um and he he passed away and just nine days later yeah uh and and if covet related illness, too, which is very, very sad. So unfortunately, yes, we were not we are no longer correct that there's only a few Simpsons writers who passed away. I hope I hope we don't have another update like this very soon. else better die or else I'm going to be steamed. But we'll talk more about Mark Wilmore when we get to his first episode

in a few years or so. But yes, it's very sad. And yeah, it's unfortunate that as the show reaches its 32nd year, we're starting to see the writing talent pass away from the not even the early years, the later years too. Yeah, yeah. So stay healthy out there, guys.

The Simpsons will be right back. 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 we hope you guys played safely with your fireworks this week listening to the podcast a big thank you to our guest drew mackie from the gayest episode ever podcast be sure to check out his recent video cataloging all of the lgbt characters and jokes in simpsons history that he talked about in this episode and if you're a fan of this podcast i want to thank you because we only are able to do this our full-time jobs because of listeners like you who support us at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you see every week me and pop it out talking simpsons and what a cartoon and five dollar and up supporters at patreon.com slash talking simpsons.

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to get it all at patreon.com slash talking simpsons I'm sorry, but we have one more thing to add to this preamble. Frank and Payne's script for this episode was based on a spec script they wrote for The Critic. Yes. So that's where this comes from. It bleeds through this so much like so if you think to yourself okay what would a critic episode be about where first he visits a book fair in new york with all these famous uh authors and then it's about a single dad who's having trouble connecting with his kid that's like every marty episode of the critic and then the ex-wife stuff in here is 1000 the critic like oh okay wait

wait wait i thought about this and i actually deleted it from my house i'm like i don't need to mention this because this is stupid i did not know that do you think that sophie's mom kind of looks like alice a little bit oh you know as she does uh hair why she looks like alice but she dresses like ardith the evil the evil ex-wife true i wonder if that was intentional that's super interesting i think there was just a lot of ex-wife humor on the critic my reading of it was and there's no correct reading of us because we don't know that's what the spec script was my reading was that in the spec script uh homer was jay and jeremy was a celebrity that has uh because he would be more the type to have like an illegitimate child yes definitely you're right yeah now that fit that fits for me i will or duke or duke phillips oh yeah yeah that's even funnier

r.i.p manic but you know when they say spec script that goes more into the theory i've been thrown we've been throwing around a lot on here which is there were multiple scripts produced for an unmade season three of the critic and we wonder we've never read one of those actual scripts and i feel like the reason they're not out there is because some of them were just fully cannibalized into simpsons episodes which like i mean legally i don't know probably the wga might have some issues with that but it's like gracie owns both of them so I guess they can use them. I mean, I think we talked about it on the Food Critic episode. That had to be a Critic episode, right?

1,000%. I mean, and that one's a Gene Ritten one. Oh, sorry, Drew? No, I was going to ask which ones you guys guessed were like covert Critic episodes. I definitely think that one. Simpsons Tide. Simpsons Tide, absolutely is one too, yeah. Okay. Yeah. episodes i definitely think that one simpson tide and simpson tide absolutely one two yeah those okay yeah well definitely when there's a i will say just markedly once gene comes back on there's

a lot more watching tv and commenting on a tv show or a movie uh which just feels like critic jokes that came back into the show yeah and he and mike reese they started in parody so they're like they love parody the most lisa sacks that's another one that feels like it's home to a lot of critic jokes not necessarily a full critic script of just character replacement but multiple jokes that are just like oh that's a that feels very critical also i mean in this one the whole kuwait thing i'm like well that's what the desert storm was a full episode of jay as well yeah yeah i can totally see it and i could totally see them writing a thing where jay had sex with a woman in uh iraq but uh but yeah so i guess that now we're finally finally out of the preamble uh and so the episode begins with a bullet time couch gag just to really set you in the year 2000.

That would be tough. A lot of work. It's easy to write on the page. Matrix joke. Yes. This episode's opening, as far as this, I feel like the episode could easily begin at the book fair. Yes. Yeah.

I feel like it has two unrelated set pieces. Krusty doesn't need to be at the book fair, but that's traditional for there to be an unrelated set piece but there are two of them yeah and i think this uh this bit here as a cartoon about homer being an asshole is funny and it's full of silly things but in an episode that wants you to care about fathers and their daughters what an insane way to start this episode it is kind of nice to see homer and bart collaborating on a project together and like not being like antagonistic towards each other but like who the fuck thought it would make sense to not frame it around homer and lisa which was a much smarter parallel and then also where we're going like the whole wrecking the room thing is something they did like what the previous season or maybe two seasons ago with the whole when they turn lisa's room into a salt

yeah yeah we didn't cover that one it was it was it was back in late season nine so yeah i know they do such horrible things to live this epic well this is the string of this era of lisa must be hurt punished or punished she. Every time we just did the treehouse where it's like the core plot of the Night of the Dolphins is Lisa cares about dolphins and for caring, she must be punished. I kind of like this as an unrelated short to start the episode.

There's a lot of fun gags. I do like the offscreen explosion of Maggie's room. It's a perfect like audio joke. And Bart and homer definitely in the year 2000 jackass was just getting started so yeah they they were engaging in what was popular but it's not just that it's the boys being little rascals but it's also the women are both scolds like it's the funny the drawing of marge with um a bunch of watermelon in her hair but when she's like didn't i give you chores like that's that's such a uh that's a parody of scoldy marge i mean take note of all the times lisa gets screwed over

in this episode it's it's pretty funny like at least once an act screwed over and then she just kind of falls away and we don't really think about her anymore which is weird uh but yes they are exploding their chores with fireworks at the start of the episode. Ready? It's hopeless. Or is it? Yeah, it's hopeless. I said, or is it? I said, it's... Oh. Homer, what are you doing?

Listen, do you want the job done right or do you want it done fast? Well, like all Americans, fast. Clear! You can't argue with results. You know, I was watching this again this morning, and I have to give it to the Foley people. That did sound like a drawer exploding. It did, yeah.

I like Marge saying, well, all Americans fast. That's good. But again, it's like marge is a mega nag that's how you start with yeah you're going to your chores and then she's at least she gets to be silly i mean i guess a more boring way to write marge in those moments would be like homer don't destroy that instead of saying like you know what can't argue with results that's at least a joke let's have fun. I agree. I'm glad they gave her that much.

I tried really hard to think of a reason for why this episode begins specifically with Homer solving problems with literally more firepower than they actually need. And the closest I could come up with, and on my show, we call this a reach around when you're like reading way too much into something and trying to come up with like an authorial intent that probably is not there. I maybe, maybe, maybe it mirrors what happens later in the episode where Krusty loses Sophie's violin and his solution,

rather than just to buy a fucking violin and give her a fucking violin, he ends up sneaking into a mafia house and there's a literal shootout where it's like, this was much more complicated and involved a lot more firepower than it needed to. And maybe that sort of justifies this opening but that is such a big reach and yeah it is maybe the funniest part of the episode for me but it just there's nothing there's no there's not enough reflection of it later in the script to me i i like it as a reach around but i think i i think totally this while they even say on the commentary

the third act had a big change from their original script but yeah i could I think totally this while they even say on the commentary the third act had a big change from their original script but yeah I could also just see this this bit not even being in the original script because like we know we need like four more pages well okay Homer and Bart play with fireworks for two minutes and then they're gonna go to the book fair yeah on the commentary uh I like this episode a lot but on the commentary they said it had a really bad table read and it was a holdover for the next season. And they're like, sometimes you hold over episodes, you know, to work on them more. Mike Scully goes, we call those bad episodes.

That was good. But I think it's fine. But I guess there were some problems with it because I guess it just didn't go well at the table read. And that could be a big make or break moment for a script. Then we get a quick joke about them destroying santa's little helper's home so they destroy they make a pet unhappy too they abuse a dog it's great i love the controlled demolition of his house and uh target date january 2007 once a far off mystical date in the future now way in the past not 14 years in the past now

yeah that that joke works better in the year in november of 2000 to be completed in 1994 uh god yeah that's uh you know what that's just them stealing their old joke for themselves all right so then the next scene you know i often complain about your cast home run here but this is one of the examples that had completely left my mind until re-watching this and i now put this in the top five worst things he's done because it's not just that he cruelly destroys everything his daughter owns but and not even that he does it on her birthday but that he feels nothing about doing it like he doesn't feel bad he's just such total thoughtlessness and the cruelty of it it's so over

the top though that i found it funny like him ask you do you have friends or family you can stay with yes it's funny it must be a hard time for you you're like he doesn't even take any responsibility just like wow this must be hard for you well that's that line that i talk about on the simpsons a lot of like if you just want me to throw up my hands and go this isn't a show about a family or real people with feelings it is a silly time of funny of funny lines and if i only want to feel that then that scene is funny but then if later in this episode they want me to like feel for crusty reconnecting with his daughter and then turning

to homer for help then i feel like it is uh counterintuitive to show me homer thoughtlessly destroying lisa's's entire room. This is what I'm talking about when I say that, like, just weird creative decisions that seem to be really counterintuitive to what they ultimately want to achieve were being made here. And I don't understand it. But it's the 17th production episode in a season, so they're also just getting tired, you know?

I mean, I guess it makes sense. I will point out that, like, when they blow up lisa's room they could have just wheeled the tv vcr out of her room and prevented this and that was not even considered for a moment that is how little they cared about lisa's room i have to think that homer sees that on a list and then bart bart did this knowingly like he's standing to the side of homer like smiling because he set homer up for this and he knows he can get away with it because homer will do it but well now that we don't have vcrs anymore this problem does not exist it's a dynamited vcr uh i guess a disc can get stuck in things still but if you're still using physical media these days some some are uh but yes lisa's room is destroyed in this next clip. It's going to take a lot of fireworks to clean this place up.

What's going on here? Honey, there's a point in every father's life when he blows up his daughter's room. Oh, yeah? You didn't blow up Maggie's room. Lisa, this must be a rough time for you. Do you have any friends or family you can stay with? You've ruined all my stuff. Oh, come on. Tell us how we can make it time for you. Do you have any friends or family you can stay with? You've ruined all my stuff. Oh, come on.

Tell us how we can make it up to you. Hey, pretend it's your birthday. It is my birthday. That's the spirit. Now, what do you want to do? Well, the book festival starts today. Anything at all. You name it.

What do you want to do? And then when it cuts to the book festival, I forgot to get that clip in there. Homer even grumbles like, stupid Lisa. It's like, fuck you homer i i mean that's the joke that homer is so selfish that even going to a book fair to a day on his daughter's birthday after destroying everything she has is the last thing he would do like it's good that we get away from what he did for the rest of the episode i'm glad the episode isn't about that yes yeah uh lisa even saying like it is my birthday it's like woof ouch and and yardley plays it very real of just saying like you you destroyed all my stuff like i you just played too real yeah i i mean i'm glad we don't

linger on this because it is like unforgivably awful but i do really wish that this had been more of a hom-Lisa storyline, just to parallel the Krusty selfie storyline. Yeah, I think that would have worked better. Yeah. Though also, for this being a Krusty episode, Bart kind of gets shoved out of it too. Bart is usually the accessory to a Krusty episode.

But I guess he has more lines than Lisa after the middle of this, but still. But so that even itself is weird because they're introducing a new young girl character who has two defining traits one she's crusty's kid and the other one is that she likes playing music and they don't pair her with lisa at all and that seems like another weird missed opportunity easily the interaction that sophie has with bart earlier in the episode could have been lisa and they don't even fucking think to do that wow she's a regular lisa jr yeah that music connection i didn't even consider that it's even easier to do but again lisa at this time in the show is made to suffer not have friends like it's it's about i guess it also fits the mike scully's first episode of the

series is when lisa finds a rival who's better than her and everything. And she has to. So Lisa's not even special anymore. And she has to suffer being second place. But yes, this is also the second time it's been Lisa's birthday in the series. Is this worse than her being abandoned by a family? Well, that dangerous stranger didn't come by this time. That episode never happened.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. Oh, you're right. So this is her first birthday. think we dreamed that yeah uh but yes uh apparently this book festival is based on the ucla la times festival of books uh which has been going on since 1996 and they even did it virtually this year in 2020 uh it would have been in and when i say this year i mean last year in 2020 um it would have happened in april of 2020 but they delayed it until october and i think that's when they just threw up their hands like it's virtual just here we'll do it this way i i've been to it it's a it's a nice event i

was gonna ask okay i mean does it must have a lot of cool author guests and all that yeah and i can't remember why but i know going to it one so my ex used to uh like sort of produce the event so i had to go i can't i can't but i kind of had to go but um i don't remember how it worked but um one time i interacted with margaret cho and that was nice and then she ended up following me on twitter so that was that was that's a nice that's a nice takeaway from not buying any books at the Festival of Books. Oh, that's cool. That's good. You mentioned Margaret Cho. I kicked myself the one time I found out like her and Bob Mould were doing something in San Francisco one day and I just missed it. I was like, oh, man. But if you ever get to see Bob perform live, he's amazing.

Like it totally, totally worth the effort of going to a live show. He's one of the few famous bobs i respect i i am i mean he's one of those people i've been kicking myself like how did i not go see him live in in the before times and hopefully i get another chance i mean i read i'll tell you what i read his biography his autobiography and I loved every bit of it. But I would have paid 10 times more for an entire book only about when he worked for WCW Pro Wrestling and was a writer for wrestling. Right. I interviewed him once. And so when I interact with famous people, I don't really care about very famous people.

But if it's a minorly famous person, I do kind of get tongue tied because I want to say something meaningful meaningful to them to like be like hey i really really appreciate like what you're putting out into the world and he was lovely i was like a unintelligible mess for that interview but the print the print product turned out fine uh but anyway back this episode so they they they're walking around the festival books we have a joke of millhouse selling poems and they there's a rush on them and he says that their hands were everywhere which like that's there's uh people really wanted those one dollar off uh poetry book coupons that's uh kind of insane i mean these these jokes about books and stuff feel they definitely feel the more new yorker style of a critic thing though though we've talked about it many times the scully years

are about the simpsons going to a fair like five different times season 11 is the fair season lots of fairs and unfairs uh and and also uh they head over to rev and lovejoy he has a uh christian themed cookbook which has like stig muffins, which I get that, but like, okay. Mary Magdalene had sex, right? Is that her thing? So that's why she has this chocolate orgasm.

I believe so. Is there like a, like a, like a pastry called a chocolate orgasm or something? I found a recipe for making a chocolate orgasm cake, which really it's just like, it's a devil food cake with like chocolate pudding inside was the recipe I saw. Yeah.

And I think there was kind of like a, a cum joke and that it squirts all over tom wolf oh definitely orgasm hits tom wolf and i he's not doing his voice in the show i think he i think he eventually would be on the show six years later yeah so mo in elisa okay i like how he just tears off his suit there's another one underneath it famous for his suits yeah it's a full tearaway suit on him really good animation on that i like that it's just like you know pulling a uh paper towel off of the uh off of machine but my read was like oh yeah tom wolf he wears white suits um but i've never read any of his books and then i'm like wait why do i know that his defining characteristic is wearing white suits and i'm like i think it's from this episode i he was one of those like

public intellectuals like gorvadoll or though i've actually read some gorvadoll and not tom wolf but then we get our our first bookie guest star of the episode apparently uh julie thacker flew up to maine to record with this young man i i guess actually in in safety with his age and health scares i should definitely play our anti-death jingle for this guest star. We're talking about Stephen King, correct? Yes. Yes, and 18 months

after this, or before this rather, that's when he had his fatal, or sorry, near fatal van accident where he was walking and was struck by a van yes and survived thankfully very scary that thing yeah it's uh they must he has since recovered and he's you know still still having fun on twitter it's also funny he has all this energy even though like i assume he has gotten sober by the time he recorded this but he's i unfortunately doesn't have the same coke energy as he does in the trailer for maximum overdrive that's great how's he go literally i literally

have in my notes that i thought he did a pretty good job for someone who's uh a non-actor guesting on the simpsons because sometimes that doesn't go so great um but i also say if you have ever seen the trailer for maximum overdrive you know that he can carry a scene also he is in uh one of the segments of one of the creep show movies playing this hick that is affected by this meteor that falls i think it's mostly a silent uh piece uh but he does have some dialogue in that though you know now we talk about maximum overdrive then they should have had yardley smith share a scene with him instead that's the one he directed that's right he wrote so she worked yardley worked with him a lot it's uh real fun to hear a talk about that actually there's a great episode of i was

there too the now defunct podcast where she's on a talking about i believe maximum overdrive and basically it was going so poorly that everyone was just drunk constantly on the sets just to get through the days and and stephen king himself said that he was like more than drinking on working on that. But I love his read on there. It's a hot mic, I will say that. But I love how over the top he goes. I got the clip right here. So, Mr. King, what tale of horror and the macabre are you working on now?

Oh, I don't feel like writing horror right now. Oh, that's too bad. I'm working on a biography of Benjamin Franklin. He's a fascinating man. He discovered electricity and used it to torture small animals and green mountain men. And that key he tied to the end of a kite, it opened the gates of hell. Well, let me know when you get back to horror. Will do.

Mark's on a post-it note. I love that. Get back to horror will do mark's on the post-it note i love that get back to marge uh that's very it's uh it's funny they gave marge like marge is a fan of stephen king that's a not what you'd expect to which i like that when he talks about green mountain men is he referring to the green mountain boys i think so because that was i hadn't heard of them before looking it up for this yeah what is this exactly it's a militia yeah like a revolutionary war militia like not not modern i guess maybe there is a modern day militia that calls himself that too perhaps but i was looking at to see what was out would you believe there was no stephen king book in the year 2000 probably the only book since like the 70s where there were sorry the only year since 70s where he did not release a book because he was recovering from almost dying but this was between uh the girl who loved

tom gordon and also dreamcatcher and black house it's too many but and then he just wrote scripts that were like just a full just film script that wasn't a book and and he had to make up that pseudonym to publish more books i've never read a full one of his books they're just so daunt they're just like giant they are big i got a million of his movies but i got into them as a teenager like i did read the stand the unabridged stand that was like one of my greatest feats as a teenager i would suggest the shining it's uh not as daunting as the other ones and it's very very good it's one of the few times i can remember being scared to turn a page in a book which is a thrilling and weird feeling i have read that yeah that that is a good one that's uh i know that's joey's favorite book on friends you know that but which by the time

they finished that series of friends joey couldn't read no no uh but uh but yes we then get some quick gags with uh with frank and dr nick i I do really like the animation of Professor Frank attaching, just going like, well, here's the electrodes to your loins. I mean, it is a fantasy. Loins! The fantasy of reading an entire book in a second. I would love that. There was a good joke on the UCB sketch show as well of like a gun that just blasted out a sound that was the experience of reading a full book i i i fantasized about such a thing though the last time i actually like sat

down and read a book has been a while i've just am too much of an audiobook guy now if i if i listen i i am quite learned but i didn't actually read a book this year and i normally try to do uh not do that i try to read books so i just bought a Kindle in the hopes that I would read books again. You know, you've got time at the time of this recording, you've got two weeks to read one book this year. It's true. I'm going to do it. And we get to see Dr. Nick has a miracle health plan that's just eat whatever you want and you might lose weight.

It's a free country. Yes. Stuff yourself sick diet, I think. Yeah. And then we get a joke about the four dummies brand which is also very late 90s yeah uh so i did some research on this nothing too extensive but the first one was 1991's dos for dummies and uh they still make these books but the for dummies thing is so small on the actual title that it's just part of the branding and i think like dummies is problematic so they don't want to lean too hard because on the old books dummies

was huge like hey dummy yeah well i mean that bright and that bright yellow just like you know draws your eye on off the shelf at a barnes and noble yeah more more than the complete idiot guides i always preferred the for dummies brand but it's funny that it started as a bunch of computer manuals that slowly morphed into just every topic and it's different than the complete idiot's guide too that's a different it's a total ripoff of dummies and they also did the same thing made him a lot of money though that ripoff but yeah well talk about things you can't do now like the the when bart meets the dummy guy he's uh this is not the kind of duh duh idiot you can play on a TV show now. No, but I have some mind-blowing information for both of you in that throughout the book fair, Bart is wearing his lucky red cap. A cut scene in this episode explains why.

Oh, boy. When the dummy goes, me have to go to bank now, the scene cuts. There is a cut scene on the DVD where Bart goes, my hat is a bank. And the guy empties a money bag into Bart's hat, but it's not money it's potato chips. Wow. And the guy goes, you rich now. So that is why Bart has his cap on throughout this entire set

piece. Wow, man. I'm also shocked that they actually kept that consistent. Like once you do the joke, even if you cut it, you don't have him wear it in the next scene with Krusty, but that it stays on even after that yeah it's so distracting part's lucky red hat in that scene i think that's why you don't do a bart hat joke anymore because they kept the hat on him i know mike reese jokes he says when he hears other he said like a decade into his tenure on the show

he'd hear younger writers joke about like Bart's Lucky Red Cap like oh let's bring it back and he's like guys I'm right here come on thank you for telling me though I was wondering about that and I don't have access to the DVDs for this so I have not seen deleted scenes I also thought it was a a small joke that Cletus and Brandine were shopping around in there they're they're the for dummies they are dummies call me ishmael dummy that's an okay joke but i mean this is just a series of sketches about books really which yeah that's that's really what these first acts are especially in the scully years of like a series of sketches which i mean ian maxstone graham is more in control in this time too and

he's he's mr snl like he's an snl vet which we're coming to uh play in this next clip i have here yeah look hey you gotta we we have to hear guys have you ever considered that christopher walken would be a funny idea look maggie christopher walken's reading good night moon good night room good night moon night, cow jumping over the moon. Please, children, scooch closer. Don't make me tell you again about the scooching. You in the red, chop chop. So that's Jay Moore.

And they wanted to get the real guy, and he was making fun of himself at this point, right? Oh, yeah. He was doing a version of himself, but he just wasn't available. So they got Jay Moore to do it. No, it's so weird. I can't imagine that they didn't have someone in the cast already who could do a decent Christopher Walken impression. That's like the one thing most people who do voices can do. Kevin Spacey, what a master of it.

No, I'm sorry to even say his name. Kevin Pollack. Yes, Kevin Pollack. That's a good one. Yeah, but it is the one everybody does. It's like, though you can appreciate like, oh, that's a good one of the one everybody does. But yeah, the more cowbell sketch aired seven months before this. I couldn't believe that.

Yeah. Wow. So our generation was fully in the, oh, Christopher Walken. He's the funny guy like he's if he now if Christopher Walken were to star in a film that is a dramatic part it would be very unexpected like that's just not what he does anymore though I guess really even if you go back to like Annie Hall I was thinking of that yeah his scene is that he's doing comedy as an intense uh character actor uh but the Jay Moore thing is because Ian Maxton Graham worked with Jay Moore on SNL and remembered

him as doing a good walk-in impersonation. But I think, too, it was that he was in the Fox family at the time. They would have recorded it because Action was airing on Fox at the time, the Jay Moore starring sitcom. Action is one of the meanest shows ever that aired on mainstream network TV. Agree. But also, it made me laugh and was more interesting than a lot of stuff that aired on mainstream network TV. Agree, but also it made me laugh. It was more interesting than a lot of stuff

that was on TV back then. 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. Care, care. Did I mention that we care? And one of the last episode of it, which didn't air until the Comedy Central re-airings of it, is about how Harvey Weinstein is horrible. And they were making that joke in the year 2000.

It's weird to have him on here because we've established that Stephen King is doing his own voice. And then we get into this weird gray area of like, but some of these people are not doing their own voice. And we actually brought in this other famous person to do a voice and it makes me wonder why they stuck with jokes if the people who would have done those voices done their own voices were not available does that make sense yeah they thought they could get everybody just because like all these book nerds will want to come on oh they can't they won't yeah Tom Clancy said no he'd be on the show actually in the future yeah it's true yeah I I think they probably, oh, any author will say yes to us. We're TV, you know, but I saw one rumor online, but I couldn't see it substantiated of saying like a walk-in actually like turned down the money.

He thought it wasn't enough money, but I don't know about that. But definitely whenever Scully says like, oh, you know, it it could have been him but there was a scheduling problem anytime I hear scheduling problem I think that's the cover for somebody difficult or something else though also I feel like there's an intentionality to the design of the character that it looks like Jay Moore dressed as Christopher Walken to me it doesn't look like Christopher Walken even he doesn't have red hair right I mean I guess he's he was like uh Silver Fox by that point right oh by then sure yeah the the streets of gray were coming his hair is like it's a strange color yeah it looks like a guy on SNL wearing a wig for the funny scene of like what if Christopher I mean that also is just kind of a I it's such a stock. In 2000, maybe it was a little fresher.

It was, it was. Sure. But I mean, I don't know. It's right there with like, isn't it funny to hear somebody read Go the Fuck to Sleep? Like, I guess. Sure, sure. But yes, we then get to the audience question joke, which I feel like this is a comment by the simpsons writers about what it's like to go to public appearances that they'd started doing by the 10th season

and being asked bad questions like how much do you make like now there's much worse audience questions you can get at a panel i think and uh talking about things they wouldn't do now uh there's a funny bit of lenny asking about the b2 bomber but he actually was asking it to maya angelou not tom clancy uh maya angelou does a poem about the b2 bomber uh performed by tress mcneil not a black woman yes wouldn't be done now yeah no oh the the the sign gag i do like bart doing one of his old bits but it's pointing out like these were never that funny and they're kind of hard to do i do like bart doing one of his old bits but it's pointing out like these were never that funny and they're kind of hard to do i like how bart laughs and then is disappointed

yeah so he changes the future of reading to the future of breading and he just he laughs he's like no uh that's i do really love that that's them commenting i'm like these are a lot of effort and what's the point you know uh but then we get another you know it's only been a few minutes since something mean was done to lisa yeah let's make her pay uh so but we have our other another big guest for this episode miss tan i loved the joy luck club it really showed me how the mother-daughter bond can triumph over adversity no that's not what i meant at all. You couldn't have gotten it more wrong. But please just sit down. I'm embarrassed for both of us. And then Homer avoids eye contact with her because he's so embarrassed for her. Lisa just gives the thesis of the book to her.

I mean, that is the joke that Amy Tan is saying that, well, the obvious thesis of the Joey Luck Club isn't true and that you were wrong. But, like, I mean, that Lisa gets to meet a woman of literature who she so looks up to, and that hero, like, chews her out in front of everybody and humiliates her. I'm like, God damn. Why must you be this mean to Lisa? She'll be tormented by a manta ray later, too. Yes.

That's the last thing she gets to do in this episode. No, there's one other bad thing they have her do after the manta ray. I just remember the Joy Luck Club. There weren't any real stories about Chinese people given to mainstream culture. I think my family learned about Chinese people through the movie. Oh, there are Chinese people, and they have stories. No, it was eye-opening for me in high school to be assigned the book. through the movie like oh yeah oh there are chinese people and they have stories no i i it was eye-opening for me in like high school to be assigned the book like i i read the book in high

school and i and i i did enjoy it and i uh and it is absolutely about a mother-daughter bond that's across generations um have you guys seen the movie both of you yeah a long time if i did it was in the 90s so a very long time ago i was flipping through channels and i'm like oh it's the joy luck club i've never seen this movie and i like ming na i think she's just amazing to watch anything but she was not in the scene i was watching the actress in this scene was lauren tom is in joy luck club really yeah okay all right i gotta watch this again knowing knowing and appreciating the work of lauren thomas amy wong herself and also con junior yes uh yeah man and uh well and also you know we talk about amy tan and stephen king they have a connection to matt graining as well right they're all in the rock bottom remainders

the the rock and roll writer band right yes the the only for charity they're not like a real band basically them and say dave barry and mitch album and a bunch of other writers they come together and cover songs like they yeah and i believe a remainder is a book you send back because you can't sell it that's right yeah and rock bottom would be the cheapest that book would be i mean we get an nrbq song later in this episode but at least we are not subjected to the music of the rock bottom remainders which i'm sure is fine but like we don't need to i'd prefer it i've heard too much nrbq in my lifetime at this point uh we all have well i did find a clip of matt graining explaining uh what it was like to join the rock bottom remainders and you'll get to hear a little bit of them in the background

i was a little reluctant but I'm not the only one there were some phone calls back and forth between members of the rock critic's chorus saying what have we got ourselves into I don't know this is really bad because we knew as an ex-rock critic myself

what could have happened to us as performers being reviewed by the likes of us? There you go. But it's basically like three dozen people on stage. So you can't really single out one person. They're like Arcade Fire, right? We go from that to Krusty the Clown and his book signing. This book title, by the way,

what a weird pull because I'm just learning this now. Krusty's book is called Your Shoes Too Big to Kickbox God and it is the parody of an 80s Broadway musical called Your Arms Too Short to Box with God.

I don't know. I don't know why. Such a deep cut. Maybe one of the deepest cuts this show's ever done. Are you familiar with this musical, Drew? I don't know musicals at all, so no no i only know this from like retroactively trying to trace what the hell this

title came from i do know it is uh i don't know the musical which actually it's also from a phrase coined by writer civil rights activist james weldon johnson though i didn't know that either but i knew it as a term that you would just like hear in lyrics or said around in the last 20 years. I'd hear it a lot like there's it's it's like in some some hip hop lyrics, some other song lyrics. I also know it as a thing, a pro wrestler of mine, one of my favorite CM Punk. He threatened somebody with like, you can't beat me. Your arms are too short to box with god and so i think it's now just like uh as just a saying you say about like you're not basically

to say you're not strong enough to defeat me that's that's how i've heard it used but uh in in the year 2000 to pull that as the title of a book like that that's a crazy uh pull it's on the screen for a long time they're going uh see we did it takes a long time to read it and then i guess you know we have another guest you know i got a reason to play the jingle here death stalks you at every turn there it is death john up dyke passed away in january of 2009 at age 76. Funny story, I guess, is that I went to Cleveland to see Cinematic Titanic, Joel Hodgson's riffing group, before everyone got back together again. And even though John Updike died, they printed out the flyer to earlier, the pamphlet or whatever, whatever says the list of events. And he was still on there after he died.

Oh, wow. He was going to be there the next week oh that's sad uh on the commentary which has uh joe montaigne on it uh so he kind of takes it over there's not there's not as much space to talk about the episode on it but uh they they actually mentioned like oh there's john updike he just died like they recorded it within a week of the uh of his passing and has anyone read a john uptick book i did which one was it i was run rabbit run okay yeah but it was in high school so uh whatever i say about my review it is i read it as a teen boy who had no life experience but

as i recall it then i went like uh it was different for me to read a book about a guy who like had sex in it i'd never read books where sex happens but i just thought about like it's it's about a depressed uh husband who wants to cheat on his wife and it's just like a bummer you know no i've never read one oh i read rabbit run and it was in a period of my life where i was very insufferable where i think i think we all go through this and some people don't actually leave this period where you're like, I will absorb the art that makes me seem smarter than I am. So it's like, oh, if I read this, I'll be actually smarter.

So I would read a lot of books, especially books from the 60s that my older professors liked. So they would try to be like, oh, all these books from the 60s are the best. So the best authors are like Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike and John Cheever. And sometimes they'd be right. Like Kurt Vonnegut is amazing. Catch-22 john cheever and sometimes they'd be right like kurt vonnegut is amazing catch 22 is great but then i'd read something like rabbit run

and think like i hate this main character he sucks it's all about breaking free from this post-war plastic lifestyle but at the expense of like every woman he meets right he just is like the most insufferable main character and there are two other books about him i'm saying run rabbit run sorry rabbit run is garbage i don't like it it's hard to read the prose is amazing john updike's uh a and p i think the name of the story is i'm such a bad english major i like he's a very famous american author and i've just never even touched his body of work yeah a and p by john updike is an amazing short story like he's amazing with prose but just the the this the material within rabbit run was just so repulsive to me that i was no longer excited to read the remaining two books and i've broken out of that

uh you know part of my life now i i love genre fiction it's fine but back then i was like no only the smartest books for smart bob mackie that's what he reads you want to be spotted reading herman hess and somebody's like whoa they're very impressed by the way I am 21 and reading catch 22 aren't I clever oh you won't date me okay that's fine Z when I could have read those ones the the influential teachers for me told me to read like Franz Kafka and so I was like all right I'm super smart because I read Franz Kafka yeah for me it was all like the 60s writers that were kind of called counterculture and I did read some hunter thompson then i will say that was the and i and i really like his prose i think they're good they're all from a different era though but i think too the guys who were telling you to read john updike they probably in their writing wrote stories about how they'd finally get to cheat on their spouse

for 30 years yeah and even people like this i'm going on too long about this english stuff but i i gotta i have a master's degree and I'm still paying for it. So I need to use this information somewhere. Thomas Pynchon, I don't get it. I'm sorry. That's all I got to say. Don't get it. I tried to do it.

Pynchon Simpson's guest. I just smashed into that wall of Pynchon pros. I couldn't do it. So I also was an English major, only undergrad. I did not go to grad school. But I- You're smart. I was, but I should have mentioned something else. I guess I didn't

like it. I only fell back into it because this one very influential professor who specialized in Southern lit, like turned me back on to like studying literature because I liked her. But as a result, I've mostly just read Faulkner, which is great in very specific context, but it's not really helping me out in life at all. And, uh, didn't make me a great writer. And, um um no one else has really read uh anything outside of like azalea dying or absalom absalom and i can't talk to them about it man now i gotta i gotta pick back up faulkner now i've only read a couple uh like i gotta read some more of that but it's also funny to hear on the commentary that uh ian maxton graham

uh who seems like you know a very you know fancy man or a very well put together guy him saying that he totally fanboyed out to john updyke it was like you know isn't rabbit kind of like homer like that was it's it was funny to hear that he even he can be a fanboy of stuff wait did that does that mean that they brought John Updike into the studio to record this? This is really him. Yeah, it's really him. To say his own name and then laugh. So weird. Do you think he was like sort of insulted to be like, that's all you want me to do? Really?

I wonder if they recorded more lines and then just pretended they were going to be used. I wonder. They don't mention how they got him in there. But if I was John Updike, I'd be like, that's what's in the fucking show? Come on. Something that surprised me about him is that he wrote the book the witches of eastwick and that's an amazing awesome movie i didn't know he wrote that i did not either uh but yes why do we hear the wonderful two words that john updike says in this very important scene for crusty

book writing what a scam huh it's only 20 pages long and this guy wrote it for me what's your name again john uptake whoa whoa i didn't ask for your life story so you really know crusty what's he like oh he's wonderful he would do anything for his fans hurry up kid name hey it's me, Bart Your biggest fan Hey, good for you, cause I wanna Know that all my fans are, you know K to C Hey, this pen's gotta last me all day

Now, if you could Yeah Name? My name is Sophie Hey, good luck with that I'm your daughter I finally found my daddy. Oh, I think I just seltzered myself.

Shut up, Updike. You're right. He just says, I'm John Updike and laughs. He doesn't even say I'm. He just says John Updike. Yeah. That's it. I just seltzered myself.

That didn't make me chuckle, but shut up, Updike. I had a little laugh at that. And yeah, I also, I love Krusty not knowing Bart again, like not recognizing him. It's fun how impersonal he is through all of this. Yes, yeah. And he goes, and I love hearing Dan mumble as Krusty. And when Sophie tells him her name, he's like, yeah, good luck with that.

And I wonder how much of that is based on Simpson's staff going to signings and how it feels. But yeah, so Sophie comes in and I do. I have a reach around myself of a guess of what it's based on. But lots of celebrities have out of wedlock children uh but i think this is inspired if if anyone specifically would be on live tyler oh yeah because live tyler she didn't know she didn't meet her father steven tyler from aerosmith until she was 10 uh she was the uh she actually thought her father was todd run grin uh for a time even though uh she said apparently the story went that once she saw a

picture of steven tyler she's like i think that's my dad and uh that they then connected and steven tyler you know hadn't been a dad this whole time but then once he meets his his young daughter he's like he apparently really embraced being a dad and then of course put her in a classic of the mtv era he immediately sexualized his daughter yep yes wait what was going on with live tyler's mom that live thought her dad was a different rock star oh well her mom it was Bo Bell, I believe her name was, a former Playboy playmate and model. So she had been with a lot of rock stars. And so she married Todd Rundgren for a time. And she was with Todd Rundgren when she became pregnant and had the child. But she also had spent some time with steven tyler and so uh even

though i believe rungren uh also thought it was uh his his daughter for a time and so i wonder if he demanded like back child support from steven tyler after that but uh you know actually where's there's no child support jokes in this episode no No. I was kind of shocked at that. You know, we're talking a lot about great literary figures. We didn't even mention the ones this episode is named after, the Insane Clown Posse. Oh, yes. Some of the greatest minds of our time.

When they made a joke about Insane Clown Posse in 2000, who would have thought they'd be around still to this day? It's crazy. Wait, they're still around? Oh, yeah. I don't know if they did the gathering of the juggalos uh in in the covet year but uh you know those seem like something they would have done yeah yeah those videos were great until people found out about them and they became mainstream and i think they're trying to top the parodies now yeah it's like when um trapped

in the closet became popular and it just uh yeah that's a bummer now to talk about that. But yeah. Around since 1985, the insane posse of clowns. See, I know them too well because, again, the wrestling connection. They are. They actually failed as pro wrestlers first and then got into rapping. And as they became popular rappers, they're like, we're starting our own wrestling league and we're gonna wrestle it you guys are teaching me a lot about pop culture right now this is this is incredible yeah when i say the gathering that is shorthand for the

gathering of the juggalos i which is an official thing though honestly i've learned it all from previous guests on the show nathan rabin who uh that's right who went native as an icp listener he he was studying them as an outsider as a journalist and then he just enjoyed the life too much and and his only nice things about the uh the juggalo community it turns out they're the reasonable clown posse this is when i really thought like this is very critically, all this Gulf War stuff, and especially saying the name Cokie Roberts feels like a critic joke to me, too. The Gulf War stuff especially because around this time, the episode of Futurama Wars, the H-word had aired, and our thoughts on war in the year 2000 were much different than they are now. That's why the Iraq stuff is very light-hearted and there's not the baggage it has now yeah but a year less than a year before 9-11 they're doing these jokes about

it like i guess well that also sets sophie's age at a very specific time for the year 2000 which it's also funny if you think about like the sliding timeline of the simpsons bart lived through desert storm He was alive during it, and now he's meeting a character that is written to be the same age as him who seemingly was conceived at the time Bart was aware of the Desert Storm. Yeah, I wrote in my notes,

this is the first time I think that we flashback to an era in which the Simpsons already existed. Yes, yeah, that's true. Yeah, and unfortunately that means they can't do a joke about bootleg Bart merchandise of him strangling Saddam. But yes, let's hear the story

of Baghdad Love. Listen, honey, a lot of kids think of me as their daddy, but I'm just a simple TV legend. Here, have a keychain. No, I'm sure you're my father. You met my mom during the Gulf War.

Was your mother an Israeli flight attendant? No. Cokie Roberts? No, she was a soldier. Chestnut brown hair, kind of shy, 32 confirmed kills. Oh boy, now it's coming back to me. Saddam Hussein? They should call him so damn insane.

Hey, you're just fanning the flames of hatred. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, just when you thought the desert couldn't get any hotter, it's the Cincinnati Bengal cheerleaders. I can't look at that. I have a girlfriend back home. This is an insult to our Muslim hosts. Unironically, I want soldiers to feel that in other places. This wildly inaccurate behavior I want to see in real life.

But it's very funny. I like how reverent they are. Yes. These rowdy soldiers. Especially about the Muslim host thing. That's funny. That was a concern we had at some point during desert charm right i think so i i do think that actually came up about the uso tours and that that also feels

very quaint of just like well no we're supposed to just bulldoze this shit when we come into afghanistan or iraq you know uh well also all these saddam jokes like god that guy's been dead for like 15 years now it just feels so it's so weird honestly how easily propagandized we were into hating this guy's like oh he's america's number one enemy he has no impact on us but he's somewhere else and like it's almost as if consent was being manufactured somehow i've never heard of that yeah i i enjoy how offended they are at so damn insane which i think i saw that on so many t-shirts in 1990, 1991, right? Yeah, I like that Krusty's so hacked that he's using that.

And he thinks that later we find out that it's worth not saving Saddam's life because he values these jokes so much. And also, I mean, the Simpsons and critic writers really love talking about how bad bob hope stand-up is especially his uso tour stuff we're not that far removed from home we're learning to be a hippie from watching the video yeah a sandstorm comes in apparently the bit of crusty walking through the sandstorm is a reference to the meryl street film the french lieutenant's woman sure which it did that was previously referenced when lisa writes the letter home from camp crusty gives the man give to the man on horseback yes yeah then man these animators are real horny for this character sophie's mom the wiki will tell you she

has a name but that's a lie man she was definitely given a name later you know well she's in a comic book or something yeah name in a comic book she does not have a name because this is also very critiquey you don't don't name women sorry oh yeah yeah we did all we did so much of talking critic it's like wow this this woman jay is dating for this entire episode is not named yes she's uh you would think the a character who has the second most lines to jay in an episode would have a name that would be spoken aloud. But somehow, no. I guess it's because most women on The Critic are like monsters that who destroy men's lives. I just, for the same reason that I watched every episode of The Simpsons, I just rewatched the movie like yesterday.

And she is very prominently placed in the movie in the scene where Green Day dies. Yeah, I remember that now. She's like next to kent brockman right yeah like there's sophie's mom way to go you went to a green day concert that's fun for you it's also funny that they draw her so sexualized in this bit and then late and then later though as the frigid ex-wife she is drawn as unsexy as possible i didn't quite get that close-up of her face is it supposed to be attractive because it's a very odd drawing i don't know if they're trying to accentuate certain features within the style of the show but it just seems odd to me i think that when crusty is describing her they changed a line and that she would have there's no reason for

simpson characters never blush like a blush never appears on the face because uh we don't see nostrils ever really yes yeah that too yeah the level of detail i feel like they're my guess is that crusty had a line that directly referenced her features and then they're like yeah let's change that line and so instead he says like maybe it may be because the muslim women were biting but at first i thought it was the first time a simpson character blushed but it actually is not uh it at least happened one time before when nelson presented posies to sherry bobbins right there his cheeks actually red in as uh someone blushing would do it's a weird director directorial choice to like break what is essentially a rule that you don't show that kind of like face color change yeah yeah which makes me think there was purpose to it other than

trying to make her look like a cute lady which also like you know what she gets a really raw deal here like a strange clown barges into your private bedroom basically on base you're also like a woman in the military in 1990 you're probably sexually harassed every second you walk anywhere and then they have to put her as like this monstrous battle axe and and for what because crusty ruins her fucking career and her main job of a targeted assassination i guess if you would have cut out the dynamite thing in the beginning we could have had like a scene together with them where they fell in love not just like instant attraction yeah instant getting down with the clown the second this strange clown walks into her thing

she's like i am open for business like i i don't i mean everybody has their own things but what makes her so attracted to crusty the clown in that moment? But I guess Krusty has his own reasonings for it. He thinks it was just the danger of the situation or the magic. I just love his statement of like, it was magic. So doing a Johnny Carson character impression? He's not dead yet. He'd only stopped being on TV for six years. When the morning after begins,ie's mom says the only word

she says in the whole episode which is that she overslept and it's uh it's gonna fail to kill saddam hussein crusty then basically commits a treasonable offense of preventing her from killing saddam hussein uh he would have been sent to gitmo for that honestly uh but don't worry we got him yes yeah but but so crusty explains his reasoning in this next bit i just saved my baseball bit who's saying zon first i had told you zon second and stupid when i came to she was gone. And the war had been over for eight months. Anyway, how'd you finally find me?

All Mom ever said was my father was some pathetic clown. So I typed pathetic clown into a search engine, and your name popped right up. It's Mom. Hey, how you been? Remember me? You better get going. It was nice meeting you. Thanks for coming out. But I was hoping maybe we could do some stuff together, like go to the beach and junk. Look, you're a sweet kid, but I'm not exactly father material. I curse, I gamble, I pick fights with homeless people. What's wrong with your eyes? You need a claritin or something all right you get one trip to the beach with my assistant okay i'll take you crusty is on fire in this episode i think oh yeah

yeah this is really good for crusty episode uh though why would the ayatollah and snobby on the same team crusty they they're hated enemies we didn't hear the whole bit you know i'm sure he sorted it out eventually uh i also wonder like with this uh sexy woman in fatigues thing is this like a gi jane kind of reference is this what they're going for like that was just a couple years before this episode aired yeah i was thinking that too um it seems like around the same time and like we generally don't eroticize female soldiers that much that they have to then turn her into just a battle axe like ex-wife who just fiercely hates this guy becomes like psychotic yeah to the point of not speaking any more lines just growling it's really yeah i'm not a fan of that

but i think you know just two years later if they said this joke she'd say i googled pathetic clown not typed pathetic clown into a search it's a mouthful isn't it yeah i'm glad we have the verb google now um i looked that up because i was uh surprised by that too apparently we weren't using google as a verb often enough then that they knew to use that but the first time it ever appears in tv is in an episode of the last season of buffy wow wow i mean yahoo was a big deal in 2000 so maybe we were yahooing things i don't think anyone ever used that as a verb though i don't know why not yeah i don't think i ever yeah i said like oh yeah who did i binged it well that's because well for for me i would use i used a smattering of search engines until

it was a while before google Google took it over for me. So I wouldn't use one just as a verb. I mean, you know, when you really think about it, it's kind of gross. We just use a giant brand name as a verb, just an everyday phrase. We'll use Xerox things. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I put on my bandaid.

Yeah. Q-tip. All of them. I Google pathetic clown. Sorry. I Google pathetic clown and uh that frame came up oh that's perfect that's good i would have thought we get a picture of our former president or any politician yeah so this is the bit in the episode where i think the personal experience of

like hollywood writer dads comes in here like Like this is about, you know, bouncing, like whether you're divorced or not, like this is about being, being a Hollywood dad who is famous, but also is, uh, weird with your kids. Like doesn't know how to relate to them. Probably may perhaps because you're like a workaholic who doesn't spend any time with them. So they're like strangers to you. It's kind of, I do think it's kind of sweet how think it's kind of sweet how crusty wants to well actually barely wants to be with her but like she's it's so sad how he doesn't even recognize her as crying he's just like you need a clarinet what was this about and he should be good around kids presumably but he's a children's entertainer uh sophie is far more understanding than most

children are i think after the first time he just like shut down but there's also a bit they mentioned on the commentary i don't think it was in the deleted scenes like footage of like mo saying annie defranco more like annie diskenko which i was like what what wait where would he have said that yeah i i don't know they mentioned it over this scene i mean he maybe i i don't know why he would have said it but was matt was matt solman saying he was ashamed of that joke or something i think so it was his joke i think that's right yes yeah i have a krestovsky family question for you guys and that is this weird theory online that um so like sophie is drawn to be coded as being crusty's kid and one of the ways you can see that is that she has that specific shade of green as her hair color and do you guys know about the idea that barbara

van horn mel sancho mel's wife is supposedly crust Oh, yes. People feel strongly about this. Yeah, we talked about that in the one for Realty Bites. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Because they, yes, they, so as I recall, it was Sideshow Mel while, is being beaten by Krusty while they're listening to Lurling Lumpkin songs that I told you to stay away from my sister.

But then the song melts Krusty's heart he's like ah you take her someplace nice so then in Realty Bites when Mel is uh being shown a home by Marge and they're bowling him and his wife are bowling uh you know his wife is just you know a pretty lady but she is given Krusty colored hair which I i did note in that moment oh wow i didn't know about this theory and it's not even sideshow mel style hair is just the crusty color hair on this attractive otherwise attractive normal looking woman but the thing about the simpsons is they always like to do like uh like how sarah wiggum looks like chief wiggum and like luanne looks like kirk and they don't make her look like a female Sideshow Mel and it's probably nothing

but I just love that there is a contingent of people writing the Simpsons wiki who are like no no officially Barbara Van Horn is Barbara Krustofsky Van Horn yeah I remember reading on that wiki that they treat her entry as any time not just her on screen but if Krusty says well my sister blank they then use that to fill in information on her, treating her as it is canon that that's his sister. I mean, Krusty, well, Krusty is a very cold person in general, but he certainly doesn't treat Mel like his brother-in-law. No, no, no. I am looking at a picture of her. It could be. be yeah i i think the coloring used that idea though drew i think you're right too that it

could just be following the rule of millhouse's parents or ralph's parents are all drawn to just look the same in general there's no bone in her hair though yes they should have just gone all that all the way with it i would also think about an illegitimate Krusty Children. He's got a son out there, too, as seen in Marge vs. the Monorail. Right. Swaggy, woogie, wah, wah, wah. That's right. 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? Another weird thing with the coloring issue is that when sophie comes back they lighten her skin so she doesn't in this episode she basically has the same skin tone as like the simpsons do and they made her skin tone lighter i don't know why they would do that but it uh had the weird effect of making her colored more like sideshow mel than she was like crusty yeah i you know you're right i i didn't catch that, that they changed it. I prefer her having just standard yellow skin tone.

But yeah, maybe, where are they going with this Mel thing? I wonder. But yeah, the next scene, I feel like this is a cute little dinner scene of them gossiping with Homer gossiping with God. It's like an older joke from homer where he gets into like personal business with god when he's praying yes yeah that's like a season one thing even yeah i uh but to make it feel like the year 2000 homer says i know he's a player like homer using player in that way is a very year 2000 thing definitely and uh and also i we again this is the same production season as the death of maude so

they're already joking like maude's get get taken in from all comers in heaven right now really all those guys wow uh what what a horrible thing for homer to say about the woman he basically killed so is homer hearing the voice of god at this point i guess so in his mind he's hearing god say maude is having sex with lots of different men in heaven that's a game hendrix so this is the last time i'm gonna flash forward i swear but no worries have you guys seen the season finale of episode 29 is called flanders ladder uh no no no i'm not okay so i want to tell people that listen to this podcast that maybe you should just watch this episode because it is

fucking wild. They do a lot of cutaways to Maude in Heaven, like looking down on her kids. That happens kind of a lot. There's this episode where in an extended dream sequence that is like the bulk of the episode, Bart can see ghosts and they have Bart interact with the ghosts of like every dead

character. Okay, I every dead character okay I have seen that I have seen that and I want to watch this it's worth a watch and like there's a you see a scene with everyone like Amber Simpson is there and like Sherry Bobbins is there which is weird to see but Maude is there and Maude's actually

kind of the second most important character because her whole thing is wanting to get revenge on Ned for marrying Edna. Cause at this point Edna is not dead. And it is the weirdest episode that also seems like Simpsons fan fiction. And also seems like they were really trying to work within the mythology of the show. And a lot of people hate it.

And I'm not going to say it is necessarily the greatest thing ever, but it is a fascinatingly weird thing to watch. And then it ends with a flash forward to telling you how every Simpsons character dies. Oh, yeah. It turns into the end of Six Feet Under with the same song even, I think. And Maggie Simpson does not die ever. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Okay. I have seen the end of that one. I think I did it for mod research at some point to be like any every time mod came back voiced by maggie roswell again once they showed her in heaven for the first time they could never bring her back it's it's really too bad the door was open until then i know there's another recent episode just about how creepy it is that like the or and tragic that like rod can't remember his mother's face and like he doesn't see it in dreams yeah um i know a lot of people didn't like that episode either i kind of feel like newer middling episode of the simpsons are better than like middling episodes of the simpsons from this era

i think they kind of did some interesting things like trying to give the flanders kid like actual emotions and motivations that he doesn't really have any other episode. I guess it's weird when you're 10, but your mom has been dead for 20 years. Yes. It does mess with you. So we head to the beach, and Krusty, not much fun at the beach. Okay, kid, there's the water. Knock yourself out. Come on, Dad.

Let's go body surfing or boogie boarding. Listen, kid, I'm not the kind of dad who, you know, does things or says stuff or looks at you but the love is there where are you give daddy a clue oh that's my girl okay you just sit there and I'll throw the frisbee to you oh I gotta sit up now what am i baryshnikov hey you beat me what a great day we've had huh you know for a clown you're not really a lot of fun i i love that crusty line i'm not the kind of dad who does things or does stuff or looks at you but the love is there love is there god yeah i well and also like drew barrymore does a really good job uh play like playing that line like that's just well acted of like saying like

you know for a clown you're not really a lot of fun like she's a heartbroken child are they pitching her voice up it sounds like they're pitching your voice up a little bit i can never tell i can never tell if someone's doing it manually or if it's done after the fact and yeah i also like hearing scully on the commentary saying like he's just like my dad except he's there that rules and i love the design of crusty wearing sock garters to the beach like like like he's a one of the sunshine boys when you'll sign and play and the whole time you like swimming's a one of the sunshine boys when neil simon played and the old timey like swimming suits like striped swimming suit top yeah the crusty i mean in in his first appearance crusty is supposed to be like a guy who is 60 then which would make him 70

that now in the year 2000 that's another one where the floating time frame has to be like they used to be able to show a clip where crusty is frame has to be like they used to be able to show a clip where crusty is like well this is like they could tell you crusty's been on the air for 29 years in in 1992 but they really can't do that joke anymore they then cut to the other dads doing a good job apparently apu is doing a lot better with uh with having eight kids like the one time you've seen him happy with all these kids uh and i'm sounding like the back page of a sunday comic now but did you guys spot the difference in uh the shot with ned oh no ned is drawn with a normal body he's not the hot bod we've usually seen oh wow okay yes i didn't even notice thank you for pointing that out i'm disappointed in

myself that i did not notice that it's it's the first time i noticed he's not the stupid sexy flanders we all know and love he let himself go after ma died uh i mean too he's not the man with the chest in that thought shot and though now unfortunately i'm thinking about like how what for him to wear board shorts to the beach, what is he having to do to contain that genitals? There's some gaffer's tape involved. Yes. I'm glad you said that, Henry, and not me. I do like that Ned doesn't want it to look like a Catholic church tube. That's not an inner tube.

I'm done. Oh, come on. Come on. And then we get a little cute bit of uh kearney with his kid i i always like when he's teaching his kid i love the i sleep in a drawer kid yes uh kearney let him out of his door for a dad day and and so then we cut to homer being tortured by his kids which in a vacuum it's funny the drawing itself is very fun it's a great drawing of every child attached to him in some way and doing something to mess with him yeah especially

him getting hit with bubbles in the eyes and and also he has one of those like you know the velcro uh catcher's mitt thing that you have for the beach i like that but but you know if you're gonna do this again don't have homer nine minutes earlier be the worst parent in the world that's that's all this feels like the dad's on the show venting like my kids piss me off just like just like how that uh bank roof release episode ends with the moral of the story is you kids don't take they take your parents for granted and then crusty selects of all the dads he sees he selects homer as being the best one to be his mentor just for no reason other than that that has to happen for the story to move along so

frankly a poo would be the best i think yeah out of all the examples he saw if he can handle eight kids the telling tips on one it'll be a breeze well i think too it's interesting that crusty not only befriends homer in this, but also they fight the mafia together, which is both of what happened in Homie the Clown. And that same mafia guy is in the gathering. Oh, yeah, Don Victoria DiMaggio is there, too. But, yes, Homer has some lessons for his old buddy Krusty. You know, Homer, I spend my whole life entertaining kids,

and I just realized I don't know the first thing about them. Well, I won't lie. Fatherhood isn't easy, like motherhood. But I wouldn't trade it for anything, except for some mag wheels. Oh, man, that would be sweet. Dad! Dad! Just a second, honey. Daddy's on his high horse. Dad! Yeah, I'm watching, honey.

Nice cannonball. Anywho, the key to fathering is don't overthink. Because overthinking is, um, what were we talking about? Ooh, a clown! I just want to play one second of that. You can get a taste of I Like That that girl by nrbq yeah some more nrbq their like seventh appearance on the show so far they he paid for multiple homes of theirs with the with this licensing why why why why why do we have to listen to it again and again you guys may have talked about it on a previous episode but they're mike scully's favorite band yes

and we honestly we would do the same thing if we were running a show cronyism and i'd hey i would find my favorite i don't know uh let's say they might be giants i'd pay i'd give them a bunch of money to do original songs for my show are they original songs or are they like no actually this isn't original they they nrbq did record a couple original things for the simpsons as well but uh like i think the best use of nrbq was the marmalade song yeah but this one the difference between you in your like dream show like giving they might be giant stuff to do is that like in real life you meet people who like they might be giants and like i only know one person who likes nrbq and it's mike scully and i've never heard of anyone else talk about this band it is just same here the only other person i can think of is diedrich

bader because that's how he met mike scully at an nrbq concert that's right uh well diedrich paid is a great actor and voice actor and everything but it's funny that he got cast on simpsons because they he's an nrbq fan as well i mean they're on a different level of fame as drew barrymore so it's weird to see like drew barrymore stephen king john updike and nrbq fan as well i mean they're on a different level of fame as drew barrymore so it's weird to see like drew barrymore stephen king john updike and nrbq all the same episode the homer in this entire speech here is like kind of the dumbest he's ever been one of the dumbest he's ever been like he is forgetting who he's talking to as i love that clown and i guess what mag wheels are accessories

for cars? Yeah, they're like fun wheels for your car. That's all we gotta say. All the mag wheel jerks are gonna come out in the comments now. You guys really don't understand mag wheels. I like Homer thinking motherhood is easy, too. That's pretty great. But yeah, it's been a few minutes, so it's

time to torture Lisa again of her being surrounded by a manta ray uh i feel like in the original script it was a shark and they they toned it down to manta ray that's uh that's just my gut on it that makes sense do manta rays kill people or no i mean they famously killed uh steve irwin yeah that's that's that's right and they're so fun to pet i know i've i've enjoyed petting manta rays a couple of times. I can't do that. I hope in the post-COVID world I can get back to petting manta rays again. That's what you're most excited to do.

It's up there, but ahead of a concert. Then they have a pair of gags about them riding horseback together, but they're surfing with the horse the impossibility of them running away from the tide and then getting splashed with water from behind somehow that's very funny i do like that and uh and crusty bribing sea captain to keep putting fish on the line so uh so sophie can feel good that's that's sweet and there's a sweet little scene where uh she plays her violin for him yes yeah actually i got that here too kid i gotta admit you're starting to grow on me same here dad it's nice that you don't always have to be on i thought i was on when was i off that bit about the tide pool? I tell you, it killed at Jacques Cousteau's funeral.

Dad, relax. Just enjoy the sunset. Hey, I know that song. My dad used to play that when I was a bully. It's beautiful. Do you play? No, I guess musical talent skips a generation. Like diabetes. You might want to watch out for that, too. Mom, I guess musical talent skips a generation. Like diabetes.

You might want to watch out for that, too. Mom, I had the best time. Can Dad come in for milk and cookies? Why, I'd love to. Oscar Homolka. That's okay. I think I'll go somewhere friendlier. Like beautiful downtown Grosney.

Zoom. I do love that Zoom. Yeah. I do like that. Oscar Homolka, I think it just, it's the name of an actor, but I think it was chosen because it sounds like it could be like a Yiddish expression.

I think that to me sounds like Dan Castellaneta, I bet if you ask him to do an Oscar Homolka impression, he can do it. So I bet it's him to do an Oscar Homolka impression, he can do it. So I bet it's just a name in his Rolodex. And he's like, oh, that sounds like a fun exclamation. I thought what was interesting about this scene was that Sophie's mom does not look like Sophie at all. Like you wouldn't think that they are related. And they code them as being attached to each other because they give them both Petereter pan collars which is a very odd design

choice but that's how we're supposed to associate this mom with this little girl yeah they they should have designed her i feel like they just designed a sexy soldier lady and not uh anything else with her and and also like i don't know i i instead of making her just the clown hating ex-wife monster i would have been interested to know emotionally her side of things of like that she's raised this daughter all by herself and now all of a sudden she loves this dad that had abandoned her her whole life you know i mean obviously obviously crusty's not at fault of not spending time with her before because he didn't know she existed but still i i feel like the ex-wife they make her such a man hater but there's they could actually deal with something more deep if they talked about her worried that she's losing her daughter to the

that she actually put the effort into raising to the father who just showed up until drew pointed out i totally missed that they're the connecting feature between the two characters are their collars yeah i mean they have identical collars um yeah again if they just kicked out the firework segment and maybe we rework the third act of this there would be more room for both mom and also sophie who kind of disappears in the third act so yeah but then there wouldn't be time for like then they'd have to think of a name for this ex-lover of crusty's and that'll take all day you know name a woman gosh what are women's names helen we're staying late tonight boys i want 30 women's names on that chalkboard let's go uh but i i do i did uh think it was kind of sweet how crusty cries and hearing his his daughter play the song his father played

him growing up father is still alive and we'll be back in the show yeah yeah but uh yeah i guess that scene works better if his father's dead but uh but it's still kind of touching and but yeah that that setup of the ex-husband standing outside well again crusty's not the ex-husband but the ex standing outside the front door of the apartment looking in and seeing things that terrify him. That's like two jokes combined from the critic. Like that's straight from the critic. It's the gag of Jay arriving at his super fans house in the misery parody and everything

on the wall is a picture of him. And then it's also the times Jay is standing outside the door to visit Ardith and she is just like screaming with anger and even having to look at him. But at least it's funny drawings of dead clowns. I had to laugh at those. And he's talking about the Chechen city of Grozny, which from 99 to 2000 in the Battle of Grozny, thousands of people died during the Chechen Civil War. So fun, fun joke too soon crusty too soon uh but i always love uh it goes over your head act out like it's just so funny i think homer does a whoosh when he does it but zoom's funny too and then in a very weird turn after all that

sweetness homer crusty invites homer to a criminal poker game with snake and fat tony i guess they're no longer holding these at homer's kitchen since the car hole incident yeah well though also after mo learned that homer is so slow that he's terrible to play poker with why did mo invite him back so my headcanon for this is that there are two parallel poker groups there's one for like lenny and carl and barney and that's like the nice guys who are not actual criminals and this is like the seedy underbelly of springfield poker group where the stakes are higher that's what i made up in my head i could see that and crusty's like now you're coming to my poker night homer as a thank you to you i guess said though in most of these scenes it's like homer is an accessory to this story

because it could it would work much better if it was just Krusty alone. But there's always the thought, you know, no, a Simpson needs to be witness to these things. I do like Homer reflecting on like my uncle still has my nose. That's a good interjection by him, though. You guys, just to prove that with your most recent episode about the one where the Simpsons don't show up. It's the rare one, the road to Cincinnati. 20 years to build up the courage to do that. Like, no, simply no simpsons don't show up it's the rare one the road to cincinnati 20 years to build up the courage to do that like no simply no simpsons crusty has four aces a pretty great hand

uh he his poker face is destroyed by a spinning bow tie uh but yes there are two hands better than it a straight flush and a royal flush and uh so it's funny that crusty thinks like that's a lock which is like no four aces is not a lock it can be beaten but statistically low chance of it and uh and yeah it's also funny to see fat tony just brought in it reminds me of how say in the episode faith off for no reason in the last like four minutes three minutes fat tony shows up to be like hey i'll kill you if you don't do like it's just it's instant stakes to add in fat tony i do always like him and it's like yeah there's like six guest stars in this uh episode it's kind of a lot did they have a guest star budget they had to run out by the end of the season but i mean joe montana is pretty great and it's fun to hear

him on the commentary especially i think my favorite bit on the commentary is him and Dan Castellaneta reflecting on that they were both Chicago based actors at the same time in the 80s but one was in the serious actor realm and the other was in the Second City realm and that his um his voice for Fat Tony is based on his uncle who he brought to one of the recordings when he was alive and everyone was tickled by the fact that he sounds just like Fat Tony. That's so sweet. That's real sweet. I am always impressed when I remember that. That's not what Joe Mantegna actually sounds like in his day-to-day life.

He is doing a character that is like not his normal self. I should see him in a real movie again. It's been a long time since I've seen him. You can always watch Thinner. Oh, yes. Yeah. Boy, he is an ethnic cleanser of the Romani people in that film it's it's not a good guy I guess to talk about uh

Stephen King again that's a Stephen King oh yeah he's in the money pit he plays a uh contractor who makes an uh unrequited pass at Shelley Long you know I was also thinking about him with um uh oh yeah you guys have your shelly long cast i should be if you we we talk about shelly long yes yeah uh i i was thinking about it because the i believe they're about to re-release godfather 3 with like the definitive cut and i think they filmed some new scene with with pacino or something and montaigne is in that it's it's you know it's pretty funny i was uh how time has changed so and Montaigne's in that. It's pretty funny how time has changed. Sofia Coppola's in that movie,

and everybody was super cruel to her, like, oh, what nepotism, putting his daughter in it. 30 years later, everybody who made fun of that puts their kid or gives their job, every job in Hollywood, and it's like, how the worm has turned.

Also, you can't make fun of Sofia Coppola now because she actually is a very well-established director it should have been winona rider but she was unavailable that would have been a better movie yes i think that's actually worse for sofia coppola to everyone's like you just got this because you you were the director's daughter and she's like actually i was the second choice oh god yeah uh that's even that is meaner uh but uh but yes so crusty he's got four aces but he's running out of money he needs to he needs to find something to up the bet with uh and i do like homer asking if it can be a high low split which uh that is when the pot is divided between the player with

the best hand and or the high hand and a player with the lowest hand which means the lowest ranking card so it's funny that homer keeps asking like hey can we do the thing where you split the plot pot with the guy with the worst hand no oh okay then i'm out i did not know that uh again i had to look up a lot of rules for poker for this scene though i should be playing i was playing a bit of video game poker in uh in yakuza lately yeah i was gonna say all i know is how like you play it in video games yes and also calling back to that critic uh desert storm episode homer even sings uh in the jungle just like jay does right oh my god i was wondering where i heard that before and okay so yeah i was wondering where that was coming from because uh like i couldn't figure out what they were

referencing um because like the lion lion sleeps at night hadn't been in pop culture at that point. You're right. That's where it's from. I think I was just like, oh, that was funny in that other critic. Let's do it there. What if Jay sung it again? And so Krusty goes to his car searching for anything he could use. I like that he even looks at his floor mats like, can I bet that?

But he sees Sophie's violin violin which is definitely not worth two thousand dollars uh which they have to point out uh but i i like the animation of the four aces singing do it to him and you'll met she'll never know nice harmonizing uh and uh it gets appraised by a man with a jeweler's lube who can somehow read sentimental value into it. I enjoy Fat Tony holding it, not really knowing what it is, and then rubbing it on his teeth. That's great. But so, Krusty calls, and it's

not so good. Well, it won't bring much cash, but it's sentimental values through the roof. It is acceptable. Then I'm in, and I call for aces. Read them and... Straight flush.

Oh, no. You can't. My daughter will never forgive me. Oh, wait. Now I can do it for real. That's a good joke. Yeah, it goes on for like 10 seconds. I like how long they spend just on him playing the violin. And at the end, I like him going,

like that when he grins. And also, it's like a really good drawing of Krusty looking like heartbroken through the crook of his elbow i like that shot too and a very accurate animation of him like hitting the different strings on the violin it's like someone spent a lot of time on that scene i could tell so kudos to you it's a very very good act break it's one of the better act breaks i can like think of in the simpsons i i really like that it ends on a joke but also a stakes thing i like that i mean is they said that the third act was heavily rewritten from the original one and i do think it seems very you know well what if the mob takes her violin and he's gotta get it back to prove he loves his

daughter this poker game feels like where the swerve happened where the rewrite happened where i think now fat tony is here hooray but i I kind of love all the mafia stuff they do in Act 3 because they have not really done things with the whole mafia in a while. It's usually just Fat Tony who shows up. So I like all this stuff coming up. It is a lot of fun. Yeah. But first, Krusty has to break the bad news to Sophie.

Hey, hey, Dad. Hey, hey. Now look, Sophie. I know you think your daddy's perfect. No, I don't. But I did a bad thing. I know you think your daddy's perfect. No, I don't. But I did a bad thing. I lost your violin in a poker game. You what?

But don't worry, I got you an even better one. This is a ukulele. Yeah, the thinking man's violin. Check it out. I want to go back to my little grass shack in the Kealakekawaii. I want my violin. But honey, I... I can't believe you would gamble with something that meant so much to me. Wait.

Time out. Four aces is not a gamble. Mom was right. I was better off not knowing you. Krusty briefly becomes Adam Sandler's character from uncut gems they're like hey that's not a gamble okay i i mean he's also singing the uh the 1930s hawaiian song uh my little grass shack and he says it i can't i can't pronounce it but i think it's also really cute how they say hey hey to each other like that's really nice it's a great way to show the growth between them i think

just that little exchange um also drew's drew's reading of no i don't is exactly what it should be it's perfect yes yeah no i don't like yeah she's she's not judging she's not being a jerk she's just like no matter of fact uh all right then we come to the last bit of lisa content that i didn't like in this episode first we have a joke clearly written by people who have never watched the tv series dawson's creek but i've never watched it so i thought this is what was actually happening on the show well not really yeah other than the character dawson they don't name any name of a person who was on that show also i'm fairly certain that show never had a latinx character yeah they actually it's a very it's an incredibly undiverse show uh actually uh i mean they they did have a gay character on it at least but uh starting in the second season i think really just

so kevin williamson could tell the gay stories without making dawson gay that was like they basically just like well there's this guy jack who just is dawson and he'll be gay but that's why dawson didn't like get laid until like the fourth fifth season of the show is that true he uh do you know who he lost his virginity to on the show the character dawson no it was it was pacey yeah i wish that's the only other character name i know pacey ends up with joey uh but then uh but yeah dawson uh he lost his virginity to uh michelle williams's character, that's sweet. That's okay, I guess.

She got a bad rap at the end of that series. Anyway, this is Dawson talk here. I should drop that. But Bubble Bee Man is there, and he says, what the dillio in Spanish? That's funny. Two uses of what the dillio in The Simpsons. But boy, do I not like that Lisa, of all characters,

has to be the one who's like, I think this is forced diversity pandering. I'm like, what the fuck? What? 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? What? Lisa should

not be saying this. Yeah, Bart can say this line and it's fine. Marge can say it and it still works but lisa is just like they're just having lisa complain that they're just putting people into roles that could be played by a white man it's just pandering it's like bar if i hate hearing lisa say that she she could complain that like their way they're doing is like forced and awkward that would have been better but like that's not the words they put into her mouth, which is too bad. The word pandering definitely means a certain thing in this.

Yeah. There's some political commentary happening here. Social commentary, cultural commentary. There we go. Not a fan. Not a fan. Also, ironically, the next broadcast episode of The Simpsons has Lisa hanging out with a character played by a Dawson's Creek co-star, Joshua Jackson himself.

But this bad parody leads to one of the greatest cutaways of all time, right? Hell yes, yeah. I do have that clip. You gotta help me. My daughter found out I'm a jerk. Krusty, I'm sure she just needs time to get used to you. Marge, may I play devil's advocate for a moment? Sure, go ahead.

Get in there. Stupid game. game now what were we talking about my daughter's violin all right why don't we just break into fat tony's compound and get it back really you'd help me take on the mob for a casual acquaintance like you absolutely yeah devil's advocate joke one of the all-time greats and uh even though i know what's happening i know the cutaway is going to happen i get excited for it it's fun and i was blown away the first time like that is that's an amazing joke i've never seen a joke like that before yeah i don't remember react i don't actually know when i first saw this episode because i would have been in my first bit of college when it aired so i probably saw it way

after the fact but it reminded it made me feel like it was a family guy thing and i know family guy stole like a certain form of cutaway from the simpsons but even the way homer gestures when he asked marge for permission to play devil's advocate made me think of family guy and that kind of spoiled my enjoyment of this although the art on the pinball machine is really good you're right that it was staged exactly like a family guy line but but the difference would be their couch is against the wall in the Simpsons house. And the couch is in the center of the room in the Family Guy house. So very different. It's an important difference.

Before we get too far past it, I do want to say one more thing about the Dawson's Creek parody. The girl whose name is mentioned is Jenda, which is like a fake made up sounding name. But Jenda is also a character who's now recurring on The Simpsons voiced by Amy Poehler. That's Bart's high school girlfriend who he ends up marrying and divorcing in the future. And I was like, that's super weird because I've never heard of a person named Jenda before.

Weird. And it's not by the same writer. It's that Jenda arrives in a Matt Selman script. And I just have no explanation for why this name Jenda would have gotten used twice on the show. I guess Matt Selman would have been in the room. So maybe he threw out Jenda arrives in a matt selman script and um i just have no explanation for why this name gender would have gotten used twice on the show i guess matt selman would have been in the room so maybe he threw agenda and then forgot about it like 15 years later just he just had gender on the brain

that's uh man i still we we you i appreciate you drew supporting my part is gay theory uh from bart to the future but yeah it doesn't feel right to me to see bart with a woman in the future i don't know i just that's that's not bart to me especially after you know in the first in the first four years especially season four they enjoyed writing jokes about bart having gay tendencies that come out i i guess especially in lisa beauty queen they like doing that and then they stop with him even though they do it with literally every other character they throw under the gay bus whenever they can yes yeah i think all the all the gay jokes for bart got transferred to martin yeah but they yeah or mill or millhouse or millhouse yeah every millhouse is gay when

they don't want to have him be in love with lisa yeah what the hell's yeah come on you got martin if you're gonna do homophobic jokes we'll do them with martin as the little gay boy come on he's he's perfect give martin some screen time man uh but yeah the i also love the design on the devil's advocate oh it's great i want like a t-shirt of that i'm sure there are thousands of them on like red bubble or etsy or whatever and uh and yeah that homer has to i appreciate them spotlighting that. Homer has no reason to risk his life for Krusty in this way. But it is so similar to the end of Homie the Clown. Like, it's them going into the lair of the mafia, Homer and Krusty together. They should have, I mean, if they're going to hang a lantern on the fact that Homer should not be working with Krusty for this dangerous mission,

they should say, like, just like the last time we did that. Remember, Krusty? I guess they wanted to joke about some things, but not other things. Yeah. But I do love the mafia meeting set piece. It really feels like just gag-filled police squad style humor. Just like everything works for me. Even though it is a weird plot element of this touching episode

about a father and daughter coming together, I like all the jokes. Yes. I like all the jokes. Yes. I like all the jokes. But yes, why don't we learn about the many crime families of the Italian-Americans and also meet two of the breakout stars of Modern Simpsons.

Hey, I heard there's a lunar eclipse tonight. Maybe we should look up. Nah, for me it's solar or nothing welcome to my home to answer your first question yes we do have pasta if you need money laundered just set it outside your door you can pick it up in the morning now some unpleasant news i have learned that someone in this room is a squealer we've narrowed it down to either johnny tight lips

or frankie the squealer okay it's me i can't help it i just like squealing it makes me feel big all right come on that's great so yeah uh johnny tight lips and frankie the squealer uh in the ranks of jimmy the scumbag right yeah i i think they've appeared in many more episodes that i went to the wiki like it's like over two dozen for johnny tight lips he's great a great drawing too more than sophie um that episode i told you about where all the ghosts show up frankie the squealer is a ghost in that and so apparently he's now canonically dead man i know they try to kill him in that treehouse but that's obviously not canonical when death takes a holiday bits happen but yeah i i feel like he's dead and then he's not dead sometimes like he's like hans mole man yeah yes actually dr nick riviera and

and something else i'll note on time frame for this year this i appreciate this because this is the last time they're going to do parodies of mafia stuff that doesn't include soprano yeah we just did a talky futurama where uh it was a mafia episode but it was all like pre-sopranos mafia stuff and uh i do like homer's plan in that uh fat tony will merely be too distracted by his hosting duties to find them. So he'll just be too busy hosting his party. I also love that Homer says, if I know Fat

Tony, and I don't, he'll be there. Which also, though, isn't true because by my count, before this episode, Fat Tony has tried to kill Homer three times. He tried to kill him in Hie the Clown. He tried to kill the entire Simpson family in Twisted World of Marge Simpson.

And he tried to kill Homer in Mayor to the Mob. And he tried to kill Homer in Faith Off. So actually four times before this. He knows Fat Tony very well. I mean, oh, Fat Tony. I will go now. So it's also just kind of a thumb in the eye of any history there of Homer going like I don't know fat Tony

and of course it's very funny to hear all the names of the crime families including the Cuomo's I believe it but organized crime cannot take down COVID-19 no no I mean well they've been weakened so much over the last decades

so Homer and Krusty explore the place they No, no. I mean, well, they've been weakened so much over the last decades. So Homer and Krusty explore the place. They set up all this violent stuff. I do like that they connected with the old crime movie thing of Tommy guns being kept in violin cases. Like, that's funny. I like that, that it's just a pile of them. And then also as Homer and Krusty are searching through it, first Homer has an idea for no reason to try to climb in the vents yeah that has nothing to do with finding the right uh case it's just like well you climb through a vent in a movie right yeah and then homer then in the

cutaway has it stuck to his butt which means that he tried to go in butt first into that that made me laugh the most of anything in this episode that that really did it for me i have to say i i really like them uh how bad how bad their plan is where they just walk out in front of everybody with their arms full of cases that's insane yeah i like how just ludicrous and just gag heavy this this bit is uh and uh oh also the bit where they walk in on Frankie the Squealer being beaten. He says Tony's real name is Marion. That is a reference to John Wayne's real name being Marion Robert Morrison. And also I like that Legs, Louie goes, hey Legs, let's go jump on Tony's bed.

But yes, we also hear about that they're going to use the website crime.org which is an open domain right now you just got to pay two hundred thousand dollars wow that's it at least according to the the web page when i i typed in crime.org and you know what that's that's uh that's a retcon of fat tony's name because when he's established wasn't it like william fat tony williams or something like that yes yeah but then at uh at homer they fall it's set up like he's fat tony d'amico yeah so he's had a lot of names and then of course we uh as you know drew from watching farther ahead this fat tony dies in a few seasons and is replaced by fit tony who then gains weight who gets fat yep homer and crusty very just brazenly walk into the center of the room and cause a gang war

as everybody's shooting at each other. Only one person gets hit, though, and that leads to a very silly ending. Wait, about the gunfight, what I love about the gunfight is they're all just firing guns point blank at each other, but no one is getting hit. They're able to dodge instantly. Yes. guns point blank at each other but no one is getting hit they're able to dodge instantly yes uh but uh well it wouldn't be funny if that tony or other people just got shot in the face or whatever but uh but yes that leads to our final clip here johnny tight lips where'd they hit you i ain't saying nothing but what do i tell the doctor don't suck a lemon

hey Hey. You did it. You got it back. Thanks, Dad. Dad, that still sounds weird to me, but I'm glad we're friends again. And you've lined the case with money. Small bills, unmarked, and non-sequential! Holy simoleons! There must be five grand in there! Oh, which I intentionally put in there for you. You lucky little hamantashen. Come on. How about a tune for the old man? That's him! That's the one homer simpson i said i was sorry all right fair enough class act sorry you're such jerks

that bullet went in okay so this is the third time homer has been shot over the credits in the mike scully run i'm not saying i don't like it i'm just saying he likes doing this a lot so i think the first time was in screaming yellow honkers yeah where it's a non-canonical scene where homer is forced to read uh you know like a written statement about how fox is great because the end of that episode talks about all the great programming on what m yeah not just Dateline but all the rest of it yeah and then in um EIEI Doe he is shot by the uh the duelist right yeah but not but he still wants to eat pie before going to the hospital yes yeah so yeah this is the third time that episode has ended with Homer being shot man that's uh yeah Well, also, I was counting, in addition to that, how many times just in production season 11, Homer screams over the credits because he did it. I have it here.

It's the episodes Last Tap Dance and Springfield screams over the credits. The Mansion Family, Little Big Mom, Eight Misbehavin', EIEI Doe dough and guess who's coming to criticize dinner all of them are homer crit screaming over the executive producer stuff so uh they i think they just it is funny but they maybe over relied on like have homer just scream us into the ending here but but even more specifically how many times he's been shot it's like well you guys really like that i mean it is funny that Homer gets shot. And if you do it at the very end of the episode, no consequences. It doesn't matter.

Yeah. Didn't love it. I can appreciate you guys saying that there's a rich history of Homer screaming and getting shot over the end credits. But when I watched it, I was just like, oh, that's how it ends. All right. Well, I guess in all those cases, it is what do we have confidence in our ending? Perhaps if Homer screamed over it, we'd have more confidence. Like, yeah, the sweet ending is going out on her playing the music.

Having Homer run through screaming and being shot at is the crazy ending. And they chose that. I think it does display a lack of confidence. Yeah. The other getting shot endings were better. I do love homer's like sorry you're such jerks like that that get that made me and then it seems like he's surprised they still want to come after him yeah i i mean also i do like homer running through it

just as a way of them recognizing that this had no ending that they in the previous scene crusty just goes like hey i got the violin but the mafia knows you just robbed from them that doesn't solve your problem yeah they walked out in front of them that's true so i also do love uh that sophie that five thousand bucks is just the start of the child support she's owed but i like that she describes it the way the fbi would that it's non-sequential though i really i feel like johnny tight lips for that one picture that one shot of him he wouldn't be so recurring but him saying tell him to suck on a lemon that's such a funny line that that's why he comes back a million times he is great and

this episode as a whole uh it's it's a mess in terms of plot and i think the sophie stuff is kind of buried but i think this episode persists for me because of all the great gags. And one of the all-time great gags is the devil's advocate gag. I just love it so much. So I say I like this episode. I am the episode liker on this podcast. I enjoy this one for the funny jokes. I wish it wasn't so inconsistent with Homer,

and I reject a jerk-ass Homer. And also an unnamed woman is a bad thing in these shows. And just being treating Lisa so poorly. Oh, and I last bit of thing that Sophie is called a hamantash, which is a traditional Jewish cookie, usually related to Purim. But I could go for some hamantash now. But anyway, I think it's I think it is a I like the heart where it comes in. And there are jokes that make me laugh a lot. Plus, the legacy of Johnny Tight Lips and Frankie the Squealer is something.

I think this is a wacky ass episode for the end of the season. And I wish it was a little nicer to Lisa in particular. And I definitely would reshuffle some plot things in it. Yeah, I said how I feel about it. On the hamantaschen thing, I was looking at the Simpsons archive. And one of the people there conjectured that the reason Krusty calls her that is that hamantaschen are triangular shaped, and Sophie's head is actually shaped like a hamantaschen. So I'm like, oh, I like that. I think that's a nice little thoughtful thing, if it was intentional.

I would say so. There are several Jewish writers on the show. Yeah. But yeah, and people probably think I have some weird problem where I pick things apart too much. But I just like it when stuff happens for a reason rather than happening for no reason. Because that's what happens on animated sitcoms that are lesser than The Simpsons. Well, this time a lot of stuff happens for no reason because it's just funny to see Homer with a bunch of fireworks. Come on, Drew. Isn't that just fun? He has returned from the fireworks factory.

I don't know. Good read. I like that. Yeah, they go to it pretty early in this one. So thanks again to Drew Mackey for being on the show. Drew, please tell us about Gayest Episode Ever and where to find this amazing new video project cataloging every gay joke on The Simpsons.

Well, both of these things are conveniently located in the same place, GayestEpisodeEver.com. That one will take you to everything about my podcast, which looks at LGBT episodes of classic sitcoms. But if you want to watch the big gay simpsons supercut that is at gayestepisodeever.com slash smithers uh the the video is titled smithers and beyond every you know i just said that you can also look for smithers and beyond on youtube and uh that's that is where most people are currently finding it so thanks again to drew mackie for being on the show check out his podcast gayest

episode ever but as for us if you want to check out more of our shows and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Sign up there. You'll get just that, but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall that is far too many podcasts to mention here. But the most recent miniseries behind that paywall was Talking Futurama Season 2 Part 2. And that was nine new episodes of Talking Futurama to wrap up 2020. And if you're behind the $5 paywall, there are two new miniseries coming at you in 2021, this very year in the spring and the fall.

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if you follow at talk simpsons pod on twitter so please do that thank you so much for joining us folks we'll see you next time for season twos two cars in every garage three eyes on every fish and we'll see you then She's the cutest thing I know Plus she likes me back And all mine for me at the door Yeah, she never makes me wonder When it comes to that With my head in the world Cause I like that girl Shut up, Updike!

Had enough, squealer? Did you know Fat Tony's real name is Marion? You just don't get it, do you?