Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Make Room For Lisa With Super Eyepatch Wolf

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

This week we welcome back on Super Eyepatch Wolf (be sure to check out John's YouTube channel and Patreon), all to discuss Lisa's difficult relationship with Homer! After losing her room to a cell phone tower, Lisa is feeling ignored by Homer all as Homer ignores any problems to eat mayonnaise. Somehow that leads to an out of body experience and Homer being buried alive, all as we get to an ending that doesn't make a huge amount of sense. Whether or not you listen along in a sensory deprivation tank, please enjoy this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention podcast listener we've got an exciting new podcast coming just for patrons of patreon.com slash talking simpsons talking futurama season two part one has begun exclusively for our five dollar and up patrons on the talking simpsons network that's the first 10 episodes of futurama coming to you once a week so just sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and you'll get Talking Futurama season two and all of our limited miniseries, including the entirety of Talking Futurama season one. That's 13 episodes.

That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product. and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where Marmaduke makes history come alive. I'm your host, the recently knighted Sir Drink Salad, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, and I promise to put in at least twice the effort of a deadbeat dad. Excellent. And who do we have on the line? This is John Walsh, also known as Super Eyepatch Will,

and I promise not to try and mentally destroy anyone. I swear to God that'll make sense later. I appreciate it. And today's episode is Make Room for Lisa. Hey, Marge, what's your favorite radio station? Today's episode aired on February 28th, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh my God! Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh boy, Bobby, the cult classic film Dark City makes a small debut in theaters. CKY's Volume 1 album is released, aka the soundtrack to the classic Jackass episodes and the CKY videos that preceded that and star wars x-wing alliance is released and that's the final game in the x-wing pc series and we're all leading up to the smash debut of episode one it's coming can't wait yeah that cky song the 96 quite bitter brothers i think the song to be honest i had no idea 96 quite bitter beans yeah okay that's right to be honest i have no i had no idea what you're talking about i thought i was having a small stroke during there it's like of course yes the first ck1 well uh cky with the uh the i believe

it means can't kill yourself very problematic these days can't sell that on dvd uh but it was you know this punk band that had a skateboard video. Bam Margera was part of it. That was the CKY group, then teamed up with the Jackass group to make proper Jackass. The famous prank-based television that we all know and love. And so if you remember, at least in

season one of Jackass, and in the CKY videos, you'd hear I'll take your word for it. They'd usually save it for the really nasty segments. I remember them selling these at GameStop. These skater DVDs, right? Yeah, yeah.

With the stuff that was too hot for MTV. I guess you were not a Jackass fan. I hate Jackass. I'm sorry. It was lost on me and I don't like it at all. I've never seen the movies. Oh, you missed out. No, no. Yeah, it was like a defining part of my teenagehood.

Like, I definitely rolled down some hills in some shopping trolleys. I see people like maybe five years younger than me. I think I was, I found it distasteful. I was like Sideshow Bob at age 17. Oh, really? Johnny? Yeah, I found it distasteful. I was like sideshow pub at age 17. Oh, oh really? Johnny. Uh,

yeah, I remember friends, uh, downloading off Kazaa, the CKY videos. And they're like, Oh, if you,

you like jackasses, not have as fucked up as this man. And then you transition the backyard wrestling before you paralyze yourself. Uh, what was it? I remember, you know what? I'm not going to disgustingly describe.

Please don't, please don't please don't they're fun times i'm turning into you on this podcast yeah you're taking my bit pop you found out what repulses me it's uh dangerous pranks uh well dark city though what do you guys remember that i still haven't seen it all i know about it is that it's very matrixy and it came out at the same time as the matrix and roger Roger Ebert loved it when he was alive. He was actually, I think he did the commentary, like a commentary track on Dark City. I don't think I've ever seen it, no.

Oh, I think you'd like it, John. It's rather anime-y. It's one of those like five movies that came out in the 90s where it was clear somebody directing American films had seen anime enough to steal from it. Ah, okay. Perfect. And I think actually the Matrix connection is even deeper than you think, because I believe they reused sets, city sets built for Dark City in this. It was, I believe Dark City was the sophomore jinx of the director of The Crow. After The Crow was so huge, he was like, well, then I'm going to make my dream picture, Dark City.

Did Babe Pig in the City get some of those city sets too no those those were down in george miller's like australian stuff gotta see that movie yeah i'm looking at pictures of it here this this looks wild oh yeah i think you'd really enjoy it yeah this this looks like it could be kind of fun i'm more of a dog city guy myself uh and i i played i played a bit of X-Wing versus TIE Fighter, but I actually didn't play X-Wing Alliance. Oh, boy. We have an entire episode about the X-Wing series on Retronauts

and Cat Bailey and Jason Wilson. We just sit back and let them talk because they know everything about those games. Well, yes. Let's talk to our guest here, John Walsh, a.k.a. Super Eyepatch Wolf. Welcome. Thank you. It's really good to finally be back yeah your last episode was way back in may of 2018 uh bart the fink so season seven god i mean a big reason we wanted to have you back on too is just to quickly uh talk

about all the cool videos you've been doing lately including me and bob really enjoyed your bizarre modern reality of the simpsons video you did a couple months back yeah that was that was a very interesting one to work on because i really it was one of those videos i really wasn't sure how people were going to take it because the subject matter was so i guess kind of strange compared to my usual stuff but um it was also super fascinating because like it was just like i kept going down this hole like discovering like new weird like fan projects the video is all about like weird fan iterations of the simpsons and like the weird things people do with the simpsons online and i think by the time i hit like that simpsons hentai zine i was like oh i mean this is too i'm in way in too deep now our favorites are like the shit posting

for sure and just the clever recontextualization of simpson scenes like it's like how people retell an old joke in a new way is just you know exciting actually last night i saw a new meme based on bart hitting homer with the chair in the bathtub it was based on the game Homer with the chair in the bathtub. It was based on the game Bloodstained Ritual of the Night and the video had 300 views on YouTube. So it was made for a very small audience, but it was extremely well done. It was really weird seeing all that stuff. But then like, I felt like so much of it as well was so like reflective of like, you know, the really strong parts of Simpsons and like what you were saying there about like recreating. There's one comic and it's literally just, I think it's a comic the artist did when he was kind of drunk

and it was just him like trying to remember the Homer goes to New York episode oh yeah it was it's just great like it was it was really fun and uh all that great Simpsons music too like the our music inspired by the Simpsons that was such a great find too i thanks for the simpsons wave stuff yeah that's so fascinating uh yeah we also just had a really cool video on the the fall of 2019 stuff uh you watch which i i also bring up just to brag that me and bob have seen pro marin it's really great yeah take that i've seen it twice yeah that's the problem with living in Ireland

you just like there's this new anime movie out a promo from Studio Trigger and like me and my friends all really want to see it

everyone online's raving about it and we just can't and it's like god damn it those Fathom events can't make it across the ocean the stream isn't powerful enough I think we're also seeing

One Piece Stampede tonight too so I'm sorry to make you double jealous yeah no this is this is all great we can like sneak a phone in and sort of twitch stream it to you before we get shut down would you mind that would be great also john you know since the last time we recorded i've talked to a few other uh irish simpsons fans i was curious about this thing i found out about the commercial breaks in it when it aired there so there's just one commercial break in the simpsons, like in the middle of the episode. Yeah. Okay. So this

is something I only discovered like in the last three years that you guys don't just have like one commercial break. You have like a lot. Like I was sitting in my hotel room and I might've been watching the Simpsons and there was like one commercial break. I was like, well, that was pretty early. And then like another one later. And I felt like rioting. I was like, what is going on? I can't imagine growing up with Simpsons where there's just a break in the middle of the episode. it was weird because towards like later on in Sky 1, which is where it aired,

what they do is they'd show like 18 minutes of an episode and then have a commercial break and then show like the last four minutes. That's so, yeah, that's really odd because to me growing up with the show and a lot of shows where it was a three-act structure because there were two commercial breaks. So you could split a show into three acts. Now there are three commercials on the simpsons so

the last act has to be like sort of like a 90 second wrap up that just really really fast so i always feel i can't it's been like that for like five years and i can't get used to it and we've noticed on disenchantment like the pacing does seem a bit weird because they don't have those hard act breaks to sort of like restart the story a few times yeah actually i just watched the newest simpson the treehouse the new treehouse of horror that just aired the 30th one oh i gotta watch that before tomorrow what's interesting in it is to get around the forex structure they instead just front loaded that they do basically a 90 second short segment at the start so then they can end with a full regular third okay and it was like the omen at

quintuple speed that was the one it was uh it wasn't their best i'll say but it was fun i will say it was they had some fun celebratory stuff for like it being the 666th episode that's why i assume they did the omen oh yeah right that's that's kind of fun okay extra clever you know it's too clever for me i like how they acted like they planned it but by while winking at you like we didn't plan it this way uh well john also like were you watching you must have still been sticking with the show into just season 10 you're not you hadn't turned away yet right no no i think uh that was a long slow process that went well into my adult life but um i mean i still like there's like there i was this is actually an episode i really really like from

season 10 i think there's some really kind of good laughs in there oh yeah i i i really love the line when the when it's like the woman in like the kind of isolation tank place is like, you might see visions, but they can't hurt you, though they may mentally destroy you. And I thought that was like just such a weird like inclusion, but it was really funny. I do think it's hard for me now not to view Scully episodes run by Mike Scully as coming from the viewpoint of him being a father of many daughters. And this one especially feels that way. Yeah, it does. I'm not a huge fan of the ending. We'll get to it

eventually. But it is a very dad perspective. Like, why can't my daughter understand that I think she's boring? She needs to come to terms with that. If only. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Though I think this episode did make me, I think it's a little lopsided about where it puts empathy on characters but I I also did give me like perspective on remembering all the times like my mom not my dad but my mom took me to movies or pro wrestling shows or all these other or every trip to the comic book store she gave me like I I look back on that like well she couldn't have enjoyed that like so i it did give me a little more insight there yeah i i kind of felt that as well like i thought like the last little bit at the end where she has like her realization like it was kind of i think maybe

like a little clumsily written but it still kind of resonated with me a little bit yeah so at least you know there's a good kernel in there i think but uh though i think the lopsidedness also comes from scully wants to do a touching father-daughter story but this also comes deep in a season where the writers as a whole under scully are really enjoying making homer as cruel and thoughtless as possible for joke purposes which makes for some funny jokes but then you pay the price when it comes to like but can't you feel things for homer and his relationship yeah uh it's you can't it's hard to have it both ways totally um and yeah i think this is technically a new director episode but not

yeah i matthew nastick we talked a bit about him in Doan in the Wind. So Mark Kirkland found out his wife was leaving him or divorcing him legally during the production of the episode. So he had to have Matthew Nastic, his assistant director, direct that episode, direct the rest of it. So this is Matthew Nastic's first episode

as a director, as a full episode. And he has directed 49 episodes as of this recording of our podcast. He was working on the show as early as the Do the Bartman video in 1990. It's a pretty long pedigree there. Yeah, and he's still working on the show for like, so yes, 30 years of working

on The Simpsons. I love that video. Great direction. Oh yeah, that's I mean, that was Brad Bird directing it. Animated in like Croatia or something? I had no idea. Wow. Oh yeah, Brad Bird. That or it. Like animated in Croatia or something? Oh, really? I had no idea. Wow. Oh, yeah. Brad Bird. That or Hungry.

Yeah. One of the hosts. It no longer exists. But yeah, it was famously as cheap as it could be. It was hungry. The music video looks amazing. It's some of the best full animation Simpsons ever had. And now you just have to try to forget that it's written by Michael Jackson

when you enjoy it. His producer. Sure. Okay, sure. I was looking back at Nastic's other career too. I did see he worked on shows we did for our sister podcast, What a Cartoon, as well, Real Ghostbusters and Rugrats.

He worked on both of those. But I think his most recent non-Simpsons credit was like Duckman. Like doing colored his color styling on duck man so i think he was just doing that uh when he was laid off you know between seasons because as we learned animators need work between uh breaks that is insanity yeah by the way i i still can't get over that so you do a few duck man something wrong with that no quality show oh and also this episode is uh the last one with a credit writing uh by my brian scully by mike scully's brother older brother and off to family guy he went yes he yeah he had quite a long career at family guy uh but this is like a sequel to his previous episode lost our lisa it really is i

was getting a lot of lost our lisa vibes from, like Homer and Lisa adventure and them trying to understand each other. But it is like a flip side where it ends. The previous one ended with going to basically another museum where like how this one began. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And it was Homer doing something for Lisa. And so this one ends the other way with Lisa doing something for Homer. So it really does. It's like pretty much a full sequel episode i think yeah uh and this one though begins with a very out of i forgot where this joke was from this episode until i watched it i was like oh this is where the the time travel oh yeah this and the b story in this one i both fully forgot we're in this episode yeah i forgot

this b story existed uh but in our first, I both fully forgot were in this episode. Yeah, I forgot this B story existed. But in our first clip here, Homer travels back in time. Okay, FDR is in the White House. An ice cream cone costs a nickel. And a hot new tune by Benny Goodman is hitting the charts. The year is 1939. 1939? Oh my God, I've gone back in time.

I've got to warn everybody about Hitler and get to the ice cream store. Hey, Homer, what's all the hubbub? Let me guess. You traveled back in time again. Shut up. You haven't even been born yet. Easy, Homer. I'll bring you back. Oh, boy, am I glad to see you guys. That was Men Without Hats.

Or, as they're known today, Men Without Jobs. Don't go there, Marty. I'm not going anywhere. That sequence of Homer being slightly sleepy and then thinking he fell back in time. That's happened before. Yeah. They've had to deal with it multiple times by the way because we might have some younger listeners the episode title is referencing the old sitcom make room for daddy which eventually became the danny thomas show you needed to explain that to me too i didn't know danny thomas being famous for being a famous

hollywood dick listen to the gilbert godfrey podcast you'll learn all about that okay and then lots of cartoons even children's cartoons they reference how he liked to lay under glass coffee tables and have sex workers defecate on them oh yeah wow yes okay there's an episode of Ren and Stimpy where he has a celebrity coffee table collection he's talking about his Danny Thomas glass coffee table and Ron Howgie probably wrote that joke since it's right around how it sounds that's about ron haugi yeah so yes danny thomas i i had heard the glass topped coffee table story but i forgot it was danny thomas was the the guilty party of that yes and uh we have to reference gilbert goffrey's podcast on every episode everyone hated him everyone hated working with him he was a famous monster yeah no everyone loves him he's a adorable old cussy grandpa so yes the in the reference there too the

music the things homer's listening to seemingly is like casey casem's american top 40 yeah which is all about taking you to a point in time though i feel like that i don't know i i would think he'd talk about songs as early as 1950 he wouldn't go back to 39 with his song instrumental songs yeah it's not i mean john like is how aware are you of casey queso meant his radio shows i am pretty sure this is the first time he's ever come into my life oh okay well i mean you know scooby-doo right yeah yeah okay so he's shaggy on in or in classic scooby. Right, right. That's how I figured he was known internationally. But he was cast by Hanna-Barbera because he was a very popular radio show host in the 60s up to his passing in 2014. Oh, was that recently?

Yeah. Yeah. I might have talked about this before, but this is a kind of weird thing being like an international viewer of The Simpsons, where The Simpsons is like this kind of window into a lot of American culture. But a lot of the time, you're not really aware what the reference is. And in some cases, you think it's like, oh, what a weird, random piece of humor. And then it turns out like this actual like cultural context behind it. It's a funny distance that it creates with international

viewers that i think they it's i think it comes from them trying to write smarter like we can sometimes it's easy to make fun of family guy for going like hey remember this and then they just state specifically what they're making a reference to while simpsons i think often challenge itself to be like let's have a little smarter like parody of this without having to outright state to people, you're listening to Casey Kasem's American Top 40. I remember I saw there was a family guy joke and it was referencing the end of Pulp Fiction when the guy comes in with the samurai sword and the guy in the gimp mask. And I thought that was hilarious, but I'd never seen Pulp Fiction.

I just thought it was this weird random scene that the writers had just made up. And I was like, that's so weird. And then when I learned it was a reference, I thought it was way less funny. And sometimes that happens to me with The Simpsons as well. I mean, it still happens to me from time to time, even in watching that recent Treehouse of Horror.

I've only seen the first season of Stranger Things. So when they were making a couple non-season one Stranger Things references in their section, I was like, I guess I have to assume that's a good joke. Any spoilers in there? Not that I noticed, but the best joke about that area was they had comic book guy show up and just say like, sounds like you haven't seen season three and that was that was the closest to one of those spoilery jokes you have real quick about the american top 40 in case you've never heard it i used to actually listen to it to go to sleep some nights like homer actually in the 90s and it was just a the very friendly voice of casey casem

talking about uh when things were simpler in the 50s or 60s and playing an old song. I was eating at an airport at some point in my life after he died. And I remember hearing him on the radio and I was like, he's dead. He can't be on the radio. He's dead. Really, it was like an archive thing of Casey Kasem. You could play like the year is blah, blah, blah. And this guy's top of the charts.

Up next, we've got blah, blah, blah with blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, did he record something for every year and someone just bought it to play in an airport so he's dead yeah i mean it should just play forever so is this that futurama joke as well where it's like farmer john remembers oh that oh that's a pepper or is that a different thing yeah that's pepperidge farm yeah it's referencing like a 70s maybe 80s tv campaign for pepper pepperidge farm another very obscure reference like most of these we learn backwards through mystery science theater yeah ah okay i will say when i watch uk television programs it i don't have as much of the opposite situation maybe it's just deeper references just fly right by me but i don't feel the need to google as much of the opposite situation. Maybe it's just deeper references just fly right by me,

but I don't feel the need to Google as much of like, oh, what's this about? Like, who's this person? Though then again, I am so unworldly that it was, when we had our last Irish guest on was when we learned what a Taoiseach was. I never heard of that before. We're ignorant Americans.

Have you guys ever seen Father Ted? I've seen a bit of it. Just a little bit. i think if you want that weird reverse culture thing that's a good show to watch i will say actually you know the closest i got was i watched the uh the i think it was it's northern england based reference but it's the phoenix knights show and i did need to have like a british person with me to just explain like well that's what pensioners are that's what this is like it uh because obviously we wouldn't have pensioners in america no safety nets for nobody man that's just everybody in free fall yeah the

only doll we have is bob and he's still alive knock on wood but i do like that they bring Homer back to current day with Safety Dance, a very, even in 1999, a very dated song that would not reflect modernity. So that's a good joke, too. I just all to set up just the hacky joke of men without jobs. Intentionally hacky, not like bad writing. It's a good, bad DJ joke. But now they've all been replaced by the DJ 3000. So yeah, you can can't there's no clear

channel yeah personality in american radio stations well so the homer wanting to warn people about coming things now watching it knowing that this is in 1999 and bad things are about to happen it is it had an extra level of gag he's so innocent homer doesn't know but yeah so homer hears that they're having a whole radio station party at pjo harrigans and so homer just leaves in the middle of work to go drink all day which i i'm a broken record on this in these seasons but like i'm not i know homer got drunk before the scully seasons but he gets blackout drunk like every other episode. They've, they increased his binge drinking so much in these seasons. And very,

very dark ways too. Oh yeah. So I, did you listen to the commentary on this one? Okay. So this is actually pulled from a super dark story from Mike Scully's past where, uh,

so in this episode, Homer is, uh, passed out in the middle of the street, hanging out of his car. And, uh, when Mike Scully was,

you know, dating some girl in the seventies, they had a a first date together and when he dropped her off at her place her dad was sprawled out out of his car on the front lawn in a very similar pose man oh my god real life stories of uh crippling alcoholism are happening right on the screen and well i mean homer well yeah when you take it objectively that hom Homer left work in the middle of the day to drink all day, that he then drove home and just fell out of his car in the middle of the street. Marge just treats it as nothing like that shows a real problem if this was reality. But but John, what do you think of the there's a little touch of Ireland in this episode. This was not in my reason for asking you on.

Yeah, like I think this is definitely how I'm used to seeing Ireland depicted in The Simpsons. All right. I remember the first time I saw an Irish reference and I think it was the itchy and scratchy. Watch out, itchy. He's Irish. And I remember being kind of appalled. Like, what do you mean from an american viewpoint especially for american writers of irish heritage it's just funny to them

making fun of people being racist against irish people just feels so ancient it it approaches the idea of comedy so yeah yeah no they get so many gags out of it sort of like whacking day being an excuse to beat up the irish yes yeah and a fine job you did it i actually do get a lot of pleasure from like when i go to an american con and someone will be like um and we have a member of the uk here with us and i'll be like do we oh sensitive sensitive subject i've been careful well to be honest with you i kind of milk it for my own enjoyment i don't really care that much uh we we don't understand the the uk brexit none of these things we don't it's too much no one no one does it's impossible uh i did i hope

uh i hope uh boris johnson does die to ditch soon as he's promised. I did see that. Is that one of his campaign vows? He said he'd do it if he couldn't get it by the due date, and he hasn't got it yet. Let the people vote on a ditch. But anyway. If you guys haven't, you should look up the Boris Johnson Please Leave My Town clip. Oh, I'll check that out.

Oh, nice. Oh, I have seen that. That was great. What was that? The Simpsons will be right back. Hope you're enjoying this week's podcast brought to you by omni touch and a big thank you to our guest john aka super eyepatch wolf be sure to check out his videos on youtube they're all tons of fun whether you like anime or simpsons you're definitely going to want to check those out and if you like this podcast you should check out patreon.com slash talking simpsons me and bob do this full-time thanks to the support of our wonderful patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons who for five dollars a

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so please consider heading up to the ten dollar level today but okay yeah so so we have some fun homer drunkenness uh and marge it's kind of sweet how marge just picks him up like let's get the gum out of your hair yeah we'll just walk you in here uh the the extra darkness of the joke too not only that homer drove home drunk and fell out of his car but also that like he's among the cars stopped in traffic he's a he's an ambulance so all right somebody might be dying yeah because of homer too they uh it's a mean it's a mean era of the simpsons it starts homer off at a very low place in this episode uh and as homer gets walked back into the house he asked what's your favorite radio station and it's one of the weirdest like edits in the

show it's like they kind of do like a fast fade into the next scene it's an editing style they never do on the show yeah it might have been better as just a quick cut to the next scene. It's an editing style they never do on the show. Yeah, it might have been better as just a quick cut to the next scene. Yeah. The fade was odd, but I did like the joke where he actually wants to know. I did like that, yeah. Now, John, did it offend your, you know, editing sensibilities to see that kind of just weird fade there? A little bit, but having done as much editing as I have, the only reason they'd use a fade like that is because they have to.

Like, I'm guessing they cut to the next scene and the two shots were too similar or something. And it had a weird, like jarring effect. And so they had, because like that's, that was very strange.

But it's Homer's nursing his hangover. The kids are ready for Saturday. Okay, Dad, we're ready. Hey, that's super. See you later. Dad, don't you remember? It's our special Saturday.

You agreed to spend one Saturday a month doing something with the kids. Oh. Oh, quit complaining. It's half the work of a divorced dad. Yeah, but it's twice as much as a deadbeat dad. Homer. They know I'm kidding. Hmm.

Okay, Bart, it's your turn to pick. Where are we headed? Bowling? Demolition Derby? PJ O'Harrigan's? Isn't that a funny name, huh? Huh? Hysterical, but I traded my turn to Lisa for her dessert.

No! We did a Lisa thing last month! And I'm glad we did. But now I think we should do something normal people would like. Why do you assume that I won't pick something fun? Normal people. Yeah, normal. Homer is barely hiding his contempt for his child there.

I mean, talk about dark jokes, too, when Homer says, they know I'm kidding. And the way they go like, oh, yeah. That feels like it reflects the childhoods of the writers of their dads thinking they're kidding and the kids remembering it much darker than they remember yeah i guess homer has really walked back daddy daughter day from season three oh yeah yeah i had always assumed that lasted a month yeah and he forgot about it i like homer's uh state changes there that he goes from thinking like well i'm not gonna do it at all all right fine but it's bart's turn and bart at least i understand him so we're gonna have some stupid fun and then he gets the extra punch that it's lisa's stuff

which he fully doesn't understand uh and just marge marge has to grumble so much in this scene to steer homer back on track, yeah. Over and over again. And just nudging him to do the bare basic minimum. Just the least, yeah. And then Bart even reminds him, a divorced father would have to do two weekends. It would be every other weekend. I wonder if that's still the case.

Every other weekend was a divorced day. I grew up amongst divorce everywhere, springing up all around me. So I knew when it was the divorced dad weekend, I meant extra fun for all of us. The dad would make it up to you, to the kid and his friends. Yeah. Pizza and nonstop, uh, scary and dirty movies all night. Though in this case, like it, I think I, I feel like it was a once a year thing. I went to stuff with my dad, just my dad, like me and him. I think we like went to an American football game and, or like basketball things that he wanted me

to get into as much more often. If stuff was done on the weekends, it was my mom taking me and my brother somewhere, usually just a movie or something. But a father, father Sunday's kind of, kind of rare. Uh, I think it's crazy homer even agreed to do this in the first place sounds like a drunken promise that homer made homer's statements too of just like what normal people like he's just he's he even when he's trying to be nice he's really just crapping on lisa tom which that again happens so much these seasons yeah it's a regular beat i think he really has that like kind of casual comments from a parent that will absolutely destroy you down pretty good.

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. They're even more mean in their thoughtlessness because Homer isn't trying to hurt her feelings. But just as especially as like things normal people would like, just full of judgment there. But then Homer's passive aggressive in those statements turns into active aggression in this next clip here. Oh, this looks very educational.

Well, this could be quite enlightening. Fine. How about... She didn't say it yet. Go ahead, sweetie. The book fair? Oh, no. I'm not falling for that again. If it doesn't have Siamese twins in a jar, it. The book fair? Oh, no! I'm not falling for that again.

If it doesn't have Siamese twins in a jar, it's not a fair. Oh, this is perfect! We're gonna go see Marmaduke? No, the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibit. It encapsulates America and makes history come alive! What, and Marmaduke doesn't? Sorry, Dad, my mind is made up. This is all your fault for trading away your turn.

Just for that, no dessert tonight. Trading my next turn for your dessert, deal. Don't! Yeah, Marmaduke's always a good punchline. Good old Marmaduke. Is that one that carried over to your neck of the woods? No, I was just about to ask, what is Marmaduke? Oh, my goodness.

You're missing out on some of the worst comics. Sit back, get ready for an hour. Well, yeah, so they're one panel comic strips, actually kind of like Andy Cap will be referenced later. You should pitch it like, what if a dog was big? Yes, a dog is too big to do things, but he doesn't understand that. That dog's walking you.

That's the premise of Marmaduke. That's a pretty exciting premise to me. Now imagine that joke went on for 50 years once a day and they never stopped. I believe what Mort Walker, no, not Mort Walker. That's Beetle Bailey. The creator of Marmaduke is Satan. I think there's still new Marmadukes being made, even though the creator passed away. I see it got a film release in 2010 and it has a nine percent

on rotten tomatoes it's lucky to have even that there was a movie yeah so it's had like four different authors over the past uh 60 plus years wow so uh now it's paul anderson uh 2015 to present okay he's so he's not the artist they put in as a character in Rick and Morty no okay but apparently it looks like he is the uh the descendant of the original creator Brad Anderson so that's all it always works like Beatle Bailey will live forever because the the Walker family will like uh multiply same like family circus yeah see these are all these comic strips that are too bad to be put in international newspapers but he really really looks like scooby-doo like to a shocking degree i i do think he predates scooby by like 15 years yeah well was it owen wilson that's him in the

marmaduke movie i think so yeah oh boy i think he looks even more freakish than the garfield cgi creature even yeah so but marmaduke is you know if you were a kid reading the comic strip page in your local american newspaper i would read every single comic but in order in a very specific order of like tiered list and if i was so bored i was like i guess i'll read marmaduke i remember like marmaduke was on a different page next to the junior jumble just because of the way it fit in the layout it was never on the comics page proper i was like i guess this will fit next to a junior jumble or two so uh it was weirdly placed so i would i would scan it real quick just like oh yeah he's in trouble again. Whatever. Making a mess. That postman got knocked over.

So yeah, Homer and Homer being a fan of Marmaduke says so much about Homer. And Andy Kapp is referenced later. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Which that was my first knowledge of like the pub scene of England, I suppose. But the Smithsonian though, has anybody been to the Smithsonian here? I have.

I have, too. Guessing no on you. No. You don't have one? No, I mean, if you visit Washington, D.C., it would be high on your list of places to go. It's a bunch of buildings, though, right? Yeah, there's like five Smithsonian's.

I will admit, I haven't been to the Smithsonian in 18 years. Like, that's when I last was there i it's been about 12 years for me and i never went to a touring thing though which they do that as well like they take some stuff from the smithsonian and then tour tour it all around the united states to take it to different museums that's also like there's a similar thing with that when i was a little kid of king tut's uh stuff you know stolen from egypt yeah the british people were taking it all around america so what you're saying is you're cursed unfortunately we weren't able to make it okay so i'm not i have not gotten king tut's curse but uh yeah the when i went to the smithsonian it was after i'd seen this episode so i was looking

for fonzie's jacket and all the other stuff they see i think i think the real thing that's there is archie bunker's chair though right i think they're both there okay but what i did see when i was there uh was star wars memorabilia oh good and actually so i had the inverse of homer and lisa's experience here where lisa you know is like why are you looking at all these stupid pop culture products? We have American history here. Look at this. When we were there, my dad was the one going like, why are you looking at Star Wars props? The Declaration of Independence is here. But I had never seen these Star Wars props in person. They had the full Crimson Guard outfit right there. So you're like in the Planet Hollywood exhibit. Pretty much. Yes. Yeah. And my dad, my dad doesn't like many things I like, but he really hates Star

Wars. And so it, I guess it was kind of like the situation in this episode of my dad suffering through a very celebratory of George Lucas documentary that was airing there at the Smithsonian. And he had to just sit through it. I was going to say, try explaining to your dad that you're an anime YouTuber, but then you do run a Simpsons podcast and I don't think it's that different a conversation. Similar

conversations, yeah. With any of my interests, my parents' philosophy has been, he knows what he's doing. They never interfered or been interested, so it's better that they don't know i remember my mom said to my dad once listen he never listens to us he just does his own thing so just don't even bother this time and since then they've just been like okay you seem to have some idea what you're doing with your life that's uh that's the best i can get out

of my parents too i well i will say the i i feel your pain there too john i think bob and me both do of like that my parents at least watch the simpsons and know what that is yeah we watch it together for like the first five or six years maybe a little bit longer than that but when my parents like saw the when i asked for a neon genesis evangelion wall scroll for a birthday it made absolutely no sense to them and it was in it is an inexplicable show so i was kind of in a corner there one time for christmas i asked for like the neon genesis evangelion box set and whatever happens things got so lost in translation i ended up with ray charles 50 years of genius box set wow i'm trying to make sense of how that would even uh

mistranslate yeah that was really something wow well i mean hey that's good music too wow that's uh that's what they said they were like oh i'm sorry it's the wrong but ray charles is very talented and i'm like i'm sure he is does he have access to a robot he doesn't have existential dread about robots I mean he goes through his own problems sure but no robots I'm now just trying to play the deductive reasoning of figuring out how it got to there I think it was compounded by it was one of the first things they ever ordered off amazon as well so i think there was a lot in hindsight i was

expecting a lot i was a pretty like fastidious kid uh so when i had like lists for christmas or birthday i'd be like here's where you buy it here's how you say it here's how much it should cost when i was a teenager and couldn't drive my mom went off and pick up games i had pre-ordered at the video game store because it was right by where she worked i was like here's how much it should cost when i was a teenager and couldn't drive my mom went off and pick up games i had pre-ordered at the video game store because it was right by where she worked i was like here's how you say pokemon here's how here's what this is here's what the strategy guide looks like i had to like basically brief her before work she very nicely picked up a lot of things for me it's the same sometimes even like i'd be like could you pick me up a video game magazine and she'd be on the store being like, which one do you want? And I'd be like, well, what's on the cover?

And I'd make, uh, yeah. She's asked the man. Yeah. Very, you know, this episode is all about remembering,

uh, the things our parents did for us. That's, but yeah, this, this became weirdly thematically relevant. Uh, but as they arrive at the Smithsonian thing,

we get a quick joke that is like more real than ever about corporations buying up things. Hey, how come the Smithsonian needs to be sponsored by a cell phone company? I can answer that. Uncle Sam needs to spend our tax dollars on the essentials. Anti-tobacco programs, pro-tobacco programs, killing wild donkeys, and Israel. Good old government. Yeah, but corporate sponsorship cheapens our nation's treasures. Actually,

they're OmniTouch's treasures now. We bought them during the last budget crisis. They are such a fan of the Lindsay Nagel-style character in these years. Oh, yeah. It's a real go-to for humor.

This is... Yeah, totally. This is maybe the most magically powered one though because she could appear from behind anything i i love that bit where it's just like she's not even a human she's just this weird corporate entity she just there to explain whatever the corporation needs to like that and yeah like that they could only imagine how powerful cell phone companies would be by now. Like, Lisa's anger would be tenfold these days.

I did enjoy all of her euphemisms in this episode. It reminded me of the Fleeta Peeta lady. It's like, they're called Crunch Patties. God, all of her, you know, newspeak kind of words in this are so funny. It's called caring. Caring. Communication, unity, community. you know uh new speak kind of words in this are so funny it's called caring caring communication unity community and it couldn't be more real now like this is the this is the way woke brands talk to people like it's all it's all so true i mean that if you guys saw that surprise mechanic story about loot boxes that is just that except it wasn't a joke and it happened in parliament

oh god that's uh man it sounds pretty fucked up over there yeah i don't and life's a nightmare now it really is so i looked into this on the wikipedia just to be sure i think this is the final appearance of a lindsey nagel that is not true Lindsay Nagel because interesting. That's cool. The, the full design of her with the blonde hair and the outfits and all the things she normally has, that will be in the May 9th episode.

Uh, the Menta episode, they say. Oh, okay. Yeah. That one is fully the Lindsay Nagel that we see like, so,

but I mean, this character has glasses and a different hairstyle we've seen a more basically brunette lindsey nagel in episodes like the poochie episode or kids news but this is like this is like her cousin from out of town yeah and named after sue nagel who was an agent at the time yeah and uh she would later be going to become an hbo president right and she was the one who gave game of thrones a chance when no one else wanted to and also uh she was married to future simpsons writer dana gould yes yeah uh now divorced uh he's got a he's got a young betty page style girlfriend now it's all working out for him he does okay that sounds

about right yeah good hey good for good for him he's everybody's happy that's good but yeah this uh so say goodbye to proto nagel we'll soon have real nagel uh but so they take uh they take a walk through the smithsonian they see all the things that are in the regular smithsonian which i think you know scolds like lisa can be like that's not history but i think if they're reflecting what's popular on television in the last like 70 years that is American culture more so than like some politician or soldier or whatever. It's people, it's fictional people on TV. I think, I think it's the smart thing to do though. I mean, where does it end? Like, will there be like costumes from Twilight in there? Yeah, honestly there could have been. When we're 90, we'll be cutting the ribbon for the podcasting museum.

Oh, boy. I can only hope. No, I mean, John, you're going to be in the YouTuber Hall of Fame when they buy part of the Smithsonian. YouTube does. Oh, God. I don't know that that's a hall I want to see or be associated with. Or we can all just tell Patreon buys a Smithsonian and put us in there. We'll be in shrine there.

One of our corporate overlords will. Sorry. Hey, this will cheer us up. Homer destroys the Bill of Rights after sitting in Archie Bunker's chair. You just licked off the part that forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Beautiful. Really? That much? It's going to cost $10,000 to repair that Beautiful. Really? That much?

It's going to cost $10,000 to repair that document. What? Of course, OmniTouch understands that real money doesn't grow on trees. Not these days. Finally, a company that understands my needs. We sure do. It's called caring. So we're even then? Not by a long shot. But I have a solution

that'll work out for both of us. Especially you. I don't want a cellular transmitter sticking out of my roof. We prefer to think of them as keep-in-touch towers. It's called caring, Marge. Plus, you've increased Springfield's roaming capabilities 64%. You gotta admit, Marge, that's a lot more roaming. Mmm, I guess. 64% You got it Mid-March That's a lot more roaming Oh my gosh It's a very like

Dystopian corporate thing That they They basically take Ownership of the word Caring Yes And Homer is just It's called

Caring Marge I love that line Where it's like You licked off the part That says cruel Unusual punishment And he just goes Ha ha

Beautiful Like I just think That's such a Nicely delivered little line it's legal throughout all of america because the uh the ink disappeared i love i love that the guy has uh the brass knuckles just waiting like oh yeah here we go yeah like he's he's been waiting for someone to lick off that line there's a very fun pedantic commentary moment where they they bring up that homer licks it off shouldn't the bill of right stuff that's on his tongue be reversed yeah he licked it off i guess the joke i guess what the

explanation was it'd be too hard to read the gags yeah 100 i love though that on the commentary matt selman can hear them getting back into the argument they had 20 or 15 years earlier when they recorded it and he's just like stop stop stop let's not talk about it uh i guess though yes it's but it's not correct that's uh i gotta play the boring jingle now it's not technically correct terms gentlemen are we talking about redistricting or are we talking about reapportionment because oh well i can't win them all i like that our jingle has no music. It would make it too exciting. No, it has to be as flat as possible.

And Homer has to sound disappointed at the end of it. Also, you know, it's funny they're connecting Archie Bunker's chair and a piece of American history because the creator of All in the Family and all those other shows, Norman Lear, he actually owns a copy from 1776 of the Declaration of Independence. Yeah, that's right. There were several copies of it. Yes, yes. So, I mean, it's not the real one, but if it was a copy made in 1776, it's as close

to being able to buy the real one as you possibly can get. He paid $9 million for it in 2000, which that's gotta be worth a lot more now. It's got some founding father's filth on it. Probably held by one of their slaves. But yeah, so they made this joke about connecting Bill of Rights and All in the Family a year before Norman Lear buys the Declaration of Independence. But yeah, Homer just falls into the corporate

speak so easily he's just like hey i admit that's more roaming i feel it's i feel like it's really sad how i guess easily marriage just caves in and it's just like yeah i guess like this is the woman who grew furious over a bowling ball a couple of seasons ago and now her house has been turned into a corporate nightmare yeah she's been very worn down by this point yeah uh she just has to accept these things that homer clearly agreed to without marge even being asked to maybe she should see it from the omni touches corporation's point of view uh she finally does and just like i guess you're right like one homer is such a good consumer that the second he's told like finally a company that understands my needs he believes anything omni tells him i mean these terms like roaming we didn't have a cell phone in 1999 yet i think i

think my parents had them at this point uh maybe like by like 96 they had there was at least one cell phone floating around in our family okay my dad worked for a company that would eventually i think is all tell still around i don't think it is after all the lawsuits no the famous gilbert fiasco oh hey but my dad did work for them uh and by the i maybe a little after this episode we got a cell phone because he was working for them but uh they were all getting prepared for y2k which is just uh what 10 months away in our simpsons timeline but uh but yeah that was i think when we finally got a cell phone uh then homer is getting all comfortable on his or on the couch

we get a reference to handicap which they'd already done there oh handicap you wife beating drunk yeah and he's in the classic cap uh couch pose back to the camera which uh does look comfortable yeah i did i wanted to curl up on my couch right there it's like a drunk fetal position uh well yeah and in america like i guess handicap comics i i bet you can probably still find it published in things but more famous for the hot fries yeah sorry didn't steal your fire i think that's pretty much it. Like just, but he's,

he's the mascot of like the cheapest type of potato snack you can get in America. Just like, Oh, it's a hot fries, just like thin strips of potato with tons of seasoning on it. Do you have the handicap hot fries over there, John?

I'm curious. No, I don't think we do. They were really like the in-demand item in our high school vending machines like they would always go out the first they're always be the first like sold out item in the machines i didn't even know that any cap was like a british creation until years later like it just was presented in american newspapers is just like it's just it's a comic strip like i think i don't know if they rewrote words in it or anything. I would think they would.

I think, I think they left it in like the slang. Oh, okay. We're like putting in like apostrophes to abbreviate things and using just like the, I guess, whatever sort of region he was in their slang. I don't think they localized it. If they mentioned spotted dick, we'd all be confused. It's funny over there too. But yes, Homer is very thoughtlessly

destroying their home and Lisa learns that she is the greatest victim of them all here just pretend it's a tree honey or as we say at Omni Touch a progress tree yeah well I hope it doesn't hum too loud because I have a ton of homework to do and if I don't finish it, I... My room!

What? I heard a yell. Did you touch a wire? What happened to my room? Nothing. They just needed a place to put all the electronic gizmos and I know how much you like that science-y stuff. So I just... You gave away my room? Come on, Lisa. Try and see this from the

Omni-Touch Corporation's point of view. Your father's right, Lisa. Try and see this from the OmniTouch Corporation's point of view. Your father's right, Lisa. Cellular services about communication and unity. Community. Community. Oh. He hardly has to sigh a lot this episode. Yeah.

Lisa's in real distress. I really like the voice performance there. I think she went when she's like you gave away my room she sounds so upset like it's genuinely kind of sad yeah it's like it's funny but also like Homer is so stupid to this point he's putting this giant like corporation ahead of his daughter and it's like it's kind of awful yeah the the that's something they have to make Homer so much more stupid for these because the only other way it works is if homer is like intentionally cruel i think that's worse i think

what they're trying to do is uh like he's been his mind has been clouded by corporate propaganda and that's why they're making homer like they're giving him the excuse to be this cruel because he's just parroting all of these corporate slogans and the intention of the corporation is good in his opinion so i think that is giving him permission to be this cruel to lisa man it's so mean like it's just to give away her room like your room is all you have as a little kid like it's it did all her stuff get destroyed did it get put into storage i say uh take over maggie's room and move maggie to the rumpus room that exists outside of space and time i never thought you're right just destroy she's a baby just get it is it is pretty uh weird that she has her own room that baby come on yeah

i i feel like you're asking for trouble leaving a baby all by itself in the room there i don't know i i am not a parent so who knows but yeah like uh yeah the acting by yardley yardley does a lot of great acting in this one and that reaction from her is like you gave away my room like she's just beyond incredulous with her she's like bewildered and furious at the same time and that's also when it's the last appearance of not lindsey nagel and they all they had like almost like kind of a creepy layer. Like she like sidles out behind that turning rod. Yeah. Yeah. She has a real like a nightmare appearance. And I mean, also to adding that to their house, they're all getting cancer, right? Like you can't,

you shouldn't live under a cell phone. Can't be that close. No, but I mean, that's the ridiculousness of it i think i will say i've learned to care less about these things but i do think this episode ruffled my feathers a bit in 1999 because i knew it would just be reset they'd pretend they never had it like lisa would get her room back the next episode and it it's just such an extreme change it it shows that things don't matter in this uh new world yeah yeah i think it's it's like they're constantly edging towards that point and this is one of them where it was like whoa seriously i i when they come back from the commercial break marge does the closest you'll have to an excuse

where she's like it's just until your father pays back for destroying a national treasure and so the explanation seems to be once they pay back the 10 000 to omni touch then omni touch would remove it but how can they possibly remove a cell phone tower from their house that easily but uh yeah i think you're pretty much though there is a big march subplot you're basically supposed to forget there's a cell phone tower on the simpsons house yeah yeah hom Homer paid it off. It's fine. It went away. There are bigger cheats in the series, even in like early years.

This is a big cheat though. It's pretty big. And also, they did an animation technique. I don't think they normally do. I can't remember another time. But it's like when they put shadow lines around them, they're not blue. They're usually black or darker tones so it's like yellow orange and blue on the characters like shadowing over alisa telling her about community

it's it's i liked that a lot and i liked when then like she opened the door and there was those like blue highlights on her i thought that was really cool um and i think a lot of earlier simpsons episodes did really interesting stuff with the lighting and it was kind of cool to see an echo of that yeah the colors were an interesting choice it makes the room even more creepy and totally like aggressive yeah and that's uh not to bag on current day Simpsons shows but I think that's the kind of stuff they lose because a lot of the time it feels like backgrounds are just taken from pre-established assets so like well we already drew this room or let's let's just follow that rule they do do like the odd experimental section but it's like if they're doing it it's like that's the gimmick this section as opposed to just having like interesting art

direction throughout yeah it's it's much more isolated those moments instead of and definitely come with like a clear effort by one artist on the team of like no why don't we do this let's let's let's go let's be out there in this scene uh but yeah so so we come back from the commercial lisa is still incredulous and when they slam the door on a room i think that's them saying to the audience to like just forget what's in there we're not going to see this over don't worry about it but yes lisa has lost everything and homer then somehow makes things worse lisa what's your favorite movie until you taped over it the little mermaid that's right the odd couple so meet your comically mismatched roommate, Bart Simpson! I'm gonna make your life a living hell.

Dad! Okay, if you're going to live in my room, you're going to obey my rules. One, I am Bart, thy god. If I am out, the Krusty doll is thy god. If the doll's with me, you will worship the nightlight. Should the nightlight be unable to fulfill its duties... Shut up. You shut up. This is not going to work.

No, you shut up. Lots of sighing from the series. I love Bart thinking that Lisa is still in the shut up argument that he gets like, no, you shut up. I love Homer singing, like nearly willfully just suppressing the situation so he doesn't have to think about it. And he's continuing the song down the hallway. Singing the song to himself made him forget whatever else he was saying. And again, that's one of these things

where you have to either write Homer as so stupid to be thoughtless because otherwise he's just cruel. Like he should be listening to Lisa say all these things, but he's just been reminded of the odd couple and he's like lost in a fugue state almost yeah totally uh it's not my favorite animation in the episode is

when he's bent down to be face to face with lisa but he's like moving his hips at the same time to sing the song uh and that's uh yeah the odd couple, both for the movie and the sitcom of the 70s as well. I looked it up. It was written by Neil Hefty, who wrote the Batman theme. Okay. A classic Batman theme. Both good themes. Iconic theme songwriter of the 60s there.

I do think, you know, it almost, it might be correct for an eight-year-old, your average eight-year-old, but I think Lisa should have a different movie than Little mermaid be your favorite movie i don't know that that feels too doesn't feel mature enough yeah i always found that like a little odd sometimes when like they'll go really hard on lisa being an eight-year-old girl but then like everything else about her is so much more mature like i think she'd be more into like the say winona rider version of little women at that point or maybe the 90s version of Pride and Prejudice something like like a little smarter I think it was what uh but like Mike Scully channeling what his daughters were into in the 90s yeah yeah I guess like the fact that it is

Little Mermaid does make her come across like more innocent in that segment which is like then you're nearly playing on like the absurd cruelty of Homer is like the joke. I guess it does make the cruelty even worse. Yeah, yeah. That also Homer taped over it too. So Lisa, you know what, that you go by it so fast, but the references that Lisa is being so ignored by Homer, she can't even watch her favorite movie anymore because Homer taped over it. And he doesn't even remember he did that.

As somebody who got frustrated as a kid by parents not listening to them, this middle act here of her just being so fully ignored by Homer at every turn, it's frustrating for sure. And anybody share rooms with their siblings? Absolutely not. I don't have any. Lucky. So lucky.

Lucky. I have a brother three years younger than me. When he was born, we had to share a room. And I think until I was about five and he was two, that's maybe when we got separate rooms. But it was a long time. It felt like a long time when I was a kid. Well, my little brother, though, we didn't have fights like that.

It was just more that he had bad ear infections as a little baby. So it drove me crazy. And obviously, as a four-year-old, you don't have any empathy for your little brother's ear infections. You're mad. I was already mad that no one was paying attention to me anymore. And now the screaming baby all the time. It should have infected your ears.

It's that easy. I tried. It didn't work. I have two healthy of ears but i was very happy to by seven i had my own room and my own tv which was pretty sweet but we're in a generation me too yeah no having your own tv man but i i remember watching clarissa explains it all marathon the first day i got my tv right into then a marathon of pro wrestling i get used to this uh but but at age eight and ten having to share a room with my with my brother

would be a hell world oh yeah i already did not get along with my sister so uh that would never happen no my parents are too smart but yeah so then the b plot kind of comes out of nowhere here and they they have maybe two minutes to give it. It's a very underserved B plot. Yeah. There's a cut joke from this B plot too. Oh, right.

Yeah. It's Otto trying to buy drugs from snake and he messes up the lingo. And, uh, that was a cute joke. It's all right. Yeah. Oh,

actually the commentary to this ad, it had a moment. I forgot what episode the commentary mentioned it, but that this episode is another with the very long intros. They do the full intro on it. Yeah. And Mike Scully mentions on the commentary, his reasoning for it was he really hated that

syndication was making all these cuts to episodes. So he's like, well, if I just give a long intro, they can cut the intro to like the 10 second version in syndication and they won't cut out any of my jokes and then he finds out on the commentary they're like nah they just keep the long intro syndication version and don't and they still cut you it was he meant well it was a good idea yeah yeah but now i understand why he uh we have the long opening for every one of his episodes it's very distracting to see the full season two opening in season 10 but but he was only doing it to prevent the things that were driving me crazy every cut in syndication it's why i'd never watched

syndication if i could i'd just put in my tapes thankfully now it doesn't matter if you pledge your loyalty to disney you'll be fine but yes the the b plot comes in it was it's one of the like the last remaining things for the bill and josh years that they never found a thing for in season seven or eight that scully's using now because like uh bill oakley and josh weinstein apparently actually did this of using baby monitors to listen to people's calls over airwaves like which sounds illegal but i i had a friend who did the same thing she had a walkie talkie and sometimes we'd be in a room and she'd just be like oh someone's on and all it was ever was like I think two guys who were

in some kind of moving business but we were fascinated oh yeah like one of my sister's bad boyfriends of several I had a police scanner I would bring it over occasionally and I would listen to just like the most boring conversations from neighbors but i could hear them and that was the point that was what made it exciting like talking about recipes and uh quilting and all that boring crap yeah you never know what you're gonna hear you might marge gets the most exciting phone calls in this one let's see marge make uh quite a discovery hello mother see more you were supposed to call me three minutes discovery Sorry mother I was driving through a tunnel and my cell phone wouldn't work I don't want you driving through tunnels. You know what that symbolizes Cell phone calls over the baby monitor

Spicy oh, that's not the point. We should report this to an Omni touch care rep people's privacy HOMER, WE'RE PICKING UP CELL PHONE CALLS OVER THE BABY MONITOR. WOO, ANYTHING SPICY? THAT'S NOT THE POINT. WE SHOULD REPORT THIS TO AN OMNI-TOUCH CARE APP. PEOPLE'S PRIVACY IS AT STAKE. GREAT. I'M GONNA EAT MAYONNAISE. It's funny how the mayonnaise thing does come back. Yeah, at first I was like, it felt like just an easy food monster Homer joke,

but there's like three jokes in a row about the mayonnaise. So they, they actually earn it. I think it's not just a simple gross out thing. I really love the line. You know what that symbolizes? Agnes is one of my favorite characters. And whenever like her, like just obscene bitterness comes to the surface, it always makes me laugh. Yeah. And this is some of her meanest things. So now he has like a 90 minute longer commute. Yeah. Or else I think that's, you know what?

Digging even deeper. I think that's why she let him have a cell phone so she could call and know he's not driving through a tunnel. She also wants him so like unsexual that he can't even metaphorically. And I also like we get a little bongo cameo there to the the bunny toy that Maggie's got. Oh, you're right. Okay. Yeah.

I think they drew a very Los Angeles tunnel there that Skinner drove through. It definitely reminded me of our trips to the L.A. area. But Homer just, that's one of those moments where Marge just has to throw up her hands where Homer just goes like, great, I'm going to go eat some mayonnaise. Like with his hand, just by hand. Yeah, that's his private mayonnaise jar, I think.

It's not spreading mayonnaise. Well, he's not sure whose mayonnaise that is. Oh, true. Maybe he thought he grabbed the wrong jar. We head back up to the room. Bart is squeaking his chair. It makes me think one of the writers in the writer's room would just do that and drive other people crazy.

And Homer enters the scene with an empty jar of mayonnaise. He just tosses on the bed, which is a pretty great continuation of the mayonnaise thing. Bart doesn't even seem to mind that it got thrown in his bed. But then Bart gets a whole new thing to make noise with. Bart, stop squaking your chair. If you've got to do something, click this pen. No! Hey, that looks like fun.

Race ya. Yeah, run. Lisa, you play winner. Come on, Bart. I'm waiting on you. Oh, honey, you missed a great race. Bart was winning, but then he said, this is stupid, and he stopped, and I won.

Dad, I am trying to do my homework. Hey, you're mad at me. That wasn't your mayonnaise, was it? Dad, why did you have to take away my room? Maybe you'd feel better if we watched some TV together. I just want to study. That's no fun. It is to me.

No, it's not. Dad! Oh, here's something you'll like when animals attack magicians. Pick a card. Any... That's awful. Awful entertaining. my stomach hurts oh poor lisa that i thought that pen clicking gag was in lisa the simpson for a minute i misremembered it as being in love it seems like a very dumb thing to witness yeah oh but the click that homer creates it into a race he's like i'm gaining on

you like i like that bart thought it was stupid first. Like, that's how childishly they're writing Homer at this point. I really love the pick a car. Like that. And even just the idea of the show when animals attack magicians. It's like it's such it's such a great, absurdist Simpsons humor. We are in the when blanks blank and world's blankiest blanks era of fox so they're really digging into the uh those sort of shows it's it's bringing together

two of fox's biggest hits of those times it was when animals attack plus secrets reveal yeah that's true so it's uh that magician is ned fl. Just hearing it in sound there. He tore his mask off and his face. But it's funny to hear Ned, of all people, get attacked. But yeah, I like the... It feels like some Harry Shearer improv of just like, pick another card. That was good. But man, Homer is so bad here. Yeah.

Man, it just makes me sad. I also, I didn't clip the line. But when Lisa says, why didn't you give them your room? He's like, I thought never occurred to me. Yeah, yeah. I just I guess they have to say, well, he just he's being thoughtless, but not like intentionally cruel. His problem is his thoughtlessness.

There's a lack of empathy, too. Yeah. Like this scene here, Homer. Homer thinks he's doing a great thing for lisa he's like i know what's fun this must be fun for you too so let's do a thing that's fun he can't understand lisa at all and that that's a good like issue for them to explore in this episode but you just feel so bad for lisa and she's especially when she's like physically ill yeah at all it's so sad it's all she wants to do is her homework and again great acting from yardley where she's like like she's so frustrated

it's it's great acting then we get one of these jokes it's not so good 20 years later of marge listening in on a phone call it's referencing the eddie murphy right? Yeah. Yeah. In case you weren't aware of this, in 1997, Eddie Murphy was caught in his car picking up a sex worker who is also trans as well, a trans sex worker. This often happens, unfortunately, in these things. Eddie Murphy as the customer was not arrested but was you know part of the report the sex worker who was arrested they got publicized and then it was a huge story that eddie murphy had picked up a trans prostitute but said in a much uh less woke terminology than i'm it was basically like i guess the term was like cross-dresser like a transvestite that's what i mean they didn't know what language to use in 1997 but this person was

already dead by the time they made this episode though yeah which that's one of those eerie things about it yeah the person is uh shalimar sayuli i i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly but she had some fame and worked more in the adult arts after getting the publicity of being arrested for this. But then in a very weird accident of accidentally locking herself outside of her apartment and trying to get to an open window and falling five stories and dying. It's just very odd, I'll say. But yeah, so she had passed away by this point but that's uh it's uh it's just a bummer kind of joke now that obviously the writers didn't mean it that way then and i think we've all i i think we i've definitely in the last 20

years i've learned a lot about trans people and would not and wouldn't make that joke now either yeah totally yeah the lines then of like at least i thought she was a chick those kind of things like i will say there were many worse comedies in 1999 making much crueler jokes than simpsons crusty was the character they project every sleazy hollywood story on too so it makes sense he'd be the character for that anyway yes crusty they're putting that bit of hollywood babylon onto crusty for this joke here but uh but a but a clown in a towel hitchhiking home is a funny through the desert through the desert yeah yeah that is funny seemingly the same

desert that uh that homer and ned were left in in just a few episodes earlier as my continuity nerd thumbs up they also had his cattle skull birth mark the superfluous nipple and his yeah i don't even look for those anymore because i just assume they're there ma i also like that marge is from all the stuff she's learned she just writes like bear quimby interns uh burns greedy greedy yeah all these surface level yeah i actually i actually missed that one that's really good that's uh that's the best gag in that sequence there and so uh lisa tells march he's got a tummy that hurts and so uh instead of changing the maggie's diaper homer then takes lisa to the doctor where that's hibbert tells her it's from stress it's stress related and that i you know i

wonder if the writers were suffering from this at the time or were putting in their own stress-related injuries into the script. They should learn to chuckle mindlessly. I just did it. I like that gag. It at least lets you know that Hibbert, now, you know, he laughs all the time because otherwise he'd have a heart attack or he'd just be stressed. Yeah, like I thought that was a kind of fun spin on that character. And like at this point, like the Dr. Hibbert laugh is so established. I think it was kind of interesting they sort of played with it there. And this also in Homer suggests taking her to a demolition derby,

which will pay off in the end of the episode. So that's good plotting there too. But then after turning down the chuckling, Lisa is given another option, which she seems to like. Well, I could prescribe some harsh antacids, but I think Lisa would benefit more from some herbal teas or aromatherapy. Yeah, you know, some of that all natural stuff is really very well. Oh, no, you don't.

Screw that touchy queery crap. We'll take the harsh antacids. Nothing's too good for my little girl. I sure settled his hash. We'll take the harsh antacids. Nothing's too good for my little girl. I sure settled his hash. Imagine that quack thinking he'd try one of those crazy new age cures. They're not all crazy, Dad.

Sure they are, honey. You know, just because you say something is crazy doesn't make it so. And just because you think museums are boring and demolition derbies are fun doesn't make that true either. I'm sorry, Lisa. Oh, it's not your fault. I know we love each other, Dad, but we're two very different people.

And much as I hate to say it, as time goes on, we'll probably just drift further and further apart. Oh, Lisa, honey, I won't ever let that happen. Good act break of him drifting further apart as he goes backwards down the escalator. Though just listening to it now, I was shaking my head of like, when Lisa says, that's not your fault. Like, but it is his fault.

Yeah, no, it totally is his fault. Indisputably his fault. This episode does fall too much on Homer's side just because of the men writing it, I think. I think, yeah. Yeah, it really is his fault this this episode does fall too much uh on homer's side just because of uh the men writing it i think yeah yeah i uh yeah it really is his fault yeah i i mean that's part of the lopsidedness of this story too that like lisa lisa for the last like six minutes of the show has been just crying out for homer to listen to her and just expressing her feelings and homer simply can't hear it and then the one time lisa reacts to homer and yells at him and hurts his feelings she instantly goes like i'm

sorry like it's just such the sad music happens when lisa is mean once yeah not like the eight times previously homer was mean yeah it's not fair that they treat it as equal uh well not equal they don't fully treat it like that but it is like hey mistakes were made on both sides here huh like let's let's i i don't like that so much homer i guess in a way homer will pay physical penance for what he does yeah i guess so yeah though you know if you look think about it causationally if lisa hadn't picked the smithsonian none of this would have happened in the first place. That's true. She should have realized Homer would have had some hijinks there and destroyed something.

She's at fault. He's a tornado, human tornado. Yeah, he can't be blamed. I will say also, it's weirder now hearing Homer say, touchy-queery crap. Yeah, I got a bit of a shock when they said that line. I was like, whoa, okay i i guess it was this was a while ago yeah i mean i think even then it was kind of a surprise to hear yeah it's a little meaner than airy fairy which is a term he could have used which is also offensive but yeah hearing

query in there just kind of like whoa i you know i think it was one of those uh fun simpsons turns on sayings where you expect him to say touchy feely crap yeah but that's too obvious like that if it's what the audience is expecting that he can't say feely so what does he say instead he says query just to make it even worse uh and again great shot layout one of my favorite shots in the episode is when lisa is going like you know there's actually some good stuff and homer when he interrupts her his hand also just covers her face you're right but i also this is the one time i with homer like yes use medicine to help your medical problem don't use herbal teas or aroma therapy actually use medicine for your medical problem

he's not thinking of it in those terms but i think he's right yeah i think now i probably would just say like just give me those harsh antacids i'll take those like i i guess it is kind of extreme for lisa to take all those antacids at her age i mean an eight-year-old developing an ulcer that would be like a national news story yeah it's more like she needs a lifestyle change but i think actual medicine would be better for her i guess they need hibbert to direct them to the new age stuff because i it's been firmly established in this episode that if lisa was the one to suggest it wouldn't have even happened anyway so yeah i mean yeah let's talk about this new age stuff here i this is definitely at the time in 1999 like south park was making a lot of jokes about this too like in general

uh the people who made comedy shows did not think very well of new age medicine or any of the crystals and everything or vegetarians because if you're a vegetarian uh where i grew up if you went to a vegetarian grocery store like one of these stores would always be attached to it and it's stunk of incense so bad i would rarely go into them so uh yeah i i do have some experience yeah i understand it's funny because like the next scene there's actually a scene in the most recent season there's an episode of the most recent season 30 which is very similar where marge like buys a new age store i think it's like a crystal store oh yeah i i haven't seen that one i think i saw like a picture from it that i wow i didn't realize that happened yeah new ageness has only become more mainstream

since then especially like the what they're making fun of here was only like two blocks of real estate in LA. And you'd maybe see, get like one. I knew of maybe one store like that in my suburban area that I'd have to drive like 30 miles to go to with my vegetarian friend for their needs. And definitely too, I was, I had the Homer reaction to of like, hey, I'm accepting of other lifestyles and whatever, but this is stupid. Boo. But I think I have gotten more open-minded to it now though not that i use it because it's dumb uh query no but i i do think there is stuff worth making fun of in it to some degree of just i especially

think like a blonde lady saying namaste yeah that is worth making fun of yeah all the appropriation of uh you know other cultures medicines no one no one will ever make me believe crystals are real yeah that in astrology i'm sorry i don't care whatever is a retrograde it's not affecting me uh yeah they prove us wrong i'm a tourist you can't change me oh that was really funny thank Thank you. So they head over to Karma-ceuticals, and Homer, it's basically like a comedy bit where Homer just riffs on things in the store for a little bit. Like a toothbrush.

That's pretty great, yeah. And Homer has the reaction you'd expect for being in a New Age store. Dream catcher, give me a break. I just wish you could keep an open mind about other cultures. Other cultures are fine. I'm just saying I can get along in life without a toothbrush.

Namaste. And ooga booga to you too. May I tell you about our white light specials? Absolutely not. My little girl's tummy hurts. Do you have anything to stop her complaining? Dad. Here, try this wheatgrass juice. Well, your tongue works.

Let's try some oil of Lorenzo and what's keeping Joan Rivers alive? Fetal grindings. But I have a better idea. Oh no, no freezing. No, Mr. Simpson. This is a sensory deprivation tank it blocks out all the external distractions that bombard our souls can you pee in it i'll take two hours me too so yeah i lived in santa fe for a summer and it's mostly these stores but the women running them uh they're all white but they're like 40 years older they hate all young people there i mean they've probably seen many young people enter and judge them constantly so rightfully so yeah i could see them being on edge for sure and uh lots of selling of dream catchers and turquoise

especially incense yeah pictures all your fun stuff yeah again the appropriation angle of those dream catchers that's what offends me with them now not just of like laughing at their validity or not but uh yeah no i i don't think i've spent much time in one of these stores but the uh that we i do like that wheatgrass joke of just like well your tongue works it shows that woman is a little more she's not as naive as she might think she is she's like well this does taste bad yeah she's uh and fetal grinding seems to imply that joan rivers eats baby yeah well stay young it didn't really work uh hey it lasted a while true stayed around for a while they had uh some really mean joan rivers jokes this year what's the ones like help me my daughter's untalented that's right then she gets run over

yeah so they they were really mean to her at this time and oil of lorenzo a reference to lorenzo's really hacky yeah they could add a funnier thing there but but now we've gotten to the point where another secret reason why i had asked on uh super eyepatch wolf this week you have experience in a sensory deprivation tank right i sure do i actually i became kind of like fascinated with the idea because of this episode and i was always like man i sure do i actually i became kind of like fascinated with the idea because of this episode and i was always like man i wonder if you actually hallucinate um and so i actually tried them last year wow so what's it like uh it's pretty pleasant like you kind of just float there and you kind of like let your mind go blank and it's just it's just quite nice i like afterwards

i was like i don't know if that had like a big effect on me or anything and then i went home and i had maybe the deepest sleep of my entire life except for like 11 hours and i was like whoa okay wow wow man now you really saw me on this i've never done that but i i sort of entered that state when i'm at the dentist where it's just like i can make my soul leave my body i don't fall asleep but i it's it's like i don't know what's happening i can just sort of like exit my uh my being you're just so dissociative yeah i'm not afraid of it just like well here's my chance to just lay here i have no other obligations so they can just like work on my teeth i think it's totally the kind of thing people should try i'm sure they're people who's

like it wouldn't be for them but i i liked it i'll probably go back for one at some point oh you're selling me on it too i because of this i don't think entirely because of this episode but i've just been scared to do it i guess you know i i'm not a particularly like claustrophobic person or anything it's not on that level but i guess the joke she says about you might destroy your mind that does scare me but that was one of those things like i never tried uh you know marijuana for the longest time because i was worried like what if i'm the one person who goes crazy from this what if you force yourself through a keyhole yeah so uh but i eventually tried that, but this one still I haven't. This also is a clever way to get some hallucinogenic kind of jokes with Lisa that they can't normally do really with any of the characters because they can't do drugs.

They have to do like, you know, magic chili peppers and whatnot. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, these sensory deprivation tanks, I guess they were getting to be the hot new thing in new age health in the Los Angeles area in 1999. It was after they shut down the oxygen bars. They opened up all of the tank bars. What was the thing you talked about beforehand with me? The Matt Selman was also like kind of just crapping on his wife's stores in this.

Oh, I forget. Like Matt Selman jokingly complains about his wife a bit on the commentaries and uh there are two jokes about his wife on this one and uh when this when this character the store uh runner appears he says this is based on all my wife's friends but i think his wife had he she had a candy shop at some point maybe she still does in la somewhere that's nice maybe we can go to the candy shop also funnily enough i talked about that stranger things parody they did in that recent episode lisa also gets in a sensory deprivation tank and that as well really oh wow yeah it's a

major plot point in stranger things that the character l Lisa plays goes into sensory deprivation tanks. So it's, uh, they use it in that story. Okay. Oh, one other thing I remember before we leave this episode is that, uh, Mike Scully growing up a lot of brothers and there were different bedrooms, but the parents' bedrooms was splitting up all the bedrooms. It was like a very weird layout of a house where the parents' bedroom was in the middle, but then the other bedrooms were on either side. And he said said that's why the marriage didn't work so that sounds pretty hard yeah i don't think well it's not like i had like more than like three kids even like a lot of kids they sound like a classic irish catholic uh kind of household

there i think so then we get back to the end of marge's b plot which when it showed up again i was like oh that is that we're still in this. It's weird to see this in this act. But yes. Oh, actually, no. Before we get to that, let's hear a little bit of Lisa and Homer hallucinating. Oh, my gosh. I've entered the body of our cat.

Maggie. Hey, hey, get your sticky hands off me! Ow! Bad cat! Leave her alone! Wow. My mind just created that out of nothing. This tank is releasing the full potential of my brain. Oh-ee! Oh-ah-ah! Ting-tang! Wala-wala-bing-bang! Oh-ee! Oh-ah-ah! Wala-bing-bang! Ding-ding-doo! my brain oh e oh uh uh ding dang well a bing bang oh e oh uh well a bing bang ding ding do making up his own lyrics to the witch doctor song that's fun that's the uh the ross baghazarian

chipmunks classic witch doctor which uh they they can't i think on the commentary they say what they spent a hundred thousand dollars on it i couldn't have spent that much but no i bet it wasn't cheap that was his yeah pre-chipmunks he learned that sped up voices are funny yeah and he built a career on that that still exists today while his family exists within that career dome yeah we it's been a little while since our last squeakwell but uh it's uh we the chipmunks are still at it oh they're always they're always coming back we'll never be free of those i mean i guess now we're ready for another chipmunks reboot like those ones are old now that that version of the chipmunks but yeah sorry i got to the march thing early because there was the one little gag of lenny and mo gossiping to each other about uh

willie's mail order bride who is still in a box uh these mail-order bride jokes are so like dusty like the like the joke it's like no they literally mail you a woman or whatever like they're harder to laugh at the more you know about what the you know the reality of realities of human trafficking that mail-order brides are yeah it's actually quite sad then uh but yes bart and millhouse have a little plan for some fun as uh homer as bart puts it and it leads to uh marge learning her lesson and honestly kind of like a sitcommy way like this other than the one little thing they add to it this would have been in an episode of full house or something i think this resolution here outside of Milhouse getting a concussion. Yes other than that. Yeah Talk to me, baby. Okay. I think I lost him

Oh a cow He's led bossy. Listen Tony. I need someplace to hide. Oh This place looks good. 742 Evergreen Terrace. Now to open the door and kill whoever's inside. I'll start by turning the knob. I like that. Gotcha, miss.

Oh, my God. Oh, Mom, you are a prankster's dream wow you really clobbered him that was a horrible trick to play on your mother yeah well it serves you right for eavesdropping i guess we both learned a lesson but if anybody asks you hit him i do really enjoy bart overselling the uh the play he's doing it's like now i'll open the door i'll start by turning the knob that was pretty good yeah i like that uh poor poor millhouse he is he's not getting up like he's he's really down i mean it's an easy cover just to be like uh he fell he fell down he doesn't remember i mean especially the way like

you can tell a bunch of her because like it's broken that the baby monitor is broken on his head too which also this reminds me of lost our lisa because that also had a very brief margin bart side story too what was that the uh the glued stuff to his face oh yeah that's right no wonder i couldn't remember which also i guess was somewhat of a prankster story as well yeah so uh bart always with the pranks he's such a little prankster but uh yeah at some point i kind of feel like with this scene that they were like okay how do we wrap up this b plot and they probably threw a few ideas around it's like what if she knocks out millhouse yeah millhouse violence is always a good solution yeah i think so me that's true yeah any i think the second you see millhouse added to this act you should be thinking

like some bad's happening to that kid it feels like they were written into a corner of like we got to resolve this somehow and then they head into a kind of predictable direction of like somebody pulls a prank on marge and she learns her lesson so the only simpson way to do it to make it unique for them it's like well it would go farther than it would on a regular sitcom and a horrible injury would happen to a character not just uh not just marge learns her lesson like well i guess we both learned our lesson like that's what somebody would say i'm like blossom or whatever but that's the end of that uh little b story there i i oh and i did like how bart adjusts to the mooing he's like yeah take that bossy

yeah that was great uh improv we head back to the karmaceuticals and the repo depot is there taking everything back which feels like another like meanness from the writers of saying like, this could never be a business. They're stupid. You could never run this. They close by the time you left. Like it's a little, a little me. Yeah.

I do like the guys, like the teaser on the truck and Homer, the, when they pick up Homer's tub, whenever I lift with my back and hurt my back i remember like no remember what the guy did lifting home but you have health insurance right uh currently i do yes yeah i got sure paralyze yourself they'll pay for 10 of it maybe i have a pretty bad copay homer gets taken away and goes on quite an adventure, up to and including being buried alive in this next clip. Oh, boy. Oh, Nettie, you almost hit that coffin.

Leaping Lazarus. Is this what passes for eternal rest these days? Rod, go get Daddy his burying shovel. Yay! You sure buried him deep, Daddy. Not so deep the Lord can't find him. And judge him. This is the best birthday I ever had! Okay, I'm ready to get out now.

Yoo-hoo, hippie lady! Hippie lady! Hi, hippie lady! Uh, I didn't expect that the first time I watched this. You hippie lady! Hippie lady! Hi hippie lady! I didn't expect that the first time I watched this. Yeah, I was glad he wasn't buried alive for long. It makes you a little anxious. Oh, that does scare me quite a lot. Yeah, it totally does.

That you are floating in this water and also you can't open the door and you don't know what... I mean, that is, I guess, terrifying about sensory deprivation tanks is you don't know what's happening outside. Did we mention she put a cinder block on his? Oh, yes, that too. Yeah.

Well, because he opened it instantly to grab a magazine. Obviously, you can't read in the total darkness. That's something, too, I do like in the animation that they, once you know it's pitch black in there, they then just color them in dark tones when you see them. Because that's better than floating eyes that they could have gone with. One of the things that started me on the Bizarre Modern Reality, the Simpsons video I did

was actually the scenic Simpsons photo of Lisa in the deprivation tank saying, I have to clear my mind. There's something just like really beautiful about that image. And that kind of led me to kind of thinking about these things and like how people

recontextualize them and stuff yeah yeah the well and also the speaking of gorgeousness in it too the way they drew the first person vision of lisa as seeing through snowball two's eyes yeah it's very well done yeah it's uh it's a really it's a trippier visual that i remembered in this episode not to mention with all the strobe lighting effects in the top of her, I want to say coffin now. But yes, they still have time for a little Ned scene. And I like Ned's religiosity gets meaner in these seasons, I think too.

This is a Bibb's burying shovel. Yeah. I love that little touch. And I was like, you buried him deep, daddy, as if this is a. Yeah. I love that little touch. And I like was like, you buried him deep daddy. As if like, this is a common occurrence. Yeah,

that's true. I'm glad they have that line there to explain why Homer is somehow deep enough to go through the earth and into the water system. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but that's, I,

I also like Ned making sure to fully proselytize there and just be like, not so deep. The Lord can't find him and judge him. Yeah. I also like Ned making sure to fully proselytize there and just be like, not so deep. The Lord can't find him and judge him. Yeah, I love that. He has to get that in there too. Yeah. Also, the great period on the sentence is that it's Todd's birthday. Oh, right.

Yeah. But yeah, Homer then goes on a real like Looney Tunes kind of adventure in the tank. Honestly, almost too silly. But that's Homer's's in looney tunes town which i mean if we're comparing this to lost our lisa he also gets his head crushed by a bridge in that one and it's a pretty silly adventure there too he's less damaged in this one ultimately see yeah though the shots of him smashing his face inside of it like that's really well done and painful looking another great like they do some really good camera tricks in this

that are extra creative. But yes, Homer ultimately washes up on the beach. Ow! Oh! This inner pea soap is tough on the old coconut. Ow! Ah! Pimpy lady, I'm letting it out!

Ah! Hmm. Look, daddy, a whale egg. Oh, jeez. I am so sick of companies dumping their crud in our ocean without a permit. It's not like those permits are hard to get. You're going right back where you came from. But Daddy, you're on vacation.

Crime doesn't take a vacation. Hey, hey, hey, careful. You'll pop it. I do like them saying they they work hard they play hard right yeah it's uh i mean crime doesn't take a vacation and that cuts that's uh you know it's an okay joke but i do like the design of fat tony with his like sock garters on like that's he still has these old-timey mafia things about him even in swim trunks i do like that wave's not mad about pollution it's just the lack of permits and how easy they're to get i love that line where he's like it's not like they're hard to get because it's like oh god damn it yeah he's he's not opposed to pollution at all he's fine with that but it's just you get get that permit come

on he almost took a stance on something uh and and then wiggum uh ralph thinks it's a whale egg that's pretty funny too uh i get you know normally i would think wiggum would just uh police chief wiggum would agree with him and just be like it is a whale egg but he has to recognize what it is to take it somewhere else then somehow ends it up getting right back to where it was uh for a very silly gag but that's uh it's it's fun too lisa meanwhile finishes up her journey she becomes multiple people including cokie roberts who r.i.p yes uh just passed away in september npr commentator yeah yeah and a journalist and uh while she's identified on her wiki wiki page as american journalist and best-selling author i just knew her as a funny

name said in like politics murphy brown yeah uh but she seemed like a nice enough lady and stuff i can't i don't remember any actual reporting of hers but she does seem like the kind of woman lisa would dream of being yeah i could i could see that too and then lisa has her final vision which lets her realize that she's she's actually a very selfish monster as she has been this entire episode yeah she finally learns her life think about other people lisa uh it's happening again i wonder where i'm going this time. What's that? Oh, yuck. That sandwich is full of meat.

There's bacon. Canadian bacon. Mexican bacon. Oh. And a mouth-watering veal chop. Oh, no. Now I'm dead. Oh. And I'm at a stupid, boring ballet.

Hmm. No! Dad, wake up! Your snoring is disturbing the dancers. Hmm. How can you embarrass me like this? Oh, you won't sit through anything that doesn't have car crashes. I'm sorry honey

jeez why is lisa so mad at me i only came to this dump so i could be with her what happened to my big sandwich i like that in this memory he falls right back to sleep after it's like i'm reading this as a little uglier than my original reading which is pretty ugly we're just like pointing out to the uh bad behavior of an abuser is the real crime here just like you telling me i'm abusing you makes me feel bad how do you think i feel i'm sad yeah yeah you you telling me i made you sad made me sad and aren't you yeah i i i don't want to see that much sinisterness in this episode that's trying to be sweet. I do think it comes from a sweet place.

But yeah, it really does feel like it's taking the side of the abuser. Like, well, you should realize your stuff sucks. And they should be bored. Here's the good things of that sequence. Yeah, yeah, there's good stuff. I really like Yardley's acting as Homer. Like, she's having a lot of fun doing the Homer drool and celebrating every type of bacon in that giant sandwich.

And also even in her hallucination, Lisa still does what she does in Scully seasons, which is point out inconsistencies in the show. She notices the sandwich isn't there when he wakes up again. So that was fun. And I do like seeing the the first person view of homer in lisa's eyes that's uh that's a well executed

thing too there so there's a lot of quality in this and i do think there's a i can see it from a parent's view of a good parent who thinks i'm a good parent and do all these things for my kids and they don't appreciate it. Like I can get that, but the character that Homer is in this episode and all episodes before this is not a good parent and isn't a self-sacrificing person and doesn't deserve this kind of redemption. No, no, he doesn't. He hasn't earned that. It's like the sentiment is like, yeah yeah but like the practicality of how we got there is a bit like i think they felt that it was too repetitive they just have episodes that end with homer apologizing to lisa so they wanted to go like well let's not do something we've

already done before but homer apologizing to lisa is the logical end point of everything happening here for a happy ending so to subvert that and find a new way to do it they have to twist themselves into lisa somehow thinking she is the bad guy here for wanting to spend time with her father at things she enjoyed i guess she's trying to share her love of the arts yeah unfortunately they're boring so she's in the wrong well this ending also seems to apply to like homer never gets to go to things he likes which that's not true either homer does everything he wants all the time i get what it's trying to say but it the more you explore it with the characters as they are it kind of it's a little hollow a little hollow at at best but

yes why don't we just play the the happy ending here as uh as lisa does something nice for homer finally boy i can really be a pain in the butt gee i should cut dad some slack after all he did take me to the ballet and the smithsonian exhibit in fact he takes me lots of places he hates. No, he doesn't. I told the witch doctor there's a test in my chest. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I told the witch doctor he had to run a test. Hi, sweetie. Hi, Dad. How was it? I went on a wild ride without ever leaving the building.

How was yours? Pretty cool. But now what do you say we go do something we'll both enjoy? Like what? Whoa, look at that car burn. Does it get any better than this? Not to me, Dad. And here comes the ambulance

almost the here comes the pretzels oh yeah similar delivery that man's dead yeah yeah right behind them he's just dead there's no way that didn't snap his neck and kill him instantly in that moment that reminds me of like someone was just uh murdered in a gender reveal oh god where they inadvertently built a pipe bomb it's like you can't go that high concept with your okay number one don't do it they're stupid number two at best it should be like confetti or cut a cake yeah yeah don't build a pipe bomb oh god that's that yeah that was that was very sad how would you like to come into the world knowing your gender reveal party killed your grandma? Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.

I hadn't even thought of that. Instantly, instantly killed her. You just never tell your kids that, though. What did happen to grandma? Well, she moved away. I guess by the time that baby is 12, though, they can Google their grandma's name. Oh, yeah.

Boy, you've added extra tragedy to that recent tragedy story, Bob. Just think of the families every time there's a tragedy. I like Homer's Witch Doctor song that involves having chest pains and asking the doctor for help with that. Seeing the doctor for medical reasons. Yeah. I mean, it's nice Lisa doing doing that but that also does feel like the the patterns of abuse of just like of emotional abuse of just like feeling being the more empathetic person in an abusive relationship who then blames themselves and does something

nice for their abuser it's just it's a it's a bad cycle like so yeah it does feel a little like it represents that especially like it it just feels hollow when lisa says he actually does a lot of things he hates like no he doesn't it's established in act one he doesn't yeah he never once a month and only for lee only for lisa every other month too the destruction derby that's fun i've you know i've never been to one i did play the playstation video game destruction oh that was a great video game that was one of my favorite early ps1 games i i'm still a nintendo boy but uh that was one of my first things that wasn't like a fighting game on ps1 that made me go like i think this playstation's pretty good yeah i've never been to a real one before seems

dangerous i i've told before actually for more of Henry Gilt stories of... Henry Gilbert. Oh, God. I did get my mom and dad to go to a monster truck rally when I was like five or six. And my mom got like really bad tinnitus from it because it was in a domed-in structure. And so it was just so loud. uh that fills me with a lot of guilt so that that was my mom sacrificing for a thing i wanted to do i was brought to one of those and i didn't really like it the only other thing i've been like that is uh i went to one nascar race once and it bored the crap out of me and i left i like got out of my seat and walked around until the kids parents would take me home with,

this was like, you know, middle school friends kind of trip. NASCAR's terrible. Destruction Derby is at least a little more fun. The most contact I've had with NASCAR is when like Hal describes it in Malcolm in the Middle, and it seems pretty dull. Yeah, it does seem pretty dull. I think it's funny American racing fans make fun of F1 as lame. And I feel like NASCAR sounds even more lame than time trials.

I mean, I don't care for any. Cars, who cares? They're just machines to take you places. Yeah, take that gear heads. If a car doesn't transform into a robot, I don't care. That's our stance, officially. Is there anything else we have to do? Any other wrapups no i mean that's basically it i i think we've my feelings on this episode are that it's it's a it is a sweet exploration of a father-daughter

relationship but and there's tons of funny jokes in it but it feels more hurtful every year that the resolution is that lisa takes the blame in it mike scully was there is a kind of like cynicism to it all right that i think is kind of is never really subverted properly do you know what i mean yeah mike scully was too blinded by dad fever to see these issues but uh we love mike scully check out our interview with him on the patreon yeah it was a recent really good one you can hear a lot of his uh background and how this season he was able to unionize the writer's room for this season. It was a really cool story, but this was a writer's room with, I think, basically no women in season 10, other than Mike Scully's wife, uh, Julie Thacker, who also is a really good writer. Uh, but that was

the only woman in there. So you're either had single men or dads. So there's not a lot of diverse perspectives in the room at that time, which they've worked on and tried to improve over time to varying degrees. I like Lost Our Lisa more as far as touching Homer Lisa episodes. Yeah, it's the better companion episode to this. Yeah, for sure. So, John, thanks again for being our special guest. Please let everyone know where to find you

and all of your great stuff. I'm sure you can find me Super Eyepatch Wolf on YouTube, at Eyepatch Wolf on Twitter, and I also host the Let's Fight a Boss video game podcast.

Ooh, nice. Yes, we love all of your stuff and we love so much when you come on the podcast. It's awesome. It's always a pleasure. Like, it's always kind of fascinating to hear

you guys break it down in such detail and like especially for me the american stuff i'm always like really i i'm glad i glad we can help uh inform those things just as your perspective on stuff helps us uh learn things too so i appreciate and hopefully in the future you know preview for someday in the future i want us to do that teenage mutant ninja turtles episode cartoon oh yeah we should do that let's figure that out soon yes it'll it won't be 16 months uh like clockwork every 16 months we'll talk to you again but but thank you john yeah thank you oh no problem guys like honestly my pleasure so thanks again to john walsh aka super eyeful, for being on the show once again

and check out all of his great stuff and his podcast. But as for us, if you want to support our stuff, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And if you sign up at the $5 level, you'll get access to every episode

of this podcast and What a Cartoon one week ahead of time and ad-free. And at $5 a month, you'll also have access to everything behind that paywall that is over a hundred bonus podcasts, including all of our limited mini-series the newest of which

is currently rolling out that's talking futurama season two part one 10 episodes of talking futurama to get you through the end of 2019 there is way way too much to talk about on that five dollar level to uh wrap it up in this nice little wrap up of the show but henry please tell everyone what's going on at the $10 level. One extra long podcast every month. That's right. At patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. If you sign up at the $10 level,

you get all that $5 stuff that's too much to list. Plus our monthly What a Cartoon Movie podcast where we talk about a different animated feature film once a month. It's a bonus. Exclusive podcast sometimes goes over four hours long our most recent one was the nightmare before christmas which would be tons of fun if you're still in a halloween hangover or are ready to celebrate the holiday season early you'll want to listen

to that and that's just the 12th one we've done a whole year's worth is in your back catalog if you sign up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast every monday and occasionally on friday go to retronauts.com or look for retronauts in your podcast device henry how about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Whenever there's new podcasts out on either the Patreon or the free feed,

I'm sure to tweet it out from my account. So please follow Henry Gilbert on there at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next week for the episode Maximum Homer Drive and we'll see you next week for the episode maximum homer drive and we'll see you then america's greatest citizens summed up in one piece of clothing.

Fonzie's jacket! Who's Fonzie? Who's Fonzie? Don't they teach you anything in school? He freed the squares!