Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Marge In Chains

Episode Date: January 25, 2017

As flu ravages Springfield, Marge gets arrested and Lionel Hutz has a tour de force in the court room. And Marge spends a few minutes in jail as we drop some real history on you in this week’s podcast…

this episode of talking simpsons is brought to you by gamefly and you listeners right now can go to gameflyoffer.com slash laser time to get a free month of unlimited games i heartily endorse this event or product product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where our slogan is, listen and be damned for all eternity. I'm your host, Bob Mackie, and I've been working with a shattered pelvis for three weeks. And who else is here with me today? Oh, hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and we're putting that bitch on ice. Man, why can't I think of a better one? And who else is here with me today oh hey it's Henry Gilbert and we're putting that bitch on ice man why can't I think of a better one

and who else is here Chris corruptus extremis antista and special guest and I'm not wearing a tie at all oh my god he's going to win this is the laser time podcast network's

chronological exploration of the simpsons and today's episode is margin chains and this aired on may 6 1993 when sheriff lobo was still relevant and chris will tell us what happened on this mythical day in history. As a matter of fact, I will. Oh, my God. Kevin Kline charms the pants off the nation in the newly released movie, Dave. Cheers is number one on television. And a fresh-faced Simpsons writer appears on David Letterman to talk about seceding the show. That would be Conan O'Brien.

Wow. That would be this fall, right? Yeah. So he's currently in the middle of working on Homer Goes to College, the season five episode. Well, actually, I guess they're probably done with it at this point. He's probably working on everything. Yeah, but he's getting ready to leave and having to pay Fox a lot of money to get out of his contract. Not in terms of late night TV contracts.

Getting out for $200K. I guess not, yeah. Yeah, he still owes them scripts is what I hear. I believe Craig Ferguson had to be given $10 million just for not getting Letterman's job. That was a great deal in his contract that said, if I will sign this new contract, if I don't

inherit Letterman's show, you owe me $10 million. That makes Stephen Colbert worth $10 million more. That's true. For a not highly rated show that also he really should be you know singing more in cars or doing hopscotch it is the best one of its kind in that time slot seth meyer's still at it different time stuff yeah yeah so some production details about this episode this is actually uh bill oakley and josh weinstein's first episode as staff writers

and uh they were sort of given this idea. On the commentary, they say... Oh, so they were freelancers when they did Marge Goes to Work. I think they were just story editors. They moved up the chain to become actual producers. And on the commentary, they say that new writers are given Marge episodes, I think because no one wants to write them.

And they're also the hardest episodes to write because Marge is a tough nut to crack if you're a male comedy writer. A single male comedy writer. I'm 24 and a Harvard graduate. What do I know about women? Yes. Well, we'll see that from all the clips of her.

She is like not the star of this at all. No, this episode is called Marge in Chains, but it's really like Marge on Trial and Lionel Hutz is the true breakout star of this episode. I think this is probably his best episode out of all the Lionel Hutz appearances. This feels like a tour de force. It reminds me of the Otto show where they're just like, let's do every joke about Otto we can. And this one, too, is just like, this is every Hutz joke.

And we'll never bring Hutz back because we're just doing too many jokes with him. Did you know that it wasn't a sequel episode but in uh the season 27 finale last year marge goes to prison again this time for 90 days but it much more focuses on her story in prison and it's about her seeing prison as an escape from her family and she'd rather be there than at home yeah apparently the original script of this episode that oakley and weinstein wrote had a lot of marge in prison and it was a fairly realistic portrayal of prison. They did a lot of research into like what happens in prison if you're a woman. Like who do you

meet? What do you do? But they thought the other stuff was a lot funnier so it got cut. Do they toss salads with syrup and jelly or do they expand it? Why would they need to toss salads? Let me consult this HBO special. I've seen some documentaries on Cinemax about this.

A little documentary called Caged Heat. But why would you toss salad when just the other side would be tossing something, right? I have no idea. I've never seen a woman before. No idea. We are Simpsons nerds. I can't believe they invented it. Yes, we got Troy bringing us in.

Hello, everybody. I'm Troy McClure, star of such films as P is for Psycho and The President's Neck is Missing. Wow. But now I'm here to tell you about a remarkable new invention. Until now, this was the only way to get juice from an orange. With your eye. Right over your eye, not even your forehead. Cracking it against your forehead.

That reminds me of every infomercial where it's like, don't let this happen to you. And there's a Tumblr of every animated gif from those commercials where people are just like knocking shit over. They can't live their lives. Part of a Thanks Obama meme. We did a pretty good parody of that for that GamesRadar app.

Which we shot in one day, but it had the usual, is this too much work? I wrote the line, I can't beat the last Boston rock band. It's a good game joke. And this whole scene is, it's like a sequel joke. One of these things you'd see a lot in season four of like, this sequence was funny in season three. So let's return to it. They last did this in the Bart's soapbox derby episode oh yeah the tombstone polish yeah and so this is basically the same bit is this to reuse the

animation no it's not reused animation but it probably reuses the same like setup and background but this time like in the opening it was three different items yeah that they pretty much just cut into the original footage. The full microwave. And the showrunners of this time said that their strategy is to open with a parody to start things off on a funny note. And then you can go into the story. And they do that often, Algin and Mike Reese. And by the way, you can get your own car chandelier on Etsy right now. And we sell them.

Also, I think sun and run is a lame joke. It pretty is. It's just a peep joke. Nice to have Dr. Nick back. Hi, everybody. Hi pretty is. It's just a peep joke. Nice to have Dr. Nick back. Hi, everybody. Hi, Dr. Nick. Troy, would you like a glass of orange juice? I sure would.

But won't we have to pay those outrageous grocery store prices for something the farmer probably spit in? Not anymore. All thanks to the new juice loosener. Doctor, are you sure it's on? I can't hear a thing It's Whisper Quiet That is two lines I use to this day It's Whisper Quiet and you got all that from one bag of oranges Yeah, this is really Phil Hartman's episode

I forgot about this opening bit with Troy McClure in it too That should have been, I meant that to be my opening joke something the farmer probably spit in and just the 70s movies with the dumb titles like before i think he'd only called back to mostly industrial films that he'd done and this is when they get real silly with shitty like 1970s family did have calling all quakers was that already yeah yeah i mean we heard him in calling i just feel like he hasn't he hasn't even done eight yet we haven't heard eight troy mcclure movies at this point so and and i love homer's fevered dialing in to get he's like i've got to get this thing i gotta get it they're getting a ship from osaka which is something like they could

do tokyo but they did osaka i feel like they were trying to pick a less famous even though that's like saying well they did la instead of new york were trying to pick a less famous, even though that's like saying, well, they did LA instead of New York. They went with the more obscure city in America. Well, wasn't this based on a real thing? I thought it was on the news. If only there was a show that dug into what happened in the 60s. Definitely. Look, I have a lot of research here.

I do. I'm ready for it. But the reason why I didn't research is I thought the joke was based on a real thing, but the real thing was an old fucking wives' tale. Like, you probably got sick from that Japanese item, that kind of urban legend. But placing it in Osaka is a very specific thing to do. It might have just been, like, at the time there was a notable outbreak of flu or a virus. I could have sworn there was.

It was on our news for, like, a week week and then, I don't know, maybe. In a way, it seems to presage bird flu. Yeah, that's true. I feel like it's just a normal thing to fear stuff coming from the Orient. That would be an offensive term. That wasn't that long ago. It was in 93, though. Like, yeah.

So, you're saying the urban legend stereotype of diseases being brought over from Japan has been around for a while. This scene also has a bad Japanese dub joke, which I think will soon become a joke no one understands. Yeah, it does. I mean, it was mocking... I guess dubs weren't great in 93. No. But it's a Godzilla reference, especially. I recently watched Mothra for the first time and I feel like it was like

let's tell white people to be Japanese but they don't know what Japanese people sound like so everybody talks really haltingly like this because this is what a foreign person sounds like. But they don't do the LR thing. They just kind of like speak really haltingly because they're trying to match the lip flask but it's like I guess this is what a Japanese person sounds like.

It's very strange but you hear that in this scene. Well is that right, Tabana? I have to speak quickly because... But, okay, so here is some research for you, Brett. Hey, you got to take it if you can give it. So the box that is being shipped is to 742 Evergreen Terrace, which I do believe, and I double-checked this, this is the first time the Simpsons addressress has been 742 Evergreen Terrace.

It was wrong just a couple of episodes ago. For previous reference, in Season 4, New Kid on the Block, Bart tells Moe to come kill Jimbo at 1094 Evergreen Terrace. That's true. And then meanwhile, in Homer's Triple Bypass during the cops in Springfield, they're breaking into 742 Evergreen Terrace, which is where Snake and Lovejoy live next door to each other. And so that's Snake's house. So this, I believe, is that that was just seven episodes ago. So this, I believe, is the first time the Simpsons house has been 742 Evergreen. That was a good catch. This blunder made me hate the whole episode.

No, I'm not that person. But it's lovely to think about it. Well, it's just human writers coming up with this. And someone probably thought that was the address they came up with for the Simpsons. Now it's set in stone. Yeah. It wasn't made to be wiki. That's the difference between in and say, when community started, I feel like they were already cataloging their facts from the beginning or even on south park they were just like yeah we've counted

everything or we we try to keep track of all these things so then everybody gets the osaka flu which again talking about on the commentary they said that they were told to read the plague by albert yeah and only one joke was based on it i don't know what it was they won't say i've read the plague and i don't know what joke was i've won't say. I've read the plague and I don't know what joke was from that. I've only read The Stranger. I have not read the plague. I think it's the germ cloud stopping at a stoplight. That's totally Camus. But we do see, I feel like it's the

first personification of Skinner's mom as an angry woman. She looks at him grumpily but she doesn't say anything. There's no lines but I feel like she was just sort of a sweet old lady and then after that psycho reference happened it was all downhill for her. Agnes is really glowering. One of two very clear psycho references.

Oh, yeah, in this episode. And three, if you want to count the movie Troy McClure was in. That's true. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so everybody's getting sick. I like the personification of the germ cloud, and it's just covering everybody up. And the sequence of Wiggum being haunted by it like the blob. Yeah. He fires his

gun at it. Yeah, he gets a hot dog and then... I think he might have hit that hot dog. It's the second time he's thrown his gun at a supernatural thing after running out of bullets. We had the mummy in the Cops in Springfield parody. What is this clip?

Sartre, we keep getting orders to let the virus win must be a school day lay down your arms all right let's make some puffs bart's uh homeostasis immune system faking uh well no it was it was him telling his his blood cells to give in and get sick. So it was inside of him. I definitely did this as a kid. Me too. I was like, could I force myself to get sick? I don't want to go to school.

To maintain a fever, I would do that thing where I try and bring all the blood to my head. Yeah, you're like going super sane with a thermometer in your mouth. So I'm like, thank God I'm not the only one who did that. Yes, I did it all the time. This taught me that might work. Why does the flu have Snake's voice? That's why I wanted to play it. I got confused because I called the clip Snake Virus.

I'm like, what the fuck was I talking about? Also, why is the soldier the pimply voice teen or squeaky voice teen? It's true. It was a great way to do a gross joke without pissing off the censors. Otto gets vomited on from the sky. But it's... The dreaded Osaka flu has hit Springfield with over 300 cases

now reported. Now over to Arnie Pye with Arnie in the Sky. Route 401 is going around and around and around and around and around and look out at the corner of 12th and Main because I'm going to be sick. Whoop.

That's much worse than dropping his bagel. A couple quick bits I like. There's the itching, scratchy cartoon where I like when he lands on the cactus, the needles go directly through both his eyes. Yeah. And then the joke of Burns saying he had his germ-proof thing, even in first viewing when I was 10, I was like, Homer's in there. Like, Homer's going to open this door. Such a big setup. I did not expect it this time.

I don't remember Burns in this episode. We also have, oh, sorry, Brett. No, I know they go to great lengths to not set this any specific place, but the 401 sounds like a mix of the 101 and the 405, which are the two main LA, especially because they're writing this in LA. You must drive on one of those to do anything. Yeah, to do anything. And this episode ends

with a very LA riot. So I definitely feel like LA is getting... If you really want to find Springfield, there are mile markers in this episode, very briefly. Oh, that's right. On the direction to Mexico. If you can figure out where North Haverbrook is

and triangle it with Mexico City. It is on a map. Which it had on a sign, and it was 630 miles away. You don't need to tell anybody that early. That's an entire day's trip. Maybe that's the joke. I must end my cameo, unfortunately. But thank you for letting me join for a brief moment.

Thanks, Brad. Send Brad off with a clip of Mayor Quimby on vacation. Now for an emergency announcement from the mayor. People of Springfield, because of the epidemic, I have canceled my vacation to the Bahamas. I shall not leave the city. Hey, you, get that steel drum out of the mayor's office. Sorry, mon.

So you couldn't have captured every flu clip, but we did have the first married with children parody i think it's the inferior one because he doesn't flush the toilet uh after the joke is uh after the joke is told it's the um i mean this episode could be all of that but like we just have every clip but so yeah ned watched married with children and that's why their family was damned he was damned for all eternity and so that's okay this is another thing cut out on my... You're watching the wrong versions, Chris. Sorry, man.

I've been seeing a lot of comments getting added, Chris, for not listening. I'll lend you the DVDs, Chris, if you need them. Whatever. Okay, but so in that scene, at first as Todd speaking, Todd's like, so here's my theory. That married with children was nice

to a degree. It was pretty much a joke you would have seen on the show. These plants are all lifeless and limp. Sounds like you in the bedroom, Al. Woo! Yeah. So I think they thought they could get the actors to do it. I think they did.

Because meanwhile, the next time we'll see Clifford married with children, it is a mean joke about how it's not good. Well, let's have sex. It is a no pig toilet flush. Woo! Great. Surprisingly Puritan joke from the Simpsons. Who do?

Otto got barfed on his face. They're on their high horse. Yeah, what the fuck? And then also comes the scene with Hibbert and a placebo. He's like anything i give you just be a placebo where can we get these placebos that's not me the meaning of the word placebo me too i also like i'm carrot i mean ouch sadly mine was two three years later with brain candy oh yeah brennan fraser and the uh that's right and the killer bees thing so there was a box of killer bees and that's what they eat. That was a very 90s fear.

We were very afraid of, in the early 90s, we were very afraid of killer bees. At least I was. A doctor would come out on a terrace and make pronouncements like an old politician. And in the show, they're apparently being shipped somewhere. So the fear, especially of killer bees or Africanized bees. That they were discovered in a Texas town in 1990. And so people were just like, they could take over our regular bees and be killing all these bees. As probably pointed out more comedically, we were constantly terrified by clouds of killer bees that we're told were coming in the country. Yeah.

And now all I hear about, like, the bees are almost gone. We just had no bees. We need killer bees. It's either no bees or killer bees. We'd have one of them. So everyone in the Simpsons family is sick at this point. Yeah.

And they all have different demands. So Homer's in Burns' flue thing. He's in his germ-free thing eating a sandwich. And then in the next scene, he's in bed sick. I don't like that he also uses the i'm mr burns that made that less predictable yeah okay obviously homer's

gonna be in there eating a big sandwich even but then he's like my name is mr burns but i had that clip if we smith is this plague doesn't scare me i've constructed a germ-free chamber for myself. Not a single microbe can get in or out. Who the devil are you? Don't panic. Just come up with a good story. My name is Mr. Burns. Don't!

That's a good time killer. Yeah, it's like almost every episode now, Homer talks to his own brain. It's wonderful. But so then he is sick in a poor use of continuity. Everybody's sick and Marge is

highly put upon. Mom, can you bring me more OJ? Can you get me some of those Flintstones two of a morphine? There's no such

thing. Marge, the boy's wasting valuable time. Come change the channel and pat my head. In a minute. But I'll miss

Sheriff Lobo. and get me a bottle of bourbon grandpa you know you can't have liquids after 3 p.m you can stir it into my mush yeah i mean this is the first time i looked up sheriff lobo i had read about it before the internet it's like tv guide presents the 50 worst tv shows ever to be like my mother the car and stuff like that this time i looked it up and I read about it. Apparently it was a spinoff of BJ and the Bear, part of the brief strange trucker fad of the late 70s in which a trucker – Yes, exactly. In which a trucker was teamed up with a chimpanzee named Bear.

And Sheriff Lobo was the crooked, zany sheriff on BJ and the Bear. He was spun off into his own show that lasted like a season or two. I think maybe three seasons actually. 79 to 81. Three seasons. Claude Akins, who I only know from Master Ninja on Mystery Science Theater. That's right. That's where he's from. It's like, if you read about the history

of the show, it didn't do well, so they retooled it. You don't think basing a show around a fat, corrupt, redneck cop that's not the main problem? want to replace everybody else the lobo show has been canceled for retooling do we have the theme song i did send that to you because it is it is very much a um different era yes very very much so there is a man the legend tell who stands for what is right I believe the best description of this opening is he's on a collision course with wackiness. It really is.

It is beautiful. It's a thing of beauty. Despite all the references to Sheriff Lobo on Simpsons, which I have been like, this is the second of three. There's the sign, the itchy and scratchy thing. There's a sign. Oh, no, wait. Maybe that's later.

John Schwarzwilder is in some picket line holding a sign, bring back Sheriff Lobo. I thought it was wagon train. Oh, it was wagon train. Yeah. The one you're thinking of is the bobo episode like lobo lobo bring back sheriff lobo that's the only other lobo one which it's funny that like the staffs of four and five which were very different still they'll add homer loves sheriff lobo it is the perfect dumb homer show though about like a fat crooked southern sheriff a terrible show nobody cares about i give them credit too i only noticed this time the care they had to draw the flintstones

vitamins like they really look like yeah that's true yeah it's very blue the red kind it was blue and pink as long as i like blue like pink i just want to eat that car not betty yeah that was the thing you'd see in a lot of oakley weinstein ones where grandpa is there and you're like why is even grandpa in this scene and then he'll say a either the joke that ends the scene or a plot important moment and him asking for the bourbon is plot important it is the only reason he's there and so she goes to the quickie barmer doesn't drink liquor no that's the only reason he's there he drinks beer i guess they saw bourbon as an old man drink though i'll have bourbon any day delicious marge in the quickie barge i gotta give them thumbs up great animation for all the heads on the shelf this is jim reardon

oh yeah it's great and he does marge frazzled so well too and it's another of those moments where i think probably for at least a few minutes I was like, oh, it's hard being a mother. It's really tough. Then you're like, give me some potato chips. I looked down for... I was here at the opening scene and looked down for a second. I just assumed she was in a giant grocery store. It was jarring. That was the

quickie mark? She walked for like a minute down the aisle. It's kind of like not cost effective to do all of your grocery shopping at the convenience store because it's a convenience store. Wadapu is kind of a dick in this one. He's really not nice. The thing about how the price was lowered

because an escaped mental patient tampered with the Tylenol or the aspirin is based on a real thing that happened in 1982. I looked it up. Apparently seven people died in the Chicago area when someone laced Tylenol with cyanide. No one was caught. They assumed it could have been the Unabomber. It wasn't him. I think someone tried to extort the police by saying it was me and give me $1 million, but it wasn't that guy.

He just wanted money. So to this day, someone had poisoned these capsules and they were not caught. I think from then on, they were no longer capsules anymore. They were just like the pill form because it was harder to tamper with. That's why they're in those bubble wrap kind of packaging. Yeah, yeah. That too. We get a rare appearance of brother.

Sanjay. Sanjay, yeah. And we get, I like them beaking Hindi to each other. I'm assuming that was Hindi. There are other languages spoken in India. Really depending on you guys to know whether or not that was true. It is because they actually called the Indian consulate, I think, Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, and they were not happy about it,

but they reluctantly decided to translate things for them. So all the Hindi you hear in this episode is legit. Respect to white people for finally acting like Indians right. You're welcome. But seriously, though, I think in the early 90s, a lot of shows would not have bothered to get accurate in uh indian dialogue including the simpsons like apu is kind of a generic brown convenience store employee they never get too specific over

his real nationality and putting a language to it well i mean apu is it was a very clear reference to the apu trilogy yeah uh which the we've never discussed by saj reference to the Apu trilogy which the films by Sajid Ray the Apu trilogy he was if you were a film student of the 60s and 70s those were likely the only Indian films you ever saw like he was scratch what I just said he was the Akira

Kurosawa of India back then it did seem a bit a little contrived that they immediately were like no she's a thief. Yeah. Like, Marge has been shopping there conceivably for, you know, years.

And also, Apu has been robbed already in this point in the show like eight times. Yeah. So I remember as a kid thinking that justified his dickishness because we've never seen

anybody get caught for stealing from the quickie mart. It constantly happens to him. So he almost catches somebody like, yes yes let's do this i guess it's the first time he's actually caught excited yeah this is finally happening and sanji is here to see it so there's a couple levels to that where first it feels like march totally just forgot she's pulling things out of her pockets and she left one thing in her pocket

but then when she says colonel quickie mart's yeah i do that you did not pay colonel quickie mart's kentucky bourbon but i but then when she says, no, I guess I didn't. I was just like, why isn't she giving her real excuse now? I forgot. I'm sorry. But when she says, no, I guess I didn't. That then made me think. So was she reflexively going like, F you, I'm not paying for this thing.

You're charging me 25 bucks for this bottle of aspirin. I think she was just so harried and frazzled. She just was just reacting in the moment. She didn't have time to be outraged or indignant about being accused of theft. She's like, no, I didn't. Probably thought nothing was going to happen. And then of course, the cops show up immediately this time for nothing. Nothing with coconut.

Yeah, that was all really wonderful. It makes our community store seem amazing. I went in there one time, left my card at the bar, tried to buy some whiskey. My Discover, they don't take Discover cards. That's why I got it, so I'm not tempted to use it. And the guy's like, just take it, come back tomorrow, give me some money. I'm like, you rule. This is the rules.

I know where you live. And so then Act 2 begins with Lionel Hutz's rock bottom. This then just becomes the Lionel Hutz show. For one whole act, yeah. It's all him. Now don't you worry, Mrs. Simpson. I... Uh-oh.

We've drawn Judge Snyder. Is that bad? Well, he's had it in for me ever since I kinda ran over his dog. You did? Well, replace the word kinda with the word repeatedly, and the word dog with son. That should get the line of the show because it's a great line but it really paints a picture i want to know what situation he was in and where that could have happened repeatedly running over a boy

it's one of my favorite all-time lines like well so then why are you free if you repeatedly ran over the son of a judge well i guess later we do see his raging alcoholism so that could have explained it. But still, it's like, I don't care if you are an alcoholic, you should be in jail. You ran over this guy a bunch of times. This is also the first time that judge is named Snyder. That's why he's called Snyder from now on. Maybe he moved for a bad court thingy during his trial.

That's true. Might have worked. The Simpsons will be right back. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit dejauden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care Thank you fine folks for listening. Hope you're not too bored. You know what the perfect solution is for being bored and always has been?

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take my word for it you can get started with a 30-day free trial for yourself by going to gameflyoffer.com slash laser time you like laser time shows then you might like bonus time laser times weekly bonus show exclusively on patreon.com slash laser time here's you might like bonus time laser times weekly bonus show exclusively on patreon.com slash laser time here's a taste of what you've been missing the movie we watched was called walk the dark streets and i thought it had the amazing the most amazing premise ever the movie fucking sucks world war ii vets finally meet up again one guy's desperate for the money and the other guy's doing pretty well. And the guy's like, I'm a trophy hunter.

I'll pay you to hunt you through L.A. But it's about two guys hunting one another through L.A. I'm like, why hasn't somebody done the movie of two people hunting one another in the city? It would be so cool. Well, it kind of did with the pest. We just talked about it on 302010. And it assassins. Yeah, but Predator 2.

But they're not hunting one another. Like, that's what I think is the cool thing. So you think the one thing holding back the pest is that John Loigizamo didn't get to hunt back Jeffrey Jones? There's no X to his sever. Okay. I'm like, I don't even know if that's an apt reference. I have not seen the film. For some reason, I was like, yeah.

I played two Game Boy games. I think most people remember the movie there for the hit song from it. That one was like, come on, get out the floor. Everybody walk the dark streets. Street. Walk the dark streets get bonus time laser times weekly full-length uncensored and ad-free patreon exclusive podcasts as well as weekly full-length movie commentaries wrestling and cartoon video commentaries physical rewards the first season of talking simpson and more at patreon.com

slash laser time starting at just five bucks you'll help us live and we'll do our best to help you never be bored again yes what hey spoiler lionel hutz will get line of the show oh for sure oh my god yes i also didn't like how Apu was celebrating. He's dancing around, listening to music, and we're going to put that bitch on ice. I was like, that's mean. I've seen Apu brought up in a lot of articles on tokenism

and stereotypes, and I always want to be really quick to defend, just because I love Apu and I don't want to imagine a world without him, this is the one where like, oh wow, that was just a bunch of nonsense words and weird dancing uh yeah here homer tries to plead with a poo to uh drop the charges on marge i'd like you to drop the charges against my wife no offense but we're putting that bitch on ice now come on i'm your

best customer i'm sorry mr homer but it is the policy of the quickie mart and its parent cooperation lord and defense dynamics to prosecute shoplifters it is the policy of the Quickie Mart and its parent corporation, Nordine Defense Dynamics, to prosecute shoplifters to the full extent of the law. Yeah, that was not authentic. Yeah, they at least got one bit of Hindi right. I do like Chris's explanation

though that he finally has nailed a thief. And I do like the general story about Poo. He's an immigrant. He came over full of hope hope but then he realized he'd become as crooked as any like american businessman he's and that's what he does in his job oh that's america i have to be as crooked as a white man i get it also we get i think when the last scenes ever of a wiggum and quimby secret meeting yeah which then leads to something that you that has i have a bit of a history explainer for as well. All right.

Please do. Don't tell anyone, but Marge Simpson was arrested for shoplifting. Let the word go forth from this time and place. Marge Simpson is a shoplifter. Hey! In other news, the chick in the crying game is really a man. I mean, man, is that a good movie give us hell quimby so that was absolutely redone dialogue like it was so his mouth is

all wrong yeah even the crowd's mouth yeah it's all off but i so i wonder what the original line is but that one is a very loaded line like first off as a kid i didn't get it same here my mom had to explain to me she had seen the movie though for her to explain that um some that a woman had a penis in a movie i was like uh okay yeah it's pretty famous for that sequence because that is the end of the movie. And it opened up doors to decades of transphobia films of just like, she's got a dick, vomit, it's so gross. In that movie's defense, no one ever remembers Forest Whitaker, isn't it?

It's fucking awesome. In most of the movie, yeah. And Stephen Ray's like, well, whatever. Yeah, he also doesn't, he gets grossed out at first, and then by the end of the movie, he's with her. No, the film, The Crying Game isn't so much about that as it's about Ireland and the IRA, and it's a Neil Jordan masterpiece. He's great.

I love Neil Jordan. So, a lot of people hadn't seen it at that point. All right, so here's a quick history of The Crying Game. It did come out in 92, the year before this. Right. But many people didn't see it until it got nominated for oscars including the lead actor yeah well it was nominated actor so but this so uh crying game was being sold as a twist you won't believe a twist though like keep it to yourself and this is when modern spoiler culture became

yes it became real with this one. There were films before just like, don't tell anybody about the shocking ending of this movie. Keep it to yourself. Like Psycho. Dorothy's dreaming. But this was one of the big ones of modern spoiler culture for us, at least as I remember it. And there is a moment that typifies it. Okay, so I sent you a clip, Chris, from Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel at their At The Movies

show. So this is modern spoiler culture. This started here. So every year on the Siskel and Ebert's weekly show, they would do If We Picked The Winners special, which they would actually almost do as an award show unto itself. Yeah, there's an audience there. With an audience there, and they're in tuxes, and they're just like, these are the nominees for the oscars and we're picking who would win and so they get to the supporting actor category and siskel then says this is who i'd pick the actor from the crying game then comes a big chiron on the screen that says turn down your audio now if you don't if you if you haven't seen crying game yet wow and roger ebert is just like i can't believe you're gonna say this

well i mean while gene siskel's like no the film's been out for months and the actor is nominated in the actor category so this is not a spoiler they're not even using the word spoiler so then gene sisco talks about why he wanted why he is giving it away on tv and talk because he to talk about the person's performance they he has to talk about the spoilers and so this is him finishing it up and then uh roger eber is not pleased afterwards i going to be called upon to be very tough. I think it's easily the most difficult performance of the year, whether it's a supporting performance is debatable. I think it's a starring performance, actually.

Could it have been done better, however, or as well? And if so, by whom? And, Roger, if you disagree with me on this one, I'm going to be very upset. I think it's a spectacular performance. Well, Gene, first of all, I don't think you should have given The Secret away because very few people have actually seen this film in terms of a national television audience. I think it was cheating because, to me, one of the real pleasures of watching this film was to walk in there and not know until a crucial moment in the film what the secret was. I don't know if people turn down their sets in time.

And I think it was you were, in order to make your opinion, what you were doing was you were keeping them from enjoying what I think and what I agree with you is a great performance. Well, the question would be, how can I do criticism of this work without talking about why I think it's so much of a stronger performance? Unfortunately, what we're going to end up debating now is whether I should have given the secret away as opposed to whether or not... Oh, it's a very good performance. It is a good performance.

Well, let's see if you pick... I'll suck a dick, Siskel. God, I miss both of those guys so much. They're both right. They're both right. very good performance. It is a good performance. Let's see if you pick up. Suck a dick, Siskel. God, I miss both of those guys so much. They're both right. They're both right. Yeah, yeah. It's a good argument. Well, and so a thing comes up on the screen

that just says, like... Turn volume down. Turn volume down. Crying game controversy. That reeks of, like, a behind-the-scenes battle that Roger Ebert won. Yeah.

You better put up this on the screen before this airs. It's an okay compromise, but it's very awkward. Like, no one had ever done that before at least to my knowledge give it away well because people guess what there wasn't an internet then so you couldn't just go online and say what was the ending of crying game you wouldn't know less than a year later ace ventura would give it away extremely transphobic let's like put a new ending on that movie so you can watch it again i mean but please uh but so yeah that's why that joke was in there siskel my mom directly referenced siskel giving it away and

people getting mad at him for doing it on the show i'm so glad you looked that up because i knew like which critic was it but i didn't have time to look it up god so that's why i looked it up but yeah that's how i it was a controversial thing then and that's why they put it in the show. So then on top of that, the Simpsons are being like kind of dicks of it in May. So that was in March. This was May, early May. And they're like, yeah, the chicken grind game was really a man. What? That's pretty, yeah, that's pretty awful.

But it was for the purposes of a joke. Anyway, so that is that Simpsons joke explained. So Chris, I wrote something down that you would like. We have the return of one of your favorite lines. So Ned talks about his brush with the law and the guy comes to the door and says, excuse me, are you Ed Flanders? He's like, no, I'm Ned Flanders. My mistake.

Now Marge, don't you worry. We've all had our brushes with the law. Are you Ed Flanders? No, Ned Flanders. My mistake. There you go. I know Chris loves that line. I think it's even the same.

It's not. It's not. It's just Dan Costano doing the same voice. I would love to, if anybody knows, if that's a reference to something. Because if it were to happen more than once. Dan would know. Either it's as funny as I think it is, or it's a reference to something. I mean, it happen more than once dan would know maybe it's like either it's as funny as i think it is or i mean it might just be a chicagoan parlay like that's where he's from you know just be like that's how we say in chicago i mean or it could

be a reading from an old movie because doe is a laurel and hardy thing i mean they could be pulling these things from their brain you know just for the sake of performance uh they also go by the fact that marge has webbed toes which was not not kept ever. That was lost. Same as like, they never talk about how Marge has been grazing mules since she was 17. They never talk about that either. But that her webbed toes were mentioned on her trading card. Oh, really? Wow.

They had like kind of a picture-in-picture fact on the Simpsons trading cards, which I think were about a year away from them in Simpsons timeline here. Marge is so ill-defined. That's why she has a fucking vacuum in the arcade game. Yeah, really. No traits.

I do love the joke about Judgmental Christians where Maude is peering through the God Bless You cross-stitch and Marge adjusts the picture and she's like, get out. But Maude is Norman Bates in that scene. She is. She's not about to masturbate, though. She's not Vince Vaughn. But I think that was the scene that finally got me to rent Psycho, because it was like the fourth time my parents would tell me,

that's from Psycho. I was like, all right, I got to watch this. Which, by the way, that wasn't spoiled for me, the twist of that, before I saw it. Oh, wow. I got to, just like if you were in 1964 or seven i forget the year exactly like a 60 oh 60 another trans situation just like if you were back then i like at the end of that movie and by like i mean i'm entertained by at the end of that movie they have to say like oh so he's

a transvestite they're like well no not exactly he's actually like we should have ended this movie five minutes ago i'm sorry for wasting your time much worse than that no he needs to look at a bug yeah he wears his mother's skin please don't throw the trans audience under the bus I didn't watch psycho actually

because I watched a billion clips of it in all my film classes so I've studied every granular detail of like seven scenes but I'd never actually seen it until like two years ago it's

phenomenal it is it's way different than what you think it is because it's just it's very slow intense and like the murder is just like like a minute of the movie

and it's just all drawn out tension. Anthony Perkins like I don't what you that for that year that is one of the most amazing performances

I've ever seen. He is charismatic as AF and like his performance holds up really goddamn well. Watch Psyco. And so then we're back into the courtroom

where they kind of just do every Lyle Hutz joke they can. The blue-headed lawyer gets a good one on. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, who do you find more attractive, Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson? What is the point of all this? Your Honor, I feel so confident of Marge Simpson's guilt that I can waste

the court's time by raiding the super hunks. Raiding the super hunks. He's going to win. Mr. Hutz. He did not. That is Marge's line with Hutz.

It's the only time she doesn't grumble. She actually says something at some point she says why do we always hire him much later and that's what I asked myself during this scene like why did they hire Lionel Hutz again it's all you can afford and this is rock bottom where we get more into his alcoholism

he did drink all of that bottle of whiskey before like a little sip of whiskey, like, it's 9.30. Who cares? Brownest of the brown liquors. I always think of it as brownest of the brown liquors now.

And if we freeze on frame 138, we distinctly see a puff of blue hair coming from the grassy knoll. Now, Apu, Mrs. Simpson claims that she forgot she was carrying that bottle of delicious bourbon. Brownest of the brown liquors. So tempting. What's that?

You want me to drink you, but I'm in the middle of a trial. Excuse me. Hello, David. I'm really tempted. Just take it one day at a time and know that i love you i love you too man it's a real dr joyce brothers style guest appearance i get one sentence but i would guess the most specific alcoholics anonymous reference i've ever seen i have that's a sponsor really so well first off, I could just, hearing it isolated like this, I could just see

Phil Hartman in my mind saying all those lines. This is beautiful. And I love the sound of the alcohol swishing around in the bottle. It's very, very distinct. Is it really David Crosby? It is David Crosby, which I felt was a little too hard. It was a little too try-hard of like, he's looking at his own albums

and surrounded by yeah clearly him like only one guy looks like him and that's David Crosby I was reading the Phil Hartman biography a few years Phil Hartman before he was an improviser an actor he was an album artist yeah and he may have designed the album I don't think that's true I'm

trying to find the specific that's when his name had two ends in it yeah Much more Germanic way of saying it But he was fluent in German This might not be worth even mentioning I can't find the fucking albums Phil Hartman drew illustrations For album covers for music Like Crosby, Stills, and Nash

So as a kid I really didn't I barely knew Crosby, Stills, and Nash Or David Crosby And I didn't know that he was famous as the recovering alcoholic like that was his thing or recovering recovering substance abuse or not just alcohol i'm just recalling this did he give his sperm to a famous lesbian couple that's what i thought it's like i want those genes in this body i know why would you want that but exactly turning me down for that motherfucker. So in 82 and

85 he was arrested for drunk driving and substance abuse. Spent nine months in jail even. Wow. You gotta be pretty bad as a celebrity. They locked up celebrities then I think. And so by 1993 he was famous for getting sober and then he was in

AA and getting other people sober. We'll get a sequel to this joke in the b sharps episode oh you're right yeah the more obvious way of doing a joke about crosby being drawn and uh that now the parody of him would have been that he got arrested for like a bunch of knives like he got he got arrested for uh bringing a bunch of weapons through an airport wow i didn't know that that's more recent arrest i wouldn't know it from his music. Look at him. He's like, I love you.

Now, Apu's photographic memory has never been brought back again. No, I guess it must have helped him as a computer engineer. Yeah, this be my line of the show's role. That's the joke. Well, if you never forget anything, tell me this. What color tie am I wearing? You are wearing a red and white striped club tie in a half Windsor knot. Oh, I am, am I?

Is that what you think? Well, if that is what you think, I have something to tell you. Something that may shock and discredit you. And that thing is as follows. I'm not wearing a tie at all but if i am wrong about that maybe i am wrong about mrs simpson uh that should have been how he won the whatever yeah i do like how everybody else sees him doing this with his tie and then jury yeah this is yeah huss is removing us taking so long to remove his tie. Not in the jury. Huss is removing his... taking so long to remove his tie. He's struggling with it.

Everybody sees it. For another episode of Chris's Simpson Shorthand, half of my life is spent introducing clips and waiting for things to load. And those lines have become like... and it sounded a little something like this, if that's what you think. Because if that is what you think, this page isn't loading.

That's true. It happens on streams. It happens everywhere. I don't know how much we edited out. It happens all the time. Speaking of pre-internet research, as I was earlier, they had to call up David H. Bailey of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to get Pi to the 40,000th

numeric. Yeah, now you can just Google it. Yeah, but they, Oakley and Weinstein said that they got, like, shipped a printout of it all the way to that. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it's accurate, too. Yes.

Yeah. It's pretty neat. Fucking more. It is one. More great huts. I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah.

That's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy. Right. This is his finest hour. It's so good. So you don't have a clip of it I see there, but Clarence Darrow, I should let the audience know. I actually didn't get this joke until now. That Lisa compared. Well, so she compares him to Clarence Darrow, who, in case you didn't know, he lived from 1857 to 1935.

An early human rights attorney and a leading member of the ACLU back in the day, which I give them some support, guys. He'll be shut down by the time this airs. All in jail. In the gulags. But so Darrow most famously argued in the Scopes of Monkey trial. That's correct. Which was to teach evolution in schools, which settled the debate forever and it would never be a problem in American schools again. Watch Inherit the Wind, the old one.

It's very good. Now, the black guy from the Mod Squad is Clarence Williams III. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. Samson from Half Baked. Now, the black guy from the Mod Squad is Clarence Williams III. Oh, wow. Samson from Half-Baked. That's how our generation was. Or the host of Tales from the Hood. Yeah, that's it.

But he is Samson. Well, talk to Samson. This was the first time I got that joke that Clarence is the name of the actor who played the black guy on the Mod Squad. Not the Claire Danes film, the original Mod Squad from the 70s. No one remembers either one. It was just on my awful antenna TV.

And he is in the movie. Of course. Oh, wow. We also missed during the, I mean, you can't hear it, but Lionel Hutz's dick is hanging out and he has no pants on in the bad court thingy. Yeah, that's right. It's right after the you know you're not wearing pants.

That scene just continues. It's just like, well, you didn't go to put on pants. He like solid snakes himself against the judge's podium or whatever you call that. The joke is even better because he's asking the judge that without pants. You don't even see it in frame. With just his ass hanging out.

You will never be allowed to see that much of his ass again. Yeah, though I like that he had sock garters. That was cute. And then there's another joke they lost, which was, he says, could you imagine the world without lawyers? And then it's everybody at peace. And they wanted to play the I'd like to teach the world to sing song, but they couldn't get the rights to it. So they just pretty much play the first five notes of it. Yeah, and it's a little off.

It's the Coke song, right? Yeah, as invented by Don Draper, as we all know. Spoilers for Mad Men. Man, I guess I haven't seen that last season. You have not seen the last episode of Mad Men? Last season. Okay. Well, sorry I spoiled it for you.

My bad. But hey, if you should have seen it by now, I'm on the Gene Siskel side, man. If I haven't seen it by now, I don't care. But Marge does go to jail for about two minutes. Yes, it's true. Marge, I'm going to miss you so much. And it's not just the sex.

It's also the food preparation. You're still with stains of all kinds. But mostly I'll miss how lucky you make me feel each and every morning i'll miss you too homie oh i that's another of my favorite huts lines in this one he's being sued by the national council of churches he says like all right that's big yeah it's there there's a really great anecdote on the commentary about the line uh marge says who's minding the quickie mart she was supposed to say that as a callback to lisa beauty queen right she says who's minding the quickie mart and people are robbing it because they're

both at little miss springfield but in this scene marge wouldn't give a shit because she's pissed off they put her in jail so when reading the line julie cavner initially said who's minding the quickie mart and who the fuck cares so i wish they would have had that on tape or something like that because i really would have wanted to hear march swear she was right that was selling out marge's character yeah wouldn't care about the people who just put her in jail i think oakley and weinstein build in a line that will like make it a little more uh reasonable but it still kind of stands out like why would she be concerned about the quickie mart in any case yeah and uh i also as a kid i loved bart's dream sequence uh bartina uh yeah with the warden it was such it was just what a 10 year old would dream up a bugs bunny type plan yeah and that was the first but not the last down i go

i love that like the throwaway line of I'll bust you out as soon as I get a crowbar and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, that's not terribly funny as a joke. I do like that it gets funnier

when they show it. Normally, I hate that with The Simpsons. And he says, I need a crowbar. He doesn't use it to pry anything open. He uses it to smash

the guy in the face. Yeah, I think that was what they were going for. That was a joke too, yeah. And so then, it's finally time for the brief third act where they really we get two

scenes of marge uh without the family there pretty much i mocked it on the front and i think it's true here too that it's like the idea of homer ideas like homer leading the leading a strike homer going back to high school uh marge going to prison those are strong enough for real episodes that actually focus on that. But in all three of those episodes, they just aren't given enough time or focus. This episode also retreads a lot of Homer alone stuff, where it's Homer being terrible at raising the family by himself and just fucking everything up immediately.

It's still kind of funny, though. While your mother's gone, I don't want to have to wash any dishes. So from now on, drink straight from the faucet or milk carton, and we'll eat while standing over the sink or toilet. Who's going to change Maggie? We're going to let her roam free in the backyard, and nature will take its course. I cannot believe how much I've adopted that philosophy. Eat over the sink or toilet.

Everything I eat on purpose, I was joking with my girlfriend, comes with its own plate. How we use electricity Can be smarter, cleaner And greener At Electric Ireland We can help guide you there You see our new Net Zero Hub Has all you need to know about

Smart meter plans, EV tariffs Solar panels and much more Making your usage clearer Your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricisland.ie. It's either on a bun or in a burrito shell.

How about a bread bowl? I poured my own beer in a glass. I drink water directly from the faucet all the time. Not so much from the carton, just from the faucet. But they heighten the Homer alone stuff of him wearing, running out of clothes and wearing stuff from the attic.

Which is funny, though, that can't be Marge's dress. Marge's dress wouldn't fit him. No, that's a stretch. Yeah, well, though, Mona Simpson's dress wouldn't fit him either. Boy, the prison inmates were quite but's dress wouldn't fit him either. Boy, the prison inmates were quite butch, weren't they? Yes.

Knock, knock. I'm Marge Simpson, your new cellmate. I'm Phillips. They call me that because I killed my husband with a Phillips head screwdriver. This character actually reminds me of the similar-looking character on Orange is new black who in an episode uh name is boo yeah boo who steals a um uh screwdriver to use it to masturbate with and it's a big plot point that was a great payoff in that episode in the first episode of the whole series they said look this isn't oz and that's them talking to the audience too like this isn't oz yeah this isn't also a cinemax thriller like this women's prison is different from regular

one and you think the whole time if you were watching a show about men in prison you think well they stole that screwdriver to murder someone like that's what it is and so yeah finally find out where the missing screwdriver rent is being used as the handle for a corn dildo yes that's right what that's how boo is using it which hey, hey, that is ingenious. Boo rules. I love her. But, yeah, so Phillips is pretty much that, and then the Matt Folden was pretty great, too. I love that bit.

I love all the mad jokes. God, other than The Simpsons and, like, Ren and Stimpy, Mad was still kind of one of the most important things in my life. What kind of slime would I marry? Alright, I don't want to sound too heartless. Al Jaffe's still with us. Don't talk shit. Yes. He will live until we post this, at least.

I don't want to sound too heartless. So Marge is there for 30 days. And if my mom went to jail for 30 days, I would be sad. I would be. But would they really be like, oh, mom, I miss you so much. Like, it's been two weeks. Lots of visits. I don't know.

But for a kid, days feel like weeks. I guess so. And Homer's their only parent, so it's got to accentuate the loss there. But also, Marge is thirsty after, again, she's been at best three weeks without Homer. I don't know. It's not as dirty as her teaching me stroke formation with a wacky video like that. Slow then fast? Jesus, I still can't get over it. I thought it was real cute wacky video like that. Yeah. Slow then fast? Oh, Jesus.

I still can't get over it. But I thought it was real cute how Bart and Nelson connected. Yeah. I thought it was amazing. All right. Bologna and cheese. What do you got, Bart? Pack of sugar and peanut butter smeared on a playing card.

Ha ha. Your mom's a jailbird. So is yours. Oh, yeah. Let's play. It's no Peter Butter eggs and dice sandwich. I love that.

Mr. Show. The more I learn about Jimmy Carter, the more I learn about this president, the more amazing he is to me. There are two distinct stances on the writing team. Al Jean fucking hates on the commentary aljean's like i loathe jimmy stewart i hate the man and carter oh sorry not jimmy stewart

god damn it that's happened before i love jimmy stewart no he's like i hate i hate jimmy carter i loathe the man and matt graining is offended he's like you hollywood weirdo yes and he's like then aljean's like well if he was running against bush i'd vote i'd vote for him probably they're recording in 2004. So he says, I hope I get my chance this year. I feel like there was like rumors, early rumors in 2004, like maybe Jimmy Carter will run against him. Why don't you take a look at presidents who went and worked for ThinkTakes and Hedge Corporations and which one literally saved lives across the world and still is despite being almost dead. It's going to be a test to see what obama does after it too like though he's we've got he's was so young we've probably got like 40

should america continue to exist we probably got like 40 years of obama philanthropy ahead of us so i mean meanwhile uh oakley and weinstein thought this was a joke a satire of how people hated him for no reason yeah but it does work like that, too. It does, too. I think it works both ways. But I feel like it's, I mean, I didn't live through that period of time, but I feel like maybe it's a little, I mean, we've had so many worse presidents since that. It's what we talk about Simpson's shorthand.

If any of you assholes hear his name, you will say the line of the Springfield crowd people in this sequence. $15 short. Exactly what Marge Simpson's marshmallow squares bring in. Can we still afford that statue of Lincoln? No, I'm afraid we'll have to go with something cheaper. I give you our 39th president, Jimmy Carter. Oh, come on. He's history's greatest monster.

My favorite music? Yes. Hank, do you want to explain Malaise Forever? Can I explain it? I have a link as well. Oh, nice. Well, so first off, I think their hatred of Carter, it's very a pre-Clinton thing. Clinton was more like a sequel to Carter anyway, or at least he appeared that way in 92, I think their hatred of Carter, it's very a pre-Clinton thing. Clinton was more like a sequel to Carter anyway, or at least he appeared that way in 92, I think.

In 92, he did. It was like, okay, it's another Southern Democrat who is showing like, see, we can, I do hate blacks and I'll put them in jail. If you read about how high gas prices were during that gas crisis, you'd be like, you're a baby. Yes, that's true. If you read about how high gas prices were during that gas crisis, you'd be like, you're a baby. Yes, that's true. But I also think that hatred of Carter goes through Reagan into the continuation of Reagan's administration with H.W. Bush. And so I think it was just people hadn't remembered, like, no, Carter wasn't bad. History will smile upon Jimmy Carter. He sucks.

But apparently people hated him. He was seen as a weenie as it was who yeah who put on sweaters and man wore a sweater and told told americans not to consume as much yeah how fucking dare he enforce laws to uh not have cars shit into the air constantly which everybody like people all over the world left and right hated them. And I'm only saying to the people here in California, California still has that. You can't drive a car unless it's tested for emissions and smog checks. It was a shock when I moved here.

Like, oh, smog test. Glad I don't have a car. That's a Carter thing, man. He did that for the nation during a gas crisis. Everybody hated him. Again, how dare he write all this. We have the right to be wasteful, old trying to teach us a metric system fuck up that put solar panels on the white house reagan came in tore them down tore them down to pay more money yeah well

fortunately we'd never see any more vindictive moving into the white house like that again never um so malaise forever though is on a statue and that is a reference to a very specific uh speech by carter which i had never really looked into same here until today episode so america was in crisis like people were very worried like prices just seem to be going up and up and up are we screwed this is the stuff you can see why they were attracted to a fucking actor who could act like a strongman a year later. So apparently Carter goes missing for a few days. I think it was 10 days. 10 days.

Which that is incredible to imagine. That would be hard for me to forgive, too. Just like, well, Obama was gone for 10 days when people were worried. Not great. Not great. Prediction, you'll see it again. A lot. Oh, yes. A lot. Oh, yes.

A lot. Someone's going to be very unreachable. And you won't see him on news footage clearing brush in Lubbock, Texas either. So when he comes back, he gives a speech called the Crisis of Confidence speech. And I have a clip here that's got an intro to explain it in time. He never even says the word malaise, but that's what it got loyal to. Two years ago today, Jimmy Carter gave his famous malaise speech. He never used that term, but that's the name that was given to a speech

in which the president said the country's economic woes were due in part to a crisis of confidence in the country. It has come to be known as perhaps the most politically toned deaf speech in modern American history. Take a look. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis of confidence.

It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. I kind of don't disagree with that. I kind of have a problem saying the problem in this country is that you don't believe. Yeah, you've got to believe harder. Our good buddy Obama said if we just believe in america the russians won't hurt us so uh it's

a common it's a very common like unrealistic solution stupider than all that shit reagan's yes yes learning in america but so yeah he disappears for 10 days and then shows up with that speech about like why are all these prices going up why are we all worried it's because you don't believe enough and and it was i could see that turning people against him yeah and so then people saw that as him accusing america being stuck in a general malaise the depression but not an economic depression yeah and so from then on he got labeled with the malaise thing before that he was the peanut farmer but true, yeah. He had lust in his heart. Which he sold before he became president. Yes.

Because that's what presidents did. He was ready to sacrifice a peanut farm. I mean, what greater sacrifice can one man get? But I've got to play this clip because this would have been

my line of the show if not for all the Lionel Hutts. Release the dogs. Gee, they look pretty mad. Yeah, I've been starving them, teasing them, singing off key. Me meh-mah- simpson was here i mean i love that singing off key yeah and uh nice early we didn't have the term butterfly effect in the mainstream but that

was totally this is the butterfly effect that oh yeah marge wasn't there to sell the marshmallow squares leading to that eventually leads to uh springfield in crisis it's funny no one had like the 20 they would have brought in just to throw at the statue like nope He's like, nope, 15. The exact amount Marge Simpson used to bring in. And then Marge is released from prison to quell the anger of the townspeople. Well, no, the 30 days were up. It was only 30 days. Oh, really?

Okay, yeah. But yeah, Snyder sentences her to 30 days. When did the riots start? I guess on day 21 or something. Okay, wow. For some reason, I thought that was a direct result of the riots, Marge being let out. I don't know.

I just assumed that, maybe. No, it was just Ty. I think it's your memory. My memory of the episode is Lionel Hutt's winning with the Ty defense, because the poo agrees. Maybe I don't remember. And then someone got her out, but they didn't. She just went to jail for 30 days. Non-evil punished, but hey, Phillips is rewarded.

Goodbye, Marge. I'll miss you. I hope you find somebody men are such slime but i'm seeing this new guy i think he's different he says his name is homer and he works at the nuclear plant march does not ruin her uh her fun really i feel like that line was redone the mouth movement was off on that one too too. But I like the implication that Barney just stole Homer's identity

when Homer's standing right there. He's there. And it's also kind of Barney's non-Belch catchphrase at this point. It is. He did that to Mo in another episode, too. Getting ahead of plugs, Patreon.com is

how we live. We have season wrap-ups. I gave Barney my MVP of last season. It's true. He just didn't rise to that at all during this whole season. He's had his moments. He's going to drop off soon. Well, with the rise of Lenny and Carl, it was the drop of Barney. He just had many more.

We need a drunk here. What's this drunk doing? But it was more like just his excitement. Whatever you say and being pepper sprayed and burping. I think the writers were just as fascinated

with just having Barney burp. He ended up serving a very grandpa role where it's like just put him in for one joke and that's all he does. And then and just to make it up to Marge

they redo the Jimmy Carter statue as her just put her hair on it. It says Marge forever. up to Marge, they redo the Jimmy Carter statue as her. Just put her hair on it. It says Marge forever. Yeah, Marge forever instead of malaise. And then seeing, like, when they have the ball smack him in the face, it does feel like a very anti-Jimmy Carter statue.

I think it's a shot at him. Yes, definitely. They were meaner to him than married with children. I'm just saying. I wasn't there. I was there for the first three months of reagan's president last three months of uh reagan's presidency but since then he's like cured malaria all over the world and built houses for people who couldn't afford

them and i don't know any other former president who's done that much good no he's a great man he's in a great episode of king of the hill voiced by dave herman unfortunately not actually jimmy carter but he didn't but did he do paintings like oh bad paintings yeah yeah those paintings are bad one of my favorite onion jokes was that george w bush keeps look at george w bush's wonderful paintings though they all have a dead iraqi boy like they just can't not paint in there. That guy, he deserves no peace. Fuck you, buddy. Whatever history, think of him much cuter.

I see, I saw that. We're recording this on Inauguration Day. The photos of him. Adorable. The photos of him there, I feel like he was just loving, like, I'm not the most hated person here. Sweet little grandpa war criminal. I mean, his hair is light. He's getting bald yeah his dad's about to die yeah we can only hope oh boy if him and barbara die the same day boy that'd be great

after those 10 000 points of light in the sky yeah so let's wrap up here this has been talking simpsons i've been your host bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts you can find that every monday at retronauts.com it's a classic gaming podcast about classic games it's great go to retronauts.com or go is Retronauts. You can find that every Monday at retronauts.com. It's a classic gaming podcast about classic games. It's great. Go to retronauts.com or go to retronauts on Twitter and you will find it there. Everybody else, where can we find you? H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter is where

you'll find me trying to not slip my wrists. But also enjoying things and enjoying life and seeing tweets. You'll see tweets from my SF Sketchfest shows I've been attending, which have just been tons of fun. There was the brain candy,

uh, live reading and we got to see, literally got back from a king of the hill, 20th anniversary, which was amazing. Greg Daniels was there of Simpsons fame, but, uh,

well, more so office fame, but, the American workplace. Anyway, that was great. I write for fandom.com. You can see my works on

video games there, but more importantly, Patreon.com slash LazerTime. That's what supports this show and keeps it going strong. Every dollar helps and we really would appreciate any help you can do. $5 a month will get you access to the entire

first season of Talking Simpsons, which is not available on our iTunes stream, plus our season wrap-ups for 2 and 3 and soon to be 4, and other tons of great special things. Do you want to watch us do a live commentary for the WWE Flintstones crossover movie? It's on there! Will it be a 2003 Royal Rumble? Or audio commentaries for Jackie Chan's

first strike in Black Dynamite is voted upon by the Patriots yeah that doesn't sound very good yeah really fun and also the show

Laser Time where we just pick a topic do kind of a show like this but it's topic based not Simpsons based but if you like

something you can set your watch by 30 2010 a look back at 30, 20, and 10 years ago in the past and I believe next week we had to bring up The Simpsons. Very important.

We won't get to it for years. Poochie. It's the debut of Poochie. Oh, man. Deep in season eight. Another of those episodes that were like, ah, we're almost done. The Simpsons is over.

February 97, I believe. So thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week with Krusty's comeback special, the season four finale. We'll see you then. Wow. Infotainment.