Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Itchy & Scratchy & Marge With Toby Jones & Maddie Queripel

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

This week we return to the world of animation and who better to guide us than a couple of animation creators, returning guest Toby Jones (Regular Show, OK K.O.) and Maddie Queripel (Regular Show, Infinity Train)! As Marge becomes the nemesis of cartoon violence, we talk about art vs influence, the cartoon history this episode reflects, and how much things have changed in the last three decades. So listen now before your baby beats you up! 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!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons where pies are always easier to draw. I'm your host purveyor of senseless violence Bob Mackie and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons who is here with me today as always. The screwballs have spoken, it's Henry Gilberts.

And who do we have on the line? Michelangelo's Dave, Toby Jones. And a whisper of MSG, madeline carrie bell and today's episode is itchy and scratchy and marge what are you doing i'm cataloging the violence in these cartoons i don't think adults have ever actually sat down and watched them before today's episode aired on december 20, 1990. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Merry Xmas, Bobby. Lots of kids are about to get Ninja Turtles as holiday gifts.

Kindergarten cop tries to beat Home Alone at the box office, but can't do it. And number one on the Billboardboard charts is stevie bees because i love you the postman song it's uh in parenthetical well bad news first it was a tumor always get a second opinion uh yeah i uh my friends like kindergarten cop more than i did i as a kid it was uh i was home alone all the way i i as as i got older i like kindergarten cop i guess a little more but it's not it's not one of my childhood favorites lots of friends i had would always quote the the naughty lines from that movie yeah that's the only thing like when you're a child and a movie has one scene like that that's the one part you just

remember and the rest of the movie just goes away like that movie nine months when i was a kid i was like nine months is the funniest movie ever because that one scene where the barney character swears so yeah kindergarten cop was like can you believe that's the scene with the one thing of swearing and the super exciting scene where the kid climbs the dangerous thing but then like we watched a video about it recently it's like wow this movie is full of boring garbage interesting fact about kindergarten, when they were making the game Silent Hill, they needed a reference for what does an American school look like. They used the movie Kindergarten Cop, so a lot of that movie's school

is in Silent Hill. And vice versa. I was eight years old this Christmas, and I definitely asked for a number of Ninja Turtles for that Christmas, too. This was the Christmas of Game Boy for me, I believe. Oh, see, I was spoiled enough to have gotten Game Boy for my birthday.

You rat bastard! Well, the Game Boy was a gift from my parents to my mom. She played Tetris as much as I did. Oh, nice. I'm trying to figure out what I would have gotten that year. Maybe a Super Nintendo? Would that have made sense? Oh, no, that would be be the next year unless you got the super famicom when you were awake no i no yeah i was i was really big into the import import scene when i was four

no i think i think i was like pre-memory too young to remember what i got for christmas that year then i think super nintendo is the first christmas i really remember oh nice i know i got game boy and i got ducktales for game boy and also castlevania the adventure or the castlevania venture i don't know what that game is actually called because it does in a weird spot on the box pretty legit though i remember getting my turtles for christmas and part of the the system was tearing the plastic tool uh the the weapons were molded plastic onto like a thing so you had to tear them off yourself yeah harsh uh but uh but yeah so that was this is the christmas 1990 episode

and big guess we got this week for it so joining us is toby jones returning guests and new guests madeline carrie pell and madeline you are the supervising producer on Infinity Train. Yes, that's right. And Toby, listeners have heard you before on, well, such great episodes as Millhouse Divided and the one where Burns goes to the Mayo Clinic. The classic Burns go to Mayo Clinic episode. It's the Mansion Family. The Mansion Family.

And of course, Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie. I think our longest episode. That's right. Oh, man. So this is the other family. Mansion family. And of course, Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie. I think our longest episode. That's right. Oh man. So this is the other side of that coin. We got you back from that one, Toby. Yeah. It was really interesting to kind of go backward and see the first Itchy and Scratchy episode

after spending so much time diving into that one. And I think Maddie was at least in the room for our Evangelion podcast recording. Yes. Yes. I've been hovering around in the fringes for many years now. I think we were driving on the way to the airport or back from the airport.

We were going to go to the airport right after. I had to sit and wait while we talked about Ava for two hours or whatever. I'm sorry, we didn't have an extra mic that day. I'm sure you have many amazing thoughts of an evangelion i mean you want to share a thought right now i feel like all my thoughts

pale in comparison to toby who's done uh lifelong amounts of research and watching and fandom but yeah i'm such it's good i'm such a freakish maddie's been having to listen listen to me every single day be like i can't watch the new ava movie maddie where's why can't i watch it maddie i've watched you go through the five stages of grief of like acceptance like i just have to accept that i am not gonna watch it soon you know i just it's just gonna happen what's gonna happen and all i can do is say yes that's right but there's supposed to be a camera we were supposed to be in japan for this where's the camera i ordered a i ordered the um the booklet they hand out in theaters in japan for the new ava movie oh and i got it i'm like oh cool and then it says do not open until you

see the movie and she's like damn it no one has been brave enough to pirate it yet yeah and well and i saw one of the things you speaking of holiday gifts i believe toby i saw you had gotten a the book of just all of the storyboards of Evangelion. Oh yeah. That was, that was, I guess you could call it a holiday gift to myself at great expense. And I got this huge stack of just thick Evangelion storyboard books,

which was, which has been really fun to kind of dive into anything to just lick my wounds waiting for that movie to be available. But yeah, Maddie, you've, you worked on some of like our favorite cartoons, like regular show steven universe close

enough and and you've been working a ton on infinity train for the last few years yeah that's exactly right yeah i recommend all of it i think and uh well book four of it well i guess book four of it just got announced when we're recording this i I don't know if it's out yet at the, when this comes out. All right. Time for all the spoilers. I'll just lay them all out here. But,

but I was so excited when book four got announced, you know, we've had on before we've also had on Owen Dennis and Lindsay K tie as well. One of the writers for infinity train. Yeah. Awesome. It's a, it's a great show,

but, but yeah, I guess Manny, I, my first question would be like what is your personal connection to the simpsons and it must have had some influence on your artistic career oh definitely i think especially in elementary school i think one of my claims to fame was doing ralph wiggum impressions to my classmates uh yeah so it's

definitely had an impact i think i I would watch it when I started. It was mostly I would watch it in syndication because in Fox it would be like an hour of The Simpsons back-to-back every day in the afternoon. And before you know it, you've watched a lot of Simpsons if you do that every day. And then I started watching them when they premiered on Sunday. Yeah, and I think a couple of years ago I was curious. I'm like, when did I stop watching regularly? Cause I went to college and I didn't

have cable anymore or TV. And, uh, I was looking at the Wikipedia episode list and I thought, okay, for sure this season. And then I read through the synopsis like, no, I remember that. Remember that. And then the next season, I remember that too. I remember that. Uh, and I like went till season 15 or something i didn't even expect i'm like oh my god i had no idea and uh and also for both of you guys it must be quite an experience to uh have watched these in your youth especially episodes like this one about the animation industry and then enter that world and now see what it gets wrong or gets right in in episodes like this one yeah it's amazing yeah we've definitely had like phases with it

where like we both watched it in syndication growing up and then we both revisited it on dvd when the dvds came out and and and re-approached everything from a new perspective and then actually this year as like a pandemic activity maddie and i watched through the entirety of seasons one through nine so we had just watched this one a few months ago um and it's been it was a very nice comforting activity so many of our guests have been doing rewatches of the simpsons during covid yeah uh we're we're a great covid companion for all of those rewatches this podcast now i i know toby uh you've listened to all the commentaries too like maddie did did that uh did you give a listen to the commentaries a lot? And did that also prepare you for working in Hollywood on cartoons?

I sadly missed all the commentaries because I just watched them on TV. And it wasn't until I met Toby and he had all the DVD sets and I'd watched some of the commentaries with him. It was very jarring because he would know all the episode names and things. And I was like, what? They had titles? And the titles are all really long and weird. This one is fairly straightforward for season two. There's no two cars in every garage and three eyes on every fish.

And then there's one fish, two fish, blowfish, bluefish. Yeah, it's those fish ones. The two long fish ones are the ones that always got mixed up. When you just saw me mix up weekend at bernsie's with the mansion family as well i also i i'm i'm glad you're here maddie as well because not only is this an episode about cartoons and cartoon history but i do think it has a little bit of a spirit of women don't like cartoons to it that I'm not the biggest fan of in it, I will say. I can confirm we hate cartoons. You're working on one to take them down. I'm going from the inside.

Yeah, that was definitely a thing when we did the rewatch. We watched it and we enjoyed it, of course, and then we both kind of were like, huh, afterwards. So it was good that you called us up to get into a little more depth on that so we have a bit of a director's corner for jim reardon who was new to the show at this time this is his first episode and yes he was a cal art student part of the cal arts mafia and we all know cal arts is the harvard of animation so of course he is on the simpsons i mean reardon is one of the most important animators in Simpsons history. We've talked about him here and there. When we've talked about the Scully years, we talk about him quite a lot.

But we never really, you know, we didn't do a director's corner back in the original run of these episodes. It's true. And one of the earliest things that he did that people might know him for is the classic 1986 underground short bring me the head of charlie brown just a very very violent charlie brown short i mean if you compare it to like the 90s charlie brown shorts or like south park it's not that no no but yes if you have the viewpoint of a person of night put yourself into 1986. It's quite violent for them and very well done. Like you, you can totally see Reardon's skill for comedy action there.

And it's on YouTube if you want to watch it. Very easy to watch. And so after graduating. I believe Rich Moore is a voice in it too. Yes, he is the guy doing the narration. So it's clearly Rich Moore's voice. So after graduating from CalArts, he went on to be a director and writer on the very influential Ralph Bakshi show, The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse. And he would also go on to co-write Bakshi's Christmas in Tattertown special for Nickelodeon. And Tattertown was posed to be the first Nicktoon, but that fell through.

Yeah. I mean, I would assume it fell through like most Bakshi things always fall through but yeah it's it's technically Christmas in Tattertown the first Nicktoon it was the first original production our our friend who runs the video channel Pop Arena did a really great video about it but yeah you know if that hadn't fallen through Reardon probably wouldn't worked on The Simpsons because he'd be part of that 65 episode order and probably still be working on it like uh three years into the run of tattertown and then sliding right into cool world yeah right into cool world uh so from tattertown he went on to work for tiny tune adventures so if you worked on the new adventures

of mighty mouse you either went to work on ren and stimpy the simpsons or tiny tunes those were the three shows to form from those artistic teams but jim reardon worked for the first season of tiny tunes which is 65 episodes uh he was a writer not a director and there was no artistic role but i have to assume the writing of those shorts was done in storyboard form i don't know how tiny tunes was written but if you watch a lot of early episodes jim reardon will be a writer on some of those yeah you know i definitely think um some of the written by episodes of tiny tunes that are you know sherry stoner or tom ruger uh those uh well actually ruger maybe i definitely think sherry stoner wrote a script down and had like a written script but i would i would bet reardon i i guess i suppose they could have had the commandment to Reardon,

like, you have to write a text script first, then you can draw out the boards. But, I mean, you know, I know Spielberg was of the same mind of, let's do it in the old Termite Terrace style, and that includes borders being very important. Well, given Reardon's later roles in life, I believe he is also a writer on top of being an artist. You can do both things, it's possible, if you roles in life, I believe he is also a writer on top of being an artist. You can do both things. It's possible if you're too talented, I say. Well, I know Simpsons trains you to think that if you exist in the animation zone, then you can't write things because that's for the writers. I mean, on the commentaries, hearing surprise from the writers like Brad Bird an oscar-nominated writer they they never considered that brad bird

one of the reasons he was an amazing animator who gave so much to the simpsons is also because he understands storytelling uh but it seemed like that was a fresh concept the many of the simpsons writers had to learn anew every time yeah over time i believe david silverman had put so much in the show himself and pitched so much stuff that he they made him a producer he deserved it for sure yeah so uh on the simpsons he directed 34 episodes and became the supervising director when david silverman left the show from 1997 to 2002 after that mark kirkland took over for a bit but that eventually went to mike b anderson who is to the uh supervising director to this day yeah yeah i reared in was a great pick to to replace him like he was you know so early on the show i think of him it's it's funny

too the tiny his tiny tune episodes first started airing as his simpsons episodes were starting to that's true yeah yeah so the pipeline of tiny tunes was really long like he he was assistant director on the halloween special and that really long. Like he was assistant director on the Halloween special. And that probably was airing the same day as like the Tiny Toons Halloween episodes and that five episode dump that happened every week. Yeah. I think as supervising director, he did his best. You know, he was put in charge as the entire animation boom was stretching out all of the staff yeah and on

talking of the hill we saw how many people of that era left to work on king of the hill yeah that reardon was able to maintain even the level of quality that 9 through 12 have after losing all of that staff not just to king of the hill but to mission hill to uh and the family guy all this stuff it's like he he kept it together pretty well and still directed like one or two episodes a season too so in the mid-2000s jim reardon left the simpsons for pixar uh where he wrote wally with director andrew stanton and that was nominated for best original screenplay but it lost to milk the story of milk man that's how it gets to your table every morning no it's about harvey milk uh yeah that's a great movie too but uh but yeah i i need to consider jim reardon as oscar nominated as well

it's uh again that's that's so funny too that he can just rub that in the simpsons face of like you're not oscar nomin well actually i guess longest daycare has been oscar nominated yeah and uh but not not winner either so i've only seen wally once had a big effect on me when i saw it but i always thought boy i wish they would have had the confidence to make the entire movie dialogue free instead of the first 20 30 minutes sure sure but i would have loved to see that movie but i still like wally but but i did like the turn yeah i like the surprise turn of it i didn't see that coming and i think it's fine but a, I would have liked to see just a purely visual movie. It is a fantastic movie.

It's one of my favorite Pixar ones. I guess the thing he did after that, we talked with Lauren McMullin a little about it in our interview with her, that they both worked on the canceled Pixar project Newt. They had both worked on Newt. And then I believe Jim went to Disney because he is story director on the first two Wreck-It Ralph movies and Zootopia. pixar project newt they had both worked on newt yeah and then i believe jim went to disney because he is story director on the first two wreck-it-ralph movies and zootopia yes yeah i he was uh rich

moore brought him over to to the disney feature animation position yeah because rich moore directed wreck-it-ralph and zootopia yes he did yeah so the for reardon he didn't work on the simpsons movie because he was working on wALL-E. So everybody else who came back, like Rich Moore, worked on the Simpsons movie. But Reardon did not. He was at Pixar. But then once Rich Moore left Simpsons and went to work on Wreck-It Ralph, he was able to bring over Reardon. I think it was thanks to Newt being canceled, Reardon was freed up. And I just remember from the press tour where i got to interview rich more i

also got to interview the credited writer of wreck it ralph and i asked him like man pretty great to not only work with rich more but also jim reardon these like mega stars of simpsons and he's like oh my god you don't know how great it feels draw me the fattest homer you can uh but yeah jim reardon just an amazing career right out of cal arts to ralph baxi then the tiny tunes then to the simpsons then to pixar then to disney what an amazing career and i think he's still working yeah i wonder what's up with him he doesn't uh how unhelpfully he does not have a linkedin uh but get on twitter jim yeah what the fuck i want to interview you rearing but yeah he's my first guess would be that when Rich Moore

left Disney feature animation to go over to Sony, perhaps Jim followed in there. I mean, also Jim's older. He could have just retired to, you know, like, but, uh, it, I guess, you know, maybe we, his animation takes so long to make. So it's possible that whatever he's working on now will be released until next year. who knows and we'll talk about it in the episode but rich had to be the guy to put eddie fitzgerald in the simpsons yeah because eddie fitzgerald is a major character in this episode well well reardon did work with him too on tiny two right right uh on mighty mouse and tiny tunes so yeah so he had to be the one to put eddie fitzgerald in the show uh but yeah

jim reardon what a great guy we should go into the background information about this episode though because it's based on a few things i think the main thing it's based on which is something they admit to on the commentary was the initial backlash to both the simpsons but specifically the backlash to one married with children episode led by a housewife named terry ricta, the scourge of all writers' rooms. Yes. So I can tell you what she was offended by. The season three episode of Married with Children called Her Cups Runneth Over.

The premise of the show is it's Peggy's birthday. She's very depressed that her favorite bra has been discontinued. So Al has to go to a lingerie store in Wisconsin with Steve to find this new bra. So the quote is, she was offended by images of an old man wearing a woman's garter and stockings.

The steam where the scene where Steve touches the pasties of mannequin dress and SNM gear, a homosexual man wearing a tear on his head and a half nude woman who takes off her bra in front of Al and is shown with her arms covering her bare chest. And the next shot for Colta began a letter-writing campaign to advertisers demanding they boycott the show. And my note on this is, this episode was written by two women.

I think the Married with Children writers' room was half women. Wow. I didn't know that. That's cool. It's a surprising fact to find out about Married with Children. Not only was it one of the very few shows in the 90s that one of the co-creat in the 90s that one of the co-creators was an african-american man but also how many women they had on the staff compared to say the simpsons for instance on a writing staff and what do you mean it only took till season six to get the the one woman and then after she left another two seasons and three seasons to get

another woman yeah but oh it's very interesting to kind of re-approach and reconsider um to get the the one woman and then after she left another two seasons three seasons to get another woman yeah but it's very interesting to kind of re-approach and reconsider uh married with children and kind of how it started and kind of what it became there's that youtuber jose who did that fantastic like feature-length retrospective of married with children that was very educational yeah i was going to recommend that i think it's called how al bundy became an icon and that jose channel does a lot of great sitcom retrospectives about things like home improvement and Malcolm in the Middle. There's a lot of really good ones on his channel.

I'm just waiting for the day he finally does Drew Carey's show. Ooh, man. Oh, that'd be great. Nobody talks about Drew Carey's show. I know. So the result of this boycott was that some advertisers did pull out of Married with Children, but then they were all back within a year.

And the one thing Fox did was they told Mar married with children to cut back on some of the sexual content and they moved the show from 8 30 to 9 p.m on sundays which is when it should have been anyway yeah yeah it was a race your show and because of this fox did not air a season three episode about a sex tape and that would not air in america 2002 on FX as a lost episode. Even then, it was still cut. Man, they even cut, even on FX, it's still too dirty a sex tape episode. And that episode also written by two women, two different women. So this was not a sexist male writer's room.

There were lots of women in the writer's room writing these jokes about bras and people cross-dressingressing and so on we're not saying it's like systemic misogyny at play i mean it's it's also like married with children you know there's lots of problematic things in it not to say it's like the most progressive show ever right right as elmer says everything's bad when you remember it The Simpsons will be right back Are cartoons turning little Maggie into a little monster? Keep her away from me, Marge She's got that crazy look in her eyes again Find out on The Simpsons Thursday on Fox

When you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Welcome to the Breakfellas Screwballs. It's Henry Gilbert here.

Big thank you to our guests, Toby Jones and Madeline Curry-Pell. We had so much fun talking with them about the World of Cartoons episode of The Simpsons. They were tons of fun to have on. Please check out their shows, Infinity Train and OKKO, Let's Be Heroes, and all the other great stuff they do out there. Also, you're fans of our podcast you should know that this is only possible thanks to the support of listeners like you who go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and subscribe there for premium stuff not only do you get the satisfaction of knowing that you're supporting me and bob doing this as our full-time

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dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons to get a ton of extra stuff so you get all the five dollar things i just mentioned and then you get our what a cartoon movie premium podcast you see on our sister podcast what a cartoon you can hear us cover animated series the same way we cover the simpsons and if you go up to the ten dollar level you get our monthly what a cartoon movie podcast we cover an animated feature film often for over four hours as super in-depth scene by scene and historical analysis you can hear us talk right now about the disney renaissance summer as we're covering hercules from 1997 coming up after that the hunchback of notre dame in 1996 and cool world we really ravaged that film cool world

and that is just the most recent stuff there is close to three years of a back catalog of what a cartoon movies over 130 hours of stuff ranging as wide as end of evangelion to a goofy movie spider-man into the spider-verse to beavis and butthead to america and everything in between please check all of that out at the premium level at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. But yeah, actually, you have a clip, too, from the news then. Oh, yeah. In one woman's crusade against sex on television. Now, this is what made television mother C. Red on Fox Television's hit comedy Married with Children. Terry Ricolta got so sore, she wrote letters to the sponsors, and some of them pulled their ads from the show.

But tonight, an executive for Fox is saying Mrs. Ricolter has no business telling other people what to watch. Art societies and all of these things that, you know, rather wealthy people do, I don't think that she is living the normal American life. And I don't think she's able to make a judgment about what is funny to the majority of American people. Incidentally, Kellner says the show's ratings are up since Mrs. Recolter began her crusade. And we'll find out that they put her up to it. Everyone has a free speech issue, don't they? We'll see you tomorrow.

Whatever that means. Nice comment there. But yeah, you know, I was going to say. Yes, everyone has a free speech issue. I was going to say Kent Brockman seems a lot realer in this episode. Yeah, seriously. That was just very interesting because you'd think that the argument would be like hey the show's not for everybody there are 100 channels you can watch but instead it's like no this show is for everybody and she's wrong to say otherwise

that he was seemingly calling her a limousine liberal which is also funny coming from rich executive jamie kellner yeah i think ultimately i don't know uh obviously she's conservative uh i think what she was most offended by was the presence of a gay person on television. I really feel like that's what set her off. You know, that scene? Yeah, that scene is a hodgepodge of things. It's like, what do you think was the thing that really pissed her off? But I think you're right.

It was definitely the gay jokes that were in that scene, not the topless woman moment. And things like S&M gear, you know. Yes. Yeah. that were in that scene not the topless woman moment and things like snm gear you know yes yeah and the thing this episode does is kind of tricky because in effect it's placing marge who we've already established as like a smart seemingly fairly liberal woman in a position that is likened to something that a conservative person like that would hold so there is like this uncomfortable feeling you get during during the show where it's like maybe it's a bit of a square peg round hole situation well that's uh well it's a great arc that marge goes through in this that she finds out she's surrounded by people more conservative than she is on it's true yeah terry ricolta is one half of the equation the other half is a woman named peggy

charon and the action for children's television Group. Now, I don't know. Do you guys? I learned a ton about this doing this research. But had you guys ever heard of the Action for Children's Television Group? No, I've never heard of it. Well, this is a two-hour podcast now that I'm going to start. Here we go. Born in 1924.

But actually, she was born in 1923 oh my god but yeah so there was uh bostonites peggy charon in the mid 60s as a parent she noticed that uh there were a lot of problems in children's television programming then and she had a lot of issues with it now the first thing she had issue with or her first major target with a group she brought together called action for children's television act uh which that is kind of what snuh is parodying snuh is a parody of act uh but acts first target was romper room because the that i've never seen one episode of romper room but it literally did have scenes of showing kids how to buy a toy or like isn't this a great new toy look at this toy and she i think very rightly had issue with that and so she got romper room canceled like she or all the way to fully like that was she was responsible. She has blood on her hands from the death of Romper Room.

Well, I mean, her group caused enough of a stir and was doing enough public messaging on it that, yeah, the programming block of it, they decided we won't make more Romper Room. And and also coming out of that in the late 60s, you can see that happened to Romper Room. And by the end of the 60s, you got sesame street the children's television workshop these things were done partially from charon's you know movement and the group she was leading that they wanted more enriching things for children to learn from instead of commercials and a big thing she was against was the advertisements to children she just felt like all these ads want to make children feel bad and like they need something and that's a horrible thing to constantly show kids i mean it explains why i feel the way i do every waking moment so yeah i think it seems like there was there was

something really something there now a reason a lot of uh say gen x men who grew up through the 70s who would go on to make cartoon shows like this one a reason they don't like peggy charon is because her group's next target in the late 60s was a feeling that in 1968 there were way too many violent superhero cartoons on tv and in general too much violent cartoons if if you were a cartoon Network obsessive like me who saw, oh, Herculoid, Space Ghost, My Tour, all those shows, those only ran two years because of Axe's push of like there's too much violence on kids' TV. All those shows ended, and that's why Hanna-Barbera the next year sold Scooby-Doo and friendlier shows after that. Wow. I had no idea.

Yeah, I think we'll have time to get into the whole thing of violent kids cartoons because it's funny we were watching this episode and like uh at first i was like well what is this episode really about because itchy and scratchy is such a parody of how of violence it's so much more violent than real cartoons and i was like well actually no regular show and infinity train both get really violent hey don't throw me under that bus or train i'm gonna write to hbo max get this filth off my television uh that's the ticket you get when you get kids plus baby grind people into wheels whatever you want no but so acts action and political pressure that led to more educational programming it is a true thing that most networks

in response to this general feeling of of wanting to lighten kids cartoons in the 70s which act was partially responsible for did lead to huge cuts in old cartoons bugs bunny the bugs bunny and tweety show that was on abc even in the 70s they hacked up so many of those cartoons and removed like gunshots explosions uh some of the other dicier stuff that's an old looney tunes suicides yes yeah those all got cut out and so for a generation of cartoon lovers they're like these are hacked to bits and it's all peggy charon's fault they blamed her same with old tom and jerry cartoons if you've no one would want to watch the 1975 Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry show,

but it was made so nice and friendly and the characters even talk in it like Itchy and Scratchy does. The Itchy and Scratchy change that happens here is a lot about what the Tom and Jerry 75 show was. It's really interesting just how cyclical this has proven to be. It feels like we get these waves of more kind of over the top violent or mature-ish kids cartoons.

And then it kind of goes back and forth again over time, I guess. And I feel like there's no like solution to it. It's like, yeah, small children shouldn't be watching violence. But also there should be violence in some cartoons because it's great entertainment. It's funny. And stuff like that. It feels like it's a classic thing of just not understanding that there's a spectrum of different audiences of ages of children who can and should watch different types of cartoons.

Like in OK KO, for example, it's like that's a younger show than regular show or Infinity Train, but it's full of violence and fighting. And for some reason, if we put a two frame impact flash on a punch, it's not as bad it's like what is this really accomplishing well and and also uh i think a big reason that for in our youths in the 80s and early 90s when cable channels which didn't have to deal with the network fcc rules they started playing uncut tex avery and looney tunesunes and Tom and Jerry's it felt like a bigger deal to us like we we didn't have to see those cut up uh classic cartoons for that same reason so that's why some people don't like Peggy Charon in the animation world they they see her as a bit of a wet blanket like Marge has put in this episode but I will say if you actually read i've read a bunch of old

interviews with uh she she passed away in 2015 but peggy charon in many of her interviews that i read from like the 80s onward she is very politically left-wing she is not a conservative she certainly is not like a a christian values type lady in the 80s when reagan took over she hated reagan's deregulation of the fcc and all the toy commercials she she spoke a ton against it and she had good things to say about the simpsons too yes yeah if you look at her uh here's a quote of her in 19 in may 1990 so six months before this episode aired uh she was asked about you know the simpson the bart t-shirts that were getting censored in school and she, she was asked about it.

She said, quote, I think the Simpson family is one of the few thoughtful cartoons on commercial broadcasting. How can you teach the Constitution if you ban t-shirts? So that's what I'm saying. Yeah, she's kind of a complicated figure. her group act sued the FCC in 1993 because they were trying to limit children indecent programming on television and her reason for fighting against it she said quote too often we try to protect children by doing in free speech indecency to some people might be sex education and that's the problem who defines the indecency the censors define it so so yeah i'm just saying she's a complicated figure yeah yeah so so i also think when you have that history for her mixed in with say john schwartzwalder's libertarian beliefs as the writer

you know uh as an adult i am so conflicted about this episode and of course we'll talk about it in detail very soon. But I feel like it doesn't really know what it wants to say. And the satire is very ineffective in which the satire just seems to be, we're going to present the opposite of what we believe. But there's no real spin on it. There's no real moral to it. And on the commentary, Mike Reese says,

so many crummy shows have an issue episode and they tell you what to think. I kind of like when a piece of writing takes a side and explores it and explores both sides but ultimately will say well this is this is kind of the correct way of being and i feel like it's throwing out a bunch of ideas but never committing to one and even in the end marge is just like i don't know i was wrong i guess yeah and i don't know it's it's kind of tricky because like something you know the simpsons being a thoughtful show is true. And the thing that's good about The Simpsons is that, you know, it encourages you to be critical of everything you see. And as a kid watching a show like this, that's a very valuable thing to watch and actually very educational in its way.

Yeah. But the thing with an episode like this is that, you know, watching it now and seeing kind of how that kind of thing developed in the future where it's like as a self-contained monument this episode we will totally come to this later i'm almost just saying it too early but it's like as a self-contained monument this episode is pretty good but the problem is then you think about like what did people learn from this you look at the the gun episode of the simpsons which i'm less fond of or you look at like south park you know other things that are like let's point out how dumb all sides are and you look at it that way it's like oh maybe maybe this led to you know things that i'm not as fond of yeah i think the

message of this episode is humans hate nuance yeah get rid of it and ultimately i think marge is right i don't know we've been doing a lot of king of the hill stuff for our mini series talking of the hill and i feel like that show was so good at taking a side but not being didactic about it where it'll be like hank is wrong about this thing let's watch him figure out how to approach it or let's watch him change his mind and obviously the show is taking a stance on this thing is okay and hank should not be afraid of it but it's not like shoving in your face or spelling it on the screen it's all done through characters and i feel like that is still a very good way of doing it here. I don't,

I feel like they're just, they don't really know what to say. And I think it is a John Swartzwelder script, heavily rewritten with a lot of input, with a lot of input by James L. Brooks, who wanted the show to end with cartoons changing forever in that montage of the kids going outside to be the ending of the show.

Yes. Yeah. I think that there's a thing of like, it's, it's fun to explore and be satirical and all that stuff. And there's always that there's always that line of like, if it starts to become like more nihilistic, then it becomes kind of a bummer. This episode just barely walks that line. You know, you get all like I think that seeing Marge grow and seeing her fondness for David and and the kind of weirdly warm ending kind of helped kind of make it not quite as bad as it could have been.

I yeah, I think I think they are working through their issues then they they also peggy charon gets mixed up everybody thinks she's exactly like terry ricolta or also tipper gore like they don't say that but this is after the entire you know uh explicit language thing in in music too that happened through the 80s and there's something strange in here baked in i don't know if it's intentional that because marge is uh an activist because she is ruining cartoons she's not doing her wifely duties which i find kind of troubling what if the pork chops yeah what if a man had to heat up his own dinner she's failing them she must the cruelty the inhumanity yeah no there's there's a lot of sexual politics wrapped up into this too that are not uh the most

progressive i well it i guess after doing all that peggy charon research for me it is so clear that she was one of the influences for this that i couldn't believe they don't mention her on the commentary that it feels like a choice not to say it like that they or that maybe graining had gotten to know her or knew that she had you know supported the show and wasn't saying that it's bad for children and they maybe learned like oh she's not the censor we thought she was perhaps yeah but could be yeah but i i feel like she gets a bad rap did did a lot of bad cartoons get made in the network's reaction in the 70s to what they thought was better for children and did also it then just take a hard right turn in many ways in the 80s of just everything became a toy commercial in response to that like sure yeah that's all true but uh but i guess we

should get into the episode itself yes uh so the episode begins with marge making uh pork chops you know i'm more into now uh the marinade a long marinade of pork chops she's doing a dry rub thing i've i've gotten i've learned a lot about cooking in the last need the meat to soak it up yeah yeah pork chops need to be moist for sure. But also just like if we're following Homer's favorite foods continuity, there's so much pork chop and applesauce mentioning in season one. And we're seeing it bleed into season two. When is the last time he explains he kind of shows his fondness for pork chops in this way?

Man, I think pork chops are just not extreme enough of a food for him to want as time would go on and the jokes become more exaggerated sorry henry yeah yeah the the closest i can think of is in the vegetarian episode he names pork chops as one of the amazing foods you get out of the same magical animal uh but yeah i i like seeing marge like dealing with all of her shakers. And I think it might have been a goof up or something. But did you guys notice one of her shakers, as she is saying, it says M-M-M-M. That was cute.

I don't know if that was a mistake or not. Also, no shaker top just opens right up. You're good to go. as much as you want and we were still in the anti-msg era of america and msg is good damn it yeah i agree uh you don't need a whisper you know yeah get a little farther than a whisper with that msg that uh yeah the march has to be like secret like i can't even say a whisper. I miss Jean. And then we also get to one. This is the discovery of one of Al Jean, I think, favorite things of Homer is that he's bad at building stuff. Al Jean, whose father owned a hardware store.

And Al Jean, it was not good with his hands. Yes. Yeah. He went on to become a math major at Harvard. He left for Harvard at age 16. Yeah, pretty amazing yeah al aljean uh mike reese jokes in his book that he feels bad that he brought aljean into the world of comedy because he thinks he could have been like president someday had he not been pulled away he was

such a gifted kid but president but not a great maker of spice racks yeah yeah i really like that homer made that spice rack for march i like that it will it almost wasn't a joke it's just like i'm gonna make you a spice rag and she's like oh really it's like you do so much i'll make you a spice rag oh it is nice yeah okay just a very matter of fact thing that's i thought it was cute and after he makes it and he makes it really badly there's no joke about it being bad you know she uses it and she likes it and it's not like the it's a similar joke to the le Grille where he pulls the picture down. You see what he actually built.

In this episode, he's like, ooh, he's happy about his crappy worksmanship. This is one of my top rules of comedy of yes is funnier than no. He makes a bad spice rack. He likes it and Marge likes it. Yes is funnier than no. You know, Maddie, I haven't considered that before. This is a rare nice thing Homer does. Like there's no two ways about it.

Homer wanted to do a nice thing for Marge and he built a thing and gave it to her. There was no, there's no extra meanness to it. One thing that sours me on this episode a little bit is that it doesn't really have Itchy and Scratchy correct yet because I feel like at this time of the show, Itchy and Scratchy was the other side of the Happy Little Elves coin in that they were both really bad cartoons. really have itchy and scratchy correct yet because i feel like at this time of uh the show itchy and scratchy was the other side of the happy little elves coin and that they were both really bad

cartoons but for different reasons and in these episodes in this episode the itchy and scratchy shorts that we see are not clever maybe a few are slightly clever but in the future they would use this as an opportunity to write clever cartoons in this one it'll just open and they'll be whacking on each other with hammers for no reason or something like that or itchy will ring scratchy's doorbell and blow him up with a bazooka there's no like art to it there's no cleverness to it at all yeah i'd say there's like a little i think we're like starting to get there some of them were funny yeah it's nowhere near what starts to happen like it got to a point even a season later where an itchy and scratchy cartoon starts and you're like i'm gonna see something like pretty wild here and pretty imaginative

yeah i think they get close with the one in which uh scratchy puts the bombs in and he can kind of see himself brushing his hair they work uh i think you know another funny thing uh with the use of itchy and scratchy here that i think just like how this episode has a psycho parody for no other reason then i think they they realized, we could do a psycho parody. You can do that in a cartoon. And I think Itchy and Scratchy are just so violent over and over again in this that it's just the realization,

especially by Sam Simon, not talked about a lot in his career, is that he got his start in Saturday morning in the 70s. So I think for him as showrunner, he's also getting out his jollies of like, finally, I can blow shit up in a cartoon again. I couldn't do that on the Mighty Mouse cartoons in the 70s.

I love all the things that have to be finagled for this psycho parody to work. The stairs in the garage, the random carp on the workbench that has to get pulled away. Like just all the little pieces that are like, okay, set it we're good yeah the stairs blow my mind we always talk about the mystery rumpus room but no one ever mentions the mystery stairs in the garage in which we see homer run into the garage at the beginning of every episode those stairs are not there

yeah hey i never thought about that that is maggie's whacking spot it's a classic example of of the simpsons introducing me to something through parody long before I'll ever watch it. You know, I probably didn't see, probably didn't see psycho until, you know, five,

10 years later. Oh yeah. Yeah. Me too. I, I think I watched it just cause I'd seen, I probably seen this parody and then I saw another cartoon or something parody,

you know, like let's say kids in the hall parody it. And then it finally hits me like, Oh, the, these must be coming from the same movie. I find it yeah cross reference uh also as homer walks to the garage he passes by crusty introducing a cartoon which this uh this is still the old crusty voice in this episode uh time for a new cartoon kids and i i like that crusty is always on in this he's not uh the tired old man he is he's just like

it's every cartoon i just think of that one line about give a dad's head this is like the opposite joke for crusty now the joke now for crusty is that he's always on whereas very soon it'll be the joke is that the second second the camera turns off he just sinks and turns into a pile yeah actually we just talked about a season 12 episode that begins with crusty counting to 100 or counting down to when the show's over he's like and the show's over okay bye folks uh but yes we get a quick uh itchy and scratchy cartoon and then uh yes maggie an unspoken aspect of this episode is that maggie is a sociopathic killer underneath that like she's every the joke in her part is that everybody

always said oh no kid watches a cartoon and thinks they can blow up their brother just because uh bugs bunny survives an explosion but in this case like maggie is the kid every parent was afraid of she does believe all these things but she'll even imitate the good acts like giving home her lemonade yes yeah and i think that's one that's one of the issues of the episode that i that i had some that i had the most trouble with and partly it's just because growing up in the 90s it's so ingrained to me to be like no you know mortal combat is good you know the matrix didn't cause columbine you know violence doesn't cause violence in real life and all that stuff. So seeing this episode, I'd be like, no, yes, Maggie, when she sees things, she does want to kill people.

It's like, no, you can't say that. But of course, I think part of it is just that I have that ingrained in me from growing up during that time. I think maybe the satire would have been more effective if Marge had mistakenly thought Maggie was imitating the television instead of her just doing it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know what? She doesn't see the mallet before she hits home or she does it just yeah i do also i do want to just say in general this i also was one of those people to be who grew up saying like

violent video games don't have an effect on me or anybody all that stuff i'll kill you jack thompson i'll kill you uh but exactly but also when i say like, oh, cartoons had no effect on me. As I do my professional job for the fifth year, talking about all the cartoons I watched as a kid, I think it probably did have an effect on my life and did change me in ways. Yeah, cartoons affected us by giving us jobs. Yay, thank you, cartoons. They're job-creating.

Only positives. Yeah. But yes, Homer gets smashed on the head in a psycho parody like the angles are amazing i love i love the shot of homer's reaction face like it's a crazy big cartoony reaction that kind of breaks the rules of what simpson characters faces can do but i love it whenever they do that it's great and these early seasons they do it for effect and also like i was thinking about it a lot because i guess according to the commentary this was jim reardon's first episode he did and so i was paying a lot of attention to it's clear he was like first first episode trying to really show off

uh there are sequences like this in the huge pan that happens later oh yeah um and i can also definitely tell he was like studying specifically crusty gets busted a lot uh trying to figure out how to like great crusty's in here also i love the actual animation on when homer gets hit with the mallet just the way his face caves in it's so good and it's also so funny that like why does homer own a giant cartoon mallet yeah and then it's even funnier that like later marge is like why how would a baby learn to hit someone with a giant mallet and then itchy and scratchy are hitting each other with giant uh like meat tenderizers and so they're not even using that kind of cartoon mallet and homer seemingly only built his spice rack with

a hammer and nails yes yeah and i must say a really boring thing about my life uh during the pandemic my best purchase one of my best purchases so far was a spice rack it's like oh my spices are here together and one little happy family it lives right next to that new dishwasher thingy you got yeah the uh you know i i also really like the joke that homer has when he walks into his garage that's got to be at least two thousand dollars worth of stuff and he he's treated like he has never touched them before he's like i knew i got these for a reason this was the era of those time life book series now i just go on youtube how do i fix this thing yeah exactly i mean they uh they totally lavish time on homer walking in observing his stack of of encyclopedias uh describing the fact that he has a bunch of encyclopedias pointing out a specific one and talking about like they

just like they really love that and you just linger there for a very long time maddie you mentioned you're like oh that's so that maggie can get set up for the kill oh yeah giving her time also she's i mean i guess gravity probably did a little of the work for her but for sure to hit him that hard to like he's unconscious homer is like wide-eyed on the ground certainly concussed like though maybe he's ground, certainly concussed. Though maybe he's also very easily concussed because this is right after the Daredevil. He's still recovering from that, really. He's still in physical therapy. But yes, Homer's brain is broken by this.

And Marge just isn't sure how it could have happened in our first clip. So television's responsible. Hey, we were watching that. Well, you won't be watching these cartoons anymore, ever. But Mom, if you take our cartoons away, we'll grow up without a sense of humor and be robots. Really? What kind of robots?

I heard about the cartoons. break man thanks nelson hey what have you watched chichi and scratchy over at my house hey that's just crazy enough to work you heard me i won't be in for the rest of the week i told you my baby beat me up oh it is not the worst excuse i ever thought of in a week. I told you. My baby beat me up. Oh, it is not the worst excuse I ever thought of. I wonder why Bart and Lisa are so late getting home from school.

That, yeah, I really like the, it does seem like a critique that when Mark says, I don't know where she'd get this and just drops Maggie in front of the TV. That's a funny joke. But here's something too. I'm going to give Marge credit that I don't think the show does. But Marge did what they say they want parents to do. That if you view your children's programming and feel it's not right for them, then say okay then you're not watching it like she she

does what she's supposed to do and she's defeated by the availability of television yeah true she's she's doing what she was told to though but i i like to that the second maggie sees the stabbing she like is activated this all made me very happy that i was lucky enough to grow up with no media boundaries in fact my mom would recommend me inappropriate things to watch. One of the first R-rated movies I saw was Terminator 2 because my mom said, you should watch this. It's really good. And I remember and I really enjoyed the violence, even though it was kind of traumatizing. But I also remember a time in which I was watching Married with Children and my parents were in the room and a really racy joke happened.

I forget what it was and my stepdad was like should you be watching this and you know I had to explain to him the genie was out of the bottle I've been a Married with Children fan for years I like that he asked you if you should be watching this it's like can you explain like should you be doing this and you're like well I'm not going to say no to that like yes I should

in fact I should be watching more my intake needs to be up at least a couple more episodes of it yeah uh yeah no i'm not my my parents let me watch like my mom let me watch robocop way too young to have seen robocop but it's because i liked you know this is something peggy charon would have been right to say there shouldn't be a robocop cartoon because it'll make kids watch an R-rated movie called Robocop which is what I did although I mean on the other side of the coin Robocop is a very smart satirical film that could encourage kids to be critical of uh corporations and the police uh

later it did do that for me but as a child I was like wow that's a lot of exploding blood like it actually as an eight-year-old the movie that has everything as an eight-year-old it actually was too much for me i i think when uh murphy is murdered i i actually asked my parents to turn it off right i came back afterwards i mean that that's the thing about yeah like when there aren't the boundaries you almost have to make them yourself but because it's like when you're a kid you do have some boundaries it does kind of give you the forbidden fruit thing and make you want it more yeah i don't think there's a solution and i'm certainly not a parent but i'm speaking from the child's perspective of the harder it was for me to access something the more i wanted it yeah actually i put up my own boundaries as a kid

because i was a coward and still kind of am and that i could watch anything but i didn't want to watch horror movies because i knew i'd be afraid i didn't start watching them until my mid-20s and i only watched them when older kids were like come on you you have to see uh the first friday the 13th come on i think i was the millhouse of this scene like i was the kid who's like well we're we're all just gonna play video games all day at my house just tell your mom you're over here and we'll watch whatever it's like oh your mom doesn't want you watching beefs and butthead well come on in here friend exactly it's on tv oh yeah i was mostly watching beavis and butthead because i had older sisters who were raised on mtv and so i was just inheriting it yeah the uh actually yeah beavis and butthead was that was the biggest moral panic

i lived through where someone could restore me from it because when south park came just a few years later i could watch south park anytime i wanted like no but i think my mom and definitely i remember at elementary school if somebody even mentioned beavis and butthead like they were in trouble like it was it was bad a kid brought in taped recordings off of tv of the audio just to beavis and butthead and we'd all stand around like oh my god this is the filthiest thing we've ever listened to. We're so naughty.

Marge is, I think, justified in her action because she did the thing she's responsibly supposed to do as her parent. And the kids instantly go around it in the way every kid would. Yeah, and I guess it's like, and again, there's the right and wrong or whatever. It's hard to say, but it's like,

realistically, you could say, oh, the baby's too young to be watching these cartoons and i guess our 10 year old can can watch it just fine but yeah it is a family dynamic there too i i guess you know and now this like the the the friend who use house you can go to to see whatever it's called the internet yeah that's what i was thinking it's like if i try to get my kids to stop watching weird slime videos they just watch them on their friend's phone yes yeah exactly they'd go to their friend's house to watch a youtube tutorial to how to set up a vpn to get around our uh the parent the parental locks yeah no i like i 30 days free with this like

we're see we're all uh this is all childless people talking about uh parenting but i i feel bad for those i feel bad for all those parents out there like it's got to be rough in this my kids love mukbang videos and you can't get them away from those things they just love watching those people overeat i also like the lampshading of how the obvious answer is you go to your friend's house to watch the cartoon but when bart is presented with he's like hey this is crazy enough to work it's a very very soft joke but pretty funny not to go on too long before going back to the episode but i also feel that lisa should have more of a say in this because you can see what her feelings

are about taking entertainment away from her and i feel like because this is a john swartzwalder script lisa gets nothing to do i feel like you're totally right yeah even a couple years later lisa would have done a whole free speech thing i think it would have been a better episode if it was lisa versus marge over the concept of free speech i think but not to not to do punch up on a 30 year old episode but i feel like lisa there's a hint of her having bigger feelings about this but they're not explored at all yeah more so later she's just into marge like wow my mom is doing political action this is interesting to me like that that's how she looks on to it but i'm more they give lisa the smart lefty viewpoint on it of just like but if we're raised with that we become humorless and we'll we'll grow up to be robots which part just likes the idea of being a robot that's fine i mean that's definitely

how i feel about any uh anyone i meet in the adult world who hasn't watched the simpsons so that's just true i definitely identify with lisa's viewpoint i've thought many times like wow thank god i watch so much tv oh thank god it's like if i wasn't funny nobody would even like me this is important so much of my life revolves around having watched hours and hours of television thank you tv now the common language yeah and uh i i also really like when homer calls in sick with his being beaten up by his baby i i also another animation but i love that that pile of garbage right by where homer is like and santa's little

helper has his face inside of a chip bag yes yeah uh that's very well observed and also just the way i'm living right now in the back see that's the thing you feel in season two we keep noting this that they actually decide hey shouldn't the pets be doing something here why isn't like a cat under foot or a dog rubbing against you like they pretty much just throw away the pets in like the next season that no one ever asked like what's santa's little helper doing in this moment he's out back also you know i think this is the only time we've ever seen janie's mom in the show yeah just barely in the background yeah i thought that too i was like wait a minute janie's rich yeah i was gonna say janie's tv has a bigger presence than her

family in this episode i know uh i mean that kind of set up in 1990 you you have to have a parent who makes like a seven figure salary probably or high six figures marge then takes on the stance of uh that terry ricolta did as well which which is like watching the cartoons and cataloging each thing. There were also, I don't believe Peggy Charon did that, but there were similar groups. I found a 1990 news article about how many moments of violence were in each cartoon, and it ranked them of the Saturday morning programming slot what was the most violent. I do believe Pirates of dark water ranked as the highest in its year no wonder it was left unfinished they warned you the water was dark

it's dark it's there in the title uh and then i mean and then batman comes like two years after that now that's that is a violent and they thought pirates of dark water was super violent like the batman is far more that's why i liked it yes yeah no as a kid i mean that's why i think partially the withholding of a lot of the violent things as a kid growing up that once i finally got to see say power rangers where characters just like they just kick each other and hit each other with swords i love that as a kid and all the anger you had over them editing things like oh in japan they can see blood and boobs yes yeah do you know as i rightfully should uh no i mean too yes when we got to see we got our

generation also was the first uncut anime generation too that i definitely bought my fair share of uncut dbz vhs at suncoast Video. Yeah. Yeah, was that your first anime, Maddie? Was it DBZ? Yeah, I have a very vivid memory. I think it was like third grade going over to my friend's house and it was on Toonami. And I think it was the episode

where Tien's arm gets cut off. And I was like, this is amazing. Why have I not been watching this my entire life? And we immediately went on their computer, printed out pictures of goku and stuff and tried drawing them freehand and that's where it all began baby no going back that's amazing and well that also is like that the cable loophole like that got around the ftc thing and they could have a lot more stuff they could they couldn't air on regular tv uh and so yes march starts

cataloging the violence it's i love her line it's why i made it the the opening thing like i don't think adults have actually sat down and watched them before like i know it makes marge a giant nag and a stick in the mud but her her way of thinking like an adult has never watched a cartoon before that would be crazy at least fun i love her list too like gophers buried alive like it's very much like the lists we would get from s&p when we're doing our cartoons i mean they're very nice people but it is sometimes funny where it's like it'll be something hypothetical where it's like we noticed there's a toilet on screen make sure there's no poop on that toilet and it's like yeah this better be a clean toilet all right if you say so please trick fewer dogs in your next episode uh yeah dogs trick that's

hilarious uh you you guys have a lot of dogs in your cartoons too you have to resist that at all times i'm gonna get them uh or also i mean we've i think on our okko podcast we do with you guys you you talked about the intricacies of a green flame versus a regular flame. Yes, you cannot have a character burst into flames or touch fire. But if it's green or pink, maybe you can. It's magic fire. Yeah, I think Craig had that where there was an episode they had to cook something, but they can't show kids using the oven without parental supervision. And then they just did a great gag where it's like oh it turned out by itself that's lucky yeah craig is actually like full of great little jokes about getting around

s&p stuff they i forget there's even recent episode we watched where it was just like yep it was all tv y7 appropriate or something like that yeah that's that is some of my favorite stuff they do on craig that uh that that craig can be super grounded at one moment and then a character will just turn around and be like they on the recent one they did of where they were playing hide and seek and craig is he enters the the like front of the house and he says oh should i hide over there no we never go over there on the show and it just shows it's just a white space if you were to pull out even slightly the show just gets like more like casually surreal every year which is very much to my taste but uh but yes marge is cataloging all the things this is when she sees well we all

agree is the funniest ditching scratchy in this episode of the the the scene so funny they put it in it's the one bart flashes back to you in the april fools episode you're right i just thought it was an entertaining episode of our lives but yes scratchy gets his eyes knocked out of the back of his head and then he puts two bombs back in his head and they do work as he brushes his hair and then uses the eyes to do a wild take that he is about to explode and uh and i love that Homer laughs at it, that he thinks. But it's, again, I think back to what Schwarzwalder's probably doing with this scene is that Marge grumbles at it and Homer laughs because men like cartoons and women don't like cartoons. And that Marge has to just be so humorless in this scene. She says, like, what kind of person would find that funny

it's just oh boy uh but yes so homer homer then tells mars yeah but what are you gonna do and then she gets her own personalized stationery which is a running joke in these early seasons yes the continued endless letter writing yeah along they got it was like every other episode for the first uh two dozen episodes is somebody writes a letter for a long time in this one they're learning how to make it interesting because marge is writing a long letter but it passes between people there's an interesting cut in which he's writing it it flips upside down and then we cut the crusty who's holding it and trying to make sense of it because he can't read yeah i love that i yes they they at least shake up who it goes to from person to person and and yes marge does what terry ricolta did which was write a letter to the network though

see this is marge's mistake she wrote to the producers of the show not the network she should have gone above them to the network with this yeah or if twitter existed she could have tweeted directly at the revisionists or something yeah the person with the real power on the cartoon yeah yeah hashtag hashtag itchy and scranchy are canceled party right uh i think uh i feel like march's letter well you know somewhat a little coming off a little harsh pretty reasonable i think none of this would have happened if uh he just would have responded a little nicer about it and then he wouldn't have had to go through all the trouble of the yeah of everything coming down on him all he had to do was not call her a screwball and maybe it would have turned out different yeah actually let's let's hear the letter and the response in this uh slightly long clip this is the kind of

entertainment they think is suitable for younger and more impressionable viewers yeah but what are you gonna do i'll tell you what i'm going to do i'm going to write a letter dear purveyors of senseless violence i know this may sound silly at first, but I believe that the cartoons you show to our children are influencing their behavior in a negative way. Please try to tone

down the psychotic violence in your otherwise fine programming. Yours truly, Marge Simpson. Take a letter, Miss White. Dear valued viewer, thank you for taking an interest in the Itchy and Scratchy program. Enclosed is a personally autographed photo of America's favorite cat and mouse team to add to your collection. In regards to your specific comments about the show, our research indicates that one person cannot make a difference

no matter how big a screwball she is. So let me close by saying... And the horse I rode in on! I'll show them what one screwball can do! She even compliments it. Yeah, yeah. She gives... She's not on an attack, and she's just asking them to tone it down a little bit

and not trying to cancel the show or anything, but, yeah i i really you can tell there that what was not being said was he told marge go fuck yourself yeah yeah uh but two things about that scene so the person who reads the letter before roger myers jr is a caricature of eddie fitzgerald who never worked on The Simpsons but worked on Tiny Toons and on Mighty Mouse with Jim Reardon. And in the future, Pinky from Pinky and the Brain

will be based on him because he's got fun teeth and he's got an energetic personality. So Eddie Fitzgerald, he never was on The Simpsons, but we'll see him in this episode as one of the animators along with three Simpsons directors.

Yeah. Yeah, if you see Fitzgerald in a recent interview, he has since gotten his teeth fixed. But if I looked at vintage ones, his teeth are not exactly pinkies. It's like a couple of his front teeth are slightly askew like that.

But yeah, he'd also work with Sam Simon even in the 70s on some of the filmmation junk. But he had a lot of opinions about how filthy cartoons should be and shouldn't be. He would be the nemesis of a Marge Simpson. I think that's why they picked him as the artist there. And also Alex Rocco as Roger Myers Jr. sadly passed away in July of 2015 at age 79,

and he only appeared two other times as this character. In The Day the Violence Died, in The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show, Alex Rocco appeared other times that he would be voiced by Hank Azaria in very, very tiny appearances. One of them is, here are two tickets. Yeah, that's great.

And he was in the front, too, in a major role, actually. Hank Azaria playing Alex Rocco's character. And the other time he was on the show played by Hank Azaria that I can remember is him talking about the itchy and scratchy cell. Guaranteed to increase in value. Oh yeah. I mean it feels like they do a lot fewer itchy and scratchy episodes after a certain point. It feels like that was for a while it was like every year you'd maybe get an itchy and scratchy episode. But it feels like that's kind of long gone i i think alex rocco to return big time because i don't

think to the previous show runners they were like ah do we really need alex rocco let's uh or maybe they're thinking save some money on a guest star but he comes back for the bill and josh years and bill and josh if you were an a character actor over 50, they want you. It's time to cash in. And he was hired because of his role as Moe Green in The Godfather. They just loved his voice. He was a crusty old soul. And it's fun to watch The Simpsons, even in these early years, it's always in flux as to does Krusty work for them?

Do they work for Krusty? Are they a Disney-style empire or just cartoons that Krusty is buying? I like how they play with the idea almost every time. In the earlier seasons, I just remembered that they kind of have a sort of running joke between Mayor Quimby and Wiggum, where they keep having these head-to-head standoffs where it's like,

don't write a check, your butt can't cash. Well, I'm gonna write your checks, Quimby. Like, yeah, they have this power dynamic that I feel like they kind of forget, but that's sort of what this reminds me of. It's just randomly assigning power to one of them. And in the background, he's walking by Itchy and Scratchy on ice. And there would be a Simpsons on ice that Matt Groening wrote and got paid in pinball machines. Yeah, I love that story on the commentary.

The funniest thing I found out from looking up it, the Simpsons scene was at the 50th anniversary show for the Ice Capades. You can find it on YouTube. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer. Your trips greener. smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener,

your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. And it aired seven days after this episode. Really? Okay. Good timing. It was December 27th, 1990. And I also looked it up. There was a Simpsons cologne in the year 2000 because Alex, sorry, Roger Myers Jr. walks past the Itchy and Scratchy cologne display.

In the year 2000, there was a Simpsons perfume for girls with a citrusy smell to it. I did not know. Yes. Yeah, I was going to ask, what's the scent? Because I don't know what smell to it. So, yes. Yeah. I was going to ask what's the scent. Cause I don't know what I would choose. It's citrus. The smell of the Simpson.

They're yellow. In the commentary. Yeah. Matt Groening says like, Oh, I wrote Simpsons ice capades myself. And it's just like, I guess I should watch that and just see this.

Like, I'm just imagining my greening, like getting home and just be like, all right, time to write the Simpsons. ice show uh i mean it's all the original actors doing their characters it's just marge going like oh homer we're almost at the ice capades i love ice skating uh i will some nice frosty ice skates frosty chocolate ice skates uh i i will say as uh even as a pedantic kid,

it bugged me that Scratchy's gray belly is missing from several of the shots of Scratchy in the background. I was like, oh. I hope somebody got fired for that blunder. Did it bug you that in the pitched cartoon to Marge, Itchy gets boiled in acid? Yeah, you know, that did bug me too. You're right.

Also, you know, he is roger myers jr but he's not a junior in this episode yeah uh because they didn't i think it was itchy and scratchy land that they no no sorry it was the itchy and scratchy movie where they decide that itchy and scratchy have been around since the 40s so that way myers has to have inherited it from his father i i believe that's when it's invented but they also another thing on the commentary they they talk about what influenced itching scratchy and they still don't say squeak the mouse even though it's very obvious that that old uh listen we talked about in our crusty gets busted episode with casey green but yes so marge becomes their worst enemy

through that uh the cruelty of that rejection letter they they create it's like a super villain origin story really like they're responsible for it uh and so yes marge starts a picket line it's uh it's just her and the kids and homer i like how homer is embarrassed by it and marge has to tell him the point is to be seen i want to ask uh toby and maddie what do you think of these signs as people who work on animated shows because i feel like it's a lot to ask Toby and Maddie, what do you think of these signs as people who work on animated shows? Because I feel like it's a lot to ask animators to do this. And I think in the future they would just show the sign once and then it would be off screen. I think, yeah, I mean, I will say the signs are hilarious. Yeah, I love what is said on them.

I think they even mentioned on the commentary, like, this is really hard. It's also made much funnier knowing how technically difficult it would be to accomplish. Yeah. But I also do think that while, while the cartoons that we do are still usually animated by, by hand with like pen and paper, something like that probably would have been done at a later stage. Yeah.

Unless they wouldn't have had to redraw it every frame necessarily. Yeah. Cause text, they probably have to remove it anyway for if they were doing it in other countries so they could replace it with the correct language dialogue. Yeah. I think there is like a metagame in animated shows where it's like the stupider something can be while being incredibly technically difficult,

it makes it funnier in a way. Oh, it's good. I was just thinking of all the poor animators' hands who when just marge stops and puts down her sign i'm like god all those words they gotta move yeah it's like like i know that they you know obviously they they had to have xeroxed it for each one but they still had to redraw it every time but well also in this one is they do something that even by the next year they wouldn't do which is they later when there's you know text on the screen for a tv show they they animated it on screen instead of doing it in post and that's something

we definitely have have dealt we dealt with that on ko where for a while we would we would send the uh the on-screen text as like a design asset to the animation studio but after but after a while just like they said in the commentary we started usually doing that stuff in post uh and so as marge is presenting all this she see uh is alone with her family at first but she slowly gets some new uh people of interest i do think it is uh very intentional that the two women who first get into it are the christian conservative women of springfield well they're finally giving mod a role outside of of being the suburban ideal housewife. She's already learned to be more judgmental. That's true.

And this is what Marge describes Snuh. Well, how long are we going to have to be doing this? Well, I've never changed the world before, so I don't know how long it takes exactly. But if enough people take an interest... Hello, Marge. Oh, what is

S-N-U-H? SNA. Oh. It stands for Springfieldians for Nonviolence, Understanding, and Helping. I've started a crusade against cartoon violence. I can protect my own children, but there are many others whose minds are being warped every afternoon at four. Oh. That reminds me.

I got to get over to Milhouse's and play sports. All right. And I'm going over to Janie's again. We're going to be making the most of our childhood years. Have fun. We will. Marge should be a little suspicious with all that laughter as they walk away. I love all the like

little mod oh like that interaction it's so funny to me very conversational rhythms it's almost like an episode of home movies or something oh yeah yeah i also just love when she says what's what's that oh it's snuff oh okay like that yep i got it yeah that uh that marge no one told her like you should do a different name this is confusing to talk like marge just sticks with snuff it should spell an actual word yeah it almost feels like a grammatical joke too that it ends with helping or something like that uh and and yes uh i i guess it does uh you know when i if i'm talking about the sexual politics of this i do like the daily show that lisa likes cartoons just as much as bart on the same level it is not they they could have written it that she's like oh i want to watch my little pony or

the happy little elves but at this point lisa likes violent cartoons to the same extent bart does yep yeah and they they do establish that like, you know, Marge is somewhere on the spectrum on the slippery slope toward becoming a Helen Lovejoy. One thing I wanted to mention is when looking at that scene, working at Cartoon Network, we never had the pleasure of having people protesting outside over the content of the cartoons we worked on.

There was just for a while, there were a bunch of people outside saying shame on Christinaina miller who was like the president at that time it was very because of like a union dispute over some construction yeah like it was something like the construction company had hired non-union workers so like it wasn't her i like i don't quite remember but yeah it was not content related just something about the construction interesting shame on christina miller and they were very nice we walked by them every day on the way to work you know so it was very nice people was the giant inflatable rat there oh i wish oh damn it i think that rat only lives on the east coast we never i never see a west i've seen an sf you've seen oh yeah okay i've

never seen that rat around sf i want i want to see the the inflatable rat by the way that's san francisco if you don't live here no one says San Fran it's always SF it saves so much time I appreciate you clarifying that I wouldn't want to go check the show notes I always have to especially on this podcast whenever I say Bart I need to say like I mean the

trains that we take Santa Fe this is a New Mexico podcast now oh Moe is there yes thinking that they canceled wagon train or he could bring it back that's so that's John Schwarzwalder coming through him there which I this shows you how the the capriciousness of what's popular that wagon train seriously was one of the top rated shows of the 50s and no one even knows it as a in 1990 it is a reference made would make you go huh and now in 2021 wagon train is nothing it's not like no one knows it you can't use it as a reference it doesn't exist look i spend a lot of my time

learning about old references to things because i love mystery science theater but some things are just too far out of my reach yes what is what is wagon train it was a western series that aired from i believe 1957 to 1965 yep and uh there are 284 episodes yeah wow it was uh just your regular episodic western that also was famous for having a lot of guest stars sort of like you know right after wagon train ended batman 66 started and it was the hip thing to be a guest on it and i think wagon train was similar for a time uh but like eddie albert was on an episode for instance but it feels like future agnes not season two agnes is in that line with her sign that says destroy the violent people yeah she's there she's got interesting color scheme like her pearls are colored the same as her shirt something like that yeah oh yeah there's uh there's a real blundered animation

there too for sure no that's that's the rare action figure version of agnes yeah there's one of those in every box of agnes how the mold works works and yeah it slowly expands into a bigger and bigger crowd shot of moving people with signs with text on them and i again was like oh these i have to give marge credit in this world if she can have a giant group of people who only live in springfield and 13 of them in the last week have had their heads bashed in by a child itchy and scratchy actually is a dangerous thing that's yeah marge is correct up to this point yeah true if her issue is that it's inspired people to harm their fathers there's here are five here's i i counted them 13 hands are up of of fathers with heads. It is very funny how incredibly specific

the act of violence was. It was repeated. And so after the growing of the political action we then go home and they definitely are blaming Marge for not making dinner as is her job. I like the jokes about how

the things don't stay in the little containers and TV dinner trays. They just the peas just roam wildly. But you know what? This ungrateful family. I was raised by a single mother. I could microwave my own dinner and I did a lot. She at least cooked those TV dinners for that ungrateful family.

It's true. Now, I hate I hate that Marge is also like she's the one apologizing. She's like, I'm sorry. I should have made dinner correctly. Move one apologizing. She's like, oh, I'm sorry. I should have made dinner correctly. Move the peas back to the pea compartment and get on with your life. Yeah. I do also love Bart. I could feel that as a kid of going like, who's up for some cartoons?

Just some cartoons and just being shut down at every turn as you're just trying to convince a parent to let you do a thing you want to do. Yeah. Also, in 1990, Homer says there's 20 million women in the world like there's there were far more women than that in 1990 gene fund uh yes yeah that also felt like swartzwater coming through homer there i think people are still mad at her uh and then yes it's true and it's just like this is becoming such an outdated thing to be mad about but it just comes up because when people hate a woman they just will hate her forever yep yeah pretty cool right yeah i uh yeah homer uh thinks he's gonna get his

beloved pork chops which like he could he can make his own pork chops or order out like just uh oh and bob found the the next time or the final time homer would talk own pork chops or order out like just... Oh, and Bob found the next time or the final time Homer would talk about pork chops after this. Seemingly the final time in the first like 12 or 11 seasons. It's when he becomes a food critic and he gives Marge's pork chops his lowest score ever, seven thumbs up. And Marge's reaction is like like you always like my pork chops like she's in that one marge seems to be going like but remember in season one you like pork chops this is your trait and i was just googling it on frankie act in that there's lots of pork chop references in season two there's a huge spike in season two of pork chop references i bet it was also because they were

like doing so much work with the merchandising team that when they were told like well what's the thing homer likes by the toy manufacturers they say well i guess pork chops when they go to unky herbs he wants pork chops uh in the fugu fish episode he talks about there was never a poison pork chop friday was pork chop night that's right lots of pork chops i'm just imagining the like playmates toy of homer coming with a pork chop yeah a little pork uh and so uh that then cuts to crusty's studio as he's about to present a cartoon and i showed everybody this before the recording but i have a cell from when crusty says wasn't that a great cartoon boys and girls i i have if you see his arms like he his his hands

are in fists and his arms are to his side i i have the cell of that but there's no mel in my cell going to buy the mel cell and hold it hostage ten thousand dollars or i started maybe it's like an ancient amulet you have to unite the two and it unlocks the new level. Oh, more importantly. That sounds like a regular show episode, I think. Yeah, Toby, I'm sure you've had an amulet. Oh, definitely. Many an amulet, many combining of ancient ritual stuff. That's how Act 3

gets started. But also the first appearance of Sideshow Mel, who does not speak yet, but he will speak just like Sideshow Bob when he finally talks. i forgot this is the first time we've seen him man and then he and he's called by name that's why he says sideshow mel there man wow i forgot that was such a major now i'm even more pissed off he's not in my cell because it's his first appearance oh no you've ruined my cell bob no you can just draw

him on there i'll have nina draw him on there for you. Krusty. Krusty. But I also will say that it's nice that in the audience of people who are booing Krusty, it is a mix of men and women. I could definitely have seen it being just all nagging housewives who are angry, but it's men and women in the group. It is a balanced gender group group of uh of protesters but yes crusty can't believe it hi kids guess what side show mel it's time for itchy and scratchy

hey settle down boys and girls but crusty will have to bring out his old friend, Corporal Punishment, again. Please, stop it. What's going on? Who are you people? What do we want? What do we want? No! You're ruining the show.

Stop it. Please, stop. Oh, please, lady. Be quiet, quiet. I don't know living here, all right? Stop. Stop. That woman.

That's Scooball Marge Simpson. Like all TV on sitcoms, it's filmed live. Yes. And Krusty does not notice until this moment that his audience is full of adults. Yeah. It's a cheat, but it's a fun scene his producers failed him there they should have said like hey this is they're planning something we're canceling today's show or something let's play let's play the falcon islands rerun episode but i love like dan's performance of crusty here it is the old crusty and just how he's like please I you know like it's

very natural the way he says it I love that too yeah first seeing him seems so helpless in that way it's pretty funny uh and I always wonder what what does corporal punishment normally do is he does just him showing up is the implicit threat to the children of like hey shut up I think it's his only joke in the entire series he will appear a few more times in the background as part of the cast of characters with Tina Ballerina. Yes, and Mr. TV. Those one-offs. And I think he is in Krusty's Funhouse, the video game. Oh, he's made to be an NES boss character.

He helps you kill the mice. Oh, he's not in that? Okay. And, yes, so the boardroom are a bunch harvard hacks who can't think up a way to do it they it's pretty much just a copy of the boardroom that burns uh when homer in simpson and delilah delilah where burns is like ah you got no ideas they all want to murder marge yes yeah and then then comes the next scene which is a a real snake eating its tail of this episode, that Marge is being a parody figure of a real life character. And then in the show, a cartoonist parodies Marge and kills her on screen, which I think she does have a lawsuit here, actually.

Yeah, I thought so, too. Also, very quick turnaround on that. Wow. Yeah, you know. Korea is not involved in this production at all actually it feels like the staff they had for the shorts really it's three directors that's it yeah you know it probably is what it is i think you're right which is all internal animation that was done in a week like yeah so i suppose it is slightly accurate yeah uh but yes i i also really love that the cart the very self-satisfied

cartoonist they would give me going like i'm so funny yeah yeah but i have an idea yes uh now of course you guys didn't work on a show called regular show that never had a problem with it uh drawing a person in real life that never happened no that's always it's there's always a thing that's really funny where it's like you put something in and just don't say what it is because you don't want to have the legal team flag it and that was the one time that went wrong on the on the uh on the billy mitchell thing but now it's like yeah if if legal flag something you cannot do it at all and it's it's very uh you have to come up with a new joke you certainly couldn't have uh knocked a person's head off that looked exactly like the woman who is mad at you on TV.

It's the one time Itchy and Scratchy agree on something. Yes. Unless the person's very obscure and everybody keeps their mouth shut, you cannot do that. But yes, Marge gets parodied in this quick clip where I just love every sound in it, even though it's also sexist about how women hate cartoons but you know some of these stories are pretty good i never knew mice lived such interesting lives

so much needless brutality i don't know if i'm having any impact at all don't do that don't do that hey don't do that take that you dumb squirrel i think that's how john swartzwater just writes marge in general don't do that yes yep yeah i we we just talked about it in the uh right before they go to the book fair in the in the insane clown poppy episode marge just appears at the start to be like don't do that with fireworks guys i gave you chores oh boy yes hey the boys must team up and have a rocking party episode yeah it's uh there was a lot more of the of homer and bart having fun together as the boys while the while margin lisa did boring things at home

because that's what the women subplots are for i'm sorry thank you i accept uh but but i do love homers take that you dumb squirrel that he has no clue that it's so obviously Marge. Yeah, like how many people do you know with that hair? But yes, that's when Marge gets her phone call to be on Smartline. The first time appearance, it's not Kent Brockman's first appearance, but it's the first appearance of the Smartline programming block. I like Smartline when it's in small doses. They didn't really do it a lot. It appears maybe eight times in the show,

but I think this scene is way too long. And it's a little too blunt because it's just asking every character, what is your opinion on this topic the episode is about? I feel like they should be showing their opinion through action, not just sitting down on a talk show to discuss.

And earlier, Henry, you were like, it's a sketch and it is. Yeah, yeah. It's just the talk show sketch dropped into this episode. Yeah, Schwarzwalwalder you know he wrote for snl right before writing for this show so this definitely has the feel of an snl talk show bit of characters right directly stating their purpose though not to say that you know terry

ricolta and peggy charon and lots of similar people mainly their bully pulpit was appearing on talk shows and saying well here, here's why I feel this. So, I mean, it's accurate. It's accurate to what was going on. If Marge had more than nine seconds, then I feel like it would have been better because I want to see, like, what is Marge? If everyone else gets to talk,

Marge should get her chance to say, here's my problem with what's happening. Yeah, and her thing is that she gets cut off multiple times throughout, which is also very aggravating. Yeah, and I's right i guess that's accurate i mean i literally just did it yes toby just interrupted you yeah the sequence is like it's like pretty funny but you're right it's long and it's like it doesn't reach any like heightened level of comedy but we couldn't lose that dr marvin monroe live in uh vienna bit right yeah this this scene made me happy they got rid of

him because i upon re-watching this i just thought you know he's not very funny no he just kind of waste time and he's yeah i well it's a joke they don't if marge if they're being so open with it i wish marge would have had a line that says oh this is a hit job on me like every every guest is against me like they didn't bring in one supportive guest to march but that's not and also kent is against her too the only jokes with monroe are just making fun of pop psychology which is fine but it only goes so far well man i mean imagine the scene if marvin monroe was his original uh actor from the first table read of tom like it would play a little different i'd say

yeah we got two whole marvin monroe sections in this episode i kind of like his little list of things that are hard for psychologists to deal with it's like kind of funny stuff like that yeah women who love too much i i do you know also this is a different time in the simpson show where marge appears on television and the kids are like, wow, mom's on TV. Like for the characters by season six, they've all been on TV so many times that it's kind of boring to The Simpsons then. And also Roger Myers, his name is misspelled. But hey, that's the danger. If you can't, you can't change it in post.

It's just written on screen. Yep. But yes, I do. I have two clips from smartline i'll just play the first one it it's uh the very frustrating bit of marge not being allowed to talk now what in the world is wrong with that mrs simpson there's nothing wrong with it excuse me excuse me he was addressing me i know there's nothing wrong with excuse me there is i think that it's a bad influence on children a break i think that is a bunch of baloney.

And here's why. In preparing for this debate, I did a little research and I discovered a startling thing. There was violence in the past long before cartoons were invented. I see. Fascinating. Yeah, and there was something called the Crusades, for instance.

Tremendous violence. Many people killed. The darn thing went on for 30 years. And this was before cartoons were invented. That's right, Kent. So much for your viewpoint. I like Marge's oomph is all she gets, but Marge definitely, she would say, I'm not saying cartoons invented violence. Roger Myers has such a frustrating, realistic argument of like, well, here's the argument i think you're having and

i'm going to tell you how you're wrong in this argument yeah and it feels like the show is taking sides with roger myers at this point i mean it is because up until this point the show is like no marge is right she might be a little pushy but she's right because these cartoons are directly influencing and encouraging violent acts look at all the people in the audience who are wounded by their children but now they're like oh no these men are right and there are bigger problems in the world than cartoons yeah it's very like it's very like self-defeating and actually just like kind of confusing to watch yeah i mean as a sketch it is three different men tell marge she's wrong and she barely gets to talk that's yeah pretty uh pretty disheartening even even when introducing the topic Ken Brockman laughs about it yes yeah which I was kind of

surprised he had such an opinion I don't know which I thought was which I thought was ridiculous until we listened to that clip at the beginning of the episode I was like I guess the the they do just laugh at a woman having opinions you know we've all got our own free speech issues. Yeah. Women have their little free speech issues that they can have fun with. When they're not busy cooking dinners. We've got pork chops to eat, people. Come on, chop chop.

You can complain about cartoons after you've made me dinner yeah uh i do i mean i do love kent when marvin says like what the hell's wrong with that not a thing he just says not a thing like just fully editorializing uh and the bright spot is crusty vamping because he can't turn it off and uh did brad bird do those scenes he had to have have, right? It really, yes. Or it was Lynch. It does look very Brad Bird-y when he hits himself with the pie. That does look, yeah. It's just so specific that it's not unlike how Brad, it actually feels of a piece of the heart attack animation

Brad Bird did in Krusty Gets Busted. Yeah. You're right. It's weird to use this terminology, but yeah, there's some great drawings where he's fully like off model and it's very fun to watch. Super charming.

I love his resting smiling face. Like just that he's just not moving and just like, like just open mouth grinning. This is back when Kent and Krusty kind of liked each other. He didn't touch it, did he? Yeah, exactly.

And so, yes, Marge tells everybody that they should call, they should write in if they're upset about it too. And this is when Marge's populist action works in this next clip. I will never watch your show, buy any of your products, or break if I see you crossing the street. Wow, that's cold. Dear sleaze merchant. Oh, come on, that hurts.

Gentlemen, the screwballs have spoken. Now, I do like the symmetry of Act 1 and Act 2. They end with a character being offended by a letter they were sent. So, yeah, that's good storytelling. More just strongly letter-based storytelling. Yeah. Gotta draw the line of death threats. A little dark.

Yeah. Not what Marge envisioned. Early Simpsons mostly about correspondence. Yes. That's why america loved it and the uh the pull out to show the long long line of cars that is a reference to field of dreams uh oh really okay yeah on the commentary mike reese asked like is that a field of dreams thing and algin just goes like sure but but it actually is if you look at when basically the baseball field gets popular,

the film was 1989, so it was right before this. To show how popular their little backyard baseball field had become, it zooms out to show just a line of car lights in the dark to show it. So you look at them side by side. It's an intentional reference. That's a movie, as much as I'm a film person i have never seen probably because it's about baseball which i don't care about what you're not a baseball person uh i i think uh boy was it a tiny tunes that didn't if they build it they will if you everybody did that reference yeah that that was everywhere

that's another one much like psycho like i knew the references before i ever knew about the movie uh okay the yes it was everywhere the tiny tune ones i'm thinking of is when bab shows everybody the old cartoons that give rebirth to uh honey bosco's girlfriend i think the cartoon is called fields of honey yeah oh well there you go then yeah uh so we come back for the commercial break and uh marge is back to cooking because she can finally do her woman's work again. Using Homer Spice Rack. Yeah. This week she does that. And though here, let me like I want to ask you professionals here.

What Marge does in this next clip, she should be paid for consulting work, right? Yeah. That's a legal. That's a complete minefield there. Somebody contact the union. This is not going to stay. Exactly. Yeah. It's a legal, that's a complete minefield there. Somebody contact the union. This is not going to stay. Exactly, yeah. It's a very cute scene.

I love how just like matter of fact Marge is about it. She's been this whole crusade and then she gets the phone call being like, how do you, and she's like, well, I don't know. You can do something like this, I guess. Yeah. What I will say is that like Marge is depicted, you know, as like a angry person who hates violence and hates

cartoons in this episode but but uh I will there are a lot of people who love cartoons who would also recommend this exact type of storytelling uh in shows you know yeah like why does there have to be conflict can't they just like each other I don't understand why we can't watch that for 22 minutes exactly it's like why did the character do that it's like well because uh then if they didn't there would be no story in the first place and i say that as someone who loves uh you know totally chill slice of life shows shows where it's all fine everything's fine don't worry about it yeah it's funny it's just like on regular shows like man i hate rigby he always causes these problems that's true if rigby wasn't there half these stories wouldn't exist that's accurate

oh in the INS studios office from left to right we have caricatures of Rich Moore, David Silverman, Wes Archer and Eddie Fitzgerald and Wes Archer is wearing a beret in his caricature and Matt Groening asks about it and apparently he was wearing a beret at the time we did not ask Wes Archer that

we failed next time if we can interview him in about a year let's i'm asking about that beret but interesting change about your beret phase i want to know about it in the early 90s uh it was the times of the beret but in this episode they show the cartoon being written in storyboard but later the itchy and scratchy writing staff is the simpsons writing staff yeah yeah in the front And they do script first. Yeah, you're right. They're writing storyboard based in this episode

and that's not how The Simpsons is made. Hey, you know, this wouldn't be the first show to go from board driven to script driven at some point during its pipeline. Yeah, I love all the storyboards they show though. It feels like they must have really gone through the ringer on what could happen in this episode because none of these storyboards relate to one another like yeah itchy and acid they're

gonna chase there's a rocket ship over there whatever the way that they're standing there it's very like snippy's cartoon show style where it's just the whole whole production right there on the wall uh well toby i think uh when we did our first podcast with you uh that with uh ian jones qwerty also on it i think you both like, oh, is it easier to draw a pie than an ice cream cone? But that sounds like it's bullshit. Well, honestly, drawing an ice cream cone is much easier than drawing a pie. Yeah, it's way easier to draw them holding it, for sure.

Yeah, holding it. And then also an ice cream cone, it's cylindrical, so you don't have to draw corners or shapes in three-dimensional like a pie. You got to figure out what the edges look like and stuff. Yeah, that's just my opinion, but yeah. Eddie Fitzgerald, incorrect.

Yeah. On the pie slash ice cream cone issue. But yes, Marge is called to consult. And also, I do like in this how agreeable she is with the passive-aggressive dick on the phone who's telling her, just blaming her for everything. Oh, and one other thing, I like how when she's talking to them, you can tell she's preoccupied with cooking and the acting, which is very subtle. Is this Marge Simpson?

Yes. The Marge Simpson who fixed it so cartoons can't be violent anymore? Yes. This is Myers. I'm here with the writers. Listen, you're so smart. How do we end this picture? Well, what's the problem you're having?

Okay, here it is. Itchy just stole Scratchy's ice cream cone and... Well, make it a pie. Pies are easier to draw. Okay, a pie. Anyway, Scratchy is understandably upset. Mm-hmm. So we figured he could, you know,

just grab Itchy and toss him in a bucket of acid. Oh, dear. But then we remembered that this might be interpreted as violence, which is morally wrong now, thanks to you. So what's your big idea? How do we end this let's see oh couldn't itchy share his pie with scratchy then they would both have pie it's different i'll give you that i feel like in the future they would not have

marge using her spice appliance over dialogue. Yes. Yeah, you're right. Very naturalistic. But yeah, with Marge's phone call, a billion coffee shop AUs were born. Yeah. See, yeah, I think there's room enough in the world where you can have a cartoon where the characters can just have their pie like just share like it's but the argument here definitely seems to be that if if your mom got to make cartoons they would

suck because no one would be in conflict like that you you actually raise a really good point like i i sound like i'm speaking disparagingly of cartoons with no conflict but actually yeah i i agree with maddie too that like the you know the idea of of like a low key cartoon that is actually very low on conflict. There are tons of great shows that are like that. And I wish there were a lot more of them. I think it's just the constant thing is like everything can't be everything. Like you can't have all of one thing or all of one other thing. It has to be a mix. Spice of life. Spice of pork chop. Spice rack. Spice rack. Oh. Now, I recall this is like 800 superhero discourses ago, but this is like in 2014 where I saw a very like bro-y film critic saying, you know, all these people want to just see the Winter Soldier and Captain America just hang out.

Well, what kind of thing is that? You need conflict. That's the key to drama. And I was just thinking, like, would it be so bad to just have one thing where just Captain America does hang out with a friend and just talks to him? Why would that be the antithesis of drama just to see that? Well, yeah, that's an interesting point because it's like what happens is, it's just like maddie said you know at a certain point if everything's following the same beats and serving the same needs then everything becomes exactly the same yeah uh but uh but yes so marge marge gives them a plot point for their episode and they animate it and then i mean also too i will say peggy char in real life, she did consult on some children's television workshop productions.

Like I in her obituary, I read they said like she worked consulted on the creation of the adaptation of Arthur for PBS and Between the Lions. So they actually did. Yeah. Which are like informative and teach kids good stuff. And then that Arthur cartoon would go on to like piss off other groups because two lesbians appeared in it one time. Oh, geez. Yeah. And then they had a gay marriage on it, too, and pissed off some people. But I guess at the very least, they let a character, they let Arthur's teacher be gay. That was nice. Yay.

Yay. they let Arthur's teacher be gay that was nice yay yay and so we have a quick infomercial joke which I'm definitely sure after they did that they're like okay three scripts from now Homer just watches the infomercial on tv and we're doing it and yeah Homer versus Lisa in the eighth commandment it's not a shot of him watching a tv and I guess the joke is you don't you barely see what the product is because Marge walks in front of it. Yes. Yeah. And that's basically it. I mean,

it is amazing. It can do all of those things. It's, it's yeah. The design of it, that thing is wild. I, I,

now, you know, I'm saying that it, it sold it on me as well. Like I would buy it too, but where would I keep it? And so, yeah,

as March changes the channel, I do also like the shot of Krusty just laughing and pointing at the camera. And yes, the kids are allowed to watch cartoons again, but they don't like it. Lemonade? Please, I made it just for you. You are my best friend. Itchy and Scratchy seem to have lost their edge. I think it conveys a very nice message of sharing.

I think it sucks. Oh, hey, thank you, Maggie. This really hits the spot. Doesn't it, though? You make really good lemonade, Scratchy. Thank you, Itchy. Wasn't that funny, boys and girls? Well, wasn't it?

Aren't you going to watch the rest of your cute cartoons? Nah, come on, Lise. Maybe there's something else to do on this planet. But again, Marge is correct because the impressionable maggie learned to share by watching this cartoon and brought lemonade out of some pocket dimension i guess oh yeah that's impressive too that a baby can just get a glass of lemonade and walk it into the room i love the dialogue in that cartoon just oh isn't it though oh thank you i feel like also matt graining has so much anger about the smurfs which died the day

the simpsons premiered sort of right yes yeah pretty much the last new smurfs was made right around when they premiered yeah and i think he's filtering a lot of his anger at things like care bears and the 80s cartoons that are very much like this through this short i feel like you also call out the uh tom and jerry the later tom and jerry's where they talk in the commentary as well yes yeah they this is definitely attacking the 75 tom and jerry as well though they i watched like several minutes of it and it is very boring and slow and just bad but they there is conflict in it they're like oh a baby bird is lost or oh yeah there's like a magic wand they fight over in another but certainly no one is smashed in the head with a frying pan or whatever in them it's

which is too bad but i think too the argument is that if they aren't trying to kill each other they're in love and that they are a gay couple how we use electricity can be smarter cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricarland.ie.

I love later cartoons. I'd watch that show. Yeah. I love the reboot of Itchy and Scratchy and later cartoons, their ballroom dancing and Scratchy is telling Itchy a bedtime story. That's so great but but yeah well also though this that's one thing this cartoon's wrong about not that easy to get gay cartoons on the tv even 30 years later and not that easy to draw a rocking chair animated and I'm meeting in perspective yeah oh man I didn't even think of that as incredible that's wow yeah that seems like it would be pretty hard and on the commentary

macerating points out kids love to imitate this scene, and I definitely did with my friends at the lunch table. More lemonade? I love their giant eyes, too. Yeah, they're cute. Yeah. I could see that that's the thing, too, though. It definitely makes the argument that all children would hate this,

which I think there were definitely some kids who would have loved it but the the show uh sees it as like no all children would hate this these would be bad cartoons and they turn them off oh yeah i think you're right i think that the thing to do would have been to let let itchy and scratchy continue to exist but then also create a competing very nice cartoon uh about people liking each other i know every beat of this uh this rebooted itchy and scratchy cartoon but the funniest thing for me is the cut from the title card to them blankly staring and rocking and saying nothing yes yes that's the slowness they could only stick with the slowness for a little bit but yeah and i gotta say roger myers jr he's

got to be part of the story so so I know why he's doing this, but few of these executives would be down in the trenches with the animators looking at storyboards. I don't think Gabor Chupo was doing this. Yeah, that stuff would have been an email. Yeah, I guess back then it would be on a carbon copy memorando, I suppose. Yeah, he certainly wouldn't have been in the room with them. Also, just standing at the storyboard wall with the artists. Also, that David Silverman one, his version definitely got updated because he gets to have a beard line in this one.

But they changed his look quite a lot afterwards. I guess he still has the beard line when he appears as, you know, at the end of that monorail episode, I now really get the joke that the people who die at the end of that monorail episode i now really get the joke that the people who die at the end of it are the animators and i think it's the animators way of saying this episode killed us it was too hard they gotta keep they gotta keep respectfully up to date with the david silverman designs yeah as he grew out his hair they it made it less puffy that's uh he had to change it up not to go on too long about this cartoon, but last year we covered Muppet Babies for What a Cartoon. And re-watching this reboot of Vichy and Scratchy made me think,

this is a lot like Muppet Babies, in which Muppet Babies was a very low-impact, friendly show. And every scene in Muppet Babies would be like, the Muppet Baby walks over to the next scene, you follow the Muppet Baby as it walks, and it goes Kermit what are you doing oh I'm doing this wow that's cool and then they walk they literally just walk over to the next scene and there's so much of the show is you following them as they walk just like time passing yeah yeah I well you know in in that case too it was Jim Henson was doing that in opposition to most of children's programming.

He wanted Muppet Babies to be not about kids consuming things or watching stuff. It was about at least trying to say, you could do this. Look, the kids are doing this. You could imagine doing that. It was at least aspirational. But yes, so then we get this big, long montage set to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, the first movement of it. It's a reference to the Greek section of the original Fantasia as well, set to the same music. And from what I read, Bob Anderson is really responsible for the scene.

And it is not one long pan. There are very cleverly hidden cuts in this pan but it's still super impressive yeah very yeah as a board artist i was definitely watching it being like oh i can see where the scenes change to make it not all one scene because the longer a scene gets the harder it is to do so they cut it up into little pieces i think my favorite is the dog catching the frisbee that's my favorite part of the whole thing yeah just the way it so beautifully glides through the air and goes over the hill very impactful i mean too these simpsons artists were told probably by through the script of so you know like fantasia can you just like do

that you know like they did in fantasia uh i also do like on the commentary when they mentioned the use of beethoven music that they dunked on schwarzwielder by saying he wants anything german very pointed yes I think this is back when they were more relaxed at doing their what they mock him in the writers room for of calling him a fascist but again this is how James L. Brooks

wanted the episode to end like James Scratchy are gone forever and the kids are free so I think he believed it I think he was on Marge's side and thinking you know yeah this was bad for the kids Marge is correct we've seen many instances in which she was correct and them turning off the tv gives them more active healthy lives yeah if if children were to stop watching television all day they would have the pastoral childhoods of mark twain in the 1920s that never really existed i'm sure but they just turn into those kids were all

working yes they were working in the mines and it is funny to think you know like listening to the commentary and then being like oh no no we depict all this very sarcastically and we don't believe it at all it's like it's like yeah i guess to make sense that like uh to go back to an old timey uh fake idyllic time would kind of suck yes it should be more sarcastic though that's my issue it's way too subtle in a way where the meaning gets lost I mean the one real joke is Nelson

painting the fence like Tom Sawyer there should have been more of that throughout the sequence but I think they were too focused on making it very pretty I guess they show him like rolling a tire Martin rolls a tire the kids are playing marbles. I could see Martin doing that, though, knowing what I know about him.

That's true. Yeah, no, I guess I can see the satirical intent was that this is so perfect and idyllic that it's impossible and kids wouldn't actually do that, but it just does seem too good. It's like, oh, I guess kids would just be happy and socially adjusted without watching kids of 1990 had one thing to do when there was nothing good on tv it's called nintendo

yes yeah that's true uh this this couldn't even imagine the kids yes actually as a little kid when i saw this i probably did think well either turn the channel to another cartoon or turn on your nes because there's like don't I probably was like don't give up on TV kids like watch TV like me all day uh but yes uh the Marge has changed the world for the better so what did you kids do today me and the the guys went fishing. Almost caught a catfish this big. And Janie and I went bird watching. We saw a grackle.

Oh, that's nice, dear. Come on, Lise, let's go finish our soapbox raisers. Okay, may we please be excused? Sure. Wow, what great kids. This is a golden age, Marge. And the parents of Springfield owe it all to you. I didn't really expect things to change this much.

Well, I always knew you'd change the world. For the better. It's very ADR. They do recycle Homer's movements there. What even is the joke there? I guess Homer thinks it sounded negative. He's like, I knew you'd change the world. For the better.

Like, yeah, I'm guessing that's it. But I'm also guessing the episode was like two seconds too short. And they're like, well, Homer can just do that. Let's just do that. I really think from this point on, it was a rewrite. This Michelangelo, this David thing. It feels like it comes in so late. And I feel like this is where the episode deviates from

what the original idea was I do I do think it's it is needed to give to give this turn for for Marge I think it's a it's a good rewrite for sure it it identifies that Marge is not a censor like the uh very conservative women who also aren't it lets her show that she appreciates art. But it also turns into, one thing I have say chastised shows like Newsroom for West Wing is that they create arguments that aren't the actual real life argument, but it is an argument that the writer of the show can win. And so in this case, they turn it into like several different straw mans to ultimately say what they really want to say to the Terry Recoltes of the world of like, well, where does censorship stop? You know, so, yes, we we cut to Italy.

They are deciding to take David on tour, which I like that Mike Reese points out that Dan is doing an Italian accent that would have been welcome in Peabody and Sherman. It's just so big. And it's going to New York, Springfield, if they have time, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle. Yeah, that's a good joke. Yeah, I love it. Then in this world, Springfield is just below New York City as the important American places to go. And yes, I will say that Peggy Cheren had better control over ACT in where they directed their energies towards.

Like if a bunch of Christian conservatives like Ed showed up and said, hey, we need to censor this thing because it shows a penis. She would have said, no, that's stupid. We're not going to do that. And she kind of allows them to like, well, you know, if you want to go, go ahead.

I'm just not going to come with you. Right now we're living through the cancellation of Dr. Seuss. But really, that's his estate deciding they don't want to have those books in print anymore. And that is an argument for the public domain. If anything, these conservatives who are mad about these books, no one cares about being canceled. They should be arguing for better public domain rights. It's also very weird how often conservatives get mad at you know business decisions done by private private uh entities yeah it wasn't good for me oh no this this extreme privatization

actually hurt my thing i don't like it yeah no i well i mean also i've seen've seen a similar thing popped up with the Muppets, but Disney+, their approach to it is the preferable outcome, I would think, for people who feel like, oh, they censored everything. The Muppet shows are shown uncut, and they have a thing at the front that just says, hey, this has outdated depictions that are not really for kids, so you got 10 seconds to get out of it. That's the opposite of cutting a show or not having the episode on there. I mean, honestly, it is very helpful

because like, I think as kids, we all had a very steady diet of like casual racism and stereotypes that were completely unchecked for comedy and entertainment. And if that was there, we would at least know like, oh, this thing is not correct

that I'm looking at. Yeah. On an episode of Podcast The Ride recently as of this recording they're talking about chucky cheese and they're watching a lot of old chucky cheese videos that they would show in the restaurants and one of them that shocked them all was chucky and the gang playing a song in front of the confederate flag wow they were playing a country western song because to a lot of people for a long time that just meant country you know know, down home country. Yeah. And, you know, you know, it's. I definitely.

Yeah. I remember like as even like in high school or early college being angry if I'd see someone have like a Confederate flag in their car and people or people, my peers not really getting it being like, well, I don't get it. It's the South. It just means, you know, country or whatever. But we in North Dakota love the South. Yeah, exactly. Isn't it a suspect that somebody in North Dakota has this this yeah why am i seeing these in ohio yeah yeah you guys are in the union man yeah uh no i uh yes i i do like marge being told like uh it displays parts of the human anatomy that practical as they may be are evil

i i also i will say as an eight-year-old i was surprised to see a drawing of a penis on television like it's i guess they get away with it in that it is a marble penis that is drawn and it's also it is certainly not very i mean i think too the simpsons are getting away with something by saying by making this point we get to draw david and as he appears and it doesn't work if we don't actually show his penis in a cartoon the first full frontal on television yeah yes i think that under any other circumstances that wouldn't have been able to happen in the show and the fact that it's still there now at disney plus uh it's it's really cool yes yeah they they did not suppress david's doodle even even on disney

plus i've said it so many times please we need to see more penises in entertainment uh i also like marge being told she was soft on full frontal nudity the idea they've been privately gossiping about that fact uh but yes uh they then tell the guy to take his big italian butt home uh they they are protesting the the david statue and then then comes the time where marge must be destroyed and defeated on television like it's it's such it makes me sad i really dislike the thing she says the i guess what she learned really makes me sad. Yes. Here's the clip. Yeah, it's super depressing. Why are you against this statue?

I'm not. I think everyone in Springfield should see it. Wait a minute. Aren't you Marge Simpson the Wacko? Yes and no. Hold it, hold it, hold it. How can you be for one form of freedom of expression like a big naked friend over there and be against another form like Itchy and Scratchy?

Good question. Well, I guess I can't, which is a shame because I really hate those cartoons. Oh, yeah? Well, what do you have to say to all those Marge Simpson wannabes out there who wish to suppress David's doodle? I don't know. I guess one person can make a difference,

but most of the time they probably shouldn't. Well, I guess that settles that. I'd like to alert our affiliates that we will be ending our show early tonight. Join us tomorrow when our topic will be religion, which is the one true faith? One other thing I don't like about the scene is that Roger Myers should be there.

It should not be Marvin Monroe. I hate his voice, number one, but he should have more of a presence in this episode. You know, he should be one of the last people you see because it's a lot about him and what he does. And he's the guest star. Yeah, yeah. Actually, it doesn't finish his story either for the episode.

Yeah, and hearing what Marvin Monroe is saying, I can hear Alex Rocco saying all those lines of being the same character. So I don't know why they gave it to him. Yeah, it's odd. Maybe it is because it's a later day, later rewrite. Yeah. And a lot of the Marvin Monroe dialogue seemed like it was ADR based on his lip movements.

Sorry, Maddie. Oh, no, it's fine. I was just going to say, I feel like it's like, how can you be against one form of expression and for another? And she's like, I guess you can't, but you can. Why can't you? Yeah. The whole point is, again, humans hate nuance, but she's like i guess you can't but you can why can't you yeah the whole point is

again humans hate nuance but she's not against the expression of violence she's against the expression of violence to a certain age of children like specifically children's cartoons and how they're affected by it which i don't know is something to be taken into account that like i don't know art is yeah valuable i lost my thread anyway somebody don't say something before i embarrass myself further it is just a thing where yeah it i think it goes back to what you were saying about about nuance where i feel like uh a show that was a little bit more willing to play with the nuance of it would have maybe found a way to make this be a victorious moment for marge and instead she has to be like owned by her own logic. Like I hate to use that like that's such a corny phrase,

but that's how the scene is written that a character and it, it feels absolutely like wish fulfillment of some of the writers. And I would certainly think John Schwarzwalder who would just want to get in the face of somebody who he feels tries to censor because Schwarzwalder would definitely, as I would think from his political beliefs, think nothing should be censored and everything should be available like it's and also speaking that nuance thing again I just what what all got lost in all these stories I had heard before about Peggy Charon and her group was that she was also against the commercialization like it never it was only the cartoon violence people talked about but she really didn't like how much products were advertised to kids and her criticism of capitalism

is kind of obviously i can see why the media didn't care to talk about that as much but yeah i i hate that that's lost in in the tales of her story like she's maybe too because that is a harder thing to critique her for because i think think most people, even if they're like, would say, eh, I watched violent cartoons when I was a kid. That's fine. I think they'd have a harder time saying, you know what? Probably they shouldn't watch cartoons where the Transformers tell them to buy them, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of just a bummer because it's like Marge is correct in the end to want Michelangelo's David to exist and for people to see it and I think that if she had just said something like well I guess I love art more than I hate those stupid cartoons uh and and for her to be proud of her viewpoint and to just you know because she's right and in that last point so making her be depressed by her own by that it's just like it's very like self-defeating and a bit of a bummer I also think what muddies the water

here is that the entire show is about violence. And now suddenly this is about sex in the last act or at least just like what you could view as a sexual work or nudity in general as being harmful or bad for people to see. I wish this third act was also about violence in a different context that Marge does approve of. It would have made their argument stronger and made the episode more sound, I think. Yeah, yeah. But then they couldn't have drawn a penis on TV. It's true, it's true. Maybe a violent penis, a penis holding a hammer.

Oh, there we go. A prehensile penis. You know, I do think I figured out what the Marvin Monroe joke is here, though they would drop it in other ones. So he's in Vienna, the home of Sigmund Freud. And then the ones that so he's in vienna the home of sigmund freud and then the next one he's in greece which he's in athens which michelangelo made uh you know grecian statue i think the joke is that marvin monroe is talking them into sending him all over

the world for amazing vacations and he says no no it's part of my appearance i can see that yeah i wasn't quite sure because yeah the second one he has the zinc on the nose or whatever this the sunblock yeah i i guess like my the joke that i thought it was was like look at all these rich pop psychologists going around like i think your thing the thing you're describing is a little bit more more specific also i think the background for vienna is just a hill or something like you're not even throwing any like you know, historical sites or anything. At least he's in front of like the Acropolis or whatever in Greece.

But yeah, so because Marge admitted defeat, SNA still exists, but cartoons just get violent again. I guess her concession on Smartline made the rest of America go like, oh, okay, cartoons can be violent again, which is not how things go. But, yeah, so also I like the Kent. I think Kent, I do like the gag that he thought, oh, we're not supposed to settle arguments on this show. I guess we're over. We got nothing. And so the violent cartoons are back, maggie learns to shoot a gun which she

will use to shoot mr burns just a few years later oh yeah that is a really good itchy stretchy cartoon with the increasingly large guns being pulled on each other yes i like it i mean it's uh it's kind of just taken from that barber of seville uh or rabbit of seville that's true yeah but though i just love the silliness of how big of a thing they pull right from they don't run off screen it's just straight from behind their back like yeah uh yes then they headed to the museum for the closest thing to a happy ending the episode has well there he is Michelangelo's day oh what's wrong. Oh, what's wrong, Marge? Oh, me.

Here the kids have a chance to see a great work of art, and instead they're home watching a cat and mouse disembowel each other. Hey, don't worry, Marge. Pretty soon, every boy and girl at Springfield Elementary School is going to come and see this thing. Really? Why? They're fortunate! Oh, well, isn't that nice uh that's uh i mean i do there is a cleverness to after all of march talked about how what she

wants kids to do and not do the moral of the story is that governmental schools force children to do things the state has the final say yes yeah i can appreciate that there was an effort of sorts to give the audience and marge some sort of happy ending i'll take it you know it's like okay fine uh i like when the camera pulls out for their forsonum yeah really big uh lionhomer has that's a great shot yeah i love that uh and like them putting uh holding hands right in front of the genital region of david is such fun posing too i i wonder if there were debates about like how many seconds they could show the penis for on screen oh for sure there was arguments about that 100 yeah hidden in that adjust yeah okay you see it and now we're

gone we don't have to look at it anymore well and i i 100 bet internally when they pitched that they hoped like what if terry ricolta writes in about this oh man could we be so lucky that we piss her off with this and we could have the actual thing happen in real life. I think she was mad. One of the scenes she was mad about was that there were pasties on a topless mannequin on screen. So maybe they thought they could get her the same with this. But no dice. They did not get a public anger at this episode.

But yeah, I think it's an interesting episode. I also really like that how it is the first inward looking episode like this is self-referential and just like they would do with many of their self-referential episodes is they do it through the lens of itchy and scratchy and this set the tone for that and and as a celebration of cartoon violence it succeeds at that very well just as it was like, they do this cartoon about man cartoons should be allowed to be vile again. I believe it's the summer by the end of the next summer after this Ren and

Stimpy premier. Yes. I think they did a change in a way you could see that the Simpsons changed things with that, but I just wish it wasn't so about making Marge feel awful in the end. Yeah. Yeah yeah i don't want to rehash everything i said so far but again i feel like it'd be better if you had a more of a point of view instead of just a bunch of ideas to think about and just like what did you learn

write this essay and let us know it feels like it's a prompt for discussion which is what we're doing and that's fine but uh i echo what henry said and i kind of like the perspective of a teen scratchy as the Simpsons writers room. I think that's a little bit of a more of a inside baseball look at the show, especially with things like the front and Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie show. I like that perspective better. Yeah. And in that situation, I think it's a little more more effective because they're they are talking about themselves and having themselves as the target. So it just works a little better for me. Yeah. And then I guess overall for the episode, it's like, you know, I can kind of poo-poo,

you know, some of the specifics about the message and all of that. And I certainly feel that way. But at the end of the day, it is still a season two episode of The Simpsons. It's fun to watch. There are funny jokes. It sounds great. It looks great.

And I would still watch it pretty much any day of the week. And great for Jim Reardon as his first outing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just echoing toby said i it's a shame for marge but there are some small wins for her so i'll take it uh and and yeah i i guess uh one final thought i had too is like this shows how much bigger the scope of the show keeps getting that they they see like oh we can get out of the simpsons home for most of the episode and just have these big ideas and marge can just be a person who appears on tv and talks about stuff like it can just get bigger and bigger and it'll only get bigger and

bigger from here yeah it's an early example of them uh you know and i mentioned um crusty gets busted as well as this where it's like it starts to become about about the town and the media and what's happening in the world. It certainly like predicts what they would later do with like the Gummy Venus episode where it's like about what happens. So Toby and Maddie, thanks for joining us for Talking Simpsons. Maddie, welcome as our new guest. Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor. I was very nervous to be on.

So I was like, oh, I've only been hovering for an honor i was very nervous to be on so i was like oh i've only been hovering for so long how am i to be on we're such big listeners in this household so it's always it's always a pleasure and please let us know where to find you online if my research is correct maddie uh the fifth season or the fifth book of infinity train is about to launch uh as of this recording but it will be a few months in the past as of june book four book five i wish oh boy but no yeah book four on hbo max thank you and uh toby evie uh we think we ask you this every time but nothing nothing you got to announce just yet no nothing yet i'm just still uh toiling away in the development minds for now uh so you just keep keep up with me on social media as toby

toby jones on instagram and twitter for the moment and of course please please tune in for you can still watch ok ko on hbo max and hulu and my pilot aj's infinite summer on youtube and now i'm out of breath uh well yeah and maddie what's uh what's your twitter account uh it's at ham shears which is after a syndicated comic i used to do but it's no longer online uh but yeah at ham shears which is after a syndicated comic i used to do but it's no longer online uh but yeah at ham shears and that's me that's my twitter yeah i uh i just uh recently retweeted one of your great simpsons drawings you did of the the drawing of handsome homer oh that's great it was very vivid in my dream and i love how it's not that different from homer it's he's got these crazy bangs and sort of more of a defined chin.

Like that's the difference. The moment being there, if you being like Toby, I had this dream where I had a very specific, handsome Homer. And then I had a vision in my head of what it looked like. And he showed it to me and it was like the funniest thing I'd ever seen. I think it's like my most popular treat,

which is funny to me. It's like, wait, that's what did it. All right. But thank you guys so much. It's like, wait, that's what did it? All right. Whatever. But thank you guys so much. It was so awesome having you both back.

Or having, well, it was so great having you for the first time, Maddie, and having you on again, Toby. You're both welcome anytime. Happy to be here. Thanks so much. So thanks again to Toby and Maddie for being on the show. If you want to support our show and get every episode one week ahead of time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month you'll get just

that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes over a hundred bonus episodes that you probably haven't heard and our most recent mini-series behind the paywall was talking of the hill season two part one that was 11 new episodes of talking to the hill our king of the hill retrospective podcast you can only get that behind the Patreon paywall at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. Sign up for that. You get all the $5 stuff plus access to one mega long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher.

And what is that, Henry? Bob is talking about the What a Cartoon movie podcast. So in case you don't know, every week we do the What a Cartoon podcast in addition to the Talking Simpsons podcast. If you liked hearing us talk with Toby about all this stuff, we had him on with a creator of OKKO, Ian Jones-Quartey, to talk about their show in two separate episodes. Plus, we discussed Evangelion with him and Ian. with what a cartoon we also each month do the what a cartoon movie where we talk about an animated feature film in the same in-depth style that we cover talking simpsons that means often we talk for over four hours if you like hearing us talk about evangelion we talk about that for five whole hours in the end of evangelion podcast other recent ones have included we talk about the Ralph Bakshi classic, Cool World. We talk about the 20th anniversary of Shrek, the Ogre-rated film, and so many others.

You get all of the $5 stuff Bob just mentioned, plus an entire back catalog over 140 hours, I'd say at this point, of what a cartoon movie podcast closing in on our third year. So please sign up at the $10 level to get it all at patreon.com slash talking simpsons as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast about old video games find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two bonus episodes every month henry what about you you can follow me henry gilbert on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g if you like cartoon opinions i sure share them on that twitter account so follow that and you know if

you're following me and bob you should also be following on twitter the official twitter account for the talking simpsons podcast that is at talk simpsons podcast. That is at TalkSimpsonsPod. Follow on Twitter at TalkSimpsonsPod so you can stay up to date whenever new stuff goes live for Talking Simpsons. What a cartoon. What a cartoon movie. Talking of the Hill and all the other side bits.

Also, whenever any news happens on the Patreon or in our lives, certainly at TalkSimpsonsPod is going to be tweeting about it. So please follow at TalkSimpsons Pod on Twitter already. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next time for Season 12's Homer. And we'll see you then. But the third bowl of porridge was just right.