Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Jaws Wired Shut With TheRealJims

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

This week's episode delves deep into what defines Homer's rage, so we are joined by a luminary of Simpsons history, TheRealJims from the awesome YouTube channel of the same name! After Homer breaks his jaw following an angry day at the movies, he learns to listen and love his family. Somehow that leads him to a parody of The View followed by Marge trying to replace Homer's insanity. We're talkin' downtown on this week's podcast! 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!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking of the Hill, the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that corks your cry hole. I'm your host, India's answer to Brian Dennehy, Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always?

Okay, Chug Monkeys, it's Henry Gilbert. And who is our special guest on the line? Hey, it's the real Jims from the land of YouTube. And this week's episode is Jaws Wired Shut. It may contain brief rudeness, adult explosions, and scenes with Gary Shandler. This week's episode originally aired on january 27 2002 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby at the state of the union address george w bush coins the term

axis of evil for north korea iran and iraq the rams and the patriots win their respective playoffs and they're going to the super bowl and the 2002 count of monte cristo film is released in theaters that's the one starring jim caviezel and a perfectly sane man with no weird beliefs this is before playing jesus christ drove him crazy it did yeah i think or maybe he always was maybe i i do think when you play jesus in a movie and everybody worships you for like four months of filming something probably and then on top of that you're acting in a baroque old tongue for a crazy person like mel gibson you probably lose your mind a bit more after that you know but yes that that count of monte cristo movie that's the the only count of monte cristo adaptation i've watched

in full it's it's pretty good it's pretty good i've watched uh this may sound like a joke but it's not i've watched the anime wow and it's actually very good because that is like a 1300 page book it's one of my favorite books i've read the unabridged one uh once uh the anime version don't turn off your podcast it's called gonkutsu and it's a future version of account of monte cristo but it is incredibly faithful to the book it's the most faithful adaptation i've seen and i've already embarrassed myself so i won't say anything else but please watch it well did those versions though bob have luis guzman as his helpful sidekick oh i don't think so no that's well that's the case in the 2002 count of monte cristo i believe the villain in it is uh guy pierce i think kind of plays a

villain in it i just remember luis guzman on a on the island where they discover all the money he says like you're the richest man i've ever known this is what he says way richer than lenny uh yes acts of evil uh they're doing pretty good right yeah that was a great a great moment of like conflating these three countries that have nothing to do with each other other than that they are official enemies of america and the gay the guy who made up that term david from he's now one of america's uh the liberals greatest allies more like david come that's what you should put underneath everything he tweets uh yeah we're just calling our shots we're just calling our next wars we're really really feeling it in 2002 you know they never did their as much as the w and his administration

were were slaving over it they didn't do the iran thing hey we've got three weeks before this goes live the economy's doing bad people are unhappy a war could really you know boost our morale uh and the rams and the patriots i don't i i'm gonna look to james if you know who won that uh that super bowl because i would assume the patriots oh i'm definitely jumping i'm definitely jumping on this one because that is football's axis of evil right there that i believe that's the first patriot super bowl under tom brady like this is the beginning of that. I guess he would control with an iron fist the Super Bowl for, I guess, the next 20 years and maybe still.

Or is he actually retired now? Though I guess he could un-retire by the time this comes out. I believe this is his last season, supposedly. What's great about this comment is that it's going to be evergreen because next year will be his last season as well. But supposedly he's going to retire next year i think okay but yes the the horrible awful patriots uh they they won the they won the playoffs that's why there won't be uh next time we do a season 13 episode i won't be telling you who won the super bowl because obviously it preempted the simpsons and the

simpsons didn't air alongside the super bowl that week so but that's what happened in early 2002 it's a great as we say every time talking about 2002 a great time in the world it is and joining us this week is uh the real jims uh he is a youtuber who does a lot of amazing videos about the simpsons including like simpsons mysteries season overviews and all kinds of other fun stuff on top of that character profiles welcome to the show, The Real Jims. Thanks for having me on the show. I admit it's kind of surreal to be here right now because the weird thing about it is that sometimes while I'm editing videos, I'll be listening to a Talking Simpsons episode. So in a weird way, you guys affect the YouTube channel in the sense that

I need something to listen to while editing. So it's kind of surreal being here right now. Oh, that's great. I got into your videos within the past year and they were so well done. One of the first things I thought of was I hope he likes us. I hope we can respect each other. And it turns out that we do. Definitely the meeting of two different mediums right now, YouTube and podcasts coming together right here uh james i'm a i i am a big fan of you i think bob turned me on to yours the first time he saw your stuff before me i really love the character uh histories they they have helped us out oh yeah uh you know what we we certainly know a lot but especially your histories of say when we did the just stamp the ticket man

uh first episode and we saw or just stamp the ticket guy that's yeah i we i then referred back to your video on it like okay after season like 14 what did they do with this character model and to know that he was involved in uh that terrible lady gaga episode i was like what i i hope he comes back for another one-off gag soon because that's sad final appearance for for him well actually um like after doing that video people kept telling me more and more modern appearances that I like completely missed because it you know like I can't go through every episode like I think there was a later episode where just stamp the ticket man ends up on the jumbotron at a game and he ends up somehow kissing homer's butt at some point so like let's just say

they took just stamp the ticket man to weird places strange new places yeah well we're in the world of smartphones there's no tickets to stamp anymore that's true he could become the qr code man or something who knows no and i i just watched your one of your more recent ones on the mysteries of Ralph Viking Line. Obviously, all three of us here are literal-minded people and view it as the way it was meant to. That's what the joke is, I'd also say. This is like Christian scholars talking about interpreting the Bible. Yes. Like, well, Jesus truly meant this, right?

We're all on the same page. Clearly, there are many different Simpsons denominations when it comes to that joke yeah i i really it wasn't just that you deconstructed like the view the viewpoints of it too but how you you try to figure out why it endures so much as as a line to parse out more than so many other like simpsons i i think the viking line definitely persists more than you ever say goodbye to a shoe ever see a man say goodbye to a pair of shoes before which uh you know that also certainly has a lot of arguments to it too yeah in a weird way I kind of regret making that video because I heard from people in the comments about how they used to be team literal but after listening to my metaphor argument like they've switched back and like I'm horrified,

just horrified that like I'm like ruining lives. I had somebody reach out and said that they had never heard about the debate before and they brought it up with their fiance and now they disagree and they're going to blame me

if they break up. So I think that that video is ruining people's lives in the Simpsons world. Also, I wanted to point out both James and I were posters on No Homers Club around this time in like the early to mid 2000s.

And I love that No Homers Club receives mentions on early Simpsons commentaries. And I feel that if they were to still make commentaries and release them, they'd be complaining about our podcast now.

Perhaps James's YouTube videos. Oh, yeah. And Twitter, definitely twitter too absolutely absolutely no yeah it's uh i mean no homers club they didn't realize how good they had at them when when you hear them complain about no homers club on commentaries because that kept it all fenced into one area of people talking about simpsons now they can hear from everybody on twitter instantly about every episode but maybe i think i i like to think that compared to how they sound on the commentaries on this like this episode uh in that era and i would hope that aljean and and the rest of the producers are

seeing more positivity towards them as well of like people just celebrating their favorite old jokes or or funny drawings that they like i i would hope they're seeing a mix of more positivity instead of just them associating no homers club with everybody hates our show all the time and is super negative i would think that if they if they did commentaries today and they did mention your podcast or my youtube channel or whatever they're going to refer to. I think the tone and the temperature of the situation is a little different now because the joke about no homers back then was I think they called it like worst episode ever weekly, I think was the

tagline. They said I think even no homers put that at the top of the banner in response. They described no homers as just being like pecked to death like every week by comments and threads all the time whereas i don't know like maybe i'm just being overly rosy about the situation but you guys obviously give so much perspective about the highs and lows and like i think you give each episode like it's fair chance so you're clearly not looking to just nitpick it to death and i feel like that's how i try to run my youtube channel where like i really want to dig into what makes an episode work or what doesn't so i feel like and i might have heard this from matt selman too like matt selman has expressed like how much he loves the fans so i feel like the general temperature of the fan community and how they interact with the show

has improved since those no homers club days yeah i think so too yeah i think so and it's like i feel that we fans all are on the same age we we've mellowed out a lot too like i've said this before but we made it our personality to hate a thing like i'm the guy who hates new simpsons let me complain about how bad it is and i did that you can look up all my old posts on no homers club i was probably insufferable but now when i get back to these episodes that i'm sure i complained about 10 15 20 years ago i can see all the funny jokes i was too angry to laugh at yeah for sure and like i'm sure that you guys get comments from people all the time who are like oh you're in season 13 why are you even bothering because they're just all gonna be bad in a row but like there's legitimate things to talk about in each of these episodes. I like how I'm like justifying justifying the reason why we're doing this episode right now.

But like, yeah, like we've kind of moved past in a way like the whole just painting with a broad stroke of just everything is bad. And like, I don't know, like it gets just kind of boring just to hate like entire swaths of a show after a while. Yeah, you're I some of my favorite videos of yours uh recently have been the ones about season 13 and 14 like your full season reviews of those and your top 10 episodes of those because i think on uh for both those seasons you're coming at them with a very fresh perspective that is both fair but also like if you don't like something you're not being like well they tried hard or whatever you're just like boy that episode wasn't good you know you you're fair on the highs and lows yeah in fact a lot of people say that i'm like a little too nice to the seasons

in general because like i kind of give a like these are the general trends and this is what a season 13 episode like quote unquote feels like and then when i get into my top 10 i get a little more subjective but if there are things that are like not great about the season or just kind of this consistent problem like like in season 13 i said that if you're in the trans community, this isn't a season that I recommend. Like if there's something like that, like, you know, you mention it and say it's there. Like I've gotten comments from people on YouTube who don't like it when I say something like that. But, you know, if you're seeing a trend in the show and say, you know, it was 2001, it was 2002. This is what the culture was like.

And put it in that context, like, you know, it helps explain, it was 2002. This is what the culture was like. And put it in that context, like, you know, it helps explain what's on the TV a little better. Yeah, I like having the perspective of hindsight in that, especially in this era, James, I don't know if you agree, but I think this is very interesting in that Al Jean returning to run the show and he's returning to a lot of premises and characters 10 years later that he thought were interesting.

Like we're gonna see the return of arty ziff uh return of other characters in this episode uh it's 10 years later after colonel homer what are movies like now what's the what's the big movie theater like now let's look at it like he's returning to these things with like 10 years of experience of writing and 10 years of of life in america and reflecting upon these old ideas with like new experience yeah there are definitely a lot of moments like even in this episode where I watch it and just like there's something in the back of your head subconsciously where you're like this feels like an old episode like and maybe there maybe the writers aren't doing it consciously,

but like it does feel a little remixy this era of the show. Yeah, I mean, I also think it is they didn't have as much access to the old stuff to know that they are redoing stuff. I think in my personal notes for this episode, I wrote like, well, that's really similar to this joke from this episode. And like Bob did a really great tweet screenshotting how a brochure has almost the exact same joke written on to it, too. And hey, season three wasn't on dvd yet yeah i i do wonder what the difference was back then that they just you know somebody had to know at some point but do you also not want to tell your boss that like oh hey we kind of repeated this like is then your boss gonna get mad that you sound like one of the sticklers on the internet who says who they make a literal joke

about in the show when comic book guy says uh you guys owned a horse before you've done this before like maybe there was just a general feeling in the office of if you complain that we did something before you're the enemy in this office or at the very least they're not going to receive it too well yeah i think every 10 seasons they should get to do a so your life is ruined pamphlet yeah yeah and i think it's been said al jean was normally the guy in the room who would identify like oh no we've done this joke before but you know uh when you make 5 000 jokes a year on the show sometimes they come out kind of similar a few of them yeah and i could see in season 13 he's not as familiar with the old stuff as before

and plus it's fun watching by season 14 or so you can really tell that like him re-watching his old episodes to do a commentary on them made him think of new ideas like yeah i guess uh the last preamble question i i had for you james was when i gave you a a pick of this episode you mentioned that this would be a good one because you've you've been thinking about jerk ass homer as a as a concept a lot lately yeah actually i feel like this episode this podcast might come out after those videos are over but uh one of the video concepts i want to do right now is one about a jerk ass homer basically the thesis of the video is that jerk ass homer is effectively dead in my opinion i'm also writing a review of homer simpson and kidney

trouble just to just to kill it while I'm at it. But it's kind of just an idea of like jerk ass Homer was this concept and it kind of peaked around seasons 10 through like, let's say 10 through 14, let's say, but then I'm positing that they did change Homer back to kind of the traditional Homer, he pops up here or there. But the concept of jerk ass Homer has like subsided enough that I feel like it's more of a phenomenon that's like almost over talked about, like in context of the whole series, because, you know, they've been on for 30 years. But you would argue that jerk ass Homer was really a problem in about four to five years of that 30 years. Yeah, I think I think Henry and I

we reject the jerk ass Homerer idea because it's just it's arbitrarily applied homer was a jerk ass like in season one sometimes you know and it's funny to see these uh these narratives fall out of fashion where yeah jerk ass homer it's rare to hear that one of the most common things you heard until like maybe the past 10 years was like oh yeah principal and the popper uh the worst episode or maybe that was said until uh the mod death episode happened where it's like yeah they ruined the show with that one terrible mistake and another one i think is falling out of fashion is uh we're going to get to this in the future but at least in this period of time in the early to mid 2000s it was the definitive unanimous agreement

that yes last exit to springfield the best episode of the simpsons and we did it a while ago and we were like that's funny it's a good season four but i think people really overrated it and i wonder how it's going to hold up when we get to it again uh because just for whatever reason and they said on the commentary in like 2004 this is the funniest one people say yeah number one on all of these tv guide or time magazine lists or everything yeah yeah yeah i feel like the internet and like this is just such an internet thing to do but i like it it like gets a concept and then just kind of latches onto it forever so like last day of springfield will forever be like the best episode like jerk ass homer happened and then the show got bad like that's the narrative yeah like i feel like you need these discussions and actually look at them to like at least see is this true or

not like i don't know yeah i you know the jerk ass thing in this episode definitely seems like a response to that too where aljean challenges them to be like well what if homer wasn't awful what if he had his what if he couldn't say things and had to listen and also their argument by the end of it seems to be well homer will be boring and the show would suck. So it needs to be a jerk ass. If Homer was nice, act three would be boring. Yeah. But I do think with the jerk ass discussion, too, it was interesting for me because while we were finishing up season 12, which had jokes about Homer like killing people or fully just hating his children or wife. To then watch at the same time some season 33 stuff when it was premiering

i specifically like the naked and afraid parody episode where homer and marge are trapped uh and they kind of have to fend for their lives but the point of that episode isn't that their marriage is bad because homer is an asshole it's that they just became boring and they don't go out and do anything they just stay at home the the central conceit wasn't that Homer hates his family. Homer loves his family in that they're just boring together. And I thought that is, you know, 21 years later, so different from the Homer I'm seeing in season 12, who's just a hateful monster who lets his father die of kidney failure,

nearly die of kidney failure in his backseat. Yeah, and I was even like ranting a little bit on Twitter saying it's like, I don't know, like this homer but there's an argument that season 33 homer is almost too nice now like it's really weird like going back to these jerk ass homer seasons i'm like i'm kind of liking this edge again it's really weird like they give me the nice teddy bear homer and now i wonder if he's like a tgif dad yeah it's a tough thing you know uh that he i mean he can't be as violent as as before it doesn't feel it when i watched the season 33 episode homer will still say in a why you little but i can't imagine him actually like strangling barts like he can't be homophobic anymore like in

this episode yeah we sound like such baby boomers right now talking about like where's the old homer used to beat his kid all the time like yes exactly the woke mob has ruined homer yeah no no that's all we're saying no no speaking of of why husbands hating wives this is an interesting episode about the or at least on the commentary hearing about how this episode was written well one this commentary is full of writers complaining about their wives okay i was going to mention that including one man uh who would uh get divorced yes yeah but well but uh on the commentary that it's it's matt selman saying that the episode would begin with homer going crazy being sick of endless trailers and then it would be he breaks his jaw and he learns

to be he gets more in touch with his family because that the telephony story that the then new to the show brian kelly as a writer he had broken his jaw in high school and had it wired shut and he knew you could talk with it you would just talk like this through your teeth like i'm doing now but yeah i understood henry yeah well that's what's a great joke in this episode when homer clearly says i'm horny yeah barge has to say i don't know what you said it's like how could you i forgot there there's a big cheat yeah yeah but yeah i think there's some willful ignorance on her part yes yeah and one that brian kelly in the room kept his mouth shut and it's funny hearing them say on the commentary like that's what kept him his job because if he on his first day had said um guys this episode doesn't

work that's not they'd have fired him for being a whiner or whatever you said this this episode was rooted in wives or wives well just uh it it so much of this talk about Homer and Marge's relationship on the commentary it's a lot of guys saying like well my wife does this or my wife does that a lot of it is a lot of the rage is directed at the view uh and like dana was like oh there are these tv shows you don't know about until you get married yes yes which why would you why it's weird that there's so much like wife talk with the discussion this episode because marge doesn't really do anything until about like halfway through i would say yeah yeah i i agree but i guess really with the view stuff that's that's really where it comes in but and also there's some fun commentary uh jims in there that dana gould reveals that he pitched the old man yells a cloud a joke which on the commentary they're already saying yeah

and on the commentary they're like proto meme i mean, this was when it was becoming a meme that they say like, oh, you know, they cut to it all the time on The Daily Show. It's a real joke. And Danny Gould's like, wow, really? Like he's just discovering that that's a meme. I think at that point referencing John McCain. Yes. Being the old man yelling at the cloud. Oh, and also, yeah, it's funny too that the commentary is full of of matt selman promoting his wife's

store as well which can't go there anymore sorry sorry future guest of uh the simpsons yes renee ridgely the but at the time she had a store called hands on third uh which uh and they constantly are it's funny as he's trying to explain hands on third the guys are making fun of him there's like oh his wife's making him promote his store. But the website for it is also dead now, so it must be fully gone. But Renee Ridgely, much more. She was just on the series because promoting awareness of she's a breast cancer survivor, and she promotes awareness of, you know, mastectomy patients who choose to not have reconstructive surgery.

And she is a proponent or promotes her own aesthetic flat closure. That's apparently the accepted term for it. But mainly meaning you have a mastectomy and you do not replace your breasts. So, yeah, that was she's hands on third much in the past for Matt Salmon's wife. And they're still very unlike Dana Gould and his wife that he talks about on this commentary. Matt Selman, Renee Ridgely, still happily married. And I think Dana Gould may be freshly engaged. Oh, yeah, he is engaged.

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Good for him. And though I do wish director Nancy, speaking of i do wish director nancy cruz was on this commentary i'd like to there's some fun animation in this i'd like to hear what she thought on it well also though instead joe montana is on the commentary he's just like i want another root beer flow montana yeah yeah he just hung around he kept talking about how they were giving him root beer flow so i guess the commentary was catered he just like he wants to drink more

yes yeah i think delicious root beer. You get a free. That's hey, stamp the bingo card. I'm talking about it. Mike Reese, when we asked him about, you know, commentaries and why you guys love doing them still, he says it's because, you know, you don't get paid for it, but you get a very nice free meal when you're there. And root beer floats are part of it.

So, yeah. Had he even seen the episode before or was he just bumming around for 20 minutes enjoying like a free screenplay of something it did not seem like he had seen it before no he didn't have much to say his only comments were about him wanting another root beer float yes he's or they joke that like oh is fat tony maybe in the background for this scene and then they joke of saying like well don't say that we might have to pay him if he can fight about that but so yeah unfortunately though nancy crew's not on on the commentary to explain stuff but all right let's get into the episode proper here so the couch gag i just want to say it has some really fun good silent film acting i like i like

the couch gag homer we're very well observed uh charlie chaplin on him this this could be asking too much but i wish every character of the family was a different silent movie character but hey whatever that's a lot of work it is yeah and it was interesting to see that it was a shortened credit too after watching a bunch of those mike scully episodes in a row it's like this is really the beginning of them just cutting straight to the couch again yes yeah now that gene's back he's like we've gotta just get no more of this uh opening thing you know sc Scully had said on a commentary, his reasoning for it was that he thought if he kept the credits to 90 seconds, then when it goes into syndication, they can cut down the credits and cut less of the episodes.

But then it turned out that didn't happen anyway. They still were cutting the episodes and keeping the credits long. Yeah. And I'm used to Al Gene's episodes, at least the seasons three and four ones, to use the full credits and then later the circus couch gag. Yes, yeah. But I guess, you know,

in the 10 years since, or eight years since he had been a showrunner, commercials got longer. So his episodes would will be right back. Welcome to the kingdom. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet?

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Break. It's Henry Gilbert, and we hope that you and your donkey pal are enjoying this week's episode of Talking Simpsons. And a big thank you to our guest this week, The Real Jims. It was awesome having James on. He was such a cool dude, and we really enjoy his YouTube videos. You guys should be checking them out if you love Simpsons history. And if you listen to this podcast, I'm sure you do.

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So the episode begins with homer reading uh pie times magazine which you know we're just a handful of episodes away of homer just being reading high times magazine oh yeah yeah which uh i would guess homer homer being so turned on by the pie filling is uh disturbing to me i would guess it is a joke about how playboy used to not show uh the genitals of their uh playmates and then they did like oh they show the pie filling now i would guess that's what the joke is about it's just uh one of 10 000 fold out jokes you could do around this time so many fold out jokes kids let's just fly over the heads of kids now folding out a thing to see a sexy picture like you the kids don't know that it definitely seems like

kind of a preview for where the rest of the episode is going to with like all of like the boner jokes and like the horny jokes like i mean this first act is kind of all over the place but it's like wow what a preview to where this thing's going huh well yeah yeah this is a horny episode i mean in about five minutes we hear a penis ripping through clothes off screen yes yes after seeing a pair of bouncing large breasts right before yeah i uh but first we we have to see how far homer has come since season eight as uh him and his kids see a pride parade which i gotta think the homer so every time homer's on screen he actually seems nervous about the pride parade and not liking it but it feels feels 80-yard where he goes like, a Pride Parade?

Woo-hoo! I think it was post there like, Homer shouldn't dislike the Pride Parade. Oh, for sure. When I watched it this time, that woo-hoo is definitely added because he is very clearly standing there nervously. And then when Santa's little helper is interested like then he's getting out of that scene so he kind of feels like somebody got a note where they're like we've already done homer's phobia we need homer to like relax just a little here uh and you know what if i may make notes as long as we're talking about sexual things the the big muscly dude his nipples look weird they're very large yeah they're like the biggest nipples that have ever been drawn in simpsons history uh but yes as uh you know as a gay dude on here it's interesting what

these jokes about the pride parade like even the idea of showing a pride parade on the show like they hadn't really done it before they did have the joke of the newspaper article of local gays show their pride and bart in the photograph but this is actually like a full-on pride parade and then what a weirdly dated joke that the joke is we're sick of pride parades or that they're almost unnecessary or redundant like it's a it's a weird joke for 2002 where there's like no gay marriage or gay rights still illegal yeah like that uh ruling isn't coming yet yeah it's but i feel like the perspective is la comedy writers who are just like yeah we see the pride parade every year whoop-dee-doo

we're not homophobic which i i would contend that's not exactly true uh by today's standards but uh well here why don't i why don't i play the clip real quick of the the pride parade opening what the hell is that rainbows tank tops empowerment this is the gay pride parade we're here we're queer get used to it you do this every year we are used to it. Spoil sport. Oh, honey, think pink. Look, a salute to safe sex. We're gay.

We're glad. But don't tell Mom and Dad. Wouldn't it be great if that man and woman got together cool it's lesbians of the caribbean you know it's uh marge currently uh i think i'm right about this uh henry uh she is into gay culture right oh? Oh, yeah. You know, in the season 33 episode where Smithers gets a boyfriend who's a rich, famous gay guy, like she knows all about him and like she's very supportive of that stuff. I mean, I know. I'm glad it's progressive. I'm glad she has changed. But I like this kind of sweetly condescending Marge who's just like, we should get together.

Yes. Yeah. And, you know, this is a big moment, this little-off joke because uh i don't i don't think it's clearly patty but if you think about who patty is it's obviously patty because there's a slight difference to how julie cavanaugh does patty and selma's voice but they need to be talking in the same scene for you to really notice but yeah if you examine everything you know about patty to date and the gay and sometimes trans jokes they made about her you could say that's patty and this is the show kind of defining her as gay they'll explore that in good and bad ways in the future yeah and right there with smithers and it's clearly smithers voice and arm coming out of the the closet there

yeah yeah how do you feel about like how overt that joke is in terms of like referencing their sexuality because yeah in the past they had kind of like you know they kind of tiptoed around let smithers obviously like they're like he's going to like resorts and stuff that it's very coded you know but like this is like directly putting them on the screen in a way do you like like how they're approaching that or do you think like they're like hinting a little too strongly here you know by this point they i think they'd heard enough rumors or people figuring out all their sticking putting together all the jokes they're like then let's just do the hardest wink possible and just have it clearly be their voices uh but i think too that's like how the since the show has

been on so long it also just tracks where acceptance levels are for gay characters on tv shows because they just had coded stuff with smithers for so long then by this point they're like look we all know right but he still chooses to be in the closet and then you know like five years ago they're like wait why are we even having jokes that he's in the closet like why for the smithers character he should just be out there's no reason he a character like smithers wouldn't be uh my my own take is that i feel like with patty they're sort of making the most of a bad stereotype they made her into where it's like the 90s very male writer's room where uh basically defined her as well this very mannish woman she's

obviously obviously a lesbian and man too yeah and she obviously pees using a urinal that's how mannish she is so the logical extent was she's a lesbian that's like a not a great way to think but they're sort of saying no let's actually make her gay and make that uh you know who she is her identity and again they will do a really bad episode with that premise in the future but they'll eventually do better with it yeah it makes you wonder if this joke was kind of like the seeds of that season 16 episode with Marge commenting like that because she's clearly seems like she's having a good time at the parade but then says that very let's say quaint and condescending comment like she's clearly like okay in theory but like her application to it

is like pretty messed up so it makes you wonder if this was like the kind of beginning of that episode idea what I I like that the gag too in its obviousness. It could be read as Marge being so in denial about her own sister that she could hear her sister say that and see her arm and to be like, just call her. What if that man and that woman got together? Like that person is anonymous to her. Like it doesn't even hit her that could be patty well so i take that line as the same kind of quaint marge who says about gore vidal like boys girls lisa boys kiss girls yeah yeah but i mean that was only what like five years before this maybe six it's like at that point in time marge was so

like a 60s mom she didn't know about gay people now she does but she's like well they should still be straight that'd be nicer yeah and eventually once marge ages into being a millennial mom she just has to be like well no i like gay culture i i grew up in the 90s now marge has so i have a a simpsons mystery we have uh james on the podcast he does the simpsons mysteries videos for his youtube channel now you look there's one mystery i haven't solved in this in this episode we'll get to that another mystery that i did solve was in the credits one of the credited voice actors is john cassir he is the second buster bunny and he's also the voice of the crypt keeper and i was like well what's he doing in this episode and on the wiki and i

believe on imdb he's credited as the dogs in the parade. So with Saddlesore Galactica, that's what he's credited as. And I believe it because I believe with Saddlesore Galactica, that was the last Frank Welker performance in the show. Well, they couldn't get Frank, so they got Jim Cummings. I think they were trying out cheaper Frank Welkers. Yes, this is where it goes, Henry. So Jim Cummings, first cheap Frank Welker. Second one, in the parent rap,

Jess Harnell is credited for doing the voice of the seal. He's actually not in the episode. They just use stock effects, but I guess because they hired him, they put his name in it. I feel like John Kassir was another animal sound tryout guy, another cheaper Frank Welker, and eventually they're like,

Dan can bark. Hank can bark. and we'll just play a sound effect yeah why are we hiring all these other especially if you're not going to pay for the frank welker then for then just go with dan going or just get sound effect get a library of sound effects but yeah that is the mystery that i saw you're right and but the one i haven't solved is Dana Gould, credited voice actor in this episode. He's nowhere to be found, not even in deleted scenes. So maybe he's in some animatic scene that was never animated, but it feels like a bookkeeping error or something. Or an unfunny deleted scene. They're like, nah, we can't even put this on the DVD.

This is crappy. I think I might have heard something about that because I clicked on on the episode like trying to remember where he was in the episode and i think i heard something about him being a producer like in universe so i think maybe he was working for afternoon yak or something and he was and he was like deleted from the episode i that's my that was bob's big best guess too which i i agree with at first i thought he might just be like a dog also or maybe he's the mummy going but i i don't think so i i i think it is just a deleted scene but if even if you delete it even if you delete a scene contractually you must have to credit the person for it in this scene here of homer um denying forcing santa's little helper into the closet it just sounds like dan doing the

the slh sounds i'm like yeah yeah he does good dog sounds i can see why they didn't want to hire a secondary dog sound man i also you know what i love the gay steel workers of america coming back i wonder if that was you know it certainly seems self-referential i wonder if it was an artist that pitched it at the animatic or if that was in the script, but it's a callback to the amazing gay steel mill from Homer's phobia. And you know what? I like the lesbians pirates of the Caribbean joke because they're all running in the same circle of the very, they take the very un-PC joke that was removed years ago in pirates

of a man chasing a woman i believe they changed it to the woman chasing the man was was how they they fixed it and that makes it okay yeah but but in this case it's a butch woman chasing a femme woman in three groups like that's the note if you pause and look at it the chaser and the chasey it's a butch woman in pants chasing a more femme woman in a dress uh which but they're both smiling i think they also wanted to have a zoom in to show that they're both smiling that this is a fun game being played and it's not anything darker being done in in the scene and also you know what wave to brunch maggie that's a funny

line i like that yeah good which now brunch is for everybody it's not it's not a gay coded thing you can all get drunk on champagne at 10 30 a.m when re-watching that scene i was like is brunch a gay stereotype maybe i just am not connected to how 2002 was but like i don't know i feel like everyone goes to brunch right now i well you know what we can thank the uh queer eye for the straight guy i think and a lot of that other stuff mainstreaming the idea of brunch that everybody's like yeah wait what well because i definitely think in 2002 certainly i would think straight hollywood writers writing the simpsons they know about brunch and go to brunch but i think the stereotype then was if you don't if you go to brunch then you're not going to church and obviously gay guys are not going to church they're going to brunch

like that that's why i feel like the joke is it's a secular meal like that's what jacques taught us about in season one that's right yeah cantaloupe that's right uh and you know what not as a heavier gay man myself not into this joke about heavier guys being unwelcome at Pride, though not that it's untrue, of course. Though also, you know, my husband and I, we actually own a screen not unlike that one. A folding screen. I mean, we just got through with Pride Month in America, and we're talking about who belongs at Pride, and I think the Simpsons do. Yeah, yeah. They're allowed to march in Pride.

I say that as a straight man. You know what? There's a dog cop marching with the dogs. I don't like that. But also, Maggie's reaction to seeing the gay dogs. In She of Little Faith, they had a drunk, is shocked, throws away booze bottle joke. Oh, yeah. This is their second one.

So it's a runner of parodies of the drunk throwing away their booze bottle joke oh yeah so it's a runner of parodies of the the drunk throwing away their booze it's it has the whiff of dana ghoul to me this kind of joke this kind of old-timey joke although who knows maggie should not be that shocked by the dogs i feel like maggie should be more with it at this point i think so too yeah she won and she's the one carrying around a pink triangle uh balloon which is very cute yeah Yeah. I like her with that. So Homer is disgusted that Santa's little helper wants to join the gay dog. So basically this was all just set up to the Simpsons go to the movies jokes. Yeah.

And we return to the Springfield Googleplex theaters. A rare appearance. So this debuted in Colonel Homer. And the idea written in 91 was what is a movie theater like in the 90s? Well, there are these things called multiplexes now and the entire family can split up and see their own movies because for a long time theaters were just like one, two screens. But now we have these things called multiplexes. And after that, it was only in Bart's Friend Falls in Love and EIEI Doe. It'll be in one more episode after this.

I think it went away because the meaning of the word Google changed for all of us. So it was no longer associated with 10 to the 100th power. It was now the search engine. And also because the multiplex is just everyone's default movie going experiences. All of the small theaters have closed or are closing. You just have to drive out to the middle of nowhere or next to your mall and see a movie at a place with 30 screens and that's it yeah and like and and what's really weird about this one in general is like i feel like the first time we saw the googleplex theater they like opened the episode at the googleplex theater right like am i yeah they did yes like they end up parking right yeah it's a parking gag and then they go where's this one like they do the

whole like gay pride parade and then they do this googleplex sequence and then we go to the main plot proper it's almost like we get two different opening set pieces in one episode yeah yeah they well it seems like they went you know and we this movie stuff isn't enough for act one before homer breaks his jaw let's also let's have 20 seconds of homer looking at a pie magazine and then about 90 seconds of a pride parade and then they can get there i mean the real reason they go to googleplex is to pitch joke titles to movies and have there's an overload of them there's honestly too many premises is my favorite of the side gags because there's too many joke signs some of them you have to kind of frame your way through because they're only visible

when they're panning over to certain characters. So I have them all and I will, in a very tedious way, read them all out. Oh boy. So we have Wedgie the movie, Shenanagoats, which is the PG-13 movie the Simpsons went to see. We have Air Chud.

We have Chocolate 2, The Vanilla Ing. We have Final Chapter, A New Beginning. We have Editor in Chimp, possibly the sequel to Hail to the Chimp. We have Too Many Premises, like Henry said. We have Editor in Chimp, possibly the sequel to Hail to the Chimp. We have Too Many Premises, like Henry said. We have Clone Me an Angel, Dude, Where's My Pepsi, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Valley Ranch. And that's all of them. That's good.

You know, yeah, the Hail to the Chimp sequel or maybe prequel, because honestly, it's a drop in status right if you go from being the president jim to just the editor-in-chief of a newspaper which i assume is uh for editor and jim i feel like they might have made editor and chimp into like a real tv show that they watch in season 14 i'm trying to remember now because there's so many monkey jokes i feel like they did editor and chimp i i think yeah i think you might be right on that. I also like Chocolate 2, The Vanilla Inc. It almost feels like their second joke about Chocolat, which they had done in the previous episode. You played the joke up front, Henry, but a very mean-spirited slam on Gary Shandling,

who basically helped Al Jean become a sitcom writer. And I guess Al helped too, but he had just come off of uh what planet are you from and i don't think town and country had bombed yet by the time this came out by the time they were writing this uh but this reminds me actually like i just bought a bunch of old mad magazines when i was on vacation at this comic book store and there was a bunch of like different poems about celebrities there was one about gary shandling and it was absolutely cruel really but this is from 1990 it's like the gist of the poem was he's he's hideous he's ugly he's not funny and

everything he makes is a complete bomb this is before the larry sanders show yeah that's wow that's crazy but uh yeah i was like i thought comedy nerds loved gary shandling but they're like no get this big tooth man off my screen that's james like al jean and mike reese wrote for it's the gary shandling show they wrote reese wrote for it's the gary shandling show they wrote the last episode of it's the gary shandling show and working on that show gave them the connection with sam simon to be hired on the simpsons like yeah it's it's crazy yeah i i was like i mean maybe gary shandling was a jerk or something and this was their way of getting back at him i don't know if you want to be cheered up in these dark times i mean this comes out in three weeks but i assume things will be worse uh just go online and see uh just

look up gary shandling being repulsed by uh ricky gervais being in his home oh yeah and then just being very rude and insulting to him and making him sad i mean it cheers me up yeah i mean when you got gary shandling and ricky gervais in the room next to ricky gervais anybody's gonna come off better so i like i don't really get like what was the perception of gary shandling in 2002 that he was just a failure at that point like i feel like he was still around around if he can get the larry sanders show later well you know the what planet are you from was a huge bomb like that which was like a pg-13 comedy that did very very poorly so maybe that was also just them feeling like ah it's open season on gary or also like he's box office poison he'll never star in anything again which he didn't really like after i mean the town and country was probably

being made before what planet are you from because that was even bigger bomb uh but now you know the kids today they they only know the lake gary Shandling for being the Hydra-affiliated senator from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Senator Stern. I only know this because I have his Wikipedia page open. Yeah, I was like, I don't know that. How does Bob know about his name? I like how they're also taking a shot at Dude, Where's My Car? Because this is definitely the height of Dude, Where's My Car mania.

And then they end up naming an episode the following season after Dude, Where's My Car. That's right. Dude, Where's My Car mania. And then they end up naming an episode the following season after Dude, Where's My Car. That's right. Dude, Where's My Ranch. Right. Which then, you know, that accidentally is a reference to the Ashton Kutcher feature series, The Ranch, on Netflix, which now we don't talk about because one of its co-stars in it.

Oh, right. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to gonna say last thing about the gary shanley joke really good shuddering animation on bart and lisa yeah i give credit to that i mean it's like i this is such a quaint set piece that i enjoy because it did show you like here is what the movie theater experience was like in the year 2001 when this was written now i wish we could go back because it's like you got to select like one of five different viewing experiences do you want 3d do you want d box do you want all of these

other things that you haven't even experienced yet there's this one i saw when i was in vancouver where like at certain scenes uh the screen gets wider and gets protected onto the walls that's a new technology i saw let there be carn that way. I paid more money for the carnage to expand from the screen. And it's like, I miss the word searches. I miss, like at this point at my local theater, I think there was just like a slideshow before the movie. I miss the slideshows. But now you're watching ads for like Coca-Cola.

You're watching ads for video games and banks. And you don't even get the cool fake roller coaster ride with the snacks flying at you. And they're basically like a 30 minute tv show that's hosted by like maria menudo's hosting this show and and i i always love their wrap-up at the end because they're like and when we started we talked about this new show on tnt then we went behind the scenes of this film and plus we heard from our partners at coca-cola and now it's time and that's all the pre-talk before 30 minutes of trailers there there are very many trailers before stuff the whole like the whole satire behind it is like like weirdly dated in a way because yeah i definitely i

definitely miss the days of the corny like word jumble with odom shank or whatever but then the rest of the parody with like all of like the countless countless like word jumble with odom shank or whatever but then the rest of the parody with like all of like the countless countless like trailers and everything like that still definitely rings true today so it's hard to tell like like they get the general gist of it is pretty evergreen but the actual execution is like in some weird bizarro version of 2002 i've i've also had the experience recently in theaters of of thinking like homer in this scene of just like what feels like five trailers is enough if you're going to show me more than when and it feels like they build and build and build of like okay they just ended with

the let's say the spider-man trailer because that's the most anticipated film in the next six months great now it's time for trailers to be over and then it says like nope we got three more trailers after this i'm just like jesus christ the so many trailers the last time i got excited seeing a trailer in the theater was when i was surprised by the avatar 2 trailer before dr strange i didn't know it was coming i was like wow a trailer i didn't see online a week before i saw this trailer not that look I'm not one of the avatar crazies but it was just nice to be surprised by a trailer not one that I haven't seen like eight million times I miss uh I though also I I feel a certain nostalgia for this era of it because

of pre-show stuff because I worked at an AMC theater at this exact time you were writing the word scrambles I I was working with the people who i didn't get to control the projector that showed the slideshows and stuff but i got intimately aware of them from cleaning theaters or just being around it every five days a week yeah my another quaint thing i miss about it is that you don't get as much uh in court theaters today as you don't get the local ads as much you know you still do at independent cinemas in Canada. Well, that's nice. And I love hearing the business proprietors do their own ads

because there's one. So I went to the Rio and Vancouver a ton during the summer and the fall. And there's one where it's like a local businessman doing his own ad. And at the end, in the flattest voice, he goes, enjoy the movie. So I was saying that a lot during my travels. Just like the flattest, most sinister voice on that. God, that must be horrifying to film because just being on television, like running a television local ad has got to be kind of weird for these people.

And then projecting that onto a giant screen. I feel like if I were in one of those local ads i would never ever want to see it because like nobody has enough like screen presence to fill up a whole screen like that at least locally one and your local ad is playing next to like incredibly expensive ads full of like you know uh huge special effects budgets but yeah the the tom hanks autumn shank line that's a good that's a funny gag it makes me chuckle the yeah weird apu says autumn shank a second time like he's saying namaste or something he's putting his hands together i i i laughed really hard like because i read that as a poo acknowledging how sweaty that joke is he's like that's right that's his name i see yeah it's like autumn shank uh and yeah it seemed like a johnny carson thing almost yeah definitely absolutely yeah gene's back so it's uh johnny carson jokes here yeah

and uh according to my research there is currently a dj who uh djs under the name autumn shank makes sense yep you know what too then the next gag in this the itching scratchy thing it's barely a parody like there are silence your cell phone cartoons that we don't get actual like cartoons that play before your movies now you just get silence your cell phone like 30 second cartoons like uh the the m&m's one is the one i've seen the most times well it sounded like matt selman wrote this so it would become a pre-movie thing because in the 90s they actually used that clip from burns's air uh the turn it up turn it up right right with people's heads exploding they

used that as a thx trailer in the in the 90s at movie theaters i saw that a ton and it was always fun like oh a simpsons clip so i think they thought they could work that same magic in the 2000s. But I think this was too violent. Yeah. Even though when you would see like a PG movie, you could see a Simpsons man head explode before it if it was in THX. I guess it's the blood. Yeah. This is so bloody.

But, yeah, I looked up. There are so many silence your cell phone cartoons that were made. Like I found one featuring the Minions. I found one featuring the stars of the forgotten movie Rio. Though I'm sure, Bob, you love it. It's a bird movie. I love it in theory. I've not seen it.

And same with the characters from Ferdinand, the John Cena starring CGI bull movie. Like all of these, like, please, it's your cell phone cartoon. So this one, barely a parody of the real world ones. And also, among the characters,

there's a very obvious life in hell rabbit too. Yes. I feel like all those like weird animals, like he's like sitting near like some weird frog. Like I find myself distracted

more by all the different random animals that are throughout the theater you know what i mean because like itchy and scratchy doesn't have a big cast of characters so they had to design all these individual weirdos in the audience and i don't know like i don't know where i'm going with this but but um like like every time i watch it i'm more distracted by them than actually paying attention to itchy and scratchy yeah the one thing i like about it is the animal characters are distracting but it's funny that for once itchy and scratchy have a common enemy but in the end itchy still has to kill scratchy he's like well i'm still gonna cut your stomach open and spell things out with your guts oh yeah i because yeah the start of it i was like oh that well because

it's called like silence your beaks because the cartoon is about killing a duck. So that's why it's the rare time where Itchy will do a horrible thing to someone who's not Scratchy. But it wouldn't if they were still friends. I mean, they didn't even they teamed up to kill Hitler in another cartoon. But then Itchy still killed Scratchy. Right. Right. So this all felt also very critique to me. That's what my next note is god

this is very critiquey although i will give aljean and mike sorry i will give aljean credit for only writing one movie parody or rather matt selman i feel like i was expecting way more movie parody yeah trailers yeah but yeah soccer mummy uh this this is a good parody of what movie trailers were like around this time is this soccer mummy is this more of a raunchy like adult movie parody or is this a parody of like all the weird soccer movies of the 90s like the big green and stuff it feels to me like uh it was making fun of the gross out uh comedy craze of the early aughts but also it feels like a kid's movie as well like a kid gets a magic power sort of movie as well yeah yeah it it definitely the my first thought was jack frost the uh the 1998

film about the boy's father reincarnated as a as a snowman who has silly adventures but then it has sex jokes like it's american pie which definitely was the the style at the time uh to quote another substance joke and then also that ed o'neill is soccer mummy like that's a great reference to though that they're dumping on ed o'neill they're like oh his post married with children career not so good and then meanwhile now he is worth so much more money thanks to modern family like that married with children is it ed o'neill's like you know nobody asks about that anymore he's mr modern family making millions an episode kind of thing yeah wasn't there a story about ed o'neill that he was in a dramatic movie and got

deleted from the movie because the audience laughed at him like that's like how little work he was able to get at the time because al Al Bundy is just such a memorable character. If you see him in an... And he's a great actor. I've seen him in dramatic stuff. Great, great actor. Yeah. His character in Wayne's World is what happens after Al Bundy kills his family and moves.

No, he's still in Illinois. He just moves to a different town. A couple counties over. So, well, here. I've just got the whole mummy trailer here. Oh, and show the movie. Oh. Justin's soccer team was in last place.

You suck. No wonder your parents are getting divorced. Until they dug up a new player. Ed O'Neill is Soccer Mummy. Wow. I feel good. Go, Soccer Mummy. Wow! I feel good. Go, Soccer Mummy. You taught me to believe in myself.

I feel good. I feel like I would. Uh-oh. The professor said not to let him get a boner. I got a year. I'm laughing, but it's a laugh of impatience. Show the movie. Oh.

So many previews, so many previews, so many previews. And now, our feature presentation. If that's a phrase you like to hear, then you'll love Movie Call. Ah! If that's a phrase you like to hear, then you'll love Movie Call. Start the movie! Start the movie! Start the movie! So, Henry, you go to the theater a lot more than me. And I still see a bunch of trailers, but at this point in time, like Walking on Sunshine or I Feel Good were kind of your default trailer songs. Is there a new one? You know, it's more more it is newer stuff uh i actually just saw i'm thinking of watching the uh the newest trailer for the

minions sequel and in that they they play eminem like guess who's back back back again again because you're supposed to go like they're back the minions are back but you know with uh meanwhile i think of hearing songs in a trailer recently i do think they still go pretty obvious but just with more current stuff uh like actually using i feel good there it's a 30 year old song then or 30 ish now say in the trailers for the new Thor movie they're playing a sweet child of mine which is now a 30 year old song so it's just the time frame moves forward on it James I don't know what your experience like you're you still hear obvious songs a lot though I just saw a light year the other I just saw a light year this past weekend so I've definitely seen that minions trailer more times than I could really care for at this point.

Related to the soccer mummy, I can't believe that there is actually a line in that movie. The professor told us to not let him get a boner. Like what on earth context could that line ever be put in the movie? I love it. Like the soccer mummy. I love that that gives more background to it. Like the soccer mummy was created by a gives more background to it like the soccer mummy was created by a professor it's not magical it's that the professor found it for him and that

the reasoning he can't get a boner is that his erection will explode out of his wrappings that's that's why he can't get a boner uh which uh i also uh double check this uh they say it on the commentary it is the first time boner is used in the context to, like, Homer would say, I pulled a few boners in my day, too, son. Or not like boner land. Or boner land. Or having Ned say, like, you know, come off half-cocked, pulled a few boners. Like, they would have winks towards it.

But this is the first time boner has been said by a person to directly mean a direct penis. So it is a real first for this series i gotta say when i was uh when i was working my season 13 uh video when i was researching everything this was the episode where i wrote down wow there sure are a lot of dick jokes in season 13 like this is definitely the season obsessed with penises and the mummy boner is another example of it well you know family guy is about to be canceled for the first time. So they really need to fill that void. Yeah.

Yeah. Family Guy is getting dick jokes all over the place. They got to get some in there. I think. Yeah. This is the line, though, between the difference between Homer Simpson and Jay Sherman. This scene, I feel, would have been written exactly the same in the critic up to the point of Homer laughing at it. Like, Jay Sherman would not laugh at this trailer. But Homer is supposed to have such bad taste that he would like this movie

so but that's why i think they actually deal with it pretty well that he's like that he's laughing but it's a laugh of impatience that he we don't see one frame of shenanigans i really want to know what this movie's about yeah but also you know is a difference in times this time homer goes crazy and unlike in the learn lean episode the audience agrees with him they want the movie to start they're not mad at homer for ruining the movie uh also around this time in the commentary bob you noted a very funny thing al jean says that is uh different from how he feels these days yes uh he was just making fun of people he knew in the industry who only wanted to make shorts to win Oscars.

I don't have to say anything else. Yep. Yeah. Here he's judging people who make theatrical shorts in the hopes of being an Oscar winner and that it's a less competitive category. Hmm. Who would do something like that?

Wow. And a Matt Selman written episode too of all things yep yeah but well yeah guys those shorts aren't going to theaters anymore no they're really not their last one was uh with onward i it was the last movie i saw before the lock i forgot that was stapled to onward yeah because i wanted to see that short and little did i know it'd be just shoved on disney plus in two weeks because uh because there was a pandemic anywho yeah so uh it's fun you know it's fun watching if we were doing this podcast uh 18 months ago he would have been like i would kill to see even the all these boring trailers i miss the movies like now now we're done with that we're like i'm sick of the movie theater experience again like homer

goes crazy we cut to four unique squeaky voice teens it must be a record at this point to see four unique squeaky voice teens hanging out together not unlike handing out their rifles they hand out giant kit kat pieces what is the deal with this kit kat bar joke like is this even i know like i know the general joke is that movie theater, like, like bars are, are large and everything, but like,

have you ever seen anything like this on the Simpsons? It seems like a really weird, sweaty, observational, but not observational joke. Like they literally put in two keys and go out and like, are going to beat him to death with giant Kit Kat bars. I guess it's like a family size Kit kitkat which is what it says on the on the packaging but that's not funny enough

no it's not big enough but well now you can just buy that uh kitkat that big pretty easily but it's that big but it's small individual ones it's not one's actually that i realized this episode has a reference to kitkat and later crackle oh yes yeah so lots of chris rice in this episode boy i you know not to spoil that line later but i agree with homer in that but uh but yes so homer gets cornered i do love his basically he's reading a stage direction out loud he says what are they going to do advance on me and i would bet right after that in the script is in uh uh, is a, the description, the ushers advance on Homer. Homer is on the run, which leads to, uh, a real injury.

Maybe we should try to calm dad down. I prefer to egg him on. Hey dad, has the movie started yet? Homer, you're going to get in trouble. I'm not scared of those ushers. What are they going to do? Advance on me? This ends here.

And so, for helping to KO litter in our community, I hereby dedicate this statue of Dredrick Tatum. Litter is my most treacherous foe. I would like to eat his children. Not on, suckers! My mouth! My beautiful mouth! Excellent bound. Now we go party oh the sound of that breaking there man but you know like like we said with gay stuff uh dredrick tatum is the ever-evolving uh receptacle

of mike tyson jokes and what the america thinks of him uh and and jokes about the new crazy thing he did what was he doing around this time period ah well so uh mike tyson recently uh was restarting his boxing career because he had you know gone to jail and then also he bit the ear that bit had that was like late 90s yeah it was late 90s so the destination plan for mike tyson that would actually happen in 2000, it's either late 02 or early 03, but he is going to fight Lennox Lewis, the top heavyweight of the time. And honestly, Mike Tyson is not good enough at this point to face Lennox Lewis, but it's a big name fight. So he's facing nobodies to earn enough wins to justify him facing Lennox Lewis.

So he faces this one nobody whose name who's such a nobody i did not write down his name but he beats the crap out of him very quickly let's call him glass joe and then after he kills glass joe uh he in in june 2000 he gives this interview which is uh very memorable as he's talking himself up and mainly this is him saying like this is him pitching himself to be Lennox Lewis's next fight uh and it ends with this uh very memorable bit uh Mike Tyson says he's no Alexander I'm the best ever there's never been anybody's Rufus I'm Sonny Liston I'm Jack Dempsey there's no one like me I'm from Nairclaw there's no one that can match me my style is impetuous my defense is impregnable and i'm just ferocious i want your

heart i want to eat his children praise be to allah are you saying now mike and then he leaves i thought it was that's so that was that was like a then recent quote right uh yeah it was only like 18 months old when the episode aired yeah he had i guess he had a reputation for trash talk because in the homer they fall uh he's talking about homer and he says i want to make orphans of his children and they said well he has a wife and she and he says, I want to make orphans of his children. And they said, well, he has a wife. And he says, I imagine she would die of grief. Yes. So I guess he's all about like things he'll do to hurt your children.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, well, this one was extremely memorable at the time of like, oh, he's well, because Mike Tyson, especially after biting Evander Holyfield's ear to end a fight in a disqualification. It also made his like eat your children thing feel even more like accurate it's like well he did bite that guy's ear so maybe he will like literally eat these children a child's about like a hundred years i can see him tearing

through one i like how they i like how they don't even acknowledge it they just walk right out of there like they just walk right out of the scene with barely an acknowledgement i would think him and diamond joe are gonna have a good time partying those yeah they both know how to party him and dredrick yeah i now it's uh and then funny to think uh 18 years after this episode airs marge works at dredrick tatum's dispensary because they then are about oh mike tyson opened a pot dispensary marge should work at that uh now of course uh he's no longer voiced by hank azaria don't don't worry about that uh but homer's mouth is horribly broken this is also like you know not too different

from a year before the horrible knee injury homer goes through as well which also is disgusting and also is a g Shandling reference. That's right. To all of those comedy writer basketball games that injured all those out of shape old men. Homer gets his diagnosis. And this also is a joke like, oh, I forgot this shocking joke here. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there.

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world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. Homer, you've suffered a broken jaw. Broken jaw? He won't be able to talk for quite some time. I've wired his jaw shut. It's all explained in this pamphlet. So your life is ruined.

Oh, dear. You can't eat solid foods those are his favorites stop it homer oh don't worry on a man his size that just provides sexual release so uh we're talking about this episode and the things they're writing i'm not i'm not putting this in anyone's mind this is what happened homer came he did yes he released sexually that was the sound of homer having an orgasm yeah he had sexual release from injecting himself with suicide like he's killing himself. Homer wanted to die there and he presses the button to kill himself. I think Al Jean really liked the idea of a suicide chair because the critic had one with Dr. Krikorian. That's right.

When Duke Phillips had Phillips disease or whatever. Well, that's like there are four jokes in this episode that are just in the critic. Also, yeah, that's another of them the suicide share uh but two things the we see the the crayon on the x-ray cannon i hate that cram james i don't know how you feel about that cram but i hate the cram and its persistence i'm not the biggest fan of it either i think they probably should get although honestly at this point they've done so many explanations for how homer is dumb but definitely seems like a little bit of algin bias right there for the recent times yeah for the episode he wrote yeah yeah and also we

talked about this earlier but so your life is ruined is very similar to so you've ruined your life from i married marge i want to hear marge say we have a similar pamphlet at home or something like that you gave us one 10 years ago yeah work put that like just do adr with julie kevin punch that up a bit yeah i mean it's a it's a funny joke by itself but i mean too this seems to be al jean saying like hey remember we did all those pamphlet jokes let's bring that back pamphlets were funny yeah and like the whole context of the situation too like when you see him get his jaws wired shut it does kind of put in your head of what would it be like if your jaw ever got shattered because like your life wouldn't be ruined obviously but

it really does feel like a huge impediment it almost makes you like irrationally afraid of ever being punched in the mouth after watching it yeah i know it's uh it is scary thought of having like that actually having your mouth wired shut to have all that stuff attached to your head too like yeah i think just uh uh instinctively or on reflex when i'm watching this episode i do keep my teeth clamped shut and just think about it so it's uncomfortable uh and all that like gear in your mouth well i've never bob you i believe had braces i've never had braces so like just metal in your mouth all the time i had what crusty would call the whole magilla going on there but hey i could open my mouth with braces and eat things and brush my teeth yeah homer doesn't brush

his teeth or even seem he could use some mouthwash like just because you can't brush your teeth and you think that silver polish he gets later would have some cleaning uh properties i think the effects are mostly poisonous with that he's huffing in that scene really well and speaking of homer putting things up his nose he then shoves a piece of steak up it which is also pretty insane and then in a very accurate for the time joke it's a joke about imitating jackass which was all the rage uh not to be too nitpicky i think it's funny that homer cares that bart is going to hurt millhouse he shouldn't be mad about this like yes you want to see it yeah or like yeah like two episodes ago

he helped them like build a rocket with a hamster inside yeah it's true homer is famous for daring bart to do new things yeah he he shouldn't say no to this but uh but i do think it is very accurate to the characters that millhouse would be the one bart would do it to make millhouse suffer it wouldn't be bart doing the human yo-yo it's him doing it to millhouse yeah it definitely reminds me of the following season well i just i have season 14 on the mind but the following season when they watch the batman special and then want to send millhouse on the uh on the spinning ride which starts actually i'm trying to remember what episode that is now but it reminds me it definitely reminds me that bart always is the one who puts millhouse in trouble that's an

interesting episode where adam west just plays adam west and it's just batman and robin they're not they don't make up a parody for it it's just crusty was on the 1966 batman series and at this point uh jackass has been off the air for about five months uh last episode was august of 2001 i bet all these people were like that's the end of that chapter no more johnny knoxville and his dangerous pranks well the the joke millhouse says is kind of what killed it it was yeah so and or let it turn into a movie series uh exactly but it was that mtv was getting too many angry parents and also despite what they put in front of the thing people would just film their own and we're like yeah i'm jackass too i can also fall out of a shopping cart and break my uh shoulder or clavicle or whatever but also it was that the guys all became too famous that like

in season one if you watch season one of jackass they like do pranks they only work if you don't know who they are but when they would try to film a prank of like hey uh i'm a crazy person like hey johnny knoxville i'm on jackass right now right okay cool they're like no no again i must reiterate with henry's topsy-turvy tum-tum i don't know how he's a fan of jackass hey look we all have exceptions to rules i guess so jackass did pass the too gross thing for me as i heard so many positive things about the jackass forever and i maybe will watch it eventually but it is like too much shit like it actually did pass the line of like too much bodily fluids in it even for me yeah james were you a jackass viewer back then sorry no i'm also in henry's aspect where i was

just like i think i watched one or two episodes of it and quickly realized that this was not for me that being said it is kind of surprising given how big it was that the simpsons never did a full on jackass parody episode because like this line it definitely kind of feels like they might do one especially like homer hangs out with the jackass guys it makes too much sense i'm gonna pitch one right now because they don't use this character that much anymore auto auto becomes a jackass style uh celebrity i like until he goes too far in the third act but then it's too similar to homer pelusa so yeah you're right you'd have to hang out with steve-o at the very least you gotta get steve-o in there that'd be the one i'd go for but you know those fucking jackass guys they still are

they still are at it they're they're old but they're like 45 year old men still doing it johnny knoxville got a brain hemorrhage filming this recent one. Yes. Yeah. But he's still at it. All right. So next up after that, Homer heads over to the bar. Speaking of things that seem very similar, this sure is the opening to Homer versus New York, isn't it? But Duff Man arrives in our next clip. Hey, Duff lovers.

Does anyone in this bar love Duff? Hey, it's Duff Man! Newsweek said you died of liver failure. Duff Man can never die. Only the actors who play him. Ooh, yeah! Ah, you must be here for the Duff Trivia Challenge. That's right, local distributor.

One of you could win a lifetime supply of Dove. Okay, Chugmonkeys. What beverage brewed since ancient times is made from hops and grains? How about ancient hop grain juice? Wait, wait, wait. Homer's trying to make a guess. What are you doing? You're getting some kind of booze all over me. Time's up. The answer is beer.

Ooh, Duffluck. I never would have figured that out. That's the kind of thing you just gotta know. Yeah, it's very similar, except Barney still can't drink when Duffman is there this time he doesn't care yeah he's he's very unengaged with it but ancient hop green juice that that gives me a chuckle and also this is important canon for the character of duffman duffman is many men he's not just one guy uh even though we've seen him a bunch of times, that's why I said it before on this podcast. This is why there is one Duff man who has a relationship with Grady, uh, the Scott Thompson character.

There's another Duff man who is suffocated to death by Mo when he puts a sticker over his face. Right, right, right. So, uh, there's, there's many a Duff man. We've got to be on at least Duff man number four by now, right? I think so. Yeah. Also, also James, I think you'll agree,

Al Jean loves licensing music, especially popular songs. So far this episode, we have Get Ready For This. We have I Feel Good. We have Oh Yeah. Oh, and Summer Place. Theme from the Summer Place

was playing over the safe sex bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, wow. I'm just glad this is coming out of Disney's pocket every time they have to license these. I have no idea how they're even able to afford season 13 because the whole season is like this i swear at least 50 of their accounting budget must be spent on aljean's music montages well you know what this must be right before i i'm i'm certainly going to be paying attention when we start getting into 15 and 16 but like we we have heard from pals in the tv industry that thanks to the music market dying

and that you can't make money off of selling your musics too much but you can make more money licensing songs to tv shows and movies that the price just went up and up and up and so maybe this was like the last time it was much more affordable to do it on on the tv budget and then as the year in the next few years after this season it keeps getting so much more expensive like to to do it and to have a licensed song like i i think we've heard from pals in the uh in the kids realm of animation that they're like it is so much cheaper to pay for a new song to be written for your show and recorded than it is to license any song any person has ever heard of also that they decided to associate duff man with a licensed song i'm trying to remember they

definitely did it in the city of new york with the yellow track but how many times have they introed him with that song i wonder because it's got to be like what maybe like a dozen times because they can't afford to do it every time he appears i definitely think when he's there in an official capacity they they play the song with with his spokes babes yes yeah with the spokes babes yeah hey you know what we're gonna get to the spuds mckenzie episode in a little bit so I'll keep an ear out for how much they use yellow in that one. But James, in your videos, like about 13 and 14, you, you were the one who really made me notice like, yeah, Al Jean really pumped.

Not that in the previous seasons to this one, there weren't musical montages and everything, but he does it so much more than, than most to do uh most showrunners did yeah it's really interesting because you think back to like seasons three and four like you see an episode like bart's friend falls in love how there was like entire montages of homer saying goodbye to his stomach you know like they really enjoy list jokes back then and like you notice the same kind of trend in the algean era as well where they just do one gag after another gag after another gag but one of the differences is that they love setting it to music in this era so yeah you're right smack in the beginning of the algean music montage era

right now yeah and we'll get to it but i think part of the the joke like the meta humor is they also choose the most obvious song which if you don't know if you don't view it as the meta humor then just like oh what an obvious song they're not very creative when it's intentionally uh bad or less like a corny song to use like say sugar sugar but i also like in this bit too this is a rare moment where homer's smarter than everybody else in the room like he knows an answer no one else does but i think it that homer can read the label that it says the answer that's how he knows i think that's important yeah yeah that's true that's not that's what you can't see in the clip is that it says made with ancient hops and greens or whatever yeah since ancient times uh but ancient hop green

juice i love i don't know if this this is too deep a cut, but this scene has always also reminded me of there is like this got milk commercial where the whole premise of it is that this person is calling into like a quiz show or something and they're like eating peanut butter. And the question is asking like, I think it's like who shot Alexander Hamilton or something. And the person can't get out the answer because their mouth is full of peanut butter. So I don't think it's meant to be an homage to that scene but i always think of that dumb god milk commercial you know what that was a a very popular commercial the guy going yeah yeah i i think that maybe the inspiration was there i think if they were going to do a parody it would have been more direct but i feel like they they started there and that classic commercial? Directed by Michael Bay. Whoa, really?

Okay. He should have stuck with milk commercials. It's true. It's true, yeah. So speaking of references to movies that people don't know, this is when Homer gets his chalkboard, which is a reference to Anthony Hopkins' character in Legends of the Fall. I had to look up scenes from it to be like, is this really it? I don't want to just go by the commentary. but yes his his character in the movie does have a stroke

and because it's in olden times he has a chalkboard he writes on instead of like homer should really have just a paper and a pad pad and pen uh but it's it's funnier him writing on a chalkboard this is also olden time so he can't use the notes app yes on his phone just showing his uh it's just it does feel weird to me like bart pulling out his cell phone like i'm just like yeah i guess he bart should have a cell phone today but it still feels feels weird to me yeah i love i love the little chalkboard i feel like whenever that little chalkboard like appears on the episode i was like yes this is where the episode starts for me um because i don't know like the scene before like works how he's not able to talk even though you could argue the whole situation is kind of weird in general

because he clearly can talk in the hibbert scene but once like the chalkboard starts up like i feel like we really start getting the inner monologue of what he's thinking how he's listening to marge and then some of those chalkboard gags though not actual chalkboard gags not in the traditional sense and another Simpsons mystery that's solved is that Marge says the things on the curtain are corn cobs because sometimes they're painted like carrots sometimes they're painted like corn cobs but they're actually corn cobs so there you have it I love that Marge just stands around and counts them all day like when she it's it's really it's like a man's understanding of what a woman does I guess I guess they count things around the house uh you know while i'm out earning

the money but uh yes i think uh this this little bit here it does seem to be an answer to jerkass homer of like just what if homer actually listened to marge what would that be like that that novel idea did it go a little something like this scene. How was your day? Do you really want to know? Mm-hmm. Well, let's see. I was in the kitchen counting the corn cobs on the curtains when who should ring the doorbell but Ned Flanders?

It seems he wants to ban culottes in the schools pardon me french but sometimes that man's a goofy doofy march thinks flanders is annoying this marriage just got interesting the marriage was bad up until now but now it's finally interesting they have one thing in common now i love this bit uh i like this runner they just had of marge saying like you know that guy's a meanie beanie fofini and now calling ned a goofy doofy i like marge's g-rated insults at people i love i love how she shakes her head like goofy doofy it's adorable it's aggressively down to earth too like they could have filled this scene with anything but instead they decided to go with this very down to earth too like they could have filled this scene with anything

but instead they decided to go with this very down to earth ned flanders showing up and like that's how homer connects to his wife over his mutual dislike of flanders like it's very day in the life which is kind of nice to see oh no it's so and also to make up the thing that ned the joke thing that ned is doing banning cul culottes, it's a more grounded thing. Like, this is Gene getting more grounded. Compare this to, say, a radioactive ape breaking into Ned's place and holding him captive and driving around in his car. This is a little different from that.

And then we have a cute little short moment of Homer and Maggie playing around. I like hearing Maggie make her noises. And also, this was some of the best animation in the episode of them spinning around together. Yeah. I enjoy the domesticity of this second act. It does feel a lot like season three. You know, like what's happening at home? What are all the characters doing?

Well, it's so funny on the commentary they were all worried and i think still like regretting like boy we wrote a episode where homer can't talk for the middle of the episode we're losing our best character but i think it all really works you know yeah two works way better than act three like actually it's the usual they say it on the commentary it's the usual of like oh the act three didn't work as well at the at the table read so he went crazier and zanier in our rewrite i think one of the cool things when when re-watching it right now is that they still do write homer in kind of the same clumsy way as before like he's definitely being more thoughtful like when lisa comes in and talks about her problems with Ralph Wiggum,

he like wants to comfort her, but they couch it in a way where he wants to like shut her talk hole or whatever it is that he says. Yeah. I, and I've also loved a bit of Homer when he says he writes down. Yes. And Lisa goes,

really? He writes races, writes yes again. That's great. And the phrase is cork her cry hole. That's right. Yeah. Now I have a little clip here of Homer helping Bart and Lisa separately.

We were playing four square and I called no double taps and Ralph double taps. And I said, you're out. And he says, I can do a somersault, which has nothing to do with anything. Aw. Maybe a hug will cork her cry hole. Thanks for listening, Dad. We gotta coordinate

on this thing. So the substitute teacher comes in and says her name is mrs duty and everyone's looking at me like take it part run with it and it hits me i've become a clown a class clown and it sickens me wow bart has feelings mrs duty yeah all the scenes with the family are great, especially the grandpa one. Yeah, yeah. I think some of the best all-time grandpa lines are in that scene. It's like there's some bangers in there.

I love him describing Liberty Cabbage and saying, like, long story short is a phrase that he just keeps going and going and going. And Homer's loving it. He's not bored by it at all. Sometimes with that, like like grandpa scene like i really start wondering if maybe they push things too far because like i don't know like homer's definitely changed as a character but i feel like even homer think this is still boring bullshit i should run away right like homer kind of feels like he's being written like he's on drugs like he's in the uh in the weed episode later you know maybe that steak entered his brain and changed his

his mind as well that's the real story of what's happening here well that liberty cabbage joke you know it was meant to seem as musty because it's about how when they uh sauerkraut they didn't want to use the word when they were at war with germany so they called it liberty cabbage and here you know we're just ahead of the return of freedom fries as uh as as the iraq war begins i love that bart hates that he's become a class clown like that he's trapped in in the character of his own making here people were doing do the line bart off screen yes and also though i i really love that lisa is sick of ralph schtick like this is that to me feels like the writer saying we're sick of writing non sequiturs

from Ralph. Like, Oh, then he just says I can do a somersault, which has nothing to do with anything. That feels like the writers talking about how, like we, we wrote a character that is like,

can just say anything. And it's a joke. Yeah. I feel like that they were announcing the end of Ralph jokes, but they didn't stop. No, no, they,

it's too much fun. It's such an adorable little Lisa impression, too, where, I don't know, I'm not in love with how they write Ralph in this era in general, but that they just kind of, they give Lisa this chance to show off her little, like, impression of silly Ralph, and then it's over

something as silly and mundane as, like, a double tapping in Foursquare. Like, who cares, in general, general like as part of it but the fact that they're able to like let yardley smith like try that impression on the show is is really fun i love the lisa scene yeah it's always fun when characters on the show imitate other characters oh yeah it's always great then uh marge then sets up the next scene that is the annual springfield formal event yeah i love that name it's like the the i think that the meta joke is like we couldn't think of a name or it's it's like what's the most generic

title for this uh and this again it feels like aljean's like hey remember we used to do a runner of pointing at a framed newspaper headline so that's what they do here with local man ruins everything uh which i do love that homer is holding an american flag while riding a donkey that smashes into a giant cake but it is very similar to idiot ruins game springfield forfeits pennant and carolyn omine was like why is this hanging in their bathroom yes it's not even a newspaper article just like a picture of homer in a headline there's no like newspaper framing around it it's a solemn reminder in their marriage of when that happened yes yeah may it never happen again this is when uh the march decides they're finally going to do it and uh she gives him some silver polish which homer's reaction to it is like a dog having

his belly scratched i like to think it's partially he's huffing the polish and that's that's what's doing it so they head to the formal event as march saysge says, it's the one place you can go. You can wear a tiara and not look crazy. This is a bunch of very silly rich people jokes, but I like all of them. Burns, Burns asked him a question and Homer just writes so hungry. And he's like, that's right. This, this person is from Southern Hungary. Here's some money.

And he's like, he doesn't know how to leave the scene. So he's like, you know what? I'll just hand you a bunch of money. And the music in the background is from southern hungary so yeah yeah i do enjoy the cleverness of turning so hungry into southern hungary it's cute yeah they then talk to the wealthy dowager and she compliments on how henpecked homer is and i like i like him uh sorry i like her dropping my husband mac stone with a ball yes yeah the most old-timey aristocrat name but she's like name dropping

like in case you don't know which is a great it also feels like an attack on ian maxton graham and his very bougie name maxton wither ball and they're so fancy that they're going to eat at toad hall the uh the fancy landed gentry home of the wind in the willows where mr toad lives what what is this reference though like it's so weird how to see how the scene with her ends because like like this has nothing to do with the wind in the widow wind in the willows otherwise right but then she just drops this toad hall reference out of nowhere that's what i love about it that instead of making up a rich fancy place they just say toad hall the place the rich fancy place it it might also be you know know how much they love Disney and Disneyland stuff like this.

You do go to Toad Hall to ride Mr. Toad's wild ride. So it could also be that. Which, hey, a deep cut in our podcast library, guys. Listen to our What a Cartoon podcast we did about the BBC Wind in the Willows show. The stop motion one. Trippy as hell. Yeah, it was a lot of fun then uh yes there's just some very good dance animation as everybody's uh very solemnly and boringly dancing around but i i

like all the rich people jokes before it and this this is where homer very loudly just says clearly i'm horny but marge says like i don't know what you said but i bet it was beautiful then comes in the donkey which i agree with the commentary the donkey doesn't look like he's asking homer to ride him uh but more ride him i had the donkey heard homer was horny so yeah he sees the opportunity the way he looks back it motions to his behind it's just like yeah yeah well well remember this is the episode that also had those gay dogs earlier suggesting like to santa's little helper in a very similar way the angle at which the gay dogs are drawn

for santa's little helper to look at them their behinds are centered like you see their butts that is true yeah homer that donkey his his donkey friend is very random uh and that he sees the cake and he's like come on let's smash into the cake but he who invited him max dode wither ball it's his it's his donkey i guess he's also at the uh demolition derby as well that's true so so then uh hibbert comes around and uh he's blurting out medical situations to everybody including letting homer know that he's going to uh have his uh jaw removed and and he'll be back to normal which at first shocks marge and then also uh we find out that revel in love joy is getting pec implants which he is not ashamed of he's just like thank you like he's just super

super yes yeah that's a good line to go out on on a very weird joke yes yeah i wonder if helen love joy requested them or if it's his is does he need it for his own confidence or is it like does helen want this where where's the pecking plants coming from we don't see them in the future unfortunately oh this is definitely a helen lovejoy thing you think it's her james yeah it's her request spice things up in the bedroom unfortunately from doing simpsons mysteries and simpsons histories i know way too much about their love life and uh this is definitely a hell and love joy request on her end i see yeah she she's tired of him spending all that money on trains and wants him to invest it in some pec implants then we come back from the break homer gets his thing uh his jaw cut and this is where there's a

bad breath joke and hibbert has to remove his shoes to cover the odor which is kind of weird the only part that made me laugh is the very late adr of homer going nicely done i was like what a weird compliment for homer i think they're just acknowledging how crude that joke is where hibbert is like the only thing that smells worse than your mouth is my feet yes so let's get to work and they also seem seem very underwhelmed or confused by Mo requesting to be taken to Orgasmville. Yeah, they're just like, yeah, Mo's sort of embarrassed, though. It feels like at this point, Mo should not be embarrassed about calling an escort. He should be like, yeah, you all know I do this.

This is what I do. I are escorts. That scene went on a lot longer than i expected because they pause and listen to literally the whole call and then he comes out and there's like an odd moment between them as well very awkward yes yeah it's uh but but this is where homer learns the importance of listening where i can see how they don't detail what the original third act was but i could see them going like this third act what you pitched was boring let's have a parody in here we need to have a tv show parody and so very awkwardly a television producer just walks up to them in the bar but hey she's an alcoholic

i love how they deal with that yes i'm an alcoholic in uh in our next clip and when i couldn't talk i learned to listen i I learned so much about my family. You'd be surprised how much you hear if you just listen once in a while. Really? Let's try it. Hello? Yeah, I'd like to arrange for an escort, please. To where?

How about Orgasmville? Hello? Hello? Oh, hey. How you doing? I was just telling all the guys how losing the power of speech made me a better man. I couldn't agree more. You're today's modern, enlightened man.

The kind we television producers have been booking since the mid-70s. Hey, what are you doing in here? I'm an alcoholic. Homer, will you appear on my show? Sure thing, Elkie. And Dana Gould's there to say, hey, that's my wife, who's no longer his wife, Sue Nagel, named after him. Former president of HBO? Yes, yeah, who I believe she now just exited a job at Annapurna. She was working there on their TV stuff.

When they were doing the commentary, they were still married, and also it was right before game of thrones because it was 2010 so her successes weren't as notable at that point she is apparently the the executive who uh staked their reputation on getting game of thrones on the channel yeah i'm just glad that he made that comment um in this episode instead of the one where lindsey nagel comments that she's a sexual predator and that's why she changes jobs so much oh that's right yeah yeah you know i'm a guest sexual predator and that's why she changes jobs so much. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would guess sexual predator, alcoholic, go hand in hand for her.

I think she's in the bar for both reasons. Yes. Yeah. And then we get a return to afternoon yak briefly seen in Bye Bye Birdie. The show comes on, Homer goes, canceled. Yes. Changed the channel. The joke is like, man, boo, canceled.

Homer turns it off. Yeah. the channel the joke is like man boo canceled homer turns it off yeah and this is not me uh implant like making this up but on the commentary it's like well this set piece is because women make you watch this awful show and don't you hate it and uh like i i liked snl's uh view parody but i was also 15 and probably very misogynist being like a little shithead. This doesn't age very well, I don't think. No, I mean, look, the view, it's as banal and empty as most any TV chat show you're going to watch. It's not like it's high art or anything. It only got good in recent years because it made Meghan McCain cry all the time.

Sure, that was fun. Yes, yeah. You know, the best day of my life on Twitter was when I insulted her enough that she blocked me and I don't see her stuff anymore. I reminded her that her, on the record, her father called her, and this was after he died, her mother the C word. This was in a newspaper article. That's what got her to block me. But yeah, the view, I mean, I would see it from time to time in my summer deal. In the summer days off.

You got a summer deal? Well, I mean, in high school, when you have the summer off, you couldn't just stream everything on YouTube and watch whatever. If you're going to watch television all day, you're probably going to have to watch some of The View or you'll come across it. And so I watched it a little bit, but the original incarnation of the view i think barbara walters who created it she had higher aspirations for it that it would be a more serious show i think and also that it would be empowering for women and maybe this is also about how sexist media is that the only times you'd hear about the view is when stars on the view would fight with each other and it would make news like and it was just what gets promoted that women disagree with each other and that women don't support each other like i don't know james how how much is were you exposed to the view around this time

i know i knew a little bit about it i i didn't see it directly but when watching this episode it does bring me back to the time especially seeing the parody of star jones in the scene because i was like oh yeah star jones i remember she was like a big thing on that show for a while but then i also remember that there was always like this big like like the media was not great about star jones as well at the time because she was she like struggled with weight issues at the time and there was a lot of stuff out there about you know just just trashing her all the time like i makes me wonder where star jones is now but does make me feel like oddly nostalgic for this time in pop culture history of because who are the other people on is joy behar is in this barbara walters and this was before elizabeth hasselbeck right

yes yeah so so the four parodied here are barbara walters joy behar lisa ling and star jones i forgot lisa ling was on the view yes yeah yeah and so uh yes this is before hasselbeck this see this is the last time they could do this joke about this setup of the view because after they get rid of lisa ling who she is you know she lasts i think under two years she's gone 10 months after this episode aired and i believe it was that was when they discovered what we need on the show is to intentionally have somebody who will make this show worse by having a blonde republican woman on there to say actually i agree with everything george w bush does but i think that

is also the difference between they started the show in the clinton administration now they're in post the 9-11 world and so they need they choose to have a red state basically a fox news personality as one of the women on the show and that is that has pretty much been the dynamics for the 20 years since of like uh once barbara walters the show, she would appear sporadically. But really, when they got Rosie O'Donnell on the show, the show is about Rosie O'Donnell arguing with the whatever the Republican woman was on the show. And then when Rosie left, then it was Whoopi Goldberg as the host and her and Joy Behar arguing with the blonde Republican woman. Right. Also also one other thing about this uh and this is no uh you know no offense to trust mcneil because it was written

like this but you're just co-opting gilda radner's baba wawa impression yeah yeah because the lines are written for that speech impediment to be funny just like well this was a joke 20 plus years ago and i mean i don't even think uhry O'Terry leaned into that impression as hard because she was probably like well I love Gilda Radner and I don't want to do the same thing she did yeah it was pretty tired by then yeah I agree yeah I mean the Simpsons version of her she basically talks like a baby the entire time through and it's really distracting yeah I think I prefer all the again to your point James that this is the penis season i prefer all the the penis size jokes i'm talking that was the line that stuck with me from this episode and i many other lines i forget

but i long remembered i'm talking downtown which uh i i agree you need to you need to keep it up downtown that's what i think but i but yes to let everybody know where what happened with these view stars lisa ling left tens months later star jones stayed on the show until june 2006 when she was kind of fired kind of quit she was not having a good time on the show barbara walters would appear sporadically on the show but eventually she retired from and is pretty much retired from public life she's she is not uh very young anymore and that in 2014 she stopped doing the show joy behar still on the show to this day uh still co-hosting the show and they have her say call homer homola as a reference to like the yiddish word bubbala joy behar has to tell people this all the time to this day she is

not jewish joy behar is not jewish she is an italian woman from new york just like gary shandling yes but he's a man yeah or or yeah i get gary marshall too yeah sometimes just you just talk like that and you're not jewish yes yeah but she's had to deal with it her whole life but why why don't we hear a little flavor of afternoon yak welcome to. Today, we will meet a man who couldn't open his mouth, so he learned to open his heart. Please welcome Homer and Marge Simpson. So, Marge, tell, what's it like kissing a man with a mouth full of metal? My boyfriend has a metal tongue stud.

Who cares what's on his tongue? Long as he's a stud where he counts, I'm talking downtown. Mom, what was Homer like before he broke his jaw? Well, he would eat all the time. We'd be making love and he'd have a mouth full of Hershey's miniatures. Crackle was my favorite. I hope that was the only miniature in the bedroom. I'm talking downtown.

And before he broke his jaw, he never listened. But now he takes to heart everything I say. Well, as much as humanly possible. Spickle audience. Yeah. Crackle is the best Hershey's miniature. I agree. It's the best.

You know, okay. Who prefers Crackle to Hershey's or Nestle Crunch? Oh, God. I mean, anything to like adulterate that awful like cheap chocolate flavor. Nestle? Yeah. Just like put anything else in it. I don't want to taste the pure uh hershey right yeah it just it's bad you know the the hershey crackle i think has a better chocolate it's more a higher chocolate

to crisp uh ratio and a crunch bar you get more crisp to chocolate sorry sorry i'm more of a bunch of crunch guy myself oh sure that's those are the butterfinger bb's of the crunch world yeah bunch of crunches is a favorite of mine in a movie theater the crowd of women booing and that also just feels like a very male view on the show of just like the view is where women boo men for existing for not being perfect like they want us to be yes uh but then we we cut to after we we then i have other half of the afternoon yak bit because this bit is insane and i guess it was filmed by marge and then given to them yes we have a clip i just love that marge cuts to a clip honestly this bit here of like play the clip i could replay this on our show many times he did such crazy things roll the clip ostrich burgers get your ostrich burgers i'll take one okay you

pick one out and i'll punch it to death oh dude i thought we were friends. Well, I'm not proud of that clip. Homala, it's easy to change, but what's hard is not changing back. Do you promise not to revive your reckless, reckless ways? I don't know. The Demolition Derby is next month.

Please, homie. No more craziness for me? Well, okay. For you, I'll be as dull as Dilbert. Very good. Our next topic, my son still wets the bed. You told me we were going to Red Lobster! Yeah, shocking bird violence.

He punches this thing. We have our bird. Everybody hates birds jingle. We haven't played this jingle in so long. Also also that bird was exploded for talking on its phone that's oh yeah i guess uh you know i didn't consider the cartoonier bird is bird violence too but yes here's here's the jingle everybody hates birds right at least the bird got revenge homer was gonna punch it to death like that is such a crazy thing he's not gonna use any uh weapon or like anything he's just going to punch on a giant ostrich until

it is dead like a bloody pulp i guess and homer is uh peeing on the grave of animated dilbert oh yes yeah uh two years too late but still I like how they also somehow have this clip where Marge both filmed this and she filmed it from multiple angles as well, like a regular Simpsons clip. It really, really breaks my brain a little. It almost reminds me of that community clip show of clip show items that aren't from actual episodes because it feels like a simpsons clip show moment yeah yeah march shot coverage they did multiple takes yeah they uh you know at this point they would be filming this much oh he's gonna do something how i mean also the the concept of

homer owns a bunch of ostriches like that feels like a bad episode pitch too like what does homer do with a bunch of ostriches and he will beat them to death and then eat them that's what he did not to spoil an upcoming episode in season 13 but this is also the ostrich season because uh bart runs into one uh when they go to the uh what is it that uh that old movie star guy's house oh that's right yeah it's that's it isn't the lastest gun in the west too yeah they they must have learned that you could eat ostriches at this time and they're like let's keep getting ostrich is a fun word and they get to honk and stuff it was uh i mean people just had just discovered red meat was bad for you they're like well what else can we kill yeah perhaps this is another one we can chalk up to jokes of aging writers having to change their diet my wife made me a turkey. Our wives don't want us to be fun and crazy.

They hate heart disease. Also, I like to think that Luanne Van Houten brought Milhouse onto the show, not to humiliate him, but to be put on television. She just wanted to be seen on TV. 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 electricireland.ie the whole sequence does feel like that they had so much trouble trying to get homer to not revert back to his old ways that they had to invent this entire tv show setup just to keep the story going does it feel that way to anybody else yeah i think it feels like it was kind of like done by the end of act two and then it was like act three uh if you're getting impatient out there here's a scene of homer being a jerk just to remind you yeah and to have characters literally say out loud and homer you can't revert to your old ways off but i want to go to the destruction derby demolition derby setting that

up as well for for the big ending which also is just uh well that's in make room for lisa in season 10 that answered the demolition derby as well yeah yeah yeah that's right wow yeah i was like there had to be something recently i do think marge coming home uh and saying like oh i guess things are back to normal uh that does feel like a commentary on how in the scully years homer would literally destroy the home and leave it to marge to clean up like he would flood it entirely i'll be at moe's he would explode things this is a really good joke about sitcom jokes uh of of marge being upset that how boring homer has become i'm gonna kill you!

Well, so much for the new Homer. What's going on? We're rehearsing a play. Yes, and I was merely reading the title. I'm gonna kill you. Hmm. It's just a false alarm. Yep.

Nothing to get excited about. Well, I'll be in the kitchen if you need me. Professor Van Doren, so good to see you. Ah, I'm rehearsing a play, I see. This place is so dull. The 911 button is covered with dust. I just poured myself a new glass of milk. The old one sat out for a little while.

Are you coming to bed? It's 7.30. Marge, I could stand here and argue with you, but then I'd have to get a new glass of milk. Good night, honey. Boy, things are going really good. Good, good, good, good, good, good, good. Hmm, look at that freckle.

I should dig that out. Good, good. That feels good. It's a dark joke about self-harm yeah i also like the absurdist take on the rehearsing a play thing because uh i mean i'm explaining the joke here but you don't loudly shout the name of the play you're about to rehearse yes yeah yeah that's so this is a great joke about sitcom cliches because, you know, in a 70s sitcom, they like say on a episode of Three's Company, there would be a big misunderstanding of like, we were reading from a play but the great bit is that they never actually read from the play homer reads the title and then they say hello to a professor who walks into the room homer and bart don't actually practice lines on screen uh that's just so good i mean and that like uh obviously there's not actually a play by edward albee called i'm going to kill you that's

no he wrote i was afraid of virginia wolf and actually i love this one because uh i did not a play by Edward Albee called I'm Going to Kill You. No. He wrote I Was Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And actually, I love this one because I did not play it on stage, but in a classroom-like reading of an Edward Albee play, I was the lead in The American Dream, one of his one actors of Edward Albee. So I'm a fan of his work. It's a good, it's a funny, look up The American Dream. It's a funny little play.

It kind of feels like since Homer is basically like a mellow self. Now it's almost like a self meta commentary of now we can only do the most schlocky 1970s ask a jokes for a while as well. Like, I don't know if it's like, obviously that scene that you described is very arch already but it seems like they're very consciously trying to dial things back for a little while like it's weird that matt selman was so concerned about act two being boring because i kind of feel like the concern right here is like and the characters are feeling it too that like this part is kind of the

slowest part of the episode yeah and i also think it's a less successful version of something they did before in the day the violence died where in that episode the story ends in act two and the characters are experiencing like existential dread like no we are in a sitcom we're the heroes we need to figure out a way to you know finish the story it doesn't finish in the end of this story yeah instead it's lester and eliza and this one it's marge laying in bed thinking like well no a character can't change forever in a sitcom that this is just not how things should be and this is the last act where something has to happen there has to be a finale in this episode why isn't there one and marge is going insane that there's

no ending to this episode and so i i mean to this in the answer i said it earlier but in the answer to oh is homer too much of a jerk ass they're saying that if he was just a boring guy who worried if milk sat out for too long then it wouldn't be a fun show and then it would drive marge even crazy too though i guess do this feels like guys saying wives want their husbands to be uh to chill out but then they become boring and they hate how boring they are make up your mind wives and what's nice is that they're not like i like that they're actually not like consciously bringing that to the forefront as well about especially with any kind of jerk ass homer commentary this could have been like you know what i mean this could have been kind

of a wink to the audience of uh hey you guys really want the homer who is going to destruction derby things at the end whereas this one they do tend to play just very in universe as a commentary between their relationship and i think it does play a little less obnoxiously by just doing it in universe and uh this is where marge is magically given the form i love all this form comedy like oh there's the form and there's there's a great cut scene with the form yes it's so sad they cut this scene that so uh the form flies over to march she takes it and goes off to the derby we then show see march entering the derby and when she says like listen to all that revving and then the deleted scene which is hidden on the dvd it's not in the

normal deleted scene sections but it's march uh then saying oh it sounds like a bunch of washing machines starting up because obviously march can only make comparisons to laundry or dishwashing but uh then the person an official from the event says hey you just can't compete in this wait is that a form yeah it's good and we find out that that marge's email address is bart's mom 16 yeah at aol at yahoo at hotmail who knows try them all that's for us to guess but uh clearly she she favors bart i guess with that with that email yeah you know that's uh sucks for it to be maggie and lisa yeah yeah yeah i i like the idea of marge trying to find a fun third act for the episode what i don't like is i said it before uh like i i really associate this era with a lack of confidence in their storytelling and it's like i see it so many times where it's like a wacky act three caper that seems to come

out of nowhere and i think this is like a wacky act three set piece that doesn't naturally follow from what we had seen before. And it feels like them just trying to juice up this third act as much as possible in an artificial way. Oh, it definitely feels a lot like season 12 or season 11. Like the one that I think of a lot is the Canyon Arrow episode where they have to get them in trouble with the rhinoceroses, like leaving the zoo where Marge has to come in and save the day on that one. Actually, with all the Marge car action, that is a lot like that one.

But there's like this kind of narrative that, oh, from going from seasons 12 to season 13, that suddenly they stopped doing these act three tangents or dangerous situations. But this is very much like a season 12. This is very much like a season 12 episode. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I think I said this before in the brawl in the family one a season 12 this is very much like a season 12 episode oh yeah yeah i well i think uh i i said

this before in the brawl in the family one and and she a little faith that gene is trying to get things back on the family but he still has this room full of people hired in the dirty mike scully episode so they're still and also it's the more of the culture of the time that the zaniness and the filth still comes through and on top of that i mean you've got dana ghoul there who is a zany filthy guy who i i i think maybe we over credit things but there's so many jokes in here like boy that feels like dana ghoul pitch that yeah usually in a good way sometimes not yeah but would you say that the um the lack of marge in the first half of the episode ends up hurting this ending?

Because when rewatching it just now, since they have literally two different opening set pieces and a third act kind of swerve where Marge kind of takes over the thrust of the situation, it is a very disorganized episode as much as I like it. And the whole pivot to Marge is a little clunky like on re-watching it now yeah I agree suddenly it's Marge's story I think we should have had an act one setup where she thinks Homer I mean it's like the background of the show where Marge isn't like Homer's behavior but there should have been an incident outside of the injury where it's like Homer needs to calm down Homer needs to listen to me something like that where it feels like her story starts in act two there should be hints of it in act one you know it's funny this is the inverse of what we just said in sweet and sour marge because in that it starts as a marge episode and then it ends with a wacky homer adventure to an

island to get a bunch of sugar yeah this is now the opposite of that where marge actually steals a homer episode in the finale from him captain wacky is now captain uh thoughtful it's so yeah she has to take up the uh the moniker herself that's a really good point because this does feel like the bizarro episode in a lot of way because we have like homer being okay with like homer not being okay with bart doing jackass stunts and And then like Homer, like listening to grandpa ramble. And then now Marge is stealing Homer's story. Like everything about this episode is backwards. It's kind of refreshing in a weird way,

but it's really, really weird. You know, the joke about gouging, like saying that it's time to start your gouging when selling merchandise. Those joke prices were just the prices at a wrestling show i went to recently like i when i went to a the aew double or nothing in las vegas i did pay 40 for a shirt that 40 t-shirt that is what it the covid was free buddy yes it came with the shirt i i did get covid and a t-shirt at that event i wish i should have read the sign free covid with every t-shirt i'm fine now everybody henry henry lived and that five

thousand dollar jacket does not seem that crazy anymore especially with like the the kind of experiences disney has been selling lately oh god yes yeah honestly a five thousand dollar crew jacket is like nothing and it disney yeah they they will build evergreen terrace you can stay in the simpsons house for ten thousand a night i bet in five years and we'll do it better start saving up we'll do it yeah oh god i really hope they don't do that someday because i have to go to that right you have to we all have to dump our money on like making some kind of impression video right like they should cop us yes i would think let's all just keep trying to get even more famous yeah and then disney will

give us the the free uh influencer visit i'm gonna say in five years we'll all be millionaire simpsons influencers and we'll be able to get on the ground floor of this and by that i mean we'll be sleeping in the living room yes and we'll say god disney and their imagineers have gone so uh have done such a great job you have to go there when it opens this fall what can't this company do i can't wait to be telling my subscribers that yeah this thing is ten thousand dollars but if it's a good value to you then it's totally worth it it's not for everyone but i think yeah this is also the return of smashy smashy last year yeah itchy and scratchy land uh and uh also uh there's some really good action animation here the figure eight of the cars just nearly hitting each other as they cycle around that's

really good i also like all the the the school bus has become the skull bus and i like that otto is very supportive of marge in this you know my my brain inserted a a second joke into this that i think is is actually it would have improved the episode not to be too full of myself but uh otto like writes the bus with the stop sign he should say wow so that's what that lever does or something like that like he's never used it before i was waiting for like comment on the thing you just did yeah that would be funny i guess they thought it was like absurdist enough to write the bus with the little stop sign that comes out i mean it's a funny little gag yeah when i saw the figure eight that they were doing i hate to say it from listening to so many simpsons commentaries

but i immediately thought of the poor animator who saw that stage direction in the notes they're like crap now we have to animate like a dozen cars moving a figure eight for like 10 seconds they just animated six lesbians running in circles on a float what are you doing to these people boy yes as an animator to be told here okay we start with a parade and then we end with a dying demolition derby i i love that marge enjoys it for just a minute just her saying like i hit someone and then i taunted him i've never felt more alive and then right after that when she gets hit but she's like what was i thinking trying to feel alive forget that i also

like how she's treating it like being in traffic like go around go around oh and also don't hurt me i'm not like you people i'm loved that's a great line to hear there's some fun stuff i i feel like am i forgetting they never reveal who the driver of this mysterious black car is and i in my head i'm like it's somebody we know and the reveal is gonna be funny but they never reveal it it's crazy yeah it's like a missing joke yeah i feel like if this episode were done during the scully years i actually do feel like they probably would have revealed who was in that car or at least made a bigger deal like i feel like al jean since he is a little more relationship

focused they were content to like get homer in there and like save marge and then they're just like that's it whereas i feel like if this were done maybe two years ago i think they probably would have like had even like a bigger showdown like as an action piece yeah i think well i think a better version of that joke is in the opening to lisa's wedding because you're just seeing two knights smash each other and then the reveal that it was flanders bashing in with smithers his face for no reason but you learn what sounds means just before we get to this i want to i just want to talk about it really quick there's a popeye parody in this episode and it's i i do enjoy it to an extent and i don't always want to say like oh they did this before this on the critic but this was on the critic and that's not the problem the problem is the critic one is so much better

it both commits to the art style and commits to the bit where uh in the critic i forget the episode but it's lady hawk lady hawk franklin remembers back to when he fell in love with eleanor and it's a popeye parody where he gets like booze instead of spinach and it's like it's the same idea right yeah it's i mean it's just uh yeah it's fully drawn in the style yeah and it's just a popeye short in the middle of the show i i really wish they would have committed to the style and the parody because in the middle of the parody it stops being the parody and then it picks back up like i wish they would have just done an entire pop by segment it just feel again not on no

confidence because when he arrives on donkey back it's like dun dun dun dun dun dun dun whatever that song is yeah is that like magnificent seven or something i don't know what that is because they use that in the lisa's pony as well yeah similar sound alike yeah but uh sorry sorry james i was interrupting you a frustrating thing the frustrating thing about it though is that the donkey callback is actually kind of good like when he gives him the beer and it looks like it's going to work out and then he just like like falls over like it's a good screw the audience joke like it's a good swerve but you're right it does totally make the Popeye parody very disjointed I love when Homer drinks it and he kind of like his gut moves in a way a Popeye body does and when Marge is doing the arm flail like

that's a ton of fun too but then they also want to have a line of Homer instead of just doing Popeye muttering he very clearly says quit banging my wife which that's a different style of joke than a popeye joke it's it's cute and all uh and it gets more of the like you know it's sex obsessed season 13 i wish they'd i i agree with you bob i wish they'd gone all the way like they did in the critic episode yeah but but here is a little of homer saving the day with once he finally returns to being an alcoholic which also sorry before i play this clip too i'm sorry i like how you frame that it's like but by becoming an alcoholic again he can save the day well that's the thing that this

actually that beer reactivates him it also doesn't really flow through the story because homer never stopped drinking beer he's drinking beer in act two when he's taught when he meets lindsey nagel he's drinking beer like it's not that homer got sober right right so that beer activates him is kind of a cheap deal that actually steals even more from the critic because in the critic scene it is that franklin drinks a martini and then becomes super strong so it relates it to alcohol as well okay, I'll just play the clip now. Go around! Go around!

There she is. Dad, you've got to do something. But bold moves are no longer my forte. She could get hurt. What do I do? What do I do? Wait, i know bear here sure sonny this beer's delicious i'm gonna save some meat wave now let's get this show on the road i like his muttering i like his i and okay the misdirect with the donkey what i like is when homer says i need gas for me ass fuel for me mule and then after he drinks it and falls asleep

homer isn't angry he goes like he looks like a little angel like it's it makes it that homer wanted him to fall asleep by getting him drunk at the beginning of the scene as well like when you play back the clip he's also like standing there like wondering what he should do like i'm not gonna save my wife because i just had a character arc like it's really really bizarre that they have committed to this character arc so much that like homer is frozen in action like i hate to be too much of a little jerk about this because I feel like one. But I love old Popeye cartoons, especially like the black and white Fleischer ones. It's like Popeye's mouth didn't really move when he was talking, when he was just doing like not incidental muttering.

But like if he was like a scene where Popeye's got to say, hey, I'll live. It's me or whatever. His mouth would move. But if he was just like marching around and beating people up, there'd be no lip flab. It'd just be like, hey, guy, come in here and just do a bunch of popeye noises and nobody cared so it's weird to see homer's like mouth move accurately to these popeye mutterings well i mean that probably had to be a problem for the overseas animators yeah you know and this is not blaming like oh the overseas animators did a bad job but they are probably so trained to be like if you mess up this lip flap you're in big trouble

and it's going to come out of your end or whatever. So even if they're given the direction of, don't have Homer's mouth move while he's talking in this scene, there still might be animators that are like, no, that has to be a trick. Like, if we don't animate his mouth, we're going to get in trouble. This is a sting. Yeah. Again, I don't want to be too picky,

but it's like if you're going to do the Popeye bit and you only half-ass it, no pun intended, I'm going to notice, you know? Yeah. Well, then Marge's car explodes too, no pun intended. I'm going to notice, you know. Well, then Marge's car explodes too, which I guess they have to get a new car after this or replace it with the exact same one. I mean, I love Bart's thoughts at the end of this episode where I'm like, I'm with you. I forgot where this episode was going. Yes, yeah.

Even he agrees. Just like, yeah, what did I need? What did I want? Yeah, this ending here, I'll play the clip. Yeah, you're right, Bob. The ending is Lisa and Bart are both playing the audience here. Lisa is us saying, well, that's inconsistent. And then Bart's saying, who cares?

Like, the episode's over. And I got to see Homer smash something. But, yeah, so let's hear our final clip. He saved her. Isn't it great to have the old dad back? I thought you liked the new dad whatever this family needs a live wire but it's just not me that's okay marge you're a good wet blanket the kind i like wrapped around me

when hummer's jaw was crushed crushed crushed his life took a nitro burning funny turn oh yeah it's important to grow grow grow but if you take it to the max max max it's gonna get ugly in the mud and there it's a happy end yeah i mean but the this is uh i'm gonna gripe a little bit the episode is not about marge thinking that she's too boring or her life is too boring i mean they've done episodes like that yeah uh this is just something she discovered in act three and that's not the resolution that we needed yeah it's not that homer learns to like be free or whatever yes yeah yeah it does feel like there's a conflict between Acts 2 and 3. Like, I feel like sometimes you can just kind of tell when the writers were struggling finishing with an ending.

And sometimes it's really obvious. Sometimes it's not. And this is one where it feels really obvious that they had a good premise, but they didn't know exactly where they wanted to go with the character arcs yeah and they also i i just feel so bad for marge in this era where they're like see marge agrees she's a wet blanket her job is to say don't do that like that's that's marge agrees with them and she needs to do that but but yeah also it's not i guess it is crazy for homer to jump into not in a car to jump into the middle of a destruction derby but i don't think of that as him i guess it's reckless with his life but it's not like crazy i don't know it's

it uh it doesn't fully connect it's more selfless than crazy right yeah yeah i mean it's risky it's a risk he's taking surely but to mix it up with a popeye parody but that they still won't fully commit to. They, they should be the stuff of Marge doing the olive oil with her hands. That should be her the entire, the entire rest of the scene. I, I prefer that. And then end it with like a Popeye style ending.

I know they did that with brother's little helper or whatever. That's right. Yeah. But still, uh, it's funny. Do it again. Yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, the, the first two acts, I I'm with you, James. I think the first two acts are, are stronger you james i think the first two acts are stronger than the third they want to get too wacky i even like the idea of exploring what the show is

if homer's boring and will marge can marge be the crazy character instead but uh yeah it's kind of they it could have used a lot more structure i, yeah. Again, a lack of confidence that, come on, you've been on the air for 13 years. You've seen so many other shows die in your wake. And so many of your shows have died in the wake too, like The Critic and Teen Angel. So have some confidence or maybe that's why you have no confidence.

James, sorry. Any final thoughts on this episode? Yeah, I tend to like this episode in general. Actually, on rewatch it did make me like it a little less like watching it with a more of a critical eye but i do think that we just did come off of a very aggressive era of homer so in a sense i do like the sort of meta bent of this episode there is something to just enjoying the warmth of likable homer in act two i feel like that's where it hits

its stride, obviously, because that's really like the most traditional act of this thing. So while I think that's really solid, I think the buildup doesn't build up the Marge angle of the story enough, where like once the Marge stuff happens, it's just hard to buy into that. This is really a Homer Marge relationship story in the end. But like I said, there's enough charming Homer material in it that it's still like fun to watch and I enjoy it. So thanks for joining us, James.

Please let us know about your YouTube channel and maybe you could preview what will be coming out soon towards the end of July. Any new videos on the horizon? So once again, my channel is TheRealJim, so you can find me on YouTube. I am currently, you should have probably already seen a review of Homer Simpson and Kidney Trouble, as well as a video about Jerk-Ass Homer,

who is dead, by the way. And then after that, actually, I'm going on family vacation later in July, so there should be a little bit of a break. But there'll probably also be a Simpsons Histories coming up. I still have to decide who to pick, though. So if you guys have any big nominations you want to see, I'd love to hear it. Oh, he just had the first appearance of Diabetti in our series.

That's going to be a very short video. Yeah, it's true. No, but I mean, I have to credit you, James, because, you know, everybody can talk about the classic age, the first eight seasons or nine seasons or whatever, however you want to define it. But I like that you go beyond that. And I also, to pat ourselves on the back,

I like that we're going beyond that too, because I've seen these before, but I don't remember them as well. These are not things that I quote that often. It's not like I often forget what the third act is and I and I like watching your videos because I was like oh yeah what is season 14 and also what are we in store for so I love seeing those reviews of of the later later meaning 20 years ago seasons yeah I feel like I had to go back a whole season because I have a lot of season 14 on the brain since it was the last one I just covered so like going back to all these like season 13 boner jokes it's like oh yeah this is the season with boners and ostriches for some

reason so it's been a fun blast to the past one you've prepared me for all of the breast jokes we're going to deal with in the next season yeah uh season 14 uh marge gets buff marge gets breast implants implants and everyone is a furry so yeah get ready guys it's the real fetish season yeah season 14 is the fetish season well and james if i can compliment one more of your videos that i haven't yet i really also enjoyed your one about the bongo comics and and all the simpsons comics which you know not many simpsons fans uh have read many of them and just you know exploring all the weird stuff that happened to them and the interesting stories. And also how they are pretty cheap to get because there's not a market for them.

Though I fear that your popular video telling people to buy them cheaply will increase the rate at the market. Yeah, I hope that, like, after doing that video, I feel like I don't have that much clout where I can like affect the whole industry. If I were smart, I should have bought a whole bunch of Simpsons comics and then just sold them back at this point. But I didn't plan that much in advance. But that was a really fun video

to do. Like I'm not a comics guy. I've never followed it. So it was fun to just kind of get my feet wet in a medium that I just don't know anything about. I actually got comments from people who are basically telling me, James, don't learn anything about comics because I love your greenhorn novice perspective

where you don't even know what a splash page is or a trade paperback. As a mega comic nerd, I did appreciate that about your your viewpoint on it yes actually i thought before we go i thought of one character history you could do i didn't see it on your youtube page uh chalmers i don't believe you've done a trauma's video unless i'm completely wrong in which case edit this out uh nope i have not done chalmers he actually is on the short list i definitely want to do a Chalmers video sometime

because like that guy's got so much history. He's got like the Shauna Chalmers stuff, the Skinner stuff, like all the weird movies that they make. Like he is definitely going to get a Simpsons history. Excellent. Shauna gave him a whole nother life. Yeah, yeah.

She's a major character now. I mean, that's my wife's favorite character and Skinner is mine, which is why we're together. But our relationship is nothing like that. Yes, yeah. Well, as long as you both agree on the Ralph Viking joke. Oh, we do.

We all agree on it. If not, there'd be trouble. But James, thank you so much. Yes, thank you, James. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks so much to The Real Jims for being on the show. Please check out his YouTube channel. It's just called The Real Jims.

It's great. We enjoy it. And if you enjoy our podcast, you'll enjoy his videos. But as for us, if you want to check out his youtube channel it's just called the real gyms it's great we enjoy it and if you enjoy our podcast you'll enjoy his videos but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week at a time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month to get just that but also access to our extensive back catalog of full-length miniseries episodes about shows like king of the hill futurama the critic mission hill and batman the animated series and that five bucks a month will also get you regular access to our monthly episodes

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at the $10 level, you get an extra super duper long, super in-depth podcast about an animated feature film. Do you see how in-depth and granular we got on this 22 minutes of Simpsons television? imagine that for a film that's 88 minutes long that often goes over five hours or sometimes even six hours when we're really feeling it this month if you sign up you get to hear us talk about disney's beauty and the beast from 1991 the month before that was the little mermaid and this year we have covered

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