Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Lisa's Date With Density With Matt Burnett

Episode Date: August 29, 2018

Matt Burnett is co-creator of Cartoon Network's fantastic Craig of the Creek, as well as one of the first writers for Steven Universe, and he joins Bob and Henry for Lisa's first crush. Much to Milhouse's dismay, Lisa has a thing for Nelson Muntz, and it leads to painful consequences for everyone. All while Homer annoys the town with auto-dialing happiness! Unpack the gauze from your ears and listen to this week's podcast! This podcast is brought to you by VRV, the streaming network full of cartoons, anime and more. sign up for a free 30-day trial at VRV.co/WAC and help support Talking Simpsons! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? My ears are packed with gauze, Henry Gilbert. Who else is here? And I'm your favorite big sister, Matt Burnett. And today's episode is Lisa's date with density. Well, it was like that when I got here, it really was. Today's episode aired on December 15th, 1996. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God.

Oh boy, Bobby. Jerry Maguire is showing people the money at the top of the box office. The TV series Dallas returns with the TV movie Dallas. JR returns. From the dead? He got shot in the last episode of it, but I guess... Oh wait, he survived that Guns were weaker in the 80s

And parents are battling it out for Tickle Me Elmo's in stores everywhere. Oh boy, soon to be parodied as Funzo, correct? On this very program And also a Tickle Me Krusty, which was like Hey kid, don't touch that I enjoyed at the time watching

internet videos of those being set on fire and crushed And you can see just the horrible terminator exoskeleton underneath the Elmo fur. Oh, yeah I've seen that the picture of that the skeleton of the Elmo is very terrifying yes How long ago was Dallas like it's coming back for a TV movie because it feels like the Simpsons when the Simpsons covered it You know who shot mr. Burns it was like oh, that must be a show from 20 years ago I was thinking when I was a kid it ran surprisingly long I'm looking it up now and I believe it ran until 1991 because um it started in 78 yes it ended in 1991 and wow just five years yeah I can't believe it like I just associate this with the with the mid 80s I was not aware that it was on this long until we did that who shot mr burns uh research so yeah dallas they brought back dallas again a few years

ago and larry hagman's passing i believe ended the return of that dallas but they got everybody else they could too i i've never watched a second of dallas that wasn't for research for this uh no one cared about the 2012 reboot so so I think Dallas Fever is over. And meanwhile, Jerry Maguire, that was a big-ass deal at the time. I think there's still, like, I think it still has some touchstone in it. I just watched a review for a really bad pro wrestler movie

that the villain in it was Jonathan Lipnicki. Oh, wow. Because he's, like, yoked now, right? He's in better shape, yeah. Does he still have a giant head? It's not. I guess it's a bigger than average adult head.

More than eight pounds? Yeah. Tom Cruise seemingly is not aged a day since that movie. I don't know if they did this again, but whatever that single was

for this movie, The Secret Garden, that was the first time I ever heard on the radio movie clips edited into a song from the movie. Every time it played, you had to hear,

you had me at hello. Yeah. A lot of that. And I don't even, what's the catchphrase from this movie? You need the money or give me the money? Show me the money. Show me the money.

It's so memorable. That's why I remember it to this day. Let's talk to our special guest, Matt Burnett. Matt, you are a Cartoon Network hotshot. We are in L.A. right now, which is why the room tone is a little different. But, Matt, can you talk about what you have made, what you do, and who you are? I am a co-creator currently and a showrunner of Cartoon Network's Craig of the Creek.

Yay. Excellent show, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it premiered earlier this year. And prior to that, spent uh basically like five years working with rebecca sugar on steven universe i was uh the writer i should say i co-created craig and worked on steven with my writing partner ben levin and uh the two of us

have been doing cartoons for uh over 10 years now we started back when we were living in new york and we were independently animating out of our apartments in queens and we did this uh we did these shorts that we put on YouTube called All Under the Umbrella of Ronin Dojo Community College DX about just a bunch of LARPing nerds. And yeah, we rode that train all the way out to Hollywood. And now we're, yeah, on basic cable television. Well, yeah, I was going to mention the Steven Universe thing. I think it was in the art book that came out, Rebecca mentioned that you and Ben got paired with her via Cartoon Network. She had already known you before in like the indie comic scene, right?

She had known Ben a little bit. Ben had done a short film while we were in college together that a professor at – we went to NYU. A professor at NYU was also teaching at SVA classes. And then he brought over Ben's film to SVA to say, check out this movie this guy made. And Rebecca was in that class. And she saw She, She, She is a Bombshell, which is this thing that Ben did about kids in a car after a punk show. And she was just always in love with it. And then, like, down the line, we saw her short and her comic, you know, Don't Cry for Me.

Yes. And Ben had exchanged emails with her. So we were all in New York at the same time, but we were like just not in each other's orbits exactly. And then, yeah, we came out here separate and we were actually working at Cartoon Network on a live action show they did called Level Up. We worked on it for like a year and a half.

And that was just how our names were in circulation there. And then I think that they gave her a list of like, here are some writers that we work with that are okay. And she recognized the names on there. I was like, oh yeah. I remember we had a meeting with her at the little deli that's across the street from Cartoon Network. And she just was like, here's this thing that I'm thinking about doing. And we were like, that's really cool. I hope you get to make it. And it would be cool if we worked on it. And then, yeah, like five years later, we did it. So yeah, Craig of the Creek is a fairly new show. I believe it premiered in April of this year. Yes. I think April, yeah. April is, we like it. So yeah, Craig of the Creek is a fairly new show. I believe it premiered in April of this year?

Yes, I think April. Yeah, April is, we like rolled out on the app, the Cartoon Network app, on end of February or March, and then yeah, April is when we dropped a bunch of episodes on television. Can you tell our listeners what the show is about in case they might have missed it? I just, it's available on the app. You can watch it on the website too,

CartoonNetwork.com, so it's very available to watch. I just watched a bunch of it over the past few days to get ready for this. And I was super impressed by it. It's great. Oh, thanks. Yeah. Well, Craig of the Creek is a show about Craig. He's a kid who lives in sort of a Northeast suburb that reflects the areas that Ben and I grew up in where behind his house, he's got the creek, which is this wooded area with a creek running through it where kids go after school and on the weekends to just totally get away from the adult world and create a world all their own and where they make the rules and they're imagining these adventures they have and he always is rolling around with his two best friends Kelsey and JP and Kelsey is a young girl who's obsessed with YA fantasy and imagines

herself a knight in some kind of epic story and JP is just kind of like a goofy kid in a hockey jersey who marches to the beat of his own drum. And the three of them just hang out in this creek and just have adventures with all the different kids in the neighborhood. And the show's really about like showing kids the ways that you can be creative and go out and explore the world around you. And it's a really grounded show. It takes place in reality, but it's showing kids how like there's magic in the world around you. Yeah, if I could recommend one episode for our listeners to watch, I would watch The Curse, which actually Henry recommended to me. It's about the kids encountering teen goths

and buying all of their fun goth stuff at face value. Yeah. They're actually witches. It's a great episode. That's, I love that episode. Kate Leff actually wrote the story with us on that one. And that was awesome to get to do. And like, yeah, you know,

the show's super focused on young kids, we uh still have an obsession with teens uh and uh so we get them in there when we can and we just love also the interaction between older kids and the younger kids yeah that's something i really like on the show too another favorite of mine was well they're actually the uh the ones that just aired at the time we're recording was Kelsey's Quest because any interaction with the nerds who, sorry the elders of the creek that is funny to me because I didn't play tabletop RPGs

in a creek. We did it at like a Denny's that was friendly and let us do it in a corner but I just like the idea that I was that type of teen playing that who was just like, if some 11-year-olds respected me, I'd be like, all right, yeah. I really identify with those characters.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, those characters, Mark, Barry, and David, are all lifted from, they're the Ronin Dojo Community College DX kids that we did in our old YouTube short, and we just redesigned them and made them curse less and put them on the show. Our Cartoon Network. I end the anime references too and I do really like those guys. They have a similar to

End of Evangelion poster behind them. And also in the one with the book that they were searching for. Yeah, the final book. Yeah, the final book was, I love first that you were putting the Hardy Boys on blast and just saying, it's always the first guy they met.

And then second, the one kid who's like, I read manga, I don't read. That is me, by the way. So I wanted to ask you about this episode. Why did you choose it? Is it because it has anything to do with the fact that your series is also very kid-focused? I feel like if you took Homer out of this episode, it would just be the kids yeah and i i love yeah it's an episode where

it's different like a lot of the the the episodes in this oakley weinstein run are just like they really treated the simpsons more like a medium yeah genre and they were just like whatever we want to do with it we're going to do with it and it's one of these like episodes that's grounded i mean they talk about it on the commentary we like, this is an episode where everyone acts like a real human being from start to finish, largely. And yeah, just getting to see the kids interact with each other and be kids is a lot of fun. Like another one of my favorite episodes is Seymour Skinner's Sweet Badass Song and like getting to see Bart so much and stuff. And Homer tends to take over the show sometimes, but it's just so nice to see these characters. And Lisa too is a favorite character of mine. A lot of my favorite episodes

involve her and she's such, you know, she's such an emotional maturity, but then she's so funny too. And when they let her be a kid to undercut that and remind you that she's just a kid, it's great. As a professional animator, I'm guessing Simpsons was an early influence for you as well, right? Actually, not so much because I come from one of those households where my mom, like anything Fox was like forbidden. I remember like In Living Color was on and everyone was doing Fire Marshal Bill bits at school and I couldn't do it. And one time I caught it on like the black and white handheld like TV and I was like,

I watched like a couple minutes of it. And I had so not been exposed to that kind of comedy that I felt bad watching it. I turned it off. I self-censored myself. I feel dirty. And The Simpsons was another one of those things where it was like, I remember really,

everyone at school, it was like Simpsons mania. Everyone had those t-shirts. And I was just like, I want to watch this thing. And my parents were like, absolutely not. No way. This is filth. Couldn't watch Brandon Stimpy. And I still never watched Brandon Stimpy. Probably won't go back to watch now they're right uh yeah so i was i was very late to

getting on the simpsons train i by the time my youngest brother was born my parents had given up and then i got to watch it a little bit in high school but i was sort of interested in other things and then really it was in college when someone like you had recorded a bunch of the episodes on vhs and dragged them uh to to college. And we started watching them late at night. And I was like, oh, cool. And then once the DVDs came out, that's when I really started just like methodically going through it over and over and over again. And it is such like a part of the Rosetta Stone of sort of my comedy and what I'm trying to do in animation. So it has become such a huge part of my life. But for a while, it was just this distant thing that just was like, oh, this is filthy.

I can't watch this. And then you watch it now, and you're just like, oh, this is all very fine. I don't know if any of our guests have had an origin story like this. Yeah. You know, just discovering it, like starting it that late, like in your late teens. So that's pretty interesting. Is it different to watch it now that you've been, especially now that you've been a showrunner, is it different to look at it as like the view as a creator as opposed to just a viewer yeah uh revisiting this episode i

haven't watched the show recently i haven't probably sat down to watch it since i started running craig and watching it this time around it's like such boring minor like obsessive showrunner stuff but they're like things i would see in there where i would just be like oh no one sent that back to korea for a retake? There's a very slight continuity error in these one or two shots. No one sent that back to be like, could we get the shadow of the H on the Honda

on this shot because it's not here and it's in the next? And I'm just like, wait, no. No one matters. I went 35 years not noticing this or however long it's been since the episode was made. But yeah, that kind of stuff doesn't matter, but there's a part of my brain now years not noticing this or however long it's been since the episode was made but like yeah why would you not that kind of stuff doesn't matter but there's a part of your my brain now that's like

really hard to turn off every mistake yeah it's like it's a bad version of like the matrix everything uh the whole world is terrible oh you know actually i had one last craig the creek question before you get in the episode which is another thing i love about it as i got farther in the episodes i am a podcast, and I'm hearing all these voices I recognize from podcasts, especially the big ones for me were the Wild Horses, the improv troupe, hearing them on there. And also, like, Jess McKenna was another one. I was like, whoa, like, what was, is there a reasoning for that casting? I mean, I just love, I love all of those people from all their appearances on all the Earwolf shows and everything else.

And they're all so amazing. And it's crazy that you get this TV show and you're like, maybe this person would do it. And they're like, yeah, of course I would do it. It's a job. And this is my job. I'm an actor. So yeah, I'll do your show. And it's great.

And it's always been nice to hear when you bring people in and they respond positively to the material. It always feels good for us. And it's exciting that you get people who are invested in it. Some of the other people we've had on that, like, are big fans of it, like John Gabrus, Paintball Benny. And the goth girls are Karen and Georgia from My Favorite Murder, which was like, our whole wing of our design department was obsessed with that podcast for a while. And then when they were working, they would just put it on out loud and they would all just be sitting in a row in the office, just listening to horrible murders be snarked about. And then, yeah,

we were able to bring them in and they were down for it and it was awesome. It was so cool. And they, yeah, so that was really awesome. I love all the wild horses play the horse girls and they all look kind of like themselves too, which i also it was such a like it was such a like i think i don't want to do this this seems so on the nose like it's such a goofy thing that like is that they're gonna think this is corny but no they've totally gone for it and it's been it's been so awesome and you'll be seeing more of i guess everybody so yeah so this episode gets started with vandalism yes yeah well oh wait yeah this is a

mike scully one oh yeah and to feel i got in this episode watching it is like i know that oakley weinstein were as involved as they were on any of the rest of the season but to me this does feel a bit in my memory i thought this was a season nine one because it's written by scully but it also feels like a show ran episode by scully with yeah focus on the kids uh homer is uh a little jerk ass in this if i may use the term and and uh yeah it's it's just a little meaner of an episode too yeah a lot of scully was possibly the only dad on the staff at this time and a lot of his episodes to this point have been bart and l focused, not so much focused on the adults. Yeah. And also that when you get more Lisa stuff, you definitely feel like he's using his dad

background and saying like, well, my daughter does this or my daughter did X, Y, or Z. You get cute stuff in there that I think sometimes in seasons nine through 12, they sometimes went, I think, too far into the cute zone, but I think we're in a good cute zone here. Yeah, yeah, it works. But, oh yes, vandalism. You know, I used to think a car was just a way of getting from point A to point B, and on weekends point C. But that was the old me. That man died the moment I laid eyes on the 1979 Honda Accord. I've always admired car owners,

and I hope to be one myself as soon as I finish paying off Mother. She insists I pay her retroactively for the food I ate as a child. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunate. Well, Seymour, I make superintendent money, which amply covers both food and car.

Holy jumping Caesars, catfish! My H has been stolen! Now, that's how people know it's a Honda! What's the point of having a Honda if you can't show it off? Sir, if you'll just stop yelling at me, I'm sure I can find a replacement. So I think the specificity of a 1979 Honda is meaningful, but I feel like Hondas have gotten much cooler in the past 22 years since this episode has aired. I think so. so i mean they were

popular then or well at least with my family i have quite a honda background with my family the my dad drove an accord as long as i've been alive that was the family car and then like then when my first car was inheriting that accord and then the first car i owned in the last car i owned because i stopped driving 12 years ago when i moved to the Bay Area was the Honda Civic. Were I to ever buy another car, it would probably be a Honda just because I hate driving and I don't understand car culture, but I am very loyal to Honda as a brand. And you'd be ready for street racing if the chance occurred. The Accord ended up being big in the 70s or at least getting a foothold in the 70s, because it was one of the most economical gas mileage cars at the time during the big oil crisis.

All I can tell you from my research, the 79 Accord is from the first generation design of the Accord, and the second generation would come just two years later with the 1981 model. He is very happy about his 17-year-old car. The jacking the hood ornament off of the car reminds me of when I was a kid growing up. My mom only had Volkswagen Vanagons, and someone in our neighborhood had taken the VW logo off of the Vanagon, and my mom held the Beastie Boys

personally responsible for it because they would wear the necklaces with the VW emblem on the chain, and my mom was like, it was the Beastie Boys personally responsible for it because they would wear the necklaces with the VW emblem on the chain. And my mom was like, it was the Beastie Boys. And later, when I was in high school, I went to a show. And I grew up outside of Philly. And I went to a small show there that was like an Ad-Rock side project. And after the show, he was out there loading up the van. And I went up, and I met him, and I shook his hand.

And I went home, and I told my mom. I was like, I met Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys. And she was like, did you ask him where the VW emblem is? And I was like, what? Wow. Celebrities.

I don't know. She's got a real, real grudge. I'd feel, I'd feel honored if celebrities like vandalized anything. It really was my weirdo neighbor, but. Wow.

I feel so innocent that I never thought of like, oh yeah, when guys had, like the Beastie Boys had hood ornaments hanging from their neck, it was proof that they stole it. Yeah. They didn't buy their own.

They didn't buy their car. And then so innocent, they went to a dealership and paid money for the, uh, for the hood or I was a good kid. I didn't steal hood ornaments. Never would even thought of it. I saw when doing research for this,

I found a video of like on the 2016 Rolls Royce. If someone touches the hood ornament it falls down into like it zips down into the hood boy i can't take it so batman technology at work right yeah just like michael keaton batman had right before this i love chalmers realizing like he can almost give skinner a heart attack just by saying his name at this point he's kind of cruelly torturing him. And I like Skinner's acting on Chalmers' reaction to

hearing Skinner just nonchalantly say such a horrible life situation. Yes, well, we've all been in situations like that where we're like, well, that's not normal, but it's not really my place to say that. I don't want

to make you feel worse about it you're already clearly at the bottom of the barrel let's just gloss over this when they go to take the thing off kearney's car the new age it's a hyundai which i learned is a hyundai like sunday is how it is pronounced because i'd always said hyundai as well but when i worked at a website at Comic-Con they did a tie-in promotional program that Hyundai sponsored with The Walking Dead and we were all saying like oh Hyundai Hyundai when we got there and the reps were there they're like it's Hyundai like Sunday not Hyundai like Sunday okay so I I think it think it should be Hyundai based on the Japanese pronunciation, but I don't think they like the whole die thing in there.

Yeah, it's not great advertising to say die. You don't want to think of Huns dying. It's very sad. But that's a tip for you folks out there. If you're still saying Hyundai, it's Hyundai. I got it from the people who work there. Hyundai like sundae. I'll always think of that with The Walking Dead

and Petco Park. And how many free cars did you get out of this deal? Oh, certainly none. But I still had to sell out anyway. Actually, on the subject of San Diego, Matt, you have worked at San Diego Comic-Con. You've done panels and stuff. I haven't been on a panel yet.

I've been in the audience. I'm going to be on a panel this year oh wow um yeah talking about craig and yeah ian uh james cordy is gonna host it it's gonna be a lot of fun you would have just heard him and toby jones on last week's episode yeah yeah we were texting about it cartoon network is taking over are you excited for that have you done a panel before i've done a panel i've done panels before but much smaller and yeah uh i've been to the steven panels and those are always pretty pretty really cool to go to it's really like working cartoons it's really fun to do it but like you know no it's not a live

thing like you never you see people people tweet things at you but you don't really know how people are receiving it but to be in a room sometimes and they always like screen clips and stuff and to be in a room and even when it always screen clips and stuff, and to be in a room, and even when it's something people have seen before and they're reacting to it, it's such a charge to see people live react to something you made.

It's so fun, so I'm excited for Comic-Con this year. So then we get to the 7-Eleven, and... 7-Eleven? Oh, sorry. We've been going to 7-Eleven all week. Every day, every day.

They know us by name now. The quickie part. And Homer taking advantage of the self-service pretty good, which I feel like Apu better, it all week every day every day they know it's my name now uh the quickie part and homer taking advantage of the self-service pretty good which i feel like i'll poop better i'll poop better i've charged him for opening all those things to put them on the on the dough you know i think homer also presaged the um voodoo donut yeah voodoo and all the imitators who just like yeah here's just a strip of bacon on a donut i want I want our listeners to weigh in. If you've been to Portland, I feel voodoo is more of an experience than a delicious treat. You could just say you stood in that long line and got a weird donut.

I think Blue Star is the superior Portland donut. I go to Portland twice a year. Weigh in in the comments. Is it Blue Star or voodoo? I want to know. I see too many people at the airport with those pink boxes. Homer then finds the now apparently crime-ridden alley next to the Kwik-E-Mart. And he happens upon his bee story.

It looks like we put the kibosh on another two-bit telephone, swindle boys. Frankly, I would have expected better from Jimmy the scumbag. Hey, what's this thing? Huh? Ah, that's this thing? Huh? Ah, that's an auto-dialer This bird was using it to pull a telemarketing scam But instead he's gonna rot in the slammer for the next 20 years Bread and water, icy showers, guards whomping your ass around the clock

And the only way out is suicide Telemarketing, eh? So, Jimmy the scumbag, I have to know if he's friends with johnny tight lips well johnny tight lips wouldn't tell you he wouldn't say nothing uh but uh telemarketing scams i feel like this is just on the cusp of the internet age where there are so many more ways to rip people off but this is sort of telemarketing scam and a chain letter scam and do we know anything about how those worked in any way no not really i mean i got i got telemarketing calls but they always had a very direct thing of like sign up for this buy this

thing donate to this all that they but they weren't vague things of like happy dude or a record if it was a recorded message i'd hang up immediately like oh you're not a person i don't feel bad about hanging up here yeah i think i think we might be all be too young to have experienced this and like the chain letter days were just, you would get a letter in the mail saying, copy this list, put your name at the bottom of it, give it to eight friends, and they would have to send them out to other people. And eventually, all the money would go back to one person. I don't know how they worked.

But again, with the internet, it's much easier to steal from people. I feel like telemarketing scams are back, though, because I get a ton of calls every day telling me I owe money to the IRS or something and it's like yeah that's some kind of scam because now they can just like I constantly get calls from my old area code back in Cherry Hill, New Jersey Oh me too not from Cherry Hill, New Jersey

but from Ohio and if you leave Skype on all manner of calls will come in from people you've never met That's interrupted a recording once but I forgot about doing that. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be. I wasn't bitter about that. I just feel like, boy, how is this even happening now?

Yeah, now when I get, so my phone number, I got it as a free phone from my old job and I just kept, they let me keep the phone so I kept the phone number, but it's not my personal area code, but it's the one where my office was. So when I get that area code phone calls i'm like oh this is just another another telemarketing scam these ones don't work on people

who move they it worked on me for a couple months i kept just being like which hospital have my parents been taken to and then it was just like oh no okay never mind and so god forbid they ever actually if you get in trouble because uh i ain't. My theory is if no one leaves a voicemail, no one is sick or dead. So that's when I ignored those local calls. I'm glad they didn't go to the darker place. We all know they could have gone with a jail joke. They just say the prisoners getting beaten by, I mean, suicide is quite a dark joke to go to. But they need to have something horrible be said to Homer for it to work for him.

They're like, telemarketing, eh? But whomping is such a good verb. Whomping, and he hits the car. You can hear it. Yeah, and the little reaction on Jimmy's face when the car moves when he says whomping, he's just like, oh, man, I'm in for it. It's when Jimmy the scumbag realizes it. I think Jimmy the scumbag has been in prison before, though. He should know all these things.

Yeah, though he wouldn't actually go to prison for 20 years because he would appear in background shots in later seasons after this just when they needed, like, skeevy characters to show up. So not the last we've seen of Jimmy the scumbag. The Simpsons will be right back. Hey, we're real happy that all you crumb bums are listening to this week's episode of Talking Simpsons. And we especially thank Matt Burnett for doing the show we are big fans of craig of the creek and all of his work on the steven universe show as well and we hope you folks check out that show the episodes we talked about

here are really great you can check them out on the cartoon network app you can buy season pass on like itunes or amazon there's lots of cool places to see it and we super duper thank matt for doing the show also if you'd like to support this show and our sister podcast, What a Cartoon, you can go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. If you head there, you can listen to every episode of Talking Simpsons a week early and ad free. You can be listening to next week's episode, Hurricane Nettie, right now and without any ads on it for just $5 a month at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. And if you're a fan of the other show,

Manper Networked on Steven Universe, you could listen to our What a Cartoon podcast, where we cover the first two episodes of Steven Universe and so many other cartoons on What a Cartoon, which is also a week early and ad free on patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Just $5 a month gets you that and access to a bunch of exclusive interviews with folks who worked on a simpsons we talked to the writer of this week's episode mike scully we talked to longtime simpsons director david silverman we talked to writer

dan mcgrath who worked on seasons four five and six of the simpsons as well as mission hill king the hill and gravity falls and we talked to most recently mike reese who wrote a whole book on working on the simpsons for 30 whole years check all that out exclusively at patreon.com talking simpsons also if you'd like to support the show in other ways, check out a free trial of Hulu on us. You can get a 30-day free trial of Hulu at tiny.cc slash tshulu. Stream to your heart's content for 30 days, and a little bit of money gets kicked back to the show if you do through our link, tiny.cc slash tshulu.

There's anime on there. There's Steven Universe and regular show and a ton of other cartoon network series too if you like those you can check all that out and more tiny.cc slash tshulu Oh yeah, and this is definitely more season six disciplinarian Skinner than like sad Skinner other than... We get the bit of sadness in the beginning. That's true. But when he's the principal, he's just the tough guy.

He's got to be, especially because this is Rebel Without a Cause so much, so he just has to be authority in it. You can't get too much sadness with him once he has to be Nelson's enemy. This is his hunt for the H. Oh, you think this stolen H is a laugh riot, don't you? Well, I'll tell you something that's not so funny. Right now, Superintendent Chalmers is at home crying like a little girl. I guess it is a little funny.

Nonetheless, I will find the culprit. We'll start with, oh, I don't know, Bart Simpson. Um, I don't think you want to look in there, sir. Balderdash, I'll just stick my head right in it. Half a dozen eggs. Well, that would be the complete dozen. All right, rather than tempt fate, I'll move along now.

So I wanted to ask Matt, this episode is directed by Susie Dieter, one of the best Simpsons directors. And working in animation, what do you notice or what do you pick up on in terms of staging and acting and things like that? Because I feel like there's a lot of great stuff, especially in that scene where he's like, Bart Simpson! And there's a great pointing pose from behind Skinner.

There's a lot of great acting in this episode. Yeah, the layouts on this episode and these seasons are just so fun because there's so many. I was thinking about it. And that shot is the one where it's on Skinner and and then it pans down yeah the hallway and they've they've drawn into the background they've changed the perspective because like the the lockers are flat against skinner and then as the camera moves across the background the the drawing curves right to show you the perspective of now we're shooting down the hallway and i that was one that jumped out to me

and there's so many like uh the brad bird during this time when he was like consulting on the simpsons like he put together this like guide to storyboarding that gets handed – like people in animation pass it around constantly. Oh, really? Wow. It's still this document. That and there's a King of the Hill one that I think he might have done too. Oh, like the character guide of like Peggy looks like this, not like this. It's not even the character design.

It's like shot composition of like don't stage a character straight on. Do like an upshot or a downshot. And there's like in the very beginning of the episode with Chalmers and Skinner, there's that. Like we're looking up at Chalmers and then we're looking down at Skinner at the lunch table. It's not like a proscenium or proscenium staging, however you say that, where it's like sort of like a diorama. Diorama. Yeah. diorama diorama yeah and that's what's like the the simpsons is just so for at this point is such a visually dynamic show that they're really imitating like cinematic language that you

would do in a live action film because often in animation it's just easier to stage everything flat like okay we just get to draw a flat background not a lot of complex perspective and then we can kind of just like move that background around and then just have the characters be standing in sort of their stock three-quarter position and i feel like with the simpsons the way they're designed it's always we you know you guys talk about it's such a challenge sometimes to like draw them from a certain perspective where you're just like oh we got to see the back elisa yeah his head like or the top of bart's head yeah and how their eyeball bubbles out to the side yeah and they're and they're on the show they're like constantly working to find these solutions to make it dynamic

and working with those restrictions of the characters. So yeah, I love the look of the show at this point. I think it was season five when they consolidated the bullies. But it's still weird to me when I see Nelson hang out with Jimbo Dolphin Kearney. Because in season one, Nelson, number one, has his own lackeys. They're dead. They're dead. They're just gone those two like

clones right yeah yeah uh but but nelson is supposed to be around bart's age maybe he uh was held back a grade but when we first meet jimbo dolphin kearney they're supposed to be like junior high kids at least that bart looks up to but now they're in the school with them and they just put the bullies together i think one of the first times was in season five of just when they needed all four of the bullies to be just wailing on Bart at the same time. Like, well, let's just have Nelson there. I guess we never see what class or homeroom Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney are in. Of course, they're not in Lisa's classroom, but they're also not in Bart's. Yeah, you do see them in the auditorium.

Yeah, like eat up Martha. Or like Jim or something like that. Yeah. Well, Kearney's obviously been held back quite a bit. We didn't notice that was his car that they were stealing the H off of in the beginning. He is 100, Kearney now is 100% a 40-year-old man. That's just how they write it. It's like the third joke from the Oakley and Weinstein era of Kearney is an adult. With a son, with a car, he was there for the bicentennial.

Him trying to buy beer in Muchapool about nothing was the last time they treated him as underaged. After going with the obvious thing of Bart first, Skinner has ended up with his last one. And I love that Willie, they must have keys to the locker, but Willie, to find this H, is doing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of damage to those lockers. At the end, there's just a row on both sides of just destroyed lockers.

So we reach the bottom of the barrel. Nelson Muntz. The cold, hard process of elimination places the H squarely in your locker. Ha ha! The cold, hard process of elimination places the H squarely in your locker. Damn! Dang! Darn! A principal's ransom in stolen goods. Well, sir, who's ho-hoing now, hmm? I don't know, but he's got lethal tuna breath. Who does Nelson think he's impressing anyway, acting so cool all the time?

Not me! All right, Mr. Smartenheimer, that does it. First, you're going to give back everything you've stolen. Then I'm sentencing you to one week of the lowest, most degrading work known to man. Janitorial work. I'm standing right here, sir. Take a good

look at it, Nelson. That's where you're headed. So yeah, Oakley and Weinstein, they love season three. They pattern their seasons after season three, and this reminds me a lot of the locker search scene in Separate Vocations where they're looking for the teacher's guide except no axel f ripoff song yeah what it reminds me of to the ooh scene that felt like a moment like i got married with children or like saved by the bell when the audience reacts to like a character like saying something

they're not supposed to like ooh this is where they first introduced the dynamic of Milhouse and Lisa. Yeah. Like, I think this is the one that solidifies Milhouse is as a crush on Lisa. Yeah. I mean, they were edging up to it. The first time we saw this was a Lisa on ice where he was hanging out with

Lisa just to be seen. And then, uh, at the end of summer, four foot two, he was way into being in the car with Lisa. You in the car. Yeah.

And this is, yes, this is like the true fully formed, uh, Milhouse has a crush foot two, he was way into being in the car with Lisa. See you in the car. Yeah. And this is, yes, this is like the true fully formed Milhouse has a crush on Lisa, which would carry on for so long to the point where in the future canon, they are married. Yep. Yeah. Even though she is having an affair with. Having an affair with. With Nelson, right? Oh.

Isn't that what they do in that episode? I think they did have. Oh my God. I totally forgot about that. Yeah. That was in their background that they had had an affair and probably would have an affair again. Yeah, I do like that whenever they bring back that Nelson and Lisa have a history together.

I think it was in the DOS bus as well that Nelson lets Lisa go first somewhere and she's like, Nelson, Lisa. I think we've come down on this, though, that we prefer the Lisa's wedding future in which Milhouse doesn't count. And I think Lisa deserves better. I feel bad for Milhouse, but

still, you know. That episode of when she's married to Milhouse, I like that episode overall, but it bumps me out that she's settled for him. There's a whole wide world out there for Lisa. I like her. I mean, president maybe is too high. I don't know. Why not? But she, we all know how that predicts the future. But

I feel like in those, I like the idea of them all just being a family in the future like that. But it does just feel like oh, Lisa's settled. Or Lisa could have done so much more than just be who she is in this other future. And the line principles

ransom that's a great little line as well and speaking of things like running jokes beginning i think this is really they've been down on willie before but uh they'd never that this i think is when it's set up that he is like a homeless janitor who lives at the school yeah i mean i don't know how long it's been since there was that tension between willie and skinner you know where yeah they really skinner would uh insult willie and then willie would mutter under his breath about skinner's like a pansy or you know whatever a pencil pusher but i think it's been absent for a while yeah maybe it ended in sweet seymour skinner where he told him uh you a guff speaking work slacker yeah

that's what broke him. It feels like it's his response to the way Chalmers treats him in the beginning of the episode. He's just establishing the pecking order of that whenever the superintendent comes around, I get pushed around, so now you gotta take my guff, and then Willie tries to pass it on to the kids, but as we'll see, it doesn't go over so well.

So then we go back to the telemarketing machine. Oh, wait, no. First, Nelson has to give back all his stuff. And something about the visual of him telling Ralph, you're dead, as he hands it. It's really funny to me. He's like, you're dead. We almost had a spit take here on the show.

And then Homer has his first telemarketing call. An automatic dialer? Is that legal? I don't want you getting arrested, Homer. I won't. Or swindling our neighbors. Let me show you how it works. This baby has every phone number in town programmed into it.

It automatically calls them one by one and plays my message. Listen. Ahoy, hoy. Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you've got the power inside you right now. So use it and send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Don't delay.

Eternal happiness is just a dollar away. Hmm. One dollar for eternal happiness. I'd be happier with the dollar. I'm not a huge fan of this B-plot, but I like a little dash of burns in this episode, in any episode. In the continuity that he answers

his own phone and says, ahoy, boy, as he learned last season. I love Homer wearing the glasses in this scene and so studiously studying this machine. It feels like such a dad thing. He's really putting in the work of tinkering with this new toy of his, even if it is to scam the entire town. This really is the era of Homer's reading glasses.

We just did A Millhouse Divided, and he breaks them out like three times in that episode. And this is a very season nine and ten Homer trait of being specifically asked by Marge if he's doing something. And he's like, let's just silence and then change the subject. I won't lie to you, Marge. Well, anyway. And I just love the stupidity of Homer in his phone call that he's like, if you want to look as good as I do, as happy as I look now,

and then giving his, his actual address is a place like it. I obviously Wiggum's terrible, but how could you not catch him on the first guy? You got to get a PO box to scam people with at least in another, in another zip code, I think. And I,

the joke that it's only calling five, five fives is a little funny under, under the radar joke. And I like to think if everyone in Springfield has a 555 error code or 555, that then if Burns is 01, I think that means that he had the first phone in Springfield. I didn't think of that. And that's his number. Well, he almost had the first social security number.

Yes. Yeah. And for a second, I almost thought it was Abe who had the first phone. But no, he had the first radio. Hey! See what usually follow. And then we get the triumphant return of Mr. Larko. Yay.

And that's our Willie Waters. Now you take the hoose. The moose? The hoose. The hoose. The hoose! The hoose! Is this right? Turn off the noozle! The noodles? What noodles? The noozle at the end of the hoose!

Miss Simpson, do you find something funny about the word tromboner? No, sir. I was laughing at something outside. She was looking at Nelson! Lisa likes Nelson. She does not. Milhouse likes Lisa. He does not. Jamie likes Milhouse.

She does not. Oona likes Milhouse. Nobody likes Milhouse. Lisa, you've got detention. So yeah, Mr. Largo, it's so funny that he's a stat. Okay, he is in every episode in the beginning uh lisa is annoying him with uh her saxophone playing very prominently featured yes opening and i feel like i feel like they had big plans for mr largo but he is woefully underused i

feel like uh he could have been their vehicle for gay jokes but that is smithers so they never did anything with him i feel like this is the this is the most he's featured in an episode to date. Yeah. Outside of little cutaways where he's like, where the kids, sorry. You, a bug. Yeah, and when the teachers go on strike and they can play the forbidden music, I heard that. The last time he'd been seen before this was in Lisa's Rival, another Mike Scully one. This is not a dream.

And so it's like him, Howard from Howard's Flowers, Mr. Nandy from Candy Most Dandy. He's like in all of these season one like mutants that never get pulled out very often. I love the joke in the beginning of the scene where he's running off the public domain songs that they'll be playing and they'll bring back Jimmy Crack Corner

because I just, I played cello back in elementary school and middle school and I can distinctly remember like having to run through the lamest songs in the world and then they were like, we're going to let you very poorly play the theme to Jurassic Park, and it was just like an absolute...

You're like, yes, this is so metal. But wasn't the forbidden song Pop Goes the Weasel? Pop Goes the Weasel, yeah. Wow, so I guess he accepted it into his heart. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I was in band as well in in junior high and it was uh it was not fun i just it was very i was hoping i'd be like oh or other geeks in here it's like no it's very cliquish in in my band i think nelson sometimes they have to write him more clever in this one

than he normally is portrayed of just especially when he he knows how to roast willie for his accent and it'd be like oh the who's like and that's a heavier only for this scene does willie speaking that heavy yeah that's that's a strong vowel shift for this for this one scene it's i thought it was really well observed of kids thing of just like black likes blank if you if you say anything about another person, like blah, blah, blah, likes blah, blah. Though it's funny that they all assume that Uter has a same-sex attraction, Milhouse, not Jamie. I mean, despite Mr. Largo never getting any good lines,

I do always think of, nobody likes Milhouse. He thinks he's just shutting them up, but instead he's grossly insulting a little boy. So then Lisa gets detention, and she's having to write things like Bart, and that's when Nelson gives her the tip of writing with those things, which I thought those things were cool. They're nice little contraptions. Yeah, I mean, you saw those in school, right?

The deal with the five chalks when they make the musical staff, if that's what you call it. I think that's what you call it. Yeah. Okay. And then Nelson even gives her a tip, and it's like that's how it kind of starts her crush on him. I don't even know if she – I guess she does have a crush on him,

but in general I like that Lisa – this could be the obvious story of the good girl likes the bad boy, and what does that mean? And that is kind of what they're doing. But I like that at least Lisa is kind of coming at it analytically of like, why do I have this crush? Yeah, I like that she's so kind of self-aware of the tropes of young elementary school love that she's just like,

oh no, I'm doing this story now and stuff. And I also love too when at the end of the act break, while she's going like, he sure is ugly, though, but getting a crush on him. Then he's, even though he's been torturing, I got to give it to Willie. Nelson has been torturing Willie this whole time. But when he says, let's catch this football, Willie's like, oh, yeah, I'm going long. He's so excited for it, which makes it even funnier that he's being stung by a beehive after that. It's a great visual joke. When she gets done with all of the writing with the five chalk dealie, she says, that was a good idea.

And I can't believe it came from Nelson. Pan over to him hitting a bee's nest with a rake. I forgot that he eventually throws it at Willie, but it's like, what is he doing? I love the dichotomy of just like, Lisa is written so above the intelligence of uh your average uh kid that age and then nelson is just like just hammering away at a bee's nest yeah i think you know there's some there's some words in this episode and phrases that simpsons doesn't normally do but i like it because it's accurate for stupid kids at least of the 90s when I was a dumb kid to this age. I was like, yeah, this is accurate.

This is, this is un-clever because this is how dumb kids talk, at least then. So we come back from the break and Lisa has something

to tell Milhouse. Aw. Milhouse, I've never told anyone this kind of thing before, but I've never felt this way before. I think I have a crush.

Oh, really? On Nelson Munn. Way to drink, Boyd Dexter. You like Nelson? But he's a creep and he chipped one of my permanent teeth. But I bet underneath he's a sweet, sensitive person. Like you. I guess you could say I want really go for the nice guy angle.

Like, no, Milhouse deserves Lisa. So animation-wise, I do enjoy when he violently explodes his milk. It's dripping from the ceiling. However that happened, it's's dripping from the ceiling. However that happened, it's now dripping from the ceiling. But I don't feel like this has an agenda in which it's like, isn't it always like this? A nice guy never gets the girl. I feel like it's sort of more a realistic observation of what it's like

when your crush tells you these things. Yeah. And a lot of comedy nerds growing up have heard, like, you're like a big brother or you're like a sister or whatever. I think usually hear like a big brother. Milhouse gets it worse to hear like he's a big sister. Yes. I do like that he's basically getting the milk rained on him.

Yeah. We talked a lot about, like, nice guys in friend zones in our Freakazoid episode. Yeah, nerd-itor. Yeah, nerd-itor. And I am not into that. I hope that it's a stereotype that has been let go of. It comes from a lot of entitlement and toxic masculinity. But I think more so this is, because Lisa is a lead in it, they're not making Lisa the bad guy here, the mean girl that's friend-zoning Milhouse. But that's how it is. Like Lisa's not, if she's not interested in Milhouse,

it's not her problem. You know, like it's not her fault. And I love how the, I feel like the line that makes it clear that they're like, no, Milhouse is a moron is when he states like, ah, yes, she'll truly respect me if I do everything she wants me to do. And I think that, again,

that is very observational. A lot of poor guys who don't know anything about women will think that just like, yes, I'll do everything she lot of poor guys who don't know anything about women will think that. Just like, yes, I'll do everything she tells me, and then I'll win her over with my loyalty. Yes, yeah. Don't do that. Don't do that, guys.

Come on. That's okay. I have that clip here. I like you too, Milhouse, but not in that way. You're more like a big sister. No, I'm not. Why does everybody keep saying that? Would you do me a favor?

When you get back to class, just give him this note. No. Please. When she sees you'll do anything she says, she's bound to respect you. Sure. What's a big sister for? Oh, I should have said that. Yeah, I mean, no matter what your gender orientation, nobody wants to date a good natured doormat so don't learn from millhouse yeah i that is such an informed take of like um they're bound

to respect you and i still have that reaction to of like walking away like i overdid that i didn't last part why did i say that this next part to me i think is, is the line of the episode. So, okay, so as a gay man, I'm not into homophobic jokes. I get it. They're not fun. And this is kind of a response to homophobia. You can see that in there. But it's just so funny. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think they're saying Milhouse deserves this. I think they're saying Nelson is homophobic. And this is a monstrous response he does here. Yes. But the cruelty of it is the fun as well the smash cut to uh the damage done is uh is the ultimate i mean the classic siren cut yeah and the show to this point has loved abusing millhouse millhouse can uh trucks can fall on him he could get hit with x-rays he can get chased out of uh out of a waterfall like in the fugitive

like he is he's taken worse abuse as well. But yeah, this delivery, this is why the episode's for me. The delivery of some of these lines here. That's the joke. Guess who likes you? Milhouse, I'm so sorry. He can't hear you now. We had to pack his ears with gauze.

Nelson! That note Milhouse gave you, it wasn't from him. It was from me. You? Why would you like me no girls like me speaking of animation and just like staging it's a great it's a great shot of millhouse sorry nelson in the front and then all the way in the back is millhouse he's leaning over and just drumming his fingers on the desk and like raising his eyebrows it's very very great i just love how it's so funny eyebrow acting on millhouse is always good well because he's the only character with eyebrows that's true well kirk and luann have I just love how it's staged. Eyebrow acting on Milhouse is always good.

Because he's the only character with eyebrows. That's true. Well, Kirk and Luanne have eyebrows. Luanne doesn't have eyebrows, though. We learned that. She's faking it. That's right. But the ears packed with gauze, that line, too, just like, he can't hear you now because he's dead, I thought was the first thing they should.

Or he's unconscious. I feel like the school was okay with this Because Nelson is just watching him getting trucked away And just joining the rest of the students He's like getting punished Nelson is punished for low-key robbery But then he beats a man into submission And it's all good

Did he just hit him so hard he's bleeding out his ears? Did he give him the worst wet willy of all time? Like a brain penetrating His glasses are broken on his face. So you have to assume there was some facial trauma there. The fact that they leave it to our imagination is like, what did he do? Did he get up and just like run after Milhouse? Like what actually happened in those moments we don't see?

It's great that we have to fill in the blanks. It makes it even worse. And it's good that Lisa feels bad about it too. At least she gets to know like, ooh, I shouldn't have done that to Milhouse. And you're right unless nelson beat him in secret then he should be arrested or at least suspended yeah but i also like nelson's reaction to finding out that lisa likes him just like that nelson doesn't live live a life for girls to like him so he's just like no girl likes me are you wearing a wire what are you doing it could be a I mean, just incredibly low self-esteem. And we can see how that could come from his living situation.

First, Lisa takes Nelson to her house. Oh, you gotta see this. It's so cute when she does. Be the baby, kitty. Go on. Be the baby. Come on. No, boss. I don't understand. She loves it when I'm here. I believe you. I don't understand. She loves it when I'm here. I believe you.

I don't care. Hey, Lise, Mom said you had the toenail clippers and... Whoa, Lisa, look out! Nelson's in our house. It's okay. I invited him over. Nelson's my new friend. Are you nuts?

I'll probably never say this to you again, but you can do better. Please don't ruin this for me, Bart. I think he's starting to like me. Milhouse likes you. Oh, please. Milhouse likes Vaseline on toast. Hmm. So this is more of like the older Bart Nelson relationship.

They have started including Nelson in the friend group with things like Lemon of Troy and also the Grammar Rodeo. Grammar Rodeo? We're going to a Grammar Rodeo. Grammar Rodeo? We're going to a Grammar Rodeo? Yeah. Nelson, as the scene dictates, is either Bart's bully or his meaner friend. Feels like it's like Bart treats him like a necessary evil almost. Like, I'll be

friends with this guy, but God, I would never actually bring him home. That's just inviting too much of this evil into my life. He'll destroy everything of yours. Like, he'll still, I mean, I definitely had, I had Nelson type friends, a couple of them that, my mom rightly was like, why did you bring them into our house?

They are going to steal things or break things. And they usually did. And I want to say to my mom, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. They seemed cool at the time and I wanted to be friends with cool kids. And the whole thing about eating Vaseline on toast, I believe it's a story from Josh Weinstein,

the co-showrunner. He remembers being a kid and on the school bus, one of the students would always have a piece of toast with Vaseline on it on the way to school. And I was like, did his mother or father do that? Or were they just into eating weird things? And actually, I just looked it up now. Apparently, this is what will happen if you eat vaseline so vaseline is a petroleum jelly a mineral oil uh similarly paraffin oil is a mineral oil with laxative effects so eating vaseline will likely have a last laxative effect on you so perhaps this kid had like constipation issues or something but if you've ever accidentally had like if you've ever had like somehow gotten vaseline in your mouth, it's not a good taste.

Now, though, Homer liked it. He ate that entire jar of petroleum jelly. I guess beauty queens might know just from it being on their, what, their teeth? Yeah. Though, for that frictionless smile, as Bart put it. Though, when I hear about Vaseline on toast, I think of one specific song. Oh, no. Oh, God.

She'll make you breakfast. She'll make you toast. But she don't use butter. She don't use cheese. She don't use jelly or any of these

cheese. It's Vaseline. So yeah. Vaseline. Thank you. Flaming Lips. Yes. That's one of my five go-tos for karaoke. It's fun to sing. Yeah. You're not singing too fast and running out of breath.

It's just like, bass. It's in the nice, also the kind of weird Alan, they might be giants nasal range that I enjoy singing in as well. Yeah. I love how this scene showcases getting to see Lisa and she puts on that cutesy voice

when she's dealing with snowball training. Be the baby. It's such an insight into like, oh yeah, Lisa's a kid and she plays. It's just so fun to see them freed to just be kids. It's so funny. so fun to see them like freed to just like be kids it's so funny and that frustration of a pet trick of just like oh this he does the funniest thing watch watch watch and when I've been on the other side of that I have had the Nelson thought to of

like I don't believe you I don't care like I it's true this your cat can do this let's do something else I that's me and my kids now and my wife wife is going to be like, don't snap your fingers at the kids and make kissy noises to get them to perform for me. Wow. I do like Bart's reaction to Milhouse likes Vaseline on toast. He's like, hmm. Is he thinking about what that would taste like? Or is it just like, I didn't know that about Milhouse.

Or if he's like, oh, that's why she doesn't like him. I think Bart doesn't understand why, well, if a guy likes you, then you're a girl. Like him. Figure it out, yeah. He's realizing why that's not what he should do. We also get the shot of Homer getting his first two dollars from Abe and Jasper, which made them slightly happier. But then Nelson takes her to his house Which first Nelson has a quick line about This is the first person to come over since my dad went nuts

But In the previous episode In Millhouse Divided His father had left his mom Thanks to her addiction to cough drops I was thinking of the Much later episode they made In which his dad went out to buy cigarettes

And he somehow encountered peanuts and he was allergic to peanuts and he was captured and put in a freak show. And people kept throwing peanuts at him so his allergy never went away. Yeah, and that is the actual canonical Nelson's dad story out of the four that exist. In one, he's the soccer coach.

Yeah, played by Phil Hartman. Nelson tells a lot of stories, which I get. He's got a crappy life. May as well make up some stories about his parents. This was also the secret of my bad friends.

They were partially bad, I think, because they didn't have very good home life. It was a sad answer to find out about that as well. Yeah, for sure. That scene is just such a a subtle, subtle bummer. I guess the roaches maybe aren't so subtle.

I love that the roaches, once he wipes them off, the roaches walk with him into the house. Like, we're all just going in together and nobody cares. At least Lisa should react to all those roaches, you think. Oh, but in between the scenes there, we get Frank versus Happy Dude. Wab. Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Oh, but in between the scenes there, we get Frank versus Happy Dude. Lab. Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Why, it's the AT-5000 auto dialer, my very first patent. Oh, would you listen to the gibberish they've got you saying? It's sad and alarming.

You were designed to alert school children about snow days and such. Well, let's get you home to Frankie. Hope your wheels still work, buddy. Oh, no you don't. That's much better than the house-frink design that would run away. It's true. It's much better than the house Frink design that would run away It's true, it's much more reliable But I love just the sound of Homer Snapping off those legs If the auto-dialer is somewhat sentient

That's even crueler, he's like, you're not getting away And Homer doesn't question That his auto-dialer could raise up On wheels and start to go And unplug itself And go away That Frink scene was also quite Futurama-y, as most are in this era. I agree.

So then we get some insight into the life of Nelson. Nuke the whales? You don't really believe that, do you? I don't know. Gotta nuke something. Touche. You play the guitar? Oh, yeah.

I'm a superstar. Would you play a song for me? Oh. Okay. Joy to the world, the teacher's dead. We barbecued her head. What happened to her body? We flushed it down the potty and round and round it goes and round and round it goes. I wish I could laugh at the

idea of a teacher being decapitated. I know. It's funny, huh? Hardly. And then Nelson just decides to go to sleep. I feel like there's some depression that's not being addressed. It's just like, if he's sad, he just shuts down and just goes to sleep. And he's just, at first you can think like, oh, he's making it up just to get away from Lisa. But it's like, no, he just wants to sleep. He's had enough of the day. I'm getting pretty tired.

I'm going to go to sleep for a while. Smell ya later You get a little like Chuck Berry strut Yeah I love the animation on that The famous duck walk And that tune I believe Mike Scully says that he got it from his kids But like I'd heard that song as well

As a kid Yeah that was one on the playground along with Batman Smells I didn't know that one Until The Simpsons taught me. The Simpsons taught kids of the late 80s, early 90s that for sure. And it's a subtle joke, but when you see Lisa next, she's in the car. She had to call Barge to pick her up because she's in a bad neighborhood. She's going to just walk home.

This episode really set up smell you later as the Nelson catchphrase. He has two catchphrases Nelson does. Ha ha and smell you later. Yeah. That is, I think the future stole that from him because in Bart to the Future, that is the way everyone says goodbye. So maybe Nelson popularized it. I like that smell you later.

Do we have the Marge scene with Lisa and the car? Okay, cool. I love this line. This is my personal line of the show. That's the joke. I feel so stupid, Mom. Nelson's not right for me at all, and I don't think he ever will be. Well, most women will tell you that you're a fool to think you can change a man,

but those women are quitters. What? When I first met your father, he was loud, crude, and piggish. But I worked hard on him, and now he's a whole new person. Mom? He's a whole new person, Lisa. Oh, I know. I wonder if I could change Nelson.

That last Marge line is my favorite, where she's like, you have to agree with me. Yeah, I need this. I need this. Oh, delusional Marge, making her so sad. Yeah, it is such a sad line to say, but I like that. I want to think Marge's life with Homer is more than just her thinking

that she's fixing a bad person, but it is a pretty funny idea. That's why Marge has stuck with him so long. She knows she can fix him, and she has convinced herself. She already has. He's so much better now. And we have the return of Oui, Monsieur, which is where I believe it first appeared during Lisa the Greek,

when Lisa was watching the football, the football, as I call it, with Homer. And Marge took Bart out to get nice new clothes, and he was immediately beaten up Well if they're going to beat you up They're not your friends And I looked that up too The Wee Monster has not returned since this one So I think it was

More Oakley Weinstein going like I remember we went to a preppy Clothes place before let's just go with that And it also saves some time to write another sign gag That's true It's clever enough you don't need to think of it to a preppy closed place before. Let's just go with that. And it also saves some time to write another sign gag, right? That's true. It's clever enough. You don't need to think of it. Yeah, take one off

your background department's design list. That too, yeah. And Lisa preppies him up and he feels like punching himself, but he still goes along with it, which I guess shows like Nelson maybe isn't so bad. I feel like it, I don't know,

that he goes along with it shows he's not completely against lisa or fighting her on this stuff at least and the next scene is the real uh rebel without a cause homage uh they're at the griffith park observatory that's also in springfield is that what's happening here okay yeah it's it's fun to be recording this in los angeles when they have just really the observatory like which is like within within miles of where we are right now it's it reminds me of how so many times they just put uh we talked about that with Liz or we'll talk about it with Liz on an upcoming episode about how just all the LA things you see

inserted in Simpsons that you don't realize until you are in LA after watching the Simpsons for years yeah then we get kind of a sweet scene. What do you feel? What's inside you right now? Guts and black stuff and about 50 Slim Jims. Come on, Nelson. You must think and feel things. I mean, look where we are.

A rolling green hillside. The stars coming out like God is lighting a million tiny candles. The moon looking down on us as if to say... My first kiss. So Nelson is softening a bit, I think. It's a rare, like, sweet act break. Yeah. Second act breaks in these usually are tense or telling you, oh, a scary thing's going to happen next scene when we're back from commercial. It's a nice pan up to the moon.

It's really sweet. But the sweetness is ruined very quickly. And this is another, I think this might be one of the few times they use gay as a pejorative on The Simpsons, but it's for such funny effect here. i mean i don't i don't know how kids talk these days but gay was a very popular uh just all-purpose insult like that's gay the show is gay like you're gay like some it was just like it was the go-to that in the r word yes yeah among among among boys at the time i I hope kids are better today,

but this is such a great use of it for comedic purposes. Oh, man, you kissed a girl. That is so gay. Listen, you thugs, stop making fun of him or you'll be sorry. You'll be so sorry when you realize how you've hurt the feelings of a sweet young man. He's not like you anymore. He's changed, and he doesn't want to hang around with a bunch of crumbums.

Crumbums? Nobody calls me a crumbum! Hey, back off, James. I'll handle this, Lisa. You go have a fig bar. Ha! Hey, thanks for embarrassing me, dingus. You asked for it, man.

You're broadcasting geek rays over the entire valley. Afraid not. I'm still wicked bad. Oh, yeah? Then prove it, ass butt. Come raid Skinner's house with us. So, yes, ass butt is good. I do enjoy the ass butt.

I like that you have to write them as, you can't write them as too smart and say clever things, so they have to say dumb shit like ass butt. And yet they know what a crumbum is, and they're deeply offended by it. Crumbum comes back again later, right? Yeah, it's intercalls of that. Yeah, and I feel like, unintentionally, of course,

but I feel like this is a sort of dynamic we see in the Telltale Head in which Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney are the bad influences on another character, and they want him to do something. Yeah, they show up to be like, well, are you going to do this or what? And also, dingus is another of my favorite insults. It's old-timey insults.

It's a good Steve Brule word. Dingus? The Rancid Coleslaw. Best by 1994, which, joke, it gets better and better each year since the episode aired it's it's one of those rare things where you almost forget about the plot of like oh yeah nelson is mad at skinner from 10 minutes ago when he got in trouble and had to give back all of his stolen stuff and that's why they're finally gonna get revenge but he he says no and that he's gonna do it i also oh yeah and that lisa's like threat is so great too like oh you guys are gonna be sorry

sorry you hurt the feelings that's right she's so she's just so confident that he has changed he's not like that anymore and you're just like uh and And that she thinks that that's the greatest insult. Like, you'll feel bad you made him feel bad. How about that? These bullies have been shown to have zero empathy, so it's not going to work. I had a friend in middle school, I remember, when more bullier kids than us would make fun of us

and threaten to rectify us. My friend would be like, you're going to correct us? Oh, what did I say wrong? And it would just be like, no, they're going to correct us oh what what did i say wrong and it would just be like no they're gonna punch your face inside out dude yeah well be being a pedant about words said to you by a bully is the best you can get as a dorky kid as i recall and i also like the specificity of rancid coleslaw like it could just be eggs like just egg in the house we and we would have accepted it but that feels like the kind of oakley weinstein touch of yeah nah anybody can write eggs what's a different gross thing that

kids could get their hands from crusty burger too yeah which as we know crusty burger the special sauce is mayonnaise left out in the sun so that has to be some really bad cold slow down then we get some of like classic homer being incredibly unempathetic to Flanders. Hadley diddly. Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look... Ugh, that darn recording again. Of course it was.

It's been calling all night. Just unplug the phone. Hadley diddly. Greetings, friend. Dang. I told you to unplug the phone. But it could be my mother. Howdy, friend.

Shoot. That is it, Ned. If you don't unplug that phone right now, you're sleeping on the lawn. Will you two shut up? People are trying to sleep. Doesn't he say it again later, too? Yeah. Yeah.

He can't. When he should know it's him. Because he's definitely set it up to call Flanders over and over again all night. He's forgotten that he's tried to screw him in that way. You know what? I didn't even read it. It wasn't an accident it turned on to redial. He did it and has probably just forgotten because he went to bed.

He forgot about his own prank. Oh, and just poor, poor poor well-meaning flanders he just can't not answer the phone someone's calling him and what if his what if it was his mother yeah i mean grandma flanders is still alive hopefully she's the one who needs help with her thumbs yes that's right no her psalms oh help me with my psalms and uh we get to the attack at skinner's place where i feel like they kind of you remember in the season six deleted scenes there was a skinner having night terrors of flashbacks to not i think it was season five's uh boy who knew too much oh that's right yeah and it's so this feels like kind of a reprise of that joke but a little nicer to to Vietnam. Yeah, I mean, I was watching this with big headphones on,

and the impact that coleslaw has when it hits, it's just like, poof. It's really, really loud. I think I got the clip of that. Who's out there? Give me your names so I can tell the police. Seymour, what's going on? What's that odor? Go back to bed, mother.

I've got it under control. Listen, you crumbums, if you think I'm impressed, I am not. Oh, brandishing your buttocks is only getting me angrier. I want to see what's going on. No, mother, don't look out the window. Oh, my God. Great scream. Tress with a great scream there.

With how much cartoons have cracked down on visible butts over the years, I feel like this is downright pornographic for butts. They talk on the commentary. They say we wouldn't have been able to do this now. Yeah, yeah. I bring this up a lot because of the strange rules of the post Janet Jackson Super Bowl rules about what you can and can't show on TV. A lot of crackdowns happened. And I remember watching American Dad, I don't know, maybe a decade ago and there was a butt crack

or a naked butt of the main character, but they blur it out. So it's just like if you want to see this curvy line, you need to buy the DVDs everybody. I get it with younger skewing show, but this is on in prime time. I've gotten naked butts on TV twice. Yeah, that's true.

In Sunday clothes, JP is naked, but he's got mud on his butt, so it's kind of covered, but you can see the shape. And then Frybo from season one of Steven Universe, Steven gets pretty naked. I don't know if you can go too in-depth in this, but are there butt standards and practices? Is there a list of rules about butts?

There's a whole department. It's about 10 people. Okay. No, there's no specific rules about butt. I think it's generally, like, you know it when you see it, when you've gone too far with it. Yeah, we're not looking to expose children to tons of nudity, but sometimes it's super funny to do it. No one's on trial here, by the way. But Henry and I were talking maybe last night, just, like like the 90s cartoons just had so many butts in them.

Like Ren and Stimpy would just have just very well-rendered butts when they needed to. And Dexter's Lab would have Dexter's butt in it a lot. Yeah, like almost every episode he'd have it. But one of the funniest scenes in Dexter, I think to me, is in the first Man Dark episode when he's so excited to go to his first day of school for the year and he's just dancing in the shower. And then the callback to that after his second day of school

where everything's gone wrong, he's just standing sad in the shower in just the same position. And it just seems like sometimes you can show it, sometimes you can't. I was just looking at a butt today. We had someone clenching their butt, and we had a big conversation about how the folds of the fabric should look. When he clenches his butt, should the fabric

be pulled in, or is he clenching his butt, making it smaller, causing the fabric of the pants to sag slightly? That was a big thing. We landed on he pinches the fabric in with his cheeks. In Craig of the Creek, where is the place where they play Bring Out Your Beast? The splintery butt, which is just a bunch of splintery tables. That is a well-rendered butt,

but it's made of wood, so maybe you can get away with it then. Yes. That also reminds me of a funny drawn butt I saw on Twitter, which was from this new Disney show, Big City Greens. And there's a scene, it's a clothed butt, but some guy is like leaning over and his butt scrapes against somebody's car window and there's a scene it's a clothed but but some some guy is like leaning over and his

butt scrapes against somebody's car window and it's just somebody on the inside of the window like this is our plea to the public butts are funny let's just have more butts and things thank you good night yeah and you know that scene also felt like a real callback to steamed hams because it's yeah it's skinner telling it's just the northern lights mother sorry and then tress screaming horribly as agnes as well just like no no don't look don't look uh and then the cops arrive and it's also funny though that skinner they have to show skinner skinner has to say out loud i can't see you because from the way the lighting works in the animation, it's like, well, they sure look visible.

Like if you can make out their butts, you can't make out their faces. And also if it's four boys, I think he'd be pretty safe in assuming it's Jimbo, Dolph, Kearney and Nelson. But I mean, Skinner isn't always the smartest when it comes to that stuff. So they go on the run. And then we also get another hilarious Homer at the window scene. Lisa, the cops are chasing me.

I need a place to hide. Lisa's window is the next one. There we go. Ned, did you plug that phone back in? Shut up! And I wasn't even there, honest. Skinner's just out to get me. That's so unfair.

Uh-oh. Meet me at the back door. And I also like that Homer's so sleepy, he doesn't care that a fugitive is trying to find his daughter in the middle of the night. The cops are after me, yeah. Nelson didn't need to give that much information. And also him just straight up lying and saying he's innocent

when the viewer knows he's lying too. Like, no, you did this. And I also had that with bad kid friends of mine who just like, these cops just had to give him, man. These cops are so, or the security guard at the mall, they're such jerks, man. It's like when later you find out, that's because you stole something.

Yeah, yeah. Or if you had friends who like never did their later you find out, that's because you stole something. Or if you had friends who never did their homework or never say, that teacher hates me. It's always a conspiracy, man. Conspiracy. It's a dark joke that Wiggum might have shot a child. But it is so great that they go from like, I'll see you at the back door to then Wiggum busting into the house

and brandishing his gun. I forgot that was the mislead because I know what happens, and I wonder what I thought the first time I watched this. Aha! I had a feeling we'd find you here. Chief, no! What'd you do that for? Well, that thing's been driving the whole town nuts. Got me out of the bath seven times. Seven!

Hey, who shot the auto dialer? It marches on a night. See you in court, Simpson. Oh, who shot the auto dialer? It marches all the time. See you in court, Simpson. Oh, and bring that evidence with you. Otherwise, I got no case, and you'll go scot-free, you know. Chief, what about those coleslaw punks? Well, I can't be everywhere at once, Lou. Now, can I?

You know, in most cities, the chief of police doesn't even go out on calls like these. Yeah, yeah, we know, Chief. Oh, we appreciate it. Count our blessings every day. Very, very appreciative. Boy, like, Wiggum, I do enjoy how they finally address why Wiggum is always out on patrol.

He's just very hands-on. Yes, yeah. Despite how bad he is, despite how seemingly lazy he is most of the other times we see him. I think, you know, in season two, like, say, in Bart vs. Thanksgiving, they still seem to have, like, an internal rule of, well, if the cops have to come to the Simpsons' home, it's not going to be the chief of police we see in other scenes.

It'll just be Eddie and Lou. Yeah. But I think they realize, like, it's just funnier if Wiggum's there. Wiggum needs to be there on every, anything the police would be there for, Wiggum is there. I think by the time we get to Homer alone, Wiggum is the one who brings Maggie back to Homer. That's right. I'm sure there's past instances, but that's the first one I can think of where it's just Wiggum and he doesn't need

to be there. And yeah, also, it's pretty irresponsible of Wiggum to just still, even if it was for the auto-dialer, just shooting his gun like three times in a house. And also the meanness of Homer going like, Marge is auto that's a that's a jerk ass move yeah to immediately sell marge out to the cops this is some jerk ass homer in this

definitely we're getting a lot more of him they're getting more comfortable with him being a jerk and then we go to back to the observatory and the early morning vibe to this is really good too like coloring it's coloring you don't normally see on the show i i like it like gradients which back then they didn't have computers to do gradients they had to use an airbrush in some cases i believe yeah and uh we get uh we get nelson and lisa looking down on the town when he finds what i left in his birdbath. No! I thought you weren't there. Huh? Oh, yeah.

Uh, I guess I was. You lied to me. Nuh-uh. There, you did it again. All right, all right, I lied. I'm sorry. Let's kiss. No. You don't understand, Nelson. A kiss doesn't mean anything if it's dishonest There's a niceness to it. I was foolish to think I'd actually changed you Maybe I was seeing things in you that weren't really there

Definitely, then why did you want to be with me? Hmm, maybe because you were the first person that ever thought there was a nice guy inside me? Well, guess you really blew that one, huh? Well, I guess this is it. You mean like goodbye? Let's just call it smell you later. Lisa handles this very well, being as mature as she is. Yeah, and I think it's good for Lisa that she learned this lesson so young.

It was just like, oh, no, I saw something that wasn't there. I can't fix you. Like, you know, in some relationships, one lie just begets others. But she realized, like, no, you're a liar. Like, you lied to my face. I'm not sticking around here. And I also really like the sound. It's such a well-chosen when the uh the glasses run out of money

yeah yeah i assume he pooped in his bird feed for sure for sure it has to be he must have done it before the coleslaw attack yeah he just snuck around back took a poop and then said all right it's like we got to get this out of the way first guys then attacking on both fronts and that was just another great skinner no i have to wonder if they cropped that out of uh bart's comet it was very similar i wouldn't blame them that's that's a really good no and uh they could have ended it on lisa's like thoughtful walk home but i kind of like that they ended it on a joke too hi Lisa could I talk to you or will that just make Nelson wail on me again don't worry Nelson and I don't like each other anymore

oh really you got anybody in mind for your next crush well I'm really not thinking about that now I suppose it could be almost anybody. Yes! Great freeze frame. Poor dog. Yeah, Nelson, sorry, the first appearance of Milhouse's Shih Tzu, which is always a fun dog breed name to say, later to be replaced by a stuffed animal Shih Tzu named Puppy Goo Goo. Oh, wow.

Oh, I remember that now. Yeah, and I thought this thing's name was Puppy Gugu, but Puppy Gugu was the stuffed animal they gave him to sort of, you know, give him like a very effeminate accessory. I mean, this dog already is an emasculating dog. Yeah. But yeah, I looked on the wikia, and this dog has no name. It's just called Milhouse's Shih Tzu.

So, yes. It's a cute dog, i've seen i've seen tattoos of that pose like that is a great pose you know the fault is on millhouse here too of just like lisa's made her disinterest very clear but he's he's looking for any breadcrumb there he's like yeah well if it's almost anyone that could be me i think this is a good uh takedown of the friend zone or of a good look at like uh millhouse is this is all delusion you know just the the tiniest fiber of hope is all he needs to sustain himself sorry yeah it's such it's such a reminder of moments from my own long ago youth of just being like that

elementary this episode is so great of this like elementary school love of just like well uh i'm i want to be your girlfriend okay well i well, I guess I'm your boyfriend. Yeah. So what are we supposed to do about it? And then just nothing really happens. And then a week later, it's like, yeah, we broke up. And then you're like, yes, now it's my turn. And it's just like, no, it's not going to be your turn.

You're sort of just emulating what you see on TV, but you can't actually go anywhere or do anything physical, thank God. So it's all just like kind of playing pretend in a way. Yeah. It's cute in a way. Well, that's how I like that this stays in the cute zone of just like a crush and just that that's all they refer to it too. Though obviously you can extrapolate it to grown-up relationships too.

Like if you had aged them up and this was like an episode of Friends or whatever, it would have worked the same, these relationship dynamics on a regular regular sitcom except you're not supposed to root for millhouse no like you're supposed to root for champler swimmer swimmer ross ross ross is the millhouse yeah boy both he's he's he's handsome in an ugly way yeah that's right as homer would say uh we have one last bit here though the uh over the over-the-credits, a real funny gag. Hello, this is Homer Simpson, a.k.a. Happy Dude. The court has ordered me to call every person in town to apologize for my telemarketing scam. I'm sorry. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me,

send $1 to SorryDude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power. I'm glad they had time over the credits to resolve that in an era where you could still have a scene play over the credits. Yeah, though now they do some scene play and over credit stuff, I think just because they have to have four acts now on the show for whatever purposes.

I really dislike that because the three-act structure... It's just a pacing problem. Yeah, I mean, three-act structure is just the definitive structure of storytelling in this format, and it just feels so wrong to me. One of the first four-act ones I watched was... Because I tuned in and out of it, but they did one of their non- act ones i watched was uh because i was i tuned in and out of it but they did one of their you know non-treehouse story ones it was just them reenacting stories from

popular fiction and when they do three and then they come back from the commercial break lisa's like well hey can we hear another story marge like i normally just tell three stories but okay well matt as someone who makes 11-minute cartoons, how does the act structure work in something like an episode of Craig of the Creek? Do you adhere to something like that, where, you know, the rising, falling action? Like, how does that work exactly?

We stick pretty strict to, like, a three-act structure. You know, things, the length of the acts often change depending on the nature of the episode. But yeah, like, when we're writing, you know, it's a storyboard- driven show like so many of cartoon network shows so we're uh writing up to an outline and then we're giving it over to a team of storyboard artists who will then do the boards the drawings and do all the dialogue and stuff and we all work together and collaborate to take it from there but the outline is written is broken into three acts oh great okay yeah i didn't know

that i was curious as to how that how that adheres to something in a much shorter format. Although it is always like, it's three acts, but it does kind of, you do think of it in four parts because we're always, your first act is setting it up. The second act is usually trying to do something. And then we always, as we found early on writing on Stephen, because that was our first experience working in 11-minute cartoons,

like having one thing for the second act to get you to a climactic third act is never enough so we always have to have like a turn in the middle there's like some early steven episodes like a serious steven was one in particular that i remember is like the second act was like oh and then they'll just uh they'll just have some problems they go through a dungeon and essentially like oh the whole second act will be them just running into traps in the dungeon but it sort of was like oh that's kind of only one thing to stretch out what's the bulk of the episode so from that we learned like it's really about you set up a problem you have them try and solve the problem for the first half of the second act and then uh something complicates

it or they on the best thing is like they unexpectedly solve it and then you're off to a new thing sam simon i remember was once i heard him once on a podcast talking about how like they got in a, some of the voice actors on The Simpsons that were just like random crowd extras were trying to, they like filed a complaint with the union because they were like, we feel like our voices got used in it for multiple episodes. Because when we did this script,

like there's no way that the story we were doing the background crowd noises in, in the first act is the same story that's in the third act and it was like no it is the same episode it just like especially that classic first act simpson structure where it's almost completely unrelated to then spin off into this other thing it's like you really want to move the story super far you just want to keep it moving man i forgot that story that's like speaking super far stories it was something with steven universe like uh some stuff that like you guys were planning at the very earliest stage of I forgot that story. It's like, speaking of super far stories, it was something with Steven Universe,

like some stuff that you guys were planning at the very earliest stage of this show finally happened now. How do you keep that kind of stuff secret for that long or wait for it like that? I don't know. It's so weird because we knew it was secret from fans, but within the building, it was just like, it was so weirdly just like common knowledge you like work with like you know dozens of people who are just in on this and we're just kind of like yeah it's just strange that we've

talked about it's weird sometimes when you're out at lunch and you kind of are like um we'll talk about this story back at the office just you just never know um but yeah i don't know it was just it was was something we carried for so long and uh now that people know a lot of the stuff we'd been holding onto for years, that's been super satisfying. It's like, it has made me realize like what a big deal it is that we were able to kind of carry these threads for so long. Yeah. Things get spoiled all the time these days in so many things.

So it was really, it was like a kind of a gasp moment for me when I saw, I don't want to spoil it for any listeners. It isn't current with Steven yet, but yeah, that was really it was like a kind of a gasp moment for me when i saw i don't want to spoil it for any listeners it isn't current with steven yet but yeah that was uh that was amazing that i i just i was just impressed how well you it had been kept by a secret by the entire staff for that long yeah and it it was it was i mean i think everyone who has worked on it when those episodes came out had such a very strong emotional reaction to it because not to be like oh we made we made the best show ever because it's not that but like watching people react thank you uh just just it's so cathartic to like being like this is like that's like my career like you know i've been working for a while but really like steven is where i feel

like i really like animation and being an artist is such a struggle to break in and then um i had a job on level up which was awesome but then steven was just like okay like i'm here this is my job and it's lasting for a long time it's something i'm really proud of and then to see it pay off like that it's just like oh it was just like so i've watched like i'll admit like i watched like a bunch of like youtube reaction videos and it was great and they all follow the exact same beats like the the last scenes of those episodes like they everyone reacts the exact same way and it's just like it's it's so it's like oh man people are machines and we were able to program them exactly like it's crazy like everyone reacted exactly the way we intended it was it was awesome that's interesting like i kind of roll my eyes at those reaction videos but then i never thought like what

if someone was reacting something i made or I was part of? I guess that would change the entire thing. It's pretty. They're goofy, but I feel like they've become such a thing that certainly people are playing to the camera, but sometimes you get kind of the unexpected. There was one I was watching with two guys, and one guy was really into it, and the other guy, I was like, why is he? Is this just this dude's cousin who he's making watch this show? And then there was the big reveal. And that dude, just the only thing he ever did in this whole video

was sit up a little bit and go, oh. And I was like, we got him. Mostly I'm jealous. Like, I have never been this excited. There was even a Stephen Short that was kind of a parody of those reaction videos. Well, it was just Stephen reacting to crying breakfast friends. I believe it was

it was really cute i well okay i guess and then what did you think as somebody who is an adult writing kids what did you think of how kids they they handled writing a kid-centric story in this uh this simpsons i think it was great i think that like the key to writing for kids uh i think it's just like never you're never writing for them because i I think that's when you get into just like bad kids TV and you're recycling the same kind of hack jokes that you think like, oh, kids laugh at, but not to decry butts, because we certainly put our share of butts

in Craig of the Creek, but just be like if we say butts, kids will laugh. We're always trying to, everyone who makes these cartoons are adults, and the best cartoons for kids are the ones where the people making it are really trying to entertain themselves. We're not we're in animation we're not the most emotionally mature people in the world so we still have a little bit of childish humor to us but we're still just trying to be like what is funny to us what is what is funny to us and really

trust our younger audience to get it or if they don't get it be like i want to get that because that's like something kids always want to look up to the next step above them. You know, like when you're in elementary school, you're looking up to like middle school kids and high schoolers are looking up to adults. So we're just trying to, kids want to keep up with something if they can't get it. And usually they do get it. But when they don't, like, you know, it creates something they want to invest more in. I can say like, I remember as a kid, I enjoyed things like the Simpsons and Batman,

the animated series and Ren and Stimpy and shows like that, because I felt like they weren't talking down to me. And like, it was, it was ostensibly for somebody older. I was like, wow, I'm getting away with watching this.

And boy, I'm so mature. Yeah. Watching this thing. Yeah. Totally. It's so risque, but,

uh, yeah, I want to go over final thoughts about this episode. I do enjoy it. The one thing I think is, is lacking is we don't see enough of Nelson and Lisa as a couple because the kiss ends act two. In act three, Nelson goes away.

I really wish they would have explored more of what Nelson and Lisa as a couple is like. We see a little bit of that with them in each other's houses, but I feel like I really wanted to see that dynamic a little bit more. But otherwise, I enjoyed this episode. You could just get rid of the B-plot. It'd's it's like it makes me smirk but it's not the best b plot but i do enjoy this overall as a lisa story it's one of the first b plots we've gotten in a long time yeah episodes we've been doing in chronological order and it's and it's funny but it it is like we i think we talked about it before how at the same time as Seinfeld was huge and everybody's loving Seinfeld,

and Seinfeld was famous for like A, B, C, D, and E plots in their shows. All intersecting at the end. All intersecting at the end. Simpsons, especially this time, was going away for that. They're like, this is just one story about Homer's journey or divorce or any of this stuff. But this is kind of a throwback to older simpsons with that and i though i do like that there's somewhere the b and a never intersect in this one they at least smash together in a shootout at the end with a lot of the we said this before a lot of the algin micro

is three and four the b plots are so isolated i forget where they are like like where the bart crying wolf ends up and things like that just like there are so many that are just isolated in a vacuum. They could go anywhere. But I also feel like with Lisa episodes, they're also self-conscious about, you know, what if people get bored? Lisa is not the most exciting character. So we need Captain Wacky to show up and wacky it up. And I think the writers would even admit that.

I think like Homer, a little dash of Homer and Lisa's story is always helpful to keep everybody on board with the show. Matt, how did you feel in the end about this episode watching it again? I certainly enjoyed it. Yeah, the B plot is, you know, it can certainly be jettisoned. It's funny, like working in an 11 minute format myself, like we'd never have time for B plots. Like, like, that kind of Homer stuff would be jettisoned right away, because we're just like, there's no time for it. And so in a way, it's like, it's like, it's not my favorite thing. But I'm also kind of like, oh, that's fun. They got to do a second story in an episode of their television show it's like a twofer um

yeah i just really enjoyed it lisa is like one of my favorite characters lisa the akana class is probably my all-time favorite episode great that's a great one and um i mean that's why it's like oh it's like so close in this episode it's like it's got lisa it's got homer their relationship i you know i have i have two young daughters and like their relationship even before i had kids was always so special to me that when they dug into the heart of it and how homer kind of knows that lisa is his better but he's still like i you know i want to be a part of your life even though like you have no reason to kind of want me to hang around in it and i just love that and this episode is like oh they're both there but they're on completely different tracks uh but you, it's a fun episode.

And, yeah, it's like Nelson, I think, was part of that seedy element of The Simpsons when I was a kid where I was like, this is why my mom doesn't want me to watch it. It's got bad kids in it. They're going to start wearing a vest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, watching it now, it's a great episode. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Matt.

Tell everybody, again, what you work on, where they can find it. Again, we are way into the show. It's so great. Sure. Yeah, well, I am working on Craig of the Creek right now with my partner, Ben Levin. There's going to be more and more episodes coming in the future. I don't know exactly when, but you can always find it. It's airing on Cartoon Network Television intermittently, and you can always find it on the CN app and on their website and stuff. And I also, even though I left the show a while ago, there's still stuff on Steven Universe

that I worked on, and that is all going to be coming soon. I imagine it will be announced kind of shortly what they're going to be doing. And I had a hand in all of that. So, yeah. Are you on Twitter or any kind of social media presence? Yeah, I am on Twitter. I'm Matt underscore underscore underscore Burnett. Okay.

I know there's another Matt Burnett that made my Google search hard to do. Oh, there you go. There's another Bob Mackie, too. He's the bane of my existence. There's a Christian singer who has a web page set up. I think he's sitting on MattBurnett.com or something. Aw. That stinks.

Yeah, I love the show, too. I mean, the Beast one, Bring Out the Beast, the magic card stuff was just so cool to see, especially, I love the grounded stuff in that too, of like, the idea of like a kid taking his brother's magic cards and losing them, like that, that happened to me, or those things, those type of things happened to me, of like, for me, it was like X-Men trading cards, and just like, my brother wanted to borrow them, and then of course, like, he was seven, of course, he lost them. Yeah, I think Craig is very specific, not just to Ben and I, but to all of the crew that we've assembled.

We're really a collaborative environment, which was the way it was on Stephen. We're taking inspiration from Rebecca and really just inviting everyone to kind of share their childhood experiences and put a little bit of themselves in it. And then I think that's the strength of the show is that it is so specific and that we want kids to be able to see themselves and see their memories or the things that they're doing right now. We want them to see that in the show. And yeah, the specifics of playing a trading card game, which were a huge part of my youth, and they're still a part of my life. Yeah, that Bring Out Your Beast episode was very special. Awesome. So yes, check out Craig of the Creek, everybody. It's great. As for us, you can find us. So our show is entirely supported by Patreon. We have a lot of bonus stuff that is exclusive to Patreon.

You can only hear it if you are one of our patrons. So if you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and give it the $5 level, that's $5 a month, you can listen to things like Talking Critic. We go through the entire two seasons of The Critic. Talking Futurama, we go through the entire first season of Futurama, all 13 episodes, and all of our mini-series will be exclusive to Patreon. We also have stuff like interviews with Simpsons legendaries like Mike Reese and David Silverman and Bill Oakley. And we also have things like season wrap-up. We go over the deleted scenes from seasons five and onwards. And just so much

more happening at patreon.com slash talking simpsons anything else i'm missing henry uh well and you have talking critic and talking futurama as well our side shows yep uh so as for me you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast is retronauts you can find that at retronauts.com or look for retronauts in your podcast device it's a classic gaming podcast we've been doing it for a long time so i recommend you look it up and you find a topic that you like and check it out. And I think you might like it. Henry, how about you? I'm at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G.

And you can see me on Twitter talking about when we have new episodes of This Up and our sister podcast, What a Cartoon, where we go through a different cartoon each week. And also reactions to Steven Universe and Craig of the Creek and all that, too. So follow me there. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for Hurricane Nettie. Wow. Infotainment.