Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Marge Gets A Job With Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

It's a major ep for Simpsons history and for that reason, we welcome a pair of first-time guests, Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson, creators of the hilarious satirical comic Justice Warriors! Together we explore the first ep written by Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, as they tell the story of Marge and Homer working together to fix their slanty shanty. This leads to Mr. Burns sexually harassing her, Tom Jones being kidnapped, and Bart battling a wolf for some reason all on this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking Futurama talking of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more I hardly endorse this event or product Our product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we parge the laugh. I'm your host, dandy fever sufferer Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons. Who is with me today, as always? Resident of the slanty shanty, Henry Gilbert. And who are our special guests on the line?

Matt Boers, and I'm not sure I can do this podcast because my ovaries are hurting. And who else do we have? Ben Clarkson and Loud. That's our secret word of the day, everybody. Give it up. And this week's episode is Marge Gets a Job. Free sample of lemon time. Give it here.

Homer, that's dishwashing liquid. Yeah, but what are you going to do? This week's episode originally aired on November 5th, 1992. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. Wesley Snipes, passenger 57, tops the box office. Hal Roach passes away at 100.

And this episode is defeated in the ratings by a special two-hour episode of Matlock. Whoa. No wonder they were so mad at Matlock. I was really digging deep for a third thing because the music, I like to to say oh and this was number one on the uh the charts but it's the same song for the rest of the year number one on the charts so nothing fun there so i was like okay what was on it what was against it uh this night on tv and it was matlock this is why the matlock jokes begin on the show because matlock is replaces bill cosby as their great uh ratings nemesis of people they could never get. The Hal Roach, former employer of Moe.

That's right. That's right. It's his retirement home that Marge's mom lives in, in the Hal Roach retirement village. Yes. Yeah. But he lived to be 100 years old. Incredible. retirement village yes yeah but he lived to be a hundred years old incredible and i think i think passenger 57 is the one plane crash movie that homer does not make marge watch and fear of flying

because it's like hero fearless alive i don't think uh this one is part of it because the plane doesn't actually crash right it's a thwarted plane crash i think so yeah i think it's a mystery it's more of like a mystery a locked locked train mystery, except on a plane. Ooh, I like this. Yeah, I believe so. But I don't think it's the Wesley. I get it confused with, isn't Wesley Snipes also in the Murdered 1600, I think, as well? Is he in that one?

But it's the address that changes all the rules, I think, is the tagline of that but a lot of plain action movies during that era i suppose there still are but oh executive decision die hard 2 later in the 90s you get con air passenger 57 executive decision yeah not one of the great ones i don't remember it at all henry i want to know did you look up to see who the actual murderer was on Matlock that week because I'm wondering George Cooper Lindsay I know I don't I didn't see the name of the episode is the vacation if you want to look it up on to be which I

think is where all of the Matlock shows currently are you know I think we're in a real Columbo Renaissance Millennials are really getting in Columbo and I'm wondering if in like 10 years zoomers are going to be watching Matlock. We're going to be seeing Matlock memes on whatever X turns into. You know, I

I guess they went through Murder, She Wrote first. Now they're on to Columbo. So Matlock could be next. Is Columbo good? People talk about Columbo non-stop on the timeline. They're posting

GIFs of Columbo. Someone made a painting of Columbo. Is this worth my time, this show? I think so. Now, some people, perhaps the woman I'm married to, don't like it as much as me because you have to be okay with them revealing the killer up front. Right. And kind of how they did it.

And then the rest of the show is the undoing of their plans by Columbo. So if you're okay with it being not a whodunit, then it's fine. But some people don't like that kind of approach, that kind of formula. I like the backwards fun of it of like, you know who did it, but how does Columbo figure it out? And also he's like the nicest guy, too. It's just fun to see a nice cop who's just like, no, I'm just, I'm curious.

As opposed to the violent cops that perhaps exist in comic books that are on sale right now. Oh, yes. Fantastic segue, Henry, because joining us today, our first-time guests are Ben Clarkson and Matt Bors, creators of the new graphic novel Justice Warriors. Welcome to the show, guys. It's a pleasure to be here.

Now, we're big fans of your work, and Matt, I've been reading your comics for the longest time. They are some of my favorite political commentary. And Ben, your art is amazing too i just saw the the trailer for the new season of blowback that you did was just incredible oh yes so so for the audience i'm also i'm an animation filmmaker and i recently produced a really great trailer for the show blowback you should go check it out online put blow back into the search bar bar on x the everything app it's so much more inclusive than before twitter you know x can be anything now it's so great yeah i have to say you sent us copies of your new graphic novel it's great i loved it read it in one sitting the best

part is you never invoiced us and i appreciate that no problem it's it's it's free to podcasters free to podcast the the the world of it is is great i mean if uh i guess you you guys probably picture better than i will but i just it feels like amazing it is amazing satire for our times i mean that also is full of like funny characters that are fun to look at like i like swampy and shit are funny guys to to just look at for a whole comic as well yeah the book's a bit of visual anarchy yeah and that's uh you know ben created this world and then you know brought me on to uh to help write it and develop it it's a what what is it it's a dystopian cop satire a buddy cop satire among other things

and it takes place in bubble city which is a futuristic domed city where everybody lives in peace and harmony and diversity and inclusion. And there's no crime. The crime comes outside of Bubble City in the uninhabited zone, where millions upon millions of mutants live in a never-ending sprawling slum.

Swamp and Shit are two mutant cops who patrol the zone and, you know, keep it, keep it safe for everybody. And then the plot kind of takes off with a lot of economic booms and busts. We have a crazy mayor, a police chief obsessed with their mentions.

And it actually is kind of a, Simpsons is a heavy influence on it because it was sort of like the city and the town is sort of a, a big cast of characters. Although it's kind of The Simpsons mixed with Judge Dredd on acid and RoboCop and stuff like that. It's ultra violent and political and also fun with a lot of lowbrow humor. It's like if the McBain cartoon was real. Yeah.

There was a moment I was like, oh oh this is like your mendoza moment in the in the first issue yes yeah i know you're not looking for blurbs now because you've already published your book but mine is what if a trauma movie was 10 000 times smarter nice that is good justice warriors now i've never seen citizen toxy so it could be a like trenchant political commentary of the early 90s but i have to assume justice warriors is much smarter than that yeah we'd like we'd like to think it's a smart book there's a lot of cutting satire in there we go after uh crypto we go after police brutality we go after paperwork we go after economics it's uh it's a great book wild ride i uh one of my favorite scenes is where something horribly violent happens with a less than lethal gun. And then when the better cops, who also are awful, show up and they're like, okay, we're locking this down.

And it also is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. So all the tear gas is pink. Yes. The special green guns for all the awareness. Like there's so many amazing moments that we've said on this show that a lot of old Simpsons erroneously gets called predictions just because satire is dead. But I like to say after reading your book, I do not feel satire is dead, but just it's harder for 30 year old satire to keep up. Yeah, we are.

I mean, we're trying to keep it alive. And that is the way we do it is with a sort of maximalist satire to keep up yeah we are i mean we're trying to keep it alive and that is the way we do it is with a sort of maximalist satire that takes everything that's going on now and sort of you know ramps it up past 11 past 15 as high whatever higher spinning the dial and uh and it bends kind of crazy psychedelic mutants uh you know help help bring it to that over the top place yeah because it sort of ends up looking like a garbage patch kids garbage pail kids teenage mutant ninja turtles thing you don't take it seriously because it is so visually over the top and then i think that it's always a kick for the reader to realize how serious and smart it is. Like one of the main characters

is literally anthropomorphic shit. And we're talking about how smart the book is. I don't want to explain every joke to the listener and ruin it for when they read it, but because they should, they should read it. It's great. But the reveal of his wife was another like huge laugh out loud moment for me.

And also a previous and future guest of the show, Will Miniker wrote a really great intro for your book as well yeah we were uh we were really honored to have will write the introduction which he writes from the perspective of a resident of bubble city it's a great read we're really uh happy to have him i i also love again it's like i i fear much like the simpsons that this satire in 20 years won't be satire. It'll be predictions. Well, that's where we want to be because then, you know, like from our perspective as creators, not as the human race,

but then there can be like there's a Simpsons podcast you guys are doing. Then somebody can do the Justice Warriors podcast and they'll be like, issue two, and then we'll do two hours on it and everything and they'll talk about how uh how predictive we were but really we're just sort of riffing on everything that's going on now yeah we're job creators yeah yeah things are bad now but we don't have mutants yet so i mean that's the one thing our current hellscape is lacking right now yeah yeah yeah and you know we're getting to bubble cities like a lot of the um if you've heard about a lot of these uh like saudi cities they're developing giant saudi projects niam

and the line and then there's a uh there's a giant cube city being developed i forget which country that's in but they're they're basically giant they're dystopian cities in the sense that most of us will live outside them in a bleak reality. But for the people inside, they're sort of like a Elysium type space where you never have to leave. You know, you separate yourself from society and you create a little like utopian bubble where you get to live with all the rich people and you do all your shopping there and everybody basically outside is just sort of begging to get inside and be your personal assistant or the janitor. The thing is all of these cities, like they have done cities like this before, like Qatar. All to the horizon in Qatar are slums of all the people that they have to import to be cheap labor. So it ends up looking exactly

like Bubble City. Las Vegas only just needs to build out their sphere. They already built the sphere. They just need to expand it outward just a little bit more. I love that sphere. I want to look at that sphere all day. Every time someone posts the sphere, I'm into it. Every city needs a sphere. I mentioned blurbs earlier, and one of the blurbs on your book is from one of the writers of this episode. In fact, their first episode of television. I guess their first sitcom episode, period. Yes, yeah. Oh, is this a Bill Oakley joint, this whole thing?

Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. That's why it's a perfect fit for you guys. Nice. Yeah, I could tell my story about how I know Bill Oakley. It's not a great story, but it's also exactly how Matt and I met. It's just I have learned to charmingly harass people online until they get on phone calls with me. And I did that to Bill, and I literally pitched him Justice Warriors.

And I said, like, hey, check out this idea I have. And he's like, you should go make that and not call me again i mean our success is from cold calling people online like in dms and such so i i i support that hey it's brought us together it did bring me and ben together to create justice warriors i mean like i said he had he had made this world um before I was on board. Had a little animation trailer and was like, you want to help make this with me as an animation? And I ignored it at the time. I think I saw it.

I was busy. I had a baby and a toddler and it was the summer of 2020. There were lockdowns and police violence everywhere. What else? I was living in Portland, Oregon, so there was wildfires. It felt like the world was ending. Trump was nuts and anyway he followed up and you gotta do the

follow up because I ignored the first one second one he just caught me I was sitting around and looked at it and thought I got four minutes I'll check it out and I loved it and then we started once we got on a call, we just started riffing. We share a lot of the same influences from, it's a lot of 80s and 90s pop culture, as

you might have already imagined. And then we were off. Well, yeah. What kind of, I mean, yeah. What type of influence did Simpsons have on your, you know, both as artists and also, you know, it's satirical worldview as well uh just growing up i would think it had a lot of influence yeah there's because there's that element of early simpsons that's like winking at the audience but never playing its hand like it doesn't present

itself as being like a biting satire of like how lazy americans are in this episode that's like one of the little themes for for homer getting into the episode a little bit already but like one of the themes is homer is just a terrible worker like he's unreliable he's terrible and that sort of has been like scrubbed out of the understanding of homer simpson as a character over time with the simpsons that's my little simpsons have changed bit but we wanted to to put that like mean, this mean satire, but never telling you, never playing its hand into Justice Warriors. Yeah, Simpsons is definitely an early influence on me. I mean, I would sit around drawing them and Ninja Turtles.

I watched this stuff, the episode we were going to watch, I probably watched with my parents. And I was saying at the start of the show, this aired in 1994. I watched this last night with my parents, whom I'm visiting for the first time in years. And we watched it together. And I probably watched it with them 30 years ago. It was kind of a crazy experience. One more thing from my Simpsons credentials is I can, to this day, do front to back recite all the lyrics from Simpson singing the blues for sure. But I don't know if you remember, if you have that album or remember that.

Oh, we did a whole episode. Yeah. Okay, good. I should have four hours. Yeah. All right. Well, but then I, when I was a teenager and an adult, I kind of, I didn't really watch it anymore. I got super into skateboarding as a teenager, which, uh, you know, our good friend Bart Simpson also is. Yeah.

Um, but I was very much like at the time I, yeah, I was, I was too cool for school and was like, you know, rejecting mainstream stuff and didn't want to sit around watching TV like a zombie.

And, uh, that was like that kind of person for a while and stuff so i didn't watch the simpsons for a long time and now i'm getting i'm getting back into it actually and re-watching some episodes old episodes and seeing if i could ever catch up to all the stuff that they've done it it is nice visiting when i visited my mom uh just last uh holiday season getting to watch simpsons with her like putting on old simpsons with her and she's like oh i remember this like it uh it is it is some it's like nostalgia plus uh to to watch it with a parent yeah yeah it's very satisfying to to watch him again with somebody who's taking

taking a very long simpsons break and i've just been watching earlier seasons and i mean the stuff i think it holds up really well i think it's good stuff oh it's brilliant bob alluded to it before but this this is the first episode this is a major moment for the show and the first episode written by two of our favorite guys maybe the two best friends of the show of simpsons writers that our podcast has i'd say yeah bill oakley josh weinstein we normally do writers corners for new writers as we approach them in our coverage but we've interviewed bill a bunch. We've interviewed Josh a bunch. Check out those previous interviews. I can tell you that on the commentary, Josh calls this episode Us Get a were writers on a parody of pre-the-real-world reality shows, like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and America's Most Wanted. Nice.

The comedian Dave Thomas, who they later have on their show as Rex Banner, he was the guy who hired them for that. He gave them their first real non-sitcom break. So they wrote for that. It was a TV movie. And then they briefly wrote for the uh lost the time ha slash comedy central satirical game show titled clash uh which also they were on with future simpsons writer steve tompkins so that's basically all they did before they did the simpsons and of

course bill oakley went to harvard Weinstein Stanford yuck he's probably not as smart as Bill obviously he was allowed to work on the lampoon he's technically a lampooner yes he did it over the summer so he's still technically this is them hiring two lampooners as they always did but I mean they are good writers but we should recognize that yes they all went to the same Harvard class together and all wrote for the same Harvard comedy periodical. How else would they know who to hire? Yes, exactly. And, I mean, they spent a year in L.A. basically very unemployed.

But their real calling card at the time was a Seinfeld spec script. This was before Seinfeld was a hit show. They wrote it probably after the first season. And in one of our episodes, I think, or one of our interviews, Bill explains what the premise was. But I believe George is at a party, he's eating snacks, and he thinks he swallowed a piece of glass. And the entire episode is about him freaking out

about what could happen after the glass passes through his system and everything. And I think it's based on something that happened to a friend of theirs or something. But this is when Seinfeld was just about to be canceled pre-third season explosion. And that was their real calling card in Hollywood. So that got made? No, that never got made. That episode does not exist, although I would love it. I always worry about what would happen if I eat glass.

It's funny because I'm actually watching Seinfeld a little bit for the first time ever right now. Oh, really? And I'm loving it. And I'm like, I finally get it. And I'm like, okay. Like I said, I wasn't in the space to watch it when I was young because I was like, man, this popular sitcom that everybody likes sucks

and I'm a cool teenager. But now I'm loving it. Then you hopped on your skateboard and went away. Yeah, exactly. That's good. Yeah, and so like with all new writers, because there's no women in the writer's room, they're like, you get the Marge episode.

So this season they write Marge Gets a Job and Marge and Chains. And then they become, I believe, full writers in the fifth production season. But at this point they are freelancers. Oh, no, the timeline is it's mid-season they they technically are hired in season four because yeah the uh really going deep granular into it so they write this as freelancers i right i think they uh they impress the guys so much that then at the same time they are about to get hired like they're going to get an offer to write on some other unnamed sitcom but then jay kogan and wally waldarski leave after the writing of mr plow so midway through the writing of season

four so that leaves an opening for a two-man team and bill and josh get the offer to join up so they join up in the lowest level you can in season four story editor then by the end of season four as as they've also told us them and conan o'brien and one other guy is slipping my demographic they're the four guys left until they staff up for season five so uh yeah but but so this is what gets them a job and uh and yes there was josh weinstein posted some of their original script online, and he reflects on how rough it was. And now he's like, boy, I wouldn't hire me now with this script. Yeah, we could talk about that. They show that the first draft was 77 pages,

which for a standard TV show script of this length, they say 45 is much more normal not 77 and uh mike scully their their future co-executive producer on the show he joked of like i would have said i would have told you guys this script ends at page 46 because i'm done reading it and you're fired like that's what he said but uh they also say that like tom jones was not in their original script but uh there's a couple things that are more that are more embellished that are fun that i do think show why they're great like there's there's a few moments in this i'm like okay this shows why they were worth hiring and why we we love bill and josh as as simpsons writers yeah you can see at this point how

as freelancers they weren't trusted so all of these ideas in this script come from other people they're i think they're essentially given an outline or just given the ideas because the house tilting stuff is james l brooks the marge getting a job at the power plant and burns falling in love with her that was from conan o'brien and the boy who cried wolf thing is from sam simon so this is a frankenstein it did feel kind of like a bunch of concepts that were mashed together that sort of that didn't come together at the end in the way that you usually expect them to. Like, I mean, I don't like the Bart Simpson plot. It's just sort of completely unrelated to everything else going on.

The Bart's, the B story, the Bart story, usually you want to have it like thematically tied together, like a good episode of Star Trek. Everyone learns about their father somehow. These people do their father thing. They do their father thing. Oh, we learned about fathers today the timber wolf and marge having a job doesn't really line up what what are you telling me about the world yeah well even you know to bring up seinfeld which i'm watching now it's

like they usually have three completely random plots going on in a show and that they you know they tie it together to various extents, you know, by the end, but this was just sort of, I don't know. Well, one other thing about that original script is that yes,

the Bart thing wasn't in there in their first script. The, the B story was that Homer becomes a mascot for the plant called Mr. Atom. And, uh, they, Josh shared that scene too,

where basically, and it's a really funny scene. I wish they kept it in, where Homer is talking to Bart's classroom and Bart is humiliated by it. And there's a great line where one, Homer is reading from an old script where he's like, Mr. C. Montgomery Burns and the President Johnson want me to talk to you about nuclear safety. And then Martin has a very good nerd joke of saying, like, your outfit is a nucleus, but if that's true, wouldn't your electrons be miles away for it to be scientifically accurate? So there's some good jokes in there, but they shove in Bart being the boy who cried wolf to a ludicrous extreme instead.

Was Bart popular at the time? Was Bart like a big deal at this point? Yes. People were crazy about Lisa. I mean, it was Lisa mania. Wait, this is 92? 92? Miles Davis records.

Yeah, 92, 92. November? Yeah, November 92, yes. I mean, I feel like those first couple seasons, it was like Bart mania. I mean, I was a kid at the time, and it was just like, you know, I had a Bart Simpson shirt and crap like that. I could see they wanted to Bart it up, though. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Just about the structure of this episode. It does feel like, you know, writers giving freelancers almost too many ideas.

They don't screw it up. And it's a very funny episode. But also, Matt, you were talking about I think it was Matt talking about how the boy who cried wolf thing kind of comes out of nowhere and is so isolated and i feel like that was the uh the formula for these b plots and sitcoms until seinfeld came along because when i re-watched seinfeld about a decade ago i noticed it's kind of a mystery show where you're waiting to see how everything converges at the end like almost in the final scene and that was innovative in the world of sitcoms and at this point in, there are so many Simpsons B plots where I forget this wolf thing is in this episode every time I watch. I'm like, oh, it's here because it has nothing to do with anything else that's happening in the show.

Well, and it's also sort of a weird conservative B plot too, because they're basically telling you the story of the boy who cried wolf as like a moral tale right in the middle of the episode it's it's really contrasts to like sort of dealing with women in the workplace with which is the strongest stuff in this episode is the main plot line so the moral of that story is not a great one so i think they need to get away from the that moral too well i mean i get well we'll get to it we'll get to it we'll talk about it in these first five or six years of the show they try to tackle sexual harassment and they kind of piss it down their leg even though it results in some funny episodes they don't really know how to handle that topic yeah their next one is worse

uh as far as how it deals with sexual harassment while also being a very funny episode uh with a gummy venus de milo but um but anyway so yeah the episode begins with that clip of uh homer drinking dishwashing liquid which i am shocked the censors like that is kids definitely drank uh dishwashing liquid uh because homer did it they're like well he did it like but uh i i also think if i don't know we're gonna talk i don't i feel like if bart did it i would have done it but homer's an idiot so if that's then it'd be like you don't do that you don't act like homer uh though i i do think uh i don't drink dishwashing liquid but i do think yeah but what are you gonna do is a great reply to a spouse it's just like

stop drinking the soap it sounds like one well, what are you going to do? What am I going to do? Stop drinking the soap? It sounds like one of the worst things you can say to your spouse. No, but I mean it ends the conversation. It's just like, well, what are you going to do? There you go. Also, speaking of how this episode feels like there's a lot of filler, or at least like they're patching in with a patching trowel,

scenes into this episode to fill it out, which you would do more on a freelance script. There are a lot of dream sequences and cutaways in this one, which now feel like Family Guy, but it's really that they did this in Family Guy, then seven years later was like, hey, we should do that. The foundation of this episode is shoddy yeah yes yeah the b-plot is

sinking into the ground uh but well yeah i mean henry they would take it to the critic those kind of cutaways and then the critic went away and the simpsons stopped doing it and then family guy arrived people were treating it like a new kind of humor but you go back to the simpsons and around this time there's lots of dream sequences and cutaways and parodies and things like that. So Homer, after imagining his retirement, we then see that Ned is slanted while firing up the briar, which definitely it's weird to see Ned smoking, doesn't it? But yeah, I also, his slanted shot, I should say too,

Jeff Lynch is one of the best Simpsons directors ever, and his team did amazing in this i i mean the artists here like in general like this isn't this one like the best looking episode or a great looking episode of the show yeah you got some great cut-ins uh i noticed like the cut into mr burns's heart was really good uh some good visual gags throughout it and they had like the wolf following uh some water at some point it overall good animation production the explosion in the hallway with the men running away that looked okay yeah jeff lynch uh he is one of their best directors he go on to have quite a hollywood career after this as as we've talked about before but also i talk about great

action like he is really good at action like for instance jeff lynch one of his biggest claims to fame after simpsons is the one the lead animation directors on all the spider-man action in the sam raimi spider-man movies oh really that's great work that's really top tier stuff so in this episode whenever an excuse for action comes in it's actually like laid out great he's's like, it's like a starving man who's just like, oh, finally some action, not just people talking at a job or whatever or school. Yeah, I mean, the Willy versus Wolf fight at the end is basically an anime battle. Yes, yeah.

I guess they had a couple different barts that they were planning on going with, one being him violently ravaged, and they had to they decided to you know tone it down for uh for fox but i would love to see if they have like if the cells had ever been released or anything maggie's basically in like an action film right here of rolling like she is falling into the blades almost and and i like to that when homer saves her you see on homer's face he's not like oh a good thing i saved you he's more like hi maggie like yeah he didn't even know it was just a rare moment of him picking her up this also feels like a lot of homeowner problems jokes written by homeowners which full-time animation writers could own houses

back then in the la area not so much now but well my god contract is up on june 24th let's do it i'm watching uh i'm watching this now 30 later, as a homeowner that has just paid for a startling amount of wife-induced renovations. And now I have that anxiety watching the show. I'm just like, if my house starts sinking, we're done. Our lives are over. I was taking notes during the video video i'm ready to fix my own cracks we're gonna get to it very soon here but the video part really speaks to me as something that is a trademark of oakley and weinstein's sense of humor where they somehow find the most

boring things and by just dragging them out they make it very very funny this and uh the list of ailments it's just a just a bunch of complicated terms strung out over a scene. But this is what they do, and this is what they love. It's either technical, boring things, or old-timey, antiquated language. It's two of the things they do the best on their seasons of the show

and their episodes of the show. Yeah, let's hear the clip here, because this Troy McClure video, I mean, it's helped by having Phil Hartman, who was the greatest, but this entireroy mcclure video i mean it's helped by having phil hartman who's the was the greatest but this entire troy mcclure video here in our first clip is pure bill and josh too the half-assed approach to foundation repair hello i'm troy mcclure you might remember me from such instructional videos as mothballing your battleship and dig your own grave and save now over the next six hours I'll be taking you through the do's and

do not do's of foundation repair ready ready first patch the cracks in the slab using a latex patching compound in a patching trowel and me my patching trowel boy boy. Hmm. Now, do you have extruded polyvinyl foam insulation? No. Good. Assemble the aluminum J-channel using self-furring screws. Install.

What do I do in case... After applying brushable coating to the panels... Wait a minute. You'll need some corrosion-resistant metal stucco lath. Wait a minute. If you can't find metal stucco lath... Uh-huh. Use carbon fiber stucco lath. use carbon fiber stucco lath. Now barge the lath.

It's so sing-songy. Now barge the lath. Barge the lath. The Simpsons will be right back. Thursday. We already live together. We shouldn't work together. Marge starts working at Homer's plant.

She's so captivating. And discovers she has a secret admirer. I just came to give you the orchids and fragrant bath oils. I lavish upon all my employees. It's Homer's boss. Marge, get my gun. And all new Simpsons, Thursday. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener.

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Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. For a limited time, switch to Shopify Point of Sale and you could save up to 20% and improve your bottom line. We're so serious about savings, we've save up to 20% and improve your bottom line. We're so serious about savings, we've made this ad 20% shorter. That means you get six seconds back. Just enough time to visit shopify.com slash POS20. Now that's an efficient ad. Eligibility requirements apply. See shopify.com slash POS20 for details. Hey everybody, it's Henry Gilbert,

podcasting to you from the slanty shanty, and a big thank you again to this week's guests, Matt Boers and Ben Clarkson. Please check out all the great comics and art they do, especially their recent series, Justice Warriors, a great satirical look at these horrible, horrible times we are living in right now. They are both great cartoonists. Follow them on Twitter as well.

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Breaking format ever so slightly to cover one of the best holiday films of all time, The Muppet Christmas Carol. It's a big favorite of me and Bob's. You know we're going to have a good time talking about that. And you can only hear the full thing, the entire five-year-back catalog, covering everything from Akira to a goofy movie, Spider-man into the spider-verse to beavis and butthead do the universe so so many more our entire summer

of disney pixar for instance if you go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons today Yes, I built a lot of furniture and bookcases and stuff with my wife. We moved to a new condo, and I think I have said, hand me my patching trowel before we get started. It's just now I know about Foundation Repair because of the Simpsons and I think a trademark of Oakley and Weinstein too was they would actually do their research and they talk about consulting the time-life book on Foundation

Repair at the time just to get all of the lingo right. And Oakley on the commentary compliments the animators also knew what like, well, no, that is, hey, you got the lath right they got the they got the insulation right all the stuff looks correct yeah it's so this was the biggest thing that josh was showing off from the original script which was there is 10 times as much description in there in in the original script more and more uh it was a tweet from last year if you if folks want

to read the whole thing uh but it it is seriously like uh they they really went overboard with it in a great great way and uh that so if you think this is too many details here if it had been unedited it would have been a four minute scene in the episode of troy explaining how to do foundation repair i a lot more work to get all those details right too, because you can't just Google everything. And there's that, you know, now there's like 400,000 hours of home repair videos on YouTube and you can just figure it, you can just slap together the details in an afternoon. I don't know, the edit is really good from like, Phil Hartman's performance is fantastic because he's just hitting this really nice rhythm of information.

Great to listen to. And Homer's futile way of saying, wait a minute, wait a minute. It's like, pause, Homer. Stop. He starts believing Troy is real in the room with him at a certain point. And to know that he's like, oh, well, if I don't have this, okay, yeah. It's like, just use carbon fiber, stuc that's all you gotta do bill bill and josh had that dedication in in the pre internet times like they it should be noted too another reason they were some of our favorites

for they they were the first simpsons fans hired to staff really like they were they were the nerds who loved simpsons and also great writers and they were like in their early 20s big simpsons nerds i mean hearing them on the commentary say actually no late 20s but hearing them on the commentary that was recorded in like 2004 that they're 38 i was like oh wow wow wow time time flies homer is defeated by. They have to call in a specialist. You know what? As self-employed people, I think we've all probably gone through moments of this, of trying to say, do your own accounting work, and then realizing you need to call up a Surly Joe because you can't do it yourself. And this estimate of $8,500 is crazy.

It feels like you'd be well into the tens of thousands of dollars for this severe of a problem. Keep in mind, money was worth, yeah. Well, money was worth half. Money was worth about half. So that could be. So it's a $17,000 foundation repair, which, you know, I mean, my eyes would bug out if I had to pay that. According to the U.S. government's inflation calculator online, it's $19,000. If it was $8,592, it's $19,000 now. Yeah, that's a solid foundation job. That's expensive. That's a sinking house, I think. I think my friends have that. Yeah. That's about the amount

of money I had to spend getting my entire house rewired because it had like old knob and tube and crap but i got just a fantastically large bill that just crushed me and i ended up getting a job at the nuclear at the at the bruce power plant in uh in canada which is the largest i i i uh realized recently that I moved to Canada in 2020, and I live not super close, but within damage distance of the Bruce nuclear power plant, which is the largest nuclear power plant on Earth and provides Ontario with much of its power. Wow.

Those plants have never melted down yet. No, I'm fine. I'm pro-nuclear energy as long as pro it's a candy reactor that's a heavy water reactor you're fine i just moved to canada and the most dangerous thing near me is little italy i did uh a friend of my wife's who's my wife is canadian and that's the connection there we moved to her hometown and a friend of uh a lot of people work at the bruce power plant and this guy i i asked him what he did at the power plant he was like i'm basically he's like i'm basically like homer simpson like i don't do a lot i just have to be there he's the safety that's a discerning yeah yeah that's uh well it's also that's funny it's fair that is that is a similar story to

bob's as well that's uh that's's funny. Not the nuclear power plant thing. Right. Well, I mean, I just want to apologize to all of the 80-year-old men smoking cigar community out there if I insulted them with my little Italy comments. I never know what they're going to do when I walk by them. You want to avoid eye contact. They see it as a challenge. Lovely cigar, sir. So, yeah, Homer learns that he really is the only foundation repair guy in

town there's no competition the guy's got a monopoly surly joe does so if you pause it you can tell there wasn't some explosion at the white house has at the very least incapacity capacitated the president uh leaving the vice president's charge and i love any joke of brockman shifting to the just the tone shift of local news of like now like it's any joke and brockman is so great for that uh which i i also note uh that uh that that tone shift from the horribleness of life to uh just say like hey let's be let's just laugh is uh i i i get a feel that in injustice warriors as well by the way oh yeah no it's it's very present and and newscasters newscasters and sort of you know that's from maybe maybe uh brockman but also sort of uh robocop and dark knight strikes again or whatever it was called

you know i do see a little dkr in it yeah i was gonna say yeah yeah uh especially the layout it reminds me of that in a good way the uh of uh like the the screens and stuff in in justice warriors but but yeah so we see that the town their their home has now become a uh sideshow wonder cletus the slack john yokel doesn't exist yet so he can't he he appears next season he would be outside of this if they'd have created him yet but not not yet. There's clearest types out there, as well as Japanese tourists, which it was a real 90s thing and 80s thing,

Japanese tourist jokes. Like, I mean, there's tourists from everywhere, everywhere, but it felt like a real thing of like, oh, Japanese tourists in America with their big fancy cameras. It's because there was a massive- Look at them with their vacations. There was a massive economic bubble at this period in japan they had a massive they had their 2008 housing bubble and so they were just spending on credit so it was like ubiquitous kurt vonnegut wrote a book hocus pocus

where the japanese buy america during this period so like it is it is this ubiquitous joke of uh the japanese have money for the first time ever and they're flying all over the world and being metropolitan i was watching yellowstone recently which which i enjoy this there's this scene in like the first season or two where there's this bus of japanese tourists like gets off at the ranch and then he's sort of funny he sort of lectures them and then one of the guys says like the meaning of the show to him. It's like, one man shouldn't have all this land. But I was just like, when was the last time you just saw this trope?

I mean, it was very heavy in the 90s, I remember. Well, I would figure most Yellowstone viewers think it's the 90s still right now. They're heavily medicated. They're having a great time also by the way the way this was advertised uh i i found the vintage ad for this the only thing they show is this scene of bart as the carnival barker they do not they said i get a new simpsons tonight now and it's homer like it's it's homer being mad at bart i was like this is what they do for a marge episode i was just like have the scene where homer's mad at bart that's what kids need to know for the ads they really didn't believe in the Marge episode yet Homer again is trying to

think of what he'd do if he could just retire Homer just doesn't want a job is what every every prompting by Marge is just like well I could quit my job just over and over again but but here Homer thinks he's going to end up like Henry David Thoreau that's the that's his reference of journaling and uh quitting his job and doing a journal in the in nature it's basically he's writing walden uh yeah and this is this this connects to what i was talking about with homer being like a lazy american is that you wouldn't necessarily have homer depicted this way today because homer's still supposed to like he's transmuted into the regular sitcom dad who's just goofy but like Homer shows no virtues at all in this episode like he doesn't do any parenting he's just selfish he's lying on the couch he's gonna quit his job he's a total deadbeat he's

the worst employee at the power plant where Tibor has been promoted above him twice i mean i don't think they would do these jokes now but in the 90s they were super critical of union labor they were trying to play it both ways obviously mr burns is the villain but then when we get to the union episode and we've we talked about the union in the past they're just like oh these spoiled american workers with their unions yeah who they can take it easy i mean this it's it's funny too i i in their defense on the commentary even al jean's like you know i am a proud wga member we i do feel bad about some of the union jokes we did yeah well and at the time what is probably the the lowest union participation in like american history well not entirely american history but but modern American history, like what percentage of the workforce would even be unionized in 1992? It'd be like 8%.

Also, speaking of how things feel different, well, to now, though, I would say that he is treated horribly at it, but I could not imagine an actual like retirement party for somebody who worked at a place for 45 years and even having a party to kick him out of. You wouldn't do that now. You know, my main issue with this episode that I love is Burns is way too nice, especially with the ending. He would not even be throwing this party or attending it in the first place, but he intends it just to be mean and make it about himself.

Yeah, I think there'd be a retirement party, but just one thrown by the co-workers at the local log yes no why would why would burns ever rent out the spruce goose uh for it uh either which the spruce goose that was the other bit that josh showed off from his script they overwrote that as well because he's like yeah i guess what we did the most on other than the abe scenes, were the hyper-specific details of foundation repair and then all of these things of their made-up version of the Spruce Goose as well. The Spruce Caboose.

Very clever. It's great. I learned about the Spruce Goose from Simpsons references, only then I was like, oh, this has to be something, this Spruce Goose. It keeps coming up in the show. And yeah, later would turn uh oakley and weinstein would turn burns into howard hughes with uh the gambling episode yes yeah i said get in uh um but yes uh you know if you've seen the martin scorsese movie the aviator on howard hughes they do try to like reclaim the

hercules a little bit of trying to say to say, no, it flew once. It actually did fly once, but it was supposed to be like the super boat plane for World War II. They didn't even get the one they built finished until 1947, so not too helpful in the war. It flew for a minute, and they never built more of them, but the legacy of it is, one, if you want to see the Spruce Goose for about an hour outside of portland oregon go to the evergreen aviation and space museum you can see it for yourself it's still intact meanwhile the one of a kind hanger that was built for it in the los angeles area to build that monstrous uh plane in that got converted into sound stages for movies but today it reminded me of your book

has since been converted to office and event space by google so now yes google google took it over i hear the same people who uh designed the spruce goose are working on the f-35 now uh everything's fine nobody worry it's uh you see people don't make fun of that enough. The Spruce Goose got to be a joke. Spruce Goose can fly in the rain. Hey, Google had their own Spruce Goose. It was called the Stadia. Am I right?

Hey. Nobody knows what I'm talking about. I get it. But also, if the aviator's anything to go by, the Spruce Goose was only destroyed by that evil Alec Baldwin senator. Like, he's the bad guy in that movie yeah but but yes in in the uh the original script the extra details were just tragic about this booska boos that everyone died on it and that it took two

years to remove all the bodies so i think i get i think that's maybe why they didn't want to make it that tragic now you know uh i saw citizen kane for the first time in a film class when i was 18 and by that point i had seen so many parodies i was kind of checking them off in my head like yeah he dropped the snow globe yeah the people talking in front of the uh the newsreel but when when i got to this part of the movie the uh the song about charlie kane i didn't know this was a citizen kane reference until i hit it i was like this is a reference too so yeah i didn't know what this was from until reference until I hit it. I was like, this is a reference too? So yeah, I didn't know what this was from until I

actually watched it. I could understand like what everything else was, especially when the episode Rosebud came on. I was like, okay, I understand this is all Citizen Kane stuff, but not until I saw it did I realize this is from the movie. Tonight, we've all come to honor a close friend of ours.

Boring. A man who provided the Burns Corporation with 45 years of faithful service, Mr. Jack Marley. Boring. Mr. Burns, if you don't mind, I've prepared a little musical number for Jack's special night.

There is a man. There is a man A certain man A man whose grace and handsome face are known across the land You know his name It's Mr. Burns He loves a smoke And joys a joke Why he's worth ten times what he earns

He's Mr. Burns He's Monty Burns To friends he's known as Monty But to you it's Mr. Burns. He's Monty Burns. I'm Mr. Burns. To friends he's known as Monty, but to you it's Mr. Burns. Burns. Burns. It's a magical moment watching Citizen Kane for the first time if you're a Simpsons fanatic. Because you've already seen it.

I definitely, I recall on my first viewing, like, hearing the music of Citizen Kane, hearing that music start up for the Charles Foster Kane song. Oh, oh, yes. Yeah. And even the shot, the shot of Smithers, many of the shots, but especially Smithers saying 10 times what he earns like that is, I think, the best recreation they have of a Citizen Kane shot in the whole song, too. They even sometimes get the ceiling in the shot like in citizen kane not the entire time but sometimes they do and i mean the them pulling that off is because they can count on the animators the like the writers know the

they have some of the best animators working that they can be like you know what let's have a minute long shot for shot uh recreation of a scene of Citizen Kane. Yeah, that's a director that gets the joke. Like the director tells the joke with the visuals. As we've talked about his work before. That's a good director. Most animation directors, not on the ball. I will say it's not the strongest one of his episodes, but there are some great poses in this song.

Especially the burns at the end. That's a shot from directly above i think later in the episode the director jeffrey lynch says they don't he doesn't really like how marge looks in her in her work suit in her pantsuit or whatever she looks kind of like frankenstein with these really broad shoulder pads they couldn't quite nail it but scenes like this just great poses the way it's revealed when he says you know his name it's mr burns and then mr burns kind of comes into the shot like oh it's me like this this is not a celebration of of marley which that i mean that's a dickens reference i'm sure uh that his name is marley but the straw boater he has on like

the and it's smithers that is most like sycophantic also this is smithers that is most evil in this episode it's it's a lot of bill and and Josh are great with Smithers as well. They made... I think they're the guys who really transitioned Smithers from being a man who is just in love with Mr. Burns to being a gay man with his own life. Yeah, I definitely had a question about that because of his dream in the episode. I would like... I mean, I didn't remember if they ever established canonically smithers sexuality or what oh no they they have so yeah i mean uh well we can just say

now that yes that at this time and one of the showrunners aljean has said that back then he felt that smithers was a burns a sexual is that whatever burns was he'd be attracted to i think aljean said if burns was a frog he'd be in love with frogs but as time went on they just liked doing gay jokes with smithers that then turned into like some are immature but i think over time they're like you know what it'd just be interesting if he was gay and we could just do jokes that were respectful about him being a gay man not just about mocking yeah uh gay culture or what or just a bunch of straight guys you know giggling to themselves like can you believe guys kiss

other guys like like he's much more of a semi-evil sycophant in this episode right he's sort of a demon assistant to mr burns armed kidnapping yeah the this is a smithers who would and has killed for mr burns i'd say in this writing yes it was like a sort of a formative episode for me for building an image of smithers in my head because that his dream sequence of mr burns coming through the window that has stayed with me as like oh that's who smither is smithers is but yeah so this is when everybody gets thrown out i i just love to uh burns like now get out the bars oh also uh oh i'm not finished yet oh yes you are just tossed out the older i get the sadder i am of like i never married and my dog is dead sad so so dark but also i'd say in a very realistic for our times thing that they're not replacing Marley's job with a senior position.

It now becomes an entry-level position in Sector 7G for somebody. Nobody gets to move up in the Springfield nuclear power plant. This is when they head home. They were also doing a lot of Homer misquoting the Bible back then. Yeah, he's a demon. He's horrible. This is almost as good as Thou shalt not let moochers into thy hut.

Porn in on her husband's racket. It's in there. Please don't make me retire. My job is the only thing that keeps me alive. I never married and my dog is dead. I'm not finished. Oh, yes, you are. With the departure of Mr. Marley,

there will now be an entry-level position open in Sector 7G. Now get out. The bar is closed. Maybe I should apply for that job. Forget it, Marge. We already live together. We shouldn't work together. As the Bible says, thou shalt not horn in on thy husband's racket. Where does the Bible say racket?

It's in there. Look, Marge, we just don't need the money that bad. Yeah, then Homer, I mean, also Homer comes off as a mean guy of just saying like, no i don't like he says it multiple times but this is the first one he's like i don't want to see you all day like i like being away from your work it's great that i don't have to see you yeah he's a total misogynist in this episode uh he's irredeemable though though uh i will say in my life i have walked through some slanted doorways of saying like, we don't need to pay for that. Like I have said that like, no, it's fine.

It's fine. And the hummingbird is what's, something as light as the hummingbird is what sends it over the edge and seemingly nearly kills Bart. Marge is doing her resume. Again, this is one of the things that feels dated in the episode. The like, if they were to write The Simpsons with a computer, that would make them too rich in 1992. It's like, no, they wouldn't have a home computer to write things on. No way.

I have a question about this part for you Simpsons heads, which is her resume says like 1980 to present housekeeper, right? So and she references voting for Jimmy carter which i think was a funny joke i don't want to admit to that now so as i understand uh i haven't watched all the simpsons but you know they reference obviously they keep at the times they reference the presidents and stuff but they don't they're not aging so is there like a sliding time scale theory in the same way that there is with like marvel because i'm a comics guy, so I'm familiar with how they do that. Yes, actually, Matt, according

to current Simpsons chronology, Homer and Marge are not born in 1980. They are not born yet. They're born around 1984 because they should be around the same age. And Homer is perpetually 39. So, a friend of the show the real jims does a lot of

great simpsons videos about uh different parts of the history and different characters he recently did a video called homer is a millennial i believe it's what it's called and uh it estimates yes if homer is 39 the math is very easy he was born in 84 brutal although the writers have a lot of fun playing with uh you know that because some of the most classic episodes establish you know graduated in 74 the kids are born in the early 80s yeah and so on but obviously that makes no sense today like abe can't possibly be a world war ii vet skinner can't be a vietnam vet anymore um but yeah they just start as of this recording that's yeah i think it'd be really interesting if they stuck that discipline, though.

Because that's really interesting to hear that I'm basically Homer Simpson. Because that's how it feels. We're close to Homer being younger than us, just as a warning. I already said, I mean, I'm 40 as of like last week. So I'm older than Homer. And as somebody who was, you know once uh the same age as bart simpson when i was watching it it's it's it's pretty brutal but i'm like i said i'm relating to the stuff now about home repairs and like oh geez how do they like it's terrible it's terrible

it's awful really but um yeah i mean uh henry and i are are 41 not to spoil anything for you folks out there and i couldn't talk to a 39-year-old. I'd be like, I watch Rocko's Modern Life. You watch Tay Arnold. We have nothing in common. Completely unrelatable. People, they were into like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Now, Matt, it's funny you bring up Marvel because, yes, I do.

I do equate it with like if you read old Marvel comics, you'll see Spider-Man say like, you should be on you should be on the jack par show or whatever he'll say in some of the original comics and you know you you have to you just have to uh realize like well yeah but spider-man spider-man was always is always in his mid-20s you just have to tell yourself that now or he's been in his mid-20s for really since 1967 let's say because we all know when he graduated high school and amazing spider-man number 28 we all remember this but uh no i i get it but they do slowly age everyone like uh you know the x-men for instance that's something i follow a lot and it's like well

they started out as teenagers you know cyclops and all them were teenagers now they're not then i don't know exactly how old they're supposed to be. But they update everybody's origins, like you were saying with the Simpsons. Like Vietnam vets have to be Iraq war vets. I think they've done the same thing with the Punisher. But you can't... Magneto still has to be a concentration camp victim. You know, it's key to his character.

So they just... You just sort of smudge it with like, well, they've been cloned and reincarnated. So we're just going to keep it. Yeah yeah and often they will do these episodes to uh in my opinion taunt the viewer in a playful way because in 2008 they did the episode that 90s show in which it was posited what if homer and marge met in early 90s and it made everyone completely pissed off and then recently they did an episode where like what if homer was a teenager in the early 90s and people were even more pissed off by that so they really can't win but they do these episodes to tease the audience sometimes i feel i'd like to i'd like to see those for for season four this

is accurate like that mart bart was born mars got pregnant with bart in 1980 and married homer so she has been a homemaker since 1980 so technically it's true and also again that that Lisa is born during the 1984 summer olympics so just again that tells you how old Lisa technically should be right now she's about to turn 40 Lisa Wood so when Lisa sees this she knows that uh and me and Bob have been clear on this lie in your resumes we agree with this like everybody expects you to they nobody checks especially now nobody checks your resumes you'll have to do eight interviews for a job and then not get hired but they're not going to read your resume the machine it doesn't matter because yeah the machine that you're

interviewing to run say that you were the inventor of it yeah i'm gonna say it doesn't matter because most job postings aren't real so just uh throw anything you want at the wall yeah yeah lisa just flying away on that typewriter she's it also is a little duplicitous of lisa like this feels more like a bart thing to lie on the resume so much but bart doesn't know how to type yeah yeah that's true i uh oh and also like homer speaking of things that haven't that did change homer has rarely drawn this hairy they they he's he's normally pretty hairless by men of his age standards i'd say well he's called out as hairless in this episode by by bart oh that's right uh the hairless wonder or whatever he calls him the met cubal the man

with no hair yeah and then uh and yes yeah this is the same season as the malaise forever. Jimmy Carter statue. So Al, Al Jean is, uh, was not a fan of Jimmy Carter. That's a, he's,

I mean, imagine having a disappointing democratic seat, feeling president. I can't impossible. Those days are well behind us. Well, but Hey, at least,

you know, he was looking pretty strong into that, uh, his election year, right? Like, uh, 1979, well behind us well but hey at least you know he was looking pretty strong into that uh his election year right like 1979 carter was looking pretty good right uh what could go wrong yeah i like how this this the sliding time scale like adoption of like oh now they were born in the 90s now the 80s or whatever is you can just sort of the same dynamic of like an awful right-wing president followed by a sort of lame democratic president you just sort of the same dynamic of like an awful right-wing president followed by a sort of lame democratic president you just sort of there's a you know there's the pairing for each

generation you can you can uh you can slot in there trump and biden you know bush and obama sadly sadly yeah so march takes that to smithers and smithers is impressed in our next clip. Sorry, the position has been failed. Oh, dear. Marge, you're making a big mistake. I'm going to see you all day at work and all night at home. And that's good. But here's the bad part. Oh, look at that headline.

Canada to hold referendum. Sorry, Marge, can't talk now. We need the money. And my life is pretty boring. Last week, some Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door, and I wouldn't let them leave. They snuck away when I went in the kitchen to get more lemonade. Yeah, lemonade is good.

I think it's wonderful. Mom and Dad side by side at the power plant. You'll be just like Marie and Pierre Curie. Where'd they go? They discovered rad radium then they both died of radiation poisoning and then we have quite a cutaway when smithers hires marge uh note in the background this is some more continuity they cared about back then that burns his photo with elvis that he that smithers was gifted when the germans bought the plant still up in smithers office oh good gag some people might see the first time like wow what if it works as well on its own as just like oh that's a fun weird thing like burns basically that burns is nixon in the photo with elvis thing and all that but for the

hardcore's they know like oh that's that's continuity. Smithers kept the photo that Burns gave them. So I looked this up according to at least a Quora, you know, one of those questions online. People who are native speakers of Swahili did a post of like, this is just gibberish, right? This is not how anybody says it in Swahili. And so according to that, Karibu Uwe Moja Waitu is how you would say it in Swahili and so according to that Karibu Uwe Moja Waitu is how you would say it

in Swahili and I'm sure I said that perfectly and correctly I'm sure I just I did some of my own research here and I saw that uh Kazini means to work so maybe they mangled the first word one of them wrong so it's like Kabibu kazini so i don't know what kabibu means but kazini means to work in the show's defense smithers his swat healy is not perfect yeah yes yes that's what i thought so maybe it's even smarter than uh also i'm glad to see the marley at least live long enough to try to get his old job back that's uh he didn't die when he was tossed out of the car like you said ben homer is horrible here like also that after he feels like he realized he messed up telling march he hates seeing her at work he then also stops listening to her and just goes like yeah lemonade

is good and you got a little uh historical reference to a referendum in canada when the province of que Quebec where I live tried to leave and probably did vote to leave and the federal government messed with it. That's a bit of a conspiracy theory. Might be real. And yeah. Quebec separatism. We're glad you're still

a part of the country today because I don't want to have to get my passport to leave. Boy, I am now feeling outnumbered here. I forgot it's like three to one on Canadian residents in this podcast here. Oh, no. This is like when I book a gay guest on the podcast to make Bob feel the single down one. Well, you need a gay Canadian for balance.

That's true. All right. We got to do it. We're recruiting a third host now must be gay and canadian uh but yeah also i mean this we we talked about how every right new writers get handed marge scripts because there was a feeling then i'm like well of the main guys i don't want to write a marge script it's hard to write for her i like that they're finding something with her that their joke with marge is just extreme desperation and boredom. Like she has nothing in her life that she annoys Jehovah's Witnesses.

She's that desperate for attention. But also it is funny structural satire. Like this is the stuff we don't get anymore of that the Simpsons are poor in this version of the Simpsons. Like they are actually exposed to capitalist forces. Like they're exposed to austerity. They're exposed to private liability. It doesn't super work as a satire,

but at least they show why women have to join the workforce in American history. Like you're fucked if you don't have two incomes. And so they show like a structural force at least which is something the foundation of the home exactly the foundation of the home is busted and so we're going to set the woman that means you're right like that's the good stuff that that is in there in those older satires it's structural to the spirit of the show matt groening has said like that they tried to put the satire in the structure so they couldn't take it away from the show. Matt Groening has said that they tried to put the satire in the structure

so they couldn't take it away from the show, that they couldn't scrape it out by just changing writers or something, that the satire would just come from the organization of the characters. It was sort of becoming unsustainable in American life to have a single income household by the time this aired. Yeah, I think that element of the show really ends in this season because uh david merkin is the next showrunner and he wants to turn the show into even more of a wild parody of sitcoms so for the things he wants the simpsons to do they can't really be that poor anymore or the the focus on money can't be as important yeah they but to hear i mean to not many sitcoms today would have a scene where the main characters are like, we have 500 saved up.

That's all we have. We need another $800. And yeah, most, I mean, it's something you hear American politicians say often, but it's one of those true things. Like many American families like the Simpsons, they can't survive something that would cost $500 like one emergency that costs even $500 they're destroyed and that's our money now that's worth less than half that's like them saying we have

$250 but then that yes an insane cutaway to the Curies who did discover radium and die of radiation poisoning that's all true but that they use that how Marie Curie really died but it's very boring so I'm going to not do that so I just wasted everyone's

time and I apologize. No but make up a really exciting way right now Crushed by a tank in World War 2 Oh my god! It was a wolf fight But I mean when Jeff Lynch and his team were told like hey you're doing a Godzilla parody they went for it.

This fucking rules like the animation of it. There's something about the way when Pierre Curie with his laser eyes like picks up the building and is like looking at it extra hard. I feel like to burn the people inside like it's such a such a great detail in it. It's I mean, jokes about bad dubbing,bing i think have aged a little poorly just because like dubbing is so much better in movies now but uh but still the the destruction and rampage in this is is so well done i i love the animation on it they're gonna go to work and uh and ben you're talking about how bad homer comes off here uh i'd say homer's borderline racist in this bit here i

would say yeah oh he's crossed the border. Yes, you're right. He's in the racist country now. Homer tells us the best racist way to get away with mistakes at work in our next clip. Now, Marge, just remember, if something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English. Ah, Tibor,

how many times have you saved my butt? Maggie, your babysitter's here. What's that mean? Whoa, you must be sick. Let's see. What's all Doc Washburn prescribed? Do you have dropsy?

The grip? Scrofula? The vapors? Jungle rot? Dandy fever? Poor man's couch? Housemaid's knee? Climatic boo-boe? Theaggers, Dumb Dumb Fever.

And this is your office. That idiot Tibor lost the key, but you can jimmy it open with a credit card. I wanted to keep in both Tibor attacks that Homer... Clearly Homer's lies have been believed even by Smithers of saying like, uh, Tibor lost it. Later, we will meet Zutroy, the new Tibor, who works for a shiny nickel. That's right. Yeah. I'm, you know, these Tibor jokes, the darkness of them lightens a little bit when you learn that he got a promotion over Homer.

So at least you're like, well, you know, Tibor at the end of the day is doing okay. So you don't feel too bad that Homer has been destroying this man's reputation at every turn. But then it makes Homer even less redeemable. Yes. Well, in season four, they're having fun with Homer being a food monster and a horrible guy. Like that's... Yeah, I think that, I mean, I've always thought that that's kind of the point of Homer. I mean, he's not, he's a loser.

He's a bad dad who chokes his son when he gets mad at him you know and drinks too much beer and is lazy and you know is casually racist like that's who he is also when i've had first days at work i have thought of the this moment of marge just like they hand me the computer like well you know what to do and i'm like yeah then i'm just hoping not to press the button that lights everybody on fire. I'm really hoping. But yes, this is another Bill and Josh standard of an old man listing a lot of real things in a row. And there will be a sequel to that joke in the episode that a cell is from behind you, Henry. That's right.

Yes. One of my beloved. This is a real Simpson cell from Simpson and Son Revitalizing Tonic. It's Bill and Josh are so good at writing old men describing things. It's so great. And these are all real things, by the way. I do have a full list here, but boy, it would take a while. But just a couple of them.

Housemaid's Knee? Well, okay, since you asked it on that one uh housemaid's knee chronic inflammation of the prepatellar uh bursa that after repetitive minor trauma is called housemaid's knee so meaning going up and down creates a bursa you know a a lump uh i would guess assist i suppose type deal that's that's housemaid's knee okay poor man there you go too not rich man scout not the upper middle class scout no apparently that is from the misbelieved notion that only rich people got gout so if you got gout as a not a rich person that it was seen as inherited like as uh from from a rich acquaintance i love i love the that's an excellent theory of disease i love that and i

think they were getting these all from old almanacs and things like this again they did their research at the time yeah it's so it's so great that they did like again scruffula there's a real thing that even i regretted going to the wiki page for climactic poobow because i did not want to see inflamed lymph nodes above right above a man's penis i didn't i didn't really want to see that on the wiki page but thanks wikipedia for your important for your important research this is a part of being a parent i relate to grandpa simpson in this situation because you're like looking up like what disease do you have child but all they want is a bottle right yeah oh you're hungry shit i guess this is the closest of connective tissue and it's only because of the a and b story because grandpa says your babysitter's here

because marge has a job abe is now full-time babysitter so that's how bart thinks he can get away with is calling in sick to school all the time that That's the only, that's it, though. It's very light. They need someone to say that. Cut to Bart at school. He is doing his first of crying wolf saying that he's sick. This feels very season one. Like you guys said, it's a moral lesson for kids of like, oh, lies so much and it comes to bite him in the butt,

but with an actual wolf. Yeah, it's the Simpsons 90s edge that introduces the actual wolf to the equation. First, they have Homer and Marge working together, and this is when Marge first sees that Homer is a bad worker, that he is just cutting it short, like, no, we're going to lunch. Like, just put it in the tube and write a frar for Arrivederci.

And again, this is just like sending an email right before lunch, of like, yeah, I saw that. And then you go off to work. This is back when you had pneumatic tubes instead of email, which is a more exciting time in offices, I'd say. I was thrilled to see the pneumatic tube scene for two reasons. One is something Ben and I are working on actually involves a pneumatic tube joke. So I hadn't seen a lot of other pneumatic tube jokes.

So I texted Ben. I was like, oh, my God, there's pneumatic tubes in this So I hadn't seen a lot of other pneumatic tube jokes. So I texted Ben. I was like, oh my God, there's pneumatic tubes in this episode. This is great. And then I have a fond memory of pneumatic tubes from childhood. The bank my parents always went to, it was a drive-through

and they would do the pneumatic tubes for like sending your check and you'd wait for them to send it back or whatever. Oh yeah, yeah. Those are so fun. They'd sometimes send back a lollipop yeah we gotta bring back tubes for those millennials needs a pneumatic tube nostalgia moment i once worked in an office building that was so old and every floor just had pneumatic tubes running through it and unfortunately they were all disabled but

every one of them had a picture or rather a sticker of mr zip reminding you to use the uh the zip code when you're sending something. So that's how old the last use of that was. I think the 70s maybe. Jeffrey Lynch mentioned on a commentary they love the tube joke so much that they gave them like double the layouts of like that it would have been like a three minute tube scene. They drew so many scenes, different scenes of the tubes. And Jeffrey Lynch would direct the episode Bill and Josh wrote that had the sequel to the tube scene of the opening to Who Shot Mr. Burns Part One, where the tube is sent along with all the other stuff in the letter being sent to Homer.

Here's your package, Mr. Burns. I also love the musical tone of all the beavers building stuff with the tubes. It's a very sweet moment. It's like nature's fixing itself. Nature's healing, yeah. Speaking of nature, Bart's getting some natural cures here. I like that Abe had to go to a bait shop for it. And also that he's so old that he does not trust oral thermometers even exist.

He's like, oral thermometer, my eye. Though that does mean the way the scene is framed that we are seeing it from the viewpoint of Bart's rear end. Yeah, yeah. That's a good reveal. We had to wait, like, what, 12 years to see his penis? Yeah. Yeah, I guess, no, 15.

It was 07. Yeah, thank you, thank you. Yes can you can see it on disney plus right now fill me in oh uh matt matt is confused matt uh you can uh there's a there's a joke in the simpsons movie in which bart is skateboarding naked and things are covering him up throughout the entire sequence but then he goes behind a bush and then for a brief second you see his uh his cartoon penis twig and berries yes yes yes pg-13 movie wow yeah um that i i i definitely saw the movie but i don't remember that part i'll go look it up because why why because i want to see it it was a huge laugh in the in the theater when i saw it as i recall It let us know what penises

looked like in the Simpsons universe, so all the fan art got it wrong until that point. That's cute, yeah. Now I am kind of curious, but go ahead. No, I mean, as artists, I have... Have you encountered any of the Simpsons porn out there that

has been too aggressively advertised on some websites? I would say that I have not, any of the Simpsons porn out there that has been too aggressively advertised on some websites? I don't see it as much as I used to. I have not. And if I had, I wouldn't admit to it on the podcast. Okay, well, good. Oh, I mean,

my answer is the same as Matt's answer. We've only heard about it from other people, too. We don't know this stuff. Yeah. We cut to Burns burns and i think bob correct me if i'm wrong i think this is the first time we've heard the imperial march associated with mr burns in the show i i believe so yes yeah they uh they they never used it it

would be used in many more scenes after this i think fox has some ownership of the imperial march now uh for star wars nerds out there the imperial march doesn't appear in the first star wars it was debuted in empire strikes back and that film is technically owned by lucasfilm uh but then fox distributed it so i'm still thinking they probably have some of the song rights to it so that's i'm thinking they probably didn't pay a ton to to use it in this episode yeah and it's not the original recording that's a re-recording that the simpsons probably had produced so they might have just paid licensing fees for that and this is back

when a star wars reference the response would be oh that's cute yeah wow star wars fucking sick of this shit i remember it was like on season two of the venture brothers another great show they talk about how they did one episode that had a lot of star wars references and after they did it they're like we will never do a star wars reference again we we regret making everybody it was 2007 they're like oh we're sick of star wars references too we're not doing it anymore and now you can see maggie hanging out with bb8 or whatever and some of those shorts oh great on disney plus yeah head over to disney plus guys you're missing out bart's penis and elisa hanging out or maggie hanging out with bb8 that's that's worth the subscription price alone yeah just as an aside uh did you guys watch it on disney plus because i watched a pirate link that i found

based out of the christmas islands oh wow i had to go to christmas island to get a pirate link i just broke out my dvds for it that sounds like as a loyal disney plus subscriber i watched it on the uh authorized channel and you know they're about to bring up the monthly price on it, and they deserve to. It's so much good content on there. It needs to be $17 a month now. They know that a guy like me who wants to watch Old Simpsons

episodes and entertain his children with all of their offerings simply cannot cancel. So they got me by the balls. I'm just worried about the shareholders, personally. They're in trouble. I'm just worried about the shareholders personally. Yeah. They're in trouble. I'm worried, you know, I'm very worried that now this deal with the writers, I mean, I don't know if

it'll affect, because they have the streaming residuals, the union got what they wanted. There's some sort of better residual streaming thing. So Bill Oakley, you know, might be getting paid more, or at least paid something for us uh watching these old episodes i'm very worried about the the cut that might come out of the

disney ceos paid it's like this guy could be making five hundred thousand one million dollars less are you telling me the dividend might take a hit it just might although important fact though this was not a wjo sorry wga show yet okay yeah it's actually a sad i think i learned this from bill oakley saying it somewhere first of just like no this wasn't a wga show like technically they did have a deal where wga wouldn't would allow wga writers to work on the show and they would some sort of deal for like parody for a lot of stuff like as in it would match some things but uh i believe i believe i've heard from folks like oh yeah we don't get residuals like season 11 writers got residuals on simpsons oh let's get cut to uh the anti-union jokes in The Simpsons.

Yes. Yeah. You don't really wonder why every writer left after season four. No, no. They also, speaking of things Josh thanks, he thanks Roges thesaurus on the commentary for layabouts, noodle heads, all the words they love to have him say. I love the cock fight in the nuclear reactor.

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Greater Colorado Springs Big O Tires today. Big O Black Friday savings going on now. Big O Tires, the team you trust. I didn't get that one as a kid uh the and i and yes the cut inside of of burns his heart beating like a jackhammer he literally has a black heart people have called said he has a black heart he literally does that was good and they just they waited for a quite a while for it to just squeak one time we're talking about just how crammed this episode is full of ideas and when you if you ask me what's this about i would say you know marge gets a job

burns falls in love with her that happens and then there's seven minutes left yes yeah this this this is introduced at the end of the second act this uh this plot twist or this plot element rather for plots on the simpsons to work burns must remember nothing so he can't remember that by this point march has already drawn him or painted him in the nude to much humiliation and that she hates him and though marge also has to forget that she hates him because when he shows up with the uh the scented bath oils that he lavishes upon all his employees she's like well aren't you nice marge doesn't remember that she hates this guy. Then in, and then in the next season, Burns will fall in love with Marge's mother and almost marry her.

So he's, he's got quite a relationship with the Bouvier family in general. Well, but that's like one of the rules of the Simpsons that make, yeah, it's a load bearing rule, right? That he can never remember Homer's name.

That it always has to be like the first time they interact with Mr. Burns. This is another of my all-timer favorite scenes whenever i think of being uh upset at a job i think of this this little bit here i'll just play the clip hello mr burns no need for alarm i just came to give you the orchids and fragrant bath oils i lavish upon all my employees. Oh, aren't you nice? This makes me wonder why morale here is so low. I am the angel of death. The time of purification

is at hand. Oh, who cares? Marge, what can we do? Well, you could give them healthier snacks. Theme days. You mean like child labor day? Actually, I was thinking of funny hat day. Ooh, and how about

piping in some Tom Jones music? That always cheers me up. What's new, Pussycat? There we go. I mean, 31 years have passed. At the time, spree shootings were new and funny yeah that the guy i mean the darkness of that joke yes one he's polishing his gun he's talking like that it seems to be referencing the same bell tower shooter guy that we're uh from that dog dale

afternoon episode of king of the hill charles starkweather maybe yeah that's another guy sorry but yeah i know you're talking about but it used to be back in 1992 there were there were only like five spree shooters you could reference like now now you can't keep at track of like a dozen there's five a month yeah that was the time when uh going postal was big yeah it's uh this is the the the postal service thing we've talked about the history of the postal service jokes on here too yeah it's but the way he the way he stands up with purpose with his funny hat on like he's sorry henry it was charles whitman and then in the next season homer loves flanders uh flanders has a fantasy about going into a clock tower and shooting people he thinks are homer and then a postal worker pulls out his gun and fires back that's right so we come full circle with the spree

shooting jokes next season you know at the darkest times in my jobs where uh in offices i had where there were funny hat days i consider myself like the the the crying man if we're if you're one of the three the crying man not the not the staring off into the distance drinking, I'm assuming, whiskey lady. Though also, me and Bob literally experienced the piping in, not Tom Jones music, but the piping in of music at the job we both worked at. Yeah. They wanted to make The Office more fun and we were writers. So they decided, let's put a speaker directly above your desk and play Californication as you're trying to write articles about Call of Duty.

Yep. And then they let us have control of the Spotify playlist that would be playing, but then people had too much fun of putting on mean songs on it, and then they had to send out an email like, no, all right, we're controlling the playlist now. It's like, oh, all the fun's over. I remember hearing suicide is painless at work, and I think that's when they put their foot down. the playlist now it's like oh all the fun's over i remember hearing suicide is painless at work and

i think that's when they put their foot down i love the idea of the company-wide email the spotify playlist can no longer be toyed with no more papa must not be fun yeah another of my favorite like big laughs in the episode is that how when burn sees a man polishing his gun his response is oh who cares like that's such a great that's such a great reply to it also child labor day is very funny just on it yeah that was a solid joke uh and uh yes the this is where the tom jones comes in who again not in their original script it was it's a classic al gene and mike reese era thing to be like could we get a celebrity for this like let's let's get a celebrity and write them in here uh they say that tom jones was great one of their the nicest guys that in mike reese's book they have a picture of them with tom jones holding up his character design and that then later that

night he gave him free tickets to his concert so So it was also, oh, sorry, Henry. It's also a trait of Homer and Marge in that they like slightly out of date things at this point in the show anyways. Yeah, it's not unusual is play is their playlist at the party admired of War of the Simpsons episode. You're right. Yeah, though. It's funny, too, because for me as a kid, the joke is supposed to be that, you know, oh, Tom, Tom Jones is is such an old old musty reference like you know he's in on the joke but moms love him but i thought it's like my mom loves tom jones

music as well so i thought it's like oh yeah it's how it's about how all moms love tom jones like marge and my mom yeah that's how i would take it and And also, I would probably hate to look up what Tom Jones' age was in 1992. He's probably younger than I am now. Well, no, no. He was in his 50s then. He's 83 now and still with us at the time of this recording. Okay, thank God. Early 50s then.

I'm older than Homer, but when I get to be older than Tom Jones in in 1992 that's when i'm gonna be like oh i'm old they then cut back to uh the donuts being taken away so it's also marge being a boring person with healthy snacks ruining all the fun garbage that the guys want to eat it uh this does i will say that joke felt a little bit about some writer's room thing of like we can't have a chick in the writer's room. She won't let us eat garbage all day. She'll think we'll have to have selfie snacks. Like, I don't know.

Maybe I'm reading a bit much into it. I do like how jacked up Lenny gets by this guy swinging the chain. He's horribly injured. He goes into radioactive waste. That too, yes. Though it also gives resolution to the man with the gun because he's in the background seemingly he's been disarmed by the donut man who's like having like uh like this is like out of uh you know the final fight video game this chain fight here yeah so then everybody backs

away anybody else want to be a hero that's a great line so so yes this is when marge is giving given a new job a big promotion that she isn't like she is also unqualified she's she's right she works harder than homer but she's just as unqualified as homer for her job yeah but she's actually trying yeah right yeah like the thing about marge is that she does save the day like The foundation gets fixed. She's working hard. She's doing her best. And then she starts getting harassed. And I would say they're under the impression that she is the inventor of the one machine that sets workers on fire

and a proficient Swahili speaker. So while she's already evidently more competent than Homer, their perception is that she know she's hyper competent and so uh smithers then gets downgraded to being a cleaner of bathrooms which he is seemingly very proud of though he's like uh what could be better i feel like there's some level of joke to this is that smithers is on his knees in a men's room i feel like there's you know i feel like it's also immature of like uh gay men like penises and so they like pee or they like clean pee i feel like there's a bit of that maybe a little i think so

yeah i want to see the first draft of this uh scene because i honestly it feels like smithers should be scrubbing a toilet because why would he get mad that's a homer pees in a urinal yeah is homer's pee like particularly dark and messy what's happening oh yeah you're right i think it's a number two joke i think it's i think it's homer going into the stall and shoving smithers out of it yeah in my head i think he it's a toilet but no it's a year and i'm like a pee just goes down the pee hole and then it's fine what's going on speaking of bad jobs we had when i worked at a amc movie theater i had to clean restrooms sometimes and they're like well no you don't clear off you can't close down the restroom because we're too busy so just go under people while they're peeing and just mop under it i was

like well all right if you insist i and so when people got mad at me, I'm like, dude, I'm peeing right here. I'm like, tell it to my manager, man. He told me I got to pee under your – I have to clean under you peeing right here. I was thinking about being Smithers in that moment and not liking it as much as Smithers. And then you immediately went back to serving popcorn. Yes. Clean up the piss. Who wants popcorn?

I washed my hands. It's an extra $1.25 to popcorn? I wash my hands. It's an extra $1.25 to get the yellow stuff on it. Oh, and I should say this was, of course, Florida minimum wage in 2002, so not good pay. Not good pay. Not paying you enough to wash your hands, that's for sure. So, yeah, then Bart, we cut back to Bart. He gets another excuse of saying that his ovaries are are hurting i didn't get that as a kid at all i did not know

what ovaries were i think bart doesn't either that's a joke and then yes as they try to explain it bart doesn't learn i do like boy cries wolf has a few laughs i forget how it ends uh and if abe can't tell if a light is green he probably shouldn't be driving I think I feel like that was a running joke through the Simpsons wasn't it he was always doing stuff like that it better be that guy has to dodge Abe there

yeah I guess there's a later joke where there's some concern about money or if things are going to be okay and then Abe crashes through their wall and says I hit three people on the way over here that's right yeah so how's that you uh so yes this is when marge gets promoted over homer it does it's it can be heartbreaking to not get a promotion but also homer i mean if you believe in a meritocracy homer doesn't deserve a promotion which i think the show believes in a meritocracy on some level.

But that Marge is right. Like, Homer, kicking the ball of electrical tape around, that is such a great detail. That feels like a Bill and Josh line to me because it's a very boring detail. They could make up a zany, wacky thing that Homer was like, I saw you eating your fifth box of donuts or something about him being a food monster, something that is excessive and crazy. Instead, it's so boring and real that's that's the great turn of it oh homie what's wrong i'm used to seeing people promoted ahead of me friends co-workers t-bor i never thought it'd be my own wife well maybe you'd get promoted if you worked a little harder. Are you kidding? I work like a Japanese beaver. Oh, really? I came to see you three times today. Twice you

were sleeping, and once you were kicking that ball of electrical tape around. Well, I won't sleep in the same bed with a woman who thinks I'm lazy. I'm gonna go right downstairs, unfold the couch, unroll the sleeping bed. Good night.

Yeah, once again, there's this great, the structural satire of The Simpsons at this point, that Homer is in charge of nuclear safety. So there was this theorist at the beginning of the nuclear age. I forget his name. But he said that nuclear power is a Faustian bargain, that you have to have a committed and educated population that's going to take care of this powerful technology. And that's what's great about The Simpsons is that Homer Simpson is in charge of nuclear safety. America cannot be trusted with world power. Yeah, I guess go back to the episode where Bart is born,

and that's when Homer runs in saying what his job is, and Hibbert goes, oh, good lord. Yes, yeah. It's lost on people now that the joke is like, Homer still works at the nuclear power plant, but it's kind of lost on people. This does feel sadly similar to a lot of things we heard. You've heard many times before,

but definitely there were stories like this that came out from the Me Too movement, which was women in jobs who said that they felt that they did do a great job and they got deserved promotions. And then later they find out that one of their superiors wanted to date them or was going to hit on them, and then it ruins their entire belief in their abilities.

They're like, oh, was I just terrible at this job and they only wanted to date me? Especially I saw many writers and artists say that it really fucked them up. It was a side effect of the other harassment they suffered in those jobs. So it's sadly realistic here. Turns out the boss wasn't giving everybody orchids. Yes, yeah, and the scented bath oil. I thought this part of it was actually pretty well done. And I think the reason why it's even happening is because it's exactly's exactly one year after the clarence thomas

hearings which have to be the biggest public exposure to the women workplace harassment in the workplace that that happened during that time and then you know out of that you get sort of the 90s culture of there's psas. You remember the PSAs about like... This is sexual harassment and I don't have to take it. Yeah, yeah, and I don't have to take it, exactly. And, you know, you'd have to, at workplaces, people would go in and watch the, they'd pop in the VCR for your workplace training

and stuff like that. So this is coming into that era. And I don't know the production timeline on The Simpsons. You guys might actually know this, but, you know, they got to write it. Then there's animation, voice acting, just holding it until the air date. So they probably wrote this, you know, six months after the Clarence Thomas hearings, maybe. So that was just on my mind as something in the zeitgeist that just everyone who had a television, you know,

would have been aware of and uh the current president joe biden was a huge part of that whole thing he was the senate judiciary committee uh chairman and while he voted against clarence thomas was also heavily criticized for kind of trying trying kind of trying to split it down the middle they allowed anita hill to testify but they wanted to keep it moving they didn't allow like uh there was a bunch of women who was going to corroborate her testimony um and they didn't let them testify uh basically because they sort of you know they wanted to give some credence to it but they if it was there wasn't enough uh political willpower

yet in the united states for for a woman's workplace harassment, sexual harassment story to mean that your career was over and that you could not advance to the Supreme Court. And as we found, you know, during the Supreme Court Justice, as we found

during the Kavanaugh hearing, of course, that a woman's testimony against you is enough to end your career. And that we find that happens every time. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, times have changed so much since then because you got Biden and you've got you've got Clarence Thomas, the impropriety. Like, gosh, well, you mentioned Biden. It's important to remember just how old he is and how long he's been a part of everything, because I had to remind myself he's old enough and has been in politics long enough to have had a stance on busing integration.

Yeah, that's how far back it goes. And not a good one. No, no, a bad one. very open corruption in the Supreme Court. He's taking lavish gifts and then doing explicit fundraising for the Koch brothers now has been uncovered. And it's like, you know, this guy's been daring everyone to prevent him from being on the Supreme

Court since before he was on the Supreme Court. And there just seems to be no ability to hold him accountable. No, because there's no institution that can yeah why would they there's nobody like every the people can grumble about it but they just they can say you should resign and he can just say like kick rocks that's all he's gonna say well are you trying to make it illegal to have rich friends yeah it's friends it's well the crazy

thing is is that it is uh once again kind of up to Joe Biden to make it an issue or not. Right. Is it politically expedient for Joe Biden to do it or not? To basically say, hey, I want to impeach a Supreme Court justice or, you know, he can't do that himself personally, but he could certainly campaign on it as part of his reelection to kind of restore some decency and honor to the Supreme Court and get just flagrantly corrupt guy off of the Supreme Court or do what he did during the Anita Hill hearing and say, I'm against it, but ultimately... Well, I've heard that he's the modern FDR,

so I think he's going to go for it. I keep hearing this, yeah. As of this recording, he's very devoted to getting rid of convenience fees on concert tickets, and that's what he's fighting for all of us for oh thank god i hate those goddamn things um is uh but yeah no i but yes i do think this is this is definitely engaging with the the then new conversation about sexual harassment that was news to a lot of men in the 90s, I guess. Sorry to interrupt, but I think like every sitcom, because they're mostly written by men, including The Simpsons,

their take would be like, what if this happened to me? An innocent man. And then we have Homer, Batman, very funny, but also wrong-headed episode. And then there's things I can remember like Drew Carey. It's just like, this uptight bitch is upset because I posted a rape joke at work. What's her deal? That was an entire season arc on the Drew Carey show. Drew Carey's great now, but that was a wrongheaded 90s episode for sure. Poor use of time, I would say, of your nationally hit sitcom.

But yeah, so then comes the of that the censors did not like and that they had to cut down a little bit which is smithers fantasy of burns flying in through the window they had to cut it early because clearly burns is not going to land on smithers face to face in how he's falling down on Smithers. Like that is the intention of the show. I didn't notice that part. I didn't notice that. The shadow is over Smithers' crotch in the vision when they cut,

or it's approaching it. That was what they did not want the vision to be. I always prefer it. Yeah, I prefer it. The censors were right. Yeah, without catching that part myself, I mean, it was very clearly homoerotic

and it conveyed what it was intending to convey. In fact, there's a shot from that that the studio executives were worried about that it looks, at one angle, it looks like he has a boner coming up in his sheets. And it's actually his other foot, I think, but because of the angle, it actually does kind of look has a boner coming up in his sheets and it's actually his it's his other foot i think but because of the angle it actually it does kind of look like a boner um i love smithers saying too you've been reading my wish books there yeah it's a pretty iconic gag i like this

one stayed with me for like an amazing shot yeah it's an amazing shot yeah and then also uh this was all added afterwards in adr but i love the exchange about dig up Al Jolson because it's like, you remember when he did that? And so it means they literally exhumed the corpse of Al Jolson and Burns would prefer to forget the rest of that night. I thought that was a great joke. You have been reading my wishbook, sir. Yes, Will Smithies, I want you to arrange a party for two at my estate.

Marge, me, and do you think you could dig up Al Jolson? Uh, do you remember we did that once before? Oh, that's right, he's dead. And rather pungent. The rest of that night is something I'd like to forget. All right, then, bring me that crooner she likes so much, Tom Jones. So we have a quick cut to 50s day. Again, as a kid, or it's not 50s day.

Here, I'm making the mistake Lenny made here. It was Country Western Day. But as a kid, I did not get the reference to Fonzie. I did not know yet who Fonzie was in 1992. The Weezer video had not come out yet. I knew it by suffering through Happy Days reruns. My least favorite Days reruns. Yeah.

My least favorite of reruns as a kid. Then we see that the house got fixed. They hired Surly Joe. They point out on the commentary, he is not Surly at all. He is, in fact, quite friendly, and he's ready to give Homer for free the 25-cent washer that had fixed it. And Homer, again, he's going to shoot this guy if he doesn't get off his property. He already has a gun. We cut to the copper slipper,

which I believe is a reference to the silver slipper, which was a casino in paradise, Nevada up until 1988. And we see that it's kind of a joke on Tom Jones's fame level. I say, uh, though, though then Mars attacks literally has him

being a lounge singer in Las Vegas when the Martians attack. But, uh, but yeah, Tom Jones, funny guy. So this is a, this is also a heightening of how Smithers hired all the baseball players. He comes in with a suitcase of money and the baseball players all agree to play for Mr. Burns in that episode. This time when he's told no, he becomes a James Bond villain, basically. Yeah, I guess we can see what would have happened if the baseball players said no to him. He had a backup gas plan.

He always had the gas everywhere. Though as we know from real life, big name singers love to do private parties for evil people all of the time. Yeah, that's not believable. Like, yes, absolutely. This is my rage. Elton John, yes, I'll play your wedding Rush Limbaugh. I'll be right there. To many happy years.

He should have charged them exactly $8,500, the price to fix their foundation. Oh, that's good. But instead, Tom Jones is held captive for the rest of the episode, and I can only assume is murdered at the end after the concert.

Tom Jones? Yes? I was wondering if you'd be interested in performing at a private party. Sorry, mate, I don't do private parties. Well, then perhaps you should look in this suitcase. All right, but I don't see... Oh!

Pleasant dreams, Mr. Jones. should look in this suitcase all right but i don't see pleasant dreams mr jones uh but yeah smithers is very evil in this episode it's smithers with the gun to his back was a great moment keep smiling that's one of the best memes and uh you see online from simpsons but okay let's talk the controversial moment here as bart is sent into the hallway to take his test so i'll play uh i'll play folks the well the original the line that's on the dvd that's on disney plus as well is she's naming all the things bart made up that he says including a bout with rabies and then bart starts like barking like a dog after doing stuff but the original line uh i have right here uh that bar uh that bot not bart bob found bart to avoid this test you've had smallpox the bends and that unfortunate bout of tourette's syndrome well i'm not sure i'm over it. Shove it, witch!

No more excuses. So there you go. That was the original as aired line. Yeah, and then they change it to rabies. And it's weird because I wish they would have stopped it with that unfortunate bout with rabies. Because Bart's response is the response to her Tourette's syndrome joke. So now that makes no sense at all. Watching it before I researched this episode and came about this controversy,

I mean, I understood it to be a Tourette's joke, even though she doesn't say Tourette's. I mean, the way he was acting just immediately conveyed Tourette's to me. Comedy writers thought Tourette's was, you know, like, oh, it's so funny. People swear because they can't stop themselves, and that's funny you

know it was it was the easy thing to mock there's some alf clips out there of uh of when they're in between takes pretending to have Tourette's where he says uh he says some very not alf things you can find out there but yes it was a controversial line Matt you're you're right I uh let me read from uh Mike Reese's book on the incident here the censors had no problem with this but thousands of viewers did it's the most complaints we ever got about one joke when the show we ran we changed bart's ailment from tourette syndrome to rabies the one time we've ever altered a line after public outcry rabies is still pretty bad but if you pet a foaming dog it's your fault so well there you go now we're blaming people who die of rabies which i actually think

it's kind of it's kind of funny that they ran with that because like people who get rabies typically don't live long enough to write letters or uh or uh form outraged constituencies so it's like that's safe you know i mean i'm i'm ready to do something controversial on this podcast and make the case for the tourette's i think it was okay yeah i think i think it's fine what's wrong with that he's faking having tourette's that's what it sounds like bart's the bad guy yeah it's bart being insensitive basically yeah yeah i mean i can see you know first of all, in 2023, you know, we're more nice about all this stuff. And I think, you know, Tourette's not being represented correctly on air and just being joked, I'm sure, is not fun. But I think what's going on, obviously, is that Bart Simpson is an asshole.

He's the guy who tells parents and his teachers to eat his shorts. He's faking all sorts of, you know, things that he's that are he's not selling like the teacher knows he's faking. So I didn't think that the the object of the joke was people with Tourette's. I think it's, you know, we're all in on the fact that he's faking it. I think if it showed a making fun of a kid with Tourette's, I would find it cruel. But I didn't think the joke itself was, I didn't think it, I didn't come out of it thinking Tourette's was funny. Although, as a kid, if I was 10 years old watching it, I mean, I might have just laughed. Because, hey, you know, some people just do that and cuss uncontrollably. And I probably would have found it funny as a 10-year-old. I'm sure the concern of parents or whoever was complaining about this was kids might imitate Bart. Like, kids might be making fun of other kids with Tourette's or whatever,

and I can understand that. But not because of the Simpsons. When this aired, though, I was like, okay, when I heard about the change and when I got the DVDs, I was like, oh, they changed the line, they changed it in syndication as well, and I was like, okay, I guess making fun of Tourette's is off the table. But then in 2007, there's a South Park episode where Cartman pretends to have Tourette's for the

entire episode to get away with swearing. And I was like, oh, Tourette's is back on the table. It's basically that it's what Bart does for an entire episode of TV. Well, South Park is probably the last place that something remains

on the table and specifically they want to keep it there because people are telling them it can't be you know yes yeah they also like doing one joke for 22 minutes and that was it for that episode yep yeah so that yeah i found a really interesting artifact from the time uh the time here which is from this uh a column from the seattle times in february 1993 headlined tourette's isn't funny bart simpson renton boy seeks network apology and i would like to read a little bit uh of it because i think it's uh very funny mary elizabeth cronin wrote it and it begins like this why bart simpson why you of all characters

knows what it is like to be misunderstood. You're a bad kid, but you have a good heart. When you mimic symptoms of Tourette's, on the recent episode of The Simpsons, Joshua Smith, 13, switched off the television set in his rent-in-home. You see, Smith has Tourette's syndrome. Sometimes he makes noises or movements he cannot control. It's not funny, Bart. Tourette's syndrome is a neurological disorder that affects speech and motor skills. It's characterized by frequent involuntary profanity in about a third of cases, but not Smith. Smith counted you among the few friends he had,

Bart. I love how this is addressed to Bart. It's crazy. Now he refuses to watch your show. He draws cartoons depicting how you hurt him. Smith wants you to apologize. This is a letter to Bart Simpson I just want to reiterate this little boy did not exist

total headcanon I do want to see his fan art of Bart attacking him you know it goes on to describe the controversy it quotes a Fox broadcast spokesperson saying that you know the outpouring of some

parents and outraged people caused them to change the joke after it aired. Describes it. Then it goes on. Smith, this 13-year-old kid. Smith is working extra chores to pay a $200 retainer for an attorney to bring this case to Fox Broadcasting in Los Angeles. I don't understand what case they would have, but I guess. There are a lot of people who would not pursue their rights like Josh is doing, says Ridgway, an attorney. He's intent on making this right.

The incident pits the network's constitutional right to free speech against Smith's right to be free from discrimination. Ridgway says the episode probably does not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. Probably not. And then it goes on to a little more. I don't want to read the entire thing on the episode, but then the end is good.

It just says that for people with Tourette's struggling to control their tics and exacerbated by stress can be a tough task and that the kid uh you know struggles at school he doesn't want kids kids to make fun of him he says fox can say they are sorry but what about all the kids who saw the show they cannot take it back josh wants to educate people and understand to understand what tourette's is and then the column columnist ends it bart have a heart that's your closing line i don't know i the editor

i would ask them to go back on that but if that kid exists then i hope he's doing better now that i mean that that could suck yeah you know what you know this episode about your age look him up and get him on the show i mean he lives near if he still lives in renton that's not too far from where i live so yeah this episode might have violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, but later episodes put in more ramps. Just to not offend anyone. I said I was going to defend the Tourette's joke. I don't want to go too hard on it or anything like that.

But it is this weird microcosm of the politically correct debate in the 90s, which is now similar stuff is going on with wokeness and stuff, where there's a lot of like, you know, I'm on the left and a progressive, and we do this with Justice Warriors, where it's not like we don't set out to be cruel or to do punch down really but there is like a constituency of people who sort of get a little too or too about anything. I don't want to tell the Tourette's community not to get mad at a joke but like I said I think it's kind of like it wasn't directed at people with the actual condition it was like a kid who's a

dumbass one of the things I forgot about from that that I skipped over is that they ask Bart to befriend a kid at school with Tourette's. And that's the thing where I'm like, well, no, you misunderstand what The Simpsons is. Bart is an asshole.

Homer's a loser. He's a negative example. We're laughing at them. We're not supposed to emulate their behavior. You know, like that's... And here's the thing. The letter says he turned the TV off when he heard the insulting joke, right? He didn't see the end of the episode

in which he was violently attacked by a wolf for lying. Yeah, yeah. He missed the part. He didn't watch the rest, yeah. You're right. He'd gotten to see the comeuppance that Bart faces and he'd feel better. Yeah, no, I...

There have been other times on the show where the Simpsons hear some public outcry and they don't change things too fast so this i was surprised to see that they changed it out of that but yeah i get yeah i i do think the intent of the joke is not mocking people with threat there were many more shows back then and comedies that were being more directive like the laugh at the freaks kind of jokes not not i i'm on i agree with you guys i think that bart bart's the bad guy here not and that's the intention of the show yeah and that's the satire again my point over and over again that's the satire that's been stripped out of the show that they're not people to emulate it this is like i'm this is these are hellish people

these are awful people i uh i've been thinking about this stuff because i uh i've actually showed my young kids some simpsons episodes out of out of frustration with sort of kids programming and you know having to sit through a lot of it myself recently i put on some simpsons for him and i was like let's watch a real i'll show you a real cartoon and so my for context my kids are three and six three is definitely too young to even comprehend what's happening i'm and they were laughing their heads off they were asking me what's going on there's i nelson was smoking a cigarette and an adult came over and told him to put it out he puts it out in his tongue and laughs my kids were like scandalized i mean to them smoking isn't even things adults do

practically like in our you know they know a few people who smoke and they're like we shouldn't smoke because it's bad it's funny to encounter this stuff because it is like oh i'm thinking oh this is where i learned about a lot of it's where i learned about a lot of pop culture references and adult stuff is like watching things like the simpsons and probably married with children which also doesn't you know has a lot of jokes that didn't age well but you can watch this stuff and grow up and be a normal person with uh you know that doesn't doesn't hate people with Tourette's or anything so I think it's okay and I'm not like a anti-pc guy but I know that I was raised watching

a lot of violent stuff and sometimes offensive stuff and it turned out okay. And I don't want my kids to like never encounter something that is like bad or that they might disagree with or might show a kid smoking or anything because it's like you can watch it and be fine. It does seem like we're in an era in which I think creators are afraid of depicting any mean or antisocial behavior or if if there is that behavior uh they really work into turning it around and making it into a character apologizing or experiencing empathy and it does feel like uh there are child psychologists on on like staffed on every show now to make sure there are these things happening but i feel like there was value in seeing characters who were assholes and didn't learn a lesson and the joke is like can you imagine if someone was like that you shouldn't be like that but it was not quite as didactic well and you know i'm sorry to uh relate so many things to seinfeld which i don't know will now mention for the third or fourth time

but i'm watching it and i really get it now as a show and i'm like oh well this is a show why it's so funny is is it's built you know famously as a show about nothing but i'm like well it's not really about nothing it's something clearly going on, which is you're watching bad people, bad, but very funny and relatable people take something that you would either should keep in your head or just a conversation amongst friends. And then they act on it in this self-defeating neurotic way that causes harm in their lives and other lives and then the funny thing is that is that they're acting in a way that basically you should not ever act and uh always taking some small thing and turning it into some big episode length disaster that ruins someone else's life

that they interact with or something and it's funny but like if there's a moral to it i don't think it's it's definitely not like showing you a moral in the way that you're talking about shows do today but it is like oh you're not supposed to emulate these people and i think that's why the the series finale was so famously hated by everyone because they got their comeuppance and all these characters from the show testified against them and then they they went to jail. And there was an actual consequence for them being such shitty people. And everyone was like, well, that's not how it's supposed to end. Like, I like these people. I identify with them.

It was like, oh, no, they weren't the heroes of the show. They were just protagonists. Yeah, there's this comedy of manners element to it. And now we can't even acknowledge that it's about manners right like there's like this repression of the manners like it's just you absolutely have to be this way it's not there's no negotiating with it there's no get ready for las vegas style action at bet mgm the king of online casinos enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas Strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions

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So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit dejaarden.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Breaking the rules and getting away with it. Like it's become very draconian sitcom morality. Well, that's because every, a lot more writers are going to therapy now, I think too.

They learn therapy speak that just gets put into every sitcom now and mental health awareness. Well, and sorry to, if I'm turning this around into a plug of my own stuff, but this is is the reason why i'm thinking i think about this stuff about the tourette's controversy and the seinfeld stuff i'm talking about is you know me and ben write social commentary and in justice warriors we're doing a

cop thing you know we're doing a post 2020 uh satire from the cops perspective and they're the protagonists and you know sort of heroes of the story although we don't frame them as such i mean it's very uh critical of them but they're also they're the characters you follow you know it's not the and it won't be much of a spoiler to say that you know justice warriors is not a world in which the cops are bad and uh they're arrested for their police-involved shootings at the end and reforms are introduced and the left wing is victorious and we say that it's bad you know it's it's it's we're trying to do a little something else with it and it and i was a little worried when we came

out with it that you know like people might not like it because of that but i think we're trying to channel the the spirit of the early simpsons i guess it. It's not for Ted Lasso viewers. No, probably not. No. So, okay. So after this, they then cut to Meanwhile, Not Far Away, which I feel like is their way of saying, look, this is going to be

a very silly heightening here, guys. But it also is a very Gina Reese thing that they, so Al, Gina, Mike Reese wrote for Johnny Carson. That's why Kr crusty the clown show becomes the johnny carson show in their years yeah and i'm sure they watch many a segment in which like jack hanna or joan embry were on and something peed on johnny carson something climbed

on ed mcmahon it was all very funny it was funny it's just like hey look it's a snake isn't that scary oh put it on them yeah they come in from the san diego zoo and so this this is the parody of that like i love the drawing of the the eagle digging the claws into crusty like it looks so painful she was crushed clams with them oh i was i was watching it and i was just thinking of like i'm worried it's going to go into his eyeball. It's so close. Yeah. Jeff Lynch and his team had a ton of fun with this. Some of my favorite animation in the whole show, honestly, it feels almost seizure-induced thing,

is when Krusty goes loud and just like buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz just everywhere. It's insane. And the giant sign coming down behind the stage. The wolf freaking out is such a great animal freak out face, too. Her claws are really digging into my skull. She can crush clams with them. Get it off, get it off, get it off! Here we have an Alaskan timber wolf.

He weighs 240 pounds and his jaws can bite through a parking meter. He does get spooked by loud noises. Loud? That's our secret word for the day! And then also you get to know, you don't have to feel too bad for Krusty because he actually did eat one of the endangered eagle's eggs. So it's kind of revenge. This whole sequence is great, right?

Like it's perfect from top to bottom. Though speaking of your guys's book when i saw cops here choosing to not shoot a dog-like creature i was like well that's not realistic for the cop well you know that would uh an alaskan wolf would be probably endangered at the at the time of uh this uh this show airing so i don't I don't like how they're representing. I guess they don't kill it. They just show a man defeating it in a fair fight. They're still friends when it's over, yeah.

Get some booze at the end, yeah. So as a kid, I did not give this joke. The joke is that Bart is making an assumption based only on the title of what the book Ivanhoehoe is which ivanhoe is said in the crusades it's about a knight who goes on adventures during uh king richard the lionheart's absence it's all in it's in the robin hood times basically that's the story of ivanhoe but bart just sees the title and thinks it's about a russian farmer and his tool that's uh that's bart misunderstanding it and then the way the wolf appears man oh man like part bart is ripped to

shreds by him they so in season two they did the episode when flanders failed where they beat bart up too much and he was too bloody and they had to like reanimate it uh this time they're like okay bart can have tattered clothes and maybe like some scuffs on his head but no blood no no blood on Bart yeah when did they start taking the blood out of the show right because there is I think it's a negative line down I don't think more blood ever gets added to the Simpsons but it was very gory for a long time on treehouse they stay pretty glory gory and and itchy and scratchies get they do get gorier i'd say by season 12 the gore gets cut down a bit after homer cuts his thumb off i'd say that's the last glory does itchy and scratchy do they even let

that on anymore they actually this year they did a they did a rare itchy and scratchy like it was their first itchy and scratchy in a long time in this most recent season uh though it was not as bloody it was violent but the blood uh no not so bloody i always loved uh itchy and scratchy and i one of these episodes i showed my kids was like had to be one of the bloodiest mcbain sequences ever i mean he was like laying in a giant pool of blood and i was kind of to be one of the bloodiest mcbain sequences ever i mean he was like laying in a giant pool of blood and i was kind of i was kind of like oh shit like that's the stuff i wanted to make like when i pitched uh justice warriors originally to man i don't think i even used the term simpsons i think i said robocop with itchy and scratchy uh because i like why don't we have

a mcbain show why don't we have an itchy and scratchy show i feel like those would be hits yeah well i mean i guess justice warriors is kind of like you know if mcbain was was mutants that's that's a little bit of what it is like i mean i think there's room because you know instead of making a short that promotes uh loki or some italian singer and his kids he's giving a free job they could easily make like hey here's a new chain scratchy short on disney plus but you know that's not why they bought the simpsons that doesn't promote disney vertical integration though uh so so as bart's being attacked by a wolf we cut to burns uh he makes his move on marge

like they they have a joke that doesn't fully read that uh Burns is looking up from Marge's feet all the way to her the top of her hair and that's like what the pan up is supposed to be there and then yes this is when it's revealed that they've kidnapped Tom Jones and I just love it's it's so great to see I've seen it a million times as memes on social media of like Tom Jones with a gun in his back being forced to smile. It fits for so many things in life today. Actually, I was wondering if you were free for a little get-together tonight?

Dinner, dancing, and Mr. Tom Jones. Hello, Modge. That's it. Big smile. Everybody's happy. Oh my goodness. My husband will be so excited. You have a husband?

Yes, I can picture him now. Rugged good looks, sweater knotted about his shoulders, curly locks shining in the sun like spun gold. Homer, Mr. Burns gave me another raise today. The senile old fool. You're fired. You can't fire me just because I'm married. I'm going to sue the pants off you.

You don't have to sue me to get my pants off. And he has a big big smile everybody's happy and also it's great that tom jones is smacked in the head with the door as it comes down because he's too worried about being shot that he doesn't get out of the way of it burns learns that march has a husband uh he instantly fires her when he thinks he can't get with her burns has to say a thing he shouldn't say like burns has to be direct and say you don't have to sue me to get my pants off which is like that's too overtly sexual yeah i got that we wrap up the uh the bart story with groundskeeper willie gets to

be the savior of bart like he has to be an action hero rip his shirt off and he's gonna fight a wolf they they said they made it look like an anime fight scene of speed lines behind each other as they run at each other it's uh it's great and it even ends like an anime fight scene maybe i've just been reading too many one piece things where equals fight each other and one beats the other and then they're friends afterwards like oh yeah they're after fighting you i realize we're good friends that's how matt and i met yeah and and ben licks uh whiskey right out of my hand meanwhile bart is so horribly beaten that he he then has to tell the truth to edna which instead means lying and then he passes out and uh she makes sure he doesn't swallow his tongue at least

i guess it ends up not being super conservative then in the sense that he has to lie to give it's complicates it, that he lies at the end. I thought that was a good turn. I was just, maybe, maybe I'm expecting too much of like all shows to sort of tie in the plots at the end or whatever.

And maybe the early Simpsons doesn't always, but yeah. And then I've uh one more clip here which is I wish they had more time for Hutz Hutz comes in with like 90 seconds left in the episode I think Bill and Josh are two of the best writers for Lionel Hutz I think so uh to set this up real quick Lionel Hutz had been a bad attorney before for them this is a brand new low for him this is revealing elements of his personal life that we were not uh you know uh seeing before this episode why am i look at all those flies

buzzing around your head you're a mess woman so do you think i have a case? Mrs. Simpson, you're in luck. Your sexual harassment suit is just the thing I need to rebuild my shattered practice. Care to join me in a belt of scotch? It's 9.30 in the morning. Yeah, but I haven't slept in days. Last chance. Oh, yeah. Mr. Burns, we've got witnesses. Press it in in a paper trail a mile long.

Yes, well, I have ten high-priced lawyers. He left his briefcase. Hey, it's full of shredded newspapers. Yeah, we're not far from the Miguel Sanchez era of Lionel Hutz. Oh, the way he shudders when he finishes off what is seemingly a third of a bottle of scotch in one gulp. That's a blended scotch. That's not the good stuff.

Yeah. I just love his, like, shudder. And, yes, also the... It's another of my favorite drawings of him when he offers up the scotch, like, wiggles it at him, like, join me? Like, God the it's another of my favorites his drawings of him when he offers up the scotch like wiggles it out i'm like join me like god it's so and yeah his shattered practice like again he's really and they will take this to the next level in the next bill and josh episode and march gets a job because that is the best lionel hutz episode like every every line lionel hutz says is the greatest but uh but yeah the way he gives up

runs off with shredded newspaper in it also Hartman's scream and the way it builds like so good but and then Marge has the line I guess people like us can't afford justice which I think great nice almost a good episode almost writing. It's very nice how Burns has a little spot in his wall for Tom Jones and all of his lawyers. Yeah. Just to kind of hang out. You're right. He has a lot of doors. Sadly, it is a very realistic thing that it's like this. I have all of these things that would mean I would win this case against you, right? And the rich guy says, I have way more lawyers than you i win and you

just have to give up like yeah i guess you're right i've got nothing i'm i'm ruined but now mr burns has to have one of his many unpredictable changes of heart yes yeah oh yeah so yeah when he sees so yes i guess as far as we're talking about morals of the story it's sad that you wouldn't have it written now that marge is defeated basically sexual harassment wins marge is defeated and then accepts again a gift from her sexual harasser and is happy about it you would have none of these things be the resolution of any sitcom today at all the big moment that brings margin homer together is supposed to be that he doesn't even apologize for his actions in the episode but he just sticks up for marge and risks his job like that that's supposed to be the big hero moment for marge which again

when the episode's about marge losing her agency and feeling sexually and being sexually harassed i feel like it should be marge's win not homer's win like lucky this man was here to stand up for her yeah finally a man did it the other man couldn't stand up for her but this one will certainly uh out of character for our friend homer yes yeah yeah it's uh but if we recall the uh beginning of the episode was uh drinking dishwasher liquid and uh you know a hand waving off his wife's uh concern and upset that she was going to work with him well it's nice they give him a hero moment but but then they have them say, we're getting drive-thru and doing it twice. Yes, yeah.

You know, replace that with Grubhub, and that's most couples settled in nights in now. Like, oh, we're going to order some Grubhub and do it twice. Yeah, yeah. Once again, as a 40-year-old married man with kids and house expenses. That line hits a little different than what I was saying. Yeah, that tracks. But yes, Burns, like Bob said, had a total change of heart.

He doesn't hire Marge back, though. He learns he's wrong to the extent that he wants to give. I guess it's that he relates that, oh, you're like me and that you love Marge. So I'll give her a nice night with you. But obviously she's not getting a job back and the status quo remains. Honestly, it's not that nice because this is the party that Burns had planned for himself and Marge. So it was already going to happen. That's true.

Also note that when they cut to the event, Smithers is dressed as a waiter and still has the gun in his hand. So he's ready to shoot Tom Jones at any moment here. I also, I wish I had the answer to this from the original script, but because he wasn't in the original script that it wouldn't be clear. But the lip sync for Tom Jones is all wrong for It's Not Unusual. Like it's, I think they synced it to a different song and had to change it way later what's new pussycat maybe or maybe that was the song for the funny hat

thing but i mean what are any other tom jones songs though i i can't think of a third tom jones song so but uh though of course now you hear this song it was at the same time fresh prince of bel-air was airing with this and i don't know yet if alfonso robera had made it his carlton dance yet uh with this song it definitely by the end of fresh prince which was like 95 96 it was a running joke of him doing the dance we now know as the Carlton to Tom Jones. And Tom Jones even appears on the show as himself to sing the song. But I don't know when it came in compared to this episode of The Simpsons. But now that's all anybody knows of this song.

You know, Henry, it might have been She's a Lady. Oh. That would have been, you're right, that's the right one for a date with Marge. You're right. And that's the right one for the episode, too, honestly. Yeah. And I forgot, in this season, Homer the Heretic, Homer is singing Delilah in the shower. So multiple Tom Jones references so far in the show before he even shows up.

Do you think Tom Jones then decided to do the show just because he was getting so many writing paychecks? It's just like, well, you used four use for my songs i made like three hundred thousand dollars on this or whatever yeah time to come in well i think that uh i i feel like as a celebrity you know an aging celebrity as he was at the time it's like who who would turn down a uh a chance to be on one of the most watched television shows and have a little fun poked out like it would be an honor right like you're just like okay it's how everyone who is now 40 knows about tom jones yeah yes yeah exactly and similarly it's how kids today know about like joey fatone or whatever is because he appears on

some sitcom to be made fun of and tom jones really milked that direction like milk that audience for the rest of his career, like famously went on to do a Talking Heads cover with the cranberries, just hitting that target repeatedly. He was ready to be made fun of. He's like, hey, the money's not ironic. Your ironic love might be,

but the money's real. Okay, so my final thoughts on this episode. I love that Bill and Josh are here and so many of the Bill and Josh-isms I enjoy. Yeah, there's some stuff in here that feels like either overwritten or shoved in. I think a more natural story would also care more about Marge

being sexually harassed in this episode, but you could say that that's very much of its time for sure. But the Bill and Josh-ms, the hyper detail, old man talking, and also being the best writers, I would say for, I think they are, I'm going to say it,

the best writers for Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz. I think it's a triumphant episode in that way. And Jeff Lynch directed amazing animation in it. Yeah, I said my thoughts up front. I'll just reiterate them really briefly. I feel like it's too many ideas given to inexperienced writers just so they wouldn't screw things up. But at the same time, it's very memorable. But when I rewatch this, I'm just

like, oh my god, there's like four or five plots and they're all fighting for attention. I feel like they should have narrowed the focus a little bit. But tons of memorable lines. It's a great looking episode. The Mr. Burns taking over the party is classic. So no real complaints here um i feel like they should have hired another two script editors to edit this script uh it needed a few more revisions there's a there's really good stuff

for a marge episode in there actually like marge having to go to work because the house foundation is slipping that's a great pitch for an episode and I'm there for it, but they didn't stick the landing. Yeah. I basically agree with everything you guys have said. I liked the house plot and sexual harassment plot, but they, you know,

they didn't quite land the plane not to be like a armchair writer, but I feel like you needed one stinger thing at the end. You needed like the Alaskan wolf to like charge on the stage and start attacking Tom Jones or something well Tom Jones is definitely dead though I don't think Marge went to

Interpol and listened to his pleas for help so thanks again to Ben Clarkson and Matt Borst for being on the show please let us know where to find you online and more about Justice Warriors. You can find me on X, the everything app, at Ben Clarkson. Literally, I say, anytime I say X.com, the everything app, I get a laugh. It is a funny name to have for an app.

Justice Warriors is our book. You can find can find it hopefully in the show notes we can have a simon and schuster link which will go to a bunch of different other websites to buy it it's we're really proud of it we're happy to keep talking about it and happy that we keep getting to be lovable scamps on podcasts and talk about it uh so please check it out i assure you it's worth your time yeah and i'm uh Boers on, you know, most of the social media sites. Pretty easy to find. Say it, say it, call it X.

X the everything app, okay? And also whatever, Blue Sky, Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff. And I really appreciate you having us on. And it was just great that I got to watch an episode of Simpsons with my parents again and feel and it was just great that it that i got to watch a episode of simpsons with my parents again and feel like it was 1992 you're you're very welcome hey you don't uh keep watching the rest of your stay only we cancel all the other plans you had with your family and just

just watch watch simpsons the rest of the time you tell your kids no new cartoons it's 1992 in this living room forever yes that's right oh but but it was so great having you guys thank you so much yeah thanks for having us it's been a pleasure kisses guys thanks again to matt bores and ben clarkson for being on the show please check out their new graphic novel justice warriors it rules but as for us you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Sign up for five bucks a month to get just that,

but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall that includes 150 plus miniseries episodes, full length episodes covering things like Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, Futurama, The Critic and King of the Hill. And if you're at that $5 level, you also get new monthly episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talking in the Hill. And the second you sign up for Patreon, you get access to six plus years of content that you haven't heard

if you're not a patron of patreon.com slash talking simpsons and we have a ten dollar level on the patreon as well and when you sign up for that ten dollar level you get all the five dollar stuff naturally but also access to one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob's talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast where we talk about an animated feature film super in-depth just like we do a classic episode of the simpsons recent ones have included we started the scary months off with corpse bride the spiritual successor to the nightmare before christmas right before that we did a full summer of us talking about Pixar. All four Pixar films in a row.

Toy Story 4, A Bug's Life, The Incredibles, and Cars. And this month, we're going to be talking about a true anime classic, Project Eiko from 1986. You can hear us talk about all that stuff, including our longest podcast ever, six and a half hours about who framed Roger Rabbit all for just $10 a month at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons with all the $5 things Bob just mentioned included to check it all out one more time at patreon.com slash

talking Simpsons and I've been one of your hosts Bob Mackey you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo excuse me you can find me on X the everything app is Bob Servo yes and I have another podcast as well. That is Retronauts, the classic gaming podcast about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up for two full length bonus episodes every month. And I have a book out, by the way.

It is the Boss Fight Books volume all about Day of the Tentacle, the classic point and click adventure game. I released a full oral history on the game uh for its 30th anniversary please find that wherever you find good books it is the boss fight books volume on day of the tentacle and henry how about you you can find me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm always tweeting up a storm there or xing up a post there um so follow me there on the everything app uh and also all the other social medias and if you're following me and bob please check out the official accounts of this podcast as well at talk simpsons pod in most social media platforms at talk simpsons pod keeps you up to date when new episodes go live when we're doing stuff on the patreon or when we do

live shows like our one with bill oakley. Follow us there to stay in the loop at TalkSimpsonsPod and for an easy list of all of our previously released free podcasts head over to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com Thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you again next time for season 14's The Strong Arms of the Maw

and we'll see you then. What you want to do Why can't this crazy love be mine It's not on you She won't be mad with anyone It's not on you She won to be mad with anyone It's not unusual to be sad with anyone But if I ever find that you've changed at any time It's not unusual to find that I'm in love with you Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Shh.

Marge, what are you doing? It's lunchtime. I'll just be a minute. I have to finish this paperwork. Marge, Marge, Marge. Let's file this under R for our revider cheat. Big O Tire's Biggest Black Friday Sale is here. For a riveter cheat. Or stop by one of your locally owned and operated Greater Colorado Springs Big O Tires today. Big O Black Friday savings going on now.

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