Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Lisa The Tree Hugger With Kat Bailey

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

This week's environmental episode is joined by the returning Kat Bailey, our friend and co-host of the newly relaunched Axe of the Blood God podcast! We cover the ultimate episode about the show punishing Lisa for believing in something, plus we discuss Homer doing a bunch of weird stuff and the career of Joshua Jackson. Listen now or we'll sit in a tree for weeks in protest! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

Good news everyone, Talking Futurama is coming back for Talking Futurama Season 2 Part 2. Fresher than a summer ham, this podcast comes every Friday and if you sign up at the $5 level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can hear each episode as it goes live. That's right, sign up today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for $5 to hear Talking Futurama every Friday throughout the rest of 2020 and also all the previous episodes we've done so far. So head over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons now or we're gonna clamp you! Shut up and take my money! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where you can't silence the truth with beanbags. I'm your host, the level 5 vegan, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today?

Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and The Simpsons are going to Paris. And who do we have on the line? Hi, everybody, it's Acts of the Blood God host, Kat Bailey, and I am a fan of Burning Man in this group. And today's episode is Lisa, the tree hugger. I knew this day would come. The cows are taking back what's theirs. No, I think they're protesters. Today's episode aired on November 19th, 2000.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby the florida supreme court no they demand a recount where w currently leads by 930 votes this is hinted at in the chalkboard joke this week. In happier news, the Grinch beats Rugrats in Paris at the box office. And on the Nintendo 64, Banjo-Tooie is released. I am a fan of the Banjo-Tooie game. You're a Banjo-liker, eh? Yes. I see it as little brother games.

I guess you are a little brother, Bob. I am. But I 100%ed the first and I this game is frankly too big So I only played a bit of it The reason I screamed is because we can't stop doing things that came out in November of 2000 I forgot to point it out But Dexter's laboratory ego trip the VHS came out on Election Day of 2000. Yeah, we did that for what a cartoon movie Last month. Yeah, geez what a weird month

We went to sleep on Election Day and we're like, everything's going to be fine when we wake up. And then it's like, wait, it's still going? Can elections do that? It was the first time we learned what modern elections would be of just you have to wait and wait and wait on two or three states. And boy, I mean, the 2001 almost seems quaint waiting on one state for a month instead of like five states for eight days and just like so many other future patriots al gore failed to stop the steal yeah i'm kidding of course uh yes at this time in the timeline the florida's florida supreme court is saying there should be a recount that's going to get sent up to

Supreme Court. Who knows what will happen then? And the chalkboard gag is I am not the acting president. Yes. Yeah. I'm sorry. I was too caught up in the first news item. What was the second one between Banjo-Tooie and the vote?

The Grinch is at the top of the box office over Rugrats in Paris. I love that you call that happier news. I don't know if that's happier news, I love that you called that happier news. I don't know if that's happier news, Henry. Some people like that Grinch. It's now turned into like a Christmas favorite of some people I've found out on the Twitter. I'm sure I've complained about it before this movie, but I went into this with residual Jim Carrey love from the 90s. This destroyed any love I had for Jim Carrey for at least a decade.

I think I'd maybe have come to like more but i don't like it the jim carrey grinch because that minions grinch seemed worse like that uh the illumination grinch film seemed lamer to me i i at least like that i don't know i think jim carrey like he's actually having to walk around very uncomfortably covered in a bunch of garbage just know that he's miserable, I guess. I'd rather him play the... Gentlemen, they're all bad. It's true.

I mean, I'd rather have him play the Grinch than make those awful political paintings. But let's stop doing that, Jim. I mean, we're all very proud of you. Great way to go, but honestly, not that great. Yeah. Not that great. And Rugrats in Paris was when Chucky got a new mom and a new sister. And when they finally got an Asian baby on the show.

Wedding after wedding after wedding. But hey, welcome back, Kat Bailey. Hey, it's good to be back here extending my run on Talking Simpsons. Yeah, I think you are the Tom Hanks of the show and that you've had the most guest appearances I think of of anybody of any guest yeah I always enjoy coming on here and we're in the season 12 now so this is kind of uncharted territory but I don't mind watching some of these newer episodes quote-unquote newer episodes just because it kind of reflects a period of the Simpsons that I don't know as well so I feel like I'm learning something and then also sometimes you can find

episodes that are a little bit of a Dive into the Rough I wouldn't necessarily call this episode a Dive into the Rough but I have a question for both of you was Kat's last episode with us the Crepes of Wrath yes Kat was with us for our last recording on the eve of lockdown in March

of 2020 that's right Kat was our last live guest in-person guest on our show we're lucky that we didn't all get code from that it's true it was it was shut down day when we did it mark yeah i can't it was like two days later and i we were all talking and we were just talking i was like oh my wedding's coming up but i'm sure that's still gonna happen and it's it's march uh this will all blow over in a few weeks and then i eventually got married in uh january of the following year uh and uh well and also things have changed a lot since then because cat now you're on the patreon podcast train as well i sure am i'm still hosting acts of the blood god we have liberated it from us gamer we've

grabbed the axe and yanked it away from uncle reed and in the process we've started up our own patreon which is very exciting and've started up our own Patreon, which is very exciting. And we started up two additional podcasts on top of that. There's Pantheon of the Blood God, where we look back on a classic RPG and we decide whether or not it decides, it deserves to go into the kind of the hall of fame of RPGs,

the Pantheon, as it were. Right now we're doing Lufia 2. And then we're also doing Television of the Blood God, which is kind of like the Talking Simpsons format, but we're doing lufia 2 and then we're also doing television of the bug god which is kind of like you know the talking simpsons format but we're doing it with rpg related shows right now we're doing the witcher on netflix and all of this is available for patrons at the five dollar level and above all right you know so many people these days are living off of podcast patreons that i want everyone out there to write your senator let them know we need to vaccinate podcasters we're providing essential services for entertainment.

We're not up there with grocery store workers or people in hospitals or ambulance workers or sanitation workers. The list is very long. We're at the bottom, but still essential. We are essential. I should get to jump the line at least on like, say a CPA.

Let me get ahead of those guys. Hey, I think I'm way more essential than anybody who works for like Google or any of the tech concerns in Silicon Valley. Yeah, they can do all that. They can definitely do that stuff from home. I'm bringing joy to the lives of people. That's more than I can say for them. The world needs laughter. Exactly. But yes, congrats on the successful launch of your Patreon. It's always great to see any of our friends go independent and get out of the rat race. Thank you so much. And by the way, it's Axe, A-X-E, not Axe, A-C-T-S.

I've had some confusion on that front, but Axe the Blood God. You can lure in Christians by saying, we're going to talk about the Bible. The Christian God is the Blood God. I like having Kat on for this one because this is a real punish lisa episode of the show i think this i think this is the ultimate punish lisa episode it actually uh listeners i have a new jingle i'm going to uh debut here every episode uh from i think season nine onward i've been pointing out like lisa

exists to either point out a plot inconsistency or to be told she's wrong and so finally this episode provided a wonderful jingle that in future episodes i will play when it's a time to punish lisa uh and here it is take that lisa's beliefs that's great i feel like i'm here for history and that is actually the perfect jingle and also really sad i just love how uh they so succinctly put it to explain how the writers were feeling at this time they they are so they at least recognize that they're like take that lisa's beliefs like god but but also this is like uh a descended episode for a previously like very limited character who becomes much bigger this episode onward in the series and i of course mean rich texan oh okay is he officially named rich texan in this episode uh he is pointed

at and in the at the auction and says rich texan but they don't literally say his name is rich texan okay his name is shady bird johnson really is that his actual name or at least mr burns calls him that at some point well that's what the wiki says according to the wiki shady bird johnson has been used at some point well that's like that's like jeff anderson level albertson albertson i i refuse to learn it i'm so good okay rich texan is the way we all know him so that's what matters that's like jailbird versus snake as well i suppose but i'll always call him rich texan but this is an interesting episode of the show that has a whole lot of history to it too and it's uh it's written by matt selman who is the uh co-showrunner of the show now i'd say he's of of him and al jean i i think i like his show run episodes better of modern simpsons i like his

commentaries too he's very bridge bernie i guess oh yeah and he's very candid about uh you know we didn't know what we were doing or this is a bad joke or just, he's very sassy on commentaries. And I like, and I think he would make fun of us if we had him on a podcast. Oh yeah. And I, I welcome it. I love to,

after this one and also finding out, I always remember he's one of the writers of the Simpsons video game, meaning he is a gamer or more of a gamer. That's interesting because this game, this episode is very gaming ignorant. Yeah. I think. I definitely hearing Selman on the commentary.

He even says you watch South Park sometimes. And I think, why are we so crummy? Why aren't we as good at reacting to current events as South Park? And I definitely feel like hearing him say that just tied to the ribbon on what I'd already thought about him. And at this time he was writing an episode to try to keep up with south park and he like this feels like a south park episode in in how it

and also its view on like anti-hippie miss though it is not as savage to hippies as south park would be that's true hippies and more hipsters and then also the problem with chasing South Park is if you do that, you kind of end up being frozen in amber. And this episode is very much that. This episode is very 2000 in the way that it approaches environmental kind of politics and that sort of thing. And in that respect, it feels very dated. I like how on the commentary they are upfront about how snotty they're being because they're

pointing out, yes, the point of our show is everyone is wrong except for us, the smart comedy writers. I like, yeah, I like that. And I also like that. I think graining to an extent keeps them a little honest, too. I think he's good. And also they an interesting thing is what they they took the rip from the headlines from here. Did you look into this history, guys? Oh, I did.

Definitely. I have a little bit of bio on what this is about. Do you want to hear about it? Yeah. from the headlines from here uh did did you look into this history guys oh i did definitely i have a little bit of bio on what this is about uh do you want to hear about it yeah okay uh this is based on the story of julia butterfly hill who lived in a 180 foot tall redwood tree for 738 days between december 10th 1997 and december 18th 1999 uh mike scully points out she missed two seasons of the simpsons by staying in that tree you know what i also think the germ of this was found in homer to the max when they were chaining themselves to the giant redwoods absolutely yeah yeah you can so much in the scully seasons you can see a joke like a season or two beforehand that you're that you can then

point like oh they then extrapolated on that one joke into a full episode but yes julia butterfly hill she was not affiliated with any environmental group later she would associate with the group earth first but she lived on two six foot by six foot platforms over the course of her tree stay and her protest was successful in very small terms so the logging company that was going to clear cut this forest agreed to not cut down that tree and not cut down trees within a 200 foot radius of the tree. And despite one attack by vandals, the tree known as Luna still stands today. So for two years, she was up in a tree. That's amazing.

Two whole years. I did read about that attack on the vandals thing, and it's unsolved. They never found who did it. But the timing of it is interesting to me because it came nine days after this episode aired. Wow. On the Thanksgiving weekend of 2000, some Vandals chainsawed into the tree. And at the time, I read a story from the week it happened, and they were very concerned of this might have into the tree and at the time i i read like a story from the week it happened and they were very concerned of like this might have killed the tree like this this might have

done irreparable damage to it but they were able to steady the tree and and do some tree surgery on it and it is still with us but yeah i so i even wonder like i bet those vandals it's just as likely they were lumber company guys who were pissed off at this hippie who saved the tree. Yeah. But I don't know. What if it was like a kid who watched this episode of Simpsons and was, hey, that's based on this local tree.

Fuck that hippie, man. I'll cut it down. Yeah. That's dark. Holy cow. Honestly, who vandalizes a tree? I mean, dude's mad at hippie bullshit. They're so mad they're going to punch a tree.

Yeah. Yeah. The redwoods she was protecting were like 1500 years old, too. tree i mean dudes mad at hippie bullshit they're so mad they're gonna punch a tree yeah that's yeah the redwoods she was uh protecting were like 1500 years old too i think in this episode it's a sequoia it's not a redwood it's uh it's apparently up in humboldt we could we can visit it if we rent a car we could drive up there yeah we actually had a moment just recently where we were trying to protect redwoods in our own backyard because just behind us we have a couple of really nice redwoods and they were going and we were afraid for a hot second that they were actually going to be cut

down so we were writing letters to our city council we were like preparing to organize an actual honest to god protest we were talking to our neighborhood facebook group and everything and getting people riled up and mad that they were going to cut down these gorgeous redwood trees and then they said okay we're not going to actually do that and we're like thank god so we saved our own trees in our own way aren't we all lisa and aren't we all hugging trees that's sweet that's well yeah another thing when i looked into her stay in the she was there during extreme weather from el nino which like that is so 90s to me too that you get tied in el nino in this story she had to learn how to fight the elements by like sleeping in a sleeping bag with just her mouth poking out and yeah i mean say what you want about her but

she sacrificed two years of her young life to save a tree she is hardcore yeah like yeah i i it was also funny because in 2006 when i first moved here in ber, there was a tree sitting here too. And I remember when I came here, I was like, wow, just like that Simpsons episode, man. And unfortunately, big business fully won in that situation or the college, I guess, did. And they cut it all down. And now instead of that beautiful nature,

there's more parking and you can see football games, which, hey, isn't that what's really important? It was sad when I looked that up. I was like, oh, yeah, I remember that now. Oh, the bad guys won. I can see the statue in memory of a real tree. Listeners, if you haven't ever engaged with the extras on this one, there is animator commentary for this one that is uh steven dean moore the director chuck sheets and mike b anderson the supervising director just the three of them and they're also like uh they have you know like that stuff they do on the

nfl of drawing on the screen they're doing that too it is a breath of fresh air i have complained on recent ones of like these four animators they have no space to talk because the silly anime the writers are just talking over them here getting the three animators to talk i learned a whole lot it's really interesting i'll i'll share some fun stuff in it but it's the first time i really watched one of those animator commentaries it's really good they're good as always these dbds are worth it i don't know if they're going up in price or going down in price but they're definitely the ideal way to watch these they were hard to track down i think they

i think disney's letting them go out of print i don't know just imagining like john madden from the super bowl episode now that doesn't make any sense uh they should have done it when he was complaining about that he should have drawn on the screen. I would have liked to see that. But the episode begins, yes, with that 2000 chalkboard gag of the election. And then to also make it vary the year 2000, it's a Teletubbies couch gag, too. Their third Teletubbies reference to date. Yeah, they were going hard on those Teletubbies. I love the little extra bit that Maggie is very excited about it. when all the teleta the family sits around her she's just clapping in excitement uh but yes this

episode begins with crusty counting down to the end of the show not to anything fun it's a nice little subtle joke i think i just only i think i got it this time for my first viewing like oh yeah he was counting down to nothing he was kind of like now we can stop the show can stop uh he's probably like well run out of material he's just like okay i. He was kind of like, now we can stop. The show can stop. He's probably like, well. He'd run out of material. He's just like, okay, I'm just running out of time. It's a little bit like early seasons of the episode or The Simpsons where they would have

the extended couch gag. Cause they're like, we need to fill in literally any time. And Krusty just is doing what Krusty does. He doesn't even care. I love the thing that Krusty on his TV show like, and as of course we all remember, the last hundred seconds is where we count down from 100 100 uh the counting game it's so it's so funny to see crusty like kind of phoning it in i also wonder if this is commentary from the producers

going like sometimes you just gotta count down and hope you run out of time uh but then i didn't realize this when i asked you to be on the episode cat but this is a gamer episode as well for about 45 seconds yes crusty the clown is brought to you by the new game station 256 it's slightly faster to the max 256 oh and i'm stuck with this useless 252. Don't destroy me. I can still make you happy to the max. Here's a headline for Jay. Ketchup truck hits hamburger stand.

Mom, can I have 200 bucks for a 256K game station? That's less than a dollar a k. Oh, I might be able to help you. With a song about thrift. When you get a penny from a chum, don't just buy some bubble gum. Put it in your cap, put it in your cap. When you find a nickel in the snow, don't just blow it on a picture show. Put it in your cap.

Put it in your cap. I don't have a cap. When you spy a quarter in a pie. I want to hear the rest of that verse. So this video game stuff, I feel like, I don't know if Selman was responsible for this part of it, but this is the most old man understanding of video games. Like, Super Nintendo. Don't you have a Nintendo?

It's like, no, it's a Super Nintendo. At this point in history, the PlayStation 2 was such a massive leap over the PlayStation 1. I'm sure they're referencing that, that there was a new PlayStation, right? Yeah, yeah. The PS2 had just come out. I mean, well, the number on it is an N64 kind of thing, too.

And it is a multiple of 64. I mean, now you can make this joke, where there's like a ps4 a ps4 pro the xbox x the xbox series x the x i mean i feel like this is more applicable now where it's like it's slightly better but it definitely is a parent's joke about i just bought you the 252 this this thing is only slightly better like an adult a parent doesn't understand that you buy a new system because that's where all the games are going to be not just because it's fancy it's because all the games are there but this this is when non-gamers write game jokes feels like a

throwback to when the super nintendo first came out and there was all that controversy among parents were saying wait a minute you want us to buy a new nintendo and it doesn't play any of the old games what the heck and this was actually items on local news and everything so i wonder if it just kind of seeped into his brain for this particular episode yeah when doing super nintendo coverage and retrospectives that was a big thing cat people saying like was nintendo trying to rip us off yeah this foreign company and this definitely feels like you know say mike scully with his kids they're saying buy me a playstation 2 and b says i just bought you a playstation didn't i like uh but now many

more gamers right we talked about this with mike drucker on our live one there's a lot more gamers in the writer's room now so you don't just get the parents view of a video game machine and it's also so weird the game station design is it's a playstation but it has a like a joystick attached like a flight stick yeah and uh yeah well this was in this era robot voices come out of things all the time usually as they die or get hurt yes yeah why was i programmed to feel pain yeah um so marge's song about thrift not a real song written by matt solomon who was still receiving ass cap payments for it for writing that song but i like it in that it is a song that feels like it was written during the depression that marge learned from adults when she was a little kid because it's about like don't blow

your nickel on a picture show marge was born in the 50s that's true that was not her life it's a thrift song she has been handing down i love yeah and it's it's also great that she hears a song in her head but the show is not supporting her by playing a song it's it's just marge singing it herself and also she's drawn with more like shape to her than she normally is. Like a lot of times Marge is a tube, but when she starts pointing at things, you see a lot more definition of where her elbow is or like her hip. And I also love, she kind of does like a little, her little strut.

Yeah. The little strut. It's like a chorus girl strut. With her palms up and like raised at a 45 degree angle. Yeah. Most animated she's been in ages. I love too Marge in this episode she's not just like a nag a lot of these episodes writer as a nag but in this one first she's a

lame mom who sends uh headlines to jay leno which makes you a loser where people die in the sub heading uh i love she doesn't notice six people die that's great where is bart's lucky red cap though yeah that's the bigger question our favorite character is gone from the simpsons I love she doesn't notice six people die. That's great. Where is Bart's lucky red cap, though? Yeah. That's the bigger question. Our favorite character has gone from The Simpsons. That's how you know The Simpsons is truly in decline, the departure of the lucky red cap.

I think it's behind the toilet again. And that $200 price tag, I believe that was the Dreamcast price tag, but PS2 launched at $299, which apparently adjusted for inflation via online calculators 450 bucks so you know the 500 ps5 not such a big difference in 2020 dollars the super nintendo was 200 i think so again that might have been where it was getting it from i was working retail at the time in the year 2000 2001 and uh i don't know if they

still do this but uh they would get the new consoles in retail stores but they would bundle them with things and and then upsell them like you have to be like should pay like 500 for this ps2 because you're getting it with two games that you can't say no to we're gonna put these things in the box yeah i had to uh from sam goody yeah i bought my gamecube in a bundle uh which was fine because there were two games i wanted with it i i mostly when i see uh wario 64 that account on twitter tweet out you know ps5s are available here usually they are just a console by itself but some like gamestop still do the whole gotta buy five games with it, or an extra controller in two other games.

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 welcome to the break whether you're a level five vegan or not and a big thank you to our

guest this week kat bailey we always enjoy having her on please check out her podcast she does every week with nadia oxford acts of the blood god that is a x e acts of the blood god check that out for all their rpg discussions also if you're a fan of this podcast you know we're supported on patreon by listeners just like you who help me and bob do this as our full-time jobs for five bucks a month you get to hear every episode of this podcast a week ahead of time and ad free you can hear next week's episode right now and the same goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon where we cover an animated series each week in the same extreme level of fun detail plus you get access to dozens and dozens of exclusive patreon podcasts we've covered things like king of the hill futurama mission hill and the critic in the same simpson

style coming very soon you will be able to hear our talk about season two part one of talking of the hill a brand new podcast each friday in addition to all the other great stuff, just for five bucks a month. Please sign up today to get access to that. But if you want the kind of luxury only a rich Texan can appreciate, please sign up at the premium level at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. You see, for $10 a month, you get all the $5 things I just mentioned. Plus, we have one exclusive podcast each month

for $10 folks, our premium What a Cartoon Movie podcast. We talk about a different animated feature film in depth just like we do with cartoons, but it often goes for over four hours sometimes up to five hours long about films as diverse as the end of evangelion ducktales the movie and coming next month we're covering the 20th anniversary of shrek so we know we're gonna have a lot of fun with that for over a hundred hours of exclusive extra podcasts in addition to everything else consider signing up at the ten dollar a month level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons today you know what one new credit i noticed on this episode is uh dana gould as a consultant

so right before he's a writer we'll talk plenty about him uh soon you know what it must have been that he was on the writing staff of 13 but still doing punch up in like their last minute punch up on 12 that's you're probably right about that yeah i bet that's it but oh margie's like you spy a quarter in a pie god all of it marge that marge song don't look just don't look you're right just don't look the same tune selman's ripping them off he uh should be sued by paul anka uh and then bart goes to homer asking him for some money and uh i really like homer as this unsatisfiable dad who says like oh you want free money you should get a job maybe i should get a job i think you're smart now i like your attitude yeah then he was just gonna hand bart a bunch of money but he apparently had already been doing that i think there should

have been something funny in the wallet not even like a moth flying out just an empty wallet is what the shot ends on yeah you're right that uh a lost opportunity for a joke there i have expected him to hand bart three hundred dollars because he's done it in the past yeah he it's his magical money uh well pretty much homer homer doesn't count dollars anymore actually, the next episode or a coming episode after this is all about how Homer has no money. But first, Bart gets his first job with a recurring character who we actually just talked about in the Simpson and Delilah episode. Right. Because he's in there. Nice day's work, kid.

This is for you. You're paying me in hair are you insane so the uh the hair the stylist the barber there we go that's the word i want the barber from the tracy allman show yes yeah jake's unisex hair palace which uh i he first appeared actually teen years almost to the day before this episode aired is when he that character debuted in bart's haircut the tracy allman short like that's how long is that's why he has the homer beard because he comes from the original design era where adult men in the simpsons world all were drawn with the homer beard line and he was in 22 short films as well but he sounds a

little bit different yeah he had more of the floyd the barber kind of uh voice from andy griffith show i think um but yeah he is from that era and jake's unisex hair palace that was first seen in radio bart that that title okay that's where he gets his free haircut or something on bart's birthday i bet i also i think it shows you where the show is going that they they took this sweet old man character based on an andy griffith person and now they have um flanderized him to such an extent that he is now an insane man who pays people in hair and starts cackling at them and apparently uh sweeping up hair at a barbershop was one of mike scully's first jobs as a kid he said it was very disgusting apparently in uh throughout time this has had many

different names in uh in the shorts when his debut happened it was just called snipper cuts and shaves and then it was uh just called barbershop and marge be not proud and then in 22 short films about springfield was called Snippy Longstockings. Oh, that's cute. A little too cute. I like Unisex. Unisex Hair Palace, a nice fun word. But Bart does not stay at that job since it only pays him in hair. He walks down the street and runs into the character named Mr. Tai, the owner of Tai,

You Tai Now. You Tai Now, which is something that, let's say, Asian soldiers would yell at Yankees in war movies. Yeah, yeah. They do that a lot in Mystery Science Theater, like, you die, Joe. Yes, yes. That would be like a riff they would use. And voiced by the master of accents, Hank Azaria. I'll tell you what's funny with this character is that on the deleted scenes there

is a joke of bart mocking his accent like bart says when bart says he's gonna do it he says it in the style of that guy's accent and then that guy gets offended and he's like hey english is my fifth language give me a break that's a better joke than just but i guess they didn't want bart to mock uh someone's accent but it's uh you know different times uh let's say that i do like this guy's running joke about his very specific concerns about where his daughters go to college and i live the state college nightmare there were baseball hats everywhere it was a jockocracy uh i wonder if that's also the harvard writers coming through just like no gotta go to a liberal arts college You can't just you can't go to a state college.

It's a joke. Call professors by their first name. Dynamite. You want to talk about comparisons to South Park? Mr. Tai reminds me a little bit of the owner of City Walk in the South Park show, though maybe not as racist. Yes. Yeah. I think this guy probably predates the City Walk guy.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, definitely. By like five or six years. Yeah. The City Walk scene, I think it was like 05 City Walk guy. Yeah, yeah. Oh, definitely, by like five or six years. Yeah, the City Walk scene, I think it was like 05, 06. Yeah, and over time, they retconned that City Walk guy to be a white man pretending to be Chinese as well. I believe that's where they went with that character. Keeping up with the continuity of South Park is a fool's errand. But the character is a very intense accent, I'll say.

But I think it comes from L.A. writers who live off takeout, complaining about how aggressive some takeout places are. It's almost like a full Japanese accent, down to the fact that Bart is doing, I don't know, karate? Yeah, it's seemingly a Thai man who who's teaching karate to bart and he's even like in a ninja costume later but i guess you're right henry it's the observational thing of like oh there are just menus hanging on every door i see where i don't see that around here i don't see the the door hanger menus i just get them in my mailbox or you get the flyers you know

i think twice in my apartment complex a person came in i like live in a place with about like 40 units in it and one of those like pizza places uh a person was able to get in and actually hang them on every door but uh usually they can't get past the front door in my place yeah i think too with this thai character like you were saying cat about how it's really mixed up it it doesn't seem to treat thai people as that different of an asian person than other asian cultures uh but i do think it's like kind of a late 90s update at least the like if they'd written this in 1990 it would be a japanese or chinese restaurant even the idea that a thai restaurant could be a thing you'd order from that feels feels like an advanced cultural thing for the time. But if he was teaching him proper Thai martial arts,

he should be teaching him Muay Thai. Though I guess that isn't really going to... Bart would just knee people in the head and then drop a menu on them. It's not as fun as all of his ninja techniques. And then suddenly bart's in mma we have a whole different episode yeah oh they've done that episode and i've seen it oh god all right i uh yes bart first is assigned to drop off the hangers and his first one is mo and mo in a very pre-911 joke pulls out a box cutter and says he's going to kill bart

then he's going to cut him along the flaps that was seen mo's house before because i thought for a second that they were going to cleatus's house or something so i was a little surprised to see mo pop out actually uh i think we saw this house back in stars burns where uh bart is selling maps to to uh movie stars homes and a japanese couple is at mo's house asking if he's drew barrymore that's right yep and it is this it's this shack too yeah i think yeah that was the first time we saw his house he's he's been living like uh in filth since then his his place looked a lot better uh when homer vids i guess really he just lives in at his bar i guess we saw the inside of his house uh during a suicide

attempt in grift of the magi yes yeah and i mean it's darker by the minute the mo jokes on here that mo pulls out a box cutter and he's gonna murder a child uh pretty soon we're gonna find out that mo keeps a human under his floorboards and one of the best mo lines is in this episode oh yes yeah uh but uh but yeah it then turns into Bart getting trained Karate Kid style, which, yes, is not really tied. I do like that he says, don't be cowardly like a shrimp. Be brave like a prawn. That's good. Then we get a Matrix reference, of course.

You know what? I feel they wanted a lot more out of this, but they could only animate so much, where I was expecting more of a turnaround. Like, there's a couch gag where there's way more of a turnaround with the characters here. It just turns maybe a few feet. I mean, it's so much a pain.

I don't begrudge the animators for phoning it in on that, because, like... You have to redraw the background in every frame. Yeah, and it's probably on the ones to make it look natural like that's the whole point of it and matt selman says this is only when matrix jokes were slightly stale yes i love he constantly were you gonna would you say that matrix jokes are still kind

of we're still kind of fresh back in 2000 or was it starting to get a little played out at this point i think we were what uh is this 18 months after the matrix probably yeah 18 ish yeah because it was like it was like may and so this is november the next year yeah i mean uh this would seven months after this is shrek which has the same matrix joke in it so i think that is when you can say it was definitely old at that point i uh you know for when they wrote it it wasn't such an old reference i guess but one joke that i think is visually hard to read, but once they describe it on the commentary, I finally got it, is that I thought Bart was hanging the menus off all the teacups of the wealthy dowagers meeting.

He's hanging them off of all of their extended pinkies. But it's so busy a scene visually and it goes by so quick, it's hard to see when it's happening. But he's hanging the menus off all their extended pinkies. It's fun to see Bart run through the scene but yeah it doesn't it doesn't really read his pink and they say on the commentary like we drew the pinkies bigger than usual to try and get this joke to work but uh they this was a real dowager era on the show too like there's there's a wealthy dowager in like every other episode just just being shocked at things. Like when Homer says,

you guys are snobs. And this is sobs versus slobs. Like you see a Dowager draw, uh, react to it. Uh, soon, uh,

Dowager makes several appearances in Homer versus dignity. Uh, but yes, this sequence ends with Bart successfully tagging everything. We even get to release the hounds joke in, in a season 12 episode. They're still, still releasing those hounds

bart is so successful he's actually polluting springfield killing a fish or almost killing a fish i can't believe when lisa finds that fish and freeze it that it doesn't like die like they actually just let it be safely released i was waiting for that to end on some other moment but no he just swims away i guess that actual full joke is in the one where lisa teams up with burns and like she frees a fish throws it back and then it's eaten by a shark to which nelson laughs old man and lisa yes thank you uh but yes lisa has some notes for bart about his new job there you go little fish oh bart do you know how many trees died to make those menus? I don't know, a million.

You're ruining the Earth. True, but I gots to get paid. Money equals funny, sister. Oh, Betty. Bart, it's so sweet of you to take the family out to Krusty Burger. Hey, some people in this family are doers and some are donters. Don't you call me a... Take that, Lisa's beliefs.

And they all laugh at her, Marge even. Marge is snickering too. I also, I like that Lisa gets called a donter and then she says, don't you call me that. I really love the design of itchy and veronica too that is such a funny cover they're drinking a milkshake out of scratchy's head no archie's archie said yeah archie sorry man archie but bart is a betty guy we find out he's he's pining after betty in there i wonder if that was partially inspired by the

1996 comic book crossover archie and punisher i wonder lisa's first concern is about the destruction of trees setting up her character at least at the very least they do establish lisa cares about environmental things before she meets a new character like they at least show that it is consistent with her character to care about this stuff yeah it's not just because she has a crush on a boy yeah i i also do it is kind of a thing for me seeing bart take his family out for a meal like that is one of those like passages of adulthood when you like can pay for a meal like no mom i'll take still haven't done it uh you know i've seen sometimes parents don't like it when it happens like hey no i pay for this i've seen some

dads uh in tv shows too hey you're emasculating me by paying for this saying i can't pay for it i moved away when i was very poor the two times i visited home they're just like here's all the food in the world we're gonna take you out show you the town i was like i'll take it sure my parents are upper middle class and they're like so are you gonna pay for dinner that's how that's how they stay for middle class difference that's fun that's how they stay in that tax bracket cat handouts and also making this very south parky feeling as well you have lisa who dares to care about things and the show is much more interested in bart being this like little capitalist troll who's just like yeah well the world runs on money baby and he just silences her with his wastefulness

they arrive at the Krusty Burger Marge thinks it's a publicity stunt but it actually is more like a PETA style sit-in which definitely this was happening at the time and I don't know what PETA well I really don't know what PETA's done in the last year there's nowhere to publicly do anything but I don't know what PETA's up to they they've kind of gone away but this this is much bigger than pita oh but yes the guest star speaks and removes his cow head take down the clown listen i'm on your side let's get a dialogue going take out the mother cow the rest will follow your corporation cuts down the rainforest to create grazing land for cattle oh for the lover give me that no you can't don't worry honey they're just firing beanbags you can't silence the truth with beanbags

and that is our guest star joshua jackson who i vaguely know who he is but he was a big get for the show in 2000 because he played a pacey on dawson's creek a show i've never seen and i think at the time of the commentary he was on a show called fringe which i assume was also big i didn't watch fringe but i did watch a lot of dawson's creek did you watch fringe cat i did not but i know a lot of people who enjoyed the fringeinge. It's a show about alternate realities. But yeah, Joshua Jackson, Vancouver's own Joshua Jackson. But you were a Dawson's Creek viewer, right, Henry? I was very much.

Tell us about Dawson's Creek. I don't want to wait to hear about Dawson's Creek. You want to know right now? Yes. Yeah. So Dawson's Creek was a teen rom-com of our dramedy, I guess you'd call it, of the late 90s into the early 2000s. It all filmed in North Carolina. So it was probably Joshua Jackson was in L.A. for some other thing to record this.

I don't think they went to him at Dawson's Creek, but it was written by and created by the writer of the Scream films Kevin Williamson and it is semi-autobiographical about him growing up though uh what doesn't happen for the insert character of the show Dawson is that Kevin Williamson realized he was gay and that's why he couldn't get together with his girl his childhood bestie Dawson is not gay in the show they create a season two character named jack who gets all the gay stuff that happened to kevin williams and that's that experience but meanwhile pacey is the straight guy best friend of dawson and spoilers he's the one who ends up with joey

dawson's girl best friend so you think he'd end up he dawson and joey not together it was like katie holmes okay yeah and this show really was the first big hit for the wb correct and probably helped kill mission hill for being part of their new initiative for young young people yeah it was dawson's creek and then uh straight on to that with buffy as well. And it was a big deal for the producer, the guy in charge of WB programming, Jamie Kelder. He was very into these teen shows because, I mean, they were very popular. And he didn't want a dumb cartoon like Mission Hill. We'll talk about this actually in our Batman Beyond What a Cartoon 2. But the success of those teen shows changed a whole lot of programming on the WB. And yeah, Joshua Jackson played Pacey, the cute bad boy who's always getting into trouble,

but he's got a heart of gold. I haven't seen that Dawson crying gif in a long time. It seems like it got around a lot, maybe three or four years ago on Twitter, but haven't seen it to date really since then. I thought it was interesting that they decided to have him play a different character rather than just playing himself. Yeah, it's very different for this time a lot of their guest stars just play themselves but he's he plays a crunchy activist and he's really good at it i i like him a lot in this role i'll also six months before this episode aired he was in the 2000

film the skulls which is about the Skull and Bones Club. And we have some conspiracy-minded pals who I'd really love to hear their thoughts on The Skulls now, because it really is about Yale and the Skull and Bones Club. But yeah, in this section here, all the beanbag guns, I knew about the beanbag guns because I was a watcher of Jackass. Okay. guns i knew about the beanbag guns because i was a watcher of jackass okay and they on jackass did jokes about or they did stunts of like shoot johnny knox with a beanbag gun and i think mainly it was done cops worked with them on it to scare kids like they're like this is what a beanbag gun

does to you guys sadly in 2020 we got um quite a reminder of these less lethal cop weapons that bullets only made of rubber what can it do yeah they are not non-lethal they kill they have killed beanbags have killed lots of people yeah and i'm sure that uh when i watched this at the time i assumed the simpsons made up a beanbag gun well they did make up the bagzooka yes yeah from my search it does not exist but the the beanbag guns even look like or some of them do look like how they're drawn in the show they look like shotguns they they're indistinguishable from a shotgun and that's also the i for a second i forgot the beanbag part so when crusty grabs like what appears to be

a real gun and just starts firing at them i was like oh my god crusty and uh the collection of clowns that come out of his limo by the way they the collection of clowns that come out of his limo, by the way, they're not the same group that come out of his car when they're about to be run over by the tank. Sure, I'm alive, but why? And actually, I noticed Noodles, the champagne-serving clown, is among Krusty's clowns in this one. You guys, they actually didn't make that up as a joke.

Rainforest deforestation,station actually a lot of it is from cattle farming and cattle ranches okay i i thought it was a joke but then uh you know it seems like it could be plausible now i i think a lot of this reality of it comes from george meyer actually is kind of an informed guy on this stuff like they they mentioned on the commentary that meyer apparently actually sent money to the butterfly woman who was in the trees. Like he's, though I also think some of the anger he expressed towards the poser stuff and all that in the group also is from George Meyer's firsthand experience dealing with those groups. I mean, whenever I have to get into arguments with people about not eating meat, this is usually what I go to. Just the amount of credible resources

it takes to basically give you one pound of beef is just insane. Just the amount of waste that's involved with that process. So, I feel like that's a good, if you need to argue with someone and you shouldn't, but if someone gets in your face about it, you can just at least resort to that and say, here's an actual issue that's not about, I feel

bad for the animals, which I do. Yes, yeah. And that's on top of the methane that they're releasing into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming, which Al Gore made fun of him back in 2000 thereabouts. That guy, he said he created the internet. This guy sucks. We need that lockbox now. Apparently Selman says it was Meyer's idea thatisa would get a crush on this boy and that would pull her into it and like you said bob yardley correctly calls this out as bad like why

does it have to be a boy why is it always a boy she said that on the commentary and it's like yeah i mean it's a room full of male writers why would a woman do something all right because she likes a boy there's no other reason i mean it is it is nice that they do show you before this that Lisa does care about the environment before she meets him. But also this entire process is motivated for her crush. And she eventually causes a lot of destruction by becoming an activist. It read to me, actually, instead of Dawson's Creek, I was thinking of NSYNC or Backstreet Boys, just because we were still firmly in the boy band kind of thing happening in 2000. So my first thought was, oh, they're just going, they're leaning heavily into that. But it also

kind of reminded me a little bit of Bob's Burgers where not Tina, the other one with the rabbit ears, I'm forgetting her name, falls in love with a boy band. Yeah. Having Lisa just randomly fall in love with this particular character, it's not completely out of character for her because, I mean, didn't she call into a boy band once just to hear something pop? She called the Corey hotline all the time, which she hardly didn't like either, which I get that. I mean. She is like eight. I mean, that's not completely unreasonable for having a schoolgirl crush, but at the same time, it's kind of eye rolling. Yeah.

I mean, it's not unheard of for a little girl to have a crush on a boy like that yes though i mean selman also comments on the weirdness of like a six like the age disparity also is slightly uncomfortable how much bigger he is than lisa but uh this is like 18 and she's like eight they call him teenage but he doesn't read as like a 14 year old he reads as a 19 year old oh they're like college students and jesse grass the character is named named after matt selman's brother jesse and i thought it was a joke but it's not he had a bluegrass band called grass that's hilarious so jesse grass named after uh jesse selman and grass is that i wonder if it's on spotify is his brother's bluegrass band it's funny on the commentary hearing yardley say why

is it always a boy and scully and the other writers are like uh they got they've they've let's say they've all matured and learned a lot since then as as carolyn omine told us in that same interview like the the guys have grown uh a lot since the year 2000 it's a lot of this hippie stuff is low-hanging fruit but i do like that he is a white guy with dreadlocks yes yeah very the most hateable kind of of guy that's well that's something too this is how this episode is different from south park they would have made jesse far more hateable and the villain the clear villain of this episode in any episode of south park because the greatest enemy to matt and trey isn't some rich asshole from texas it is a fake young man who's pretending he cares about something but actually doesn't they would

have treated this jesse character far worse than he's would have been murdered yes yeah instead in this one he's just sort of a uh a well-meaning doof kind of yeah but it does show that uh i mean there's a bit of hypocrisy with these characters and that well they're activists but they also don't want to be uncomfortable they care more about burning man or going to fish concerts than actually saving a tree well and they're these selfless there there is there is humorous hypocrisy in that while they are being you know counter to society still within their small niche group there is popularity there is the cool kids yeah they have all of the same poser level poser level yes they have all these same inter uh dynamics and it's like

leftist infighting basically where it's just like oh you think you're a leftist well i'm this i think getting back to the point about lisa falling in love with a boy she has shown many times that she cares a lot about the environment and saving the environment so i don't really think that she needed to have a crush on anybody in order to immediately start caring about the fate of this particular tree yeah i guess they wanted to say that's why she would step up her activism is because of that but yeah it's uh it is it's a little lame to be like oh she does it for a boy a girl just does it 100 self-righteous enough to tie herself to a tree and you know what what? I say good for you, Lisa. But yes, the boy is arrested in this next clip.

Are you all right? I've had worse. In New Orleans, they hose us with Tabasco. Oh, you're so heroic. All right, cowboy. I'll see you in municipal court. Good one, chief. What?

What'd I say? I can't believe how young he is. He'd be cute if he weren't so idealistic. Look, Marge. I'm in a limo. The Simpsons are going to Paris. I love that act break joke because Homer is like trying to take over the episode

by saying, no, no, no, wait, I got in this. This is a pitch for another episode. The Simpsons go to Paris. Let's do that instead. He's literally trying to steer the plot into a different direction. Like, oh no, this is the Homer finds a limo episode. There's a self-awareness there

that I don't find under overbearing it got a chuckle out of me for sure i just like a satisfied like we're going to paris and i i do also like that you think wigum is trying to make a pun but he actually just mispronounced municipal and just said municipal and i also like that marge literally says the like he'd be cute if he wasn't so idealistic i like the line where he said oh it's worse in new orleans they hose us down with tabasco i don't know why that made me laugh but i can have a very clear image of it and i think that's why it got a smirk out of me and also like all these jokes about how horrible it is to be beaten by the cops if you're like a righteous protester it's it also feels very uh ahead of its

time and in include into politics instead of just going oh those those stupid hippie protesters fuck them but if you're raiding the capitol they're like come on could you please leave this is like a really important room and you shouldn't be in here guys come on and yet i don't want to get too dark but in minnesota there were these protests around this time, maybe 1999, 2000, where a lot of hippies chained themselves. They were trying to save an indigenous plot of land that was going to be basically having a highway going through it. And the cops came in and beat the hell out of them while they were chained to these buildings and everything and these trees and then just left them there and didn't give them any medical attention it was a very dark chapter in minnesota law enforcement so and we kind of like make light of this but the fact of the matter is that the police are really freaking horrible to environmental protesters and people who are trying to preserve indigenous

rights see also everything that was happening in north dakota a few years ago yeah i was thinking especially of the keystone pipeline and journalists getting arrested just for covering it it's uh evil it's pure evil yeah no the cops are bad this is the stance of this podcast and we stand uh uh yes so we come back from the commercial break and kent has given us a rundown on these characters dirt first group which yes bob mentioned earlier the earth first is the real group that's the parody name from this apparently the government tried to there's an interesting thing i kind of want to watch a documentary about it that was out there but earth first the close i was like did they ever kill anybody that what's the farthest they went and according

to wikipedia page there was two members of a group in Earth First and a bomb exploded in their car. Yeah. And it was the FBI stance that that was a bomb they were taking to use somewhere else. But the Earth First people said the opposite. I don't know. I could also believe the Earth First stance that the FBI planted a bomb in their car and then pretended that they put it there. 100%. Yeah. I work for campus security and obviously it's not the same as the FBI, but anybody affiliated with an environmental group was treated like public enemy number one and worse than scum.

Yeah, anything that happens to them is deserved and we're going to do everything we can to discredit them. This was from the freaking campus police, let alone the actual police department. 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. We care about you.

Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit desjard den.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care yeah i guess they're they're just uh imitating their uh police department older brothers so but yes i i do also like that kent is talking about jesse like he's like the new cover of teen beat magazine like that's as they say like who's birkenstock he's on the ride crusty statement this i don't need that's great i love that in a very year 2000 move homer also changes the channel to the history channel to watch world war ii footage the the luffawaffa the washington generals

of the history channel is a great joke. That's great. And of course, this channel has changed greatly. The original pitch of the History Channel in this era was like, you like PBS, right? What if it was just about the cool stuff of history? Which is what Homer is watching now, war footage. But now it is all like Forged in Fire marathons. I was just

looking at the schedule of the History Channel and it's just like a four-hour block of Forged in Fire, the sword-making show, which I'm sure is fine. Oh History Channel and it's just like a four-hour block of Forged in Fire, the sword-making show, which I'm sure is fine. Oh, I bet it's easy to just put that on and just zone out while pretending to work on a teleconference call. You can learn all about the Tang, Henry. The Tang.

I need to watch the show. I don't know this about sword-making. Are they done showing Pawn Stars on loop? I don't see Pawn Stars on the schedule. I see something called, let's see here the proof of the curse of oak island is a big one on on this show like on this network a big marathon of this reality show so i when i was in high school i was one of those people who was basically watching history channel religiously and that is where i learned a lot of my history from 1950s documentaries that have been repurposed for the History Channel.

I love all the public domain footage. I mean, that's also why the World War II footage was shown all the time back then, because it's like cheap or free, basically. It's just public. And so they put it on the TV and they're like, yeah. Well, also because History Channel programming in the year 2000 was for older dads who were like, ah, the greatest generation. I'm going to watch them. Apparently 17-year-old lesbians. I will give it to them in modern day.

All of their programming seems to be marathon. So if you're watching one episode of Modern Marbles, there will be eight to follow. You're going to be sitting there, buddy. It's where we learned our binge-watching habits. It's a cliche to say it, but along with MTV, I really do miss classic history channel. If they would just go back to the way it was, I would totally turn it on. But instead, I cut the cable because screw all the reality TV show programming and ancient aliens and all that. I guess I think some of that's on the Peacock now, which I found out I'm unintentionally a member of. Unintentionally? Well, if you're an Xfinity user, I feel like I'm doing an ad for the peacock now which i found out i'm accident unintentionally a member of

unintentionally well if you're an xfinity user i feel like i'm doing an ad for peacock now but if you if you live in a place monopolized by xfinity and it's your only choice to use as internet you get a peacock subscription in as part of it so they will let you watch the office with ads of course then uh everybody starts ta taunting Lisa because it's obvious she has a crush on Jesse. Homer can't recall a children's rhyme, which that feels like a very season two kind of joke for Homer. Lisa heads to the jail and that's where I had extra laughs at an eight-year-old just being like, eh, walk down the jail cells. Who cares?

Apparently Wiggum gets a lot of flaming toilet paper thrown at him at home. That's a great joke. Fire in the hole. I mean, they kind of telegraphed it when Lisa was walking in and still when I saw the flaming toilet paper flying and the fire in the hole, I was just like, yeah, good job. And fire in the hole is a good dirty joke about flaming toilet paper because there would be a fire in your hole oh yeah your

butthole you're right well uh that i didn't appreciate it i i went to i went to uh grad school that's why i got that joke uh but yes lisa confronts jesse you do yoga yeah but i started before it was cool my My name's Lisa Simpson. I think your protest was incredibly brave. Thank you. This planet needs every friend it can get. Oh, the Earth is the best. That's why I'm a vegetarian. Well, that's a start.

Well, I was thinking of going vegan. I'm a level 5 vegan. I won't eat anything that casts a shadow. Wow. I started an organic compost pile at home. Only at home? You mean you don't pocket mulch? Oh, it's so decomposed.

Do you think I could join Dirt first? Well, we might have an opening at the poser level. Oh, thank you, thank you. I think it would have been a funnier turn or a more interesting turn if lisa was put off by this guy and his constant one-upping of her the jokes are funny i do like the pocket mulch that's good yeah i i mean this isn't a an experience that happens where if you if you're starting to just get into a cause you might meet someone who tells you you don't really care you don't understand or also who's just been at something longer than you i mean this is this goes beyond like you know political causes this also is just like you haven't it's from the same place like you haven't seen this

movie like bob you haven't seen blade runner i still haven't yeah but especially like the vegetarian vegan one-upsmanship feels very uh 2000 as well i don't know i do that to myself honestly where i'm like i i'm a vegetarian but if i were a better person i would be a vegan that's the guilt they're expressing there too i mean that is why guys like jesse can get under your skin when they they point out they actually are holier than thou because they are doing less because in your heart heart, you know, you're right. You know that they are right. I was also really surprised with Jesse.

They never another show would have done a joke that he's like a secretly a rich kid or something. But they really don't do that with him. It's not even in the deleted scenes a joke about. Oh, well, how'd you start Earth first? Like, well, I got a grant. I got a million from my dad or my grandfather tied and lent me 10 million dollars i also assume that there would be more weed stuff yeah but only like really one weed joke at the end there's a big one there and when lisa arrives at the hippie club in the next scene there's a guy with a big hemp shirt but

yeah there's no jokes uh there's no jokes about weed till the very end can we briefly unpack this so this character on the one hand is presented as a hipster who is kind of like a poser and he's only caring because it's cool but also is framed as a character who genuinely does care about the environment is that right he definitely is for real self-sacrificing like a a worse character would let lisa go to jail on his behalf but he actually accepts going to jail he's like i did this thing and i'm in jail because i'm fighting the power like he is actually a more enduring character in that way it's part of their like eating their cake and having it too in this episode where they want to this character to be someone lisa can look up to but he's also got to

be kind of a dick in some ways too he's a snob for sure but he he actually does believe what he believes like he's he's not just using people he's not just into it to be the most popular boy in the hippie club he's not doing it to get with other girls like you don't see him like seducing other women in his group like there's all these stock things and i know these jokes because south park did it with every single one of these type of guys when they wrote episodes like that. So I wonder why they held back on that, why they didn't make Jesse worse. I'm glad they didn't. I think it's better lesson than like, no, somebody who can be kind of like a snob also can really believe in something and do good instead of like nothing's real.

Who cares? Why do you care about anything? Like that's not the stance of this episode on south park especially around this era they would either frame them as raging hypocrites like rob reiner for example or they would frame them as somebody who was just incredibly cynical and did not believe a word that they were saying but were doing it for other reasons like selfish reasons and in this one it feels like he is a little bit of a hypocrite. But honestly, I've met people who are invested in leftist causes who are also kind of hypocrites as well.

So it feels a little bit they're just trying to gently poke at some of the silliness that can happen in environmental groups. But it comes off as a little ham-fisted in its own late season simpsons kind of way so uh so lisa decides that she's gonna join up and visit the hippie club homer drops her off and it's very funny i homer says he's like no i saved the world in my own way and then he just starts doing donuts in his car and just says donuts like that's pretty stupid i've only been in a car that was doing donuts once in my life and it was fun uh it seems terrifying i've never been in one it's just a fun nighttime pandemic everybody's doing donuts for some reason well it keeps you it keeps you separated from other people you know

and parking lots are emptier than ever it's a real thrill i'll do it now people are just really bored i don't know i had a dream last night about going to disneyland alone, man. And then I was woken up by a garbage truck, which is really a nice metaphor. But yeah, so Lisa arrives at the hippie club and they have a new project. What am I bid for the logging rights to Springfield's oldest redwood tree? $30,000 to make cages for animal experimentation.

$50,000 for Thai menus. Daughter on wait list at Bennington. $100,000 simoleons to make the world's first drive through humidor. A soul to the rich Texan. Yee-haw! Yippee-ki-yay! Woo! Doggies! Yee-haw! Thanks to Caleb for the tape.

How'd you sneak that camera in? I got my ways. They can't cut down that sequoia if one of us is living in it. Any volunteers? All doors! Man, I'm so there! Oh, me, me, me! Whoa, hold on. Once you're up there, you can't come down.

Not for a fish concert. not even for Burning Man. Well, someone will hear the call. And whoever does will have a place in my heart. Now, why can't he do it? Yeah. That was my question. That's a good point. He really should.

Not even for Burning Man, Lion got a laugh out of me because I hang out with a lot of Burners. And they are very much like this crowd. They would drop everything for a Phish concert or Burning Man? They would drop everything to go to Burning Man. Burning Man is the event of the year. So if you told them you can't go to Burning Man, they would actually gasp and go, oh, my God, no. That's a breach too far. David Silverman, big Burning Man head himself, the Simpsons, one of the best directors. He has his own camp.

You can go visit him. Forgot to clip it out, but I like that right before this, they are celebrating that they canceled the St. Patrick's Day parade only because they step on lizards and yes that tree auction this is where rich texts in this is the first time he's ever been more than a one-off joke that he's actually a continued character and actually has plot significance and what i thought was interesting is that they try to make the footage look like it was captured with the surveillance camera for by a hidden camera it doesn't quite work you can tell they worked really hard to make it look like that but there are like different cuts in the footage too yeah so i i feel like you shouldn't have had these guys go go to all the work of making the footage jittery because you're kind of cheating within this uh this this clip of this uh auction

i do like the gag of the guy saying i've got my ways and he's wearing a hat as he says it but then it's real like no it's a it's a giant camera in a Christmas gift box. It's better than the... Okay. Yes. It's better. They increased their camera technology since Homer almost had to get his neck crushed

by the giant hat. That's right. Yeah, this is the return of the hidden camera. They love those hidden camera jokes. Oh, yes, how long the rich Texan dances. I love that, too. Like, you can hear it in the audio. It's an extra five seconds of him just going yeehaw his jig is very very well animated too this is the first time

he did the jig that made them really love rich texan i think just hearing dan make silly noises it's why it is why gil became a major character in the scully years it's scully just loves the sounds dan makes in character and so they keep writing more for him and they were all waiting for him to fire his guns and i was too i was like when's he gonna fire his guns but he didn't no guns on him this episode unfortunately and uh we then cut to the kids at the dinner table everyone at the breakfast table this is very funny yeah so uh, I have the clip here. Sheesh, look at these refugees.

How about a smile? They've undergone terrible hardships. Well, moping won't make it better. Mom, Dad, there's something I have to do. You're not going to like it, but I really believe it's the right thing. Arch, she's going to knock on our st stash we don't have a stash no of course not so homer apparently has a stash yeah homer's in homer's real crazy in this episode i i love his uh this is one of those moments where i feel like they just had a thing swartz

welder said in a in a writer's room and then they have Homer say it. They're complaining that refugees need to look happier in their pictures. I do enjoy Marge's very shocked. They've undergone terrible hardships. Yes. That's what a normal person would say

about seeing pictures of refugees. I wonder, you think Homer's stash is just pot or you think it's any heavier stuff? I think it might just be pot. He could, you know, he could have some uh tranquilizers i bet i mean he could have some zannies maybe uh but uh yeah this these crazy lines from homer just feels like what happens in a lisa or non-homer centric episode that they just ramp up homer's craziness for like the five lines he gets so yeah we need the craziest homer line in this scene what could it be and then it's the

refugee line lisa heads to the springfield woods uh the place that her and bart almost burned down completely a season ago right and it also reminded me that like oh you know what else lisa did in the woods it's where she got her poem inspiration and mr lisa goes to washington that's right lisa in the woods and big trees are deeply connected uh but lisa at first is scared of climbing the big tree and i love i love that a turkey taught her by sounding like a chicken that's so great i really love our local turkeys whenever i walk to henry's place to record i always walk on this in the route with the most turkeys and i love them just wild turkeys all around berkeley it's why it's nuts like no one even owns them they're just around they're just like every they're just like

birds you regularly see like crows their turkeys do come from the wild henry do they they don't make chicken noises that you they don't in fact the people on the commentary were questioning why is the turkey making a chicken noise uh it's it's great in its insanity i guess it would be weirder if there was a wild chicken in the forest so uh but just lisa's reaction like oh so i'm a chicken that's like it's and she she climbs up the tree she gets really high it's impressive and a joke goes by too fast that when she looks at the skyline you see that from her vantage points you can see the saint louis arch the hollywood sign the eiffel tower and manhattan skyline all from the same viewpoint and it's drawn in a very specific movie too oh i think the movie had the five like the would they have like the the meaning of the five states or whatever says it's the meaning of the five states you can see all the states uh springfield's borders and he names a bunch of states yeah and it's drawn in a

very specific way this scene like it's drawn in an odd way so i was like well that must be a mistake or maybe they just couldn't convey it visually but then on the commentary they said it's a a parody of a new yorker cover so i looked it up it's a parody of the march uh 1976 cover and the painting is called view of the world from ninth avenue which is like this depiction of the world where manhattan is at the center but you can still see like other countries and stuff yeah that's why it's running like a very flat stylized way how are they yes in this uh 2000 obnoxious magazine cover yeah i mean i guess uh i mean we're probably past the time when you can reference new famous new yorker covers but this is one of them at this point when lisa gets up in the tree and the loggers

appear it's when i was hit with a bolt of remembering the simpsons game extrapolates this episode to a full level for lisa burns is clear cutting the entire forest and her and bart work together to shut down the factory and save all the trees oh you talking about this gave me the faintest of memories of that level well you remember the cartoon at the end where the loggers are yelling at lisa like i'm losing my job like that i that was when it hit me the uh the simpsons game also written by matt selman so he's kind of he's cribbing from himself he's mining from his past the video game goes with the much more obvious direct route of like oh the person who's doing all the clear cutting is burns like obviously it would be burns it's funnier it's a real change of

pace making it the rich texan i wonder if maybe somebody said like can it not be burns this time it should be a different rich evil guy when was the last time they even used burns like properly well coming very soon is homer versus dignity so probably the mansion family was the last time they even used burns like properly well coming very soon is homer dignity so probably the mansion family was the last big burns episode yeah he's tripped to the mayo clinic yeah uh but still they're not using them very often is my point no you're totally right about that cat and i think it's also it's like harry shearer often doesn't play ball at this point i don't think he was showing up to table reads anymore and uh i don't think mike scully really like mr. Burns that much. Yeah, I definitely agree with your observation, Bob,

that I think Scully's just not as into Burns as preview showrunners. But I think you're also right that Shearer is starting to pull back more and more every season. And that also might just lead them to go like, eh, Shearer's not going to bring his A game or it's not going to be funny at the table read because Shearer's not going to do it. So let's write for more stuff for dan dan's here and he's being funny you mentioning the fact that they might have had mr burns doing this just kind of

continues to reinforce my feeling that in another universe lisa the tree hugger could have almost been a second season episode just because the way that it's paced and especially the first act reads as very season two to me and it's a a lot more down-to-earth than a lot of later episodes, especially in season 11. And, I mean, they put in the rich Texan, they have the doofy kids who are running the environmental thing that makes it read as very 2000. But in other respects, it's actually very old-school Simpsons, I think.

Yeah, yeah, it's much more character-based. And when it gets zany it's not so it's uh it's not as zany as some other ones and they don't go to paris in the final act but not to the level that it does in certain other episodes it's not full-on crazy town also homer has no money yes yeah homer has no money yeah yeah they have no money three kids and no money and they're not. Homer has no money. Yeah. Yeah. They have no money. Three kids and no money. And they're not trapped on the prisoner. He's not pulling 500 bucks out of his wallet just out of a drop of a hat. They're not trapped on the prisoner island.

Yeah. Though I guess a magical thing does happen at the end, but we'll get to that. But yes, Lisa is found in her tree. Gentlemen, start your chainsaws. Not so fast. Now you come down from there, missy. I won't come down till you spare this tree. Hang in there, Laura.

It's Lisa. Right, Lisa. You're hardcore. He said I was hardcore. Whoa! Oh, no. My baby's up there. It's okay, Mom.

I have a safety line. This is your fault with your non-threatening bobby sherman style good looks no girl could resist your charms this was her choice mr simpson i'm sorry i wasn't listening i was lost in your eye they they talk about you on the commentary that they were very much into making any character gay situationally for a gag if need be and homer instantly falls in love with jesse uh and also use the bobby sherman good looks that's a go-to love of the simpsons is talking about bobby sherman is that the partridge family no he was a solo guy that that uh marge had a crush on growing up. And in an episode of The Critic, one of Jay's only fans thinks he's Bobby Sherman. That's right.

All right. The return of Bobby Sherman jokes clearly is because Al Jean's back in the room then. It's nice that he at least calls her hardcore. Like he is, he's supporting her, though I think maybe he should be judged for like you're letting an eight-year-old risk her life for your thing.

Like, fuck you guys. You might be a legal adult, Jesse. We're not sure. Yeah, you know what? maybe he should be judged for like you're letting an eight-year-old risk her life for you like fuck you guys you might be a legal adult jesse we're not sure yeah you know what the the cops and like the cops need an excuse to arrest him like there you go he endangered an eight-year-old with his instructions they should arrest margin homer yeah what the hell well i think that's part and parcel in the way that the show has always depicted lisa where she is almost never an actual eight-year-old girl. She's usually basically just an adult. She could be a college student for the purpose, but she just happens to be eight.

In a later season's episode, she will pretend to be a small college student and start going to college as an adult. Yeah, I mean, so in that sense, that's why she fits in with this particular group because i don't know it's consciously or subconsciously they are writing lisa as basically this age oh definitely yeah and so lisa's up in her tree she's getting reports back from bart i like that he sent her thai soup and he's being supportive yeah i guess he likes that she's you know this is

a disruptive uh anti-establishment move by her so i can see bart appreciating it from that angle and uh and i also like that he bart in his letter to her says like dad is building a ladder a very tall ladder but it is a poor quality he's assessing the ladder don't trust that ladder and uh then it cuts to kent he's reporting on it he calls her lil lisa then he's like, I'm sorry, I meant little. I love his editorializing. It's like whether you love or hate her politics, you've got to gawk at this crazy idiot. Yeah.

And the drawing of Lisa hugging, literally hugging a tree that's hugging her back. That's great. And then there's a here's another deleted scene from the episode where lisa's having a bad time being uh blown around in the tree she looks up and the tree becomes comes alive and it's the old jewish man's face and he says i'm grandpa tree and if you throw up on me i'm gonna toss you out of here that's weird it's like a pocahontas reference or something oh maybe yeah i bet it is a pocahontas reference but uh i think rightly cut yeah that's a bizarre i need to watch this deleted scene we'll get to it other deleted scene specials uh they at least show that it's

lisa having a dream and not just a uh a thing that just happens uh but yes lisa is starting to feel a little homesick. It's day four for Springfield's littlest tree hugger. Excuse me, that's littlest tree hugger. And whether you love or hate her politics, you gotta go gawk at this crazy idiot. Oh, seven o'clock. The family's just sitting down to dinner. Oh. The family's just sitting down to dinner. Aw. You call that saying grace? Oh, now they're making popcorn and hanging Christmas stockings and coloring Easter eggs. Oh, I can't take it. Would it be so bad if I just went home for an hour?

She's only been there for a night and she's missing every holiday. Yeah, it seems to be at least a week or so I think she's there but or at least a few days but yeah that i love how all the holidays are collapsing on themselves i also it's such a great joke i can't believe they've not never done it before with their strangling things that in silhouette it looks like homer is hugging bart but he's instead strangling him and for such an extreme thing is not saying grace correctly like and it's for a long time. He is killing Bart. I was kind of surprised that they made the Simpsons so wholesome, but I guess it's not surprising that they would do that just in the service of a gag.

Yeah, they're doing things together as a family they would never do, only to make Lisa feel bad. I guess really as long as they can make Lisa feel bad, the consistent reality can be thrown away. I do like the callback to the strangling when they're sleeping while he's strangling him. Oh my God, that's so good. That is a good visual gag, I'm not going to lie. Another such mean thing to do to Lisa is when she kisses the tree goodbye.

She says someone's been marking their territory, meaning Lisa just got urine on her lips. Lisa tasted pee. animal pee kind of gotta debase lisa for her beliefs really sad they have to do that but yeah that homer and bart fell asleep choking that's so funny uh though though one change in the real world the people who were in the tree could never can clandestinely leave because the media watched them all the time. They never left. So Lisa being able to walk away like that, the media has to just not be there. You just have to accept that.

So Lisa falls asleep, sees she overslept, and runs back, and she sees the tree has seemingly been cut down. You can see the indent of the lightning mark on it just a little bit but it looks like it has been chopped down by uh loggers it's all because of the bucket yes so lisa's activism yeah ended up destroying the tree it it is very cruel to lisa where not only does she uh i mean it's motivated by her love for a boy, but then she betrays her values by leaving. And then because of her activism in the first place, the tree just gets destroyed, where if she had done nothing, it would have been cut down.

The same thing would have happened. Yeah, that she says, they have to make it so clear of her saying out loud, like, well, at least it's not my fault. And the lightning was attracted by her metal, Like, oh, that's so mean. That is very South Park in the activism is pointless. Everything, you are one person who cannot make a difference. If you try to make a difference, bad things will happen anyway. So why bother?

Which honestly, I don't particularly jive with that idea, especially in the year of our Lord 2021. But with Lisa, but in the year 2000, it was very much in vogue. We were in the year of our lord 2021 but with at least about in the year 2000 it was very much in vogue we were at the end of history everything was going to be nice and groovy and if you cared too much you're a total loser we figured it out folks we figured everything out stop bothering me uh so when the episode comes back from the break and uh kent is reporting in front of the uh dead tree i feel like we've heard so much from ken brockman in this episode he's in this way more than i remember this is where the animator commentary had a really fun moment where

steven dean moore mentions that he the smoke the way the smoke looks was actually inspired by ninja scroll he said he had just he had just watched the anime film ninja scroll and really loved how the smoke was drawn in that anime and so he's like i want to get that in the smoke in this episode i wonder how many other times ninja scroll has inspired the simpsons animators see this is what happens when the animators don't have the writers doing bits over them they get to say i like anime and this is fine this is inspired by an anime now i just want to have steven dean more on an interview just to be like okay tells every time you uh took a scene from an anime and put it in the simpsons oh yeah now i made a gif of the smoke on frank yak it does

look really anime that's cool but uh but yes kent is reporting on the carnage. Mom, those loggers chopped down the tree. Why did I have to leave my post? Now, honey, let's turn on the news and forget our troubles. Springfield's oldest resident has died. No, it wasn't Mr. Burns. It was this majestic old redwood, which was brutally cut down last night. Oh. Not by loggers, but by lightning.

Lightning? Oh, at least it wasn't my fault. Lightning attracted by this metal bucket. Ew. Still unknown is the fate of tree sitter Lisa Simpson. I'm afraid it doesn't look good, Kent. We found her sleeping bag right here. Our working theory is that the lightning exploded her.

Back to you, Kent. You don't get to say that. Goodbye, Lisa. We'll miss you. Oh, no. Lisa's gone, and nothing will bring her back. Unless. Dad, I'm not dead.

Oh, praise God, you're alive. Unless. Underrated line from Marge is, Now, honey, let's turn on the news and forget our troubles. Oh, yes, that's a great line. Man, yes, again, another point is that Lisa would have died if she'd stuck to her morals. In a way, she's rewarded for selling them out and wanting to be warm inside instead of saving the tree like it it's that is a very damned if you do damned if you don't kind of thing for her and that in a way lisa killed the tree in a more horrible way than if it had been cut down by the loggers because

had the loggers cut it down it could just be actually used yeah for something here it uh the lightning kind of fucks it up more though i guess it's going to be a drive-thru humidor had it been used normally which only cigar aficionados aka assholes cared about in the year 2000 humidors are for keeping your cigars humid and good that's what the smashing pumpkins guy wanted to buy in uh homer palooza well you're right a walk-in humidor that says you know boy they're just stealing from themselves all over the place hey they upped the joke yeah they went from walking to drive-thru i definitely think corrigan would invest in a billy corrigan would buy a drive-thru humidor at this point he spent all his money on scarves and professional wrestling that's true but yes uh lisa is thought to be dead. I love Homer's just unless. That's so great.

Again, Homer's trying to start new stories in this plot as it's going, but everyone rejects it. They all decide that the world is better if they think Lisa is dead. I loved Lisa Simpson. Loved her like a shrub. And I would give anything to see her sweet face again. Oh. But in death, she will do more for our cause than she ever could have done in life. Uh-huh. In Texas, we do tragedy right.

That's why, in memory of that poor little girl, I'm turning this entire forest into the Lisa Simpson Wilderness Preserve. We won, Lisa. We finally won. This is for you. He cut off his favorite dread. We have to tell them you're not dead.

No, Mom. It's a memorial for us now. If I'm alive, they'll cut it down. You are not pretending to be dead, young lady. This family has had nothing but bad luck when it comes to farce. Homer, it's Nettie. I baked you a little something to ease the pain. My side, Lisa.

Come in. Homer disguising his voice for no reason is great i love that that that is so funny so march first makes a very meta comment like his family says nothing but bad luck when it comes to farce and then a full farcical scene starts of homer dressing up lisa like maggie to pretend that she is dead and then homer to make it so clear that this is bad farce homer says it like come in a very ridiculous way of talking i like that this episode is self-aware but in a way that's not completely overbearing see also when homer was at the in the limo saying the simpsons are going to uh going to paris um it's just a a very blink and you'll miss it kind of moment that they don't

really hammer it home too much but at the same time it's just like yeah i really enjoy this so i also like uh this would be the turn in a south park episode where jesse would be like and in lisa's death we will now use you to do blank blank and blank and completely take advantage of an eight-year-old seemingly dead for your cause but instead it's where rich texan comes in and just like no he's the one who's going to co-opt the tragedy i also uh a real jfk reference and like in texas we do tragedy right yeah 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? And yes, I guess, did you read his hair as dreadlocks until that point? I mean, they do look like poofy dreadlocks. I only did when he gave the dread to the Lisa Effigy, or not Effigy, sorry, Memorial or whatever. I know it now because it's been 20 years but when i first watched it i didn't realize they were dreads until the dread was cut off they

probably said uh this kid has dreads and then they got the animation back and they're like yeah whatever it's hard to portray dreads when you can't have too many lines of detail on characters like this especially with how they draw blonde hair on a yellow skinned character too it's uh there's there's only you need to have someone call it a dread out loud and at least it knew what his favorite dread was as well do you have the mo bits oh do i because that's one of my favorite mo lines where i i cackled out loud in my living room oh right before that is when barbara straight a's i did want to mention just that i think that urban legend

sorry yes yeah i think they specifically though got it from 1998 was when the dark comedy dead man on campus came out i was there for mark paul gosselaar's movie star turn on the silver screen and then turn back away from being a movie star i never watched what was that show suits or was franklin and bash franklin and bash that's the yeah yeah yeah he's franklin i'm bash we're cops i don't know what it is about i'm sorry but yes that dead man on campus is about two guys who find out that if they can get a roommate to commit suicide then they get all a's and so it's a dark comedy about trying to drive roommates to suicide i believe it was an MTV film, right?

Yeah, it was under the same banner as Election. The TV told me to watch it, so I did. But yeah, I like that Bart is just like, oh, why? Oh, yes, horrible, hard business, that. But yes, the Mo scene. Homer walks into the bar wearing that dead Lisa T-shirt. I want that T-shirt. It's great.

But yes, here, I'll play the clip. Grieving father coming through. to the bar wearing that dead lisa t-shirt i want that t-shirt it's great but uh but yes here i'll play the clip grieving father coming through home uh uh booze is on the house seeing this how lisa is um how do i put this uh riding the midnight train to slab city thanks for the beer but before lisa died she made this tape that I think you should hear. Dear Mo, if anything should ever happen to me, I want you to tear up my dad's tab and pour cocktail onions. Dad, I can't. Read it. Pour cocktail onions down your pants. Well, I ain't never said no to a dead girl yet.

Okay, so Moe, writing The Midnight Train to Slab City is, apparently Matt Sullivan got that from a James Elroy novel he was reading at the time, which makes total sense, but I ain't never said no to a dead girl yet implies Moe has had sex with dead women. Oh, yeah. And that is what it means. That's why I cackled at home. That is one of the darkest Mo jokes. Wow.

I feel even worse now for that joke. Oh, my God. Wow. Damn. They really got away with something. I didn't even catch that. But it's absolutely what it means. Of course, the way they write Mo at this point, of course he's having sex with corpses.

There's no two ways around it folks uh i also do love the little acting on homer's face when he's playing the tape and lisa's like getting back on track he just like nods like you heard him you heard her mo like i love that and in this next scene it feels like they asked branantford Marsalis to be on the show, but he said no. So they kind of screwed him over on this scene. Oh, yes. It's kind of like it's shoved away by Milhouse. Yeah, they just let, I love that Milhouse takes the saxophone with him. And they're just like, go forth, Milhouse.

Good luck. Oh, yeah. I love how Mayor Quimby's like, good luck, Milhouse. So he knows who millhouse is and his relationship with lisa and he's supportive of it yes he wants everybody wants him to clone lisa if they can uh that's so yeah that branford marsalis he was the original band leader on jay leno's tonight show so bringing back the jay leno stuff again from the earlier in the episode i just love their way of like dumping on the leno headlines too like the only person who'd like leno headlines is somebody who's lame like uh like marches i

like it that the only truly evil person is rich texan because they reveal that he said he was gonna not cut down everything and then he says oh lisa appeared to me in a dream and said that she wants me to turn this into an amusement park and he's gonna destroy everything and use Lisa's face in it. It's so crass and evil. I love that he's evil and not Jesse. That's an important bit to me.

On the animated commentary, the director, Moore, he brings up that he worked really hard on getting the timing right on the sign effects which go by so fast i feel bad that i didn't appreciate it and then he has a fun little passive aggressive statement of there's a crowd around the tree and he says like uh the hd area they probably asked me to draw like triple that crowd about like god damn that sounds hard especially in a show with this many crowds yes yeah and and then on the fucking poor poor dean moore in the writer's commentary they call out that a lot of

the crowd looks off in a couple shots like there's the worst drawn flanders ever you know what that flanders wasn't so bad for flanders at a much reduced scale that you see for a second yeah i was waiting for a much worse flanders because I forget what you know actually happened and then they're like anticipating the moment like there he is there he is I'm like I've seen way crazier background characters than that way more off-model characters yeah they're they're calibrated for season 12 off-model when we just did season one yeah like if someone's on model it's uh you're like wow someone stayed on model by the way Branford Marsalis I want to rewind a little bit. He was, as we said, Jay Leno's first band leader who famously wasn't happy to be on the show.

And there was a reference to that in Up Late with McBain, my band leader, Skowy, who didn't like McBain. So that was a reference to Branford Marsalis. Maybe you're a homosexual, too. You're a homosexual too you're all homosexual moore says that he thinks that the crowd looks like crap because he probably just drew a rough a rough drawing and overseas just over expanded on it from there with no real in between for that and they're just like well yeah her hoover miss hoover is drawn drawn with black frames on her glasses. That's how we're going to draw her in this scene.

So that's what Moore thinks is the issue for her. But yeah, you're right, Bob. There's way worse off-model characters. But Lisa can't take snow more in this next clip. And finally, an exciting announcement from our good friends at OmniPave. Folks, last night, the dear departed Lisa came to me in a dream. And she told me her fondest wish was that this forest would become the world's rootinest, tootinest, pollutinest amusement park. You promised us a nature preserve.

Now, don't you fret. We're sensitive to all your eco-concerns. That's it, boys. The gift shop will go right there. Yes! Oh, cut it down! No! No!

Girls! I'm not dead, and neither is my sense of moral outrage uh here we go merely i don't now get your hiney off elisa land a redwood is not a promotional tool did humber drive her there uh oh he must have actually yeah he should have known what's gonna happen i was like i thought she was gonna like show herself to the crowd but she's really pushing this i it's a very also like take that lisa's beliefs line of the the other side of that coin is like oh here we go here we go homer said that same line in the uh

bart to the future one too about the soil and green like isn't that made of people uh here we go homer said that same line in the uh bart to the future one too about the soil and green like isn't that made of people oh here we go here we go i like that rich texan is basically a captain planet villain yeah cut it down he is horace greedly oh that's right i was trying to think of the name it's not loot and plunder uh the i also like i love his uh delivery of like clearly i don't okay i think of that when i think of like though this did you ever think a republican had good morals like no this was yeah and this was 20 years ago like you can you can never do this they don't care they don't care if they're hypocrites hey you're a hypocrite whatever cut everything Cut everything down. I own it. They only care if they're winning. That's it.

I mean, the flip side of we can't govern, we hate life and ourselves has always been we're just plain evil. And they were saying that in the mid-90s. So that's all you need to know. Yep. Yeah. God, Rich Texan. And Rich Texan was on the Republican board that picked Bob Roberts as well. Our sideshow Bob.

What'd he say? What'd he say? I i also i love my favorite line i think is good good good girl they say good lord he's cutting the guy wire that's good too that is like besides joe mel exists to say those lines but but yeah comic book guy is the type of guy who would be very upset at seeing a good good girl's talking as mel said the wire got cut it starts to fall over and you know what i think i know why jesse went to jail he almost killed like 80 people by drop by cutting this tree down i like that he stands by his beliefs you know that he like he's this isn't a promotional tool but it is pretty bad he almost

killed some people and i guess did kill people since he let it loose and it is it uh never stops moving and smashing things that kind of is his fault there's a really weird joke that i can tell they rewrote because the second half of the joke is clearly different uh line put in after the fact where jesse the log has been set free with lisa's weird head on top of it and he goes return to me he's trying to bring the log back and then he goes oh right i don't have superpowers yet after return to me that is a completely new line and i wonder what he said after that because it just is very it falls really flat and it makes the character seem much more bizarre than he was in the first place i bet his line originally sold about more that's maybe just like and kill everyone or whatever and then because what is not changed

is the reaction shot from his fellow hippies who kind of like judge him like wait what so i think he said something that shocked them even more than just he's crazy and he thinks he can control trees but uh yeah i would that they i mean it must have been a big adr change because they would have had to gotten joshua jackson back to re-record a new line for it the animators also completely copped to the fact that lisa's head changes direction and falling over uh i love lisa's big grinning head on top of the tree changes that's the only thing they're like wow that's kind of unrealistic yes yeah but that design of her the the pez head design of lisa is really great and that it is the smiley face of lisa as this

destructive log rolling down the uh the world uh yes good things and bad things are smashed in this next clip. Not my company! Gah! No! It was finger-ling-ling good! No! It was finger-ling-ling good. Yee-haw! Score one for the bad guys. So that was Kentucky Fried Panda and Hemp City

reduced to stems and seeds. That's pretty great, reduced to stems and seeds. That's the one pot joke they get away with. Butentucky fried panda honestly feels too like 90s edgelord i think the simpsons is better than that yeah it's uh like south park would have just done that joke but i i like on the commentary scully kind of actually goofs on them not writing a different joke that homer homer just says the sign gag out loud that was on the restaurant, but right before it gets smashed. It doesn't sound like one of the regular saying, and he says, like, it's headed for the business district. Like, that's not, maybe it's Carl Weidergut.

That is Carl Weidergut, yeah. Okay. But also, I do like that Rich Texan identifies as a bad guy. He's like, yeah, score one for the bad guys. Like, from his point of view, even he knows, like, yeah, I'm the bad guy. I'm his point of view even he knows like yeah i'm the bad guy i'm the bad guy here i accept it captain planet villain yep yeah horace greedley is very aware he's a villain and that he's a pig man well see he was at asner right yes yeah yeah we in one of his like snortiest and uh nasallyest uh roles but yes ham city is destroyed jesse's back in jail again they they ultimately

leave you with him uh with his morals mostly intact and he's not a bad guy but also solar power is bullshit man yeah yeah i can't even kill people uh and the joke about uh moistening head sponges is uh taken right out of Mile, which was a recent film then. We all learned about the importance of the head sponge when you're trying to execute someone. And I guess also they send him to jail just so like, well, this is why Lisa doesn't hang out with him again. I would assume he got like 40 years in jail, whatever the highest punishment he could be given. He's still in jail as of this moment in the Simpsons universe. He is a white middle class kid.

I'm sure he got a slap in the wrist. That's true but they do punish eco kids if they're white more than your average white guy so yeah you've got you've got leftist protester versus white privilege which level how it's hard to figure and i don't think i mean he did an okay job but i don't think joshua jackson is a great voice actor i didn't like i didn't like a lot of his line reads but i do like this last one when he says what's up with that yeah it made me laugh it's weird he's playing the character funny for the only time in the episode where he actually says like a funny line but uh yes here's our final clip hey lisa oh jesse they locked you up again yeah but i'm still fighting for the earth i even got him to install a solar-powered electric chair dude we've been here all morning could you at

least re moisten my head sponge well I'll write you letters on rice paper with a soy pencil you're sweet did they ever stop that log not yet what's up with that? This log is your log. This log is my log. When lightning struck it, it kicked the bucket. I put some onions inside my trousers. This log, it used to be a tree now it spreads love to you and me hey look it's heading out to sea okay so two things uh we got the rare missing tooth mow in that shot which i always love and i have my own tale of the tapes by the way oh boy for this because i was still taping stuff in the year 2000 and uh a trick that i learned for watching the Simpsons at that point is I always watch it with closed captions on because you would often catch a joke that they

changed and this was also pointed out in the commentary that there was uh the log song was set to the tune of Woody Guthrie's this land is your land yeah we just heard J-Lo sing at the inauguration I did not hear that because I didn't watch it. But they got permission to use the song and everything. But there was a line in the song about how the log was killing people. And I couldn't find what the original lyrics were. But I recall, to my recollection, the caption said, Now it's destroying society.

That was the final line instead of heading out to sea. So they didn't like that. The Guthrie estate didn't like that. So they changed it to now the log is heading out to sea so they didn't like that the the guthrie estate didn't like that so they change it to now the log is heading out to sea they didn't want the log to kill people i like that the singers are realizing like hey look it's heading out to sea like that's such a great uh that but they were stuck with that because uh like scully said on the commentary he didn't want to do like a sound alike or rip off. If he could pay for it, they wanted the real song to sing over. But that's what happens when you actually pay the estate for the real song.

They can have opinions on if they want to have lyrics about killing people in the song. I do think the lyric, when lightning struck it, it kicked the bucket, is very good. It's very satisfying to think about and hear sung to you. Couple things. kick the bucket is very good it's very satisfying to think about and hear sung to you a couple things first of all seeing the log wreaking havoc across the country reminded me that i actually did see this when it first ran because i'd mostly forgotten this episode but i definitely remembered how crazy that log was and then second of all seeing lisa's head kind of reminds me of the fish bulb the homer fish bulb and it's like oh that's like the lisa equivalent only it's on a giant log i love it going down what is that lombard street i've never even i've lived pretty close to that

i've never been to but it's the famous windy streets in san francisco and see it go down that and then into the bay and under the under the golden gate it did it also reminded me like well i haven't been to san francisco in uh a year now i think it's been a year for me too yeah but i'm not missing much i i did love uh well i will say the last time when we did that live show i was reminded like boy san francisco is not doing great these days and i have a feeling it'll be way worse the next time i go into san francisco the city itself yeah i love mo's uh just how horrible he sings trousers that hurt my voice to even try to do it there it must be a hot mic or they recorded hank in a different way just very harsh sounding yes but again the missing tooth which is on the original model sheet it's what wes archer swears by i love seeing mo with his rare missing tooth yeah i'm glad wes i am i stand by wes archer

being insistent on that it's on the model sheet kind of thing like even even if it looks better uh to look at if he has all his teeth it's funnier if he has a missing tooth it's it's more cartoony i feel like most thinking about pouring stuff down his trousers is very scully years to me yes yeah i mean well just pouring things down your pants is a very late 90s uh i don't think bill and josh would have done as many jokes about pouring things down your pants it is funny how moe appears in the song for no reason to describe something you've already seen yes like hey remember this yes uh very meaninglessly but it's so great i for no reason here's a poo and then there's in one of the most jarring things ever in the show they go from the this land parody straight into the matrix music over the credits like like they could have just

continued the this land music over the credits but instead they brought back the matrix music it probably would have cost extra money maybe i think they were out of this land is your land i guess so yeah i mean i guess they only use the song for a minute so maybe they're like oh this song's good let's use it again over the credits but al clausen wrote a lot of fake matrix music we got to use it all ultimately this episode definitely feels like selman trying to do a South Park within the system of the Simpsons. But there's more heart to it, Simpsons style, than there is in South Park. And I'm kind of glad, you know, if they'd gone full heartless and hateful towards anyone who believes in anything, that would be definitely much more off-putting to me 20 years later.

Yeah, it was a much softer version of the South Park Everyone is Wrong. And it was much easier to swallow than I think a year 2000 South Park episode would be for me today. So it's not amazing, but there are really good jokes in it. Again, Mo has sex with corpses. So we learned something new about characters in this episode. Yeah, it got some serious laughs out of me. And also, it could have been so much worse i was bracing myself for a really obnoxious episode when lisa goes and meets uh josh in the in the jail cell for the

first time and they're talking about poser uh poser entries and everything but it turned out to be you know kind of more of a classic simpsons episode It's outside of the log destroying the world. It's surprisingly grounded in an early Simpsons kind of way. So I came away going, that wasn't so bad. I mean, it's not amazing or anything, but it's fine. Until a giant log moves under its own power across America. It's a very down to earth episode. I do really like that ending it just it's so so surreal that in the song and how it just goes across the country based on the momentum of sliding down a hill and you hear jesse just say like what's up with that that's a great but it wasn't like it wasn't it was a surreal ending but like we've had crazy wackadoodle injury endings but this one felt like it fit as it were like i was like going you know it's it's insane

it's really heightened but it feels like the logical conclusion to this episode for some reason and i'm willing to just kind of roll with it so kat thank you so much for joining us uh hopefully we'll get to see you in person again in the year 2021 as it unrolls but please tell us all about the acts of the blood god patreon and what you're up to right now yeah thanks for having me back on the show and you guys were actually on my show just recently we were talking about the 90s anime that we loved and the rpgs that they helped create that was a lot of fun just to reminisce about magic knight ray earth alone good times and slayers oh let's not forget slayers for sure yeah i'm currently watching the entire series so it's been fun oh my god what do you think uh it really holds up if folks are fans of

uh role-playing games whether japanese or not uh your podcast is a lot of fun and you guys are producing uh you do lots of great stuff on your free feeds for acts of the blood god but also i uh you've you've really stepped it up on production wise on your patreon it is uh well worth the uh the money yeah thanks so much it's patreon.com slash blood god pod and you can follow me on twitter at the underscore cat bot thanks a bunch we always love having you back on cat thanks guys so thanks so much to cat bailey for being on the show once again please check out her patreon acts of the blood god but as for us if you want to support our patreon and get all these episodes one week at a time in at free please go to

patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month you'll get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes new episodes of talking futurama once a month but also access to every miniseries we've done for the past nearly four years the most recent one was talking futurama season two part two and coming at the end of march we'll be starting talking to the hill season Season 2, Part 1. So even more miniseries for you. And there'll be two total miniseries coming at you in 2021.

So much stuff behind the $5 paywall. If you enjoy listening to our voices talk about cartoons, there is so much going on that you haven't heard if you're not a patron of patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And there is also a $10 level

at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons that'll get you access to all the $5 stuff of course but also on top of that access to one mega long podcast once a month that is only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that Henry? Well yes Bob you're discussing the What a Cartoon movie podcast our special extra bonus podcast we do each month often we talk over four hours about an animated feature film in the same way we talk about simpsons and the what a cartoon podcast what a cartoon movie recently has done the ghibli film whisper of the heart right before that we did dexter's lab ego trip that's cartoon network classic and before that was our five hour long discussion of the end of evangelion and there's

going to be another awesome one in march you sign up at the ten dollar level you get access to an entire over 100 hour back catalog of what a cartoon movie podcast in addition to all the five dollar stuff and also all of me and bob's video commentaries on simpsons deleted scenes going back to season seven i believe and our most recent one for season 11, you can still check it out. It's a lot of fun. If you want to see the craziest drawing of Homer's butt they ever did,

you got to sign up at the $10 level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast, by the way, is Retro Knots. That is a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo my other podcast by the way is Retro Knots

that is a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro knots sign up there for two full length extra podcasts every month again that is patreon.com slash retro knots Henry how about you follow me on Twitter

at H E N E R E Y G that's where you can stay informed about all my thoughts on the world Henry, how about you? Follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. That's where you can stay informed about all my thoughts on the world and whenever new stuff goes live. But if you really want to stay plugged in on the events in the Talking Simpsons Network, you really should follow on Twitter the official Twitter account of this podcast at TalkSimpsonsPod. At TalkSimpsonsPod, we'll let you know when new podcasts go live on the free feed, when they go live on the Patreon. Same for our What a Cartoon podcast. And anytime we do extras on the Patreon or have cool news about what's going on in our world,

you will stay up to date if you follow at Talk Simpsons pod on Twitter. So please, please do so. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next time for season two's Dancing Homer, and we'll see you next time for season two's dancing homer and we'll see you then Shh.

Shh. You want money? Get a job, like your old man. Well, maybe I should. So, now you're smarter than your old man, huh? I guess. I like your attitude. Take what you need.