Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Maximum Homerdrive With Luke Savage

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

This week we welcome back Luke Savage, from the Michael And Us podcast and a writer for Jacobin, to talk all about Homer's new job as a trucker! After indirectly killing a man, Homer inherits his job, which leads him into learning a giant union scam. Even more exciting, Lisa and Marge buy a doorbell!! Listen this week before your test in Birds Suddenly Appear! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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

That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product ahoy ho everybody welcome to talking simpsons recorded in a little girly underpantsy pink doily tea party place. I'm your host, Beanie Baby bootlegger Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert in Don't You Dare Call Me a Greenhorn. And who do we have on the line?

Luke Savage here, just gorging myself on some beef-flavored beef. And today's episode is Maximum Homer Drive. There's still food, but I don't want to eat it. I've become everything I've ever hated. Today's episode aired on March 28th, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby.

WrestleMania 15 happens in Philadelphia, EdTV is number one at the box office, and Futurama debuts right after The Simpsons with Space Pilot 3000. Ah, it'll be at the same time slot for one more episode before being escorted away to Tuesday, where it can't hurt anyone. It's family guy time after that.

Yes, please check out Talkie Futurama on our Patreon, by the way way you can hear all the first season and now the second season exclusively on the patreon wrestlemania 15 that is the one headlined by the rock versus stone cold that's there's a knowing look at henry's eyes i'm kind of happy our guest uh i assume that luke is not a big wrestlehead uh it wasn't part of my childhood okay it wasn't mine either. So I assume that if there was a guest who knew a lot about wrestling, we'd spend like 20 minutes on this WrestleMania. Oh, man. You're lucky Nima Shirazi's not here. Oh, yeah.

Surprising. Is Nima's into wrestling? Oh, yeah. Me and him could go on about it for a long time. What was the biggest bout? A wrestling bout? At WrestleMania 15? Yeah.

It was the main event of stone cold is facing the rock also is sponsored by crispy m&ms stone versus rock but no yeah nema is super into it i mean he also can talk a lot about the intersection of politics and wrestling we went on a long talk about how vince is vincent gann's writing of wrestling in the late 90s was really about how much he hated bill clinton and how that drove him. Now they're all over the politics news as the week of this recording because of a big brouhaha that happened

when they did their blood money show in Saudi Arabia. It's really fucked up. What was the other thing? There was Futurama, WrestleMania. I always forget one of them. Oh, Ed TV. Ed 209's movie after RoboCop. I saw that on an airplane once.

What did you think of it? Which is the appropriate place to watch it, I think. It's about on the level of an airplane film, yeah. It was a real, you know, 90s end-of-history comment on, like, where does reality TV end? Is it going to just watch you all the time? My memory of it, and admittedly, yeah, I have not seen it since I was on a plane at some point as a kid, is that it was sort of like a raw deal Truman show with Matthew McConaughey subbing in for Jim Carrey.

Yeah, pretty much. But it's like lower stakes and less imaginative. And it's a dingier whole product like one of the first one joke is that the first time ed tv begins is him waking up in the morning wood and he rubs himself through his pants and they're like boy is this television now i guess i don't think i've seen the movie that's the one scene i know about from that movie a morning wood scene but i think the fact that there was a movie called ed out at the same time ruined the SEO. So Ed was the baseball playing monkey.

The classic morning wood scene. Who can forget? I do also remember in Ed TV, it was the first time I recognized Clint Howard appearing in a Ron Howard directed film. I was like, oh, hey, that's Clint Howard. I know him from Jokes on mystery science theater or some such and the movie ice cream man also a super weird episode of the original star trek where he plays

a baby or something oh yeah ugly space baby yeah he's everybody's drinking tronio with him so today's special guest is uh luke savage of the amazing michael and us podcast welcome back luke i think your last episode was Season 8's Mountain of Madness back in October of 2018. Yeah, wow, yeah. Thanks for having me back, guys. Always a pleasure. I've been really enjoying... You know, we've been really enjoying...

I've been enjoying it the most. But your recent spate of episodes have been really great. I loved hearing your thoughts on the Democrat debate from a couple months ago and the Trudeau boxing documentary, which was all news to me. I didn't know any of that stuff about Trudeau. That was really good. Yeah, the non-political thing I really liked was your episode about the British version of The Office because I'm currently going through the American version for the first time and I

really want to go back and watch the British one again. It's been a long time. It was incredible to revisit it because when I was a teenager, you know, and I mean, in my early 20s, as well, I watched I mean, I watched the shit out of it. I probably seen I mean, no exaggeration. I have probably seen every episode of that show. I mean, there's only 12 of them plus the special, I've probably seen each one, I mean, conservatively 10 or 15 times. And so, you know, I thought it was going to be very kind of workmanlike to go back and revisit it because I was going to remember everything. And even though I did remember much of it very well, I think both Will and I received it completely differently because I remember it being like exclusively a comedy. And I mean, it is a comedy, but it's

bleaker and much darker than I'd remembered or than I kind of received it as when I was a teenager. And I think that owes itself in large part to having been through grueling jobs and having spent much of my 20s sitting behind desks and things like that. So, yeah, that was fun to revisit. The American one's fun, too, but I don't think, and I think it's like really tightly written. The actors are great. I don't think it has quite the same depth as of uh as social commentary maybe as the british one that's true yeah i can't go as dark either yeah well i was thinking about you know comparing the just david brandt versus michael scott and like david brandt is just like this despicable creature

like with almost no redeeming qualities basically like he he makes the wrong choice and selfish choice every time while on the show uh the u.s workplace they make it much more of the like well michael is just a buffoon in over his head and he's makes stupid decisions but you kind of feel bad for him and want to help him sometimes he's fine like yeah well i mean and that that was followed like directly, directly by Parks and Rec, which was just about, like, well, your manager's great, actually, and works too hard on everything, way more than you. Hard to go back to that.

I don't, you guys got to do that one. I don't want to, I feel like every time we have a podcast run, I tell them, do this episode. We'll give you homework when you come on our show. Honestly, honestly, there have been a lot of requests for Parks and Rec, and I think the only thing that's kind of held us back from doing it is that i mean i've only seen a few episodes i don't know how many will seen but um it would just be a little more labor intensive because i feel like to really get a an idea of it we would have to watch quite a few

episodes but we'll definitely do it at some point i think it's prime michael and us material for sure looking forward to it you know ed tv i uh that's like carl reiner's in it and ellen too like it's definitely a 90s liberal kind of film as well i'd say we we will definitely be doing ed tv in fact uh in fact i think like maybe eight or nine years ago well and i had like we got a solid year of kind of inside jokes out of ed tv I don't even remember what caused it to come up. But we used to talk about EdTV a lot. So I'm sure that I'm sure that I'm sure we'll dive back into that one at some point. And yeah, another of your recent episodes, it was about the Canadian election that was a nice primer for an American like me was

learning that Ed the Sock still is happening, which really saddened me. Well, to say that he's still happening suggests you knew about him to begin with, which I'm very impressed by, if that's the case. How the hell do you know about Ed the Sock? Oh, my Canadian girlfriend had to tell me what it was. Oh, wow. I learned about it because in the late 90s, early 2000s,

I guess it's called Much Music, or it was then. That started broadcasting in the u.s so when i was flipping around for like all the cool music videos i would flip to that one and see some of the stuff on there it's a lesser syphilin ollie yeah don't care for it going to much music in high school was like that was like my idea at 15 or 16 of what like the coolest field trip would could possibly be i remember i think i i don't think i actually went i think like my high school class went and i somehow missed it but there was like a high school like a class trip to a live taping of uh of much music like in the studio where you know you'd be on the camera for 30 seconds while

the the vjs were like priming up the next video or something. I thought that was super cool. I had just figured that the sock was like a two-year thing. And then once it run its course, it just stopped. Someone's done it now. I guess Twitter has thrown a life raft to all kinds of things like that. And also, I guess, Luke, did you watch this episode of The Simpsons when it was new back in 99?

Oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure I would have seen this during its first run. And I might have mentioned this the last time I was on, but the CBC, which is Canada's public broadcaster, used to broadcast The Simpsons every day at 5, like every weekday. So I'd come back from school and I watched The Simpsons and I caught a lot of things during their first run yeah so we can thank the canadian state taxpayer money enabled me to watch the simpsons yeah it's just like michael moore said it's perfect i'm heading up there soon but yeah this episode so it's written by john swartzwell or it's got

a lot of john swartzwell or things in it and that it's based around a fad that is uh more than 20 years old of the time of this episode's airing, you know, the trucking craze of the 70s. It also is virulently anti-union, and it shits all over Lisa, so all the John Swartzwelder calling cards are here. Totally, yeah. A lot of his

libertarian axes were grinded in this one. Actually, I remember in our second Mike Scully interview, he was talking about unionizing the animated shows on Fox in the late 90s. And he said he tried to do it earlier, but there was a vote and people voted against it. And he learned democracy doesn't work. So I'm guessing John Schwarzwalder voted against the Writers' Union.

I wonder. Yeah, his mistake was leaving it to a unanimous vote instead of just doing it with like 51% or whatever. But not only did Futurama air, but I think the premiere of Futurama, in fact, aired the same night as this one. I could be wrong. No, you're right. Yeah, they wanted the 8.30 slot. They thought they'd have it forever, but they soon lost it.

And they were very, very mad about that. So it's funny to think of people going from straight from senor ding dong into the start of the first episode of futurama yeah i don't even associate that episode with uh futurama premiering i just don't know why i don't think of this episode as what premier like uh preceded it i think the i think i might have taped the first episode on my tape right after this like i know i did, yeah. Futurama DVDs came out soon enough after the premiere that I either watched that or I watched my

illegal downloads on Kazaa. No, that wasn't... Weimeyer, Emule, one of those virus devices. Yeah, I want to point out before this episode starts is that a lot of animated shows will do trucking episodes, so there were 23 episodes of The Critic. We covered all of them in our Talking Critic miniseries.

There's an episode where Jay Sherman becomes a truck driver, an easy rider. And then in four years, there'll be a King of the Hill episode where Hank is a trucker for like a day. So I don't know why, I guess it's writers who grew up in the 70s when this trucking fad was happening.

They would think, oh, that's a fun idea for our characters to be in. So yeah. What exactly is the like social etymology of the trucking fad because like i'm vaguely aware of it and the the tropes that i recognize of it like such as they are we're obviously in this episode but where does that come from you know in the 70s there was this just popular there was like there was this view of truckers in in movies and uh in television shows like bj and the bear of just like that you are the new cowboy like you just go from one end

of the world to the other and you go on so many adventures and meet cool people and you're just like this you knew new rugged brand of masculinity i think was how it was pitched in the 70s that right and i think for the writers it's in the 70s that right and it i think for the writers it's kind of stuck with them from then of just like well what would be a cool masculine job for the dad on our tv cartoon to get into and uh i mean that comes through a lot in this episode of homer just around all these tough guys with gruff voices yeah my uncle uh was a trucker i assume he's retired now. I haven't talked to him in a while.

But like I said on King of the Hill podcast we've done, he was essentially Dale Gribble. Like, mirrored sunglasses, baseball cap over a bald head, only he had a mustache. But he always wore flannel. But he would come back from his trucking trips bringing us different flavors of Snapple we couldn't get and, like, tapes of Howard Stern he recorded

because Howard Stern was not airing in our region over the radio so he brought back the treasures of America to us I had a friend growing up who whose dad was a trucker and I remember just being in awe of the fact that he got to not only ride in the truck while it was going but sleep in it because it had a little like cabin in the back or like basically just a bunk bed but what really blew my mind was that he was able to play his n64 on a tv in the truck as it was driving to like nashville or wherever whatever run he was doing i think i don't think i would enjoy enjoy driving to nashville in a truck and playing n64 now quite as much as i would have in 1999 but that was a cool idea to me when i was a kid and if you think truckers are cool cowboys,

my uncle lived with his mother until he was in his late 40s. So it bought him a lot of trips to Africa where he murdered the entire cast of The Lion King over and over again. Oh, how nice. Yeah. Oh.

Also, this episode's name gives me pause every time I'm like, I hate it. Is this the Max Power episode? episode and no it's not it comes three episodes after homer to the max and also the yardley smith connection because she was in the stephen king directed maximum overdrive that's right yes playing a hick she's great at that uh have you seen that one luke i have not i confess oh you're you're missing out on some great bad movies it's so just look up the trailer for it because stephen king hosts the trailer and in with crazy eyes that

he later admits like he was full of coke every day yeah and the entire cast was drunk they would just drink all day uh but but in the trailer with with crazy eyes looking at the camera stephen king's like all these people adapted my stories they got it all wrong i'm gonna scare the hell out of you so yardley smith she does interviews about it she's not like ashamed of the film or anything she's she's in on the joke now the camp value of it for sure and uh right before we get into the every clip in it i did want to have a special shout out to the assistant director on this because the uh swinton scott the director on the commentary mentions he was a real big part of it and that's uh james purdom who we don't talk

much about the assistant directors on these uh but these you know the unsung heroes of the animation side of simpsons he worked on simpsons as early as season six in the character layout department uh he would he never fully directed a simpsons episode but would graduate to full directing on futurama in season three and has been the supervising director of family guy for the last 13 years wow so what a rise to power yeah yeah and uh also in the commentary they joke that the episode idea came from donick carrie uh and they say that at the time they were doing the commentary which was like 2007 he's off in eastern europe making some cartoon which i have to guess is little bush they're talking oh yeah i think they mentioned

little bush the um you know the perfect time to make your anti-bush cartoon is 2007 it's safe yeah safe time luke you must have sampled that uh i don't think so oh man were you aware of little bush uh remind me it's my memory as if the entire uh cabinet of george w bush's white house were children in a muppet baby style parody cartoon i don't know how i missed that but i'm gonna have to check it out it's uh it's a great one another man uh sorry i've suggested now like five episodes for you guys to do a lot a lot of homework from this one but that's cool uh but yes the episode begins with a very classic like this is where season 10 is at its peak where they're just crazy and ridiculous things happen and they

start with Homer high-fiving about turning down a tinnitus shot after Lenny bit him and we'll never know why Lenny bit him but Lisa comes in as a giant stick in the mud the second she shows up I said to that nurse you can take your free tetanus shot and shove it But Lisa comes in as a giant stick in the mud the second she shows up.

I said to that nurse, you can take your free tetanus shot and shove it. Well, you told her, Dad. You better delete my good... You still haven't told us why Lenny bit you. Well, I really gave him no choice, you see. Lousy meat-eating scum. Huh? bet you. Well, I really gave no choice. You see? Lousy meat-eating scum. Huh? Not you. I'm going over to protest this disgusting new restaurant

called the Slaughterhouse. It's decorated with hanging steer carcasses and a fountain of blood. Oh, I heard about that place on the Red Grocer. The worst part is you pick out your own cow, and they kill it right in front of you. Well, maybe the animals don't mind, honey. They might enjoy

being the center of attention. I think I read somewhere that cows like being killed. Wait, there's a place like that in Springfield? Then why are we eating this crap? So that line about, I heard somewhere cows like being killed, for a long time I thought that was in Lisa the Vegetarian until we did it for our podcast.

But I love that line because I am a pescatarian and I only eat fish. And when I try to explain, when questioned my choices, I do hear like, well, actually, it's more humane to kill those chickens. Like things like that, where it's like, it's close to what Bart is saying. So I always laugh at that line. I mean, people get so defensive about if you don't eat some types of meats or if you have any dietary choices people get very defensive and treat you like they treat lisa in this very episode and lisa's story goes nowhere she's uh it just introduces the uh the plot basically my favorite part of this scene is is how you know it just opens in media res and you know homer's been

bitten by lenny but it's just never expounded upon it's just like oh that happened yeah uh you know, it just opens in media res and, you know, Homer's been bitten by Lenny, but it's just never expounded upon. It's just like, Oh, that happened. Yeah. In another episode, Lenny bit him while they were like in a fight or somehow Homer left him with no choice.

I just, I think actual cases of lockjaw and then the 20th century happened more on TV than actual real life. It's one of those funny diseases you can laugh at you know what you know a part of this the clip you just played i i didn't i don't really get is marge has read about the restaurant is that like a magazine she's referring to what is the what is the reference there oh i have the answer to that i think these segments were duplicated in other cities but there was in the bay area a guy

who did a segment on the local news called the green grocer where he was just saying this guy named joe carcione who was like you know you got to go to your local market and get some bell peppers they're great or whatever actually here let's i do have a clip of the green grocer here joe cartoni your green grocer inviting you to join me on action news weekdays at 12 noon and five o'clock for my daily reports on fresh fruits and veg tables i'll give you veg table veg tab that's how you say that word we had one of those guys in my uh local news i think it was a syndicated show but his name was mr food oh what an imaginative name for a uh food guy so i would guess the joke is that in the springfield market they have a all meat grocer who is the red grocer instead of the green grocer i'm guessing that's what the joke is but i didn't know

that until this this time of of questioning that line there's there's another bit i had to google as well in this one that i was like i never thought about that line before this whole bit with lisa it's very south park it feels very reactionary in a south park style especially in that it's uh south park did these jokes all the time of like these annoying hippies by protesting actually made something more popular because caring about something is stupid. And so you must be punished. That's what happens with Lisa here. She wants to protest it and she actually sends her whole family to eat there.

And what ended up being an advertisement for the place yeah that's exactly like all all the worst south park episodes the premise is like people who are socially concerned about something are actually the ones causing the problem to begin with and their efforts to resolve it always exacerbate things or make them worse and the way lisa describes it the slaughterhouse sounds incredibly gross and unsanitary yeah i mean and a person dies that day at there so i think lisa was proven correct in uh in boycotting the place well i do like with the slaughterhouse that the it has the kind of presentation like red lobster except with mammals who you eat and i do think it's making some kind of commentary on if you had to see them kill a cow like they kill a lobster you wouldn't eat there like that would be disgusting to you and the joke is that

everybody is doesn't seem to care that cows are dying around them every right in front of them yeah especially the scene with burns yeah I was gonna say like especially this thing where burns just like is constantly changing his mind to the point where they kill all these cows and then the end of the gag is like oh i'd like some milk actually from that cow and then they just instead of milking the cow they just kill it just it's like this is how disposable animals are especially to like a rich asshole like this at some point in production they thought of doing it on screen oh yeah that then i'm glad they did it off it's good the uh the no country for old men gun goes off screen to kill the cows that's how when i saw no country for old men i was like oh that's uh mr burns's cow killing gun i know that machine uh also uh credit to the animators

when they arrive at the slaughterhouse red burns and hibbert are all at tables like they are all established as attending there. There's a fun little Easter egg with Dr. Hibbert where it turns out that he's just bought a steak in the restaurant or whatever. So he's not concerned. He has no health concerns at all. He's just covering for the place. I wonder if they got him to buy in to cover them for any medical problems.

And also the neon sign when they arrive at the slaughterhouse of the cow getting decapitated, but it doesn't smile until it's decapitated. It's the decapitated face that's smiling. Oh, I missed that. That's awesome. Oh, so I want to talk about what this is a parody of. So this restaurant is a parody of this restaurant in Amarillo, Texas called The Big Texan.

I believe it opened in the 60s, maybe 1960. So they have a 72-ounce steak challenge, and that is the steak that Homer turns down that's not big enough for him. So this is also parodied on an episode of King of the Hill previously that Fall called, and they call it Bobby Love. It won an Emmy, and in the end of the episode, Bobby tries

to beat this challenge to show up as a vegetarian ex-girlfriend played by uh buffy the vampire slayer sarah michelle galar there you go yeah so my my contribution to the steak discussion is that uh so i can't i didn't know that the 72 ounce steak was a real thing but i was curious you know how uh how many calories would be in a steak like that. So I put 72 ounces in grams into Google. Apparently that's like over 2000 grams. And, uh, the like macro calculator I typed it into says that a sirloin steak of 72 grams would be like four and a half thousand calories, which is amazing. Well, Homer steak is a 256

ounces based on the amount of pounds it is. So I want to, So there are rules to this big Texan contest. So it's a 72-ounce steak, and you pay $72 if you can't finish it. So number one, the entire meal must be completed in one hour. If any of the meal is not consumed, swallowed, you lose. Number two, before the time starts,

you'll be allowed to cut into the steak and take one bite. If the steak tastes good and is cooked to your satisfaction, we will start the time upon your acceptable approval. The time will not stop. The contest is on, so make sure before you say

yes. Number three, once you have started, you are not allowed to stand up, leave your table, or have anyone touch the meal. Touch is in big letters. Number four, you will be disqualified if anyone assists you in cutting, preparing, or the eating of your meal. This is your contest. Number five, you don't have to eat the fat, but we your meal this is your contest number five you

don't have to eat the fat but we will judge this uh number six should you become ill the contest is over you lose please use the container provided as necessary that's such a funny detail that like the contest revolves around a very simple challenge just finish the steak but then they add this uh this qualitative element into it where it's like you don't have to eat the fat but we're going to judge it and i love the idea that then like there's just three judges sitting there like you know uh figure skating or something and they're going to give like they're going to hold up a sign that says like you know eight nine ten like based on whether you ate the fat or not i wonder if they assort me like i wonder if they give you a formal score at the end

but sorry i have five more rules to get through eating the fat fat is like the double-axle, triple-toe of competitive steak. There's still five more rules? There's still five more rules. I'm sorry, I have to get through them all. Number seven, you are required to pay the full amount up front. If you win, we will refund it $100. Number eight, you must sit at a table that we assign. Number nine, if you do not

win the steak challenge, you are welcome to take the leftovers with you. Hey, that's nice. At least you get that. Number ten, no consumption or sharing of leftovers is allowed in the restaurant once the contest is over. What? That's weird. What?

The way you carry it. You can't divvy up your steak to hungry patrons. Number 11, final rule. If you fail to complete the challenge, you must pay the full $72. And that is the Big Texan Steak Challenge. Wow. But you have to eat all the fixings, too. Ugh, yuck.

So do you know how many people have actually completed this challenge? I'm sure it's been done. Actually, when I Googled this, I found that a woman ate three of them. She said? Yes. That is the Sir Lloyd's a lot, then. That has to be the equivalent of what Brad actually eats in this episode. I assume it's not done very often, but it happens.

That's insane. I had a steak recently because I went to a thing where a company was paying for it, so I was like, I'm getting the steak. When I had it after I think it was like 10 ounces of steak. After 10 of that, I just felt sweaty and gross.

That much red meat sounds like a killer. Literally a killer. The woman who ate three of those 72 ounce steaks uh weighs 124 pounds which is not a very large person either what yeah I don't know this this woman uh I'm scared of her now I'm sorry to keep going on but she also ate three baked potatoes three side salads three rolls and three shrimp cocktails I'm not reading this out of weekly world news this is an actual news story. I cannot believe this. I'm calling fake news on this. I don't know how that's even possible. There is a YouTube video of this. You can watch it. Her name is Molly

Shuler. She's doing it. She's doing it for America. The Simpsons will be right back hope you guys are enjoying this week's podcast and your complimentary basket of hooves and a big thank you to this week's guest luke savage you should definitely follow his podcast michael and us as well as his writing on jacobin and in case you're new to the podcast you should know this week and every week is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons that's right me and bob are supported doing this full time by wonderful folks like you out there who give us five bucks a month to help us do this but you get so many things for that five bucks not only could you hear next

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Like that hot dog guy. Oh, God. There's a long discussion on the commentary about eating competitions and how everybody who is in one, he throws up the instance it's over. Like that. It's very disgusting facts about it.

But yes, Homer signs up for the deal, even orders a... I like the joke that he orders to drink meatballs because I think the normal joke you would have written would have been ordering a Diet Coke or it would have been like a joke that he'd order a diet drink. So I was kind of waiting... Like a side salad or something. Yeah. So instead he orders, I guess, pureed meatballs in a glass. I saw it as a glass full of sauce with meatballs on the side of the glass,

sort of like how a lime wedge would be on the side of a gin and tonic. But Homer gets warned away by a person who isn't Tony Randall. It's you! You're him! You're Tony Randall! Red Barkley's my name. I'm a trucker, and I've eaten steaks from coast to coast with taters and toast. Take my advice. This one's not for greenhorns. Greenhorns? Who's a greenhorn? What's a greenhorn?

It's an insult. Suck him, Dad. Suck everybody. Oh, you're just jealous because you don't have the belly for it anymore, Mr. No-Belly. Mr. Hasn't-Got-A-Belly. Well, I have just finished a whole lamb, but I reckon I could take you to school. You're on, boy. I like that he had just eaten a whole lamb before he wins this. I guess that's similar to that young lady.

But yeah, this is based on the old idea of who wins eating contests being very large people not not little people who know how to like drink food basically also the tony randall thing is very like rando kind of humor but uh tony randall was a uh new thing people were making fun of again because in 1996, he married a woman named Heather Harlan who was 25 and he was 75. I thought Tony Randall was gay. Was I wrong about that? That's why that's the joke. Okay.

That's why it's even crazier because he was married to a woman for most of his career. Then she passed away. And then he married this 25 year old heather harland and everybody was telling well i was sure he was gay everybody and then he has two children with her it just confused everyone they were a real odd couple i have to leave now i'm sorry uh but silence uh i prefer taters over toast with a steak. That's my feeling. What about Texas toast? Texas toast is pretty good.

It's just garlic bread, people. Just call it garlic bread. But it's puffier. I guess. And a greenhorn, for Homer's knowledge, it's an inexperienced person. And it comes from a newly slaughtered animal is one with a greenhorn. I didn't realize that. Wow.

Yeah. Homer then challenges him to it. Hibbert talks about how he was bought off. And then there's a big joke about a Heimlich machine, which is like some Tex Avery stuff there. It's a very Looney Tunes joke. It feels like a John Schwarzwalder joke for real. Yeah.

Homer then starts to eat away. He has some pretty funny jokes about saying, must defeat guy, I just met. I'm not going to play those clips because I think hearing Homer's eating sounds are gross. Yeah, they don't help the podcast. They're not doing like Talking Simpsons ASMR with just Homer eating steak. I try to cut down on gross sounds in this. That's also why there won't be a clip of when the doorbell is at its

loudest later in this oh yeah that annoyed me in my apartment but homer's sinuses packed with meat is also really good and is his hallucination of the fancy cows who he calls drunks i love that it's so weird that they do this joke that makes homer not the bottomless stomached food monster like he always is there's there's nothing he can't eat in the show to this point he he closed down an all-you-can-eat food fish restaurant because he couldn't be finished eating i i was thinking about that episode watching this too but i couldn't remember what season that was from uh that was uh season four right yeah is that that one has the great moment where uh like the the prosecuting lawyer in court has them bring in like the equivalent amount of seafood that he ate and there's just this like convoy of people with these big bags of fish but then but then homer's legal defense

is the sign said all you can eat which i'm pretty sure would hold up in court i i also like that the jury is an all uh obese jury that could have been me i love that could have been that's one of my favorite uh but yes homer reflects on that he's become everything he's ever hated i i like how bart's a real pal to Homer in this episode. Yeah, they're real chums in this episode. It's like a Laurel and Hardy adventure for these two. Homer has lost and Red is still the champion, but at what price?

Winner and still champion, reliable Red Barkley! And that's up to you, Red. You're a true American hero, and you did it with style and dignity and hey you're not breathing don't people usually breathe this man is dead looks to me like beef poisoning probably from some other restaurant mother restaurant. That joke always

disturbs me because he has no reaction to dying. He just stops moving. His heart just stops. Unless I was imagining it, you can actually see him blinking. Did you guys notice that? I think there's one blink after they pronounce him dead.

I think there's an animation fuck-up. dead. I think there's an animation fuck up. Oh, yeah. It might be an error then. Yeah. Yeah. But I love how he just dies with like he dies doing what he loves. He's got this big smile on his face. Like he's like his facial expression like evokes a sort of thumbs up, even though he's already dead.

He also has the Al Bundy like hand tucked into his pants sort of thing. Yeah. Maneuver. Yeah. even though he's already dead he also has the al bundy like hand tucked into his pants sort of thing maneuver uh yeah and then homer homer comments on a lot in this episode but he kind of killed red yeah i'll take to this uh it's manslaughter also like if i was homer i'd be freaking out that like there were two stakes homer could have been say serve the one that was poisoned, but he didn't. That would leave me questioning my mortality for sure. But Homer doesn't think that deeply. I pin it as when the guy says, and still champion, that's when Red makes his last movement. And then they're just moving his hand around.

Don't people usually breathe that's a great i do like that line so apparently they said on the commentary that there was some fears from fox's lawyers about making jokes about beef poisoning because they thought they were gonna they were gonna get it from the steak lobby from from big steak uh you're not far off there, yeah, because in 1998, Oprah was sued by Texas Beef Dudes because of a 1996 episode about Mad Cow, where she said, like, I'm never have food libel laws, where if you libel a food as saying it's dangerous without proper proof of it, you can be sued for libel. And it was put to the test against Oprah. Oprah beat it. And so there haven't been many food libel attempts afterwards, thanks to Oprah. It seems pretty clear.

I mean, you you think the first event would apply right imagine like you put a law like a moratorium on just the abstract idea of suggesting that beef might poison you this drawing of a steak poisoned a man uh yeah you well that's the thing it ended up these kind of laws even if nobody gets sued the intention is a chilling effect from like the beef lobby of just like companies people being scared to even mention a mad cow joke because they might get sued like well i hope i hope at long last you know maybe the democrats can nominate bernie and he'll stand up to big steak at last uh i can hope mad cow was a real fun go-to joke in the 90s it was sort of like the viagra joke standard. If you couldn't

come up with a Viagra joke, you had a Mad Cow joke waiting. Waiting right at a fire. And I just remember the Daily Show, the last production logo was the Mad Cow Productions or whatever. It was like the cow says moo. That's right. And yeah. That was in the pre-John Stewart days, right?

I think so, yeah. I don't even know if they've ever made I'm sure it's happened, but it's weird they haven't done it yet in this timeline that we're in now. Make a mad cow joke. I guess this is kind of that. And those Slaughterhouse Body Bags, too, they do remind me of the dark branding, let's say, of the Heart Attack Grill, if you've ever heard of that.

Oh, man, yeah. Where people have had heart attacks at the grill, and people think it's a joke. if you've ever heard of that oh man yeah where people have had heart attacks at the grill and uh people think it's a joke so uh that's uh you know that not too far off there simpsons simpsons satire just becomes real things but this is another of those uh ends of the first acts where you just go like didn't see that coming did you uh where this one is really silly in this clip they're leaning they're leaning into it so hard. Like, Homer knows, like,

well, this is a sitcom. We need two more acts. And Marge, I love Marge's reaction, even though it is, like, so contrived. I do like Marge's just disbelief at this. There goes the finest trucker who ever lived. He called me Greenhorn.

I called him Tony Randall. It was a thing we had. In 38 years, it never missed a shipment. But I guess this is one delivery old Red won't be making. Oh, yes, he will. And on time, too. Oh, no, Homer, no! I've got you, honey.

I owe it to old Red as both his friend and his killer. Oh, let me go with you, Dad. Don't you have school? Don't you have school? Don't you have work? Oh, too scary. Bye, Marge. Aren't you going to say bye? Goodbye, Homer.

That didn't sound like you meant it. Oh, all right. Goodbye, sweetheart. Have a nice trip. That's more like it. So long, suckers. A nice Homer of this era, so long, suckers. It wouldn't be a season 10 if he didn't say so long, suckers.

You know, this kind of turn from Act 1 to Act 2 made me think of is that this particular episode anyway, and this is probably also applicable throughout other parts of season 10, it's much more like a Family guy style of writing like especially after the early seasons of family guy where the plots just become looser and looser to the point where you know often by the time you get to the third act you've completely forgotten the first one because it's almost like three kind of little mini stories or two of them like uh kind of sewn together um and in fact uh i mean not to jump the gun but the episode actually kind of alludes to that later when there's that great

joke about the end where like homer can't remember who red was yeah a little bit of meta humor there they get a lot in these seasons and this one especially of them pointing out their flaws of just like the characters don't remember how this started or bart saying they're like well don't you have a job like he's yeah homer homer shouldn't be able to just be a trucker when he has a job he goes there used to be stakes i like how they just shrug them off like you don't have to go to school i don't have to go to work so let's just do have our fun adventure they traded stakes for stakes ah i like it i like it i made that terrible a couple jokes uh and marge uh i mean marge also kind of has a very lois griffin reaction of like i'm so tired of sitcoms

aiding us please don't do this like that's not uh but she knows she can't stop homer like her body language too of like folded arms and kind of she's like please yeah she just there's a lot of uh it's emblematic of like the audience like simpson season 10 audience's resignation about like all right we're just gonna do this again i guess off we go homer this is a homer's got a new job episode i see you got 15 more minutes of this uh also from this scene onward, consider this. There are migrant workers just loose in the back of Homer's truck the entire time. And what, avocados or something? Some avocados, yes. Which, that joke, I mean, the joke is about how horribly we treat migrant workers,

but it also just feels like a gross joke about immigrants. Human trafficking? Yeah, yeah. Red deserved to die. but it also just feels like a gross joke about immigrants human trafficking yeah yeah red deserve to die you know in jet he's a human trafficker i guess he's pretty awful yeah yeah there's that other great joke uh in the same scene i just mentioned where uh like he's talking to that uh that other trucker and he says you know last time i saw red he was in a plastic bag and the guy's just like yeah yeah yeah sounds like red uh he it's pretty dark that he gets he was in a plastic bag, and the guy's just like, yep, yep, yep, sounds like Red. It's pretty dark that he gets taken away in a hearse, too.

Not an ambulance, even, just in there. It doesn't seem legal that they can just put him in their own branded body bag. They should do an autopsy or something. Homer drives away, we come back, and we see the Red rascal design, which is very intentionally a Texx avery style design even and also like there's a confederate flag on it because like it's just expected like truckers drive around with confederate flags no more no more conversation to be had on that it's just it's a fun design who's who knows why they got it and also i just as a side note i watched this on simpsons world i know look like, Disney Plus is bad, too.

But I had to watch so many freaking commercials. Simpsons World is the worst. I'm so happy that this will be the last time I watch a Simpsons on Simpsons World. Is Watch Cartoon Online still around? I would never frequent such a website. That sounds unofficial. Oh, no, nor would I. I was asking purely hypothetically.

I may or may not have watched it on YouTube. Hilariously enough, I tried to watch it on Dailymotion, and it took me a minute to read. I was like, there's something off about this. If you guys ever watched any clip on Dailymotion, not that, of course, any of us ever would have, but all the clips are backwards for some reason, so all the text in the credits oh yeah but then also this clip was just slowed down very slightly so all the voices just sounded slightly off and it was like very hyper real it was very

strange it's one of those tricks to get around to take down for it it's too you know there used to be a site i would never go to uh called pixa club which that had every simpsons like straight dvd rips in sd and i didn't have to futz around with any of the fox uh the fxx bullshit and it just it i was for so many years i was like man it's never getting shut down this is so great as disney Plus looms, now it's gone. There's no more Pixiclub. You can't make it up shop. It's great.

All these new platforms that are like, finally, all your favorite stuff in one place, and then really it's just making everything harder to watch. Piracy gets tougher, but we'll find a way. We're going to have to play our boring conversation alert jingle. Let's define our terms, gentlemen. Are we talking about redistricting or are we talking about reapportionment? Oh, well.

Can't win them all. But I do question, like, wait, if their skin is yellow, why would a sunburn make them red? Like, I don't know. Shouldn't they be, like, orange, not red in the way a person with Caucasian skin pigmentation? I say all submers are red. That's my argument. Classic season 10, like taking of liberties there by the writers. Terrible. And they also, the animators, I feel really bad for them that they had to draw that one

price tag joke the entire goddamn episode. Yeah. And it's not really, I mean, it's sort of like a mini pearl joke or something oh let's tell the mini pearl story again i love from my wedding day he was that's your uh cruel parents thought i didn't know who mini pearl was yes yeah so at my wedding uh with my husband we both wanted to, and this was just at the city hall thing, but we didn't want to have nice pictures. And we even got top hats, but we weren't going to pay for them. So we bought them from Amazon and we're going to send them back, which we successfully did. They did have tags in them that we like tucked under the hats when we put them on.

But otherwise the tags were hanging out. And my stepfather said like, oh oh you guys are like mini pearl but you get you kids wouldn't know what that is and bob had to let it got in his face i was like oh from the grand old opry i mean that mini pearl i was a very lonely child sir uh speaking of uh silly jokes they also have a joke of homer turning on the radio and listening to the spice girls with the then relatively new wannabe uh in the deleted scenes it's actually a joke about dan dan kessler is playing a country singer and he's he's singing this original song about the dangers of trucking about like truck flipped over on i-95 blood and guts everywhere all this stuff so that's why bart

has this reaction. You'll see it very briefly of like, what? He kind of freaks out, but I think they maybe thought that was too long of a joke. So they just went with the easier joke of like, Homer listens to a song for young women. It's a pretty simple joke. Oh, come on, it's for everyone. Yeah, I agree. The Spice Girls, they want to spice up everybody and spice up the world. but that's that's it's uh it's a come on it's for everyone yeah i agree the spice girls they

they want to spice up everybody and spice up the world uh homer i also like homer thinking that the kid is telling him like fuck you with his honk the horn thing which i think i got away with doing that a couple times as a kid yeah then we get a scene that i swear i at first i was like this is egg magic right from the super bowl episode Even the writers on the commentary are confused. Yes, but yes, Lisa and Marge are upset they don't have a plot line, so they decide to start one. Lisa, we got another postcard from your father. Wish you were her.

How many of these is he going to send me? Wow, Dad and Bart have been everywhere. They've eaten submarine sandwiches, grinders, and hoagies. It's not fair. Your father always gets to have such exciting adventures. Maybe it's time we took a walk on the wild side. We're buying a new doorbell?

A musical doorbell. So many doorbells. I'm in way over my head. Jeez. I like Marge. Marge suggests the most boring subplot possible, but she's overwhelmed by it. Also, Homer, side note, is so mean to Marge in this episode.

Yeah, sending multiple wish you were her postcards and also homer plans on leaving marge after he meets the waitress in the diner yes he plans a divorce with gwen that's uh pretty shocking really throws himself into this like hastily created new identity as a trucker doesn't he uh and the the girl on the wish you were her it's i believe it's a betty page believe that's a Betty Page drawing That's Betty Page, alright But yes, they had to send your ding-dongs And I did want to play

This has some great Gil work here So I gotta play the full Gil clip Because he is a truly sad individual Oh, great, look at my shoes And today's my evaluation with Señor Ding Dong. Excuse me, Mr. Trainee. I'm trying to find a musical doorbell. Well, you came to the right place.

We got your Ding Dang Dongs and your Do Re Mi's and your Ah Cha Cha's, huh? Hey, man. I'm trying to find a particular tune. It's the one that goes like... Mom, is this the one you want? Yes, that's it. Lisa, you ought to be a doorbell salesman.

That's just what I need, another piranha in the tank. Good. Rolling right into NRBQ. Yes, yeah. That, man, Gil's sound he makes when he's called trainee, that makes the joke even better. He's like, oh, God. And also that Marge can't remember Close to You,

which is their song. The way she half remembers it is very funny to me. I feel like that's the first time they've referenced it since that episode in this timeline so i i didn't recognize the tune but that's like it's a burt baccarat song is that right yeah it's it's close to you it's made famous by the carpet yeah but all i could think of was that it sounds like a like a melody you'd have to learn an ocarina of Time. That's how we played that game. And it would be called, like, you know, the Prelude of Fire. And it would take you to, like, the top of Death Mountain or maybe, like, Lake Hylia or something.

Wow. You know, I could totally hear that. It's a doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo. Yeah, and the way we was, that was sort of like Marge's theme. Yeah. And Homer's was a space cowboy. You know, i remember the last time we heard close to you it was the hindu cover of it oh yeah wedding episode last season

yeah but before that i'm kind of fuzzy when it was used again i think this was them rediscovering that close to you was their song it would come back a lot it's in the movie that's what's funny on the commentary they're they record the commentary as they're making the movie so they're like it's recorded like eight months before the movie comes out so like oh yeah close to you that's a big scene in the movie and you can hear 30 seconds of it on the soundtrack and they also have a joke in there about how they had just on the commentary they make a comment of like, oh, we just changed the villain of the movie because they just did change their mind on Russ Cargill being played, how he was played and animated, which was a major last minute change. Like the poor Simpsons movies animators who had to get like, they had to redraw movie-level animation so many times. I think there's, like, Burger King merch with the original design on it of Russ Cargo. We'll get to the movie eventually.

It'll be, like, a multi-episode journey. That has to be five episodes, I think, of our podcast. But, yeah, it's funny to hear these commentaries that are now their own dated time capsule. Like, 13 years old, yeah. But, yes, Bob, you did bring up nrbq they they are in the next scene uh in the diner where homer is contemplating divorce that's where they play nrbq mike scully's favorite band uh the song is called 12 bar blues if you want to give a listen to it it is like the definition of dad rock like it's some of the dad rocky stuff not that it's bad

but it's i don't i don't think i'd go to an nrbq concert but that's just my taste i would not be welcome at one they'd be pretty mad at your hair i think yeah unless mike scully took me i thought that was cool i like the sign outside the diner that says now we're now aware of camp value i like that uh but yes homer homer meets gwen which they do draw her in kind of a sexy manner she also says want some more high test which i had to look that up that is an old diner expression for powerful coffee yes i was assuming it was like a euphemism for just uh the coffee because high test is just like uh fuel okay you put in a truck so just like i'm gonna give you more fuel

now so she's like it's like it's like trucker diner it's like road stop lingo basically yeah she's a colorful character the kind we've learned from guy fieri that he'd teach all this would be a real dive he could visit uh did you ever did you see uh friend of the show bill oakley's guy fieri outfit really good real impressive halloween costume but yeah the homer plans to leave marge for gwen and it makes it even darker that he's planning this in front of bart while talking to him just like yeah i'm gonna do that i'm gonna leave your mom yeah after that scene's over we head back to them trying to test out the uh the doorbell uh first they think millhouse is gonna ring the door but he gets attacked by birds while selling seeds more more evil birds bob in these things at least no birds were hurt though it was so funny

about about this to me is the idea that the they can't legitimately test the doorbell unless somebody just like comes to the door organically i don't know why that tickled me so much but just how they they like sit there waiting and then the fact that what's there's like they're thwarted twice first because millhouse who is inexplicably just walking down the street selling bird seeds like gets attacked hitchcock style and then they try to overcome that by just ordering not pizza but like what is it like a like a piece of garlic bread like a half order of garlic bread yeah and then that guy just knocks on the door yeah i i kind of like it as a character tick of marge and she's like it's not an official test of the doorbell unless a stranger rings it not them she's kind of a doorbell nerd uh it's such and and also right

before that though the jehovah's witnesses show up and they just they quit they quit before ringing the doorbell i love that but uh let's go get real jobs i you know i don't think the when i moved to berkeley 13 years ago i did get a few jehovah's witnesses in the first few years i was here but i haven't seen them around in a while i feel like they've get at least in the bay area they've given up i mean it's funny yeah i i got like i i grew up in i grew up rural and even though we had a really long driveway they would like come up it was like a five minute uphill drive to get to the house but they would come all the time but since i've lived in toronto i don't think i've uh i don't think i've been canvassed by a jehovah's Witness. They give up the big cities to the Satan.

Yeah, Satan's one. Marina's Thrall. But yeah, I like, they try calling Luigi's and that's when they finally have to give up. Still no visitors. It's time we opened up a can of whoop-tushy on this situation. What's the number for Luigi's? Dad's got it on the speed dial under fire.

This is it, honey. We did it. Damn it! Ring the bell! Why? You already know I'm here, don't you? Just do it! Nothing doing, Missy. Now, do you want your half order of garlic bread or not?

No, but if you'll just ring the... That's it. I'm putting an end to this. Listen, no, no, don't. It won't be the... Now, do you want your half order of garlic bread or not? No, but if you'll just ring the bell. Ah, that's it. I'm putting an end to this. Listen, no, no, don't. It won't be the... Oh, it's heavenly. Why do birds suddenly appear over there, over here? Why is it playing over again?

Who cares? No one could ever get sick of this song. Suddenly appear. And then it keeps going and going. Very loud. I was surprised by how annoying it was through my speakers. Credit to the sound engineers, I guess, for making it up there. But yeah, I also added to that that Marge not only would call Luigi,

but she didn't even order like dinner she's just like no it just one half order of garlic bread i'm gonna be as cheap as possible for this delivery and then having like you know she's like it doesn't count it hasn't counted until now that uh you know like if if unless somebody rings the door organically but then as soon as the bell goes she's just like she's just in a state of bliss uh with with a song that she can't even remember like the the 10th word to which is why do birds suddenly appear every time that you're near just like me they long to be close to you i think it's every time you are near oh well i fucked up too non-musical that in that song no i i trust you uh but yeah homer then we go back to his adventures he's they're at a drive-thru he's eating what looks to be a stuckies

brand peanut pecan log roll that's what i think it is uh and they're seeing a movie called it ate everybody which it ate everybody the the constant restatement of it is pretty funny yeah it feels like a john swartzwater joke to me uh i my favorite is they have brad in the reflection as they all homer bart and the actor all say it ate everybody and homer had stupid that would have been a fun callback for this to be space Mutants, wouldn't it? They lost that so long ago. Yeah, it's been almost a decade. So Homer and Bart are trying to catch fish using fishing sticks, as Homer calls them, which is kind of odd. Bart tells him that they actually have to get to Atlanta. Remember, Atlanta is the destination.

And Bart reminds him they actually have to drive 2,200 miles in 10 hours uh which is impossible in a in that truck i think if you were even going 120 miles an hour you couldn't do that like the uh don't underestimate the power of stim you crank i i looked up on google what is 2200 miles from atlanta and there's a lot of major cities but la is that far so i'm wondering if they were using the los angeles measurement to sounds like it and google says that'll take 32 hours to do so uh i have to think by the at this point all the other times we've seen homer he either like stops every mile or else he uh drove in the direction. One of those two things. But yeah, Homer then gets hopped up on pills,

which they said the censors were also not happy about. Well, he does balance them out with sleeping pills, which I think is another problem, too. Overdusting on sleeping pills sounds like a really bad idea. Yeah, it sounds like a suicide attempt. Homer nearly dies twice just by the second commercial break in this one. But they also make sure to say that Congress hasn't yet made them illegal, really don't dies twice just by the second commercial break in this one uh they but they also make sure to say that congress hasn't yet made them illegal so homer's not committing a crime when he takes them they're racing back to washington right now but they're even called

stim you crank so they're like it's crank they're talking about meth uh but yes homer i do really like dan's acting in this next bit here where he's freaking out and then passing out in succession. Uh, yeah, I need something that'll keep me awake, alert, and reckless all night long. Well, Congress is racing back to Washington to outlaw the... Sold! Hey, you can't take that many pep pills at once. No problem, I'll balance it out with a bottle of sleeping pills. Okay, we're all set, let's put the pep in the middle.

I wholeheartedly agree. Oh, man, I'm really wired. This is a big mistake. I get... Oh, here comes the sleeping pills. So drowsy. Pep pills perking up again. I can drive all night. It's quite an act break.

Yes, yeah. They're seemingly about to drive off the road and die. Off a cliff. You know, the pep pills also remind me of uh lisa's pep pill addiction trucker's choice yeah uh the simpsons are very addictive personalities when it comes to pills homer's acting there's really great we come back and it's the exact same shot they don't often do that in simpsons of like where a commercial break comes back it's the exact place where it ended the car just writes itself and a computer turns on and drives

them all the way to the gas station to the gassy knoll that's when homer finds out that uh that all trucks are automated secretly he learns a dangerous union secret yes yeah actually yeah why don't we hear the um the dangerous violent and lazy union here you You'll never believe what happened. I fell asleep at the wheel and the truck drove here by itself. Yeah, that Navitron auto-drive system has made our jobs cushier than ever. The what now? You know, this thing.

With this baby driving your truck for you, all you gotta do is sit back and feel your ass grow. The trucks drive themselves? Hey, hey, hey, shh. Didn't your union rep tell you about the scam we got going? Well, I'm not really a trucker, so I don't talk to the rep that often. Alright, listen, pal. Here's the deal. You stumbled on a secret that only truck drivers are supposed to know. Hey, pay attention and stop looking at that squirrel.

We get 40 bucks an hour to drive these rigs. You think anybody would hire us if they knew we weren't really driving the trucks wow you guys are even lazier than me well don't worry i'll keep your secret see that you do wow well yeah so what's so funny about this like it's obviously you know yeah pure like reaganist take on like you know blue collar truckers and, you know, like union workers in general. What's so funny about this is the idea that if there was technology that allowed you to automate trucking, the union would control it. Like, like obviously what would really happen if this were possible, like if, like if someone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos ever, you know, gets their hands on this kind of technology, it's not going to mean that people get like blue collar guys get cushy $40 an hour union jobs. It's going to mean that

those jobs all disappear. Well, it'll just be like at best temps who sit there, contracted employees who just sit there to make sure it stays on track. Yeah. And they'll probably have to sit in the trucks and like do something else like code or something at the same answer emails like yeah it'll be like uh it'll be like mobile sweatshops like enabled by app yeah i i i'm guessing in the fictional world of the simpsons the truckers union invented this technology and kept it a secret we are we are entering the world of uh automated driving though it's it's weird like whenever you log into a website now you're like helping teach cars how to drive by like identify all the stop signs just like no one's paying me to do this to teach cars how to drive

it's like oh where's the crosswalk find the crosswalk that's evil i actually love the idea of like a trucker's union owning the technology to automate trucking that's like workers owning the means of production that yes were that to be the case i do like that though they are made to be villains for doing that in this episode that's i i will say on the commentary the writers as proud union members themselves of the wga west they did have some laughs like boy we still write some evil unions in this show don't we like they i think they felt slightly uh embarrassed about going there well actually you know the automated i don't know if you've seen this uh bob or luke that how automated truck

driving i've seen it used as like a scare as a scary fact brought up not by uh left-wing like or socialist leading people but by like tucker carlson and like white nationalist adjacent guys oh no no hey luke have you seen this what is like the reactionary white nationalist take on automated trucking i'm having trouble constructing it in my mind me too too. Yeah. Well, so this came from me seeing this clip of Ben Shapiro talking to Tucker Carlson. And Ben Shapiro was just like, I welcome automated trucking. It's the future. It's where the companies are going. And then Tucker Carlson actually got really pissed.

He's like, all those people out of jobs? It would destroy their jobs like that would that would you can't just let capital reign free to destroy people's livings okay i get it so this is part of like tucker's whole thing about like this so this is like part of the sort of fake economic populism that he's trying to you know do from the right because it's like if it was, if automation, you know, made it so that like migrant workers didn't have to like break their backs, you know, harvesting a crop or something, you know,

he wouldn't give a shit about that. But when it's trucking, which is like, you know, crucial to like, that's a crucial identity he wants to assimilate to his project. So that actually makes a lot of sense. Wow, it's amazing how much, it's amazing how much social commentary you can ring from from like a 20 year old episode of simpson yeah i i was just thinking about i when i saw that clip i was thinking of this episode and i've i've seen it brought up by like alt light adjacent people that i coming to contact with sometimes on twitter they're just

like oh man you see all these trucking jobs and they're gone i mean it's also a predominantly or at least perceived as i don't know this the you know actual statistics on it but i would i would think it's fair to say it is perceived as a primarily white job so it is the type of thing tucker carlson and people who only worry about the jobs of white people talk about and especially it's like this kind of gross thing in white nationalism now of like they take they take just a morsel of the kind of stuff like bernie and other lefty politicians are talking about now but make it only as a way to help as a talking point to help white people like or a white working class kind of it's it's really it's really gross i can't so

watching this episode i i hated thinking of tucker carlson but i did uh to mention his big face now oh god but uh but yeah so i do think that will be a problem though because i think like it's another argument for you know a bigger social safety net as more people in many types of jobs get made unemployed by automation yeah we've been on this point for a while but i do want to say that uh the fear of automation is also used to scare people out of asking for more at their jobs like uh you know if you work at mcdonald's and you ask for 15 an hour you're asking to be replaced by a kiosk and uh this is not original thought but they're going to replace you anyways. So you might as well get the most out of that job you can before everything is a kiosk. If the person running the register didn't ask for $15 an hour,

McDonald's wouldn't have put research into doing an automated kiosk? Like, of course not. No. I just love the idea that Tucker Carlson cares a great deal about the livelihoods of blue-collar truckers. On happier notes, I like that Squirrel, Homer being distracted by a squirrel is a pretty easy joke, but I do like that it's drawn like a dotted-eye season one squirrel. Like a real life in hell design. Yeah, I like that.

But yes, Homer is warned by his, I love him saying, well, I don't talk about you, D-Rep, very much, because I'm not a trucker. so homer promises he won't tell and then of course he instantly tells bart all about it hey mark watch me run down this old lady dad no the second i let go of the wheel, this little wonder kicks in. And if scaring old ladies don't float your boat, watch this! Come on out, boy! It's windy! Wow, you're right, Dad. It is windy.

Hey, look! Nobody's driving. What's that? hey look nobody's driving relax everybody the navitron auto drive system is driving the truck for me it's a big scam okay i love that it's a big scam okay bob i think i've said to you many times you're right bob it is windy yeah just that statement by Bart that is just so matter of fact, like, it is windy. Or he didn't believe Homer and that it would be windy on the windshield. But also the way Homer tricks Bart, like, hey, Bart, watch me run down this old lady. Which, of course, a worry with automated driving is that they will run over people. But I don't know. old lady which of course the worry with automated driving is that they will run over people but uh

i i don't know i guess i mean we've run over people run over people all the times what's the no cars run over people henry oh that uh also the that's a type of voice you never hear in the simpsons that accent the one was like hey look nobody's driving like i don't know that's a kind of random accent you don't normally hear from like peanut gallery characters in the simpsons uh and so homer's revealing the secrets they uh he gets caught by a truck driver that gets called in there's a real pause uh pause the screen joke to read uh all the different codes uh that have like what different codes mean my favorite is actual bear in the air.

But there's another one that's like, I love you gay daddy? Gay buddy. Oh, okay. Alright. Instead of good buddy. Instead of good buddy. Gay buddy. That makes more sense than daddy. I was seeing what I wanted to see there.

And they have a reference to Jimmy Hoffa there too, which I can't wait to watch the Netflix original film, The Irishman, to finally learn the secret of Jimmy Hoffa's death. As those guys go off to kill Homer, we then see Marge trying to turn off the doorbell, even as she can't do any work on it with tools because they all got traded for M&Ms.

Though I would think Homer would have got traded for M&Ms. Though I would think Homer would have eaten all those M&Ms anyway. You could have just forgotten about them. They were like their secret stash. And Marge pulls the wrong wire and then the doorbell song starts playing faster and louder, showing that the entire neighborhood can hear it at that point. I'm glad there's no clip of that. And then Homer and Bart get uh confronted though homer doesn't seem to think it's any big deal at first look son it's one of nature's most

beautiful sights the convoy he hit us oh i should have. They're hazing us to initiate us into the trucker's fraternity. Thank you, sir! May I have another? Dad, they're trying to kill us. Oh, why do all my trips end like this? Eat butter, good buddy! Whoa, look at him roll! Oh, my good knife. My wife's going to kill me.

I think we lost him, Bart. Dad, stop. Homer kills that guy. Yeah, he's dead. I mean, I guess it's self-defense to get him off the windshield, but I think he might be standing later in the when we last see all the truckers but a bunch of dangerous union thugs are trying to kill a man and his son for daring to reveal union secrets that's uh getting pretty evil also leave it to the harvard

guy writers to think that it's like a frat spanking and initiation at first that's a including the animal house thank you sir may i have another kind of gag so also homer is right his new friends often do try to kill him at this point in the series yeah i feel like it's a common theme uh in like this era onwards where homer gets a job and the new world that he's part of wants to kill him or tries to kill him the other one i'm thinking of is that when he becomes a food critic oh yeah yeah that and uh and before that well they instead start the no homers club but the uh the stone cutters at first were going to just kill him too if they don't really want it to if they'd listen to orville jack and mister they also would have done it uh and yes homer homer drives away uh thinks he's escaped. It's a really weird cut after the guy with the knife drops his knife.

Then it just cuts to Homer and Bart's truck being left alone. And they're like, oh, I guess we got rid of him. No, we didn't. Like, there's something missing there, for sure. Yeah, maybe a cut scene or something. Homer somehow gets surprised by a giant blockade of trucks, which that's a good little visual gag there. And then Homer thinks that the auto driver's gonna help, which the auto driver has other plans in this one more clip here.

Looks like we got ourselves a showdown, boy. All right. What are you doing? I'm keeping a promise to an American roadmaster. Huh? Red, the trucker. Big fat guy couldn't handle his steak? Oh, yeah.

We'll get past that barrier somehow. Old Blinky here will find a way. I'm afraid I can't let you do this, Red. The risk is unacceptable. I'm not Red, I'm Homer. Gotta go. And gets to safety, the auto driver, which, yeah, I forgot that there's a Hal from 2001 joke here.

Yeah, it's not the most relevant joke to make or not the least dusty joke to make, but I do like gotta go. You know, Simpsons love to reference Kubrick, though. And there's a great Homer scream there, too. I like also that that's when the auto driver realizes it's not red and he has to go away. And then Homer does an insane super flip over the trucks and lands perfectly. Jack knifes the truck so it vaults over the convoy.

It's a really good piece of animation that they didn't like reading in the script. The animators. You know what I thought of at this point was, I don't know if you guys ever saw it, but one of the worst video games of all time is called Big Rigs. And it's like a truck racing game or something.

It doesn't work well enough for you to actually flip the truck as in this scene. It was like a game where there was famously bad collision detection. Just one of those N64 games, like the Superman one, that just didn't work on even the most basic level. So you'd go over a bridge and you'd actually hit the side of the bridge, but then you just sort of go right through it. It also had the worst sound of any video game that i've ever played where instead of like a soundtrack they just have this like single monotonous drone that's supposed to be a truck engine just going all times oh yeah i i've seen that where people even like drive

drive through the ground eventually and just fall into nothing yeah yeah just fall into oblivion into the ether yeah actually it's funny you bring that up a a previous guest on this podcast alex navarro he was one of the people to review that when it was new for game spot it was it was i'm so relieved you i'm so relieved you didn't say he was one of the designers no no no he was killed by that game this very night uh yeah he gave i believe it was the first zero on GameSpot. I think it was. He's a good old Alex. He's Alex Navarro. He's folks should listen to his Giant Bomb podcast appearances. He's good.

Driving a big rig isn't fun, though. It's all about monotony and just endurance. I never actually played that game. The reviews scared me away from it. Yeah, you're not missing much. Oh, yeah. The driving of that, the rolling of of it they credited to mark irving who they also credited to drawing the like uh incredible homer drives with a boot on his car animation oh yeah any sort of vehicle animation

they gave to him mark irving is like the king of animating cars in this they they also say like i think it's swinton scott on the commentary says like he bought a model truck of the truck in the episode just to understand it better to draw it which like that's that's the kind of extra effort those animators put in that you know if you just read simpsons on a script level you don't really think about like i that's why i like hearing from the animators on the commentaries i should say it's actually it's mark irvin oh and he would direct on futurama i think we just talked about one of his episodes in season two oh okay yeah thanks thanks yeah homer just drives away and uh that's when the truckers seemingly learned their lesson i like to that they imply that all their

uh their dads drove drunk when they were young. I do like Hank's sort of ad-libby reaction to that. He's like, no, no, no. No, yeah. It's very good. It's very good. Yeah, yeah. And also, to put it in 1999, a Beanie Babies reference as well, which they couldn't have

been bigger in the States in 1999. Yeah, actually, I saw somebody share on twitter a while back what he's classic like taped off tv oh yeah uh like shopping channel things for all the beanie babies listening like we got this one we got that one like all the all the hyper specific names to famous beanie babies which i don't have memorized because i was not a beanie baby collector i think the top uh pick is the Princess Diana Memorial Beanie Baby. I think it's still the most valuable one at like $40. Actually, the friend of mine whose dad was a trucker

that I mentioned earlier in the episode, his mom was a pretty big connoisseur of Beanie Babies. So it's perfect. Wow. This episode works on so many levels. This is the proof that the show was on to something. They tapped into it. I guess by the proof that the show was on to something they tapped into it uh i guess by the implication that they all just go like now let's sell beanie babies bootleg

beanie babies does that mean that in the reality of the simpsons every trucker quit their job because they feared homer had exposed it all just this union just that group yeah okay well after the collapse of the the bit the steak industry there's nowhere else for them to go you know what i guess that maybe they could just add a little line in here that would make it all all work logically they say well now the company knows about it they're just going to use it and fire all of us like it's uh but i don't see the technology after this in the simpsons never you know it's one of those many like joe it's like the how the ussr returned in the simpsons and then that never

mattered again even though lenin's body is seemingly still marching around after being reactivated crushing capitalism uh but yes homer heads off to make his drop off also imagine what happened to those poor migrant workers when Homer did that triple flip as well. That's hard to think about it. But yes, Homer makes his delivery. This is Red Barclay's shipment on time as always.

Alright, let's see. Artichokes and migrant workers. Looking good. So where is old Red anyway? Well, last time I saw him he was in a big plastic bag yeah it sounds like red all right well son I guess it's time to go home any thoughts on how we're gonna get there no but I'm sure the good Lord will provide are you crazy I'm not driving a trainload of napalm to springfield

thank you so he gets another job in an episode we don't see homer drives home to in a railroad car yeah that's uh again the show really selling itself out in its reality of like homer knows he's in a sitcom and another another new job will fall into his lap to get him home uh it's uh it's it does sell out the show again but it's a funny gag of homer just instantly trading hats he wore one hat now he's wearing another one i do remember on the commentary they're having problems finding something that could be in the truck like what would the delivery be in the first joke was nothing like there was nothing inside of the truck he was just taking an empty truck back to the place i uh you know i kind of the randomness of it i kind of like it it's better you know the same joke at the end of

the critic episode was delivering politically correct books oh yeah at uh i i prefer this joke but that was back in the like 1993 version of politically correct where it was like they were uh taking out like facts that could offend people or something i don't know he or she son oh yeah oh i forgot about that part of the joke never mind i was thinking of the malcolm x uh joke the uh oh yeah the malcolm of the parody of the movie x the politically correct version or whatever uh but then we get to the true ending of the episode i think i think they made the right move of having the incredibly silly appearance of senor ding dong be the end of the episode instead of Homer putting on another hat and getting into a train. But yes, here is the debut of Señor Ding Dong.

I'm really sorry, everybody, but I've tried everything. I'm afraid we're just going to have to learn to live with it. No, no, no, no dice. All right, Chimey, this time the bell tolls for thee. Huh? Ay, ay, ay, Senor Ding Dong! I thought you were just a marketing gimmick. There was a time when that was true, but now I am so much more.

Oh, my. Gracias, senor. De nada. If you ever need me, just ring. Does anyone have any jumper cables? Oh, you stinking Chevy. Just vapor lock yeah vapor lock that whip is so close to lisa's face that was what struck me this time it's a great design for senior ding dong i love senior ding dong's

design yeah also i love the design of wigaman his pjs but wearing his gun belt it's like a sort of like a cop pajama outfit he's wearing there uh but yes senior ding dong apparently came in pretty late they're just like what if he just showed up what if he what if that was just the end of it i guess given that he's he's trying to drive the car we can safely assume that the truckers union hasn't shared it's like self-driving technology with the doorbell delivery people uh he's not a part of the union yet i guess i guess he never will be they're not letting him in on it his the ding dong hat i i just love his his design is it's funny he he apparently did make one other on-screen appearance in the series after this in season 29 uh there's

a bowling team called the one and duns which is a collective of one-off ridiculous characters including like sir kiss a lot i don't even know what he's from but senor ding dong is one of the guys on the bowling team so so season 29 aired when like a few years ago like two years ago we're in 31 now right yeah that's amazing so that's like a ref that's like a literally uh only 90s kids will remember a type of reference uh where were you when senior ding dong was on the screen getting ready for futurama yeah that's uh saying to your mom like quick futurama's about to premiere get the other tape yeah the that's pretty having senior ding dong come back is pretty close to when Lisa sends a Homer meme to Homer in an episode of The Simpsons.

Just them admitting just how very, very long the show has been on. But Senior Ding Dong saves the day with a whip that somehow makes the doorbell stop. But it's a magic whip. Who's to say? But yeah, that was a wacky-ass episode. Yeah, and I mean, I guess the show admits that it is very wacky yeah and no stakes just a lot of fun uh swartz weldery uh violence and mayhem and anti-union sentiment you know what you say you say low stakes but there are actually lots of stakes all right the stakes are pretty high off the ground and they're big

they're big stakes 72 ounces worth of stakes you know You know, it just hit me. The last episode we had Luke on was also written by John Schwarzwalder. That's right. And it was about workers, but the nuclear power plant workers all going on a retreat together. But it's funny how that works out. But this episode is about as crazy as Mountain of Madness. There's no rocket house. That's true. The rocket house is crazier than the self-drivingness. There's no rocket house. That's true. The rocket house is crazier than the self-driving truck.

A rocket house without brakes. You know, the sort of random quality of this episode didn't really bother me. It's been a few years since I've watched anything from season 10. But by and large, I felt that the weirdness of this episode and the kind of arbitrariness of the plot, they're pretty self-aware. and I'm actually okay with that.

Like the Simpsons starts to get dodgy when it starts, you know, I don't know what your guys' thoughts is on this, but when it starts kind of altering the basic premises of the universe, like to me, random plots, as long as they're self-aware are fine. But then when they start like killing off characters or substantially revising the backstories to characters or changing just visually the look and the feel of the show, that's when it really starts to lose me. I'm going to be interested to, unlike you guys, inevitably get into those much later seasons to hear what your thoughts on them are. We're heading up to the death of Maud Flanders soon.

That's a big one. I keep wanting to mentally push it away and think it's farther away. When is the Armin Tanzarian episode? Is that season 12? Oh, no, that's in our past. Oh, you've already passed that one? Yes.

Wow. And we have recently re-decided that it is a good episode. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's not bad at all. It's just like a weird sign of, it's kind of an ominous sign of things to come uh well this you know the wackiness is episode i'm with you luke that it's

uh i think the wackiness is is great and it's what they're they're best at in season 10 is being irreverent and silly and making homer into like this honestly monster who is ready to leave marge at the drop of a hat and uh kind of thoughtlessly kills a lot of people in this i think the the lesser episodes in these seasons are when they try to do sentimentality with this homer that they've turned into like a crazy cartoon it doesn't work as well well that's what i remember from the one time i saw the simpsons movie is that it was actually trying to re-embrace some of the sentimentality that had punctuated the Simpsons

before it really discovered irony in like season three. Like it was actually, there was like a saccharine quality to some of it, if I'm remembering rightly, that weirdly harkened back to like really early kind of proto-Simpsonsons although it was actually less good than some of those really early episodes as i remember yeah i find the movie to be pretty mediocre and i had seen it recently as of this recording so yeah i can't wait to get to that in our podcast series so i'm a i'm a b minus on it i'm not as uh as much of a c plus take that but yeah i guess uh that'll still be like five years from now yeah Yeah, so look forward to that. You guys have signed yourself up for so many more episodes of this.

It's incredible. It's the most job security I've ever had in my life. I can't say no to it. Thank you. Thank you, Simpsons writers. Yes, yes. Well, thank you, Luke, for doing the podcast. Please promote all of your stuff.

You've got the great Michael and Us podcast, and we just mentioned a few episodes up top. Anything else that's going on with you? Oh, sure. Well, people can, uh,

people can check out my writing at, uh, Jacobin. I'm a staff writer there now, so I'm doing stuff every week. Uh, yeah, Michael and us,

uh, I feel like we don't remember to plug it often enough on the show, but if, if people have been listening on their podcast app or on SoundCloud, um, you know, they may not actually realize we've had some listeners report this, that we also have a Patreon.

So if you contribute at the Al Gore level of $5 a month, you can get an extra episode, well, two extra episodes a month. So please contribute if you can. He lives on my street, I've heard. Yeah, and he won the popular vote as well. But no, yeah uh yeah also folks should definitely read your work jacobin at the time of this recording he just uh published a article about the history of the term neoliberalism that i really enjoyed oh appreciate it cheers yeah so

thanks again to luke savage for being on the show be sure to check out his podcast michael and us and his work at the jacobin but as for, if you want to support our show and get every episode one week ahead of time and ad free, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. You'll get just that. And if you sign up for $5 a month, you'll also have access to all of our mini series we've done and other bonus podcasts on top of that. There's too many lists here, frankly, but we mentioned it during this podcast recording. We're currently doing Talking Futurama Season 2 Part 1, 10 episodes of Talking Futurama Season 2 to get you through the end of 2019, and they're

hitting every Friday. You won't want to miss them at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And Henry, we have a newer, well, I guess not new anymore, it's a year old officially. A year old! A year old tier that is fresher and newer than ever every month because we bring you one extra, extra long podcast every month because we bring you one extra extra long

podcast every month about a movie what's happening there that's right for ten dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons we have the what a cartoon movie podcast where me and bob talk about a different animated feature film once a month sometimes for over four hours for our Patreon subscribers. Last month in a Halloween style, but also it works for the whole holiday season. We did Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. We talked a ton about that movie and its interesting long gestation period. And this month we'll be doing Toy Story as our What a Cartoon movie. We're finally doing the first Pixar film, and you can only hear that full podcast when it happens in November

if you're a $10 and up subscriber at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpson. As for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. Check me out on Twitter as Bob Servo. And I have another podcast. It's called Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast. Every Monday and occasionally on Friday it's called Retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast every Monday and occasionally on Friday go to retronauts.com or look for Retronauts in your podcast machine

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Follow it on Twitter at TalkSimpsonsPod. One more time, at TalkSimpsonsPod. One more time, at TalkSimpsonsPod. You will stay up to date. A new podcast there as well. Follow them both on Twitter. Thanks for joining us this week, everybody. We'll see you next week for the episode Simpsons Bible Stories, and

we'll see you then. Yes, sitting at home, riding in my car, watching charity, or drinking in a bar. I like the rhythm of the 12-bar blues. Yes, I like my music to the 9, 10, 11, 12. guitar solo And the rhythm of a 12-bar blues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 you mean it ate patrick too it ate everybody what about erica it ate everybody stupid