Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Missionary Impossible With Conor Lastowka

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

This week Conor Lastowka from Rifftrax and the 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back podcast returns for a biblical experience of a podcast! As Homer runs afoul of PBS and Betty White, he heads to a stereotypical island in the South Pacific to not NOT lick toads. So stay tuned for his adventures... or should we say misadventures? Listen now or Jebus will punish you! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

bling blong everyone our new podcast mini-series talking mission hill is now exclusively on patreon put on your spicy pants every friday with a new podcast covering each episode of the cult series from simpsons legends bill oakley and josh weinstein five dollar subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons can hear every episode, plus all of our previous mini series about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsley, sign up for Talking Mission Hill today! Alright! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we stab our problems away. I'm your host, the powerful but insecure Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of the

Simpsons, who is here with me today. Why, it it's Henry Gilbert and why did I register with InstaTrace? And who do we have on the line? Hey everybody it's Connor LaStoca back again and I just also don't find Hagar the Horrible funny so I can relate. Joe Biden does apparently and today's episode is Missionary Impossible. Here he is, folks. The man who saved PBS, Homer Simpson. Today's episode aired on February 20th, 2000. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, boy, Bobby. Santana sets records by winning eight Grammys for his album Supernatural. Boo. Bobby Santana sets records by winning eight Grammys for his album Supernatural.

Boo. David Letterman returns to television for the first time after his quintuple heart bypass surgery. And Vin Diesel begins his road to conquering the world with the release of Pitch Black in theaters. So quite a week of news there. david letterman had not pulled through that that would have been one of the crappiest weeks in history for entertainment wise oh yeah and that santana album i mean uh everybody loved it but i feel like it was like mom and dads were rocking out to that they're like we're still cool yeah yeah it was a real your mom and dad are half drunk on the porch kind of album oh i remember my dad text uh i amming me about it

on aim at uh my freshman year in college i think that was probably an album worth 75 of sales came from starbucks nationwide it was an album that united generations because you know the youngsters could hear their favorite pops guys singing over his song his guitar licks and then the older folks could be like you know i heard him at woodstock like everybody can just say i went to woodstock i saw santana there yeah that david letterman thing it was a crazy few weeks where you know you just hear oh he went in for a normal checkup and they said you need a quintuple by heart bypass right now and that's like every valve is going out and and and so there were fill-ins every week every day for weeks uh on top of just reruns and then who was he johnny carson

come on everybody uh i only remember the robin williams one oh that's the only guest host i remember i and also with that when letterman came back of course his guests were the foo fighters because that learn to fly song like apparently really inspired him during ever long ever long oh sorry yes yeah yeah i think if you showed people a picture of david letterman now and david letterman 20 years ago and said which one of these guys just had a quadruple bypass probably not get a lot of right answers it looks like david letterman fell asleep under a tree and woke up 50 years later he's got a real red fan winkle uh appearance to him now i love that he you know contractually couldn't grow a beard for decades and then he's like i just getting all my

beard growing in in one one go and yeah pitch black that was an interesting movie because it the trailers really didn't talk about Riddick all that much. You're supposed to be surprised in the theater because it's a setup of all these space marines for an alien movie, and then they get all killed off fast, and then it's just about the dude who can see in the dark that is going to fight the alien monster. It's a movie that's also a chronicle.

Is that correct? It's part of the it's one it's one of the many chronicles of riddick i i love that that one film it wasn't even that popular it was like number four in the box office was the highest it got and yet once vin diesel got more famous he's like well uh it's time to launch the entire chronicles of riddick world and and they had the first one, and it kind of flopped. He made a video game that was pretty good, and then after Fast and the Furious got huge again,

then he could be like, no, we're making another Riddick. This time it'll work. And I think it still didn't work the next time they did it. They do fine, but it's like his XXX movies. Unless it's just the purest cocaine rush of Fast and Furious, nobody wants the lesser Vin Diesel franchise. Apparently there is a Riddick 4 coming. What? Riddick 3 is news to me, but that's like a direct-to-DVD thing or something.

Oh, okay. I don't know. Maybe it is. I don't know. But there was a movie just called Riddick in 2013. i do and i actually did go to theaters i'm sorry but it deserved to be on direct-to-dvd my fingers are crossed that riddick 4 is riddick versus x versus 7 bring him back has has the riff tracks covered any of the riddick uh mythology no we did uh the first triple x very early on and then we did i think it was sort of

their return to box office prominence was the uh fast four fast and furious they i that's the last one i saw but uh that was a fun one to do just because they are remarkably dumb but that was before the rock got involved we should probably take on one of ones that he is involved in oh yes yeah those okay the secret to those movies that why they're they're so funny to me is that uh they all go by wrestling psychology in pro wrestling big time stars don't like to lose to each other because even though it's all fictional they're like well you don't get to beat me i get to beat you and it's just all these arguments about it and the behind the scenes stuff on all the fast movies is like that vin diesel doesn't want to lose to the rock on screen and the rock doesn't either and anytime

anytime vin diesel's character loses to anybody like when he loses to jason statham in a car race he has to have like a bit of a speech of like you actually cheated and i would have won and you're a loser actually like he it's so it's all fictional but they they take it very seriously who loses fictional fights in in fast and furious movies so joining us today is connor from riff tracks welcome back connor you're last with us on um monday can't buy me love and as of this recording in uh around mid-august you guys just released what could be the worst movie you've ever riffed uh lycan colony although i haven't watched it yet i want to see if it's as good as or sorry as bad as roller gator roller gator is the low bar for riff track movies still for me yes and i i very much agree with that this sort of uh lycan

colony is the worst movie we've ever done movement got started behind the scenes here and i i can't say that i i agree with it i think that you know you look at Roller Gator and it's hard to imagine anything really having that perfect mix of terrible camera work and annoying music and just the loathsome Puffett and the presence of Joe Estevez. And Lincoln Colony is, of course, quite bad. But I just can't. It doesn't have a guitar running out the entire runtime. It has multiple settings. It doesn't have it doesn't have roller gator doing impressions that is the secret sauce the secret sauce of roller gator is constant

acoustic like warbling in the background yeah yeah it's just a dude on the uh steps of the student union playing uh playing the guitar without really having a plan and i think that's like maybe the 13th time i brought up roller gator on these podcasts but i just am obsessed with it and then so yeah the people are all talking about Lycan Colony, and yet the director of Roller Gator has made a movie called Baby Ghost that is worse than Roller Gator, in my opinion, and people refuse to entertain me and let us do it. I mean, it's just as bad.

It takes place all in an office building. It has Joe Estevez and Baby Ghost. I think just sort of laughs. He doesn't even talk like Roller Gator, so he's even more annoying we need a letter writing campaign exactly to mike bill and kevin convince them i well now i gotta watch this like and call me to see how it holds up but uh it's quite fun it's uh there's a full-on fursuit that is a one of the evil werewolves you got thick boston like chowda accents on these people even though they are clearly in a mountain town that is not uh not in boston uh there's like something that's always

funny in a riff tracks is when they try to bite off more than they can chew in terms of uh introducing heavy plot events a la uh global warming in in birdemic so this has a uh a surgeon who had to leave his town and move to this town because he performed brain surgery drunk and killed the patient jesus wow so i mean that's uh that's uh handled with all the subtlety and grace you might expect you know what i like about joe estevez though is that he's loyal but he's like he'll he he'd be friends a filmmaker or another actor and he'll just keep doing it i mean i also just love that he's just a full-time character in the tim heidecker greg turkington universe of on cinema he's just like joe estevez will show up for anything they ask him to which sure yeah yeah yeah if you could find a silver lining if he's a kind person who knows but uh he seems like you're not defend the performance in roller gator no no and

i mean that's that's hardly his only bad performance but uh but yes connor you were last year for season 10 i think uh you were you still regularly watching simpsons in season 11 like this this is the first one after the death of maude this episode so oh wow yeah i did not know that yeah i didn't look into the sort of uh what else was in this season but i i know that freshman year of college like i said i would have i've still been watching him like carving out the time to watch him i remember that one with uh mel gibson and the shifty eyed dog i think was in this season maybe and uh tamaco both uh both of those i thought were pretty good so we'll get to whether my opinion of this one remains the same but i i do remember watching this one and i sort of remember the the reaction people had after it of sort of

quoting some choice lines from it henry and i were talking before the recording this is a real nutty time for the simpsons uh nutty and dark for a lot of the fans just like a lot of bizarre choices a lot of like middle fingers to the viewers at home like if you expect an ending well fuck you it's just a very weird like this this season in particular just very memorable for me like the spring of 2000 just what is what happened i mean i think there's a recovery i think 12 was much better uh and i do think things in this episode are funny but the back half of 11 is just nutty it's all weird and in in off-putting yeah i think from grift of the magi onward they get so random and also just have endings that go like shrug whatever like we we got to the end 22 minutes

have passed and it's over like that's that happened with this one and i didn't i honestly didn't remember that happening but it was very much the uh i don't know mo type of thing i don't know where that fits in the chronology but see that was their first taste of the poison and then after that was in season nine and i think two years by now two years later it's just they're so used to it they're like yeah we've done it enough times now people didn't get that mad about let's say mo so in my memory of watching this episode the first time i didn't hate it but i was definitely still reeling from the death of maude and then having like a zany parable kind of episode like this one

that also aggressively doesn't have an ending it did kind of it made me more bothered at watching the show i think it's another it's another reason i would fall off not a couple years after this one it's it's a one-two punch i think yeah i just remember being sort of uh surprised and irritated that that the gibbous thing caught off with some of the people that I was you know friends with in college and stuff like that and I was like this is uh I don't know if this warrants yeah back at me a lot that's how how it went gibbous does feel like uh it's it's okay like I smirked at it but it caught on in a way I was not expecting it feels like a lesser like Seinfeld catchphrase like yada yada like i never like that either i just like you guys could do better than

that i felt like they're trying to inject catchphrases into like the discourse yada yada trying way too yeah yeah yeah they uh i remember seinfeld was it towards the end of their run the uh the promos you know that would run during the week would be like and you don't want to miss the next catchphrase everyone's going to be saying around the water. Yeah. Jeebus, however, though, that's, it strikes me of more of like a low effort, like love day. Okay. With everybody type of thing. It's just like, you didn't really do a lot of work here. I prefer saxophone or trampoline. Sure. I think, you know, it spread, I think it spread around more in America. It's just a fun thing to say, you know, if you don't want to offend your Christian buddies, you say Jebus instead.

Or it's like, it's cute. It's cute comedy. But I mean, it's fun to say. I like saying Jebus. It's just a fun word. It's a fun comedy word, I guess. It's a little too winky. Now I wouldn't say Jebus.

It's like Jebus. Don't you mean Jebus saves? Right, Bob? No now i wouldn't say gibbous like gibbous uh don't you mean gibbous saves right bob no i wouldn't say yeah there's a uh i think that there's a definitely a subset of people who are uh atheists and don't have a very good sense of humor and those uh you know the author of ready player one for instance strikes me as that type of thing so they like being sort of smug about the atheism but don't have the comedic chops to do it correctly so that's what that uh i think they they embraced the gibbous quite a bit and you are a ready player one expert so i'm pre-ordered ready player two baby i'm ready uh ready to dig in for the podcast god about that uh i i can't i only want to experience it through you and mike reading

it like well my my hope is that uh like i said about the uh law lichen colony biting off more than it can chew i hope it uh you know somehow addresses the the tension that has been around america in the year 2020 i hope they clumsily try to address that or something because that would be oh my way beyond his pay grade and would probably be hilarious uh he's usually so far behind the curve on that stuff i feel like it'll only it'll publish in like 2021 it'll be all about 2016 right but yeah so this episode two uh the way it starts is again it feels like the end of another episode it's so crazy this is so crazy for an act one it makes the other two acts feel even weirder to me i think yeah structurally it just feels very off yeah yeah i thought that too i i was just amazed at how long it took you know lengthy telethon the first act is like nine minutes and then the last act is like three minutes

yeah it's such a yeah uh and and they even mentioned on the commentary they're like we cut some of the pbs stuff because it was all funny but it just was taking up more and more time you know and ron haugi is one of their better writers in this time there's also just a real like first draftiness to this i bet they probably rewrote this one a lot but it's still it feels a little like no you needed to rewrite some of this but i all the pbs stuff made me laugh maybe it's just because of one special guest star who's who always makes me laugh i do mean oscar the grouch no um so uh the episode begins with homer watching pbs uh bart can't believe it either i do like the pbs logo having simpson overbite drawn into it that's a that's a nice little parody and uh i think we're all comedy nerds of a similar age here. Oh, yeah. I mean, didn't we all grow up discovering BBC comedies through our local public broadcasting?

Oh, yeah. 100%. I would be in hotel rooms with my family, and it would be like, are you being served? And Mr. Bean would be airing. And that was the only place I ever saw those. And so by therefore, I thought they were great because I got them in such small doses. Yeah, I was a huge fan of Red Dwarf when it was airing in the mid 90s on pbs and i had no idea that pbs uh sorry i had no idea the bbc seasons of tv were like six episodes so i'm like oh my god 1989 the first season there

must be like hundreds of episodes of the show i can't wait like four weeks into the summer i've seen it all yes yeah there's i also red dwarf and Mr. Bean. I watched a ton of plus also like the original Monty Python, sometimes Monty, uh, eventually Monty Python, like it graduated to Comedy Central and it wasn't on our local PBS station anymore, but also like Fawlty Towers, the young ones and Black Adder. Like I watched all of those and there's, I, it was so weird to watch like the joke they have about seven episodes long. When you realize Fawlty Towers is 12 episodes and it's just done, you're like, what, what? What?

There's just no more. I've seen all of Fawlty Towers. I saw a tweet that went viral this week with something about how BBC shows are either, you know, we had three episodes in the Christmas special or we've been airing every day since 1953. That's right. Yes. Like Doctor Who is eight million episodes. That's also the weird experience of watching characters age. You just see these actors. I watched Are You Being Served somewhat regularly and I didn't realize it was like it's 70 episodes long, which meant it ran a decade and so many people died on that show yeah I checked that two actors died and I mean look

maybe that comes from casting 70 year old British men I mean in your lead roles maybe that's it but yeah it ran for a decade and all those people died and you just see them age as it goes it's it's it's a weird feeling to watch it that way i i also think it's you know looking back on it like the bbc kind of subsidized american programming by just making these shows that they could rent out to american public broadcasting and fill our time also as a kid i mean i liked the naughtiness that occasionally, you know, PBS would not censor something like you get to see a butt or some swears or something. Oh, yeah. Late night PBS was something else. And by seeing a butt, I mean seeing Rowan Atkinson's butt in a Mr. Bean sketch.

But yes, Homer himself in this first clip is learning the joys of British comedy. You're watching PBS? Hey, I'm as surprised as you, but I've stumbled upon the most delicious British sitcom. Do shut up. It's about a hard-drinking yet loving family of soccer hooligans. If they're not having a go with a bird, they're having a row with a wanker. Cheeky. I don't need a man. I don't need a man. with a wanker. Jiggy. Jolly sodding, X-Mas Major.

Choke on it! Oh, crikey! You gave me a smash on the noggin last year! And that Christmas special thing you just mentioned too, Connor, is so true like this is their christmas episode wow yeah that's a timely tweet i saw it's i like the uh i i like to imagine this show do shut up facing up uh after paul f tompkins's fake news show no you shut up yeah they really zeroed in on just the uh the lower class sitcom that is too hideous to air in America.

Just like ugly characters being violent and rude to each other. And also like the set is drawn to look so ugly too. Like it makes, when you would see things like The Young Ones, which I think this is like most parodying. Yeah. When you see that, you're like, boy, these sets look like shit. But that's what's cool about them to me. It makes you see how most U.S. sitcoms look too fancy, too well done, like the crazy house that the Full House characters live in, for instance.

And that song played there is No Feelings by Sex Pistols. It's one of the lesser-known songs from the never mind the bollocks album all right look i probably mispronounced bollocks bollocks probably maybe they wanted a more expensive song and uh and yeah they were on a real soccer hooligan kick at the time too because in a couple episodes in part to the future the prime minister will also wield a lead pipe in similar manner and and also the old lady that comes in and scalds them with tea it really reminds me of the late terry jones's housewife oh yeah i think i think that's where the animators are pulling from here but i found it interesting just to have homer laughing at the guy who so obviously sounds like

you know dan castellaneta doing the hooligan voice it was a sort of a jarring uh juxtaposition oh this episode is a parade of accents. Oh, yes. Yeah. We'll get to it. Oh, God, yeah. But yeah, also that Homer, this would be the only thing Homer would watch on PBS. So it's a great pick as well. The Simpsons will be right back hi everybody henry gilbert here and a big thank you to our guest connor listoka from

rift tracks and 372 pages i'll never get back the podcast always fun to have him on and you know if you enjoy this podcast and other ones like shut your gob and do shut up you should sign up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons that supports me and bob doing this full time as our real ass jobs but it also gets you a ton of exclusive bonus content that you only get as a Patreon subscriber. That's stuff like every episode of Talking Simpsons a week early and ad free. The same goes for our sister podcast, What a Cartoon. Every episode of that a week at a time and ad free. And over a hundred exclusive podcasts you can only hear if you're a $5 and a Patreon subscriber, where me and Bob have covered shows like King of the Hill, The Critic, Mission Hill,

and Futurama in the same Talking Simpsons style. And you can only hear those if you're a patron. Why, at the end of this month, you're going to get to hear the second half of our Futurama Season 2 podcast, where we're talking about the last nine episodes of Season 2. you can only hear that brand new every friday for the rest of this year starting at the end of october only if you're

a five dollar and up premium level of patreon where you get all that five dollar stuff i just talked about and then you get an exclusive monthly extra podcast what a cartoon movie where me and bob for over four hours sometimes cover an animated feature film the same way we cover talking simpsons and what a cartoon the what a cartoon movie for ten dollar and up subscribers they get to hear me and bob talk about this month's what a cartoon movie scooby-doo on zombie island and all the previous months where we covered films like The Return of Jafar, Space Jam, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Akira, Kiki's Delivery Service, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, Aladdin,

A Goofy Movie, and so many more. You need to sign up at the $10 level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons to hear it all. So please consider doing that today but as as homer and bart are enjoying some british style violence they're interrupted by a big-time guest. Ah! Classic. Not hard to see why it's England's longest-running series, and today we're showing all seven episodes.

Hey, what the hell's going on? If you like great PBS programs like Do Shut Up and Shut Your Gob, you'll want to support our pledge drive pledge drive that's right betty white absolutely if you watch even one second of pbs and don't contribute you're a thief a common thief okay take it easy betty sorry but these thieves make me so damn mad you know who you are thieves you're mad where's my? And now it's time to go back to do shut up. Finally. But first, with your donation, you'll receive this classic PBS tote bag. Or this umbrella featuring a picture of our classic tote bag.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Love that. I guess let's play the jingle now to be as safe as can be. Again, recording this two months ahead of time. Who knows what could happen to a 98 year old woman i ain't dead yet betty white only 80 around that time of this recording yes wow yeah we have to do that at riff tracks too because things come out you know a

couple years after weeks after we do them and it's just like all right you know hold on kirk douglas oh crap like that well that's a big game i mean well for 20 years i would have said the same of like you know wilford brimley jokes and he only just passed away r.i.p wilford but yeah although he was probably like 59 for all we know this is a weird choice because betty white is not associated with pbs but i guess they originally wanted emma thompson for this but she was too pregnant to fly so Betty White was able to do it but yeah like Betty White 10 years from this episode airing there'd be like a real Betty White renaissance like the ironic rapping granny style take on

Betty White like let's have her do everything and I was like please she's very old very old she only before this it was probably only a couple years after uh Lake Placid which I recall her having a like a foul-mouthed cameo in there or something so that was probably a hint of things to come maybe that was the first like betty white swearing stuff that that was really big because i remember the commercials were like it's betty white saying like get the fuck off my property or whatever like and betty white's a very funny actor and she's always in on the joke but at a certain point it does feel like elder abuse just like make her dance around and swear she's got a few years left in her uh after hot in cleveland

it should have just been the end like just let her rest about that yeah and she's but i mean she obviously she loves to perform and also like she i i looked into it uh like her her husband passed away in 1981 she never remarried she said like hey once you had the best why why go back and also no she had stepchildren but that is what she was talking about well and also she she has no you know biological children and her uh stepchildren are all grown up like so i don't know maybe she just loves to perform that's just how she is we have to treasure every golden girl yeah we have left and she's the last one she's the final one you're right man man you're really above me yeah

i i hope you know she's only 98 years young i hope she makes it to 100 at least and uh she played an old lady 35 years ago she's she's so good as rose on golden girls but also you know it her golden girls performance is so good it replaces a lot of people well it got re-ran to our generation much more than the mary tyler moore show but she is so good as sue ann nivens on that show like she's so good and that's in the 70s 50 years ago they were doing jokes about how isn't it funny that she says dirty things because she was playing you know the happy housewife television character and then when the camera goes off on sue ann niven she goes like

hey what are you doing here you slut or what she's that was the jokes with her 50 years ago so that's how long they've been doing like isn't it crazy to hear her say a dirty thing but uh and that is how the simpsons do kind of use her here but just it's i think she's really funny here and this is better than a lot of her other old lady who swears content i think and i also i think this opening act is like 50 better to me just because i love hearing her say anything like every joke is better when she says it and i mean and these pbs tote bag jokes i i treasure every tote bag i have like they're they're much more useful to me than a lot of other uh freebies i i have too many tote bags it's a problem i need a tote bag for my tote bags

i uh i think the one i use the most is a free Mickey Mouse one I got at Disneyland. Like when me or the husband are going out to get something, like get groceries, we just say to each other, hey, did you get Mickey? You got Mickey? That's just our cute conversation. I have one from Powell's Books in Portland, which I can't go to right now. My favorite is a grocery store chain from iceland that's called bonus and it's bright yellow and it has a very curious logo of a pig they've chosen who is uh appears to be like having a stroke or an orgasm or both in between is like eyes are pointed to different directions and one is half closed so i treasure that one that's a sales pitch going to bonus and this is a really great version of how pbs pledge drives work like

i've uh my favorite time to watch on the pledge drives growing up was when in my area they would constantly i think this is probably nationally they would constantly play the les mis 10th anniversary concerts and the 10th anniversary concert is like two and a half hours long they made it last six hours like it was a day's worth of programming it was 10 minutes of music for every 20 minutes of pledge drive and and the way that guy the the hanks delivery of like and now we'll get back to this but first like that it's just oh the the frustration of hearing that but first you're like no get back to the thing i was watching but then again i would rarely ever pledge to my local pbs so i you know i i'm as guilty as everybody else and uh you know i mean pbs and their low funding is uh it gets in the

news every now and then the government it's already pretty low that's why they have to do pledge drives because they don't get much from the government that's why sesame street had to move to hbo right i i think that is partially why yeah well and for decades they the government kept trying to cut it and back then you know mr rogers or big bird could be like hey don't do it i'm on this and then they'd get scared and not do it but now they're both dead so i mean who's gonna who's gonna talk them out of it now they were the original uh ad block for patreon on podcasts that's right yeah that's that's how i learned how to do ad reads on on podcasts is who is from uh from big bird and mr rogers and uh and yeah so homer's being driven crazy by this pledge drive there's a great shot of like elderly people and hippies

who are phone banking like good good pics of uh characters there and yeah so homer decides he has had enough you know i've worked with so many legendary actors over the years who could be counted on to phone it in well now it's your turn to phone it in. Your pledge, that is. Please, please, we're only $10,000 away from returning to our show. Well, why didn't you say so? Yes, I'd like to pledge $10,000 to get them to shut up. From Anonymous.

Done and done. Dad, you don't have $10,000. How are they going to find me? Folks, we just reached our goal of $10,700. And it's all thanks to one generous caller who didn't leave his name. But thanks to InstaTrace, we've learned it's Homer Simpson of 742 Evergreen Terrace. Why did I register with InstaTrace, we've learned it's Homer Simpson of 742 Evergreen Terrace. Why did I register with InstaTrace? I mean, that's a great joke, but also 20 years later, that's everyone who bought an Echo or an Alexa.

That's right. I registered for InstaTrace by getting a free Alexa, which I have unplugged a long time ago now. Oh, you think that's going to stop it? Yeah, you're right. You've registered for Equifax by just sort of existing, and so they have your information, and maybe they'll leak it. Who knows? Hey, maybe by the time this goes live, I'll get my check for actually negative money because I got greedy.

You actually owe them the amount of the postage for them sending that piece of paper. They're going to send me an invoice. And I love Betty White's delivery of, like, but thanks to Instatrace, like, so great. for them sending that piece of paper they're gonna send me an invoice uh and i love betty white's delivery of like but thanks to insta trace like so great and and it fits in with like they had omni touch last season they're just they're having fun coming up with these you know 90s corporation names are really great and and ten thousand seven hundred dollars is a pretty funny uh amount that they were working towards. And then they send the pledge enforcement van, which I love that too.

And there's a weird joke of Bart running away. Like he runs out the window to go on a swing set. Like that was odd. I like the payoff to that joke where Homer thinks he's getting help, but Bart just got bored and went on the swings. And didn't want to go out the back door. Instead, just ran out the window. So Homer, though, his money is called upon. And he's fresh out of excuses.

Mom, Dad's on PBS. They don't show police chases, do they? It's an honor to give $10,000, especially now, when the rich mosaic of cable programming has made public television so very, very unnecessary. From now on, one of us always stays home. Agreed. Well said, Homer. And now for the moment of generosity.

Will Cash be okay? Absolutely. Well, then we got a problem. The banks are closed by now it's 12 15 maybe your movie star banks are open crazy hours but we in springfield are simple folk we like our cars fast and our banks closed okay fine we'll go down there but they're not going to be open and then uh constant activity at the bank the busiest bank you'd ever seen which that just may be very odd uh springfieldians i guess maybe they were the phone bank workers when he says our banks are closed i just sort of paused it and took note of these you know people

you've never seen again they're not the classic background characters yeah it's the same pbs hippies and well now seeing uh this busy bank it just makes me nostalgic i'm just like oh a busy bank full of people uh also there's a good little joke like visual gag that just flies by but marge is buying like greeting cards by the pound it's like just shoveling them into a big laugh at that i did like that that's a great it is a it is a this era simpsons thing like what are marge and lisa doing oh shopping yes and they have nothing to do with the plot i think in the next episode It is a This Era Simpsons thing. Like, what are Marge and Lisa doing? Oh, shopping. Yes. And they have nothing to do with the plot. I think in the next episode, there's a gag of them being woken up by a fake fire alarm Homer sets.

And, like, Marge grabs the vacuum cleaner is what she's running out of the house with. She's got a whack businessman with it in the arcade game. Yeah, yeah. that's true yeah all right it's more accurate than i thought that's canonical that's how she got the vacuum and uh and also yes they've they've learned by now at least like homer gets into wacky adventures because one of us isn't home to prevent it so uh and and these days i i mean public television does still exist and i think it helps for you know, that we don't think when we say, I go streaming and cable just replaces it. Who needs it? But it's like, well, not everyone can afford those things.

It may be people who can only watch things over broadcast really need PBS to see something that isn't just one of the four networks. And I think you can just watch anything on pbs through the their website oh or most things yeah you don't need like a fucking cable login uh that's uh that's pretty great i'm i'm sick of having to use a uh you know uncle-in-law's password once all the boomers die there will be nobody using those passwords anymore yeah yeah all of that will just end because no no person from that generation is actually using their cable logins for the internet yeah it's only for the children

and relatives yeah it's been amazing you know that's been a stock joke for years now but it just it hasn't stopped so like what what are we you know we it's still relevant it just has been played out until they flipped the switch, making it impossible for anyone to use someone else's. I feel like one of the rare people who is not sharing a Netflix account with eight other households, you know? Yeah.

Or like a Nintendo Switch account. Well, it's like the one form of like, you know, a medieval village where like you have the guy who makes shoes and he helps the guy who, you know, grows the crops and someone else is the blacksmith. We're all just, you know, we all have one account and we're supporting the blacksmith. We all have one account

and we're supporting the other people who don't have it. You know what? Me and Bob, we really shouldn't have separate Netflix accounts. We're throwing away four bucks a month. But yes, so Homer takes them to the bank. He tries to bluff his way through it, including sort of accidentally trying to rob the place. And then Homer tries to murder

someone oh yeah pretty extreme for old homer here i mean it got a big laugh out of me where homer uh tries to stab this guy in the heart over and over with a pen he just is just standing there not even flinching and then homer when he realizes it won't work he stops for a second and then goes for the crotch like he's gonna stab the guy in the dick it's so extreme man i again i'm thinking like uh you know we have to keep it in context though you know in season five homer was going to bash ed's head in to steal his tickets true give his noggin a floggin so it's it's not like that joke just because the uh the the specificity of the bank pens that they're worried you might steal at a bank is uh something that we've made jokes about before at riff tracks there was one episode

in a show called icebreaker where a guy said that he was uh i think he had to admit to his father-in-law that he was a bank janitor we just commented on the needless specificity of that and one of the things was like does he clean the chains that the little panda attached to like and and so uh homer has to admit the truth to betty white after he after he fails to kill a man oh i know everything is just i can't do it i can't kill a man you don't have the money do you homer and you thought you could stab your problems away silly goose why didn't you say so get them boys okay so this is my bombshell to drop here in this podcast uh when i was watching this what struck me was at this point in the episode i'm like oh with just like a few tweaks this could be a family guy

episode and i'm not saying that because it's bad i've enjoyed family guy in the past i watched it for six seasons i laughed at it but homer in this episode feels like peter griffin in that not only is he like watching a lot of tv but things on tv are coming to life and interacting with him and i think the fact that yo-yo ma garrison keeler mr rogers big bird elmo and oscar are chasing him might be more insane than underground jockeys yeah i think you are totally right and that it happens at the start of the episode instead of like the... A similar moment to this happens at the end of Homer being the food critic. Like he's chased by a mob of weirdos as well. But they're characters within the world.

These are existing people and fictional characters. And it does feel like... Oh, sorry, Connor. I mean, I know that Oscar the Grouch doesn't exist. I can't prove that there are not underground uh jockey elf leprechaun guys exactly yeah it's funny you mentioned that too because of the uh the joke they have at the sort of how the episode ends in terms of family guy yeah no this yes yeah but you're you're very right bob that this is it's family guy e and also south park e in that it's like they just say the names

of the things they don't make up a parody of them yeah they don't have like a fake elmo talk called like elpo or whatever it's just like i'm elmo i say my name out loud there is a bit of comedy through recognition here and it could just be a lot of it is all the toad licking because family guy this same year had an episode about toad licking where peter goes undercover as a high school student to stop this like toad licking epidemic uh i forgot they did that toad licking was in the news in 2000 i guess but i don't think i mean again um they a family guy was competition for them internally family guy was not a hit show at this point family guy was probably airing on tuesday and no one was watching in the year 2000 so it's not like they were like oh we want to be like a hit show at this point. Family Guy was probably airing on Tuesday and no one was watching it in the year 2000.

So it's not like they were like, oh, we want to be like the hit show. But it was like Fox was like, they say this on the commentary, Family Guy is cheaper. They have to take our notes. They listen to us. And you guys are too expensive. You're the dinosaurs. So I think internally they were like, we need to be wackier like this show. I remember reading about Toad Licking and like, I'm looking it up now, but like a 1989 Dave Barry column.

So he was ahead of the curve for the first time. I think of this stuff here too, of seeing all these specific people chase him. It's like a level of zaniness you can't catch up to. And to give you that at like seven minutes in, it's too crazy. You can't come back when homer is dodging oh yeah lasers shot by teletubbies and this big bird flies through the air i just think like where do you go from here how do you how do you come back to reality yeah i forgot the teletubbies are part of the gang of real things that are trying to kill homer i also i like on the commentary that they feel bad

about the yo-yo ma jokes because oh yeah that was whoo i i mean they not only is it just like a bad stereotypical accent but it also is not how yo-yo ma speaks no like so it's it's even more insulting i think i think it's a reference to how uh like in world war ii movies japanese soldiers, you die, Joe, because they would do that in mystery science theater all the time. They would reference like those old hokey lines from war movies. So I think you die now is sort of like you die, Joe. I think I apologize for my half accent there. But yeah, I think you're I think, you know, for if you were a boomer, that kind of stuff sticks in your mind. You watch that or gen x more

i'd say you watched all those car uh things growing up and it's more you're referencing those things than like uh than any like you know stereotyping attempt there but but i at least like that they on the commentary even 12 years ago they're like oh wow yeah and i spotted garrison keeler and then i forgot if i said that or not oh yes yeah he did mention yeah he's uh actually now you're reminding me he already did pledge drive jokes they did that in march on the lamb these same jokes actually but it was uh better than edward the penitent yes that's true yeah uh they realized you could watch dirty BBC comedies on PBS, just not the fancy masterpiece theater stuff. So, yes, Homer runs away.

He dodges death from Big Bird. And then he screams for sanctuary in reference to, I would guess, Hunchback, I suppose. And Lovejoy gets a lot in this. Morton, I remembered. Sanctuary Oh why did I teach him that word Quick You gotta hide me from PBS

Their bloodthirsty pursuit is made possible by a grant from the Chubb Group Give us the money Elmo knows where you live Please help me I'll do anything. I'll light a candle. I'll help with your next charity scam. The word is drive.

Here, here, Bob's your uncle. Let's just get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Nothing to see here, people. Just headed down to the dump with these children's letters to God.

That's, uh, taking children's letters to God to the dump is funny. I did like that. But I do feel like... Didn't they jettison children's letters to God at some point in time? Oh, yes, yes. Deep Space Homer. That was part of the cargo. I like them just throwing them in the dump.

Boy, you're right and that they said on the commentary children's letters to god were was pitched by dave merkin and that's the dave merkin episode the deep space homer so uh a lot of similar jokes here uh pop it will also same homer's escape here kind of similar to how he escapes an eiei dough from the uh but he's hiding behind the christmas tree in that one that's right and i do feel like there are funny jokes in this but i feel like super low-hanging fruit is like what if elmo was what if mr rogers was violent what if elmo was violent pretty pretty zanian out there huh it just feels like those like i'm gonna kill barney style jokes of the 90s that are just like come on yes

yeah the i mean that was like the most uh felix biederman i will just i'm quoting him with that it's like the most hardcore thing you could do is saying i'll kill barney man like there's a great uh wikipedia page that's just called anti-barney humor. That shows you when you're a real hit. A decade of content can be about F.U. Barney. I mean, when Charles Barkley hosted SNL, the first sketch was him dunking on Barney over and over, which I think was a reference to him versus Godzilla in those commercials. Yeah, but I mean, even SNL was doing I'm going to murder Barney sketches.

So, yeah, they're better than this. And so Homer ends the act with this uh and so homer ends the act with a flight and giving some prayers in this last clip of act one we'll send you someplace safe till the heat dies down great but why am i on a plane homer how would you like to be a missionary in the south pacific so Pacific? I didn't agree to... Wait! I'm no missionary. I don't even believe in Jeebus. Let me out. Sorry, no can do. Oh, save me, Jeebus!

And I don't think we get another Jeebus in this episode, do we? Did I miss something? No, not that we did. I thought that they were probably more prominent than they actually were. But on the commentary, they said they brought Jeebus back for the movie, and I just remember that they did. Yeah, yeah. Not so fortunate. It was one of the cheap pops in the movie theater, I recall,

hearing him say Jeebus. Though the hardest laugh in my theater theater. I recall hearing him say Jeebus like, ah. Though the hardest laugh in my theater was seeing Bart's penis. Yeah. Hardest laugh followed by a very uncomfortable silence with some odd sounds and dipping.

I thought that the, you know, Homer, would you like to be a missionary in the South Pacific was a very like, the Simpsons are going to Japan type of moment. It was like, let me just state the premise where we're changing premises now. South Pacific which which is about you know uh folks going to a uh white people going to a island during World War II and uh they're mixing with the native folk around there it's uh it's got some classic songs like gonna wash that man right out of my hair uh what happened to her is this like a something about Mary situation I I may I i i'm talking about oh i get it gotcha but uh yeah the jebus thing i think they they credit that to ron haugi on the commentary to the uh the episode writer so though though he also when he talks about pitching this

episode it all this all clicked to me the real randomness of it because he pitched an episode of all of the simpsons go to be missionaries and that got shot down and then he says that he reworked the whole script with george meyer and then pitched what they sold in this episode i was like this does feel like george meyer george meyer has a lot of power and influence over this season and ian maxton graham had the ending on this one yeah it's again it's all the crazy enemy of the people uh well i look george meyer one of the funniest joke writers on the show but i feel more and more i'm going like he is one of the funniest joke writers but letting him lead the plotting of shows hurts ends up hurting the consistency of the series i do i think that's a problem as George

Meyer's influence grew over the seasons. Yeah, there's more. It just, it's funnier when Homer is, you know, becoming a heretic and looking for, you know, reasons in the scripture to not go to church versus, you know, replacing one letter in Jesus. That's in my opinion. i think you're right and uh so homer then arrives for the next two acts of the episode in uh microasia though i guess the the scene really comes back with making you watch reverend lovejoy like eat pie slow i laughed really hard at that just like how much he's savoring it how long like they're just staring at him until march kind of breaks the ice and and i also like that when bart says he's dead isn't he like that he's like i you guys are lying to me about missionary work my father's dead that's

that's a good joke i like that but yeah actually these all feel like very some of these jokes are lost on me a little because my family were not church going so jokes about like incomplete puzzles be having having a box full of them from the church, or also like, oh, the local pastor comes by and he eats all your pie or whatever like that. I don't think that was a very common thing, though. Okay. Pastors aren't coming by to say, maybe I'm just thinking of like old John Wayne movies where the pastor comes by. He's like, now did I smell some rotisserie chicken? But yes, they also present part uh them with

a ham radio which maybe they got from selma who classic ham radio gags i wonder who was the biggest ham radio fan in the group in the in a writer's room full of nerdy boys who grew up at least one of them had to be a ham radio owner the character of ham has not returned i was wondering if that uh my dad has to be dead joke was cut from the episode that i uh illegally downloaded oh oh you maybe you got the uh you're not watching it on disney plus and signed up sorry no no it sounds like you might maybe got the syndicated version. I don't know. It's possible, yeah. Well, did you get the joke of a butterfly burrowing into Homer's brain? Yeah, I did. Yeah, that was in there.

It's in his brain with that penny from the Tokyo episode. Ah, yeah, and with that crayon. The crayon, yeah. No, that was an odd one that didn't really have any payoff, especially since he does go on to uh abuse psychedelics in the episode uh the i i hate the uh it was all a dream actually fan theories but you've got the there's arguments to be made here from this moment on why everything's crazy yeah so we already recorded uh bar to the future and we were talking in that one how it is like them trotting out a bunch of like f troop humor ironically just because it's the year 2000. And it's like, well, weren't these jokes silly?

Let's just do the crazy talk joke and the dances with focus groups or whatever. This feels like Oonga Bunga Witch Doctor humor, like Rocky and Bullwinkle go to this remote island. And it really feels like all of those kind of jokes. And I mean, they were I mean, this is purposely dated, all this stuff. But 20 years later, it feels like there's a different baggage to all this stuff now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I think they were engaging with all this in a postmodern way. And I don't, again, I never, I never think the show becomes of these things in like through intentional racism or

anything like that but in this in this case yeah bob i think it is just them going like well yeah remember these old movies of like them going to the uh closed off society and just teaching the natives things like it there were there's countless uh things that engaged in these media that engaged in these plot uh media that engaged in these plots there's a lot of fun twists on this like uh jokes will get to like the test drinking out of the testicle and you think the guy has a crazy language but he's actually got a bone in his throat like i like those jokes like those jokes that are sort of flipping the the racist tropes on their head on their head or whatever yeah but then they just do some of the jokes

later yeah and then the whole point is you know that homer ends up bringing bringing horrible things to them and ruining their idyllic way of life so at least you know acknowledge that uh aspect of all the baggage and and i also like that when he meets with craig and amy they do get a good dig in there that like missionaries you know are more they're just as much about destroying culture as they are about like helping people like you could you can make the art i think i think there are genuine missionaries who probably go to other places and do it out of you know a christian goodwill to help other people and i also think that there's probably been a number of many missionaries who just bulldoze an entire culture with Bible stuff.

I think at some point during the commentary, Matt Salmon is on and he says, I believe this episode won an award for the sensitive portrayal of native people. So they know. They know. Like 10 years ago, they knew. This plot also, again, more zaniness that it only works if the other missionaries abandon him instantly and they're just like yep see you later like also you know we talked about south park the book of mormon musical is kind of this plot also like the the story of the missionary and wacky scenarios but the shadow water missionary yeah uh though i also love homer telling him like jet lag that's it's cute

but uh but yeah i think the best of all of the antiquated island jokes uh i think you're right bob on which one is the best are you enjoying your ox testicle oh yes very much so really you sure you wouldn't rather have a coconut? They're delicious. No, I'm good. Hey, what happened to all the shirtless girls you see in all the geographical magazines? Craig and Amy gave us the gift of shame. All the naked women are on that island.

Yeah, anything goes over there. Bouncy, bouncy. What was that? Oh, we call that... Sorry, fish bone in my throat. We call that earthquake. Great. Now my testicle's got ants on it.

Thanks, sweetheart. Have a Bible. My name's Homer. What's yours? I am Uvi Lui Uki Tana Wanje. I'm going to call you Lisa Jr. So, yeah, the thing I noticed was just the detail they put into the, what is revealed to be an ox testicle. It was, you know, it had hairs on it which was when the

ants were crawling on it was oddly specific for this instance what is homer drinking out of the ox testicle i mean that's a scrotum i guess yeah they can say maybe they could get away with saying testicle but not scrotum but like that is not i i mean i i believe anatomically like if it was simply a testicle he was drinking out of, it wouldn't be hairy because that's inside of you. So I have a feeling he's drinking that testicle out of a scrotum. It's one. I'm going to say it's half of a scrotum.

Yeah. Because it's just like where one ball would be. We're really thinking about this. Well, how big is an ox's scrotum? Well, I mean, Google Image Search will help you with that. Oh, thank you. Too big. When I used to go to Vegas and go go to like the cheap casinos they would sell like a beer like a large

probably 40 ounce beer inside a plastic football so i think that the uh the springfield land at universal studios should probably sell the you know pina coladas inside ox testicles that's a you know that they're they're missing out on that money. When they reopen in Springfield, they need to start selling the ox testicles. I mean, once you hear that, I can't not see it as like they got away with Homer drinking out of a Harry Scrotum on television. But again, what is he drinking out of that? That's for the viewer to decide. Well, and also I like that when they say ox testicle, the jump you're supposed to make is like, oh, the normal setup of this joke would be drinking ox testicles is normal to the Islanders and Homer's having to disgustingly do it to keep up with customs. But when they go like, really?

Like they're grossed out by it. They're like, why? They don't understand why Homer chose to drink a bull scrotum or an oxen scrotum when they have a coconut right there and they're great. And also to let you know, this was written by writers who grew up looking at naked people in National Geographic. I was on the tail end of that generation. Yeah, you can still see them every now and then but you were like the you had other options so you were you were slightly off put by people who were like that was their only uh thing to get erotic uh pictures from i i remember pals of mine at junior high they found out that like oh our library has a collection of national geographic going back years and years and they eventually like cataloged

which ones had naked people in them now wow they were burned uh well now obviously you know the grown-up eyes that that kind of fetishization of naked native people in that way is super problematic and bad like it it uh but that's just how that's how a lot of kids got their, young people got their jollies in the pre-internet age. Like it's, it's problematic, but that's, that's where the joke comes from. And now they can see, you know, literally any array of fetish within seconds of logging on to their, you know, freshman year Zoom orientation. Oh God. Yes. on to their uh you know freshman year zoom orientation for oh god yes yeah no i uh amy poller in her book has this great joke about how she heard from a friend who's like they try to restrict their kids seeing any kind of pornography but their son searched for the word asparagus on google without safe search on and it's just a uh a picture of a person putting asparagus into their anus and everywhere you look it's porno

porno porno uh and you know i didn't realize i was in amy poehler's book that's flattering uh the you know we say the ending is cheap but they do set up the earthquake here that's true yeah fully out of nowhere they barely earn it and uh yes the lisa jr character has to be the most lines given to a character that's not lisa by yardley smith uh though i bet this won't be on like a reel of like favorite voices she's done these days and then when homer finds out that there's no beer tv well he goes crazy craig and amy craig and amy why don't you just marry craig and amy i told you we should have asked them oh how's the tv reception here excellent or tv you don't have tv but what will I watch while I'm sitting on the couch? Couch?

No couches either? Oh man, I need a beer. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God. It's an alright joke that the native people think that praying is chanting oh god over and over again on the floor that's funny but but that is also a little of no tv and no beer make homer go crazy from the shinning that's a little bit of that i could see that uh and now let's talk about psychedelic frogs so i did do a little research on this i you did some frog and by research i licked all the frogs i could find outside but uh no i i found it's funny you mentioned that 89 dave berry piece because i

found a 1990 la times article that i think was one of the that shows you the timeline of when people were alerted to like the main it became mainstream knowledge that you could lick a frog and apparently hallucinate and that the dea was starting to crack down on some frog ownership or or folks who own frogs to then take you can just lick a frog and apparently it'll work but it's more about siphoning those things off of the frog and then putting it somewhere like the i i read a 2014 io9 article about it and apparently you can uh it's cane toads and other toads in that family of frog that their secretions can cause hallucinations like not all the time but also like they're actually the frogs that are are toads that are really dangerous to pets like

dogs eat those and it can like mess them up or kill them and uh that's also why they tell in the io9 article they're like do it at your own risk because yes you will hallucinate you also probably vomit constantly uh lose a lot of like your muscle your muscles will be too relaxed to move and you'll probably have a heart attack there are easier ways to hallucinate yeah just by just by regular dmt just do however joe rogan says to do that just do it i've probably seen more frogs this summer out like in the woods and hiking and backpacking than i have in my entire uh life and the idea of just picking one up and licking one is no matter how good it would be seems like a a hard thing to wrap my head around i i can't believe they got away with

showing homer take hallucinogenics on television too especially in front of a child yes doesn't even really have much of a payoff right he's sort of just doing it like but it doesn't his eyes get bigger but you don't you know you never get a cool uh you know trippy sequence like when lisa does the gas or anything i guess he briefly sees the frog talk but i want i want more it seems to be like a very low grade hallucinogen well that's why you just have to take that everything after the frog looking starts is uh that is the hallucination so that's my that's in my top 10 fan theories of homer uh article i'm surprised there's not one about, oh, Homer dies in this episode and everything after that is a death dream he has before he hits the lava. God. But this is my favorite line of the episode, though, is Homer talking about his toads with the family.

Homer, are you all right? I guess so, but that first month was pretty rough. You've only been gone two days. Really? Without TV, it's hard to know when one day begins and the other ends. I miss you, Dad. Mom won't let me read Hagar the Horrible. I just don't think it's funny. I can see the house is falling apart without me, so here's the new order. Bart, you're the man of the house. Lisa, I'm promoting you to boy. Maggie's now the brainy

girl. The toaster can fill in for Maggie. And Marge, you're a consultant. Dad? Yes, boy? I just want to tell you how proud I am that you're showing an interest in your fellow man. Really? You're proud of me? Oh, yes. The whole town thinks you're a real humanitarian.

Ned Flanders is green with envy. Oh, really? Well, if you'll excuse me, I got some civilization to spread like butter on the English muffin that is these people with all their little nooks and crannies. Dad, are you licking toads? I'm not not licking toads. Yes, we said it up front, but Hagar the Horrible isn't funny. And it was just revealed that Joe Biden has a framed Hagar strip on his desk. Yes. And he's so old that he was in his 30s when Hagar started.

Oh, wow. That's how old he is. Yeah, I thought that was hilarious. And I retweeted it. And then I read the story behind it, which, you know, involves familial tragedy. And so I was like, whoa, I'm un-retweeting that. Well, yeah. I mean, the Hagar thing is Hagar saying to God, like, why me?

And then God says, why not back? Hagar is getting too preachy. Which God is Hagar praying to? Exactly. I guess Thor or one of the Teutonic gods. Odin. Yeah, I guess Odin. Yeah, I guess Odin. Yeah, I guess Odin, yeah. Or maybe, yeah, I guess Odin. But the, I mean, yeah, I think the Biden,

Biden liking Hagar, I mean, that also puts him in like your old dad category. Just like, ah, this Hagar, he's funny. What's he getting up to today? I mean, as a kid, I'd read, Hagar was lower tier for me in my, of course I would read every comic on the comic page every day if I could.

But I'd put Hagar above Snuffy Smith or Mary Worth. It at least had a funny drawing of a fat guy. And his duck. Yeah. And Lucky Yeti, he was funny looking too. Oh, yeah. He's funny. Yeah, it's one of those comics that will never end because it's a family business now just like the sun has been doing it for 30 years uh

it's oh yeah it's connected to the beetle bailey is or no i i'm getting i confused with the uh the other more like high and lois and uh beetle bailey and the other ones yeah but the hagar like i don't know he also it made me laugh more than Wizard of Id or BC. I'd put it above that just because they'd at least be, I guess, what entertained me the most as a kid with Hagar was the promise of violence. He'll be more violent than the BC characters with the implied pillaging of having a Viking as your main character. But yeah, I just love that the part i wondered for a second that joke always makes me pause because it's like wait is there something profane about about hagar

the horrible that marge won't let a kid read it but it's just she's like i just don't think it's funny not not not to go on too far about this but i was like okay hagar the horrible it was a comic drawn by an old man there's got to be like a million comics about him golfing and there are even for hagar even for hagar yeah like bc they were golfing high and lois was golfing beetle bailey was golfing snoopy was golfing like all these old men they were either drawing a comic or golfing god i'm pretty sure bill watterson addresses that in one of the books being like i loathe golfing strips and like the ones where calvin dad you know rides his bike or like the closest i've come to like letting my indulge my own hobbies in the strip.

God, like even wizard of it has golf strips. Every, every card, every comic strip had golf strips. Oh man. This, this,

despite how little it, it like actually would work in the world of the comic. We got to do a, what a cartoon now about that one, that one off special. That was just a bunch of different comic strips getting a cartoon. We should do. we should do well of course we still haven't even done garfield and friends yet though we're pretty low on our our comic strip podcast content uh but homer homer saying i'm not not licking toads like i just love the delivery of like i'm not not like is that there's a boyishness to it that i like and also march saying hello is there anybody

in there that is a reference to the pink floyd song comfortably numb from the wall you know what it sounded specific but i wasn't sure if it was a reference thank you they uh they certainly couldn't afford to put that song in the episode but having i mean just the animation of the frog talking is with marge's voice like that's fun that's very fun yeah yeah it would have been a good song to soundtrack the aforementioned missing hallucination sequence i you know now i need to re-watch this episode and try to sync it up with the wall and see if that song comes up during this moment i also love homer's wacky town speech of like promoting everybody especially how sexist it is

and lisa gets mad at being promoted to boy that's good and marge's consultant uh but that's a whole other episode of bart becomes the man of the house that they they barely touch on and we get like three scenes i want to see more of bart at work. That's the episode. I would cut all of this. The island stuff is not as funny as Bart working at the power plant. Like these need to be swapped in positions of A and B story, I would say. And another moment that also gave me pause in first viewing as a kid, and by that I mean teen, is hearing that Ned is like green with envy because it's the episode right after Maude died so i was just thinking like shouldn't maude still shouldn't ed be in mourning still like he shouldn't

be green with envy but also if we're gonna say that uh let's see like 10 seconds of ned being angry or like jealous or something yeah let's say this episode this whole month uh away for homer happened during the six months of ned mourning that the time cut that happens in alone again natural diddly uh and so yes uh homer then it's time for him to start teaching the bible uh he reads from psalms he reads a real psalm i looked it up it's uh 68 21 in the book of psalms and uh according to biblehub.com, Oh, good site. the translation Homer is reading is from the New American Standard Version,

which uses shatter instead of like crush or break or some other version of that. I looked up what follows the quote. It's more about how like your dogs will drink the blood too. Everyone's getting some of that blood. Wow, nice. It's quite an intense psalm to find.

That's a good one that you can find one of the scary old testament-y sounding ones those are those are always uh funny to bring up uh but then but homer is stuck on a real q a session about god here now let's open it up to some q a yes lisa jr amy said there are lots of religions. Which is the right one? Well, not the Unitarians. If that's the one true faith, I'll eat my hat. Um, if the Lord is all-powerful, why does he care whether we worship him or not? Ach, just saying.

Well, Ach, it's because God is powerful, but also insecure, like Barbra Streisand before James Brolin. Oh, he's been a rock. Oh, who am I kidding? The truth is I'm no missionary. I work in a nuclear power plant. Ooh, tell us all you know about nuclear power. Look, the point is I want to help, but you don't need a well or a chapel or an immunization center what you need a little razzle dazzle talk talk are you thinking what i'm thinking i am ack hey that's great now

let's get to work uh homer's very condescending hey that's great is kind of funny yeah just these other cultures and he's like i won't learn your names no no i didn't really get the barbara streisand joke in 2000 and i'm not sure i still understand it now uh i take it as the joke is that homer has a hardcore gay man's obsession with barbara streisand's life and that he can chart her career and know like well and as we all know bab she got a little too intense and full of herself but also very uh you know lacking in self-confidence and then she married james brolin and that that settled her out so i guess it's mainly just a joke about homer having that kind of obsessive fandom of barbara streisand that you would not expect from a man a straight

man in his late 30s in 1999 that's all right so now do uh do the unitarians one after that they just hate unitarians before for some reason they're not religious enough it's too welcoming it's back-to-back unitarian jokes because the previous episode is when bart is playing billy graham's bible blaster thank you yes and and when he wings someone it turns them into a unitarian which yeah because grandpa at some point in time there's like you know they're everyone's gasping and he says what is it a unitarian and that's right yeah i forgot about that yeah like the most i've ever heard of them outside of like you know in high school when they were like, someone's going to come in from every religion and talk to you about them.

You know, these could have been Scientology jokes and then they were talked out of them by like legal representation or a cast member of the show. Yes. Oh, yeah. We covered all that with you before, Connor. Yeah, that's right. Our movementarian episode. But yeah, the the James Brolin thing i mean i didn't now people just know him as like the father of thanos that's who james brolin is josh brolin's dad uh he played uh

peewee in the movie didn't he the movie version of peewee's adventure oh yes yeah in at the end of peewee's big adventure yeah i still think of josh brolin as the elder goonie oh yeah he he is the oldest goonie as well. Yeah. Well, then, you know what? Also, Bob, since we're recording this out of order and we did Barts of the Future already, it again struck me of like, they do this episode and then two, three episodes later, they're like, how about more tribal gaming jokes?

How about more gambling jokes? You're totally right. I didn't even connect the two. It's so weird to have and especially the homer well homer though doesn't reference native american tribes who gamble though and he says where he got his inspiration so it's just but it's just weird to have two in a row maybe that's why we don't see homer gamble all that much in bart to the future it's because they already spent their gambling homer jokes in this episode

he's more of a Bob Stupak figure in this episode I had to look that guy up me too thinking of ones I did not get that one totally lost on me I wonder you know did they know about Bob Stupak because Sam Simon is so into poker and and playing the late sam simon was a huge poker addict and he knew all the poker champions like his i mean his uh then wife uh you know i bet they were broken up by 2000 jennifer tilly she is a hardcore poker player that's why you don't see jennifer tilly in movies really anymore she's just into professional poker that just feel i mean it's further down the line but it feels like an anti-joke and that homer shouldn't know this information the audience definitely won't know who bob stupak is so he just says

that you're like what i yeah i believe it's just supposed to make you go haha uh but right before that is a pretty good joke about realistic flintstones yes again more more bird violence well we've got a jingle for that everybody hates birds right that poor pelican but yes uh the flintstones fun doesn't really play out in real life yes yeah i love it and also that homer's wearing like a turtle shell hat this is the first time i noticed it's like oh you killed a turtle for that hard hat when he gets his new costume it is very flintstonesy in this episode i forget if he has it yet he just is fred flintstone actually honestly this is fred flintstone gets stuck on an island episode of

the flintstones that's just what it is with not much different in it uh but yeah then homers are like well it's a living and so on and then the pelican is it was killed long ago by having a beat full of cement uh and then we cut to Bart going to work. Again, him interacting with Lenny and Carl would have been, seeing more of that would have been so funny. And then they also do like an opposite Burns joke about like, only when Homer is not there is it the first time Burns ever remembers who Homer is. That is true.

It's great. But yes, here's Burns chewing out parts. Well, time to get to work. Simpson! I've just reviewed your 10-year performance record, and it's appalling. But I'm not Homer Simpson. I think I know who Homer Simpson is.

In 10 short years, you've caused 17 meltdowns. One is too many. Yeah, but... You sold weapons-grade plutonium to the Iraqis with no markup. And worst of all, you took the Hamburglar's birthday off last Monday and Wednesday. Which is it? Now my voice is giving out, so I'm just going to poke you for the next hour or so. You know, UN inspectors never found the weapons of great plutonium that homer sold to

the iraqis what happened i i also love the delivery of like 70 meltdowns one is too many like uh that it's just tearing apart the reality of the entire show just like when homer caused his first meltdown he should have lost his job. I'm still waiting for all those characters from McDonaldland to come back. Like, you know, the ironic appreciation is there, McDonald's. Like, give us Mayor McCheese and Officer Big Mac and the Fry Guys. The Hamburglar, even. I feel like the last time they tried with that was Sexy Hamburglar from like five years ago. He used to be a mascot.

When we were kids, it was like a decade after the things that they were riffing on had been popular so like i didn't know until i was an adult like oh they were just ripping off sid and marty croft yeah and those things were existing long into the 90s i believe they even just hired sid and marty croft like employees they did there was a huge lawsuit and mcdonald's uh i believe they lost that's right yeah yeah i mean even the grimace you don't see them too much. Like, I think the McDonald's Playland characters, they went too far when they humanized food. It's like, no, no, no.

These need to be the people who like food. Once you have McNuggets that talk. When we were leaving short today, it has like these claymation teeth. And they really reminded me of those like how the mcnuggets would be like you know dressed up as vampires and mummies and stuff but i just it's hard to convey that in the line span of like a one-line joke yeah when we were kids uh like uh officer i'm sorry mayor mccheese was gone like big mac was being phased out and like um captain crook the the fish the filet-o-fish man i never saw he died in the 70s

he overdosed well i mean even the the early bird barely got lines oh yeah birdie birdie yeah the how dare you not refer to her by her name uh i think it was pretty much just the grimace great well the fry kids they honestly was the kids who took over it was the fry kids the nuggets yeah that's uh was the do you believe in magic hamburgers i'm more of a food folks and fun guy myself gonna play that at my wedding okay uh but that was the other song i i looked up the hamburglar's birthday there is none on the mcdonald's wiki so they've never officially said when he was born his first commercials were 71 but uh which the hamburglar he was still showing up in our things is we we got to know

him but uh uh but yeah now i think the last time grimace mattered was when he was uh stood next to some some guy who become president in some commercial uh there's a great picture of a former uh toronto mayor rob ford uh shaking hands with the hamburglar it's uh it's delightful peace peace in our time so after uh the fun little scene with burns and bart we head back to the island uh homer says a month's passed but then again he's having trouble keeping track of time like all of us right now honestly and and so homer chats up uh why he's set this all up and we get another east st louis reference in the show uh the favorite punching bag of matt selman apparently biloxi did have a gambling renaissance and east st louis had a like some sort of riverboat thing or yeah that's how both of them get away with it because they're just like it actually uh similar to how grandpa says you could

live in a balloon uh in some states you can just have if you're on the old Mississippi river you can say well it's the river though those laws are for the land about gambling and somehow you get away with it I mean you get away with it because by doing gambling it makes the uh towns much more money than not doing gambling and they're like uh you know they're like a a camper that has been parked up on blocks in someone's yard for for four years like those are boats in the sense that they are you know technically on the water but they are latched to that dock and not moving anywhere it It's not like cruising up and down the Mississippi. Disneyland's Mark Twain riverboat is more of a boat than those ones are.

Yes, 100%. You know, actually, I think Homer mispronounces here. I've been to Biloxi. That's how we said it, but I don't know. I didn't live there, but I have visited there. And let me tell you, Biloxi is boring. I don't like it i and i am somebody who likes gambling more than the average guy there goes my vacation so i mean the the draw of biloxi

is that if you live in the neighboring states of mississippi florida georgia alabama arkansas the those ones it's your closest ability to gamble, like other than tribal gaming. And so it gets a lot of people there. But what I didn't like about it and what actually was a draw for my gambling loving father is that Biloxi has no class to it. It's just like, no, it's just gambling. It's just gambling. There's no fun shows. There's not even like really great food.

It's just gambling and it cuts straight to it. Like, so I know a lot of people who are attracted to the gambling and Biloxi for that reason. I need the glitz and glamour and razzle dazzle of Las Vegas. Yeah, me too. Oh, man. I mean, my favorite drinking in Vegas is the giant baby sippy cup of a frozen daiquiri. Those are mine what's stopping you can go right now oh you're right they're living free they're not like uh not like i'm controlled by the berkeley government it's gonna be uh transformed into the uh walking dudes village of the stand by the time this comes out in november and uh homer's island blank

jokes like island island texas hold them that's it's a cute but like they they have a good point on the commentary like the could then the natives built the casino why is homer unveiling it to them oh yeah that's like they built it they should know what it is unless he just built the sign himself and the gaming tables it's a very good point as maybe as they were all building them he's like i'll tell you later let's finish it all first i'll tell you what you made and it's not even that shoddily made by homer building thing standards either uh and you know roulette is my uh preferred game now you know if i if i play i thought it was ghostbusters slots okay below ghostbusters slots uh games that uh involve other humans roulette is my favorite of those games and for similar

reasons homer likes it it's fun to watch spinning colors so this this casino is called the lucky savage the bark to the future casino is called caesar's powwow that's probably why they had to think of something other than lucky savage because they just did it like three episodes earlier also i did not know what dristin was until looking it up that they make the beer out of dristin and holy water which is nose spray and as we learned from the film wedding crashers drinking nose spray is actually very dangerous to you well more dangerous than looking frogs i think i didn't't see that movie because I'm approved of the sanctity of marriage, and

they should not be crashing anything. Also, I had to give a big oof when they out loud said ooga booga. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it was the intention. It was offensive to Captain Caveman? Is that why you were...

Yeah. I believe he was more of an unga-bunga style man. Maybe I'm thinking of Chuck Rock, the video game character. I think you're right. He's unga-bunga, I believe. There's a fine line between savage speak and caveman speak. But you'll know it. Like pornography, you know it when you see it.

And yes, in case you don't know who bob stupak is he's a poker champion and casino owner passed away in 2009 uh that's how at march just kind of just lets his comparison to bob stupak go away uh and then as homer is celebrating his second day he sees that he has destroyed paradise with his sin which this whole bit here the last act of this episode it's i think it's like too preachy it doesn't really do a big spin on it it really is just about like yeah homer destroys paradise with his modern sinful ways and he's trying to make up for it like there's not an extra joke on top of that you know yeah they just play it pretty straight even the uh i mean it's it's funny how

that guy has his face in a bowl of macaroni salad and just eats it by moving his head around like that's that's a fun and gross thing it did make me think oh yeah no more buffets either never again yeah that's no they're all done uh i mean what am i supposed to eat with my family at buffets or as i call them virus troughs uh also another like a weird moment here when homer is reflecting on how destroyed everything is is when lisa jr says to like uh says this hasn't been this bad since the a-bomb tests there's not a joke to that it's that homer goes like like it's just and then there's emotional music under it it's it's a weird i think it's kind of a mistake when in an episode this zany

to try to play an emotional moment there yeah don't give us stakes at this point it's too late it's been too wacky elmo didn't know the name of jesus we're in a alternate cartoon dimension here elmo crashed through a window already so i can't but uh but yeah homer homer reflects on his mistakes in this next clip. Oh, what happened? I gave you a glittering Vegas and you turned it into a skanky Atlantic city. Your alcohol and inexpensive buffets have corrupted us. I don't even like macaroni salad. But look at me!

Please help us. Our island has not been this damaged since the a-bomb tests like i feel like that not this damage since the a-bomb test is kind of just it's supposed to be taken as a joke but then that music tells you a different feeling for that i mean it's a joke about bikini atoll and the other places where like the French, we, we talked all about how like it was only a few years before this episode aired that the French finally stopped doing their A-bomb tests on South Pacific islands. But, uh, yeah, it's just, I don't know. It's weird. It's just a weird thing to make us care when I really would have preferred, like, let's see, let's see Bart working with Lenny and Carl. How about that?

Yeah. Especially because we have talked about, they just run the episode into a ditch and leave it smoldering there. There is no actual emotional payoff. Yeah, you know what? To go for emotion two minutes before they come to a plot cul-de-sac is kind of strange. But then we get one quick scene finally with Bart, which left me feeling weird. Guess who I saw at the supermarket today? Couldn't wait.

I just got off work. I'm sorry, honey. I just thought you don't. You do enough yakking at the beauty parlor. That's it, Bart. You're taking this man of the house thing too far. You're right. I'm sorry.

Tell you what. Saturday night we'll go out for steaks. Just you and me. A night out is a night out it doesn't get too like edible for me but i think it's cute that like marge is so neglected that just like okay it's weird that my son is posing as my husband but i never get to go out so uh steak sounds great uh it's uh but yeah this wasn't the uh the the moment where that everyone laughed at at the simpsons movie in your theater henry it's uh yeah i mean it is uncomfortably oedipal in its moment of like but also like not only does homer not only does bart become like

the dad but he also becomes like a shitty 60s dad who is it's like quit nagging me woman but but marge has never had more of a like i let me tell you about what i saw today kind of set up at the grocery store right yeah it's like it's you get a window into her life uh it's i also love her posing like she kind of has her arms like outstretched to the side of like her presenting it it's such it's a drawing that made me laugh she's been waiting all day to tell bart about this uh and and yeah that's that's the end of that story i i guess bart continues working at the power plant forever because homer burns to death in the lava so it would have been great if there was a resolution in that bart is actually a better a father and worker than homer in his absence you know here's some more henry making

up continuity for it in the previous episode that's where bart calls homer on like do you even go to work anymore oh yeah maybe that's why in this episode bart's like i'm not gonna let you stop going to work i'm gonna go to work in your place for a change dad it then comes to like a weird scene of homer having guilt and telling them like i ruined your island and either grab a stone or go to hell as he builds the chapel uh though i did laugh at uh the the two islander guys they're basically lenny and carl at that moment yeah like maybe you should shut up when he says to help them. And they're voiced by Hank Azaria and Harry Scherer. Yeah, yes, they just are Lenny and Carl. And so after some hard work, the new church is opened.

Well, I may not know much about God, but I have to say we built a pretty nice cage for him. These are from the children. Thanks to you, all of us finally have a place to pray. And I'm in a gambling program for real this time. How many times must we go to church to avoid hell? Every Sunday for the rest of our lives. No, really. Not bad, Lisa Jr.

But God's palace is way up on the moon so if you want him to hear us we've got to crank up the volume do you hear me lord homer's doing your work i'm the greatest missionary of all time uh and homer gets uh starts tripping balls in front of a child. Yep, yeah. I like that he carried that toad all the way up to the bell tower with him to then lick it. I would have liked to see him cut to God's fortress on the moon. That would have been a cool bit of animation, too.

That's not unlike Santa Claus's fortress. He lives there with Annual Gift Man. Yeah, I mean, also Homer's ears should be bleeding from this. And Lisa Jr.'s. But I do love the profanity of calling church a cage for God. Yeah, yeah. That's a pretty funny guy. Pretty nice cage.

And also the implication of like, oh, it's every Sunday until you're dead. It's like, that is kind of a lot, you know? That's a lot. But so the joke that I guess the plot they're doing here is that Homer's hubris then kills everybody. But again, I think I read this ending just to not call it bad writing. It's like, no, Homer hallucinates all of this. He licked that toad and then started ringing the bell it was a hallucination from toad one yeah toad uh i mean his eyes go wide even like i i love hallucination eyed homer as well but yes he rings the bell so

hard it causes an earthquake seemingly everyone is dead on the island the church steeple burns down and it's going towards the lava and i definitely as a kid had the thought of like what is happening it all happened so fast in my first viewing i was like where could this be going and boy was i surprised in this final clip we have here oh no this looks like the end oh that homer always getting into trouble and if you're one of the millions who enjoys his adventures or should i say misadventures, it's time to show your support. Sure, Fox makes a fortune from advertising,

but it's still not enough. Not nearly enough! So if you don't want to see crude, lowbrow programming disappear from the airwaves, please call now. Hello, Murdoch here. $10,000? You've saved my network! wouldn't be the first time and of course when she refers to crude lowbrow programming she turns off family guy

yeah that's or the logo of family guy that's their first real knock at family guy they're just like they they call it crude lowbrow programming they don't put it on the level when they have pictures of characters to represent fox they very specifically don't draw any family guy character in there they that is a clear choice being made according to somebody on the commentary like the king of the hill people were very mad that hank was in this episode it sounds like permission was not asked then i guess he. He was next to the super from the PJs. That was a blast from the past. They're good stubs.

Yeah, Bender's there. Scully and Mulder are there. Luke Perry, sideshow Luke Perry. This is the final year of 90210. It would go off the air in 2000. I'm glad you told me that because I thought even it being on in 2000, I was like, boy, that's an ancient Luke Perry reference like no he was still on television on that show and there are other screw you endings that i think are worse what i like about this is i was not that invested in the

missionary plot to begin with i wasn't like oh no homer what's gonna happen i do like the meta commentary about like yeah this network would not exist without fuck without the simpsons and i do i do enjoy that bit of it it's more creative than let's say mo or whatever they did something with it i i still would like a story i can buy into at least a little bit but uh out of all the screw you endings this is a little more creative i they just spent so much time with that pbs thing in the beginning that bringing betty white back felt like less of a cheat based on how much time you'd spent with her at the beginning that's true yeah and and i do like them kind of just bragging of like here's part to just brag like yeah this network would not exist without the simpsons like i i i mean you know in a world where there's no simpsons and there's no bart mania 1990 and 91

does the fox this fox network get another big hit that puts them on the map like maybe but i i doubt they would have kept growing to the point that by the mid-90s they could have you know baseball and football like a real network could have back then and so they definitely owe bart a lot and i like that they can even just pull out their old, I think really the only design they needed to make a new one for was Thurgood Stubbs from the PJs. Everybody else, I mean, Bender just works perfectly. You don't have to redraw him.

And they'd already had Sideshoe Luke Perry and Mulder and Scully on the show. And Hank as well, yeah. And Rupert Murdoch. So easy reuse of characters there i did i mean seeing bender i was really excited about in that moment uh he'll be back on the show in about a decade or so yeah they hold back on bender ever saying words on the show but he at least gets to appear there uh and and yeah that family guy doesn't get to be on that level is a very intentional thing it'll be two years i believe no uh it's the 14 halloween i believe it is where they do the family guy joke

that he's a clone of homer i believe a crappy clone of homer so which again adding to the complexities of the relationship of simpsons to family Guy, Seth MacFarlane really helped the writers of Simpsons unionize their workplace. He joined in on the WGA discussions with a brand new show in 99. So this is the one I knock Family Guy and I don't think it's as good as The Simpsons. But now I do try to temper it with, hey,h mcfarland did do a cool thing there he's not just like a weird guy who's a billionaire that makes people listen to him sing show tunes but uh he should be in prison for the simpsons guy yes sure sure many people should be in prison currently for that just i could never bring myself to oh you know it's worse too short it's actually worse than you think it is. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. It's at least two years, two years and then a suspended sentence and maybe, you know, probation. And if you do another another sexual assault joke with Bart in it, you you have to go back to jail. That's all right. But anyway, yeah, it's a real this ending is a real fu to plot and it's a wacky episode that starts wacky and then is just a long bit of islander jokes that have aged poorly there's

still so but uh as i say every time about random episodes in season 11 which are most of them there's at least some good jokes in there here and and there that I still laugh at. Yeah, I felt like it's better than I remember, but it wasn't that very dark period of spring of 2000 where I was online, very online then, reading the message boards, reading the news groups. And people were just vicious about every episode because of all the weird stuff they were pulling. And this is like a particularly polarizing era of the show. And I can see why like this fake out ending did not make people feel better after the death of maude like are you just gonna keep messing with us every week now but uh yeah like the island stuff has not aged as well but i do think some some classic bits came out of this and uh i appreciate it more it was a rough start to

2000 for simpsons fans yes yeah i was impressed I mean, I remembered a lot of stuff about it and I couldn't remember whether I'd ever revisited it. So, you know, maybe just made an impact in that time, whether it was, you know, good, bad,

or sometimes just a lot in between for it. I liked it better than the last one I was on for the Loch Ness Monster Willie's trip to Scotland one. You know, that also had a pull-out-of-your-ass ending

that involves gambling as well. That's true, yeah. Oh my god. It was back to gambling. But thank you so much for being on the show, Connor. Please tell us all about Riff Trax and your podcast, of course, and where to find you and support you online. Please check out Riff Trax. We're going to have, oh man, some good stuff coming

up. We're working on a sequel to a movie we did last year at the moment. It'll be out by then. And we have of course some Halloween and Christmas movies coming up this year. We're going to be doing on 372 pages We'll Never Get Back, a podcast I do with Mike Nelson of Riff Trax

and Mystery Science Theater. We're reading the book. It's called Midnight Sun and it is Twilight as retold from Edward's perspective. Finally. And you would not believe this, but it's not really that different told from his perspective. They still do a lot of the same stuff.

And then, of course, by the time this comes out, you're probably only, as I referenced earlier, a couple of weeks away from Ready Player Two, which is the book that got everything started on that podcast. So we're going to read that together and see just how bad that, that followup can possibly be. I'm really interested to see if he maybe works in some of the ready player one haters into his, into his narrative this time around. So I'm hoping we make an appearance in there. You're going to be shocked to find out that you're like,

there's a lowly prison guard who's evil named Connor in the, yeah, crow T robot, crow T robot is being crucified. Shawshank redemption. prison guard who's evil named Connor in the book. Yeah, exactly. Crow T-Robot. Crow T-Robot is being crucified. Shawshank Redemption fate will befall him or something. But thank you so much again, Connor. Absolutely. My pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me on again.

So thanks again to Connor for being on the show. Please check out Riff Tracks and the podcast. 372 pages. We'll never get back. Both great things you should listen to and watch. As for us us if you want to support our stuff and get every episode one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there we'll get that and also everything we've been doing behind the five dollar paywall for the past three plus years that is over 100 bonus podcasts

which includes all of our limited miniseries the the most recent one, which I think at this point will be happening. It will be Talking Futurama Season 2, Part 2. The remainder of Talking Futurama Season 2 is happening between now and the end of the year, and it's only for $5 patrons. If you sign up, you'll also get the rest of Talking Futurama and all the other miniseries we've done before that, along with interviews and so many other things. Too many things to list here,

and if you sign up for $10 a month, you'll get all the $5 stuff and also one mega long podcast once a month that is just for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Well, Bob, you are talking about our What a Cartoon Movie podcast. Our sister podcast is What a Cartoon,

where we cover a different animated series each week. And the expansion of that is our What a Cartoon Movie podcast, where we cover a different animated feature film once a month, only for our $10 and up patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. On that podcast, often for over four hours, we talk about movies like recent ones, The Return of Jafar, the Disney direct-to-video classic, Ghost in the Shell, the 1995 film, Space Jam, and so many more. You need to check them all out. You get a back catalog of over 100 hours of more exclusive podcasts on top of all that $5 stuff you just heard Bob talk about. If you sign up at $10 a month or upgrade your pledge to $10 a month as a subscriber at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons so i've been one of your hosts bob mackie

you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast by the way is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two exclusive episodes every month henry how about you why you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g all the henry gilbert updates are there and you should be following me already come on h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g it's so easy to remember also if you're following me on twitter you really should be following the official twitter account of this podcast at TalkSimpsonsPod. TalkSimpsonsPod not only has fun stories and tweets that we do every now and then, but it's also the best way to stay up to date for when new podcasts go live,

either on the free feed or on the Patreon, or when we have cool polls going on to be like, hey, help us pick a new miniseries. We tweet about it there and you'll stay up to date. So please follow on Twitter at TalkSimpsonsPod. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We will see you next time for Pygmalion, and we will see you then. Well, it's time to get to work. Humanitarian Homer Simpson, over and out. Ah, I'm...