Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Moaning Lisa (Revisited) With Kate Leth

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

We welcome back screenwriter/artist/comic maker Kate Leth (check out her Patreon right now!) to help us revisit Lisa's first major episode! We go into childhood depression, trying to answer difficult questions, and also the powerful voice of guest star, the late Ron Taylor! Also, we talk a ton about NES video games as Bart and Homer battle over video game boxing! Listen now before your own mother gives your last cupcake away! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product ahoy everybody and welcome to talking simpsons where a simple cupcake will bring us no pleasure i'm your host the jazz hole bouncer, Bob Mackie. This is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today. Henry Gilbert, and I swear, I only need these quarters for laundry. And who do we have on the line? Oh, hi, I'm Kate. I didn't have a quote prepared, but I love Lisa.

We all love Lisa. And today's episode is Moaning Lisa. Every day at noon, a a bell rings and they heard us in here for feeding time and we sit around like cattle chewing our cuds dreading the inevitable today's episode aired on february 11th 1990 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby nelson mandela is released from prison after 27 years please hammer don't hurt him hits record stores around the nation and over a year after its release in japan super mario brothers 3 is released on the nintendo entertainment system

in the united states so obviously the most historically important item on this list is Mario 3. Yes, Mario 3, very important. No, I mean the Nelson and Adele thing, yes. Very, very important, very good. It helped end apartheid in South Africa, a great thing. Now, let's talk about Super Mario Bros. 3. Yes, we actually did a whole Retronauts about it. If you look that up. I thought that, right?

Yeah, it was about three years ago. It was you, me, Ray Barnholt, of course, and Jeremy Parrish. We talked for over an hour and a half about that game. I don't know what else I need to say about it because it's available on every Switch if you subscribe to that online service, and you should. When this episode aired, I was probably glued to my TV seeing the Mario commercial of the children across the world, or at least America, forming a Mario face by standing together. And there were no street dates or anything.

So I have to assume February 11th is when the East Coast got it, as it rolled across the country on trucks. So from my research, the 9th is the accepted date on a lot of wikis. I think it's firmer because it was such a major release. I think it is firmer than a lot of the grayer releases of games in the U.S. But still, yeah, that's February 9th through 11th. Like, basically that week is the release of Super Mario 3. I don't want to go on too long about this, but it's interesting to see how much the market has changed

where a game like this would not come out in February. This would be like a Christmas game, a fall game. Like February is where often you can put a game to just surprise people with, but nothing this big. So it's interesting to see how things have changed. And it's wild that for over a year, Japan had the game before the US did. And I believe it's close to a year

before Mario 3 gets released in Europe. So it's a very staggered, interesting release of that. And it didn't take very long for the threat of Hammer hurting us to end. You know, he was good till he had too legit to quit. He was still good on his second album. Big fan of the Addams Family rap. Oh, that's one of the greatest. They do what they want to do. They say what they want to say. I will agree with that.

The Addams Family is living out loud. It's so good. Well, Kate, you have any Mario 3 memories in particular? As I know you're a bit of a gamer yourself. I am. This was February 1990, you said? Yep. Okay, so I was one and a half years old.

Terrible at video games, no doubt. February 1990, you said? Yep. Okay, so I was one and a half years old. Oh, wow. Terrible at video games, no doubt. I actually, I didn't own a game console until I was 26. I didn't have them growing up. I was an only child of parents who were very proud of being very good at Scrabble and reading a lot. So, and we didn't have a lot of money. So, I didn't, I never owned a gaming system. It was always just like at other people's houses. And, uh, I, at one point got a PS2, I think it was like a big gift. And then, uh, but my parents wouldn't get me any games other than the one that came with it, which was this weird, like Prince of Persia ripoff thing. And I'd never played a game before, so I had no idea how to play it and so I stopped after a certain point and then my mom took it back she was like well you're not using this it was expensive and then yeah I didn't have another one until I lived uh with with my ex who uh who

had a ps3 I think and yeah now I have like a switch and I have a ps4 and and I you know pc game I game a lot now but I didn't grow up with Nintendo. So a lot of, you know, like I'm playing Luigi's Mansion and there's so many references and things in it that I'm just like, I have no idea who any of these characters are.

I don't know what any of this means. And my partner is like, you know, has been a gamer forever. And, you know, so they're a very good translator. Well, about half of this episode is about the shame of being an adult gamer.

So this is not a tangent. A man of your age yeah kate i have some of my favorite stuff in your uh your comic strip valley ghouls is you and your partner playing switch together in bed me and my husband uh do that quite a lot actually so we really we really do it's a lot i mean cohen's Cohen's been playing Witcher 3 on PS4 lately. So I got Witcher 3 on my Switch. So we've been playing it at the same time wearing headphones. Or sometimes they're playing it on the TV and I have headphones on.

And so I get Geralt in stereo, which is very funny. Yeah, we've been doing that. I just finished God of War. Or at least the main storyline in God of War. Yeah, I have a hard time doing side quests once the main story is finished. I'm a side quest addict. That's why I love the Oxford games. And I'm waiting for Animal Crossing. So, you know, just killing time.

We all are. I played, you played, I think, even more Dragon Quest Builders 2 than I did. Yeah. But as. I got to like 180 hours in that game. That rules. Yeah. Gaming chat has to end soon.

But I have taken, I have taken a 20 year break from animal crossing i'm ready for this one to be my next one it was like gamecube a tiny bit of the ds1 then nothing until now so i am ready to jump back in oh i'm very excited and waste way so much time i'm gonna i never played it when other people were playing it i i got it on oh and got it for me on a 3DS like last Christmas. And so I had to go on Reddit and find other people who were still playing. So yeah, excited to be part of the zeitgeist. One.

And yes, welcome back officially, Kate Leth. This is, I think your third one on here. It is. It is. Thank you for having me back.

And so, yes, as you said earlier about your age, you weren't watching this episode when it aired live 30 years ago. How does she know that? Well, maybe so. It's very possible. I mean, I said, I think the last time I'm as old as The Simpsons, like I'm pretty much the same age. So it was a lot of stuff that I saw.

It was probably in the background. But yeah, I saw a lot in syndication when I was like five and six. So do you remember seeing this one as a kid? Oh, yeah. Over and over and over again, because the TV station we had ASN, which was like this very local network in Atlantic Canada. Or no, we didn't live there yet because I didn't move to Nova Scotia until I was 10. So we lived in Ontario.

I don't remember how we were watching it, but they only really had, you know, the first couple of seasons in syndication. So they would just play them over and over and over again. So I saw this episode, you know, a dozen times at least. And I mean, did the story touch you personally? I know, you know, we've we all have struggles with depression sometimes and anxiety. Yeah, I think it was one that hit me more as I got older. Like, you know, I didn't really recognize it.

I mean, I've always been melancholy, but, you know, it got to me more in, I want to say pre-teens. And then teens, I was like, I'm cooler than that. And then now watching it again today for the first time in probably a decade or something, I was like, oh, man, I feel this. I will say up front, what makes it not as special for me uh upon this reviewing is that they've done better versions of this story but i think it's still very important this early in the history of television that there is a story about a child being depressed for non-specific reasons because i don't know who wrote this tweet but it blew my mind when i read it and i always think about it it's like what if all the times

you're really bored as a kid you're actually actually depressed? And I was like, oh my God. Yeah. I mean, I've had, you know, I have clinical depression and like it's, it runs in my family. Everybody does. We're just, we're a sad people. So this one I think was one that like my mom really resonated with when I was younger. And then, you know, I, I kind of got into it because I definitely had this, but I was like way stronger ADD as a kid and sort of grew into my depression. Yeah, no, that I was sad as a kid, but I don't think I had a way to say it either. Like same with just like a mix of anxiety and depression that I, you know know got me into like existentialist dread in high school eventually like once i some teacher talked about you know like sartre camu and kafka and i was like

oh these things speak to me i feel these ways and i did and i felt very smart feeling those things too and reading those articles a trio of pleasures yes oh so, I just had teen gothdom. So I had like, you know, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Oh, yeah. And like Tim Burton and stuff like that. It was much more the theatrical sadness. Oh, no. I mean, yes. I look to those things for sad.

And all the sad boys and girls in those things, too. But you're right, Bob. They've done. This is kind of a template for later lisa episodes and they're they're they're figuring out lisa but as a trailblazing episode for what they were gonna do with lisa and what they do with her like i think they really figured her out a lot in this it's not quite as satisfying as other early lisa ones like um lisa substitute or homer lisa the greek like i think those are more fulfilling because of the way they wrap up.

They're still learning things, to be fair. I don't want to be too unfair to this episode, but talking to you before this recording, the act breaks are just like a deflation, just like a slow fade out on something. And the ending is just like, oh, let's just watch this song. It's not as punchy as you expect the show to be.

It's such a first season, though. And from my limited experience in writers rooms out here it's like first seasons are so hard you don't know and it's not until you watch the whole thing back it's not until it's all finished until you get kind of an audience reaction that you really get a feel for who these characters are and most of the time they're writing it before they even you know know the cadence of the voice actors they don't really know what they're going to bring to the performance so that affects the way you write it. So I totally get it. And for what it is, for being episode six, like super early, the first one we're really focusing on Lisa, like it does a pretty good

job for what it is. I was surprised actually, there were moments where I was like, oh wow, that's really insightful. No, you're right. I think they did learn a lot from the season because season two is a lot punchier, a lot faster. And they probably looked at this and said, you know, Bleeding Gums Murphy could play the saxophone for 20 seconds, or we could write three jokes to put in other scenes, you know? Yeah. the idea and assigning it to writers i think back to our very recent interview with jay cogan where you know he looked back and lamented on the fratish qualities of the writer's room at the time which again had no women in it and we've heard why that that was a sam simon uh actual call not an accident but which you know cogan and other simpsons writers from then have said they regret and wish they had done it differently but i can see why james l brooks who's you know kogan and other simpsons writers from then have said they regret and wish they had done it differently but i can see why james l brooks who's you know uh as as a writer is famous for

writing uh great women that he is the one to tell them like we got to do something with these girl characters yeah we we need to do something and this episode came from an idea he wanted to do on taxi about a male character he wanted to do an episode of Taxi where Alex is sad. Alex is the Judd Hirsch character, but he never got to do that because Taxi was, you know, not a popular show. It didn't last very long. So within the writer's room, people did not envy Al Jean and Mike Reese for being assigned this episode because it's like, good luck with that. I've got the fun camping story. I've got the fun France story. You've got like the Lisa is sad episode. Good luck. Which is so funny because if I were on a show, that would be the one that I would be like fighting for. Girl angst? Yes, please. Yeah, it's unfortunate that like there's multiple stories, multiple commentaries where they say like, oh, I didn't like getting assigned the Marge script or I didn't like getting assigned the Lisa script from the classic seasons. But at at least I think you know Gina Reese or say John Vitti who wrote Lisa's substitute like even if they were afraid of not doing it right I think they they executed it

pretty well for being you know dudes assigned to script they they weren't into at first yeah I like it and this one again like the character is not really super formed. She doesn't feel like a kid, really. She kind of has this, you know, adult voice of sadness coming out of this second grader. But there are good moments. There's genuine, you know, and the moments between her and Marge,

I think are really sweet. So they, you know, they tapped into something. Yeah, I think the best parts of they you know they tapped into something yeah I I think the the best parts of this in the Lisa story to me are when they identify like mother-daughter situations like it it gave them a space to expand a ton on both Lisa and Marge like in the shorts and I think in production order to this point Lisa had been pretty much just written as smarter bart and marge had only be written as like now homer why don't we do this like she's yeah she's the which is the very bare shallow way every character was written in the shorts but they lisa marge didn't get expanded

on like homer and bart did i think in the previous episodes until this point. And so I think, you know, with the saxophone stuff, with Marge's childhood memories, with just them letting Yardley Smith do what she's really good at, I think it was for the writers to learn like, oh, Lisa can be this, or we... Oh, she has traits. Yeah, she has traits and personality. And I love, you know, and this seeds so much of what drives Marge and, you know, later in life makes her such a more interesting character to me is that like they sort of embrace. And obviously this is this is really early, but sometimes, you know, a couple throwaway lines in an early episode become the basis for it's like, OK, well, this is all we know about this person. So let's expand upon, you know, these few things. And I love that so much of over time, they explore this concept of her being one dimensional as a result of being raised to be one dimensional. And I think that's really interesting, because it's like, you know, smile, be friendly, like hide, hide your sadness and i you know it's it's unfortunate but i do think it's it's so real

for moms of a specific era women of a specific era and i liked that in this episode no me too i think this is secretly like a big expansion for march episode two and this is another one that the dvds for season one have the script on it yeah i i paged through the whole table draft script and there aren't as many additions as there were in some of the previous episodes this is all i could say 80 unchanged from the table draft but some of the additions are really telling and i'll mention them in sequence when i can't wait but yeah yeah cool the directors and writers we've already talked about before yeah algin and mike reese algin of I can't wait. work but i think he's still he's going around well honestly they're making 70 episodes of rick and morty in one production yeah so i would bet he's pretty hard at work on rick and morty yeah please follow him on uh instagram i think it's archermation and he does commissions he'll like

paint you a bobby hill oh damn yeah i gotta get into this uh but i guess uh why do we get straight into the episode it begins you know i think with a a gutsy opening of just like lisa silently staring at herself in the mirror and sighing yeah i like that it's one of those moments though that made me glad that richard gibbs is no longer on the show trash just like there's like a tiny concerto of sadness playing in the sink as we see lisa just so overdone i think like that could have been played over silence so much better i think alf claus it would not have gone that uh on the nose i think i really like that her toothpaste is glum yes oh i missed that oh that's great yeah the the you're right the overdramatic music

choices you know you had to earn that paycheck true it's like i gotta write music for something it's paid by the note well unlike kate said you know the first season is so much learning and animation and that's it's just finding your tone you don't know that this music isn't the best way to play music in the world of the simpsons until you try it and see it doesn't work i like homer when homer is banging on the door he's like did you fall in there's he's got big goofy teeth and there's a lot of the big, goofy teeth that Wes Archer, I think in particular, really liked drawing or having his artists do when he directed.

He does. And they're still figuring out the layout of the Simpsons' house, and I know from watching about 20,000 hours of The Simpsons that... So Homer and Marge have an en suite bathroom, and then there's another bathroom on the second floor that's not connected to a bedroom that the kids use. So in this early version of the house, there there's another bathroom on the second floor that's not connected to a bedroom that the kids use so in this early version of the house there is only

one bathroom on the second floor okay because i actually made a note about that that was like why does this house only have one bathroom because i know for a fact it has at least three bedrooms yeah like dining room living room rumpus room which they referenced but we don't see so it's like that house would have two bathrooms at least like one and a half yeah i looked at uh like diagrams of the house too by my fans i'm like i don't think there's a bathroom on the first floor but there are two on the second floor right that makes sense and we've seen so much of both bathrooms like the kids bathroom is like powder blue and the homer and marge's bathroom is pink yeah well and going in production order for some enchanted evening the original first episode multiple scenes, there's two different bathrooms. The whole scene is...

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, that they have an adult bathroom. An adult bathroom. And the kids' bathroom. They go number three in there. When I see the kids' bathroom, it always takes me back to the Australia episode. Yeah. That's what I always think of when I think of the kids' bathroom.

I guess they just wanted to do a typical there's a lot of very just like typical sitcom humor about like the kids in the in the bathroom too long you know like just things that would have been on a family sitcom in 1960 or 1990 i guess uh you know you should read it as maybe marge is currently occupying the other one. Okay. That's what now I feel good now. Okay. Yeah, that would make sense. I was on the edge of my seat over this bathroom, bathroom gates. I really thought about it a lot. I was like, I don't think this is ever really an issue later on other than between Bart and Lisa. So I think too, like they're not, there's not a ton of jokes about needing to use the bathroom in the Simpsons house either, I think. Yeah, that's much more of a Bob's Burgers thing.

Oh man, that whole episode where Bob's stuck on the toilet, glued to the toilet, one of my all-time favorites. Maybe they're watching Married with the Children and they're like, that's what a Fox sitcom needs, toilets. Gotta get the toilets in there. I remember on that show, I watched a lot of it recently because um there was a mary with children parody on talking futurama like al bundy would walk down from the second floor with a newspaper like as if he just took a shit and the audience would cheer that's how many scenes would start wow they were they were applauding his bowel movement it was an amazing time for television that's amazing i've been trying to plug in classic simpsons

commercials for that i can find when we do these revisited ones i put them in the the breaks and when i found the one promoting lisa it is 10 seconds long and it is just the opening scene and only to show that the joke is bart steals the bathroom from Homer. It has nothing to do with Lisa. Lisa does not really matter in the promotion of the episode. God, it's like Fury Road. They're really burying the lead in those ads. Yeah, I mean, if I'm a sexist marketing guy at Fox, and I'm handed this, when I think it's like, it's Bartmania time, it's the Bart show.

Why am I giving this girl stuff? Actually, Married with Children would air right after this show. So it was the bathroom hour on Fox. Toilet time. God. But yes, in our first clip here, right after the mostly silent bathroom scene, we have Homer's search for his car keys.

Warm. Now cold. Colder. keys. Warm. Now cold. Colder. Nice, cold. Do you know where my keys are? No, I'm talking about your breakfast. Did you try the rumpus room? Rumpus room?

Great idea. Or dad. Boom! Here. I'm sorry, everybody, but I've only got two cupcakes for the three of you. Well, Mom, one of us has scarfed down more than enough cupcakes over the past three decades to keep it... Bart! Just take mine. A simple cupcake will bring me no pleasure.

Oh, yeah! So once again, cupcakes are the currency In this world in season one I did write down in my notes That cupcake is a muffin I know So what was the last Bart the General So there's a real cupcake runner

Cupcakes are the most delicious food item They soon moved on to donuts Oh yeah That's funny that it is cupcakes i just they're colored brown on the frosting and the you know cup and i was like that's not what even chocolate cupcakes don't look like that they look like bran muffins yeah they do look like bran muffins it is really funny to imagine them fighting over that yeah i think it's a real miscommunication just in the at some point in the animation like because especially if you're

just going with like the what the standard like cupcake you would see drawn and say like scooby doo or whatever it would be white frosting with like a pink cherry oh yeah i was thinking cherry for sure to signify i've never eaten a cupcake with a cherry on top no i the i i have a tattoo of a cupcake on the back of my neck because we were all 18 once. And I think it has a cherry on top. Oh, my God. I can't remember. I need to take a picture of this.

I literally don't know what my own tattoo looks like. No cherry. No, just icing. Okay. And sprinkles. You dodged a bullet there. Oh, yeah. Sprinkles.

They should have. Yeah. Oh, yeah. An update on the cupcake bit. You had mentioned the Tiger tiger electronics game uh cupcake crisis simpsons cupcake crisis i i looked it up and you can get a out of the box one on ebay for like 30 bucks pretty much i i was tempted but i'd have to expense that to do an episode about it you know what maybe i will buy it i did while looking at it i actually did buy a 1990 vintage kitchen towel for featuring the simpsons

which might be arriving this very day actually oh exciting i need practical simpsons things i have enough simpsons toys around the house but like a simpsons thing that could also do something in the kitchen that is useful you can wipe your hands on some of the dolls right this is the point i'm at with collectibles is that you know i have enough at this point that it yeah it has to be like a cookie jar or you know like something i can do something with i was so excited going to the star wars land a couple weeks ago uh to get you know cups and coasters well i mean if you're worried about buying too many trinkets anything can be a paperweight.

Just think of it that way. That's true. I love mugs now, because I drink a lot of coffee and tea, so I can... I have a lot of very good mugs. When I first moved into my old apartment, when I had just gotten to LA, I had a housewarming party and because no one ever knows what to give you, especially when you're in

your 20s and no one knows how to be an adult yet, I was just like, just bring me a mug. Just bring me an interesting mug because I don't have any. And it was great because people did. I got one from Haunted Mansion. I got a really cool Pokemon one. And so, yeah, great idea if you ever move to a different country and have no mugs. I have a lot of mugs. I only wash and use the same one every time I have coffee. It's the Lisa Simpson Overachiever mug. And I have so many other nice mugs, but I'm so used to drinking coffee out of that. I have a Buffy one that my ex gave me

that says Kiss the Librarian, which is very good, which Spike drank blood out of. And then another one that's just covered in stuff from Nova Scotia, which is very cute. I mean, a mug that's so much better than a mug that just had the Buffy logo on it or something like, yeah. Like I love my merchandise to feel in universe,

you know, that's so much more interesting to me than just like someone's face on a t-shirt or whatever. If it looks like it's from the thing, that's, that's my jam. The sentence will be right back. Sunday.

What's the problem? You falling? They're America's funniest news family. Sorry, Dad. Women and children first. What the? The Simpsons in an all-new episode. Whether you have a bratty brother or enjoy last cupcakes we want to thank you for listening to this week's podcast of talking simpsons a huge huge thank you to our returning guest kate leth

thank you so much for doing the show as always and did you know if you're a new listener this podcast is supported by patreon 100 by listeners it's how me and bob do talking simpsons every week is our full-time job and the same goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon where we cover a different animated series once a week now folks who'd like to support us can sign up for five bucks a month at patreon.com but you get so much more than our thanks for your support you get access to over a hundred exclusive podcasts only for Patreon subscribers. Our many exclusive miniseries where me and Bob cover shows in the same way as Talking Simpsons.

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So please consider signing up at the premium level today, right now. uh and yeah this whole bit here of like everyone's doing their morning stuff and they're not even noticing that lisa is like despondent or just silent and empty i like the gag that they should probably go like why doesn't lisa want to eat a cupcake and just gives up but instead bart and homer just high five they're like yeah cupcakes they're such idiots i also i read the search for the keys as bart knew they were there the whole time and he was mad that lisa like ended the game by telling homer where the keys were though i guess he does go like oh homer like more like he's like oh you didn't know they were there geez like there's a snowball 2 joke in there which i think is like the first

time they've used that cat for a joke in the show production order oh i totally missed this what was the same uh just that snowball 2 jumps off the the couch when Homer's lifting up couch cushions to look for his keys. I mean, it's not a great joke, but it did. Snowball 2 exists. It's like, oh, they did a joke with a cat. That's funny. Yeah. I think the Simpsons writers just aren't cat owners, so that's why there's never cat jokes.

Get that cat out of the way uh and another thing i did notice in the homer's search for his keys is that they're still doing not in his normal outfit but at this time when they do him in work outfit with the tie yeah they draw like a lump of neck fat over his collar that's like really distracting yeah he should be like a very streamlined upside down light bulb yeah weird weird choices and uh here's the first change from the script in the the script, the original scene doesn't end with Lisa just walking out in the high five, which I think is the better place to end it. Right after the high five, Homer goes like, oh, now I can't find my wallet. And it's a new search begins. So, you know, that's not a bad joke either.

I can see why they cut it. And then right after that is a major cut they did there's like about a three-page scene that introduces the mean crosswalk guardian uh crossing guard does she have a name mrs gross okay oh great hate it yeah she's she's just like they don't really describe her too much but she's somebody who says like, cross already. And then Lisa goes, but there's cars everywhere. She's like, what, do you need me to hold your hand? Yes.

And then she smacks Lisa's behind with her crossing guard sign and makes them walk. We lost Mrs. Gross. No Mrs. Gross. Yeah, I'm glad that they skipped that. It's just cruelty to the children. There's not much more to it than that. Also, though, it doesn't fit with the established thing in the universe that the kids don't walk to school. They take the bus with autos.

Oh, yeah, that's true. Maybe they cut it more because of that than because Mrs. Gross wasn't particularly funny or anything. Yeah, if you're going to have a crossing guard, you have to have it like on bob's burgers where she's a witch oh right oh the wiccan crossing guard that's right oh yeah yeah that's right it's really funny because it's like i when i come on this it's like i'm much more versed in bob's burgers because i have it on it's like background like comfort food for me so it's always on so it's sorry for the other sitcom family i didn't want to talk about uh mr largo though yeah let's talk about i listened to the commentary again i like that guy uh he's sort of a lost character like they remember him every five years i think like oh yeah lisa's got a

teacher but like uh this was established as like a rival like not a rival but like a force of uh authority for lisa that's why he's in the opening in every show like lisa is pitted against largo at every opportunity but no it rarely comes up and this like largo was basically a way for matt geranian to get revenge on an old mean teacher of his because he explained like oh i had a really bad music teacher a really mean one like the first day of class was the person was like how many of you kids like the beatles well they can't sing they can't play their instruments and he just went on this long rant about why the Beatles are bad to all these little kids living in the 60s.

Like, that, like, just a joyless teacher, that is exactly who Largo is supposed to be. But there's not a lot of nuance to that sort of a character, which is why I could see they went more with, like, a Kerbopple or a Hoover or a Skinner or even a Chalmers. Like, there's more going on with those characters than just like joyless in a non-interesting way i feel like that teacher is that thing that ira glass says about how you have to get all the bad writing out before you can get to the good stuff yeah that teacher's like yeah i'm gonna make a bad teacher and that's like oh yeah this is nothing i really agree that most creative work is uh you know, fueled by revenge. It certainly is for me, but it shouldn't end there. Yeah.

I mean, I had a lot of bad teachers, but, you know, they were mostly interestingly bad. Mostly they just didn't want me to draw in class and showed them. Yeah. No, Largo. I think the most jokes they get out of Largo from like season three onward is about just the effeminacy with which harry sheer plays him yeah they're just like lighter gay jokes yeah like ew a bug yes yeah they i mean i believe i can't remember if it was cut or if they kept it but they just from talking about a commentary about

him and smithers being caught together like driving somewhere and he's like oh i was just getting a ride for my friend is what largo says like so i don't know how like explicitly gay they've made him since then they still barely use him because he's also such a season one character like with his big head and crazy hair he and his giant lip line that he really stands out when he shows up in a season 30 episode i just like that they're forced to keep him in every opening yeah like largo front and center there's no like no flanders no skinner if you remember when they um when lisa sews something in the family quilt in the bouvier family quilt yeah it is largo versus murphy yeah so i think it's supposed to be like order and chaos is what they're uh representing as well

perhaps if i want to get really artsy fartsy about it you know we mentioned that like uh last episode that miss hoover never appears until like late season two maybe they thought they like well we don't need lisa's second grade teacher largo is her you know teaching the jokes we'll do any about her in school would be with largo yeah no i like hoover more even though she is not as developed as kerbopple i just like the very over it attitude she has she is so over it fully dead inside yeah yeah uh but yes in this scene this is like in air order we saw lisa's speech to selma and patty about defending her dad of like he's my only male role model and blah blah like that big speech she had that is the reveal of like lisa is deeper than you had first assumed but in production order

this speech here that lisa gives uh all about her empathy for the the downtrodden in america the this is kind of uh the first time they show the inner workings of Lisa's mind. I think it's a great scene. I got the whole clip here. Lisa Simpson! Lisa, there's no room for crazy bebop in my country, tis of thee. But Mr. Largo, that's what my country's all about. What? I'm wailing out for the homeless family living out of its car.

The Iowa farmer whose land has been taken away by unfailing bureaucrats. The West Virginia coal miner coughing up... Well, that's all fine and good, but Lisa, none of those unpleasant people are going to beat the recital next week. Now, class, from the top. Five, six, seven. I really like the statement they're making of Largo going like, yes, yes, but shut down that field. I don't feel anything for those people.

We've got to move on. It's our first whiff of Lisa as a political activist or caring and having causes. Yeah, that's true. I think this really fits with the causes she would have. They'd eventually make jokes that she cares too much and is actually annoying. Which, don't like those jokes. No. I'm not the biggest fan of those jokes.

The thing that I was laughing about when I watched the scene is how much that band sounds like the band in Nightmare Before Christmas. When Jack's walking by them and they're doing the just absolutely god-awful renditions of jingle bells like super super flat it's really similar to me yeah it's this I feel like is such a good tiny tiny way to to express that idea of like quashing any kind of creativity in kids in public school because like damn that's real yeah this teacher sees a child expressing like extreme amount like incredibly mature things that empathizes with people she'd you wouldn't expect an eight-year-old to have ever even heard of and he's just like yes yes yes stop just stop this is a distraction your empathy is a distraction. And these, I mean, this is also the first time in the show she's played the sax as well. It's been

in the opening the whole time. So, you know, viewers know her as a sax player, but this is the first time it's mattered at all in the plot of an episode, which I think that shows like Gene and Reese, they know the sax is a great outlet for Lisa, and I think it's a big reason why they would later write the origin of Lisa's saxophone in Lisa's sax. So here's a big change from the script that could have meant something entirely different for a major character in Simpsons history.

So Ralph is in this episode. There is a character by the name of Ralph. He shows up. He's the kid with the buzz cut. Yeah. The flesh colored crew cut. Yes. Yeah.

Which in script, they'd always write the name Ralph. And over time, that came to be the Ralph design they would use more in season three. And he'd shift to become the Ralph we all know and love by uh season four like in the choo choo choose me episode but this is really the first appearance of ralph uh and there's a like ralph is really important to gina reese that's why they made him such a major part of that valentine's day episode and in the script uh the first line ralph has which is cut is that he is described as an oafish boy who sits behind lisa and largo tells lisa to stop playing the sax and he's gonna have ralph play it instead because ralph is the rival saxophone player wow weird yeah they were setting up a lot

of uh different things yeah ralph named after ralph cramden i believe yeah which is why he's supposed to be just like uh in this he is like hey what are you talking to her for not the sweet innocent ralph we all know and love yeah that's a totally different character so it had one uh and then it says it makes clear in the script ralph plays the sax way worse so uh and and the the music here too it's fun to hear professional musicians play poorly intentionally like that that's a nice like just sound there then they go to the uh the lunchroom where uh lisa is having some very like dark thoughts about how they're just like cattle moved around to eat at the same time this is so over the top, but I kind of love it. I had those kind of

self-important deep thoughts in high school and thought like, nobody's thought this before about conformity, have they? I'm such a spoiled baby when it comes to being self-employed

and working from home. Like I briefly had just a short like office gig for a few days where I did some outside work and I was just in an office all day. I'm like, this is like prison, man. After the first day, like there are no windows in this room. One of my favorite things that I used to do when I was like, I want to say 19 or 20, was go to these weird little comedy shows in my hometown. And there was one where this guy,

Jordy, would do, it's like every other week or something, would read from his teenage diary or like his early teenage diary. And it was so much like this. Everything was like so dramatic. It's like this pseudo Shakespearean like dialogue of like the tragedy of everything. And like, and I was kind of the same way, you know, when I journaled when I was nine or 10. So watching this is so cringeworthy because it's like, oh, yeah, everything. I really, really love later when Bleeding Gums is like, you know, you play the blues off for someone who doesn't have any real problems.

Yeah. As an adult, I love that line more and more. Me too. Me too. It's so good. Yeah. But also saying that to a kid doesn't make a kid feel less sad, too. So I can feel it from both sides of that.

Absolutely. Yeah. When you're in it, it feels so real. It feels like everything is the end of the world. And we get to see Janie here, too, who, unlike in the previous episode, is colored correctly. And also that Bart, does bart cause a food fight every day i wonder or that's what's implied here or at least a food fight is caused every day it feels like that's just a stock kind of school idea to go to like uh there's a food fight like

usually food fights are a bigger thing not like a uh like a five second scene i uh in high school my high school did separated lunches there were three different lunches because they didn't have big enough lunchroom for all the kids overcrowding it yeah so uh in my time i never had a food fight in my lunch time but i do remember hearing that like oh two lunch periods before you there was a big food fight and now you can't go in the cafeteria. I've never been a party to a food fight before. I'm happy to say that. I don't think I have either.

I mean, I obviously as an extremely cool kid, either ate my lunch in the library, the bathroom or in a teacher's room. Oh, yeah. Because it was very cool. And later in the graveyard because I was goth. Uh, but yeah, I, I don't think I've ever actually been,

been part of like a real food fight, which is good. Cause I would get extremely grossed out by that. Yeah. I don't even like to get like sauce on my hands when I'm eating. No, I have this thing where like, I can't touch butter.

Like I hate the feeling of oil or butter on my hands. I have to like wash it off immediately. I yeah uh but yeah then then from that we uh also the scene ends with lisa getting hit in the face with food which they just did that same joke in season 10s they saved lisa's brain oh yeah yeah that's right as a way of expressing, in that one, she gets actually mad about it instead of just despondent again. And then we go to the gym class, which according to wikis and also the script, this is not supposed to be Miss Pummel Horse. This is Miss Barr. Miss Barr, yeah. Mrs. Pummel Horse, named after the Pumel horse, is a different character, but is almost identical.

She has blonde hair and is a little more butch. But Miss Barr, I guess, maybe named after the parallel bars. It's got to be like a pun-ish. Yeah, I think that's it. It wouldn't be Barr for no reason. It's not named after Roseanne Barr or whatever. So yeah, this is like the gym teacher would not like. The one joke I could think of with pommel horse is just like, I don't need this.

I just inhaled my favorite whistle this morning. That's the one good joke. Yeah. Or like Mrs. Pommel horse. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

It's surprising for a show that has so many scenes in school that they never thought of, of, of a gym teacher, like, or really needing a gym teacher. They, you know,

there's far more scenes with the groundskeeper than anything in gym yeah which is which is so funny i've never been to a school that had a groundskeeper so oh yeah i think that's why the increasing jokes are about uh willie being destitute and underpaid because it's just there's no budget for it so i think eventually skinner just gives him room and board in a shack, and that's how they have a groundskeeper. And Barr is voiced by Miriam Flynn, one of several voice actors in season one who have only one appearance. I was wondering, yeah. She is another of those Saturday morning voices that they used a lot of in season one and you know sam simon had a very specific want for voice actors and he wasn't liking what he was getting from a lot of the saturday morning people most famously uh chris

lata uh slash christopher collins the the voice of star scream who was the original burns and mo and got cut and miriam flynn is another of those folks uh she, I believe most famous part that I saw on her IMDb was she was Taz's mom in the Tazmania cartoon. So, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Interesting. She's in a lot of stuff. And I think the positioning and posing of her, like, it really feels like a duck man scene to me, honestly. It's just so weird and and uh i don't know like the proportions feel wrong to me and the way duck man proportions look wrong on purpose yes yeah but yes in an extremely relatable scene the uh the gym teacher doesn't give a crap about anybody's sensitive feelings and only helps to ostracize the outsider in this uh scene. Lisa gets hit with a dodgeball.

Lisa, we are playing dodgeball here. The object of the game is to avoid the ball by weaving or ducking out of its path. In other words, to dodge the ball. Listen, Missy, just tell me why you weren't getting out of the way of those balls. I'm too sad. Too sad to play dodgeball? That's ridiculous.

Now let's see some enthusiasm. Play ball! Yeah, that's sad. That's my entire public school relationship to physical education. So I relate very strongly. I hated dodgeball. We did soccer baseball. Did you ever play that which is

like it's like kickball is that kind of yeah it was it was the worst it's just the worst we i believe dodgeball was phased out when i was a kid uh in grade school we played a beanbag toe tag which was the non-violent answer which is why it uh wussified american kids that's why we're i i can't even fake you go down the republican speech here for that yeah i uh no i mean this uh i feel like there were more dodgeball jokes in the 90s than dodgeball was played by kids because it was a generation made to play it and hating it. Then getting it out through jokes like this. I really, well, not only like my hatred of gym teachers comes through in here, but also like Lisa's response of like to dodge the ball, like her droll comeback. That really takes me back to so many of my interactions with teachers I hated,

where I'm like, the only way I can get back at you is by being more clever than you in a funny snarky reply and oh yeah absolutely i got in trouble for that constantly in school uh but it's like it's your only it's it's your really only recourse in those situations and just to outsmart the teacher and make them look stupid and tear them down tear down their there. You know, but they've tearing your day in, in my feelings were always like, they're tearing me down so much.

I need to take them down a peg. And I, and also a very teacher responsible, like too sad to play dodgeball. This is ridiculous. Get out of here. Like, yeah,

don't, I hope teachers listen a bit more to kids telling them their problems now. I hope. Yeah, they for sure didn't when I was in school, but who knows? But anyway, enough of this feeling stuff. Video games. So, yes, for me, this is the standout part of this episode. No, I mean, Lisa's stuff is good, too.

But this is very important to me as a kid, a major gamer back in the 80s and 90s and of course today i was in the gaming industry until fairly recently and i still kind of am with retronauts but this is a very specific video game parody and you would not really see these again until like 20 years later maybe like you'd see a person with a 2600 joystick and donkey kong sounds be coming out of somewhere in like 1998 and like even in the 2000s but this somebody played mike tyson's punch out and they put it on the screen and the joke is lost in us now because the joke is what if a video game was this violent what if you could knock a head off what if you could kill a guy what if you could bury him alive on the screen mortal combat would be around in two more years doing exactly all of this as not a joke yeah the the extremeness uh we listeners probably heard last year our live

podcast we did a pax with the amazing guest mike trucker where we talked about the history of games being shown in the simpsons and this is the first and uh they they knock it out of the park, I think, with accuracy compared to every other show. Yeah, the specifics of Punch-Out!! in this are so impressive to me. It must have been fun for West Archer to do because less drawings. Because it looks like they're just drawing keyframes, you know, putting the pixel filter over them. And it looks great. It does. It's really funny. Like, the visual gags in this, I enjoyed. And this is, for me, like a plot that's kind of like, yeah. It does. It's really funny. Like the visual gags in this, I enjoyed.

And this is for me, like a plot that's kind of like super secondary. Also like incredibly tonally different to what's happening in the rest of the episodes. So it's sort of jarring. That's something. Yeah. The head cutting off, the like coffin descending into the ground is like so funny. Yeah. The idea of a game with just blood flying out of a character being hit i'm sure there

were some violent games for like computers before this maybe like sega genesis but like a mainstream game like this with like you know decapitations and teeth and blood and death uh was just like wouldn't it be funny if a game had all these things well the wait two years you'll get all that well and the young the young man writing this if they were gamers then they would have been playing you know i think just the the nintendo entertainment system mainly and that was so intentionally scrubbed clean as a response to all the dirty games that came out late on the atari that and other systems that i think that that led them to think wow video games are really squeaky clean what if they were more violent what did the uh script say about these uh stage directions all

of it's there the blood everywhere they make sure to say like this is very bloody blood flies out of faces like they describe it bloodier than even it is on screen and all of the the decapitation the the dancing on the grave all there in the script interesting yeah i feel like the writers of this uh generation of writers they're all born like roughly around 1960 ish uh they were really looking down their nose at gamer americans and i i don't care for it especially with the later scenes this is like an arcade is for children yes and if you're a man in that arcade you have serious problems and you should seek help. I feel like that very much was the attitude of the time.

Oh, it was, yeah. For sure. Because now, I mean, now the only reason that they're, you know, are adults doing it is because they were kids at this point in time. Exactly. I mean, the average, I looked it up, the average age the american gamer is uh 35 in 2019 so i'm over the age now oh no yeah because every kid is just playing fortnite yeah so you know oh my god yeah i every time something new gets like advertised in fortnite i'm like oh yeah it like when i saw that rise of skywalker i think probably had its biggest ad spend in one place in Fortnite, not on television. It really gave me context for how big that game in particular is right now.

Yeah, I've never played it. I have no context for it, but I am aware that it is everything to a specific age. Oh, yeah. And I met my stepdad around this time when he was around my age and he was a big nintendo gamer so that's how we bonded so he was one of the rare adult gamers in 1990 wow that's uh you know when i got a nintendo it was because of intense begging because my next door neighbor had it and like this is like 86 87 so i'm five or six uh and i beg beg beg for it they finally buy it and uh my mom is as addicted to super mario brothers as i am if not more so she every puzzle

game like dr mario tetris they kept her up all night long and she was super addicted to it and my dad i gotta say my dad is a crack shot, like with video game guns anyway, and he could kill it in Duck Hunt every time, right up to like Virtual Cop, he would be like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna pull from my hip and then show you, blam, blam, blam. Stay away from Henry's dad. Yeah, for sure.

He owns a lot of real guns too. My mom has played all of the Lego Harry Potter and Lego Lord of the Rings games. Oh, that's nice. And she also, I got her addicted to Stardew Valley. Oh, no. Yeah, she got to like year six on her first farm and then again to like year four or something. I was like, damn, mom.

You know, I bought my mom a Switch. I should get her Stardew Valley. I bet she'd like that, too. Well, you had to beg for a Nintendo. My parents got divorced. I was just given one. Like, here, this will give you love. And that's why I love video games today.

Like Bart, I did play a lot of Nintendo Entertainment System games with my parents in Versus. After NES, I really only played Versus games against my mom. My dad would win all the time I it was the reverse of this situation my dad uh would I think really looking back on it only play games he knew he could win a big one was the RBI baseball series because he knew the rules of baseball more than me and could just defeat me every time but yeah in our house we didn't have video games so it was my parents playing Scrabble and trivial pursuit and like you don't know jack when it came out uh against me a child so it was like i never won and i was just like why it took me until i was a teenager to be

like the deck is pretty stacked against me in terms of the fact that you only have like 70s Trivial Pursuit. Oh, yeah. I don't have any cultural reference for any of this. We, you know, we play a little Trivial Pursuit as a kid, but they got the, because my mom loves that. And I love it too. But we had, it was Disney Trivial Pursuit, which sold itself as having a kids section and an adult section. Yeah, exactly. But the kids ones were still too hard for me.

What color were Uncle Remus's overalls? It's just like these movies I'd never seen. I feel like the only one I would like, even when I played like Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit at one point in time, it was like such deep cuts from some of the books where I was like, man, I don't, I need room in my brain for like what I'm going to eat for lunch. This, this, uh, we're going on topic here, but, uh, in, uh,

no, I'm going to bring us further off topic when, uh, uh, back in the early two thousands, like 2002, uh, I was dating someone and we both loved Malcolm in the middle. We loved it so much. And I still like the show a lot, but we were like at Toys R Us one day, just like, you know, goofing around. It's like, oh, there's a Malcolm in the Middle board game. Let's buy it. It's on sale. It was Malcolm in the Middle trivia game, but only for season one. And there was like 200 questions. Do you know how specific those questions got? And that was before there was a DVD. It's just like, what is this quote from? I don't know. There are 13 episodes. It's like, what was malcolm's jacket and blah blah blah like are you kidding me wow that that's tough yeah i i feel for the designers that board game they

didn't have much to work with nope nope they just got a license because malcolm was hot yeah the the mal the malcolm market demanded it uh but yeah so in the script it does say a nintendo style video boxing game so even from the script they meant punch out they they meant the punch i mean as a kid watching it in 1990 i i knew it was punch out then too and that was exciting to me because like uh you know we talked about this before but this being an animated sitcom it could do things that all the other sitcoms couldn't do. On Full House, they could say, I'm playing a made-up video game, but they can't actually fully develop a video game and show it on screen and do it. Only Clarissa Explains It All could do that for us.

Which that was great, man. Clarissa would design a video game every episode. I can't believe they dropped that. So lame. That and the crocodile just dumped after season one man it's a thing i love so much about animation and i'm like anytime i write something i'm always trying to be like you know how can i uh make the poor animators have to work in like a different style for part of it and it's because you because you can and it's so fun yeah i uh and it's it stands out so much like to this this whole section here like it's funny on the commentary they talk about how like wow it

has to be a pretty advanced video game for the avatars to look like bard and homer oh yeah no that's every game now it's funny they predicted character creation yes uh and also i feel like uh this was this was not in the script it was an artist artistic choice just like how in punch out the referee is mario in a cameo akbar or jeff from life in hell is the referee in this game which i think is really cool but yes bob you you are correct that they're for all the directness they get about punch out the animators did miscommunicate in that they're not using any ass controllers they're using uh the joysticks of an atari it's weird that's the one detail that is off it's the atari vcs joystick at first i thought it was uninformed but i think it could also just be a choice of oh i have much more movement yeah acting they can do with it no i immediately thought of that like

the acting is more fun on a joystick than it is just someone holding a uh a game pad and man the reaction poses they're doing yeah like oh no come on no yeah it's great yeah it's so looney tunes like over the top with with homer's stuff and i couldn't's great. Oh yeah, it's so Looney Tunes, like over the top with Homer and stuff. And I couldn't remember because I hadn't seen it in so long. I thought the punchline was that his controller was unplugged. But that's from something else

that I can't remember. But I kept thinking that the whole episode, even when he goes to the arcade and stuff, I was like, yeah, I just totally remembered wrong. So that was kind of fun. But yes, their video boxing is interrupted by the A-plot as Lisa gets a note from school. Yo, Chunk, you back again?

Chunk! Get out of the way! How come he's not ducking? Wait a minute. Wait, I can't get my... Get out of the way, stupid! Not now, Mark! Get out of the corner! But! Not now, Mark! Get out of the corner!

But they sent a note from school. What did you do this time, you little hoodlum? Get out of the way! I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. There's no way they can prove anything. No, Bart. This note isn't about you. It isn't? There must be some mistake. Hey, you're right. This note's about Lisa.

Lisa? Lisa? Oh, man, that's an act break. Yeah. That's an act break. I kept that in because it's just kind of flat. So I do think it's good to end on Lisa's emotions because that is the main story of the episode instead of just the joke of a severed head hitting the ground. Yeah.

But man, the music just hurts it. It makes it just a little too maudlin. I will say like, so yeah, cheers to Richard Gibbs for the overly on the nose music for the emotional scenes, but cheers to him for accurately replicating a Punch-Out style song. Yeah. And whoever did sound design, like the little barks that the referee does. Yeah. Really cool.

Like really like above the NES game. Like right from the NES game. No, the sound effects are great. They are very correct. So yeah, you're right. Let's praise Gibbs as well as tear him down, I guess. And that is the first I didn't do it right there yeah which would become uh bart's catchphrase in uh season five briefly when he became a superstar it's like a

tier c level uh catchphrase for bart which i think is why they made it his catchphrase in that episode correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't it also crusty's catchphrase before it was bart like don't blame me i didn't do it yeah yeah i remember that everyone had that catchphrase before it was Bart, like, don't blame me. I didn't do it. Yeah. And I remember that. Everyone had that catchphrase for some reason. Did I do that? Oh.

Oh, yeah. You know, but this pre-Urkel must have been the next year, right? Oh, I don't know. I think we're in Urkel Town. We're in Urkel Town. We just pulled up. I think it was just that was a very That like Kind of You know Scoundrel Boy

Character Was like Very very popular At that point in time That slogan was on T-shirts and stuff right I think so I didn't do it

No one saw me do it You can't prove anything Oh the full thing Yeah Yeah That's Yeah which That line reading

And also the okie dokie Later in this Okie dokie They're just burning my brain Because they're part of The deep deep trouble song Me too Yeah okie dokie later okie dokie they're just burning my brain because they're part of the deep trouble song me too yeah okie dokie uh but uh but yes oh they come back from break and they're reading the progress reports i think it's supposed to be a joke that it's like principal colon skinner that it's like a uh that it should just be Principal Skinner signs it himself, but that it's like a form note that has

Principal to be determined and he writes in his name. Not communicated effectively then. As they read the note, we get a scene that I think speaks to a lot of us of just like people, you know, well, meaningly trying to help you with depression and it not really doing much. There's, you know, so much meaningly trying to help you with depression and it not really doing much. There's, you know, so much of this in this episode of, of people just being like, I think the, the, you know, the lease on Homer's lap kind of thing is, is very much the, um,

the best example, or at least, you know, that's, that's this kind of feeling solidified, uh, of him just being like, I want to help you. Come here. And then her being like, I've got all these feelings. It's like, oh, God, you might need help that I can't provide here. Here's what helped you when you were three. Will that still work? Yeah.

But yeah, here, I'll play the full clip here. Lisa refuses to play dodgeball because she is sad. She doesn't look sad. I don't see any tears in her eyes. It's not that kind of sad. I'm sorry, Dad, but you wouldn't understand. Oh, sure I would, Princess. I have feelings, too.

You know, like my stomach hurts or I'm going crazy. Why don't you climb up on Daddy's knee and tell him all about it. I'm just wondering what's the point? Would it make any difference at all if I never existed? How can we sleep at night when there's so much suffering in the world?

Come on, Lisa. Ride the Homer horsey. Giddy up. Lisa, honey, why don't we go upstairs and I'll draw you a nice hot bath. That helps me when I feel sad. Sorry, Dad. I know you mean well. Thanks for knowing I mean well.

See, Homer, looks like you got yourself a real problem on your hands. You're right. Bart, vacuum this floor. Hey, man, I didn't do anything wrong. In times of trouble, you got to go with what you know. Now hop to it, boy! Now, as an older brother, that scene as a seven-year-old really spoke to me. I'm just like, yeah, it's hard to be the older brother.

Parents don't know what to do. You're the test subject for their better children. Yeah, it's no fun. I don't like it. I know I'm speaking to an older child and a younger brother here. Yes, I'm the good kid uh but yeah this uh one thing i really want to point out in this episode there's so many scenes that like have way more fluid great animation than i remembered and this is one of them like yeah

for sure the like the posing on lisa or like just the way homer Homer, when Homer gets out of his chair and steps up and steps back, there's so many little flourishes and extra fidgets and posing that are completely unneeded but add so much emotional flavor to the lines being delivered. It's really good. I also like the brief little moment in the scene where uh homer can't reassure lisa but lisa does reassure homer like i know you mean well it's like thanks for knowing i meant well that's true that little yeah that call and response is really good or even like there's a little fidget of like bart saying like well seems like got a real problem on your hands they have to add in the sound of scratching because oh yeah it's just this little extra thing that bart could have totally just said that line standing flatly and you never noticed that he

wasn't moving. But that little extra motion adds so much. I looked at the animators on this one. There's four named ones. Two of them are future, well, previous and future directors on Simpsons, Craig Evanzo and Carloslos baeza oh yeah these feel very vanzo-y to me i think based on what i know of scenes he animated on ren and stimpy i think i i'm gonna say these feel like vanzo to me though uh you know some listeners out there who are better at identifying animators maybe thad kamarowski is writing a comment right now. We love it. We love it. Yes. We love it. We've had him on before and tease away.

I think you'll be hearing that again on a future Simpsons episode. I also really love the posing on Homer going like, I'm going crazy. Like, that's such a funny thing. That is in my mind because it was used in like syndicated commercials for it. You're right. There's been like a bunch of clips. One of them is like, I'm going crazy. I think that is why it's in my memory more than some others.

You're right. That's funny. Yeah, because I was watching it and I was like, okay, well, this reminds me so much of like the Shining episode. Oh, yeah. Sort of like a precursor to that. But yeah, I think I saw those commercials too. And I like that they gave a little space for Lisa to get like explicit about why she's being sad. And it's more of just like these realizations of like, dude, does anything matter?

Does happiness even matter in a world that has so much suffering? Like these unanswerable questions that Homer probably either never thinks about or tries to never think about. His emotions are hunger or anger. Which is very true. And those are hard. Those questions are hard. It's like, God, I think about that stuff now. Yeah, I mean, I don't have an answer now, just like I didn't have one 30 years ago.

And I do like that Marge attempts you know a better thing with drawing a bath but also lisa says that didn't help either later anyway but at least marge is like well this helps me when i feel sad which this is the first time they even mentioned that marge the character of marge has the ability to feel anything more than just like yeah and i liked that because it's like that also is you know it's like a weirdly i don't want to say like female thing but that was a thing my mom did like baths to me are like the most comforting thing like being in hot water is it's what i do when i'm sad or when i'm you know in pain or you know whatever like so i was just like oh yeah's a really good suggestion. And when it didn't work or do anything, I was like, oh no, oh no, this is really bad. No, it feels like a very 60s mom suggestion. Yeah. Yeah. And the

next scene feels like a really good Tracy Ullman show, like short, just like come to the one you love the best. It does feel like that could just be a little short yeah other than lisa in the scene like giving up and going like just go to barb maggie that's the only bit that feels like it fits for this episode totally the rest is just a omen an unused omen short in in style but it's one it's a really great scene that you can see why it was used in so many ads and PR material early in the days. If the local news was talking about Bartmania, what kind of scene are you going to use? One of a child hugging a TV really makes kind of a statement about how much kids are loving The Simpsons. Now it would be a child hugging an iPad. Oh, absolutely, yeah.

And the iPad would, like, hug it back or thank it for the hug, too. Start playing a Nazi video for the child to watch. But, yes, this sequence of who do you love more, I really like this. Enjoy your bath? No, not really. Aw, too bad. Well, I certainly had fun vacuuming. Maybe now I'll get the pleasure of scrubbing

your tub. So typical of Bart. All he thinks about is himself. Hey, don't say stuff like that about me to Maggie. She's on my side anyway. Is not. Is too. Is not. Is too. Is not. Is too. Watch, I'll prove it. Maggie, come to

the one you love best. No, Maggie. Come here, girl. Come to me. Come on, Maggie. The choice is obvious. No, Maggie. Don't go for the glitter. Look for substance. All right, Maggie. Just go to Bart. Exactly. Come to the one you love best. And then she hugs the TV. The only big change from the script in that scene is that when she hugs it,

a very violent, itchy, and scratchy cartoon is playing on the TV. We don't need it. That'd be fun, though. Scratchy is being put in the electric chair and zapped over and over again. Of course. scratchy is being uh put in the electric chair and zapped over and over again of course uh but yeah then uh also great animation on bart vacuuming up the playing cards too yeah nice touch that was very funny i liked that i was like what does homer really play a lot of cards what what is this but it is funny to watch homer's beloved stack of playing cards that just sits on the kitchen

table i know when i was growing up there'd just be a random deck of cards somewhere just like sitting hanging around yeah for sure like parents didn't play like ipad or like uh you know smartphone games they just played solitaire yeah my parents can't remember what it's called where it's like there's you put little pegs in a in a long wooden board that's got like kind of a spiral track on it or something a cribbage cribbage yes uh my parents played that i think i think that's what it was that and like we played go fish and that was that was about it i played that a bit and uh yeah so uh so that scene just kind of fades away and takes away all the energy of it which is uh they're just still learning their editing style there and uh

then it goes back to bart and homer playing again uh i really love that this going between the shots of homer's awesome posing and crazy screaming animation yeah to then bart sitting still and pressing a button pressing just one button on the controller yeah and uh yeah the entire casket sequence is in the script uh but i think the animators really embellished it even better with just the the posing and dancing on the grave as the ref like happily points out like you're the winner yeah so funny uh even the descriptor of it playing taps is is there too uh and then uh homer so this scene really makes homer look bad i think they softened it as much as possible of just like he says like well no he's they're trying to make it clear he's

frustrated by the game and overreacts to hearing the saxophone yeah i think it's a funny turn where you think that after homer realizes he hurt lisa's feelings he would be like you know just play your heart out but he's like you know what you just finger uh finger clack your heart out he doesn't he's like he doesn't escalate to like no just play it's fine it's fine it's like no you can do the quieter thing it's fine with me i did kind of like it though i mean you know he's he's annoyed at first but he does have a moment of like recognizing that she's obviously sad even though he's not really helping it is a gentler side of him than you see for most of the rest of the episode. I do like it because he's too dense to understand, like, you should just let her play the saxophone.

I think the level of empathy Homer has of opening the door and then seeing her start to cry is like, oh, like, that is more emotional intelligence than Homer, I think, shows ever again in the show. Yeah, I definitely felt that in this scene. I was like, because I really did not like Homer growing up. He was like, it was always just so, I was so bothered by him because I was like, this father is terrible. He's always yelling at his kids and like threatening them. So I had, I didn't. And then it was really funny watching this one because I was like, oh God'm gonna have to watch homer be so insensitive and shitty to lisa and then there that is like a genuinely nice moment even if he is kind of thick about it yeah and i i think too they thought

they'd have more scenes of homer is annoyed at hearing her play a saxophone and tells her to stop playing it and uh this also has the instead of a saxophone it's a saxoma thing yeah i noticed that too oh yeah before they've given it that specific nickname i think you know jean and reese especially they wrote these scenes of like homer mad at hearing the saxophone played in the house because it's distracting and i i think that's why in the season nine episode lisa sacks they try to retcon it to be like no it's actually a gift from homer and it's nice like he doesn't hate there he doesn't try to quash her artistic uh sensibilities at every turn but you get the uh the cute line play your blues if it'll make you happy oh that's a great line i didn't get that

oh that's so funny it's really good it's really good i liked that scene like that one and then lisa in the in the car with marge were my favorite parts of this yeah it uh it it at least shows homer's not like fully he at least learns like well i don't know how to make you feel better but i'm to give you space at least. Yeah. Which is again, like you said, doesn't really happen again. Yeah. And so Lisa, you know, instead of practicing,

she then hears this siren song of jazz music out of her window and decides to, you know, secretly leave via the tree in the tree house outside. And then, then, you know, a scene that wasn't scary to me as a kid is now that intentionally so of like a little kid walking through like a dark a dark

neighborhood or the yeah my favorite bit of this outside of i did write down like it's chill that this eight-year-old or whatever is just like wandering around the city in the dark um was the fact that she goes by a place that says tattoos on it but it's just like a residential house it's just a really plain looking house that just in huge letters says tattoos it's not designed for tattoo parlor yeah and this is a non-interesting fact but the uh the bridge she uh means bleeding gums on is based after a real bridge in pasadena that Wes Archer would drive by, uh,

on his way to animate things. And, uh, based on how we don't funny is I actually like clocked that when I was watching it, I was like, I know this bridge. I was going to say like,

based on how we don't take care of any infrastructure in America, I assume 30 years later, the bridge is unchanged. Well, basically, yeah, almost exactly the same. That's,

uh, it's, it's one of those classic things where after you visit la you realize like oh springfield has a lot of just la things they draw in because the animators live in uh working out of burbank or no if they were going to have a class kichupo hollywood at the time but then it's just in everything it's so funny after you live here and especially when you live here for a while because it's like Bob's Burgers is supposed to be this sort of shitty, I think, like East Coast, maybe like seaside town. Yeah.

And then but like everything in it is from Burbank. All of the references, all of the designs. It's like they go to Whole Foods. It's like very clearly from L.A. I really enjoy that when I see it and stuff now. It was something that hit me like four seasons into parks and rec of just like wait this is all la this is they're not in indiana yeah absolutely like that town hall is in pasadena so uh but okay we have approached our guest the

in air order first guest voice they had on the show though penny marshall is the official first first guest in the series and i guess it's time to play oh no always have to play it always tasteful death jingle no all right well we uh for new listeners when we uh have a guest voice on the show who has passed away we play the death jingle so uh here it comes so ron taylor died at age 2002 at a young very young man when he died age 49 of a heart attack yeah but he lived an amazing life amazing i can go over a bit of it for us here. So he graduated from New York City's American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He went on to work in musical theater

and got a role in The Wiz playing the Cowardly Lion. So one of his first roles was in The Wiz. But yes, his biggest break, I think, would be playing Audrey II, The Plant. It absolutely is his biggest break, yeah. Oh, what? That's awesome. I didn't realize, but yeah, that totally that totally tracks but unfortunately not in the movie version but he played audrey too for more than 2 000 performances he was just the voice but he worked with a puppeteer like in tandem

to make it work he originated the role and uh starting with the 82 uh broadway version of it written by the late howard ashman who'd go on to do all your favorite disney musicals of your childhood yeah i loved him i just watched that movie for halloween for the first time in like Written by the late Howard Ashman, who'd go on to do all your favorite Disney musicals of your childhood. I love him. I just watched that movie for Halloween for the first time in like a decade probably. It rules. It's so good. I had never seen it all the way through until last year because I was a huge Steve Martin fan as a kid.

Like loved him and everything. Thought he was super funny. And he was so scary in that movie to me because I already had a really big fear of dentists. And I got to like that point in the movie twice and got too scared to turn it off. And yes, like Ellen Green plays Audrey in the movie and in the stage version.

I think she still plays her sometimes because she is that role. A few years ago in los angeles they did like a fun like revival one night only kind of performance thing with like you know jake gyllenhaal in the rick moranis part and that's a pretty good cast they recast basically everybody except for her she still yeah yeah and she could still kill it She rules And as a kid

Watching this on HBO Constantly I'm like okay I'm in love with her And I like women I love Audrey So yes Same

So speaking of blues He created and starred In the musical review It's called It Ain't Nothing But The Blues Yes Which traces the history Of the blues

Via more than Three dozen songs It eventually went to Broadway in 1999 where it ran for 284 performances so tony nominated like it audrey too might be his most famous role uh but i think his like biggest um creative achievement might be ain't nothing but the blues like just as as a review that like popularized a lot of like blue standards and also introduced you know the very white world of uh broadway viewers to such uh important part of african-american history and and this music genre i i actually have one of his songs here a clip from it yes well actually here's there's two of them here's first him singing is audrey too in the uh original broadway cast recording of little shop of ours

feed me all night long that's right boy And here's the one from Let the Good Times Roll. Lots of fun. Yeah, so he was a very good choice for this. And it's funny that he would appear on the Simpsons Sing the Blues and seemingly be the inspiration for the entire project. Although he would go on to be a very character of little importance in the series until he would have his own episode where he died. And he was on the album as Bleeding Gum singing God Bless the Child, which I would always skip because it wasn't a fun song about Bart or Mr. Burns or Homer. But maybe we'll be talking about this album at some

point in the future. Wink wink. Yeah, I mean, the Moaning Lisa blues, the expanded version of her blues song is in there. Oh, that too. Yeah. Yeah. I think at least in title, I think no matter what the style was going to be, Simpsons was so popular, there was going to be a Simpsons album. But I think this episode gave them the structure for at least the title and a couple songs in it that, you know, you gotta have, you can't just have a couple singles. You do need other songs in there. So I can get that. Yeah, man, R.I.P. Ron Taylor. Like, I'm always so shocked at the breadth of his career. Like, and I can understand why they were casting him here when I was looking at his IMDB, uh,

in the eighties, late eighties, I think he was working out of Los Angeles a lot more and was doing a lot of, you know, one-off roles, guest starring roles in tons of stuff. He plays a very similar, like blues man character on Matlock in a two-parter. He's on Miami Vice. He's on Twin Peaks. He's a coach on Twin Peaks. I think he's the only black person in Twin Peaks. I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, I was going to say it's like very hard to establish a career unless you sort of have pigeonholed yourself into a, uh, an acceptable role. Yeah. It's like, uh, and, and there's also,

uh, here's a really funny thing about, you know, the next bleeding gums, Murphy major appearance is not voiced by Ron Taylor. That's in dancing Homer, where the joke is bleeding. Gubs Murphy sings the national anthem for too long.

Now he couldn't do it because of work engagements in New York so he just couldn't come to Los Angeles to the record the part they got a different voice but a year later on LA law he gets a part as a guy who sings the national anthem brought too long and gets sued over it that's crazy oh wow and i guess like his other appearance would be uh briefly as a judge in lisa's pony of the talent show that's basically it before before his death unless i'm missing something i mean there's him in the quilt yeah yeah he's i mean you might see him in a background here or there but yeah uh bleeding comes murphy pretty pretty underused for being so major in season one. And I mean, so this character,

we're a bunch of white people talking about this, but I think this character is a bit tokenizing and is at the very least like a very stuffy trope that I think was stuffy even in 1989 of the Man of the Blues man. I mean, either right before or right after this, Driving Miss Daisy won the Best Picture Oscar, which was very much like, I'll solve all your problems, old lady. I exist only to help you. I have no life. Yeah.

So it was very much of the time. This is heartwarming, isn't it? No, and it's just, it's nice, but he also has no other life than helping Lisa, at least in this episode. In his death episode, you at least get to know what his life was. I mean, we talked about that episode. We don't like it that much.

And it sort of just makes a mockery of the character by making his life insane and ridiculous. A little bit. Yeah. Now, I will say, on the other hand, I don't feel they use this trope like in, it's more ignorant than anything else. They're using this kind of tokenizing trope. And I do think if you're going to hire somebody to do it, Ron Taylor is the perfect guy to do it. And they are, you know, he is so entrenched in the world of the blues and an amazing singer that it's great casting. And when the Simpsons, you know, sometimes doesn't cast the best voices.

I was literally going to say like, it's better than a Hank Azaria situation. Yeah, Hank is not playing this character. I also think that Bleeding Gums is not like, I'm going to mentor you, Lisa. I'll change your life. Like Lisa just meets him and he says, well, you don't have real problems, kid.

But I'll jam with you. Like his existence is what the inspiration is he's not like i'm gonna be hands-on my life is now devoted to helping you lisa so i think they know what what kind of uh what they're playing with here it's true he's not like beggar vance or anything yeah yeah and he does kind of do the like well i can't help you with that like he very much is like i'm not gonna be your therapist here yeah exactly it's like i'll jam with you but i'm not gonna be like i have no idea about like how to relate to your problems kid no and i and again this was you know 30 years ago we we knew it was a stuffy trope but also like it was still pretty normalized in comedy like uh you know me and bob

giant fans of kids in the hall they did a blues man character that i think at least once mark mckinney or more than once mark Mark McKinney did with blackface. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And it sucks now to go back to. Yeah. This is the thing that it's like surprising when you find how many people have done that.

It's just like, wow. Okay, cool. What a world we lived in. Still do. I will say my, my favorite part of this whole sequence is marge pulling up going

get away from that jazz man and then saying nothing personal i just fear the unfamiliar which is such a good dig the term jazz man is thrown around a few times like when he uh dies homer says we'll get you a new jazz man his classification as jazz man like that's his that's his position in life uh actually before i play the first extended clip with him i do we get a dream sequence with both homer and marge uh so this is a big one here that is an addition from the script table draft marge's dream not there The mentions of her mother, not there. Like this is a post table draft edition. My theory is a thousand percent.

This feels like it fell out of James L. Brooks's brain and into the script. It feels like so much of a sentimentality is in this scene and a little too on the nose sometimes, but it's like giving Marge something to do and giving her a history and things like that. Like it's on the nose, but it's like giving marge something to do and giving her uh history and things like that like it's on the nose but i don't know it worked for me because it it does feel even though yeah obviously the dialogues is a little pointed but it does feel very

real of like that time and the way so many women were raised like that it's like just don't don't feel yeah it is like we see a lot of this in the series because of who's writing it it is really the boomer parents or sorry the boomers like lashing out against their either greatest or silent generation parents who taught them all the wrong things yeah for sure i think i i kept thinking throughout this episode about tahani in the good place going like the british way of like just do your best to hide your sadness and we just did hilda for our what a cartoon podcast and we noticed like wow you know parents are much nicer

in modern cartoons because i think it's like oh yeah we're the generation who are now raising children and you know i think things are getting better we're understanding uh you know how to relate to our children more and things like that instead of just being um much yeah yeah it's great i think this is a very important addition that i'm glad they made because it makes marge's dramatic choices later makes so much more sense and she's watching her daughter go through this journey puts her on her own personal journey of like reconciling her childhood with realizing like, oh, but I regret doing what my mother told me to do and not experiencing my emotions directly, instead just dealing with repression. And she's full of regret about that. She experiences a moment I think we all do when we learn like,

oh, my mom was full of shit about that. Or my dad had no idea what he was talking about when he told me this. Like, that was bad advice they gave me and i don't want to do this yeah yeah i think uh well this is also first time you see marge's mother and this isn't exactly how uh mrs bouvier will look in the future but it's it's not not what it looks like she's she is a clone of marge in most flashbacks you see her in, which I think that makes it, if you think about it from like a reading of her dreams, then she's dreaming of herself as her and her mother. And it like makes it an even deeper meaning, I think. Yeah, I think so too.

But yes, actually here I have a, it's a pretty quick clip. Here's the dream dialogue. Wait, Margie, before you go out that door let's put our happy face on because people know how good a mommy you have by the size of your smile yeah and it's really self-serving it's just like well if my kid is out there looking dour they're gonna think like oh her mom must be awful so you know get out there and be happy yeah it's i mean it's a it's a narcissistic parent behavior i would say for sure yeah and meanwhile homer has a very oedipal dream actually yeah which again this happens we say

this about every lisa episode but like i should count the pure minutes but the b story of the video game is always threatening to take over the a story of lisa's sadness yeah which i get it like these are two dudes writing a story and a father and son story about video games you know it draws their attention more i get it i understand i do really like him waking up from the nightmare with the wiggling tongue and a joke i got this time that i didn't understand last time was like oh he immediately falls back asleep after sitting up and screaming and then marge wakes him up again it's like i thought he was just like falling back like wow that was a rough dream but like no he immediately goes back to sleep and has woken up after sitting up and screaming it's it's great yeah he says something like extremely oblivious

about lisa and then falls back asleep and marge is just lying there like half awake which is like yep that's that's real uh so also in the script the uh the dream of Homer's beating is actually preceded by him dreaming of being at Moe's and having a drink with his video game character oh okay interesting and it's um now it's I think it's a good they cut it because the realization is he's having a drink with him and he's like, oh, what do you do? He's like, oh, I work at the nuclear power plant. And then Homer's like, wait, that's what I do. And then it turns into like he realizes he's the video game character. And then the beating begins. So, yeah, it's I can see why they cut it.

It's not necessarily needed, but it's kind of a cute idea of homer drinking with his video game character like that yeah and this is like a very algin and mike reese and later just algin uh set piece where it's like okay we're in act two we're heading towards the end of act two let's have them both in bed going over the plot like where are we in this in this plot in that plot like it's something they did a lot and also to reuse animation they would often do it that's true yeah this is all original oh yeah it's something they did a lot. And also to reuse animation, they would often do it. That's true, yeah. This is all original.

Oh yeah, it's all original. I mean, there's not enough animation to reuse yet. That's true. Homer's screaming tongue animation, so great. It's like three frames repeated a few times and just amazing. I love it. I still draw it. Anytime I draw a comic and someone's freaking out, I draw that weird tongue.

It's so burned into my brain. I was so sad when The Simpsons, like, started losing those worm tongues. I love them. They're so expressive. But, yes, as you mentioned, Bob, they talk a bit about parenting in this next clip. You know, Marge, getting old is a terrible thing. I think the saddest day of my life is when I realized I could beat my dad at most things. And Bart experienced that at the age of four.

So why are you still awake? I'm still trying to figure out what's bothering Lisa. I don't know. Bart's such a handful and Maggie needs attention. But all the while, our little Lisa is becoming a young woman. Oh, so that's it. This is some kind of underwear thing. Good night, Homer.

Marge just gives up on him immediately. Great murmuring on her. Just like, whatever, you useless. Very earned groan. It doesn't feel like her being like naggy wife. It's just like, oh my God, you moron. Homer just like, once he says some kind of underwear thing he's i think that's his statement of just like i have reached the wall of information

i want to know about girls growing up so i'm not gonna think about it anymore uh well meanwhile marge is like actually i think pretty good at identifying lisa in being in a middle child situation as well yeah being sort of neglected a bit which i mean that's right in the series bible of like neglected middle child like she'll sing that out loud in scenes sometimes uh but yes then we cut back to uh lisa and bleeding ums murphy jazz uh jazz riffing together it's it's our jamming i should say now Now, now, now, low B flat. Okay, Lisa. Altissimo register.

Very nice. Very nice. I once ruptured myself doing that. Thanks, Mr. Murphy. My friends call me Bleeding Gums. Ew. How'd you get a name like that? Well, let me put it this way.

You ever been to the dentist? Yeah. Not me. I suppose I should go to one. But I got enough pain in my life as it is. I have problems too. Well, I can't help you, kid. I'm just a terrific horn player with tons of soul.

But I can jam with you. Okay. I agree with his fear of dentist i don't like him either no fun i don't like thinking that uh he was my age recording this voice oh yeah i guess he was wasn't he jesus i don't like dentists no fun i don't uh i enjoy being praised by dentists because i get none of That never happens to me. My whole family has like terrible bones and teeth. So even we try really hard. And I didn't go to one for like a couple of years when I moved out here. Because I was terrified of American insurance situations.

Even though dental is not covered in Canada. But, you know, I was still scared. And I went to one last summer when my animation guild insurance was about to run up. And it's really good insurance. So I went and I was just like, need the works i need everything it's very it's it's very lame but i work very very hard so every six months a professional person can be like good job validation that like i live for the approval of authority figures yes exactly give me my sticker that says great job i i'm terrified of being told i didn't

do a great job and like being it it feels like every like teacher or manager at a job like i've always uh feared any reprisal or like scolding it's uh oh absolutely yeah just terrified it's the worst feeling in the world but uh i i you know here we are back to dentist talk here right you know that actually audrey too eats a dentist and uh bleeding gums doesn't like him that's true wow never thought of that uh there's some really great animation of lisa and murphy playing the sax together like it's it's really fun though yeah it also feels like the show would never spend two minutes of just like sax playing back and forth without jokes without any jokes i mean there are a few but i mean it is uh uh they would learn like okay here like here are ways to pack this with more jokes and moments

and stuff i still really liked it i mean i love it's nice i'm coming down against this episode guys thumbs down for me no, I'm fine with that. I'm just noticing there's a bit more air, there's a bit more space in it that I feel like they would learn how to fill that better in season two and three. Fair. But the air is a fun thing to experience in a show, but it's just not the Simpsons style.

Exactly, yeah. It's interesting to watch now. And they do stay pretty consistent in the series with Lisa's. Lisa's sax is a baritone and Murphy's Until His Dying Day is an alto sax, which a difference we did not note in that episode. And some sax players had some notes for us. Who knew we had so many sax players in the audience? I mean, as much as it sort of makes you feel bad, I always enjoy when like an extremely

niche group of people takes issue with something like and i've had it happen with comics more than once um but it it's always sort of like i don't know it's charming in a weird way you keep listing uh sports things in the history segment henry and it's just like it's bait for people to correct us i i suppose so but sometimes the history is thin and i gotta go with a sports thing oh so then they they play the Moaning Lisa Blues, as the song is called, and the Simpsons Sing the Blues soundtrack. I'm just going to drop it in here because it's a long song. We don't need to sit here and listen to it. Oh, I'm so lonely

Since my baby left me I got no money And nothing is free Oh, I've been so lonely Since the day I was born All I got is this rusty This rusty old home I got a bratty brother

He bugs me every day And this morning my own mother She gave my last cupcake away My dad acts like he belongs He belongs in the zoo i'm the saddest kid in grade number two it's a fun song that i think is the first time they learned Yardley Smith could sing really well. Like she's an underrated performer. She really is, yeah.

Like her going back and forth with Ron Taylor, especially like a professional Broadway singer. She's able to keep up, I think, to a degree while still maintaining the Lisa voice in the scene. Yeah, it's like she still, you know, sounds like an untrained eight-year-old, but like it's so charming. And when she does kind of the last couple notes on the like, I'm the saddest kid in grade number two, like that's great. That is good.

I do like that. And once the song's over, they have only a moment to celebrate before, yes, Marge comes and ends it. You know, you play pretty well for someone with no real problems. Yeah, but I don't feel any better. The blues isn't about feeling better. It's about making other people feel worse and making a few bucks while you're at it. Which reminds me, if you're ever in the neighborhood, I'm playing in a little club called the Jazz Hall.

Lisa, get away from that jazz man. But mom, can I stay longer? We were worried about you. Nothing personal. I just fear the unfamiliar. And he plays for like another five seconds. I think it's another slow descend into the commercial break, which is not a good or a bad choice,

but definitely an un-Simpsons choice for later episodes. I love how bizarrely self-aware that joke is. It's like, I just fear the unfamiliar. It's so funny. It was like, I laughed the hardest at that in this episode march is very upfront about how irrational she's being like yeah no offense this is just i'm just afraid well uh i i do have theories about that from looking at the original script that wasn't in there marge just says you know get away from that man like we gotta I think perhaps it read as a maybe slightly prejudice or just judgy.

So, they, adding a self-aware line of March saying, like, no offense, I just fear the unfamiliar. That's good. I think it works. Me too, yeah. I feel like it sort of is like a self-dunk after Get Away from That Jazzman, which is so clearly coded that like yeah it i don't know it redeems it in a weird way because it is so self-effacing yeah yeah which again it's uh it's it's smarter writing for the simpsons too which is good instead of just the you know a normal show would have just had the mom on it like get away from that strange man and just drive away. Like, yeah. I think too, you know,

bleeding M's Murphy teaches us all that, you know, it's never, you always have to be promoting your own work if you're a freelance creator like he is. Exactly. It's like, yeah, come down. Hey, you're eight. You're out walking around at night by yourself.

Come down to the jazz hole. He would tell Lisa about his Patreon now. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And of course, yes, the jazz hole yes they celebrate that they got that on the air and the in the commentary they're like wow uh so originally in the script it's the smoky note so you know they went with jazz the jazz jazz hole is disgusting and uh it's perfect for fox yes oh i love it. It's so gross. And you're right.

Yeah, I think, you know, again, the knowledgeable jazz man is quite a stereotype. But I do like that he does kind of just, you know, put Lisa in her place a little bit. Just like someone with no real problems. It's a good line. It's so funny. So then we come back from break and learn that Barney's bowl-a-rama has burned down, which in like three episodes, it'll be fine. A shocking joke where it's just like, you had so many plans for this bowl-a-rama,

but I guess that shot of Homer eating pork rinds will be reused for the Blowfish episode, where he's like, I'm going to live every day to its fullest. And over the credits, he's eating the pork rinds and watching very boring bowling. Yeah. And I guess a simple joke, but light pork rinds is the gag. Yeah, I laughed at that, too. I mean, like, I, you know, I'm generally not a fan of any kind of, like, diet fat jokes kind of thing. But that was the concept of light pork rinds.

It's sort of like seeing, like, organic Cheetos or baked rays or whatever. Yeah, it was really, it was very funny. You know, on my recent Disneyland trip, I had some space pork rinds, or chicharron, I guess they're also called, at the Star Wars land, at the same place they sell Ronto roasters, which are their versions of hot dogs. They also sell these space pork,

they have a little bit of cinnamon on them. Did they slaughter the pigs in space to make those? Well, obviously it's not a pig, it a pig it's a magical wonderful animal from star wars i i'm very excited to go back to star wars land um the best mocktail i've ever had i had in star wars land and which one they i don't remember the name of it but it's the one that's got like uh chili habanero lime salt on the rim and then it's like pomegranate juice and something else because it's like you know i don't drink and i find most mocktails to be pretty weak and boring because i don't like really sugary drinks i want something that's kind of spicy

um and yeah i was like obsessed with it and it's like six dollars so it's awesome i uh i'm a big blue milk super fan now i actually i drank i gave myself many a headache oh well no oh boy okay so there's two types of blue milk you can get there one that is kind of just coconut milk blueified and then has some extra stuff added into it that's that is gross that's the one they sell in the cantina though blue milk they sell uh around outside the cantina and also green milk those are more like uh icies or slushies but they're not carbonated so it's like you know a frozen blue drink and oh i just love it like that's the one sort of like butter beer where you can get it in different forms. Yes. In different parts of the park. Yeah, very much. I have a reservation for that place.

So I'm going to get a nice tall glass of Bantha Weiser. The beers were unspectacular to me, but you're more of a beer knower than I am. I'm sure they're all bad, so I'll just get a cocktail. Yes, they seemed cool. We got a Porg mug that I can see from where I'm sitting right now that Cohen spent $35 on. And I was like, why? Why? My husband spent $35 on that and I spent $45 on the Tiki cup as well. It looks like it's carved by Ewoks. I mean, come on.

They got a really good first order hoodie. That's actually like a super nice hoodie. So I was, I was pleased. I don't think I bought anything in, in Star Wars land. This is an ad for Disneyland now. We should, but, but anyway, yes. Homer reacts to the bowling alley thing, which the joke too, is they say, you know, a museum burned down and all these other culturally important things burned down. But only when he hears the bowling alley does Homer jump up and like, oh no!

Like, so an under-delivered joke there, I think. And when Homer enters the kitchen, I think it's the first time the kitchen really looks like the kitchen to me. It's very fully formed. Yeah, they nailed it. Finally, it looks like it. And that's where Marge is like, oh, no, Homer, I'm worried about Lisa. And it's a funny test that Marge gives Bart here of just like telling him to be a little nicer to Lisa and how he, you know, Bart refuses to go on the record that he loves his sister.

But he's like, look, we all know it. Don't make me say this. I thought that was kind of sweet because he doesn't say like, no, I don't. No, I don't. It's just like, yeah, okay. But like, I'm a 10-year-old boy or whatever. Like, I enjoyed that. There's weird sweetness to these early episodes that's like, I don't know.

Sometimes the Simpsons can, especially later on, can get pretty cynical. Oh, yeah. And I just, I like, there were a lot of little moments that were like genuinely sweet and i thought that was cool and when bart is assigned to be nicer to lisa he says okie dokie and that's the deep deep trouble that's what i thought yeah i was like why is that so familiar to me uh but also i love that the second bart tries to be nice to lisa she sees through it instantly he's just like i don't want your pity like that's a great line i don't want your pity yeah so great but uh but bart knows just how to cheer her up in this next clip hi man i don't want your pity well come on i'll cheer you up how

yeah most have it most speaking jock there Last name Strap. Uh, hold on. Uh, Jacques Strap. Hey, guys, I'm looking for a Jacques Strap. What? Oh, wait a minute. Jacques Strap. It's you, isn't it? You cowardly little runt.

When I get a hold of you, I am going to gut you like a fish and drink your blood. Where's your sense of humor, man? Also sampled. Yeah, that's right. Lisa, you'll be late for band practice. Let's go. So, yeah, very odd scene, though, because it's all like front-facing Mo. So he's very like one sad ape-like dude.

I really enjoyed how there's a guy at the counter that's just Barney but like recolored like his his hair is the same color as his flesh but it's just Barney they haven't figured out Moe's yet because there's still like an ante room or like an entrance way and then there's a swinging doors into Moe there's like an entrance room with like cigarette machines and stuff but

yeah go back to our Homer's Odyssey episode we talked all about the tube bar tapes that spawned this whole bit and read from the tube bar the cantankerous little bartender who uh sound like he had a throat full of gravel but a heart of gold i i think gene and reese were the writers who liked it the most uh these the the prank calls and i think it's reese who on uh future commentary goes like eventually you realize like these are a lot of work and nobody loves them. Why are we, why are you doing this? They're only, the funniest ones are where they're subverted.

Like I'm Hugh Jazz. Yeah. Oh yeah. I love those. But the, at least it's a great animation of like Moe screaming into the phone and Bart rolling on the floor. Like it's weird as hell and way off model, but it's great animation anyway. Yeah. like it's weird as hell and way off model but it's great animation anyway yeah and uh so then we cut to the first appearance of noiseland arcade the regular arcade of the simpsons previously i believe in barth the general was called just the video arcade yes yeah though they didn't visit it

it was just named off screen not the non-video arcade the one with video in it such an old person writing a arcade thing. But Noiseland is a cute joke. And I think they should have had a scene where Homer says, or I'm surprised they didn't have a scene where Homer realizes he needs help or he should go to an arcade to get the elite skills of a gamer and learn the tips and tricks. But now these days he just put on a youtube video about like you know frames uh jumps or whatever frame counting speed runs but i love the the kid in the

arcade because it's so he's just like the fact that he also doesn't have fully rendered eyes no it's creepy is something i enjoy they're just like these weird little dots so it's like is he from the computer yes i guess r.i.p howie who would make his only appearance and he was supposed to be like a cory feldman type but i did write a little kid i did write down all of the uh the arcade names i could read because a lot of them are just frankly illegible i think they will learn a lot about uh how to you know produce sight gags or sign gags rather so the audience can actually read them but uh we have freeway escape from grandma's house 2 dementor time waste itchy versus scratchy pack rat captain noisy crush the rebels nuclear winner robert goulet destroyer my favorite and eat my shorts wow yeah i caught i caught

escape from grandma's house too but that was the only one uh the time we're doing it this time i have a bigger tv and i could read more of them oh nice well these are jokes though that disney plus will also maybe crop out too oh yeah i never thought of that i used my dvd yeah i did watch it at sd on my dvd as well i watched it on disney plus and they were all still there okay good good i i i so some of those, Escape from Grandma's House, Nuclear Winter, those are in the script, as is Robert Goulet Destroyer. And Bob, you had asked me specifically to get a one clip from when Homer walks by the machine. Yes, they're like, I couldn't make out what is happening, but a sound effect plays as he walks by Robert Goulet Destroyer. Yes. Here, I'll play it and then I do have an answer to it.

One more time still can't figure it out so i couldn't either but once i read what was in the script it now makes sense robert goulet destroyer was totally in the uh script it is a very gene and reese celebrity joke that they love to make like critic Critic is all that. And the joke is that Dan Castellaneta is pretending to be Robert Goulet, singing the Goulet classic, I gotta be me. But he is exploded during the time he sings it. So he's saying, I gotta be me. That is the sound. That's nuts.

Like we unlocked a secret joke. But in the animation, that's not happening. It's just like a secret joke but in the animation that's not happening it's just like a little stick figure in the background through yeah play it again i do want to hear it again i'm sorry yep it like i only know that the way he's saying because you explained it to me so man i love finding new jokes in these so uh so shout to the rafters people we found a new joke now i uh i think it this is one of those moments where in a script it makes so much sense but just through all the other places it has to go the animators you know they drew it into the background but they uh how do they show

rabu gulay on screen with the sound they have yeah it's mixed really low and it's just they learn a lot about how to present a background joke like that after. Yeah. I mean, overthinking this, I think like Homer would be walking past the arcade cabinets. As he passes that one, he would walk off screen and they would sort of zoom into that and you would see the parody. I think that would be how they would do it in the future. And I think we actually would see Escape from Grandma's House in the future. Like it's when you're shooting with like a shotgun. Yes, yeah. We saw it in Bart Gets an F. That's right. He's distracting himself instead of studying, which

I would never do with a video game. Also, to get very granular, arcade games, there were not arcade perfect ports on the NES. So, I think skills he would learn in the arcade version, you know, some of those strategies wouldn't transfer over. That's also there's no two-player version of punch out anyway yeah arcade punch out is very different than mike tyson's punch out i will say that yeah but yeah no i mean this is even before like two-player games were so simple back then the kind of strategies howie is teaching homer are not uh really applicable to like karate fight back there or i guess no it was just karate wasn't it but yes why do we hear homer learn some elite gaming skills at the arcade from one howie well looks like you're a lot of quarters old man that's okay well the tips you've given me

i'm gonna pound the tar out of a certain little smarty pants tonight. Howie, I thought I told you to stop wasting your money in this stupid place. Sorry, Mom. And you, a man of your age, you should be ashamed of yourself. Excuse me, I think I hear my wife calling. Also, I like the cashier before this who mocks Homer. He's like, I think you really should use that for laundry. That should be theonson guy but they didn't have yeah he wasn't around that mother should be suspicious about a man hanging out alone with her son all night is that why homer said i think i hear my wife calling like no i'm a married man there's nothing weird

is going on here maybe he maybe uh i do want to talk about the voice of howie here i did a little research on this oh please this is the only appearance in the show the voice actress susan blue she is most famous i think she is one of the many saturday morning voice actors that sam simon rejected and only used once you know just like miriam flynn we talked about earlier susan blue what an amazing life she has led like she's most famous uh to at least to my generation as the voice of rc in the original transformers and okay i know we have a transformers writer on this episode here right that's me uh did you ever write a scene for rc in your time uh no we when we did cyberverse um she she was i think off the table in terms of characters we were we were to use because that one was mostly wind blade and and a couple of other characters

that i turned into girls because i'm just like that because originally there was like two in the whole series and i got five in there i was very proud um and yeah the comic we did recently was just like cliff jumper and death saurus which is the best name for a character um so yeah the comic we did recently was just like cliff jumper and death saurus which is the best name for a character um so yeah not yet although my friend sam mags has done some stuff with rc i think uh she's she's a very complicated character in transformers very complicated you know i my expertise on transformers kind of ends with the g1 and g2 uh but yeah rc in in my childhood rc was the the lone female transformer like oh yeah and then they did this whole thing in the comics at one point with this writer that the transformers wiki which is honestly like one of my favorite places on the internet because it's

so snarky and hilarious and surprisingly um like progressive and inclusive uh transformers has a very good fandom it It's interesting. One writer who did some really messed up, like forceful gender changing, like really messed up, very accidentally transphobic stuff with that character. So a lot of people don't really want to touch her for that reason. But also because she was, you know,

such a smurfette of that particular generation. I think Susan Blue does a great job with her voice in the original, in Transformers the movie. She's really great. She also worked on a lot of the Marvel production shows. I think her second most famous character is in the original Gem of the Holograms. She's Stormer in The Misfits. Yeah, that's a big one for me.

So she was in the Hasbro clique. Yes, yeah. I know well. And also Susan Blue, a thing I found out from doing research on her to try to find some interview with her. Because I was like, did she ever talk about The Simpsons in any interview? Couldn't find one.

But she did an interview with The Advocate and she is an out lesbian too oh interesting yeah yeah big thumbs up to susan blue then there i believe she's still active she in the article she talks about how you know the the wide range of fans she meets like botcon and in the transformers fandom it's it's really sweet but i had no idea this was the voice of howie yeah i yeah and it's her only actually she was in one other episode i should have mentioned her in the bartha general episode uh she voices the weasels in that oh yeah the sidekicks of months voice is very similar yes

yeah but uh unfortunately susan blue did not stick around afterwards but she's she's still at it a very uh accomplished voice actress and yeah if especially if you you'd like to read about her career and you know her her journey as a closeted actress in the 80s to you know being an out and proud woman now uh that that advocate interview is really worth looking up it's susan blu blue yeah i'm like legitimately It's Susan B-L-U Blue. Yeah, I'm legitimately going to go look it up because that's really cool. But yeah, so the scene ends with Homer leaving with his tips and tricks. And then we get a lengthy scene with Marge and Lisa, which I think the way it starts with just awkward silence in a car with your parents, I think that's a very well- like start to a scene there marge gives lisa some uh very bad advice now lisa listen to me this is important i want you to smile today but i don't feel like smiling well it doesn't matter

how you feel inside you know it's what shows up on the surface accounts. That's what my mother taught me. Take all your bad feelings and push them down, all the way down, past your knees until you're almost walking on them. And then you'll fit in and you'll be invited to parties and boys will like you and happiness will follow. Oh, come on. You can do better than that oh that's my girl i feel more popular already oh i feel so sad for lisa in that moment because like the the one person she's counting on to understand her it just kind of betrays her here with just like just smile until you do feel like smiling like uh it's so sad in the, her speech is virtually the same, except for the reference to her mother. She does not say, that's what my mother taught me.

That's right, yeah. Because that was added. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, right. I think that makes all the difference in her speech, because at the least, it makes more sense for Marge's emotional turn in this moment. And I think, you know, I think it really says so much about her that she's like, that's what my mother taught me.

And then how she says, and happiness will follow. That, I think, explains why she's always believed that. Because she's like, well, if I'm unhappy, I'll act happy until I feel happy again. And it'll lead to being happy again. Like, that is the explanation of like, well, it ultimately pays off to repress your emotions happy until I feel happy again. And it'll lead to being happy again. Like that's, that is the explanation of like, well, it ultimately pays off to repress your emotions, because it'll you'll get all that happiness if you stop acting like you're unhappy. It's so rough.

Yeah. And that people liking you is more important than your own feelings. It's like, yeah, just like the followup of these kids also being incredibly on the nose with the things they're saying it's like oh you smiled for two seconds i like you now yeah we need to wrap this story up yep and then they are instantly planning to take advantage of her too yeah it's like oh look a doormat yeah yeah someone searching for my approval i can use them which they may they joke on the commentary that they're like wow marge has really good hearing as all this goes on uh but also in the script it's only ralph who is talking to her largo doesn't come in and i think largo's bit of like so that's where she gets a very sitcom

line but i i think it's at least kind of funny now that's that is what put marge over the edge not a school chum but seeing a teacher tell her like enough of this free will. Right. I like that. Yeah. Cause it's like, okay, I can, I can deal with these kids being idiots, but like, this is a person in a position of authority, you know, it's like, come on. And so yes, Marge, I, you know, some, some bits work better than others in this, but I do, to me, watching it this time, Marge's extreme reaction of saving her daughter from a life of repression, it does make me misty a little bit. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. It works. It works. I'm glad they let it be Marge who saves the day, too. Yeah. You know, a show that always wants to do stuff with the boys, that they're like, Marge should save the day. And Marge and Lisa learn a lesson together. I really liked it.

Again, like, this is my other favorite part of the episode. But here's the big moment here. Hey, why don't you come over to my house after practice? You can do my homework. Okay. Five minutes, people. Five minutes. Now, Miss Simpson, I hope we won't have a repeat

of yesterday's outburst of unbridled creativity. No, sir. Hmm. Wow, Mom. So that's where she gets it. Lisa, I apologize to you.

I was wrong. I take it all back. Always be yourself. You want to be sad, honey, be sad. We'll ride it out with you. And when you get finished feeling sad, we'll still be there. From now on, let me do the smiling for both of us.

Okay, Mom. I said you could stop smiling, Lisa. I feel like smiling. It's a good, I mean, it's a good solution in that it's like, well, Marge is not saying, well, here are ways to not be sad. She's just saying it's okay to be sad, which is an important lesson. Yeah. And then there's also that, like, tinge of extra sadness where she's like, I'll do the smiling for you. Like, I still have to be like this, kind of, you know?

Yeah, right. Which is interesting. Yeah, she's, Marge is like, it didn't teach her to show her emotions yet, but she's like, you know what, I've repressed enough for two people. I can do it for both of us. Yeah, she's like, well, like, I'm just too damaged at this point to change the way way i am but i don't want to pass this down to my child but like there's something very valuable in that yeah yeah i and and that's as far as marge can go in this moment too which like yeah i and i love that that does help lisa feel like smiling or she feels accepted enough like that but it's not you know a magic you know wand that fixed

everything for her but she she just says i feel like smiling and uh that line wasn't there in the script there's an equivalent line that actually is supposed to go at the end of their jazz club sequence she's like after seeing the musicians play she's like you know now i feel like smiling but i think it's way i think it's better to put it there and have it be a hinge more on the margin lease interaction yeah it works so much better here but at the same time like there's no button to end the uh episode on there's no like moment but i mean i do like it here i prefer it here it's very sweet i think it's it's a nice and like the fact that all she needed was someone to accept her for it instead of trying to solve it is like you know really insightful and i feel like there are moments in shows where i feel like oh man i really hope

some parent watching this took something from this and and i i feel it that that might have happened from this because it is a really good way of dealing with a kid who is sad then in a weird editing choice the whole episode has been doing dissolves to the next scene but this one does just smash cut to when i even smash cut but like it just cuts to bart and homer just like the music plays you into the next part and homer scene but there's no dissolve or fade or anything it's nice and they're back to playing slugfest again. Yes. And so, yeah, Homer thinks he's going to get Bart. He's

showing off his skills, and Bart doesn't know what to do. And Homer is really feeling himself in this final audio clip here. Whoa! Kid, tonight's not your night. Alright, man, you asked for it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Aha! Blocked it!

Haha! You missed me. I gotcha. Don't try that. I gotcha. And the crowd is on its feet as Hurricane Homer moves in for the kill. Boys, I'd like your attention, please. Quiet, Bart. This is my big moment. Bart the Bloody Pope Simpson is on the ropes.

He is hoping I'll put him out of his misery. Well, you're in luck, Bart Here comes my right Oh, no My game, my game I could have beat the boy Marge, how could you? I was so close

I'm sorry, but this is more important than that silly loud game You're right, Mom I just like to use this occasion to announce my retirement, undefeated from the world of video boxing. Oh, calm down, Homer. Lisa has an idea that she thinks would be fun for the whole family. That was the first, like, rage quit by

proxy, like someone else is mad and they quit your game for you. I mean, you know, as a young person person i knew the pain of saying like please just let me get to a safe point no turn off game and you're just dead inside you're just like no no like and man dan is really figuring out like homer here like these kinds of like moans and screams like the high-pitchedness like this isn't really figuring out the the funny high-pitched places homer can go in his misery instead of like just

being a guy he's like all the time yeah it's it's very good uh just as like uh the commentary gene makes a great point of just like if your father actually started like weeping on the floor after losing a video game it'd be a dark moment for the family i am sure that has happened to a lot of young people today but yeah the and as a kid i loved the line that like bart bart still wins in the end because he's like oh yeah i'm never playing this video game again because i know you can beat me so i retire undefeated like a great extra rub in on homer there it's very yeah i like i liked that a lot too just seizing the opportunity and the final fight in it too like great posing on the bart character getting like beaten up it's i i have to be careful i'm phrasing of this because it'll just sound like I'm saying like Homer punched Bart some more and then like

blood and teeth everywhere well yeah I found like I felt like they were being and maybe this is just me reading into it but felt like they were being really careful when Homer's in the arcade

and like everything he says is like so close to being like I'm gonna get home and beat my kid tonight but it's just like I'm gonna be a little whatever it is that he says but it's like not

quite and he doesn't say kid and it's like a certain little smarty pants yeah yeah certain little smarty pants where it's like it's skirting the line just which i yeah it's good and i also really love there's some great posing on bart when he's like in trouble he's like whoa hey man whoa the way he moves around the joystick is really is. There's some more great animation in there that I think is going to credit to Baeza or Vanzo. But, you know, there's two other animators on there. I may be hurting them by overlooking their work. But they didn't direct future episodes, so I don't have to remember their names.

No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. And so, yes, then we go to the jazz hole and two minutes of music. I clipped it all down. The ending, it's a full two minutes. And then it's Ron Taylor as Bleeding Gums Murphy performing the Moaning Lisa Blues. The one joke I do like is the line about Homer that Homer listens to.

It's like, my dad acts like he belongs in a zoo. Like, Homer is following the line up until that, and then he's surprised when he hears belongs in a zoo. He's like, what? What? Not even like a shout. He's like, what? That's great. It's just like an understated what.

It's great. That's like the last joke in the episode, kind of. Yeah, yeah, that's like the last joke in the episode, kind of. Yeah, yeah. And I like the vamping, too, that Ron Taylor kind of puts in those lines, too. Like, my daddy belongs, yeah. Like, it's a weird, it's an interesting, like, jazzy choice, I guess you'd say. I can tell you on February 11th, 1990, we were all singing this on the school bus. In my neck of the woods.

I remembered all the words to this and i don't think i've seen it in a decade i was in grade number two in this episode i think i was you were not henry i know your history oh yes that's right we're you graduated one year apart though there were six months difference in the age or four months four months very important amount of months uh we're the same person in a lot of ways but uh but yeah this uh this music sequence it's it's long they really enjoy it like i i like the designs on his backing band the one guy who's like wearing like a russian ziggurat on his head or something it's a weird hat choice and they were still two guys that are just the exact same model

and also they were kind of thinking like well what do we end on like over the credits uh because i think previously we had a shot of the house at night instead of just like the classic black background with the credits so here we have the credits over the jazz hole yeah and uh again if you don't count the christmas episode because it came first in air order but eighth in production. This is the first time the credits were different than just the regular music over the words. Like they they change the credits to be just, you know, the full saxophone solo that plays over the credits. And it's really great. I think it's just as music like I'm no jazz expert, but I think it's a really great like song that takes us out. Yeah, it's uh it just as music like i i'm no jazz expert but i think it's a really great like song that

takes us out yeah it's sweet and it it very much is like i don't know it it keeps you in that sense of like this episode was kind of different yeah you know they're they're not all just gonna be jokes yeah i mean all of the uh the lowbrow viewers waiting for al bunny to show up and flush a toilet were treated to some npr caliber entertainment and they needed that in their lives and and I like our final shot of Lisa is just like her kind of happy and just watching jazz like holding her head like yeah like she's she's so entertained and that's a it's a great place to to leave Lisa for for an episode that begins with her just you know blankly staring staring in a mirror yeah oh yeah that's interesting because it is sort of a mirror it's a anyway that's neat yeah uh but um yeah i think i think this is a good episode that would really

show them the future of what they wanted to do with lisa and i think this was like them discovering what the character of lisa simpson could be and to an extent marge and then plus like as as a hardcore gamer i think this is one of like the best encapsulations of what gaming can mean to you in 1990 that you would see yeah i don't have a lot more final thoughts that i just feel like this would establish a good template for a lease episode and also really establishes her character and i think that this is one of the few lease episodes where she gets to win or like she's not like a failure, like learning through failure. She gets a little success in this or at least learn something and, you know, is able to feel better. So I do like it for that. She's not abandoned by Mr. Bergstrom or whatever. Like

there's no tragedy. It's just like a nice, a nice happy moment at the end. It's not a humbling for her like this solution is not like oh you know get off your high horse or whatever it's like she finds comfort and she you know i think it's it's sweet yeah it's so many times she has to learn to like well mr bergstrom's gonna leave you or you gotta give up your horse to help your dad or you're actually selfish and your dad is nice for taking you to anything ever that was a really bad lesson yeah yeah lost not lost our lisa uh whatever that was called uh no this lost our lisa sequel yeah or lost our lisa her lesson was to be more like

homer and loosen up which i you know that's a fun lesson at least but uh yeah you're right this is one where lisa can finally just she's just happy she just ends with her being happy not put in her place yeah and i think that's cool and definitely does not always happen so yeah k you've been with us for so long thank you for your time this morning uh please plug whatever you want you're working on so much stuff you've got your great comic you've got a patreon you got a lot of stuff going on so many things um so i don't know when this one will uh go up but uh yeah i'm uh so i do a comic called valley ghouls that goes up uh monday through friday on webtoon and instagram and twitter um you can find me anywhere on the internet basically at kate leff my last name's

l-e-t-h yeah pretty much KateLeff.com has links to everything. And I'm Kate Leff on Instagram. And then I've got a couple of issues of Transformers, actually, coming out soon that I co-wrote with my partner, Cohen. It's Galaxies number five and six, I think. I might've got that wrong. That might've been Sam's issues.

But if you look it up, you'll find it. Awesome. And those are going to be really fun. And I'm going to be at Emerald City in Seattle in March. And I think that's all the big stuff that's happening right now. Oh, yeah. My Patreon is where I have extra bonus comics and behind the scenes stuff and all kinds of weird random things and also porn. And you can find that at Patreon.com slash Kate Leth or at bisexual.zone.

Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much, Kate, for your time. Yes, thank you. Thank you.aitleth or at bisexual.zone. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much, Kate, for your time. Yes, thank you. Thank you. This is always such a treat. So thanks so much to Caitleth for joining us. Please check out all of her stuff. And as for us, if you want to support our show

and get extra episodes on top of that and access to shows a week in advance, go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. If you sign up for $5, you'll get just that, but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall. There was so much stuff going on behind that paywall. If you like listening to us talk about old cartoons, there are so many episodes you haven't heard, including all of our limited miniseries, including all of our limited miniseries,

the most recent of which was Talking Futurama Season 2 Part 1. There will be two more miniseries coming up in 2020 that's only for five dollar and up patrons and also we have other stuff on there like interviews our most recent one went up a few days ago with jay kogan yes season one to four writer and we talked so much and we learned so many new things and we never think we can learn new things but we are always proven wrong by these great writers who come on our show so if you sign up for that $5 level, you get access to that interview and 19 others with Simpsons All-Stars. Really good deal. Plus, at the $10 level,

you can get our monthly What a Cartoon Movie podcast. All that $5 stuff. And on top of that, our monthly What a Cartoon podcast, where we talk about a different animated feature film once a month, often for over four hours long. This month, we're doing the great mouse detective the disney classic all about rats who solve crime and i think you'll really enjoy that as well as the many we did before so please check out at the ten dollar and five dollar level all

the cool stuff we've put out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons as for me i've been one of the hosts bob mackie find me on twitter as bob servo i have another podcast by the way that is retronauts uh that is a classic gaming podcast going on since 2006 you can find that wherever you find podcasts but also we have a patreon and that is patreon.com slash retronauts and if you go over there and sign up at the five dollar level you'll have access to two Patreon exclusive episodes every month at patreon.com slash retronauts. Henry, how about you?

You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Anytime there's new Henry Gilbert stuff going on, I tweet about it there. Plus, you should be following the official Twitter account of this podcast

at TalkSimpsonsPod. Anytime new stuff goes up on the Patreon or on the free feed or other news happens for us, we're sure to tweet about it at TalkSimpsonsPod. Anytime new stuff goes up on the Patreon or on the free feed or other news happens for us, we're sure to tweet about it at TalkSimpsonsPod. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for our monthly community podcast, and we will see you then. I got this bratty brother He bugs me every day

And this morning my own mother gave my last cupcake away. My dad acts like he belongs, y'all. He belongs in the zoo. What? I'm the saddest kid in grade number two. ¶¶ © transcript Emily Beynon Shh. Where the hell are my keys?

Who stole my keys? Come on, I'm late for work. Oh, Homer, you'd lose your head if it weren't securely fastened to your neck. Did you check the den? The den! Great idea!