Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Krusty Gets Busted (Revisited) With KC Green

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Professional cartoonist KC Green (check out his newest book, He Is A Good Boy!) returns once more for the best episode of season one, Krusty Gets Busted! It's the first Sideshow Bob-focused episode, the first one directed by Brad Bird, and the best script/animation combo of the whole run. Plus KC drops on us some cartoon history of a proto-Itchy & Scratchy. Listen and enjoy (and if you don't enjoy it, don't blame me! I didn't do it)! (And check out KC's awesome thread of Krusty-inspired art!) Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention podcast listener we've got an exciting new podcast coming just for patrons of patreon.com slash talking simpsons talking futurama season two part one has begun exclusively for our five dollar and up patrons on the talking simpsons network that's the first 10 episodes of futurama coming to you once a week so just sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons and you'll get Talking Futurama Season 2 and all of our limited miniseries, including the entirety of Talking Futurama Season 1. That's 13 episodes.

That is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Now please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product ahoy everybody and welcome to talkingpsons, a marvelous celebration of the human spirit. I'm your host, the crown prince of corruption, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? It's Henry Gilbert, and maybe we haven't used enough gunpowder. And who is our special guest on the line? Hi, I'm Casey Green, and I don't understand the appeal of all this senseless violence. And today's episode is Krusty Gets Busted.

Don't blame me. I didn't do it. Comedy, thy name is Krusty. Today's episode aired on April 29th, 1990. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, boy, Bobby. Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares to You tops the Billboard charts. Alex Trebek marries Jean Curvan, and they're still together at the time of this recording.

Is that sweet? Very sweet. He said she's been a real rock to him during his health problems lately. And the long-lost pilot for I Love Lucy airs on CBS in a special presentation. Ooh. It's an interesting story that it was. They filmed it, but they thought they lost it. It was with previous people who were cast as Fred and Ethel, so it didn't air when it was new. I would have assumed they gave Lucy a non-ethnic husband lucy you have some explaining to do uh no desi was still in it

and in fact she was like six months pregnant with their first child oh wow of it but uh but because it didn't air back then they didn't save it and it got lost they thought it was gone forever and then in like 89 a family friend of the arnezes she revealed that her husband who had passed away got it as a gift like he from desi arnez who's just like hey you're my friend here thanks for helping us out on the show it's a special copy of the of the pilot and she was shocked to see like wow they have the pilot oh my god and so they aired it it was presented by lucy's daughter who she's like my mom was pregnant with me during the filming of this so technically i'm in this and yes shanae o'connor's nothing compares to you as we all know written by prince but oh that's

right yeah but it's a great song her Her version of it is the famous one. It does sound like a Prince song. I don't know why I didn't know this fact. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Prince famously wrote songs for other people just because he's like, I could sing this, but I think it'd be better with, you know, sung by you. And yes, Shanae O'Connor, it's a really great song of her just like, and also just her standing in place somewhere and just in a gray void in the music

videos, I recall. I recall the Tiny Toons parody of it was about Yul Brynner, who I wouldn't know who that was for a long time. It was nothing compares to Yul. So there you go. I guess the joke is they were both bald? Yeah, that's the joke. I was like, oh, I just

Yul sounds like Yul, but yes. They're all bald. I don't know anything about Sinead O'Connor other than the jokes from Saturday Night Live about her. She was right to tear that picture of the Pope. Yeah, we should be doing that every day on every show. Good for her. I mean, you know, fuck Saturday Night Live. But like, that's all I know. That's really all I know.

What are you talking about? You're the vanguard of truth in this troubling time. No, no. all i know what are you talking about they're the vanguard of truth in this troubling time no no um i i also did want to say i meant to say this a few episodes ago but forgot in the timeline of history the simpsons mania has gotten so big at this point that in march and april was when the simpsons finally started getting on the covers of big magazines. March and April had them appearing on the covers of Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, and TV Guide in the same month. I wonder if Bart was squaring off

against the paragon of morality Bill Cosby yet. I believe that is a September 1990 cover of TV Guide or Entertainment Weekly when they're promoting how they're against each other in the ratings. It's great that he's in jail now and Bart still remains free. Yes.

One of these days we'll get him. It's hard not to think of Cosby watching this episode, I will say. But yeah, in June, there will be the Rolling Stone cover of Bart, which is where it's like Bart's face on the one side and then on the back cover, it's the back of his head. Isn't it a clever joke? And I'm just thinking this episode comes off of like three intense bummer episodes in a row yes uh so i was happy to see you oh i'm feeling so free doing this episode uh what were the last what were the last

three episodes it was last three were like marge almost cheats homer uh has a huge fight with marge over princess cashmere and then bart gets tortured. Tortured by the French for an entire episode. Yeah, this man that creeps of rats, what a bummer town. Yeah, you'll hear, I mean you've heard our episode about it and we were just like despondent, I will say, over

that episode. That still has probably like the one best joke in season one. So it's like where he says so overall I was, I met one nice French person. That's a good joke. It was like an ADR joke. It worked.

It was great. But Hey, we welcome back a cartoonist, Casey green. Hello. Hey, my third time here. Yes.

It's a three P. When do I get my chip? That's five. It's the five timers last one was a mayor to the mob yes yeah with all the comic con talk yeah that's correct fun stuff and uh yes uh casey in case again folks haven't heard uh your previous appearances your uh wonderful cartoonist everybody loves your work your your I guess your claim to fame would be the This Is Fine Dog. You've done so many great, great works. Yeah. Gun Show is another one people still

love all these years ago. Gun Show, Anime Club. Anime Club was a famous one. He Is a Good Boy was a recent one I just finished. Still working on a far side parody comic called Fuck Off. I love love those i love those so much yeah thank you you you published one right before this uh recording that i just love of the the girl looking in the mirror going like why won't my teeth fall out yeah that one came to me when i was watching the jetsons movie um just just because I loved that style and also

the crazy music video that Tiffany did. Oh god, that music video. Yeah, it's such a basic ass movie, but it's so just fun to watch. Very Kennedy too, because I'm pretty sure Kennedy cartoons did some on it. I can't believe they hired Kennedy to do feature work. What were they thinking?

It's so wild to see that. I think that'll probably be like our 90th movie if we get that far in our 12 movies a year. Before we retire. In 2040, you'll be like, well, I guess it's come to Jetsons. We've done every other movie. You got it.

Smell blanks last. Yeah, that's true. Jetson, you're fired. And also George whatever, the voice of George Jetson. George O'Hanlon? Yeah. I mean, no, that's his name. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. They were like both in their deathbeds next to each other with mics dangling over them. Oh, it's sad. Well, the production took so long. It was just like... Jane! But yes, Casey, welcome back. And what a fitting one to have you on because i think you

know the the spirit of crusty and the crazy cartoon antics of itchy and scratchy i think you know really fits with the fun spirit of your comics as well well yeah and that's why i pushed myself on to this one too because i have a whole history lesson about underground uh violent cat and mouse comics to get into oh boy well you, why don't we wait until the appearance of Itchy and Scratchy in the episode before we go into that? But I do have some history, though, about the director of this episode. Some facts you might have heard if you've listened to our What a Cartoon Movie About Iron Giant, where we did a whole big thing on Brad Bird's entire life. Who is Brad? he did do this uh but this will be

a big focus on just brad bird is particularly when it comes to the simpsons i think a big thing to understand before i even get into that is just like brad this i think is is definitely the best episode of season one and i think brad bird has a big thing to do with that because i think he he really understood the spirit of the simpsons and what they were going for and articulated it better than any other director in season one did yeah he immediately got it uh having done something like a family dog before yeah so i said that like a new yorker family dog dizzy dog uh but yeah he i mean he gets brad Bird just got the Simpsons or I won't even say got it. He defined what getting it is. He knew what it was before before it became new and scary to all of us in new episodes.

But OK, yes, Brad Bird born September 24th, 1957 in Montana. A childhood love of animation brought him towood at an early age while taking a studio tour of disney at age 11 he told uh the iconic nine old men animators frank and ollie he said like i want to be an animator and they kind of like challenged like yeah right kid draw something yourself if you want to get it draw tippy the turtle then get back to me draw this pirate but frank and ollie challenged him this 11 year old and brad bird spends two years making his own short cartoon which he like you know filmed on a super eight with just like click click click the the way home school animation was done back then

uh it's very impressive for a child what he created you can look up his his short it's it's all over youtube bird's parents shared it with walt disney studios and brad was offered the unheard of internship at 14 years old at disney animation that's crazy and he studied under disney legend milt call that was his his main teacher i think don bluth got in around like 16 yeah yeah, yeah. To Walt Disney. Though he had at least the edge of like, no, he also had to move to LA to do it too. Like he was a middle America boy. Utah, right?

Yes. Yeah, yeah. I think that's some of the weirdness of Don Bluth coming from Utah. Very Mormon man. But yeah, so in the mid 70s, you know, Brad Bird, after doing that internship,

he knows he's going to be an animator. Disney wants to lock him down. He heads to CalArts where an entire generation of animators was going, including his later employer at Pixar, John Boo Lasseter. As we mentioned on other podcasts, 70s were a dark time for Disney. Brad Bird was not having a good time working there. He was a highly opinionated guy who the company thought would be like, oh, you're the future of this company. You're going to be one of our next great directors in the 80s. But he just clashed with the execs too much, and he was deemed insubordinate. He was working on The Fox and the hound and was miserable thought it was a piece of shit and was very open with management about like this is bad and it can be better let me fix it and they like straight up fired him they're just like you're out of here you're fired speaking of blue that's when bluth of the uh exodus yes exodus the film make his own studio

it's funny bird didn't go in that exodus he he got fired and went off in his own direction instead of uh i mean it sounds like bird bird is kind of his own uh leader type and uh he he wouldn't want to be a follower of don bluth that's that's my guess on the uh let's say rugged individualist of uh brad burke it's a good way to describe him uh but yeah so as the 80s began it was a complicated one for bird also marked by you know a tragic loss of his sister and he had many odd jobs and in between jobs he also was trying to sell a film version of uh will eisner's pioneering comic the spirit uh casey i don't know if you ever seen it the the pencil test for the the spirit movie brad bird wanted to make it's it's really amazing no i have not it's on youtube right yes yeah yeah easy to watch he uh he made it with lassiter and john musker

it's it's really great everyone should look it up but i uh and also though he he had trouble still working within the system he was mostly just taking odd jobs you know his individualism borders on randian bird rejects the brad bird himself in interview says i'm not an ayn rand guy that's not who i am though though he does admit that in his youth he did read the books a lot and of course he was a fan then i i don't know i mean let's wait for you guys to do the fucking Incredibles movie podcast. I'm afraid to watch that. Then we can really talk about it. I only watched that movie once when it came out, and I didn't really know about that world.

Now I am too tapped into the mindset of those folks, and I'll see nothing but that in every sentence of the movie. I will say Brad Bird's movies, they have things about like, you have to stand out, get away the wheat from the chaff, all that stuff. It doesn't have as many Randy and messages about like the parasites who steal from you and the, the takers and the makers. Uh, so none of the worst stuff I'd, I would, uh, if I had to diagnose bird on the chart on the, the classic four quadrant political chart four quadrant political chart i'd call him a left libertarian is what i'd call him but uh but anywho uh so yes he can't sell that uh that spirit movie

though he's trying to sell it as a pg movie but but it's not working but that does bring him into the orbit of steven spielberg and he starts working on a lot of stuff with amblin he writes the script for batteries not include Asterix. There we go. You got to say it. Batteries Not Included. That's part of it. And also worked on some stuff for the Steven Spielberg anthology Amazing Stories, which is back on Apple TV, apparently.

No one would know. No. There are several, like I said on an earlier podcast. The creator of Bob's Burgers has a new series on Apple TV that looks just like Bob's Burgers's burgers and it's a musical i don't even know what it's called and that's just central park like i have apple i have like an apple tv myself i don't have like the the subscription series but i see it like uh like uh shown to me all the time and i'm like i like bob's burgers but i don't really need another fucking subscription. No, no. Though in this streaming needs age, maybe I'll run out of everything I haven't watched yet on Hulu and Netflix and sign up for Apple TV+.

Maybe I'll get a VPN. Oh, well, hey, now. We would never endorse such a thing on here. No, I just want to be safe online. That's all. Yeah, yeah. But so, Amazing Stories, he joins up in that and that is when he directs his first television broadcast thing the one-off episode family dog i have

extremely vivid memories of watching that on tv as a really little kid i don't think i saw the original airing on whatever like evening that air but for some reason somebody was rerunning it and when i would see it if i saw like a few times and i would just be like what is this why does it look so cool are there more episodes of this like i'd even have the context for knowing what it was but i have such vivid memories of watching family dog dog dog i have more memories of seeing the family dog video game at my local video video store and then going that looks like it would be a fun cartoon and then never looking it up beyond that that's based on the the ill-fated tv series which was like in development hell they didn't air all the episodes i remember watching the debut and it's a very uncomfortable

episode because for 22 minutes the dog is thirsty and all he wants to do is drink water and so you're watching a dog all these gags about the dog he can't get water it's almost like a a more cruel version of the plucky bit in the tiny tunes movie yeah yeah yeah geez well because the family dog is like he doesn't talk or anything and he's innocent it's just the torturing of a nice character there's no you don't you only feel bad for him i i the episode was so popular of amazing stories but then when they tried to stretch it out into a tv show it just doesn't work like it's it's not made for that but uh but yeah it was based on an idea he'd actually Brad Bird developed years earlier with Tim Burton which is why it looks a bit Tim Burton-y as well yeah the character design for sure like the little girl feels like

she could be in Jack Skellington's world yeah Yeah. Well, and the dog doesn't look too different from like Frankenweenie's design too. Especially the later CG movie. Yes. Yeah. Brad Bird was spending a lot of the 80s trying to sell other films. He almost directs some live action stuff. He's actually staying away from the dregs of television animation in the 80s. I think he he definitely looked down upon it but but then you know while he's working on all that stuff his schedule is opened up in 1989 and he joins claskey chupo as an executive consultant on a show about a yellow family and uh yeah he would this would be his first this episode i think would be his first direction

of a real tv episode like family dog is a television animated episode but i think the time frame it had and the budget it had is not the same as a weekly animated tv series like the simpsons it's like movie quality animation no it is it's for sure like feature quality yeah character animation. Well, this has a smaller, I'm sure a smaller budget than Family Dog had and a tighter schedule. And Brad on the commentary even is like, he's very clear about like, look, we had certain resources. I wish things were better in this. But he still really likes it.

He still enjoys this episode. And I think he wasn't originally planned to be a director as well, but I think his schedule was open enough at the same time as they fired multiple directors. This could have been a Milk Grey episode or a Kent Butterworth episode. Who knows? We're so lucky Brad took this one on. Brad also mentions how hard it was on the commentary saying like, this was before they had an assistant director to work on the show and that he said he was sick when he started working on it

and he was sick when he ended his work on this episode uh but also brad brought a a special thing to this because he grew up with the tv clown rusty nails just like matt grating did yeah christiany clown from portland i tried to find clips of him for this podcast, but all I found on YouTube was a retrospective of Rusty Nails. He was like friends with Pat Robertson. Oh, of course. Because he was spreading the gospel of Jesus with clown antics. But the voice

is not Rusty Nails' voice. Just the idea and the name Rusty Nails is kind of a gross disease name. Rusty and Krusty, very similar. And also, there's a gag in here that connects to Rusty Nails'

partial ownership of a dairy farm. And also, I believe Dan Custaneta is doing a voice similar to one of his local clowns, Cookie. Cookie the Clown. So, boy, I'm so glad we're out of that era i we missed the clown era at least i did no you had you had bozo i had uh i knew cookie because he was bozo's

sidekick in my area i was watching chicago bozo in florida because we had yeah we would get wgn and uh yeah i saw some bozo on sunday oh, wow. You're younger than us, Casey. I'm surprised that you saw a Bozo, too. I didn't realize there was a clown thing, an explosion of TV clowns. I thought Bozo was it. Rusty Nails and all these others. I'm like, who? I dreamed of doing that grand prize game. I never got to.

Where you throw ping pong balls in a bucket? Yep. What a low budget. Double Dare had 10 times the budget as that. And the best part was, a kid would throw a thing in a bucket yep that's what a low budget like double dare was had 10 times the budget as that and the best part was a kid would throw a thing in the bucket he's like and you just won this and he would just say a commercial for like a toy or a cookie or whatever he's like okay now the next one oh and now you just won this board game like it it was just commercials in between uh ping pong tosses pretty sneaky uh but but yes uh bird though when

not directing episodes his job was more of a like a two or three days a week thing where he would just oversee boards and other things when they'd come in and he'd you know offer tips or suggestions or or changes to things he also like uh we've talked about many times on here, but Brad Bird's guidebook to storyboarding The Simpsons was incredibly important in defining the looks of the animation in the show. It's all on internet. Just search, you know, Brad Bird Simpsons storyboard.

You'll learn a whole lot about how he defined what a shot looks like in The Simpsons. And right after working on this, I think Brad Bird almost immediately went to Budapest, Hungary to animate the Do The Bartman music video. Oh, wow. That's right. Yeah. The Varga studio, which is what they worked out of. And a lot of the Do The Bartman, not Deep, Deep Trouble by that.

I think Do The Bartman was the last thing they did with Varga because it was just so hard. Like they did some of the early Butterfinger commercials. And then once Rough Draft was really getting going, they're like, OK, we're doing commercials and music videos out of there. No more of this Hungarian stuff. I'm looking at Brad Bird's thing you mentioned, Henry. And all of this is like him touching up King of the Hill storyboards. Yes, there's that too. He was a big part of that also oh really brad bird was on king of the hill uh at least in the formative uh like start of it he helped wes archer a lot interesting okay i'm sure we must have covered that in our series i just forgot and also undo the bart man uh he was

joined by jeffrey lynch greg vanzo and mike b Mike B. Anderson. Jeffrey Lynch, one of Brad Bird's favorite co-workers. But yes, Bird would only co-direct one other episode of the show, the sequel basically to this one, Like Father, Like Clown. Who was the other director on that? Silverman? Oh, it was Jeffrey Lynch. Like, who worked... Like, I'm sure he was his assistant.

Yeah, yeah. I think maybe that was Bird, you know know uplifting him of like no you're co-director on this and jeffrey lynch is one of the best directors the simpsons ever had like he's he's right up there with bird uh but yeah i think you know it's hard to underestimate how much bird added to the simpsons and helped defining its look i i would bet only second to david silverman is he the most important artist who worked on The Simpsons. I dare say. Yeah. So Bird worked on the series up into season eight on his two to three days a week thing while still also trying to sell movies for pretty much all of the 90s. And then in

1997, Warner Animation finally hired him to direct a movie called the iron giant and so that's when bird took that as his full-time job left the simpsons and you know i think he leaves at the same time david silverman leaves and i think you know if you want to chart a downward trend in animation quality not to say that the other artists didn't do a great job from season nine onward and they all worked very hard but if you want to chart a downward trend i do think brad bird and david silverman in particular leaving didn't help the show look good i think it's also uh this ties into it completely but i think it's also you need a hard-headed guy like brad bird to be like no we need to change this this stuff matters and if there's not someone up there that's respected that can fight a lot of things will slip through or

they like you know the producer will be like yeah it's a cartoon who cares just put it on the air well yeah and i think you know the simpsons writers they can be very dominant in things about the simpsons and telling the story of the simpsons and so you know a script if a script says a thing and they give it to the director you i think you're right not having a brad bird or david silverman there to be like uh this won't look good or how about we try this or you know why don't we rework it this way if instead you just have a person go like yeah okay yeah let's just do it like uh that can also hurt the content too for sure but this is also you know uh us guessing at the uh the behind the scenes on it anyway bird went on to do iron giant after that uh he became one of the most like sought after anime and faint well-known animation directors

around uh did the incredibles in 2004 moved on to live action with the very good mission impossible ghost protocol my favorite mission impossible uh did tomorrowland which i will never watch i don't think even if it's on disney plus uh incredibles 2 which was will never watch i don't think even if it's on disney plus uh incredibles 2 which was totally all right i think it's a real toy story 4 of a movie i think i'd say toy story 4 is a little better i haven't seen either but i like the characters in toy story more so i think i would like that uh a bit more and i like toy story 4 definitely more so incredibles 2 felt just like another episode of the Incredibles. Yeah, which it's, and when you're like, this took 16 years to give us just the next episode of the Incredibles story.

Yeah, yeah. 4 at least, like, had some things happen. Toy Story 4 did, you know? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm sure the Incredibles is a quality movie. I haven't seen it in almost 15 or 16 years. But I think the huge appeal of it, we forget, it's like, oh, they made a movie about people. This is a movie about just haven't seen it in almost 15 or 16 years but i think the huge appeal of it we forget it's like oh they made a movie about people this is a movie about just with people in it it was not about fish or bugs or toys it's people which was a huge novelty looks they got the looks

down yeah yeah well made it look good instead of awful like the baby from uh tin soldier oh yeah well i i can also say as a comic book superhero nerd incredibles in 2004 felt very special in showing superpowers and superhero action in a way that live action films to that point really hadn't and uh you know now after we've had uh 12 years of every superhero doing all the CG fights, not as special. It doesn't feel special. Turn it off. Yeah, we kind of took it for granted a little, didn't we?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, so that's the history of Brad Bird, the director of this episode. And I think he is a big part of why this is the best episode of season one, for sure. The Sentence will be right back. Springfield's favorite funny man, a criminal? Hand over all your money in a paper bag.

Homer holds a missing clue. Which one is the robber? If only he can find it. Well, if the crime is making me laugh, they're all guilty. Send in the clown. Say it ain't so, Krusty. My client has no comment. Because Krusty's on trial.

I plead guilty, Your Honor. I'm not guilty. The Simpsons. Tonight at 7, followed by Coach at 7.30 on Fox 29. 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. Hope you guys are enjoying this week's podcast, perhaps with a little spritz of seltzer and we have a big thank you to our guest this week casey green always awesome to have him on his cartooning expertise very helpful in such a wonderfully drawn episode as this one please follow him on twitter and all of the cool stuff he does and if you'd like to support this podcast and get every episode a week ahead of time and ad free, you get here next week's episode right now. You should sign up at Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

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The Iron Giant. Brad Bird directed that one. Akira. Kiki's Delivery Service. The Animatrix. The First Toy Story. Nightmare Before Christmas. Tons and tons and tons more.

A Goofy Movie. That just turned 25 and we talked for four hours about that. You want to hear all of those. And you only can get the full back catalog and every new one. If you sign up at the episode proper now. And I do want to give a special thanks to a great resource as usual, that guy, 3002 on Twitter. We got to find out his real identity. About two years ago, that guy did one of his deep dives into the table draft script.

He's got like all of them. It's crazy. And so a number of times in this, as we get to it, where there are changes, I will remark them. And that guy, 3002 on Twitter.

He is the source and everybody should follow that guy to stay in the loop for sure. The episode begins as Brad Bird proudly points out on the commentary. Each act begins with either a shot of Krusty's face or Bob's face to give a sense of the key figures of the plot and where the arc is going of the story. It's a very artsy fartsy move. And that's the kind of thing of like him knowing the language of cinema and expressing it in ways that like other directors weren't getting away with, at least on The Simpsons then. Him jumping through that paper sheet with his face on it. It was a very, you know, clown show sort of device. But also, I never got that as a thing in real life. Like, what is the appeal of that trick or that surprise?

I mean, if someone holds up, I mean, we saw it all the time, like, growing up at pep rallies. Like, yeah, you're putting up the big paper banner. Of course they're going to run through it. Is it the anticipation? I guess it's fun to hear it rip. I guess. It's like, ah, the sound, pop, you know. Yeah, it's a general excitement of something being destroyed.

You should come out of a drum is what I'm saying. It's more fun. It's also funny they never gave like, they give Itchy and Scratchy a theme song, but they never really gave Krusty a theme song. It's like an instrumental, but there's no like, yeah. That's how it goes. But also this episode begins with Krusty telling the audience a thing that he would never say after this episode,

which is too bad because this is really funny. Hey, kids, who do you love? Krusty! How much do you love me? With all our hearts! What would you do if I went off the air? We'd kill ourselves! What's that, Sideshow Bob?

This is Britney, and today's her birthday? Well, happy birthday, Britney. How do you want to celebrate? Do you want me to sing you a birthday song? Or do you want me to shoot Sideshow Bob out of a cannon? The cannon! The cannon! The cannon! The cannon! Sorry, Sideshow Bob, but it's your special birthday wish.

I'm doomed, Sideshow Bob. I know we haven't had much luck shooting you out of this cannon, but maybe that's because we haven't used enough gunpowder. Whitney, do the honors. And then there's a loud explosion which i cut out and then sideshow bob dies and yeah his famous hair burns off we never see it again he has very cartoony boxers when he in general it's a very cartoony take i'd like how he tumbles out of that cannon though it's great oh yeah yeah did cookie or rusty nails ever have a uh a sideshow character a sidekick of some sort

cookie was the sideshow bob to bozo had cookie as his sidekick and he also had some magician too but cookie was more of the sideshow bob though not not in the um weird pacific islander outfit that he's given yeah i was gonna say that's the uh i guess that's the sort of character he is like we found him on this weird island in the pacific and now he's our sideshow freak oh yeah and also as a uh you know a crate as a stupid native he can only speak with a slide wish little he doesn't know our human words yeah that seems so specific the way they they have him and mel like that in a way it's a commentary on colonialism i think yeah i mean mel's got a bone in his hair and the original

had like a lay on the original design of him yeah yeah instead it's more of like a puka shell necklace or something he's got which i guess that's the extra comedy too of just like in a regional clown production the grossness of uh of a white guy being told to dress like a hawaiian character that's uh i also i like hearing bart say like you're doomed sideshow bob like that's a prophetic line from bart there i love the design of sideshow bob so much because he is just out of season one where there were fewer rules now you cannot design a simpsons character that looks like this but i just love how freakish he looks the bags under his eyes his crazy hair like i just and triangle nose like a sharp severe nose yeah he's a long face and like tree

outline body but with like a little pot belly too in the in the graining style like yeah yeah uh and obviously suicide is a a heavy topic and you know not to be joked about but i do like this joke quite a lot it's almost like he's uh starting a jim jones death cult like if your leader dies you kill yourself children yeah no i well i love to know in the reality the evil crusty is like how will i prevent myself from ever being canceled i have to have the children chant every time that they will kill themselves if i'm off the air so no one will ever cancel my show i remember i was watching this in the late 90s probably a rerun in my room my mom was like in the bathroom getting ready or something and she heard that line she's like oh my god she started laughing i'm sure she watched this with me when it aired like 10 years before that but

she thought it was really funny. And I also really love, there's so many great just like moments of animation. This one of my favorites is shoving him. Yeah, the snap of it. He's like, well, sorry, Sideshow Bob, but it's your special birthday. Just shoves him off screen. Remember reading that Brad Bird liked to do certain crusty bits? I don't know if he ever did.

He probably did like the heart attack bit. Oh, that's his, yeah. That's entirely him. I don't know if he ever did he probably did like the heart attack bit oh that's his yeah that's entirely if he did anything else in between like the shoving or anything or anything sideshow uh bob eventually did like when he talked to bart at the end or something he's one of the credit borders on this episode too and even if he didn't like border lay it out his opinion on what would be good definitely was there but i think he like yeah he he loves crusty like him crusty has like three dads it's it's david silverman brad bird and dan castellaneta and i think bird and silverman both saw so much in in castellaneta's performance of crusty and that they made every word he says just have such a great like just pop of movement like yeah I think of another of my favorites I think this was a Silverman one though but in the

I didn't do it boy episode when Krusty says like the salivating dogs that you are the little squeeze of his hand he does in that and like like pushing himself into the camera too yeah yeah and it's like finger movement. There's so many great poses they put on it that when they hear Dan's voice, they're like, I have to draw such a funny drawing. Same with his presentation of like

gunpowder! That's a good line. One of my favorite Krusty bits that I'm pretty sure Bird did was one of the Triasa horrors where Bart had the Twilight Zone child powers and made Krusty stay on 24-7. Oh, yeah. And he was just tired as shit. And I remember in the DVDs for that season, there was like boards of like just all the Krusty poses that Bird did.

And they look so good. I remember taking screenshots of them in like 2008 or something just being like i have to keep these these are amazing i have posted that uh image of crusty being very tired and uh sometimes during weeks when we record like 15 podcasts i'm just like time for those over-the-counter wake-up drugs they they have the real energy of a seventh podcast feeling and yeah this whole this whole opening of Krusty doing a traditional style clown show, it feels different now. Because even in season two, they're like, oh no, Krusty's Johnny Carson. By season three, they fully are like, no, this is just our Carson jokes.

But here he is being a silly clown who talks to kids in the audience and celebrates their birthdays. And the way, like, you'd never see Krusty in even a season four episode go like, what's that, Brittany? Yeah, he hates children. Yes, there's also that. It's funny, the little moments of private Krusty are not the dark Krusty who like spits out a burger because it like a little droplet goes down his throat or whatever the joke here now is like uh he's a real guy yeah and he just comes home and has a drink and uh he gambles he has vices but he's a tv clown too but he's not cruel and hateful i and i also love the posing about crusty intros itchy and scratchy to play and he switches on the projector like an old tv clown

would and i think that same exact staging is what they duplicate in like father like clown when he's like sobbing of like easy scratchy throw the ball that those have got to be bradburn i think those are yeah oh yeah i remember that oh yeah so this is the first proper itchy and scratchy with a title and with the theme song and so this is a very noisy season. One thing I noticed about rewatching this is that during the fight, fight, fight, bite, bite, bite part where they're whacking each other, they include sound effects, which is really bad. And they got rid of those. That's good. It's like clonk, clonk, clonk, clonk, clonk, clonk.

Oh, there's so much sound effects in this. But yeah, I had forgotten that intro that we see a million times. it was directed by brad bird like it's from this episode i just love the blank stares as they march towards the camera and just hit each other yes and i think that was going to be uh the joke is that the violence was just crude and uh not clever because the cartoon that we see all that happens is itchy set scratchy on fire with an arrow. And they soon lost that idea for the joke. It's like, no, let's actually write really clever violence gags instead of just making the joke like this is uninspired and just cruelty. Yeah. Future Itchy and Scratchy's would be like, let's start with a funny name to it. And then parody like, oh, this is him an italian restaurant or this is him when

the escalator rips off all of his fur or any of those things and yeah you're right in this one it's just a fiery arrow is shot at scratchy and scratchy runs around screaming on fire and he's in a hammock too yes i like that touch yes this is really their first like fully formed appearance because they were in tv simpsons the final simpsons short uh and then they made an appearance in no disgrace like home very briefly but uh and i i watched tv simpsons again before this there is like a screen that says the itchy and scratchy show but there's no intro and not the classic uh here either. Yes, the first Itchy and Scratchy cartoon in the script. There was one extra gag of Itchy pouring gasoline on the fiery Scratchy.

And yes, we have a quick clip here of Marge reacting to Itchy and Scratchy, kind of teasing a season two storyline we'd later get, I think. All this senseless violence. teasing a season two storyline we'd later get, I think. homie i was hoping you could pick up a half gallon of premium ice cream on your way home from work oh premium wait a minute why patty and selma are coming over to show us slides from their trip to the yucatan anybody home oh i've gotta go homer my sisters are here i like how homer looks at the phone when yeah leaves it's a funny little drawing i really want us to get to uh when we finally have homer's console he's like always in a different part of the plant answering the phone or when we cut to him instead of just being in the one room he's always in yeah his mainly he's like picking out glowing rocks most times we see him this season and this is just him in a break room but that should be his phone like did it get patched through to him when march called him uh like

how did she know how to reach him in the break room i i wonder on this episode yeah uh you know i haven't played our boring conversation jingle in a while so let me play that what's to find our terms gentlemen are we talking about redistricting or are we talking about reapportionment because yeah that's good uh but yeah patty and selma we've seen them before so i think their debut appearance production wise was trying to kill bart yeah um and the telltale head yeah and then and then there was the christmas special and now there's this and this is their main trait which would carry through throughout the seasons i don't think they've dropped it i love this about them

it's like they're two uh women and clearly they're uh don't have any romantic pursuits or dreams of a family although they'll explore that later. So all of this expendable income they have, they just go on trips. Trips and trips and trips. You can just suck them out. That's one of my favorites. Let me bring back the big bag of oysters or whatever. Not oysters, but like... The things they got from Sulphur Bay.

Yeah. The crawdads. Yeah. Well, just cleaning out all the shells in general. Great animation on that just suck them i guess let's go back to teen scratchy real quick because uh one that joke about like if cartoons were meant for adults they put them on in prime time that feels like one of those jokes written before they realized how big simpsons was going to be and it feels more like a

joke about like obviously cartoons are going to fail in prime time and this is the last episode of the simpsons that will ever air. They're probably like, this one won't even air. They'll air four of these and then just give up. I guess, yes. Since we have the Itchy and Scratchy clip, Casey, please, you have special information on one of the things that probably, I think at least a little little bit inspired Itchy and Scratchy. Oh, it's hard to say. There's nothing I've read that says, yes,

Matt Groening was inspired by this old Italian comic called Squeak the Mouse by, what's his name, Massimo Mattoli. Mattioli, if I'm saying that wrong. Apologies. As far as I can tell, they both... Squeak the Mouse is, of course, a cat and mouse comic about a cat and mouse comic about a cat mouse hurting each other the comic goes into very gruesome and uh even pornographic heights as it goes because it like it really pushes that boundaries i did a google image search for squeak

the mouse and uh i my hair turned white, it starts as this. This is a great book, but it's very much not for children. It starts as like a classic kind of like cartoon thing. Both of them are attacking or the cats chasing the mouse. And then the cat just the first chapter just sort of ends with the cat ripping the mouse's head off, throwing it against the wall, eating his body and then just being done with it the next chapter he goes to like a sexy party with other cats where it's almost it and then it turns into like an exploitation horror movie where the mouse comes back as like a zombie-esque thing and kills all the cats in gruesome ways as they all do drugs and fuck each other wow very under very underground comics fritz the cat type of stuff oh

yeah even if graining wasn't inspired by it i'm sure it comes from the same impulse we all go through like in our 20s like what if the things that we liked were fucked up yeah exactly they they both kind of borrow from like the tom and jerry uh or mgm cartoon type of way and they just they're both cartoonists in their own right. That just understand to push that create, like to understand how to push that stuff for, for humor. Itchy and scratchy is one way. Squeak the mouse is another one.

And squeak the mouse was the eighties, right? Or a seven, 80, 82. Originally it was brought to the American 84, but that's what I'm like. It's never said if,

if graining actually knew about this or not but he is he was a very into comics and stuff oh yeah and whenever it was brought over to america squeak the mouse it was actually seized by the u.s government on charges of obscenity oh one of the books i have is the first edition that comes with like a sticker that says this copy of squeak the mouse is from a shipment of books seized by the U.S. Customs at JFK in August 1st, 1985. Wow. Things have really changed. Like there was worse stuff than that on Newgrounds in like 2003.

Well, 85, man. They were like, hey, this is a kid's book. And then they see cats having a like a foursome or something later on in the book but it was after two days of testimony the jury voted that it was not obscene oh man to be in that courtroom this for this week the mouse trial i would have been there no i looked i looked up exactly what it was they used the miller test on it i don't know if you've ever heard of this before i haven't heard this heard this. It's a three-pronged test that sort of helps the U.S. Supreme Court whether it can label stuff as obscene or not.

And the way that Wikipedia has it is kind of legalese and stuff. But I think if I'm getting it right, the three tests are does it make you horny? Is it horny? Does it show people doing it? And does it lack value? Love literary, artistic, political, or scientific value? It did not pass the, or it did pass the last one, I guess. One of them, it had value. That's what people decided. It does make people horny. It does show funny animals doing it. But they

were like, oh no, this has value has value and so because that was not satisfied as a condition it was let go all right well yeah i mean the connection to this and like uh itchy and scratchy you know it might be more tangential and definitely like you know herman and catnip for example probably an easier connection to make but i i especially hearing this you know legal situation of it and knowing that you know in the 80s mac raining was you know a lefty underground alternative comics guy yeah i find it likely that he would have heard of it at the very least like yeah that that that's all like speculation basically but like yeah like i have a comics journal uh from then uh with graining a graining interview from like the like i guess

after the first or second season of simpsons where it was huge he doesn't mention it or anything but he is like he is knowledgeable about comics and underground stuff so i mean if you've heard he would have heard about this if you're being. If you choose to be interviewed by Gary Groth, you kind of know what the Underground Comics is. But as far as I could find online, there's no confirmation from either party. Well, if we ever interview Matt Grading, I have another question added to our very long list.

We're going to need him for like three hours at least, I think. Someday, crossing those fingers. It'll happen. very long list. Like we're going to need him for like three hours at least. I think, you know, someday crossing those fingers. It'll happen. But, but thank you though, Casey, for your knowledge on squeak the mouse here.

It's a wild book. There was a sequel published in 92 that kind of flipped the script where the mouse was being victimized by the dead zombie cat. But it's, it's good. But I think the first one is like, just like perfect in like a satire kind of way of that kind of stuff. There is like a YouTube I saw that just has like, it's not a motion comic, but it has like some music just to set the tone while it shows you panel by panel. And it's all mostly silent to the no no talking. So that's a good way of checking it out if you're interested i would squeak the mouse on youtube but you probably can find used copies

online it might be a little pricey but i i think it's worth it okay uh well let's talk about premium ice cream now oh god i love that term premium ice cream yeah i why i think it was like late 80s early 90s when you know the not just like ben and jerry's but like you know uh briars or eds like all these things like this isn't just your like bucket of cheap ice cream you buy at the grocery store this is nice ice cream premium ice cream what does that mean uh why i think lines like that of premium ice cream are the joke is that the simpsons are so television addicted that they just use the commercial buzzwords yeah yeah or else they normally get like yeah the bucket of store brand ice cream that's like almost flavorless yeah i think marge is like no no get the real ice cream they get the they're coming over tonight

it's also funny when patty and selma enter the room bart smacks his head the same way homer does oh yeah there's like there's three head smacks in this whole series in this whole episode i mean they are loud head smacks too uh and yes eight carousels eight carousels of uh that's a long night of uh slideshows which now we can all just do slideshows every day of every photo we take. But we don't sit around and watch slideshows anymore. Just like jokes about fruitcakes, we have lost jokes about boring slideshows. Yeah. I don't think I've ever been subjected to one in my life.

Have y'all? I have not. No, I don't think so. None of my relatives invested in slideshow technology you know that i patty and selma they spent real money on their own projector like they're bringing the projector and the slides too like they could have brought a photo album and they just sit on the couch together but no this is a presentation like they they take pride in showing off these trips which i guess is what we all do now just Just like anytime I'm on a trip, I want to show off on Twitter.

Like, yeah, here I am. I went to. Yeah. We're all Patty and Selma in a way. But yeah, so then we head to the quickie mart. This is the third appearance of Apu in the series. He first appeared in Telltale Head, then the like one-off scene in homer's night out this is his most major appearance and i think it's definitely the first script they had where

they knew he was an indian immigrant and he's called a poo and the joke here again a joke that we figured to joke is that uh he's like hello steady customer and homer's like hey a poo like homer comes there so often that they know each other which is odd to be on a first name basis at you know at this point with the guy in your convenience store but now like we just did an episode where apu lived with homer yeah and got married at their house so uh but yeah i guess uh it it plugs into the gag of just homer is a fat slob who eats convenience store food all the time which they shout out on the commentary like no that was sam simon he knew every 7-eleven in los angeles he'd just go to them.

And you should know the first name of your clerk. Yeah. And Triple Chocolate, also a joke that's no longer a joke. I went on Amazon. I'm like, how many things are Triple Chocolate? Over 2,000 results for food items. Triple Chocolate. What does that even mean?

They just put more chocolate in there, I guess. I believe the Triple chocolate i knew like in the 90s i would you know if i was going to the grocery store with mommy if i saw a triple chocolate ice cream i would ask for it in part because i did know it from the simpsons and my recollection was ice cream so you have your base of chocolate ice cream then you basically add an extra like ribbon of chocolate syrup inside and then a third thing this chocolate like chocolate chips or like brownie bites or yeah a third thing that is chocolate that would be the triple types

of chocolate well at that point you'd call it like chocolate chocolate tack or something like that it just looked like regular chocolate ice cream chocolate super dark or whatever super dark chocolate but in 1990 it was like could you imagine a triple shot the opulence an opulence of a triple of a because there was double chocolate ice cream first there was so uh the packing in of a triple chocolate like yeah it we we couldn't imagine the hedonism of a third chocolate but they call it premium uh and yeah yeah apu i mean he's just he's fitting a lot of the stereotypes and speech patterns of an immigrant running a uh convenience store you know talked about it before but there's a little extra they give to apu in here they actually do kind of like that i wish they'd or

at least it's an interesting extra wrinkle to him that I kind of wish they stuck with. But yes, Homer arrives and the clues begin. Mmm. Chocolate. Double chocolate. New flavor. Triple chocolate.

Perhaps a little something for the trip back to the cash register. What's the matter, sir? Never have I seen you look so unhappy while purchasing such a large quantity of ice cream. The reason I look unhappy is that tonight I have to see a slideshow starring my wife's sisters. Or as I call them, the gruesome twosome. Ow, my foot, you lousy, stupid clumsy. Sorry, pal.

Hand over all your money in a paper bag. Yes, yes, I know the procedure for armed robbery. I do work in a convenience store, you know. Heh heh. You can emerge now from my chips. The opportunity to prove yourself a hero is long gone. Oh, he's judgment on him. Yeah, that's pretty great. He's disgust.

You could have saved me, but you dove into the chips. Watching this again for this podcast, I discovered two new clues, and this is one of them. He says, you lousy, stupid, clumsy. That's what he says to Bart at the end of the episode when his foot gets hammered or whatever. That was one of my questions. Is that Kelsey Grammer doing a fake Krusty impression? Because that line sounds like Kelsey doing a shitty impression. It is Kelsey saying, ow, my foot.

That is Kelsey. But then it's Dan when he says, hand over all your money which yeah uh if we were to dig into the realities of it is then i guess sideshow bob somehow has an incredibly convincing prosthetic crusty mask has perfected a crusty voice imitation but when you step on his foot and take his focus away he's surprised and he goes into his natural voice then when he resumes his composure and robs the quickie mart then he uses his uh his practiced crusty voice he's the criminal mastermind he really is not the best uh plan he never factored in like what if i get arrested oh yes yeah well they would arrest crusty and that would be it i guess he was lucky there were no cops

there right when he robbed the place yeah he get he gets away with it there i love his uh there's a great drawing of him like posing for just a second and looking around and then leaving like i love that shot i also like yeah all the clues are there like he's eating the burrito by the microwave he's he's reading a magazine that doesn't have a picture on the cover that shows us the springfield review of books as we learn later the text is uh very hard to read but it's trying to say that on the cover yes yeah there's there's some tough text on some covers in here and yes uh at the time of this recording uh some weeks ago when you're listening to this uh casey you green-shotted one specific shot in this

that looks amazing and that has led to some, to be inspiration to many an artist on Twitter. Yeah, I sort of took this from my friends Tom and Sarah McHenry, because they were doing a dud, what they call a dud stream, where they stream some Simpsons, and then they pause it,

and everyone who's on there draws whatever's on the, whatever they paused on. everyone who's on there draws whatever's on the whatever they paused on. I just paused on his scream when he first noticed Krusty right before it goes to the gun and just Homer's mouth, his big eyes. That whole area was just like, that's a really good pose. And I don't I used to like screenshot and post all that stuff a lot in early Twitter days. But it was just like you know we're all we're all in quarantine we're all bored i was like fuck it i capped it and said draw this and it just went off like people started to draw it and there's a big thread on twitter

that's probably might still be going as of this uh i mean this is a day later or when we were when we were recording but um it's uh yeah it just went it went off there's a lot of good interpretations of that scene yeah i'm gonna i'll link to it in the description of this episode folks so you can check out all the amazing drugs including your own uh casey i really love the uh homer's head got bigger and bigger and bigger yeah there's something about his mouth the his maw shape when he screams that is so hard to figure out. Like, I couldn't get it. And just Krusty's very subtle, like our sideshow Bob's subtle grimace at back at Homer.

That is like that is the stuff that I'm like, OK, yeah, that is missing from since Brad and David left. My favorite one that someone did was uh homer is like a wave in the ocean and crusty's rowing away from him in a little boat yes yes because like yeah because the tongue is so wave like whenever it screams i always think about that when i draw like a screaming tongue or see that no that was um that was hannah i believe it's her name okay she's she's a great artist nice work hannah and uh hom Homer dives into that chip display like it's a Looney Tunes black hole. He just disappears into it. You're right.

It's just a cardboard standee. He's a big guy. He should just explode with chips and cardboard. Or fall over. But it's more like it's the giant bush he vanishes into in the classic scene. I want to get that right. It was Hanny. Hanny. I mean she she was the

one who did the the homer wave awesome honey rolls saffron scarf on twitter and uh this is the start of the apu gag that uh he is highly accustomed to robberies and pretty blasé about it like he's this would grow into him being shot several times like seen a snake tying him up and to the point that he like literally gets shot in the chest defending james woods of all people like uh don't take a bullet for that yeah yeah we need him to play hades in kingdom arts 3 that's true you know if uh it just wouldn't be the same without without him so you know you wonder what this is kind of based on like definitely there were celebrities who had done bad things even in the late 80s when this was being written so i mean like for example in 1989 former different stroke star todd bridges was on trial for murder

that's exactly what i thought this was a parody of like the joke was because this was in the zeitgeist the joke is what if the adult from a kid show was the one getting in trouble but just the idea of a celebrity involved in gun violence was just a very fresh topic yeah though you know the security camera thing of like a date of a of a robbery done by a famous person it feels more like patty hurst you know yeah as well if we're talking about things that they would have known of in 1990 when this aired uh though just a year after this episode aired todd bridge's co-star dana plato would rob a video store on camera in the same way r.i.p dana plato they they those uh i had a rough time r.i.p video

stores yeah i miss those i worked it too i miss them i don't miss my uh cruel boss but i do miss that video store but in todd bridges i also didn't know that like his trial was for many people where they first learned of johnny cochran he was defended by johnny cochran and he got him off there too you know like he's uh the the rap sheet that todd bridges had was that he was accused of killing someone in a crack den like he he had been going to this uh this place to get drugs and someone there was shot to death when the cop said he was there but cochran was able to prove he wasn't there, and he got away with it. Well, no, no, he's a free man.

I'm not saying Top Bridge has got away with it. No, no, no. Sorry. I say, smell crack at home, people, where it's safe. You know, but if you just got the crack, you want to smoke it right there. You're going to drive all the way home, and you have the crack on hand.

Go through a drive-thru crack then but i'll save this after dinner then it cuts back to the slideshow which is boring everybody there's uh in the original script there's only one joke the big joke that got changed which was them saying like and here's a donkey painted to look like a zebra on the commentary they said that there was they had put in a joke in the script as they recall of them being like tricked into being drug mules like that kind of joke about uh the the easy joke you do when you do uh tourists in mexico joke but uh it's not in the at least in the table draft script that that guy was going through he didn't note it as being

maybe it was just pitched or something maybe maybe but i like the idea of them like just still taking pictures of of like and here's a secret briefcase we had to bring over if that would be the joke uh but yes the uh the slideshow continues as homer talks to a stenographer this is our tour group this is a mex Mexican delicacy called a taco plan. Delicious. This is Selma taking a siesta. My carumba. And he had a big nose. No, bigger. And big red hair that came out to, yeah, yeah, like that. Well, it is a simple charcoal rendering, but is this the man yeah it's a guy from tv my kid's hero cruddy from me and uh another cut from the script that was noted there is that there was in the script apu had a line of just like uh i came to america and this is what i get like uh so that that is cut but you do see apu like with his arms crossed

angrily in the background so he's he's not happy about it honestly this makes me want to pitch a story of apu versus sideshow bob and apu gets his revenge on side yeah the the apu story is lost although i do think he becomes a local celebrity yeah oh yeah and gun week or whatever i was gonna wait for that because i like that cover and uh in the script too homer says red hair so that mix up was there in the script and in the recording and it never changed so homer describing crusty with red hair i guess blue or green i just didn't pay attention to that that's weird so maybe they didn't know what the character design was going to be yet but he'd been in the shorts though they i think it was just carelessness like he's a blue-haired goon he was too scared of that gun he's he's misremembering or this is letting us know that

homer is colorblind he can't tell the difference between red and green that's why he's bad at his job uh so then we cut to crusty's home and i think the joke here is how fast the uh the they arrest him like it's just the same night they get to his house crusty is also a victim of swatting one of the earliest victims i love i feel like i feel like his his uh pause with the seltzer feels like it's a anti-joke because like clowns and seltzer is always a big problem. He just stops there for a second like something's gonna happen and just goes squirt. And he's gonna spray seltzer everywhere but he's like

one little spritz. I love just like the giant gun coming down at his head. Oh my god that drawing is great. They're really getting away with something here with this gun this massive like double magnum pointed at his clown's forehead on national television. Yeah, like, who's carrying that?

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never how the cops would treat a rich and famous person either. Even in 1990, I think that was the intended joke. Also, Wiggum is there to arrest him, which is, I think the first time Wiggum has seen outside of like a press conference in the show.

I feel like he wanted to be there for a major arrest and get all the glory although he doesn't go to the rest site to bob at the end yeah get off get up boys uh wigam is quite swarthy in this episode he's very tan and has his black hair instead crusty gets arrested uh and homer is asked to identify him as well in a lineup of clowns, which it's a funny gag, but I think it goes on like 20 seconds too long. Though Homer's uncontrollable laughter at seeing clowns is funny for how long it lasts. Just the mere sight of a clown is hilarious to Homer. And Wiggum says, send in the clowns, a reference to the classic Sondheim song, which the lines of it are not the lines Krusty sings in the Krusty Comeback special

uh the send in the clown song as we all know we all know the lyrics now because they were sung in the movie Joker and uh I don't know neither of you guys have seen Joker no I have but I didn't I don't remember when he did that uh before those rich jerks beat up uh the joker they sing to him send in the clowns like isn't this rich aren't we a pair you know henry i don't find the concept of crime comical in any way so i can't connect with this jokey man the joking man what what i love about that scene and many people made this joke but that a bunch of straight white stock brokers on a subway know all the words to send in the clowns like i don't i don't believe it yeah they're just there for they're there for him maybe they maybe they were part of his delusion spoilers well yeah that's

well then every moment in the movie is just like, is it all fake? Like, what even is real in this Joker-fied world? There's got to be so many fan theories about the Joker. Or Joker, rather. Yeah, just Joker. We all joke him up, man. The jokester. But anyway, yes, Homer correctly identifies Krusty. And I think, you know, from a plot standpoint, this early on, they especially want to go like,

we have to keep the Simpsons involved in this story. So having Homer be the key witness directly connects it to Krusty, which is also funny because, you know, as we all know, the original plan was that Krusty looks just like Homer. Yeah. Because he was going to be Bart's hero. And Bart doesn't realize that all his heroes look just like his dad and he hates his dad. That's why Krusty looks so similar. Though even in this episode, they're giving Krusty the bags under his eyes and a different colored muzzle as well to make him at least slightly different from Homer.

Although Marge claimed that Bart idolizes Homer in the previous episode. That bullshit. You can just ignore that. That's Marge's own delusion. But yes, Homer gets home just as the news breaks. Thus concludes our Mexican odyssey.

Very thorough. I'm home, everybody. Goody gumdrop. You missed the whole slideshow, Homer. Oh, fantastic. Marge, you're never going to believe what happened. I was down at the quickie mart, minding my own business, when... Ooh, ooh, ooh, the news! Springfield, number one news team, with our Emmy award-winning anchor band, Kent Brockman.

Good evening, I'm Scott Christian. Kent Brockman is off tonight. Why did the clown cross the road? To rob a Quickie Mart. The news story behind that enigmatic half joke right after this commercial message it's very i like that dry joke yeah he's a joke about a joke i think he's mad at the writer like he's like uh whoever wrote this sucks i like those throwaway lines like even sending the clowns when when wiggum said that was just like a quick like yeah bring bring the clowns in but it is a

joke and when he calls it an enigmatic half joke and everything just move on i i like uh marge is nice about the eight carousels at first but even by the end of it she's like that was very thorough being polite about it and how did they get and then develop the picture of them getting pictures developed i guess they had a second camera that was the last photo on the second camera and then gave the second roll of film after that i like the photo of their mailbox oh yes yeah like have your mail held ladies yeah well that shows they don't have any friends either to yeah i mean the post office will hold your mail yeah though as we all know later patty and selma live in an apartment complex so

they wouldn't have a mailbox that's true yeah and then we find out that uh crusty apparently is not on channel six uh hobo hank is at this point i guess well so in the future kent will be on on channel five news right oh he's channel six yeah so then channel ocho so then uh hobo hank must have been fired and crusty moved over to channel six at some point then i want to hear more about this hobo hank man uh but i also really like the funny drawing of barton in his sombrero that's yeah he's uh crestfallen in his sombrero and then it keeps getting like the brim keeps getting smaller sometimes uh yeah one of the views that he looks like just like a like a bowler hat like it's like a cowboy hat yeah uh but yes the original planned running joke would be that when they would go to the

new show that kent brockman would be announced for he would be off and it would be scott christian that would that was the intended running joke and i think they maybe do it twice this this being the first one and uh yeah this is the first appearance of scott christian as well as ken brockman though we'll get to him later but scott christian like barely appears in the show after season three or so like i was gonna say like i remember that was being the joke of kent was never there but i don't remember scott anywhere else he's got a nice like 70s newscaster haircut i love his haircut yeah i think the last clear time i can remember scott christian was at uh beat up waiter

or waiter gate yeah when uh they need to throw to kent on the scene scott christian was the one doing it and his hair would be black uh in future appearances not like this reddish brown color you know his hair reminds me of one of the first looks homer had with hair and simpson and delilah like his very his very molded 70s haircut oh wait he also had i'm looking at some screenshots he had the laugh and a half segment oh right yeah laughHalf. That's right. After My Two Cents, Brockman throws to Scott Christensen's Laugh-and-a-Half. That's right. And I think he also reports on Amber Dempsey. Yeah, yeah. And also, Wasting Food.

Yeah, oh, that's right. Yeah, there's some great Scott Christian ones. I said Christensen earlier. I'm sorry. I should be fired for that blunder. But yes, the news breaks, and Homer, for just a moment, realizes, like, oh, crap, I shouldn't have my son watch this. But a little too late for that in this next clip. Wait a minute. Bart, you know that guy in your lunchbox?

Oh, you mean Krusty the Clown? He's sort of a hero of yours, isn't he? Are you kidding? He's my idol. I've based my whole life on Krusty's teachings. So, uh, maybe you'd better run off to bed. Krusty the Clown is behind bars tonight after a daring twilight robbery of a local quickie market. Oh! Krusty! Oh, no! Oh, earlier this evening, the Springfield SWAT team apprehended the TV clown

who appears on a rival station opposite our own Emmy Award winning Hobo Hank. And just in, actual footage of the crime taken with a quickie mark security camera. The reason I look unhappy is that tonight I have to see a slideshow starring my wife's sisters, or as I call them, the gruesome twosome. So, the truth comes out and over all your money in a paper bag oh crusty how could you no it looks very bad honey who knows maybe it'll turn out he was innocent all along earth to marge earth to marge i was there the clown is g-i-l-l-t-y homer a new level of dumb on homer there but it's i mean normally when we see the surveillance footage especially at the time and just be like silent but apparently homer was miked up with a laugh mic for the security footage they had him come in and dub his uh his footage that's a very fred flintstone kind of like owt

out you know something yeah like they i'm so glad they lose this with homer because season one is full of like the leaning tower pizza and like things like that yeah also just the sound mixing choice of like you you could hear it there there's a duff beer commercial on tv it could just be silent but they're like well no the tv's on so you gotta hear the commercial the distracting commercial we saw in homer's odyssey yeah and same with like you should just be hearing marge and bart's exchange there but they're like no the audio's playing on the tv so you're gonna hear all the apu lines from before and uh it gets really distracting yeah i i do like though in this report yes that scott christian in his reporting

on this is just like you know what it's time to let people know that hobo hank's better anyway yeah he sticks in an ad like emmy award-winning hobo hank and not a criminal uh i i like patty and selma how offended they are just like the truth comes out but i think the uh the gag in there that i'm not doesn't make sense after many episodes later because you know in future episodes we're used to homer just being directly cruel to patty and selma and just calling them like pigs like literal pigs to their faces i think though up to this point in season one like say in the christmas special homer's like hello patty what selma what like he's pretending to be nice and like them so this is the first time they've heard

him be actually mean about them and that's why they go like the truth comes out like yeah i mean probably the next one they see patty and selma and they're just they're back to their usual uh antics against each other and uh yes bart is heartbroken in the script it calls on bart to be wearing crusty pjs but i'm really glad they didn't go to all that trouble of drawing all the extra crusties on Bart's outfit as he sleeps. He's in his standard PJ look. I mean, it's nighttime, but I would imagine these are Bart's normal lime green PJs. But yes, Bart is heartbroken as he stares at his crusty doll. You're my best friend.

Thanks, Krusty. Buy my cereal. Buy my cereal. I didn't do it. I wish I could believe you. I like how they're building in that Krusty is bad for children. And they shouldn't be watching him. And he's just a shill for his own products.

A toy that says, buy my cereal is so great that your parents spend money on a toy. And then the toy is still advertising to you. I love that. And, you know, it richard gibb insult time but that i have that music it's just it's like sad circus music people are crying at the circus and we need to hear it i it's it's so on the nose i don't like it there's some real uh gib stings in this one the coming up later during the reveal i hate them we got one more episode of this freak uh then it's alf time baby uh also i i looked up uh at least on ebay you know crusty dolls you can't buy so you can buy stuffed crusty dolls that look like this but none of them are

wind up i couldn't find one that was wind up except for, uh, and they're pretty valuable, like 50 bucks. You can get a version of the evil Krusty doll from tree house of horror. Okay. Who, but he doesn't on your shelf.

He doesn't look like a regular Krusty because he does have the sharp pointy teeth of evil Krusty. Does he have the good evil switch on the back? You better. There's a switch on his back. I can't recall if it is marked as good or evil it has to be or else they need to you know recall that item i'm not paying 50 bucks if it doesn't say good and evil but so i mean i honestly am quite tempted to buy that evil crusty doll because he does come with a string attached to and you can also get a stuffed bart doll dressed in crusty memorabilia

that also came up in my ebay search that is very esoteric bart has given up he's so sad it's uh and then we begin act two with a new close-up on crusty bars smashing over his face which uh is a direct reference to how most episodes of the BBC series The Prisoner ended. Like an episode of The Prisoner, I looked up a clip of it just to be totally sure. I had forgotten. But a episode of The Prisoner would end usually with him failing and being told, you'll never leave this island, prisoner. And then it would be a zoom in on his face and then bars just slam over it.

So it's a direct prisoner reference there and the first kent brockman right yeah let's talk about it modeled after local la anchor hal fishman who was still alive he once had the longest record for longest tenure as a tv broadcaster from 1960 to 2007 his death whoa wow that's whoa, wow. That is the Mr. Show. No more news. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it's like, no, we need to let these people retire. They also mentioned Jerry Dunphy and other ones.

But I think it's more, if you look at pictures of both of them, the two LA anchors, I think it's more Fishman than Dunphy. Oh, okay. I was just looking up and they have like an older picture of him on wiki and i'm like he looks doesn't well kent doesn't have glasses his hair is very tiny and now i'm seeing older pictures where his hair is more big and i'm like all right i see where they're getting i guess i never imagined an age on brockman but with him having that white hair and also in a later episode they do show that he was like working in the 60s like i think brockman is supposed to be read as like in his 60s or 70s yeah yeah though uh no now i think you're more

to expect he's in his late 50s especially well he has a young daughter but but i mean he he remarried that young weather lady so he can have a young daughter like i see middle 50s when i see kent but yes the classic first appearance of Kent Brockman. I mean, he's one of the best characters on the show. Harry Shearer's performance of him. Love the little wrinkles every showrunner gave to Kent. Like, especially David Merkens making him like a right-wing crank. He screams like, it's in Revelations, people!

And constantly editorializing the news yeah uh should they crack their heads open and feast on the goo inside yes but yes even the title of the episode is behind kent there it says crusty it's busted on the on the graphic there uh but yes let's hear our first scene with kent brock a.k.a. Kenny Brocklestein. Good evening again, Springfield. Krusty the Clown, the beloved idol of countless tots, now nothing more than a common alleged criminal. His trial, which begins tomorrow, has taken center ring in a national media circus

as children of all ages from 8 to 80 hang on each new development like so many Romanian trapeze artists. From his humble beginnings as a street mime in Tupelo, Mississippi, Krusty clowned his way to the top of a personal mini-empire with dozens of endorsements, including his own line of pork products. This may have led to one of television's best-loved bloopers, Krusty's near-fatal-on-the-air heart attack in 1986.

Wasn't that a great itchy and scratchy cartoon, kids? Well, we've got another one coming right up. in 1986. Wasn't that a great itchy and scratchy cartoon, kids? Well, we've got another one coming right up. But first, I gotta hankering for some pork product. Mmm, look. Plump succulent sausage, honey-smoked bacon, and glistening, sizzling...

I'm dying! I'm dying! I'm sizzling. I'm... I'm dying. I'm dying. I'm dying. Oh, boy. Listening sizzling. Gotta listen to that pork pop and sizzle. Yeah, God. The, uh... Man, I love every second that I...

Brad Bird had a rule for everything he directed that he would animate one scene of everything he directed, like do the full animation on it that would normally be left at a lower level job than a director would do. He stopped doing that when he got into 3D films because he doesn't know how to animate on that level or not in that way.

But yeah, every pose on Krusty, his insane drawings for him in that heart attack it's so beautiful and that's also a clue because uh the kids saw it they wrote him a get well card so they know he has a pacemaker right yeah yeah how kent brockman laughs at it and just like calls it an on-air blooper instead like this is horrifying you almost watched a man die and there's another clue in this that i think i might have noticed for the first time apologies if i said it way back and we did this originally but it's so hard to see it's another example of like they didn't get props right all the time and in that

little segments like crusty you wanted to stamp out a literacy he's holding the book upside down oh you have to like smash your face into the tv you're watching it on you can see it's the catcher in the rye but the font is like pencil width. It's like someone drew on the cover of the book with a pencil. So that's a clue that Krusty can't read because the book is being held upside down when he's showing it off to the camera. That's such a great plan. I wish that had come through in the animation. That's too bad.

Also, as Kent begins his story, there's flashes of news covers, including like Timely and Newsweekly. I like that Newsweekly says like rhymes with dastard. And Clownstopper. Clown has two N's and that confused me. I wanted to bring that up. I think it's just a goof about Clownstopper. Who doesn't know how to spell clown? Well, I like actually in this scene, like the gun Apu is holding is like pointed right at Kent Brockman's head in that shot. Oh, yeah.

So that's something I kind of wish they do like a couple jokes with that, that Apu's response to being robbed is that he now wants to be heavily armed at all times and is like on a hair trigger with shooting somebody like that. Apu would find a new life as a gun nut he's like oh you're you're now gonna be on the cover of gun magazine showing off how much you love guns and you wish you'd had a gun to stop this robbery seeing such a sinister apu holding a giant magnum yeah i feel so it makes me sad sneering without his mustache he shaved for that cover yes yeah apu's such an innocent character it makes me sad to see him well doesn't he always keep kind of like an ankle holster gun like in like in like normal apu ways oh well he keeps his price gun there yeah oh yeah yeah okay i got that mixed up i think apu's hindu beliefs make him non-violent he'll just he'll just take a bullet

though then again when he joins homer's vigilante squad he does have like an army uniforms it's true but speaking of character histories this whole thing of uh crusty being born in tupelo mississippi and uh it kind of uh no mention of his jewish upbringing which i guess was a secret at the time yeah and kogan and wolodarski wrote this and they also wrote like father like clown which was a big reveal of crusty's jewishness and uh was it still in mississippi when he grew up no he's in little springfield he's in the jewish neighborhood of springfield okay i do believe the tupelo thing is a elvis reference because that is where elvis was born so and they make that honey that people sing about sweeter than tupelo honey just like honey from the bee it's that song i don't know that and we also get to see a shot of the endless parade of crusty merch where he is wearing his green shirt

which he did wear in the shorts but now it makes me think about how they were making bart merch at the time that had him in a green shirt they love love that lime green. And this is the most fired up I've ever seen Lovejoy. Like when he's like, join me in a public burning. Yeah. Oh, the animation on him is so good. But a quick triple bypass and a pacemaker later, Krusty bounced back. However, he was a changed clown. Where his show had been condemned by parents and educators alike as simple-minded TV mayhem,

this new Krusty devoted a small portion of every show to stamping out illiteracy in today's anything-for-a-thrill youth. Give a hoot, read a book. Krusty's arrest has sent shockwaves through Springfield, packing its churches, synagogues, and mosques with disillusioned citizenry from all walks of life. I urge every halfway decent member of our community to gather up all merchandise that bears the likeness of Krusty, that clown prince of corruption,

and join me in a public burning! So, is Krusty the Clown about to trade in his baggy pants for the relatively snug uniform of Springfield Penitentiary? We'll find out tomorrow when his trial begins. I enjoy Krusty's really bad knockoff of Woodsy the Owl's give a hoot, don't pollute. It doesn't even rhyme. I just love how subtle that joke is.

It's like he's not an owl, so the pun doesn't make any sense. And also, hoot doesn't rhyme with book. Nope. Even though they both have two O's in them. And it fits with later gags about Krusty being incredibly unoriginal and stealing bits from everybody but that yeah that he clearly just saw woodsy the owl on tv he's like i can say that too give a hoot read a book like i love woodsy the owl uh he's uh also about this heart attack

i like to they so clearly put it like 1986 it happened in 1986 i they'd never put a year on an on an event like that in current day episodes uh and i thought it was i thought it was weird that uh the feet his feet being small was a was a big plot point for bart but yet when he's in the hospital he still has his fake rubber feet on so they're really big in there maybe they put the they're like well okay it's time for a camera they they put the makeup on him as well for that photo opportunity so i guess that's true yeah let's as is reality in this episode crusty wears makeup we are not yet at uh and it's such a sad fade to him in his makeupless uh outfit there and they made a toy. I like human Krusty. He's so different.

Droopy, yeah. They made a toy of this design. Oh, really? One of those, like, were they McFarlane? No, not McFarlane. The ones with the yellow packaging. No, just like the ones,

the Playmates, I think they were. Okay, okay. Like the ubiquitous Simpsons toys, like a thousand of them came out, the action figures, they had little chips in them, whatever those were. They made a Krusty,

a busted Krusty. Krusty bust loosey bust loose also the uh that that triple bypass thing it sounds extreme then but like in 2000 david letterman got a quintuple bypass in his life-saving surgery uh also a really good drawing i love is how the way bob so relishes rubbing the pie in crusty's face and it's so slow the way he pushes it in and it shows a crusty like this is probably the one time sideshow bob has ever gotten to do a joke on crusty instead of the other way around and crusty can't take it and punches him in the face like Bob should have quit that day I don't know why he didn't like that's assault and it's on it's on screen it's on tv now it's comedy uh the busted Krusty figure is awesome he comes with a gun and a bag a bag of money nice oh they are playmates I mean you've seen them if you have lived in the past 20 years I have several

of them I also like how they draw bob holding the bucket of books and they give a hoot shot there too and i guess lovejoy calling for a public burning uh that is a beatles reference from when they did their bigger than jesus thing and there were a destruction of beatles memorabilia i mean that that's still in the mind of the boomers who wrote this that's obviously uh one of the most memorable things that ever happened in their childhoods. But this is definitely the more energetic Lovejoy than we've ever seen before. That's for sure. And also Krusty's prisoner number, A113.

Yawn. I went to CalArts. Sorry, Casey. A quick diversion. Have you guys seen Onward yet? Yes, I did. Bob bob did now just it's forced into your home now did you catch the a113 reference at the very end oh no no where was that it's it was so subtle but i was mad that i heard it and was like oh son of a bitch because it

wasn't like it wasn't like written anywhere uh it was at the very end when the dad got a call, or the stepdad got a call. And someone said, there's a 113 in progress. Oh, my God. I missed that. Wow. I hated that I caught it. I was like, oh, fuck this movie. They should just have those letters and numbers dance across the screen.

You know? It's like, okay, you did it. Fine. Yeah. I get it. It was cute. It's like hearing a wilhelm scream now just like come on it was by the way it's the cal arts classroom all these guys

worked out of it's the stan lee cameo of pixar films really though i guess no that's john ratzenberger because he's in all those things too but uh but look in 1990 we had not been inundated with a113 references so it's not 1990 anymore i'm sick of those numbers and letters uh also in do the bart man when there's uh you know a quick shot of bart uh in a perp photo he also is holding up an a113 in it too that makes sense so bird just reused it a second time like bird you know there's an argument to be made that pixar ripped off bird because bird put it in family dog as well he was doing it before lassiter was doing it they've got school pride guys come on just just bronze that entire classroom all right so crusty with his removed makeup as we all know later it's set up that this ain't makeup

and in fact when he pretends to be rory b bellows he actually is wearing makeup to have flesh colored skin uh but since we've recorded this episode the first time they did an episode that had a bit of discontinuity that made me mad oh yeah in uh in april 2018 season 29's episode fears of a clown the plot is that kids start being scared by scary clowns in the media and crusty's show is canceled and they visit crusty at home and he has taken off his makeup and clown suit and they do a joke about how similar he looks to homer and they say boy whoever drew us is uncreative they do a joke about how similar he looks to homer and they say boy whoever drew us is uncreative they did a joke like that but i didn't like that joke but i especially didn't like of like do you guys think you're the first people to think of a joke for crusty having no makeup

it's been addressed that he always has makeup on but i do like that the joke of him uh this ain't makeup uh just a throwaway joke that they retained his continuity is excellent. I love that. Yeah, and just throwing it away for, and for what, a joke about how him and Homer look similar? We've had that joke for 30 years. That joke made me mad. It still makes me mad. I looked up my tweet from April of 2018, and I was like, I'm still mad about this.

Multiple tweets. Still furious. still bad about this multiple tweets still furious but yes that's the story of uh that's the current history of crusty and his whether he wears makeup or not they just don't care like they're just like no one watches those old things anymore or no one remembers this mid-season whatever uh and i'm like yeah i mean they're they're correct not remembers every joke, and it doesn't really matter to the show. But I still think – But also, a show shouldn't exist like this for 30 years. It's true.

I'm going to get back on that soapbox. But I have this stance of, like, if the show doesn't care, then why should I care about the show at all, then? If you're going to tell me that doesn't matter, why does this matter? Yeah. But, I mean, I am the nemesis of the writers of the show in this way i suppose uh they're so friendly yeah they're all friendly we love them i'm not your enemy i'm your friend i'll be the enemy uh so yes we do i have a little clip here of crusty's perp walk though what kind of gun did you use? We plead insanity. Look at him. His clothes are so drab.

His face is so flesh-colored and sad. And his feet, they're so small. Say it ain't so, Krusty. My client has no confidence in time. I didn't do it. Ah! So, yeah, that's a reference. Do we have that reference? I have it. Oh, no i have it oh no say it ain't so thing no it is that's a reference to uh so there was this apocryphal story that when um shoeless joe

jackson was tried in this giant cheating scandal for the world series uh there was this apocryphal story that after he was found guilty of cheating and i guess guess throwing the game, I forget what the story was, but he was coming down the courtroom steps, and the little kid was like, say it ain't so, Joe, say it ain't so. And he's like, sorry, kid. And then he left. Wow. That wasn't the story.

The headline in the newspaper was, say it ain't so, Joe. Okay. It was wrongly attributed to a story that never happened. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so that's where the say it ain't so got popular. Yeah. And the joke here is that Krusty can't say anything as lawyer talks for him. But I do want to say that I think this is because there was a movie in 88 called Eight Men Out

that was about that scandal. And then Field of Dreams was out as they were developing the season and Shoeless Joe Jackson was in that movie too. i figured they just had shoeless joe on their minds i think you're right yeah i think you're right yeah i yeah it's the famous black socks scandal as they call it yeah well i didn't i did not know that that's a that's a good catch there yes for all you fans of 1919 world series scandals that's for you but yeah that phrase say it ain't so uh does come from that. It was such a popular event in Skid Row. Did they ever bring up in the Bart Gets Famous episode the fact that he just reuses Krusty's catchphrase during this time? No, no, they didn't.

He stopped saying it by this point. He really only says it in this episode. Yeah, because it was his big thing. I didn't do it. And then he does that and everyone laughs at him. And that Bart has said, I didn't do it. No one saw me do it. You can't prove anything.

That was on t-shirts and stuff. Yeah, he had said it in Moaning Lisa. So it was before this. Yeah, his I didn't do it. He was the I didn't do it boy before Krusty. I like how it works as a plot point in this episode because Krusty just wants to state, I didn't do it. But because it's his famous catchphrase, nobody believes him. They're just like, you always said that, Krusty. We don't

believe you. What a clown. And we've got a proto Lionel Hutz here of bad lawyer, like Krusty hired a bad lawyer. But, you know, this is before they befriended phil hartman you know he wouldn't make an appearance for a few weeks into season two don't don't talk to me about lawyers until hutz gets here i don't like this guy but well we've got uh we do have though lionel hutz's greatest enemy judge is snyder oh yes he ran over his boy several times i didn't want to say i didn't want to add just look this up that um i wasn't sure if the i didn't do it was almost like an urkel style uh parody or like referencing urkel but no i was looking up the rise of urkel happened as the simpsons was exploding like urkel was rocketing to the moon as well urkel and bart on the same level at one time in popularity. But yes, Judge Snyder, he's gone

by other names too, but he's not black in this episode. He kind of ping pongs back and forth in the early seasons until he finally consistently drawn as an African-American character, though inspired by the not African-American Robert Bork, who was a conservative judge that Ronald Reagan tried to get on the Supreme Court, but in the more innocent times of the late 80s was judged as too racist for it and didn't get to get on there, which, yeah. And he was replaced by Justice Kennedy, who is still on the Supreme Court at the time of this recording,

and he's known as the swinging judge because Kennedy goes kind of every way. So I think we're pretty lucky we got him instead of Robert Bork by comparison. Kennedy, Kennedy. Well, you know, I don't know if he's in the Kennedy family. I've never looked into that. I just I just know Justice Kennedy as a name. But curious. And yes, Bird Brad Bird also says, though, they got Robert. They got Snyder's hair wrong overseas. They wanted it to look even more like Robert Bork's hair, but they could not. And the prosecuting attorney is based on Clarence Darrow, the attorney in the Scopes Monkey trial case.

Yeah, that's why he has such a specific hairline. I would guess he seems to be for the city. So he was Springfield's district attorney. He would make, according to the wiki, only one other appearance. And I remember it well. In part, the murderer. He's the one doing its part. And he is the man told, denied by Snyder.

And I guess that denial erased him from existence because he never appeared again. He got owned too hard. And yeah, I do love that crusty accidentally pleads guilty and then uh corrects himself like uh that the he blames it on opening night jitters that's a good line is that admissible like he says that accidentally can they be like all right see you maybe i i well as a kid i didn't even get that joke at seven. Like, I think this was the first time I'd seen a mystery story or a trial in fiction as a kid. I'm pretty sure.

Same for me. Yeah. So I didn't know all these, you know, things that happened in all the rules of courtroom dramas. There's some weird editing in this, too. Like, there's a side wipe uh from scene to scene like they rarely did that in the show it's better than the fades yeah yeah there's some crappy fades i don't think there's any fades in this episode i think they've you're right they've learned against their their fades at this point outside of the end of x i think we stop with

the fades and uh yes uh we also see that uh Lou is doing bailiff duty as well because he pulls Bart away when Bart's trying to stop him from testifying. Yeah, we're still on White Lou. We saw him. White Lou, White Snyder. Yeah. Where's Black Smithers? He's yellow this whole episode. It's not even a one-off appearance because Lou appears like other shots too.

And yes, then we get to see the footage again and we get to see Homer's dive into the chips from another angle. It's so funny looking. On the commentary, it's funny too because I think Walidarski is just like, oh man, I want to see this chip dive. And every time he thinks it's coming, it's not there. Brad Bird's like, it's at the trial. I'm telling you, it's at the trial. Wait for it. Homer has to watch the surveillance video twice in this episode. And they do a good, you know, Brad Bird, the extra mile him and his team went was they did pose out the scene so it could conceivably be seen from that angle.

Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. I didn't know this quickie mart was shaping up to be the one we know. It's looking a lot better than it did in telltale head oh yeah this is pretty much the quickie mart as we know it or getting there we i didn't see the nuke arcade machine when homer walked in but uh but yes homer dives into it and we also hear there they're called heavily salted snack treats like the term heavily salted and snack treats those are a real runner in the early seasons they they love that identifier and uh homer is told to point to who that was and there's a good little drama of him looking at bard and not knowing if he should and then doing it and then

the attorney directly comments on how long it takes which which is funny. Eventually, pointed to. And then it's time for us to rid ourselves of the memories of Krusty. These toys are just adorable. Who'd have guessed they were inspired by an insane criminal genius? But Dad, you're giving him to mob mentality.

No, I'm not. I'm hopping on the bandwagon. Now, come on, son, get with the winning team. Hey, right here, Christy's Souvenirs. Buy them and burn them. Right here. Good people. I'm so happy you're all here tonight.

But, please, just a few words of caution. Now we are going to set this pile of evil ablaze, but because these are children's toys, the fire will spread quickly, so please stand back and try not to inhale the toxic fumes. Very good joke about flammable children

stuff. As we know, children's toys are deadly and will explode in flames, so please back away. They're toxic and flammable uh i also like homer's view on mob mentality he's like no i'm jumping on the bandwagon let's get in the join the winning team oh maggie had another pacifier at the ready as soon as march took her crusty one yeah that's uh that's very shorts as well too and uh there's uh if you like funny drawings in this episode, Casey, as Homer walks down the hallway with that wheelbarrow, there's a very wild-looking drawing of Homer in vacation clothes.

Oh, yeah, I saw that. I was like, oh, there's a nice Lisa and Maggie, and then, whoa, what's up with that Homer? You never see that kind of vacation photo in the background. And I think Marge marge you know she's doing what uh many of us have had to do with a lot of our memories when a celebrity is outed as a monster you just gotta you look at it and you're like boy i wish i'd known that about that person oh well and then you just trash it or you go like moving on not talking about that movie anymore

like uh uh this is on my mind because a very good documentary about it just came out but i had this reaction with chris benoit when uh when uh chris benoit murdered his family and killed himself uh the pro wrestler that made me just look at all the stuff like boy when i was enjoying all of his matches i was watching a murderer like this sucks i just threw away my horace and pete blu-rays that's a joke for no one yeah also that's a joke for us that shows awful everything he does it's so nice we don't have to pretend like horace and pete is good yeah it's so good man uh i don't have to pay for the rest of it yeah watch like one two episodes and i'm you know, whatever. Yeah.

And no more having to read essays about how important it is like that. We're free of that. Just that we burned all of those just as we burned these crusty memories. Finally, no more essays. I love that buy them and burn them guy too. That's so funny. And also just how happy the mob is to do it too. So that guy 3002 he also pointed out that in the script they directly call out that like mo burns smithers marvin monroe they're all supposed to be in the crowd but the crowd shot instead is just a bunch of randos so so didn't

that did not come through and uh yes then we go back to the courtroom and crusty has another shocking revelation for us grassy would you please turn your attention to exhibit b tell me what you see uh um which one do you mean the one with the big B on it. What's the matter? Can't you read? No, I can't. I can't read or write. I admit it. I'm totally illiterate. Now, are you happy? Can it be that the champion of child literacy can't even read himself? Is it a crime to be illiterate? All right, all right. See this, Krusty? This is a B, and Exhibit B. Betting slips obtained by this court indicating you have lost substantial sums of money on sports gambling. Is it a crime to bet on sporting events? Yes, it is.

Oh. News for Krusty there. Famous. Animation on Big B. Love that. Yeah. So good. Just the boom, boom.

And this writer's room famously full of degenerate gamblers yes yeah betting on sports which is what uh lisa the greek is all about i i think jay and wally are the most guilty of it yeah yeah especially specifically on football i think they gamble on other things but mainly is that a rumor thing like is there still gambling happening on tv writer rooms everywhere in la these days i don't know i don't know if the writers still gamble like i think like every game that we play on our phones is like a little mini casino that touches all the same like pleasure centers so uh no i remember i talked about at least the greek but my stepdad was part of a betting pool at his job and i'd see the big spreadsheet all

the time with like all the things written in i didn't understand it it was like a big exciting thing for him and then one year i noticed um oh hey uh hey well that you didn't bring home the betting thing you're not talking about anymore what happened he's like oh yeah the guy running i got arrested oh wow so uh yeah it was uh not good for him you know i'm wondering if writers room now are just so nerdy and also full of just non-football fans that that gambling doesn't happen. You know, that feels that feels like your dad's thing. Like if if a co-worker came to me like, let's gamble on the World Series. I'd be like, well, how do millennials gamble?

Do zoomers gamble? Oh, I mean, you had it right with like the little arcade stuff on your phone and just people go to casinos for fun. Oh, man, you go to Vegas, you're seeing a lot of young people there for sure. For sure. You're seeing them. Yeah. Yes. This establishment of Krusty being illiterate or having trouble reading.

I think it stick around until about season four and then they pretty much drop it. Like Krusty needs to read things for certain plot events to happen. And I think in one of the early flashback episodes they show him reading a cue card yeah yeah and it's like or the torah he can read the torah yeah for his birth i guess he could have like learned it phonetically i suppose yeah memorization i guess yeah i feel like that's how a lot of jewish kids do that probably and uh i also i think the gasping crowd is taken from the gasping crowd of homer's odyssey like a couple of those people in the move back gasp it looks looks very similar i think there are some freaks of animation there i like to have the district attorney knows

crusty's looking a little too uh sympathetic so he's like all right all right all right what are these yeah he doesn't care he's just like this is unrelated uh then there's a all right dissolved to the next scene not a at least a peppier one and it's to show that time has passed because now the jury has already uh got their verdict and crusty is found guilty and uh and his lawyer runs off saying like i knew this happens to me every time like a very troy mcclure kind of moment i think troy mcclure had just been passed out drunk at that point he'd run away screaming yeah oh yeah crusty is found guilty he's he's off to jail i'm glad we don't get any crusty in jail scenes they at the end of the episode they allude to some uh they're the devils on their

shoulders are telling them to make some prison rape jokes and i'm really glad they didn't do that yeah yeah i think macarani must have stomped that out yeah which good i mean beyond like one illusion that homer said like i've heard what goes on in prison but that's all that's all i mean again in the 90s it seemed a very funny sexual assault in a prison well how how hilarious but against men how funny yeah oh boy the best the funniest ideas but anyway so i'm assuming that off screen somewhere a tv executive said well we can't have this show without crusty bob you could sub in right And that's why Bob takes over the show. And we come to a moment that feels normal now, but was entirely meant to make you just guffaw with laughter the second you hear it back in 1990.

And that was that the slide whistling sideshow Bob puts it down and has the voice of Frazier himself, Kelsey Grammer. My young friends, for years I have been silent, save for the crude glissandos of this primitive wind instrument. But now destiny has thrust me into the center ring. In the coming weeks, you will notice some rather sweeping changes in our program. Please do not be alarmed. Itchy and scratchy, we'll still have a home here.

But we will also learn about nutrition, self-esteem, etiquette, and all the lively arts. What the hell are you doing, Lise? I'm watching Sideshow Bob. You know, he's a lot less patronizing than Krusty used to be. You backstabber, you traitor, you... Snap out of it, Bart. Face the facts. All those hours we spent staring at Krusty, we were staring at a crook. Look, Lise, I know Krusty's innocent. Don't ask

me why. It's just a feeling I have. Oh, Bart. Come on, Lisa. I think I can prove Krusty's innocent, but I need your help. You do? Why? Well, come on, Lisa, you know why. No, why? I'll never forgive you for making me say this, but you're smarter

than me. So, are you with me? Yeah, man. The chrysondos is a favorite uh glissando oh okay how dare you you're mangling these musical terms henry that no one ever uses i'm sorry was he big on cheers at this point oh very big yeah yeah cheers was one of the top rated programs and he was such a successful character like he was supposed to just be a one-off guest star and everybody loved frazier so much he became a regular on the series and oh yeah trust me i i know my frazier well what i have what i have iffy memories on is cheers i didn't like cheers as much oh cheers is good yeah maybe Maybe I'll give it a try now that we're all inside forever.

It's weird. We've all forgotten about Cheers. We just know Frasier now. But Cheers was a bigger sitcom, for sure. Oh, yeah. It had bigger ratings than Frasier. But that's just because network ratings went down the entire time on average that fraser was on the air but yeah i mean cheers finale was one of the highest rated uh programs of the 90s you know i watched it

me too tried watching it when i first moved here i just couldn't get into it that's all give it a shot and i was way more just like where's fr Frasier? When are we getting to the Frasier factory? Okay, see. But I do like that Bob, you know, this urbane voice, and he assures kids that Itchy and Scratchy aren't going away. I would bet in a long-term plan for Sideshow Bob, he's getting rid of Itchy and Scratchy. I wonder why they kept Itchy and Scratchy.

Well, the contract probably keeps going that long with the Myers studio. And so he can't break that contract. But as soon as it's up, no more Itchy and Scratchy on his show. A good thing about this episode is that Bob is a good host. And his show is beneficial to children. And the kids love it. The kids love hearing the Man in the Iron Mask. That's a great twist that no one hates Bob's new show.

And how much Lisaisa loves it like she smiles like this is the show for lisa like she would prefer it to bart's one like yeah it's a it's a very smart idea that his show despite bob being evil his show is as a net much better for children and you know you ask yourself like is he doing better for society than Krusty is? Krusty, if Krusty was guilty, all he did was rob one liquor store as opposed to poisoning the minds of children everywhere. He robbed children of their youth. Making them say they'll kill themselves. Yeah.

And as Bart is still convinced that Krusty is innocent, Lisa even gives him like kind of a harsh slap. But that's more like an old movie kind of thing there. Snap out of it. You ditzy dame. And Bart is forced to admit that Lisa is smarter than him. And another thing from the original script is Maggie puts her hand in as well. And she's supposed to be present with them at the quickie mart but is not so she is with them at the taping so i think uh she's maggie was supposed to be present for all the scenes i do recall a line like maybe bart says it like me and my sisters figured it out like he includes maggie

in one of the statements later i'm like was magg there? Like, I didn't remember. She is there when they get to the studio in Act 3, but she's not at the Quickie Mart. 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 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 i forgot how act three is just the investigation period that's it and it all comes together it's like a very short act it's a real i i forgot how short it was until i was looking at my recording of it yeah uh but yes they they head to the quickie mart and uh they run into apu and apu is just on a razor's edge here like he is he

is warning them he says he's got eyes on them he's he's warning him he has a gun there's lots of like off-screen apu uh chatter i'm like did they rewrite some lines and they freeze on some video or something i just didn't it's like so weird to not see him and just hear him off screen so on the commentary brad bird comes off as a little defensive about this sequence because he knows it's kind of weak he knows the posing is just very expository and simple but he explains it of just like there are limited resources in animating a tv show and by doing this one in a more simple way it buys them the ability to do better stuff like the heart attack or what bob will do in the very next scene as well but yes as they they walk around the They find a number of clues. sent to Krusty, it was after his heart attack, when he had a pacemaker put in.

Uh-huh. Wait a minute. Krusty can't read. Okay, okay. So the poor guy can't read. Can't we get off his back already? No, don't you get it, Bart? How could Krusty have been reading a magazine if he can't read? Hey, hey, this is not a lending library. If you're not going to buy that thing, put it down or I'll blow your heads off. Bart, I'm starting to think you're right. Krusty was framed. Did he have any enemies?

I don't know. But I know someone who would. Krusty's best friend in the whole world, Sideshow Bob. I love that line there. They're like, does he have any enemies? No, but Sideshow Bob's his best friend. Yeah, it's a weird train of thought Bart went on. Like, Bob must have enemies.

But yeah, now that I think about it, a better question would be like, why did Krusty the Clown rob a convenience store in his makeup and costume? Yeah, yeah. There's no question of that, of why. He clearly wanted to be caught, but nobody did that even level of investigation. Why was he hanging out in his house with makeup on so that's true yeah also i miss bart's clomping of feet oh god oh god we hear the squeaky crusty feet like yeah he's like walking around but bart's specific like cartoonish hannah

barbara clomp of his feet in season one is some of my favorite sound effects and uh i also like some of the posing of lisa and this like she has her hand behind her back in a very like kind of sherlock looking at stuff way and and this does set the standard for most mysteries in the simpsons which is bart says he's going to solve it. Lisa solves it for him. And then Bart takes all the credit. Yeah. Yeah. Bart doesn't do anything except like have the, the gusto to reveal Bob on the air. Oh yeah.

She's a real Watson really. And he's the Sherlock who's like puts it all together. And I like how defensive Bart is just like, okay, okay. So the poor guy can't read. Can we get off his back already? I also love the

the drawing of like the stick figure having a heart attack on the microwave that's so good and uh yes the a not good drawing is the mint cigarettes that are on the back of the magazine they pick up it's like m-e-n-t it's it's very strange i guess it means menthol yeah they just forgot the yeah the hol and uh yes threatening to blow their heads off like that this the trigger uh the incredibly like traumatized trigger happy up who all gone after this episode i i can see why they didn't go with it he's funnier as the friendly up who but i mean i kind of like that the idea like i also it's kind of tragic to talk about but also in the news in the la in the late 90s were violent convenience store clerks who shot people uh so i i think it's a reference to that as well uh but that's not fun you get a load of the uh the magazines in the background they're

just like muscle right fun dance comic? Fun, dance, comic. Sponge and Vacuum should have been up there instead. Danger Liker. Yeah, they... You're right, though. They're defensive on the commentary, too. Just like, boy, we didn't realize that every magazine could be a joke,

so we didn't think of any. I'm looking at these, and they're like, so we have Fun, dance, date, bucks. Bucks? Teen, comic world with Mickey Mouse on the cover. It's like a Mickey Mouse head. And also sport. Sport.

That's, yeah, you know, that's what happens when you leave, you give no direction on what to do there. Like Bert said, this is a simpler scene they didn't work too hard on because they needed it for i mean if i was gonna want to see great animation in this would i rather see it when they're looking for clues or when sideshow bob is reading stuff i i think i'd prefer it for the reading me too and uh yes in stark contrast to crusty's illiteracy sideshow bob part of his show is reading a book on tv just him seated in a study reading a book just and i have to imagine it's just a the for 10 minutes of the show it's a static camera angle and he just sits and reads a book i gotta say like when i was a kid in the 80s watching pbs a lot of shows were this i remember there were like two shows like

this where someone would be reading a story and then a person would be drawing a picture like 80s watching pbs a lot of shows were this i remember there were like two shows like this where someone would be reading a story and then a person would be drawing a picture like slowly as the person was like reading the story i'm like it was oh who had like who had the patience for that but i was like like what's the picture gonna look like i was just waiting for that to come together but that's releasing some old memories in me i believe you kind of figured that out the storyteller or something it was a guy and his wife, and I think she was the one drawing with chalk and stuff in the background. See, I never watched those, but I do remember it as a thing

because Space Ghost Coast to Coast did a parody episode that was just that, where they got a local Atlanta guy to tell a story of like the banjo episode and then a guy draws it as he tells the story that's right that's a good episode and uh i mean casey you know that could be a future job for you you should do a stream where like somebody reads a story and you draw draw what they're talking about yeah drawing's fun when i'm not doing it for work uh and uh yes he is reading the man in the iron mask death of a titan is a name of a chapter but it's not the 35th chapter it's the 50th chapter of it oh or at least got fired for that blunder at least according to gutenberg.com which is where i read it and uh and also, the closing lines of chapter 49

are what Bob says in this next scene, except there's four more words after where he stops that are now entering the cavern. So he's slightly wrong there, too. Hey, he was trying to find a good one to go out on. It's abridged. Oh, no, it's a better. Yeah.

Maybe he cut out 15 chapters, and that's why it's abridged, too. He a better yeah yeah uh maybe although you cut out 15 chapters and that's why it's abridged he could have been reading a different translation oh you're right yeah you're right well the gutenberg translation did have the words he said up to the four that were missing but yeah it is it is a translated text but why do we hear reading and singing from old sideshow bob a volley of musketry flamed thundered roared a profound silence followed broken only by the approaching footsteps of the third brigade next week chapter 35 of the man in the iron mask the death of a titan hmm well kids that's our show for today and now in the words of mr cole porter every time we say goodbye

i die a little every time we say goodbye i wonder why a little every time we say goodbye Goodbye Ah, love it. Yeah, I have a clip of the original song. Ah, yes. The Cole Porter classic. I gotta say, I like Kelsey Grammer's version better. Speaking of taking its time, this song takes its time. Okay.

Every time we say goodbye Jesus. jesus come on let's go let's go i got places to be long enough I wonder why a little. Why am I gone? Okay, we got to stop this. It's like Valium. Yeah, man. I thought Cole Porter did Cocaine. He's speeding this up. I think you're thinking of Charlie Parker.

Okay, well, he at least sang about Cocaine. Like, some get their kicks from Cocaine. But Jesus, I didn't realize that song was so low, like slow. I'd never, I've honestly only ever listened to the Sideshow Bob version of that song. I thought Sideshow Bob's version was slow. They linger on. It's like, no, he sped it up. They must have, in the mix, have been like, this show's too long as it is.

Like, speed up this song. And yeah, I saw that even gaga has covered that song in her duets album in 2014 uh but uh yeah written in 1944 that man that slow ass version of it though jesus you're trying to prolong the saying of goodbye goodbye i get it so you take your best gal up for a dance and it's the last dance of the night that's right you got to go to war i don't want to say goodbye to that and uh and every pose in that sequence is just beautiful like his his flame thunder roared like his hands oh yeah oh man and every i even laugh at kind of the funny drawing of it like when his his hand is kind of back a little bit he's like every time like that drawing's even funny to me like god the perfect drawings they loved drawing sideshow bob here like you can just

see the passion in in every shot of it as the next scene comes bob is uh being congratulated on a show well done and we get our first bob laugh it It's a great show, sideshow. Switchboards were jammed. The kids loved it. Thanks, Ed. I'm glad we finally dispelled the myth that I'm too uptown for the tots. And yet I can't help thinking about poor Krusty. and the shading on that i think that's the only time that kind of dramatic shading was done in

all of season one like this you could tell that they didn't really know how to do it yet because they're like pencil lines where all the shading starts instead of having it just be one color of paint and then another color of paint like you see where the drawing of the shading is yeah that's true yeah and i really want to know what's going on with that poster in the bed like the very distracting poster in the back of his uh office you could see when he's laughing i miss that the uh what did it say it says don cascali and i looked it up and i'm like i can't find a google search image like image for this or a result or anything it's of a guy like in a beret interesting maybe it's uh like a poster from an opera he went to i guess so yeah yeah

that's uh yeah that's weird i i missed that one i my eyes were so drawn to his laughter and uh that's the first of many great evil cackles from old sides Bob, yakking it up on the old yak box. And yeah, Act 3 starts with Bob's face showing he has replaced Krusty. That's how much things have changed. That's the three faces of this episode. And also the first speaking role for an Asian character on The Simpsons. Oh, wait. Who?

One of the... Well, it's like a very Asian accent. Like, we see your face on keychains. I don't want to do the accent, but it's clearly... And you look at the the well it's like a very asian accent like we see your face on keychains i don't want to do the accent but it's uh clearly and you look at the character it's like this i guess they're trying to figure out what does an asian person look like oh i didn't uh i didn't even realize that well here i've got the clip here because it precedes the very important first meeting of sideshow bob and bart as long as we don't count telltale head where technically sideshow bob is part of the mob trying to kill Bart. Let's not count that. This is their first meeting.

We see your face on Keechee. And water action pan and snow domes. This is all very exciting. But I think we'd do well to explore the more upscale market. For instance, Sideshow Bob limited edition prints, collector's plates, commemorative coins. Some kids are here to see you, Sideshow Bob. They say it's important. Well, we can sign these contracts tomorrow. Certainly. Some kids are here to see you, Sideshow Bob. They say it's important.

Well, we can sign these contracts tomorrow. Certainly. I take great pride in being able to sign my own name. Hi, Sideshow Bob. Sideshow Bob, can we ask if you... Forgive me, children. As much as Sideshow Bob would love to chat, he has a show starting in moments. Here you go, three tickets. Be my guest.

Okay, but... Come, come, let's run along. He should have signed those contracts yep yeah that's it's so great they almost he almost signs it and he'd be rich everything would have changed it's it's nice how they show how close he got but wow he just said he had time for kids and then just like fucking push them along yeah yeah i guess it's only so he that's why he's barefoot in this entire scene too. It's only so he can put on the shoes in front of Bart. So Bart can see that he has long feet,

but, uh, yeah, Bob. Wow. That was a good catch. I had been so distracted by Kelsey Grammer's voice all this time. I did not realize that was a,

um, rather intentional, uh, Asian accent on that person. So if you're an Asian woman, want to cosplay the Simpsons, there are now characters oh no three i like i heard that too as a bad asian accent i was like she didn't particularly look like it but that sounded kind of like yeah you're right like man well rough this this makes me even more convinced that this bit here is pulled from greening's meetings with simpsons

merchandise people ahead of the show like as uh as we'd find out in like you know he did a december 89 interview where he's saying like oh yeah we've been meeting with the merch people they want to do this they want to do that like so by the time they're writing this matt graining has been having the meetings with the people who make stuff and And I could totally imagine that in his meetings, he would have had the white guy who owns the company and probably an Asian person who runs the factory that makes them in China. Like, I could see them pulling it from there like that. But yeah, now that that's he makes me sad. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

So we got this woman. We got Cookie Kwan and we have Barneyney's girlfriend and uh humber's barbershop quartet yeah and when they were making this episode they didn't know the show would be a hit but they were obviously making merch ahead of time before the airing the the bart dolls were coming our way already like in uh if you guys want to hear a nice blast from the past, the December 89 interview on Fresh Air that Matt Groening does with Terry Gross, it's really good. He talks about how, like, yeah, we had a tough time at first figuring out how to make a Bart head, a big plastic Bart head for the dolls. So they knew the production pipeline to create Bartmania was turning way before the episodes of the show started airing and uh yes so the kids are able to get onto a tv station as they easily do in many other episodes

and i also love the line i take great pride in being able to sign my own name and maggie is there with them when he walks in so i guess they they just forgot to pose out maggie in the or the quickie mart scene or if they're trying to make the quickie mart scene as easy as possible then you don't draw maggie in there the line that i caught later is bart says my sisters and i have been investigating so yeah that's maggie was supposed to that's why if the recording says sisters then they got to draw maggie in there maggie was playing in the microwave very dangerous which that makes it even crazier that they were able to just like hey magg Maggie's coming with us to the show.

Like Marge is like, sure. Have fun. Bart, you can take care of her. Marge is not really a factor in this episode. No, I guess after she tells, yeah, after she gets together Bart's crusty merch in the middle of the episode, we never see her again. So here's one of the biggest changes from the original script that i i found in the original script before sideshow bob comes out there is a sideshow bob theme song written into the script oh really okay and uh i shall now sing it for you oh boy

sideshow bob he's a man who never stole never never had a rap sheet, never on parole. He won't let you down or get thrown in the can. Won't make you frown. He's a stable wild man. He's your friend and idol. Sideshow Bob! That's great. Interesting. Although I'm glad they went with the cavalcade.

It's like... And it speeds things up. Yeah, it's classy. It's like a circus version of classy music. So the joke is a little better. We complimented the music by Richard Gibb. They asked him to dress up an existing piece of music. Well, his arrangement is good.

You guys are giving this guy some gruff. We're going to hear all the Gibb stings coming up soon. Well, yeah, so the show begins and Bob is fully replaced, Krusty. Hello, children. Whom do you love? My son, Bob!

Come on, Bart, go with the flow. How much do you love me? With all our hearts! About a zillionth as much as I love Krusty. Today's show promises to be a marvelous celebration of the human spirit. But first, I regret to say I see a youngster who looks troubled. What's your name, young man?

Bart Simpson, sir. Well, perhaps we can shed some light on your problem in a new segment exploring pre-adolescent turmoil. I call it choices. I don't think so, sir. sir bart i'm reaching out to you i love the it's very they said in the commentary it's very donahue posing like going up into the audience and like resting your hand on your arm on your knee and like talking like being very personal touchy-feely and the choices set is more like a sally jesse rafael set or something it even gets like a weird it's hard to even make out in the background but it gets like a weird like little musical sting like cheesy schmaltzy uh like stuff like daytime talk show music and i also like in bob's adjusted intro he

says whom yeah and he doesn't ask them if they'll kill themselves yeah if he goes off the air so bob is better for kids in every way he's not encouraging self-harm and i also like how this is written that every kid loves bob except for bart and bob's hubris is that he wants to even win over the last boy who still loves crusty more and that is his undoing like if he hadn't put bart on television in this in the choices segment he could have kept it a secret at least if he knew bart knew he could hide it or maybe just murder bart as he always plans to do after this episode but instead he lets him be on tv and he's he's again that's his hubris he wants to def he can finally truly defeat crusty if he makes the last boy stop

loving him that's uh and so bart gets uh on the stage of choices i love the design of it and i also love how he tells him just like i bet the other kids don't accept you true sideshow bob that doesn't bother me bob then hears all of uh the evidence and he's got a refutation for it all So what's on your mind, Bart? I bet the other children don't accept you True side, Joe Bob, but that doesn't bother me You see, my sisters and I have been doing a little investigating And it looks to us like Krusty was framed

Framed? Well, the videotape showed that the thief used the microwave oven at the Quickie Mart But Krusty couldn't go near the thing, not with his pac well you know bert as much as i love crusty he was never one to take doctor's orders too seriously well maybe but get this crusty was illiterate and the guy who robbed the store was reading the springfield review of books ah well bart the fact is you don't have to be able to read to enjoy the Springfield Review of books. Just look at these amusing caricatures of Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag. Yeah, I guess those are kind of funny.

Children, this whole sordid affair has been a shock to all of us, but we must get on with our lives. Some such great posing on Bob and the little expressions and everything. Oh, yeah, his subtle like, uh-oh. He's posing unframed like he's like, wait a minute. Yeah, I love that. The little frightened look in his eyes. And his acting is on overcompensating for every cover he has of, like, Bart's easy evidence.

I love extra that when he's making an excuse, he's like, well, obviously, I have a copy of the Springfield Review of Books right here, and see it's it's actually pretty great it's on the set yeah it's funny it shows what a damning piece of evidence it was the same book crusty head and i love how bart's like those are kind of funny to the to gorvydal and susan sante characters yeah uh yeah he's uh bart's being very nice there but i don't think he knows nobody that's a great joke too that if you can't read you don't give a shit about a drawing of gore of a dollar susan uh but yeah and it's such a great choice too the review of books because if it was like say just people magazine or newsweek ones that have a bunch of photos in it, it'd be easy to say like, well, he's looking at photographs

or whatever. But a magazine only about books that doesn't have a picture on the cover, that makes it even more of an unfriendly to alliterates magazine. And something such that Bob would read anyways. Yes, yeah. Which again, part of his set dressing on poses. It's like on the fake coffee table they have there. I love that. But yes, Bob is trying to close the book on all this, and that's when it hits Bart.

Uh-oh. Let's try to remember Krusty not as a hardened criminal, but as that lovable jester who honked his horn and parted around in his little car. And shot you out of a cannon. And shot me out of a cannon. Yes, we will never forget that, will we?. But open your heart. I admit I have some mighty big shoes to fill.

Big shoes to fill. Big shoes to fill. Big shoes to fill. Big shoes to fill. Big shoes to fill. Big shoes to fill. Big shoes to fill. Angel Kreese, there was a school of thought called stoicism. a minute you did it excuse me oh god the

big shoes to fill thing i love that it's just the echoing of kelsey grammer's voice and then the neon feet going into the screaming mouth like it's it's great just editing work like yeah who knows how much even was done in animation. And the pullout as Bart just turns his head as he realizes what's happening. It's really good. It's very well done. Though, here's a goof-em-up. The neon feet, they all have five toes, not four toes.

Oh, Bob's a freak. What the? But yes, the way he points at him, he's like, you did it. And he's like, excuse me and he's like excuse me like great great acting on uh kelsey there too and uh as this child takes over the show they should really cut the cameras yes yeah well you know this is uh it's a small town station it's live tv nobody nobody knows anything uh but actually this is where i made a new connection i had not made before and it's partially thanks to that guy 3002 on twitter in the original script bart grabs the mic and talks to the audience

and he says kids in tv land and instead of kids watching at home or well you'll hear it in the next clip but he doesn't say kids in tv land in the original Krusty the clown short on Tracy Ullman. The story is that Bart doesn't think the Krusty he meets in person is the real Krusty. And he rips off Krusty's nose, calls him an imposter, grabs the microphone and speaks to the camera and says, kids in TV land,

that's not Krusty. So this is a fully a sequel scene to that. Like it is a takeoff from the Krusty the Clown original short. So that was, I was like, whoa, I never realized that until we rewatched all the shorts, which you can watch our rewatch of those at the $10 level at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. I recommend them. But yes, so it's, you know, it's hard to remember a time when there weren't a lot of simpsons i recommend them but yes so it's you know it's hard to remember a time when there weren't a lot of simpsons and so these guys jay and wally writing a script they only have the shorts to go off on and they i think they used that scene from the crusty short as a

jumping off point for this scene it's about the revealing of an imposter yeah on a clown show but bart is actually correct this time instead of the uh instead of wrong in the Ulman short. But yes, Sideshow Bob is caught. Attention, fellow children. Krusty didn't rob that store. Sideshow Bob framed him, and I got proof. Fuck you, lousy, stupid, clumsy. See that?

Krusty wore big floppy shoes, but he's got little feet like all good-hearted people. Sideshow Bob really feels the shoes spin. See that? Krusty wore big floppy shoes, but he's got little feet like all good-hearted people. Kids, right? How do you figure we missed that? Get off your tuffs, boys. Get out of that studio. Yes, I admit it. I hated him. His hackneyed shenanigans robbed me of my dignity for years. I played the buffoon while he squandered a fortune on his vulgar appetites. That's why I framed Krusty.

I would have gotten away with it, too, if it went for these meddling kids. Take him away, boys. Treat kids as equals. They're people, too. They're smarter than you think. They were smart enough to get me. In the original script, it ends with Bart saying, take him away, boys. So there is no, treat kids as equals!

I love in his last moment, he's still being a great respecter of children. He wants to just help them. I was sitting there like, you know, I agree with that maniac. Even though all of his episodes after this would be about trying to kill a child yes well most of them yeah if not one child then all children and everyone else in springfield within at a bomb uh i also just love his line of like while he squandered a fortune on his vulgar appetites uh do you think this would have had a bigger impact if the audience we did not know did not see like him

laughing evilly like in that earlier like if it was actually a big reveal like oh it was bob yeah maybe maybe yeah yeah now that you mentioned i think that was kind of a mistake to told it to show to show the hand that early yeah yeah though it does make the comedy funnier in first viewing when he's like, framed? What? Like, those covers are funny. Yeah, I mean, they play it up very well, but it just like, it feels like something we'll never be able to truly understand if the other way. And I mean, his whole speech, too, of the meddling kids, in 1990, it was still very

clever to do a Scooby-Doo reference. Yeah, it was fresh at the time, right? Yeah, probably. The Wayne's World movie would be like two years later, and they'd do a Scooby-Doo ending. Though, I think it started in 87, 88, was Pup Named Scooby-Doo, which was Scooby-Doo dunking on itself. About damn time. Took 20 years. I mean, all of us, well, we were watching scooby-doo reruns when we were seven

and so i think i did get this reference but the writers of the show had had their minds numbed by scooby-doos their entire lives yeah they were kids for the original run yeah yeah uh but yes he's he's pulled away another of my favorite drawings in the whole episode is like they were smart enough to catch me like on that me his his desperate look is so great before they shut the doors yeah yeah the paddy wagon and uh also bart's assertion that good-hearted people have small feet and large feet is a sign of the devil i would suppose i i like that bart bart does a correct logical conclusion then he makes the next jump of like, yes, he has big feet. And that's how it was him in the video.

And obviously he's evil because as we all know, evil people have big feet. Like he throws in some magic. It's like basketball's an evil sport. We shut it down. That's why. Yeah. Didn't you see Uncut Gems? Oh, man.

I love Uncut Gems gems all basketball people are evil uh you know kevin kevin duran he seemed he seemed like an understanding guy there so yes uh there's also a really great just match cut of the doors slam on bob and then the doors open on crusty in the next shot it's it's really good of the courthouse door opening. It's that bird touch. And Homer and Krusty walking down the stairs together. I feel it's a very intentional choice of an image of just like,

yeah, they look the same. Do you notice that, audience? And yes, we have our happy ending as Krusty won't forgive anybody except Bart. Well, we made a terrible, terrible mistake. Won't happen again.

It better not, you dimwit. Rusty, I'm mad enough to admit I was wrong. And I'm sorry I fingered you in court. I sincerely hope that the horrible stories I heard about what goes on in prison are exaggerated. Well, the important thing is that I regained the trust of the children. But there was one boy

who trusted me all along. Bart? Yes, sir? Thank you. Ah. Serene circus. Yeah, the happy circus the clown stopped crying there's a great there's a great um sophisticated little touch there i mean it's not super complicated but how the the shot that they take of crusty and bart turns into like the shot that's hanging in his room yeah and they pull out from it yeah it's really nice that's really good i mean that's like a citizen cane kind of shot like the photograph of the newspaper group and then it uh pans out and it's uh the photo that's up in the office that's true i can see bird intentionally doing a cane

thing there but yeah no that's a really good that's a really good touch. And I noticed that Krusty's signature is very childlike. I like to believe that while in prison, Krusty began to learn how to read. By Father Like Clown, he can at least sound out like, Dear Krusty. He's like turning the letter around. But later, Krusty has to be reminded that Bart did this. What have you done for me lately?

Some of my favorite sounds I've done a lot in my life. He's not quite as gruff as I wanted him to be. He's still in the Jebediah's head kind of voice. Yeah, he's the higher register that Dan was doing in season one with him. I say Jebediah's head and Krusty's voice a lot out loud in my apartment because I don't leave it anymore. I can't.

Your bird's going to be saying that the next time I see him. I want him to say, Jebediah's head. I'm sorry. It's been only a three-hour recording. But I guess the last bit I want to call out there is I love that a cop apologizes for arresting the wrong person. They're like, that won't happen again. Better not. It will happen.

The cops are famous for how many innocent people have been arrested by them. And Wiggum's just going to get dumber. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, Wiggum should be eating his gun if this was like a season 30 episode. Not in a self-harm kind of way. He thought it was chocolate. Like, yes. Yeah, the design of the parting shot of Bart's room full of Krusty merchandise is very sweet.

I have to assume that Krusty gave him a bunch of free merchandise to replace all the stuff that got destroyed. Honestly, it's probably a real bonanza for Krusty. Everybody has to buy new Krusty merch to replace the old stuff they all burnt together. And yes, just like Bart, Krusty has a bunch of green shirts on his merch back then. And it's a cute ending, but in Future Simpsons, that kind of ending,

they just have the normal, cute, sweet ending music they just play in most episodes instead of the happy circus as we heard one more with gib yeah we uh so much mambo in that next one oh man yeah uh but man i think this is one of our longest in a while but how could it not be with so much great crusty comedy and the first kelsey grammar appearance like everything about this is great like even even when you talk about a higher average of great episodes in season two i still would say if you just looked at season one and two this is in top five episodes i would say so yeah and it's a solid season one definitely and it's so weird that kelsey grammar is in five

minutes of it yeah but he's that powerful that you think he's in the whole thing. You know, every word he says is just so remarkable. And yeah, I, and great direction too, that tried a lot of stuff. The other ones didn't,

uh, the other episodes in season one didn't, didn't get a chance to try or nobody wanted to try. And, uh, yeah, man, I just love it.

Like, uh, I mean, Casey, any other, any other final thoughts? No, this is just,

this is a excellent episode like i remember uh when you had matt and virgil on but they tried to get him on for season one and then matt was like no that i don't like season one it makes me feel bad i was like i get season one is a little rough but like this is a solid episode i love moaning lisa also like the bit with marge coming back and telling that stuff to Lisa at the end. That's one of my favorite moments. Also, like you got to enjoy the art, even the even like the weirder parts. I don't want to say bad because I don't hate this.

I love I love the look of old Klasky Chupo Simpsons. Well, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Casey. Yes. And Casey, can you plug whatever you're working on right now on your Twitter, of course? I'm working on getting the Busted Krusty the Clown figure for $13 on eBay. That's not bad. And he talks if you put him on the prison playset.

Well, maybe I'll look for the prison playset next. I have a couple of playsets, but not the prison one. No, I guess prudent to my talk about Squeak the Mouse and Edgy and Scratchy is a new comic I put out called Me and You. It's an anthology I'm doing where it's about kind of the spirit of duality in life and between people, ourselves,

you and someone else or whatever. It's also just absurd slapstick and odd and weirdness in the likes of spy versus spy or or those old tom and jerry stuff there are two issues out that you can read online and buy on my store uh go to caseygreen.com.com and you'll see the link there first one's about two baby birds uh throwing each other off the nests over and over and the second one is about a cat and mouse oh boy all right i'm gonna check these out for sure yeah just go to caseygreen.com.com and obviously follow you on twitter oh yeah people can stay in

the loop not only on your your viral threads about redrawing scenes from simpsons but also whenever there's a new fuck off i i believe you tweeted out too yeah i always post it on twitter um there's a oh yeah fuck off has a actual url that goes just to the webtoon site but it's it's an easier way of archiving it it's comics website dot online that's easy to remember i hope so um yeah there's always a new i try to do at least four a week there's no real uh schedule for it so because you know you know fuck fuck that stuff off you know uh so yeah follow me on twitter at casey green with two n's just like clown stopper i was saying your twitter handle we were talking about that extra n yeah yeah i'm staying in and doing my work uh well

us too and then we thank you so much for coming back casey yes thank you thanks for having me y'all so thanks again to casey Green for being a guest on this show. And please check out all of his stuff online. But as for us, if you want to support our show and get some great rewards on top of that, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And if you sign up at the $5 level, you'll get all of our shows one week in advance and ad-free. And you'll also get access to all of the podcasts behind the $5 paywall, over 100 bonus podcasts that you haven't heard that includes all of our limited mini series which

the last one we did was talking futurama season two part one and we are now in the middle of talking mission hill our newest patreon mini series we're doing the entire only season of mission hill with our talking simpsons treatment having a lot of fun doing that and we hope you check it out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons at the $5 level. That new miniseries and so many of the other things we've done in the past nearly three years of this Patreon. And Henry, please tell everyone out there what's happening at the $10 level. One super long podcast every month for $10 and up patrons. That's right. The What a a cartoon movie is what bob's talking about we once a month do a different animated feature film in the talking simpsons style often for over four

hours long some of our longest and most in-depth podcasts uh you know our most recent one castle of cagliostro the lupin miyazaki classic but you know as i talked about it before but if you really loved all this discussion of the career of brad bird and its connection to the simpsons you would do yourself quite a favor if you listen to our one for the iron giant that we did back in december so please check all of those out for 10 bucks a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast you can find that every week wherever you find podcasts or head on over to

patreon.com slash retronauts where we're offering two exclusive full-length episodes a month just for five dollar and up patrons again check it out wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts for more great stuff henry how about you hey i'm henry gilbert and be sure to follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm always tweeting up a storm on there and if you want to stay in the loop about what's going on with me and all the podcasts you should follow me there plus you should be following the official twitter account of this podcast and our sister podcast what a cartoon that's at talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod on twitter we'll keep you up to date with all the comings and goings with all of our cool podcasts as well as some other fun stuff so please if you're not a follower of it yet

follow at talk simpsonsPod on Twitter. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for the final episode of Season 1, but the first in production, Some Enchanted Eating. Well, kids, that's our show for today. And now, in the words of Mr. Cole Porter, Every time we say goodbye, I die a little. Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little Every time we say goodbye I wonder why a little Every time we say goodbye

Goodbye