Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Lisa The Greek With Alex Navarro

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

It's your football lock of the week as we welcome back our pal Alex Navarro from Nextlander to discuss the intersection of gambling and fatherhood. We not only talk a ton of behind-the-scenes details of the real-life football bets that inspired this ep, we also gab about halftime shows, shows premiering after the Super Bowl, beer bottles playing sports, and tons more. So grab some baloney and bread for this Super Sunday Brunch Spectacular of a podcast! Support this podcast and get over 100 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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why it's blabbing about batman the animated series the newest patreon exclusive podcast mini-series on the talking simpsons network that That's right. For the rest of 2022, we'll be covering eight of our favorite episodes of Batman the Animated Series with the same heavy-duty research, clips, and trivia you've come to expect from us. And if you sign up at the $5 level today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons, you'll get to hear each episode as soon as it goes live. Remember, sign up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons to hear all eight episodes of Blab About Batman, the animated series, as well as the 100 plus other exclusive podcast episodes we produce so far.

So become a patron and join us through the rest of 2022 for another great miniseries. Same bad day, same bad podcast feed. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, home of the Super Sunday Brunch Spectacular. I'm one of your hosts, the retired criminal Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, and this is my podcast, Lock of the Week. And who do we have on the line, our special guest today?

Well, I guess this is my shoe-in of the week because you stole the one I was going to go for. This is Alex Navarro from Nexlander. And this week's episode is Lisa the Greek. Now stay tuned for six hours of exciting football action. Well, bye-bye belt. This week's episode originally aired on January 23rd, 1992. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God.

Happy Super Bowl week, Bobby. The truly crappy Capitol Critters debuts on ABC. Color Me Bad's All For Love tops the charts. And just as Lisa predicts, the Washington football team wins the Super Bowl. And yes, it's Super Bowl week. They timed it for this episode. We have a ton of stuff to say about the Super Bowl that happened this week. So I'll just say that Capital Critters, we covered that very in-depth, unfortunately, on a What a Cartoon podcast. Yeah.

A little over a year ago, I think. I think so. All I'll say is more like Capital Shitters, and that's all I got. I feel like I've maybe seen one episode of that show and that was enough for me yeah it's a terrible show only exists because of the simpsons the simpsons got very successful and so you know then steven botch goes like well i can make a cartoon too what if it was like a terrible political cartoon about the rats who live in the white house like what would they say with with very stupid things about

race to say included it was a bad idea because we all know the white house is full of clowns yeah yeah not rats circus yeah the capital circus that's a better show but yes learn all about that uh in in that podcast and uh yeah color me bad's all for love it's it's a nice little song to listen to at the the super bowl it's it's no i want to sex you up but it's all right sure oh yeah it's a much better i'm thinking of more the the robin hood uh prince of thieves all for love oh yes yeah hey that's a good all for love too and that was just a year prior to this or maybe the previous year or two years ago i don't know like 1991 okay yeah yeah but yes the big news this week is the super bowl which is why they timed this

episode for it as well and uh this is a very footbally episode of the simpsons uh and and we've got a good guest for that as well yes joining us this week is alex navarro of next lander welcome back to the show alex thank you so much for having me i finally my football expertise can be put towards something that isn't just playing madden every year yeah it's an episode about football in which you actually see no football being played yes it's amazing that yeah and i i was gonna say alex i was like well i know alex must know something about football based on how many times he's reviewed madden the nfl video game yes it's true i i've been watching football for many, many years of my life. I briefly worked as a tester on the 2K football games for one year before I got an actual job

in games media. Video games and football have permeated my life in ways that maybe they shouldn't have, but here I am. Well, so, you know, when this episode aired in early 92, were you already a football fan even at that young age? I was like a loose football fan at that age. Like baseball was kind of my sport of choice when I was like about that, about that old. So I grew up when I sort of became aware of football. I grew up in geographically, the team that would have been the one that all the people around me were voting, were rooting for would have been the Washington football team. And even as a kid, before I even knew about the racism aspect of it, I hated that team, despised them,

wanted nothing to do with them. And then I picked the Patriots for some reason because it was just like, they had the orange uniforms back then. I was like, oh, they look kind of cool. And then I was rewarded with about, let's say about 15 years of mediocrity before Tom Brady came around

and then gave them some Super Bowls and then ruined all that by having a MAGA hat in his locker. Well, you know, I feel the same way like with pro wrestlers. It's like, look, I just assume every pro wrestler is probably probably a conservative guy. And then I get I get to be happily surprised when they're not, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things where it's just like every sports person will eventually disappoint you in some way. You just hope it is a mild disappointment in the end. Does gambling enter into your enjoyment of football in any level?

This is not a sting. Yes, yes. Well, that's the thing. The thing that struck me the most legitimate coverage of their sport because it has become so legal and so like embraced by the leagues because they know that they can make an absolute garbage ton of money off of it. It's everywhere now. And I was never much of a sports gambler. I would spend like 50 bucks on the Super Bowl with my friends. That was it. And now it's just everywhere and it's kind of horrible.

Yes. I mean, we'll get to it eventually. But in this podcast, or sorry, in the episode, Homer says, you know, it's only illegal in 48 states. That has changed. Some form of gambling is illegal in every state because America is a failed state. We can't actually collect taxes anymore. So we have to steal from poor people.

We found a new way to do it. And that's making every kind of gambling legal or at least one kind per state and sports betting is actually legal in 30 states at this point at this recording it's it's nuts i didn't realize how pervasive it was and how heavily advertised it was until a lot of those companies started advertising them on like podcasts like i hear them on podcasts and also you know i am not a sports viewer regularly but the venn diagram crosses over with wrestling and so when i watch pro wrestling on tv that is when i see the ads for gambling sites even ones who do like product placement on aew dynamite yes where they say like where you can gamble again again on the intentionally faked or predetermined pro wrestling shows.

It's ridiculous. It's totally ridiculous. And you definitely see it a lot on AEW because, again, Tony Khan is from, you know, like his father owns the Jacksonville Jaguars. And yeah, like the ownership has embraced it, like everyone seems to have embraced it. And it just feels like we're running out of ways to squeeze money out of the rubes so let's just legalize every possible avenue i'd rather bet on the bud bowl than on wrestling it's probably it's probably it's slightly less fixed i've you know i've never gambled on wrestling i haven't out of all the things in eight i i'm not saying i don't love gambling but i've never i've never gambled on sports in general it just seems too complicated especially once i saw the that safty brothers movie uncut gems oh yeah and see i was like man gambling sports gambling is so complicated all these side bets and all this stuff like

yes oh it's too it's too complex i want to sit in front of a machine and i press a button on it and then when the spinning things stop i either won or i didn't yep now you never bet on wrestling henry have you ever pulled the lever of a john cena slot machine you know cena hasn't done it yet i would if there was one there i if there was a cena branded slot machine you know i i don't gamble i don't like it there's no like religious reasons or like you know history of addiction or anything i just i don't like the idea of losing money and just the other day I was in an arcade playing the crane machines. And after three tries, I just felt very sad.

Like I wasted all these Dave and Buster points and I'll never get them back. And I didn't have any pride. I'm like, no, I must win it now. Sunk cost fallacy. I just walked away. I'm a bad gambler for that reason. I just walk away.

But so in your case, you actually ended up in the perfect situation where you tried a few times, didn't lose a lot of money and you said, okay, I'm done. You've cut yourself off. The worst thing that can happen to you in gambling is winning a decent amount once because then you are going to chase that for the rest of your damn life. Yeah, no, I think that happened to my dad. I've heard this story that on my parents' honeymoon that he hit big and then lost it

all and then like sold their plane tickets or whatever to try to win back some money and uh that didn't work either kind of ruined their honeymoon that's a very homer simpson move i feel like yes yeah i promise i'm not mistaking an episode of the show with my parents but well also alex with your your madden knowledge too i wonder is is is madden ever used for gambling purposes do people ever sim out games in that for gambling so i haven't seen that but they like you know ea would always send out a press release of like we simmed the super bowl and here's who we think who's gonna win and who's gonna have the most touchdowns and all that stuff and it was you know hey they were wrong about 52% of the time, I will say.

Oh, Madden gambling. This brings me back to 20 years ago when I was in college. And there was a little cafe on campus. In one room, you could play Madden in with people. They had to shut the room down because a gambling ring had started. Whoa. Yes. Wow, man. Jeez.

We didn't do a Super Bowl or any of those pools. But I did. We did a pool for like the Royal Rumble of put $5 in a pot and random numbers you get. You don't pick the guy who you think is going to win, but you don't know when each guy is going to enter. It'll seem likely that say John Cena will win, but you don't know what number he's going to be and you randomly draw numbers. So it makes it kind of a gambling thing in that way.

But no, I've've never never really got into the sports betting thing either yeah yeah my my gambling was always poker that was where i you know i used to play with friends when i was in vegas for some ungodly reason i would you know i would hit the tables for at least an afternoon but i also realized there was gonna have to be a hard limit on that because there would be a it could get real dangerous if i ever got too into it you know that gambling and the poker thing, too, I have felt the itch while playing the, we were talking about it off mic,

that Marvel Snap, a video game, because on phones, the app, I shouldn't say, I'm talking like an old man, like, the video game, what I mean? On the telephone. Do you have games on your phone? Yes, yeah. But it is like, I've played it,

and it's not just the experience of wanting to get the to pull the right card of like come on show me ace show me an ace but also that you're thinking like the randomization of so many elements feel like waiting for the slot machine to show the one thing you want to see like there's a lot of random elements i prefer the skill and master for story storytelling a bane at a three in three in my life. It's up to you whether you dodge that or not in Interwitch Time. Not some random thing. This is a big episode. Really, the only reason they wrote this episode is because many of the writers are degenerate gamblers.

Yeah, there were no phones in the writer's room because it was 1992. So to pass the time, you would either write in the dictionary, draw little cartoons, underline things, eat or gamble. Yes. And those were the things you did in the writer's room of the early 90s. And some more preliminary stuff. This episode, for the longest time, because I'm not a football fan, maybe until 10 years ago, I thought this episode was named after the movie Zorba the Greek, having never seen it. I assume there was some connection. Like, is it about a gambler?

I don't know. Maybe. But then I found out about Jimmy the Greek. We'll talk about him later. But this episode is actually very heavily based on a Mary Tyler Moore episode from season five called The System. And on the commentary, Al Jean makes a joke that when this episode was pitched, everyone in the room was very aware of that episode because it had just aired like 15 years before

they were pitching it. So imagine, like, you probably remember something that aired in 2006 that's where they were uh in 1991 and then and james l brooks was showrunner on that season like i but bob shared with me the episode and i skimmed around it in the credits james l brooks is like co-executive producer on the show and they they say like oh yeah brooks didn't even remember it at first like oh is this uh did we do this on the Mary Tyler Moore show? And it's basically like if Al Jean now would say to somebody, do we do a monorail episode of The Simpsons? I think that sounds right. In this case, Lou Grant is the Homer figure and Ted Knight, Ted Knight's the character's name.

He is the outsider Lisa figure who figures out a system to sports betting. But in the case of the Mary Tyler Moore episode, it destroys the art of betting for Lou because it's just like stats and math. And he becomes very despondent over that. So that's all on YouTube. It's very easy to find. If you want to watch The System, which is, this is very loosely based on some core ideas from that episode.

It also definitely feels like the writers venting their anger towards each other over gambling. Like that's why they have Mary Tyler Moore in the episode says to Lou Grant, like, this thing is completely distracting you and it's not making you happy. Like you're miserable. You, you have an addiction and it's, it's about them trying to get less into gambling. Oh, and that one, they lose big at the Super Bowl. They do not win at the Super Bowl. So it's instead of the happy ending that this one has. And one final preliminary thing is that we covered it a bit the first time we talked about this episode.

But upon this revisit and doing research, I realized how much of this episode is a parody of the pregame show the nfl today yes so cbs uh you don't need to know that but uh when you find out how much is based on that it's astounding something that's still on the air but the form of it that they're parodying was the form that was contemporary at the time yeah alex you're a regular viewer of the nfl today on cbs uh so i have i yes as someone who does still watch football, I inevitably catch the, both the CBS and the Fox pregame ones, because those are the ones that are on throughout most of the day. And yes, the current version, which I believe has Phil Sims and, oh God, I'm trying to remember. Tony Romo is the main commentator now, so he's not on there. Oh God, I don't know. It's

a bunch of old guys. It's the ones that aren't on fox which is like terry bradshaw and all those dudes right yeah more familiar with those guys uh in part because they did a simpsons cartoon once yes i mean for all i knew when i was 10 uh smooth jimmy apollo was just a new character they invented and also i didn't understand lisa referencing phyllis george until uh yesterday yeah me too yeah know, there were several good 30th anniversary things this year on the episode. And in the Forbes one, which had a long interview with Al Jean about the episode, he makes the point of like, well, yeah, we as gamblers, especially they were all glued to NFL today and these other shows, because you couldn't just look up the stats. You couldn't just look up like, well, it's the, you know, in my my market i can't watch the game i bet on but it's the third quarter what's

going on you had to watch shows like nfl today or or just updates during the game to know what's going on right well that and also like that was the heyday of the sports bar where people would go and every single game would be on tv because they bought you know the insane satellite tv package or whatever which is why i think the sports bar has kind of fallen on hard times as a concept because NFL Red Zone exists and these, you know, various cable packages where you can just watch everything exist and the internet exists. Like there are a million ways you can watch all these games. Some of them legal, some of them not. But the idea of you having to go to a place where they give you jalapeno poppers and you sit there and you eat your goddamn jalapeno poppers and watch the football like a good little boy.

They're not really it's not really necessary anymore. This is ruining society. Don't socialize as much anymore because nobody socialized at those bars. Just fixed on the TV. I straight ahead. Before we get into it, Rich Moore direct this episode. One of the best directors on the show. He'll go on to be supervising director on the critic and on futurama he would direct

wreck it ralph and zootopia i believe uh big big wig in the animation industry this episode was a challenge for him it's a good looking episode but in this episode homer simpson is on the couch for about 70 of it occasionally they let him go to moe's to like collect money but he is really fixated on this couch this episode is so, but it still is not boring to watch. And he successfully avoids having to have his team animate football being played. It's amazing. And I have a theory about that. Number one, it's hard to animate football games being played.

But number two, they don't know who's going to be in the Super Bowl nine months ahead of time when they're writing and recording this so they know no matter what they do the teams will have to be 80 yard in at the last second which is why only a few times you see Lisa say the names of the teams who are playing in that Super Bowl so it would be weird if that is the one game you don't see animated if all the other teams that were

predetermined if those games had all been animated it would be weird if the pivotal game was not so I think there was a executive level decision made that we don't see any game being played because we can't actually animate the final game because we don't know we can replace dialogue we can't replace colors yet this is not digital animation and it's one of those things where like it actually kind of fits the theme of the episode because the football is actually the least interesting part of what is going on there is for everyone involved like homer's whole thing is that like yes yes thrill of the game what have you but there's this extra thing on top that really makes it sweet and it's taking mo's money

i i think too you know the nfl is very strict about their i mean even compared to other professional sports leagues they are very strict so the simpsons even under parody i don't i would figure their lawyers told them like you you do not draw a single nfl logo on this thing you can do the colors that's it yeah i assume that when the denver broncos are on homer's lawn they just have the colors not the logo right i think so yeah i mean one we noticed that when they had magic johnson in this season they clearly made a deal with the lakers to get the official lakers logo in the show but you know this was before it's actually a very interesting time when this aired too because this is a couple years before fox gets the nfl so they can take shots at the nfl or like joke around in any way they have the freedom of not

worrying about scaring off or pissing off their incredibly important content partner that now literally everybody will like billions billions just to have some football on your channel yeah and it's i'm looking at the footage now and the denver broncos do have their logos on their helmets in that scene and you only move twice so well well well either they they paid for it or they didn't care well they got oh sorry alex so they would have gotten the nfl what three that episode's what three years after this oh yeah yeah i guess it's when they had the nfl then yeah so they would have had uh permission yeah and then not long after that pat summerall and john madden just appearing on the show right right yes alex too you've seen in like football video games even back then the big deal was like man got the nfl and other things

didn't you'd tech mobile well actually tech mobile did get the nfl it had some of the nfl i don't know if it had all the player names but yeah it definitely had some i mean there were other like you know there was like the joe montana game that came around there was a few others the nfl license was not exclusive it was just that no one really paid too much attention to the other games that weren't madden until 2K came around. But yeah, Bob, you're right. This is a great view thematically of how gamblers view football. It's just like it is a series of stats or results that you gamble upon.

It doesn't mean anything. Like whoever the player is, whether they broke a passing record or whatever, that's nothing. Like that's nothing. The men telling you the score is more important than the men playing the game exactly yes and yeah you know on on the history of this one i want to give a tip of the hat because he also was a nice dude to me on uh twitter as well alan siegel uh who wrote uh for the ringer and oral history of it earlier in 2022 he did did a really good job he talked to lots of the folks writers and actors on it uh had a lot of insight also because it was for the ringer it had a sports insight that gave me you know a viewpoint uh i don't know as well uh and and also when i when i talked to elvin i said oh you know the

only thing like over dm i just mentioned him you know the only thing that it doesn't have is is the stuff about like lisa predicting it correctly and he uh all those years in a row and he says like well yeah the editor didn't think he knew that people were going to know that was missing but he's like the editor thought it didn't matter i think what's the thing which no you need every single uh that editor a fool that's my podcast better than the written word but we include everything but but i definitely have cribbed a few things from alan's uh great article but they already tell enough of the fun story behind the scenes on the commentary as well about it but it is the simpsons writing staff in the golden age was especially as headed up by jim brooks and sam simon i don't get the sense that i think this

was games played without mac rating i do not Matt Groening was a sports gambler. But James L. Brooks and Sam Simon, the two other co-developers of the show with Groening, huge gambling addicts. They love gambling on football as well. Jeff Martin in that Ringer article tells a story that when he started there, Sam Simon was like, oh, so you like football? Which he really meant, do you like gambling? And then Jeff Martin said to him, I'm more of a baseball guy. And he said that he felt Sam Simon instantly judged him. and was like baseball guy come on like you can't gamble on that as well

jay kogan when the co-writers the story tells that they before the super bowl in the year before this at the super bowl as a group they all flew down to vegas and he says he saw one writer lose a small fortune on super bowl 24 betting on denver which is why i think homer has the line stupid denver in this episode this is a quote uh cogan says about this the writer's room is where i learned to not give a shit about football teams and just give a shit about the spread that's that's what he said they learned and that mike reese is also very funny on the commentary because he's the one guy's like like, I don't give a crap about your football stuff. This is stupid to me.

They made every day two hours long. And I also want to say that our pal and previous guest on the show, Tim Kalpakis of the Birthday Boys sketch group and the Sloppy Boys, he worked at Gracie Films about 12 years ago. One of his main jobs was delivering the envelope of money to the winners of this football pool. He has handled the Manila envelope full of money.

He says he has dropped off that money to stars like Josh Duhamel and Adam Sandler. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I was like, well, Adam Sandler, why is he in the Jim Brooks pool? I forgot that Adam Sandler is the star of the Jim Brooks directed Spanglish from 2004. Oh, you're right. Good buddies. So if you see a PA, there's a good chance they could have a sack of money on them. You know, now I'm telling people to case the guys.

If you see a PA drive away from the Gracie offices, you know they've got thousands of dollars in an envelope. Find their names in the credits and just travel after them. Go. If you see a PA drive away from the Gracie offices, you know they've got thousands of dollars in an envelope. Find their names in the credits and just travel after them. Go. I guess for guys like Adam Sandler, especially when you're that rich, money is meaningless. But if you bet well, like it's like, oh, well, this is much better money than just like 80 million dollars from Netflix. Yeah. What's the worst thing you have to do? Make another grownups? It does make me wonder, is this why so many of these writers stay here this long is that they have had these gambling the gambling debts they all owe jim brooks money oh and also he mentioned that george meyer that was how tim kalpakis got

to meet george meyer was dropping off the the money to him one time and which he also mentions george meyer lives in wilt chamberlain's, which he got to see, which is the old home that Wilt Chamberlain had. The famous one that had the stories of the hot tub reveal in the living room that you like press a button and it opens up and like, ooh, a hot tub right there in the living room. Now I need to know who owns that house now. You know, I think Meyer probably still owns it. Good. If I did, I would. good if i if i did i would but i actually sent an email to tim just asking like hey can i mention this again on the show that you dropped off the money at the gracie philips thing he's like yeah

he he said when he dropped it off to josh demel he got to meet fergie because he was married to her at the time oh yes yeah so you get to meet the stars when you're dropping off all the the simpsons football money uh also another thing to mention about the behind the scenes on this one that kogan waldarski wrote is technically and i and it's totally deserving yardley smith won an emmy for this episode for her performance in this episode uh but i found out the 1992 primetime emmy award for outstanding voiceover performance it was the first time they gave away that award to actual voice acting in a cartoon it basically is the simpsons award they invented and because of that they simply gave six emmys to different members of the simpsons oh because i thought only marcia wallace won for bart the

lover i completely forgot that uh yardley or maybe i'm just learning this for the first time yardley smith i mean did the entire cast just get emys for voice acting? You know, not the entire cast, but it was like definitely Nancy, Yardley, Marsha. Oh, and also Jackie Mason as well. Right, right, yeah. And I think Dan and Julie, but it's also named for different episodes. Like Bart won for, oh Bart, Nancy Cartwright

won for separate vocations. Yardley's was for this so but they did win as a group not so yeah that's how it's listed on the the Emmy page but yeah no Hank and Harry they tried I I think they got him later but uh but yes but technically speaking as far as it goes yes Yardley Smith did win an award emmy for her performance in this episode and it's totally uh deserve it i'd say i i think so oh yeah this is a great lease episode and uh but i guess uh this this episode uh yeah the title well i mean he's he's his character shows up very early in this so why why don't we talk about jimmy the greek now uh yes jimmy the greek snyder a mainstay on the nfl today for 12 years

and then unfortunately he was the late 80s version of canceled when he said unfortunate comments about black athletes on an interview and uh he thought he wasn't being racist where he's like no these are actually compliments but you can look up what he said. I can imagine just based on that description, the exact thing he probably said. And yeah. Because it's key to a thing I'll play in a second. He definitely talks specifically about the thigh muscles of black men being a certain way. Yeah, it was some eugenics-y type stuff.

Yeah, just get those brain calipers out while you're at it. Yes. And I think it was the first time I realized, oh, smooth Jimmy Apollo. Apollo is a Greek god. That's very clever. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It is.

It's really smart. And so they're making fun of a guy who, when they put him in this episode, they're parodying a dude who got canceled four years ago who's off TV at this point and is like a memory. He's a memory, but, you know, that kind of personality if not specifically him was definitely a thing that permeated that like sports coverage and especially football coverage of that era like if it wasn't him there were other guys especially on like local news that would do similar things so it was still a concept that existed it's just i think he was the most famous version of it and then i read that part of his appeal too was because back then again we talk about how insane it feels now but back then the nfl wanted to have no relationship to gambling at all they did not want to say

the odds or anything and so part of the like dangerous fun of seeing jimmy the greek is his name is like he's a character out of the the godfather which had just come out in the in theaters in the 70s he's like oh yeah i was i lived in las vegas a bunch he'd say and he'd have funny euphemisms and and he'd just wink at the camera like that was part of the dance of the fun of the guy yeah he i saw that the thing the reason he was even asked that was it was like for a martin luther king day the timing was very unfortunate and in his head he thought no this is a compliment yeah yeah it's uh i'd like it if someone praised my thigh muscles i mean oh boy and i guess bob shared would be a sketch i'd never uh i had not seen before and if i had seen it on comedy central reruns as

a kid i wouldn't have got it because i did not know the context of it or nfl today i didn't see it either until looking it up and what's interesting is that so phil hartman is playing uh smooth jimmy apollo in this episode and the caricature uh the voice caricature he's doing is basically his sinatra but in this snl sketch we're going to hear phil hartman doing a fairly accurate impression of jimmy the greek that is closer to his actual voice nothing like sinatra at all so uh this this is from the uh the sketch that aired like i think literally a week after he was taken off of the show called nfl today black pride uh which is very funny that it's basically the concept is that the character is over they have allowed jimmy the greek back on the show and he has overcompensated by learning a ton about black history for black history oh my elway's been

given a free ride all his life he's got those big thighs that go high into his back which by the way is something you see in players both black and white and does not predominate in any particular race but a genuine get it back to Elway, Greg. This is just the culmination of centuries of planning. I mean, back in Ireland, during the Middle Ages, the English would take the big white Irish guy and breed him with the big white Irish man. Very interesting, Greg. So you're taking Washington then.

Well, Ben, I couldn't think of a better way to kick off Black History Month. Oh, man. Yes. Yeah. taking washington now well i couldn't think of a better way to kick off black history month oh man yes yeah so a very different voice but it's more accurate to the actual guy but i think that's probably why they have him in this episode because he's he's uh troy mcclure for about 15 seconds but up front he is smooth jimmy apollo phil hartman it's so good yeah in that sketch kevin nealon is parodying brent musburger and here it's Harry Shearer doing it. Brett Gunselman, which is a great name. That's the parody name. The Simpsons will be right back.

You don't have to wait until Sunday to see the big game. We are live from Super Bowl XXVI. It's happening Thursday on The Simpsons. Bye-bye, belt. And everybody's got football fever. It's like there's some kind of bond between us. Don't miss the thrill. The chill.

There's one loyal fan wearing nothing but a G-string. And the spectacular halftime show. One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock. Go! It's Football Fever Thursday on The Simpsons. His kids are buying new clothes. He's eating in the finest restaurants. Hello, I'm Mark Hood.

I'll be your wager. Hello, I'm Homer. I'll be your customer. Homer Simpson is on a roll. You sucky son of a... What's his secret? Who do you think's gonna win? The Dolphins? No. Gotcha, is on a roll. You sucky son of a... What's his secret? Who do you think's gonna win? The Dolphins? No. Gotcha, 50 beans on Miami. His daughter is calling the shots.

Each and I have been gambling on pro football. Homer, gambling is illegal. Oh, only at 48 states. The Simpsons, Thursday at 8 on Fox 29. America has football fever. I'm glad some people could resist the game. Oh, my God, I forgot the game.

And the Simpsons are getting in on the action. Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Presenting the super spectacular Simpsons football special. I just think this NFL thing way too far, man. Shut up, boy. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

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take advantage of no credit needed financing made easy. They work with multiple lending partners, so the financing is tailored to you. Remember that when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free only at your locally owned Big O Tires, the team you trust. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the break. I hope you're feeling some football fever just like we are, especially thanks to our great guest this week, Alex Navarro from Nexlander. Check out all of the awesome stuff he's doing. I always love Alex and all the guys at Nexlander's work on Game of the Year stuff.

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feature film crazy in depth once a month often for over four hours sometimes over six hours in some extreme awesome cases and this month you'll get to hear us talk about for the first time a laika film para norman from 2012 the month before that we talked about the 1980s traumatic toy commercial transformers the movie and there's a giant pack catalog with so many awesome ones including this year of us covering who framed roger abbott that's the six and a half hour long podcast just so much awesome stuff there you can hear over 250 hours of exclusive what a cartoon movie podcast in addition to all that five dollar stuff if you sign up at that ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons today but yes the uh the episode begins with something i think that got cut off a bunch in syndication but

i love it rich more and his team were shown the 80s opening to nfl today which is like wire work early early cgi of a guy running down the field and they imitate it in two-dimensional animation and have the guy get decapitated and his head flies through the air towards god just why we're here it's what the sport is when i was a kid and i'd see my dad watching shows like this, I would watch the CGI opening. And then when it's over, it's like, well, now I just got to watch old guys talk.

Where's the, where the cartoons go? I just have to walk, watch regular head injuries. I love Homer and ultimate snacking mode. Everything right next to him, his dead eyes looking forward as he shoves, like he knows where each difference,

heavily salted snack treat is with all the place in this episode episode, I'm really surprised there's not more drinking. Yeah, pretty light on that. It's so well animated just on a cycle. You could just make a gif of that that could cycle endlessly of Homer just shoving all the different food in his mouth over and over again. As Marge gives him a warning, this when he almost has uh the heart attack he will have in season four but uh but first let's let's hear from uh smooth jimmy apollo and now with his picks for today's games the man who's right 52 of the time smooth jimmy apollo thank you bretta first game today denver and new england is too close to call. But if you're one of those compulsive types

who just has to bet, well, I don't know. Denver. Woo-hoo, Denver! Yeah. Moe's Tavern, where the peanut bowl is fresh and hourly. Moe, I'd like to bet $20 on Denver. I think I can provide that service. Chief Wiggum, could you hand me that little black book?

Oh, sure thing, Moe. I was just using it as a coaster. 20 beacons on Denver. Pleasure doing business with you, H.S. All right, Denver, justify my love. At the end of 13 seconds of play, it's New England 7, Denver nothing. Don't! Look, Dad, I made a modest studio apartment for my Malibu Stacy doll.

This is a kitchen. This is where she prints her weekly feminist newsletter. Dad, you're not listening to me. Lousy, stupid Denver. You know, that feminist newsletter now, you replace that with feminist podcast, her weekly feminist podcast. That's what she'd record it. Can't even be a blogger anymore.

But so I got to say, as a little little kid i felt no tension about watching it now as an adult watching homer's heart nearly explode i was like oh this worries me more as i see now this is why the the middle-aged guys writing this show wrote these jokes gratefully on just the blood being forced through like a torrent of blood it's like a bucket being emptied and this this brought me back because my stepdad did not have a heart attack but he was a football gambler because he was part of a gambling ring uh ring makes it sound so salacious a gambling group at his workplace and every year he would bring home like the big spreadsheet with like where you put all your bets and everything and he'd be following it as he gambled it was kind of fun

because you know it is a thing daddies do to make sports more interesting is gambling it went on for a few years and then like one year i was like hey uh hey where's your where's the gambling sheet and they had to tell me oh the guy running it was arrested because it was illegal in 1994 to do that so yeah wow man so i guess someone narked on him that's sad boy it's terrible it's a victimless crime the only victims mo yeah uh yeah but i also love homer's delivery like a little beer he'll put out that fire like he doesn't think about it for one second oh and that the joke again it doesn't make as much sense now because it's so the the joke is that it's very upfront that he's helping people gamble but i just love he's like but i guess if you're one of those compulsive types who has to gamble,

I got such a funny line. Well, and Homer's just elation at the idea of you just said a name. That's all I need. You told me who to bet on. I'll do it right now. Yeah. Wiggum's got his black hair back. I feel like this is the last time we're seeing Wiggum with his black hair i think so and it's a rare appearance at least the name of smitty oh

right he's written smitty's name uh last seen in uh smitty safing up in the german episode i like how homer says 20 big ones when he means 20 dollars not that's the biggest he has to work with you know reminded me of like oh yeah this episode homer basically which is like it's not that it's nothing especially in 1992 money but he makes maybe like 500 off of this whole thing i think in total lisa is trying to get some attention from uh homer sharing with uh i i just love lisa's whole world she made for her malibu stacy which like this is a a barbie doll essentially and she makes a modest studio apartment for her where she prints a feminist newsletter like that's so so great that that's the vision lisa has for for her malibu stacy i mean her thing with malibu stacy is always imagining her as very much like the avatar for the life she wants for herself

and as much as you know the fancy malibu stacy stuff is nice and everything she wants malibu stacy to be the feminist icon that she envisions and this is you know i mean this is obviously laying the groundwork for when you know malibu stacy goes completely in the other direction uh but it's it's you know it's a nice little character touch when the friction between her and malibu stacy can uh can take no more just like homer's, it finally explodes. I also think it's very adorable how Maggie's bathed in the sink in the next shot. It's really cute. And so Marge wants to help Lisa connect with Homer.

Get that a shoebox house. Lisa, you're so clever. Why isn't Dad ever interested in anything I do? Well, do you ever take an interest in anything he does? No. Well, we used to have burping contests, but I outgrew it. Hmm. Well, if you want to get closer to him, then maybe you should bridge the gap.

I do it all the time. I pretend I'm interested in looking at power tools, going to those silly car chase movies, and some things I'll tell you about when you're older. Do you understand? I think so. But! What?

Oh, look at that. No, why did you do that? Wouldn't it be fun if we watched a game together? Okay, just don't say anything and sit down over there. Over. Over. Over. Over.

Over. over there over over over over lisa please i can't hear the announcer he said denver just fumbled i love homers homers like sobbing he's like one quarter into the game he's just like why is that why it's so good but okay what does Homer like that Marge doesn't like? I'm going to assume it's 1992. A Marge, very religious to the point where she's against gambling. I think anything outside of standard missionary sex. Sure, sure. And that's all I'll say, really. I would figure oral.

I would bet it's a joke about oral. That's my guess. I would say a finger in the bum. Okay. I can figure oral. I would bet it's a joke about oral. That's my guess. I would say a finger in the bum. Okay. I can see that. I don't think Homer and Marge had that kind of imagination. Yeah. Well, maybe it happened accidentally once.

Who can say? Yes. You know, yeah, I guess you're right. With Marge, 1992 Marge, cowgirl might be a bit much for her. Yeah. Look, we could get looter, but I mean mean it's a very dudes writing a script in the 90s that it's like the moral of the story is women need to like things more than a father or husband likes give them a chance yeah and of course women hate sex yeah also that yeah that's i'd much

prefer when they write it that marge loves snuggling like she wants to have sex with homer as much as homer wants to have sex with her most times. Weird little detail here. I will just throw out, uh, regarding the game, which Homer loses very badly on. I believe the score is 55 to 10 New England Patriots. So there's a thing I love about, and this is, this is not gambling. This is just a, a, a fun, weird side thing about football these days. John Boyce of the, uh, of, of, of SB Nation and, and all that stuff. stuff. I don't remember if he invented it or if he just sort of like popularized this concept. Scorigami. The idea is that there are unique

scores in football the way that there are not in other sports because of the way the math works out. And there is a bot on Twitter that tracks whether a score that happens in an NFL game is the first time it's ever happened. And so there's a weird dedicated subset of people online who are desperate to see score a gami whenever it happens. And I was curious about this. Had 55 to 10 ever actually happened? And in fact, it had to the Denver Broncos. The first time 55 to 10 ever happened was the 49ers versus the Broncos

in January 28th, 1990. And the Broncos in January 28, 1990. And the Broncos were definitely on the wrong side of that one. Wow, man. Boy, I wonder if that's like, it could even be a reference because this was written in 91. I bet someone lost bad on that game. I mean, when you lose on a game like that, you probably don't forget that score. No. I think it's why I didn't connect with football because the points were so weird.

Just like, wait, a touchdown's worth six. And then there's like an extra point if you kick it but then if you kick it through the goal independently it's another thing and then there's a two-point conversion for a while what's going on they still have that and then there's also two points if you get sacked in the in your own end zone that the the other team gets two points for that it's a mess it's a whole mess we need a mario party star system for football games the only fair scoring system i i wouldn't know any of these rules if i didn't play blitz like nfl blitz in in my high school days that's that it's how i learned any rules of football and half those rules are not the rules of football no you can't hit people after the

whistle they don't they don't encourage that i mean it's fun to do in a game, obviously, but not when a video game character can't get CTE. Yeah. Do you remember that brief period where they brought Blitz back and they went all the way in the other direction when they were literally doing Mortal Kombat X-ray shots of injuries you were getting? Yes, I remember seeing Lawrence Taylor promoting it,

I think it was, too. Yes. That is the correct football player to get to promote that game. I remember I didn't review it, but me and Bob's previous life as game reviewers, the guy who was reviewing it at our website, he was like, look, this is the x-ray move on a testicle rupturing in the game. That was the selling point. Also, when she mentioned silly car chase movies i could not think of you know in life today many many a romantic partners had to go to

a fast and the furious film i i even made my husband go he'd never seen a fast and the furious before when the john cena one came out and i was like come on we gotta see it john cena's in this one it did make no sense to him yeah that's a rough one to go in on if you don't know the deep and textured lore of fast and furious which i'm only half kidding about that oh no it's it's very it's it's a dense lore of those of those films for sure so yardley smith talks about this a little on the commentary, but she is way more clear about this in The Ringer. She did not, when she first saw that scene in the script of Homer telling her to move

and move and move, she thought it was too mean. She thought it was way, way too mean. Here's what she said in The Ringer interview this year. It was one of the first times I feel like Homer was really not nice to Lisa. And in that moment, she had no recourse, no retort. I was like, this is fucked up. It's not okay. I really get my hackles up about it, she said, even to this day.

But she feels it's pretty earned by the end of it, at least. She still loves the end, but yeah. They then on the commentary talk about how like, oh yeah, you could never write a scene where Homer strangles Lisa. Like that would never work. I was thinking that Homer is more actively aggressive towards Bart, but passive aggressive towards Lisa, where he just tells her, well, I can't. He doesn't say this, but he can't strangle her. So he's like, don't talk and get as far away from me as possible.

And then we can exist in the same space. But that's it. Like he has a different negative relationship with each child. He strangles bard he sort of like actively pushes away at annoyance at lisa and then just forgets maggie exists also it's very good dad energy of like fine like he's just like i guess if you want to sit next to me though for me as a kid i did not watch football with my dad, but I did hate going clothes shopping. I was very bad at doing it. My God.

Yeah, I mean, I was raised by women until I was like 10, and I was taken to a lot of clothes stores because babysitters and daycares are expensive, so you're coming along for every ride. Sometimes you can stay at home. Don't tell anyone we let you, though. But oftentimes it was like, well, I played under every clothes rack. I've read every tag. What do I do? Which is why I'm so jealous of every kid with an iPad. I couldn't just dial up Finger Family or Baby Shark or whatever and entertain myself.

I had to look for things in a store full of blouses. Yeah. It was a dark time. You get dragged around by your mom. And yeah, I think this captures, this is, you know, in early Simpsons, this is some of their best stuff when they're just like hey do you remember when you were a kid and how you hated going clothes shopping and like i do i feel bad obviously of being the like mom can we go kid to my mom who

was just she's got to buy you new clothes for school you know that's what that has to happen like and yeah i was getting in the way of it with her i think but yeah also this taught me you could melt toys as a kid too i had never tried to melt a toy before but then i saw bart do i was like oh you you could do that yeah my friends were more blowing up toys types so it was a lot of firecrackers and gi joe's less melting of army men well you see in our i i was more of a toy boy as we've said many times on this show like that's why Army Man you could melt and destroy, but I liked even the crappiest G.I. Joe. I would not want to blow him up because then I couldn't play with him anymore. Sure.

That was the downside. But yes, Marge decides she's going to hang out with Bart all day since Lisa's hanging out with Homer, which is one of those rare B-plots that is entirely contained to one act and is not called back upon at all the rest of the whole episode i like it because otherwise it would be too claustrophobic this entire act is just homer watching tv and they kind of need uh some fresh air basically in this in this first act homer learns the uh the as he's surprised to learn that if somebody's right 52 of the time they're wrong 48 that's when homer is given some options on what to bet on next and first he is shown the lock of the week

which i love and then the shoe of the week the shoe in as well which are both great arguments just i feel like i have i've put that logic on mulling over things before in my life too it's a pretty big lock like just totally meaningless but though smooth jimmy is right miami does win he tells him he tells him to pick miami it's what lisa picks too and he's right keeps it nice and even yeah and this frank joke i do like it but i feel like a year later the machine would fall over and crush him i'm surprised it doesn't now i think the only joke is how long they they stay on him hitting it like homer changes the channel the it doesn't now. I think the only joke is how long they stay on him hitting it. Like, Homer changes the channel.

The cameraman doesn't cut away. Like, just for seconds on seconds on national television, Frank is kicking a machine on TV. But, yes, then we get another reference to another guy who, his fall from grace was different from Jimmy the Greek's, but we get a little reference to pete rose you want some of this don't you yeah well you need to know the winners and i know the winners so call me now whoa five dollars for the first minute two dollars for each additional

minute you have reached the coach's hot line line yeah lay lay it on me, Coach. In the game of my M.A. versus Sin. Cincinnati. Sin. Cincinnati. Not. Cincinnati.

Come on, come on. Don't you realize this is costing me money? We must consider many things. The wind. Not the wind. Is blowing out of the west At five miles per hour Not

This is ridiculous What am I supposed to do Who do you think is going to win The Bengals or the Dolphins I don't know the Dolphins That's one of the funniest moments in the whole series Just Thomas saying Cincinnati Cincinnati

I mean it's obvious but the team playing in the whole series there. Just Thomas saying, Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Cincinnati. I mean, it's obvious, but the team playing in Cincinnati because it takes them the longest to say. So I think that was decided after they wrote that joke. Like, well, let's make it Cincinnati. It takes forever to say. One has the most syllables. Yeah.

Well, you know, also that's where Pete Rhodes' Reds are from too. So it fits there. I just love the way it's drawn to be Pete Rhodes or a guy in a Reds outfit anyway. It doesn't really look like Pete Rose. I thought the performance and the drawing looked like Tommy Lasorda. Definitely. Because he was a pitch man for a lot of things back in the late 80s, early 90s, including Ultra Slim Fast.

Right, right, yes. And Sega Genesis. Yeah. And there was a critic joke about him. Now they call me Stinky. Yeah. But this is also pulled from real life this is from the ringer piece as well george meyer said the slow talking

run was inspired by an actual shady tip line that sam simon called sam was an alchemist who could turn real life frustration into comedy gold so that's he he actually suffered through that i one of my favorite things this time watching it was seeing what a great joke it was that we have this slow thing he says everything is slow as possible when homer thinks he's gonna say miles per hour which the joke would be he'd say miles per hour he instead says not the faster way to say something which but more confusing and homer's more frustrated that he couldn't guess the right word yes yeah it's just great and also just is like don't you know this is costing me money like what a great stupid thing god we all at some point in our lives probably called at least one 900 number whether for help

or for you know various other reasons i assume yes just going like come on speed it up it's costing me money you know the nintendo helpline people they weren't drawing it out like that yeah because they were all free that's uh yeah you've, the Nintendo helpline people, they weren't drawing it out like that. Yeah, because they were all free. That's, yeah, you've seen the footage of those people back then. Yeah. They would talk to lonely, fatherless children like me. Yep. Tell you how to beat Ganon.

Homer calls in his bet. Then we also see that though Moe is taking small bets from Homer, he's taking hundreds or even thousands of dollars of bets from crusty and mel somehow mel is a more generous gambler yeah i guess he's more he's more of a degenerate even i i wasn't sure if that was crusty deciding to make him bet 2000 instead of 200 or if that was actually mel is the biggest degenerate gambler of all you know what this time i caught it mel squeaks his horn twice which is his sign of like that means two bet too large on this one you know what this is the big difference time makes but in a couple seasons few seasons after this in season six

crusty would be doing his gambling entirely with fat tony right yeah it got that big but they hadn't figured that fat tony would be a regular in the series at this point. Also, I think they have Mel do the horn honks because this is right before they decided he's going to talk now. Like he does say something in Radio Bart. He sings in the Radio Bart song, but he hasn't actually said a line yet other than that. So we don't fully know about his Shakespearepearean juilliard training or anything yeah i believe we're gonna hear that in black widower okay yeah all i could be is myself so yes uh i

recently went mattress shopping uh and had bart's kind of thing too like whatever this one yes i picked it can we go now though i actually agree with marge's taste in these clothes i think i i would not the bow tie. No. Absolutely not. I like the shirts. Never trust anyone in a bow tie, ever. They bring evil.

Bart could easily learn, like, he could become a hipster with these clothes in, like, five or six years. He's ahead of the curve. He's, like, got this cabana gear almost. Right. Ready to go. But he's 10 years old. He's not ready for that. He's not ready to make the debut of

this in uh in will in williamsburg so uh this is where another another fun line here now bart i think you'd look very sharp in this shirt fine get it let's go no no no you have to try it on oh and this one's 50 off you know why these clothes are on sale mom because the people who wear them get beaten up. Well, anyone who beats you up for wearing a shirt isn't your friend. Ooh, this looks good. Oh, and this one is very, very cute. And these, oh, look, little bow ties.

And don't make that face at me. How'd you know? A great gag of, like, your mom always knows. You know you're making the face behind it. She always knows, and as well-meaning as she is, she will say things to you like, anyone who would beat you up over a shirt is not your friend, as if that is not the most staggeringly obvious thing to a child.

Yes. Marge thinks that it's like, oh, well, you shouldn't be friends with those people if you're beating up. Like, yeah, no, that's what Marge said. Yes. Apparently, Kogan and Walidarski that that some folks didn't get that joke and then mac raining helped them get it in the episode it is a great line i'm glad i'm glad they got it in there bart's uh while he's in hell homer and lisa are having a great time here and this is when homer explains why people love gambling. Touchdown, Dolphins! All right, Dolphins!

All right, Dolphins! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! 50 big ones! 50 big ones? Uh-oh. You see, Lisa, Daddy's friend Mo promised to give him $50 if the Dolphins won the game.

You mean you made a bet? Well, I wouldn't call it a bet. It's a little thing Daddy's due to make football more exciting. What could be more exciting than the savage ballet that is pro football? Well, you know, you like ice cream, don't you? Uh-huh. And don't you like ice cream better when it's covered with hot fudge and mounds of whipped cream and chopped nuts? And, oh, those crumbled up cookie things they mash up.

Mmm, crumbled up cookie things. So gambling makes a good thing even better. That's right! My God, it's like there's some kind of bond between us. Homer cannot understand, like, wow, a bond with my daughter. This is insane. I don't understand this. This did seem insidious in 92.

We've been talking about it, though, and I think kids are trained from a young age with all the gotcha games. Yeah. G-A-T-C-h-a by the way uh the games where you uh do pulls every day to get like the random jpegs of spider-man perhaps or uh anime girl in a bikini yeah those kind of things hey that jpeg of spider-man plays uh he's a he's a great card to play, Bob. He's got a shiny logo now. Oh, God, yeah. No, yeah, I think kids are more set up for gambling than ever these days. When we were kids, video games had a ton of gambling in them, especially ones from Japan where it's like,

oh, you're between levels, play the slot machine. And we thought nothing of it. And it's just like, I learned about gambling from playing Vegas Stakes for the Super Nintendo. Right, or most Mario games had, or a few mario games yeah yeah yoshi's island i forgot how to scratch and win segment yeah there was literally a caesar's palace game wasn't there for the super nintendo yeah i think i rented it my favorite and still to this day every time there's a new dragon quest i'm like all right where's the casino like let's get into this though also i just beat yakuza zero and that has the um the hobo casino in it which also is great uh though half the games like

look i'm sure mahjong is a great game i don't know how to play it i can't i i have played most of those games i have never tried to learn mahjong i can't do it or koi koi or uh all the they they seem like fun games but they're just just very complicated for a first-timer. It is a little insidious as well how Homer explains. It's like, oh, it's like ice cream, but it makes it better. That's all. It's not an addiction. It just makes a fun thing even better.

Yeah. It's like fudge and cookie crumbles and sprinkles and all these other things on top of the thing uh it's very adr i love homer's like crumbled up cookie things that's a good one also homer just spills all his beer right when he does it he's just so excited like he never gets to win very cruel line that homer thinks is sweet is uh my god it's like there's some kind of bond between us yeah he's uh it's it's something he couldn't even fathom then we get a quick cut to uh bart trying on some clothes i had to say we need to investigate we monsoor and the people who run that place yeah it's why i've only made one other appearance in season eight shut down those cameras in children's dressing rooms like yeah but that's the joke yeah

it is gross and bart tells them to get bent and also they must have like shot that girl too those those are shotguns are ready to go for her for her socks she didn't come in with uh uh so yes uh and then marge in a very mom way doesn't realize she humiliates part by uh showing showing everybody his underwear and she needs to get new ones for him it's it's a it's a cute little joke then again another my all-time favorite drawings the episode i don't know why a homer and lisa counting down the thing together the way like lisa is i don't know they have like these kind of like goofy grins on their face like it's such a funny drawing of them counted down together i can't can't fully explain it but i love it again it's just people on a couch they need to

try to make it interesting so i think they're going extra hard with the poses in this episode you know uh i'm kind of grossed out seeing homer homer telling lisa to keep something a secret from marge like i don't know parent i lisa likes being in on the secret i do love homer saying like you'd think that wouldn't you you know she's got a crazy she doesn't get it man yeah not like me and you it's great to gamble see you're seeing all the wins it's awesome and also i i do love their little shared laugh at getting one over on marge she's like oh what's so funny nothing and this is where the the bart b plot ends very humorously of Bart. Bart in his little bow tie and cute outfit modeling his clothes for his friends as they're threatening to beat the shit out of him. They're going to kill that boy.

They're going to kill him. Marge again doesn't understand this. So we come back from the commercial break. Homer is tucking Lisa in. He says they're going to do it again next week. And you see you'll find it gets rid of the unpleasant aftertaste of church. I think also it's very, it's kind of Homer's scary love that Lisa reveals that him being nice is actually worse than being mean because he nearly

kills her or definitely hurts her by tucking her in too much. Yeah. It's his patented half-assed over-parenting. Yeah, cutting off the blood flow. Marge also, you know, says, oh, see, I told you it would work. But Marge is going to learn it can work a little too well. So then we come back to the next Sunday morning. I guess, does Lisa give him picks during the rest of the week? Like, you know, this wasn't when, I don't think in the 90s there was Thursday Night Football, but definitely Monday Night football was around that.

Monday night football was around. Uh, yeah. So the, the dark thing about the NFL these days is that they are finding ways to sprinkle it into the rest of the week. When college football ends, they start airing games on Saturdays now. And then there's Thursday night football every week, which now belongs to Amazon. Um, but yes, back then it was all Sunday and then the one Monday night game. Oh, okay. Well, so i guess for

the monday night game he just asked for lisa's pick on sunday like oh and watch i bet on there too but uh i like lisa using psychology to guess that the guy is bluffing uh though i noticed the guy has the little pointy shark teeth which is uh that is a no-no in the style guide for simpsons i also like it's homer once again believing in information presented to him because the guy's just saying these platitudes like we came to win today and he's like yeah he's gonna win. Did you hear him? He said he's gonna win. He wouldn't lie to me. But yeah that

Lisa instantly sees through him like he's a little boy lost in a world of men. And she bets her whole college fund on it which is 23 bucks and then he asks her for the next three picks and so Alex was this the predominant feeling at the time that the 49ers were, uh, had pure hearts that the Seahawks had something to prove and that the Raiders always cheated? Uh, the last one, definitely, if not cheated at very least the whole Raiders organization

was definitely a little on the, uh, seedy side. Uh, Al Davis, who was the then owner is one of the most notorious owners in all of nfl history because he is a completely capricious weirdo who would demand that his coaches draft weird people and he had like complete creative control over like who came onto the team and stuff and his son it now runs it in now that they're in vegas and he is continuing that tradition not by being as weird and scummy, but by having maybe the single dumbest haircut anywhere that any rich person has ever had. The Seahawks back then were bad, if I remember correctly. So they definitely had something to prove.

The 49ers, I'll say that Joe Montana, pretty squeaky clean as quarterbacks went. So that's not too far off. Okay. All right. And we hear from the commentators even saying after a suspect play, the Raiders win, which, well, this is the 91 season. Were they in L.A. then, or were the Raiders back in Oakland? I can't recall.

I think they were still in L.A. until around 94, 93 or 94, somewhere around there. I can't remember exactly, but exactly but yeah i think they were still in la at this point now i just get sad going by the on the trip i fly out of oakland and back and forth a lot these days and man every time on the road to the airport in oakland you drive by the empty raiders stadium now it's just sad right next to the oracle arena which is also just empty now like no teams it's a it's a bummer if they lose the a's it's like god i'd blow it up yeah i don't know if they'll lose the a's i feel like that's the one they might be able to kind of keep their their grip on but yeah like the raiders thing is

just sad because i mean if you want to talk about the way that gambling has now permeated professional sports the idea of a team being in las vegas period was like an absolute no-no for decades like no matter how big the city got no matter how much money there was to be made there like leagues just wouldn't touch it because they were too scared their players would just you know like gamble on their own games and all that kind of shit and now it's just like they built a billion dollar stadium in vegas and now there is both an nhl team and an nfl team and other leagues will probably bring teams there at some point and you know before 20 years ago was only the xfl that put the team in there they were the only ones brave enough but yeah so lisa gets three for three they

win again this time i think you hear it on the commentary algae notes that like boy we don't show the tv at all on this like they cut in future footage of the two commentators saying really only made it for act three but they have they have a quick cut to the nfl today parody characters say uh mentioning that the raiders win just to just to show you something that's on the tv instead of just like you said bob now i am feeling claustrophobic thinking of these scenes like it's just always them in front of the TV just over and over again. It's the ultimate Algin and Mike Reese episode of television where its character is doing nothing but watching television. That's right.

They love it. Then Lisa decides she's going to be an extra nerd about this and goes to the library. I love, first off, that there's the crusty give a hoot, read a book in the background from season one. I love seeing that. And also that, you know, it's the crusty give a hoot read a book in the background from season one i i love seeing that and also that you know it's the hit place to be it brought in one extra person called making it a madhouse at the library and this is when lisa goes through the card catalog they really like these card catalog jokes for a few for a few episodes i mean that the clock was ticking because i think by the mid 90s we just had a computer system to look up books in my in my school but lisa reading things like homoeroticism in oddball canadian rules again their attack on

the rouges they already did the jokes about that earlier in the season and uh it's a weird uh joke to end with but phyllis george in football uh it's not the funniest thing to end with but this is i think this is the first time like who is phyllis george and she was uh she did work for the nfl today she was one of the first female sports broadcasters hired in the mid 70s and she was the former wife of robert evans oh wow yeah one of them yeah i saw that he went from she went from robert evans to the owner of kentucky fried chicken who would then become a governor. And of course, you know, a former Miss America as well. And also a journalist. Yeah, but Phyllis George, she was, you know, I mean, back in the late 70s, early 80s, being the woman on NFL today, like you probably got a lot of judgments at that time, I would guess. I would think so. Yeah. I

mean, football, I think even more so than other American sports, was definitely the most misogynistic as far as whether women belonged anywhere near it during that era. But these days, it's like there are women referees, there are women coaches on the sidelines, and not just on the broadcasting side of things. So yes, Lisa's studying pays off, though,

in the next scene. They've won again. It's the next Sunday. And, you know, despite this being the football season they do not draw it at any time like a winter happened uh it's this is not a winter or christmasy episode of the simpsons yeah bart's playing outside in his short pants and a t-shirt no one's wearing jackets anywhere it is an unseasonably warm super bowl sunday and this is before climate change has affected our winters as much now yeah so yes uh lisa wins big again and this is when homer officially christens their new tradition oh doctor what a finish the final score ladder 17

houston 13 and the lowly falcons are flying high who Who would have thunk it? My daughter? That's who? Yeah, me! Lisa, you pick the winner every time. You must have some kind of special gift. Come on, Dad. It doesn't take a genius to realize that Houston's failed to cover their last ten outings on a way turf the week after scoring more than three touchdowns in a conference game.

Oh, my little girl says the cutest things. You know, Dad, Sunday is fast becoming my favorite day of the week. Not Sunday. Daddy Daughter Day. The usual, Moe. A beer and a wad of bills. Okay, you lucky

moron. Here you go, Omar. $135. I used to hate the smell of your sweaty feet. Now it's the smell of victory. Oh, shut up. Moe has nothing clever to say. He's just like, hey, just shut up.

Like, enough of these funny, cute things. He's wearing his famous cowboy boots from his snake handling days, I think. I mean, yeah, homer is collecting money but again the what the money he's getting is like like he said 120 bucks in another one is it real quick who's the who's the sportscaster voice is that harry shearer because that he does that i feel like that voice is in a lot of any sports related episode it is a very good sportscaster voice oh yeah yeah he he does such a great old doctor yeah it's him doing Vince Scully, correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's called out in the Gabbo song. That's right. I can even do Vince Scully. No, he's so great. If Harry Shearer wasn't a very, very rich comedy guy, he could definitely call games. Absolutely. I also love the direction of,

or the next scene begins with the noise of Homer slamming open Moe's door. Like, just like, bam. From the sweet moment to theer slamming open mo's door like just like from the sweet moment to the door slamming open in a dank bar because that is really all it means to homer like it it isn't about spending i mean the moral of the story is homer homer learns that he should have loved lisa but it is all about gambling to him he just wants money and and to succeed i could love my children or i could have 135 dollars that's that's worth more yeah your kids will always love you but i i'll give it to homer that when he gets all this money he spreads it around you know like he he could have just spent it all on uh on frosty chocolate

milkshakes for himself but instead he wants to show it off taking the family to the gilded truffle i also like that marge marge is correct a better way to spend that money would have been to get rid of the termites if he wins more than 25 he will spend on other people when he won the money or sorry when he sold his stock in the german episode he just bought a nice beer yes that's basically it you know that's that's not the selfish homer you always assume but yes it's a really sweet scene at the gilded truffle i love that homer has a lame dad joke and everybody laughs at it like it's so great uh and then also that bart asked for the freshest bottle of wine and that the waiter just has to go like wonderful like he just he you have to take it because they're they're paying never heard that

one before oh so good uh and uh this is when lisa also gets to request her favorite song a as far as i can tell completely made up jazz song not a, as far as I can tell, completely made-up jazz song, not a real song. The only results for it on Google are references to this episode, the Broken Neck Blues. Yeah, the joke is so subtle, you don't realize it's a joke, where a blues song will be like, I've got the stone in my shoe blues or whatever,

some minor problem, but my neck has been broken, I've got the blues. It just sounds like a real blues song. And it's football appropriate. Yeah. The CTE Blues. And it's football appropriate. Yeah. Yeah. The CTE blues. CTE blues.

God. You know, again, in pro wrestling lately, I've had to see a few necks bend in the wrong way a couple times. They've just made me like, ugh. I mean, if you've ever seen a Kota Ibushi match, absolutely. God, that was a bad one. Yeah, no. And I just saw the Ricky Starks clip recently again, and I was like, god damn, how did that guy walk after that?

The guy's fine now, everybody, but he did break his neck. Listen, you should watch anime. The fights are better, and only animators are hurt. And their injuries are off screen. Yeah, it's all in the wrist. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

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we get to see guys getting, we see a man freezing to death with body paint, which as Instagram has taught us now body paint technology has improved it breathes better you know don't use acrylic paint i think this guy's just using house paint yeah apparently kogan and walidarski said this is based on a sketch they wrote for tracy allman which i haven't seen they said that martin short played the guy which that'd be extra funny to see martin short uh basically in a G-string. God.

And with his body painted. The body paint people are still out there. They still do that stuff. It's more face paint than body paint, but you definitely still see the occasional like weird person at like a December Packers game with like no shirt on and like the team colors on. And it's always really nightmarish to see man the uh you know the the body paint i was just thinking of because multiple popular recording artists dressed as marge simpson this year full blue body paint yes uh i believe it was lizzo and uh man i want to say megan the stallion but it might be wrong i know lizzo did it well meanwhile i saw kim kardashian she did mystique

but she wore a bodysuit. It wasn't even body paint, you know? There was like a little paint in there, but not much. Yeah. Now, if you're a billionaire, you should have the same level of Mystique outfit that Rebecca Romijn had in the movie. Oh, yeah. At the very least.

I mean, Diddy's spraying for what looks like the actual Joker costume. Like, you know, like, keep pace. That's right. I forgot Diddy was the Joker. That's right. Yeah. But yes, everybody's having a good time. We cut to the next day, the next weekend.

Homer is just laying back on the couch, even letting Lisa make, like, make the calls and make the bets with Moe. And Moe just takes them from lisa like he doesn't even go like it's also funny that he recognizes lisa's voice even though he never recognizes bart's voice that's also good and he drops the confidentiality instead of saying hello ls is ls like just give me the bet lisa because he knows this is just he's gonna lose and it's it's driving him crazy the next day homer uh is at the bar uh bragging about it this is when barney asks if they wants to they want to hang out on sunday that's super bowl sunday homer then makes plans for the

next sunday which barney says well his mom's gonna be in town from norway but okay which is like i love that that barney barney's mom lives in norway for some reason uh and that's a Norwegian name well we do know later this obviously was not in the joke they're making here but we do know later she is a member of the navy yeah she only comes back into town for war games okay wait does she come back into town when uh barney is like telling big baby sent you and his diaper blows off and he goes hi mom she was around the corner when he was nude. Yeah, that's true. So she was in town for that, at least.

But not seen on screen until season eight, where it's like Barney in a wig, basically. Yes, yeah. You'll never get his attention anyway. So, but yes, you see, Homer made plans for the next Sunday, an important moment. Then we get a quick visit to show and tell. Mo, this is LS calling for. calling for H.S.

Just give me the bat, Lisa. 110, 120, you lucky son of a... Hi, homie. You want to go bowling next Sunday? Barney, are you nuts? That's the Super Bowl. How about the Sunday after that? Well, my ma's coming in from Norway, but what the hell? And when the doctor said I didn't have worms anymore, that was the happiest day of my life.

Thank you, Ralph. Very graphic. Lisa Simpson, would you like to read your essay? The happiest day of my life was three Sundays ago. I was sitting on my daddy's knee when the Saints, who were four and a half point favorites but only up by three, kicked a meaningless field goal at the last second to cover the spread. Dear God. A fair response. by three kicked a meaningless field goal at the last second to cover the spread dear god a fair response that's i again all those words meaningless to me uh until i guess uncut gyms makes a little more sense of it after watching that but basketball bets are different from football bets they are but

i also still don't understand how point spreads work and no matter how many times i try to read up on it i still don't get it my eyes just glazed over when i tried to do research on it even this time someone in the comments will describe it very well and then we'll read the comments on talk to the audience this month yeah so it's a perfect system it's up to you yeah uh but yes we're getting close to the standardized version of ralph here like ralph is kind of the stupid idiot we we know he's the weird kid telling graphic stories about worms uh that probably discussed to the audience uh oh and also miss hoover still has her blue hair she's not uh not yet i feel like in just a few episodes that blue hair is gone i'll miss it it's a season one

blue hair that's the the really she's a season two debuters she gave it to wiggum uh and so uh yeah the the my god reaction is also quite funny see as homer is spreading around the wealth again we don't i'm saying that we know this happens between this episode happens over the course of probably october to january yes so perhaps these gifts are related to christmas this is homer's like big christmas gifts to everybody marge is gifted a a fragrance meryl streep's versatility uh which she has never done a professional fragrance yet she had recently at the time done an american express ad which people were like oh really that's selling out isn't it and she she defended it like uh well me and my family use american express what do you they

nobody apologizes for that stuff now they like this joke so much it comes up again in a streetcar named marge where uh the pageant is brought to you by that and the the tagline is smell like streep for cheap it's also such a friendly joke about meryl streep like the joke is she wins a lot of awards she's still the most nominated uh best actress lady out there and i think we're all making calvin klein's obsession jokes around this time because there'll be one in next season where the fancy braces uh emit calvin klein's obsession for teeth right i feel like this was the era when the extremely haughty and expensive looking perfume ad really took hold on tv like it was right in that late 80s early 90s era where like they started getting weird french directors to do these completely unbearable

ads for these fragrances that had weird celebrities in them yeah i think homer's original mr plow ad was a calvin klein uh parody yes yeah yeah yeah also uh and speaking to snl parodies the one they did for with hartman and i believe jan hooks of obsession but it's about a cleaning supply that she can't stop using uh that i think also was a great parody of that type but yeah that's jim brooks wants to work with meryl streep he's not going to be too mean about her which i mean what is there to be mean about even 30 years later it's like it seems she's just like a really great actress who everybody likes who works with her she is she'll be on the show in three years as uh jessica lovejoy that's right yeah she's like as blandly beloved a major actress as i feel like there is in the world and also when you see her and stuff you're like yeah no she she should be nominated for this she's

very good at this she's a really great actress meanwhile maggie is gifted a stuffed elephant but she prefers the bubble wrap bart is gifted a gag gift which is so great because he says he never tires of it's one of those things you see at spencer's gifts and you think to yourself who could ever enjoy this this much and but bart does he really does i think gene and reese got a big kick out of this device because it comes up in the critic where duke philip wants to base a sitcom around that device it's like i think i think i'm calling it you smell or something like that. Right, yes. Yeah, God, I just love it. Kiss my butt, kiss my butt.

God, that's so funny. Just Bart pressing it over and over again. And Lisa, meanwhile, has been gifted every single thing in the Malibu Stacy toy line. But Marge has questions. Oh, Dad, you must have bought me every Malibu Stacy accessory there is. Not quite. They were out of Malibu Stacy Lunar Rovers. Ooh, perfume. Meryl Streep's versatility.

Boy, I know you're gonna like your present. Shut up! Shut up! Kiss my butt! Shut up! Go to hell! Go to hell! Dad, I promise you I will never get tired of this. gonna like your present shut up shut up kiss my butt shut up go to hell go to hell dad i promise you i will never get tired of this homer those are very thoughtful presents but you have to tell me where you got the money from all right march i'll tell you but first you have to promise you will not get mad i promise i will get mad because i always do when you make me promise i won't all right if you must know lisa and i have been gambling on pro football you promised you wouldn't get mad i did not i promised i would get mad that's a great line yeah it's like i promise i will get mad because i always do and you make me promise i

won't that's that's a great line the next time you're in a in an argument with a loved one and they say like i'll promise me you won't get mad you give him one of those you gotta tell that and they talk about the legality of gambling, of course. We brought that up earlier in the episode. And there's a Wikipedia page called Gambling in the United States, which tells you which kinds of gambling are legal in which states. And there are seven different kinds of betting. There's charitable betting, parimutuel, lotteries, commercial, tribal, racetrack, online, and sports betting. There is only one state in which

all forms of gambling are illegal you could probably guess which one that is utah yes you got it i knew it i didn't look this up that's see i feel like i won the lottery right there and also hawaii for some reason sorry i just spotted that oh yeah that makes less sense to me yeah you know this this was in that forbes article they said that in 1992 on super bowl 26 in nevada 50 million dollars was legally bet on the super bowl then now or in for super bowl 55 uh in 2021 500 million dollars was legally bet just in vegas alone on on the super bowl if you want to do all kinds of gamblings go to uh illinois iowa indiana or new york new york yes yeah it's all happening there oh yeah i guess atlantic city that makes sense

yeah that's uh i mean i was shocked to find out bob when i visited vancouver uh that that they have casinos there i just never considered canadian casinos as like a thing you know honestly i'm uh i'm worried that i'm going to be visiting you more often in the future in vancouver and i'll uh it'll be hard to pass up the just getting a little action in at the tables you know even with health care canadians love ruining their lives too so don't you worry about that they're not so different from us part of the human condition uh so yeah homer though convinces marge that uh the only the only victim is mo and that everything could be fine and then in a perfect perfect uh line to say at the as act two is reaching its end nothing will be nothing could possibly go wrong

but gambling is illegal oh only in 48 states besides it's a victimless crime. The only victim is Moe. And it's brought Lisa and me together. I just don't know. Look, what's the problem? The kids are happy. You smell like Meryl Streep, and I got that foot massager I've always wanted. Believe me, Marge, nothing bad could possibly come of this.

You know, Dad, we've been watching a lot of TV lately. Maybe the Sunday after the Super Bowl, we could hike up to the top of Mount Springfield. The fires in the tire yards really make for some beautiful sunsets. That sounds great, honey, but next Sunday I'm going bowling with Barney. What about Daddy Daughter Day? Don't worry.

The new football season is only seven months away. So that's it. You just wanted me to help you gamble. You never wanted to be with me at all. You're a very selfish man. Go to hell. Go to hell. Hey, once again, great present, Dad. That's so great because at first you could think that the go to hell is Bart saying his displeasure at Homer,

but it actually is him complimenting homer on his great gift like he he's not turned on home heart doesn't care if bart if homer's a bad father he just wants good gifts yeah he's got the key chain yeah and again it's homer really underestimating lisa's intelligence because he thinks he can just you know euphemistically get rid of daddy daughter day but immediately she knows why yes yeah he's like uh you know the football season will be next time like he he just figures like well yeah i'm not gonna hang out with you if it wasn't for gambling and then lisa is right to be incredibly hurt by that and just saw like in a crying very well done by ardley like he earned that emmy it's sweet that lisa i guess misunderstands

or has such high hopes for homer that she figures like well we have such a good time on daddy daughter day that if I suggest a hike to him he'll want to do it like no Homer would never never want to go on a hike ever like do you think the possibility even of the idea of doing stuff on Sundays past football season has even entered Homer's mind at this point no we can't really see behind it yeah it's also it's not just that uh it was all you know a sham to to gamble it's not reciprocating because in the beginning marge is like well have you taken an interest in things he likes and for weeks lisa has done that but she he's not willing to do the same for one weekend it's like no no there's no gambling

involved i'm done with you he's uh he's a bad marge is right he's a very selfish man like it's uh it's a dark time at the start of act three i i do also love homer homer says nothing could possibly go wrong instantly it all falls apart we have a quick cut to lisa's bad dream i love the vision lisa has for herself of like of her as a mean old gambler if she doesn't correct course like she this is the thing she's afraid of she'll be somebody with at least three former ex-husbands and hawking his jewelry for one last taste of the uh the gambling like where has lisa even seen a person like this at this stage at eight years old like where is she seeing these degenerate gambling like former

truck stop waitresses that fucking you know are hawking their wedding rings just to get to the next thing and smoke themselves into a doris voice i'm surprised they didn't have doris growl dub her in this scene that would have been funny uh if bart had this dark vision it would end with him saying cool that's true yeah lisa lisa has the sense to know this is bad but i love every bad future vision of lisa this and her you know overweight uh married to ralph vision she had as well is quite funny she wakes up in a start she reflects on all the things she has wasted or uh all the things she got with the dirty money the alfa romeo which is an italian luxury car uh collagen injections which it apparently uh i thought they were like new at the time they'd

been around since the 70s apparently uh when i looked up history of collagen injections on google on google i i think it's important for lisa's moral standing as a character that she'd never keep that i feel like look you got your gifts you won that stuff it's your money lisa like you know honestly homer should be giving you all of the money it's your bets but uh for lisa's very strong moral code it makes sense that she gives away all of the stuff and uh again a tribute to rich moore and his team the stampede of little girls that nearly crush bard and tear apart all of lisa's things like to get their stuff that's so fun oh it's great and they didn't have the word yoink yet

but i feel like they would have put it in when the girl yanks the chinchilla coat off the tiny hanger when she does it i'm waiting for the yoink i forget every time it's just like oh i feel like in my brain i'm inserting a yoink and trying to remember the scene only makes sense to have a yoink there you know but yes we then have a very uh funny slash through what people expect from a sitcom even in my first viewing as a kid I thought that this was the resolution Homer's apology to Lisa like I mean Lisa first tells her like sorry Homer but then then when homer apologizes you're like oh okay maybe is like you think this is like a regular sitcom and then homer instantly like a piece of shit then tries to trick her into telling him well who to bet on uh but this is when lisa

gives up on her on her father and makes her final bet. Lisa, honey, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but I really had a good time watching football with you. And I think you had a good time with me. Yeah, I did. Well, come on. We can still watch a Super Bowl together, can't we? Huh?

Well, I would like to see what all the fuss is about. It's a day. So, do you think the Redskins will beat the spread? Put me down. Look, Dad, I'll tell you who's going to win the Super Bowl if you want me to, but it'll just validate my theory that you cared more about winning money than you did about me. Okay. I think Washington is immortal luck. Washington!

Woo-hoo! However. However? What however? What do you mean, however? However what? However, I may also be so clouded with rage that subconsciously I want you to lose, in which case,

I bet the farm on Buffalo. Lisa, do me a favor. Complete this sentence. Daddy should bet all his money on I don't know if I still love you Washington if I don't Buffalo so there you have it and yes he said that's the old name of the Washington Guardians uh that took him a very long time to change the commanders oh yeah yeah oh sorry commanders guardians is the that's the Cleveland team It took them a very long time to change. The Commanders now. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry, Commanders. Guardians is the Cleveland team.

Yeah, the Cleveland team. One of the other teams that had to change their name because their name was actually kind of racist. So a couple of things just real quick here about the game that is being immortalized here, this Super Bowl. This is the first of three Super Bowls in a row that the Buffalo Bills would go on to lose.

This is a dark time to be a Buffalo fan, though they are newly ascendant now. This is the last time the Washington quote-unquote commanders would win the Super Bowl between then and now. In fact, in the last 30 years, they've only had nine winning seasons, and most of those were nine and seven or eight seven and one seasons they have been historically bad for a very long time after this mostly since dan snyder took over the team who is widely considered the worst owner in all of football and wow that's uh i didn't i first i was gonna say it's like karma getting on them but i guess it's really just dan snyder is horrible yeah i mean it was a horrible name to begin with but he really dug in his heels even more so than other teams with like

no this name is not racist it's actually good you don't understand also he's hated so much that the other nfl owners hate him to the point where they are trying to get him to sell the team and i think he has actually indicated he finally is going to because he apparently was keeping dirt on a bunch of the other nfl owners and was like using like threatening to release that uh if he anyone ever came after him and then some of the other owners like jim ursae of the colts was like come at me bro i don't care release whatever you want i want you gone that's how much they hate him wow man the yeah the i mean if other nfl uh team owners think you're a bad person you have to be the worst yes the worst person on earth the worst the worst thing you can

do as part of an nfl ownership group is fumble the bag and all he has done throughout his tenure is fumble the bag not just with making the team bad but also losing the team money losing money as an nfl franchise is exceedingly difficult to do, and he has found ways to do it. Wow. Wow. So racial insensitivity is one thing. Profit margins is a whole other problem.

Yes, yeah. But, well, you know, there is a lot of history to Lisa's picks here. Lisa is correct, and she, it's funny. So this is from the Al Jean interview with Forbes. He talks about, and he mentions it's funny so this is uh from the al gene interview with forbes he talks about and he mentions on the commentary too he bet against lisa and because he thought the buff the bills were due yeah he's like because the he's like the bills are gonna get there like he he bet against her and the when the washington football won. So that was 92. In 1993 and 1994, Fox decides they will replay this each year.

And that they would, instead of keeping the names from the previous year, they did the really neat thing of updating the two team names every year for the member, the players on each year's Super Bowl game. Which was also helpful because it was Buffalo every year for the member, the players on each year's Super Bowl game, which was also helpful because it was Buffalo every year for the three years. That's incredible. They could keep all the Buffalo lines. And also the Lipsick never matched in the first place, right? Yes, yeah, it was always wrong. I mean, when I watched it in the rerun in 93 as a kid and heard the names were different, that she said Cowboys,

I was like, wait, what? That's not what it was before. They re-recorded all these lines and not just names were different, that she said Cowboys. I was like, wait, what? That's not what it was before. They re-recorded all these lines, and not just her or Homer, but also Harry Shearer's lines as the commentator get redone too. And no one's lifting a beer glass up over their face to say the name of the team, like in the latest Super Bowl episode. Which that's a great joke too. But yeah, Al Jean said his reasoning was not just because he wanted to bet against Lisa every year, but it was because he thought every year Buffalo was due.

He's like, well, yeah, you know, when the team loses one year, but they make it back the next year, they definitely win then. And then by the third year, he's like, OK, the Bills have got to do it this year. Like he was sure that, yes. It turns out they were the washington generals of this whole uh of this period of the super bowl you know i also knew this stuff about the bills losing not as a sports fan but as next files fan because there's a really funny joke in the cigarette smoking man origin episode when he finally got set put in charge of the secret black ops group uh one of his

commandments was like and the buffalo bills never get to win a super bowl i they made it that he had fixed the games uh with his uh special powers you wonder what the buffalo bills did to him early on in his life again homer homer accepting when she says like well i'll tell you but it'll just validate to me that you cared more about gambling than me. Okay. He just, he accepts. It's like, I want to win money, Lisa. Give me the, I don't care.

If it hurts your feelings, I do not care. Like what an asshole. You know what? I'm with Yardley now. He did. He, he were, he has, he's too far down. You can't come back from this. So yes, they, then it it's it's the game day homer has

started his uh he's very depressed about it because he knows that it's really about lisa's love here they announced that it's at the hubert h humphrey metrodome which was the site of super bowl 26 okay and uh which has not existed since 2014 it got demolished it was one of those those domes just like the tokyo dome actually apparently the tokyo dome was like designed based on it the the metro dome uh which uh i miss those old 70s domes now the today's domes look too i like the retro future of those old domes arena designs now kind of suck and the thing is it's not that the old arenas were great but there was like a kind of personality to them a little bit you know especially if you were a wrestling fan like when they went to the garden you know you always like you knew when they were

in the garden you know now these days they feel like family fun centers and extremely expensive ones at that and they were named after dead old men not quicken loans yes yes no yeah i just went to the uh where the 49ers played to see Elton John last month. And yeah, again, I was struck by like, it doesn't feel very special. It just feels like I'm in a mall or something. It just, it feels, it's very sleek, but yeah. The only way you can tell them apart is by the roof design. That seems to be where they throw all the money is like, what kind of weird roof do we have?

I will say that Las Vegas, I've only driven by it, but that one in Las Vegas, it certainly looks like a lot of money. It looks very expensive. It fits with the Vegas aesthetic of this is expensive, but not that expensive. Yeah. Well,

first we see that the, the Superbowl is played all around the world, including in France where they don't care about it. They'd rather watch Jerry Lewis, which as a kid made no sense to me. It before animaniacs made jerry lewis a regular character and uh w gimel aleph none in tel aviv is a fun joke about the hebrew alphabet because those are all hebrew uh characters in the alphabet gimel aleph and none there's no w oh that's clever yeah and i decided to look it up and i was like why do the french like jerry lewis

there's a lot of articles written about it but essentially in the 60s the intelligentsia fell in love with jerry lewis and they were writing things like oh his pratfalls are a window into the human condition and they were taking him way too seriously but that's why it's because the intelligentsia fell in love with him and sparked the movements yeah yeah well it worked out for him i mean french people just love following people falling down yeah it would be kind of like if adam sandler made all his movies in the 90s and then no one cared about him and he was like popular in uruguay i also really love that drawing of lisa mournfully playing her sax that's a really good like shot and homer can't take it no more he's gotta leave uh we visit mo's where it's uh yeah

it's there's a big brunch for sunday this is a runner just for this episode of mo answering the phone and say like mo's tavern blankety blank blank blank like he i just love barney's reaction like baloney bread like he just when he sees the bread like bread like god he's wowed by a lot of things including a free beer that mo dumps in the sink oh it makes it so says like oh god but but yes homer comes in mo tries to lie and say he's not taking bets but homer doesn't want to take a bet anyway this is when uh mo gives and rescinds his free beer to party i again a great line by homer i had the greatest gift of all a little girl who could pick football and i ruined it like he's he doesn't care that he had a just his own daughter but just

he he still only cares about the gambling that's all he cares about and so then we head to the nfl pre-show which is uh the super bowl pre-show which is two hours and 45 minutes i mean alex super bowl pre-shows are way longer than three hours now they're all day events now i mean they're more like even two days like saturday is a ton of programming too from the super bowl oh yeah they they like you know if you're on an espn or something they will do nothing but talk about the super bowl for at least you know that entire week and then the networks will find ways to slide that stuff in wherever they can but the basically from the moment the sun comes up on Super Bowl Sunday

to when the game starts, there is nothing but guys in suits talking about the various ways in which one team might win the game or how this free safety has a charity thing. They found a way to do an hour on that. They are stretching and they just it's i can't watch it anymore i just can't do it anymore i mean i i knew that it must have gotten big because wrestlemania pre-shows which are just copying the entire programming of of superbowl sunday like their pre-shows are three hours of nothing like not even wrestling they just are

like people talking i i've been to a few super bowl parties in the modern era like the past 20 years and the pre-show is so long that people are already hung over before the game starts they've already drank so much that they're hung over before kickoff pretzels have been decimated yeah so once again it's the simpsons it's not really them predicting it it's just that predicting something it's that their satire of doing too much of something is eclipsed by reality becoming sillier and then speaking of uh rip from the headlines we get an appearance by troy mcclure well sir we're two hours and 45 minutes into the pregame show and we've got ourselves a special guest actor troy mcclure whose new sitcom is

premiering tonight coincidentally enough right after the McClure, whose new sitcom is premiering tonight, coincidentally enough, right after the game. Thanks, Brett. My new show is called Handle With Care. I play Jack Handle, a retired cop who shares an apartment with a retired criminal. We're the original odd couple. What made you want to do a situation comedy? Well, I fell in love with the script, Brett,

and my recent trouble with the IRS sealed the deal. Great, great, Troy. Oh, looks like we're almost ready for the kickoff. Washington kicks. Oh, it's a bad kick. Way too short. Buffalo is going to start with excellent field position. Buffalo's going to win.

Lisa hates me. What you got riding on this game? My daughter. What a gambler. A rare line for Barfly 2. Sam, I believe his name is yeah uh riff from the pages of 1985 because this is a joke about i mean a lot of series aired after the super bowl or started like lassie is a big one that premiered after the super bowl or had a big episode after the super

i forget how it works but this is based on magruder and loud which is an aaron spelling produced show that didn't last. But yes, it's not about a retired cop and retired criminal. It's about a policeman and policewoman couple who have to keep it a secret from their boss. And yes, they are named Magruder and Loud. And that's how it works. Terrible. Yeah, it's an example of for the 80s, uh there's there's a great list wikipedia just

has a list of like everything that aired after the super bowl but uh especially if you don't live in america you might not know this but like the first thing to air after the super bowl is a prime time slot for a network like especially i think from the 80s onward or maybe even in the 70s that was where each network network didn't get a monopoly on it. They basically get a Super Bowl each year. So it's like, well, this is CBS's year with the Super Bowl. And we've got all of these eyes. The most viewers that will be watching our channel all year.

The second the Super Bowl is over, we need to premiere with something we think is going to be a big, big hit. And especially in the 80s, the picks would be things that failed so hard, they would be canceled by, in best case scenario, April. Yeah. Sometimes February. And, you know, they made fun of these crappy shows during and for the Super Bowl, you know, starting or premiering, when that would become something that would really anger Matt Geranian

because Futurama was meant to premiere after the Super Bowl in 99, but Family Guy got that slot. Yep. Yeah, the new the new bosses on fox they saw family guy is the one to get that slot instead of futurama yeah i i was looking over the list of losers as well from the 80s and one other one that reminded me of handle with care is uh one called the last precinct which was a cop comedy and it starred adam west which that also made me think like oh that's also a a troy mcclure type there and there was also one called hard copy which is not that

hard copy it was a newsroom drama and i think they realized that no you don't take a chance on a brand new series you debut a big episode of friends or the simpsons or whatever you just put or third rock from the sun yeah you you put that after the super bowl though there were a few successes i guess you could call family guy success so it actually was yeah i was gonna say i think history unfortunately has proven those executives correct on that one yeah well you know futurama is hanging around but yeah family guy one i have to admit it but three successes of debuts then were a team i guess airwolf airwolf you know it didn't it got more than two seasons yeah it counts and wonder years those those all also premiered after the super bowl so it's not all losers, but it's mostly losers.

Yeah. And also Lassie was deep into its 19-year run when it aired after the first Super Bowl, but it was still the first thing to air after a Super Bowl was an episode of Lassie. That's so great. And yes, now The Simpsons has aired twice after the Super Bowl with Sunday, Cruddy Sunday in season nine. And then in 2004, no, 2005 homer and ned's hail mary pass in that episode the latter one is one of the most notable ones because it's one of the highest rated ones ever for the

simpsons because of its slot i think sunday cruddy sunday is a little bit lower because family guy was the first thing you would see and maybe fewer after that but yeah that homer and met homer and ned's hail mary pass one of the highest rated simpsons of all time it's also funny because right after it was the premiere of american dad so them in the seven fallen show traded places yes sorry also another winner yes yeah still airing on tbs to this day which i figured would stop because disney owns it now and they wouldn't want it on a warner channel but still going back well man what does warner even want now i don't even know like they clearly don't know at this point they just want whatever they i think what they want is more harry potter movies unfortunately oh you know this uh

it's a real vibe of the of the 2020s that executives buy things they don't know what they want they just they bought them yeah they don't know why they bought them they just have them ah but all right see i also i love the hosts very dismissive like great great troy hey i see they're about to start the game yeah it sounds like a real winner uh so yes uh the never oh oh and also sorry i love that troy says we're the original odd couple which is like no the the odd couple is the odd couple. Like, how dare you describe your show as the original odd couple? It's a good throwaway line for a show like that. But then we come to the never tedious halftime show.

People of Earth, we've come 10 billion light years to bring you this halftime message of these. One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock. Rock! Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock. Rock! Nine, ten, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock. Rock! We're gonna rock around the world tonight.

Oh, this sucks. Come on, snipers, where are you? Bart, who's winning? You hate dad is up by a touchdown. So, yes, first off, I love Bart's saying of you hate dad is up by a touchdown so yes i want first off i love bart's saying of you hate dad is up by a touchdown like he but and also he wants to see uh murders happen on screen yeah so the halftime show back then a joke like it was it was detested uh alex you you recall i do this year i was looking this up the the year of this Super Bowl, it was the Winter Magic

salute to the 1992 Winter Olympics featuring Gloria Estefan and Olympic figure skaters Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill. It's what football fans want to see. Yeah. I wonder, you know, if Brian Boitano was not part of this Super Bowl, would Matt and Trey on South Park have heard of him and then made him a joke in their original Spirit of Christmas? I wonder. That's a good point. It's of note here.

This is the last Super Bowl halftime show you could like charitably describe as a joke because literally the next year is michael jackson and that is the thing that kicked off the era of what if we got big musicians that your dad likes yeah it's uh and they're running out of those big music well now i i've looked up this year's uh or coming soon in january uh rihanna is. She's a Super Bowl star, though usually there's tons of surprise guests. That's part of the fun of it. It's just like, ooh, not just Rihanna. Somebody else showed up.

Jack Harlow showed up there. That's a current guy. Maroon 5? Actually, Maroon 5 is more. Coldplay Dude showed up one time. Coldplay Dude. like coldplay dude showed up one time like yeah the coldplay dude uh like last year's was the was dre snoop eminem mary j blige and kendrick lamar uh announced and then they also just threw 50 cent and anderson pock in there all right see this uh man that's what sucks now this shows we're

old we know the names of the people they put in the halftime show because we're in our 40s. We're the dads. In spirit, at least. But this thing with the aliens is actually based on the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics. Now, it's on YouTube. You can watch it. It's so long. These things are so tight and slick now, even though they're very long and boring, but there's a point to them.

And, you know, occasionally the soon-to-be-assassinated president of a country will come out of a pipe like mario and it's fun uh but in this one it's about like okay all the countries walk by blah blah blah fireworks a ufo appears it takes forever to land it takes so long to land and then it finally lands an alien comes out and talks for about 20 seconds actually the announcer talks over him briefly there's a major flub there but do you have a clip of this henry i do have a clip of the alien greeting the uh closing ceremony for the la olympics of 1984 possibilities of human achievement for almost 100 years you have celebrated the best that humanity has to offer you call it the olympic games and for that and for the cities which have kept the olympic ideal alive i salute you

and then a bunch of fireworks go off it was just the preamble to fireworks but i just love i love that they invent like, what if an alien landed and said he loves the Olympics and that it's wonderful, a tribute to humanity. And the UFO is landing and you think that they'll play the T theme because it's 84. No, they're playing the Close Encounters of the Third Kind theme when the alien is landing. Well, the Olympics is always a bunch of years behind. Yeah.

But yeah, that's's it's a reference to that uh and it's available to watch online but we played you the alien clip yeah it is the commentator right before it is saying like that's not a man on stilts that's a seven foot man in a costume it's like we're ruining the the mystique here buddy that's but yes it's in 1992 even listeners heard it because i plugged it in in the commercial break but the commercials actually were part of making fun of the super bowl they uh in the halftime show for that advertised this episode of the simpsons like and we're all sick of the halftime show right and they played the clip from this before uh to promote the episode it was also because that same

year in 92 was when Fox did their live telecast of in living color during the halftime show as alternative programming, which that was a whole thing in the, in the nineties, at least the alternative programming era, especially as wrestling fans, me and Alex know the Superbowl halftime show world title match that. Oh,

yes. I'm thinking of a reference to something we'll talk about soon. And that's a Beavis and buttheads, bowl oh yes also great yeah yeah for three years they will premiere a new cartoon during the halftime show and i was there i love the butt bowl yes that was also good but yeah the super bowl halftime show match between the rock and mankind uh was the empty uh the empty arena match they did because it was very tightly edited because it had to be exactly as long as the halftime show. It had to be exactly as long as the halftime show. And also, it was definitely pre-recorded.

I'm pretty sure. So it was all very, it was definitely not like the everything is live presentation. They were kind of trying to give off of everything else. But also, it's one of the only one of those matches, like pretaped and heavily edited that i feel like was actually good because most of those usually ended up being garbage you know the covet era of wrestling gave us a lot of cinematic matches but that was one of the first you know they didn't have the thunderdome back there so just didn't have the same effect i i also love that one because uh horrible person vince mcmahon does commentary on it and he is really good at doing commentary on matches a horrible man otherwise but now we just know him as the man

who falls out of the chair on twitter yes yeah he's oh god he's too yeah it's his legacy he he is too horny as we learn like in real life too yeah uh but you know what this next halftime show it's also sponsored by apple music. I meant to say that too. It's not just, it's like, how many more ads do there need to be in the Super Bowl that the halftime show also has to have a sponsor? Like, Jesus Christ. But I mean, it wouldn't be America's number one sport if it wasn't packed full of every ad you possibly could get into.

No, our entire economy is predicated on advertising things to people. Like, if the advertising went away there would be nothing left and so then we get a quick joke about the duff bowl uh which is great duff duff dry beats uh duff regular in it and i love that barney thinks that that was the bet it's like okay okay they're both great teams like such a great also seeing a beer pouring another beer onto tom landry beer is so funny we gotta talk about the bud bowl though yes because uh started in 89 ran until 97 it was an annual event featuring a series of commercials that ran throughout the super bowl and throughout the series of commercials you would see a bud bowl game being played between two opposing sides of budweiser products bud light versus budweiser

budweiser typically won over bud light over time the stop motion bottles would become cgi and actually tom landry played a beer bottle version of himself whoa in the bud bowl which is why he is in this uh parody of the bud bowl and people would bet on it that's so funny yeah i have to assume it went away because the thought could have been. When you really care about someone, you shouted from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part.

Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? If you're in need of quality new tires and have been searching the internet for a good deal, look no further than your local Big O Tires. For a limited time, when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free on select set of tires. And because we know that tires can be an unexpected expense, take advantage of no credit needed financing made easy. They work with multiple lending partners, so the financing is tailored to you. Remember that when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free. Only at your locally owned Big O Tires, the team you trust. Should kids be seeing the beer cartoon throughout the Super Bowl, which is why I liked it.

I loved it for that very reason, yes. I think it also just kind of wore out its welcome at a certain point. Like, people kind of just, you know, I mean, like, the fads of Super Bowl advertising, there are definitely trends that kind of come and go. And in this case, I'm pretty sure that like people just got very bored with the bottles like wrestling one another. And then once the puppy bowl

came around, like really what, what, what other alternative programming could anyone possibly need from the Super Bowl? Yes. Isn't there some

Victoria's Secret thing now during the Super Bowl? Like halftime show? There was a lingerie bowl at some point. I remember that. I do think that happened. I don't think that was a regular feature. You know, the Bud Bowl, I lovedftime show? It was the lingerie bowl at some point. I remember that. I do think that happened. I don't think that was a regular feature.

You know, the Bud Bowl, I loved it too as a kid, Bob. It was cartoons on TV. That was why. Even today, I especially wouldn't drink Budweiser. So it didn't work in that regard. Though, I'll tell you how much I loved it. We went to, on some family vacation not long after this, we went to a Budweiser bottling plant. And in the merch, in the gift shop at the end, they had Bud Bowl hats, like helmets, you could put on an empty beer bottle.

And so I asked my dad to buy a Budweiser beer bottle and I will put the helmet on it, and I'll have that, like, on my bookshelf at home. That's how much I loved it. Take the kids to see how beer is made. One final fact about it. I don't like the metaphorical implications of this. At Bud Bowl 6, it featured the first appearance by a can of beer in the game. So the can scored a touchdown but was ejected from the bud bowl shortly after due to excessive foul language during its celebration whoa again that's very loaded this uh wow i don't care for the

metaphorical implications i didn't put them on there but i'm just reading them in this uh yeah this this can appearance in the bud bowl so it was always bottles but this can you know too much showboating i guess what would jimmy the greek say about these cans yes yeah oh god uh you know, too much showboating, I guess. What would Jimmy the Greek say about these cans? Oh, God, yes. Yeah. Oh, God. You know, I looked up the Bud Bowl commercials for this, for 92, for the Super Bowl, and they actually very much disappointed me because it's like a sweepstakes thing, and the Bud

Bowl actually is barely featured on screen. It's like the story of some guy trying to get to a super bowl party to bet on the bud bowl and see if he won it's like uh they then occasionally show the commentators say well this is the score and if your game piece says this score then you won i was like i wanted to see the beer bottles uh play against each other i didn't want to see a story about a contest we have a quick cut to uh lovejoy studiously doing his service uh congregant realizes like oh god i forgot about the game run straight out of the room that's ned was not super religious yet so even he's watching the game yeah uh from probably from his rumpus room the uh we then get kind of a crummy joke about if they

win they'll be looting and turning over cars in the state cap in the uh country's capital today i guess a joke about that uh washington dc as crime in it i guess that's a joke or just how fans will destroy things when they win sure yeah it's not just yeah it's not just dc i mean there is a long storied history of various cities uh deciding to set a lot of stuff on fire when their team wins. I think Vancouver had it at one point. There are people right now girding for whether or not Philadelphia actually wins the World Series or not. They literally have to grease poles in that town so people don't climb up them.

It's a whole thing. Yeah, no, I remember an eerie E3 where the streets were quiet because the Lakers were in a championship game down the street. And cops were everywhere. If the Lakers win, shit's going down. I think there was some horseback cop who told me and my nerd friends, get to your hotel right now. Things could get really bad real soon here. I was going to say, speaking of horses, I think it was in Philadelphia that a fan was so happy his team won that he did eat the poop of a police horse jesus christ these are not sober people to be clear the decisions that are being made here are

not under the the umbrella of sobriety but uh well but fortunately because they're not doing these things for political reasons it is viewed as totally fine and just part of the society that's forgettable. But yes, it comes down to a last-second touchdown, which in reality the score was 37-24. I think it was pretty clear by, I think, the third quarter. No, the quarter. Chapter. Yeah, you were right.

But yes, this is when we get a happy ending. So with three ticks left on the clock, it all comes down to this one play. If Washington scores here, happy fans will be looting and turning over cards at our nation's capital tonight. Here's the handoff. Please, please, please. Touchdown! Next walk of this one, it is done.

The Washington Redskins win Super Bowl XXVI. I guess you love Dad. I suspected as much. Yes, you love Dad. I suspect it as much. Yes! She loves me! She loves me! What are you so happy about, Homma? You didn't win any money. Money comes and money goes, but what I have with my daughter can go on for eight more years.

Come on, Dad! It's beautiful. Isn't it so? After I catch my breath, can we go home? It's sweet. Homer, he'll do it for one weekend. I'm betting there wasn't a Daddy Daughter Day the next weekend. But he is setting trends with his new radicals hat. Oh, yeah. That's sweet. Homer, he'll do it for one weekend. I'm betting there wasn't a Daddy Daughter Day the next weekend. But he is setting trends with his new Radicals hat.

Oh, yeah. That's true. I love bucket hats. Well, I don't love them, but I like wearing them. I haven't seen you wear yours yet, Henry. I wear it all the time. Oh, sorry, Alex. Did you have memories of that E3, of that weird E3?

Oh, yeah. So I wasn't out on the streets when that happened but uh a couple of co-workers of mine were out uh i think getting out of some kind of event when that was happening and they basically got kettled by the cops because they were starting to like come down in their you know dumbass riot like riot cop line down the street and they had to find a way to get out of there because they were not part of the sports celebration. They were just trying to get back to the hotel, and I think they had to, like,

basically duck into an alleyway to get out of the path of the cops coming to get the revelers. They were screaming, please, I just previewed Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2. I didn't ask for this. I believe, you know, this is bringing back more memories.

I believe I had just seen Reggie Fils-Aimé of Nintendo give a comment about a Fire Emblem video game. And now I'm being told, like, you might be beaten to death by Lakers fans if you don't get out of here. Avoid those critical hits. You know, it's funny. All those years when the Kings won, not really the same thing. The Mount Springfield looks beautiful. I really love it. You know, it feels, after all the time spent on the couch, it really does feel special to get on top of the mountain and see that beautiful vista.

Also, though, based on Homer's near heart attack at the start of the episode, I would assume he died on the hike down. Lisa just rolled him down. He's rolled down gorges before and survived and also yes that homer i love homer's realism of saying like eight more years meaning when she's 16 he accepts it like she'll definitely hate me by the time she's 16 but that was my translation yes yeah but it's it's a beautiful ending only undercutcut by, you know, your knowledge that definitely Homer will not do anything nice for Lisa the next week. But he did it at least this week. I mean, we did the entire, the make room for Lisa episode is also all about how much Homer doesn't do shit for Lisa. And her moral at the end of that one is, much like this one, why don't you do something Homer likes?

Like, I think Homer gets enough stuff he likes, guys. You know? It was a very dad perspective in that episode. Yes. This one, though, my final thoughts are, I'm surprised that I like it so much, and I love this one, even though it's about football, which I don't care about,

and it's basically characters watching TV for 75% of the episode. But a part of me loves the self-control and the patience this episode has that would go away immediately. Like it's an anomaly right now towards the middle of the third season or towards the end of the third season, really. And I kind of miss that slow pacing. And it's like one of the last glimpses of that in the series. And I do really like it.

And it's also a very touching episode. And yes, Yardley does deserve that Emmy. So, yeah, it's always one I appreciate going back to, even though I don't care about football. Yeah. Well, the football is, again, it's more of a means to an end. It's a thing that is about, you know, Homer's, you know, destructive obsession and Lisa trying to find her way into his good graces, whether she should or not. And yeah, I mean, this one feels like it is threading that needle between like kind of

the, you know, the still second season, early third season of we're doing like these very heartfelt sitcom plots versus like the just sort of parade of wackiness that would sort of pervade the the series going forward and don't get me wrong I love the parade of wackiness the seasons that come after this are fantastic but it's it's a really nice blend of that stuff in an episode that like you said is paced a little bit more slowly but it has a really nice heartfelt message in it and it feels like one of the few instances where like the connection between homer and lisa at the end is genuine they they're brought much closer together from the incredible distance they start in the episode with that that angered yardley smith so much that she she swears when talking about it to this day i think it's a classic as well, which it is done in a more grounded way than I remembered.

I remember more of the wacky commentary on like the halftime show or whatever, but they don't hit it as hard as they would in their next trip to the Super Bowl. Alex Navarro, thanks again for joining us. Please let us know where we can find you online and tell us more about Nexlander. Absolutely.

Nexlander uh a trio of folks uh two of my former co-workers from giantbomb.com a video game website we uh we stream games we do a podcast we also do a watch cast where we are watching films and television all of that stuff can be found over at patreon.com slash next slander or just next slander.com uh and we are next slander on twitter and i am alex underscore navarro on twitter uh until the day that musk just burns the fucking thing down it could have already happened yeah i feel like we're hours away at this point not long after this episode comes out i guess it'll be game of the year season and always

a busy time for you indeed and you know we uh we're doing a little looser with our game of the year stuff we're not as regimented as we used to be a giant bomb but uh yeah we'll be doing some special episodes of our podcast around our uh our favorites of the year probably in the end of december no i i can't wait to hear you you you talking about your game of the year choices and and and sussing them out with uh with with vinnie and brad every year is is so fun to hear i always look forward to it appreciate it so now thank you alex so much for coming on it was always great to have you thank you so much for having me i really enjoy being on this show and

uh so far you've you've pretty much picked great episodes ones that i love so i'm always happy to do it oh thank you wait until next time right. We'll give you a season 14 one. We'll see how you feel then. Thanks again to Alex Navarro for being on the show. Please check out everything he's doing over at Nextlander. But as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week at a time and ad-free, please head on over to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons.

Sign up for five bucks a month. You get just that, but also access to everything behind the $ dollar paywall that includes over a hundred episodes of our podcast miniseries covering things like Mission Hill and The Critic and we have monthly ongoing miniseries about Futurama and King of the Hill and right now we are doing our exclusive annual miniseries we're doing season two of Blabin' About Batman the animated series our podcast miniseries all about Batman the animated series a new episode miniseries all about Batman, the animated series, a new episode every week through the end of 2022. You can only find it behind the $5 paywall only at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well

on Patreon. When you sign up for that, you get access to everything behind the $5 paywall, of course, but also access to one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob is talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast where we cover a different animated feature film once a month going super in depth just like we do an episode the simpsons often going over four hours about an animated feature film last month at the end of october we covered transformers the movie the 1986 classic uh toy commercial and this month we are covering the 2012 stop motion uh cult classic i would say paranorman we're gonna have a lot of fun with that and again the year we'll be covering the holiday classic tokyo godfathers

and there's a giant back catalog over four years of what a cartoon movies at your fingertips at that ten dollar a month level that you can check out i would say over 270 hours of what a cartoon movie podcast of us covering so many different things uh we've done both beavis and butthead movies do america and do the universe if you liked our talk about the butt bowl in this one everything from akira to a goofy movie as i've said as i enjoy saying so please check out everything you're missing at patreon.com slash talking simpsons as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast by the way is retronauts you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to

patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and henry how about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g stay up to date with what's going on in my life as well you should follow the official twitter account of this podcast at talk simpsons pod you will stay up to date when new things happen on the patreon on the free feed if we've got, anything going on, you know it if you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod. And of course, if you would like an easy to explore list of all the free episodes we've done of this podcast and our sister podcast, What a Cartoon,

you can find it all and more at TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for season 13's Blame It on Lisa, and we'll see you again next time for season 13's blame it on lisa and we'll see you again ¶¶ My third husband bought me this. Give me some chips for it. Are you sure, man? Don't tell me what to do, sonny. I've been gambling since I was eight,

and I've been hocking jewelry since I was 12. Now give me some chips.