Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Lisa The Simpson With Kate Leth

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

It's the end of the Bill & Josh era, and we're joined by returning guest, screenwriter/artist/comic maker Kate Leth (check out her Patreon right now!) for the special occasion! Lisa fears her mental gifts are slipping away and does her best to resist the Simpson genes. Meanwhile, Apu becomes an entertainer thanks to the lucky freezing of an elderly old man. All that and stories of playing a millionaire at parties on this week's podcast! Listen now, because my legs hurt! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron!  

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a special mini-series just for you we're going through the entire first season of king of the hill and you can only hear it if you're a five dollar and up patron at patreon.com slash talking simpsons we're giving the talking simpsons treatment to all 13 episodes of king of the hills first season and if you want a free sample you'll find the first episode available for free in the talking simpsons feed patreon.com slash talking simpsons it's the only place you'll find the first episode available for free in the Talking Simpsons feed. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. It's the only place you'll find the first season of Talk King of the Hill. Made you go click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

It's real easy, man. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, the Frito in your bag of Doritos. I'm your host, Attractive Nuisance Bob Mackie. This is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today. Henry Gilberton. My legs hurt. And who do we have on the line? Oh, hi. I'm Kate, and I have a quote that is appropriate for this, I'm sure.

And today's episode is Lisa the Simpson. Dear Log, can it be true? Do all Simpsons go through a process of dumbening? Wait, that's not how you spell dumbening. Wait, dumbening isn't even a word. Today's episode aired on March 8th, 1998, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my god! Happy International Women's Day, Bobby! SAG honors Gloria Stewart for her career that was topped with the release of Titanic, where she played Rose.

Bob's favorite video game, Wario Land 2, arrives on the Game Boy. One of my favorites, but it's still very good. And The Big Lebowski debuts at number five at the box office because nobody's watching that when it's in the theaters. But that was a classic. I think that was one of the first DVD

hits of like, passed around the DVD and told everybody, nobody watches, but this is the coolest movie. Now fans have come close to ruining that movie. I think so, yeah. Lots of guys like to explain why it's great. Those are awesome conversations to have. The movie's about nothing. Isn't that

great? Did you know that like white Russians are good drinks, Bob? I know you enjoy a white Russian. I do, I do. Though sometimes the dairy can upset my stomach a little bit. More often I go with Screwdrivers because that was the drink of Samuel L. Jackson's character in Jackie Brown. So I only drink things that are drank in the movie. But also, yes, Gloria Stewart, old actress in Titanic.

That was her 1998 award season was her time to be celebrated. Like everybody was, I feel like they gave her like a round of applause, like once an hour at the Academy Awards that year. And of course, Wario Land 2. Yes. I shouldn't even talk about Wario Land 2. I also do the podcast Retronauts, by the way. You probably know that.

But if not, episode two of our newest run is all about the Wario Land games. But these games are amazing. They're not anymore because Nintendo doesn't make them anymore, but Wario Land 2, you can still buy it on the 3DS digitally. I recommend it. That was such a clever idea of Wario can't die. That's the character design of it.

What do you do in a platformer where the main character can't die? What happens then? It was really clever. You have a whole Wario Land episode of it, don't you? You were on a recent wario ware episode and those games are just as experimental but you know what who cares about that we're here to talk about the simpsons and our guest today is kate leth she's back after bard after dark yes yeah welcome back kate hello hello my triumphant return and uh in case people don't know this is her first time hearing her on

the show she's a comic creator animation animation writer, so much great work. She also, right now on your Patreon, you've been doing some really great comics. I've been enjoying your autobiographical ones in your bat form are some really great ones. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's something new that I'm trying out and having a lot of fun with. Though I haven't seen many many simple friend in a while. I was going to ask you about that.

I know. I know. I really want to get back to them. I just, it was of such a specific era because I was drawing them when I worked in an office and those legal pads that they were drawn on were gift, like so ubiquitous. There were so many of them everywhere in the office.

So I drew them at work and scanned them on my work scanner and I don't work at that job anymore so it's like it just feels wrong it just feels wrong so i'm hoping i get back into an office because i need that energy i think it would feel weird to personally buy a legal pad yeah i took one when i left the office or i took like three of them where i'm like well i have to keep doing simple friends but yeah But yeah, it just hasn't clicked. But they will come back eventually. And this also is, I think this was a great episode to have you on because this is like such a sweet, lovely Lisa episode. Yeah. I don't know. I wonder if there's ever been a better, since this one, if there's been a better Lisa episode.

Like this is such, this one has a lot of respect for her which i i like that too like it's not other lisa episodes we've seen including ones you know the in the previous season they often sell out lisa or make her into like i love the lisa slurry episode but it makes her into a monster because she's here to trust burns and it felt like it was just crapping on her love of environmentalism and vegetarianism. And season nine is not a very sympathetic portrayal of Lisa for the most part. No, they get more jokes out of her being mean or being mean to her. Or like early what we would call virtue signaling jokes.

I'm sorry to use that word, but that's what they're trying to do with Lisa at times. I don't like those jokes now. I feel like in 98, those jokes, maybe they came from a slightly better place than the assholes who do those jokes now, but I still don't like them. Henry, it was 1998. We fixed every problem. End of history. Yeah, 21st century. Here we come. Oh, but sorry, Kate. Is Lisa a favorite of yours on the show? Absolutely. I mean, I was like weird, smart girl kid. So she was always a character that I loved. And it was it's so frustrating now as an adult to go back and look at all the times that I

thought that she was this sort of whiny buzzkill because because of what you're saying, like the unsympathetic episodes, but ones like this, it's the same with Marge, you know, I feel like a lot of because it was primarily guys writing since it's always and still is, I think. But yeah, so Marge and lisa can come across as like whiny and naggy and all those kinds of things and i love the episodes where they get to not be i love the episodes where they get to be fully fleshed out people and that's that's really great and this episode's like so fun for that well this episode has a different tone than the past i don't know 20 we've done so far because it is the final episode show ran by season seven and eight

showrunners bill clee and josh weinstein it was produced for season eight with the season eight staff held over till the end of season nine and it's written by uh ned goldryer who was on the show for just like a year yeah yeah it's uh there's some interesting stuff on there i mean well first off with the bill and josh i think they not only are they probably the the simpsons writers we are personally closest with because we've interviewed them multiple times. Friends of the show and personal best friends to both of us. Wow. But, but also I think they are, their seasons are my favorites. Like, and I think they really celebrate the show history well while making new stuff. And they're incredibly geeky guys. And in their i think bill said to us even in an interview that

he regrets not hiring more women on the staff in his time and um but i do think they were more feminist than a lot of simpsons right i mean they wrote the most feminist episode of simpsons ever lisa versus malibu stacy so they sure ran a huge huge fan of that one obviously yeah and in that one like lisa i felt like they still had a few jokes in that one of like lisa's a buzzkill where she's upset by everything but it still was lisa was right that was a bad doll like she was yeah i remember that being so inspiring as a kid that she you know stood up and got to that point and you know actually like made a difference and i i remember yeah being a kid and being like this is cool and even though they were you know again kind of making like you're saying making that joke at her expense and ultimately it taught us all that idealism cannot be crass

capitalism a new hat it's difficult yeah she tried though she tried though she sold it you know she sold it to one girl yeah exactly. Exactly. And that little girl paid $400,000 for it or whatever the number was. But yeah, Ned Goldreier, he wrote this episode and he wrote the Easy Bay Coven segment for Treehouse of Horror. Oh, so good. Is it eight? Yeah. Sorry. Those are all mixed up in my head.

But yeah, I got some stuff from the commentary on this one. Bill Oakley had to make a few executive decisions on this because this is their last episode for The Simpsons. They want to make it as perfect as possible ned goldreier wanted to call this episode suddenly stupid because suddenly susan was a popular show by virtue of being after seinfeld i'm guessing not for any other merit of its own but bill was like no it should be lisa the simpson because it fits into the simpsons naming scheme of homer the blank bart the blank so yeah we've had a number of episodes like that i i didn't know that ned was staffed for the longest yeah i didn't either they make it clear and there's also kind of

a now that i know more about how shows are staffed and in different eras i i got a little chuckle that bill said like oh we hired these three guys including you ned and a lot of you guys didn't stick around which seems seems like he's making statement of we made these hires and then the next person didn't want to keep these hires and got rid of you yeah it's a fickle beast out here i tell you i'm sorry yeah no it's all right it's all right and also this is uh not only the last for bill and josh but for at least a decade yeah the last one by suzy Dieter, the first woman director on The Simpsons. Yeah, one of the best directors of their era, for sure.

Yes, for sure. Yeah, Susie Dieter, like she is just so talented. She came up in the golden years of the show, like the first four years as Mark Kirkland's like favorite assistant director. And in season five, she got her first directing gig, which uh bark gets famous yeah so good and yeah her episodes even into season eight were some of the best anime ones just have like these great touches I just think to um though one more Skinner gets together with great school confidential school confidential yeah that's her previous episode before this the oh I love that one in that one there's such a good little move where Edna kind of seductively walks towards Skinner and she like has her finger trace the table as she walks. Like that's such a little specific that Susie Dieter put in there that the scene would work the same whether it wasn't there, but it adds so much more character to it.

And there's a lot of little bits like that in here too. And I think for an episode like this, so much about Lisa, like I do think Susie added quite a lot to that. Yeah, I feel like it is very much, again, that sort of testament to how much a woman director can do with a script. Much like Wonder Woman, I feel like. It makes a big difference. There's a lot of subtlety. It's great. Though I had thought for the longest time that there wasn't another woman director after her, but I had forgotten all about Nancy

Cruz. That in season 10, Nancy Cruz becomes the lone woman on the directing staff. God, it must have been just a nightmare for them. I have solidarity and empathy, I'm sure. I guess we've yet to interview any female

staffers of The Simpsons outside of Mimi Pond. No, we got Mimi Pond and Nell Scoville. Oh, Nell Scoville, yeah. I guess N've yet to interview any female staffers of The Simpsons outside of Mimi Pond. No, we got Mimi Pond and Nell Scoville. Oh, Nell Scoville, yeah. I guess Nell Scoville was never a staffer, but neither was Mimi Pond. No, that's kind of a problem on The Simpsons part. I'd like to know what it was like to work in that environment. I really want to talk to Jennifer Crinton. Jennifer Crinton someday.

She seems too successful to talk to, though. Yeah. Not that the people we talked to weren't successful, but she's very busy with veep and all that stuff oh that's cool yeah honestly for jennifer crinton simpsons is a little bit of a footnote or an asterisk in her career that she went on to like seinfeld and veep like rest of development stuff like that yeah yeah oh but yeah suzy dieter would go on to uh she was one of the primary directors in the original run of futuramaama. Oh, wow. Cool. And also she worked on Open Season, which, you know, it was a silly talking animal movie.

She did good with what she was given on that. Does she work on the new Mickey Mouse cartoons now? I was looking at her credits. I think she kind of, she just takes... I'm thinking of Lauren McMullen. I'm sorry. Yes, yeah. Another very talented...

Those cartoons are great. They're so good. Yeah, Goldreier would go on to work on Dilbert, the animated series, not the comic strip, Grounded for Life, and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, which is a nice mix of his... He worked on more animation after that,

but also he came from Conan, so it's kind of a late night thing. I also forgot to mention in our Poochie episode, the guy in the kind of Nehru shirt, or like the collarless shirt at the writer's table in Poochie, that's Ned Goldbrier. He was such a loved member of the staff. He's one of the five writers they drew into that scene. This episode really speaks to, I think, all gifted kids.

It's definitely, I think women get more out of this probably than men do but just as a gifted kid who's worried about like you know did i squander my talents or was i as smart as i thought and is it all falling apart like that was yeah yeah oh yeah i think this episode came from the writer ned goldreier having experience as a child where he was thought to be a child prodigy or a gifted child and then when push came to shove he saw himself as a fraud and i think we all had that gifted kid experience as hosts of the show. We talked about it a few times where we were considered gifted. And then it's like, this is hard work. We never actually learned to study. And then when it came time to study, it was like, oh, no, I don't know how to do this. I was the same way. I was I'm from Canada. And I was in the this sort of 99th percentile of kids, they did this, you know, province wide test in Ontario for kids,

and then the top 1% or whatever got into this gifted program. And that happened to me, I don't remember it at all. And I literally didn't believe it until a couple years ago, when I found the actual letter at my mom's house. Because I was like, I don't think so. I don't think so. But yeah, so I went to that school for a year. And then we moved to Nova Scotia, and they didn't have the gifted program. So I went into regular school. So that was a huge adjustment, because, you know, socially incredibly different. And I had the option to skip a grade, but I'm already a little bit younger, like I graduated high school when I was 17. So they were like, Well, you can skip a grade. But my mom was like, no, no, no, no.

I think socially that would be even harder for her. Cause I, you know, if you can imagine was an awkward kid. So I stayed in the grade and yeah, it was, it was that like, oh God, am I smart? Like did I belong there? Was I, did I fake my way in somehow? And I struggled with that for a super long time. So I get it. All of the gifted kids of the nineties became podcasters. So their talents were never wasted.

I think part of it was just that I had ADD and I was on Ritalin and it helps. Yeah, for myself, I think the American gifted classes I took, or at least in Florida, when in from age 10 and up was when I was putting gifted classes. And I think it was because like, I at the start, when they gave like simple math problems, I could do those instantly. And I did, you did feel like, oh, I'm way smarter than everybody else. And I appreciate the positive goal of gifted programs, which is to like, recognize aptitude in students and try to give them more space to grow. But I think, you know, one issue that they didn't think about, at least when I was taking

them, was that it kind of the mentality it gives a kid by being told you're gifted can not be handled the right way by the child once they hear it. And they just think like, oh, then I don't have to try. That was the message I got from it. And so I turned into a procrastinator who hated doing homework or taking tests. And yeah, and it just turned into a cycle of just put off homework, put off homework, and then try really hard on the final test and get a B when I knew I could have gotten an A.

But that's the entire experience because I went off Ritalin when I went into high school and because it was, you know, I was just so robotic or I felt that way. I felt very, and it's better now because I'm, I'm, you know, I take Ad super unproductive. And yeah, again, like putting everything off to the last minute, very, very procrastinating and knew I could get a B, even if I didn't try. And that was how I coasted through all of high school. In my last math class in high school, I ended up with a 53 out of 100. That was mark for the semester and on my final exam i drew a picture of a shark because i had already gotten into college which is so entitled and shitty right but like i was you know it is funny though yeah yeah it felt right at the time i mean i went to graduate school so i think up until my late 20s i was still chasing the gifted kid high like i need it back i need to feel smarter again.

And not doing me a lot of good right now. Yeah, I stayed in advanced English classes all through high school and remedial math. Because without being on the medication that made me able to concentrate, I just couldn't do math. I'm still terrible at it. But it was bad at the time. And I hated it. And I wanted to go to art school. i loved math until i got to geometry and then i i really hated it like that's yeah algebra was fun it's easy that that stuff was easy for me but i feel like the opposite i did

actually like geometry but algebra trig that kind of kind of tripped me up once we got i used to do long division as a method of like anxiety reduction it's like if i couldn't calm down i would just do long division but it's been so many years that i don't know that i would remember how on paper and i don't even think kids like do it that way anymore math is different now i liked uh geometry up until we got to proofs and then my brain shut down where it's like prove this is a triangle like look it's a triangle i'm staring at a triangle yeah what are we doing here and also this episode i think too gets to this fear that a fear that maybe when you're the like lisa where

you're different from the rest of your family this fear that you'll end up like them and just like i don't know i i have fears of like i don't want to be like my dad for sure i have those fears but uh oh yeah uh but but at least homer i do like that they kind of address that lisa is a little too mean to them later but in homer homer's response to that is a nice one like that's why homer homer is a likable character in this instead of that that also makes this stand out from season nine because we've been remarking a lot about how season nine has a lot of fun with homer being cruel which can be funny but also it's not very nice uh and so it's it's nice

to see homer and this is is more innocent stupidity and when yeah when he thinks he's hurt lisa's feelings he tries in a bad way to help at least. Yeah, it is. I feel like it's in a way sympathetic to all the characters. I don't know. It just has a lot of really sweet moments throughout all the jokes. And I had completely forgotten that this episode was the frozen man. Yes.

Me too. Me too. Which I know we'll get to, but it started happening and I was like, oh my God. I was surprised too. I was like, oh, there's no Beast story. Oh, wait, this is the Jasper one. Yeah. That's what I also like, that this feels like a complete Bill and Josh tribute.

Because there's so many, in the Lisa story, there's a lot of sweetness and love. And also, Simpson's history in there that is in some really interesting ways. And then with the Frostilicus story you get a lot of like 1900 isms and also observational things about convenience store food yeah i really like or just convenience store culture it's a bill and josh episode we need a story about an old man in there somewhere but yes this episode begins with a lunch and a brain teaser in our first clip. I bought my lunch at the gas station. It's the kind John Grun eats when he's not in space.

Wow, just like the commercial. There's a brain teaser on the back. Professor Provolone's pigtail puzzle. That's a tough one. Got it! Is this it? Excellent, Milhouse! How about this?

Nice work, Bart! How about you, Lisa? I'll get it in a second, don't worry. Oh, of course! It's... Yeah! Champion of the world! Answer this, Professor! Hey, some of us are! Answer this, professor. Hey, some of us are still trying to solve it.

Just you. Maybe I can't concentrate because of all your cooties. It's called lice, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. He's very proud of his lice. Bill House got those lice from that monkey from Pier 1. Pier 1, yeah. Or Trader Pete's, as they called it later. This reminds me of playing Professor Layton games. Oh, yeah.

And those games make me furious with how stupid they make me feel. And then when I solve the puzzle, I'm like, you didn't explain that the right way. I'm right. Yeah, I felt that way a couple of times playing Breath of the Wild. Oh, yeah. And I would forget it. And then I'd be like, oh like oh my god that was so simple or you know it's like the solution is really simple but the actual process of doing it is is difficult yeah you do really get that like i should have gotten this you know my my

favorite moment in breath of the wild was when of that experience was i tried to do one of those like balance puzzles to make a thing go through it and then eventually i thought like oh wait you can make this puzzle move in such a way that it's like a paddle that just slaps the ball to the other side of the screen and i just did that like a hundred times until it finally fell into the place and i thought like there f you game i did it my way god anytime i got to one of the ones that was like moves with the way you move the switch yeah where it starts with the g yeah anytime i would get to one of those i'd get so frustrated because i was like oh god no i know like i can figure out the solution right away

but i know this is gonna take me an hour yeah when i first saw this i didn't get the puzzle i didn't either it all looked like uh weird to me. I was just as confused as Lisa. I guess when they were writing this, they were sharing brain teasers in the writer's room. And this is David S. Cohen's brain teaser. Totally makes sense. And nobody got it. They pretended to get it.

It feels like a very Harvard-y fun time in the writer's room there. I got it like the first try watching it this time. And I don't know if that's because I remembered it from the original airing or not. But I was like, oh, yeah, I've seen that. But I also go to this thing with some friends of mine once a month where we just do puzzles. So I feel like I have my brain is more set to that now than it might have been in other times in my life. I think the name of Lisa's lunch is the perfect boring name.

Portion time. That's great. Oh, in my life. I think the name of Lisa's lunch is the perfect boring name. Portion time. That's great. Oh, I love that. I love that. And that it's officially vegetarian. So you know she's not eating meat there. I like that too. And yeah, that John Glenn joke was interesting,

especially when I picked it apart. So that John Glenn, if you don't know, he was the first American to orbit the earth. We couldn't beat the Russians there. And then starting in 1974 to 1999, he was a Democratic senator from Ohio, Bob's home state. Yep. Terrible. He did no good for the state and he's dead now. See you in hell, space boy.

He had to be better than the Republicans. That's true. That's true. I'm sorry. But so in 1998, January 1998, so like weeks before this episode aired, he had been campaigning years before. But it was announced in January that he would be going up into space again. Oh, okay. And he would be the oldest person to ever go into space at 77. Though it wouldn't happen until October of 1998. So this was them. This almost makes it feel like an ADR line that they're saying, this is what John Glenn eats when he's not in space,

which is an even funnier line. Like John Glenn eats space food when not in outer space. I didn't know it was recent news. It felt like a clunker of a line to me. It's funnier in that context now, I and also apparently bill clinton while he was in space while john glenn was in space bill clinton sent him an email which uh a lot of people call the first presidential email though there were some ones beforehand but that again really dates it like 1998 the president sends an email what and i love the animation of the his glasses being ripped off by the vacuum seal yeah that was so funny yeah i loved that and he says just like in the commercial so it was advertised as sucking the glasses off of your face that and the nelson joke that talk about weak coffee

my favorite bits of this whole segment he stole skinner's coffee that's so great i also another my favorite gags too is the bart just takes millhouse's answer and shows it to martin yeah so it's so subtle but it's really well done yeah just so uh and and that it's all done in one shot too like i i really like that and really good like foley of a fork stabbing cardboard you can feel it yeah very viscerally satisfying when you know the end of the episode it's a really good they play it fair in a twist in this episode that like lisa really her problem is not that she is losing her intelligence it's that she is overthinking a simple thing yeah which is a pain of many intelligent people just you you have too much energy and anxiety and you overthink something simple and make it

uh an impossible task yeah exactly and we've all been there it's this is basically like writer's block that she's got here and i mean it's super identifiable i think it's it's really it's really well done that this is you know obviously one of the kids episodes, but something that's very relatable to, to adults. There's a lot of the writer experience in her in this one too, especially that the opening clip of her questioning her writing choice of like, Dominique's not even a word. Like, I love the two part of that joke. Like it's spelled wrong. That's not even a word. Great. The Simpsons will be right back. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level

to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? I gladly turned my brain to a soft Simpsons sludge because I love this podcast and I love you listeners. And we also really love our wonderful guests like this week's Kate Leth.

Be sure to follow her on at kate leth on twitter you can learn so much about her content and definitely check out her patreon she is always fun to have on thanks so much kate for coming on the show again and if you would like to support our patreon that would be a great idea it helps me and bob do this full time and record all these cool podcasts not just talking simpsons but also our sister podcast what a cartoon where we go through a different animated series each week in the same style that we do talking simpsons but also our sister podcast what a cartoon where we go through a different animated series each week in the same style that we do talking simpsons you could hear both those podcasts a week early and ad free if you were a five dollar a month subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and that's only the beginning of what you would get you'd get

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There's a lot of great Ralph in this episode. In the cafeteria, the very opening establishing shot, he's just staring at his lunch just happily. He's not eating he's just staring at his lunch just happily. He's not eating and he's just looking down. He's appreciating his lunch. And also as Lisa is having trouble figuring it out at school, Ralph is still, he's like waiting in the class to then walk by her.

That was so funny. Yeah. And then there's a great little animation gag of the people leaving school and coming back to school like excited and sad. I like that they are all equally upset at this yeah it's not just lisa everyone's hunched over yeah lisa lisa is still having problems at school the next day in this next clip so lisa did you get that brain teaser yet for your information none of your business you look tired tired. Are you tired, Lisa?

If you're suggesting I stayed up all night trying to solve that childish puzzle... You're right. Now I can't remember my combination. Look at my agriculture project. It's a piece of a cow. The project. I forgot all about it. Very nice, Janie. Good use of pipe cleaners, Becky. Don't open it, Ralph. I'll just give you a C-.

Yay! Not finished, Lisa? I'm finished. I just got to... There. It's a pig. It's an eraser with pushpins. And a spring for his curly tail. Oink, oink, oink. This is terrible at best.

I'm surprised at you, Lisa. Me too. So the writer admits to this on the commentary, but that pushpin pig eraser is a quote of a Life in Hell comic. And I immediately found it. It's from the anthology Work is Hell. And it's called How to Kill Eight Hours a Day and Still Keep Your Job. And if from the anthology work as hell and it's called how to

kill eight hours a day and still keep your job. And if you've ever read a life in hell comic, it's like a lot is happening on the page. Like lots of little squares are portioned off and little jokes and just like all the things you do at your office job before the era of smartphones and fucking around on the internet, because every office job is just like, okay, that took an hour. Now what do I do? Like just waiting until five o'clock or six o'clock or whatever. And so one of those is make your own office toys and it shows you how to make a pushpin pig. Oh, that's great. Out of an eraser and pushpins.

Lisa added the spring though. That's her creative touch. Man, the sweaty anxiety of Lisa putting together that pig, like that really got me in recognition there. Yep. Especially just telling, it started with teachers,

but I also did it with bosses of like oh yeah i'm done just yep i'm so done and i'm done here you go just finishing it up just finishing it up finishing it up and keeping the important part is keeping on a strong poker face when you say just finishing it up of course yeah i know it's it's such a sad moment because and it like really recognizing your own inner nerd when you're like oh no oh no she didn't she didn't get her homework done oh yeah yeah that is a stress i also like one that millhouse enters by still scratching his head but also his condescension to lisa yeah when he finally knows something it's like kind of out of character

but i really like it i i think it fits for millhouse being like finally i know something that you don't know like yeah i mean also millhouse sucks we've said this before another episode there was the great recent episode where he becomes a uh yeah boys rights oh never mind i thought you meant on our show yeah sorry i don't remember that oh this was uh just a couple weeks ago the the episode written by megan amram it's one of the best new episodes i've seen in a while oh right okay so it's one of the new ones yes i want to watch that specifically because it's megan amram and i love everything she does it's a really good episode that also is so ripped from the headlines of uh female ghostbusters that oh yeah honestly it could upset folks who maybe are that's a little too raw of uh wounds on yeah

but it's really i just love her she's so great and uh i also out ralph is so great as the goofus in this episode who's outperforming lisa His role is so good here, especially his bloody bag and the secret within. It's a cow's heart. It's a cow's heart? He doesn't even specify what it is? No one wants to know. I was just thinking of the line from Lisa's rival.

It's a cow's heart. She's trying to make a monkey out of you. Anyways. Also, we learned that little random blonde girl who's been in lisa's class like since season one her name is becky interesting add it to the wiki oh wait it's there and uh yeah i also like that even lisa recognizes like yeah i know i should be doing better yeah that's like me too is so real that delivery is great yeah uh and so then we head to the quickie mart there's really you know when watching this too again i forgot i thought there were more

scenes of the quickie mart but it's more like there's one or one and a half scenes per act it's like really economical the this quickie mart thing it's uh yeah and completely under i don't know how you could cross it over with the script i I'm kind of glad they just kept the Lisa thing focused and she didn't, for some reason, look at Frostilicus at some point. Yeah, I enjoy it. I mean, it does kind of highlight Homer being a dumbass, but, you know, it doesn't feel like it's specifically doing that to serve the pay plot. Yeah. And we've talked much about the character of apu and you know and the voice yeah the even even when i think he's written and handled really well here there's no jokes

about his that feel mean to me about his ethnicity or whatever but the so weird to watch now yeah even a good apu scene you're just like boy this accent. I just, how was this normal to me? But I do still think the writing and the scenes are very funny with him. I do enjoy the swindling Apu. Yeah. When he wants to be creative about swindling. That's a character. Yeah, I do.

Like the stuff they come up with for the freak show version of the cookie mart is really funny. Like the mystery can and everything. That stuff is really good i you know you wish it was delivered by a different character but yeah it was i do enjoy the dressing up of mundane items as freak show things i love i mean that's you know such a gravity falls joke like and that's one of the things not not saying you know obviously gravity falls like 20 years later but i love that as an element of like oh the mysterious can well oh and i mean alex alex hirsch is very clear about his love of the simpsons i mean he hired

josh weinstein worked on the show even so yeah yeah the love is there but and the scene starts with haagen-dazs ice cream which before i play the clip i did want to talk about haagen-dazs you know it's below if i'm going to eat an ice cream i think i go for ben and jerry's first at the grocery store but haagen-dazs is second i gotta tell you i discovered something thanks to friend of the show nina matsumoto it's a little thing called halo top henry okay and you know what sure halo top you can eat an entire pint although you shouldn't but an entire pint of halo top is like less than 300 calories that is some that's so i like i don't even know how it happens i'm sure it's dangerous. I can't get into it.

It's just not, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I feel like for me, I can, I'm lactose intolerant, so I can only ever eat

a little bit of ice cream anyway. So if I'm going to do it, I just, I want it to be good. It doesn't taste like, it doesn't taste different to me. Like I can't drink diet soda. I can't do diet anything,

but Halo Top is so good. But I have some secret history to Haagen-Dazs, by the way. Okay. So this is another useless fact I put into my brain because of this show, I can't do diet anything, but Halo Top is so good. But I have some secret history to Haagen-Dazs, by the way. Oh? Okay, so this is another useless fact I put into my brain because of this show, but the words Haagen-Dazs don't mean anything. Yeah.

The phrase Haagen-Dazs was created by two proprietors in New York. So they started an ice cream company, and they wanted to evoke the image of Denmark and the Danish people known for their ice cream, of course. Oh, I'm Danish. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, yeah, left is Danish. I guess, okay, that makes sense. Well, I guess at some point in history, they were known for their ice cream, of course. Oh, I'm Danish. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Left is Danish. I guess.

Okay. That makes sense. Well, I guess at some point in history, they were known for their ice cream. So one of the runners of this business, of the couple that ran this business, just sat at a kitchen table and started like writing down things that sounded Danish or evoked the, just the feeling of being Danish. And Haagen-Dazs was the winner. And also they wanted to evoke the sort of Danish feeling because Denmark was known for its good treatment of the Jews during World War II.

And the people that founded this company were Jewish. And Haagen-Dazs used to have a picture of Denmark on the cover. So there you have it. Again, don't need to know this but i know it now around when i was a kid i had no i had no clue the fakeness of it or the uh the tribute to the danish as well that it was and i like that a lot that's great that makes me love it even more denmark doesn't have a lot you know you got lego mills and socialized medicine yeah yeah true true. True, true, true. I guess, I mean, they have Hamlet, but that was... I mean, yeah.

I have been to the castle that is supposedly Hamlet's castle or whatever. I heard something's rotten there, but I don't know if they figured it out yet. That's why I'm never going. A very fun fact about Denmark is that the Little Mermaid statue is less than four feet tall. It's very tiny. And that it is the one that you go to visit is not the original statue. It's been replaced about like 40 times because people constantly vandalize it or knock its head off. So it's great because when you come into the airport in Copenhagen,

they have what I thought was a replica of the Little Mermaid because it was only like three feet tall. And then I got to the actual statue and it's the same size it was very surprising i'm gonna look out for both of those whenever i finally visit denmark it's great great place uh my my favorite haagen-dazs flavors are uh just uh in case listeners wonder their caramel cone really like that one a lot but also the they have their new trio flavors which i cone really like that one a lot but also the they have their new trio flavors which i also really like and salted caramel chocolate trio is a really tasty one too i like the classic one with almonds that's a really good one too yeah i mean caramel is the key to my favorite most of my favorites ice ice creams i do like caramel yeah it's very good this scene this next

clip here starts with a bit of a dad joke about ice cream what looks like somebody's hugging ice cream oh i should write this down more coming um i'm looking for something in an after dinner You'll have it in 45 seconds, sir. To pass the time, please enjoy this novelty pin. Why would I want to look at a pin with a... Oh, no! Her clothes are coming off! Hey, you know who would love this? Men.

Five, four, three, two, one, liftoff! Look at this mess. Where is that elderly old man? Old man! Old man! Ah! Hey, look, a freezer man! Wait a minute. There is a note. I have frozen myself so I may live to see the wonders of the future.

Daw me out when robot wives are cheap and effective. P.S. Please alter my pants as fashion dictates. I love that line. I wrote that down. I wrote down quotes as I went. Me too. I wrote that one down. My pants as fashion dictates is so good.

You know, reality has caught up to a lot of the food parodies in The Simpsons, but there is still no straw burrito. Yeah. I think crepes are more popular here now. That's like the closest we get to it, I think. The season one food parodies were so simple and so innocent. Like triple chocolate. Who could ever have triple chocolate ice cream? And I think you just named a triple chocolate ice cream with your Haagen-Dazs. We've gone far beyond triple chocolate.

But yeah, the strawberry, strawberry toe. I really like that name. It doesn't exist, but I would be lying if I said when this episode first aired, I didn't try microwaving a fruit pie. I was going to say that's exactly what it is but i mean a warm fruit pie is good right i don't know it's

not as special as you think it's okay it's just like a tart that's all that is i guess strawberry does exist i just pictured like the strawberry nutrigrain bars i guess yeah i guess it was all the time in high school maybe it's like a burrito but instead of beans or strawberries that would be fun god i hope there's not also beans but also but there's still like meats in it yeah chicken but strawberry no no thank you no thank you i i like when they cast up who is like homer's kind of food mo like mo for alcohol but a poo for it then he just hangs out at the corner i think it's almost kind of cute how homer is so entertained by this simple pornography yeah god they're like you know who would love this man is so good yeah i don't see a lot of those pens around lately

though although i've not been to a truck stop in a long time. They're still there. They're definitely still around. I've seen them. They're like, you know, little tchotchke, kitschy places on roadsides. There's got to be a turn your phone, close disappearing app out there, right? Oh, by now, yeah. I'm sure.

And then Homer is like clearly entertained for hours. I like to imagine he added one pen each time and that's why it took so long and great animation on you can see his eyes look at each pen in a different order i think he expects something different to happen or something he's consistently surprised by the clothes coming off yeah it's great and i love that they have homer read jasper's old man letter because it has a bunch of like the classic terminology that jasper would say but it's said by homer so and so i i did look up uh where cryonic science is at these days oh uh and from a 2016 popular science article because uh it is still happening where folks who have the money to do so do have their bodies frozen in the hopes of

science doing fixing it later there was a baseball player hall of famer i forget his name but he had his just his head frozen and it was in the news that family was fighting over the head and but the popular science article from 2016 starts with saying a teen who just died of a disease he hopes is preventable in the future his parents paid to have his body frozen in the hopes they could resuscitate it and they they use that as a starting point for like how where is cryonics now and the concept is that like reptiles can be frozen and brought back worms to they uh they even found like worms that that were taught to recognize color they'd get unfrozen and they could still recognize color so it didn't seem to even mess with your memory they talk about that is almost

impossible to replicate with mammals because of the difference in just like blood and cellular decay like it's just freezing you kills you it does not stop you i read a while ago that it was the thawing process that was the problem yeah Yeah, yeah. Not so much the freezing. Well, it's also that the brain and the nervous system on humans is much more complex than a frog or a worm. Yeah, worm to human is a big leap. Yeah, that's why you can't. And also, you have to, the not funny idea with Jasper is that he just killed himself because slow freezing in a freezer just kills you. It is not. Yes. They talk about how cryononics part of it is they need to flash freeze you they got to do it fast the slower it is you're already killing yourselves in that point anyway so it's fun that

this is a cartoon so jasper is not dead but you it you're dead already at that point so they got to flash freeze you and then find out a way to thaw you. And also there's a real danger of cracking once your skin even below that gets frozen. Even just a hairline crack, you're dead. They can't bring you back at that point either. Yeah. When I was a kid, we grew up in Ottawa, Ontario, which is very cold. And one winter, my dad went outside. He had a very full beard and it was still wet from the shower.

And it froze and he tripped on the front step and smacked his head and his beard cracked off. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And it wasn't until he got back inside and thawed that there were obviously some bleeding happening. But it wasn't terrible. His face didn't get ripped or whatever. But it was like, it gets bad. Freezing gets gets bad and if you can do that to facial hair so jasper's beard could have shattered it should have shattered it happened well now when you see like that was it

just three years ago in an article i don't think there's probably been much improvement now so you can see why today's crazy billionaires are more interested in like singularity and uploading their brains to a computer as opposed to freezing themselves they're all chasing immortality i say put me in goo when i die i i mean i'll go to sandman apparel if they invent it like no problem but other than that i'm good we we leave frostilicus back to l's worries. She just can't focus on anything. And I get that feeling too. Also that she can't play her saxophone right. And it's the one time Homer's ever enjoyed her saxophone playing.

I love that gag. Yeah, I like his little dance. Yeah, it's so great that it's animated from his back and yet so expressive. Again, Susie dieter and her team just so good also another bill and josh thing is their love of abe simpson yep and he plays a real key part in this episode i i like he didn't he doesn't often these days but no he's usually in the room for a joke as they often point out like they'll often add him to end a scene i love the domesticity too of like a haircut in the kitchen.

That's really... It's cute. My mom did not cut my hair as a kid. My mom tried it a few times, and I was like, let's not do this again. I feel like I've got trims, like bang trims, but I don't think it was full haircuts or anything. I just, in general, hate haircuts. I just can't even at 37 I still like I've I haven't had a I get a haircut about every six to nine months because I just don't like it I love them I mean

it's very like it's like a mini spa thing for me but my haircut is a whole process because I have to get like I have a mohawk so I have to get the sides buzzed and then I have to get the hair like the roots bleached and then dye the whole thing and it's two colors of dyes it takes like two hours i enjoy it no your hair your hair is lovely if i may compliment you thank you it's a lot of work uh but it's worth it now i am and the bi-coloring is very it was great which no one will ever believe was unintentional but it literally was um but once i realized obviously i, I'm like never going to change it. But yes, here's, Abe has some tips for Lisa. Oh, no, no, no.

The George Raft look is dead. I want an Audie Murphy. If you would just apologize to Louie, you could get your hair cut the way you want. No apology. Not until he admits she's a jerk. Mom, I think something's wrong with me. I can't do anything right lately.

You're just having a bad day. I had one last week. I burned the roast, my cake fell, and I ran out of butter, so I had to spray the English muffins with Pam. Maybe you're just a lousy cook. I'll go get the back team. It can't just be a bad day.

I feel like I'm getting dumber by the minute oh ain't no big deal all simpsons start to lose their smarts around your age what are you talking about i'll show you follow me i'm with marge you know she's doing a nice thing for abe and then he insults her give him a little cut that's a pretty brutal sound effect on whatever it is harsh He put in his head. He walks away from it. He's okay. I also had not heard of Audie Murphy or George Raff before watching this. Yeah, those were totally lost on me. In my first viewing as a kid, when I was a teen, I thought it was just him mispronouncing Eddie Murphy.

I think I did that too. But they're both real people. It doesn't matter who they are, but they're both old time movie stars. George Raff was in Some Like It Hot. that's the only possible one most people have seen i haven't seen his other movies that are listed on his wikipedia page and and audie murphy was like a decorated the one of the most highly decorated combat veterans of world war ii and then segwayed into a film career uh and also there's a really great cute animationist maggie playing with a brush in the background that like oh yeah actually when they go to the attic then when they leave the

kitchen to go to the attic they walk by maggie who's reaching for the scissors on the table that's great yeah it's so funny that's great it's a nice little touch in the background and uh and just the great little gag of unfurling that that his uh barber tie was actually a kitchen table yeah okay that's right and just putting that hair covered cloth on the thing yeah that was gross oh just uh but it's a nice it's gross without being too disgusting like there's yeah there is there is a gross moment in this episode that actually made me gag a little bit when abe pulled on his hair in this it's when it hit me that like oh abe's design is actually kind of a pinhead design yeah i never

really thought of it that way before you just have like a cone style head yeah yeah it's so funny watching her trim the like four little points on the top of his head yeah there's a line later but actually since we're talking about his hair let's talk about it now. Abe says baldness is part of it. Abe's design comes from the shorts, so he has rules about him that they wouldn't do in current episodes or even in a season two episode. But his hair is attached to his head. And I always read it as he had a lot more hair than when he says he's bald. I'm like, so does he only have like those four tufts at the top of his head i think it's just a little thin tuft i see and the side of his head has those weird like

bumps on it which i i think that just implies that he's like just stubble is there or there's not a lot of hair also your hair falls out when you're old so yeah yeah i just assumed it was like a tiny version of the way that art and lisa's hair is where it's just you know an extension of their head so uh and it and then it's funny when you have to ask them to like well he pulls at his hair and the animators have to figure out where does hair begin on yeah that's tricky and i've had fights with friends too uh like he said with louis where it's like this argument will end if you admit you're a jerk that's the argument that you're not a jerk or you are a jerk. It's never going to happen.

No one's ever going to admit that. It's great. Yeah, Abe takes Lisa upstairs. This is when she finds out the truth of the Simpsons gene. Wow, Dad was a good speller? Oh, your dad used to be smart as a monkey. Then his mind started getting lazy, and now he's dumb as a chimp. Grandpa?

Hey, I am too too your brother's coming along nicely look at bart's homework back when he was your age he was smart as a chimp this is just two years ago that's right then the simpson jeans kicked in this is crazy just because you and Dad and Bart went downhill doesn't mean it's going to happen to me. Does it? Sure! But it doesn't mean you can't live a long and pointless life.

That's a great act, Brady. Then Abe recognizes his life was long and pointless like that. I love the flip book, of them, you know, and that must've been so wild to animate because it's like you're animating animation in a way, like you're animating this flip book thing. But it probably took a lot of planning to just figure that out, how to make it move like that. I remembered that as a distinct visual from this episode,

from seeing it as a kid and thinking that was like oh that's cool yeah i well as a kid i i loved i love flip books i would wear and a few flip books i got as a kid i would wear them out of just like flipping them until the spines were pretty much ruined or well no they kind of get fanned out after you flip them enough times yeah i used to make them a lot if i had you know big booklets for anything for school or whatever, I would make them. A lot of journals or whatever. Though I know Matt Grading loves flipbooks, like, because he made a point to, like, not only in the big book of Bart, there's a flipbook gag in it, but also in the first run of true Simpsons trading cards, not the crappy ones, the real ones from 94 94 the back of them was a flip book of bart playing the guitar well you can ruin your cards that way i think that's what he wanted yes that's

amazing the the math checks out there too that like bart was a good student until uh he turned eight which is lisa's age so it works good for her dream i think we've seen flashbacks where homer is not very smart when he's before eight, but don't think about that for continuity's sake. And at least the saxes showed Bart was not very bright in kindergarten. Yeah, that's true. But let's pretend it's okay. It's fine, yeah.

Kate's right. It's fine. Sometimes, you know what? Continuity has to be sacrificed for the joke. And when they come back from the break, that's where we had the opening line about dumbening and the dumbening isn't even a word i that has a very real writerly feel to it and also her log like again this is them bringing back stuff i it feels

like it's been a long time since her log when was the last log entry and i i mean i definitely remember it from like classic classics of thanksgiving unfortunately simpsons wiki people you need to make a page for lisa's log because there isn't one it's very unhelpful for research purposes they have ones for so many things so many just objects in the simpsons world but not the log unfortunately yeah so i i've seen on frankie yack uh searching for dear log separate vocations and and also Barbers of Thanksgiving. Okay, so man, if it was separate vocations,

that's like season three, right? That's a long time ago. Well, there's a location later in this episode that was not seen since season one. Yes, yeah. Separate vocation, she's going through a very similar crisis as she is in this one too.

After scoring poorly on a standardized test, she becomes a bad girl. The worst. The worst feeling. That just another great like golden years throwback plus her eraser still has the spring in it like you have to look directly at it but it's still the pig eraser when she uses it to erase dumbening well i'm looking at the screenshots on frinkyak and the staging is the same like her in front of that that vanity mirror yeah at the little desk it's really cool i think she's in her same like you know kneeling chair kneeling chair yeah i've never had those i feel that was like the yoga ball chair before its time also in the background bard and homers smashing into each other game is so funny because there's clearly no rules to it but they are keeping score i did enjoy that that. It was kind of like a Calvin Wall

moment. Yeah, that's what I was looking up to. Though, I would think a full-sized man would not just bounce off of a 10-year-old boy. Again, sometimes you've got to sacrifice it for the joke. And it also

underlines them being stupid. Yeah. Simpson men have thick skulls That is true We know that That is also part of their DNA But what is DNA? Oh no I'm wrong every time I say this is the last or second to last Troy McClure

He'll be back in this little wiggy too Wow, okay Yeah Yeah, there was Oh, right I was like, does he stop appearing? And like, right Yeah He the uh the scientarium or whatever i can't i can't every time i'm like oh no more troy then troy appears again i feel like he's in every single episode this season even though i

said we're not seeing him again until bart bart the mother but this is a great classic troy here i'm i'm got it's two minutes long but i'm gonna play the full thing uh but just in parts here but i i also really love that this is hibbert playing uh playing a film strip for her hibbert has to be pretty stupid in this episode for the jokes they do normally he's not this bad of a doctor so you're worried about your jeans huh well does it hurt when you go like this? No. Then will you turn this projector on for me?

I think the film should answer all your questions. Have you ever wondered why fat parents have fat children? Or why Chinese parents have Chinese children? It's no coincidence. It's because of D-N-A. Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such medical films as Alice Doesn't Live Anymore. And Mommy, What's Wrong With That man's face but mr mcclure

what is dna what the oh hi billy let's find out together the same billy from the uh cow but he was jimmy in that one yeah and his hair color wasn't blue yes they could they're they're from the same factory those billy and jimmy maybe him being billy in this one is why he thinks he's billy in the other one when he's jimmy because this is filmed before the other one and he he just thinks they're he's the same kid i like the continuity of these fred mcclure films and uh it's such a great gag the the siren going off when he takes his thing off to say hi seemingly he's poisoned himself but but then again bill Billy is exposed in there. Billy's been there the entire time.

He's just- Billy was born into the corruption. I think Troy just has more germs. On the commentary, their joke is that they were keeping it on Troy to stop him from contaminating it because he's there. And I do like the animation of the baby eating the pizza. That's funny too um

someone you know i was looking this up and because i didn't remember when it happened but phil phil hartman i know this is like a sad thing but phil hartman is the first celebrity that i like recognized as having passed away as a kid like that i knew that it had happened and that it affected me because of but because of that end of like Saturday night live stuff. Cause my parents were huge comedy nerds and had that kind of stuff on all the time. And I remember being like, Oh wow,

this is wait, they're not immortal. Yeah. This is wild. It was wild. And anyway. Yeah. I mean,

when he shows up in 1998 episodes, I can't help but think like, Oh, two more months, Phil. That's all we get out of you. You know, Phil is definitely a shock for me, but I was a little old. I was 15, almost 16 when he passed away. The first one for me like that, though, is Jim Henson.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. When it was announced. I was too young for that. I remember when I was in. Actually, i found out both of them while i was like in a car with my mom and just on the radio they said jim henson has passed away and i just remember me and my mom just like gasping to each other like what

yeah i guess it was jim henson and then immediately john candy she's like all these people that i liked as a kid anyway sorry it's very sad i was just like thinking about that it's such a moment anyway anyway and then red fox of course yeah and uh it's a really clever title for the film strip too someone's in the kitchen with dna which uh instead of dina that's the reference someone's in the kitchen with dina very good and what does dna Well, yeah, so in the next clip here, I love, one, that it is a completely unscientific video, but also that it starts in a lab and then Troy immediately brings God into it. Yeah. Let's hear it real quick.

DNA is God's recipe for making you. You take a dash of dad, a pinch of mom, then we bake for nine months and... Mmm, that's good Billy. Mr. McClure, what does DNA stand for? That didn't answer anything. I need more information information would you like to see it again isn't there any way i can change my dna like sitting on the microwave not according to any movie i've ever seen i'm afraid you're stuck with your genes lisa it's a bit odd that we get back-to-back scenes of Dr. Hibbert and Dr.

Nick being bad doctors. Yeah. It's, it's interesting layout of that. Great episode for bad doctors. Hibbert's not, wasn't at first the bad doctor, but he jokes made him have to be that way.

There's easier jokes to make of a bad doctor of like he injures someone or he offers free prescription medicine but in this case the idea that his only medical knowledge comes from movies and also that he's like well you can watch the movie again if you need more information that's so great i loved that i love it i mean i love a bad doctor. And I also just, the drawing of, of Troy wearing the chef hat that says God on it is so fun. Yeah, I did like that. It's very much like that Farsight cartoon.

Yeah. And I enjoy that. Oh, and there, I feel like there's something quietly sexist to that. Troy adds a lot of dad and just a dash of mom to create someone. Whatever.

That's just how they made their writer's rooms. Oh, wow. Oh, that's good. Gauntlet throne from 20 years ago. And also that's good. Billy is a very weird.

It's so good and weird. And I think though, Hibbert, she gets something looked at if his hand hurts every time he flips a switch. That's dangerous. That's carpal tunnel. I'm lucky for all the video games

and computer work I've done. My wrists are still good. I'm still pretty good on my wrists. There's a lot of health things I could improve, but I'm lucky in the carpal tunnel. Wrists are still holding together. I am. Someday I'll develop podcasters wrist

but yeah i got the bad back but who doesn't right in this economy this economy uh but yeah the speaking of dr nick yes he's in this next scene here which uh is also really great where they they talk about the scientific impossibility that jasper is even still alive. Hi, frozen buddy. I love that. Hi, frozen buddy. He's got a lob, but I don't hear a dob. Oh, there it is.

Yeah, look, he's still alive. This freezer is an attractive nuisance. Just look at all that ice cream. It's damn near irresistible. Well, we better leave him in there. Moving him now could kill him and tire us out. Check it out. A freezer geezer. That, God, moving him now could kill him and tire us out.

I love that line. And the phrase attractive nuisance came from Dan Graney, who we interviewed. He was a lawyer before writing for The Simpsons, so that's a legal term he got. That's funny. Wow, I didn't know that. Attractive nuisance. Yeah, no, Dan Graney, he's, yeah, it's funny. His law background, he, no, that was also Rich Appel,

another lawyer, Harvard lawyer turned comedy writer. Both Harvard Law School graduates, right? Rich Appel jokes that he's- Just like Obami. Sorry, Rich Appel jokes that he is a he was a funny lawyer and a law-focused comedy writer though speaking of jokes this uh that gag of apu being convinced to make a sideshow is kind of a repeat of a joke done both with stampy and with the the angel yeah with like the reveal after someone has given an idea.

Yeah. Well, I'm even just saying like, we'll offering money and then going like, Hmm, money. Like, uh,

but this time it makes even less sense with a poo should already realize money is good. Homer needs to be convinced that money is good, but it's, it's a, it's still a funny hard cut to freak E Mart, which I love it. A poo becomes full-on carnival barker. And that the side, like the things in his window are sideshow attraction posters too.

Like even with like the brown lettering on it too. It's very oldie time. The astonishing rubber check. With how advanced like baking technologies are like does anyone know what a rubber check is anymore or my check bounced i still i still like writing checks myself but uh i haven't done it in so long everything's digital now i still i you know i pay a lot of things digitally but i like having the paper trail with our irs payments we've just been yeah oh yeah that's that's the one thing I write checks for.

Well, when you grow up in a slightly poorer home, you learn that like, oh, if my mom writes this check on Friday, she can put the money in before Monday and it's free money. It's just free money. I remember on the last podcast on the left, that fun podcast, they talked about how easy it was to just do check scams back in the pre-internet days. Yeah, it really was. Yeah, I can imagine. And, you know, I've never got a Frito in a bag of Doritos or vice versa, but it reminds me of the fun of getting a fry in an onion ring thing or an onion ring in fries. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or like a really weird one. Yeah. Like a weird, you know, Franken-fry. Yeah. Or sweet potato fry in your fries upgrade they're the mystery starches in all cases so lisa is worried that she meanwhile is losing her mind which this is another like all-timer scene of ralph laughing at the flag on the mailbox i love that scene so much yes uh here's here's some of lisa's worries

dear log my worst fears have been confirmed i've hit my mental and creative peak at the tender age of eight what will my life be like after i descend into mediocrity Well, Ralph seems happy enough. Maybe I should just give up now and settle into a mindless, happy stupor. We now return to When Buildings Collapse on Nonstop Fox. I do love that the thing that the idiots are watching is Nonstop Fox. Yeah. That's pretty great. It's great.

I like this whole bit is really good visual gags and the buildings collapsing. Both the society of structural engineers and the house of Usher, which is like such a good goth joke. Yeah. I love it. I mean, it was more fun to watch buildings collapse in 1998 yes yeah true true but all of their parodies of reality shows just became reality shows

and honestly worse yeah because there's like uh when surgeries go wrong and i was like okay there's got to be a version of that in real life and i googled it and there are like eight of them there was a list like here are the top eight surgery shows you should watch i'm like oh my god i'm tuned out of that world completely now so like there is literally a show called dr pimple popper that's the world i see that when i log into hulu just like change the name of that show gross doctor doctor gag inducer i had oh it was like on my instagram ads for a while i I don't know why. Instant playing. Yeah. Yeah.

Instant playing. And I was just like, Oh, no, thank you. I don't want to be judgy of other people's tastes. If you, if you like those pimple popper things,

then fine. She's the queen of pus. It disgusts me. I know people who like watching pimple popper videos. It's when you really care about someone, you shouted from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs.

Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care yeah it's like fine but also i don't ever want to see it i don't i don't think it's fun and i judge them harshly uh i but i i yeah i tried to look up the at the time they had also on fox world's Wildest Police Videos. They weren't recurring series. They were just a special, like Alien Autopsy. The phrase was, when blanks blank.

When blanks blank. So when animals attack. That was the famous, yeah. And it was nonstop Fox. That was the slogan for Fox at the time, nonstop Fox. Yeah, you just can't stop it. It's going to keep coming at you, this Fox. That was the slogan for Fox at the time. Non-stop Fox. Yeah, you just can't stop it. It's not good. It's just going to keep coming at you, this Fox. No, I think, I mean, I think these shows do still exist. I don't watch much regular television anymore, but I remember like a

decade ago, they still had like MCX or whatever, like just these collections of extreme videos, but they almost feel like redundant now when it's just youtube exists like you just watch that stuff on youtube i think in the brief period before everyone was watching youtube there was just a flood of cable channels and a flood of cheap entertainment there's so many of these shows just on all of those channels you've never heard of which are now obsolete yeah there was so much of it i always think of the weird al version of the eight miles song where he just sings about different TV shows. Ah, yeah. Next week on Fox, watch Lions Eat Christians.

It's the line that always comes to mind where I'm like, we're basically there. Oh, yeah. No, we are. We're not far off. There's a bit in here that reminds me slightly of the Classic Film Network. And they were saying that 50 years ago. Their concerns about the degradation of society via tv are like so quaint now and these things almost feel quaint what i

so it does make me wonder what 2050 television will be uh or whatever the replay has replaced it by then i think it'll just be screen like internet and tv are the same thing now just i watch screen i look at screen i touch the screen the screen is my lover uh i can feed myself with the screen too i mean i just got a vr rig so you know we're halfway there i'm i'm in the zone it's it's wild you know what i've the little bit i have a playstation vr and the little bit i've played with it has been really good but i i am afraid afraid to do more than 30 minutes at a time because when i take it off after 30 minutes i do have that feeling of like oh this is the real world again i forgot about it right yeah

as soon as you take it off your head you're like whoa okay i'm not batman anymore it's just strange because i've been playing beat saber a a lot, which is so fun. And it's kind of like DDR with lightsabers. And it's so great. So great. But yeah, as soon as I take off the headset, it's like, whoa, this is so jarring. It's very fun. Lisa goes to join them.

And she's asked if they're, she's welcomed by Homer and Bart in this next clip. Hey, Lisa, want to join us? Room for one more. We're watching the TV. Man has always loved his buildings. But what happens when the buildings say no more. Yeah! Woo-hoo!

Wow! Oh! Yeah! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I didn't think it was going to fall over. Yeah! Woo-hoo!

Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! The best part was when the buildings fell down. Yeah. Maybe people got hurt. Hey, yeah. And now, a Channel 6 editorial reply. Boring.

And now, when surgery goes wrong. All right, sounds good. They don't even reply. They're too engrossed with the TV. The great lighting in this scene, like special colors on the Simpsons to make them look more hypnotized by TV. I love, it's been GIFT a lot, but the scene of Homer patting the couch

with the dead-eyed stare. Yeah. Every time I watch one of these, all of the two times I've done this for the podcast, I'm like, man, like the gifs just – even 20 years later, they're still so ubiquitous. Oh, yeah. Wow. They said they got – that's from a classic Twilight Zone episode, the Room for One More scene. But they added their own. The shot of Homer looking at you saying,

Room for One More is such an iconic shot, but I also love the reverse shot of Lisa, how she's framed looking at it with his hand patting it down. Yeah, that's great. And Bart's very stupid. We're watching the TV. Bart's rarely been this dumb. Yeah. And yeah, I think this is such i i've said it before

but it's such a writerly show that you're it's easy to just look at it from the writer's standpoint but like the framing of these jokes the animation of them like they the execution is all in the animators and so when you have like a a simpsons master honestly like suzy deeter doing it you you appreciate it and it and you do notice when it's not there in some later episodes you know yeah and like all those building explosions that's fucking hard to do in animation it's very hard to tell animators to do five different buildings exploding in unique ways yeah yeah yeah it's good though yeah yeah the usher one was great i i didn't know i only knew it as a vincent price film until uh i think college when i heard the original well i'm here as your

you know resident high school goth to let you know that even at the time i laughed at that joke it's very clever yeah and uh yeah that homer i love homer's extra giggle at knowing that it's funnier that they someone got hurt i never thought of that and uh and also the image i had totally forgotten it but i love it now the image of the editorial reply like i'm using that in my twitter usage in the future for sure it's great yeah standing on a desk and screaming i mean that just is twitter now is the editorial reply to like new york times editorial in my Twitter usage in the future for sure. It's great. Yeah, standing on a desk and screaming. I mean, that just is Twitter now is the editorial reply to like New York Times editorials that are bad.

I know I've used it for that. We head back to the Freaky Mart as we get to see what Apu has made. And you know what I love about this scene now is that it feels like obviously Apu is just being opportunistic and he's doing this for money, as he's usually a very business-minded person.

But the world he builds here, there's something about it that I do love, that he's trying to add wonder to the most mundane of things. He's making a full experience. It's not just for Stilicus. There are many wonders to see. I love that, just the viewpoint of, like, wow, isn't an ATM magical? It produces images of dead presidents. It's a really clever comedy.

Mystery can? The mystery can is my favorite part. I love it. What is it? You're left with wondering that of just a can that the label fell off if you worked at a grocery store or at your home. It's very much like, I love the,

yeah, the thing about it, printing pictures of dead presidents is so great. It's such a, it's such a thing now, you know, especially in animation for younger audiences, when you're on the writing side that you really,

really steered away from doing any visual jokes that involve writing because it's difficult for translation. And that's something that people are so much more aware of now, especially with, you know, streaming platforms and stuff like that, where it is much more quickly going to need to be, you know, viewable in Indonesia and in French and all these kinds of different things. So there's so many times when I've written in, like, gags that involve text and have having to take them out.

And it's, it's like, I completely understand at the same time as I'm like, but there was, that would have been so funny. Yeah. I never, I never thought of that as a,

that, that totally makes sense. The real thing, especially with younger audiences for like kids. Cause adult animation, I think it's, it's still pretty common but it's definitely like across the board you know when i was working at hasbro

it was pretty much like just don't put text on anything yeah because like uh bob's burgers and bojack horseman are sort of just sign joke the show yeah just like we are making nothing but sign jokes but that's much like that you know that's the adult animation side of things yeah like that's the thing that always sticks out to me about steven universe because there is a lot of text in that show and like signs that make jokes and stuff like that but so much of the stuff i've worked on they're like just don't just don't do it yeah that's too i i'm glad steven universe gets away with that stuff i well and as as we know from having the from eckett sugar on our show that they they are big simpsons fans on Steven Universe.

For sure. I mean, yeah, it's like everyone here is, you know, it's what we grew up on. I feel like the writers, the animation creators of 10 years from now, they're going to be the SpongeBob generation. Like that's who. Yeah. Well, because I mean, everyone i know now is like the the anime

and also yeah you know like we grew up on on yeah spongebob and simpsons and and then you know anime so it's it's everything is like a strange amalgamation of all those things which is very cool and it's exciting it's it is what i love about my favorite kids cartoons these days are the synthesis of anime and Simpsons. Like, yeah. But yes, let's hear some of the trip through the freaky mart, not the quickie mart. Please. Behold the can of mystery. The label vanished many years ago.

What strange wonders lie inside? Treasure? Dog food? Something's man is not meant to know. Show me your tie! It says, show me your tie. It's cute. Come on, let. Hey. It says, show me your tie. It's cute. Come on, let's go.

Me and Frost Delicous go back a long way. I used to share a bathroom with Frost Delicous. In fact, I got a real funny story about that. Actually, it's not so much funny as it is long. It seems that there was... I want to know where the story's going. I love that. I wrote that down because it's like the,

you know, among people who panel at conventions and stuff like that, it's such a common joke of like, actually, it's more of a comment than a question. Yeah. Those are the worst. Oh,

God, yeah. It's so similar. It's like, actually, it's more of a long story. Now, I,

I, I kind of stopped. I've never had i've never been on a panel but stopped attending them as much because i just or i'd leave by q a section because they just they bothered me so much about there weren't there would be good questions but a bad question would just frustrate me to no end it's so hard because i have such a hard time watching it and like i again yeah if i go to a show i will sometimes leave during the q a i have really bad social anxiety and a lot of it is like secondhand embarrassment anxiety and not just for the person asking the question but for the people in the panel for the people in the audience

it's it's a level of discomfort that is like a physical feeling so sometimes i will leave like when i listen to the live episodes of My Brother, My Brother and Me, I skip the audience questions because I'm just like, I can't handle it. But when you're on the panel, which I've been many, many times, there's nothing you can do. And yeah, sometimes the questions are really great and they, you know, cause a lot of really good conversation. And then sometimes it's like, oh God, I'm trapped here.

And I have to say something. I don't know what to do and everyone is watching me three person's been talking for five minutes yeah now three three of my least favorite types one is when they say a question for the whole panel and then when two people answer it and it takes a long time they're like uh let's move on and they're like no no wait what about you guys i'm like oh god this is a three-part question yeah i love i love a pant like a moderator that is uh that knows how to deal with that my friend sam sam mags she does it um professionally and she's so good because someone will be like well this is more of a three-part question she'll be like yeah we you, we actually only have time for one. And she's very pleasant,

but also very good at moving things along, getting to the next thing. And if someone's answering for too long, she'll just be like, that's so great. Let's move on to another question. So many moderators don't have that skill. No, yeah. The moderators to kind of just stand back

or that you need, sometimes you like want to look at the moderator, like save us, like save us. Yeah, very true. Oh, and another, my other least favorite thing at Comic-Con panels is when, not just when you have a like a, an agenda driven question

that comes from like a not positive place, but it bugs me even more when that agenda driven question is actually like a Google-able answer that is obvious. The one that comes to mind for me was I went to a... This was when Grant Morrison was writing Batman. And it was just the Batman panel with a bunch of Batman writers. And this guy comes up and he's like, come on, man.

When are you going to have Batmite in your comics? Because he thought it was a cute joke to say. And then Grant Morrison's like, Batmite was just in like two issues ago you're not even reading this get out of here that was nice i like saying that yeah panels are are generally uh stressful whenever i'm running them i i just tend to make only enough time for like three questions it's terrible because it's like or the thing i do really love when people do is like submit questions it's terrible because it's like or the thing i do really love when people do is like submit questions beforehand like put them you know yeah you can avoid uh anything that's like hey i i know this is i'm supposed to ask a question but can i just pitch

you my webcomic and it's like oh yeah i've done panels and uh my solution to the q a section is to not have it anymore yeah but the last time I had Q&A was I would just restate the question after the person said it because lots of people don't know how to use a microphone. It's not their fault. Yeah, and you can condense it. So if someone has a rambly question,

you can be like, I think what they're asking is, and you give sort of like a shortened version that's much more easy to to convert into you know answers or the version of the question that you want yes yes oh you know what yeah the last panel q a i sat in on was for a job and it was a one for the star wars rebels show it was a nice panel and uh then a guy came up and asked only the actresses. He's like, do you guys really like Star Wars? Because you're pretty ladies.

What size are your shoes? Now, in defense of the rest of the audience of that panel, he was resoundingly booed by the people at that panel for that question. It was very embarrassing. I can't believe they got that show me your tie joke on the air too i laughed at that a lot that was great uh there there should be a show me your tie hat now actually uh and also with the frostilicus bit uh in a way apu kind of murders jasper by turning down just a little bit i was little bit. I was like, wow, this is intense.

It just kills them. It's a very dark joke. And he turns it down. We return to Bart, Lisa, and Homer after their show is over. They're really hungry after watching all that surgery. And their mutual anger at Marge of just like, why didn't you start three minutes earlier? Then we'd have

dinner now. I think three minutes felt a lot longer pre-smartphones. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. And I'd be lying if I said I hadn't eaten a melted candy bar. I forgot it was in a bag or something. I mean, who hasn't? The sheer volume of them is a lot.

I would put it in the freezer. But sometimes you don't want to wait for that sweet, sweet chocolate. It's true and uh i they've never looked more like pigs than yeah eating that together and bill oakley pointed out that this is sort of the subversion of the homer as the food monster character they don't like they're like let's make the food monster thing disturbing yeah like he's eating like garbage candy out of a sofa cushion like an animal on his knees. Wow, that's really good because they didn't like how easy Homer the food monster is. That's why in their 300-pound Homer episode, he barely eats.

And it's not about him eating a ton of food. It's about him living the life of a big fat dynamo. You really don't see him eating in that. That's right. Yeah. Where's that cake? But I do love his line, join your family.

Like that's very. Full of chocolate. You got to put all the chocolate in your mouth before you say that. Yeah. I very much felt Lisa in this scene where she's like, oh.

Yeah. Yeah. I still feel that too. Especially extended family things. Though I feel more in touch with my California extended family than my Arkansas extended family. That makes sense. But yes, as Lisa is tempted by chocolate and the ease of just eating warm, melty chocolate that you've been sitting on for hours. She has a vision of her future. Quit it.

Quit it. Quit. You kids knock it off. Mama's watching her stories. Hi, honey. It's me, your husband, Ralph. Hey, Angel Pie. Can you drive me down to the library?

I want to rent us up some movies. Wesley, get Mama's prying bar. Easy does it, Natty. A little more, get it right back in the box. I'll get your coat. No. No what? I don't want to turn out that way. What way, Angel Pie?

Like you! This is so mean. It's hard. And, like, I remember thinking this was so funny when I was, like, ten and now I'm watching it and I'm like, God, fat jokes were just the easiest target. It was not as clever as washing yourself with a rag on a stick.

I have to say that. No, that was, like, funny, I guess. I don't know. I liked all of her, like, twenty children. So, you know, I mean, at least she can as washing yourself with a rag on a stick i have to say that no that that was like funny i guess i don't know this is i liked all of her like 20 children so you know i mean i mean at least she can get it but yes like she's still having a very good for her yeah but i do like the the that part bugs me but i'm just very sensitive to that kind of stuff i understand yeah i do love hi honey it's it's like me i'm just like, it's Ralph, your husband. It's also not very kind to our Southern friends. But I think Josh Weinstein on the commentary says he wants a future series with a giant Southern Bart and giant Southern Lisa.

They both become Southern when they become obese. And stupid. So Bart's got his rag on a stick and she's got a prying bar. So they both have accessories too. Yeah, no, I mean, there is i i just laughed at it at the time now not just the you know yeah i i am also more sensitive to fat jokes now i don't think it's comedy just of like hi you're you're heavier than other people are that's not it that's not the easy that's not the most complex joke for one thing and but also i i think this is slightly elitist now. It's just easy white trash humor.

Yeah, yeah. Like, Lisa could be stupider without having to be a redneck. Yeah, that was the show. I mean, Cletus was, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we have not met Di met diabetes yet so uh that's coming yeah anyway yeah but i i do relate to like obviously that fear of like well i'm just gonna end up stupid but um yeah yeah i i do really like ralph's uh wiener clerk design the. The way it just swings on his head

when he comes in the room. I like that. Also, don't knock the library. Those free movies are a great source of entertainment. Your tax dollars pay for those free movies. Everyone should make more use of their local library. I'm just two blocks away from my library and I barely ever use it.

Yardley Smith, this is a tour de force for her when which is really nice for her because often in season nine especially she has like two lines like we listeners will hear this later but in trouble with trillions and in simpsons tied simpsons side two upcoming ones lisa says three things just like snidely comments on the plot and then leaves which is funny but yardley gets a lot more to do here. It's the only character she plays. Oh, right. Yeah, everybody else is doing like 12.

And her Southern accent definitely reminded me of Maximum Overdrive and her classic Southern newlywed character in there. If you'd like to hear Lisa swearing and almost getting run over by cars, watch Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive. It's a classic bad movie. This leads into the scene that made me almost gag, which is when they're at the dinner table. Oh, right.

Yeah. It's like your soup's getting a skin on it and then over like takes it. It eats it. And I was eating cereal when i was watching this i was just like oh i'm so i don't know what it is but i'm also like very repulsed by skins that form on on the surfaces of food um i know that it's completely natural i know it happens but there's something about it that is just like continuity alert everybody oh and bart gets an f homer says ew i hate that icky soup skin his feelings on soup skin have changed in uh seven years

people can evolve oh we can all change no i well i also really love the it's it's like almost it's a very animalistic animation on homer eating it too like yeah his mouth opens it kind of reminded me of a lizard you know yeah they do make homer and bart very just kind of like yeah animalistic is is the right word i think it's just sort of gross in this episode and also that bart swears to dance on her grave that's yeah yeah uh but then we get a very sweet like this this third act all about you know again the the white trash jokes felt a little elitist but i do like that it definitely felt like they had a point in this episode that in the third act they want lisa and the show itself to opine to the viewers like you don't just have to watch tv there is

more out there and that starts with lisa talking about her last meal, as it were. It does feel like a Flowers for Algernon thing. They would do a much more direct parody of that later in the show, but it feels like they're definitely taking from that. I really love the soft Simpsony sludge. That's a good line. Fine. She doesn't get her skin.

Lisa insulted his mom. She thinks she is so great. I'll dance on her skin. Lisa insulted us, Mom. She thinks she is so great. I'll dance on her grave. What? Oh, nothing, right. Dear log, it won't be long now before my mind melts into a soft Simpsony sludge.

Soon, the arts and literature I love will be replaced by talk radio and vulgar mudflaps. It's time to give my brain its last meal lisa's so convinced she's getting stupider when she's writing this in her log too yeah right she's clearly her she her mind is still there she she heads to a museum where uh kenny admits that he is stolen like i love this gag I wrote this one down too. It's like,

thanks, Lisa, I painted that one real much in my garage. It's so good. There's a lot going on with this character where he's stealing paintings from the museum

and forging them to sell the originals. Yeah, it's great. And he has to tell people too. He's like bragging about it and just Lisa's reaction gasp to close that scene is really funny there's a great cut scene that actually popped up on the dvd i hit the button to pause it and

sometimes when you do that it'll bring up the cut scene that should be there and there's a scene where lisa goes to the comic book store to play dnd and she's like oh i've never done this before i should do this before i become stupid and they don't want her to play because she's a girl and then she realizes like i don't even want to play with you guys. You're way too nerdy for me. So, yes, it's ahead of its time. Wow. Start your own group, Lisa.

That is the lesson most D&D players... I had been in a tabletop role-playing group, and we, as teens, were not as welcoming to girls as we'd want to. I think... I'd like to think i tried more than the other people but you also when you're a scared teen surrounded by older sexist boys you just kind of go with the flow and i'm i'm sorry to say that but uh oh yeah i mean i tried playing once when i was a teenager and i was the only girl and i had no idea what to do and nobody would help me with anything so i was just like well i'm just gonna flirt with everything if that works and it generally did it does yeah that usually works out i didn't think i i liked dnd until i started playing it again as an adult with you know

regular human beings and was like oh this this kicks ass actually when when it's welcoming to you it can be good yeah yeah yeah and i play I play with great people. I love D&D. Did you ever get Vampire the Masquerade to try as a goth? No. Everyone thinks that I would have, but it just, it didn't hit the place that I lived. I mean,

small town Canada. So, you know, it just might not have reached us because I did travel with a gaggle of goths in high school. So you would have thought, but no, we never got into it. We were, we were War of goths in high school so you would have thought but no we never got into it

we were we were warcraft goths so that's what we were doing like world of warcraft wow yeah that's a boy that's funny because i had like i am not a goth person but i played so much vampire because that's what all my friends were playing like that was though i would usually pick the least goth vampire tribe to be just like oh i want to be really fun oh it is lots of fun i mean what's the secret of what's fun about dnd to me is a character creation is fun and storytelling is fun but what's best about it is it is improvisation like it's improvisational acting like that's what's so fun about it well yeah we have i mean I play in two groups,

not to get too far off topic, but like I play in two different D&D campaigns and one is run by our friend Rich and it's very structured and it's very much like, you know, we are the champions, we are heroes and we're trying to solve this big sort of overarching puzzle.

And it's very classic D&D, very wholesome in a way. And it's really fun. And then my partner runs one for their roommates and our friend Marky. And it's just a shit show. We're just like disaster bisexuals who just light everything on fire. And it's so fun. It's such a different energy.

But it's neat to have both because it's fun to do the like puzzle solving and the you know the structured elements of the traditional one and then this other one where it's just us like fucking around yeah the your your second one was more like my childhood troop by our teenage troop yeah i i never played dnd too cool well oh well actually since we're talking about feminist things too a compliment i will give to the white Wolf games like Vampire the Masquerade. They were the first time I ever saw something where the chosen pronoun in the writing was always feminine. Okay, wow. The storyteller makes her character and she makes this.

It was a pointed choice by it. And as a 16-year-old, it blew my mind that like, oh, I guess you can do that. Wait, why do we always make it male instead? It made you question things. It was a very like kind of, it felt very like a punk move by the White Wolf publishers there. Yeah, I love like, I know there are so many people that don't or that are against it. And that kind of only makes me love it more. But like, I love fifth edition D&D.

I love that they made it so accessible and so much more diverse and you know in the art in the books there's tons of women and they're you know there's like yeah a sexy dryad here and there but generally they're very empowered and cool and interesting and it's like and you can make your character non-binary which is really cool and yet they have all it's so open-ended for that kind of stuff. And I was just like, holy shit, what a wild choice for D&D to make, you know, the thing that was so exclusionary to us. So I've been,

you know, growing up, it's like, that was the people playing it, not the company. So yeah, that's cool. So Lisa encountered D&D playing assholes,

but what about the jazz hole? The jazz hole, yes. I was working on that. You brought that up earlier, Bob. This is a big callback for the show. Yeah, one of the filthiest puns from the first season. From the first season.

They got that in in the first season, the jazz hole. Oh, wow. From Moaning Lisa. Yes, and that is a perfect callback that, like Lisa, as we know, she's lost Bleeding Gums Murphy here, so she can't turn to him. Yeah. But she returns back to the jazz hole Like Lisa, as we know, she's lost Bleeding Gums Murphy here, so she can't turn to him. Yeah.

But she returns back to the jazz hole is where she hears the Lisa blues sung by Bleeding Gums Murphy at the jazz hole. Like that's where that episode ends. And they go there over the credits. Yeah. So her going back there, it adds extra emotionality to this scene of her. I love that it's an eight-year-old just wandering into a jazz club. It was a more innocent time. I love this snide guy.

I love the drawing of this snide guy. I don't know why. No, his voice. Yeah, actually, the man who hates jazz is very funny in this brief clip here. Sounds like she's hitting a baby with a cat. You have to listen to the notes she's not playing. I can do that at home. Do that at home. I like that. I've tried to get more accepting with jazz in my age. I like that. Yeah.

I've tried to get more accepting with jazz in my age. I can, when I turn, I was this guy in my teens. Also just was the cool thing to hate jazz. If you're like too cool for school, like jazz is actually dumb. You're not smarter than me for liking jazz. That was my posture at a time. Now I will put on Spotifyify or whatever just go like jazz play just the thing that is jazz i won't learn the names of these songs but i'll listen to it fair enough i just always think of the the paul f tompkins yes i

was thinking of that is that when somebody plays a note and everyone laughs yeah yeah and he doesn't know why yeah i yeah i think that pft bit ruined jazz for me for a long time yeah as lisa is enjoying her last meal we get the finale to the frost delicous arc which uh this whole bit man uh this might be my line of the show i do quote one thing from this a lot uh i say like three of them yeah yeah same but yeah this is a little longer of a clip but it's it's all worth it son i represent a group of oil tycoons who make foolish purchases we already bought us a stained glass bathrobe and the world's fattest racehorse now we need your ice man oh no i could never sell him he's like a frozen father to me. How much for just the head? By gum it worked.

I've awakened in the future. Moon pie. What a time to be alive. Hey, who had brought my freezer? Return to your state of living death at once, sir. Is that you, Apu?

Whoa. Time has ravaged your once useful looks. Oh, well, Sanjay, that is the end of our freak show. We must relinquish the giddy glamour of show business and return to the humble pleasures of the neighborhood shopkeeper. Time traveler discount. Come on in. So I always use that.

I think I overuse the phrase, what a time to be alive, when I'm commenting on a mediocre new thing. Like, oh, there's a newuse the phrase, what a time to be alive, when I'm commenting on a mediocre new thing. Like, oh, there's a new season of this. What a time to be alive. Yep, I love that line so much. And about a moon pie, of all things. I didn't hear about moon pies until this episode. I assumed that they were real when I watched this.

I mean, I'm more of a Twinkie man, but I do like moon pies there. If I'm eating garbage from a convenience store moon pie but yes why why don't we give what a time to be alive the line of the episode that's the joke though also like his he's not meaning to insult apu but he's just like yeah time is ravaged your once youthful looks that's such i also just like the kind of like i was saying the mundane the wondrous view of mundane things that also kind of is there with jasper awakening in the new world that he's like he sees futuristic things and all the old stuff he knew that's just so great and you know i have to wonder actually futurama was 100 being worked on at this time i would think they knew at

least the concept of a man cryogenically frozen wakes up in the future i wonder if this was kind of a reference to or if any of it came from the futurama work that was happening around the same time i think i have to wonder because they say the thing about well if you can't like just just the head because that's yeah it's in the jars yeah yeah i think just cryogenics was in the zeitgeist then it was a topic people talked about a lot so a lot of people were thinking of the idea of freezing a body i think the head thing is a walt disney reference too because that was the urban legend he's not frozen folks he's i i believe so yes but isn't that that what Disney would want you to think? True.

If they could buy everything, they could bring that man back to life. Also, I do love the line, return to your state of living death. Yeah, at once. State of living death. Living death is another favorite of mine, too. I like that. And also, the shot of a very confused jasper wandering out into the future like so great and nudie martz so that that is a weird that feels

like a very wild twist like didn't see that coming i really didn't know and then uh way more nudity than you'll ever see on tv now yeah yeah and sanjay uh not a lot is being covered up by that bike rack yeah i don't know what his anatomy is. They're not doing favors to Sanjay with those drawings. Gotta say, but just stamped the ticket guy, a big fan of nudity. He's the first one through that curtain. It's funny, on 2K Chosen Row, we have burlesque in it. Yeah, basically.

It's fine. It's appropriate for the brand. Though I do think it's funny that i can't imagine that there is a i have to imagine that the nudie mart is based on the clientele a strip club mainly with female performers so having the two owners of the strip club nude outside welcoming people in seems to be counterproductive to getting clients. I saw it as more of like a nudist club where you go in to be naked and there could be dancers there. That's how I saw it.

Yeah. I didn't know what was going on. It also just seems illegal for them to stand outside naked and telling people to come inside. That's also true. Yeah. They have a nudity license. It's fine. Actually, Apu has already been arrested once for public ind come inside. That's also true, yeah. They have a nudity license. It's fine. Actually, Apu has already been arrested once for

public indecency. That's right. But that was the story. Alastair and Eliza saved him on that one. Maybe he got an exception from then on. Actually, after that, maybe he knows public nudity laws well and that he can get skirt around them. Anyway, that's the end of Frostilicus there. Lisa,

meanwhile, is inspired. And this is like the bechdel test is you know is one way to test pop culture and i think simpsons they've they've hit that before like definitely lisa and marge have had conversations that are not about a man true true but the uh the trite comment is uh baby got back passes the bechdel test it's not a foolproof system yes yeah they're both talking about a woman's butt it's a good starting point for feminist criticism of yeah right it is it's it's a jumping off point i think rather than like you know a hard steadfast rule of whether or not something is good um but yeah it's it's something like i can't help but notice it in media that i watch and i always sort of look for it but but it's oh like I can't help but notice it in media that I watch. And I always sort of look for it.

But I was bringing it up too because I thought this does feel especially rare of Lisa talking to a grown adult woman who isn't a relative. Or Marge. Yeah. And this really stands out. I like that this one gets me now as an older person who I used to be in the lisa role of talking to someone you look up to and not this i don't mean to this could sound like a brag but i now have met people who look up to me just from a podcast and and i have the feeling after of the person who's like i just need to pay my bills that this this woman has in the scene and for this uh this character

who is unnamed, I believe they wanted someone at the time who was a famous sort of experimental music person, but on the commentary, they can't remember who she is. Wow. And she turned them down. She said, no, thank you, Simpsons.

That's too bad. If this had been like Shirley Manson or something, that would have been cool. Yeah. But maybe experimental, but not popular. Oh, I see. Shirley Manson was in a pop band yeah okay that's different i but i do really like this uh this little exchange here is very cute

great set oh thanks but the crowd kept looking at me like i was using too many augmented nights uh they just came for the buffalo wings but you really got through to me how good i figure if you've got something special to say you have to share it with the world yeah why you still can thanks damn that felt like a sale she's just like i need to sell these tapes oh man i wrote that one down too that's really because i also know that pain it was a sales pitch uh why i mean yes you've yeah unlike us you've you've been to a number of cons like you said and have run your own you've been your own salesperson a number oh yeah and it is that thing of like you have this very meaningful

conversation with someone and they're like thanks bye and you're like oh well that was nice but shit i've tabled i've tabled a few times and I thought, oh, I thought they were going to buy something. Yeah. If you liked me, you'd buy something. But, you know, now it's the people who take my card and they're like, yeah, I'll buy this online later. And I'm like, what? Yeah. Yeah, I've said that myself, too.

I try to buy more, but sometimes sometimes i just i do really mean it uh with at cons i haven't been to a con in a couple years now but i do mean it when i say that sometimes it is just like i don't want to i'm not in the position to carry around a bunch of stuff right now that's that's usually how i'm feeling but when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care.

Did I mention that we care? Fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough. But yes, when Lisa then realizes she needs to go to the station and do her own editorial reply, she's very against war widows, as she says. Lowered bus fares for war widows. Those mooching war widows as she says well lowered bus fares for widows those mooching war widows and uh well

and also speaking of lines i've taken homer saying big chocolate apology cake i've said apology cake yeah they owe me they better have a big apology cake like that i like saying that more than just this person owes me an apology but then we get lisa's real big speech here like it's in two parts this is just great from yardley and writing wise they're following that's an interesting thing they have to take because it has to be you know very earnest from lisa and it needs to you know feel it needs to stir emotion in you but they also want to joke every sentence too so it's uh it's an interesting balance they have to strike here. Now the guy doing, no, no, no, let her speak.

I'm trying to get fired. I love that. It's so real. It's a good, you think, again, it's just like the guy at the museum. Like, what is his life like? There's a lot going on with this character who we've never seen before. Yeah. He reminds me of William Holden from Network.

Yeah, you're right. But definitely, I want to know the story of why he's trying to get fired. It's fascinating. But yes, here's the first part of Lisa's speech. I'm getting worried about Lisa. She's been gone for hours. If I were her, I'd be buying me a great big chocolate apology cake. Authorities believe the wave of towel snappings will get worse before it gets better.

And now, with an editorial reply, here's a small girl. Hello, my name is Lisa Simpson. I'm supposed to talk to you about Proposition 305. Moach and more, widows. But I have something more important to say. For reasons beyond my control i will soon become vapid sluggish and slow-witted so before that happens i want to share some things with you that have really meant a lot to me what is she doing out there i'll cut off her mic no no no

let her speak i'm trying to get fired i love that so funny and homer homer hates those moochin war widows that's also great the kent his producers did not set him up well he's just like a small girl that's that's failure on his producers little girl likes her brain and uh yeah it is it's such i'm trying to get fired it's a really great subversion of just like like no let her speak the world needs to hear it keep those cameras on keep those on don't you cut it like something they would have written very earnestly and laughably in say newsroom i think newsroom had like eight scenes like that uh but yes lisa here's the here's the second half of lisa's speech which stirs stirs all of springfield and please don't deprive yourself of wonderful books like To Kill a Mockingbird,

Harriet the Spy, and Yertle the Turtle. Possibly the best book ever written on the subject of turtle stacking. She's got that right. Beauty is all around us, and not just in pageants and parlors. You can find it in the swirl of galaxies or the swirl in the center of a

sunflower. That's a good idea. Let's go out for some frosty swirls. Homer, your daughter is pouring her heart out. Well, tape it. Why is she saying all this? Is she dying? Oh, she's just upset because I told her her brain's turning to mush. You know, on account of the Simpson gene.

Simpson gene? That's just foolishness. No, boldness too. So please, I beg you, don't take your brain for granted. It's the best friend you'll ever have. Little girl likes her brain. What's your opinion? I mean, this pro-intelligence speech definitely feels like it's coming from writers who feel bad that

they're on television yeah you feel that television has degraded intelligence and society as a whole there are some very strong anti-tv sentiments yeah in this episode yeah yeah yeah it's weird for that right because it's like you're sort of insulting your audience a little bit yeah a little bit just a little bit for watching a cartoon i don't know it's the second're sort of insulting your audience. A little bit, yeah. A little bit. Just a little bit for watching a cartoon. I don't know. The second half of the speech doesn't really hit for me because it's like, okay, Lisa. But, you know, I get what she's trying to do. Well, I'll tell you one thing that has turned me against this aggrandization of knowledge.

Yeah, Bob knows. I know exactly where you're going because I have the exact same feeling. Yeah, exactly. Well, because this is probably just toxic men ruining everything as they always do but i the there's this very much feeling of the online intelligentsia these days is like that iq points are like your dragon ball z power level and the smartest person is obviously the best and it also leads people to assume they are the smartest person in the world. And also just like facts over feelings, that whole like bullshit.

It makes me really hate the idea of intelligence these days, even though you people should engross their minds. I'd agree with that and, you know, learn more. But things like emotional intelligence are also important. Yes. And empathy and things like that. I had a whole conversation with my mom when she was in town about that. Because, you know, like my mom is pretty woke as moms go. But she's 62 and she's of a different generation.

And we were talking about that. And she was saying how, you know, oh, she's still like, even though she's not as strict about it as she used to be, that she's still really bothered by people who can't spell. And I was like, yeah, I really used to be like that. But then, you know, I kind of got to the education that that's a pretty classist way to be. And that, you know, doesn't help anybody because it's just saying I'm better than you because I had access to, you know,

better education or whatever. And my mom was like, yeah, I know. I just, I still sometimes think of myself as a grammar Nazi. And I was like, yeah, I don't really use that anymore. Cause there's real Nazis again now. That's a good point. It was sort of a good jumping off point for this conversation about like,

I used to care so much, so much. Like I would only ever text in like perfect sentences and perfect grammar and punctuation. And now I'm like, what the fuck ever, who cares? It it doesn't matter and even though i'm a writer for a living you know when i do my actual work it's it's on point but in day-to-day life and on social media and stuff like that it's like whatever who cares um and yeah the people who are like well you you spelled that wrong so your point is invalid it's like okay yeah yeah that's why i that that's not the stance lisa is taking but it's so easy to go from this like yeah be smarter kind of demand to the

direction of the online pen so just like um actually this happened in history or whatever just the um actually folks out there again yeah learning facts is good you should learn things always try to engross your mind that's fine like but also that is part of that intelligence is learning that is empathy for sure that emotional intelligence and common sense are like very very important if you if you want to open your mind you could read a history book on World War II. You could also try to listen to what it's like to be somebody who isn't you. That's also mind-blowing. I also like that, Homer, this feels like another callback to classic-ass Simpsons of the Frosty Chocolate Milkshakes.

Yeah. Like pre-TV show Simpsons. Yeah. Series Simpsons. I, I did frosty chocolate milkshakes. Anytime the family would go to dairy queen that we'd say frosty chocolate milkshakes.

It's amazing. It always feels nicer. And I, I wondered why Kent Kent felt slightly off to me in a couple of the shots here. His hair is a different color. His hair was miscolored and his tie was red when it's normally blue. Interesting.

But I mean, he's in so little of his shots and it's not so standing out that I get why the retake budget wasn't given to that. Yeah, I see that. And it's also a very like vaudeville line from Abe like, that's just foolishness. Nope, baldness too. And then just walks out. Da-da, da-da-da. Later we find out he is telling the truth it's real yes yeah yeah they're both right why one that the the answer is staring you in the face the whole time it how it can work in this last scene here but uh i it felt so clever at the time i did i didn't see it coming even though in this

next scene all the women are visible but your eyes are just drawn to Homer speaking and you're looking at all of the weird people that surround him I love all the drawings of his relatives but I didn't want to skip over the conversation I got a big gut laugh out of that on the commentary Bill Oakley

who we podcasted with like three times by now he does not like that joke and he's still deliberating in his head as of that commentary where he's like that feels like i want to go home joke oh no i like that i laughed really loud at the conversation hat to wear a conversation hat for a phone call that no one can see is very i like that it makes it more confident it's funny i like it it looks like a crocodile dundee hat it's just so absurdist i don't know it's i i like it there Dundee hat. It's just so absurdist. I don't know. I like it. There's a couple, you know, Bill's exacting this as a comedy producer. I, as a showrunner,

like I like that about it, but sometimes he can be just slightly harsh to jokes. I'm like, no, that was funny. It reminds me of listening to like Mr. Show commentaries and Bob Odenkirk hates every sketch. Like this sketch sucks. I shouldn't be playing that character. This is bad. This set is bad. Yeah, like I just, it hurts to hear them beat themselves up like that. It's really tough.

And it's such a common thing. You know, nobody hates the work as much as the people who made it. And I get that for sure. But it's, yeah, sometimes you don't really want to hear it. This final bit here here i do like that homer is trying to help lisa like it's born out of positivity it only makes things worse and i i

definitely good acting on yardley there where she's just like giving up on life she's like why even bother waking up but yeah he's putting a very positive spin on these people's uh pointless lives it's it's pretty amazing that in the tri-state area there's that many simpson relatives too who will never be seen again either but yeah god damn so this next bit here actually i should have used line to show for this because this entire sequence is the greatest like one dan castellaneta does such a good job yes homer style voices that are all different yeah what a challenge i think what they said on the commentary is they let the audio run for 20 minutes while i came up with different

things yeah yeah dan dan is a top level improviser so that's it's great they gave him the space for that and then they had the great recording then they give it to suzy dieter and her team and they come up with so many variations on the Homer design of the beard line, the hair, all of that. It's so good. God damn. And just the drawings are so funny. They make me laugh just seeing them.

Just seeing them. And then when they say their lines, like, let's just give a listen to all of the Simpson men here. Lisa, honey, wake up. Why bother? Because your father has a big surprise for you I'm adopted better come on

Lisa it's me daddy your father I rounded up every Simpson in the Tri-City area so I can prove to you there's nothing wrong with the Simpson genes this is your great uncle Chet go ahead Chet tell her what you do I ran an unsuccessful shrimp company oh but you run it right oh yeah

okay this is your second cousin Stanley um I shoot birds at the airport you Everybody hates birds, right? You look pretty successful. Thanks. I play a millionaire at parties. At least I'd like to. You probably should have researched this first, eh, Dad? What about you? Well, sir, I step in front of cars and sue the drivers. I beg celebrities for money.

I'm a prison snitch. Jug man manager. My legs hurt. Lisa's right. We're nothing but a big bunch of losers. least i'd like to i think about that all the time his goal is to play millionaire party something that no one does yes you don't hire a fake millionaire to hang out at parties but he can't even aspire he can't even like reach that goal of this fictional job he thinks exists and he's

always walking around in millionaire clothes but uh i shoot birds at the airport everybody hates birds now i gotta say i'm a big pro bird guy i have a parrot i've had one for 17 years there is so much bird violence on tv if you want to do a story about a pet getting injured if you want to injure an animal for a joke it's always a bird on twitter i see all kinds of videos that i don't want to see of like here's a bird getting hurt isn't it hilarious and i gotta say whenever that happens i think everybody hates birds but you know what I'm trying to turn the corner on that I think I'm going to say right now that funny bird videos are the new funny cat videos all your cat videos are boring I've seen cats fall off of every manner of thing I've seen cats be stupid in every way birds are the future I

said my piece I will watch cat videos till the day I die. No, it's all about bird videos, I swear. Give birds a chance, people. I'll take birds, too. I'm seeing bird. I am seeing more of a proliferation of bird videos. It's all me. I think half of it's you in my feed. I think it's spreading more, too. I think people are accepting that birds can be cute.

But yeah, no, I think, well, it's part of the, you know, de-cutifying of pigeons. People are just like, oh, the rats with wings, yuck. When rats are cute too. Like, why are you being so mean to rats? What if they were pigeon rats? But I know it is a joke about bird cruelty. It's not nice. But I really like how the guy says, I shoot birds at the airport.

Well, I mean, I get that. I get that a lot of people don't like birds because a lot of the reaction I get, this is all my weird bird stuff, by the way. A lot of the reaction I get when I tell people I have a parrot or it comes out, their reaction is like horror. It's not like, oh, I have a dog. Oh, what's its name? It must be so cute. What kind of breed is it? I have a bird.

Oh, don't they live forever? Aren't they messy? Aren't they noisy? Those are the first things people say to me. I'm like, do you think this is okay to say this about somebody's pet? Like, Oh, you're stuck with that fucking thing forever. It's screaming and shitting everywhere.

God, your life must be hell. Anyways. Birds are great. Yeah. There's a flock of parrots in Burbank. They're very famous. That they fly.

They were introduced here by accident, I think. And you can hear them sometimes flying over we got to check out those parrots next time we're on a podcast trip to burbank there are parrots in san francisco wild parrots oh yeah that's right yeah they're just in my backyard and in my living room yes yeah you have a very nice parrot i i i've learned to i was scared by your bird at first I must admit Well birds always, they've always scared me Because I got bitten by one as a kid

And they just, I don't know If a cat scratches me, I had a cat for so long That if a cat scratches me I'm like, aw you love me You think about that fun song about the cat scratch Yeah I'm afraid of horses And any sort of Cephalopods uh squids octopi

um so but those feel like normal fears and bugs i'm afraid of a lot of bugs and not even afraid but like looking at them makes me uh freaked out even if logically i know i don't need to be scared of them but birds i feel like i'm fine with I've known a lot of people who had bird fears. My ex, my ex, Adam, he was terrified of birds, but for a very good reason that when he was young, his his older sister would hide in closets around the house and she had a bird shaped kite and she would jump out of the closets and throw the kite at him. And so he's afraid of the closets and throw the kite at him. Oh, my God. Like, all the time. And so he was afraid of birds, which is, like, reasonable. That's reasonable. Yeah, that's reasonable.

Yeah, I agree. I also got every line in there. The, well, sir, I step in front of cars. Like, that guy is so proper. Yeah. He just is like, I want to tell you all about my job. He's like, well, sir. Yeah.

But my favorite is my legs hurt. My legs hurt. I like I'm a prison snitch. He's very proud of himself. For money. Yeah. Well, just the design of the legs hurt guy, too, that he's just in a monocolored sweatsuit. And just like the way he looks down at the ground

i do like they do something with the animation here that they don't do that often and that is homer needs to get between these people so fast so there's like motion blur as he goes super fast between all of them it's interesting it's not something they do that often yeah like zip lines they don't do a lot of that or like motion or like smears either yeah A lot of that in Simpsons, yeah. No, well, so all seems hopeless for Lisa and it's also a good trick that Homer says he's going to pay them after they leave somehow, which that's what he wants. They all believe it.

They're all stupid. They'll get your money after you leave. But there's some hope left for little Lisa. Wait a minute, Homer. You didn't ask everybody. What about the women? Fine, fine. left for little Lisa. You have to if you want to be an architect. Or an environmental lawyer. Or regional sales coordinator for the third largest distributor of bunk and trundle beds. Oh, did you hear that, Lisa? So all the Simpson women turn out okay.

That's right, sweetie. The defective Simpson gene is on the Y chromosome, so only men are affected. So I'm not doomed! so only men are affected. And a success. Unless you're a man. So wait a minute. This means I'm going to be a failure? Yes, son. A spectacular failure. Eh. Good. It's the perfect boring joke. Bunk and trundle beds.

Bunk and trundle, the two. I love that. It's so good words, too. Just bunk and trundle. That's just funny. And what's good, they needed a joke at the end of that because the other three are just like inspirational good jobs to have. But that last lady does have a very good job, it sounds like. I love her pride in it too.

Like third largest of bunk and trundle. I like her. It almost feels like outsized pride, but you should have pride in your job like third largest a bunk and trundle like there's i like her it almost feels like outsized pride but you should have pride in your job like that exactly i mean also compared to everyone else yes everyone needs a trundle bed by the way a trundle bed does anyone know what that is actually that's a drawer bed drawer bed yeah like where a smaller bed comes out underneath the main bed i've never seen one in real life yeah I was looking at those for a while as an option for people, for guests at my home, but they don't seem very comfortable. Yes, the second mattress is much thinner because it has to fit under the first one. So my bed has drawers under it, which is much better. And if I have a small person, they can sleep in a drawer.

I need that under bed space for shoving things under and cleaning and to lose things and to feed the monsters feed those monsters the cats need a place to hide oh yeah you gotta have that uh your your cat is adorable by the way i love thank you i think i have two i have lulu and ray they are both named after sci-fi heroines which is not on purpose but yeah they're very they're great they're so cute but i uh yeah i like lisa finally finds hope again i like she's like that means you went to college right that's that's very sweet though lisa college is a trick save your money lie about college on an application that's all you gotta do i mean the college lie was going strong in the 90s yeah yeah it was it was definitely a thing that was was hugely important to me as a kid because neither of my parents had gone to school or had finished college.

And so my whole thing growing up was like, well, I'm going to go to college. I'm going to be the first one and I'm going to do the whole thing. Four years, like big school and graduate. And then I went to art school and then I dropped out after a year. And then I went back after having a bad trip on mushrooms, went back for a year and then i went to art school and then i dropped out after a year and then i went back after having a bad trip on mushrooms uh went back for a year and then dropped out again really following uh in the lineage of my family but you know it as it turns out i have almost no debt and a career now so it is uh i may have dodged a bullet a little bit i have lots of debt

but two degrees that i have never hung up anywhere because they don't do anything for me. Yeah, my partner has a master's degree that they're like, I don't even know where it is. It happens. It happens. No, I'm more on your situation, Kate, and I don't. I did, you know, I regretted it at first when I started applying at places because I was like, oh, everybody else graduated. I'm just not going to say that. And then by the time I was 35, I was like, oh, I'm kind of proud that I got this far without a college degree.

Honestly, I mean, like I write for TV. I live in L.A. I'm doing just fine. Oh, yeah. Hey, listen, my degree makes me a liability. Did not go to college. Yeah. You didn't come off as too experienced. Well, I as too experienced but it wasn't for me i also

like that they have to recognize that this happy ending for lisa is a bad ending for bart's yeah that he is due bart has had so many like dark future fantasies that he thinks are cool that's true yeah like being a stripper that's like passes out bang bang bart uh the rock the rock star that passes out to the slag off the drifter yeah yes so yeah you know he doesn't mind having no future and i like that he just kind of shrugs and goes back to clanging his head in those pots and pans that's yeah uh that that's sweet you know bart has a good attitude as well it's uh just accepting sometimes you know just rolling with it i was watching it is so funny because when they're talking about it and they're like well it's only transmitted with you know this chrome the y chromosome or whatever and i was like

sitting there being like chromosomes don't determine gender this was also like 21 years ago or something this is some real like uh metal gear science happening in this episode yeah yeah it's just like it doesn't it's not the same yeah no it's it's of the of the time but it's the thing i'm saying now people need to hear that now i mean that's the uh the previously mentioned facts over feelings people need to hear that now that that gender is not related to chromosomes that is exactly true exactly uh but yes the the episode that was a very clever end to this and just the announcement that like that lisa is safe that she has a future that she is smart and then they finally returned to i was really happy they returned to a thing that yeah you would have thought they'd forgotten by now

and honestly like future simpsons episodes where we talk about how they kind of forget where they started the episode yeah they wouldn't do this kind of ending i really love this ending it's it's really sweet dearest log i am me again and i feel like there's nothing i can't do except this stupid brain teeth. I got it! Woohoo! I mean, splendid. I feel warm and fuzzy. That's like the wholesome music.

Yeah. I kind of wish they'd had original music for the whole credits, but they just play it into the credits and then have the usual theme. Yeah. But man. It's good though. I like it. Yeah. And my first viewing as a teen when she figured out the puzzle,

I was like, oh my God. Like my mind was blown. I had completely forgotten. Yeah. Even Nelson got it, not me. Yeah. It's when you see that it is numbers mirrored, it does seem so obvious.

I'm like, oh, duh. Yeah. But sometimes really simple puzzles are harder than, you know, complex ones. Because it's like, you're looking for the more complex solution. And it's actually very simple.'s actually yeah definitely the name of the episode is lisa the simpson this is her accepting her simpsoniness while still being herself and

like her woohoo like that that was a great second thought and then correcting yourself like i mean splendid she's still a simpson yeah a very you know not addressed at any point but it's like she also has half of you know know, Marge's DNA. Marge is not an idiot. Yeah, that's also true. I didn't have that thought before upon a past viewing. Like, yeah, why does Marge, where's the Bouvier gene or whatever? Yeah, they're fine.

It seems to be that the Simpson genes are very, are the dominant one. Almost all of it's like scientifically impossibly always the dominant gene somehow and also that those simpsons women there i like that they are independent clearly they either either unmarried or they kept their name in marriage which i i like that too which lisa said like when i get married i'm gonna keep my own name if i choose to get married yes yeah she corrected herself but yeah this is the last bill oakley and josh weinstein episode and it's a nice little uh send off it's sort of like summer of four foot two where it's an emotional lisa story they ended the season with in this case

it's towards the end of season nine not at the end of season eight which they intended but it still works just just view it viewed in production order it is a very touching end you know they they say on the commentary too that like we they've said before you get tired by the 20th episode of a 23 episode order you're not trying as hard and that they were like we have to get our last episode right they really pushed themselves to get it right and i think they really did in this like it is a yeah a perfect coda you know their second to last episode was Principal and the Pauper, which I think was actually very good for them and their style too. But I'm glad they went out on an emotional Lisa story as their final one.

And that Susie Dieter got to go out on that too. And that it's full of references to classic, like season one and two Simpsons even. Well, that's what I was going to say. It's like, yeah, if it was their last episode, it totally makes sense because you're talking about them referencing life in hell and, you know, early pre-Simpsons Simpsons. It's like, that tracks, of course.

We have no power here, but I will say this. So the Simpsons is in season 31 production right now, right? And at this point, like old writers have come back. It's always the same amount of seasons old as I am years old. Oh, wow. I'm going to be 31 in the fall. At this point, oh, happy preemptive birthday then. But at this point, they're in that season. Old writers have come back. Sometimes their children write for the show. Nancy Cartwright has written an episode. I'm going to put it out right here. Let Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein write one episode. Let them come back once.

People love their stuff. And this just reminds me like oh man they're so great running a show yeah it's it's sad that bill and josh haven't come back you know they've they've worked more with mac graining they currently are working on disenchantment with mac graining so they're they're like in the simpsony family but yeah like they were the the only two didn't come back for the movie of former showrunners yeah and you know were they busy with other stuff you know who's who knows but yeah it's it's always just disappointed me just as a fan that they never got to come back because their episodes before they became showrunners were some of my favorites and their seasons are some of my favorites too yeah they're just so good it's

they should be part of the simpsony fun along with all the other old writers that get to come back. They are conspicuously absent from newer things and I find out later in interviews like their choices were not popular amongst high-ranking people like James L. Brooks and perhaps Al Jean. So, I don't know. I'd like to think that they could mend those old

wounds. You'd hope. I mean, Josh Weinstein does this enchantment, so there's still connections there. There's a lot of delicate egos in the animation writing world it's like i i can see a number of reasons you you you know better than us yeah a little bit i mean i'm only a couple years into it but yeah it's you know it happens so uh to wrap up kate you're our guest do you have anything you want to promote for us right now? Thanks again for being on the show. Yes, thank you.

Oh, yeah, of course. What a treat. Well, I'm trying to think. Anything that I have, I'm going to put on Twitter. My Twitter is just my name. It's at Kate Leff. Same as my Instagram and pretty much everything else. KateLeff.com is where all my things are linked to. I have a Mysticons graphic novel just came out.

Will have just come out by the time this goes out. That is based on the series, the Magical Girl series for the youth. And so that's done with the same team that did Spell on Wheels, which is- Oh, that's great. Yeah, yeah. So this is the second one

that we've done a second graphic novel. So if you have a niece or nephew or young person in your life, you can check that out for them. And then, yeah, pretty much other than that, I'm making comics on Twitter and on Patreon primarily so you can get to that through my twitter or by going to bisexual.zone nice yeah i i think uh too if uh if listeners want to see both funny and sexy comics your patreon is is a good time it's true for ten dollars a month you

can see some filth not of me but drawn by me by me. Very clear distinction. But yeah, yeah, it's, you know, a little bit of both. Well, this is a very long episode. So thanks for joining us. Yes, thank you. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. and get all kinds of bonus stuff on top of that, please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and for the low price of $5 every month, you'll get every episode of this show one week at a time and at free. And the same goes for our sister show, What a Cartoon.

And at that $5 level, you'll also get all of our mini series we've done like Talking Futurama, Talking Critic, and the currently unfurling Talk King of the Hill, along with too many bonus podcasts to mention right here in this little wrap-up. Henry, what do we have at the $10 level?

Well, for the special premium $10 and up, folks, they get access to our monthly What a Cartoon movie, where me and Bob talk about a different animated feature film once a month, chosen by our audience, our most recent one. Three hours and 22 minutes of talking about Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. And you can only hear that if you're a $10 and up patron at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And if I may add, also in those extras, we talked a shitload about Bill and Josh on this episode. If you want to hear me and Bob chatting it up with them in interviews, those interviews

are only available on the Patreon as well. Check them out. So as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. Find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts a classic gaming podcast every monday and occasionally on friday go to retronauts.com or look for retronauts in your podcast machine it's a good podcast that i'm on henry how about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g you'll get all your updates on henry gilbert's life but also when there's new things on the Patreon,

and you'll hear about them all first if you follow me on Twitter, H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Thanks for joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for This Little Wiggy. We'll see you then. Now you're swinging, honey.