Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie

Episode Date: October 12, 2016

Bart finally gets punished and Homer makes it stick by forbidding him to see The Itchy & Scratchy film. This is an animation tour de force, which gives the hosts a chance to nerd out about old cartoons in this week’s podcast…

today's talking simpsons is brought to you by bark box and you can go to get barkbox.com slash laser time to get a free month of doggy delights i heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we've got beats. This is the Lazer Time Podcast Network's chronological exploration of the Simpsons where we've got beats. This is the Laser Time Podcast Network's chronological exploration of the Simpsons. I am your host, Bog, Bog, Bob, Big Chief Crazy Cone Mackey. Who else is here today? For Santista with a stolen nickname from Bob. I'm Henry, a big fan of poison pizza.

My name is not Bog, by the way, at least outside of Twitter it's not. And today's episode is Itchy and Scratchy the Movie, which aired on a Tuesday, November 3rd, 1992. Chris, something very important happened on this day in history. You can tell us. Oh, I got it, Bobby. Oh, my God. The important news Bob was referring to is that Elton John signs a record-breaking recording contract for $39 million. And I had to pad this segment because this week's news will have to stretch across two episodes Exactly. Question, were you guys watching this episode during that? Because I was.

Hell yes. Why would I care about an election? I'm sure I knew more than I did in 88 just because I would watch the SNL clips and they were so funny. And I knew that Bill Clinton was a kill billy and that the other two were old ladies. Yes.

I didn't listen to the commentary but I was bumbling around for some insights here. You look at the schedule, everybody was talking about the election. It seems like almost ballsy, mad Rupert Murdoch counter-programming. Yeah. To like, fuck everybody else then. We're going to be the only people in primetime on network airing a new episode of our show

on a night it never airs. It's kind of like when MTV would air new Beavis and Butthead shorts during the Super Bowl halftime. Yeah, I love the butt bowl. Yeah, I miss Super Bowl halftime counter-programming. It was such a 90s thing and now it's dead. Living color live. Yeah, I think a lot of people didn't think there was any way the Democrats would take back the White House.

Sideshow Bob warned us. I'll be back on the streets with all of my criminal buddies. It wasn't a foregone conclusion. Most people thought Bill wasn't going to even get to win the primary. the primary he may not have perot didn't ruin so many votes for um bush ruined that election like a japanese banquet though so uh not my joke not my joke bush sucked but also yeah perot kind of really hurt him and yeah that's why both parties from then on were like, please no third party. Like, you will kill us in the presidency. Like, it happens every – you always lose some votes. And if you suck as much as Al Gore did at beating a complete imbecile like George W. Bush,

then that third party, that 3% of a third party will get you. But, you know, seeing the Perot bits make me go like man he's got he is so much more respectable than gary johnson god of course yes he is it's so crazy you see gary johnson in in interviews like he doesn't even have like a pr person to comb his hair let's just comb your hair can we just do that he fell off a turnip truck and uh yeah this it's so weird to think that uh we are almost 70 episodes into the simpsons and we are just hitting Clinton's America with this episode. It's so strange. Yeah, it feels...

I always equate it with a Clinton ministry. I almost smell my first pubic here. I really don't want to. So yes, this episode opens with a bit from the critic. Well, what would eventually become the critic? It's so critic-y. Yes.

Dapted Klingons off the starboard bow. Again with the Klingons. Nearly 25 years ago, it's a joke about how the Star Trek cast is getting old. We're almost down to half. So this is Star Trek 12, so very tired, with great impersonations of all the original cast.

Back then, it was a funny joke to do because we were between Star Trek's 5 and 6 5 was them trying to pretend they weren't super old but everybody's like you're really old and then 6 he was climbing the mountain Henry I saw it why is he climbing the mountain?

but the captain or the Uhura body double yes for a dance of the seven veils a fan dance but then in 6 they made 6 going like this is the last one you are all old you're retiring this is it and uh so this joke happens between it and when i see it now maybe it's because james doing is no longer with us yeah i thought the joke was a little just too mean of like and scotty's gotten fat he wasn't fat in the 60s like yeah you're all i'd like to see how fat

the rest of you Simpsons writers are to 40 years later everyone just gets whiter even if they don't get fatter so I gotta say I'm always shocked to when I do see an episode of the original series like that's Scotty I mean yeah that was my reaction too I only knew Scotty as mustache guy who's fat and has gray hair I love the Futurama episode with the Star Trek cast where they couldn't get James Doohan so they got another character and called him Welshie. Good old Welshie. And he died. Welshie! I never got the reference. Oh, really?

Until just now. It's the last Futurama episode, I believe. I think it's the Fox run. Maybe second to last? I thought the Devil's Hands or Idle Play things. Devil's Hands or Idle Play things are the last. I thought it was meant to be the finale. Never mind. But anywho, another reason why I feel like this one is too mean is I got to watch the

original cast watch this bit. What? Because it was on, I think it was on one of those 30th anniversary of Star Trek things. It would be 96 if it was 30. I guess it's not a surprise that Jess had its 20th anniversary, the 30th anniversary special hosted by Ted Danson. So on the 30th anniversary special, I believe this was where it was. It might have been somewhere else.

Ben Stiller comes out, who was moderately successful at the time, but was not megastar Ben Stiller. But he comes out to say what a big Star Trek fan he is, specifically the original series. And then he intros this clip. And when the clip's done, it ends on that joke of Scotty being too fat to reach the controls.

And then it cuts to James Doohan's face. Like, the producer's like, well, let's see his reaction to it. And I think he's nicely laughing at it, like, ha ha. Hurting inside. He's so mean to James Doolin. I'm on a juice diet.

If you've watched the film Trekkies, you will get a whole new appreciation for James Doolin because he tells a story of somebody, a fan calling him and saying they want to kill themselves and him talking them out of suicide and then meeting them years and years later at a Star Trek convention and saying, remember how I was the one who called and said I was going to kill myself and now I got a college degree and I've got a big job and it's all thanks to you. And it was just like beautiful. Wow. Beautiful.

Anyway, so. You need to say, keep watching that Star Trek anniversary special if you'd like to see the bridge of the Enterprise with only the cast of Frasier. Because that is what happened. That is exactly what happened. I love the line, again with the Klingons. It's what I remember when I think of Star Trek parodies. I think Family Guy

opened like 19 of them. Also very funny. I love the way they made William Shatner move. But so very tired is the Star Trek joke I remember. And Facebook has that on this day feature, at least of this recording during this recording and I a few days ago I clicked back and like nine years ago my Facebook update was just again with the Klingons

so it's very appropriate that we're doing this episode now. Alright but this episode it is I don't know like again we talked about in the Halloween episode previously a lot of these references went over the head of 11 year old little me but not this one. No way. This was celebrating an

entire medium, sending up an entire genre. I thought I'd never get tired of watching this episode. I love it so much. We grew up mostly in a post-Roger Rabbit world which was all about seeing specials on

Termite Terrace, specials on how do they make Disney cartoons do you guys remember the one of Carol Burnett showing how they animate a cartoon? No but I remember like all of those things I remember verbatim in my head it takes 1000

drawings to make a 7 minute cartoon no idea where I heard that but I watched those things all the time and around this era, every cartoon would have an episode about making a cartoon or what entailed the making of a cartoon. Tiny Toons did, of course. Beavis and Butthead, so many were about making a cartoon because the people

making the show were making cartoons. They're four years in. Their lives are making cartoons. They don't have a life anymore. So they gotta write about it. This begins with the parent-teacher conference. I really love when Bart says, oh, you kid. And the way Marge says, thank you, Bart.

It's a great line. It might be my line of the show. Oh, you kid. Thank you, dear. Now be good for Grandpa while we're at the parent-teacher meeting. We'll bring back dinner. What are we going to have? Well, that depends on what your teachers say. If you've been good, pizza. If you've been bad, let's see, poison. What if one of us has been good and one of us has been bad?

Poison pizza. Oh, no, I'm not making two stops. That might be my line of the show. That's great, yeah. I'll just throw it out. Maybe it'll be tough. I don't know. Oh, no, I had another one.

That's the joke. Never mind. Keep going. Okay, but the dynamic of this episode of Bart versus Homer, but it's so different because you'd think from the previous episodes, Homer is the super disciplinarian who strangles Bart. You think he's the mean one. But he's mean in instances, but he's also like a total pushover in the long run.

I get that a lot more now being an adult. How the fuck do you punish a kid? Thinking of me grounding one of my friend's kids for two weeks, like, I'd never be able to hold up to that. Of course I'm going to forget. Of course I felt like as a kid I could get away with murder because my parents couldn't hold to that. They don't want to see me miserable for two weeks. Like, this is not really coming from nowhere, though. In Camp Krusty, we saw Homer, you know, Bart didn't get good grades.

And he's like, well, you shouldn't have to suffer for my bad judgment. So go to Camp Krusty, we saw Homer, you know, Bart didn't get good grades, and he's like, well, you shouldn't have to suffer for my bad judgment, so go to Camp Krusty. But I think it's really like Homer is too lazy to punish Bart, and it's less that, less of him wanting to baby Bart, but it's more like being lazy. He did mention that. He's like, I didn't want to you hang around the house all the time.

But this is all the things Bart has done. Bart has been guilty of the following atrocities. Synthesizing a laxative from peas and carrots. Replacing my birth control pills with Tic Tacs. Well, I'm sorry. I'm sure Bart doesn't really mean to be bad. Now's our chance to be bad.

So Bart has to be really bad. He's at his worst on record, I think. But he's real cute in this episode for some reason. I don't know. He's pulling up the carpet. Look at him. Well, he is abusing Grandpa. So, okay. The dark, dark joke about Arthur and the fireworks.

Where did he see the fireworks? They cut away so they don't tell you he put them in his growing area, but like, if he did, Bart's in jail. That's a crime. He's in juvie. But I do want to ask you guys, did your parents go to these? Because as in Homer the Heretic, I established my parents had no time for God.

So of course they had no time for the PTA. So I really locked out. There were none of these meetings, none of these conversations. I was a good kid, though. All the time. And if there's anybody under the age of eight listening, your teachers look bad if they say you're bad. So all of my teachers. They don't get funding. I was the worst.

My teachers hated me. I had some things that are like borderline illegal happened to me for misbehaving. You are a part. Yeah, yeah. But every time they said Chris is a really smart guy but can't seem to focus himself. They gave you a real compliment sandwich. Yeah, but that's the thing. A teacher can't insult you because it reflects poorly upon them in almost all cases.

So kids, if you're under eight, and I know most of you are. I've seen the demos. Do whatever you want. And meanwhile, Homer gets all the good stuff because he's there for Lisa. To Lisa. But I do love this because I think if I'm, again, I keep viewing this through the eyes of a soon-to-be parent, which I'm not, but there's really no other evolution I can take as a human being at this point.

Do I hear the stork? I just called this clip How Disciplined because I think I would have a difficult time with this. Are you kidding? Lisa turned out perfect. I won't stand here and listen to you bad-mouthing Lisa. We're talking about Bart. Oh, that guy. I think the problem here is discipline. If Bart does something wrong, you should punish him.

Well, we try. But he has his way of making us think we've punished him when actually we've completely caved in. He's the boy you love to hate. Well, you've got to start being firm with him. I believe with persistent discipline, even the poorest student can end up becoming, oh, say, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. What great men he would join. John Marshall, Charles Evans Hughes, Warren Berger,

mmm, Berger. I love the running Supreme Court justice jokes, and that Homer knows an astounding amount of Supreme Court justice. Ask me to name two. It's a weird bit of knowledge he possesses. I know William Taft was one. I do want to mention two things about Homer being in Miss Hoover's classroom.

One, he makes armpit fart noises through his clothes. Once again, we saw that in Bart the Genius. And two, he's sitting behind what looks like the prototype for Ralph Wiggum's dad before he was a Wiggum. It's like literally an adult Ralph is in front of Homer in these Miss Hoover scenes. So look for that guy. The trivia on the

wiki had pointed out that Ralph's parents are clearly not there. Yeah. But I see that. But Homer, also Homer squeezing into the desk is great animation. I love that. And we get a little taste of what a flashback will look like in Lisa's first words. They're drawn the same way that they will

be in that flashback episode. When he's reading TV Guide and about how Fonzie's worried he's losing his cool. That joke is great. The three R's of TV Guide. Reading, writing to, and renewing. Homer, so he's losing is cool. That joke is great. The three R's of TV Guide. Renewing TV Guide. Reading, writing to, and renewing.

Homer, also I love just Grandpa's teeth. It's a great little run. I like how the teeth are just like orbs or dice or something. They're so weird. There's a lot of, but that's what I, one, we haven't even got to the story of the episode, which is a celebration of animation. The story starts, like literally starts with Act 2. Everything else is a prelude to Itchy and Scratchy.

But the amount of squash and stretch and animation techniques on display here are insane. So Rich Moore would direct some great episodes with great animation, including Cape Fear. He would go on to be the supervising director of Futurama. And The Critic. And The Critic. And I just re-watched Zootopia. I'm going to make a couple recommendations here. That might be my... It's in my top five did he direct zootopia he co-directed okay at least co-wrote it and he directed wreck it ralph in my car yes that's right that's where i

got to interview him as i mentioned if you if you think zootopia looks stupid it's because for some reason the promotional uh things did not tell you it was a film noir about casual racism it didn't tell you anything it it doesn't say that anywhere. I'm like, this is surprisingly weird for a Disney film and it's amazing. The ad campaign was like, get this guys, what if animals could talk? And I was like, you've done this for a hundred years. But it's funny,

it's beautiful, it's deeply moving and that movie is really good. I still want to see it. It looks really cool. Good old Bang Bang Bart, man. I love Bang Bang Bart. That's for me to love, bitch. I still want to see it. It looks really good. Good old Bang Bang Bart, man. I love Bang Bang Bart. That's for me to love, bitch. I felt bad that this was a nightmarish future of Bart where Bart was not there to say cool

after it ended. Just the way he like ugh. So wait, we have Gambling Hag Lisa, we have Drifter Bart, we have Bang Bang Bart. I think I'm missing one more dark future. Fuck, which one was it? I'm thinking of when he got strangled

in that courtroom oh the Rockstar Bart oh the Rockstar Bart God I love these Dark Futures yeah he fucks up Grand Fosse and that is

like in hindsight now as an adult so goddamn gross to put another person's dentures in your mouth I love the shot of him hanging

from the ceiling fan blade and the background spinning behind him I love all of it and him biting the ceiling fan blade and the background spinning behind him. I love all of it. And biting the records is such a, like, it's an oldie. Bart taping them up and spitting them out. Like, all the animation here is like The Simpsons is very rarely functioning like a real cartoon.

Yeah. When Grandpa's teeth hit the floor, it sounds like dice are rolling. I come across like linoleum. When he pulls them out of his mouth in this sequence. If you don't start making more sense, we're going to have to put you in a hole. You already put me in a hole. Then we'll put you

in the crooked home we saw in 60 Minutes. When he pulls the tape off, it's like this fireworks flourish of things and frames of animation the Simpsons normally don't get. It's a really pretty episode. He's eventually stuck

on his forehead. Yes, I love the animation of Grandpa waking up with the ball of tape and teeth in his mouth. And then you have written comedy, and this is all beautiful. Look what your bad egg of a son did to my teeth! Dad, you and your

stories. Bart broke my teeth. The nurses are stealing my money. This thing on my neck is getting bigger. Now this is exactly what Bart's teacher was talking about. Our son did something wrong, and you looked the other way. But, Marge, look at that hanged dog expression. He's learned his lesson. Let's get him a present.

Please, Homer, why do I always have to be the bad guy? All right, all right, young man. Since you broke Grandpa's teeth, he gets to break yours. Oh, this is going to be the bad guy. All right, all right, young man. Since you broke Grandpa's teeth, he gets to break yours. Oh, this is gonna be sweet. No, no, no. Oh. Bart, we're sending you to bed

without your supper. Yeah, right. Like you're gonna let me go hungry. I'll be eating that pizza in five minutes. Bart, stop being confident. I love that. That's a good line. Stop being confident.

Chris, you did not capture, I think, what is my line of the show. Which one? Time really flies when you're reading the Bible. Ew. The way he just slowly backs away from it. But this is my favorite moment as a kid. It's real quick. It doesn't do well in audio, but again, a beautiful animated gag.

I'm starving. Somebody bring me some food! Quick! I'm a-comin', boy! Get back here! It's so quick, but it's Homer running up what looks like, I don't know, to the seventh story of The Simpsons House. He's running so fast with pizza in his hand.

The animation on that, and also Bart seeing Santa's little helper's head as a pizza box was really good. With the pizza tongue coming out of the box. Yeah, really cute. Even as a kid and now if someone was prohibiting me

from eating pizza while the smells were going on in the house people would get murdered. I would not put up with that for a second. I think this did teach kids bad lessons

of like, oh, you can manipulate your parents. And I did. You have some power here. They can't let you die. Yeah, there wasn't many ways. You can't

watch TV. Well, what I'm going to do is go down to the garage sale and buy a $10 black and white TV, hollow out the furniture you gave me, and hide it inside. Fuck you. And that's how I watch most of The Simpsons, by the way. A 13-inch black and white television on Fox 49. That's called a technicality, Chris.

Yeah. They finally introduce what... Jasper also, he tries to steal... I lived a little bit of... Grandpa trying to steal Jasper's teeth. Jasper sleeps in his bed with a 9mm. That's pretty strange. If it isn't the two fairy.

This is great, but this is what the whole theme of the episode is. Coming for Christmas, the Itchy and Scratchy Movie! Bart, come quick! There's an Itchy and Scratchy Movie. Bart, come quick. There's an Itchy and Scratchy Movie. You'll find it on the Itchy and Scratchy Movie. Coming soon to a theater near you. 53% new footage. So that joke, you might not get it now,

but this is why it's a good animation joke because animated films are very expensive to produce and always have been. And in the theaters, the Looney Tunes in general were represented by compilation films. The original animators, Frizz Freeling and Chuck Jones, Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny movie,

The Bugs Bunny Roadrunner movie, Quackbusters, Fantastic Island, things like even Heathcliff the movie was just like, here are some of my old adventures. Oh, that is so awful. Also, in the He-Man movie too,

they all recycled animation. Only Disney, and Disney wasn't making many new dark cartoons then either. It's really difficult to convey the excitement of an Itchy & Scratchy movie because really the only thing it compared to is me being like 27

in a Simpsons movie coming out. Like, yes! I'm going to watch every trailer and buy my tickets in advance. Which is why that movie starts with an Itchy and Scratchy. They're at the Itchy and Scratchy movie. They are. So what really astounded me about this episode in retrospect is that Itchy and Scratchy did not jump the shark.

Like, they were continued to be used as characters and they continue to have new adventures. Like, I felt like this could have been the end of these characters. Like, the logical conclusion of these characters. Like with the auto show when they stopped using have new adventures. I felt like this could have been the end of these characters, the logical conclusion of these characters. Like with the auto show, and they stopped using auto pretty much after that. The movie we see at the end of this episode could have been the last short. The ultimate Itchy and Scratchy will not use this again, but I'm glad they kept it up, because we'll get to it later on. The Simpsons will be right back. Our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more.

Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. Hi, Talking Simpsons listeners. This is your buddy, Chris, telling you that this episode is brought to you by bark box you know what bark box is if you don't know what bark box is it is committed to making your pooches happy and they work with local and independent businesses to do this uh for you humans out there bark box is a delivery of four to six natural treats super fun toys and they're all curated around a surprise theme each month bark BarkBox ships to U.S. and Canada, and the boxes start for as low as $20.

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We've been talking about forever trying to get a group together. That might be better for Beta Break breakers but to go as the entire man Ant-Man Paul Rudd Paul Rudd Celeryman the entire oh yeah Tane Oyster I call you Tane I know we knew you would do new Tane so like like someone's got to be Oyster someone's got to

be Tane that Tane I can get into get bonus time laser times weekly full-length uncensored and ad-free patreon exclusive podcast as well as weekly full-length uncensored and ad-free patreon exclusive podcasts as well as weekly full-length movie commentaries wrestling and cartoon video commentaries physical rewards the first season of talking simpson and more at patreon.com slash laser time starting at just five bucks you'll help us live and we'll do our best to help you never be bored again there are other bits that reminded me of being a kid in there too where you know i don't know if it is this way for kids now with the internet and all that but

when i was a kid you could have a movie announced to you by the commercial on TV You would never know. In a month this movie's coming out. That's exactly what I was hitting up. The idea that like, because I remember doing things like that. There's a movie and I have to call my friends. Did you know there's a fucking Garbage Pail Kids movie?

I remember so many moments like that in my life, like with the Ninja Turtles arcade game, like this is real, like one night No promotion for it we didn't find out on television somebody from entertainment tonight tells us while they're good like when they're throwing the credits i guess you had to read variety at that time to know but like as a kid like i just watching fox one night like what the critic is back there there are new critics yeah like what what what yeah i remember my dad would have to tell me because he's so fucking npr obsessed and every one of those idiots goes on terry gross oh it's gonna say terry gross you know there's a new there's a movie out of this whole ninja turtles thing you keep wearing on

your shirts and i'm playing with like what yeah i think by the mid 90s mainly because that's where you get updates on if a new mystery science theater would be on that i learned to read tv guy and then and renewing which is a reference in this show. The first Mystery Science reference. That's true. And speaking of being a kid, okay, so did you guys ever put action figures in the microwave? No, but I hated

hated G.I. Joe. I was such a... I hated most manly toys. I loved just cute stuff. I liked Barbie. I had Rainbow Bride stuff. So I would definitely torture G.I. Joe characters my aunt would give me, driving nails through them, burying them in sand,

melting them with magnifying glasses. I was kind of a weird kid, believe it or not. I'm on a podcast. I was a weird kid. But after I discovered Nintendo, I'm like, fuck toys.

I'm a video game guy now. It's all video games. I'm just, our episode of Laser Time where we tried to find the, what's the oldest toy on the toy shelf and what I had to do was detail what year every toy came out. And you know,

from like Barbie in the 50s to before, Transformers in 1984 and then 85 and you do not have something represented on the toy shelf

until Power Rangers in 1992. Oh wow. There is not a toy, other than Ninja Turtles there is no toy phenomenon that could crack the Nintendo hold on young boys.

Wow, that's wild. Well, I did do it, but actually before this episode, so I wasn't inspired to do it by the Simpsons, but I remember it was about three years before this episode aired I had a it wasn't James Bond, it was Robocop and a Robocop toy, and I

put him in the microwave as part of whatever story I was telling. It's got metal in it, right? Oh, God. So that was part of the story I was telling of, like, I have to put him in some science machine in the story I'm telling with this toy. So I put him in there. Oh, God. And he comes out smelling weird. And this is the RoboCop toy that had, like, the cap buster in the back of it.

And so it had, you know, had the cap buster in the back of it. And so it had a metal flicking thing on the back. So I put metal in the microwave. And I then, as a kid who was like, I just told my mom some days later, oh yeah, I put RoboCop in the microwave. He was fine. And then my mom was like, you put metal in the microwave? You could have exploded.

I always forget that. I think I've put metal in the microwave like five could have exploded like i always forget that there's uh i think i've almost i've put metal in the microwave like five different times i think i remember when i became disillusioned with toys i loved the crash dummy toys they were so cool because you were supposed to break them but if you broke them too much they would break permanently and that kept happening and i extended my interest in toys for one more year they were so cool i love them really those the dark wing and i'm like, I'm going to buy the Darkwing Duck toys, and the Bigfoot Make Your Own Tinfoil Crushable

Sorry, we're too nostalgic here, but the Itchy and Scratchy movie, yeah, they're referencing compilation films with like, yes, usually 30-40% new animation, because it's expensive. And also, due to the process of animation, it's very rare for a movie of an animated tv show to hit theaters while it's still popular

and i was trying to think of good example like care bears is like the first it's a strange pioneer in the theatrical animation industry because it did hit that yeah two to three years after this batman mask of the phantasm would hit theaters. Kind of after the momentum was gone. The momentum was gone a bit. They did plan on it just being direct-to-video, and they're like, no, we can put this in theaters, and it did not do well in theaters. It did terribly, and it's really good.

Until the Nolan films, it was easily the best Batman film. I still think it is. I'm sorry. No, I can totally see that. I don't think the normal age that well no dark night I think is you can hold that one up pretty dry also just the way like the fight with the Joker it's the fight in

really good and the music is fantastic yeah and it's fucking bleeds like he bleeds all over the knocks the Joker's tooth out it's fantastic what are you doing? You won't get us both killed. You can't tell. Whatever it takes.

And the House of Tomorrow. I think we're kind of bonded here as human beings and friends over our love of animation. I'm playing with a Gumby toy right now. If you can't see the rest of my room, it is kind of a salute to every era of animation, I'd like to think. I think this episode is important, though, because it establishes that Itchy and Scratchy are this world's Disney, which we did not have before. No, they had never been timeless before. Which they would double down on with Itchy and

Scratchy Land. And I know I've said this on a billion podcasts, but I love 1940s 30s animation. They were screened theatrically in front of movies with Humphrey Bogart, and then they found a new lease on life in the 50s by being screened on television, because they still

worked, unlike a lot of... Rerun forever. Yeah, unlike a lot of the other content made back... You couldn't tell when this was made, and it's all designed to work really fast. Yeah, and these writers grew up watching those reruns during their childhood. Because there wasn't quite enough time to fill 30 minutes, you would usually have a

children's show host, like a Krusty the Clown. So the only thing I was confused by is because with my adult knowledge of this medium, they would have had to have been 1940s cartoons. That Krusty is just pretty much there to shout out to local affiliates and play Public Domain Merry Melodies.

And then do one game just to say, all right, we play the Grandpa's Game. That's why Bozo exists, and I think it's still... Is that a frame of reference people? The Bozo franchise. It is a franchise. There's been multiple Bozos. You can be your town's Bozo if you try hard enough.

Well, speaking of television institutions, this episode has a debut. Does it? Oh, yes. Oh, I believe I have that. It looks like Henry has the whole history. I want to hear this. I have that.

Hold on. Let me burn through these clips then, I guess. Boy, you're going to have to be punished for this. Dad, you could punish me, but that means you have to think of a punishment, sit here, and make sure I do it. Oh. Or you could let me go play with Milhouse while you spend the afternoon watching unpredictable Mexican sitcoms. Yay.

Ay, el estomago. Run along, you little champ. It's probably his least whimsical adventure, Bumbling Man. Well, so first off, this is a reference to... El Chavo. Well, it's a thing that kids couldn't do. Well, they can do now, but I just remember when it was like as a child raised by television, who was

looking to kill time whenever, you could, like, roll the dice and be like, let's see what will be on this Spanish language channel. I won't understand it. Telemundo. But, yeah, what will be on Telemundo? Sometimes you get Sabado Gigante. Sometimes you get Sabado Gigante.

Sometimes you get Debo, like Alf with a puppet, which is a human puppet. As a boy going through puberty, there were very attractive women on Telemundo. Sabado Gigante, especially. On their sketch comedy. That's where every single cast member is Jimmy Fallon and breaks at their own joke. So this was, in general, a reference to that, of just turning on Spanish-language television, and as a white person

who doesn't understand Spanish, it's fun in its own way. It is actually a very specific reference to El Chavo. So, Bumblebee Man, first appearance, and he's almost always written to just say Spanish language

that any high school student in America knows. It's usually no me gusta, not my poor stomach. Ay, ay, ay, no me gusta. Ay, el trabajo. But it is specifically based on El Chapulín Colorado. Or not El Chavo? The red, well, yeah.

El Chavo. Yeah, but the full name, the red grasshopper. Oh, God. Yeah, El Chap full name, The Red Grasshopper. Oh, God. Yeah, El Chapulín, Colorado. I was talking to my buddy from Brazil, and that show is huge all over the world. Except here. Apparently, it's a superhero parody sitcom, and he is a superhero. Is that right?

But it's also had animated shows. It's had movies. Yeah. And he would have a sidekick who was like alfalfa, basically, with painted-on freckles, an old man. And he was played by actor Roberto Gomez Bolaños, who passed away in 2014. Yeah, recently. And his stage name was Chesperito, which in Spanish means Little Shakespeare. Wow, really?

Yeah. That's awesome. And so, yeah, this was a very specific reference to him. And, you know, his character would grow over time. Sometimes he can speak perfect English. Other times he can't. In the 22 short films about Springfield. That's a great, great bit.

I love that bit. And it is that he lives in a Spanish-language world, a part of Springfield where he only speaks Spanish, and his life is, the real life is his bumblebee mask. He has like a slapstick comedy house where things just fall on him. Yeah. Ooh, Eldorado. This, to me, is my favorite part of the show, not just because it involves our default ending theme.

Tonight on I Am Springfield, we meet a man who's been hiccuping for 45 years. Kill me. But first, we'll examine the growing itchy and scratchy mania with their new movie premiering today. I got my ticket.

I'm here live in Korea to give you a first-hand look at how American cartoons are made. But first, let's take a look back at the year 1928. So before we get started with this, this is on the commentary, by the way, a little commentary fact. This scene

kind of outraged the overseas animators, and they did not want to work on it. As they should have. I agree with them. I agree with their outrage. It's a funny joke. It looks like a prison camp. It looks like a prison period. They. It looks like a prison period. I mean, they're being forced to animate at a gunpoint.

And yeah, the story is just... I think the scene is sympathetic towards the animators, though, even though it's inaccurate. In a way, but it's also... Well, I would think it's not sympathetic to the bosses of the Korean animators who are there employing. Yeah, they're kind of eating their cake and having it, too. Like, ha ha, you're underpaid. This was...

We talked about that in another episode, right? Or was that the season wrap-up about the process of... Yeah, they're kind of eating their cake and having it too. Like, haha, you're underpaid. I talked about that in another episode. Or was that the season wrap-up about the process of animation? I was talking to a dear friend who just didn't know that all animation almost to this day is the work of slavery. Like, underpaid people

and usually the exploitation of foreign labor. It was funny because in the 80s it was like all outsourced to Japan and the quality was much, much higher because Japan has a big history with animation. But I think there was the fall of communism in South Korea or something happened where Korea became accessible. No, no, no. South Korea has always been our bros.

That's where the home of animation was. I don't know why it traveled to South Korea. I know that Japanese animation is more expensive than korea and then even japan started outsourcing it in anime but this what like this was something i didn't know until this episode and as a kid until this episode that all these cartoons were animated in korea and then it's something you find out yeah they all are done there but and

but yeah in the commentary that i believe was director jeffrey lynch saying that like they pissed off everybody at the at the studio in seoul uh korea is seoul south korea and then they did come back to them and just like hey you draw this all right yeah like and guys they fought back for the first time yeah and i think the the producers were the writers were taken by surprise. Like, oh, we thought it was bad there. No, it's, the reports, though, of course, this is who would want to say that it's good. It's people exploiting people. But they say that it, you know, it is a good job and a good facility and people get paid well.

And the cost of living is much lower in South Korea. It has to be something like that. Because if it's anything like modern game development it is exploitive and terrible and i i don't know how the process of animation but we've all read that book sick little monkeys and like the amount of like work that writing that's done in la with animatics done here sent to canada and then sent to korea yeah is insane and that's like any case, animation is a highly skilled and completely thankless job. And the reason this, The Simpsons

or Itchy, itchy is correct, Ren and Stimpy, is better than Hanna-Barbera cartoons is because of cheaper labor. When it was just all, even like cheaper labor like Rocky and Bullwinkle was animated in Mexico for nothing, which is why it looks like dog shit. Rocky and Bullwinkle was animated in Mexico for nothing which is why it looks

like dog shit. Rocky and Bullwinkle is hilarious though but it is horrible animation. Yeah and Ren and Stimpy would send the they would do all the layouts in America which was unheard of. The Simpsons were doing it at the time too but those are the important poses. They would not just send a storyboard

to some place in the Philippines and say you figure it out which is what almost every Hanna-Barbara show would do and filmation and all those other companies and and also it was it was something too i remember in the the korean animation thing in the miyazaki the special making of of um send it to hero or um spirited away in that he bemoans the fact that to hit ship date, they have to outsource stuff to Korea. They didn't want to. They wanted to keep all the animation in-house,

or at the very least, in Japan. Such a crazy process, though. Then they shipped it off to Korea, though, instead. But it is funny, though, that Korea, and I'm not to say there are no Korean animated films, but I remember when I was a big anime junkie in the late 90s, it was a big deal that there was like, oh, this is made in Korea but for Korea,

and the people in charge are Korean. They had a really awesome film boom there for a little while. And in a reverse situation, the movie The Host, which is really good. It's like a Godzilla movie, but all of it takes place on the ground in the daytime. It's kind of a monster movie. Approach to a monster movie you haven't seen.

It's a Korean film, and all the effects were done here in the Presidio by another company. I love the host so much. Especially like it opens with... It breaks the rules of monster movies. The first time you're going to see the monster is full on and in the daytime. We are incredible animation nerds, by the way of monster movies. The first time you're going to see the monster is full on and in the daytime.

We are incredible animation nerds, by the way. We are. That's what Ken Brockman is getting into. 1928, that's the same day Disney falsely attributes the birthday of Mickey Mouse. What's the true story? Are you a Mickey truther, Chris? Yeah, is that they first made the short Plane Crazy with Mickey. So I love that.

Because no one ever says this. Technically minnie has the exact same birthday nobody wanted to distribute that cartoon but uh and then ken brockman goes in and then came steamboat itchy steamboat willie is not the first mickey cartoon it's the first cartoon in america with sound yes and so that's labeled as mickey's debut even though that's not technically true people had seen plain crazy uh but it's the first time mickey talked and it's the first time any cartoon character talked, I think, in the States. But before Steamboat Itchy, we have That Happy Cat, which is the perfect send-up of, like, 20s animation where it's just like, here's a farm and the animals are dancing, and that's the cartoon. Like, that's all it is. It's always in three beats.

Yeah. Again, I came upon that revelation recently. The only thing dated about all comedy is pacing. That's as far back as I can go, the 1930s. The pacing is so glacial. I think they really honed it. Mickey Mouse was a dick when he was first created. He was a mischievous little prick.

He would play animals udders like an instrument. He would fuck with people. A lot of animal abuse. Pull guns on people. He'd drink. I love doing the epic Mickey press tours like Warren Spector. Remember that.

Those cartoons are a lot of fun. Halloween's coming up. Watch The Haunted House Mickey. It's great. Oh, great stuff. The Mad Scientist and stuff like that.

Yeah, The Mad Doctor. All that stuff's great. He kind of got softened as he became a corporate character. But for me, just like, I cannot believe there's an exterior shot of the steamboat. Like, that is just literally from... They infer that during the commentaries and Matt Groening's trying to shush them.

Like, didn't we actually copy animation and backgrounds directly? And he's like, shh, don't say anything. Sorry, I didn't know that. But that is the shot in Steamboat Brilliant. And also the spinning of the wheel too is the same one but it's but it is such a glorious and so if i can make one recommendation for real animation fans because i saw a fucking 17 year old youtuber scared the shit out of me that said amazing world of gumball is canceled uh but like what i love a lot the show is the funniest

it's carrying the looney tunes torch i can't get a single friend of mine to watch it. I think it's hysterical. I'll take you up on that, Chris. I think it's amazing. And one of the most amazing things... Come on, watch Steven Universe first. One of the most amazing things... That's true, I need to watch that.

But you don't need to like... Steven Universe, you got to get to like a certain point. Whereas this is just like short, amazing, fun... But what it also does... Amazing World of Gumball uses every kind of animation. They go to school and they talk to a puppet, a CG object, a claymation object, a crude squiggle vision. Like, there are every kind of animation there is.

It's all mixed media, yeah. So when you look at it, you can see, like, that is moving at a different frame rate. And so is a lot of the itchy and scratchy stuff. Yes. They've never been animated better. And so the revelations I get about the process of animation from watching Amazing World of Gumball to this day you can get in this episode because in the itchy and scratchy have never been animated so well and the the foley work there's more sound effects in the itchy and scratchy material than they usually get well speaking of good animation chris my favorite

bit in this is the hitler short like we have never seen before or since such great animation on the simpsons just like a perfect setup of wb wartime cartoons where it's just like complete unaltered violence with just a a message tacked on to the end like like save scrap iron or whatever yeah it yeah it's it's the fuller animation you saw in those old theatrical things it reminded me well it reminded me in turn of like warner disney and mgm yeah the extreme violence was almost more mgm or tex avery's mgm though the faces were kind of they like i thought itchy looked a bit like jerry uh but also a bit like a disney cutesy animal yeah but then the way the characters would flop around and be rubbery that felt more like warner and then also the wartime background

i was like well you just ripped it looks like straight out of a warner world war if i can be super nerdy it looks like a direct shot from commando duck that's what like whatever that duck hitting hitler with a hammer in the back of the head that is the only like character anybody would recognize today who interacted with hitler in one of these propaganda shorts because it actually like nobody bugs donald mickey they never got close to hitler yeah like there was one short would recognize today who interacted with Hitler in one of these propaganda shorts. Because it actually, like, nobody, Bugs, Donald, Mickey, they never got close to Hitler. Yeah, like, there was one short with, like, maybe it was, like, Goebbels or Himmler or

somebody stalking Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck throughout the entire cartoon. Maybe that is Commando Duck. Well, and there was the one with the, there was one of the Three Little Pigs parody with the wolf that is Hitler. And then there was also one with... It's called Chicken Little, not to be confused for the

Zach Braff animated vehicle. Who could forget? He's a summon in Kingdom Hearts 2, of course. Disgusting. There was also the Daffy one where he fights the eagle, the Nazi eagle. That's right, yeah. But yeah, Hitler was rarely depicted, you're right, in these cartoons. It hurts my brain because I try and

think of what this is a reference to, but the reality is only Daffy got that close to Hitler once for one second. But that has to be what this is referencing. And that scene actually inspired Algin and Mike Reese to create The Critic because they were like, what if we did a show with animation this good? The Critic would never look that good at all times. But it still looked a little bit better than The Simpsons in terms of animation quality, I think. In time.

Yeah, sometimes. In the second second season some episodes look real rough that opening is so beautiful though for the critic yeah um i will say as a as the simpsons canon lover and the history i would say this doesn't 100% jibe with the history of chester j lamplight that would be introduced in season eight episode oh yeah the itching scratchy like place in the world is so all over the place i mean it mostly does fit because they do show steamboat itchy again in the chester j lamplight that's right yeah and they still infer that is the first episode it is the first itchy cartoon all of this gets a little infuriating and i don't mind talking that much, because I look at the wikis and the popular theories. Like, the Itchy and Scratchy movie is based on the Tom and Jerry movie.

Eat a dick, the Tom and Jerry movie had not happened yet. They post-dated this, and it sucks. They talk. It sucks. They talk. It's weird. It's the wrong thing. It's that the characters are lightly based on Tom and Jerry.

The characters are based on any theatrical cartoon short. Worker and Parasite is based on those weird Czechoslovakian Tom and Jerry cartoons. The Gene Deitch ones. The Hitler thing is based on a Looney Tune. The Birth Date and Black and Whiteness are based on a Disney cartoon. God, I'll shut up now. I mean, it's a repository for animation references all over the place. And I do like that that scene ends with the tale of the real-life Itchy and Scratch.

Yes. A rat that killed a kitten. Uh-oh. But right before this, there was... I just love the randomness of Bart smashing the mustard packets. Yeah. It made me want to do that. People always freeze-frame this weird in-between frame of Bart looking back at Homer as Homer's

asking what he's doing. It's this very weird drawing of Bart with his eyelids half closed and his mouth half open. I've seen it on Twitter like a billion, like the Marge Crumping picture, whatever the hell that is. Oh, got it. Marge Crumping one. I really do love that. That's the best joke in the new series. That must be from a Zombie Simpsons episode because I don't

remember it. Oh, it totally is. It's a recent one. But, Jesus, that all leads us to oh, God, Bart's a recent one but i think jesus that all leads us to oh god bart uh bart's what he's not watching maggie and maggie ends up getting behind the wheel of the car yes creating a prison break i i you know this uh good joke this was a thought i had earlier in the episode too with the grandpa's teeth that and the maggie stuff whenever it's the three kids hanging out and just being kids i'm'm always like, oh, this is shorts. This is like, this is Tracy Holman

shorts thing because so many Tracy Holman shorts are like, the three kids hang out and Maggie's gonna break things or whatever. Or Maggie gets away and has a crazy adventure. I'm putting this out there now. We should do a shorts episode as a bonus because I was watching a lot of those last night and some of them are

in high quality on YouTube and I think they have great animation. It's amazing how fast they evolve. Really do. We're doing 302010 right now and I think recently the Fox Network launched. It launched with one program. The Joan Rivers talk show.

Can you imagine? You have to fill 24 hours of air time and you made one show. The next April is when Tracy Ullman starts. Well, they counted on affiliates to cover the rest of it. They're just like, hey, we're in network for two hours tonight. That's it. Two hours a week.

But Bart finally gets... Oh, sorry, Hank. Go ahead. But I do like the dual lines of Snake in this episode. Like, oh, right, a crime spree. And oh, no, beta. Which we might have to put in context for people. That was the video cassette format that lost.

It was the less wanted format. Killed by porn, apparently, because VHS was cheaper. And I guess people go where porn goes. But there is one of several scenes in the series of someone driving recklessly past Wiggum and him not caring. Like, this happens like at least four times in the show, I think. Yeah, anybody get love. It's like, there's a dog driving a bus. Yeah, and also when Otto's bus drives by, it's like, anybody get the number of that?

Yeah. And then in the next episode, like, nice doggy. That's a nice reckless drive, Mr. B. Yeah, Wiggum has gotten very bad this season. But just diving back into the story story bart has allowed this to happen with maggie and finally gets his real punishment all right boy this calls for the biggest punishment i ever handed down and this time it's gonna stick come on homer this isn't funny damn right bart you can't go to see that itchy and scratchy movie ever.

Now I put my animation nerd roots out there. I legit think this is cruel. It is cruel. Because he didn't just say this week or at opening night. It was ever, ever and forever. And there's just numerous scenes where a family member has to come and plea. And it used to seem silly.

Yeah, that's too much. If I was told, like, a year, that would break my heart. But I'd be like, so even on DHS, I could never watch this. You're eight. You're told you can never watch this ever. You would think about that nonstop. There's a lot of life ahead of you. Yeah.

Dad, you've got to let me see that movie. Can't you just give me a spanking? Come on, go nuts. Don't point that thing at me. You're not going to the movie and I'm sticking to it. Dad, I agree that Bart should be punished, but the Itchy and Scratchy movie is the defining event of our generation.

How would you have liked it if someone told you that you couldn't watch the moon landing? It would be, because if there was a... God, Space Jam is such a terrible comparison. But it's like if someone said Donald Duck and Mickey were in a movie, and you've been weaned on those cartoons for a decade. Well, Roger Rabbit, right?

Well, Roger Rabbit was a spontaneously created character. But if you were told you can't see the new Star Wars... Yeah, the Star Wars is the only real comparison I have, because that's the kind of thing we all get mad hype for. Well, I feel like it'll be less special now but like episode seven was oh the first forward moving star wars in 30 years that's exciting yeah but uh okay so the lining up for stuff i guess they were doing like people lined up all the time then but it really feels more like a parody of now that like everybody lines up for everything i i've had numerous i've had several failed stand-up bits about that but my girlfriend

titled it line culture and i can't stand it and it's very present in san francisco not only are people camped out right now for a fucking iphone 7 i don't wait for shit yeah yeah but they but like you to get a croissant for five dollars people will line up for two hours like what what are you trying to... Why do I have to show up to a fucking movie theater for tickets I bought online to a show with a very specific start time, and you show up here three hours early? Why does that keep happening? I think this was like...

I remember the writers talking in the commentaries about just being surprised by the lines for movies like Batman. They would see a lot of movies together, and there would be huge lines for them. They constantly go back to that at that they all went to the same screening of 1989 batman in production of season one and but by season four even most of them had families and they weren't hanging out together this episode did make me think though so when bark can't see the movie there's a scene of him like i'll just entertain myself with my imagination and he can't do it and i was like i was thinking is it possible for a child to be bored in 2016 that much like being bored must be just like a relic of a forgotten age there's no way anyone could ever be bored anymore i we on 30 2010 we brought up the what was at the time of my

first favorite movie the straight to video my pet monster uh where a little that's a great video game parody opening yeah it really does like it's like one of the first people to animate that and that's the best part of that movie. I remember that because I was watching with a friend. I was like, that looks just like a video game. They're like, what's a video game? And I was like, get out of here. I need to show you things. But it was a 45 minute movie. I rented it every weekend. I could watch it over and over. So when I got bored,

I would play that movie in my head scene by scene and be totally satisfied. Wow. That was probably me in Space Ball Screens. I think I did that with like, boy, ALF episodes maybe? When I think of the late 80s in pre-Simpsons time. In Simpsons time

that was what I played. Yeah, old Simpsons tapes. Speaking of stories, I like stories. Do you have this clip? I think it's a great Homer moment but also the continual dumbening of Homer. Yeah.

His IQ drops about five points this episode. I think I cut that part. I really wanted to catch his mitt, but my dad wouldn't get it for me. So I held my breath until I passed out and banged my head on the coffee table. The doctor thought I might have brain damage. Dad, what's the point of this story? I like stories. Well, can I please go to the movie?

I know my punishment might seem a little harsh, but I can't go back on it. You're welcome to watch anything you want on TV. TV sucks. I know you're upset right now, so I'll pretend you didn't say that. Again, going through 302010, and like Magnum P.I. two-parter and Simon and Simon, there absolutely was a vast ocean of difference between films and TV shows. There was no fucking comparison. If you were to tell me I can't see Terminator 2

and I have to watch Beverly Hills 90210 instead, there's no comparison. You have to watch Drexel's class. Drexel's class. Or Saturday afternoon television. Yes, it's like Aliens is out. So what are you going to do, Sit at home and watch fucking Pinwheel? Oh, anything but Pinwheel.

Then came a really, when Lisa comes back from seeing the movie, comes a really great in-joke. This is like the first big in-joke I think I got at the time. How was it? It wasn't that great. Be honest. It was the greatest movie I've ever seen in my life.

And you wouldn't believe the celebrities who did cameos. Dustin Hoffman, Michael Jackson. Of course, they didn't use their real names, but you could tell it was them. Lisa. Sorry, Bart. Take that, Sam Eddick. I'm sure you, yes, if you're listening to the show the whole time, you know that they were probably credited as Sam Eddick and J. John Cena. They did not mention Penny Marshall, though, who did not

use her real name. Or any name, I don't think. I don't even know if there was a pseudonym there. I don't think so, but yeah. It doesn't sound like she went to a real microphone to record that. No, it's just like... That's all on Patreon. I'll do it over the phone. So in the pre-internet age, you could read a magazine or a trade magazine.

There are definitely news articles that would tell you, that's Dustin Hoffman in this episode. The news promoted it as Dustin Hoffman and Michael Jackson, but for legal reasons? For Michael Jackson? Michael, yeah. In both cases, they kept it an open secret, but you didn't really know.

You're right. This is the show confirming it for you. Yeah. This was, I mean, even on the commentary for the Michael Jackson episode, they finally are just going like, I guess we're not keeping this a secret anymore? Yeah. I mean, due to recent events I won't mention here, I think we're learning now and we have been learning just how restrictive music contracts are. They like own your soul.

You can't do anything. You have to work with people who have done horrible things to you. It's just like a nightmare. Yeah. Ah, yeah. Well, Kesha has a Simpsons connection. Exactly. i didn't want to mention that but there you go i mean i really like it it's the death of the simpsons that's when they die enough enough about kesha let's talk about another cool celebrity never want to hear mailer yes uh the naked of the dead

am i right okay who wrote the novelization to the 18 scratch, which is giant. Not Leon Uris? That Norman Mailer wrote very long books. Yeah. And it was big enough to crush all the stuff in the trash can. It's a great visual joke. And then Milhouse bullies Bart, which is a very random moment. He teams up with Nelson. I've seen the 18 scratchy movie 13 times.

I've seen it 17 times. You guys must be getting pretty tired of that movie by now. No one who saw the movie would say that. Let's get him. I hope that's still happening with kids needing to see movies in the theaters multiple times. Amazing Spider-Man 2 is great. Well, stop it, Bob. Maybe Captain America Civil War.

That's better. Well, I think it more is the kids just... Force Awakens. Don't kids just wear out their DVDs of Disney films? They do. DVDs. We're in the... The screen, the tablets. All the joke reads to me like Jurassic Park.

And I was... That was like... That movie got me woke on film. Stray woke, y'all. AF. And then, like, I think my friend and I were kind of in a competition to see it over and over again. So to be able to convince your parents to take you

to see a movie 13 times, which I did for Jurassic Park, because it was in the theater for over a year. I know I'm not a kid anymore. I know I've seen a movie. That looks good. I'll wait to steal that

on BitTorrent. Like, that's what I say in my brain now. I'll watch my Russian stream. I felt very proud of myself for going to a movie theater and watching a movie recently that was not a Marvel film. The same weekend seeing Peach Dragon and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, two great films shot in New Zealand. I saw Hell or High Water, which is a really good little modern Western. You're both patrons of the fine arts, officially.

But, of course, then I wouldn't be watching TV. Can't you see the bind I'm in? I love that line. Yeah. I think of that all the time. Okay, yeah, I got that. It's incredibly selfish. I love it. Homer, we'd like to talk to you. But then I won't be watching TV. You can see the bind I'm in. Dad, you've got to let Bart see that movie.

I've never seen him like this. He has the demented melancholia of a Tennessee Williams heroine. Don't you think I know that? Homer would know that. It's been two months. You laid down the law, and I'm proud of you. But I think we've gotten through to him.

Ah, sweet, soft-hearted Marge. You just can't see the big picture. If I stick to my guns, the boy could wind up Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. If I fail, the best he could do is judge at a Mr. Tight Buns competition. I can't let that happen. I won't let that happen, and I can't let that happen. All right, so that is pretty much... I love the end of the being...

That's the joke. That's kind of my line of the show, but then also so is this. We're home! We got beats! It's a non sequitur that I love. It's a kid getting excited about a weird thing. And so the biggest plot hole in this is that there is no way a theater wouldn't just sell Barth a ticket. Even if Homer told them, don't sell my son a ticket.

Especially in this era of movie theaters. It would never happen. I've sold movie tickets to kids. I worked in the box office at an AMC theaters from 2003 to 2004. And when I was there, I only enforced the R rating stuff when I wanted to just be a dick. Like, oh, you're 15, you want to see a sorry to movie? I technically don't care but i also love the power i have to deny i'm the god yeah so fuck you but but otherwise i'd just be like

yeah watch whatever i don't care i know i shouldn't get off in this rant it just i love all my early theater experience experiences and this is also an episode from a way earlier time in our pop cultural history. And the Aztec Theater is still around forever. I love the old movie house motif that they have. Think of every place you saw a movie when you were a kid. Is that movie theater still there? I would argue that it is not. It was replaced with stadium seating, moved closer to the mall.

It's not still there. Mine is, but it's still shitty. It wasn't one of those old movie houses that we have in San Francisco or even my hometown of Youngstown, which was turned into a porn theater in the 70s and abandoned in the 80s and then knocked down in the 2000s. Again, I've said that a billion times on other shows. I watched The Care Bears and Pinocchio and The Emperor of the Night in the Tallahassee, Florida, Northwood Mall.

Northwood Mall was eventually bought by the state. And my first job was at the Department of Business and Professional Regulation where I scanned documents and corrected them into a computer. Inside of the theater, I saw my first favorite movie. Wow. What an awful thing. These ceilings are really high. Oh, my God. I'm in the theater.

This sucks. There's something that in my hometown of Berkeley where I live now, they don't knock any buildings over in the Bay Area because everything's so expensive. So there's a dollar store by me and has a huge, huge ceiling and I walk in there and I'm looking up like what's going on? Oh my god, this used to be a movie

house. There's an ornate balcony and all these fixtures and this beautifully decorated ceiling. Really sad. In the Mission in San Francisco, the Alamo Drafthouse revitalized one of the theaters. The other one across the street, old and beautiful, kept the front facade,

found more profit being a parking garage. They hollowed out the whole thing and you park there now and they make more money. In Berkeley, there's a few abandoned ones too, though. I do like the California Theater. It's still a really good little theater. It's more than 100 years old, and I was like, what were they playing in the early teens? You guys owe it to yourself as East Bay folk to go to the Paramount if you haven't.

I've been there, man. It's amazing. It's built during Prohibition, and you can see the areas where they hid liquor. Yeah. It's great. It's literally like a palace. It's beautiful. So the Itchy and Scratchy movie finally leaves theaters.

There's a fucking news story about it, Hank. I'm here at the Springfield Aztec Theater where after eight months and nine Academy Awards the Itchy and Scratchy movie is showing for the last time. Tomorrow a new movie starring Liza Minnelli and Mickey Rourke will open.

Will it be as successful? Only time will tell. Well, Dad, I guess you won. No, son, we both won. You don't know it now, but I've started you on the road to somewhere very special. It's the only thing that makes the show cute. What's that? I still think this is cruel of home.

It's pretty cruel. But this new movie Brockman's talking about, it's probably not as bad as Honk if you're horny, but I feel like Liza Minnelli and Mickey Rourke were at the lowest point of their careers at this time. In 93, absolutely. What was Mickey Rourke even doing, just getting uglier? What was happening? They both were in different

states of drug process at that point. And neither of them had starred in a movie in a very long time, so the idea of them together, though also, the idea in 1992 that they'd still be alive, both of them had starred in a movie in a very long time. So the idea of them together, though also the idea of 1992 that they'd still be alive, both of them would still be alive in 2016 was probably a crazy idea.

And yet, here they are. Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, though, is beautiful. Gorgeous. I do. I love Liza. I love Liza. You've got to come out on every episode. I hate how Adam and Homer is about this because it's the only thing he's ever stuck to and it hurts Bart.

And the thing that Bart really didn't watch it for 40 years. This would devastate me. In fact, I would probably be doing more podcasts right now if my father prevented me from seeing the movie I was most looking forward to. I'm glad I grew up with lax parenting. Yeah. It really helped me out. But the future stuff, which I sort of hate. 2032.

Is so great. I was expecting more future jokes coming to this after watching some Futurama. The funniest one that I didn't recognize because Homer and Bart are walking down the street. Bart is now a Supreme Court Justice. Yeah. And then it says

the itchy and scratchy movie in a very small parenthetical, also Beauty and the Beast. That is a great joke. I didn't realize at the time that Beauty and the Beast was kind of critically, I don't have another word for it,

but it was beloved. Yeah. It won the animated film to be nominated for an Oscar. For an Academy Award. The best picture. They had to create an award just for animated films

because like, yeah, maybe these movies can sometimes be as good as these other movies. I say fuck that category because every piece of garbage ends up in that. It's awful. I hate it all. It's funny that this episode first feels like a real critique-y episode, but then ends with a Futurama, like the pilot for Futurama. It's both of the spiritual successors to The Simpsons, which then didn't last as long as The Simpsons. It's funny it's bookended by those.

You're right. And I feel like this was the last time a Soylent Green joke could be funny. I mean, they've been overused to hell and back. I love the Phil Hartman SNL sketch. Like, Soylent Cowpies are people! One senior citizen and one Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I'll get it, son. That'll be $650.

Don't. One Soylent Green. Hold the butter. Soylent Green. Didn't get it at the time. People, the holy trilogy of Charlton Heston is Jesus. Is Soylent Green, Omega Man, and Planet X. Omega Man's so good.

All of them he dies in the end for your sins. They're all beautiful. For the sins of society. And Soylent Green, I know that joke is sort of hack. It wasn't at this point. It wasn't because I think it was kind of a small movie. Yeah. And it is so good.

It is great. The people scoopers. Ah! I think it became an older. Women are furniture. It became an overdone joke because the kids who grew up watching it then started writing comedy. And the Simpsons were one of the first to get to it. Okay, so this is not a dream sequence.

This is not like an imagination. This is 40 years in the future. And so I still take it as canonical. When they've done later, fast forward episodes, and Bart's not on the track to be Supreme Court Justice, like, it kind of bothers me.

I don't like that. And that's why I liked in the Ren Faire episode of Lisa's Wedding Day, That's the only one I feel like is canonical. Bart says, Bart says,

but I'm just working out all this aggression before I go to law school. Oh. Implying that he is going to law school to become a lawyer, and that is the track to become a judge and then a Supreme Court judge. Well, this did bug Matt Groening, tying this future down for Bart. Yeah, he did not like that idea. It's not being a dream sequence.

But I've always kind of, I don't know, I hold them as like alternate timelines that serve that episode. Yeah. And I don't take them very seriously. I'm not offended by it. I know it won't happen. They're not really canonical, I know. But I like when they stick with that

and stick with him being on the track to go to law. So that's why I was less a fan of him becoming just a wannabe Jimmy Buffett. That episode I liked. That episode has funny bits, but liked it a little less. It did predict President Trump. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. He's the one who appointed Judge Bart Simpson. Yeah, that's true. Lifetime. I have to point this out. As I get older so do my parents

and this is sort of what it's like. It really got me to the end of this. I did not expect that. Sort of what it's like to watch stuff with my dad now.

Yeah. Which one's the mouse? Itchy. Itchy's a jerk. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah, that really does get me. Yeah.

The idea now, as a kid, it was meaningless to me. But, like, the idea of, like, my dad's getting older. I'm glad we can talk about that. Just connecting with him. I brought it up on a friend gathering. Like, is anybody else's dad getting slower? Just connecting with him. I brought it up on a friend gathering. Like, is anybody else's dad getting slower? This is like in the head in speech.

They're all getting a little slower. Yeah, it's happening. You know, actually, I'm going to ruin a story I'll tell here on this podcast. But the weirdest sync up of this was, so my grandfather on my dad's side, who I called Papa Daddy, because he was my Papa Daddy. It was Papa Daddy and he was from Arkansas. But anyway, so he was visiting us in Florida.

He almost never visits us, but he visited us. And he actually would pass away just like four years after this. So he came and visited us. And it's Simpsons night, so we're watching The Simpsons. And he's going to watch it with us. And so I thought it's just any old random episode. It starts with one joke. He watches it.

He laughs a little at that. Then he falls asleep while we're watching it. As Grandpa would. And this episode would then turn out to be the Grandpa vs. Sexual Infertility, which is as grandpa would and this episode would then turn out to be the grandpa versus sexual infertility which is all about a cross-generational connection between grandpa homer and his children wow i was like i think it was so obvious the connection to us in the room that we didn't want to talk about it we're like that's a weird episode to watch with your parents in the room well yeah yeah they're reverse vampires bob i thought so reverse vampires so

anyway yeah that was i still think back on that too is like one of my favorite the joke he laughed at was when there's more than one way to get high baby and then my papa daddy said uh he sure did get high huh his car went up. And he went... That was adorable, by the way. I do like it. She said, Jerk is a real mose, their leader comment. That kind of reaction to something you're watching with your parents.

I was back home recently talking to my mom. We were talking about politicians, and I forget who she was talking about. It was some politician, and she was like, That's just like something out of the Bart Simpson show. The Bart Simpson show. And also, Bart and Homer sitting in front of the screen.

That is an MST3K thing. Yeah, on the commentary they said that's one of maybe two homages in the entire series to MST3K. One that would be on in most bars. The Burns is Shot episode. Yes, my favorite episode, so stay tuned for that one. Part one. Yeah, and lastly, the thing I want to talk about is that they, originally they were going to show nothing of the movie in the theater.

But they felt it was a cop-out. So instead, they took that railroad scene that was going to be earlier in the show and put it there so you'd see something. But it's lavish. It looks better than most of the regular Chee and Scratchy episodes. I want to give them credit for that. Because it looks of a higher quality than a normal Itchy & Scratchy episode. But maybe so when they say it would have been a cop-out to never show the movie. But, oppositely, they set up that this movie was so amazing.

It was the greatest movie anyone had ever seen. It seems to be 40 seconds long. Yeah. You see, you're like, this is just Itchy & Scratchy. Yeah. It seems to be 40 seconds long. Yeah, and then you see, you're like, this is just itchy and scratchy. In retrospect, maybe they shouldn't have shown it and put that scene in earlier, because I feel like it could never live up to what all the kids were saying, what the critics were saying, the nine Academy Awards, everything.

I mean, it was a very lavish scene that we should have seen. The best costumes? How many Academy Awards are there? Yeah, but I feel like, again, it was good that this was not the jumping of the shark of itching scratchy when it could have been they could have just be like this is one of the things we just won't do anymore like auto like we're done with itching scratchy now but itching scratchy land is one of my favorite episodes oh it's it's like nothing but jokes and i love it yeah they don't even jump to jump the shark in the poochie episode no no it pushes it but it doesn't. Until Frank Grimes. Yeah. That's the perfect jumping on the shark.

The show should have ended by my standards. It's all good. Frank Grimes is coming back. Thank you for... Oh, shut up, Chris. Thank you. I will not acknowledge it on this podcast, but thank you so much for listening to Talking Simpsons. This is probably our longest episode because... Remember it used to be half an hour. Oh my god. We are the biggest animation dorks and this is an episode all about animation expect the same from itchy and scratchy land when

we learn all about the nazi roots of roger meyers uh senior we're gonna go downstairs get hammered yeah come back and watch donald duck cartoons so my fucking eyes bleed neat neat that's a great way to live your life uh i'm goofy and a heroine so uh that's one way to go so yes i've been your host bob mackie you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo I also do the classic gaming podcast Retronauts you can find that every Monday at retronauts.com or usgamer.net all these guys have been on it you'll like it a lot and I also

write for somethingawful.com a comedy article every other Thursday for the past 11 goddamn years I know I'm full of ideas that are unprofitable Henry where can we find you? H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. That's where you'll find all my thoughts on this election, and you can block me at some

point. Or just turn off retweets, okay? Guess what? Henry doesn't like one of the guys. The guy in it. I don't like the man in it. The name of the man. I write for fandom.com, but also I'm still part of the Laz. I write for Fandom.com.

But also, I'm still part of the Lazer Time podcast family. You can hear me on so many great podcasts, including, you know, you could go back and listen to my old comic book podcast, Cape Crisis. There were 200 amazing episodes of that. And also, you can hear tons of great exclusive things that I'm on on Patreon.com slash Lazer Time. Where for $5 a month, you can access to so slash laser time, where for $5 a month, you can access to so many great things, at least $5 a month. You could get more if you want it,

but you can get the entire first season of talking Simpsons along with our season two and season three wrap up specials only on patreon.com slash laser. That's like eight hours of the show. You probably haven't heard before. I know you're so good at that plug. I'm so glad I never have to do it. I, what I was trying to plug is laser time podcast..com it's where all our shows and our videos live you've heard me plug things in the past that you're probably not interested in judging by the analytics of our traffic uh but but what i was trying to remember i've written a couple really deep uh animated articles i can only remember who roger rabbit yeah the 10 things you

didn't know about who framed Roger Rabbit. Animal Olympics? Animal Olympics. I've got to show you some. Henry, you did most of the work on it, but it was about animated grudges that played out on film. Some of the stuff we're talking

about, you can see, just reflects our knowledge of how knowledgeable we are. I love doing that article. And it was all inspired by that Sick Little Monkeys book. It was actually all inspired. It came out of a raging fight between the two of us that then turned into a great article. You made it productive.

You made it work. That's always nice to hear. Yeah, it was pretty neat. I've never seen that happen before. Like, you mother fu- That is a good idea. Let's talk about that now. Well, thank you for listening to this long, long episode of Talking Simpsons, which I love to do.

And we'll be back next week with Marge getting a job. See you then. Wow. Infotainment.