Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Milhouse Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

"You're panhandling! I should have known from that panhandling sign! Plus that ticket you got for panhandling!" - Marge Simpson Milhouse briefly moves away, Homer becomes a part-time vagrant, and Bart and Lisa form a temporary bond in this overstuffed episode bookended by Isabel "Weezy" Sanford. Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking Futurama, talk king of the hill, the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I hardly endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that understands the mechanics of heterosexual sex. I'm one of your hosts, Bob Muccellini-Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today as always? Henry Gilbert and I learn to present TV history from Isabelle Sanford.

And this week's episode is... Milhouse Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Dumb Scots! They ruined Scotland! You Scots sure are a contentious people. You just made an enemy for life! This episode originally aired on February 15th, 2004, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history Happy Valentine's Day

2004 Bobby city officials in San Francisco start issuing same-sex marriage licenses 50 first dates tops the box office and Millie Bobby Brown is born tops the box office and Millie Bobby Brown is born. Wow. And things will begin to get a little odder, let's say, in about 11 years. Wait, no. When did that show, okay, I guess yeah, 2015, sure. No, you watched that first episode.

She is like a baby in it. She is like tiny and she looks like a space alien in that episode. I only just watched the first season, this last Halloween season, so it's all new to me. So when I see her as a babe in all these news stories about how she's grown up too fast, I think, not little Eleven, is that her name, Eleven?

Yes, yeah, that is her name. Though she will be, and all of the children will be fully adult, like they'll be in their mid-20s by the time that finale season finally is released. Lyle Yes. For the longest time I thought it was wrong that there could be two Bobby Browns, one regular, one Millie, but I guess the world got used to it. Matt That first season's alright, but when you watch the, it's a fine show. There's

worse shows to watch. I had a nice time with it. It's full of good actors and some actors who I used to like and they're pretty shitty now, but now it feels like they have strung it along far too long, this wait for this final season. It can't possibly fulfill these expectations. And they're telling me how long these episodes are going to be. It feels like a threat. Although I had just watched ET again. They were talking about ET on the Blank Check podcast and it is just a reminder every time I go, yeah, every part of the first season of Stranger Things is just steals from ET among us.

Trey Lockerbie Designed to make you think of much better media which is why it was very successful. And like you said, Henry, it's fine. I watched it, I was like, oh, it's fine. I didn't think anything, it was a life changing experience or anything and maybe I'll watch more. But they were off to a good start with that first season. But same sex marriage in San Francisco. Well, I think we talked about this on the Talking Futurama all about proposition infinity So check that out in the patreon fee We went over the history of same-sex marriage in America because that episode is about the California proposition to ban the ban on Homosexual marriage whatever the phrasing was.

I'm not even sure what it was. You know, same sex marriage and proposition eight banning it was, was a big 2008 thing and this is four years before that where the city of San Francisco makes headlines of doing the right thing, but it's technically illegal of issuing same sex marriage licenses to couples as part of Valentine's Day. A lot of names like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom got a lot of public exposure because they were a part of that, which again, a good thing. It also raised their names in the national consciousness for sure. So it helped them out, but it was the right thing to do.

Yeah, absolutely. But we talked a lot about this in our talkie-futurama. It's an episode all about that. It's a hopeful and also depressing history. And 51st States Bob, I watched this later on TV. I was definitely waning as a Sandler viewer, but I, it seemed fine. It was the first one that I watched where I realized this has no reason to take place in Hawaii other than the actors want to be in Hawaii for a month.

This is where the vacation movies begin. By that I mean they go on vacation and maybe film a movie while they're out there. No, I have not seen this one. In the early aughts, I was dating someone who liked Drew Barrymore because a lot of people told her she looked like Drew Barrymore. So I caught up on Drew Barrymore up until 2002 when we broke up. But because of that breakup, I don't think I've ever

seen a Drew Barrymore movie since. Well, Bob, the idea of this one is what if Memento was a love story? Because a girl wakes up every morning thinks it is the day she lost her memory. And when she goes to bed, she loses that memory and starts over again. How could they possibly fall in love? Well, they do. And I remember the ending even being kind of like, wow, that is insane. Like there's kind of a big, big move in the ending that I was shocked by. She was faking it the whole time for attention. No, no, no. She's, it's, they, they find an interesting way around her, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no I'm talking about Millie Bobby Brown, who was like hired to be the Drew Barrymore of Stranger Things, and then she's born the same time one of her, Drew Barrymore's biggest films is released. So she's both the Drew Barrymore and the ET of Stranger Things. If you can mash them together, Gertie and ET into one character, that's, uh, that's her. Right, thank you. What a great sequel. What if, what if they merged?

Heh heh heh. But that's what happened when this episode aired in 2004. And this episode is guestless, repeat, guestless, but that's fine because we're covering a not very good Simpsons episode that's not actually about Millhouse. And it may contain the most racist material I've seen in a Simpsons episode to date.

So we'll cover that about halfway through, but shocking, especially because I was watching it in public and taking notes in public and looking around. Yes, yeah, we will get to that, but yes, I'm I was watching it in public and taking notes in public and looking around. Yes. Yeah, we will get to that. But yes, I'm glad you've already said that. I was like, I had to look up a different joke of that same material from earlier in The Simpsons.

I was like, is this worse than that? And it is. Yes, it definitely is. Well, if I could say a compliment to this episode, I do think that every time we do an episode like a previous one we did directed by Laura McMullen, I'm like, boy, I do think that every time we do an episode like a previous one we did directed by Laura McMullen, I'm like, boy, I wish the other animators got to take bigger chances. I do think this episode, and also I see flourishes in the next couple I watched ahead.

I think Matt Nastick and his team, and this is a rough draft animated episode, did take some bigger swings with some animation in this. I think it's good animation. Yeah, Al Jean Kalslada on the commentary. It's a very well directed episode with a lot of big moves you would not expect with this very, I guess, domestic episode with not a lot of big action.

And I checked on it too. It wasn't just, it's not just rough draft, but also multiple quality borders on it, doing the storyboard, including previous podcast interviewee, Peter Avanzino. Oh, well no wonder. It's so good looking. So I take back though my damning praise of Laura McMullen that was like, boy, why doesn't every other director get to take these kind of swings this season? Here I'm seeing it in this episode. It's got some really good stuff in it. Yeah, other

people are still bringing it, and we have a few new writers to talk about for our Writers Corner this week. They are freelance writers, and they are David and Julie Chambers. So first up, some preamble stuff about the writing of this episode. Millhouse doesn't live here anymore. So it sounds like Kevin Curran came up

with the whole Millhouse moves away idea, and David and Julie came in and originally pitched the idea of Bart being an apprentice to a panhandler. And then apparently Al Jean came up with the whole Bart and Lisa becoming friends after Milhas leaves plot and he assigns that to them. So it's like a hodgepodge of many different ideas. It sounds like based on the history of these writers, they were freelancers brought into pitch. They pitched this idea. It ends up being one of three plots in an episode that they are credited with. Yeah.

And then I looked up, they were part of a book called Inside the Room, which is really like a, a class that got turned into a book and they did a, they did a video interview for it on YouTube. I wanted to look up like any other thing these people have done. And when I saw it, they mentioned I saw, they mentioned in that interview what they say on the commentary, which was their pitch was after learning about how in Pakistan there are,

this is their words for it, beggar pimps, but people who sometimes maim children to make them better at begging, that was what BART would be for unhoused people. And so that was their pitch. And then they're like, well, we instead want you to make Bart and Lisa friends, but Homer can be a homeless person instead in this episode. I don't know, if I was writing this show

and people come in with a beggar pimp story for Bart, I would say, oh, you know what, we don't need pitches. Don't come back. Family Guy, down the street, go to Family Guy. I think, what if Chris Griffin was being wounded by a pimp? Funny stuff. These stories must have been in the air in English language newspapers because this was a big plot

point in the film Slumdog Millionaire that won the Oscar a few years after this movie came out. Yeah, Al Jean does bring that up. I have not seen that film, but I have to assume that content is in there. So other preamble stuff, apparently there was a lot more going on in Capital City. There was a cut plot from this episode where Luanne was playing Betty Ford in Gerald Ford the musical, and I

guess they even wrote songs. That sounds so much better than this warmed-over James L. Brooks leftovers that consists of the Bart and Lisa story. I definitely agree with that. And especially because they go to the trouble of redesigning Millhouse. And it's like, oh, then especially like you see pictures from this isolated. And I think of like, oh yeah, this is the one where like Millhouse reinvents himself and him and Bart aren't friends anymore. That's like 20 seconds. They do nothing with that. Like that is is I think a better story than Lisa and Bart become friends like that is a very Season two or one idea that they don't have much new to do with

Yeah, it's the least interesting part of this episode and other things I'll go over their history But it's also revealed in the commentary that David Chambers is related to Nixon in a very very remote way and apparently His father would go to Nixon family events from time to time. That led me to look up the video of them I wanted to see too because his wife is kind of mocking him for like, look at him, you can see it's like she's kind of like

ragging on his looks, man, I'd say. So let's go over the history of David and Julie Chambers. So I'm going to assume that they were and presumably are still a married couple. They don't say they're married on the commentary. This is not a brother and sister. They're clearly a couple, a married couple. And David has a bit more experience than Julie, let's say. So let's go over his credits first. So David Chambers, his credits go back to the early 80s,

where he wrote for a lot of trash and semi-trash like Buzzing Buddies, The Facts of buddies, the facts of life, the love boat, the fall guy. You know, there was a TV version of the fall guy, that great movie they just made. And also fantasy island among others. I'm not going to name them all, but he wrote for a lot of 80s sitcoms. Man, this also fits with the, uh, the Al Jean picks old people who don't need a Simpsons credit for it to help out instead of younger writers back then. Yes, yes. If we are going to pick on Al Jean a bit, this is a trend in this area where instead of picking an up-and-coming writer who needs credits, he goes to someone who has been writing on sitcoms for more than 20 years. And his wife. Yes. Has done some writing but not as much as him. So David

wrote for a lot of garbage. He ascended to the next level of sitcoms though when he became a writer and producer on a season of The Wonder Years in the early 90s. And then following this he wrote and acted as producer for even more sitcoms like Getting By, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, and On Our Own. And it's been lost to time I think, but people might forget how great of a sitcom The Wonder Years, how acclaimed it was, how watched it was. I don't know if there's a way to watch it today, but if you were on The Wonder Years for a sitcom, The Wonder Years, how acclaimed it was, how watched it was. I don't know if there's a way to watch it today, but if you were on The Wonder Years for a season, that meant you were a good writer,

or at least they trusted you with a very important show. Yeah, it burned pretty brightly, and it's funny how five minutes of the commentary turns into just writers talking about The Wonder Years and ignoring things on the show that I was like, boy, I would have liked an answer to how this happened, but instead let's talk about the wonder years. They're like, wow, wasn't the wonder years great?

And hey, I agree. I'd rather be watching an episode of the wonder years than Millhouse doesn't live here anymore. So starting in 2001, his wife became a writing partner of sorts. I'm not sure what her history was before then. Maybe she was creative in different fields, not entirely sure. But their first collaboration before this episode was an episode of Becker. And then following this episode of The Simpsons, they wrote for shows like The Buzz on Maggie, Spaceballs the animated series, Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures, and Fancy Nancy.

So quickly moving out of the sitcom space into the kids TV space and TV for stupid people. I guess the spaceballs TV show That's a demographic for that someday I feel like we'll the the natural inertia Entropy like the gravitational pull will make us have to cover that spaceballs cartoon at some point It always looks very rancid to me and their last credit is in 2021. So it's very possible that they're both retired I mean the husband of the group, I just forgot his name. Oh, David. He has been in TV writing for over 40 years now.

I can see it's very likely that they are both retired, so sure. But yeah, they are freelancers who have a ton of experience. It seemed like David might've even ran hanging with Mr. Cooper for a year. So yeah, not the kind of person you should be hiring for a freelance position. Ideally, I understand you want people with experience, people that can deliver an episode, but this is someone who doesn't necessarily need a credit. I've read a tiny bit of their USC presentation on like how to write scripts and how to, you know, prepare for episodes.

Like they were talking about like, oh, you know, we went through all these synopses of Simpsons episodes. And just to be sure we weren't pitching something they'd done before, which Bart helping the unhoused be better at begging that had not been done before, which was their pitch. So I think too, that they, I can hear them on the commentary a couple of times, kind of joke, like they say that the movers joke was like the one joke that survived their script I think was something they said yes yeah if you don't like this episode it's not their fault because I feel like if you want to talk about numbers if you write an episode they probably keep about 33% of it and that's if you're on the staff I

feel like if you're a freelancer I don't know 10 to 15 percent of what you see on the screen is what was in your script because you're not there for the process to fight for your Own jokes or to propose new jokes that will belong to you and then later appear on television Yeah, they talk a little bit about the multiple rooms of writers like on the Simpsons movie in there It feels I don't know if you caught this Bob or if I'm just assuming too much But it seemed like Matt Selman on the commentary He was trying to say like well, I wrote this or I wrote that it sounded like he Selman on the commentary, he was trying to say like, well, I wrote this

or I wrote that. It sounded like he had a heavy hand in rewriting this one out of the people in the room. Yeah, maybe. I don't know why this episode seems so troubled because they are mid-season. Usually the, towards the end we're seeing these scrambles to patchwork an episode together, a thrown an ending, a crazy ending to make up for an ending they're not confident in. But yeah, it just seems like a strange, a strange production, this one. And having a title like referencing, you know, the Martin Scorsese film Alice doesn't live here anymore. And then having it be like, no, this is sort of about a brother and sister

becoming friends. But don't get away from Millhouse. Millhouse is the character people care about. Like, spend a little more time on, Millhouse is now cooler than Bart. That's a more fun story to me than Bart and Lisa become friends. And also, the writers, I don't want to blame them because this got rewritten so much, but it's like Lisa from season two

gets teleported into here or something. Like, this is not season 15, Lisa. It's a little odd. Yeah. When I sat down to watch this, I forgot what it was about and I thought, oh good. A Millhouse episode, Pamela Hayden is leaving the show where she has left. We have not heard the last of her quite yet. So I'm excited to sit down with Millhouse and he is such a minor part of this.

Yeah, it is a weird episode for sure. And with a, not the best ending, I'd say too. And also even they admit this episode is full of some jokes that they have done before too. So they, that's another problem with this one. Yes. They're turning themselves into the joke police with their hands raised. That's why I don't feel bad when we become joke polices on it. The episode begins. Well, first there's a couch gag and it's the Simpsons like being grown again. Like this feels like the fourth in a row and it's the Simpsons being grown again.

This feels like the fourth in a row of, not the Simpsons' food, but them popping, this popping out of the ground isn't different from those other ones. Yeah, I wrote down that it feels like there's a secret, Simpsons are food runner in the couch gags. I mean, just in terms of what we recorded in season 15, their cake toppings, their popping out of a pie,

their beans growing out of the ground. It feels like they zeroed in on this for whatever reason. They were very hungry in the Couch Gag writing room that day. So yes, this even opens like a very classic Simpsons or like the first written Simpsons of Homer's Odyssey. This begins with a field trip. Like, it's like how much more traditional can you get

with a Bart story? Yeah, Bart is not forced to sing John Henry. Instead, we start with Nelson who I think it's a fun turnaround that Nelson is getting mocked for being poor. Like instead of him being the bully, it's him being mocked first for his lunchbox and then for being poor and to the point that he also is even rejected by, by Miss Crabapple. Poor and having terrible parents at the same time. and then for being poor and to the point that he also is even rejected by by Miss Grabopel. Poor and having terrible parents at the same time. They're gonna

be doing a lot more with Nelson soon I think in this season. I feel like the ha ha couple is coming up either this or next season. Oh yeah yeah well they've hit on this season Nelson's father stories like the absentee going out for smoke jokes with Nelson. Right, and I did write down that it makes sense that Nelson would have the little bunny foo foo lunchbox because that's a song or nursery rhyme about a bunny that abuses field mice.

So he'd be totally in the bunny foo foo zone. Then that is a smarter, I thought it was just like, oh, because he's poor and can only afford a something without IP on it. But you're right. It's a song about, but it's a bullying song. Yeah. I don't know if they thought about it that much, but it made sense to me.

They also laugh at him because he admits that is Mrs. Muntz is now too fat to work at Hooters, which sounds like the basis of a lawsuit. Check out an article on, on labor because Hooters and employment law nightmare, because it is faced many and lost many discrimination lawsuits at Hooters, an employment law nightmare because it has faced many and lost many discrimination lawsuits at Hooters. Not a good place to work. It's going out of business now because Jen Alpha doesn't care about flesh-colored pantyhose.

Well, it's really that it got bought by venture capitalists. Hey, I feel bad for people who lost their jobs. But Hooters, most of the headlines you can find on Hooters before that is they get sued for discrimination of like not hiring people of color or body shaming. It's an ugly place. It's a bad, bad place.

Although Henry has a lot of Hooters experience. Well, look, hey, if that's where my mom wanted to do trivia a couple of times when I visited, that's why I've been to Hooters. That's all I know. Too many R rated movies and trips to Hooters with your mom. Look, it's where the trivia was. Or maybe she was trying, it was like when Smithers was made to go to the back house.

It's like, he likes chicken wings, but will he like the Hooters? Let's find out. You know, when I went there, I have to say, I was happy that we had a, our waitress was a pregnant woman that I feel like was prevented from being fired by Hooters in a discriminatory way. She was there for like the three sickos

that would come in just to see a pregnant waitress at Hooters. I see, yeah. They had been checking the Pornhub, most searched in this county. All right, so anyway, Nelson is kicked off and we've seen many like, oh, Nelson is left alone, but I like this one. Yes, imagining himself in a tuxedo in Tails

and saying, someday. Yeah, him with his big ugly face in a top hat in Tails is really cute. This was a real anxiety, cause of anxiety for me as a kid, although it never happened. The idea of forgetting your permission slip or forgetting the money you needed to take a field trip. And then you would see the kids,

the few that would get left behind. And it was a real scandal. Like, oh my God, can you believe Noah didn't bring in a slip? Then meanwhile, Millhouse pops off at Mrs. Krobopel as she thinks it's Bart at first, which also kind of copies an old Simpsons joke. Forza Hannah. This like Millhouse is full of beans and, well, what do you think? She thinks it's Bart at first, which also kind of copies an old Simpsons joke, for as I have it.

This, like, millhouse is full of beans and... Well, what do you think? I kind of like that after 15 years, somebody says crabapple. Yes, they were sitting on this for a while. This card has been in the deck for over a decade. They're playing it now. I wish they would have played it in a better episode, but this is the first time they're really getting behind it.

They avoided it. I liked it better in the way of how they avoided it was I've been calling her Crandall like that. That joke makes you think Homer's going to say crabapple, but it is great that after 15 years, all the kids are like, ah, it's so obvious. Why did I never notice that? From the field trip, we then cut to Homer and his pals being unsafe, which also reminded me of Homer's Odyssey as well. Well, there's another runner happening in this era.

I want to say it goes back even a few seasons where Homer is coming up with his own song parodies and singing them. Oh, you're right. Yeah, this one being Rawhide. Yeah, yeah. Before we had our last one of our earlier recordings. I don't know when the episode lines up in our schedule, but he was singing a parody of cars and there are countless ones. There was an episode that opened with him singing a parody of Ring of Fire because he had to pee. Wow. Yeah, you're right. And he also sings a Mr. Boat. Well, it's what he thinks the lyrics to Mr. Bojangles are. So that's not it. I would say that counts. I would say

that counts. I mean, it's also a chance to just let Dan Castle and I kind of take over for 30 seconds. He's having a good time. I feel bad for Lenny and Carl's characters that sometimes they're at a higher station than Homer, but here they're just as stupid as him. And Carl seemingly dies on camera during all of this. He's impaled, it seems. Two episodes earlier, Homer was fired forever by Burns, and I guess he got his job back for some reason. And now Burns is just going like, nah, get rid of these.

Just send him to go get drunk yeah he's being very charitable instead of firing them he just wants to send them to Moe's also if you think it's too recent for mr. Burns to call somebody snap crackle and pop the rice crispy mascots date back to 1930 so he would as an old man have heard of them those are new characters to him still you know cereal cereal meal would be a new thing to Mr. Burns. And what Mr. Burns imagines beer-swilling jerks to do is look at French postcards. Salacious French postcards. Yeah, I assume that's a euphemism for pornography in oldie time talk, right? French postcards.

Sure, I'm sure there were like salacious drawings on them. You know, when I googled old French postcards, you can see people who died over 120 years ago doing sexual acts on old postcards. Oh, so they're photos? This one, when I searched old naked French postcards, yes, like full-on pornography. Okay, yeah, because I didn't bother looking it up, but it says, it's a small postcard-sized piece of cardstock featuring a photograph of a nude or semi-nude woman. I was seeing the French get down to some dirty business

on one of those pages. And I believe they were sold as postcards because then they would have a legit reason to sell them, but you didn't actually use them as postcards. You, well, you're gonna send your pornography to some friend in the mail? Also, I would think the postman's just gonna keep it. They get sent away.

Then in our first clip here, we arrive at the postman's just gonna keep it. They get sent away. Then in our first clip here, we arrive at the Museum of Broadcasting. It's a parody of the thing that's called the Paley Center now. Yeah, this is in the show, it's called the Museum of Television and TV. This is a parody of what was called the Museum of Television and Radio, now the Paley Center for Media. And they're joking on the commentary recorded in, I don't know, 2011 or 2012 that now this is just YouTube, but now everything is being taken off of YouTube,

and that's been the case for years and years and years. But in that perfect period on YouTube, just everything was there, every TV show from the past was just embedded on there forever. But now there is a reason for a place like the Paley Center to exist again, where you go in, you request to see like an old episode of the Ed Sullivan show that is not available

on physical media, and you can go to a screening room and watch it. Yeah. I also think the Paley center is great for the panels they host and the history they explore. Like I have used in the past for, for research purposes, Paley center interviews, you know, they, in 2007, just three years after this, the Simpsons did a Paley Center panel.

There's only like five minutes of it uploaded on the Paley Center YouTube page, but they do cool stuff. And I was sad to learn that the one in Manhattan is still open, but the Beverly Hills one that they refer to in here on the commentary that opened in 1996, it closed in 2020 and its archives were donated to the Beverly Hills Public Library. I have to assume it was a COVID dealie. That would be my guess too, but you can still go to the Paley Center in Manhattan. I think it seems pretty useful still and I appreciate all the people who host it, though

it does seem like based on looking at their next month of stuff at the Paley Center, most of their panels seem to be part of a deal with the NFL and it's talking about like football on TV history. Well, that's one way to keep the lights on, I guess. But here we get a special, our first of many guest stars in this episode teaching us about television history. Hello, I'm Isabelle Sanford, the beloved Wheezy from the Jeffersons. At this museum, you won't see a Michelangelo, but you might see Michael Landon and Beverly D. Angelo. This blows. Let's sneak off. Wander away from the group?

Man, you've been huffing from the Bart bag. To old man Burns, who's paying us to drink because we're embarrassing. We suck! We suck! Oh, a lot of that went in my lungs. I included that too because I like that Homer does a Popeye style motion, except it has realistic effects on him.

Yeah, the gulping down of everyone's beer as it flies in the air and down into his mouth. Well, there are so many special guests on this episode, many of which say one or two words. This one is Isabel Sanford, who played the character of Weezy on The Jeffersons, I believe the wife of the show, correct? Yes, yeah. Sherman Helmsley played her husband. They were characters. The Jeffersons were one of many spinoffs to All in the Family, which was like one of the biggest TV franchises of all time. And Norma Lear was known for hiring really great actors who could be called on to do lots of great stuff.

And she was nominated seven times and won once in Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She was a very accomplished actress, not just on the Jeffersons, but in many other places. Yeah, and yes, she really was that raspy even 30 years before recording this, which is probably why she died about six months after this aired. Yes, it's very sad. This is, I think, her last appearance on television, though I think it's respectful of her. It's not making fun of her. It's also, though, The Jeffersons, what a failure compared to The Simpsons. Only 11 seasons and 253 episodes. Pathetic. I watched some of this.

It was a Nick at Night show for a while, right? Yeah, I think so, yeah. I never understood it in the right context of I would see the Jeffersons on in afternoon, like rerun TV. Sherman Helmsley is a very funny guy, though I know him from appearances on shows like Hanging with Mr. Cooper or What about Dinosaurs? The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. and Sherman Helmsley is a very funny guy. Though I know him from appearances on shows like Hangin' with Mr. Cooper or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

What about Dinosaurs? Sherman Helmsley plays the boss on Dinosaurs. Oh yes, right, that too, yeah. So I didn't realize that the story of the Jeffersons is this guy gets rich and it's them moving on up, but he wasn't rich in his All in the Family appearances. It's about them becoming rich. I think I had the same history as you.

I never saw on the family before seeing the Jeffersons. I watched the Jeffersons and I thought, well, this guy's funny, but I don't get the story. He lives in an apartment. So what if a guy was rich, but he's the, you know, they, they, they were a great couple. She won a Emmy for a very special episode where she goes back to her old apartment and reminisces. It's the type of episode you wrote back then to get Emmy nominations and really showcase the actor in roles like that.

She was great and they have a funny story on the commentary about her too, which I wish Mark Wilmore was there for. Trey Lockerbie Yes. Mark Wilmore played her on In Living Color. And the clip that you dug up Henry is a parody of Thelma and Louise, where she is one of the two women in that pair up. What if it was Thelma and Louise Jefferson? What would that be like?

Hmm. And so yes, basically in the there's a scene where they're robbing a bank and Wheezy comes in and this is Mark Wilmore, who is mainly a writer on In Living Color, not often a performer. My guess would be the late Mark Wilmore was so good at imitating her that they wrote in a sketch around it and were like, okay, then you're dressing up as Wheezy for this scene. Trey Lockerbie That sounds about right. And based on the episode number, this is late in Living Color. I think they just were giving anybody a shot Jim Carrey still in this episode. They haven't lost him yet But yes here a little sample of Mark Wilmore's imitation of Isabel Sanford as Weezy Jefferson

Who are you? I'm your son Lionel. Why no? Well, which line? Oh, are you the funny one who was on the show from the beginning? Or the second one that nobody really liked? What difference does it make? Just don't go doing this to yourself. I swear if you come any closer, Lionel, you'll be speaking to Mother Jefferson in person. Okay, okay, calm down. Why are you doing this? Because I haven't worked since Reagan was in office.

I figured this way, at least I could get on top, so America's most wanted. Oh, I love how mean the show is. Yeah, TV's not that mean anymore. No. Like, all you have to do is talk like this. Like, just get your voice really gravelly. I'm sure that killed his throat, having to do this sketch live.

But yeah, she lived until 86, so it's not like she died tragically young. She was much older than Sherman Hemsley on the Jeffersons. Al Jean tells the story that Mark Wilmore, you know, met her and she thought he did a good job at that as well. So I wish he'd been on the commentary because they could have just told fun stories by The Jeffersons instead of The Wonder Years, which has nothing to do with this episode of The Simpsons. And they already did their Wonder Years parody.

Yeah, with, they also got the actor from that too. So that's nice There's a ton of old TV stuff in this episode things that they could not possibly do today And I get this as Dana Gould written all over it knowing what he's obsessed with. Oh, yes Yeah, there's like eight lines of this is like I think Dana Gould was very involved in the rewrite of this one right at this one. The Simpsons will be right back. Fox, LOL Sunday knows you can't have a night of family comedy without marriage and children. So we've got Christina Applegate on King of the Hill and the new Bernie Mac. It's hot inside this snickin' droopy head!

With David Faustino. Oh. Plus the secrets of a successful marriage. I'd like to know what you've been doing after work. Right. I'm not gonna lie to you. On an all-new Simpsons, followed by Malcolm and Arrested Development. It all starts at 7-6 Central Fox, LOL Sunday. Welcome to The Break, everybody.

It's Andrew Gilbert here, thanking you for listening to our Museum of Television History. And a big thank you this week goes to our patrons, who, thanks to their support at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, they make this podcast possible. It's me and Bob's full-time jobs, thanks to the support of listeners like you who are there. And if you're not yet a patron, you should know, you don't just get our thanks, but if you also sign up, you get to avoid ads like this one and the rest that you hear in this podcast and all our other podcasts.

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Check it all out for yourself when you visit patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. critic every episode of Mission Hill and many of our favorite episodes of Batman, the animated series. Check it all out for yourself when you visit Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. But if you want something as nice as Diamond Earrings from a Hobo, then you need to sign up at the $10 level at Patreon.com slash Talking simpsons because you get all the ad free bonuses you just heard me talk about but you also get our mega bonus each month what a cartoon movie where we cover an animated feature film as in depth as we cover the simpsons this month that means you're gonna hear us talk about looney tunes back in action the would be sequel to space jam that had a rocky release and a ton of interesting stuff about that

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hear all of the bonus ad-free stuff. Once more, that is Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. So, at the bar where Homer and the guys are getting drunk and Homer's filling his lungs with liquid, Homer gets extra drunk very quickly here. This is when Appu enters the room with Manjula, who Homer calls Appulina, and it's weird that this is an episode not about Manjula like hating Appu or them hating their children. Oh yeah, it's also an episode about

March and Homer's anniversary. I forgot that that's part of it. This episode is so full of ideas. Yeah, also though, it's like, well wait, this sounds like Homer is, I don't know, trying to keep up with the gift giving of Appu. Have they ever done that before on the show? Yeah, it's not like your anniversary is a fixed day on the count I mean, I guess it is but there's not a day called anniversary day and everybody gets their partner an anniversary gift your anniversary

Is the day you were married and I guess Homer was married right after a poo got married on the calendar It's it's a like a strange coincidence I don't know if I'm overthinking this. Or is Homer counting their anniversary as the date that they got married the second time after Millhouse's parents got divorced? It could be. It could be. Though also this being their anniversary,

it's like, okay, then they've been married. Obviously, this is a sliding timeline, and I know this doesn't matter. But, so it's their anniversary, and they've had children. So this has been, they've been married at least two years and Maggie is still the same age. Those kids are never growing up either. Though I did laugh that Homer's anniversary gift is a charity, uh, charity address labels

that came in the mail. Oh, you better believe I use all of those with no guilt. Whenever I get them in the mail, they're like, oh, if you want more of these, just give us $50. And I thought, well, this will cover a few years worth of me sending in my rent check. So I'm okay. And that was the last time you've used like a physical address, like a letter to anybody. Well, I guess the last, when I was living in America, that's the last time I ever had to send in a regular thing in the mail with a stamp on it was a, a, my rent check to my landlord. And now that does not happen.

My, my landlord just recently, they switched over to like a new secondary, like app thing that almost certainly only exists to like charge me an extra like $3 or whatever. Every time I use a credit card on it, I have to think that's the only reason it weeks. Oh yeah, probably. You know, for my anniversary gift this year, we went to Tokyo together, which is pretty good, but is it as good as seeing Paris Hilton in Paris, Texas on the way to Paris, France?

Maybe not. I don't know, debatable. I want to know what she was doing in Paris, Texas. Yeah, I'd have to say it had to be a highly paid party appearance. Like, part of her job then was like, she will be at your party if you pay her enough money. She'll hold up that GameCube.

The only Paris, Texas I care about has Harry Dean Stanton in it, the end. So Homer is feeling inadequate, and we then cut back to the museum. There's a good little background joke about nosy neighbors that Ned Flanders is part of. Yes we have they're walking through the hall of nosy neighbors we see Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched, Mr. Roper from Three's Company, and then Flanders from the Simpsons and I like how they drew basically clip art

Flanders. It's a drawing of Flanders someone did in like 1993 for merchandise and it's the exact same. If you type in Ned Flanders someone did in like 1993 for merchandise, and it's the exact same pose. If you type in Ned Flanders in Google Image Search, you'll find that specific Flanders. It was like it was pulled out of a, you know, ad deal memo that was sent. Mrs. Kravitz has to be completely forgotten now. Like Mr. Roper, maybe he has like 5% Q rating these days.

I think Roper could be more remembered because there was a spin-off called The Ropers. Though I mean, I think Mr. Furley is much more memorable. I prefer Don Knotts. Absolutely, and it's crazy to think that he came second. It wasn't Don Knotts being the first nosy neighbor. All thanks to Mr. Roper's hubris of thinking he could have his own series, a Jefferson-style spinoff. And that man was Norman Fell, who would later play Zeus in The Erotic Adventures of Hercules.

You know how I was introduced to him as an actor was, there's an episode, it's The Gary Shandling Show, it's a long parody of The Graduate. And Norman Fell shows up in it, and Gary Shandling like rejects him, like, no, we're not doing a Three's Company parody, we don't need you here for this. And he's like, no, I'm in one scene of The Graduate here. And he like plays, he puts it in the VCR. It's like, there, see, there's my one scene in The Graduate. So this is where Bart starts to learn

what's going wrong with Milhouse, though he really doesn't want to know. Milhouse, why are you acting so crazy? Did your imaginary friend try to kill you again? No, Walter's been cool. Milhouse, why are you acting so crazy? Did your imaginary friend try to kill you again? No. Walter's been cool. But I gotta say something, and it's not easy. Well, if it's not easy, don't do it.

That's how I got where I am. Then let's just say I don't care what people think of me anymore. You mean up until now you did care? Then why did you wear that tutu to school last week? What about all the times I didn't wear a tutu? Nobody ever brings those up. Now leave me alone.

It's the Paul and Helen Reddy Hudson Brothers Easter Special with guest stars Willie Tyler and Lester and Nadia Cominici. I'd like to hippity hop on your balance beam. I don't think you understand the mechanics of heterosexual sex. Well, circle gets the square. TV sure has come a long way, huh, Millhouse? Oh!

Oh! Check it out! I'm riding some guy named Ironside! Ow, my banana! Danger, danger! Dora Jarl, the indignity! The agents got all my money! Rrr! I'm bored. Dora Jarl. The Indignity. The agents got all my money. I'm bored. Let's go switch the heads on the Cosby kids.

Now that's the one that really feels like Dana Gould, right? Yes. Because based on growing up in the 80s and 90s, I know all of these references because boomers will put them in things, but some of these I had to look up like the Hudson brothers and Helen Ready not not as known to me as Paul Lind I think this is really a parody of something gayest episode ever covered It's the Halloween special the Paul in Halloween special. Oh, there are other Paul in specials as well I was thinking of our gayest episode ever friends because they talked about their troubled relationship with Paul in as a gay That was on the the bewitched episode they did, I think, where our pals on the Gayest Episode Ever podcast talked about how Paul Lind,

like jokingly outed another gay celebrity, which was like a pretty cruel thing to do when he lived in a transparent closet and was not out in his lifetime. Yeah. And he also was involved in a man falling to his death out of a hotel room window. He has, yeah. It seems pretty suspicious, I would say. was involved in a man falling to his death out of a hotel room window. Yes, yeah. Seems pretty suspicious, I would say. After I learned that, every time I walked by that hotel

in San Francisco, I'd point that out to people. It's like, hey, that's where Pauline's lover died. Allegedly, alleged lover. He was just checking the drapes. Helen Ready, I did know the song, I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar. Oh, that's her, yeah. Though, the Hudson Brothers, no clue.

The Bay City Rollers were even less famous, is my sense of it. Mm-mm. Well, and Willie Tyler and Lester, definitely just a good pull if you want a cheesy 70s reference. Oh yeah, when I see the pictures of them, I was like, oh, I feel like I saw clips of him growing up.

And he's at 84, they still are doing it, like in last year's Adam Sandler special, I Love You, Willie Tyler and Lester appear in that. I wonder if Lester updated his looks. I would think he's using the same dummy he used, or mannequin, I think they would prefer they be called, as he did 50 years ago. Mannequin Americans.

And Nadi Comaneci, the first perfect 10 in gymnastics in the Olympics apparently. She still would have been a child when Pauline was hitting on her here. That does add an extra grossness to her, doesn't it? Extra creepy. Though, yes, you don't understand the mechanics of heterosexual sex is a very funny line that also feels very written by Dana Gould. And then we get another like, I have to Google this thing. Right?

Wait, well, which one was it? Which one were you Googling? Oh, Ironside. Yes. Okay, Ironside was the late Raymond Ver show. And it's about a detective in a wheelchair. The only reason I know about this is because one of my favorite crime authors is Jim Thompson. And towards the end of his career, he was just incredibly drunk, unable to find work,

and one of the final things he did was a novelization of an Ironside episode. Oh, that's a sad late career job. Yeah, and I've still never seen it. Apparently it's good. Apparently Raymond Burr is good in it. And it's sort of like playing off of his history of being Perry Mason for a while. Like what if he was solving crime in a different way? I mean, a wheelchair bound crime solver is interesting. And they tried to give it another go with a 2013 reboot starring

Blair Underwood as Ironside. This is the first I'm hearing of this. There was an Ironside reboot. It lasted less than 10 episodes or at least aired less than 10 episodes. So Blair Underwood in a wheelchair did not get the channels popping off. They didn't get hit the ratings. And despite how obscure Ironside is now, it ran for eight seasons. There were 200 episodes.

It was a very like popular long live show. Wow. How did I not know that as a reference on the level of Perry Mason or Batlock? Why didn't I know it on that same level? That's crazy. It was just buried I guess. Well you just watched it, well not just, but you just watched Raymond Burr in Godzilla. You watched the first Godzilla not too long ago. Oh right, where Raymond Burr basically plays Sora, Donald and Goofy as he is just interacting with a movie that doesn't know he exists. And he basically does the same thing in Godzilla 1985 as well, though I don't know if that's how available that even is anymore. That was like the first Godzilla movie I watched as a kid.

I mean we saw the original cut of Godzilla first and then we saw the Raymond Burke cut later and it's just funny. They do a very good job of putting him in the movie but once you realize he was never supposed to be there it's very very funny, because so much of the dialogue was, I talked to my friend Mr. Tanaka about this, and it's in my head, I'm like, he knows nothing about you. We're just seeing the backs of heads and him nodding. Yes, yes. And then after Isabel Sanford got a lot of lines,

then we turn to the things that shouldn't talk but do that it feels like, this is where I was like, commentary, tell me how you got three major guest stars to resume their characters for one line in this episode. Yeah. And it's funny because when they're watching the credits, someone says, Oh, Nick Paquet was in this. Who did he play?

And I guess LG says, Oh, Salem the cat. Yeah. They should have been talking about this because we have a lot of things that fall over in the chain reaction, including a Lancelot link, the lost in space robot, uh, kit Salem and Mr. Ed and Nick Bacay is here to do a few words of Salem. William Daniels is here to voice kit and Dick two felled is saying a few words as the lost in space robots. Now, two of them, Daniels and Two-Fell,

they'd already played these characters before in The Simpsons. The robot said, Danger Bart Simpson, as he warns him to not go to the food court with Dr. Smith. Oh, right, yes. And William Daniels greeted Homer as Kit in Wizard of Evergreen Terrace episode. I completely forgot about that.

And then Dan Clasenetta plays Mr. Ed. We were just talking about this on some podcasts, but Mr. Ed doesn't talk like this, actually. It's just the guy saying, I'm Mr. Ed and I have got a deep voice. That's basically what he sounds like, but in our heads we've barren stained it into, oh, he always sounded like a horse.

Yeah, see, Dan's imitation is why on Wander Over Yonder when I was talking about Mr. Ed, I was like, yeah, that's why April Winchell is doing like, oh, I don't know, Wander, like when she is being played as a horse in the episode. I thought that that, like, that's what is in everybody's head of like, oh, I'm gonna imitate Mr. Ed. I'll grant you, maybe he went Wilbur a few times,

but the voice actor was seemingly probably like 80 years old and he thought, I'm gonna imitate Mr. Ed. I'll grant you, maybe he went Wilbur a few times, but the voice actor was seemingly probably like 80 years old and he thought, I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna do the horse noises with every line of dialogue. It's gonna get old. And you know, I have two ideas of how they knew Nick Bacay would be. One is that he also was on In Living Color

late in those seasons with Mark Wilmore. And secondly though, Sabrina the the teenage witch crossed over with Teen Angel for an episode and in Salem appears in it. So Al Gena Mike Reese have written lines for Salem the cat before. Okay. They had connections. I guess they had connections to all these guys then. And don't feel bad for old Nick McKay.

When you look up his resume now, he's doing very well as an exec. He was an executive producer on the Young Sheldon and Mom. So he's, he is making pretty good money. He's come a long way since playing an Angry Beaver. Which we covered on What a Cartoon. It seems like he actually, despite his riches and being a very successful TV producer, I watched him, I was like, oh what,

has he done any interviews lately? And he did like a Nicktoon fan channel that had like 100 followers interview about his Angry Beaver stuff. I was like, oh, well, how do you like that? He likes talking to fans, which is nice to see. And he's okay by saying, I don't know, two words of Salem for this.

I guess he was probably in the area. And for the joke, they all talk over each other. So you don't know two words of Salem for this. I guess he was probably in the area. And for the joke they all talk over each other so you don't even... It doesn't even matter that they're guests. Yeah, it's strange the way the joke is played out that they're just all kind of collapsing into each other and saying their lines at the same time. And my other note was why are these statues talking? That's true. Why is that? Also Lancelot Link scared the crap out of me as a kid. I'd watch anything on Nick at Night,

but it scared me, all of these chimps with words being spoken over them. Yeah, and just constantly flashing their giant deadly teeth at you. Oh, God, yeah. But we're the last generation that could get these jokes on The Simpsons because nobody watches these old TV shows anymore, anywhere.

Now Sabrina's as old as Lancelot Link was in 2004. Oh God, you're right. And the cats who played Salem when it wasn't a puppet is as dead as Lancelot Link actors are too. Anyway, changing from that to a happier thing, the Cosby show, we even get a Cosby show joke. Yes. Although it's like, I'm wondering if this is a Fat Albert joke because it's called Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

But a lot of people refer to the kids on the Cosby Show as the Cosby Kids, so it could be either one. You know, yeah, boy, it's a funnier visual in your head of changing the heads on Fat Albert's pals, because they all have very distinct cartoon looks. And it feels more like they're going for 70s references here, or they're like, that it feels more like they're going for 70s references here. Or are they like, that's kind of what they're usually

drawing from, I know Sabrina's not 70s and Knight Rider's not 70s, but that's where they're comfortable with. Yeah, they leave more of the 80s stuff to Family Guy. I'm glad you said that, Bob, because yes, in my head I was imagining the cast of the Cosby show, not the Fat Albert characters. Then we cut to Homer, and Homer has become a 1930 style

rummy, which also felt very Danigwil to me as well. Yeah, it's weird. Well, I guess this is the middle of the day. Well, this is still when he's on his day drinking trip with Lenny and Carl, right? Yeah, yeah, except he's so drunk that even Mo shoves him out the door. So Homer is really drunk this episode.

And he is becoming like, he is a 1930 style rummy who like dances for nickels. Like that's what he becomes here. The wealthy dowager makes a few appearances here in this episode. This season had more dowager than I recalled. This was the first time in the episode where I was like, oh, this is really good animation.

The drunken dancing Homer does here, I think is really well done. He has to do a lot of dancing in this episode. So that means they have to find new ways to have him drunkenly dance, like, in three different scenes. Though this is, I guess, the only time he is legitimately drunk, instead of pretending to be a crazy drunk guy. I'm not saying this is them stealing from the past, but it's a joke I like better. It's when, I think it's from Homer versus New York, when he is sitting on the sidewalk and people are throwing money in his cup.

He's not begging, he just has a cup on the sidewalk. He's like, hey, I'm not a bum. And then a guy throws in a little bit and he's like, oh, that's it? Like kind of like he's judging people immediately after saying, I don't want your money. You're right, that 30 second joke is basically a better version of this episode.

Yes, I don't like this plot either. It's, I don't know. Everything has such a weird and different tone. This does feel like natural path of this season because we said it a few episodes ago, but they are doing so many Homer is unhoused man jokes. Like this was, the most recent one was in the Marginal History Tour.

Yeah, that's true, that's true. Or like he smells bad so people assume he is unhoused, or we're seeing the presence of a lot of unhoused people on the show as well. Yeah, like so, you know, in Marginal History Tour, he's just sleeping in the library along with the other unhoused people, and then before that, in Tis the 15th season, when he gives his clothes as charity, they say they smell worse than his old pants, which that's kind of a joke in this one too.

And Al Jean helpfully does the job for us, so we didn't have to look up The Streets of Cairo as the song. Yes, although now, did you have a variant on this when you were a kid, because they're talking about the different variants, and there was a lyric in this I didn't get and I still don't get because what was passed around in my school now keep in mind Bob Mackey is quoting this I did not come up with these lyrics they were just sung and as

a seven-year-old I was like what does that mean there's a place in France where the naked ladies dance and the dance they do is enough to kill a Jew and there were no Jewish people around me I couldn't ask now are Jewish people afraid of dancing? Help me out here. But in my, I guess it was Catholic school, so hey, maybe that was it. But yes, the dance they do, enough to kill a Jew.

Mine took a more racist bent, I guess. Yeah, no, that was, and hey, I'm not saying, my schoolyards in Florida and Arkansas didn't have racist things said by children at it, but not of that style. That song to me is, there's a place in France where naked ladies dance and there's a hole in a wall where you can see it all.

Like that's the next line to me or another line in it. I just think of Homer saying, well do do do do do do you too, punk size. Boy, this is a lot of season one coming through in this one. When's that kid coming back? Yeah, that kid's really cool. He's the one who mistakes him for Fred Flintstone, right? Maybe.

Yeah, this is where Homer is being handed money by a bunch of characters who, they look very specifically designed, all these people handed the money, don't they? Yeah, these are not people we've seen before, it feels like. My first thought is always, these are friends of animators. But they definitely look like early 2000s US citizens. Like even one of them has like a parody of a of like a peace sign shirt of the American flag, except it's like

with the number of fingers the Simpsons character has. Okay yeah yeah they feel very specific. Maybe it is actually people on the design team. Or they're contest winners or somebody's friend. They're just they're all so specific and they didn't just pull Just Stamp the Ticket Man out of the model team. Or they're contest winners or somebody's friend. They're just, they're all so specific and they didn't just pull Just Stamp the Ticket Man out of the model pack. Yeah, these just look like caricatures to me of known people. They're way too detailed to just be pulled out of character packs. Yeah, yeah. And this also is at a time where we keep spotting characters like, oh, they haven't used that

character in a while, but they're filling a scene with old characters and then meanwhile this one is full of new people when they could have saved design budget on this so yeah I wonder, Matt Nastick, I want to know where do these people come from? So Homer is making bank meanwhile Bart follows Milhouse home as we hit the commercial break. Bart, there's something I gotta tell you. I'm moving. What? My mom got a job in Capital City. Capital City? You can't move that far. You're my best friend.

What's your mom making? I'll match it. It's too late, Bart. My mom's already transferred her 401K. Nooooooooo! I do like Bart knowing about that and the significance. Yes. My mom's already transferred her 401k. No! I do like Bart knowing about that and the significance. All I gotta say is, hey, Luan, must be nice to have a 401k. Yes, but it does sound pretty good for her. You would think, I don't know,

we haven't heard much about her jobs before this one. Yeah, and I guess her job was going to be being in that musical, but that plot was not shown to us. Sweet Fanny Adams, bye bye, that's what she said. Yeah, yeah, and I don't know if the voice of Luanne Van Houten is consistent, but here it just sounds like Pamela Hayden is doing a regular woman's voice and not Luanne's voice.

Oh, I think it's Maggie Roswell, she's on the credits. Oh, sorry, I'm sorry, I meant Maggie Roswell, I apologize. Yeah, I think it's Maggie Roswell, but she doesn't have a reference for the voice, so she just is like, well, I guess this is what she sounds like. It doesn't really sound like the correct voice. Yeah, no, for Luan, I mean, she just was,

in Diatribe of a Mad Housewife, she was back as Helen Lovejoy, and I think she had a little better handle on that returning voice, but maybe too it's that, like, you know, we've said it before, and even Al Jean kind of talks about how pissed off everybody was at Maude's death on the commentary, but this is them getting

Maggie Roswell back and it could just be like, this is early days of long distance recording with her regularly. I think room tone wise, I have a clip of her in a second I'll play, but I do think to me, you can hear she's in a different room recording space than the regular Simpsons actors. Yeah I just feel like she it's the Louie and Louie and Van Houten is not a like a strong voice in terms of you know has a lot of character to it but it's very specific

so it's not like they could have pulled it up on YouTube to show her or whatever so I just assumed that the reference wasn't there and had been a while since she last played the voice. I wonder if that's also why they cut the side story of Luanne being in a musical because that would Maggie Roswell to the extent she's being used in the show at this time in season 15 They are like a few lines here and there that definitely feel like they are Recorded after the color animation comes back, like from a temp voice, which makes me feel like they would then choose

at the writing level, well, we can't write a bunch of lines around a Maggie Roswell performance. Yeah, that could be right. I wonder too, of like looking back on this, did they consider this would be writing Luan out of the show at this time? Yeah, I wonder. They're at the point, they're really toying with the out of the show at this time. Yeah, I wonder.

They're really toying with the idea of getting them back together though, Kirk and Luan. I mean, Kirk is pitching the script for a future episode. Yeah, it's kind of right around the corner for the show, it feels like. I guess we'll get to it in season 19, but I think that it was definitely on Al Jean's, we've heard him say it on other commentaries. He's like, you know, I can get these, I can get the Van Houtens back together, I could send Manjula and the kids away,

I just can't bring back Maude, so he has his list of fixes that he could do, but he held off on the Van Houten reunion for another four years after this. But let's hear what Kirk thinks about all this. Luan, what are you doing? Look, Kirk, I need a fresh start. Well, couldn't you get a fresh start

by remarrying your old husband? Kirk, we're going. Fine. But you can't take Millhouse. I have visitation rights. Yes, and you're also supposed to pay child support. Hey, I thought you said my money was no good. I said you're no good.

Get in the car mill house. This isn't over. I'll fight you with every lunch half hour I get. Speaking of which. It's going to be tough to be peppy today. Tell me about it. I feel like we were just learning about the sign twirling people around this time. It's gonna be tough to be peppy today. Tell me about it. I feel like we were just learning about the sign twirling people around this time.

I don't really see them anymore. Maybe businesses are like, we don't even want to pay people to do that. They haven't found a way to have an AI script to do it yet. Yeah, no, I felt like it was a pretty new thing in 2004 to notice a sign twirler, though I love the extra indignity that it's a Spanish language sign too that makes it somehow like even sadder for Kirk, for Nuevo Cantos. But yeah, hearing her there, I was like, I could see maybe she, well, man, she would have had to like pop in a DVD of season two to be like, no, this was how she sounded, remember?

But yeah, like season, really season eight is where she finds the voice because then she becomes a character, but not as easy to do in 2003 when they're recording this. That's not the voice that Pyro or Gyro fell in love with. No, no, it's almost there, but only weirdo sticklers like us would notice, honestly. And the way the episode ends, again, it's just like, she is still in Capital City at the end of the episode.

So maybe they thought, also though, they have no thought for continuity here. I don't know why I'm saying this. I think they're like, well, no one will care if she's suddenly back. Yes, yeah. We did her story, but not really. It feels like this is gonna be more about her.

I also wonder if this was supposed to be like the act break because Bart's know that is the act break but he's in the same place at the start of the next scene and his sad walk away at the end of this scene that feels more like the commercial break to me. Yeah it feels like the act break is in a weird spot here. Though there's a couple very strange like there's a few weird fades in this one this has some wonky editing in it too. So then we go back home, we see Marge watch a car drive up. Now, I don't want to say Homer's driving drunk, but I can neither

confirm nor deny that this is a cab she's watching pull up. He is driving drunk, and they'll confront that in an upcoming episode actually. I believe Co-Dependence Day is all about drunk driving But this this is there's some funny march stuff here Which I like and the characters are being pretty over-the-top But there's an undercurrent of like women are present hungry piggies that I don't like very much Yes, actually this has a lot of like negative women stuff They even fit in one last thing at the end here But my compliment in this in this little clip here is that I do like

How Homer is drawn as a friendly mega drunk here. Why are your clothes so dirty? And why do you smell like liquor? Have you been clubbing? Holy, they're beautiful! That chevron station has the most romantic bouquets! I feel a swoon coming on!

Here it is! I am so wasted! Oh my god, oh my god, we're having a simultaneous pass out! Well, at least they're not fighting. Good line from Lisa, seeing both of her parents collapse on the floor. Yeah, that's, uh, she's sad to see a lot, though, boy, that's a filthier joke than I realized at first. The simultaneous pass out, like, and the way Homer is reacting to it feels like it is a

joke about a simultaneous orgasm, I would say. Oh, oh, you know, I never thought of that. Maybe he's just thinking, well, who's going gonna be running the ship if we're both down? And I do love the sadness of that Marge has been given many bouquets from a Chevron station, like guilty husbands who buy things at the last second. Or she knows that it would not come from anywhere else. Now, what is happening next on the show, we can cover in some detail,

but I wanna know in the comments, has anything been this racist on The Simpsons? Because this was shocking to me because it is every joke about Chinese food and Chinese people you can think of crammed into about a minute. And I will say it's presented at face value. And this was a style of humor in the early aughts and beyond, to be honest. You would just present racist visuals, racist jokes without any commentary. And the joke is look at this incredibly offensive thing you were watching on TV.

You don't believe it's true. And we don't either, but the fact that we're putting it on TV is crazy. Isn't it? And that's where the entertainment value came out of here. When you're watching it in the cold lay of 2025, you're saying this is just a bunch of racist jokes. And then when I'm working on my notes in public and there is a Chinese Canadian woman sitting next to me, I'm like,

okay, let's shut the laptop and go home. And I only knew this because she was talking on the phone and I was like, ooh, I don't know if I'm comfortable with playing this entire thing in public. But yeah, I'm not saying they set out with hate in their hearts, but this is just a style of humor that is not happening anymore. I had totally erased this from my mind. And we've talked about how I had to double check this like, okay, when do they do this before? So when hunk of hunk of burns and love, they go to Chinatown and when they go to a Chinese restaurant at it. They try to serve Lisa. Lisa just orders sweet and sour rice

because everything has an animal in it. And she's offered cat noses as one of the meals. So they did have the racist stereotype of Chinese people eat cats and dogs, like joke in there. But still, this is so, it's the way the mice are drawn as well, like, yeah. Yes, the's the way the mice are drawn as well. Yes, yes. The Asian eyes on the mice are over the top, way over the top. It's every joke about Chinese people and Chinese food. It's just, yes, they're saying the food is made

out of cats and dogs. They put MSG in the food, which is poison. MSG is actually very tasty. Stop being a baby about it, everybody. And also you get hungry again after an hour. They even work in that old joke. It's crazy. That is the corniest of old everybody. And also, you get hungry again after an hour. They even work in that old joke. It's crazy. That is the corniest of old jokes. And it's also crazy, in tis the 15th season, remember that deleted scene of the Mr. Magoo character that was clearly cut because of like, wait, this just reads as racist, not as us making fun of Mr. Magoo racist stuff.

Yeah. They were smart about it then. They weren't quite smart about it here. And I will say that this would be funnier. Like it wasn't King of the Hill. When King of the Hill did an episode in season one, it's about when Khan and Min and Connie move to town, and because Hank is small-minded and not used to people of Laotian descent, he assumes that his dog is missing because they're cooking and eating it. And it's a big joke about Hank's beliefs in how ignorant he is. But then the people who are currently in the White House right now, that was one of the talking points that they ran on during the election. They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats.

Yeah. Yeah. So this, that just, it's like kind of like a splash of cold water in the face. Like, oh, showing me this racism ironically is not as funny as it used to be. A, because I'm a lot older and it's not 2004 anymore. B, because of the thing I just mentioned, the whole talking point about immigrants. You know, there's one other recent thing that reminded me of this era of comedy and it was on the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary. They had a funny, I've mentioned on the podcast before, but they had a clip package that was presented jokingly as an in memoriam, but it was all of their

badly aged comedy and it, they have like yikes appear on screen sometimes when they're like, wow, we did that. And one of them was, and I had completely forgotten this. Do you remember when Lucy Lou hosted SNL around the same time in the early aughts? I recalled the, the hosting gig in the show, but not any sketch you might be leading us towards. Well, there was a joke from her monologue. I had totally forgotten this until it was in the clip package.

The joke in her monologue was she's like, oh, and I love being here in New York and I made a traditional meal of my family for them and it had like she's serving them like Barbecued cat as part of the thing and I was like and on the screen they go like wow So, you know, I totally forgot about that. Yeah, we don't need to go over everything but it's just it's really it's I mean This again, this is a style of comedy at the time There are shows that I that I love like wonder shows in that are today like incredible minefields because it's about, it's a bunch of like super angry leftists just getting out all of their aggression about the George W. Bush administration.

And sometimes the sketch will be like, what's the most racist thing we can show you? Yes. Yeah. It was, it was a shock value alone and that's just kind of empty. Sorry, Henry. No, yeah, yeah. It's a cliche to to say but it was a different time at the very least And when you see this in the cold light of 2025 this just it just seems like oh This is racist and hate hateful towards Chinese people. That's that's all it is and I hate

I will complement the animation again when they rip apart scratchy's face It's very well done. Yes. Yeah, the animation is good. Content not so good. By the way, I didn't actually close my laptop. I made my window smaller and moved the VLC player over to the other side of the laptop. You know, another thing that makes it feel weird is that the way Lisa is written in this episode, and this is at a time when they are always having her be the person who says, episode and this is at a time when they are always having her be the person who says, um, actually, and pointing out when something is insensitive, she merely laughs at this and has no reaction to it.

Yes. No, I pointed out in my notes, Lisa finds the racism hilarious. And this is when we've made the sound effect for like, take that Lisa's beliefs and they always write her as the one who's like, she's the one who would have a problem with this. She has no problem with this. But I'm just throwing this out to our audience. Is this the most racist thing on the show thus far? Way in.

Yeah. In a fun way, in a fun way. Are there other ones we have chosen to forget that are not coming to mind here? So yes, after that little cartoon, this also feels like classic old, old, old Simpsons of her, of Lisa realizing like, oh Bart, you're not laughing at this,

which was, how many episodes is that? Let alone when he sells his soul, even before that. Yeah, yeah, like when Millhouse is, it's actually a Millhouse related thing, when Millhouse seems to be Samantha Stanky and Bart is not laughing at the Itchy and Scratchy for similar reasons. That's right, yeah.

We're hitting on a lot of things here. We're being the joke police, but this is where Lisa also calls out that she can kind of see coming another old storyline popping up. Yeah, we're just going to do this little wiggy again for about 30 seconds. Oh, Bart, I'm sure it's hard to lose your best friend. You mean Milhouse? Funny little guy. Afraid of the dark and the light. Now I've got new friends. Guys who get me.

There's one right now. Who is it? Is it Ralph? It is not Ralph. Hi, Bart. My nose makes its own bubble gum. Just get in here. 18, 19, 20. I found you, Bart. Ralph, we're playing checkers. I don't like you, boy mommy. Boy mommy is good, but we've seen this dynamic before, honestly, and they got everything they could out of it. Boy, the producers are getting a little tired of Ralph Shtick.

They're like, yeah, we get it, Ralph. You're not smart. You're a dumb child. I'll tell you who did like that, my nose makes its own bubblegum joke, the Fox ad team, because that's the centerpiece of one of the vintage commercial I found for this episode. I want you to assume Ralph is going to be a big part of this episode in Millhouse. Both this and the pants wedding joke later were both in the ads. So it's getting very scatological, at least on the Fox ad side of things.

And this is where there's the one deleted scene in the episode, a secret one, on the DVD. And so right after Ralph leaves, we then pan across the room and Marge is there with Patty and Selma. I don't like you, boy, Mommy. Oh. What's with him? with Patty and Selma. I don't like you, boy mommy. Ugh. What's with him? Oh, his best friend moved to Capital City.

Don't worry, you're better off this way. You don't want to be with the same person all your life. You'll lose your individuality. Hey, you're scratching my leg. I could tell you had an itch. Well, next time ask Selma. You're Selma. Oh, well, then you're the one with the bladder infection. The doctor called this morning.

Here. That's really good. I wish they would have left that in. Yeah, I like that, though. I realize now, as an audio piece, you do lose a little bit of the joke of that they're finishing each other's sentences when you can see them both on screen. Yeah.

It feels like Julie is giving them the same voice to kind of sell the joke more. Yeah. I think in a couple episodes, they have a bigger plot point in the John Lovett's episode that's coming, the Arties If episode. But so I'll be watching or listening rather to see how similar or not she's playing them then. But in that scene, they're meant to become like, yeah, they become the same person eventually. They've lived together so long. So yeah, I wish they'd kept that in there

instead of just ending on Bart's side. But I guess you need more time for the Museum of Television and TV, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I would have rather them swap in the Patty and Salmon scene for the Ralph scene, honestly. Yeah, I think the Ralph scene really offered nothing new to it. And also, like, visible boogers on The Simpsons just feels beneath them to me sometimes.

One of the episodes we covered lately, well, actually, I think it was an early one. I was like, oh, that's Marge's pee on the screen, but that was in season five. I don't like this urine sample one bit. But in this episode, we see Ralph's inflated booger and then piss from an old man soaking through his pants. And those are done in just full, like the reason we see Marge's urine in that scene is because it is being tested in a vial and it is more like clinical.

This is just fully like gross out humor. Then we cut to Homer, he's sobered up but sad as he's driving around here. And we get a billboard that I see as parodying the De Beers ads of the time of the this year get our diamonds are forever those ads yeah this the slogan is because money equals love and you know what with our patrons I feel that same way your money does equal love and we love all of you back mm-hmm and I can say when I got married I did not buy a diamond I supported violence done many decades ago by giving my wife, my grandmother's wedding ring.

Oh yeah. Antique diamonds or antique jewels is a good way to avoid that. There are also a lot of places that advertise that they sell, you know, conflict-free diamonds, bloodless, non-blood diamonds. Like I believe that is where we got our rings done at. We did not go for, we made sure at least of that. Yeah, I'll say with diamonds, adopt, don't shop. Also, we talked a lot about the manufactured diamond world in Homer, the vigilante episode,

but we learned about fake diamonds a lot later in this episode. Yeah, I love, we'll get to it, but I love all the fake diamond names that Julie Kavanagh has to say. Julie has some fun in this episode. I think she has a good time. So Homer, after being met by a dressed down dowager,

like it's the same dowager voice, but she's wearing regular clothes. What's the point of a dowager? Casual dowager. And this is where Homer decides he is going to become a exit sign, holding a cardboard sign guy, which you still see it. It's still popular in the panhandling community.

Yes, so they work in a lot of very broad jokes, but I also like how they work in the dark jokes too, where they're a lot of over the top observations, but then the woman's saying, nobody wants to be alone. Yes, that's a great line. I love that. Yeah. But we talk about all the guest stars in this one.

This one could have been a guest star, but I think Homer's teacher is perfectly fine as his area. I like that. Yeah, but also give him a name. Yeah. You know, give this character just, I don't know, it just feels like he's a major enough character in this. He should have a name.

If they made him 5% more distinct and named, he could have been a recurring new bum character for them, and there are many hobos they use in the show. But yes, this is where Homer We met in a police lineup. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know number two and number four are an item now. You don't have to tell me. I was number three. Listen, you have any pointers for a newbie? Well, there are six schools of begging. Bad musician, messed up vet, cripple, fake cripple, religious zealot, and crazy guy.

I think you would do well with crazy guy cooking Pepsi on a safe thing wake up people now that is good crazy penmanship is clear yet said is a good line we're talking about signs you know signs they're used for the acquisition of money on the street and I'm not seeing the funny sign anymore. I think these signs go through like fads. I think there are even memes in panhandling signs. Because there used to be the classic like,

please help, then just kidnap my family or some kind of kooky thing written on a sign, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. I haven't seen the most recent one I saw on the nearby on-ramp it where I live, the guy just had the typical like please help out of work like sign. Like no real flavor to it. Yeah, I'm not asking for jokes is what I'm saying.

I like that they kind of framed this like Homer is up and coming in the world of say stand up or magician or something. It was just like, well, there's six schools of thought. And he's getting the crash course in it. Yeah, yeah, I like this. It starts in a funny place, although this starts way too late in the episode. And there's very little time for it, just like the good idea of like,

Millhouse has reinvented himself. This also kind of comes in late. I like Homer greases himself up real good. And there is a fun little commentary bit of them talking about why they don't do cross hatching anymore to represent dirt on characters. I really miss it. It's just the classic iconography of someone being dusty.

Yeah, a cross hatching in a cartoon represents either one of two things. You being dusty like Pigpen or you have a certain hairstyle like Archie in Archie Comics. Sure, sure. I should have checked this if this was in our pal Drew Mackey's collection of every gay reference on Simpsons because I see this as a stealth gay reference of suspects two and four are now a couple because I am assuming that if Homer and all these

other guys were in the same line up, that it's all men in the line up then. Yeah, I guess that would have to be true. He wouldn't be in a lineup with one woman in it, right? So it's, and that makes it even cuter that Homer's like, hey, you don't have to tell me I was number three. Like he could see the romantic sparks flying between two and four.

The magic was happening right in front of him. I also do like the distinction that cripple and fake cripple are two distinct versions of unhoused man So Homer and also one more compliment animation Homer's little spin as he's talking about coke and Pepsi That's it's a good a good little yeah motion I have to assume a lot like all the stuff was at the bite down castle. Oh, yeah He's he's having a lot of fun So then we have a quick clip to Bart getting ready to visit his

good buddy Millhouse. I do really appreciate that Bart is heading off to Capital City. Like this is bringing back that history. They didn't just say like he moved to Cleveland or Manhattan or whatever. Yeah, although we don't see much of it outside of a building and I don't know if I feel that these plane travel jokes are funny currently in this current climate. Oh yes, that's true. Yeah, speaking of that trip to Tokyo I took, it was like the day after I flew out of the

Seattle airport that a Delta plane and I flew Delta hit into, had a bump into a Japan Airlines fly I was like wow that could have been me the previous if I if I'd flown one day later I'd have been on that plane that that had a little accident on the Seattle tarmac well I am old enough to have had one of these plywood planes that are powered by a rubber-brand propeller I don't know if you've ever had one of these Henry no no no no they seem well they barely work. Oh, okay. And guess what? That crappy cheap plywood, it breaks pretty easily

when the plane doesn't land safely because there's no pilot. I hope it didn't contribute too many splinters, at least. No, no, no. Once you fly it a few times and it breaks, you just throw it right in the garbage and you're done. So, oh yes, I did, as I say oh yes. I forgot, I had a tiny clip of this because they found a new joke for the oh, yes guy

That's Homer flashing his big wad of cash After he approaches the the counter of Costingtons because he's he's, oh, this gross homeless guy is coming up to me. And then it leads to from an oh no to an oh yes. So we head to Capitol city and yeah, I wish we spent a little more time here because this creation of like, if you live there, you call it cap city. And it's like, wow, there's a little story

and it feels more lived in than I expected. Yeah, I wanted to see Millhouse do anything else with these kids. And this is the one scene, right? This is it. This is it, this is it. And there's no deleted scene of them either. These are all very specifically designed kids who you think could have appeared.

Like, instead of Bart and Lisa becoming friends, how about Bart spends the entire weekend there, and eventually those kids realize Bart is cooler, and then Millhouse wants to go home. the entire weekend there and eventually those kids realize Bart is cooler and then the millhouse wants to go home. Yeah the least thing that happens after this is just feels like you're getting away from the point of this where millhouse is becoming cool, Bart is being left behind, but what if he's stuck there and now has to be the millhouse of the group? What then? It feels like a much more

interesting story. And these are some very early aughts, cool kids here who all have very like hip hop attire, I would say. Now I take it as a design joke that Milhouse with his blonde hair that spiked up, like it's him becoming Bart, right? Like he is intentionally looking like Bart's hairstyle at least. He's kind of becoming Guy Fieri before we knew who that was. Right, yes. He just, he hasn't put on a fake goatee. But yes, Milhouse has changed when Bart meets him again in Cap City. before we knew who that was. Right, yes. He just, he hasn't put on a fake goatee, but yes, Millhouse has changed when Bart meets him again in Cap City.

Millhouse, Bart's here. What up, B? Millhouse, is that you? Yeah, I gave my look some new flavor. Suck it in. Uh, maybe later. What up, M-Life? Millhouse, this isn't you.

This is my only chance to be cool! Now please, let me give you a wedgie in front of these guys. No way! Please! I'll be gentle! Oh, fine. Wedgie! Oh!

Millhouse, you had cap city on him! Springfield baby in a diaper poked his eye with a windshield wiper. Springfield baby, Springfield baby. I'll always love you Bart. Springfield baby, Springfield baby. Going back to the variant I experienced of this little chant, it was insert grade here baby, stick your head in gravy. So let's say you're in second grade,

first graders, inferior, first grade, baby, stick your head in gravy. Oh, okay, now this one's coming back to me. This one I did not hear that much as a kid, I remember. But yeah, when you said stick your head in gravy, I was like, okay, I think I did hear that one. The windshield wiper one is a new one. But yeah, you went cap city on him.

It's just very, I wanna spend more time in capital city with these kids. I wanna know Millhouse's new identity, M-Life, as they call him. What a cool kid. I'm liking this Millhouse. I mean, as a kid, I moved a couple times and I never had the ambition of Millhouse,

but I did have hopes of like, oh, can I reset? But I mean, the glasses stay on and I did not invest in a new wardrobe. So eventually, you end up in the same place in my childhood experience. And then when my best friend moved away and that was Bob, I didn't reset either. I just, I was too old.

That's true. And now if you can't see it folks, but I dyed my hair a shocking platinum. I'm bee-like. And your gold chain looks great. Thank you. That's true, and now if you can't see it folks, but I dyed my hair a shocking platinum. I'm bee-laced. Your gold chain looks great. Thank you. Now, poor Bart is having to be the nerd to Millhouse,

which I guess this would have just ended us up in the same place as Summer of Four Foot Two, but there is a story there of Bart reveals that Millhouse is actually a dork and doesn't go along with this kind of story. But yes, so Bart is sad. He goes back home and he's watching a video that is out of continuity because as we all know from the Lisa Sacks episode, Homer was fully bald when Bart and Milhouse became friends for the first time in kindergarten.

Okay. Well, hey, maybe it's a partial toupee. We don't know, but obviously not tracking the hair growth on Homer as much as they used to. But the amount of micro machines he spits out after one falls in his throat and then he coughs up like five, that I chuckle. Well I insist these are Hot Wheels because you have the classic orange track. You're right, yeah, the size-wise, you're right, it is the classic orange track makes it a Hot Wheel, you're right. I own more micro machines than Hot Wheels. It's a somewhat inventive joke that I kind of like because they launch a car into his open mouth

while he's sleeping, and you think, oh, he's choking, he coughs up more than one car, so only upon this most recent launch did Homer's airway get blocked. The other ones are just kind of sitting in there. And Marge filmed all of this, I'm assuming, instead of helping Homer for this video. She knows he'll bounce back. And Matt Groening would be happy at the small amount of tears coming out of Bart's eyes

as he watches this. They mentioned on the commentary, what, it was Matt Groening's 50th birthday when this aired, right? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess it was February 15th, 1954. So he turned 50 when this aired. Boy, would it just been his 71st birthday then? Yeah. Oh, we recorded this? Yep. Good, good.

Hey, and here's the 71 more, man. We salute you. But I clipped this out too, because this is a cute little line Marge says. And I love when Marge is lame. And she's a big lame in this scene. Bart, honey, it's a nice day. Why don't you play outside?

Outside? That's where me and Milhouse played. You know, I think your sister could use a little help washing the car. You'll be like an owl saying, Milhouse who? Milhouse who? Milhouse who?

Hey, Moldylocks, Mom says I'm supposed to help you. No house who, no house who, no house who. Hey Moldylocks, mom says I'm supposed to help you. Fine, you're going to confirm the accuracy of the hose. Ah! Ah! Ha ha ha, you wet your pants. Shut up, it's a serious problem. Leese, you are so dead. Ah!

And that was right there in the commercials for it again, the like, the piss wedding. That's just piss on his pants, right? Yeah, well this is what Fox, this is the audience Fox was trying to cater to, but it does feel like the Milhouse Who thing was a strategy one of the writers' moms must have used to get their children to forget about something.

Oh, totally, totally, yeah. The way it's phrased like, you'll be like an owl saying blank hoo, blank hoo. I like when they have lame mom things for for March to say and yeah this is where Bart and Lisa like start having just very wholesome fun there's not much of a turn on it it's just like oh they have a water they have a hose fight while cleaning the while washing the car like this just feels like a scene from a regular sitcom not not a Simpsons ramp up or increase on it.

Yeah, they're playing it a little too straight here. So I guess Bart does say he's gonna kill the whole family, but that's really the only ramping up of the gag. There's a lot of funny things happening outside of Windows in this episode. As we go inside to see Homer and Marge, the water fight continues outside and Ned gets caught in the flash zone.

Doesn't that also feel weird though that it's like I noted that is one of the strangest edits in the episode where it's like it's a fade with no music but Marge is in the same place watching him play so it doesn't even feel like a time fade because they are where they were from the start before. That struck me as odd and I can't understand why. That wouldn't have been an act break or anything, so I don't know why it was edited like that. Though this is where Homer repeats himself

from Helmer versus the 18th Amendment, which Al Jean admits to, so thank you Al Jean for your honesty. He probably wasn't there for that. Oh no, he wasn't, as we know, because in that same season he complained, from that same season, he complained that he learned after the fact

about the Armintem's Aryan thing. One of very few years, Al Jean was not present on The Simpsons. Shocking. This was the season eight of The Simpsons was like his Teen Angel time. Right, while he still was doing like a critic episode, a critic season three writers room episode they wrote

was airing in season eight but he was they were busy on Teen Angel then but it was like we we mentioned that in Simpson Tide is that it was like no this feels like it was written one year earlier because it was yeah so many 1995 references hey if you want to know we mentioned a few times on here if you haven't gone back in our archives listen to our Teen Angel episode it is I got new quotes from Mike Reese about Teen Angel. You will learn new things about Teen Angel. You, of all the many things you know about Teen Angel,

you'll learn more on that. It's the most definitive source on Teen Angel ever created. Bob, you mentioned earlier, this is where Marge has a fun list of things to say. Homie, I'd like to know what you've been doing after work. Marge, I'm not gonna lie to say. Homie, I'd like to know what you've been doing after work. Marge, I'm not gonna lie to you. I also found this in your drawer. All the answers you need are in here. Happy anniversary.

Are these Diamondique? Nope. Diamondel? Nope. Cubic Diamondium? Nope. Dioxyribodimondoid? Close, but no cigar. Just plain diamonds. Oh my god. Oh my god.

Mm. We finally have something to put in the wall safe. Hostess Twinkies? I heard if you age them for ten years, they turn to liquor. Kids! Go ride bikes for a while, huh? Yeah, you heard your mother! The sailboat painting is getting a lot of play in season 15. Yeah, we have a scene from Moby Dick now used once more as it's been the hiding place of their,

their wall safe for years now, we didn't know. I almost included deoxyribodimondoid in my opening, but I didn't trust myself to be able to say it. You did good there though. I was really focusing. But you're right, Bob, this is women be lovin' diamonds, is this episode. There's no extra turn to it.

Marge enjoys these diamond earrings so much, she instantly has sex with Homer, as is your reward for giving diamonds to a wife. It could be a generational thing, not my experience. If I were to throw down that much money, my partner would be upset with me. This could have been a vacation or mortgage payments or anything.

A major purchase done without consulting the other person too. Yeah, that too, that too. When you're in a household like this, you're kind of like, even if you don't share a bank account, you know, what's yours is mine, what's mine is yours, we're in this together. Don't spend thousands of dollars on jewelry

when there are other needs that need to be met. Especially in the Simpsons household. Right, yeah, well, I mean, we've said that in in many episodes, like when they jokes about having being in the private sky box at a basketball game. This is them doing jokes about their lives that don't apply to the Simpsons, but they just do them anyway. Like I, I would bet many Simpsons writers have bought expensive diamonds for a romantic partner with some expectations of that. We all know what it's like, folks,

when your girlfriend is mad at you, when you won't spend your teenager residuals on a diamond. Am I right, everybody? You run two seasons of a sitcom. They know that you skimped on your gift because they read in the trades that you signed an overall deal with Disney and you can afford it.

Yeah, also the fermenting of Twinkies, this was, I think there were more stories going around, well, I mean, there already was a joke of you cannot hurt a Twinkie, but I felt like back then, I was in an 04, there were lots of jokes of Twinkies never age and this Twinkie's been on the shelf for like a decade and they're made to never age. Those were a lot of jokes then.

Another thing that's just lost the time, I don't see the Twinkie anymore. If you ask me to find a Twinkie, I'm sure they'd be in a grocery store, but we're not talking about Twinkies. The last time I thought about Twinkies was when Minions were advertised with them. I remember that.

That's right. My teeth just start aching when I think of one. That's my problem. I looked up like, okay, has anybody tried to do this one? And the closest I could find was, first off, no, it does not ferment. But secondly, the best I could find was a 2020 Business Insider article about somebody who accidentally

kept a Twinkie for eight years. And when he bit into it, he found out that it didn't ferment, but it grew common kitchen mold and did not taste good Yeah, don't do that. It's easy enough to grow mold without turning it into a thing Also, they have all these like Homer is drunk jokes in this one. Then he just gets drunk again except on Twinkie wine Yes, and then the next plot there's like another thing here that feels like it could have been a part of a different plot line entirely that was more developed. And it's Bart and Lisa discovering this burial mound of indigenous people and it feels like a little touch of Lost Our Lisa where Homer and Lisa see something

that no one else has seen before and it's like a touching moment they share. Here it's something they see once and then they never go back to it except there's a bit of a betrayal when Bart tells Malice about it but it does not ever turn into anything more than that. Yeah, yeah, this feels like another half-formed idea they just tossed into the freelance script. And what also just them hanging out together is not played, like when Lisa does the jump, it's just played very straight,

this would have been in a traditional sitcom too, and then on top of that, even when she lands the bike jump there's a weird timing where she just kind of gets off the bike says nothing like no joke and just turns around and then discovers the cave I was like hey you guys forgot to write a joke here yeah anything it just the them finding the cave is so quick they're barely in there and it feels like it should be a lot more meaningful because I guess according to the comment there They're drawing from some some burial mounds that had been found around the time of this writing Oh, yeah

It happens a lot still to this day like because well Bob this may be news to people who are being taught in schools today But did you know America's on a bunch of like land stolen from people? We're just building everything on a giant graveyard that we put the bodies in there ourselves for the most part. Yeah, apparently that these burial mounds from many different indigenous tribes in the US are found very regularly. There is just a headline when I was looking for it from November last year of like, indigenous mounds rediscovered at Forest Home Cemetery unearthed Milwaukee's

ancient history. That's just the kind of headlines you see still to this day. So they're still being found. And yeah, I think to this like jump scene, well, it has two things that I was like, wait, wait a minute. One was for five seconds, they used a music cue they already used for a better joke in Treehouse of Horror 2. Oh, what was the cue? They used the anti-smoking ad, the... The... Oh, okay. I guess I just... It wasn't remarkable enough for me to notice.

But yeah, that's the whole Like Father Like Son jokey parody of that music. Think about it, won't you? Which I knew from MSD3K jokes. Me too, me too. And go back to Trey Hustle for two. You did a great history on it in that one. But they used that exact music sting from that episode just for the very start of their bike ride. Because it feels like Al Jean is recognizing,

oh Bart and Lisa bike riding together is just so wholesome, but not a joke here that maybe it becomes a joke if I put the the anti-smoking ad commercial music on it. What else from the 70s or 60s have we not put in here? Yeah and then it's more like what haven't we done in the last 13 years? Oh okay we can put that one. And you know speaking of another thing I was like oh and this is the joke where Bart says Geronimo and Lisa says Sacagawea. No that's from the Simpsons movie and I was wrong. I was waiting for that joke and she just says Geronimo too.

And she was Sacajawea this season. Maybe that's why they wouldn't do that. Or they were sitting on that joke since this episode and that's why they put it in the movie. But her just repeating Geronimo again, I was like, guys, you missed a joke here. Well, they would find the joke three years later. So yes, they come across these burial mounds, they're walking around.

There's only one thing I notice in there, it's the traditional fertility deity of the Hopi, Coco Pelli, which I mainly know from New Age capitalism, like trash, like put on like t-shirts and stuff, the flute playing god. Oh yeah, yeah, that's I guess used in t-shirt designs you said, right? Oh yeah, yeah, you'll see him everywhere because, well also because Coco Pelli, being, you know, an ancient fertility god, has no copyright on him, so nobody owns him. And he's gonna get you laid. There's a fun song about Coco Pelli by the friend of podcast the ride and doughboys Bugmane that folks should look up out

there. It's a really fun, I believe it's called Cocoa Pilled is the song, it's a fun song. Yeah, then I do like that Bart is committed enough to a bit to cover himself in spiders. That made me laugh, I like that. He's a professional about comedy. Those look like very poisonous spiders. They're not just like regular spiders. Those are too big for me.

Doesn't it also feel like they're writing Lisa to have fun with Bart, and it would make her too much of a scold But shouldn't Lisa say Bart have some respect for these both ones. Well, Lisa just suddenly became racist this episode She's like, oh man those those jokes about the Chinese classic and you desecrating this grave amazing Yeah, but Lisa's completely reoriented her her belief system for this one episode. We talked about them squeezing in stuff from the 60s and 70s. Here's another one. It's Homer singing Mr. Bojangles from Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. This is something I only looked it up for the first time upon viewing this episode.

I have never heard this song in full before. I've only heard references to it. Oh really? Wow. I am surprised that you never seen the Sammy Davis Jr. one is the one I think of. I feel like Homer's little hat move of how he like slides it down his hand. That's I think of Sammy Davis Jr. performing the song. Maybe I'm incorrect. Maybe this is a cover, but this is what came up when I searched for it. I'm like, all right, who did this? Oh, no,

they are the originators of the song. But it all they are. Okay. Yeah, no, I looked it up to Sammy Davis Jr. Did a very famous, especially, he sang this, I learned this from looking it up, he sang this song for Nixon, at Nixon's inauguration. Relative of the writer of this episode, he sang it for that guy. And Bob Dylan did a version of this one too, maybe you've heard the Dylan one. Oh, probably. Yes, in the song it is about an old homeless man who dances for quarters and talks about how his dog died,

which Homer only remembers at the end of his sign off on this. Trey Lockerbie Now, I'm not saying this is thievery, but it reminds me of something that was done better. There's an episode of Beef's and Butthead where they become panhandlers and they are kind of the apprentices to an unhoused person played by Bobcat Goldthwait. And they do a much better job because they're children asking for money, so everyone feels really bad for him, and he gets mad at them and tries to get revenge on them. So I'm like, oh, I've seen this plot before.

All right, that was a better episode. Well, also, the Beavis and Butt-Head design, the Mike Judge design of a homeless person also was very funny in a realistically sad way. The one joke I remember is the Bobcat character was telling them, you need to open with a funny line, and his line is, what's the best donation in the world?

Donation! And he holds out his cup. So, sorry, I blew the delivery of that entirely, but it was funny in 1994. No, here Homer is instead just pissing them off by not quitting. Well, actually, you know what? I have the clip of it because it has the funniest line in the episode, or the saddest funniest line maybe. Mr. Bojangles, Mr. Bojangles, we're all Bojangles. Who killed Bojangles? Maybe it was you.

Angles, maybe it was you Thank you, thank you remember my dog up and died. Thank you You got your wife the earrings man. Why are you still doing this? I want to get a second house closer to work He's taking all our business. We're gonna have to do something. We never do anything. That's why we're bums. Hey, you're a woman. And you're a three headed devil dog. Devil dog. Want to make out? No one wants to be alone. So pretty broad performances of this woman having severe mental problems, but she immediately becomes lucid when she recognizes the situation. Her loneliness

breaks through her dementia there. And Tress is, I mean, she's given it her all with that screaming a devil dog too. I like that, again, because it's sad and depressing, it makes me think it's a Dana Gold line, but I gotta be wrong. Bob, if you wanna see like a maudlin performance of a song, look up Sammy Davis Jr. doing Mr. Bojangles.

I will, if I ever feel like being down again, you know, if I'm gonna dip into that. Things are, I mean, I don't need to be artificially depressed with the current state of world politics. Oh, sure, sure. Also that Homer bragging that he wants to buy a second house to an unhoused man. It's funny.

I like it. Closer to work. He's got a house and a job. We then cut back home for a long scene of them all realizing things about stuff, but I like that Janie, Janie's back to being Lisa's friend for one moment here. Unseen. Because they needed Lisa to have a friend for a joke here. Though when has Janie ever been into jazz with Lisa at all?

Like that doesn't seem right to me. Well this miraculous thing happened in front of her house and she thought, I'll call the one person I know who cares about jazz. That's true, and hey, if Branford Marsalis breaks down in front of my house too, Bob, I'll give you a call. Please do. But she turns it down.

You know, the shooting BB guns joke is improved by saying that they're going to shoot Appu. Like that, though this gets into the weird racial area of this episode too, baby. Well, it's a joke about Apu's treatment, like the status of Apu in town, because I think it was even in Insane Clown Poppy, which is three or four seasons ago, where Marge asks the Michael Keaton guy, did you shoot Apu? It's just a fine now. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah, it's been a little while since Appu the bullet sponge has been a story in the show and soon that will be a pivotal part of or we have covered no when we do cover Homer and Appu that's a pivotal part of it though. Yeah, here they're kind of bringing it back but this is where we just have a on paper this shows you what good direction can do with an average or not so good script that on paper the Realization of like oh am I am I becoming best friends with my sibling blah But they make it great as an act break

Mm-hmm, and they say that Matt Nastic and his team just did this on their own. It was not in a state reaction Yeah, I mean, I think this act breaks. Thanks to be fair it's just all expository and then it ends on a real real groan or like come on Like this is this is what you're going out on It's this the Homer line especially but it should have been you know Expository line from Lisa Jokey line like it like kind of build off of it and then end with a big joke But the joke it ends on I'm gonna say it's terrible. Oh, yeah, yeah. And hey, we just covered Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, so you think we would love hearing this line.

I think the animation is like the A plus for this era in season 15, like this long uncut shot of just going around the house, constantly shifting perspectives. Like maybe that's also why when this isn't funny, they didn't cut it because they're like, this animation's too good to cut the scene.

Do you have a clip or no? Because I will say what Homer. Oh no, I don't have the clip. Okay yeah, I don't blame you because like I said, it's not very good, but they all have realizations. Lisa says, is my brother my best friend? And Bart says, is my sister my best friend? And then Marge says, Homer actually bought me diamonds.

And then we go to the bathroom off of the master bedroom It's Homer looking in the mirror and he goes mirror mirror on the wall. Who's the baldest of them all? Oh That's like that's like a full house joke get out of here with that. Yeah, take that back to hanging with mr. Cooper guys Yes, yeah, like this is the this is not Homer's store I mean it could be a non sequitur, but it's like it's a joke that Homer is sad that he's bald I don't know also This is the age of like Al Jean loves ADR and loves changing lines after the fact and this has no lip sync to it It's just in his thoughts like so

This is a perfect opportunity to change this line and make it better Keep the keep Matt Selman and the other writers around for the evening and say no this This is our end of act 2 we need a funnier line for Homer than a parody of mirror mirror on the wall We can do better. Yeah, my fear is that this is the improved line and it was rewritten Man, how much worse could it have been? Yeah, if it wasn't so well animated, this like, it's like 40 seconds long, this shot around the house with no,

nothing funny, but great animation. You could lift it out and the scene that starts the next act of more people being incredulous that Bart and Lisa are friends, that covers your story needs right there, and you don't need this scene here. But, but Matt Nastick and his team, they did a great job animating banal dialogue.

Above and beyond the call of duty. We come back from the commercial break, and we start with the most memed thing from this episode that I had completely forgotten was from this episode too. Like, I don't know if you, maybe it's not memed as much as you used to, I feel like Al Jean references this joke a lot on commentaries when they're talking about Willy. I think this is who did. Who? You don't know him. He lives in Russia. I can't believe they're hanging out. Ha! Maybe she'll be a good influence on him. Or maybe he'll corrupt her.

It won't last. Brothers and sisters are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots. Or Welshmen and Scots. Or Japanese and Scots. Or Scots and other Scots. Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland! You Scots. Damn Scots, they ruined Scotland. You Scots sure are a contentious people.

You just made an enemy for life. Yeah, on its own, it's a great bit. I've seen it used as a meme format in the pro wrestling fandoms I would frequent, in comic book fandoms, in anime fandoms, in gaming fandoms, like it shows. And usually the point of the joke is that if you are a passionate fan in some community,

you will end up hating everybody, including your fellow fans, and you're just that negative. Yeah, just like, it's the way to define something as being particularly toxic. And you've just made an enemy for life, like that is a perfect, perfect line. Though, I, you know, this defines Willie is just a guy who's like Constantly full of rage which I miss I miss the Willie who is so self-sacrificing that even saved the wee turtles

And this this more defines him as cruel or incredibly angry once he started living in a shed I think that was the end for Willie the benevolent. Yeah, I think so. Yeah that turns into jokes about is like alcoholism, too Oh and get so overshadowed the animation being so great in the previous scene But in this one, I actually really like the layout to where you can hear it of Characters keep adding in their thoughts on it and it's laid out as like a zoom out Yeah I think we zoom out from the swing set to the principal's office.

And to make this joke work, the principal's office has to be huge and kind of empty because with every character adding in their two cents, we pull out even more. Yeah, you start from the swing set, then back out to the jungle Jim with Janey, then further to the windowsill with Krabapel, then further to Skinner, and then further to show that Willie's

there as well at a second window. Yes, Skinner's office has grown twice its size and all of the things he had on the wall is not there anymore either. Then we cut back to Homer's story as it wraps up here. A hobo tattletale has called Marge over her. I do like her saying, you know, you maybe don't have clothes to wash, but I do. It's saying that he's a filthy guy, but also that all Marge thinks about is housework. I just enjoyed the amount of time she says panhandling in her outing of Homer. This is where Marge also, again, they sell out her character, but this little speech

is funny. Homer? You're panhandling? I should have known from that panhandling that you were Marge also again, they sell out her character, but this little speech is funny. Homer! Ah! Your panhandling! I should have known from that panhandling sign! Plus that ticket you got for panhandling! But Marge, it was all for you. To buy all the nice things you deserve.

The flowers, the earrings, the Bob Seeger box set, which really only needed to be one disc, but the box was nice Oh, I don't need fancy things and even if I did this is the wrong way to get them And to remind you of what you've done I'm going to keep these earrings and wear them at social occasions I don't understand. Well, then maybe you need to buy me a brooch Yeah, it's a I don't understand. Well then maybe you need to buy me a brooch. Yeah, it's Marge being a complete hypocrite, but I guess it's the funnier thing than her returning the diamonds.

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, this is them sidestepping doing the most obvious thing in the plot, and it just turns into like Marge having the moral high ground on Homer and saying like, don't do that. But then to sidestep that, they instead go into the cliche of women love their diamonds more than their moral superiority. She's diamond hungry.

Boy, Bob Seeger catching strays here, as the kids would say. They're kind of right, honestly. His best of is all you need. I can't think of a Bob Seger song off the top of my head. I don't go past night moves, I'm done. Oh, that's a good one, that's nice. But that's it.

Well, hey, then the box can store other CDs. Sure, it's a nice box. Yeah, that Marge, I mean, the way she constantly says panhandling, that's funny too. Panhandling! She hits it the exact same way every time, that's why I like that speech. Yeah, no, the captain is really great this season.

She's underserved at times, but doing a great job. So that wraps up the Homer has, I guess I didn't categorize it as that until now, but this is also a Homer gets a new job episode too. Homer, Homer the Homeless, that should have been the episode title. We're not that far removed from the double Homer's new job episode where he was both an ambulance driver

and a used car salesman. Right, right. Yeah, a lot of these are very busy, these mid-season 15s. So now, speaking of things going too fast, right after Bart and Lisa realize they're best of friends, instantly, instantly it is over. And with like minutes, like 20 seconds left,

it feels like. This is crazy because is this burial mound going to amount to something? Maybe like what they unveil in it will be significant to all of their relationships with each other. Maybe it will reveal something about their connection as a brother and sister, but no, it's just like, oh, there's a curse or something.

Anyways, who cares, we'll never see that place again. Oh look, it's Millhouse. At best I can give them is that Lisa saying, oh, it says it's a curse implies that Millhouse coming back is the curse in effect in cursing her. That's the best I can think of with that. Yeah, I mean, this is the first I'm really thinking about this connection and I guess that's it, but not enough for a Simpsons episode. Although I did like the joke

about the very lame variants on Monopoly. This is around the time where there were a lot of like mall kiosks that would just have your favorite college university Monopoly version, where everything was just named random nouns, even if they weren't streets. Yeah, I just went to a toy store the other day, and they had a wall of, you know, the board game section. It was a wall of monopolies, but they were all, you know, proper themed things, like as in including Simpsons, of like it was TV shows or movies.

This one did not have any college teams, though that is because I live in an area with like proper sports teams So they don't have to care about colleges so much in the Seattle area compared to like say where I grew up in Florida Where they were very invested in the college football teams. I'd rather play Edna curbopoly It seems pretty sexy based on the cover of it So millhouse three turns in our second to last clip here. Hi Lisa! I brought you the Cat City version of Monopoly.

Baltic Avenue is now Wayne Street. It's awesome! Millhouse? I thought your mom took you away forever. I got a court order bringing him back. The judge said I was the most pathetic person he'd ever seen in court. Pity custody! Boo-yah! Ripple man, I'm here to take your pants.

Not in front of my son. Please! You're somebody's father? Yes, okay? Oh, boy. Well, I'm glad to be back. Those cap city kids don't think I'm cool anymore. We were having a sleepover and a robber came and wet my bed. Then he folded the bed back into the couch and disappeared into the night.

I knew you'd blow it. Now, let me show you that mound. You told him our secret? Hey, he's my best friend. Oh. I see how it is. Great! Then we're all cool.

The framing of Kirk in the background being pathetic and having his pants taken away, like that's funny. Oh yeah, that's the second joke where something is happening outside of the living room window. And Kirk has to be pathetic for the father to win in family court, am I right, folks? Come on. Kirk is definitely posting on r slash family court right now. That was a comedic take on family court, new listeners. But I mean, Millhouse Went in the Bed is,

they done that before, but I like that he says the terrible lie of a robber folded it back up and pretended he didn't do it. Yeah, that just ended his chances in a new town. And again, this is a very sloppy episode, too many ideas. We just cut back to the same room later that day. And it's like, okay, this plot needs to resolve. And I made a joke about this upfront.

This does feel like James L. Brooks' cosplay. Like, what would James L. Brooks do? This meaningful, emotional thing delivered through device because both characters are too ashamed to admit how they really feel or too ashamed to apologize. It feels like an inventive ending if it was written in like 1973.

Maybe for an episode of the Love Boat that David Chambers would have worked on. Or I don't know, season two Simpsons. Yeah, yeah. Well also speaking of Brooks, the scene that precedes it of Bart and Lisa basically being like an old married couple and giving the speech like if a woman says this,

it means this, like that feels a little like Brooksie but also a guy complaining that women are insane too. Yeah, this episode's coming down hard on wives. Wives of course will always love diamonds and give up anything for them and they're insane and if they say something isn't wrong, they're of course lying to you and everything's wrong. And if they say something's not funny, you better not laugh Because women are humorless. Of course, there's that too

Like it's you know mentioning all this you'd be surprised to see that a woman's name is on the script for this episode I feel like she didn't sign off on any of this. No, I Doubt that too. But yeah, so Lisa is mad at first part doesn't realize it until Homer tells him that he's in the doghouse And so this is where they use the just introduced monopoly board for a plot Which like yeah, okay if it's gonna be used to be the sweet ending You I think you have to have the monopoly board introduced more than a minute earlier. Yes. Yes Maybe it's one of the things Bart and Lisa could have done to bond with each other. Maybe it was like, it was more meaningful in their lives before

Millhouse showed up with it, right? Yeah. And instead it's cap city monopoly, which represents the thing she hates. So, uh, yes, Bart is, uh, offering to play the monopoly game with her. She says no at first, but then pulls up the chance card and sees that it is a sweet apology gift. These are basically like a coupon book that Bart is gifted her.

This sweetness leads to an aww kind of ending that then they try their best to cut through, as explained by Isabel Sanford. Pick up another. Bart will give back the Malibu Stacey head you thought was lost. by Isabel Sanford. Oh, do I have to? Mm-hmm. All right. This is what sitcoms call a schmaltzy ending, a sentimental capper to leave the audience feeling good, usually followed by a little coda to cut the treacle.

Granny, I'm gonna shoot me some Viet Cong. Yeah, well, I ain't cookin' them. And George Jefferson, wherever you are, we love you and want you to come home. Now the direction of the Monopoly scene is a little weird. I wish when Lisa says I want to use this card now and Bart's like oh really? We see the card on the ground and that's when it's revealed that it's a free hug and then we pan up to see the hug because when we see the hug immediately afterwards like well yeah

it was for a hug there's no surprise there. Yeah, yeah actually that's poor layout by the episode that actually has very good animation to executing poor jokes but you're right once they hug I'm like yeah this is so like that that's poor layout by the episode that actually has very good animation to Executing poor jokes, but you're right once they hug. I'm like yeah This is so like that is so corny their right to call it out as corny for sure And I guess the coda to cut the treacle is both wheezy and a fictional joke Sorry, not a fictional joke, but Beverly Hills I'm a Beverly Hills got Beverly Hillbillies fan fiction in which Jethro is happily signing up for the Vietnam War,

which again, I'm gonna give that to Dana Gould. It's funny, if you go to Shout Factory's YouTube channel, they've got a number of ones that just like stream something all day for, I don't see like days at a time. Mystery Science Theater is one of the ones that I usually leave on. Something I left on recently for my parent

while we left the house was the Beverly Hillbillies, and was the old black and white ones and I was kind of entranced by it because it's been so long since I've seen them. TG I should pull these up, these Screen Jam productions. I should be watching them. They were really into writing new lines for Granny and Jethro. I think that there was a deleted scene one a bit ago, like they've been doing several. They did in, I definitely remember in Mo Baby Blues, they wrote new jokes for Granny and Jethro there too. Yeah, and then there was like saving Irene Ryan, their Saving Private Ryan parody, which is like,

oh, that's a lot, you have to know who the actress who played Granny is on the Beverly Hillbillies. And at least Isabel Sanford is explaining why they're cutting through the treacle here, but Gene on the commentary, he acts like, boy, I're cutting through the treacle here, but Jean on the commentary He acts like boy. I shouldn't be passing the buck here Or maybe he sounds like he doesn't like the ending but he says it was is david murkin's pitch and it acts Absolutely sounds like a murkin pitch of cut through the treacle. Don't have it end on an awe. Yeah

Yeah, I think ultimately he decides I don't know if I like this and it's been over a decade since those commentaries were recorded, let's find out. Yeah, I think I'd rather end on the Jefferson's theme and Isabelle Sanford dancing than, aw, give one free hug. Like that is too cute, but not original enough to be special either, so I'd rather they end on a joke. I do like the joke where George Jefferson is now a real person and he's gone missing. That he finally abandoned, and not the actor, but George Jefferson. Yes.

Because she wasn't being Weezy Jefferson before, she is herself, but now she is speaking to the character George Jefferson. A strange line to go out on, but it is kind of memorable. I guess he eventually got sick of his family and disappeared and has not been seen since, and they're begging him to come home. I just learned from Gayest Episode Ever, the secret life of Sherman Hemsley. Yeah, yeah, I had no idea. I mean, we should say that we all assumed that he was gay and just he never came out. I think, yeah, yeah. They found some vintage interviews with him that are

like oh this barely seems like he was in the closet even. Listen to that one for that but the you know that Jefferson song Moving on Up is a classic one of the best sung by Jeanette DuBois who was a cast member on Good Times so she's singing the theme for a different sitcom. It was big in 2004. I first heard the song outside of the show as a sample in Nelly's hit rap, Batter Up, where it's kind of the bridge. He recontextualizes and sings the theme for the the beans don't burn on the grill part of the song they call it the national anthem in this it's a baseball themed rap better so it reemerged in pop culture around this time oh yeah it was

a hit in 2000 I remember like in computer lab I heard that song playing all the time from the classmates sitting next to me in computer lab would eat would be playing it all the time or just singing it out loud, the song. I had no idea, where was I? I was in computer labs. You didn't have the cool computer lab buddies like me who were listening to Nelly back in 2000.

That's not it. And not only that, but he paid it forward because Sherman Hemsley even appears in the music video for Batter Ups. Oh hey, good for him. I'll leave it on an ancient rap song from the year 2000 there. Oh wow.

I love the credits take us out on Moving On Up. That's at least a good one. Yeah, yeah, it makes you forget the episode was kinda bad. And I guess final thoughts on this one, we talked enough about it, but it's like five different episode plots jammed together and they're all tonally completely different from each other but I will say congratulations for setting a high new standard for racism

in comedy. Let's hope they don't you know over top this one but man it was that feels like a new low in our coverage of post classic Simpsons. Yes I hope we never have to mention it again is like well it got surpassed with some future joke in the show when it comes to to racial stereotyping jokes like that with with the most ancient of seventies complaints about Chinese food. But yeah, I I'd say other than that scene, most of the episode is like half good storylines. It could have been like just you take two of them and they could have been done in a better episode. I don't even blame the freelance writers too much because I don't think they are the caliber of a Simpsons level writer. I think they could have found

many more deserving people to write these, but I don't even blame them because everything they wrote got rewritten anyway and their original pitch wasn't even taken really. They were told, oh, you said homeless guy, Homer's a homeless guy. That's your new story. I mean, who knows? Maybe their episodes of Barbie Dreamhouse Adventure are basically like Succession and we just don't know about it or Severance, one of those S shows. They could be killing it on all of those shows. And maybe we would learn a lot from taking their college class that got turned into a book. But I think the nicest thing I have to say though is that I think Matt Nastic and his team at least added visual flourishes and got to take the risks I was hoping to see in non Lauren McMullen episodes.

So I welcome that in this episode and and hey, it's where you get the meme of you just made an enemy for life and Scottish people hating everything. Sure, sure. I'm glad that something of value came out of this. But thanks for listening everybody. This has been Talking Simpsons. And if you want to support the show and get all of our episodes ad free in one week ahead of time and also access to a huge amount of full length mini series episodes, head on over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up there again for five bucks a month.

You get access to all the stuff I mentioned earlier to go into more detail. We do a lot of shows about other shows so we've covered things like Batman the animated series, Mission Hill, The Critic, Futurama and King of the Hill. There are over 200 episodes of podcasts covering those and then when you sign up for five bucks a month you also get two new episodes a month one of Talking of the Hill and one of Talking Futurama so access to a huge catalog of back content and then new content all the time, ad free episodes, things one week at a time. It is a steal at five bucks a month at patreon.com

Talking Simpsons and there is a ten dollar level as well. When you sign up for that you get access to the five dollar stuff, but then you get one very very long podcast a month only for patrons of that level. What's going on there Henry? That is the ten10 level that has our what a cartoon movie that Bob is referring to. That is our animated feature film discussion that we do each month. That's really like three podcasts in one. It's also ad free, just like all the $5 stuff, but you also get to hear almost five hours or even six hours sometimes of us deconstructing an animated feature film last month, we covered an American tale Tale the 1986 Don Bluth film that was produced

by Steven Spielberg at the height of his powers. The month before that we covered How to Train Your Dragon from 2010 and this month in April as part of our April tradition of covering live-action stuff or mash-ups we're covering Looney Toons back in action, which has a lot of interesting stuff that happened behind the scenes on that. So you will learn all about that in over 78. I just saw it in our collections page on the Patreon. 78 what a cartoon movies and it's growing every day. Us talking about so many classic films from the Disney Renaissance from Studio

Ghibli, so many other things. Check out all of it at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And I have one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Blue Sky and Letterboxd and other places as Bob Servo. And I have another podcast. It is called Retro Knots. That is a classic gaming podcast about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Retro Knots and sign up there for two full length bonus episodes every month. And Henry find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. And Henry, how about you? I remain h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g on Twitter, but I am also tweeting, but I'm also posting more fun stuff on Blue Sky where I am talking, Henry, which is also my name on Instagram. And if

you're following me and Bob in any of those places of social media, you definitely got to follow at Talk Simpsons Pod because that's the official account of this podcast. Whenever new stuff happens on the Patreon, on the free feeds, live shows, anything else, us guesting on other people's shows, you learn about it if you follow at Talk Simpsons Pod. So please follow that today. And if you want a list of all of our previously released free episodes and lots of other cool stuff, head over to TalkingSimpsons.com. Thanks again for listening folks, we'll see you again next time for season 5's Bart Gets Famous and we'll see you then. It's you and me baby, there ain't nothing wrong with that Forever moving on up, moving on up

To the east side, to a deluxe apartment Smithers, the board of directors is coming here today I don't want them to see Snap, Crackle and Pup down there Sir, there's a big cardboard box out back that could keep them amused They can make a fort No, no, just give them each a nickel and send them to Mose. Let them wail away the afternoon, spilling their beer on gullets and trousers while drooling over French

postcards.