Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Lisa's First Word With David Sims

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

Whether or not you remember 1984, you're going to love first-time guest David Sims, cohost of the excellent podcast Blank Check and film critic for The Atlantic! This episode is a treat for any former children of the '80s as we hear the tale of Lisa's birth, how they got their first home, the creation of an iconic clown bed, parodies of McDonald's commercials, and even the star-studded first word of Maggie. So grab your meat-flavored sandwich and listen along! Support this podcast and over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod! and our Instagram! Also, check out our newest shirts on TeePublic!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where iron helps us play. I'm one of your hosts, the handsomest boy in Albany, New York, Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Henry Gilbert, and I promise this will be almost as fun as an hour-long episode of Mama's Family. And who is our special guest on the line? On the line is David Sims and hello Joe. And this week's episode is Lisa's first word.

Not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child but somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day. This episode originally aired on December 3rd, 1992, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby, Eddie Murphy's The Distinguished Gentleman can't beat Home Alone 2 or Aladdin at the box office, Saved by the bell hawaiian style debuts on television and stephen king's dolores clayborne tops the new york times bestseller list you know henry the one thing i know about the distinguished gentleman is that the biggest star

in that movie is not eddie murphy it's a little lady named doris grau oh she's wow simpson's own lunch lady doris is in that movie she was in in a lot of bit parts late in life because of her hilarious voice, and this is one of them. I think she's also in Babe as well, like right before her passing. Wow, man, I forgot about that. Did you forget about it, or have you never seen The Distinguished Gentleman? Because I haven't. I have never seen The Distinguished Gentleman, and the only thing I know about it is the poster where eddie murphy is lifting the lid of the capitol to take the money out and me having like me being so fascinated by it that i asked my mom to explain it to me and she was sort of like uh you know political corruption you're eight years old i don't know if i want to like get into this with you right now but

it's sort of about that lobbyists like you know how do you explain lobbying to an eight-year-old and that image later inspired january 6th that's right yeah it's fun it shows that uh he can't beat macaulay culkin or disney movies the 90s have begun it's saved by the bell hawaiian style i i look that up it's almost the finale of the show like it's one of the last things they did while the characters were in high school and it's where they go on vacation and mr belding's there too also apparently gave them the confidence to make the college years as a primetime show because it aired in primetime and in good ratings yeah i think this was the time that uh i believe the new class was going and you know uh if if you had nostalgia for uh saved by the bell which just ended a year ago you'd be tuning into this but this for me as

a 10 year old this really stretched the credibility of saved by the bell, which just ended a year ago. You'd be tuning into this, but for me as a 10-year-old, this really stretched the credibility of Saved by the Bell because I did not buy the whole, my principal is here on this trip, and somehow he has authority over us? What's happening? When you see a teacher outside of school, you're allowed to flip them off.

Every kid knows that. And of course, Dolores Claiborne, I never read the book. I did see the movie, I remember, as a youngster thinking it was a good movie. It's a pretty good movie. I like that movie. It's been a while since i seen it taylor hackford it's a taylor hackford joint real you know that guy gets you an on-base single now as far as i know that is a that's a departure for stephen king in terms of his normal kind of

content or am i incorrect about this oh i mean it's still in like new england and it's about childhood secrets that are haunting people except there's no like ghost in it it's it's still in like new england and it's about childhood secrets that are haunting people except there's no like ghost in it it's it's just child abuse is the there's there's no symbolism for it it's simply the real monster is trauma but anyway that's what happened around when this classic episode of the simpsons aired and joining us today is david sims he is a film cricket and the co-host of the hit blankank Check podcast with former Talking Simpsons guest Griffin Newman. Welcome to the show, David. Hello, fellas. Thank you for having me. David, this has been a long time coming. We've had on Griffin twice now, and we are big, big fans of

Blank Check. So we thank you. And you guys certainly reference The Simpsons a lot on there as all right-thinking people do. But I was being a huge diva with you guys. You kept throwing episodes at me, and I would be like, nah, I don't like season three as much. Like, tell me when you're getting to season four, please. At least, at the very least, season four. Right? We're in season four now, right? Yes. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Sorry, we were having our heated talking Simpsons meetings. We're just pounding our fists on the dust and saying, Simpsons playing hardball! I just, I don't know just i just knew what i knew we offered you many classics but you really wanted this one is that so so day and i haven't asked why this whole time why david why why lisa's first word well i mean i'm sure we're gonna get into it but this is on a box of vhs called the simpsons greatest hits i think right will we talk about this many simpsons vhs

back in the day right where they were just sort of put five episodes onto a onto a tape so i own that tape i believe the premise is it has the first the 100th the 200th episode it has bark gets an f which is the highest rated episode and then it had lisa's first word i don't even really know why i guess because you know lisa's first word i don't even really know why i guess because you know lisa's first word isn't it i don't know what the premise of including lisa's first word was i don't remember um but the idea was that these were all monumental episodes i had that tape i watched that tape endlessly i have seen this episode a thousand times but i had never seen it as a parent i became a parent in the last couple years

and i wondered how it would feel for me you know now like how if if my relationship would it has had changed now that i am a parent of a child i i'm curious of that too throughout this podcast we'll be asking you if the toddler behavior is uh accurate as displayed we are both childless uh we can talk about it i definitely had some thoughts on that i mean yeah we can talk about it well david as well uh you know a long time listeners of blank check know this but i am curious we all have similar childhoods being you know white men who were uh grew up as as comedy nerd simpsons fans in the 90s but we've also uh we've had on other guests who are from uh the uk are also from ireland and they have their own view on the simpsons where the simpsons

is huge there well like one of the biggest american shows of the 90s if not the biggest i think and so you kind of straddle that line so as growing up in the 90s enjoying the simpsons while living in both of america in britain you must have very interesting viewpoint on the simpsons so i don't really remember having much relationship with the simpsons when i was a kid in america i lived there until i was nine years old and obviously i was aware of the simpsons beyond it being on tv just its merchandise and its you know general sort of early 90s cultural presence. But I was pretty young and my mom hated The Simpsons on sight. She was just like, I don't like the vibe of that. I think she really was, like probably a lot of

boomer parents, absorbing it through t-shirts and was like, that seems to be about a rude and defiant child. I don't want you watching that so it's only when i moved to britain where the simpsons is on constantly as it is here too i guess but like you know i 7 p.m on sky one you know two episodes of the simpsons every night that i start watching the simpsons every single day basically and it becomes the universal comic language of my and my friend's life like you know basically everyone i know once i'm especially like 10 or 11 everyone i know watches the simpsons knows every reference one can make through the simpsons through those first you know 10 or so seasons it is it is the most i think it's the you know the most pivotal and important tv show of my life i think it's probably still the best tv show ever made i don't know how to reckon with that

quantify yeah i'm sure that comes up on this podcast a lot like how do you deal with that now that there's you know 20 odd seasons of the simpsons that i haven't even really thought about this hard but whatever that's my experience that's my that's my feeling uh well david also aren't the commercials in different places in the Sky 1 airings? Isn't there just one commercial in the middle? So you're not even remembering the acts the same. Wow. You just reminded me of something I totally forgot.

That's right. Of course, American commercials, there's three in a half hour episode. Is that right? That seems so crazy to me. But that's accurate. Whereas British people do not, or at least back then, did not tolerate that nonsense. Obviously, the BBC has no commercials and even pay cable like Sky only had the one for a half hour show. That's right.

So, right, you would get the cuts to black and be like, okay, that's an act break, I guess. And then, right, there'll be a random commercial in the middle of an act. As a kid, I clocked none of this and then later i started to realize what was going on i think well we were truly free and not paying the tv license i paid my tv license isn't that crazy you have to pay a fee to own a television no that's not true you have to pay a fee to get broadcast television you can own a tv and just play videotapes on it or whatever and not pay the tv license but then you're watching it in in what uh 48 frames per second like is that even

watching a tape uh but also david well yeah i was curious too because you know what did any of your friends go like oh in america they have you know crystal pepsi or whatever some some joke in the show that's very specific to america i always wondered how much those like or joke about casey casem's radio uh look this episode that we're talking about today is a great example it is filled with references to things brits would not understand i just i guess we just didn't care i mean or brits just kind of picked up american pop culture references through uh the simpsons because beyond the the pop culture references like where's the beef or joe piscopo or whatever like like i didn't know anything about like the soviet boycott of the olympics like you know i i definitely

first learned of that through the simpsons and thought it was a joke that only was happening to crusty i didn't realize that it was actual commentary from uh from these guys one uh i guess too is a is a movie fan you know the simpsons must have introduced you to a lot of through parody a lot of films that are you know classic films that you probably then watched after seeing them referenced yeah 100 so many like and to this day like i'll watch like ben her i'd be like oh i didn't realize that's the simpsons okay i never thought of that you know like that that happens to me all the time that i realized that the simpsons was copying like shot selection from some movie we've said it before but

the experience of watching citizen kane for the first time is just like going like oh that was the simpsons that was like every every other scene basically yeah you're laughing at dramatic scenes because you're imagining Mr. Burns there instead of Orson Welles. Well, like you're saying, when you saw pretty much any Hitchcock movie, you probably remembered the scene from The Simpsons of the psycho parody or whatever.

Right. Citizen Kane, though, that's a big one for sure. That whole episode, obviously. For some reason, I guess it's the Jay Sherman episode that has the ben-hur parody right i didn't probably didn't see the ben-hur for 20 years after like you know and then was like oh it's been her like the the you know getting the drink from mr burns that's

mr burns movie is about five parodies strung together i think it is yes that is such a classic like it clearly is a critic episode animated by the simpsons because it is so packed with references and once you see ben-hur it becomes even more funny because like mr burns replaced jesus with himself like he's like yes i am christ yes it's great uh well david i guess too then this probably did you experience the advertising rush of this episode? Because I definitely remember being advertised as Maggie's gonna talk. I don't think I did. I know. I think I've seen that covered maybe in like some like documentary after the fact or whatever.

No, I don't think at the time I was only when this episode aired, I was only six years old. And so I definitely was not watching The Simpsons that my parents were very much like you watch pbs like you don't even watch things that have commercials and then when i turned probably around six or seven i learned how to like use the remote and then it was over for them like i then i was doing stuff they didn't even know how to do like i i was the one who would like record stuff off the tv i knew how to work a video player like yeah no i was not aware of it at the moment i know it was much hyped obvious yeah it was a big stunt episode i don't know if elizabeth taylor's participation was advertised ahead of time or if that was a surprise i have a feeling that maybe she was listed as a guest but not you know they didn't outright say she would be voicing maggie

or if maggie you'd even hurt hear her first word because the the episode title is a big mislead as well yes yeah i as i recall i remember going into i can't think of a specific commercial but i remember starting the episode with the buzz of you're gonna hear maggie speak you know we're four years into the show she never says anything except in a in a couple of of comedy like dream sequences or whatever uh or you know there's a couple shorts where she sort of says words but not counting those she has never spoken on the show the ending scene with her you're then supposed to see the credits and go like oh like wow but yeah this was this was heavily advertised it was the uh highest rated episode

of the season which maybe that's why it was on the tape uh david it was maybe that's why it got a crazy nielsen rating i or maybe it's just oh it's the episode maggie speaks in that's that's monumental remember if you guys don't know this the cover of that vhs is the simpsons being rendered as mount rushmore oh yeah they are you know so the idea it's monumental literally if you if you see what i'm saying that's clever very clever this episode though i do want to say that it does begin with a very important piece of simpsons content and that is the uh circus line couch gag which would be the savior for any episode that came in too short and uh we'll see in this episode how they extend certain scenes they add certain things with old footage. This episode came in very, very short.

And I will say that this 20-second couch gag used to be unusual. Like, wow, this is a very long and extravagant couch gag. And I was looking up, you know, now that they're doing couch gags for the sake of going viral, what is the longest couch gag? And the longest couch gag is actually two minutes longer than this. It is the two-minute-and-20-second Rick and Morty couch gag and the longest couch gag is actually two minutes longer than this it is the two minute and 20 second rick and morty couch gag uh maybe the next time you'll hear that or see that they might sound a bit different but uh that was in season 26 and that came in at two minutes and 21 seconds so this was just unusual to see a couch gag last for more than a few seconds

but they would use this a lot uh when episodes would come in short yes i i hate this couch gag because they use it so often i when i was a kid i would get mad about this couch gag because i thought it was boring i know every listening to it i was like i know every musical note of this like every you know you know like all the the jugglers coming in and i anyway go on yeah no i got sick of it too which is too bad when i see it with fresh eyes of just like as not somebody who wants to see new simpsons content and who is being delayed from that by seeing uh this couch gag for the fifth time when i watch it now i'm like no this is just like this is very pretty it's nice it's it's a fun couch gag but i you know sorry i appreciate it

now that i've seen like 45 second john chris falusi couch gags on the simpsons well sure yes yeah there's couch gags by not canceled people too that went very long like they're having a bad run of those aren't they yeah yes they are yeah no the couch gag they just did a couch gag this year that involved uh stop motion animation and the return of alf uh voiced by paul fusco because it was a true alf not a fake alf appearance yes the uh though yeah this to show you how late they were getting in the season this year this was used three more times in production season four like that's how much they needed this lot just in production season four i'm not talking about

the other scene i assume it's also at before the front that's that's a really short episode too oh yes yeah that has the the perfect ending though with uh with ned oh yes uh everyone loves ned flanders yes but oh also in mike reese's book he mentions this too why it's so why they used it so much and he's like yeah we did a perfect episode but it was 30 seconds too short so they did this elaborate opening which he also makes a point to say in his book just to show that he's sharpening his knife still he's like the opening credits of family guy look a lot like this couch gag just saying so mike reese still still mad at uh at family guy after that opening though we get straight into the episode as a kid i remember seeing it and thinking like wow they're gonna have maggie's i didn't know how tv shows could like trick you or or play with your expectations at the very start they're all like maggie's gonna speak oh good we can see it at the

very start and not have tension the rest of the episode uh not the best pacing this is why yeah that was on writing tv yeah it's also funny this is a piece with uh homer's barbershop quartet uh both written by jeff martin and there's two jokes that kind of work in tandem uh in this one that jeff martin wrote and these it's funny that he's basically left the show like he throws him these two scripts and he's like okay guys i'm gonna take a gigantic creative deal at disney for millions of dollars no more late nights on simpsons for me and i think he was one of the maybe two people on staff who did have children i think maybe al jean his kids might have just been born around this time but jeff martin had had a daughter who would later

write an episode with him for the show so he had the authentic dad experience by this point i really associate him with like highly emotional episodes that that are not like over the top or anything, but like that have a real grasp on like family dynamics. Like I married Marge or whatever. Yeah, I'm a big Jeff Martin fan. No, and he writes some of the best stuff that capture the feel of a specific year when they name a year. They're like, yeah, I mean, it's a it's a gutsy thing to name the year that this is the third one of these where they did it on the 2002 commentary. They're even saying, boy, this is probably pretty dated to viewers now and they're seeing saying this 20 years ago on a dvd commentary it's it's all pretty uh authentic to the year 1984 of course

we're all little smart asses with wikipedia now and you could be like well you know cindy lopper's album uh she's so unusual came out in october of 83 and this is spring what are you doing here but uh you know at the time it was passable and i still enjoy the authenticity of just pulling from a single year and i think in the future when they would do these flashback episodes they would not be as consistent to a specific period of time i'm thinking of even things like that 90s show where it's just like taking the entire 90s as a nostalgia point instead of just these two years of the 80s no i just i'm just thinking so this is this when does the simpsons start 80 89 88 89 december 89 is the

launch of the series proper but i think it's like april 87 for all men right so they are they're reaching back before it's a it's a lot they're just being logical right they're just subtracting bart's age essentially from their launch date ish like for yeah or from the the episode's date yeah and they're picking a fun year to clown on i don't but yeah did they want to do a specifically an 84 olympics gag or did they then go like well if it's 84 what happened in 1984 i thought i was gonna say i think just logically subtracting eight from the current year 92 just thinking okay this is going to be about the birth of lisa we were all alive and in entertainment in 84 what was happening then and as a kid so henry and i were born in 82 and for me as a kid i knew i was alive in 84 but not aware of what was happening so it was a fun window into a time

where i existed but had no idea about the LA Olympics or any of the references happening here like where's the beef it wasn't until YouTube and the internet where I could look up all these old commercials and it wasn't until the commentary that I learned this McDonald's contest an entire series of jokes is written about was a real thing right right they got screwed over by the Soviet boycott right yes yeah it's funny david you mentioned your your mom was not a fan uh because my mom loved loved the simpsons and she was a needed guide post in this episode because i uh like there's so many jokes in this one where i feel like i remember looking to my mom and like mom what what do they mean by that who is joe piscopo who is this person

of course too this one meant a lot to me because I am an older brother like Bart. My brother was born in 1985. I was born in 1982, so roughly similar ages. So I'm on the Bart side of this as the like, yeah, this other kid showed up and ruined everything, and I hate him. That was my- I was the kid who showed up and ruined everything. Yeah, Bob. Sorry, David. You're the kid who showed up and ruined everything yeah sorry david showed up i i am an older brother i i don't remember this being a dynamic for me i was also like this is about a two-year age difference and i do think that's crucial and i do think they kind of get that bart is a toddler when lisa arrives or as i'm like four years older than my brother slightly

different maturity level i want to say about my mom so my mom i don't think ever really came around on the simpsons i think she generally she finally accepted like this is an acclaimed show like she she understood it was more than just like some sort of awful children's show my dad loved the simpsons he he got it and watched it with me all the time um but the episode my mom is from utica new york and the episode where superintendent chalmers says he's from utica uh you know in the steam tams uh segment of the short films episode any time my mom was always within earshot anytime i watched that episode it was cosmic every time she would hear him say well i'm from utica and she would be like no one ever references utica until like what is this like she would always ping it i just remember that very well i think we have the first albany reference uh we do in this episode is someone of the staff from upstate new

york i guess they must be right like there's some writer who's from the the mohawk valley essentially i'm sure they love it it's just a boring thing few think about uh is when they think about new york but i mean when i think of a locations well jeff martin he's a texan he was like the one texan on there. Al Jean, Detroit. I think Reese is from the New York area. I think, you know, I was just reading his memoir. I should remember where he was born.

Looks like he's from, like, he's from Connecticut. He's from Connecticut. Ah. Yeah, yeah. Which is, you know, the Northeast. But being from Utica or Albany, you know, being from theawk valley that's that's a specific vibe and i i there the amount of times they've referenced that area is maybe slightly too many for me to think it's a coincidence but i'm not sure so shout out utica new york obviously but uh yeah the episode begins with the tease that maggie will speak and just letting viewers know she never speaks we we also

get references to like oh yeah mr rogers still alive and alive and apparently saying get bent all the time. I love how Homer points at himself for the word daddy just to tease what the whole point of the story is. Like when they know the ending, this is a very well handled lead up to the ending here. Like just all the setup for it. So, David, I guess we could start with this here. Like, so, you know, first words, my mom told me that daddy or dada usually is said before mama by a baby. Like, that is the old wives tale. No, I believe that is true. And I think it's something to do with it simply being an easier word to say. Although that might just be some old wives tale that has, you know, they've settled on that as the reason.

I don't, honestly, my daughter's only two years and she's almost three but i don't even remember which which she said first they make noises you know and it's like it's hard in those very early phases of talking to distinguish between like them making noises and them saying like dad or mama my daughter's first word was puppy like that that i am pretty solid on we're both put solid because she was obsessed with dogs when you say first word you're kind of not counting mama and data i would say those are you know those are barely words those are yeah those are kind of baked in that's it well you better work on your story because in five to seven years you're gonna have to tell it just like marge has to here so true i don't think i was ever

told what my first word was though i don't know if they were documenting all of this they just heard a bunch of random syllables they're like take from that what you will mama dada it's all there and lisa quotes better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt which i've read an entire article that this is misattributed to abraham lincoln right uh thanks to 1931's yale book of quotations but apparently it's entirely in doubt whoever said it some people also say it's uh that mark twain said it but that's misattributed as well i believe it's literally from the bible in some form and it's been like sort of morphed over the years but right that's one of those famous like yeah no whoever said it

never said it quotes i know that i also love after homer proves it wrong he goes swish like that's such a perfect just he's like got it it's it's such a i mean it is 92 but i i i missed the the days of swish when you know that was just a a cry of victory and uh and also i i believe my mom probably was a regular reader of Fretful Mother, I think. I think she heavily invested in that book. That is a perfect gag, and it is the same shit today. Can I say a bad word? I'm sorry, I didn't even- Oh, yes.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Love to ask when I'm guessing on a podcast if I can swear. Yeah. It's not a magazine anymore, but it's the same. Google any question as a parent, and you'll'll be in fretful mother's own very quickly you actually have a guess there's like 700 youtube channels that are all fretful parent ones well also david how did you consider a corrective tongue extender at any point for your child it's such a classic thing i mean i was so how old is maggie canonically like in the show do we do we ever is she like

one i think one is the average uh year they give right it's definitely they celebrate her first birthday in miss bouvier's lover so right so she's sort of forever one which is kind of like she's kind of a almost a change of life baby like they had her a while after lisa she's seven years younger than lisa you know for anyone listening there who's fretting about their kid not talking don't worry about it man they'll talk when they want to like it's always so it's always easy to think you need a corrective tongue extender you know unless you have a twin and then they develop a weird twin language and you're not in on that and it gets really creepy from that point onwards that's fun though yeah that sounds cool i i had a co-worker who um you know she when she got pregnant she'd

you know been trying for kids for a while when she first got pregnant she then found out it was triplets and she could not she's like oh my first my first baby is three babies this uh that i'm sure she loves them all but to me i was overwhelmed at the thought of like, OK, you're your very first baby is three babies that I would walk into traffic. I cannot imagine how I would say call an agent immediately. I've got a new act for you. Three babies in our first clip here. Marge sets the scene for 1983, which I do want to credit friend of the show, The Real Jims on YouTube, who did an entire video about how Homer is technically older than Lisa now, or Lisa's age based on how they do references in the show at this current time.

And he'll only get younger than Lisa as the time goes on. Yeah, Homer currently born in 84. Based on his forever 39 existence. Although, well, we won't go into it right now but it's very complicated in case listeners don't realize this this is why we start every episode of talking simpsons with setting the time with three references because of this structure of marge setting the stage well this story begins in that unforgettable spring of 1983 ms pac-man struck a blow for women's rights.

A young Joe Piscopo taught us how to laugh. Before Lisa was born, we lived in a tiny apartment on the Lower East Side of Springfield. Chipwich for sale. Chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin. Chipwich for sale. You guys want to play stickball? Certainly.

Yeah, sure, let's go. Come on. Did you girls watch the last episode of MASH? That Mike Farrell really boils my potato. I'm missing the clinger already. When the working day is done, girls just want to have fun. That's all we really want. Homer! Homer is what grown-ups call me.

Call me Daddy. Homer. Daddy. Homer. Daddy. Dad. Dad. Da.

Yes? Domer. Why, you little you know without the visuals to distract me i'm uh taken aback by just how assaulted with 83 references we're getting here yeah and uh and then of course a man strangles his toddler at the end of that scene but homer is striking at the very most uh an 18-month-old in this moment here. I cannot deny being shocked now to watch Homer strangle Toddler Park. I'm very used to the strangling. I don't mind the strangling.

It's part of the show's iconography, but I was like, that's a very young child. You can't do that. You will kill them. The Simpsons will be right back. Television history is about to be made. Did you hear that? She said burlap. I don't think so.

Maggie will speak for the first time. I'll give you this cookie if you talk. What, what? Only guest voice Elizabeth Taylor knows what she'll say on an all-new Simpsons next Thursday. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter.

Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. Whether your first word was daddy or burlap, a big welcome to the break from Henry here, and also a huge thank you to our guest this week, David Sims. It was so awesome to have on David, the writer for The Atlantic, as well as co-host of the Blank Check podcast we had on Griffin before, and now we've had on David. It was so awesome to have him on. If you're not a listener to Blank Check, please check it out. It's one of

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I swear that when I finally watched Comedy Central SNL reruns, they got to the Piscopo years. That's when I was like, oh, this guy's supposed to suck. The Simpsons taught me this about this guy or it's not even that he sucks it's that marge marge thinks of him as the greatest funny guy i'm the same show as eddie murphy she's like yeah joe piscopo he taught us how to laugh well later in the season we'll have a really mean joke where bart watches modern snl and goes i miss joe piscopo. Oh, yes. But yeah, all of this stuff. Ms. Pac-Man, 82. Joe Piscopo's on SNL from 80 to 84.

The Chip Witch invented in 78. Girls Just Want to Have Fun. That album came out in 83. They're doing everything. And then the MASH finale was February of 83. So this is all accurate for the most part. Yes. Now I get the extra joke of Marge asking asking did you guys see the last episode of mash

famously the most like watched tv show ever at the time and she's asking did you guys watch it and it feels like uh the simpsons were really the first two 80s nostalgia because we had i married marge with early 80s nostalgia and we're continuing this and i think the entire world was not really on board with that idea until maybe the wedding singer came out and i think 97 the adam sandler film uh that is right 97 yeah yeah and and that that was refreshing at the time right yeah we weren't really doing it and the idea of 80s nostalgia was a joke in uh back to the future too like in 89 can you imagine being nostalgic for this crap and then we suddenly are i would go to the 80s cafe any day of the week now they should have built it at universal they missed their chance i know god well so i i love

that they live in like a to make it 1983 they also write that it is basically like a a 1930s new york city melting pot i love that too like with irish and italian immigrants all hanging out with them the the video stickball gag is really good the arcade stickball it really that gets me every time uh and just lower east side of springfield is great which i guess that's also where the hasidic uh neighborhood is too that crusty grew up when with it was rabbi father yes are they nearby ethnic town which we would see much later right yes i mean too i loved well also as a little kid who is playing something as as as incredibly sophisticated as sonic 2 i was like yeah those 1983 those ancient 1983 video games those those suck compared to today's amazing video games with blast processing and mark kirkland says he based marge's design on his own mom so it's also like she's a

boomer mom in 1983 with her with her stretch pants and her little kerchief it's it's a very flattering design i do like marge and her slightly smaller uh beehive as she ages her beehive grows naturally that's right i mean yeah she looks she looks great i don't like being closer to Homer's hairline of 83 these days. I'm not a fan of that. He was like, what, 23, 24? Yeah, you're right. Yeah, if he was 70, well, he graduated in 74, so he'd be 28 then, or 27 in this 83. Well, also, wait, if he's perpetually 39, is that what you guys are saying? So this is where it gets complicated, David,

because at this point of the series, he is forever 35. And then soon he'll be forever 36. And then a few years later, they're like, we have to make him on the border of 40. We're also getting old. And him being 36 makes no sense. So now in 92, he is 35-ish. Okay.

So he was 25-ish when he had Bart. Okay. Yes. Theer choking and singing uh girls just want to have fun apparently that the girls just want to have fun was another of the like it was too short in the animatic which tells you like by the time it came back in color and they're like we're still 30 seconds short like oh shit so and even more of the padding was that they reused bart on the clothesline swinging around because they're like, we have no ending to this. So let's just darken the shot and have him spin some more and then have Homer say some more lines. But David, I guess this is another parent question.

I mean, do you find it deeply disrespectful if you're not called daddy? If your child called you David, would you be like, hey? I be like hey very disturbed my child has done that because my wife calls me by my name and so she has mimicked it but it has not settled in thankfully but the idea of it happening is like an open act of defiance i would not appreciate i will not stand for that whenever that gets debuted because i do feel like that's something kids do when they're older and they're like i'm mature now i'm gonna call my parents by their names you know like some people try to pull that uh no i am daddy or dad sometimes i'm usually mostly just having commands barked at me though like come come here or i want a cookie or whatever i will say though if you have the privilege of having a stepdad like i did you'll be a a nine year old boy and telling a 40 year old man like, hey, Will, do you have any milk?

I didn't get a stepdad until I was like 35. So I don't think I'll ever call him by anything other than his first name. But I like my stepdad even. I don't do it disrespectfully. He's a good stepdad. But it's also like, you know, you're an adult meeting an older adult. And so it's just like, well, it'd be weird to call you dad ever. But yeah, so, well, also, I mean, the messy baby stuff, the flushing things down the toilet,

like these all seem like well-observed child behavior. Yes, obviously swinging on a clothesline is extremely frightening. Although that gag made me laugh so much when I was a kid. Although the sort of like like they'll get tired of this energy that a parent has and it's like no not really like you know that is a universal thing like your kid will be running in circles for like 10 minutes and you're like well they they have to stop this sometime um but uh uh they have they have they have balanced energy and they have boundless will and they have boundless like they have no sketch they don't have they have boundless energy and they have boundless will and they have boundless

like they have no sketch they don't have anything to do like there's nothing like for me i'm always like you got to stop this so i can go make dinner they're just like i have no there's no i have no plans like this is what i want to do right you know babies also love watching comedy writers take shots of johnny carson oh yes yeah it's so so Marge is telling a story and falls asleep I do wonder if her using the name Mavis is a joke about Jay Leno's wife name uh like which whenever I hear Mavis I just think like oh yeah that's the name of Jay Leno's wife isn't that weird like Mavis isn't an un I mean you know I'm not judging somebody for being named Mavis but whenever I hear it I just think like that must be a Jay Leno reference.

I don't know. Did we know that much about Leno? He's not hosting The Tonight Show at this point in history. Oh, no. I guess he just took over recently. He just took over in May. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Maybe so the Mavis references are flying off the shelves right now. Well, he was a pretty famous stand up, you know, for about a decade before that. Maybe the guys knew that uh david you may not know this but algin and mike reese worked on johnny carson for a year or two and uh hated it and so they stuck in as many references as they could to mocking johnny carson saying that he told lame jokes and jeff martin will always say take that johnny and of course they came to regret it because by the end of the season johnny carson would guest star on the show right right but i feel right i feel like when he appears on the simpsons

the joke is that he is this indestructible superman right like that's you know he's lifting the car above his head or whatever and i always took that as a kid a post carson kid like carson was not part of my life of like it's like a sign of deep respect right like of these these these younger comedy writers being like oh Carson you know like we we must off our cap yeah I think it was less uh him telling lame jokes as him changing jokes that were written for him and then getting mad when they got no response yes it's Al Jean tells a funny story because he well he says that the only problem with the joke scraping the barnacles off the dinghy they said is a perfect that's why they wrote it is a perfect carson punch line but they said that boy george he would never have said that because it was too

current a reference for carson to make because aljean then tells a story that they had a joke where the punch line was the stray cats in the 80s and carson didn't know who that was and he changed the line to the alley cats which is some like 50s band and it got no laugh and he got and he blamed them for it not getting a laugh though it was also funny to hear Al Jean on the commentary dissing Carson for dated references um when you know maybe Al Jean makes some of those on current Simpsons episodes yeah I think he's now the age Carson was uh after he retired i mean i think carson retired before he was 60 or when he was 60 i i looked it up uh carson was 66 in 1992 aljean is currently 62 okay so yeah i wonder if he's uh you know maybe maybe don't throw stones

at all so hey i'm sure uh i'll make very current references when I'm 62. Oh, yeah. All the things that are popular in 2042. My dad was not a Carson fan. And so Carson was looked down on in my house as well. I think my dad had an Al Jean-esque opinion of Carson as like hacky, which I think is not fair. Now I watch old Carson. I'm like, this rock rock i wish talk shows were like this now where he's just like oh how are you doing you know they just have like 10 minute

conversations about nothing with no laughs and it's interesting like no one would dare do this now people are openly smoking cigarettes in front of him ed mcmahon is drunk it's great talking about like senators from idaho and you're like this is great could you imagine johnny carson doing a bit where he um sings like the opening theme to like scooby-doo or whatever that that would be the equivalent of singing the gummy bears theme i i couldn't i'd like to see it hey you know what ai people get to work we've already lost that battle so you might as well make good entertainment out of it this is when barge announces that they're going to have twice as much love in this house than we do now which homer thinks to me they're gonna start doing it in the morning

which assumes that seems to imply that they do it every day at night and they're in their early 20s mid-20s yeah they're newlyweds haven't you seen rear window that's the joke with the newlyweds about how they're having sex like every day oh that's true. Yeah. And this is when Homer learns that they might have a brother or sister. Heh heh. Got your nose. Got your wallet. No! Bart, don't you ever do that again.

Understand? Beep. Ah! Guess what, homie? There's going to be twice as much love in this house as there is now. We're going to start doing it in the morning? No.

Oh. We're going to have another baby. Marge, that's... Bye-bye, keys. Hear that, Bart? You're going to have a little brother or sister to play with. I love Bart's vision of the baby brother. It reminds me me feels very matt

graining life in hell like of him like imagining all the things he'll be able to do with a baby brother which is mainly like use them to blame them or as a doorstop yeah i mean later the uh the bart sitting in the corner in the chair is just a life in hell panel there were so many of those with uh bongo in the corner one word balloon easy day for matt granting but those are still funny also and homer sees bart flush the keys down the toilet with bye bye keys uh they reuse once more homer from the christmas special bow oh geez that's i'm but only the bow whoa part no geez yeah we're tracking all the bows yes homer simpson does not say bow he says doe and they've they've reused the sound effect five times now

but yeah i mean david it flushed keys that hasn't happened to you yet has it no my daughter is interested in the toilet but she has not attempted that all kids like the toilet i think just because it's such a bizarre object and then because like the potty is such a big like thing like you know it's like discussed all the time once you're like turning three but uh no she's never flushed anything she's thrown things in places that are hard to find but she does not she's not like my daughter to be clear she's just not very bart simpson-y like she's uh more retiring than part is and she does not really have little stinker energy but she can break it out if she needs to now as an adult another of these moments it feels different to me of just like seeing the two parents well a second

kid we need to become homeowners like and we'll do it tomorrow afternoon i was like what and we need fifteen thousand dollars yeah you know i have friends in san francisco who uh they have two kids and they are still uh raising them in a in a two-bedroom place in the kid share room and they seem pretty happy with it oh yeah that's fine kids sharing room is good that's that that'll you know that'll build character i i as a kid did not like sharing a room my little brother but that is because he had very bad ear infections up until he was about three or four and so and obviously as a as a four to six year old I did not care that my brother was in pain. I was mad that he was sharing a room with me and crying.

And that was all I cared about as a very little kid. I shared a room with my brother till I was 11, I think. Yes, 11 years old. And then I finally got my own room. This is when Homer also shares some very 80-yard life background story that feels very written by Mike Reese. Just like, oh a my cousin frank did this and just uh eventually we learned that mother uh that uh frank became uh mother shabubu somewhere i think it's the second episode in a row we're doing that has a sex change joke because

it's 1992 uh this this is like this is the clumsiest part of the episode because the lip syncs all off uh mother shabubu just sounds like some weird mad libs comedy but uh hey they spackled that joke hole it was time to move on we we see bart left with uh patty and selma and i just love i love the bit about like that spout medley that he he connects two songs this little kid connects two songs that have the word spout in it and patty and selma are very entertained by that i would be too if uh if my nephew was so clever to do that though i am still not yet uh the uncle i want to be uh with none of the bigger responsibilities of parenting who just you know gets to see a kid every now and then yes i am

the absentee uncle the cool uncle who lives very far away you see me every five to eight years my love is implied also i love how it feels like so 80s and that they're just both smoking right in his face without a care in the world like i i was told my dad smoked until i was about two and he was guilt and he held it against an aunt of mine for daring to tell him i don't think you should smoke in front of your baby he's like how dare she look my dad smoked two packs a day and i mean he was not allowed to do it in the house except in one room in his like office which was as you can guess like a completely insane like smoke box that like smelled crazy yeah i wonder how that was dealt with when i was a kid do you have to like constantly go off for smoke break i don't know

yeah i was recently uh thinking about the 80s and just smoking around children i was recently in japan and uh some bars you can smoke in and it wasn't that annoying i just wasn't used to it but then i realized like why is this making me feel so nostalgic and warm and happy then i remembered oh that's right every adult was smoking around me until i left uh for college from from my birth until then and then i told my wife you're gonna live after me don't worry make preparations now so uh they head over to stinking fish realty you know with a name that bad it's got to be good they they start checking out the rat's nest first they see a place that is an active crime scene yeah i do love the nice little touch that the police passenger doors are open because there

was a shootout so they were using those doors as shields oh that's great i missed you're right that's a great extra bit to it i love that and it also the blood on the wall written things written in blood that's uh that feels like them setting up things for uh for cape fear or it's like oh writing in blood that's like in cape fear that that gag really got me then uh they they head to a place where i love that they're standing in this thing. And Marge just says, what's that stench? Such a great, crazy. Now, Mr.

And Mrs. Simpson, the only houses I have in your price range or in the neighborhood, colorfully referred to as the rat's nest. This one just came on the market. Oh, dear. Now, here we have beautiful hardwood floors, trap lighting.

What's that stench? Once you get used to the smell of melted hog fat, you'll wonder how you ever did without it. Mmm, hog fat. Let's keep looking. Ooh, do you smell something? Arr! Why buy a house when ye can buy a houseboat?

Excuse me. Yar! Don't forget to check out the galley. That's real shag carpeting yeah i guess uh at this point in the series homer smells worse than a rendering plant yeah they i think the the writers are like uh mac reigning definitely felt like we're going too far making him also the smelliest person in a room as well it's a good gag though just just them you know noticing it it's it's a solid 15 minute joke 15 second joke do they say hog fat

a lot in the simpsons i feel like i picked that up from the simpsons as like a disgusting substance like the you know hog fat i think somebody was stuck on rendering plants david because we have the joke in um colonel homer where he's driving past a lot of very stinky things trying to find another bar. I think one of them is a rendering plant. And then when the guy at the pet store is telling Homer where to find the pony farm, he goes, merely take a left at the rendering plant. So they really had that in their heads as like a disgusting place to be. I mean, seems kind of gross. I don't know.

Someone's got to render i guess uh and then we have a quick scene with sea captain uh basically reenacting jaws just to let you know again this is how fast they fell in love with sea captain he first appeared two episodes ago in new kid on the block and he appeared in the episode after that so in three episodes he's appeared three times that's how much they love Sea Captain already. And notably, he's had a different job every time. He was restaurant manager, and then he was infomercial CD salesman. And now he is a, I guess, boathouse real estate agent. Yes, yeah.

Or just selling his boathouse. Who knows? The Simpsons also is really into houseboats at this time, because in Cape Fear, they'll move into a houseboat. Houseboats are cool. I'm with the Sea Captain. Like fear they'll move into a houseboat houseboats are cool i'm with the sea captain like why not live on a houseboat and i think that is they have the they have the worst way out of that you know every every other gag about how bad the house is is good except for that one where it's like jaws attacks you're like jaws wouldn't attack a houseboat i forgot judge

constance harm also lives on a houseboat doesn't she she does yes yeah i forgot no i mean i look this up and google results tell me that it's much cheaper to live on a houseboat but i really feel like those are sponsored ads from the houseboat uh industry because it's like seniors love living on houseboats it's 16 000 less a year sleepless in seattle he lives on a houseboat and that always seemed like a really good houseboat how to live on a boat in new york city i'm now looking this up then we go to the kitty house which uh that is that's one of those things where you hear about all the time of an old lady leaving the house to her cats but uh that it just was in the news recently a woman in tampa left her house to to all of her cats in just back in july also bart is sort of quoting the wicked witch though

it's like combining fly fly and i'll get you my pretty or all the times he says my pretty bart that turns it into go my pretties kill kill actually later um i was gonna say henry later we see him try to live out this fantasy when all the puppies are born oh yeah that's true and he tries to stick them on the bullies and they're just like can barely open their eyes and stumble around yeah that's a good gig yeah i'm gonna chalk bart up to making a wizard of oz gag to another of the they're making bart gay in season four counter on me i'm gonna do that it might not be true but i'm choosing to do that this time but yes then they go to a house that's perfect recently when i was looking at the apartment we did move into my first thing was looking around and thinking what where things

would go and uh and bob's hilarious wife she quoted this scene to me on twitter to be like oh this is what you're doing you're just like yeah the tv and couch and i think of nothing else of where would it go in my apartment homer is predicting the men really live like this meme there should just be uh a tv i mean the tv should just be playing the video game bloodborne and it's complete it may be like a half opened palette of energy drinks next to the chair or the couch i think it is kind of touching that it vanishes when he sees the price yes yeah it's it's like an extra little gag but of course uh this is when many many a clickbait article has been made about how the simpsons can't live today on homer's

income and all that which is true and it's i think they i like them those articles in spirit because they do make a point about how harder things are for the current generation compared to uh 30 40 years ago but people need to keep in mind when they say Homer owns his own house, his dad bought his house or helped with the down payment by selling his old house. I mean, I recently purchased a condo with my wife, and I think the amount Homer is asking from his dad would pay for the area just my shower stall is in. Of course, Vancouver is a little more upscale than springfield but still just the idea of like i only need 15 000 also i love that like until i saw the film quiz show i didn't know what

abe was referencing here about how he won the house yeah this made me want to watch it because i was looking into it and i was thinking oh i never watched that robert redford film and then i saw watching the trailer hank azaria is in it yes that's right he's good in it david that one did pretty well well i mean it didn't like win oscars but it was in the best picture running back then how's i uh off the top of your head does it rank well in your ranking of that year yeah that's a good movie quiz shows like maybe redford's best movie great movie about the media early 50s media you know like uh or maybe lates, but like back when you would look right at the camera and say like, I love these cigarettes because they make me healthy, you know, all that

stuff. And just the kind of like, like waspiness, like, you know, wasp, post-war wasp, like control of everything. It's, that's a cool movie. I really need to watch it because my only memory of Quiz Show is the critic parody in which Chrisris farley is in the quiz show booth drowning in his own sweat so i need to get the actual image of the movie in my head so that's not all i'm thinking of right i also love that abe just has a long speech like basically like he thinks he's in a novel just giving his like speech about the man he used to be that he was the handsomest boy in albany new york which is a great another great upstate reference and he just gives up on it because homer tells him to dad i I have a problem. Why'd you come to me? I don't know nothing. I used to get by on my

looks. Now they're gone, withered away like an old piece of fruit. Are you done? No, not yet. I was voted the handsomest boy in Albany, New York. Dad, I don't need advice. I need $15,000 to buy a home. Oh, well, all I own is this house that I built with my own two hands. You didn't build this house. You won it on a crooked 50s game show. I ran it on everybody and got off scot-free. All right, son.

I'll sell this dump and write you a check. Dad, first you gave me life. Now you've given me a home for my family. I'd be honored if you came to live with us. Thank you. So how long before you ship Grandpa off to the old folks' home? About three weeks. They have, in typical Simpson form,

they have a very sweet moment of him saying, you know, like, I hope you can live with me, and they hug. And then instantly they reveal that, like, very quickly they kicked him out of the house and sent him to an old folks home. Even Lisa is participating in this cruelty. She loves it. Yes. If Abe wasn't such, they show in the house, Abe was a horrible father and Homer grew up in a horrible home.

So you don't feel too bad for Abe. The home is frighteningly bad. It looks so awful. Just that little backdrop they have no i think it gets worse every flashback episode and this is i think the last time we see it or the since he sells it after this scene then it's the last time and in chronological order by the time they get to the mother simpson episode i think they their answer for that is of like well yeah abe didn't want to be a single parent and it thus was horrible at it and that raised homer terribly

right makes sense uh so then we go to a commercial break at least an american commercial break maggie has been tricking homer seven times in a row to get a cookie i love too that lisa says my first word you're what what where miss remembers it and starts to tell uh the the season two episode lucy gets locked in the vault from the Lucy show. I figured you guys will have looked it up, right? Yeah, I was looking at like I watched some of the Lucy show on Nick at Night, probably around this time. And I was like, well, not as good as I love Lucy. I'm tuning out.

But all of the episode titles are Lucy does blank. Lucy meets blank. That's all very self-evident as to what the title is about. There's no clever Simpsons titles in that era. I watched it as well because as an MSD3K viewer, I was just like, okay, Mr. Mooney is just the guy who says Lucille, which they always quoted on MSD3K. And then we have the, oh, that's later. Your kids will love Oyster Lucy. He's like, oh, Mr. Mooney, I've just got to meet Bob Cummings.

That's right. That's the other Jeff Martin one. Man, he was on a real Lucy kick as well. But yeah, so then Bart re-centers them by reminding him that the dad just threw all his money down the sinkhole. And so we then cut to them moving in. They're just giving it away. Homer meets Flanders for the first time, just as a quick aside.

This could be a whole episode the first time Homer meets Flanders. But they're just like, yep, here he is. Hey, Homer, this house sucks. Bart, I told you not to use that word. Call me daddy. Homer. Yeah. We welcome you to the neighborhood.

Sing fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. From now on, you'll be history. You'll be history. You'll From now on you'll be history! You'll be his- You'll be history! You'll be history! Buenos dias, neighboritos! The handle's Flanders, but my friends call me Ned!

Hi, Flanders. Who the hell are you? My name's Todd. Will you be my friend? You're funny. If you need anything, just give a whistle. I could use a TV tray. Well, gee. What?

I just this minute bought it at the hardware store. You said anything. Sure, you can borrow it for a little while. And that little while is now eight years and counting. Now, it's our job to talk about this and point this out. I'm sorry David has to be here for this, our intense nerdery. But Todd should not be born yet because Todd is younger than Bart and Lisa. And in fact, Rod does exist. Rod is the older kid.

Rod is the Bart's co-star in Dead Putting Society. But then in the episode Manger Things, we learn that Homer helped Maude give birth to Todd in 2015 and Bart and Lisa were alive. So Todd should not exist but hey the scenes later where they're annoying Bart very funny but even at this point Todd was younger than uh Lisa but can we just sort of think of the Flanders as like existing outside of time in some strange nightmarish way could that be it like that they're just I choose to haunting Homer like they're like there to annoy him but yes no you're you're right it's confusing that that uh he's there but they point out on the commentaries

they for all often forget which one is rod and which one is todd and yeah it's never really revealed how old either one of them is supposed to be also like flanders is a big time fan of webster because webster debuted in the fall of 1983 and he's already wearing the shirt for it in uh which now let's again this this math is uh intentionally annoying uh but that if lisa is born during the olympics which is between the end of july and the middle of august of 1984 then marge would announce her pregnancy in like november of 83 so they would be moved into this house by spring of 1984 i would guess so it it does work with webster being on television yes it does fit into the webster timeline yeah also like homer homer isn't annoyed that bart says the

word sucks it's that he called him homer another great joke this this uh the scene with flanders though it's another one of those well that's the origin of that kind of scenes where uh this is uh homer calls ned flanders right right because he's like uh the name's uh flanders but my friends call me ned he's at high flanders so because i think that's a very subtle like here is why homer calls him flanders he's never he never says ned that's so subtle it flew by me as well because ned defines it as friends call him Ned so Homer will not call him Ned. And also it's the first time Homer borrows something with no intention of ever returning it. Me and Bob just did a little bit of this of when we both moved away each of us gave the other back things that we had borrowed for many years. I only got one book you got a an entire satchel full of goods several carl bark uh

collections as i recall was uh and i gave you back the kids in the hall uh biography or a timeline book one dumb guy great book henry wouldn't know nope no see i still have a red i returned it to you on red homer at least used that uh tv tray for eight years it's true it's true david as well i mean how accurate are these terrible twos and the pots and pans and all of the noise i am so great uh that is accurate and i have thought about that song my whole life i am so great everybody loves me uh that's still funny um the capacity my kid has to shriek at volumes that you don't really understand, sometimes out of delight, not even out of anger, is the most profound noise that I can think of her making.

But yeah, she likes to bang things. It's fun to bang things. And also, David, do you somehow manage to fit in eight hours of TV a day? Well, I mean, not eight hours, but it is still my job to watch movies and such so i do watch more than many but then i'm also looking at my damn phone all the time that's the thing no hey you shouldn't feel the joke is homer should feel a little guilty that he somehow he doesn't somehow do it it's because he is an absent parent and not helping marge but right right right that it it is your job unlike homer parent and not helping marge but right right right that it

it is your job unlike homer yes that's that makes sense we get an itchy and scratchy parody which uh of the 1981 chariots of fire movie i've still never seen it where does that rank among best picture winners i would assume it's better known on the other side of the atlantic than uh than in america yeah i mean i guess a brit i mean one best picture i feel like it's but uh you know it's best note better note i guess it's a well-known british movie i guess i've never liked chariots of fire that much i i associate it with one thing which is the thing everyone associates it with oh yeah the music yes yeah the the award-winning vangelo score and i think that has lived on in parody because if there has to be like a silly race and something that i mean that was the sound drop they would use like if al bundy needs to run a race yes they're gonna play uh the

chariots of fire song and then van jellis would do the blade runner score the next year so really on a roll oh yeah uh but of course this is where the olympics enter into the story they have many great jokes about things are in 92 they were making fun of everything's the official something of the olympics and the monetization of the olympics i'd say is like 800 times worse now than it was uh when this episode was written true they really nailed though the like american especially at the time under you know presentation of of foreign athletes back in the day well david one of my favorite uh blank check bonus features was you guys talking about the opening ceremonies

for the London Games, which was very interesting. Yes, something of crucial importance to me, Danny Boyle's 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, which is beautiful. I don't know anything about the 1984 Olympics opening ceremony. Who lit the uh who lit the torch let's see oh john williams did a score i did all this other research i missed that one uh let's see uh apparently lionel richie played a nine minute version of all night long that's fun

whoa oj simpson was among the torch carriers so you know okay uh rayford johnson a famous famous decathlete uh lit the flame okay well that sounds nice i believe in the london games mr bean was the official silent fool of the uh 2012 olympic game yes this is when crusty enters the story as he lays out his sweepstakes. Krusty funny. Duh. It's all part of our Krusty Burger Olympic sweepstakes. Just scratch off the name of the Olympic event on your game card and if America wins a gold medal, you win a free Krusty Burger.

And cut. I almost swallowed some of the juice. I'll be tasting that for weeks. Great spot, Casey. Put a sock in it, Preppy. How much are these free burgers going to cost me? Not to worry, Mr. K. We've rigged the cards.

They're all in events that communists never lose. I like, I like. This just came over the wires, Big K. Uh-huh. Soviet boycott. U.S. unopposed in most events. How does this affect our giveaway? Let's see.

You personally stand to lose $44 million. Oh! Well, we have to remember that after this scene, Krusty suffered a major head injury and forgot how to read before Krusty gets busted. Hey, yeah, wait a minute. He does read the wire. That's true. He reads it out loud.

It proves he's reading it. I know, Henry, you did some research on this. I did a little myself, but yeah, based on a real McDonald's promotion where they lost an incredible amount due to real life circumstances. Right. Yeah, the Big Mac, right? They gave away gave away big macs basically it was a scratch off if they win you win thing and so if they win a gold medal you win it too and of course they made the and they had done it uh actually in for the 80 olympics as well but because of the ussr and other eastern block countries dropping out us did win many more gold medals than they usually did they won 83 total that year and yeah and mcdonald's never

publicly stated how much they lost many did project in the millions of dollars that crusty loses uh they were running out of big macs in certain locations but despite it being a you know a big loss for them they still repeat repeated the promotion in 1988 and 1966 96 1996 apparently it was a tiered promotion in which like if they won a bronze you got a free coke if you if they won the silver you got a medium fry if they win the gold you get a big mac so they were losing money on the Big Macs. And the real-life circumstances were that the Soviet Union and 13 Eastern Bloc countries boycotted the 1984 Olympics because we, in America, boycotted the 1980 Olympics because the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Now, who would do something like that?

Who would do it? Of course, those brave freedom fighters really saved the day. The gallant people of afghanistan yeah has the uh yeah also i i love crusty saying the official meat flavored sandwich like a perfect line like i mean him saying like i'll be tasting that for weeks i almost swallowed the juice like that is stuck with me for so long too if i ever eat anything gross i am also thinking i'm gonna be tasting that for weeks though i wish it was miss penny candy who gave him the wire that's that's the one downside to it they really forgot about her yeah it's too bad well of course as a kid i did not realize was a reference to miss

money penny right when i was a little kid as well uh much like bart i did not like having to give my crib to my little brother i was obviously i was three years old i shouldn't be in a crib anymore my parents did not successfully sell me though on getting my big boy bed i was like no i want the crib you're taking for like i was very mad about this is a classic thing kids regress when the new baby arrives they want to be the baby again i've i've heard of this i've heard tell of this uh you know they they basically want to you know they miss being the baby even though they don't really remember being the baby i don't think there was any crib struggle for me but for a few years they had to put a railing on the side of my bed because i would like little nemo myself

out of bed almost every night just roll out of bed and fall on the ground they call that a toddler bed now that is yeah that is that is a toddler bed yes we are soon to to we will transform into the toddler bed soon, I think. Though also it's a great joke that Homer can't rip Bart away from it. Like Bart is too strong for Homer to pull him off for some reason. There comes another joke that stuck with us for, I think, all my friends referenced all of the time in high school. Homer J. Simpson, you're a genius. I know you like clowns, so I made you this bed. Now

you can laugh yourself to sleep. If you should die before you wake Can't sleep. Clown will eat me. Can't sleep clown will eat me can't sleep clown will eat me i had a friend in high school who wore a shirt that said can't sleep clown will eat me and that's when i realized you could just have unlicensed shirts that just have lines from episodes on them because i remember seeing that at a hot topic and maybe the year 2000 and i thought this is not a licensed piece of merch you can't just do this and i don't know if you notice this henry i i when he's building the clown bed it is reused footage of homer building wonder bat that's right from homer at the bat yeah they

more more filler in this episode to hit time that's funny now because he's not on the commentary they can only refer to this as being from mike reese's life but i got it from his book he explains how this happened my father built the original clown bed for my little brother john back in the 60s the clown face dad painted may have been even scarier than homers the eyes were two soulless black pits the nose a weird pink color with black flaring nostrils it was so creepy my mom insisted the head to be removed it wound up leering in the back of the closet like a scene from the movie it my brother spent the next several years sleeping in a headless cloud wow and it should be pointed out uh mike reese's father a doctor not not a uh a craftsman

yes were you guys scared of clowns did you guys have that fear i was not really scared of clowns but i didn't like like i didn't i didn't want to see a clown i think for me it wasn't so much the clown it was a a large thing getting in your personal space and i still feel that way with uh giant mascot characters like i do want to keep my distance right right on television i liked bozo the clown i watched that obsessively but in person I don't think I did like clowns. If it was like, oh, there's a clown with a balloon, I would maybe start tearing up or walk my parents in the other direction. They also quote Mike Reese saying, kids are scared of clowns and adults think they're stupid, so what the hell good are they?

He's very anti-clowns mike reese you know he's correct but yeah if you if you buy the mike reese book he has pictures of the original clown bed that inspired this joke so you can you can see for yourself just how horrifying it was they then see homer doesn't care that bart is incredibly traumatized he's too busy eating burgers uh we see that swimmers from other countries can't even breathe underwater. And this is when Marge goes into labor. By the way, there would not have been an hour-long episode of Mama's Family in the summer on ABC, which aired the Summer Olympics because Mama's Family was an NBC show up until the end of its second season in 1984,

when it then became first-run syndication in 1986. Thank you. Although, hey, you know, there was a two-parter in February of 84. Maybe there was a rerun, but it would not be on that channel. And is Homer excited to miss that episode or does he think he's going to stay home and watch it? That's what always confused me. He's forgotten about the baby. I think the joke is he's like, well, I'm staying tuned for this. Bart gets left with the flanders i love

how lame rod and todd are again like you said bob doesn't make sense canonically but i love how lame they are now i i want they they're playing a board game with dice from oh it's the pop-o-matic bubble yes but didn't doesn't ned flanders think dice are wicked isn't that a later joke that's true yes when they're which is a great joke he became more religious yeah right you think okay you think that's sort of like right part of his his evangelical journey is he drops dice at a certain point yes yeah i think that's when they do uh the bible trivia in the uh the foster home episode is that it yeah okay also i love they they move one space at a time it It's less fun that way.

Right, right. That's it. But yeah, Good Samaritan is a perfect lame Christian board game to play. And the song Joy in My Heart, Jeff Martin says he got that from his Bible camp he had to go to in summer. Child, and he's like, at least I got something out of it. This also is when they meet Ned's grandma, voiced by Yardley. We'll take good care of your boy, Simpson. Enjoy the miracle of creation.

Shut up, Flanders. So, kids, what do you want to play? Good Samaritan! I get to clothe the leper. Lucky. Supper time, boys. Oh, boy, liver. Iron helps us play. I get to clothe the leper! Mucky! Supper time, boys! Oh boy, liver! Iron helps us play!

I want to go home. No I don't. I've got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart to stay! And if the devil doesn't like it, he can sit on a tack. Ouch! Sit on a tack.

Ouch! Oh, can you help me with my thumbs? Ah! Oh, Bart, you met Grandma Flanders. Hope she didn't scare you. Hello, Joe. I love this poor old blind woman like shaking arms saying can you help me with my psalms and it's one of the best like yardley rando yardley never gets to do rando voices but she's good at this one yeah they're usually too

obviously lisa sounding but this is a unique voice grandma flanders not long for this world no yeah it's the idea that grandma flanders has left us by the time we are in the current simpsons like timeline i assume what i really like about this episode which seemed to uh bucks a competition is that we don't see lisa being born it's just like next scene lisa is here there's no uh jokes about the the trouble with the birth or you know marge screaming at homer or any of the other gags you can do she's just there and the episode continues normally yeah it's true marge doesn't have any labor pains on this one after she's born marge is already reading uh fretful mother

magazine is your baby too cute is it's fear i mean they do say the second baby walks out of you definitely i think my mom said it was easier for her baby to over one. Yeah. Then Homer reveals that he set up an account for her at Lincoln Savings and Loan. Of course, a joke about how Homer invested in something that turned out to be a huge scam. Of course, that would never happen now where a company says fake increased profit to juice up their stock prices.

That had never happened now. And John McCain was involved was involved yeah that's right sure was yeah the keating five right is that is that it the scandal yep it was a bipartisan effort to the keating five it's all democrats except for johnny i believe yes so it's not not a perfect situation yeah we're reaching across the aisle yeah to steal yes but yeah so uh then uh homer apparently originally said bart can kiss my hairy yellow ass but the the censors didn't like that that was too that was too far for them so that's why it's but they changed it to but bart is two years old so again it like just it's a little harder it's the same with the strangling you're like i don't know if you should be telling a toddler to kiss your ass as they recognize again extremely for padding replays all the lines from the episode twice like they they go they the head cycle around him twice just like

they do in the monorail episode and a couple more uh they're just like yeah this will get us 20 more seconds i think when uh marge is in the car and homer alone uh when all the things are driving her crazy yeah yes i haven't flushed a ball in years oh yeah that was yes so this is the second of three times in monorail i like it best because to pad it even more they hold on homer after he says i call the big one bitey and he just like smiles it's just like yeah an extra like five seconds uh but yeah this is when bart meets his uh baby sister lisa is extremely cute adorable which makes it all the funnier that bart fully rejects her i mean i of course i was too young to remember the first time i met my brother but i probably was uh i don't know maybe

i thought it was like oh this is a fun new toy or something. I definitely didn't have, within a year I was, I didn't like him as much as Bart dislikes Lisa immediately. He gets different toys? Yes, yeah. Look, I didn't know how to share. I was a bad kid. The fault is on child me in these memories. Little Lisa, I've already started you a college fund at Lincoln Savings and Loan.

According to this magazine, Bart might be jealous of her. Yeah, well, Bart can kiss my hairy yellow butt. From now on, the baby sleeps in the crib. Iron helps us play. Hello, Joe. From now on, the baby sleeps in the crib. Iron helps us play. Hello, Joe.

Bart, there's someone in here who wants to meet you. Well, Bart, what do you think of little lisa i hate you they go to the commercial break with bart saying i hate you then uh we come to another moment which again does not fit the timeline if lisa's born during the olympics then a newspaper would not have a reference to the spring democratic primary debates but you know although we can accurately trace lisa's birth to uh march 12th 1984 yes yeah so uh in case folks don't know well first off i have a clip here it's a dual clip i'm sure if you're a listener to this you know about the wendy's commercial where's the beef which was a big deal of an old lady clar Clara Pell, saying, where's the beef? Sorry, Clara Peller, respect her.

Clara Peller, sorry. RIP. Hey, Henry, she was at WrestleMania 1. She was, that's true. I should respect her more as a WrestleMania 1 attendee. I told this to your co-host, David Griffin Newman. His dad attended the same wrestling event right before WrestleMania 1 with Andy Warholhol which is insane

yeah yeah uh didn't andy warhol love wrestling he was into it right he was like into the iconography yeah yeah well sorry henry uh clara peller not just an attendee but she was a presenter she was on on an onstage performer during that event correct yes yes she didn't like do a move or anything but yes she is like and now to announce the bout yes that's but so here's the a little bit of the original commercial along with the quote marge is talking about here where's the beef some hamburger places give you a lot less beef on a lot of bun where's the beef when i when i hear when i hear when i hear when i hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad. Where's the beef? Yeah.

Everybody's laughing. They love what Mondale says. I mean, we're mocking it now, but some people try similar things like Pokemon Go to the polls. Not so effective. Yeah. And, of course, when Homer says, no wonder he won Minnesota, that's a joke that he only won that state and also dc uh but reagan won the 49 other states true but i do love how when you hear the actual clip there you see mondale is like oh boy all right he mentioned his programs gary hart mentions programs i got the line right here and he's's like, you know, you know, you know, that wasn't a flaw in the, the upload.

Yeah. No, he was getting over it. He was lining up for that one, but he lands it. Look, look, everyone's laughing.

Like he has to get it out. And I think Gary Hart, like later he was like, you know, he was, he would bring, show up with papers and be like, here's the beef.

And it was like, well, Gary, you got to let this go. Like he, he nailed you. Just don't worry about it. like, Gary, you gotta let this go. He nailed you. Just don't worry about it. Cut to Bart seeing all the pains of being

the new baby taking all his attention, which bothers every new child, I'm sure, or every older child. I mean, it doesn't help that immediately Patty and Selma just throw him away or just like, whatever. The older they get, the cuter they ain't. How mean.

They are awful. I know a new song. You still here? Alouette, gentil Alouette, Alouette, Alouette. You already sang that part. The older they get, the cuter they ain't. Hey, the baby just spit up. Also, has Patty ever looked uglier than when she goes in for the kiss on Lisa?

They ever drawn her uglier? They're taking the time to draw a pretty thick, some growth is happening on the upper lip there. The size of that kiss on it or the the lip mark is so it's so huge then bart you know he's trying to uh he then sees that nobody's paying attention to him he can't even hold the baby i gotta say marge the the olympics are just ending marge is looking great for a woman who just gave birth she's a she's a slender woman she always has been She's a real tall drink of water

And she bounced back very quickly But like you said the baby walks out of you On the second one But yes this is when Krusty can't take it anymore I just love him screaming at them like You people are pigs I will personally spit in every 50th burger I like those odds

Homer thinks that's a new part of the contest. Welcome back to the final day of this, the 23rd Olympiad. Brought to you by Krusty Burger. You people are pigs. I personally am going to spit in every 50th burger. I like those odds. In a moment, we'll look at the courageous Korean gymnast, Kim Hwan, who made a perfect dismount on what was later revealed to be a broken leg.

Ouch! But first, let's go to the boxing venue. Please, please, please, please, please! The American, Drederick Tatum, does a triumphant turkey trot over the supine suite. One's thoughts turn to Alexander of Macedon's victory at Granicus and Issus. USA! USA USA USA Carl Lewis I could kiss you I will say injuries like the one they show on the screen here

that did it's kind of why I don't like watching gymnastics performances on the Olympics I'm just like oh man it feels like the one where you're going to most likely see a leg get broken now Henry I know you are on a wrestling hiatus, but I see you tweet about wrestling, and most of your tweets are always like, what a match. Oh, he landed really hard on his neck. I hope he's okay. You are always documenting all of the many, many injuries that are happening in wrestling. That's true.

So I ask you, sir, how is that different? Well, you know, that's fun. It's part of the fun. Yes, I know. Very recently, I watched Kenny Omega do a great match, except he did a move where he landed directly on his neck and seemingly was fine. But I was like, I wish this Kenny Omega match would be more fun to watch if I wasn't worried he broke his neck twice.

But I guess I have more of an attachment to pro wrestlers than I do to professional Olympic gymnastics folks. So, of course, they are very skilled. an attachment to pro wrestlers than I do to professional Olympic gymnastics folks. So of course they are very skilled. We also see that at the 84 Summer Olympics, that's where Dredrick Tatum won. Now the guy he's based on, Mike Tyson, famously did not make it to the Olympics. He was just edged out of the 84 Olympics team, which is where Evander Holyfield won a gold. Mike Tyson would soon after defeat Henry Till tillman the man who replaced him on the team in uh in brutal mike tyson fashion and i don't know if howard cosell was announcing

for the olympics but we're getting in some of our last howard cosell references in pop culture right now oh yes yeah with a great word a great word he definitely was still doing the olympics okay in 84 yes yes uh i mean his his alliteration is his last olympics yeah his alliteration is great uh the triumphant turkey trot over the supine swede and uh supine great word if you want to know what the opposite of prone is it's supine that's that's your word of the day from talking simpsons 84 was his last call of boxing that was the last time he called a boxing match wow there you go wow we we cut to the the uh the crusty burger where everybody's getting the last their burgers

everybody's loving it so carl lewis i could kiss you i do wonder if this is a reference to even in the earth by 92 there were rumors that olympic gold medalist runner carl lewis was gay like he is not like he has not come out of the closet or anything into he is, you know, he is not gay. But there have been rumors running from even then. So having Wiggum say, Carl Lewis, I could kiss you. I do wonder if that's sort of a wink in that direction. I took it to be. I mean, I didn't hear those. That's a fair question. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

I didn't hear those rumors. I just assumed this was a 1992 vintage, a man wants to kiss a man, LOL, next scene. I remembered hearing about it before that he had had these rumors dogging him for a while. And then when I Googled it, it was like, in 1990, there was an article like, is Carl Lewis gay? He says he's not. I was like, wow, it was in 1990 people were saying that about him? Yeah. So then we cut to Dr. Hibbert. He also gives Bartle Rubella inoculation, and he now has beaded dreadlocks.

That's where his hairstyle has changed to this point. I think they're braids, not dreadlocks. Oh, you're right. It's braids, yes. I would like to see someone beat a dreadlock. That actually sounds very hard. Talking Simpsons Challenge. Real pain in the ass, yeah.

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to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Bart gets a rubella inoculation. It's also great.

It does feel like a perfect Simpsons line of like, ooh, that was the last one, but I have something just as nice. A rubella inoculation. And even laughs evilly as he comes in with with the needle rubella is also the right the right disease that's the that that's the right level of like weird second sort of tier uh child disease that's been eradicated no one ever says rubella anymore german measles that's what rubella is right well david you're staunchly against vaccines of all kinds for your children right i will say i am not i have vaccinated my child but the mmr is the worst one that your kid gets it does suck oh wow i didn't know they were still doing mmr i remember that from when i was a

kid oh yeah the terrifying you gotta get the mmr yeah but that's the that's the one where your kid gets like a fever for like two days it's so so annoying. But it's fine. It's good. You want it. You want you want that rebelling out of there. Bart's still rubbing his arm in the next scene. And yeah, it's also the again, I do remember that as a kid. And it seems realistic of like that when you're like two, you want to hold a baby and you don't understand that it's dangerous for a little baby a little kid to hold a baby yeah yeah it's tough i think you can kind of do the like you you sort of gently place the baby in their hands and you never let go of the baby something like that but it's tough yeah i think this may shock listeners and perhaps david but i i think i held a baby once in my life and I was 14 and then I realized okay there's too much responsibility I'm not going to be a father either so I'm drawing the line here man I can't remember the last time I've I think yeah even my friends who have had babies I've never asked that I don't think they've offered I'm just like yeah that's good I I don't

need to to hold your baby I I'm scared enough just being in the room with them like what if I sneeze and kill the baby like just this fear in my head I'm afraid that's on the baby Henry yes yeah the baby is weak no um so Bart then we have a a montage of Bart getting his revenge it almost seems sinister the way like it's scary how he's approaching Lisa with scissors like it feels like how he's approaching lisa with scissors like it feels like we've entered a a horror movie briefly here uh but he's only given lisa her first haircut which then even when she bart says who's cuter now when she has that little uh bear uh bonnet on i like nope lisa's still cuter bart sorry adorable yeah this is when we get the life

and hell shots of bart uh in the chair in the corner time out no no she is cute yeah i think you're just you're just right well speaking of things that are cute in a cartoon but when you really think about them a baby being shoved into a mailbox and left there is not very cute in real life but it the way lisa looks at bart when she's left in there is adorable. But obviously that would kill a child, I would think. If Lisa wasn't so smart and perfect. I'm not saying try it at home, but there's enough air in there. Sure, sure. To await the mailman rescue.

You know, if Mythbusters was still around, we'd have our answer. Yeah, hey, you're right. Also, Bart leaves her at Flanders is even then. Even when Flanders returns the firstborn to homer homer doesn't even speak to him he just slams the door in his face let alone returning the tv flanders is also trying to get a foot in the door to get that tv tray back it's like i return your child and i'm not calling the police so after all this bart's. He's going to run away from home. And this is when he is finally pulled away from doing that thanks to Lisa's first word. The thing the episode refers to.

I liked it when it was me, Mom, and Homer. You wrecked everything. I'm leaving. Goodbye. Bart. What did you say? Bart? Submarine Succotash, you can talk.

Mom, Dad, she can talk. Say it again, Lise. Bart. Bart, Bart, Bart, Bart, Bart. I'm her first word. Well, I'm not surprised. Lise is crazy about you. She thinks you hung the moon.

Wow. Aw. It's just so cute how she said and it seems like lisa spoke it like before she's won at like nine months yeah okay so this is my only note is that obviously bart is way too articulate for a two-year-old he speaks in full sentences and you know he has a lot of complex thoughts and lisa definitely would not say anything at nine months but this moment as i predicted like completely made me cry like it hit me so hard this time and even though i did remember of course that she was going to say his name but his reaction and just the memory of that kind of like you know this is what i think is good

about um you know uh jeff martin's story approach is just like he he gets you know just the feeling of of the little kid saying something with intention is so powerful it's great i love it it was i was crying i was crying watching it today three hours ago yeah i think it's uh i mean from what i know about children uh it's very observational because uh when you are a toddler you are the center of your own universe and the fact that lisa is acknowledging bart uh means a lot to him because all he knows is like from his own experience there's very little empathy at this point but the love is there but again bart is uh you know not really old enough to understand other people's experiences and it's so sweet like a brother i do love it of

just like oh a sibling realizes they love each other and have a connection this isn't just some stranger in your life and but actually the cut to the present is exactly how things went with my my sister where it's just like oh they get along and just like from a certain point childhood onwards it's like bitter rivalry fights all the time yes yes now i i love bart's it's right there and then the zoom out like don't leave your name i'll write your name on the carpet but so yes this is where we get to the big big emotional payoff as we see that lisa as a baby even she would call him homer That's how smart she is. She knows to call him Homer, a proper name. She knows proper names. Again, Lisa is very smart.

Also, Yardley saying Dava Hasselhoff is adorable as well. Adorable. But this is when we get to the climactic ending that had been advertised so heavily that was so popular that it got bigger ratings than a new episode of the final season of Cheers on the same night. Lisa, can you say mommy? Mommy. Can you say David Hasselhoff? David Hasselhoff.

Can you say daddy? Homer. No, sweetie. Daddy. Homer. No! No! I was sitting there. I don't see your name on it. It's right there.

Bart, don't write on the rug. Ha ha, Mom yelled at you. Did not. Did too. You know, Maggie, the sooner kids talk, the sooner they talk back. I hope you never say a word. Daddy. Aw. And that was Elizabeth Taylor, who, you you know as a 10 year old people are trying to tell me who

she is and it's like oh she's one of the most beautiful women in the world and then you're in the supermarket you see her on the tabloids you're like what that looks like my grandma i don't understand and then later in life you you see footage of cleopatra and other films cat on a hot tin roof yeah who's afraid of virginia wolf even you're like okay yeah i understand but when she's introduced to you at like age 60 and people are telling you like uh oh there's no one hotter than this as a little kid you're just like well what's going on here also she is herself later on the simpsons right she does voice herself yes later this season in uh crusty gets canceled i think all she says is i've got to fire that agent

as she's polishing her diamonds right she's polishing the oscar that's right yeah oh and she says do it all in the same day i guess is the question also she says good like that's right it was the clever thing about crusty gets canceled that they were like well we're gonna have every celebrity we can in here so people like her and uh barry they're like, let's get him twice. Let's just just to beef up. Krusty gets canceled that episode. But yes, there's there's quite a story about this one as well.

Yes. Well, it was a big get for them. And I know like on the commentary, there was some talk of her flirting with director David Silverman, who was there for the audio recording. But then there was a rumor about her saying something filthy on Mike. Is that correct, Henry? Yeah. So there had been this story that she was not happy that day. Matt Groening, when he was on Conan in 1994, told a story that basically he's telling a

story and he says she got sick of having to repeat the word daddy over and over again to to do the take and she then stormed out saying fuck you and but but then algin and matt graining would later amend that story and graining would be like i was just trying to be funny on conan uh but that basically it was they now said well actually here i'll quote yardley smith when she clarified it four years ago on Twitter. And she was also there present for the recording. She says she didn't storm out, but she did take exception to being asked to say daddy 20 times. And she let us know by saying, fuck you, when it was done. She brought her little white dog to the session and one of her giant diamond rings and and mike reese also implied she probably was a little pissed off or at least not in a good mood

of like say no say daddy again say daddy again say daddy again because apparently it was a huge crowd of hanger-ons of simpsons employees watching the recording because she's so famous they're like oh everybody's there so i would guess if you're elizabeth taylor surrounded by people and a director keeps saying no say daddy again say daddy again you might get a little fed up at it and then much later they will reuse this clip but it won't be her i assume because they won't have to pay her again her estate yes yeah in the season 13 not good clip show uh gump roast uh they've replayed the scene but uh give a listen to it here they they had nancy redo it instead huh and she normally is the uh the babbling voice of maggie right and uh and i guess like we were talking about this earlier the one time maggie talked

and i think it was even because she was uncredited i think it was in this commentary that mac reigning revealed who it was uh it was carol the actress carol kane yeah did the voice of maggie in um the thanksgiving episode i don't even know if it was that was ever documented before that just like another kind of secret please don't credit me cameo in season two but her saying daddy is so sweet she knows she's saying it to make him happy and it's also like but you as a viewer get to be in on the secret of like oh but she did say daddy homer got his wish but he doesn't even know it poor homer and it also lets them have the fun of well we told you to hear at least maggie's first word but the the family doesn't hear it so as far

as they know maggie has never spoken so So it still keeps the reality in the world. Like they don't have to give up Maggie has never spoken jokes. And it's sort of the underlying joke also. Like I always think of Maggie catching the beer bottle before it hits Homer's head in the hockey episode. She's actually quite connected to Homer and loves him a lot, even though he's only kind of dimly aware of it often. He always forgets about Maggie.ge the dog's not a baby or whatever that line is i love that maggie loves homer that much like it's sweet that i think like that's her i mean in season 13 she shoots a bunch of people to save homer from being killed as well it goes that far as as far as maggie talking in the years to come

there be tree houses and in episode fantasies but pretty much even in flash forwards they think of excuses to not have her speak because they don't like they want her to be silent that's the fun of it you know there's you know in say uh the episode where they adapt the fountainhead uh jody foster speaks for her but it's you know that's a story being told it's not real right and in lisa's wedding there are a number of jokes about how maggie is always on the phone she can't shut up she's going to sing at the wedding but every time she's cut off by the show that's a good that's a very good gag in my opinion teen maggie in that episode is is cool uh or it seems cool at least in the next season

and lady bouvier's lover bill and josh write a joke that maggie at her first birthday party is saying spaghetti over and over again and nobody cares because they're like that's her second word who cares but they got cut before the episode came out when we interviewed bill even he was like wait that got cut i totally that. I remember it just as we wrote it in there, but it did get cut. But Bill and Josh got their revenge because Maggie does in episodes say daddily doodly when they move in with the Flanders in season seven. That's right. Yeah.

And her head spins around. Yes. Yeah. I'm wondering if that goes into the fantasy distinction there perhaps uh but i guess final thoughts on this one uh great time capsule for 1983 1984 uh fairly accurate jeff martin is the writer of these flashback episodes after the first one and he really understands how to do it and lots of great jokes uh lots of great lore that's now incredibly outdated and makes no sense but uh yeah one of the all-time classics that might be kind of trite but that's what i'm saying oh yeah it's it's adorable full of great

family things that touched me as a little kid even of just like oh this is about how like babies are born and also this mystical time of 1984 now it is the same as an episode from a couple years ago that parodies 2015 of just that like eight years is nothing to me now as opposed to eight or nine years being a long time ago the force awakens was new in theaters yes yeah i know uh all the promise i mean now now the line marge would be saying like we all had the promise of force awakens teaching us teaching us how to laugh again now that david would know anything about that or a star wars podcast no no no oh my god uh any final thoughts david as i thought um this episode did feel a little different for me now as a parent i appreciated that about it i remembered it very very well this is not some simpsons episode i'm finding you know new jokes in or

anything like that i remember every joke pretty much word for word but i do think it is uh despite most of the humor being rooted in very specific throwback jokes about a time period i was not alive in i do think this is a bit of a classic yeah no i mean it must uh the simpsons in general must hit a lot differently when you're uh when you become a parent than than before i maybe i should do like a full rewatch and see, yeah, how much that is the case. Obviously, I don't have kids yet. I have a toddler. Right, yes.

I don't have, I've not, you know, yes. I use that in a general sense, yes. When you become a parent, it probably hits different. We're telling David now, you need to have more children. Yes. And then watch The Simpsons. I mean, this episode kind of made me want to have another kid i will say that you know the the cuteness of bart saying uh elisa saying bart yes well also i you know uh your your

co your co-host griffin he re-watched the entire series over covid so just wait for the next lockdown and you can you can do it i think please jesus christ i think he got to like season 26 or something he got too far he did tap out maybe make it all the way yes well thank you so much David Sims for being on the show please let us know more about the blank check podcast and anything else you might be up to right now yes you can find me at blank check uh we're going to be starting a Barbara Streisand miniseries very soon I think right now we're doing some sort of catch-up episodes are on new releases around christmas time but barbara streisand i think it's going to be our next mini series and obviously

you can read my writing at the atlantic uh where i am a film critic i i was just reading your one for the holdovers which was a film i very much enjoyed as well yeah great movie yeah perfect perfect for the holiday season oh and i i look forward to your one i would guess when this comes out maybe you've posted it i don't i don't know your schedule but yeah you must have one for the holiday season oh and i i look forward to your one i would guess when this comes out maybe you've posted it i don't i don't know your schedule but yeah you must have one for the boy in the heron coming up pretty soon we will that should that will be a recent episode by the time this posts yes that oh boy i'm recording that on friday yes uh but uh but yeah david i'm so glad we finally were able to get you i hope uh hope we can have you back again soon sure absolutely and thank you for having me i hope i was remotely interesting no you were tons of fun thank you

thanks david thank you so much to david sims for being on the podcast please check out the blank check podcast he does with griffin newman and all of his writing over at the atlantic but if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and at free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up at the five dollar level which will get you just that but also access to over 150 bonus podcasts podcasts about uh futurama king of the hill batman the animated series the critic and mission hill and that five bucks a month gets you regular monthly episodes of both talking futurama and talking of the hill these are all full-length podcasts over 150 that you haven't heard if you're not a patron,

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only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob's talking about the What a cartoon movie podcast or animated feature film discussion each month for our premium patrons often for over four five or even six hours about a specific animated movie last month we got into the holiday season with the muppet christmas carol a true classic we loved it and we love talking about the Dickens original too. You will learn a whole lot if you listen to that podcast. At the end of this month, we are covering another Disney Renaissance classic.

And I call it a classic because we really do enjoy it. The Emperor's New Groove. You're going to have so much fun listening to that. We have five years of What a Cartoon Movie podcast. We've covered everything from Akira to A Goofy Movie, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse to Beavis and Butthead do the universe, and our longest podcast ever is there too. Six and a half hours on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Not a minute wasted. You need to sign up at that $10 level to hear that and all of our previously released $5 podcasts too. Check it all out again at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpson. And as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast by the way is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com

slash retronauts and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and by the way i have a book out right now it is the boss fight books volume all about day of the tentacle i put together an extensive oral history on the 30th anniversary of that classic point-and-click adventure game and you can find that at boss fight books or wherever you find books like amazon local bookstores what have you it's a great buy for the holidays and henry how about you you can follow me on most social medias at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g or talkinhenry on instagram as well you should be following the official twitter account of this podcast and the network of podcasts at talk simpsons pod it's at talk

simpsons pod on twitter blue sky instagram all the cool places you will stay up to date whenever there is new stuff going out on the patreon on the free feeds when we have live shows like our upcoming one in january for sf sketch fest so many cool things you stay in the loop about at talk simpsons pod and if you'd like an easy to explore list of all of our previously released free podcasts of talking simpsons and what a cartoon and many other things head over to talking simpsons.com thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast talk to the audience and we'll see you then so Eh, he'll tire himself out soon.

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