Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Lisa Gets An "A" With Imran Khan

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

This week we have a mix of dingos and lobsters as we're joined again by Imran Khan! After some blissful sick days playing video games, Lisa is thrust back into school unprepared for a test, leading her to cheat and make things more and more complicated. In a totally unrelated story, Homer befriends a lobster named Pinchy and, well, things don't turn out so well for one of them... Listen now, mate! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!

Ahoy, ahoy, everybody! This is Robert Goulet Destroyer Speedrunner Bob Mackie with a special Talking Simpsons announcement for you. Who else is here with me right now today? Larry the Looter High Score Holder Henry Gilberts. Excellent. And in case you didn't hear the news, we are going to be at this year's PAX West Convention doing our first Talking Simpsons panel there. Yes, that's right. In Seattle, Washington, Saturday, August 31st at 12.30 p.m. We'll be at the PAX West Convention. And the panel will be all about all of the fictional video games within the world of The Simpsons as we set up front. Things like Bonestorm, Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge,

Robert Goulet Destroyer, Escape from Death Row, and more. We'll be playing a ton of clips and commenting on them with the great Mike Drucker. Yes, the hilarious Mike Drucker, professional comedian, comedy writer, and our guest on the Simpsons Spinoff Showcase. He is going to be joining us to chat all about the surprisingly dense world of fake video games created for the Simpsons.

If I may play a little preview, here's what our conversation will sound like. Thirsting for a way to name the unnameable to express the inexpressible. Tell me more again that is happening at this year's pax west saturday august 31st at 12 30 p.m in the sasquatch theater get there early i have a feeling it's going to be standing room only we've got a lot of fans in seattle and they're all waiting for us to show up there i'm super excited i haven't been to pax in

like three years and never had a panel there so that that's really cool. And there's tons. I mean, Seattle's such a cool area, too. It's great to come back there up into the Washington area. Plus, I mean, actually, you know, if you're there, the Tacoma Art Museum has a Simpson exhibit right now that you should check out. But not on Saturday, August 31st at 1230 p.m. And certainly not in the Sasquatch Theater at at pax west so shove that up your stocking i heartily endorse this event or product Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we're trapped in deep didgeridoo. I'm your host, real comptroller Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today?

Henry Gilbert, and Hugh Downs says this podcast is the hot new thing. And who else do we have? Ron Kahn, and I fake sick to be here today. Oh, nice. And this episode is Lisa Gets an A. Aren't you proud of your big sister, Mr. Pinchy? Hmm? Hmm? I am sick of everyone being so proud of me.

This episode aired on November 22nd, 1998. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. As always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. The Rugrats movie tops Enemy at the State at the box office. Powerpuff Girls debuts on Cartoon Network. And we're all acting like Lisa Simpson because we're at home playing Ocarina of Time, which just came out the day day of this episode who has time for the simpsons

when one of the most important games of that era is waiting for you i have a feeling i turned off my gameplay of ocarina of time to watch this and then once it was over as like flip back on my old n64 and play that gosh i think ocarina of time was the first. No, Mario 64 before that, but it was still pretty rare that I would get a game on release day then. It used to be like, oh, if it was a game around November, then I just wait for it as a Christmas present, you know? But in this case, I was like, I'm going to buy this game myself. I'm 16.

I don't need to leave this up to Santa Claus anymore. I'm in charge now. Did you get the fabled gold cartridge? I did not. Okay. Really? Even if you got on release day uh yeah because i bought it at target i didn't buy it at game spot oh yeah was that exclusive might have been toys r us uh i don't know i just heard the first printing was gold it was the first printing but they weren't all gold oh that's right member would say i definitely got one of the because they were okay so the first printing some of the cards were gold and some were not gold but the initial release which had the ganondorf blood yeah there was like a 1.01 version that got rid of a few uh censorship things like the blood baby

yeah if i recall correctly the gray cart with the blood is the rarest version and really oh man that's in a box somewhere back in orange park, Florida. I believe in the updated version, they got rid of the Islamic chant in the Fire Temple. And they also made the blood green instead of just red as blood would be. Right. Yeah, the monster blood, the T rating blood is green. If it's green blood, who cares if it's blood? Same with like, well, I shot a robot in the head. I didn't shoot a man in the head. Also, it's weird because Ganond cares if it's blood? Same with like, well, I shot a robot in the head.

I didn't shoot a man in the head. Also, it's weird because Ganondorf's not a monster. Yeah. He's just a weird green guy. He chooses to be a pig sometimes. When he bleeds, he had become Ganon, the monster. But check out our episode of Retronauts about that I did maybe four or five years ago. What was the other news?

I'm just thinking about Ocarina of Time. Powerpuff Girls beats Enemy of the State? Powerpuff girls debuts on cartoon network oh sorry sorry what beat enemy of the state that was the rugrats movie and i'm sure you mentioned this on several podcasts we walked by the klasky chupo compound which i believe was last updated in 1993 because on the well on the front they have an image of their facebook cartoon character which is no longer online so that's relatively new as of like 2009 yes but one side of the building is rugrats and the other side is ah real monsters which is i love that show i love the designs on that show they're ugly on purpose but the logo was not the logo you see in the tv series which makes me think that had to be painted long before it actually went on the air.

And it's just this faded gray box. I was thinking about the Rugrats movie when we walked by there because in that mythical pitch reel that's so amazing of Klaski Chupo trying to sell like three dozen shows. In that, they talk about how Rugrats was the first non-Disney animated movie to make $100 million. And it was so huge like just imagine being in that dilapidated building in 1998 as they're just all like high on the Rugrats movie power like they had like seven years of extreme success. Gabor had his own money pit back in that back of that building but yeah I mean it's related to Simpsons because they did the shorts in the first three seasons the Simpsons classic Chupo did of course and then they moved on with their own simpsons which got a

movie before the simpsons about a decade before i think it's because simpsons didn't want to have a movie until they didn't have time to have a movie well meanwhile like nickelodeon was all ready to have movies like they had done harriet the spy two years before this but they were finally animating their shows for movies and i mean what else would they pick than rugrats to be their first one it was their big especially because they had just gotten a brand new season the year before with the hanukkah special we did that's right like rugrats proved to be way more successful than they first expected they're rebooting it now aren't they that's what they say we've heard several things uh there's a reboot in the works and also like a hybrid live action cgi movie of

rugrats sounds terrible like i kind of actually hope they keep those awful designs if it's cgi i want to see what tommy's head looks like i'm picturing like the lion king remake of like hyper realistics uh so it'll be like baby geniuses yes walking around and enemy of the state was the movie it beat so they got to say like we beat will smith i watched that movie it's funny to see it now because this was just talked about on our our friends of the show matt chrisman on choppo mentioned this movie of just like the apocalyptic thing they imagined in the movie of like what if the government could listen to you all the time he's like it just happened and nobody cares like it is totally totally possible. But I also remember in Enemy of the State when I first watched it, Jason Lee has a minor

part in it. I was just going to mention that. Skateboarding's Jason Lee because I think we were both reading the same View Askew blogs. That's probably why I saw it opening week. I got to see this. I got to watch Mumford. I got to see all the Jason Lee hits.

He said fuck a duck in it, I think. I didn't see Mumford though. I never saw Mumford. And yeah, the Powerpuff girls cartoon was really good it's funny that it took two years after dexter to come out everybody probably thinks it in dexter's compatriots but basically craig mccracken and his other guys on the staff once dexter was over they kind of just graduated to powerpuff girls and started making dozens episodes of that that even had a video game joke in it about Ocarina of Time complaining about Navi. Oh, yeah.

I couldn't believe that joke as a kid. I was a teen. I thought video game joke that's accurate on television. Impossible. That was sort of the I believe for the time it had reached almost spongebob levels of success before spongebob eclipsed it it was the big cable cartoon for kids that was like overly merchandised and everything and i got a movie eventually that's kind of fun to watch but a little boring it's very very artistically driven oh and the last thing i want to say about ocarina

of time is like i feel that it somewhat is overrated these days i think there have been i'd say four zeldas better than it since it came out i would say if you're like if you're someone new to the series coming back to augment of time is damn near impossible yeah even with the 3ds update a version of it it's still like well i mean and that was even before breath of wild it felt a little creaky before breath of wild after breath of the wild it feels like any zelda feels musty compared to it i mean i like a lot of 3d zelda's more than that but i feel like it was the template from which that style of game was born nintendo was like with mario here's how you make a 3d action game was all that's like here's how you make a 3d adventure game and everyone else followed suit so i feel like they they at least

built the blueprint that all games kind of follow in 3D now. I mean, people don't talk about it now, but at the time, no one knew how to target enemies in games. Yes. And that game revolutionized that idea and basically set the template, like you said, for 3D camera action forever. Which is why we'll talk about in this episode, Crash Bandicoot was just a tunnel that you ran down. Every level was a tunnel. No one ever thought, like, what if there was a bigger space to run around it until they saw z targeting nobody understood it like and it feels like everything's been built from there yeah like you think about it now it makes sense

like why would you not just have a lock on the enemy with a button yeah especially because it's so hard to navigate 3d space so yeah at least like give it just lock me onto it and make this easier but yeah i mean this is a lot of video game talk for us normally in here but it fits because of our wonderful guest imran you're back welcome yes you were last on the podcast for uh the canine mutiny i believe yeah that was your first appearance so we talk all about your simpsons biography there did imran choose this episode himself i don't know how this one oh i thought it'd be a good fit because it's so video game okay yes i mean you i think me and bob both shunned crash bandicoot so perhaps you played it more i did i played it when it was on the ps1 okay i i mean what what what did you love

about that crazy marsupial so love is a strong word okay yes uh crash bandicoot if i recall correctly came out in 96 so it was like one of the first big 3d platformers it was the same fall as a mario 64 right at nights which is like some people love nights some people do love nights some people love lots of things it's pretty it's okay it's all right i remember first being i don't know attracted to the idea of that game because of the advertising campaign it was cool he was guilty of stalking mario and we hope he pays for his crimes one day but uh yeah that's how you judged it back in the day like the edginess of a advertising campaign was how consoles prove their worth

yeah it was like the next level of genesis does nintendo right that he literally goes in the nintendo parking lot to yell at Mario. Yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, when you compare... I'm probably going to piss off a lot of people, but if you compare Crash Bandicoot to Mario 64, it's night and day. It's incomparable. Mario 64 is one of the best games ever made. Crash Bandicoot was not. It's almost unfair, but it still was a lot better.

I think Crash was better than a lot of 3D games. Most 3D games of that era, Crash was better than just by virtue of... It was one of the first major polished games. For what a 32-bit polygonal machine could do in 96, they made a good thing of that. I think definitely Naughty Dog was way ahead of the pack pretty much there. So I talked to someone at Naughty Dog a while back

about the first introduction of Crash Bandicoot, I believe it was on E3. And I can't verify the veracity of the bandicoot i believe is on e3 and i can't you know verify the veracity of the story but from what he was telling me they were watching while miyamoto came up and played the game and miyamoto like was apparently quite impressed with it so their their big claim to fame was like i wonder how we influence mario 64 i could see i mean yeah that's i i definitely think you know everybody is influenced by everybody nobody makes a game in a bubble but that's that that has to be pretty

interesting when miyamoto comes to play any game on the i remember in the e3 days of covering e3 seeing people on twitter like i took a photo of miyamoto playing a non-nintendo game look at it look i was in a photo with miyamoto though i didn't know it at the time. I don't think I've ever told this story publicly, but I think my first E3 I was like 17, and I met Miyamoto on the show floor, and like I didn't understand what he was saying. He didn't understand what I was saying, but he gave me his business card,

which has his personal email, which Nintendo does not want out there in any way. Wow. We gotta buy that from you. Okay, so a rep came out right after him and like took the business card from me, and I was a 17-year-old kid at my first E you. Well, okay, so a rep came out right after him and took the business card from me. And I was a 17-year-old kid at my first E3. I'm like, I don't know what to do. Should I get it back?

Yeah, that sucks. I would have ran for the hills. And by the way, Miyamoto is the creator of Mario and Zelda. You're not a mega dork. We're talking about Shigeru Miyamoto here. Well, that's funny, that E3 story, because in a book on game development, Naughty Dog, one of the developers of it they go

through all of this how crash came to be they originally called it like project needle mouse because they were going to rip off sonic it was meant to be sonic and so he talks about how ken kutaragi the president of playstation games hated crash and he thought it sucked and he didn't want it to be their mascot and he fought hard against it but at the very least and say sony of america they let it happen like yeah and if it was recently discovered if you go online now you can see like the animaniac style opening for crash bandicoot that was cut from the game i think at sony's request like no this we don't want 2d the idea of 2d in people's minds like a cartoon opening would be bad for this yeah sony of america was very weird about that at the time like i people don't remember this now but there was a big war with capcom over

megaman at the time oh yeah they didn't want to publish i think megaman 8 or it might have been x4 because it's too it was 2d and pixelated still which didn't look fancy and political like now i mean their their idea was like if a consumer saw this, they would assume that all the games look like this and that it was no better than like Super Nintendo or Genesis at first glance.

I kind of get it, but it was also, it held back a lot of games from coming out in the early days. Yeah. Like a lot of RPGs. A lot of games were unlocalized

and I think some games were just outright rejected because they didn't look good enough even if they were 3D. But I remember, I think Capcom threatened to move Resident Evil 2 off the PlayStation if they could not publish Mega Man. i think capcom threatened to move resident evil 2 off the playstation if uh they could not publish oh wow power move uh but anyway yeah so this this whole

start here is just to show you we are big video game nerds for this video gamey episode of the simpsons and i two years after crash comes out then they do dash dingo in the show and it was just like shocking to me is 16 that like this is a real playstation game and she's playing it on a thing that looks like a playstation yeah it's very close and the dingo character appeared in lord of the dance for a dingo junction or whatever that store was it's the same character so they reused him it is actually like the most specific well okay it is one of the first, most specific video game references. I remember calling that not like, so obviously bone storm and like the Bart fantasy of the different characters.

Yeah. That was mortal combat. And I think touch of death was also probably mortal combat. Touch of death might've predated it, but it was like a karate champ or one of those sorts of games like Kung Fu. Yeah. This one, I remember like when I first saw it live,

I was like, Oh, that's a, I recognize what this is satirizing yeah i think like i think there's just been three direct uh like exact parodies one was the punch out one in uh yeah in moaning lisa the other one was bone storm with mortal combat definitely and this is crash bandicoot they've done video games like fake video games and by the way that's the topic of our pax panel oh yes august 31st 12 30 very soon for you listeners come out to seattle at pax west to see us on saturday august 31st at 12 30 in the sasquatch room yeah b this is a direct like people played this game on the commentary uh matt

geraning said it's like one of the one games he was good at that his kids would let him play with them at the time so yeah they knew what they were making fun of and this was a popular game uh in 1998 see i was a crash hater as a kid well because it was positioned as mario versus crash and my allegiances were very true by 1996 so i wasn't going to play crash i talked about this my husband is a few years younger than me so he actually did play crash a lot and he didn't own an n64 as a kid as did most kids because they had playstation played uh over n64 but so for him his memories are much more of crash than of super mario games and as of this episode's airing the third game and i think the final

one that naughty dog worked on outside of the racing game was uh about a month old so yeah they put all those out in plus two years yeah they were annualized yeah and i guess it's weird i guess time moves a lot slower when you're younger but uh when they did the parody of crash i'm like really crash bandicoot that game's like two years old but uh now two years is just like a like a like yesterday to me now because we're all aging rapidly uh yeah i i don't think i ever really play crash except in demo form it was a really cute little throwback in uncharted 4 the video game from a couple years ago where you play it in the game the series has kind of had a resurgence as of late because of i don't know if i want to say because i'm uncharted 4 but people who play crash as kids are now adults with income so like the crash bandicoot remaster slash remake last year uh not last year two years

ago was one of the uh time goes time is a weird flat circle but that ended up being one of action fiction's best-selling games that year because year because I guess there's so much pent-up desire for that old series the way it used to play. And there were so many bad... I mean, so even if you don't like Crash Bandicoot like me, the games that are not made by Naughty Dog are much, much worse. Like the Activision and Universal run or whatever are

just weird and off and they tried their best but... At some point he got a tribal tattoo. Yes, that's right. That's what happened. Him and Spyro both got screwed over by that, which is also so weird that they both ended up being owned by the same company that wasn't Sony, that then also wasn't even Universal anymore. It just became Activision. Yeah, that's right.

And I think we're burying the lead here. He's just the Tasmanian devil in shorts. Oh, yes. That's all he is. Oh, come on. He has cool things to say. At least dash dingo. Does he even talk in the games?

No, no, it doesn't. He just reacts to stuff. Yeah. The, yeah, I,

there are no funny memes of like the early game. So like of his like wild takes and stuff. I've seen memes based around those. Those are fun. That's some of the most like clever stuff in the game. Cause the gay, it's also was funny to play it in that in the game because the game, it's also was funny to play it in that Uncharted game because it may, it hit me of like, I'm running towards

the camera is Crash in Uncharted, the most run towards the camera action game ever. Oh boy. I was actually surprised even as a kid, but now more so that like the Ooga Booga stuff never struck people as bad. Oh yeah. Yeah yeah witch doctors seemed different back yeah i mean like a white america banjo kazooie was doing it too oh yeah lots of fun witch doctors yeah yeah i'm quoting things there i'm sorry i'm sorry but i still like tiki bars okay i can't stop going to them but enough uh i guess enough pushing people away

with our video game thoughts uh though also yeah before uh we did this episode i pulled elisa of delaying my research and procrastinating because i was playing fire emblem three heroes too much yeah i did that last night i was up till i knew i had to get up fairly early this morning but i was still up till about 2 2 30 playing i'm gonna spend 60 when i get home because of you guys it's so good. But I'll tell you what else I forgot about this episode. That it was the Pinchy episode, too. Me, too.

I had no memory of Pinchy at all connected to the Crash Bandicoot stuff. It is almost entirely separate from the entire A-plot. Except that one point that Pinchy is proud of Lisa. Yeah, that's the one. That was the opening clip. I wanted to, like, let me get the one line that intersects the two of those stories. And also just in the preamble here, this episode was disliked by the Catholic League political group. They took offense to a gag at the start of the episode that Marge will say in the first clip.

And though you look back on it in 1998, the Catholic League should have been looking internally instead of externally from what i've heard they've done nothing wrong yeah no scandals uh and so uh this episode begins like the full opening too which feels like they uh you know running a little short in the start of season 10 here that'll buy you a good like minute it was a minute 13 on the counter i was like damn uh But then we get a very cute church brunch opening. And may we burn in painful and foul-smelling fire forever and ever. Amen. The Knight Minister will be giving a guest sermon next Sunday. Go in peace.

Don't make me come up there. Woo-hoo! Oh, man, look out. Let me at him. That guy never stops talking. I'm starving. Mom, can we go Catholic so we can get communion wafers and booze? No, no one's going Catholic. Three children is enough, thank you. Hang in there, son. I'm taking us out for our traditional Sunday brunch. Idiot!

He zinged you, Marge. Brunch is served. I feel guilty coming here every Sunday and never actually buying anything. Why? We're following the rules. If it has a toothpick in it, it's free. So do we know the E.T.'s gourmet pun? No, what is it?

It's not very good, but it's also kind of a deep cut. So you know the group Steve and Edie, which is referenced at the end of Cape Fear. I've got Steve and Edie tickets. Yes. The female in that group, the female singer, is Eadie Gourmet. Wow.

E-Y-D-I-E-G-O-R-M-E. So Eadie's Gourmet's is a pun on her name. Wow, that is really deep. It felt so specific. I thought, this has to be some reference, but I had no clue

and then Google was coming up short. Not even the wiki says what it's a reference to, so I had to do some deep digging. I went actually into the snpp.com episode capsule. Whoa, man. Well, thank you, Bob. No problem. I was worried. I just had a note in here of like, find out what that is.

I don't know. Well, until you feel fulfilled now uh well also it's funny homer stealing all that stuff by in the grocery store because there's been a lot of like viral uh grocery grossness going on right now i believe i believe some woman was put to death for licking ice cream yes yeah yeah very harsh punishment uh i mean look hey don't don't lick ice cream and put it back on the shelf that's that's gross don't do that but i don't like everybody being like a freaking snitch on these people yeah i suppose it uh but yeah homer's doing the exact thing here and they let him stay in the store this is kind of what my dad used to do honestly like i'm pretty sure this is why we

had a costco membership not because we ever bought anything from costco it was because you could graze there yeah if we're running errands on a Sunday, it's like, oh, we'll just go get lunch from here. No, that's... I mean, at Costco, you can also just get a dollar hot dog that's giant. But that's a dollar more... Than nothing.

Yeah. That's true. I think they're parodying like Whole Foods or Bristol Farms, like a health food grocery store. There was one that I went to when I was becoming a vegetarian in Ohio. It was called the Mustard Seed. And that was was in solon ohio and solon is a nothing town that's a suburb of cleveland

but it's referenced in the first drew carrey song we're going bowling so don't lose your soul moon over parma parma is also a suburb of cleveland before cleveland started rocking and they had to change the lyrics so wow i man now i know what what will happen if he gets lost in solon he'll be eating at the mustard i don't see drew carey doing well actually he's pretty healthy now yeah he's uh yeah he's a he's a thin man too today right yeah it was on price is right they filmed a ton of him at his classic weight we all remember to carry at and then when they resumed filming he lost a ton of weight over the break but in episodes it's like

one day he's big drew carrie the next day he is thin drew carrie i was re-watching community and he has like one guest spot in that oh i did not remember that he lost a bunch of weight so i was like i know this actor he seems so familiar but i can't place him he was the guy at the party with the big weird hole in his hand is that what it was nobody? Nobody asked me about this. I forget what he said. It was a joke about it. He's like, here, let's give you something to talk about all the rest of the year. Boom, dropped it through there. Yeah.

He was his old lawyer boss, Jeff's old lawyer boss on the show. But why are we talking about Drew Carey? Anyway, no, I went to, as a kid, I think we went to like World Marts or something like this or something that had this kind of stuff. We had no fancy food places like that around here, or at least that I was aware of. I think World Market or whatever didn't show up until around when I left about 10 years ago.

Now, I think all grocery stores have this option. Even the Target by me has just like the Beyond Burger and, you know, fake everything section. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But samples, though, I don't see the samples as much i uh you know i haven't been in berkeley bowl in probably a year it's just easier to go to trader joe's i sorry berkeley bowl but uh that's a local shopping trader joe's always has samples though i never get the sand what sample they're tucked away by the uh this is for local people in berkeley

they're between the like cheese and the beer and wine like in that corner like across from the chips there's always like a little counter with like a little tray and it's usually surrounded by homeless people i didn't realize that was a sample area oh man i've been missed out on so much free cheese but homer goes to town on all that stuff the stuff in the church you know my family never went to sunday morning church or to go to brunch so this combo of like church then brunch is uh sounds pretty nice. When I would do a sleepover at a certain friend's house, I won't name any names. They were church going folk and I'd have to go with them. But it was just a countdown until we got to go to Shoney's breakfast bar. And like I could just eat an entire plate of bacon and be like, I'm breaking all the rules here. But man, that's just so weird.

Forcing your other people's kids to go to church with you i don't like it yeah it feels very well observed of church-going youngsters of just waiting for the minister to say amen so you're finally free and he's just like teasing it out and teasing it out i also like there's a really funny dutch angle as everybody's running out of the church and uh that's what mo says like i wouldn't stop talking and yes the gag that upset the catholic league that was march saying that she would not go catholic like first calling it booze and wafers and then saying i've got enough kids thank you very much like that the the catholic league was very offended they've also had enough kids i think so yeah uh well barth's correct oh no oh no double entendre uh but i i was with

bart though because like if there was a mass so i went to catholic school there would be some of these mass during the day you would relish that sip of backwash wine and that little still like piece of bread or like the super super thin cracker because it would get you through to lunch you could just savor it in your mouth i also like that Marge is being sold out so much. She's just telling the kids their face. Three is enough. Thank you. I feel like season one Marge wouldn't have said that.

The Sentence will be right back. This week's podcast is dedicated to Pinchy the Lobster, and we thank our guest Imran Khan for coming on by and helping us remember this classic episode of The Simpsons. And if you'd like to help me and Bob keep doing this full time, it's all thanks to the support of listeners like you at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons the Talking Simpsons network is entirely supported by listeners and we give you so much for five dollars a month if you sign up for the easy RSS feed at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons you'll get every episode of Talking Simpsons a week ahead of time and ad-free.

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to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. To further the growing meanness of homer in the show he zinged you marge was quite a line too i feel like there's been a lot of bad parking scenes in the scully era that's true he really they really like homer parking badly that's i mean homer does another thing in the in a couple minutes here that i'm like this seems really really bad on Homer that they barely even comment on. It's another new low for Homer in this episode, I think. Also, though, this episode is full of like, there's like two jokes that Lisa's expense for being a vegetarian. I feel like they're getting, it's not about being nice about her vegetarian views.

It's about shaming her. Right. In this case that she she wants to eat cud that's packed in its own saliva yeah we've come a long way with uh vegetarian options since 1998 yeah i mean it i do you know i think that was for vegetarians in 98 it was the feeling of like a whole aisle of veggie options yeah that's impossible so i guess that it's a dream in that way for her we have the second appearance of gavin gavin is back along with his uh put upon mother it's some of the most la humor in the show yeah it's also like with his last appearance one

of the first jokes about millennials as as they were children now we're all adults i i love his extra like when he says i hate you too like he does like a double finger point it hurts it's really good acting on it and i will say so i was in that uh snpp.com so springfield nuclear power plant uh that was the website that used to catalog all this information and i noticed that their list of the serials was incorrect because oh i was watching it on a DVD in 2019, is it? Yeah, 2019. They were writing that down while watching a broadcast signal on their SDTV in 1998.

So they got a lot of the tiny, barely legible text wrong. So I'll go through all the cereals. So we have, these are not all funny, by the way. So we have Apple Snacks, Fiber Bites, Healthy Charms, Count Caroba, Bran Munch, raisin chunks, alfalfa bits, unfrosted flakes, nature rice, wheat taste, and veggie munch. Some of those are funny. Yeah, I eat some of those.

I like healthy charms. Yeah. That's funny. But not lucky. And also the count chocula became like count, well, that's like carob, right? Yeah. I get it. If you told me like I could get a cereal that did not kill me but tasted

like old cereal like old sugar cereal I'd be happy I that's why I like that gorilla munch the the one healthy kid cereal but those gorillas are funny with that gorilla lie to me alfalfa bitch the mom reach for the wrong one to suggest to him I think like count caroba

would have I i think uh turned out a lot better there uh but yes here's here we take a little tour of edie's gourmet gavin honey help mommy pick a cereal how about alfalfa beds those suck i hate this store but sweetheart mommy i hate you too i want to live with one of my dads! So, you say this product is known as fudge? Yes, just like it was last week. If you're going to get snippy, I'll take my business elsewhere. Jerry Garcia?

Honey photo? Desmond Tutti Frutti? Lisa, help daddy find some normal flavors. Candy Warhol? Xavier Nugent? Nah, nothing made of dead guys. What's in the back? Hurry off, my hands are getting cold.

Oh my goodness, Homer, get her out of there. Oh. Sherbert Hoover. Oh, we oh we gotta get you home to a warm blanket and a cold compress who's the rate dollars a pound sport eight dollars a pound times a oh five pounds is um let's see how many pounds in a gallon oh i can't afford that yes that whole tour was fine i guess let's start with like bart's fudge thing i that woman shouldn't let him just take everything yeah you're you're an adult tell them no customer's always right ben and jerry's i think we talked a ton oh we talked about haagen-dazs a bunch. Yeah. And we'll talk a lot about them, I think, in Doan in the Wind. Oh, that's right.

Yeah. This comes right after Doan in the Wind. Which we have not recorded yet, by the way, as of this recording. These Ben & Jerry's celebrity flavors specifically, that was cool. It was all the rage in the late 90s. It started with Cherry Garcia, which was a mid-90s flavor. Now you have fucking jimmy fallon flavored ice cream he's gotten two did you really he's just bland tasting

the first one actually wasn't bad it had chocolate covered potato chip chunks in it that was jimmy fallon's late night snack but then when he moved to tonight show it became tonight dough jimmy fallon's tonight it's not even a good pun honestly it's uh i definitely prefer steven colbert's americone dream which fortunately stayed the same when he went from the rapport to late night he still got the same name yeah so i looked at market prices for lobster today and homer uh they're charging him a lot because today in 2019 money it's 9.99 a pound for lobster really yeah and i would have thought it gone up more maybe it's more expensive.99 a pound for lobster. Really? Yeah. Man, I would have thought it gone up more. Maybe it's more expensive for a whole lobster. Or also, I mean, maybe the Simpsons writers are so rich,

they're just guessing at lobster prices. They never look at the prices. They're ordering lobster for lunch every day. I think we have heard stories from Bill Oakley and the like of like the only expense you get to have that's fun is an expensive lunch there. Like you get no support otherwise from fox you get a little support otherwise from fox no gifts or nothing but you can charge all the lunch

you want uh sorry i wanted to list two other ones wavy gravy and fish food fish food is i think the best celebrity named ben and jerry i'm not gonna eat so wavy gravy is actually a flavor right it it has been retired but yes i'm not after the hippie clown that's why i'm not gonna eat so wavy gravy is actually a flavor right it it has been retired but yes i'm not after the hippie clown clown that's why i'm not gonna eat it what's in this thing here yeah i had wavy gravy at all uh no fish food though man oh it's so good boy and i don't like the music of the band fish but the only negative i'll say about fish food is that there's full chocolate fish in there that they can you can hurt your teeth biting down on those when they're frozen solid in your ice cream pint. I got to give a shout out again to Halo Top, the best fake ice cream you can eat. It has zero calories and you can just eat an entire pint and not feel it the next day.

It's amazing. That seems dangerous for sure. It's like 300 calories for an entire pint of ice cream. It's amazing that seems dangerous for sure it's only it's like 300 calories for an entire pint of ice cream it's amazing as opposed to a thousand for most ben and jerry pots that that feel like a single serving when they are not like me and bob just went to the hollywood and highland we did jerry's uh coffee ice cream also honey bono like sunny bono died 10 months before this so i'm kind of shocked it's so soon they're doing a Sonny Bono joke. They were kind of making fun of how bad these names are on the commentary. We wanted all of these to be timeless.

I mean, Sherbert Hoover is probably the worst. And that's, you can tell his mouth movements all off. So they changed it too. I wonder what it was. But my mom, my mom, she really hated hearing people call Sherbert. Now, according to Merriam-Webster's website, both are acceptable pronunciations, even though Sherbert is clearly spelled without an R, without a second R, but Sherbert is expected. Just like Reese's Pieces.

I hate that. I hate that even more actually i'm trying to unlearn that stuff and not be a uh i don't say grammar nazi yeah prescriptivist don't say grammar nazi anymore everybody please there are real nazis i was trying not to i was uh yeah but it really bugged if if we went to baskin and robbins and my mom heard somebody order a sherbert she'd like grind her teeth like she really hated to hear that though I guess really we should be calling them sorbets right like that's the if we really want to be accurate perhaps I just go with gelato gelato and yeah when

the lobster showed up I was like holy shit pinchy there he is right there this is the pinchy episode I still even watching the first two minutes of it it still didn't hit me this was the pinchy episode they uh speaking of other names i wish they'd have gone with the name that they say on the commentary they would have done oh go ahead ron haugi said it was going to be shelly that's funnier yeah it's too clever for homer though i guess i yeah it's almost close to bitey pinchy i guess it is yeah call the big one bitey same with pinchy is also of the same ilk as stitch face yeah yeah so fine it fits more with homer's intelligence but my argument would have been in uh in the writer's room that homer would be stupid and just call him shelly because he has a shell and not mean a double meaning but

hey i mean pinchy everyone remembers the name pinchy so i'm not shocked by that there's a weird number of episodes especially this season that start with homer walking into a store and getting an idea for a thing oh yeah yeah i mean it is kind of like too on the nose for him to go unless yes it is very sitcom-y i think uh he's very peter griffin in this episode yeah yeah that's for sure it when i speak of him being awful in this episode shoving lisa into a freezer as she coughs and shivers yeah and then he says come on my hands are getting cold that's really i don't know why it always feels worse when he does an awful thing to Lisa compared to an awful thing to Bart. By cartoon logic, though, she is cold for 15 seconds and she gets sick immediately. Yeah.

Like a little after this time, I was like stocking freezers at my grocery store. And you can withstand a lot of coldness without immediately getting like influenza. For like $3 an hour. Yeah. Hey, it was $5.25. Oh, wow. It could have been $5.15, but we weren't in a union. They kept telling us that.

You know, Shellfish, I'm not the biggest fan of it though i i never really gave it much for try as a kid it's because i'm not allergic to it but my little brother is uh we found out like after a couple seafood trips he like had pretty severe allergic reactions to it and so as a family we just never really ate shellfish like it it's not like i couldn't order shellfish at a meal but if i did it'd be like a worry of like well it's near your brother what if it cross contaminates so now when i see shellfish i can or i could eat shellfish anytime i want but when i see it they just look like bugs to me it just doesn't it they don't feel appetizing well i mean they are in the spider family so don't hold that against them i don't know how you feel lobster takes too much work it does yeah it's not worth it i i kind

of prefer uh crab to lobster uh just for the flavor it's good and crab generally cut like there's no expectation traditionally for a restaurant to bring you a shelled crab yeah yeah maybe disassembled at worst but lobster they they always bring you the full thing i'm like no just take it out for me let me put it in a thing of macaroni and that's fine well you know isn't it like red lobster whatever you want to know it's the one you pointed at and you definitely don't want to know that i've never felt the under the obsession with that uh i was at an e3 uh the electronic entertainment expo by the way when i was in the video game industry and it was at the end of a long e3 and our website decided to take us to a steakhouse even though some of us are

vegetarian thanks a lot guys and it was one of the fancy well fancier it's like ruth ruth chris's steakhouse or whatever it's one of those fancy enough but it's. It's one of those. It's fancy enough. But it's like, it's one of those ones where they not only like ask you what you want, they'll like show you the sides of beef. Oh, yeah. But then they like, they brought out a live lobster to the table. I was just like, I have to, this is just too gross. I have to leave. Oh, wow.

I didn't. So you left? No, I didn't. But I thought about it. Okay. I was a coward. I think I went to the bathroom and like splashed water on my face. Like, I don't want to see a thing

that is probably just going to be thrown and like committed to death. They kind of parody that in the truck episode, right? Like it's... Oh, yeah. Pointing at the cow you want dead. Yeah.

Burns just kills cow after cow. We'll be seeing that one not too long from now. I mean, I talk about, you know, I eat crab. You can owe me by my own logic, but still. Yeah, Bob.

You kill... How many crabs have you killed? What's your belt made out of? That was actually like when I was a kid. I mean, I talk about, you know, I eat crab. You can own me by my own logic, but still. Yeah, Bob, you kill. How many crabs have you killed? What's your belt made out of? That was actually like when I was a kid, that was a fairly traumatic experience for me because I don't know how much people know about the Muslim faith, but my family is religious. So my dad once took me to, I forget the exact tradition,

I'm going to butcher it, so I don't want to say too much, but there's a point where you are you have to kill the cow for the community and like slit its throat yeah and my dad took me to one of those it's something like a uh at a butcher and like they they on a killing floor i guess but when i saw that i'm like i should maybe not eat beef ever again i didn't hold that but it was one of those very traumatic experiences for me and that's one of the reasons I hate seeing it at restaurants. Oh, yeah. Boy, you know, the closest thing I had to that as a kid was seeing a more redneck family of mine.

They had killed a deer the day before hunting. And then they just had it like the carcass strung up in a tree and they were just flaying it all day. And I was like four or five when i saw it i'll put the deer henry i'll always remember it because i was scarred by that but then immediately got to watch return of the jedi the first time i saw a star wars film so those two things are like forever linked uh not that i i i eat tons of meat i i am a total hypocrite, but I don't eat deer. No venison for me. Don't eat beef. Eat deer.

I eat less beef. Yeah. I kill chickens are my main nemesis. They're so cute. So they leave. Lisa's already shivering. It has a cold instantly. I think it's really good, like stuffed up acting byisa too or yardley i should say and uh it's

all visual but my favorite joke of the episode is when they get home in the fish tank yeah yeah how long have we had these fish when they're right there in the shot you're like okay what's happening with these fish they never show those fish they only exist for this one shot but what homer really in reality does is kill both of the animals. Yeah, it's a very funny joke of him. They're both between life and death on each side of the tank. It's very good. Yeah, so as they get home, Lisa has a cold.

Lobsters need salt water. I'm way ahead of you. I have the fish. I'm still ahead of you. Add the fish. I'm still fine tuning. Uh oh. Perfect. You don't sound so good. We better get you some cold medicine. No problem. I picked some up at the store.

Oh, homie. You made breakfast. Nothing's too good for my one and only. Yeet, yeet. You're nothing but skin and bones. How are you feeling, sweetie? Much better. Oh, my. You're burning up. I'm going to tell the school you're staying home i'm afraid i can't allow that lisa bob no wait we can make a deal you don't have anything i want i love that line yeah i love that march would be willing to uh i guess bargain with lisa if she had

something yes yeah. I mean that felt really familiar to me as a kid of feeling like I thought I told my mom too before like come on let's make a deal and the parent goes like you can't not as matter of factly as Marge does but like you're a child you can't negotiate with me. Everything you

have is mine so you can't make a negotiation. You have no leverage but I like how she just desperately goes you can't make a negotiation you have no leverage but i like how she just desperately goes like we can make a deal uh and i've rarely identified more with lisa in an episode than in this one both in that first the denying that you're sick and like i'm not sick i can't be sick i have to go to work like i i did that all the time but then once you're allowed to be like oh it's accepted i'm sick then it's vacation time and i'm riding this out being as lazy as possible while i'm sick oh the sweetness of a sick day oh in high school i didn't like high school so i didn't go to a lot

of high school uh my mom and i had an understanding of course and uh i missed like 30 days a year in my last two years i think probably 30 maybe 30, maybe more than that. Wow. But I got all my work done. But that is when I became like the future host of Retronauts, when I was just like, well, I'm home and I could just play every NES ROM that I can find. So I'm going to play all these games and then learn everything about them. All my brain is still able to retain a knowledge. And that's why I'm full of bad information,

not good things like languages and things about the world. Well, but what was more important for your job? It's true. It's true. All those sick days paid off. That high school was wrong. And jobs defined worth, as we all know, personal worth.

I remember specifically my mother telling me, like, you cannot play video games when you're sick at home to, I guess, disincentivize me from faking sick to play a game. But when Wind Waker came out, it was very obvious I was going to fake sick. She's like, you better be actually sick because you're not going to be able to play a game but when wind waker came out it was very obvious i was going to fake sick she's like

you better be actually sick because you're not gonna be able to play the game but she folds like sewer man on laundry day so i would i i'll naturally i was like okay i'm just gonna play this he's like all right fine my mom was kind of a pushover uh because she cared about me that sucker and she was just like i just like uh mom i'm feeling kind of sick well you are staying home like immediately and like even if the roads were bad's like, you are not getting on that bus today. I was like, this owns. Wow, man. I had a good mom.

Yeah, that's a nice mom. My mom, I think, would give me some sick days. Not too many, but she'd allow it. I mean, the level I'd play it. But I also, as a kid, I didn't really identify with the shows that were about like, here's how to fake sick. Here's how Ferris Bueller does it or whatever. I'm like, I never think of working that hard to fake sick. I didn't desire it that much.

I guess I didn't hate school as much as you, Bob. Not that I loved it. I wasn't treated too well. But when I could take a day off and play video games all day, that was a perfect feeling. I would alternate between watching TV as well. But when I could take a day off and play video games all day, that was a perfect feeling. I'd alternate between watching TV as well. But daytime TV, especially in the 90s, was not good. I guess it's probably still pretty bad, too, now.

I mean, today everything's on demand. So, like, whatever. Just go through Netflix. You have a sick day as a child today. Amazing. You could just watch every SpongeBob all the time. Not having to just settle for like Jerry Springer. Jenny Jones, Ricky Lake.

All the judges, every single judge. One more judgeful than the last. I found a streaming channel that just shows Unsolved Mysteries all the time. So like I spent, I think, want to say like two weeks just watching Unsolved Mysteries. It's shocking I had anything done. Also, yeah, the Homer acting like Peter Griffin this is a very Peter Griffin moment of making a full breakfast that you are clearly implying to your wife is hers and then basically destroying it by putting it in the fish tank because that lobster isn't even going to eat that like it's it's so wasteful and stupid and needlessly mean to your wife it all

feels very family we are just two months before the premiere of family guys so hold on to your seats folks it's it's just what's in the air of writing father figures and shows uh so lisa gets her permission to stay home she watches some a nice parody of shark week which was definitely in the air back then and the learning channel was about learning in 1998 uh now i have to say because of my girlfriend got me into the show i am watching trashy reality tv and my new favorite show is uh my 600 pound life whoa i haven't heard of this it's uh it's my new anime i'm watching so uh it's pretty good what's that oh yeah yeah it's all about uh well the food they eat is

mainly casseroles, but you understand. But yeah, Learning Channel has not been about learning for, I don't know, 18 years, 19 years. But the joke about the seaweed shark actually has some truth to it. I found a 2017 National Geographic article about how scientists found that some sharks eat way more grass and seaweed than they had previously thought so it's not all meat for sharks they can't you know sometimes you got to settle for the leafy those sharks are losers those sharks are getting cucked kill some modern society man it's because they stopped playing shark dodgeball and it all went down from there are these sharks being feminized by the media?

Shark justice warriors? These sharks aren't even being properly gendered. Everybody. All right. Enough. These are jokes. We do not feel. Oh, yes.

Yes. If you're a new listener. So Marge, in a very inverse parenting thing, insists that Lisa does play video games to think less, which is a very funny turn on it. And so Lisa is given her assignment. Foolish dingo. You must find and devour the seven crystal babies or spend eternity trapped in deep didgeridoo. I am so scared. or spend eternity trapped in deep didgeridoo! I am so scared. Alright, I guess you're supposed to go through this stupid door?

Hmm, I wonder what's in this glowing barrel. What? Nunchucks, those aren't even Australian! Oh, great, so I'm dead now. Fine, I'm sick of this stupid game anyway. Yes, I am just four power wands away from an anti-gravity lozenge. Hope I don't run into that weird little troll. Hi, Lisa. Pause, pause.

I brought your homework. We have to read this. The Wind in the Willows? It's about a toad and a badger and a mole. I draw it on mine. this my house no you live in a different house that i shall rule the down under this we'll see about that mike so 1998 uh the last year you could legally reference a cry in the dark, I think. Oh, yes. Yeah. That's also, that's why it's a dingo instead of.

Yeah. In case you're wondering, that's the Meryl Streep movie. Yes. About a real life story about a dingo supposedly taking a woman's baby. As a kid, I had no idea about what the reference was referring to. I only knew that from Seinfeld. Exactly. Yeah.

I didn't know Cry in the Dark either. Well, as we've learned from doing all these shows henry you pointed it out that like these movies were a way for writers to do coded jokes about things you couldn't get on tv so the dingo joke is like i want to make a dead baby joke on broadcast tv in 1998 how do i do this oh reference a cry in the dark fortunately there's this classy meryl streep film and i'm referencing that same with like if you wanted to do a transphobic joke you'd be like no no no it's a crying game joke it's I'm just referencing the popular film crying game

as we all do so yeah it that's they were lucky these popular films came out that let them do these dark jokes and I say why read the wind in the mills when you can ride it at disneyland gives you the full experience when it was a great book though i've never read it i never saw the uh

the movie i've seen like either as a kid i saw like three different adaptations including a claymation one by the danger mouse guys didn't ride the ride until i went to disneyland for the first time last year i did know about mr toad and everything but i never read the book as a kid either i'm sad i'm sorry to say so you you're the only one who did the homework i'm not sure if it was assigned or i just don't think i picked up in the library or something but i remember really liking it as a kid could you answer the test questions later like he had a red blank no absolutely not he has a red car right doesn't he he's a red scarf who knows oh maybe he boop boop even in 98 this was the one plot point in the episode that bothered me then and still feels a little not

discontinuity but it feels out of character that lisa who is such a well-read child would not have read such a famous children's book especially of like her generation's famous it seems like she uh that's below her reading level she's reading things like ethan frome and gorv et al gorv et al books yeah yeah she would not be into this uh and i like that i messed up and didn't have the line there but when march calls says hugh down says they're the latest craze i love that because it means she just watched 2020 and hugh down downs introduced like some segment by saying the latest craze is video games and then probably cut to john stossel talking about video games so one thing i noticed is this is a thing that i noticed in all cartoons and i'd make a website

about it if there were money in it but like just controllers because they don't want to get over the trademark issue with making an actual accurate plastic controller. So this one is more of a Virtual Boy kind of thing with longer handles and a D-pad on each side. Yeah, I noticed when we were doing Talking to the Hill, Bobby's Game Boy, which they say Game Boy, has the D-pad on the other side. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's on the right side.

I think, yeah, I mean, it's about not just dodging copyright, but also I think it might not even be Nintendo or whoever enforcing it. It's like advertising thing of just like, what if their opponent says they're paying for ads on the show and then you've got an accurate Game Boy on the show? So it has to get into like parodic area. Yeah, I think the rules changed because like in um a streetcar named marge homer is just playing game boy in bed yeah it's just a literal game boy same color same control same everything i think they uh you know in season eight they were even impressed that they could still do count chocula on screen i think now by season 10 they do have to be more like those could have easily just been Ben and Jerry's flavor, but they were Ken and Harry's.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think they're just being more held back, leashed on these things. And if you go back to I forget, I think it was 22 short films. It was the one, the Hamburglar comic book. Yes. Yeah.

He says it's Hamburglar, but his hand is covering the H in Hamburglar. So it's just like it's weird. There are all these weird, weird rules to get around uh though the console really looks like a playstation you know like except it's like a wireless playstation with no cords coming out of it they did mess up there and even as a child i was mad that when she says pause she's pressing two side buttons i'm like we all know the start buttons in the middle lisa come on is it start start on PlayStation or is it like run or play? It's start, but it's a play button. Yeah.

Yeah. On PS1, it was still a play. Now it was the start button. Now it's what? Action or options? Options. Yeah. I hate that.

Make it start always. It's better than the Xbox One, which has... I work in the industry. I don't know what those buttons are called. The stink line button, right? It's like hamburgers and boxes yeah well who i mean who plays an xbox one now anyway uh i mean it's on the og xbox just the white and black button that were just like it's white and there's black just press that one so so many needless buttons on that and but yeah i i also

think there's it's really terrible level design that the first thing you do is walk up to a barrel and ninjas come out and kill you instantly like insta death right there poor level design dash dingo creators so this episode actually predicted crash team racing oh yes yeah they did they in the next clip l Lisa will say, you know, ask to get warmed up syrup. On the screen, it's like a picture of Crash Team Racing. Like they drew a screenshot. Yeah, I pause. It's like, is he in a cart? Is he riding like a go-kart?

It's crazy. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, Crash Team is a 99 game. It's not a 98 game, right? I can't recall if it was announced by then. And even if it were, it would have been in like a game magazine magazine so that would have to be like a deep pull if they didn't just predict it yeah i you know now i'm extra confused i wasn't even looking at that timeline like there are racing levels in those games but i don't recall if they were like go karts like

they were on animals and things like that but it was the era that you would uh like game magazines would whine like oh another kart racer which you don't get any of those anymore but they were everything had a kart racing game in 1998 around that era also in in simpsons they can't really do polygon so it's still digitized but the isometric camera angle at least like captures well enough what a polygonal crash game kind of looks yeah yeah uh though the isometric stuff just reminds me of bad british video games it looks more like sonic 3d blast than it does land stalker oh land stalker so lisa has given her assignment totally ignores it to play video

games for three days straight which oh god how wonderful i was playing fire emblem right now yeah let's let's just stop this podcast uh they should just listen to me play fire emble but anyway instead of that let's listen to lisa play more of her video game oh no yes that's it bite bite bite lisa oh sweetie you look so much better ready to go back to school? Uh, I don't know. I mean, I could risk it, but... No, no. You just stay put. Wow, you didn't even feel her forehead. How do I get that kind of credibility? With eight years of scrupulous honesty.

Meh, it's not worth it. Oh, I really need one more day, Mom. I think the germs are regrouping. Now, for breakfast, I'll have hash browns, coffee, and a short stack. And would it kill you to heat up the syrup? But I might infect the other kids! That's a risk I'm willing to take. So long!

Welcome back, Lisa. I trust you got the homework I assigned? The wind in the willows? Oh yeah, Ralph brought it over. Perfect. Then I won't need to excuse you from the test oh test game over mate so the villain in that game is like uh crocodile dundee a paul hogan style figure yes definitely looks like paul hogan which great acting on dan castaneda too there i he i feel like he's played

a lot of video game villains and stuff actually i guess at this very same time he was the star of earthworm jim 3d for the n64 yeah actually that might have been like 99 or 2000 but he was uh he was getting ready for it yeah he was on the cartoon series already yeah so we talked about two landmark games the ocarina of time and earthworm jim 3d which is just as important which is a blockbuster exclusive if i recall correctly you can keep it they keep that game midway was doing a lot of blockbuster exclusives back then yeah play fighter 30 63 and a third yeah what a classic we're not good enough to be on the system ralph has written very special in this episode i i don't think that choo-choo line is a reference to their valentine's thing

but it made me think of it anyway i don't think it's intentional but i did love the line is this my house no you live in a different house and he doesn't even respond to that and just goes choo-choo i though i think it's cute that when he says he drawed on his it's a picture of him and lisa that's uh also homer weighs himself right before this summer weighs himself and pinchy at the same time and it comes in at 300 which homer says he it's 140 on his uh driver's license so what was the uh three three oh nine what was the oh it's way in uh king size homer or uh homer the great he had to get to 300 in that as well yeah was it three okay yeah yeah yeah once you get to 300 in that as well yeah was it

a three okay yeah yeah yeah once you're over 300 and i think though he was at like 315 after he moved his gut off of the towel rack all right this breaks previous rule that normal homer weight is 239 because that's that i mean now that i'm an adult that just seems way too skinny for homer yes yeah i i don't think that's real. Man, boy, someday I'll be 239ing in Homer, I promise. I would think Homer is more meant to be read as 290 and the pinchy adds maybe 10 pounds. He's definitely getting big. The lobster's getting big.

Also, man, I love the way Lisa crawls under the bed. She's like knocking the door. Oh, shit. Yeah. Kids of all ages do that still. It's the performance of pretending to sleep. That gag was the first time I realized you could heat up syrup before you put it on. Did it change your life?

Kind of did. I got microwavable safe syrup distributors. Yeah. They would actually, around this time uh maybe earlier they made the smaller ones the smaller jugs you could put right in the microwave and they actually had like a little indicator on them that told you when it was hot enough oh man i miss those label indicators yeah things oh that was class same with like the beer where the rocks would change a different color blue if it were cold enough yeah i miss that kind of label

technology now it's it's been lost to time that's probably just an app for it or something uh because i'm now still sometimes i'm if i make pancakes i still get kind of lazy like hey i just got it out of the fridge it's the pancakes are hot enough and sometimes i like the you know the texture of a cold syrup on a hot pancake and that can be fun too but uh l Lisa giving it an order, including coffee to Marge, which Marge should really say, like, an eight-year-old does not need coffee. For the last time, yes. That's one of the best. I love that meme.

The Lisa getting coffee memes. Me and then whatever is being poured into that. Yeah. Just the look on her face. She's so satisfied with that coffee. The episode then comes back lisa realizes she is screwed she doesn't have any of the answers for the test and then comes in a nightmare that could only be born by out of the minds of grade grubbing ivy leaguers yeah those scumbags yes uh we forgot to mention ian maxstone graham is the writer of this episode, though. The A plot is apparently Ron Hauge and the B plot is Richard Pell.

I think Switch was the round. That's what it is. Yeah. Okay. Ian Maxton Graham brought his own personal experience as a Brown alum. You're saying Brown a lot, Henry. Are you okay? Brown.

Brown. Brown. Okay. All right. You can bluff your way through one test. Mr. Toad has a red blank. Okay, skip that one. Mr. Blank needs a blank in order to blank his blank.

Oh, I am in deep blank. And the lowest grade in the class... She's going to say my name! Lisa Simpson, zero. Lisa, the president of Harvard would like a word with you. Nasty business, that zero. Naturally, Harvard's doors are now closed to you. But I'll pass your file along to Brown.

Heck of a school. Weren't you at Brown, Otto? Yep. Almost got tenure, too. No, not Brown, Brown, Brown, Brown. Lisa, you're saying brown an awful lot. Are you okay? Well, actually, I do feel a little feverish. Aw, don't worry about the test.

Just get yourself a nice drink of water. Then come back and finish the test. Hoover gets a lot of comedy in this episode. This might be the funniest Hoover he's gotten to be in the show, at least since Calm Blue Ocean. Actually actually it's a little both the uh that brown thing so yeah ian maxwell graham went to brown he tells a funny story on the commentary that like he knew a professor there and that his he thinks that this embarrassed the professor enough to make him quit going to brown

it's pretty funny and that they give it to auto too now i'm sure brown is a very fine university it's an ivy league university yeah it's in the league but if you're at harvard that's the kind of thing you make fun of yeah yes you all the other brown yeah same like oh stanford couldn't get into harvard huh on the commentary mike scully and yardley smith joke about they both never went to college like mike scully went to one day of community college and he's in the room with all these harvard guys i love the guys i love that and like scully's a man of the people sorry exactly yeah no i think scully's been pretty awesome on twitter lately too he's very strongly behind the union movement up there like he's he's a real workman man he's not some fancy pants harvard guy it's uh it's why

i don't want to be as mean to him as i thought i would be uh or mean to his seasons as i would be when we started this because i've come i've come to really like mike scully the man he's he's one of the most uh interesting guys of the group and also like i didn't finish college either or go and definitely didn't go to an ivy lee school So Simpsons legend that had the career path closest to mine is Mike Scully. Like, so I, I can only look up to him as a, as inspiration in that dream sequence too.

There's a really nice shot, like low angle of Skinner. Yeah. Totally reminds me of that pathetic meme. Yeah. What is that? What is that? Is that from,

uh, the boy who knew too much that meme the one where he's looking down i you know i think it's a season one one actually yeah i think coloring looks season one might be like a dream sequence from season one or something yeah yeah or i think actually it might be him looking at the wiener uh yeah that's it yeah that's it yeah so from the very second episode of the series. That one it's expected that it would look crazy and there's crazy angles because they're still figuring out how they want them to be drawn. But

to see Skinner look like similar to that in a season 10 one is really striking and I think makes the dream sequence even better, you know, more dreamy and that Lisa thinks so poorly of Brown that she thinks that otto was a teacher there not even a student otto is a phd and was published a lot it seems

like when lisa's fantasies like she even has to put down ralph to get in like yeah she's uh come on lisa you're better than this uh which is fair yeah Yeah. I like, too, that Hoover, yes, Hoover jokes that seemingly he's going to forgive Lisa and let her leave. She's like, then come back and finish the test. Also, like, a teacher announcing the lowest score. Oh, yeah. That is not a thing that I recall ever happening.

See, maybe that does happen a lot in this class. There's a lot of score-based shaming. I mean, there were the academic alerts. We know Springfield does that just gives ralph a moment to be recognized for something i think that's all they're that's all she's doing he loves hearing his name yeah it's like when he was failing english on possibly he was very excited for that too i won i won get off the stage ralph uh so as lisa is desperate she runs into bart bart reveals that he has a lifelike model of himself somehow he replaced himself and left the room well we found out he's a skilled puppet craftsman later in this episode so they're planting that in your head it's it's the chekhov's puppets

there's no reason to pay off that puppet as being bart's but it now it totally makes sense that that this sets up that he can build this this is a skill bart will never have again his his incredible craft at building maybe you know they say homer bought that fake lifelike dummy to fake his own death but maybe bart really helped to make it and that's it yeah that's when bart discovered his love of making false bodies out of latex in shop class which like also 10 year olds don't have shop like this is them writing them as middle schoolers once yeah bart takes lisa to the boys bathroom there's a i kind of don't like that line that he's that he says there's nothing in here you haven't seen since the time homer boycotted pants which like yeah so she's seen homer's genitals is this what

the joke is i hope i i think i don't like that this is also i don't think they talk about this on the commentary but uh this is like a happy days thing for sure fawns had an off like come into my office they go to the bathroom when you want to talk to somebody so but nelson has like a desk on a toilet and stuff like that so it's much more complicated employee of the month sign yeah i forgot about that a filing system in the tank and then the final joke of the Rolodex is a roll of toilet paper. Which is actually an extra gag

that's a Rolodex. Boy, they're clever by half. But of course, because it's a Lisa story, there has to at least be one gag-inducing, disgusting joke in the episode uh and that's when lisa purchases her study aid i don't want to cheat hey hey these are study aids they're for novelty purposes only if a few bad apples use them for cheating i can't be held responsible forget it i'd rather get a zero get for you lass got me a zero once, and my life turned out just fine.

Oh, whoa-ho! That's a nasty clog. Ooh, you've got yourself a partner, have you? Keep the change. Come here, you slippery rascals. Oh, man, like hearing it isolated from the video, the Foley people amazing work yeah yeah this episode is very anti-blue collar it really is yeah uh well i

mean ian maxton graham is quite a fancy lad so i could i could see him being a little classist here that's for sure yeah the lisa sees a zero as her road to ignominity and nothingness by being a poor like willie's doing the dirty job somebody has to do it man which by the way if you like that show dirty dirty jobs that guy sucks he does you guys need to listen to the citations needed podcast all about that oh yeah that's a great one it's really good mike rome i believe is that jerk's name row row yeah yes look it up the citations pod our good buddies anyway i feel like i have to advertise that show every episode of our podcast they are friends of the show uh but the yeah god the sound of that and also the water everywhere like i'm glad i think it makes it

slightly less disgusting that the water is clear like at least that helps yeah although there is brown matter splattered there is yeah you're right yeah so yeah i mean they can't they can't resist going like literally to the toilets for this stuff but uh i also love nelson's study aids thing like that's still how people sell illegal things now they're just like hey i can't help if a few bad apples use this like this that's not what this is intended for no no no that's like how people i bought fireworks that were incredibly dangerous because they sign this thing that it's to scare birds off my farm those damn birds how what's our history here with cheating uh like the thing that dictates my life like uh i love i'm not

ripping him off because i identify with this completely like he he like underlined like a like a through line in my life like paul f tompkins in his uh laboring under delusion that i bet his thing was like what guides his life is the fear of being yelled at so like the fear of being caught i've never shoplifted i've never cheated on a test i just don't want to be caught and i have dreams like dreams where i'm caught for doing things and i just like wake up in terror oh wow so uh yeah i just i could never do i remember my first year of college i was in this film class and someone that went to high school with me was in it and we rarely talked in high school but she's like oh hi bob how you doing and we just had a small chat she's like listen um i i didn't do any of the work can i can i just look off your paper during this test and i was, we are in college.

I don't want to get kicked out. I took it way too seriously, but I was just like outraged. Man, you blew your shot with this girl. Yeah, it never would have happened. I'm glad. I think she's still there in my old hometown. I've definitely cheated in class before. I remember once in Japanese class,

I wrote most of a hiragana chart or like the ones that i didn't recognize onto a small slip of paper and put it in the little flap above a zipper so i would just kind of occasionally check that or pull that out which probably looked really weird but didn't look like cheating uh there was a time where for a final exam for history class in college, the professor gave us the final exam as a take-home. And I forget why. I think I just Googled one of the questions verbatim. Only to discover that the entire test was taken off an online test that had all the answers on it.

Wow. So I was like, there's no way I'm not going to use this. I'm going to get a couple wrong on purpose. Because you don't want to look like lisa in this episode yes you this might have been what motivated that honestly you know i i definitely had the fear of authority that's not like the fear of being yelled at i definitely didn't try to cheat for that reason too but also like the effort i i was more like, I'll just fail every test until the big important test. And then I'll cram overnight and level out to a C in my classes.

That was... C's get degrees. The most pride I felt in a class was when a teacher said, I couldn't do this. Or she's like, you can't come back to AP English next year. Your grades aren't good enough for that. And then I was like, I'll show do this. Or she's like, you can't come back to AP English next year. Your grades aren't good enough for that. And then I was like, I'll show you B. And I went to the AP class test. And only me and the valedictorian got a four on it on the AP class.

Everybody else got a three. And so I was like, hi, you got to take me back now, don't you? And she really owned me by saying i never thought you weren't smart enough to do this i just thought you'd never try hard enough and i was like uh and i didn't i pretty much repeated my lack of trying in the next year but still gotta be and passed my ap class but so yeah it was more laziness though not that i wasn't above a cliff notes like buying that i i would do that that was the closest to like cheating i did of like not reading the book and reading the cliff notes

but some books are boring you know crime and punishment's a really long book yeah i had to freaking do that book because it was assigned to me because my teacher didn't know kafka enough i was like i was trying to be a real cool guy be be like, I want to do Kafka's The Trial. I'm so smart. She's like, I'm not reading a new book. I've been teaching this book for 20 years. Exactly, yeah. So she handed me freaking Crime and Punishment,

which is like three times as long as The Trial. And that didn't teach me anything about, you know, victimization by a system you can't understand. It taught me about, like, guilt of killing some old lady. I'm not going to do that. But you haven't killed it taught me about like guilt of killing some old lady i'm not gonna do that but you haven't killed any old ladies so it's true it works so lisa though does decide to cheat and runs off with the answers we then cut back to the uh pinchy getting moved out of his fish bowl into our fish tank into a kiddie pool which i would assume he's killed the goldfish

at this point. They're dead. He's eaten them. Well, here, let's hear Homer and Pinchy getting along. Good news, my delicious friend. You're going to be a free range lobster. Come on, boy. Dig in. They'll give you a big, strong thorax.

Wow! Why, you little... Oh, look at him cower. Just like the boy. I can't stay mad at such a helpless little mammal. I'm going to get you for that, you little scamp. Here, take that, pinchy. Obviously, lobsters are not mammals.

Homer is wrong there. But the little spitting water fight is it's kind of cute like but the the darkness i was referring to was homer liking pinchy because it reminds him of how bart cowers in fear of being hurt by homer like that's that's such a dark joke that uh that just that bart now expects strangulation so much. He's like, like cowers in fear. That's fucked up. But it's funny when it's our cartoon dad friend Homer.

It's just hilarious. Do lobsters make vocal sounds? Only when you kill them. You know, I forget on the commentary how defensive was Groening about this lobster acting in unheat animal way he never even mentioned it wow really i mean it always well the coloring is a little too red but he always looks like a lobster yeah he doesn't like do wild takes or like wink at the camera yeah sherman old general sherman so this is showing that homer's already starting to warm up to his dinner which is like the one time you

know they could actually done something in this episode with lisa identifying with homer of like oh you don't want to kill animals this is just like what happened to me but uh that's actually lisa is mad the animal isn't killed smell uh but yeah we come back to the school and miss hoover miss hoover had a really fun lunch grading the papers. I graded this morning's test over lunch, and most of you did quite well. I got a B! No, Ralph, that's an F. I must have spilled some Kahlua. Perfect, Lisa.

And you got all the extra credit questions, even the one that got cut off by the copy machine. Well, I guess I was just on a roll. Don't be so modest, Lisa. You earned that A+++. Actually, there are four pluses. No, that's Drambuie. I've never had Drambuie. Read the description.

It sounds like the kind of sweet whiskey I enjoy. Yeah, I think you would enjoy both. Oh, I know I love Kahlua. I love me some kalua uh yeah you see bob you and your girlfriend love too many sour drinks i i want sugary and sweet and uh brown liquors yeah harsh brown liquors uh i all of my liquor needs to be cut with about a cup of sugar i'd say at least uh have you ever tried either of those i have not i had to look up what drambuie was

when i heard like i don't know why i assumed it was like a mediterranean food or sauce or something i guess yeah i think i had to i didn't know what it was she said until i saw this with the commentary on like a decade ago i didn't realize what drambuie was a brand i never ordered it at a bar or whatever tried it like i none of my favorite cartoon characters like or big lebowski drank it so i didn't know you know anything about it this is a really uh dumb tangent but uh hey it's talking simpsons so welcome uh i get i grew to hate kalua before i could even drink because uh this is the same era of time in which mystery science theater 3000 was back on the Sci-Fi Channel. And every commercial break, there was a fucking Kahlua ad with the Brown Sugar song on it.

That's right. And it drove me crazy hearing the same ad over and over again. So if you were watching Sci-Fi Channel in 1998, I don't know, season nine of Mystery Science Theater, you were seeing those ads over and over again. Well, and the show is two hours long, so it's like 18 commercial breaks. Yeah. Yeah, God. Thank you for saying that.

I totally forgot that commercial, though. Maybe that made me want Kahlua all the more watching it. I think it was, what, another of those sexy beach fun commercials? It was the Kahlua going through like a dusty city and like rivers of it okay that doesn't sound very appetizing in description but i like to just like hoover was drinking so much during lunch she spilled two different types of alcohol like that's how much yeah i missed the lunch joke originally and i didn't get into like right now i was like oh she had liquid lunch okay as a former teacher i did great papers while

drinking before so uh at the bar but would you be so sloppy as to spill them on your grade i'd be careful so uh lisa is shamed by her triple a plus and then we come back home there's a funny reversal of marge drooling over food and homer not wanting eat it. It's a cute change up to the situation with them. And again, what episode of season 10 would be complete without more violence done to Marge? Oh, so plump and juicy. He's going to boil up nicely. Well, I guess this is it, old pal. This is your big day.

Water's boiling. Quick, chuck them in. Come on, chuck them in. Okay. Water's boiling. Quick, chuck them in. Come on, chuck them in. OK. Let's go. In the pot, in the pot. Moo?

But Marge, look at that guy. Ah, yes. He looks like an ordinary cow. Son of a. Feel that, Marge? He likes you. And now for the main course, steamed Maine cabbages. Pardon me for asking, but where the hell is my stupid lobster?

We're not eating, Mr. Pinchy. He's part of the family now. Pinchy, I made you some risotto. What? You've got to be kidding me! What's your problem, Veggie? You don't even eat lobster. No, but I enjoy the smell. Well, lobster or no lobster, this is still a very special dinner. That pinch on her nose would leave a scar. Yeah.

But that felt so cartoony to me. Like Popeye gets chonked by a lobster. Even the noise is very cartoony. Yeah, yeah. Though it's funny right before that is the joke is how uncartoonian disgustingly real the lobster's face i like the just horrible noises making yeah also uh julie is really funny when they're like ow son of a like she's she's really pissed like and also that homer like so misdirects it by bringing out the full steamer like risotto did he make that i have to

assume he did yeah i was actually like super hard to make like in a non-restaurant setting i've never made it what's uh what's so tough about it i was looking at the other day because i've been watching hell's kitchen i'm like i wonder how easy it is to make risotto apparently like every recipe was like hey this is difficult like getting it just right and not burning it is surprising yeah it could burn or stick together and if you. And if you spill some on the stove, it gets everywhere because it's just these little tiny, tiny pieces of pasta. Yeah. Wow, man. So he's pulling out all the stops with the lobster.

I don't think I've had risotto before. I don't think so. I should give that a try. Well, actually, now it sounds too hard. A restaurant could give it to you. But if I'm in an Italian restaurant, I'm going to get manicotti. My favorite. So Pinchu is pretty big, but could he have fed Homer, Bart, and Marge?

They all seem to think they're going to eat them. I think a lobster is like maybe two people, maybe. But usually you order the lobster. When you say, I want the lobster, you just get a lobster for yourself. Or like a tail if you can't get a whole lobster. That's what I thought. But they all seem to think they're all, well, except for Lisa, they think they're all going to eat the lobster.

But yeah, Lisa, they totally sell out her character that she's like, oh, I like the smell of this animal you killed. I mean, I don't eat most meat, but I do. So I live right by a really good Mexican restaurant. And when they start cooking their meat, it smells really good. Does smell good. So see, man, you're owning yourself by your own logic all day here you should hate that i exist in society therefore i'm a hypocrite maybe they was each of them was gonna get a claw and homer just gets the thorax maybe it's not it's not a big dinner

and then lisa is revealed to the rest of the family that she got a big a marge reveals that she just rummages through her shit all the time like that's just normal for her not even lying about it she oiled lisa's diary hinge i think it's very cute that homer refers to lisa as pinchy's big sister that's that's adorable so uh lisa runs off and homer is yeah, he's so excited for her. We then instantly cut to the next day at school. I like Lisa's sad face. It's a good, it almost felt like a season one or two drawing they pulled out of the,

it reminds me of like a moaning Lisa sad face or something on her. She has like a thicker neck. Like it feels like a Klasky Chupo neck, honestly. Her and Bart, Bart can't seem to understand why the difference between honesty and fraud which is a funny little gag there bart bart's good is just a con man in this episode like just fully a con man when lisa arrives in school tune is at her locker there is a few frames of an off-color wendell that walks by it's real distracting uh different colored hair i think yeah he's got brown hair they saw somebody got fired for that blunder i hope the voice actress for wendell just passed away yes

yeah yep uh russie taylor who you'll hear in a future clip in this episode yeah she's uh at the time of recording just died a few days ago yeah yeah not too long ago r.i.p what little things wendell ever said yes yeah she's more famous as the martin prince voice so that i think that's her most famous voice on the show and who knows what they're going to do in the future with that uh situation do they recast do they they just not use martin anymore it'd be funny if they made a big announcement we're retiring wendell we're sorry we know he's very popular uh we're discontinuing all the wendell merch it's over for wendell so lisa has offered more cheating from nelson and then nelson is more clever than you think where he goes la-di-da lady cheaterly which is a gag on lady chatterly's lover

which is i guess about how she lady chatterly cheats a bunch and so he's comparing her to uh a cheater in that way, I guess. Is that the reference? It's just a good pun. It's a good pun, yeah. So Nelson's more literate than we think. I mean, I guess to have all that system of cheating, he probably has to take some level of smarts there, too. And he offers her some denominators, which Lisa calls dirty denominators in a very cute line. Lisa just wants to move on from all this,

but then she gets called to the principal's office in a very fun and silly scene. I've just received some rather unusual news regarding your unprecedented A+++. To be honest, I'm surprised and saddened. No, not saddened. What's the word? Ah, yes, delighted. I'm delighted to report that your grade brought the entire school's GPA up to our state's minimum standard. We now qualify for a basic assistance grant.

It's the greatest honor the school has ever received. And it's all thanks to you. Your devotion to scholarship is a shining beacon to all. Stop it. I cheated. Cheated, cheated, cheated, cheated, cheated. Lisa, what are you trying to say? I cheated.

I cheated. They're really getting a handle on what Scully's Skinner, he wants it to be. he's he's out of touch empathetic but he's more just like brainless like absent-minded yeah just like in lard of the dancer he's like i don't remember approving a dance like yes you did yesterday oh right yes carry on like he he's becoming much more like flighty in his memory yeah uh can we talk about the turn in this episode which is why i really like this because you think the simpsons would still do this plot well where you would think lisa has to learn a lesson she's got to pay for cheating she's

got to uh you know recover in some way both emotionally and in terms of the school and how abuse her but i love so they spend a lot of time crapping on lisa in scully's years and they're also doing it here but they're doing it a very clever way in that they're just saying well lisa's morality is incompatible with the world like her black and white morality has has nothing to do with the functions of everyday life like her cheating actually was good but she refuses to see it as anything but like a stain on her morality which is i just like them deconstructing lisa's very goody goodiness in a fun way rather than just like shitting on her for caring about something yeah yeah though i also think this third act is another scully trope not only of like

shitting on lisa and proving her morality is incompatible but also of them going like this is predictable we've done they they call her poor, predictable Lisa later. They know. I think I even felt it in first viewing of like, if the story is about a moral quandary for Lisa, it will definitely end with her telling everybody that she cheated and not taking the easy road. We haven't seen this exact story before, but like old man and the lisa she's given a similar choice in this one so when it becomes predictable the writers are you know correctly i think defensive or worried of like we can't just spend eight minutes of the show going to the exact expected place so this is about going counter to that and finding a clever way to do it sometimes

i think they out clever themselves and trying to get away from a predictable ending but this one is one of their better uh attempts to avoid predictability yeah it's important that she like she was the one who admitted it and she was not caught because like the character just kind of held if she just became younger girl bart that would probably it would not make for an entertaining contrast between the two yeah and her moral test has already succeeded in the end of act two she admits it right here so act three really is just about yeah like you said Bob navigating how her morality works with real world consequences yeah and to give away the ending of course I like that they give her the moment even though she doesn't know they let her have the moment she wants even though they all know well

no one cares like i don't care if she cheated who cares to test about the wind in the willow she's eight years old this doesn't affect anything it's totally meaningless compared to a basic assistance grant which is desperately needed and so uh you know i believe it is still a very major issue in schools these days the uh for public schools the means testing of scores test scores to apply for levels of funding you get like it's uh like most things in america it is they are laws that are not unfairly applied especially to poor and and communities of color in this country, as always happens. And this was before No Child Left Behind. Yep.

Yeah. But I was going through these kind of testing in 98 when this episode aired, which was just the teachers were training us to pass a test, not to learn things right but to pass a test and the tests were built on a federal mandated level so you were just learning how to answer questions correctly enough to get funding for a school which you desperately needed so you can't even be mad at the school for like getting forcing you to be there because it's like they need funding which it's the same school that's making you sell candy bars yeah yeah i mean schools are were criminally underfunded in my youth and i don't think it's gotten any better since then and they all had like acronyms like tcap and stuff yeah yeah i took the iowa test clone high had the same uh had a similar gag

about this except their scantron technology was a uh a giant conspiracy to sell number two pencils to kids right yeah this entire plot point here that it's about getting test scores up enough to get funding that's how it goes in schools i think a lot of public schools to this day i believe though uh you know if we have listeners out there you know more about this currently with kids or teachers i'd love to hear about it but that system it just turns kids into kids who take a mandated test well not kids who learn things but i guess then again in this society all you're supposed to do is fit into a hole for that does test things anyway so school to prison pipeline boy Boy, that's fun. So the third act begins though with Skinner still aghast

and then he comes up with a plan. You cheated. Oh lordy lordy lordy. Why didn't Miss Hoover tell me? She doesn't know. You're the only one I've told. Well, then one could make the argument that there really is no problem.

But what I did was wrong. Oh, very much so. But as long as we handle this in a mature and above all quiet manner, we'll still get that grant money. Well, you really scared me there. But we can't accept that money. It's tainted. No, no. Leave the money out of this.

It's not the money's fault you cheated. Besides, I've already started spending it. Check out the new scoreboard. I'm still learning all the buttons. Well, if you're going to cover this up, I'll just have to go over your head to Super... Intendant... Chalmers! I'll just have to go over your head to Super Intendant Jammers. That's a great reveal that that thing has been in the room the entire time.

She has seen it the entire time that she was talking to Skinner. The second she walked into his office, she should have said, what is this? And he then would tell her. But instead, no one talked about it until that moment he motioned towards it like i already bought the scoreboard and the scoreboard is they then have to like draw his office to be like with a 15 foot high ceiling as well which it's never had before the door is smaller than it too so you're like how did this get in there he built it inside of his office how does it get out again it's but he was so excited about that scoreboard which that's a that's a classic high school style

scoreboard just two-tone color all the all the charge and the sounds like that's that should have been to let my dad know when i was a dork because he took me to a college football game when i was like six or something and all i did was watch the scoreboard and love all the cartoons that appeared on it i did not care about the game all the fancy animations yes all the video graphics like uh i i cared very much about graphics as a child i like the idea that skinner would be the one who's manning the scoreboard during games oh yeah he loves it that much well and Chalmers does, too. Everybody loves that scoreboard.

They love that charge music. And I also like how Skinner's right. The money didn't do anything to you. Let's leave the money out of this. He's lying there about, and you haven't told anyone else. Today on Twitter, I saw a friend of the show, ProZD, zd uh someone show he had a very funny joke about if anyone asks you like and you haven't told anyone else you need to tell them right there oh i told everyone i called my mom and told her everyone knows because otherwise you will be

murdered that's what's about to happen if somebody ever says to you especially if you're on their boat yeah the thing you shouldn't say right after that is like now where's my reward give it to me yes lisa does go over his head and calls in superintendent chalmers oh also on the scoreboard it says go pumas which that's a good level of continuity somebody cared to remember that the mascot is a puma mighty puma or puma i feel like he said puma in that episode uh but yes chalmers is here and he has some words for lisa dinner i am outraged that you've kept this for me you were supposed to call as soon as the new scoreboard was in tell me does it play that song charge oh does it ever you can't keep this scoreboard because there's not gonna be any grant money because I cheated! Lisa, let's take a walk. A little traveling music, Seymour.

Good lord, what a dump. It's not surprising this school was once classified the most dilapidated in all of Missouri. That's why it was shut down and moved here, brick by brick. Look around, Lisa. That grant money could do a lot of good. Don't you think those youngsters deserve a regulation, tetherball? Ow! The sound of that cinder block.

Just splitting his glasses, like, ouch like and the bent pole yeah slightly bent uh and that i love the pattern of that joke like the timing because nelson hurts his hand punching it and millhouse is finally like laughing he gets to laugh at nelson for a change but instantly he's smashed in the face way worse that much that uh missouri joke is also very very good so close you know why don't we give that line in the episode that's the joke so let's shut down and move here brick by brick they both look at him like well wait but we're not in missouri well that's why i was like that is so wasteful too of like well we wanted the worst school in missouri sent here brick by brick to be rebuilt uh it it makes no sense it's a great where springfield joke and i i like how pissed

off chalmers is too like that the window is just broken like seemingly recently broken he just smashes it more with his elbow then in our next scene is chalmers is shown talking to lisa about the school we get to hear now it feels eerie marsha wallace and russie taylor in the same scene but uh this is a little bit of pepsi teaches math it does remind me of that but it's still clever. Partial credit. We can buy real periodic tables instead of these promotional ones from Oscar Mayer. Now who can tell me the atomic weight of bologna? Ooh, delicious?

Correct. I would also accept snack-tacular. And for the first time ever, our computer lab actually has a computer in it. Hi, Lisa. Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers. I'm learning. Oh, way to go, Ralph. Ah, she's a beaut. You can't beat a Coleco.

How many can I put you down for? A lot? Please say a lot. I need this. I don't know. I'm not even sure we can keep this one. It's up to Lisa. What do you say, Lisa? Will you keep our little secret for the good of your classmates and your school? And let's not forget old Gil, huh? The wolf said old Gil's door. Oh, I guess I don't

have much choice. Oh, oh thank god now let's talk rust proofing these calicos are rust up on you like that shut up gil close the deal close the deal oh boy i like we get so we talked a lot about video games up front we get calico vision and super nintendo references in the same uh scene very good so great yeah they which well that's like an 81 82 machine yeah yeah it's as old as i uh the which is the even in 98 you're like where did he get this like he's got like quite a few of them it sounds like he's uh probably the exclusive calico dealer for springfield so one thing i actually didn't know was that calico was the company behind cabbage patch kids really yeah they made computers and cabbage patch kids the connecticut leather company wow that's their name it's stupid as hell now you know it uh the i just knew calico

is like a system we didn't own i the first console my parents had they got it as like a gift from somebody else was an Intellivision we had that because I had a horse racing game on it and if there's something related to gambling my father will probably be interested in George Plimpton sold him on it right he probably would have had some not nice things to say about George Plimpton but no and then the next system we got was a Nintendo because or an NES because. I thought you were going to say or an Nintendo as my parents called it. No, but I did get it through constant whining about how my neighbor had it and who should have one too. But yeah, Super Nintendo Chalmers.

God, I love that. I think I used that line a hundred times since that episode aired. It's perfect and uh there are there have been memes out there of people who made their own super nintendo yeah like they painted uh chalmers on a super nintendo boy you know what we should be asking nina about this in japanese do they call them super nintendo chalmers in that too or do they call super famicom famicom chalmers super famicom troller i don't know we don't know what the super we don't know what the title of super nintendo is in japanese oh that's true uh nina help us out here in the comments please

buy the season in japanese on dvd have it shipped to your house and then report back to us you have two weeks uh but uh the yeah the just calling him super nintendo chalmers it's it's such a cute little line to get ralph as well and also just i i like it sweet it is another special ralph joke but it's sweet how happy he is he spelled care yeah and uh learning is something i say oh yes i'm learning uh and the wolves of old gill's door that's another one i think i've used a lot to this see you know people you talk season 10 still has good things man this uh there's so many good like uh memes in this scene alone yeah i think you know this uh early candidate for best episode of season 10 i think at least it gets an a there

was a gag during the baloney in part that i did not notice until i watched it this time that if you look behind martin there's a there's bart's puppet that's right yeah it's in the same position as he was in the first time no way yeah it is supposed to still be bart's thing behind him i had written that down yeah oh. Oh, that too clever. Like you never, you never even noticed it. They were overthinking placing this Bart puppetry skill in very early and every act of Bart's puppet exists. Everybody has forgotten it by now because it's such a wacky episode.

And also Pinchy just takes all your memories. But this is a rare time where gill actually sells something successfully yeah but it's all pending on lisa's decision so it's uh you know he should be selling stuff to the school all the time because the school is pathetic and he's just the level of pathetic to sell garbage to the school now i had a computer lab in 1998 and i was damn happy for it because they were more advanced than my home computer at the computer lab not that they were particularly super advanced but they did have photoshop on them which was pretty cool it's about a time i was in high school the computer lab they're actually at

internet computers whoa uh but before that dangerous to give to 17 oh well we were monitored of course uh before that in grade school uh we had apple twos which were way way way too old even then like they're like computers from the early 80s late 70s so i wow that's really old i i think when i took a typing class we had computers that had no mice like they were they were simple word processors but for the classes that's all this was like middle school mid 90s but for the class that's really all you need it was just a thing to type into yeah i think in my classrooms we had oregon trail computers ah yeah but unlike the library there was like a big deal when they had actual pcs and like yeah on the internet oh yeah i remember going to skipping many a lunch and

just sitting in the library on the internet i think we made up a fake club that was like computer club or something like that to leave class and just go like we go to disney.com and play games oh man that's awesome yeah in my computer lab in high school you had to watch it because there was like this uh just vicious and uh brutal uh old librarian who would just stalk the uh up and down and make sure you're not doing anything bad on the computers and of course i was a young nerd and I love video games. So I was like, oh, this is my hobby. I'm going to look up things about video games while I'm at school. Why not?

And she would bust me on it and say, if we wanted to look up this crap, we'd have Nintendos in here, not computers. You look up something educational right now. And now guess what? I'm doing video game stuff for a living. And she's in the fucking ground. And probably in hell, if I had had to guess who knows what she did uh so as lisa makes that momentous decision we cut back to uh seemingly pinchy's last day actually is the last scene

he's alive in his last we saw his last meal right uh i was? Yeah, maybe. So Homer and Marjorie at the beach. I really like their beach wear for it, too. And Homer seems to think he's walking pinchy, but he's just dragging him. This is such a weird scene. It's all very weird. Yes, here. I'll just play the whole thing. Relax, boy.

We're not going to cook you. Enjoy your day at the beach. Oh, look. Here's a little playmate for you. Hey, you don't have to take that from no punk-ass crab. What's wrong with you? It's not his fault he's a sissy. Someone's been coddling him.

Don't look at me. I want her to eat him. Sorry, it's usually the mother. You know, I run a small academy for lobsters like this one. We stress tough love, daily chores and the like. No, we're not sending the lobster away to some snobby boarding school. Yeah, I understand. It's hard to let go. Tell me this then.

Do you have any spare change? I love that scene. that joke is funny what i really like about the scene is that it feels like an encapsulation while i was talking about earlier where they want to zig when you think they're gonna zag and in this case it was it would have been totally understandable that the plot would be the end of pinchy when he learns to be an obedient lobster or whatever he goes to lobster obedience school you could totally see them taking that off ramp that they're building with sea cat and that it would be led by sea captain totally would make sense and then that marge that immediately goes like no we're not doing that and and then that takes the immediate

turn from sea captain being this authority to being homeless and begging for money at the beach. My interpretation, I'm not sure if that was right, was that he was making the whole thing up. Like there's no actual lobster school. Oh, and he's just going to scam them out of money. Yeah, just like, well, that didn't work. So I just, do you have any change? Yeah, I thought he was making it up. And Marge actually believed that the lobster school was real.

Yeah, I bet that lobster school does never existed but i i did uh in first viewing i was like is this where they're going we're gonna see the lobster there's like 90 seconds left of this episode too yeah uh it's and uh poor pinchy he is too weak to go back into the wild i mean his death isn't better but uh he can't be freed he'd just be kept at home for the rest of this follows a similar arc of uh mojo as well oh yeah only difference is no animal can enter the simpsons house yeah that's not saying his little helper snowball too uh homer you know actually in that one abe wanted to eat mojo and homer does eat yeah his his animal friend it's uh it's dangerous it's dangerous to be homer's homer's buddy if you're an edible thing uh so we come back after uh the degradation of

the sea captain it's uh it's time for lisa to face the music the cop troller is there it's how i learned the word controller he's a good guy i like this character i like i like both comptrollers we get this first one's better than the second comptroller but everybody is like wow the comptroller everybody knows him he's presenting a giant check to an audience i like the nice touch that this first comptroller is voiced by harry shearer because harry shearer also voices auto yeah yeah it makes it realer plus the the audience when you see their reactions then you know later like well wait they're all faking this everyone's in on this but lisa marge and homer apparently yeah i mean hopefully we're not spoiling this for you but uh

this this twist only works once when you see it but i was just like bowled over by how funny this was and how out of nowhere it came. But yes, Lisa comes clean. I know this giant check is very important to everyone here, but what's even more important is the truth. Because after all, education is the search for truth.

No, no it isn't. Don't listen to her. She's out of her mind. And the truth is we don't deserve this grant, and I don't deserve your applause. I cheated on that test. Wait! How dare you condemn this girl? Who among you can honestly say you've never cheated on your wives or your husbands? What she just did took courage.

And where I come from, Canada, we reward courage. So I hereby decree that you keep the grant. And let's give this brave girl the ovation she deserves. Oh, honey, I'm so proud of you. You got the highest grade in the class. But, Mom... The highest grade. Okay, Lisa's gone places people oh man acting is tough i'll be in my trailer oh good old predictable lisa i knew her conscience

was a ticking time bomb heads up here comes the real comes the real Comptroller. Oh boy, I love that. I love his speech too because like, how many of you have cheated? Instead of naming everyday things you might cheat on, he jumps to the most severe form of cheating. Also, Kirk looks at Lance and Luanne. Yeah. But also, the other two I noticed were

Hibbert and the Wiggums both look at each other like, everyone in the audience agrees agrees oh yes we've all cheated on our spouses we all understand this that's such a great on your wives their husbands and where i come from canada love that line too yeah because it's another great misdirect you think he's gonna say where i come from some american city that's great i feel like uh like he had auto had to drop some fact about the comptroller in order to make it seem more real so it's like well here's one thing about him to prove that he's real

but it's not even specific it's just like i come from canada not like i come from vancouver or ontario or this province it's like where i come from canada and for the trick to work they also have to let lisa think that the comptroller let them keep the money because they will have the money later so they can't trick her later that they didn't take the money so it's so great that they even bake into that like no we he let us keep the money the comptroller they also had to disguise him as the actual comptroller yes to look like him too like i would think bart helped with that mask yeah that's a perfect double of the real comptroller's face yeah that uh the whole audience's reaction like lovejoy faints

helen lovejoy faints like is she faking this or was this because the way edna says to everybody here's the real comptroller everyone seems to be in on it's all an act yeah so even helen lovejoy is lying about it. I mean, I guess they all want their kids to have a better school, so they've all decided to go along with it. Clickers don't come cheap. Apparently the Comptroller Atkins

is named after their writer's assistant at the time, Jacqueline Atkins. And you know what? When I saw it was $250,000, I was like, no, Lisa, this truth is not more important than that. She's lying. Yeah. I'm with Skinner.

So, yeah. I also like to the Marge is just in such deep denial. She's like the highest grade. And they needed Bart to be in on it, apparently, for it to all go off. Yeah. I mean, he had to build the, he probably made the mask. He made Elisa Puppet. I mean, with this, so maybe like 18 months ago, or maybe even two years ago, someone

made a pin set of all of the Simpson family, like facsimile creatures. Yeah. So there is the version of Homer that he made when he was traveling with the B-Sharps, which is like the oatmeal box and balloon arms. There's Bush Marge with the paper plate face. There's this Lisa. And then there's a gross snowman Bartz, like the crappy snowman he built. And so as the real comptroller arrives, everything falls into place. This grant ensures a light bulb in every classroom

and a high definition TV for the teacher's lounge. Now, where's the little girl who made this grant possible? Where's Lisa Simpson? Come on up here, Lisa. Now how about that? Smart and modest. Well, I should be going now. These giant checks don't hand themselves out.

Okay, people. Let's have a round of applause for the real cop troller. Idiot. I know a liquor store where we can cash this right now. That's great. What liquor store has $250,000 on hand? He knows one. That Skinner knowing of that liquor store seems a little too hip for him, too.

Though maybe he just befriends people there like Gus at the car wash. Yeah, maybe Gus works there, too. I can see him not having a bank account. Oh, yes. Yeah. His mother wouldn't let him. Although in 1998, getting an HDTV, that's some fancy stuff. Be heavy.

But a light bulb, I like too. The idea that the cop troller even knows they're going to spend it on themselves, not the children. Light bulbs for children,d tvs for adults uh and and skinner just blowing it with like the real cop troller uh and i also really like the drawing of bart's very believable puppeting posture yeah he's like a puppeteer in that in that little uh drawing there yeah he's bart is so skilled in this episode he's wasting his time in school with this uh lame schooling uh and so with all that wrapped up there's only a few seconds left in the episode to close out the b story which um is one of the darker endings in the series but also one of the funniest i think i i still laugh at this to this

day and uh that it starts with marge wondering who brought in muddy claw prints like who do you but also one of the funniest, I think. I still laugh at this to this day. And that it starts with Marge wondering who brought in muddy claw prints. Like, who do you think? Who do you think? Here is the delicious ending. That's one grade I truly earned. Who left these muddy claw prints on my clean floor?

Sorry, Marge. Pinchy got all dirty in the yard chasing birds. But don't worry. I put him in a nice hot bath. Hey, what smells so good? Yeah, Pinchy? Pinchy? Oh! Pinchy!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, man, that's good. Pass the butter. Are you going to eat that all by yourself? Pinchy would have wanted it this way. My dear sweet Pinchy would have wanted it this way. My dear sweet Pinchy. No more pain where you are now, boy. Oh, God, that's tasty. I wish Pinchy were here to enjoy this.

Oh, Pinchy. that's so great the no more pain where you are and then snapping him in half is the best part of that and sucking out his brain like snap just break its back suck it out like yeah it's some of my favorite animation episode is the way he's pulling on his face when it comes to

like yeah like it's extra good animation on all the extra gross chewing and slurping the audio of that like the whales are kind of hot like it's really good acting yeah i think he was doing a lot of like ad-libbing and stuff during this they said on the commentary yeah like there's such skilled acting from dan and the animation is there to match it it's it's so great is this and just such a great tableau of uh of them all watching homer sob as he eats a lobster while their plates are empty it's just such a a weird dinner for all of them of like so you're just gonna eat it all like oh there needs to be a side i mean you if you're gonna split a lobster

between uh three people you got to have some like i don't know mashed potatoes or cheddar bay biscuits at least biscuits uh steamed vegetables who knows there's so many options out there a sad end for pinchy as he gets um eaten by his father pretty uh pretty horrifying ending for poor little pinchy but at least it got out okay yes yeah at least lisa she put the f on her score as it's meant to be i i liked how she was able to perfectly mark through the a plus to make it an f that was again they barely had time at the end they were like speed it up okay f and uh pinchy's dead and uh the title lisa gets an a is referencing bark it's an f right yes yes season two premiere. And Bark Gets an Elephant. Like now Lisa finally gets a something.

Yeah, it's fun when they have a callback title like this. I'm surprised they can still remember those kind of things. It's like when they bring back a Homer versus the blank or whatever. Or Homer the blank. Yeah, yeah. Marge the blank. Yes. Any final thoughts on this one?

I think this one is so funny and goes into unpredictable places. And, you know, the only negatives I'd really say is I just feel bad when they like crap on Lisa or crap. And also have Homer just be needlessly mean to people. I still am not loving those jokes. But this is just such a funny episode that goes in so many unpredictable and fun not unpredictable and stupid places yeah in my head i just miss a lot of season 10 but i remember like when i went back to watch this is an actual really good episode like this is something that i quote a lot of lines from over the years so like obviously this is a quality episode i just didn't think about was season 10

yeah the ending really makes it for me again it worked the best the first time i saw it but i just love how clever it is and how it kind of subverts the learning a lesson story. And that Lisa only thinks she learned a lesson, but again, her morality is incompatible with life. So it can't work in this situation. But yeah, another great episode. Imran, you're our special guest.

Please tell us where we can find you, where you work, your Twitter, any of that good stuff. My Twitter is I-M-R-n-z-o-m-g uh you guys also plugged your pax panel so i will mine as well there is a at 6 30 on saturday i think there is a news writing panel with me uh matt came from ign oh that's a good that's a good time eric van ellen from us gamer and rebecca valentine from games industry man that's nice yeah boy i think six months of my games writing career was i was on the news beat and it is no fun it is tough it is a real i'd say underappreciated skill for sure

yeah games press for sure so if you're curious how that works or how that like the day of a new writer is we will be happy to complain about it for you and it's also good it's not competing with ours so yeah otherwise we would edit this out but but thanks everyone again for coming on thank you so if you want to help our show and get all of these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com talking simpsons and if you subscribe at the five dollar level you'll get just that and alongside that you'll get our other podcast what a cartoon one week ahead of time and ad free and at that five dollar level we also have miniseries like

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We're going to give them to you anyways. We like you that much. Henry, what else is going on on the Patreon? Well, if you want even more than too many podcasts. Frankly, we're going to just we're going to give them to you anyways. We like you that much. Henry, what else is going on in the Patreon? Well, if you want even more than too many podcasts, then you'll want to go up to the premium level at $10 a month. For those folks, you'll get to hear our monthly What a Cartoon Movie podcast, where me and Bob go through a different animated feature film once a month. We did Beavis and Butthead Do america last month and it is a classic we talked for over 200 minutes about that film so please you'll want to give that a listen at the ten

dollar level 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 i have another podcast by the way it's retronauts if you enjoyed all of our video game talk about old games you would enjoy that. It's Retronauts. If you enjoyed all of our video game talk about old games, you would enjoy that podcast. Go to retronauts.com or look for Retronauts in your podcast machine. It's available every Monday and sometimes Friday, and I think you'll like it. Henry, what about you? Follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G.

Whenever new things go live on the Patreon, I tweet about them there first and same. With my political beliefs and other funny joking arounds, you can follow that all on Twitter, H-E-N-E-R-E-Y G. That's it for us this week. We'll see you next week with Homer Simpson in Kidney Trouble. I need a miracle. Come on, you owe me.

What's up, sis? Bart, shouldn't you be in class? I am. It's a little something I whipped up at shop. Mostly latex. What are you doing out here? We've got a test and I didn't read the book. I'll get a zero for sure, Bart. What do I do? Well, if it was me, I'd just take the zero.

But that's not for everyone. There's one other possibility. Hey, I can't go in there. Relax, there's nothing here you didn't see when Dad boycotted pants.