Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Lisa The Iconoclast With Tristan Cooper

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

Less chat, more hat as we dig up the bones of Springfield to find the truth about pirates and George Washington. Dorkly's own Tristan Cooper (@tristanacooper on Twitter) embiggens our cromulent podcast to discuss Lisa's world-changing findings just as the town celebrates the bicentennial of Jebidiah founding Springfield. So grab your favorite bell and silver tongue to listen as myths are shattered and legends are revealed! This podcast is brought to you by VRV, the streaming network full of cartoons, anime and more. sign up for a free 30-day trial at VRV.co/WAC and help support Talking Simpsons! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

Attention Talking Simpsons listeners, would you love to hear us give the same treatment to Futurama? Who would do a thing like that? Who could do a thing like that? Then you'll be delighted to know we're doing just that for Futurama's entire first season. Hey, when you look this good, you don't have to know anything. And it'll only be available for people who donate at the $5 level to the Talking Simpsons Patreon. Oh god, no! And along with 13 episodes of Talking Futurama, you'll get all 23 episodes of Talking Critic,

the entire first season of Talking Simpsons, monthly community podcasts, interviews with Simpsons writers, and so much more! Shut up and take my money! Remember, go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons to get your hands on podcasts from the world of tomorrow! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we're pickled tink about podcasting.

I'm your host, typhoid carrier Bob Mackey, and this is a chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? A big fat loud mouth who can walk when he has to, Henry Gilbert. That is really mean, Henry. And who is calling in special guests? Dead white male bashing PC thug, Tristan Cooper. I'm a greasy thug too. And today's episode is Lisa the Iconoclast. Excuse me, my microwave Johnny cakes are ready. Today's episode aired on February 18th, 1996. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in history.

Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby. The IRA bombs a bus in London killing three people. Chinese New Year is here to make it the year of the rat. And Happy Gilmore hits theaters and entertains young Henry Gilbert back when he was the perfect age for Adam Sandler. We mentioned this on the Chapo podcast with Two Bad Neighbors, but this was the golden age of cinema and Happy Gilmore and Black Sheep.

What a wealth of riches. In theaters at the same time. I remember seeing Happy Gilmore in a double feature with that Matt LeBlanc chimp baseball movie. Oh, that'd be Ed. Are you familiar? Ed. Yep. That was a rough double feature.

Not to be confused with Ed TV, which is a movie about reality shows, I think. Yeah, it's about reality TV. But just if it never stopped it was like it was the uh more bro-y side to the truman show yes so it sort of predicted live streaming yeah and there's a joke early in the movie where he wakes up with a morning hard-on and touches it and they're like oh this is how the show starts huh i don't know why that's the only thing i can remember about that movie morning wood well it's also it's also that Ellen is in it pre-outing

herself. There's that too. It's true. So, Tristan, in case people don't know who you are, some people out there, can you tell us who you are and where you come from? You might know me from Dorkly.com, where we have lots of articles and comics and all sorts of crazy crap on

the walls. Some people might know me best from a little bit late last year when I cracked the case of Toad and his hat slash head. Oh my god, that was you. It was me. Many people have talked about it and debated it over the years. I will, to my dying day, say that I the one that held nintendo's feet to the fire and made them say whether this fictional mushroom head man was was wearing a hat or not wow it's in it is not a hat right i mean he wears those earphones uh you don't wear earphones on your hat

i'm not really sure the biology there but he's definitely not wearing a hat we we did learn about toad gender earlier in history right like? Like they choose their own gender or something? One of the producers, I believe, said that about like, why are you a toad and who's a toadette? And he made it sound very much like you pick if you want to live as a toad or a toadette. That's just, it's that I believe that's it. It's very progressive. Do you recall this, Tristan, in the Mario? Yeah, yes.

That sounds right. They don't have a gender at birth and then they pick their own as they grow up. Wow. It's, it's very tough. Yeah. I,

I love a lot of your viral tweets as well, especially like for, for animation nerds out there. I especially love your ones of like Ghibli dinner, Ghibli bedroom, or, or less. I have a lot of,

uh, random threads that are very nice and very chill and very aesthetic, and then that's mixed in with a lot of just pure garbage, just the worst memes imaginable. So I'm sorry about that. Well, and last year during the 25th anniversary of Batman the Animated Series, you had a ton of great pictures and history in there too. So I'm just a fan of your Twitter account as well, Tristan.

Where can we follow you on Twitter, by the way? That is at Tristan A. Cooper So just imagine Tristan A Cooper, a barrel maker Those are very common So what's your personal history with The Simpsons? When did you start watching? When or did you ever stop watching?

And what made you a fan of the show? The beginning of my story is very similar To a lot of guests I'm sure i started very young um i was instantly entranced i would stay up late at night and like crawl out uh down the the staircase and watch uh between the banisters as my parents uh watch past my bedtime i had trouble watching later on in the like seasons four to five range because my parents instituted the dreaded no tv days rule oh my god no tv on tuesdays and thursdays no video games no fun stuff whatsoever

so i think the simpsons was on thursdays or was it tuesdays it was thursdays for a while yeah in the golden years it it was Thursdays. Yep. So that put a real damper on my Simpsons watching until syndication hit. I feel bad for you. I had two parents who, frankly, worked way too hard. So when they left, it's like, the TV will raise you. Hang out with the TV.

Don't leave the house. My parents went in the opposite direction. And eventually, they added a third day, Wednesday, to the no TV day rule. And that was well into the internet time. We would sneak watching TV all the time. They would come home, and us three kids would be just sitting in the front room conspicuously doing nothing while the TV kind of sparkled with static. So did it make you a better person or just fill you with resentment? It made me covet TV in a way that I think that is unhealthy.

I want to blame them for warping me into the internet goblin that I am today. Oh, so it did make you a better person. We're all internet weirdos here. Always online, never stopping. Blake, so what were some of your favorite episodes? And what made you pick this one out of the several possible season seven ones we had on offer? I really love 22 Short Films. Mr. Plow was a big favorite.

So many of them kind of run together because I forget about the B plots, especially in some of these episodes. But the ones that you gave to me, I picked this one because from what I remember, it taught me an important lesson as a kid in that Lisa at the end, spoilers, decides not to tell the whole town the real truth about Jebediah Springfield and again at the time I thought oh this is good just because I'm right and I know I'm right doesn't mean I have to tell somebody about it and you know I don't always follow that rule but growing up now I kind of look at it a bit differently I don't know if Lisa should have

told the town or not maybe not in that setting to get sniped but there's quite a moral quandary I have with the end of this episode too which I look forward to digging into but later yes and I wrote a college paper

on this episode it's one of my favorites I wrote several papers about the Simpsons and video games in college and I have two degrees for some reason episode it's one of my favorites I wrote several papers about the Simpsons and video games in college and I have two two degrees for some reason I don't know why they gave them to me I just did all the work that's all it takes to get through college really this this was one of my favorites too at the time I but I didn't super duper love it but now it's it's it's one I go back to today I I'm like, oh, wow, this is great. I especially love Lisa and Homer stuff. And it comes at Lisa and Homer from a very different angle than they usually do. That's for sure.

Yeah, Homer's on board with the plan from the beginning. But I do want to talk about, before we start, this is based on real history. So remember President Zachary Taylor? He is one of the mediocre presidents. So he was thought to have died by eating too many cherries and too much ice milk at a party. Because he was that much of a dandy, I guess. I don't know. So later in the 80s, I believe, a Florida professor of some esteem was like, no, I believe he was poisoned.

And we have to dig up his body and find out if he was actually given arsenic if his milk was laced with arsenic or whatever and it turns out after digging up his body and testing it no he was killed by cholera he just had tainted cherries and milk because washington dc had open sewers just like shit flowing through the streets it was disgusting everywhere it's hard to not imagine people were well that that's kind of similar to what well not exactly similar but what killed garfield oh yeah garfield getting shot didn't help for sure but it was that right after he was shot they're like well we got to get this bullet out dig dig dig here's my unwashed hand oh me next yes yeah they're playing that's where the game of operation came from the death of garfield uh but but they unfortunately had to exhume the body of a president, which I don't think had ever been done before. It's true. And I think they were

only able to, in my research, they were only able to do it because they the coroner was a, there was a coroner who was a relative of Taylor who could give permission to do it. I read that someone somewhere more recently had

a problem with the testing methods and that they think that it really still could be arsenic poisoning. But, you know, it's probably not. It's probably just cherries. Yeah, I feel like with 1991's computers and science stuff, I feel like we have an edge today, and I say dig that bastard up. That cherry-eating bastard. Well, I still think it's a cover-up by the Freemasons.

That's my belief but well the reasoning was supposed to be that uh they were the south was afraid that uh taylor was going to veto slavery expansion but but taylor was kind of like kind of iffy on slavery he was like not totally against it so i'm not sure how much that holds water i mean this is a totally the dorky presidential history type thing that oh yeah the nerd harvard nerd writers of the simpsons at the time were so into like they they especially love presidential history like i've uh he's not a writer in this season but arch harvard nerd conan o'brien i've heard him on like the um his let's plays that he clearly hates yeah he'll give somebody crap of like if they know every character in Smash Brothers he's like tell me who the third

president is you even know that tell me that's amazing but I do believe that Jonathan Collier who wrote this episode is like was like the big history buff on the staff so maybe that's why he was assigned this topic or this uh this episode and uh also on the writing side of things it's not just that jonathan collier wrote it but two words in this episode come from big name writers who we interviewed dan graney partially about this and so the uh interesting creative stylist directed by mike b anderson who's just one of the really good season seven directors this is his first episode oh it's yeah wow he had come up through under david silverman he and in the early days of the simpsons in our david silverman interview if i could uh advertise another interview he talks up mike b anderson and and also bob anderson is some of his like you know best co-workers before they graduated to director

yeah mike anderson directed uh dav David Silverman's first written episode, or co-written episode, correct? Oh, yeah, which just aired at the end of April, April 22nd. Okay, so I guess let's get right into the episode with quite a film strip. 1796, a fiercely determined band of pioneers leaves Maryland after misinterpreting a passage in the Bible. Their destination, New Sodom. This is their story. That's one of my favorite that that's the new joke i got this time i never as a kid the idea that like first off the joke of like

okay so classically in colonial times like it's the the story of the pilgrims and other fervent religious folks who they came to the new world just to practice their weird version of christianity but in this case the people doing this somehow misread the bible to know that and thought sodom and gomorrah were the good places in the bible and they wanted to find found a new one that sounds more like a shelbyville idea i do really like the way that the old film strip is presented here, it's got lots of really nice old grimy scratches. There are like cheesy actors like looking right at the camera and the props are just garbage as well. It's perfect.

At least once like the strip floats around, like it gets off center or whatever and you see it on the screen too. Yeah, they did a lot of post-production work to make it look old and shitty. I mean, I'm old enough to have seen like eight millimeter films like this in class and like in high school they were still showing us stuff from the 60s and 70s i saw some of these like in in class but i also i was more acquainted with films like this though the 50s variety on mystery science theater

oh yeah though we were more of the boop next slide boop next slide right yeah or the overhead projector yes yeah transparencies uh and it's so perfect that troy mcclure was the star of this like it's it's a rare troy appearance where he does not say you may remember me from it's just him in his 70s we in the 70s like we aren't used to seeing young troy mcclure and stuff either that's right no crow's feet yep it's not it's not him who he looks like a muppet but his skin is too leathery as they would say and and also i saw stuff like this and other oldie times stuff like this but not in the colonial style where i grew up from ages 7 to 10 i lived in atlanta or in a suburb of atlanta marietta and so they had

tons of historical stuff like this because georgia got to have like double historical bullshit like this because first they were one of the original 13 colonies so you get some colonial crap but also a major spot in the civil war so you also get Civil War and antebellum stuff too, which in the years I lived, my family lived in Atlanta, that was when Ken Burns' Civil War documentary started. And so it had never been hotter and busier for docents at Civil War museums. It's really great to live in California

where no one really cares about that crap because no one was here yet. I mean, to be fair, people from Mexico were here. So I shouldn't say no one was here, yeah i mean to be fair people from mexico were here so i shouldn't say no one was here but americans weren't here we don't celebrate yeah yeah i bet if we wanted to we could find like a recreation uh gold rush town or whatever probably we could go to nevada city in in california probably see one of those i come from uh i grew up in oregon so there was a ton of oregon stuff all over the place, which is around the 1850s. And there's like these like very cheesy, like life-size wagons set up everywhere and bigger ones you go inside.

And it kind of, I think this era might be a little bit earlier as shown in the film, but it kind of reminded me of that. Yeah, I mean, kids from the 80s and 90s were basically forced to learn about Oregon and the trail because we just played that game over and over. I don't know why. We didn't have other games. Yeah, it's like this is the one thing that's closest to a real video game. I thought we were really special. I thought that we were the only state that was playing this video game. When I met kids from other states, they were like,

oh, you play Oregon Trail. I'm like, what? Wait, I thought this was ours. This is our thing. I wish Florida had a number of munchers. It would have been Florida's number of munchers it would have been florida's number munchers i also do that's frog fractions right yeah uh also i do love the line some type of land cow like it's so bad and you can see like the little piston on the mechanical bowl if you

freeze frame at the right time you can and definitely tell this the stuntman from troy plus the the boom mic gets in the camera you see at least definitely tell the stuntman from Troy plus the boom mic gets in the camera. You see at least one of the people has a watch drawn on them. And the way the wheeled buffalo that he's on

just comes toward them. It's all so beautiful. You can see the hands pushing it behind and then the extras pushing it just kind of like stare awkwardly.

It's hard to watch this in 2018 without thinking of the internet video Guy on a Buffalo and the movie that comes from Buffalo Rider, which is a Riff Trax movie. I recommend everyone go out and watch it. It's basically a stuntman fighting animals for 90 minutes. Wow, I have not heard of this one.

Real animals? Are they real animals or are they like cheesy fake animals like in the short? Oh no, they're real animals. He can't act, but he can fight animals. That's why he was hired. So yeah rider look it up wow i have not heard of this the but also to find out that he killed the buffalo and that that's two jokes i like in this that are about the reversal of actual history one the idea of like oh he tamed a buffalo it's like no the thing with buffaloes is they got murdered every because they were just stupid animals they just got over farmed and killed by everybody he barely shot it

and and the joke that in springfield the only time that it was the native americans who double crossed settlers instead of the other way around springfield where they shot like they shot the uh the springfieldians folks in, it was the indigenous people that were really fucked up by America, not the other way around. I hate to say line of the episode this early, but... It's live the longest. Yeah.

That's the joke. You've saved our fledgling community. Mr. Springfield, how can I hope to achieve such greatness? A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man. Yay! Springfield rules! Way to go, Springfield! Embiggens?

Hmm. I never heard that word before I moved to Springfield. I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word. Excellent. Not to throw our friend Dan Graney under the bus, but I prefer cromulent because there's not an existing word in it. I think embiggens a bit of a cheat, Dan. I'm sorry to say this, but I prefer cromulent. I am also on the cromulent train. Yes, I agree. Tristan? I would have to say cromulent as well. It sounds like a mix between a star trek planet and a crouton so i'm all i'm on board

well yeah so the history is a short version in the room they were asked to come up with neologisms aka just a made-up word that sounds like an accurate one for the time and imbigin was dan graney's addition to john collier's script and he did it first, as he pointed out in our interview with him. And just this year, 2018, Webster's Dictionary made it officially a word. That's right. Which was probably spurred on in part by the Marvel Comics hero, Ms. Marvel, using that word. And also, apparently, in science, the science dorks have started using it in some string theory stuff.

I'm sure they've been using it since 1997. Yeah. Is there a difference between enlarge and embiggen in the science world? Scientifically, I'll leave that to the commenters to say. I want to feel like embiggening is more of a metaphorical growth than an actual physical growth. But I have to

say, this reminds me, now that I live in California, I grew up, I'd spent 28 years in Ohio, it reminds me of all of the dumb Ohio words I've had to force out of my vocabulary Because if I say them I'll have to like Leave the situation like I have successfully I stopped calling soda pop Everything is pop in Ohio

I'll have a glass of pop can you pick up some pop Also for whatever reason it could just be in my neck Of the woods shopping carts were called Buggies And I have not dared Speak the name of buggies in really i never heard that i i have not dared speak the name of buggies in this state yeah i grew up with a few weird uh organisms as you would as well we definitely had pop instead of soda and we also had and something i'm learning that i'm wrong about

only like this month is that the game uh paper rock scissors uh is actually rock paper scissors because i say it wrong. I say it around the other way. Oh, I thought it was Scissors Paper Rock. Wow, really? It's always been Rock Paper Scissors in my life to me. This is blowing my mind right now. If I drank more soda, I probably would have had this problem too.

But mine was in the South, it's not pop or soda it is coke you just call everything a coke like well i'll get a coke and that's why if you're told like pepsi then people like what like you would tell it out you talk okay yeah you would tell a friend like grab me a coke and it just meant whatever soda was in the fridge was the coke you were getting and pepsi is never okay it really is never but i'm still not a soda drinker so i i don't know the difference the sentence will be right back Perhaps you'd like to embiggen your podcast listening. Well, you can do that by signing up at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons.

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But yeah, as Grady pointed out, out humorously he was very defensive that cohen jumped on his bandwagon he's like you couldn't have cromulent without him big and that was me first second comes after first it's so but the reason i love cromulent is it's such a great word like i just love saying it it's it's a wonderful descriptor but the thing that pisses me off is like folks cromulent means valid or acceptable you if you wanted to say this is wonderful you don't say cromulent if you say something was a cromulent episode of the simpsons then you're saying it's all right you're not or it's acceptable it's a perfectly cromulent episode i i just love the device of saying a fake word is okay by using another fake word yes that's a perfectly cromulent episode i i just love the device of saying a fake word is okay

by using another fake word yes that's a beautiful line too yeah and that we get to know that edna moved to town while meanwhile hoover has been there from the beginning she is a native and that she it kind of fits later with her stance on defending jebediah to lisa i think that's right and if you think back to Bart's Friend Falls in Love, she tells Samantha Stanky you'll get used to it when she's like, your town smells funny. Oh, yes. Yeah.

I also like that the video works so well that even the bullies are in love with Jebediah, just like they were in Telltale Head. And Kearney would have to be born in, I don't know, 1970. At least. Yeah. At the very least he is that's something too that it clicked for me in this one like oh they say in the beginning it was 1796 to make it 200 years in 1996 right yeah and that 1996 that's what puts it very specially in time too because you could you could imagine that ke kerney is 30 like that's pushing the joke

but that's the joke but if he's 20 if he remembers something from 20 years ago that's fine he's not remembering something from 42 years ago that's true so this is before he we see his child right yes that's uh that's in a millhouse divided i believe it's the first time we meet i sleep in a drawer you stole it from me henry i love that line so much well i sleep in a drawer oh you stole it from me henry i love that line so much oh i sleep in a drawer that's my listen that's my audio shit posting i just did it i have to make the image for that now you've got a couple weeks till this goes live i'm doing it now i uh i also when i was a kid it mystified me the idea of a bicentennial i didn't know it was such a thing in the 90s i only knew because there was briefly a time where i collected quarters or at the very least was like oh this is a quarter from this year the quarter from this year and quarter collectors out there will know

there were bicentennial quarters for 1976 that had a different back to it that's true the only reason i knew about it growing up is my grandma had bicentennial things in her house because she was alive in the 70s and old enough to enjoy that. And there were like collector's plates and like little eagles and stuff like that. And in 76, America was deep in need of patriotism after Watergate, as Kearney says, but it's true. They were depressed.

They needed something for bicentennial. So like, yeah, 200 years. I mean, I guess we'll probably live to see the, well, what the 250 years will be 26, won't it? Not 2026. That should be right, yeah. Yeah. So I look forward to what will even America be in the 250 years?

President Barron Trump. No, Jared. It'll be President Jared first. Oh, God. I don't even know which is worse. Oh, so also then the essay assignment. There's multiple parts to this episode that is clearly written by geeks for geeks. I loved writing essays in class.

That's why I became a writer because I just loved time to write an essay. And the award feels so real to me too. Just like you'll get the honor of having 18 of them kept on file at the library. I also like the stakes are so low that 18 of them will win the award. They will be accepted into the library. Only two people will not. One of them is Ralph the award they will be accepted into the library only two people will not one of them is ralph well ralph gets an a later as we recall so maybe not ralph though i also i love that gag too about punishing ralph's non-writing creativity it's the school

going like no you can't draw you don't accept drawings you have to write this like it's punishing an artist which i love that gag oh so another thing i didn't i noticed for the very first time for some reason my memory i remembered it was homer sitting at the breakfast table reading the newspaper but he is walking into the room reading which i wonder if that was just them being like, we've done 8 million episodes where Homer is reading the newspaper and finds a plot point. Can he at least not be sitting at the table for that? They do a little more work with it. I really like the headline, Parade

to Distract Joyless Citizenry. That is great. Marge doesn't get a lot to do in this episode, but I do like how she's somewhat on board with Homer at first and him being into this whole, you know, being in the parade thing. Hey, they need volunteers to play old-timey people in the parade. Look, I can be a butter churner,

a typhoid carrier, an apprentice. I think I'll be an apprentice, Marge. What kind of apprentice? That's for my master to decide. How about Town Crier? You'd be great at that. You think so? Well, yeah, Dad. You're a big, fat, loud mouth, and you can walk when you have to. Oh.

Well, if you kids believe in me that much, I'll give it my best shot. Actually, Bart isn't used very much in this episode either. It's very light Bartage. This might be his only line. I think so. Well, he talks about the Indians shooting people. And then saying Lisa's dreams are square. Yes.

But it's a very light peppering of Bart. I like when like either bart or homer are forced to the periphery and they just say like little one-liners and it's like wow these guys are great it's just a one-liner they don't have to carry a whole episode bart is kind of like grandpa in this episode in that respect where he's just he's around to tell a joke and then they go away from him it says a lot about the strength of lisa as a character and that some people you know aren't too fond of lisa and marge episodes but she really carries the whole thing kind of on her own it's a really different that you don't get this in most episodes of a lisa a plot and a homer b plot like that's not usually the combo of characters yeah and the plot i like how nicely the plots intertwine they eventually become the same thing they

intertwine perfectly. Like, and that Homer, I love Homer taking Bart's insult as a compliment. Like, aw, it's always nice when Homer doesn't understand he is being insulted. And so then we head to the museum where the great sign gag, where the dead come alive, metaphorically speaking. And there is no real internet at this time,

so Lisa has to go to a museum to write a report and uh before i play the next clip it's time to premiere a new jingle for the show i'm looking forward to this so uh quick quick intro to this we've had some more unfortunately timed passings away of people at the time of this recording yeah barbara bush passed away right the same week as we published two bad neighbors and then arlie ermy passed away within a couple weeks of uh about sideshow bob's last gleaming so whenever we record from now on when we record an episode and the actor is still alive though they're old then we are going to play this jingle i love it i must i must add to that henry uh we do have dark powers and you must

respect us and you must you must give us more money because we don't know what we'll do with these dark powers we don't decide who dies they just die so don't make us mad is what i'm saying you gotta be i'm a little worried that this might make it more likely to kill the guest stars than less likely. Donald Sutherland you better hang in there you bastard. But yes Donald Sutherland is the guest here as Hurlbut which is such a great name that they never make a joke about.

Everyone just accepts like your name is Hurlbut. It reminds me of Mayor Poop and Meyer from Futurama. But yes let's hear the wonderful voice of Donald Sutherland. I'm the curator, Hollis Hurlbutt. Hi, I'm Lisa Simpson. I'm here to research a report on Jebediah. Oh, you're in for a treat. You know, some historians consider Jebediah Springfield a minor patriot, but I think you'll find he's easily the equal of William Dawes or even Samuel Otis.

I really love this character a lot because I think it's a very well-observed other side of the coin to Seymour Skinner in that he is a bachelor. He is a very tweety bachelor, but he has a very set schedule and his life is in order and the i like the fact that he drinks chicory because coffee would be too intense for him and he eats microwave johnny cakes he's a very simple man but he knows what he likes he loves that era of time yeah he loves sharing it with people but also he just has a very small world he takes care of and i love that and he's he's just so nice he's just so nice and he loves sharing that with a fellow nerd like lisa he's just so excited like i love later when she arrives with homer he's like lisa and you brought a friend

like he's just so excited it's just so nice you can tell he's listened to those recordings over and over and over again. As he starts to creep on Lisa while she's listening to it, he starts to mouth the words behind her. I thought it was really nice. That's right, yeah. I like the design of the museum because I think it's just like an old house or something like that. It's kind of dark inside, but it's not creepy. I remembered it is bigger before watching this episode. I was like, oh yeah, it's a museum.

But I think I just got it mixed up with i went to at least like i think atlanta had a natural history museum or florida they had one like this that had those specifically the dioramas with the speaker right inside of the diorama and you press a button and it starts talking i i definitely had been to that and there's something i love about those they're just they're they're special and stupid and old and in today you don't need them no no they're beautiful i i find their beauty in them the shield of jebediah with his saying would define the town and the character from then on even to the point that in the hd opening it's always there they put it on the jebediah statue it was not on a statue previous to this episode obviously because this

quote didn't exist that's right but that's some discontinuity there they have some really nice little background touches you can see it for a few frames the portrait i think of the painting of like an old school auto like carting kids to school there's an old silhouette of what looks like a bouvier a march style and i think professor frank doing a benjamin franklin with the kite and the lightning yeah you can barely see those you literally need a freeze frame but someone spent a lot of time making those great paintings you get a slightly better look at them when lisa returns to show him the fire right about that you get a longer pause on that but i also just want to say i love donald sutherland who at the time of recording is still alive still

alive and still with us 82 years young i i wish him nothing but the best and that he he's amazing kind of in everything and he has such beautiful unique cadence like he's he was a big star in the 70s which for 70s kids like the writers of this episode were, they would have known him in the classics like M.A.S.H. or Clute. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which kids know him for today because that's the meme. He's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That's Donald Sutherland pointing with his mouth unfurled.

I came to love him even in bad trash like the 1996 action movie Hollow Point, which I don think anyone has seen and does does not need to see i have not seen it i have a question though about jebediah springfield so he has not made too many appearances in the simpsons so he was in the telltale head in season one and the shelbyville episode in season six and this episode did we miss any other appearances no not that i'm aware not that i think either. And when I looked at his wiki page on the Simpsons wiki, his other appearances for episodes were all listed as statue. They all said statue next to them, not in flashback. So this might be the last appearance of Springfield actually, Hans Sprungfeld actually saying stuff.

That's true. Because this episode, spoilers, it destroys Jebediah Springfield. I don't think they use him after this and I really hope they don't. I hope they didn't forget about this. Is he not in Lemon of Troy? That's before this one. Yeah, I just forgot the name of the episode.

In Lemon of Troy from season six, he is in there. And also in this version of the founding of Springfield, Shelbyville, Manhattan is not mentioned, but I guess you have to assume that the buffalo thing happened after shelbyville manhattan split off from them or he's just in the background or the people who made that movie were just like well this the shelbyville history is a dirty one we don't want to include that in our historical retelling what we hear of the history in lemon of troy is very different than the founding of new sawdust like we live a life of chastity and eating root marm but you know

abe simpson is an unreliable narrator it's true i forgot he was telling that you can't you can't totally count on that though his story about attractive cousins from that is proven true by statue in shelbyville oh you're right at least At least that part of Abe's story is true. And just, I guess, so we mentioned it, William Dawes, Samuel Otis, the guys who are equal patriots to Springfield, who were they? Oh, I can say one of them if you want.

Okay, you do William Dawes. I call Samuel Otis. Okay, William Dawes, he got screwed by Paul Revere. Actually, he was one of the main alarm riders of the Revolutionary War, and he was basically overwritten in history by the famous poem the uh sorry paul revere's ride which you might have heard at some point in your life i don't think kids hear it anymore but that that poem is a conglomeration of many writers but i believe dawes was one of the most important ones

of that event of the revolutionary war and samuel otis was a really lesser guy of the Revolutionary War. And Samuel Otis was a really lesser guy of the Constitutional Congress and the early government post-Revolutionary War. I think his highest claim to fame is that he was the first secretary of the U.S. Senate. He was a Massachusetts representative. So that is Samuel Otis. Just, dude, you pull out the back of a book of like, well, these are very unremarkable revolutionaries

by comparison. And now they know who they are we ruin the joke as as kids i was definitely when in our childhoods definitely i was taught revolutionary war history oh yeah that's been a question every time school books for kids gets brought up in in the news it's like there's definitely a battle over the portrayal of the founding fathers kind of like this episode of like well do you just give the the story your parents grew up with of just like well george washington did this he's the most important guy ever thomas jefferson john adams ben and franklin do you just talk about the disney version of the founding fathers or do you talk about their flaws do you talk about slave ownership for instance and and things like that and it's i it's a difficult question of america how america wants to remember itself and that goes straight

down to how you want to first tell children about the revolutionary war in the founding of america i i'm more on the side of like warts and all on that I think yeah especially kids I mean I guess kids can't really understand all of it at the start that's the real problem though like all of these major events in history happen in a way more barbaric time I mean things are still pretty barbaric now but I feel like you have to sort of give a storybook version to kids at first because of this the horror of the many wars that happened is just like indescribable if you really want to get into first because of just the horror of the many wars that happened is just like indescribable if you really want to get into it it's just like it's not it's not pretty yeah and also if i'm a teacher who doesn't have a lot of assets and resources to teach things i'll show my

kids the disney version of johnny tremaine and just be like yep that was a that was a revolutionary war i don't need to know more stuff than that like and you can just count on old old old stories of the of the revolutionary war like that I wonder how much today kids are being taught about it and how I know that that is a that is a political battle battleground of many in today's age there were I don't know if you've seen these screenshots of like newer textbooks that gloss over slavery in like in a way that is almost the song of the southian in in how how much it it paints it as like a non-issue it's kind of disheartening yeah they have to say like well you know some did treat their slaves poorly others treated them well and gave them food and not all of them worked in the field it's just this weird dressing up of things and it's a central question to how you portray slavery

in the history books because i think the innocent way to look at it is that people especially i say this is somebody you grew up in the south that let's say you're not racist okay but you also don't hold on a second egghead okay uh but you also don't want your ancestors to have fought and maybe died to defend the institution of slavery that is a morally horrible thing to have to deal with in your history so isn't this like confederate history day or something like that literally today it's one of those made up holidays well the history is that you guys fucking defended slavery like that's that's the history i mean that not everyone in the south on slaves is actually like you had to be rich to own one or not rich but you needed more money than a regular person but it's like there's there's no defending it like i i was born in

arkansas a confederate state and moved to georgia and then florida which wasn't a confederate state but may as well i mean it wasn't it was friendly to it and it's just there's there's no defending that i'm sorry like you kind of it's it's something america has to deal with we're gonna lose our pro-slavery listeners it was a complicated time it was the style at the time yeah that that stance too really bugs me i'm just like well it was what was accepted it's like yes there was certainly no abolitionist movement in the 1800s nobody they just all accepted it like yeah anyway happier things to talk about being a town crier hargie hargie i declare myself pickled tink about Springfield's bass and siddeley, touch and toodley, rin-tin-tenial day.

You saw diddly-ock, Flanders. Give me that. Hear ye, hear ye. Yee Old Town Crier proclaim crappy by all. Choose us, Homer Simpson, and he shalt rock thy world. Good God, he is fabulous. He's embiggened that role with his crumulent performance. Simpson, and he shalt rock thy world. Good. God, he is fabulous. He's embiggened that role with his crumulent performance.

Top-notch crying, I admit. But the hat and bell belong to Flanders, so no dice. Oh, they're just family heirlooms. That shouldn't stand in the way of Homer taking my job. Let's get more hat. Let's get more hat. Woo-hoo! Hear ye, hear ye!

The Homer Broadcasting System is on the air! All hollering, all the time! I'm gonna make it! You ought to restrict your crowding to the parade and selected pre-approved publicity events. Okay. I like this a lot because in season seven and eight, Oakley and Weinstein, the showrunners, wanted to soften Homer a bit.

And I feel like this is one of the ways they do it in that he is likable to other people for certain skills, most of them being loud. But they're not repelled by Homer. He says that he smells bad or he's going to eat them or whatever. They're like, this guy's doing a great job. There's still a joke about him smelling bad. Oh, you're right. Or at least that he messes up. He does something to

that hat it the hat needs to be cleaned after homer has it i guess they can't escape that but still uh wigum admires him yeah that he's homer's at least good at something and yeah he he and also poor ned but it's perfect net of just like well you can just have my job shut up just let's chat more hat should be the name of this podcast. That's a good nickname. And I also just love how they draw the, how many people have colonial-style get-ups in the line to get in for the tryouts.

I love that, too. I will say that Skinner uses the word cromulent wrong here because he says he embiggened it with his cromulent performance which means that like he made it better with a so-so performance oh that's true maybe uh ned's was less than adequate and homers was adequate i feel like cromulent is just adequate yeah maybe it's like baseline though it does seem to be more of he's giving homer more of a compliment than just adequate it would sound like but i'm standing by i feel like david cohen has said it means valid or adequate not so uh it yeah i'm gonna go side with the interpretation that skinner misused the word adding more confusion

uh so we head back to oldie time springfield stuff and we get to hear about his hatchet his fife and his chamber pot which uh that he just kind of skipped so i saved that well i guess it was anything he touched you know that was that's a joke lost the time but i only know because they they made it a plot on the super mario brothers super show but the george washington has slept here thing oh yeah that would be used for tourist traps. I think it's kind of in that similar vein. Did he just get around a lot or what? I think it was just a thing in the East Coast area.

You just say, like, George Washington slept here. Or at the very least, it was a plot on shows like Rhoda or whatever. Just like, my family says he slept here. We should sell this old place. And we get the delicious microwave Johnny Cakes. In case you don't know what Johnny Cakes are, they are just cornmeal pancakes. That's all they are. Though I saw in searching the internet, there's some even more creative ways people have been making Johnny Cakes. I do prefer cornmeal to regular dough.

I guess regular flour pancakes. I prefer the standard flour pancakes i'm boring like that i gotta say people cornmeal bread pizza i will get attacked on the internet but it's good it is good it's not my favorite i it is good i do like it i mean uh well it's it's used a lot in um chicago style i think so yeah and that's pizza i will not accept any arguments it's pizza All pizza's good. All pizzas are beautiful. I get it.

I agree. But then Lisa makes the discovery of the century. The secret confessions of Jebediah Springfield? Know ye who read this, there is more to my life than history records. Firstly, I did not tame the legendary buffalo. It was already tame. I merely shot it. Secondly, I have not always been known as Jebediah Springfield until 1796.

I was Hans Sprungfeld, murderous pirate, and the half-wits of this town will never learn the truth. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! You really get wacky, cartoony animation with Lisa, Diphtheria. Ew. Wah! Wah! Wah! Wah! You really get wacky, cartoony animation with Lisa, but that act where I got hurt just wiping her tongue off with both hands and spit flying everywhere is really fun. It's fun.

Don't worry, folks. One, diphtheria would not last that long in open air. And then second, at the very least, as an American child, Lisa was likely vaccinated for diphtheria as well so i assume it's one of those diseases we kind of wiped out at least in the first world yes yeah it's it's gone and i don't wonder if hurlbutt discovered this before and had hidden it already like it's it's it's just i that's the joke but who wouldn't have looked inside of a fife at one point in 200 years?

He definitely would have. I have to say, uh, like Jebediah Springfield was not a sacred cow in terms of the show itself, not within the show, but in terms of the show itself, no one would have really cared had they done this and they did do it. But I thought it was pretty brave to just be like, no, this character that is based that is part of the show's lore is a fraud. And I noticed that in these seasons of, uh, Oakley and Weinstein, they did it a few times. So like Jebediah Springfield's a fraud.

Chester J. Lampwick is actually the creator of – not Ren and Stimpy, sorry. Itchy and Scratchy and also Seymour Skinner's a fraud. So we talked to Bill Oakley about this in our first interview, I believe. And he was like, we weren't trying to break the show. We just didn't think the show was going to be on for much longer. We wanted to try every idea that we wanted to do, which I thought, like,

that is very brave. He's definitely defensive on that breaking the show thing just because he's especially about Principal and the Pauper. I think he's probably had to hear that quite a lot. We'll get to it.

It's coming. I can't wait. There's something you can really feel in these scenes. Like, in this next one, too, the scenes between lisa and donald sutherland they say on the commentary that they recorded uh donald sutherland and yardley smith together yeah they did so you can feel a lot more interplay between them it's

it's just you can you can't tell it's something you notice when it's not there when they're not when it's somebody's just like well this baseball player was in town so we just recorded with them it doesn't feel you can tell jose can say co wasn't in the same room as somebody but uh but yeah oh sorry here's the line here's johnny cakes is everything okay you look aed. Oh, it's just the excitement of studying Jebediah. Sounds like you've come down with a serious case of Jebeditus. Just when I was getting over my Chester A. arthritis. Did you have arthritis? Um, no.

And that was an ad lib by Donald Sutherland. That you have arthritis was an ad lib. And Lisa's like no i think uh that is a very uh hashtag relatable moment in that you are joking around with somebody on very different wavelengths and like they don't really they don't really mesh up that well when you're trying to joke back with a joke they gave you yeah so once lisa finds us out and does some extra digging and sees that hans sprungfeld was a real person and existed in time then lisa transforms into what i definitely was at one point the the annoying kid at the dinner table saying like well actually did you know i it's about the original pilgrims maybe maybe it's because i found drugs or something but uh i was one of these insufferable logic lords at one point

in my life too and eventually i learned that being liked is more important than being right which is a big part of the end of this episode i guess but i i'm just happy that i'm not currently like uh listening to ben shapiro right now oh god oh no uh but i mean tristan were you this uh as well in high school or when you started learning the truth about history? Oh, definitely. And I was that way about, I was looking through my old Facebook posts recently because they had that big Twitter thread of like, here's how to download all the things that Facebook knows about you.

And they have all your messages, all your phone calls, et cetera. So through that, I was looking through my old messages and it was just a lot of posts of me going, hey, here's the end of this conversation that we had earlier. I'm posting on your wall. Here's the thing.

I was right. I was right. And just, like, getting increasingly sadder and, like, annoyed replies. I'm thinking, like, oh, oh, okay. You know, the episode had come out 10 years before I had sent those messages, but I hadn't really gotten that that lesson yeah no i i was like that too i almost i basically stopped talking to one friend in middle school because i was very insistent and i and i was right but i was very insistent that the teenage mutant ninja turtles original film was a new line cinema release. And he's like, no, it was FHE. That was the first logo on the VHS.

I was like, yes, that's who put out the VHS. But the film was made by New Line Cinema. He's like, fuck you. And then one day, the next day, I went over to his house with a VHS copy. Oh, my God. Oh, no. And turned to the back and like see copyright you see the copyright is here and unsurprisingly that didn't make us friends again me pointing that out that

is what i mean uh so lisa is doing this for like i think good reasons but you can see how this sort of mindset is very appealing to a young nerd where it's like well it's hard to make friends i'm not good at sports i'm not very charismatic i probably't date anyone, but I can always be right about things. And that will be my thing. And dear God, I was insufferable. There's a great gag about it, too, in this type of thing in Rick and Morty, in Rick and Morty season one, when he has to start raising that alien child that he created. Oh, yeah, yeah. Where he quickly goes through adolescence when he becomes a teenager

he runs out through the streets and he goes like the original pilgrims killed the indians and jesus wasn't born on christmas day blah and it's just it's all the things you immediately say at once as a teenager like you know this is everything's bullshit man and this is all what kanye west is currently tweeting yes it's oh no hey you don't't know where Kanye is at by the time people hear this episode. That's true. Play the jingle. Hurry up. But though Lisa's discovery is more innocent, she just – Lisa has a natural inquisitiveness,

but this is what happens when you start learning history that is not the accepted patriotic history. I mean, the fact that there is a photo of han sprungfeld and it's a very easy mystery to solve you don't need to be encyclopedia brown to put the pieces together like somebody should have found this out before uh but here's part one of the han sprungfeld truth hear ye hear ye what's for breakfast toast i don't understand demar the old toast what would you say if i told you the jeopardized springfield wasn't as great as he's cracked up Y'all toast! What would you say if I told you that Jebediah Springfield wasn't as great as he's cracked up to be? Look, Jebediah was really a vicious pirate named Hans Sprungfeld.

His tongue was bitten off by a Turk in a grog house fight. No tongue, eh? How did he talk and eat and laugh and love? He had a prosthetic tongue made out of silver. Yes, that'd do. He was one of the evilest men of the 1780s. He even tried to kill George Washington. The dastard! The dastard.

I love dastard. I love grog house fight. That's a great line, too. I just love the idea of getting your tongue bitten off by a Turk in a grog house. It sets a very vivid scene. It does. It does. And the idea of a silver tongue to go with Washington's wooden teeth, which aren't real in this reality.

They really were. So then they cut to the famous unfinished portrait of Washington being done by Gilbert Stewart. That's the man who did it. And I love that Hans's arrival is like, give me all your money. Like he doesn't, there's no political reason he is attacking George Washington. He just wants to rob him. And he jumps to the window wearing a pirate hat. Yeah, it's so beautiful. And then he said that they intentionally animated the fight to be like the final battle at the

end of the first lethal weapon. Okay, wow. The battle between Mel Gibson and Gary Busey, back when they were both not crazy. I can tell you more about this famous portrait, though, by Gilbert Stewart. It was painted in 1796, although this episode said it was painted in 1781. And I don't think there was a reason it went unfinished, but he went on to base 100 portraits of Washington off of that. He kept it, and he sold portraits of Washington based on that original portrait that he painted while Washington was sitting across from him.

Wow. Yeah. And that's basically the most famous type of painting of Washington. It's more or less what you see in the dollar bill today, right? Yeah. It was modified to be on the one dollar bill i think they flipped the way he was he was uh facing but a version of that um a version of that washington is on our money now and then we get a great wooden teeth to the balls joke i feel

like on a lesser show or in later simpsons they would have just drawn the teeth on the balls but they just let the implementation yeah like you you just imagine it you know in a more painful way than it would have looked if they just drew what you imagine is worse and is he barefoot in this scene uh no only in lisa's dream he's barefoot yeah because well because he has to for the ninja choke he puts on yeah but not in this one their their battle is interrupted by the arrival of Betsy Ross. I got the white stars you wanted, but I couldn't find any red hearts, yellow moons, or green clovers. Well, I'll use it, but I'm not paying for it.

Next time Hans Sprungfeld was seen, he had changed his name to Jebediah Springfield. Lisa, honey, when my family first came to this state, they had a choice of living in Springfield or Stinchburg. You know why they chose Springfield? Because everyone knows Jebediah Springfield was a true American hero. End of story. I believe you, honey. You do?

Of course I do. You're always right about this type of thing, and for once, I want in on the ground floor. Oh, thanks, Dad. The show can only be so long, but I kind of wanted to see more of Marge butting heads with Homer and Lisa. I mean, this is a longer show. In fact, there's no chalkboard gag. In this one, they just cut right to the house in the beginning. So, yeah, it's a long episode to begin with.

Marge's defensive history is just a nice little first moment of the resistance Lisa's going to see. I mean, she gets enough, I guess, more from Marge would be kind of even more painful to see. Yes, yeah. To get it from her mom, of all people. Well, she was you know, her family is in the museum so maybe she feels a strong connection to Springfield.

She does think Springfield is a part of us all. A part of us all. A part of us all. She's a Springfield patriot. She is. So, she is the type of person like most people in Springfield, who they don't want to hear an uncomfortable, provable truth about their founding father. They're just like, no, I don't want to know this. And it's a really sweet moment between Homer and Lisa. But also, to fit with season seven and eight, it's a very meta moment.

Homer has been through enough episodes yeah where he has been at odds with lisa that he's like well i should have learned by now that even if i don't actually believe you you're always right so i'm just gonna take your side now instead of learning a lesson at the end that's great it's sweet but it's also very very smart and yeah it's it's a more clever homer than we're used to seeing at this point. It's a much nicer Homer and I've been watching a lot of these old episodes with my wife and I have

to be very choosy and selective with which ones I watch because what do you know, in this current climate, she's not super happy about watching a man be a total asshole to his friends and family and get away with it. And so we watched this one and she was like oh actually homer wasn't a total dick to everyone he loved he's really only a dick to flanders who has no problem with it apparently the flanders ability to just take it

on the chin he's like okay but yeah unlike season five and six homer is a fun homer but it is also like the biggest asshole in the world he just always gets away with he's ready to give a noggin a floggin uh but yes now lisa uh lisa innocently gives her report in and she gets a worse grade than ralph for the first time ever ralph a janie a and lisa for your essay jebediahiah Springfield, super fraud, F. But it's all true. This is nothing but dead white male bashing from a PC thug. It's women like you who keep the rest of us from landing a husband.

Ooh. Ouch. I've been called some variant of a PC thug. Oh, yes. And it never feels good. I kind of wish PC thug was the parlance instead of social justice warrior, which is the word. I hate that term so much.

Yeah, I guess it has changed. Yeah, wouldn't PC Thug be better? I don't know. I do like about this scene that, for some reason, Ms. Hoover is calling out everyone's grades one by one, probably specifically to stick it to Lisa, because otherwise nobody really does that. It feels like even if Ralph could get an A on this, by one probably specifically to stick it to lisa because otherwise nobody really does that it feels

like even if ralph if ralph could get an a on this is just busy work like just write sentences about this guy i don't care 18 of these will be good enough to be saved forever if you love the town then you get an a and that lisa's attack like a pc thug this is this is what people got called for in in the 90s and also now if you that, like, bad things about a historical figure, that people are just like, why you got to destroy this person? You know, you got to take the good with the bad. Like, they're inspirational figures. Any of that stuff.

Like, if you bring up the Trail of Tears, you're just like, why are you trying to just bring it down, man? Come on. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of talk in academia about this, and I spent a long time there. And I'm sure it was happening before I was there, but at the time, I'm a literature major, a student of literature, if you will. And it was still like, oh, yeah, 99.9% of the books you read are written by straight white men. And, I mean, there are some historical reasons for that, but also, like, we could read different books.

And there was a lot of push and pull about that. I was like, well, we cannot read Aristotle. We can't not read this. We can't not read that. It's like, well, maybe we could read different books and there was a lot of push and pull about that. We can't not read Aristotle. We can't not read this. We can't not read that. Maybe we can read different things too. I think you're okay without Aristotle. You're fine. Read the Cliff Notes. He's boring. I mean, was he the one who was the most gay of them?

Or was that Plato? I don't remember. One of them is made up though. Which one of Socrates? That's the number one. That's the first. I remember the mnemonic device I was given in school was SPA. So Socrates, Play-Doh, Aristotle. That's the order it goes in.

SPA. But then also, Lisa's just this poor little eight-year-old who then her teacher's just like, Peter Pizzi. Lisa could have got a viral story just out of that. Like a note of pc thug on her story she hands that to uh lisa she lisa hands out to marge or homer they they got a top rank twitter tweet oh for sure or like a reddit mega post but yeah we don't really learn a lot about miss hoover in her time on the show but and then we i guess we do learn now she's like a jaded right person, right ring person. Well, she definitely is mad at the feminist movement for making it hard for her to get a husband.

She's got some anger there for sure. That is something I've heard that I dislike from some women. I haven't heard this since I was in Ohio. But there were some women who were mad at feminism because they were like, now I have to get a job and go to school. Just like, well, I don't want to argue with a woman about why you're wrong, but there are many things you're overlooking that you can do now. Perhaps. Yeah. What I'm saying is women be right about things.

Be as right as a man about feminism. No, it's a real touching scene where Lisa is crying over being called the PC thug and being rejected when all she wanted to be was right. She's like, I'm just telling you the history I found by researching it. And Homer misunderstanding and his greasy thug when most of his plans involve grease and violence. Homer is a greasy thug. Like the plan involves greasing yourself up first. Grease yourself up real good when i think of greasing yourself up for a fight it reminds me of uh the show deadwood oh yeah there's

a great like grizzly and see quite realistic street fight in the show between dan and the the assistant of uh major dad in. And before the fight, they both greased themselves up real good to make it hard to grab them in the grappling. No baseball bats, though. Baseball having been invented the previous summer. But so Homer vows. I love Homer could have turned on her

just like everybody else, but he believes her and is supporting her so much that he's going to go with her to talk to Hurlbutt and get that fife hi mr hurlbutt oh you're back and you brought a friend town crier i'd like to ask you a few questions one where's the fife and two give me the fife hey stop i've got nothing but respect for the office of town crier, but this is well outside your jurisdiction. Oh, yeah? Well, put this in your fife and smoke it. What the... That's Jebediah's secret confession. It proves he was a fraud. The secret confessions of Jebediah Springfield. Know ye who reads it?

Oh, I think, Lisa, that you've been taken in by an obvious forgery. Unfortunately, historical research is plagued by this sort of hoax. The so-called confession is just as phony as the Howard Hughes will, the Hitler Diaries, or the Emancipation Retraction. But it explains why there's no record of Jebediah before 1795. He was Hans Sprungfeld until then. That's preposterous. Now, get out.

You're banned from this historical society. You and your children and your children's children. For three months. I thought that was the act break, but it's not. But it's a good act break if they were going to redo this edit. Yeah, if they needed a fourth commercial break, that's a good space to put it. But for three months, like that shows, Hurlbut's not a bad guy.

And he's also lonely. Also, yeah, you know what? I like that lonely reading instead of he's not sad, he's being too harsh to at least, he's like, oh, I'm so lonely. I have some info though on the other famous frauds he mentioned. Yes.

So the Howard Hughes will, I read up on this. It's pretty interesting in that after Howard Hughes died, someone dropped his will off like randomly at some Mormon church. And one of the 16 people named in that will was this gas station attendant in Las Vegas. Apparently he was out doing something. He saw what he thought was a bum at the side of the road. He gave him some money and some food and drove him back to Las Vegas. It turned out to be Howard Hughes.

Now everyone thought he was lying to get the Howardard hughes money and that he possibly forged a will but after all these years have passed it turns out that he he's probably right about this like there's a record of howard hughes like leaving and wandering at a certain point when they could have conceivably met and they could have like had this transaction i mean howard hughes you know famously had uh undiagnosed mental problems at the time so i could obviously i could totally see him just tooling despite being a very rich one of the richest men in the world just tooling around like a homeless man and like that man i feel even worse for that poor guy everybody he helped him and not only was he called a liar and a hoax like he was ripped off of millions

it said it basically ruined his life he had to like move around the country but yes so i recommend again the book citizen hughes it's written by the same guy who wrote the bible code don't hold that against him it's a very good biography of uh howard hughes's last days and the the hitler diaries were a fraudulent series of diaries supposedly by hitler uh basically written by two german journalists and released in like multiple volumes they were found to be a hoax in the 80s so that's what that's about but emancipation retraction not even slightly real and the rule of threes that's the funniest one yes the last one makes it the fake one i also i subscribe

to the belief that hurlbut knows that that is yeah he knows it's real you don't pick it up in on you know but uh when she says hans sprungfeld he kind of wretches he doesn't look at her but he kind of like seizes up a little bit because he knows for sure well i mean you'd have to just seeing a picture of hans sprungfeld in a history book tells you he's real like this is the real deal so then we head to the copy place which i gotta say they did their best to make copies, a copy place funny. The copy jalopy, as it's called. I do like the sign joke, and I don't know if I read it before.

I don't remember it, but the sign joke is we tried to make copying fun. Yeah, that does sound like the writers saying, look, we tried to make jokes here. I like it, though, because there's no way you're going to sex up at a copy shop. Yeah, it's true. I still – I have been to copy shops in recent history because I refuse to own a printer. I don't want one. I print two things a year at best and I'll just go to a copy place and do it. I'll just frequent them rather than own a printer.

What do you got? Are you guys pro-anti-copy places? Oh, I'm pro. I don't want anything else in my house and I can just walk to, actually, there's a place called

Copy World like three blocks from my apartment that's super easy for me. Oh, I just abuse the copy machine at work. See, that is what I did back when I had,

when I worked in an office, that is what I did. Same here. And at my college, I did that too. Like, oh yes, this is very important school work.

And from time to time, my husband, he still works in an office. He'll come back with some copies. He's making copies. Funny man, Rob Schneider. It's quite a reference. But I do like the joke that all paper types are the same. That's a funny joke. Yes.

100 yellow. Oh, but yeah, sorry. Let's hear comic book guys. Great movie idea. I'd like 25 copies on goldenrod. Right. 25 on canary. Canary.

25 on saffron. Mm-hmm. And 25 on paella. Okay, 100 yellow. You don't have to help me with this, Dad. Oh, sure I do. I always believe in helping a little guy, and you're the littlest guy I know.

Question. Is your name Ridley Scott or James Cameron? No, it's Homer. Well, then I would thank you to stop peering at my screenplay, Homer. And if I see a movie where computers threaten our personal liberties, I will know that you stole my idea. I'm just waiting for my kid. Mental note.

Steal his idea. I love that joke so much, that Homer would never steal his idea and never write a script but also it's a real knock at the nerds on the internet who are just like I'm writing a script and I will sell it to James Cameron who is definitely looking for movie scripts and to make it

and of the most trite idea that has been done a million times even in 1996 of computers infringing on civil liberties which are still just being made today like that's every movie it's his idea so broad and then he's like don't steal my incredibly broad idea and then ridley scott would still make a movie like that today i'm certain i james cameron only makes avatar films and by makes i mean prepares to make them for a decade. Yeah. Was 1996 the year that the net came? That was 95, I believe.

Okay. It could be 96. It was in the, it was in hackers was, hackers was 96. I do remember that. And I think strange days, definitely we were thinking about being terrified of computers by this point. We had moved on from being terrified of televisions to computers. Something with computers.

But yeah, also, you know, hope Ridley Scott's still alive by the time. Anytime I mention anybody over the age of 70, I'm like, oh, I better future-proof this in case they pass away by the time the episode airs. So then we get some Apu gags, which are, honestly, they feel like a preview of Much Apu About Nothing. Oh, yeah.

The immigration episode later this season. Hi, Apu. Can I put this poster in your window? Well, of course you can, you little pixie. You're just as sweet as the sticks which bear your name. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. Take that down.

As a semi-legal immigrant, your poster could land me in a predicament as red hot as the candies which bear that name. I like all of his candy metaphors. Yeah, candy metaphors are fun. I don't think any show would reference Pixie Stix and Red Hots these days. It's true. They're the very lower brand candy now. But I do want to point out that the poster Lisa has is based on the Wanted for Treason poster of JFK that was put around Dallas a lot right before he was assassinated. And I believe Lee Harvey Oswald might have done a few himself. He was not the writer or the manufacturer of that flyer.

He was just one of the people that was like, I don't like him either. But it was made by a guy from the John Birch Society. It was basically like, you can go online and read it. There's a scan of it online. It's just like, he's not tough against communists and he's doing all this other shit. Like, yeah, it's kind of like what a whack job thought of Kennedy in 1963.

Well, I also like, Apu jokes are a dicey situation now. And I look at them differently than i did as a kid but conceptually i like this joke that it's not a joke about apu's otherness it's that he's like if you put this flyer up i'm already on thin ice in america around patriots like i'm gonna be looked at too closely like but it's not even that he disagrees with it he's just like this will make people mad at me and this country is racist enough as it is it's sort of like after right after 9-11 at least for me if i would go into any gas station or quickie mart or whatever with a person of brown skin behind the counter there would be flags everywhere and like pro-america stuff everywhere because they had to

it would be they would be murdered otherwise like but then Lisa makes her second presentation, which I got to say, Moe and the Flyer is pretty great. Hear ye, hear ye. My daughter has something to tell you about Jebediah Springfield. Oh, that little cutie wants to do something cute. Shut up, you bum, shut up. Go ahead, Angel. Jebediah Springfield was nothing more than an evil, bloodthirsty pirate who hated this town.

Good God! Homer, you know, I support most any prejudice you can name. But your hero-phobia sickens me. You and your daughter ain't welcome here no more. Barney, show him the exit. There's an exit? Evil, bloodthirsty pirate. Hello, town jubilation committee?

I got something that's going to make you a lot less jubilant. All the barflies with their jaws hanging open is definitely a take on the producers, a reference to the producers. I love that reaction. Yeah. I can't stand it. Mo is very open of like, I support Moe's prejudices, but not this one. Hero phobia.

Hero phobia. That he supports. It's almost too smart for Moe to be like, to make you a little less jubilant. Yeah. Well, we know that Moe is an angry, hate-filled man, so of course he supports Moe's prejudices. So then they get called before the committee here.

You are tampering with forces you can't understand. We have major corporations sponsoring this event. I hope you know you're sponsoring a celebration for a murderous pirate. A pirate? Well, that's hardly the image we want for Long John Silvers. Well,

I see no way of settling this. I say we imprison them for the duration of our bicentennial. There is one way. Get the silver tongue. If Jebediah is who I say he is, then it duration of our bicentennial. There is one way. Get the silver tongue. If Jebediah's who I say he is, then it should still be in his grave. Well, I should know why they're trying to get a guess, but human decency prevents... Dig him up! Dig up that corpse!

If you really love Jebediah Springfield, you'll haul his bones out of the ground to prove my daughter wrong. Dig up his grave! Pull out his tongue. Can't we have one meeting that doesn't end with us digging up a corpse? It's even better knowing now that they dug up Taylor and peeled back his corpse and looked for poison. That was a University of Florida professor. This is just the one with a bell demanding it. They just give up because he's screaming at them.

I was like, dig up his corpse. That bell is very influential. And I have to say, for the story, Hollis needs to be in the historical society. But I feel like he should be on the jubilation committee planning all of this. He seems to be the biggest source of information about the town in the town. Well, here's a no prize guess for me. He has done it for so many years. He either hit term restrictions or he's like, I'll let somebody else do it this time.

I'll give it up to Skinner. Skinner really wants it. I'll just do this. Or, I like that, but or maybe he thinks that this will bring a ton of people into the museum and he wants to be there to reap the, well, he's not getting paid for this, I guess. The attention. Yeah, reap the attention. Though I got to say, when Lisa shows up, she's the only one there. When you would think they would have peak tourist season during the bicentennial, and yet no one's there. No one cares.

I love how Lisa says myths that got mixed up with the truth, which that is history, folks. It's true. I also think it's funny that Skinner, a POW, is the one suggesting that Homer at least be held captive for the duration of it. I didn't think of that. That's great. And, okay, Long John Silver's. What do you guys think of that chain restaurant? As somebody who – oh, sorry, Tristan, please.

I want to hear this. No, I don't have – I try not to think of it. It was someplace that I always saw on TV and I always kind of wanted to go to, but there was none in my town or none nearby. It's kind of like Sonic. I always see Sonic commercials, but there's not any Sonics for 200 miles in my location. I'd go to Sonic before Long John Silver, I'd say that. I prefer it. My grandma, when she was alive, she was from Rhode Island.

She moved to Ohio in the 60s. And yes, she had an accent like Peter Griffin. It was amazing. But she would take me to a lot of seafood restaurants because she missed eating seafood a lot. So we would go there. And also the lesser known Long John Silver's Arthur Treacher's. What? It's the name of a famous British actor from like the 30s, Arthur Treacher's.

Oh, wow. So that makes it more accurate as a fish and chip shop yes yes uh but i think i think arthur treaters could be better i mean it's both they're both trash food but uh but at long john silvers you get to ring a fucking bell if your service is good on the way out oh wow and i also like as a kid how their uh their restaurants were designed to look like ships like you'd walk in on like planks and stuff like that it was pretty neat but i've not been to one in a while there's you know bob we could go there today if you want. There's this one just a 40 minute ride away.

Dare I? Wait, where is this? It's near El Cerrito. El Cerrito, Richmond borders. That could be like the $18,000 tier. Yeah. A trip to Long John Silver's. I was never the biggest fan of Long John Silver.

In case you've never been there, folks, it is basically a fish and chip shop. So fried fish with French fries. So double fried. You get everything fried. You get a plate of brown. Well, that's really what it's about. And that's, I actually, it's not a thing west of the Mississippi, I think,

but Captain D's. Oh, no, never heard of it. I preferred it. Like, it was, there there i looked at it now like there's a hundred locations in georgia there's 71 locations in alabama but the farther you get from the coastal south the fewer captain d's there are until eventually there's none past illinois but captain d i like their version of fried dough better but that's the secret of all of those. It's just like, well, you're barely even eating the fish.

It's just a pile of like fried bits among your fish. Like you get the bits with the fish. All I know is that I love the bits. The bits are good. The bits. All I know is I ate hush puppies for about a decade before even questioning what they were. I'm like, I don't know if this is meat or something else, but they're good. It's some cornmeal.

Yeah. I mean, I did learn that later. But when I was a kid, I'm just like,'t know this is meat or something else but they're good it's some cornmeal yeah I mean I did learn that later but when I was a kid I'm just like I'll just eat these they're they're the cousin of Johnny Cakes and so we head to the graveyard Adlai Stevenson is forgotten it's funny there's like an eternal flame on his grave when no one cares about Adlai Stevenson he's no JFK he was just the vice president of Grover Cleveland, and then he lost the nomination to Williams Jennings Bryan, who never won the presidency. I guess, obviously, we know that. But he ran for president under the Democrats, like, twice. I believe Williams Jennings Bryan is also the Scopes Monkey Trial guy, I believe.

Boy, you know, maybe we should look this up. Edit this out, because we could be wrong. Okay. But anyway, but if I'm not wrong, then I'll keep it in. It's also perfect that Willie is the gravedigger too. Oh yeah, he's back being gravedigger Willie as in from season three, Street House 402, right? Seems like he just does both at the same time for the school and the graves.

And when they pull him out, I have to say, when you know the reveal later, Hurlbutt is very fast. And I guess they could only really hide it in a commercial break, so you could see the time. You don't see him obviously grabbing out the tongue. It is a very, uh, it didn't go off the cockadoody cliff or whatever. Yes,

the cockadoody cliff. And by the way, William Jennings Bryan did represent the prosecution in the Scopes Monkey trial. Boom, he was the bad guy, or I guess he was on the side of jesus i won't let's not let's not pick sides i do want to say that shot of them uh is pretty you know i like the atmosphere the smoke rising up and looking directly at their faces but it is kind of like one of those cursed simpsons images with like several characters all at once looking

dead-eyed at the camera and some of them look okay but like Hurlbut in particular who's up on the top right and he's got like this kind of like weird like melty face like one eye is off kind of like drifting into his sideburns a little bit. It's very cursed. Front-facing Simpsons

are all cursed. It's true but the scene is like has done so well in terms of animation in that whenever they do like a shadow layer, especially at this time, it's a lot of extra work in terms of just the physical production of the show. So they use it sparingly. When they use it,

it's used very well. But yes, the coffin is open and it's up to Wiggum to dig around. Jebediah Springfield has been replaced with a skeleton. No, that's the skeleton of Jebediah. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, uh, well, let's start looking for that silver tongue.

Don't forget to look in his shoes. When I lose something, sometimes it turns up in my shoes. Actually, if it's anywhere, it would be lodged in the sinus. All right, here goes. Forgive us, Jebediah. We mean no disrespect. Well, that settles that. There is no silver tongue.

Is there, Bonesy? Oh, I wish, Chief. With that kind of dough, I could buy me some eyeballs. Ha, ha, ha. Well, that's the spirit, Bonesy. Why don't you sing a song for the nice people? All right. Camptown ladies, sing this song. Do-da, do-da. Camptown ladies, sing a song for the nice people all right camp town ladies sing this song

that's great uh i mean we don't see the animation here but i love how into it everyone is and i love like mayor uh quimby like leaning in with a big dopey grin on his face like yeah i love it so that's it's just so amazing that they are disturbing the corpse of their George Washington. Yeah. And yet, first off, Wiggum doesn't realize how horrible it is to rip the head off of him. And then second, no one is offended by it. He's doing a bad ventriloquist act with the head of the city's founder. And they're all just like, oh, you want to sing us a song?

Yeah. They're all just loving it. No one thinks it's. And just the way he's acting with Bones, like, rock-a-bye-me-shy-balls. and they're all just like oh you want to sing us a song yeah they're all just loving it no one thinks and just the way he's acting with bones like rockabye me schweibels he's a natural showman that wig on well i mean he wants an excuse to wear makeup that is true finally but that wigum and bonesy were not for cromulent being i think the line yeah wigum and bonesy is my other line of the episode that just really takes and Bonesy is my other line of the episode. It's great how that just really takes over the scene. One thing I noticed upon this viewing, though,

is that for as important as Jebediah Springfield is, he gets a regular shmegular grave. It's not even like a fancy grave or a tomb. It's just like amongst everybody, just a normal headstone. That's true. The Springfield Historical Society, if they're going to put him back in the ground,

they should at least pay for like a mausoleum or something there. Yeah, for sure. So seemingly Lisa is wrong and it comes with a price. Hear ye, hear ye. Everybody makes mistakes. Let's go home. Not so fast, Simpson. This foul business was all your fault.

By the power vested in me, I hereby strip you of your ceremonial bell. No! No! No! And try corner hat. You will have the hat cleaned and then return it. He's got a filthy scalp, that Homer Simpson. Without his hair covering it, it's just his stinky skin on the top of his head.

I do like the subversion, though, in this episode in that Homer does not need to be convinced by Lisa. He's convinced immediately. And then Lisa seemingly seems to be the one who is wrong. And Homer is disappointed in that. I also love his hear ye, hear ye. We all make mistakes. He tries to end it right there. And I love the foley in the next scene where Homer is sadly like rocking an alarm clock back and forth.

It's like someone just went out and bought one and they did that up to a mic. Yeah. Like knocking it back and forth. It's like someone just went out and bought one and they did that up to a mic. Yeah. Like knocking it back and forth. Click, click, click, click. If you try to make it alarm yourself and you're not moving your arms quickly, that's just what the ringer will do on its own. It's just well-observed.

It's beautiful. And I loved Homer's sadness. It was a quieter version of his sadness of like, play there, please. And he didn't like, I think a season 5 or 6 Homer would have lashed out at Lisa but he just like sort of, he's resigned and he just like doesn't want to dump it

on her. He still apologizes to her of like I shouldn't have let you let me get carried away I think a good equivalent might be the jug blowing scene where Homer does yell at Lisa while doing the rhythmic jug blowing and here, uh, Homer does yell at Lisa while doing, while doing the, uh,

the rhythmic, uh, jug blowing. And here he's just doing it himself by himself, not blaming anyone, but Homer. That's true. He's,

he's grown some, uh, he will ungrow later on. Uh, but yes, then we get Lisa's nightmare, which is pretty beautiful too. It's got some more Hans versus Washington action, which is just beautiful.

Why did you dig up the bones of the past? Why did you disturb the ghosts of history? I, I... General Washington? You did some good work exposing Jebediah, Lisa. Don't stop now. There's just one piece left in the puzzle. But I've caused so much trouble already, General Washington.

I can't go on. We had quitters in the Revolution, too. We called them Kentuckians. Well, I'll just have to find another little girl to be president. What's your friend Janie's number? No, not Janie. She'll pack the Supreme Court with boys. I want to help you, George Washington. Even your dreams are square.

Lisa is only given a friend for the benefit of a joke. Yes. Like, Janie's only there. It's like we need somebody else with Lisa or somebody who's Lisa adjacent to mention. It's more like Lisa has no friends. Yeah. Lisa is such a square that she calls George Washington General Washington because it's more period accurate to that time frame of George Washington rather than president. Yeah, I guess for 1781 he wasn't yet president.

What's kind of cool, though, is he comes in through the window just like uh hans does in the historical flashback so they both come in through windows but washington opens he doesn't break through it that's true he's more he's more respectful but also for my research i don't exactly get the joke on kentuckians and say unless it's just a humorous non sequitur so kentucky it was a commonwealth of virginia during the uh revolutionary war not a lot of people lived there until around the war they all moved they got more settlers there during the battles and it became a state around the time springfield was founded actually 1792 and it's the 15th state kentucky is so i'm not sure why they would call them kentuckians again it could just be an unsecretor but if there's any big history nerds

out there could tell us i i'm dying to know i like to think that he just has a weird grudge against kentucky that's not explained it's true yeah well i guess he was a virginian so maybe he was mad at the people who went south of the border to kentucky and also a fear of packing the supreme court with boys yes in general that was that was the charge that well it's not the charge it is what fdr tried to do fdr tried to make there be four more supreme court justices so all right uh so he could or three i forget definitely more just so he's like why can't get more shit done if the supreme court would stop saying it's unconstitutional but really how many uh justices do you appoint in one term i mean our current president looks like he might get lucky and get like three

it's true not together that is the big fear of mine if the current president packs the supreme court with boys yes yeah his choice in boys i don't think would be particularly good i don't think he'd pick a good woman either i think whoever he would want is no matter what gender not great but this is just one of our shortest clips ever but i just love this little line here can you open my milk mommy i'm not mommy ralph i'm miss hoover it's not there for any reason it's just like a very observational little kid thing i'm sure it's happened in your class at some point like growing up somebody calls the teacher mom

i fear i might have done that even myself at one time or at the very least i laughed at other kids calling them uh her mommy there was on more than one occasion i was in a class and one of the students was the child of the teacher which you'd think they would switch that around, but they, they didn't. And there was definitely a mommy or daddy at one point, even though it was accurate, it was no less hilarious to the little child.

You know, I didn't have a class when I had classes, I, with a teacher, her student was in the school, but they were not in my class. So the, but one day he in my class so the but one day he got bullied and then the teacher was very mad the next day just like how could you how could

you children do this like which i felt she was right to be angry but also you're you're not helping your kid with the with the cruel students in this class my favorite observational thing about little boys is actually from South Park, and that how Butters will pull his pants and underwear down all the way to use the urinal. And there was always one kid that did that, and I was like, well, yeah, I guess that's just, you know, the most common

sense way to pee, but we gotta use our flies here, gentlemen. It's how you were taught by your parents, and it's just that you never grew up to learn a better way. The slightly less weird kids would go into the toilet stall and pull their pants down to pee yeah if you had to do that you at least knew like i don't need to show everybody my butt i can do this privately in this room even if i want to pull them down that way after this point the episode basically becomes an episode of

murder she wrote yeah i really like murder she already She Wrote, or Columbo, or any of those types of shows. There's a parlor scene even at the end of this. No, I mean, her grilling of Hurlbutt is very much Angela Lansbury here. What are you doing here? I was right about Jebediah, and now I can prove it. Oh, please, not that claptrap again. Haven't you hurt Jebediah enough with your childish tales of pirate ships and fisticuffs and a silver tongue that can't be found? That's because you stole it.

That's a lie. I'm an antiquarian, dammit. It's my job to seek out the truth. But when you found the truth, you couldn't take it. You couldn't stand that you devoted your life to a fraud, so you covered it up, didn't you? No. Didn't you? No, that's preposterous to a fraud, so you covered it up, didn't you? No. Didn't you? No, that's preposterous.

I mean, I couldn't. You can't. Stop it. Where's the silver tongue? I like how they didn't put jokes into that scene. Yeah. The tension is played for just played straight. There's no gag to it.

It's just like, spill it. And Donald Sutherland is doing a great job acting under the pressure and then especially the the animation on the wiggling mustache just like it's beautiful right and that his eyes like flit away and just give it away where he's been hiding the tongue in plain sight i guess that's also when he says i'm an antiquarian damn it that's all you need to know like well why didn't he just destroy it he couldn't it's history he can't destroy history but he just has to hide it to have an actual seem content to leave the uh scrap of paper in the trash he had two chances to get rid of that that scrap of paper at least hide it or move it somewhere when lisa put back

the pipe and then when then it was still in the trash can he was cleaning up sweeping dust under that that model lady he could have taken care of that at any time but he didn't it's true I think he didn't want to get rid of that either it was like a relic of Jebediah even if he was a fraud it's like I believed in this man it's something that he personally wrote so I guess it's still

meaningful to him it is funny to see him sweeping dirt underneath something both metaphorically and literally. I just got that. Yep, same. I just got it. So it's a great plot point that he was written on the portrait tear, which that's not why that painting

isn't unfinished because somebody tore off a piece of it, but it's a great little addition to history. I love it. I like how they built that mythology and hopefully made a bunch of kids think the wrong thing. So here's Harold Butt's confession. I thought no one would ever find it. When I pried open the coffin, it was there.

That shiny tongue sticking out of his mouth, razzing my entire career, my life. Before the dust could settle, I pocketed it. But I thought I had you fooled. You did, until I realized that Jebediah's confession was saying more than he meant it to. How else could he have gotten this?

Sprungfeld must have taken it with him when he ran off after the fight. Exactly. This celebration is a shame. And it's all my fault. We've got to get the word out to every man, woman, and child in town. Even the music underneath it is like,

this is the scene in a detective movie where the guy's like, but how? Oh, this is how I did it. But how did you know? It's beautiful. It's great, yeah. And that it was hiding in plain sight in a diorama. Though when you see it there, you see like four screws on there.

It's like, so is it screwed into the back of Hans Sprungfeld's neck? Like, obviously, yes. A silver tongue wouldn't literally work in someone's mouth because your tongue has to move to make sounds. And a silver tongue couldn't do that. That's true. I mean, I think it was probably just attached to the stump in some way. If you look at that little diagram, it looks like it screws on to whatever was remaining of his tongue.

It looks like it goes on to the molar. It's just like right on to the tongue. That drawing, if you look at the drawing that they show in Lisa's book or whatever, I forget where it shows up, but it's a very detailed drawing of how that would actually work in your mouth oh yeah it's like it's like an etching or something it's very well done and uh it ends with them running to the parade which that also feels like a very 1970s political drama ending of that donald sutherland would

have started like we gotta get to the parade it's it's uh the only one i can think of by name is in blowout the brian de palma film that ends at a big celebration where uh one character gets murdered because and nobody hears it happening in plain sight because it's nighttime and there's a fireworks barrage going off so it drowns out the the the character screaming i don't want to spoil blowout for you which is a pretty good movies but yeah it's a pretty good movie it's a adaptation of blow up but uh blowout stars john travolta john lithgow dennis and dennis franz young dennis franz who looks as old yeah it's simple it's but he looks as old as he does in 1996 in this 1979 movie. We get to Lisa's speech and we also get confirmed that, never forget this,

Quimby considered killing Lisa, a political assassination of Lisa Simpson. Quimby considered this. All right. Stop. Stop everything. Stop the parade! What? What's going on here?

This is highly unorthodox. This is Lisa Simpson. She's discovered something very important about Jebediah Springfield that you need to hear. People of Springfield, I, um, I don't know quite how to say this. Don't be shy, little girl. Think of Jebediah, and the words will come. I did a lot of research on Jebediah Springfield, and... I think I can pick her off.

Wait, let's see what she has to say. She sees all the people in the audience. Jebediah Springfield was... Flags everywhere. Jebediah was... A veteran. Great. I just wanted to say that I did some research and he was great. Great. It was great.

So to use the common parlance of our times, Lisa had a reverse facts don't care about your feelings moment. She's like, oh, these facts would hurt feelings. I'm going to keep them to myself. Well, I guess let's dig into that. The ethical question of what Lisa did. Well, Tristan, you brought it up first. So what are your feelings on this now and at the time of the episode airing? I kind of compare it to – I compare it to two things.

One is the very easy comparison that I thought about this episode while watching before I knew about Taylor was Christopher Columbus, who we still celebrate him – I think is it a national holiday still, Columbus Day? I think so. For some people, yeah. And obviously he's a genocidal

monster. He's a terrible person. Not a lot of people want to hear that. He's Italian. And I do think that in that case, people should know. And there's another case. There's a folk hero of my own from a small town that i

grew up in in oregon uh by the name of uh bobby the wonder dog back back in 1923 bobby was lost in indiana and his family couldn't find him so they just like went back to oregon because they were visiting family and uh six months later bobby the wonder dog shows up in town having traveled 2500 miles uh supposedly he's like celebrated all over the place he gets keys to the city when he dies rinton tin is trained to put a wreath on his grave he's like a huge deal wow and in town there's all sorts of murals on my town there's a huge it's a very long and huge mural with a statue of Bobby. There's a dog house right there. It's more or less homeward bound. And, you know, I researched it again after this episode made me think of it.

And I can't find anywhere that confirms my suspicion that that story is complete bullshit. Like 2,500 miles, crossing rivers, crossing the mountain range during the dead of winter i don't i don't believe it for one second but like ripley's believe it or not you know backs it up all sorts of oregon historical societies back him up his his body is still buried up in portland people want to exhume his body and bring him back to the small town oh my god funnily enough because it's such a point of pride. In that case, in Bobby's case, I don't think it's worth raising a stake. And in Christopher Columbus's case,

I would say certainly. Yeah. In Jebediah Springfield, I don't feel like I got a good enough idea of how bad a person he was. Was he a genocidal maniac? I just, he's a pirate. I guess he tried to murder someone.

All I saw was him getting in a fight with George Washington. Yeah, I totally agree with you in that they make Jebediah sort of a cartoonishly villainous man. It wasn't like, the episode could have been like, oh, this guy had like a child slavery ring or did other very, very bad things, but he's just like a thief

and a crook. The worst Lisa finds in her research on him is that he was a gross grog house fighting guy who who just tried to rob washington and i guess would have killed him in a scuffle but wasn't like a potential assassin he just was a failed uh thief and it was more that he hated the town when it's like no this man loved the town and i mean i would like to know more of the idea of like, well, why did he become Jebediah Springfield and lead these? How did Hans Sprungfeld decide to lead a bunch of settlers to

Springfield for Maryland? Was it part of his plan to escape Maryland where he was on the run as Hans Sprungfeld? It could have been. I smell another sequel episode. I'm pitching it right now to Dan Graney, man. He should do it.

Yeah. I think there's, there's a little more to go in there of like why did hans do it and maybe there's more information there that would that would fix him i i'm of the belief of innocence is bliss on that stuff and it it feels great to it's a childlike innocence it's why people don't like people who i don't think are personally racist or particularly love the Confederacy. They're like, but my school or my flag was always this flag or this in where my town is. That's where this Confederate monument was. Or that's, it's just part of what grew up and I didn't want to think about it that much. So I didn't. You're just upsetting. You're upsetting someone's reality, which I could get why people have a negative reaction to it there are certainly people who defend those types of monuments and history for evil purposes

not just wanting innocence but either way i think it's like i i feel america or ourselves society would be in a better place if you accept the negative things that happened in the past there's there's actually a really good documentary on kind of the subject too called happy valley which is a 2014 documentary on the penn state uh oh boy i want to see this now it's it's really great it's it's not just about so if you know anything about the penn state stuff it ends with joe pa dying like 40 minutes in and then the other hour is just about how everyone in the town in Pennsylvania how they're dealing with it and they're just like our dad was bad we need to find a new dad or this town and other people you get to see all these

people trying to justify it or trying to say like look this guy was bad yeah but that's not the players like give us a, come on, man. Don't take down the, it's, you get to see people have to deal with that kind of thing getting exposed and how it's much, it's why the film's called Happy Valley and not any of the principal players by name in it. It's just really about how the town reacts to it. I'd much rather watch that than the HBO movie with Al Pacino oh god you're right oh the documentary is much better yeah I mean for me I think uh I saw this probably last maybe a

decade ago and at the time I was probably thinking you know like Lisa should have told them and they should have known because Lisa was right so I thought this I love this episode but I felt like the ending was kind of a cop-out now that I've mellowed out a lot I'm like no I agree with the episode's take on things like ultimately Han's what they showed of him it was not bad enough for everyone to need to know and have their fun ruined in fact like Lisa reminds me

of a modern figure that likes to ruin fun Neil deGrasse Tyson or it's like this announcement could have been her Neil deGrasse Tyson tweet. I mean, the most recent insufferable thing I've seen him tweet was, people say save the Earth, but actually the Earth is going to be just fine after we're gone. Like, you know what we meant, Neil. You know what we meant.

You all know what it means. Like, we get it. Yeah. Please. Yeah, I mean, I remember when he was the cool scientist. Now he's just like, actually, I have to correct you on this. No, I... I do believe that Lisa would have been better off tweeting this information or, like, putting it in a newspaper or doing something else other than standing in front of Springfield's largest mob in a town prone to breaking out into riots. That's true. It's not exactly the time or place for that kind of thing, I guess.

She should know i mean she she is eight but maybe probut should know the town a little bit better by now than to make that kind of thing yeah uh known because you know people at the bar didn't react well think about you know hundreds of thousands more people i think he spends too much time by himself in that historical museum he doesn't understand people too well so here's lisa's reasoning for not sharing why didn't you tell me because the myth of jebediah has value too it's brought out the best in everyone in this town regardless of who said it a noble spirit and biggins the smallest man that's uh so uh co-showrunner bill oakley does not like that uh he did not want to put that in but everyone else says it's a good button on that it's it mixes the the sweetness with also the uh

you know the you know subversion of that the simpsons loves to do so well it feels very murkiny actually yeah murkiny or or mike scully kind of style. Like, no, someone should try to murder Lisa. Like, but just fail. I'm glad Oakley let it through. Even after she's already decided not to go public with the information, they were like, let's get her just to be sure. She could change her mind. This information can't be out there.

I also like, like, what other show in 1996 would have made a joke about assassinating a child joke about assassinating a child yes almost assassinating a child and that not that not being a huge stink on the news or whatever can you believe the simpsons did this also as long as i'm making movie recommendations lisa's deciding to not share the truth is kind of a reference to the man who shot liberty valence which is one of my favorite westerns old classic western it's a john ford john wayne film it really is one of the best end of the west kind of stories it's not just john wayne but also lee marvin and jimmy stewart and jimmy stewart's

really the star of it so it is about jimmy stewart is a man who was a representative from this western town then became a senator and is on his way to maybe being vice president and from there president but he became famous in the town for being the man who shot liberty valance who was the bad guy in town but he comes to town when the character played by john wayne has just passed away and then jimmy stewart's character tells the story of what really happened, that it was John Wayne who shot Liberty Valance, not Jimmy Stewart. And he just, John Wayne was fine. John Wayne told him then, look, Pelgrim, just let everybody think it's you.

I'm getting out of town. He got famous on a lie. And now at the funeral for John Wayne's character, he is letting his demons out and letting a news reporter and local law enforcement know the truth that he had always known. And this is what the news reporter says as he's tearing up the story that he was just told. Well, you know the rest of it. I went to Washington. We won statehood. I became the first governor.

Three terms as governor. Two terms in the Senate. Ambassador to the court of St. James. Back again to the Senate. And a man who, with a snap of his fingers, could be the next vice president of the United States. Well, you're not going to use this story, Mr. Scott? No, sir.

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. the legend i love it yeah i love that scene though that's also like you know maybe people in that in the same case in this town that what's going to help that town or the world it's like no this guy was a fraud he didn't actually shoot this person it doesn't really help anybody yeah i think a lot of a lot of fiction is drawn from that or maybe just the popular trope because i i can't think of any specific examples but i know it doesn't really help anybody. Yeah, I think a lot of fiction is drawn from that, or maybe it's just the popular trope, because I can't think of any specific examples,

but I know I've seen a lot of the idea of the legend being more important than the facts. So then we get to the end here. Just one last dangling thread to be fixed. Well, hey, it's Homer. Good to see you, Nate. Get lost. Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! He is not the official town crier police do something well i'd like to man but it's too damn good let him march boys let the man march and that is an animal house

reference which i didn't know no me neither i don't particularly care for i don't either but i love i love the animation on the scene where it is Flanders marching with everyone behind him, the crowd moving by, and it's like a dead-on shot of him. It's so well done. Like, way to go. It's Mike Anderson, right? Yeah, Mike Anderson. He really was showing off in his first show. In fact, he said on the commentary he wanted to make the biggest Simpsons crowd ever for his first role as director. And I think at that point, it might be the biggest crowd ever.

Yeah, I think so. Some interesting details in that parade i noticed right behind flanders is what looks to be a young troy mcclure yeah model and uh also some some other weird show people showing up in the crowd right behind wiggum when he says let the man march it's it's already ziff oh wow i'll have to go back to that that's right so it's the last line of the episode and then well there's like a chinese dragon that's also a bison which i thought was very strange ah that's great that's a very good joke yeah i love that joke and that's i do wonder if eventually hans and jeb's uh similarity will be discovered by someone else i i feel like it's only a matter of time really it's the the as more

research is available like i would think by by 20 by 2009 like some cracked article would just have figured it out like hey look at these two pictures isn't this the same guy also uh another episode another cartoon that's similar to this episode is gravity falls oh in the first season there's an episode called Irrational Treasure, which involves time travel and finding out a secret about the town, which Gravity Falls is set in Tristan's Oregon as well. And in it, Dipper finds out that the man who founded the city is a lie and it was a different guy. And they get to the ending where they're like, no, it's not worth it. Don't tell his descendants, even if they're jerks, that he's a fraud josh weinstein worked on that show right yes oh my god though that was what seemed to be the moral they were coming to and then dipper the main character of the show goes

hey you know what your family's a fraud deal with it and then he says you know what what's underrated revenge i need to watch gravity falls i have access to all of it so it could be a what a cartoon someday i want it to be well then we end this episode will end with the song that ends this episode yes uh the ballad of jebediah springfield imagine an era in which credits were shown and someone writes an original song for those credits with a new singer it's beautiful it's good and it's uh written by jeff martin of uh he's a simpsons og who wrote many of the classic songs yeah uh first three four seasons i guess his biggest claim to fame on song would be the uh streetcar musical he wrote all of that yeah way to go jeff martin this episode though i want to say

really great i still it's still one of my favorites it's way up there i like i like how it dips in the lore which is a big oakley and weinstein. They're all about exploring Simpsons lore, especially in these years, where other showrunners really weren't doing that that often. But I also like the very sweet Homer story. I love Hollis. I love the mystery. It's a very well... It's like everything the Simpsons does well in one package, I think.

Yeah, I agree. It's very well-rounded. Donald Sutherland is so great. His character design, his character, that part of Springfield the very lonely little museum yeah and it's just good it's one of those episodes that is so versatile that you can

look at it different ways at different points in your life which is where I think that Simpsons really thrives I agree it's a great episode that also is a conversation starter as well it has an interesting moral dilemma that's not there's no real black and white to it and it's based on great stuff you pull out of reality too and it's kind of always going to be it's a timeless kind

of story too i like that and well animated and also donald sutherland i think is one of my favorite guest voices they've ever had oh yeah he's. He's so good as Hurlbutt. So one last thing about Donald Sutherland, who will live to the age of 1,000. Yes. He will not die soon. So I want to say that on the commentary, I learned that Bill Oakley, he said this is one of three people he didn't direct because he was too much of a wimp. So not that Donald Sutherland was mean, but he was Donald Sutherland.

And he knows what he's doing. So he was undirected, basically. So was Lawrence Tierney and also Kirk Douglas. So Kirk Douglas and Lawrence Tierney for different reasons. I also thought, I had assumed he'd won an Oscar at some point, Donald Sutherland, but no. What? Technically, yes, he got an honorary Oscar in 2017,

which that is a kiss of death if ever there is one in the entertainment industry so i'm i'm extra worried about it knowing that but no he's gonna live to 100 110 even prove us wrong donald one more thing about donald sutherland he did play a character named homer simpson in 1975 i want to say the day of the locust oh yes wow i think matt graining brought that up once or twice before but i totally forgot about that yeah i knew that was the name of the characterust? Oh, yes. Wow. I think Matt Groening brought that up once or twice before, but I totally forgot about that. Wow. Yeah. I knew that was the name of a character in that book slash movie, but I didn't know he had played him.

Wow. That's amazing. So, Tristan, we're going to do our own plugs once we get off the air with you. So can you talk about where we can find you, what you're up to? Sure. You can find me on Twitter, Tristan A. Cooper. You can also find me at dorkly.com, youtube.com slash dorkly. And we also just recently started

the Dorkly podcast. Google that. Where we, me, myself, our video producer, Tony Wilson, and Julia Lepetit, we all discuss our highs and lows in pop culture, make way too many references to both Paddington and Rampage. So if that sounds up your alley,

please come on by. No, I hardly endorse Dorkly. In fact, I wrote a few things for you guys back in the day when I was freelancing. Oh, man, I gotta look those up. I'm way on board. 2013, I think I did maybe three or four articles, maybe two. That was a bad time in my life, but I like writing for Dorkly, I'll tell you that much.

Yeah, it was a bit before my time, but that's interesting. I'll look those up for sure. Yeah, so thanks so much Tristan hopefully we can have you back sometime yeah thanks I would love that thanks so much for having me thank you so much for joining us folks for this episode of Talking Simpsons we loved having you as listeners and I will tell you about all of the

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If it wasn't clear by now so yes Thank you so much for listening I've been your host bob mackie find me on twitter as bob servo and hey listen to my other podcast retronauts go to retronauts.com and look for retronauts in your podcast machine it's a classic gaming podcast every week and occasionally with bonus episodes on friday we cover everything to do with classic gaming including up to like the playstation 2 era so if you've ever played a video game we've talked about something you like probably henry and i'm I'm at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. And you can find tweets from me there where I will also share details on these episodes coming up as well as when we do new interviews, tease upcoming interviews, and also tweet about our What a

Cartoon series where we go through a different cartoon in a series once a week in the same wonderful talking simpson style thank you so much for joining us we'll see you next week for homer the smithers see you then it's that team up jebediah springfield whip them horses, let them wagons roll. That a people might embezzle America. That a man might embezzle his soul. His soul. His soul. Yeah.