Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Moe Baby Blues With Chris Cabin

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

As we close out season 14, we've got returning guest Chris Cabin from the podcast We Hate Movies! Together we celebrate what most call the best episode of the season, thanks to Emmy-winning acting by Hank Azaria, not to mention the stunning direction of Lauren MacMullan. But can this sweet tale of Moe connecting with Maggie survive a whacky third act with the mafia? Grab an orange peel and listen along to find out! Support this podcast, hear it ad-free, and get 180+ bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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now big o tires the team you trust this podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a Movie Podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the only thing more exciting than an Italian-American-Mexican standoff. I'm one of your hosts, the budding snake farmer Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today as always?

Flaring my nostrils in olfactory anticipation, it's Henry Gilbert. And who is our special guest on the line? Chris Cabin, professional Jiu-Jitsu player. And this week's episode is Moe Baby Blues. Listen to those lucky people. Enjoying that pretty flower. I got nothing. Just this can. This week's episode originally aired on May 18th, 2003.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history happy season 14 finale Bobby interstellar 555 the Daft Punk musical anime film is released Buffy the Vampire Slayer reaches its finale and the MuchMusicUSA is renamed to Fuse. And this is, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel because this was the same night as So I already did three other news things in the last episode we did. When you said Interstellar, Henry, I thought, well, Henry's saying Interstellar wrong, and he's got the year wrong too. No, no, yes. It's Interstellar, the Daft Punk anime made with the late Laiji Matsumoto.

The 5555 stands for the story of the secret of the star system, where every first S in that is replaced with the number five. The French appreciate anime to the right level. They got us beat in that. Or at least Otaku in France, they appreciate anime to the right level they got us beat in that or at least otaku in france they appreciate anime and especially raiji matsumoto much better than americans do and i'm jealous of that as an american it took america a long time to stop being afraid of it and also to stop being afraid of daft punk this is before the they really hit it big in the u i mean they people knew them

in america i'm not saying they didn't but I felt like their big hit was like five or six years later after this, right? Digital Love, I think that was the big one because they had the Juliette Lewis Gap ad where she's dancing with them. I hate to say a commercial had that much effect, but I do think that was it. But yeah, that was for Discovery. The record Discovery is like that whole soundtrack, right? I remember learning about most

music from commercials honestly back then what are those ipod silhouettes dancing to that's new music right pretty much my my way of finding new music was googling song in commercial and and then finding it out and then listening to the whole album yeah nobody talks about the positives of that like when everybody was talking about like selling out and all this i remember i had friends who could not get over the fact that like i think it was modest mouse was using a chevrolet ad and like i heard about that for a month and i'm like like look i get it like now like people are just like rabid to sell out but at the time we were so conservative about that I kind of see the backlash had to come like that I feel like now since I know that musicians don't get rich

by selling music anymore it's just like well then the only way they're gonna own a house most musicians is if they put it in a commercial so I don't begrudge them as much no now whenever I hear a new song which isn't often I can I can usually imagine the bank commercial it will be part of in five years. Who here was a Buffy watcher? I actually barely watched any Buffy. I watched other Whedonverse shows back then more than Buffy. I never watched during when it was airing. I got completely when I had girlfriends and they would show me.

And that was my first introduction, I believe, to Joss Whedon. And I was just kind of like, okay, that's fun. I still, to this day, like the movie better. I don't know. I think I'm in the minority on that one. Yeah, I haven't seen a frame of this. And when it was running, my thought was always, oh, they made a TV show based on that okay movie from almost a decade ago?

All right. And then I just never looked into it until I found out that people were way into it online. But like you, Chris, no girlfriend ever showed it to me it's a failing of all women that they never sat us down to watch buffy i think you know meanwhile me on any gay dating app back in the day i felt like the weirdo because maybe it was just what the algorithms were showing me every guy i would see on there would say my guilty pleasure pleasure, I watch too much Buffy. And I was like, okay. I'm kind of a willow. Yes, exactly.

Is that a character from Buffy? Help me out. Of course, that's Allison Hannigan. Every geeky man's red-haired dream boat. I was very aware of her, but not Buffy. You were America Piehead? No, just, oh, it's this redhead that's on magazine covers. I wonder what her deal is.

Buffy has a really big fan base for me. I knew it. I also heard, like, oh, this is just like an X-Men show, really. I was like, I like the X-Men. I'm just going to stick with that. Then when Whedon ended up writing the X-Men comics, I did read those. I thought they were all right. But now, of course, it's no fun to like Joss Whedon and you kind of have to

distance yourself and be like oh I liked all the other writers on the show or all the actresses who were his victims or his cruel boss stuff I don't know if anything could be quite as cruel I mean I know it was really bad and I don't want to belittle what people went through I don't know if any of it could be as

bad as having to sit through that much to do about nothing thing you put out. Like, my god. It was a whole movie that you put out in theaters, man. And not even like, you know, there's plenty of the Mekas brothers will put out like epics of their home videos

and unbelievable, like beautiful 16mm that was shot live in like fucking Belfast or wherever. And then I have to watch Clark Gregg half doing half doing shakespeare great perfect we were too complimentary to dr horrible sing-along blog so he made that again he's like i can do no wrong did he basically film a dinner party at his house and then edit it into a movie a very nice dinner party with like some carnival players in the background there was a lot of circuit de soleil kind of bending and twitchival players in the background. There was a lot of Cirque du Soleil kind of bending and twitching ladies while they're eating

and saying this dialogue with what I remember as mostly handheld camera work. No, thank you. Big no thank. The third thing about Much Music USA, I watched that a ton. And it's why whenever we have on Canadian guests, I surprise them with my knowledge of Ed the Sock

because we shouldn't know about it. But I watched Much Music USA. I had no access to Much Music USA. I guess it became Fuse. Is that correct, Henry? Yes, it renamed itself to Fuse. The only thing I know about Fuse is that for whatever reason, that's where the Whitest Kids You Know sketch program started before it moved to IFC. And it showed up on IFC and I started watching it.

And then I learned this is the weird Fuse history to the show. I was like, what's Fuse? Much music was like, they're the MTV of Canada. They then expanded into American deep cable in the late 90s. And I would watch like, oh, they'd play some music videos on there you wouldn't see on MTV. I'd find some indie music you wouldn't see normally and then they rebrand to fuse i think to not make it sound as much like a canadian channel like much music usa sounds like and they spent a ton of money also they had a downtown heim square

yes chris you must have seen it oh yeah in person it was right across from master square garden it was a huge place i know it because i because I had an acquaintance from high school who worked there as a video editor. And I think I got brought in maybe like five times for an interview at that place when I was still trying to find an actual normal job. And I interviewed with the same guy five different times for not the same position,

for a bunch of different positions but i remember getting into that place and like i started knowing like the ladies out front i was like hey guys how you doing it always sucked because i would have to go directly from there back out to penn station and i have to wait in penn station because i would go and hang out with the lady i was seeing at the time lived in white plains so it was just a little bit of a stressor sorry to bring back all these horrible fuse feelings for you yes very deep roaring and yeah if you're wondering why this aired the same night as bard of war and they burned off two brand new simpsons on the same programming night it was also that year's season finale of king of the hill and malcolm in the middle and

i believe it was because there was a big nascar race the next sunday so they're like well if we're gonna take out that entire sunday of programming for nascar let's just get the season finale done with in the first half of may then let's just get it all done now i don't know how you are doing this but you are like hitting all of my like work stuff forever i worked at nielsen ratings and i would create quizzes that like audience members would take to see if you noticed certain product placements so you would essentially write a question over around a scene that had like a tide box in the back or something like that and the worst worst job you could get at nielsen was covering nCAR. It was horrible. Not only were you counting any, like,

if the camera held on a guy holding a Pepsi for over 30 seconds, you had to write a question about it. The panels on the side with all the different guys, you had to write stuff for that. It was just a non-stop work, whereas David Letterman, maybe you have to do four questions total in the whole thing.

Oh, God. You came in on Sundays, and you were there until, until like 3 a.m doing that yeah nascar is just the advertisement race yeah who tides winning way more than football and any of those guys like it is everywhere at nas on those stadiums that's what happened the same day that mo baby blues aired and joining us once again is chris cabin from the great podcast we hate movies chris last joined us for season 13's Papa's Got a Brand New Badge. Welcome back to the show, Chris. Thank you, guys.

Great to see you again. When this airs, you will have just joined us for, I believe, Despicable Me 2, I think it is. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad to be back, guys. I'm a little sad to be doing this episode, but I know a lot of people hold this one in higher regard than I do. So I'm kind of interested to talk about it.

Well, first, Chris, I want to thank you for not inviting us to do Garfield, A Tale of Two Kitties. I'm glad we dodged that bullet. You did. And you would have, I assume, have you guys seen it or not? I have never seen it. No, I haven't either. I did see the Garfield movie, which I believe you also did, Chris. Yes. For a previous episode yes that one was during the time the tale of two kitties came at a time

when you could not make a popular movie without including at least 30 seconds of the black eyed peas like it just you were not allowed to be put into a theater unless you included their song and there's a like at least a minute of garfield shaking his ass to a Black Eyed Peas song while they're making lasagna. It comes into my brain at night. It's just nightmare fuel. Well, it's funny that second Garfield movie is just like that second Smurfs movie and the second Return of the Muppets movies

where they see that the movies do better in Europe than in America. So they're all like, we're going to Europe in the next movie. Oh, good. I'm sure this will go very well. But I believe, I think Chris mentioned something

about this episode's reputation up front. And yeah, this is a beloved episode of this era. The early Simpsons era is what it is now. And I remember being online with the very, very cranky fans in news groups. I think I was probably posting on the No Homers Club message board at this point. For as cranky as they were, people usually liked this episode.

I think they came around to liking this, and they got slightly less cranky for a short amount of time. And I did like it at the time. I'm a little cool on it now because it has a lot of the wacky third act stuff. And I feel like they just add Fat Tony when they're out of ideas for how to end the episode yeah yeah i i don't want to be a basic b but this has been my favorite of the season we've recovered but also yeah i think for me it's the animation really takes it up and the first two acts i think are very strong but it has to again have a third act of a caper i don't know they have to point guns at people

for your third act yeah put the baby in danger i guess is what you need to do again at the end of it just to make a full circle but what i like about this episode is what we get from mo like as a character study is what i am interested in in this episode what i am generally not interested in is just like i mean we've talked about it a hundred times, like the repeating of the jokes that like, I'm not sure if you even needed to repeat it. And they probably had been repeated at least five times by now. Anyway, a lot of the big laugh moments that I feel I should have gotten. I just didn't because I was like, oh, I know this joke. I remember this. Yeah. It's just too close. I also feel that in June of 1999, the entertainment industry should have said, okay, guys, we have six months. You have to get your Godfather references in by the year 2000. We're not going to let them on TV or movies or in anything. We've done enough of them. We're shutting the door on this. In fact, Godfather references in 2003 it was kind of shocking at the time like even then

I thought oh we got over this didn't we and watching it again I thought like wow I forgot there's just so much Godfather stuff in this episode the reason it's here is because of James L. Brooks it was his idea and they could not say no to him and in his mind he's like oh Godfather's a newer movie right people know that and

2003 we're talking about Sopranos we're still talking about good fellas and godfather's beloved but i think the novelty of seeing a horse head in a bed or having a joke about that has long passed and i was just reminded of this because of the real jims did the great simpsons youtuber he did a retrospective on season 18 and it reminded me that in season 18 they do an even fuller godfather parody but lisa has a crush on a michael corleone type son of fat tony who wants to be a baker and then gets pulled back into the family as like so they get even more direct than this episode

in four years well i'm so surprised about because you just brought it up pop is like last time i was on this show we did papa's got a brand new badge they do a full the intro to the sopranos gag they had seen it right they had gone there and they went back again and i was like what no we're past it we've done it at least do casino anything man actually i was gonna note the symmetry chris that the last time we had you on was for a season finale like this one which also has the mafia in it for the big third act and a shootout that involves maggie in it also yeah yes i didn't even think about that yeah absolutely and it's not like godfather stuff is inherent in the character of fat tony yes he is a mafia guy

but he is a caricature of someone from Goodfellas. By the time they got around to doing their mafia thing, they were doing a Goodfellas parody. Yeah, Bart the murderer is him joining the Goodfellas. It's him as Henry Hill joining the mafia. Like Fat Tony's Paul Sorvino, another guy in Goodfellas looks so much like Louie that he sued the show and lost.

You guys would know this better than I do. Did they ever do an extended analyze this, analyze that, Mickey Blue Eyes type thing? Because that was the late 90s. Isn't the mafia hilarious? I mean, come on. It's not like they're funny. Just the idea of them having to be around normal people. Hilarious. Just the idea of them having to be around normal people. Hilarious.

Just unbelievable. Maybe we'll get to it soon, but I'm sure that there probably was a too late analyze this parody within The Simpsons starring Fat Tony. Another issue with late Simpsons, and I mean this even up to this most recent season, is that Al Jean in particular loves Fat Tony. Like, he makes sure there is a fat tony episode every season i think he loves working with joe montagna and that's cool joe montagna is good like he's always good i like hearing him and stuff but yeah it's sometimes it's like well more sometimes than not it's like yeah i get it enough with the fat tony it's also strange because they have mafia jokes for like five years in the classic era but no

fat tony they only get fat tony back in like season seven or eight i forget after bart the murderer he comes back for homie the clown and it is a three-year stretch with no fat tony but still plenty of mafia jokes right oh man that's the thing i mean it's a common begrudgement with this show is that you used to like guys like fat Tony and his gang because they were a nice little spice to throw in, you know, an episode for a gag or something. It was fine to throw them in for a little bit and for like the first couple episodes where they are actually central to the plot. But then, like, as it goes on, you're asking me to like eat a full plate of cumin. I don't need that. I really don't.

And like, especially when we're trying to move forward from this and like try to do new things. We are what? Two weeks out from mission accomplished at this point. It's something a little fresher I would have preferred, but you know, I know that they got, you know,

families to go home to, so they can be lazy occasionally, I suppose. I don't want to dump too much history on Chris and we should get started, but it should be noted that I think for the past seven years, Fat Tony has been dead and replaced with a clone who ate a lot of food or his cousin or something. Yes.

There was an episode where Fat Tony died. He was replaced with Fit Tony, a skinnier version, and then eventually the stress of being in the mafia causes him to overeat and become Fat Tony again. So technically Fat Tony is one of the characters that died. Oh my God. Are you telling me this is going to like, this is a sick perversion.

I am going to have to now watch that episode just to see how that looks in reality. Because like that just sounds like the stupidest damn thing in the world. I know that's where we are with The Simpsons in current day. To compliment this episode, the Godfather stuff, whatever,

but they found a way to take their running gag bow being suicidal turn that into an episode that's actually like one of the sweetest ones they've done in a while that is an accomplishment to me at season 14 level i think really good and they play the suicide material very real at certain points to the point where it's almost uncomfortable but i'm happy that they pushed it that far because you need Mo to get to his lowest. I mean, the still frame of him with his head in the oven with a sign that says no funeral, that's one of the darkest, funniest jokes on the show.

But him grabbing his head and just being wracked with sadness as he's about to jump off a bridge, that's not a funny frame you can send a friend. No. I also kind of love the fact that they at least want to treat like they don't want to go and present like this was out of nowhere like they do follow like a certain depressive thinking right when he's in the bar and he sees all my friends and tries to get out of his skin for a little bit and of course he's immediately rejected of course i love mo getting

you know pushed around like that but at this this point, I feel like I had already, maybe it was this episode, but I feel like I had already felt some warmth from Mo before this. And I don't know exactly where that came from, if it was just him flying Homer out of the ring or what. But I felt bad for him in this one. And I remember not feeling, like, the no funeral bit, I wasn't like, oh, poor Mo. I was just like, oh, my God.

Like, just it. Now it's just like oh man no don't do that mo come on come on buddy before we continue though there is a new writer for this episode so let's go over the history of jay stewart burns how we use electricity can be smarter cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub little writer named Mr. Burns.

No, not C. Montgomery Burns, but J. Stuart Burns, who we covered way back in our episode of Talking Futurama all about My Three Sons, which was his first episode of Futurama. I dug a little deeper this time, but his career is very easy to sum up because he's been on The Simpsons for like 23 years. So there's not a whole lot to say before Futurama. And then for most of this century, he has been on The Simpsons. So yeah, it sounds like he was one of several top quality Futurama writers who once the show was canceled for the first time, he found greener pastures at Simpsons, which was a smart move on Al Jean's part. He actually left before that, but I'll get to it. I think the show had some downsizing in production season four, Futurama, and that's why he left, was forced out, who knows, but we'll get to it in a second. yes jay stewart burns wrote for the

harvard lampoon but then he stepped down from the ivy leagues and got a disgusting degree in mathematics from uh berkeley from uc berkeley a master's in mathematics and so he left the ivy league to get to just a a highly regarded state college on the west coast i mean if you're going to school on the west coast it's it's stanford or nothing at least as far as ivy league porn movie social the social network taught me it's just like oh stanford's the only school that matters on the west coast you you see berkeley's a very good school i believe it's still a state school but at the same time tuition i imagine is probably forty thousand dollars per semester yeah no tons of tons of great stuff happens at berkeley we we lived near that school many a time and when we we moved away from there, the last time I was there was when I was really feeling like, oh yeah, these are children who go to school now, and I'm much older than them.

Both Oppenheimer and the Unabomber were teachers at Berkeley, as far as I know. I didn't watch Oppenheimer, but I knew he was hanging around Berkeley. Oh, man, Bob, when you watch Oppenheimer, you're going to notice neighborhoods you've walked around in and lived near your whole life. You got to just watch it for the Berkeley sighting. I still haven't seen it because the filming of Oppenheimer prevented me from picking up a package from the university one day, and I'm still bitter. You're still. And there's many such cases like this. It's what hurt their box office. Back to J. Stuart Burns. His career began with two freelance episodes of Beavis and Butthead.

They are Cow Tipping and Pumping Iron. And from there, he became a writer for the WB's Unhappily Ever After. After writing a few scripts, he eventually moves up to producer role by season three. So that's his full, his first full staff role on a sitcom is Unhappily Ever After, which is, it's the version of Married with Children that asks the question, what if Al Bundy was a family annihilator? What if he wasn't just thinking about it? When he had a puppet to tell him to do it as well, right? Yeah, or to stop him. I don't know what the puppet stance was.

You were too distracted by Nikki Cox to pay attention to any other plotting. Yes, it came out at a very crucial time in my life. So he's on that. show uh comes to an end he goes on to be a writer and producer of futurama he wrote seven episodes including the emmy award winning roswell that ends well and it looks like he left futurama at the end of production season three though he wrote one freelance episode in the comedy central years and he is not a listed writer on any of the 20 confirmed episodes from this production order of Futurama for the Hulu episodes. I mean, I would assume it's hard for him to fit in more Futurama with his pretty full-time gig of Simpsons, but also when doing the research on season four, as you did, we learned a lot like how even guys who we thought

were still on staff like Lou Morton just did a freelance script, a great freelance script. But yeah, definitely sounded like there were cuts made in season four as Fox knew that they were eyeing the exit on Futurama. Right. So other Futurama stuff, he is the writer of the 2003 video game that you shouldn't play. Just look up the cut scenes online that are arranged into a nice movie format. For the longest time, for about four years, it was the only new Futurama content you could get. It's really great on the DVD, the second DVD, Beast with a Billion Backs of the movies. They have the one they officially cut together as the movie.

And if you listen to the commentary on it with Jay Stewart Burns on it, they mentioned that this is from David X. Cohen's personal game save on the PlayStation, and they had to record it themselves. Well, like most DVD extras, it's now on YouTube. I don't know if the commentary is,

but if you're curious, you don't need to track down the out-of-print DVD. It's pretty readily available. He joined the Simpsons with the first episode of production season 14, which was The Great Louse Detective. And since then, he's written a total of 26 episodes in his 22 years with the show. Yes, he's still writing for The Simpsons. His most recent episode as of this recording was The Tipping Point.

That was a good one. Not great. Good by season 35 standards. It was pretty good. I liked that. I did like that one and 26 episodes that's got to be getting him at least in the top 20 of most prolific simpsons writers like with number of scripts i don't know often i i looked this up a bit ago like has anybody surpassed swartzwalder yet and no but they're getting close yeah he was

a real workhorse i think because he was freelance for so much of his time on the show so he was pumping out like four or five per season a lot of these guys aren't doing that and uh unlike other longtime dudes uh like say carolyn omine who i think took a little step back midway through her work time or moved up to higher ep level like selman who's now also graduating some people to like co-EP or co-show writer with him. Sounds like J. Stuart Burns has stayed in the regular writer. I'm sure he's paid very well, but in the regular writer like workload for decades. Yeah, I know he's paid very well because there was a recent news story about him selling his crazy house. When I was trying to find any videos of him talking about this episode because I wished he

was on the commentary that's when I saw that 2023 video of his tectonic house in LA yeah yeah he lived in a sideways house with slanted doors and halls he lived in a sideways house and it drove him up the walls that's how it works folks watch a 30 year old episode of the state if you don't know what I'm talking about outside of a consulting role on disenchantment nearly all of his writing career has involved writing for the simpsons and it's funny that i still think of him as a futurama writer because he's been writing for the simpsons literally seven times longer than he ever wrote for futurama so 22 years compared to three years that's a that those are different numbers entirely that's man that is so yeah i have compression of time thing where it just feels like oh yeah all of the the last 17 years of simpsons doesn't feel all that long comparatively

to us and for for burns to work this long on it is impressive i then one of the only interviews i could find with him about an episode was from 2007 or 8 where ign interviewed him for a couple minutes about how he wrote the what the world of warcraft marge episode uh ma in in that that season when it was brand new yeah i think it was just called marge gamer or something like that oh that's right but it in that thank you for saying that bob in that interview he pointed out that it's more clever than it thinks because marge is an anagram for gamer and And so it's supposed to be that. I think I only got that after I said it out loud about 10 seconds ago.

Yeah. But yeah, I do want to say, we're going to wrap up this writer's corner, but it sounds like he might've been hanging out with David X. Cohen around the time because David X. Cohen was also an early freelancer on Beavis and Butthead. I think they both spent time at UC Berkeley

from what I recall, maybe, perhaps. That sounds right to me. Yeah, yeah. In the Wikipedia entry for J. Stuart Burns, there is a link to a very old Newsweek article from like 1993. And the premise of the story is, did you know all these comedy writers come from Harvard? Everyone writing TV shows you like went to Harvard. And he is given a brief mention like J. Stuart Burns, class of 92. He's going to go off with some friends to write for Beavis and Butthead. So at the time, it was to most people a crazy idea.

Now we all know, well, of course, if you go to Harvard, you're going to become evil, an evil political power or a comedy writer. And that's it. You will quietly join the CIA, but not officially and just, you know, have all of this access and passports and everything. Or you write comedy. I did find there was one other interview i forgot to mention uh when you mentioned cohen and him being friends i've only skimmed around in it i'll probably watch the whole thing but it's called uh at ucla a few years ago in 2017 they had a panel call that is fully online a public

lecture that's about an hour called the calculus of comedy math in the simpsons futurama and the big bang theory it's got jay stewart burns david cohen al jean eric kaplan ken keeler jeff and jeff westbrook all all on it yeah i read a lot of places that jay stewart burns is responsible for all of the math jokes from uh went from when he started until now even though al je Jean is a math whiz, Jay Stewart Burns has the master's degree, so he takes precedent. If you want to see a bunch of them really pull out their Ivy League stuff,

it's in the intro when they're naming who has a bachelor's in what and a PhD in what. It's how I heard Ken Keeler talk about how he is like blissfully retired at the time and barely working on stuff in 2017 and then when they get to Al Jean Al Jean's like yes I just have a I just have a bachelor's in science in math I don't have a PhD and then I think it's Eric Kaplan who goes like um I actually have two PhDs so I think I'm in the lead of this group. He might be.

He could be the most accredited comedy writer with his two PhDs. But this has been the story of J. Stuart Burns. May he write for The Simpsons for another 22 years. This DVD commentary is one of those very uninformative ones because they got Mac rating there, which is aarity in season four and they've got hank is area and dan castellaneta so it's just you know it's guys having fun hanging out with guys who don't really remember a specific episode they did too well though hank and dan they're at least having fun with like doing dueling impressions of johnny carson and don corley yeah apparently apparently Hank Azaria won the Emmy this year for Outstanding Voice Over Performance for this episode specifically. So he's on for that

reason as well. It's kind of lame that I learned that it wasn't until a couple years later when he won this Emmy. In 2009, there were multiple nominees. Back then in 2003, the Academy just said, this is the performance of any voiceover performance that wins an Emmy. No other nominee is even considered. I think the strength of this one is really Laura McMullin being the director. She's the best director on the show at this point. I think she gets away with stuff that they don't allow other directors to do. I said it before, it's because she's a Harvard graduate, I think, that Al Jean listens to her when she says, no, we need to do this and it'll look better. Harvard Lampoon? Was she president at some point? She was president of the Lampoon. So she actually outranks Al Jean in the Lampoon system. Yeah.

I wanted to circle back really briefly to that outstanding voiceover performance category. It started in 92 and that's the year they just gave seven Emmys out to Simpsons voice actors. So Marsha Wallace, Yardley Smith, Jackie Mason, Julie Kavner, Dan Castellan, and Nancy Cartwright. No Harry Shearer, which I find to be a snub. Yeah. Oh, no, I would be bitter over that. That's why he's so bitter. Yeah, as he should be, honestly.

If I was to see that, I would be like, oh, they created this category just for the simpsons like they just did that okay i understand it's a big deal they win most of them just like the wga writing in animation section it should just be called the simpsons award no also on the animation side they bring up a the assistant director raymond percy who when i looked him up i was like oh yeah this is a very strong assistant director. He'd go on to be a regular director on The Simpsons, and then he'd leave them for Disney in 2008. He worked on Wreck-It Ralph, the Laura McMullin's Oscar-nominated Mickey Short, Get a Horse, and Frozen, and Zootopia. And not only that, he did small voice parts in those movies, and he is, you know, the sloth that everybody loves from Zootopia. That's Raymond Percy wow okay I mostly like Zootopia and Wreck-It Ralph not so great on Frozen and I haven't seen the Mickey short Disney products I enjoy are short in supply these days get a horse look it up it's a

really great Mickey short and I'll take a look and Wreck-It Ralph is essentially a Futurama video game movie it's also funny because on the commentary, Al Jean in 2013 says about Percy leaving them for Disney, oh, it's like he became a serial killer. He makes it sound so horrible to go to Disney. Now Disney number one fan is Al Jean. He loves Disney. It's never been better, folks. And last preamble thing, I did want to note note i looked into like how many people talk about this

being like the best simpsons of post golden era because that is really the online sentiment or sentiment is as homer would say but i saw that like previous guests the real gyms has mentioned it several times is like one of the best post season 10 episodes if not the best and also previous guest emily saint james in 2009 at the av club wrote best tv episodes of the decade list and put this one on it and new york magazine in 2009 also rated it very highly of post golden age era though it's in a slideshow article that is now entirely broken and you can't really read it. So good job, New York Magazine. Was that Matt Zoller Seitz's list? Because I know he had done one and he had put it on. I had read Emily's piece about this one, but I just read that Zoller Seitz

had a very high esteem for this episode. I didn't know if that was it. I assumed so since he was at New York Magazine. That sounds right, but yeah, you almost can't read it it is interesting the rep it got as such a great episode which i was feeling it i mean the mafia stuff is just yeah yeah we'll get to it but you know if the third act was the battle between mo and homer over who could be the father figure of maggie that would have been a better more emotional third act which could have been what the original was but maybe just not as exciting as Italian American Mexican standoff yes what I wonder is if starting to get a little protective about these relationships with Moe and Homer like maybe fans don't want to see them at odds so like seriously at this level that was my only thought on that because i'd read something about for

original idea was to make this about homer being a terrible father and like mo kind of stepping up a little bit they just kind of dissolve that in for the crime shit the episode begins with lisa doing our job for us almost by trying to explain what our stamens are a pistol what that joke means i believe it is a pun on the like saying you're a pistol or whatever as a compliment like you're full of energy you're great but then they make it the term for a part of a flower the pistol and the statement so i assume that's what the joke is this is those jokes that i start really i feel like we get more of these as the show goes on where it's like you get that it it's a joke, but do you get the joke? Like, audience, tell us.

Is this good or what? It's fine. I don't know if Lisa needs to be doing this, but fine, fine, fine. I do like the Venus trap hot dog. I thought that was great. Well, and of course, since everybody shuts Lisa down and tells her to shut up and then she looks sad, it's time to play the jingle early in this episode take that lisa's beliefs and lisa will not be seen anymore in this episode

oh uh also there's no deleted scenes on this episode for the d, even though there are for pretty much every other episode, not this one. You can watch a full animatic of Act 1 and the storyboards, which are fun in a technical sense if you want to see how the drawings mature and all that. But there aren't even that many deleted bits in that. So I'll only note the one part that comes up in the Beverly Hillbilly scene. Other than that, there's no other differences and this thing about the sentry flower when i saw it then and now i just kept thinking of the dennis the menace movie speaking of another christopher lloyd performance oh boy we've been circling that on the show for many years now but that christopher lloyd performance i kind of love that it's him because you have walter mathau playing like a grump and you have to have somebody worse than him clearly to really be the villain so christopher lloyd just going like a

homeless murderer or something he's definitely a drifter yeah feels like the same type of character that michael richards played in problem child yes oh 100 yes both of them were challenged by the director with like play in a pg rated way a child murderer like we can't get too far but the audience needs to think you will stab a child to death and you're only going to murder him nothing no funny business yes yeah very strict here i feel like disney movies had to do that i think like at least four different actors got that speech in blank check when they're like like tone loke definitely had to be told look just be cute about shooting them just be a little Four different actors got that speech in blank check. Oh, God. Tone Loke definitely had to be told,

look, just be cute about shooting them. Just be a little cute about it. See, Home Alone had it right. The Wet Bandits are simply thieves, but they are pushed so far by one kid that they're like, all right, you know what? I will kill you. You're the first person I'm ever going to kill, but I'm sick of you, kid.

He threatens to bite his fingers off. Yeah yeah i feel like it works at the end because you're not like stewing with that idea and with like them as the child murderers it's almost immediately after that they're caught so you're just like okay i just had that thought for a minute and they head to the botanical gardens that are based on the huntington gardens in pasadena. And Bob, I know you're a big botanical gardens fan, right? I've seen you go to a few. I've been to a few, and they're fun. And it's nice to get away from screens, folks. We're looking at too many screens these days.

And I will say that it does sound boring, and I'm often not that excited to go. But when I go, I always have a good time. My co-host, Eric Siska, we went to the Arizona Botanical Garden, which was in Phoenix, Arizona, and it was really gorgeous. But it is funny now. I never think about it because I live on Connecticut now. I used to live in New York, and you would see rats and stuff.

It's fine. But you do see rattlesnakes an unbelievably nerve-wracking amount in Phoenix. If you go outside of the city. They're just out there hanging out all the time. That's scary. Yeah, the one time I was living in Southern California and I went hiking, I saw a rattlesnake far too close to me, and then I decided, I'm joining a gym. Gotta get those knees up.

It was coiled and rattling, and I thought, I should only see this on a movie screen. It should not be happening to me right now. The Simpsons will be right back. It's the biggest Fox Sunday ever, featuring the Simpsons season finale with two all-new episodes. First, when Bart gets busted, can he survive life in a youth group? The preteen play. Have we completely ruled out prison? That would at least look cool on my resume.

Then, when Moby comes to kiss Babysitter, what could go wrong? Maxie's gone! It looks like Maggie crawled through these bushes, spit up over here, and crashed her tricycle into the wall. No, that was me. The Simpsons one-hour season finale at 8, followed by the one-hour Malcolm season finale next Sunday. Hey everybody, it's Henry and I hope you're enjoying this podcast as much as an orange and rind in the mouth. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Chris Cabin.

We've had him so many times before in all the we hate movies guys and we always love having them on thank you so much chris for coming on the show and you know on we hate movies they just had me and bob on to talk about despicable me too that was a great bad movie to talk about you need to check that out for yourself and you know this podcast is only possible thanks to the support at patreon.com slash talking simpsons supporters there keep me and bob employed and get to hear every episode of talking simpsons a week ahead of time and without any ads in them because they are five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you also get over 180

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simpsons ten dollar a month subscribers get all the ad free bonus content i was just talking about and then they get our mega podcast it's really more like three podcasts in one our chat about an animated feature film on what a cartoon movie we talked for five even six hours long about an animated feature film this summer we are finishing up all of our discussion of the disney renaissance from the 90s we just did mulan this month we're covering pocahontas and next month is going to be Tarzan. And you can hear those. Plus all of our previous back catalog covering all of the previous Disney Renaissance films.

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to breaking the old fourth wall there. And I also like homer thinking that jesus has seven apostles and that he's treating him like he's jay leno of saying just like yeah with a staff that big he's not that funny yeah the venus flytrap joke you see it coming a mile away but there's three things i love about it one is that homer poses like he's like a fashion model while he's listening to it like he's kind of on the side with his hand in his pocket. And that it's a hot dog in the mouth, and the way Homer tears apart it and kills it is also like,

there's a great little detail to it. Yeah, chomping through it. But while they're all having fun, Mo is alone, as usual. That's odd. It's 11.15 in the morning and the bar is empty. I'm live at the Springfield Botanical Gardens where we're minutes away from the blossoming of the Sumatran Century Flower, which only occurs once every hundred years. Hey, those are my customers, slash only friends.

Where are they getting their beer? Psst. Psst. Psst. A cooler? I've been replaced by a cooler and who can blame him no point in moping around might as well join him and have a jolly old time i'll better set the alarm

his alarm is a shotgun that would kill anybody who touched that door i'm assuming barney gets one right between the eyes at some point. I love this writing of Mo. First off, I love that they put this in Act 1. They're not having Mo show up at the end of Act 1 for no reason, and they're like, okay, now the actual story begins. They're setting up early that Mo is a lonely sad man. It's his episode. episode i mean we're just

back to the future three chris roley that being his movie versus marty's movie like they're very clear no this is mo this is about mo and what he's going through i would argue until the fat tony stuff then all of a sudden it's just like well whatever let's end the show yeah we get the simpsons family up front as to not scare the viewers and then we can jump into the mo suicide story we could ease into that yeah i love mo he's not mad even he's just like man who could blame them this disposable cooler so much better than me i was waiting honestly for him to pick a fight with the cooler when he got there like just a little joke about like oh you think you're so nice and economical and you can hold ice so well well we know mo doesn't think he's better than store-bought dirt so i think he would

immediately just fall on his knees in front of the cooler and recognize its superiority although now that they've killed him off all i do is notice larry the barfly in scenes they just killed him this season now all i see is him's just everywhere. Now that you know he's gone, you see him everywhere. Like Jimmy Carter. Listen, I know Jimmy Carter's not dead. I'm referencing the joke of the Simpsons and we're recording this a month in advance. The man's been in hospice for I think a couple decades now, it seems. He's in and out of there. Now you're making it two recordings this week, Bob, where we're gambling on Jimmy Carter being alive or not when it comes out.

Oh, yes, that's right. Well, R.I.P. But if not, I'm rooting for you, Jim. Yes. You know, when I looked up century plants, too, I, you know, because I'm a silly person, I thought, oh, yeah, they all must just it's easily 100 years. Yep. 100 years on the dot and it's like most stories i found a bit of like news stories and local news are like century plant blooms after 40 years 20 years century plant it sounds like an

actual 100 year century plant pretty rare hmm no idea and also though it seems mainly to happen in florida maybe these century plants are blooming earlier thanks to climate change who knows you should look into this i'm sure eventually again it's so picky which ones i've seen since but i assume they've had many a climate change isn't this funny type episode since this one but like with stuff like this i don't know if it's just because i vaguely i'm not even sure if i saw this one when it originally aired i would have probably seen it on a rerun but like the only one i remember from this season i definitely watched was the uh rock camp one the strummer how i spent my strummer i think or something like that yep and that one i was like okay i'm done i'm in college now i don't have to think about this

i can just buy the dvds and watch the old ones but i was just kind of like oh of course it's gonna stink right like of course this's going to stink, right? Like, of course, this is where this is heading. And I felt like I didn't necessarily remember that. That was just like, that was obviously what was going to happen. And when Mo arrives, this is where he faces further rejection, which he is ready for. Here I am, one of the crowd. I'm comfortable.

I'm calm. Anybody looks at me, I got a hypodermic full of bleach. Ah, people, we are officially over capacity. We gotta kick one person out. Someone who's alone, already bitter, someone whose feelings have been trampled on so many times, one more won't make any... Oh, Mo! Yeah, that's me, all right. Sorry, Mo mo you can either walk out with dignity or i can push you down this muddy hill i'd prefer that you push me seeing how i'm desperate for any human contact all right thanks a lot oh by the way i wanted to point out that the president i should have referenced as lyndon

johnson that's who marge saw after he died oh he's been dead for 50 years it's safe to joke about him yeah you're good i don't bring the hypodermic needle full of bleach with me but i have gone to parties feeling like well like okay all right i'm normal everything's fine nobody's looking at me you gotta find the dog to pet sorry chris i was just about to say like i now have to ask up front is there going to be a dog at the party i i would rather not if there isn't going to be an animal of some sort i can hang out with i'm gonna have a problem with that and it's funny now because i've been to parties in the last like five years where like it's not like the neocurely but a popular way to take shots now, I guess, is with emptied out hypodermics.

Like, plastic ones, not like the glass ones. Like, squeezing that into your mouth rather than just taking a regular shot. And so I thought of that immediately when he said the hypodermic full of chlorine. How funny would it have been if they do this and they pick out the Phil Hartman characters to push down the hill? I looked around and I'm like, I noticed he's definitely dead by now. Why are they still here? If they do this and they pick out the Phil Hartman characters to push down the hill. I looked around and I'm like, I noticed he's definitely dead by now. Why are they still here? This is a weird inclusion.

You're totally right about this, Chris. I noted this as well. They made a rule after Phil died. We're not putting Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure in the backgrounds anymore. It's a reminder of this wonderful man who was murdered far too young. And I think this could be the first time they ever showed up in this noticeable of a fashion in a crowd scene since 98 or whenever 99 i don't even know why they did that i genuinely don't know why you would just this was the one you broke it for yeah i wonder it seems like it's just sneaking them in or it had been long enough like he's

been dead for five years when this episode airs so maybe somebody in the somebody in the character department just thought well it's been five years or they're new to this place and they don't know and and then the producers don't notice it either but yeah it's very distracting to see any Hartman characters anywhere after he's dead it's interesting to know that when you see a crowd scene in the Simpsons or ID Show, somebody has to sit down and think, okay, Sideshow Mel is standing next to Kemp Rockman, and he's standing next to Krusty. Somebody is thinking about all of these things.

That hypodermic full of bleach, by the way, that makes me think of Terminator 2, and the Drano in the needle stuck to the guy's neck by... Yes. Have either of you guys seen the Clint Eastwood movie Absolute Power? A long time ago, but not recently. Totally worth a watch. It's essentially him doing his Clinton movie.

So you can imagine how bonkers that would be. But one of the big climactic deaths is him injecting an empty hypodermic into somebody and they just go away. I was like, oh, whoa, fuck. See, that's the thing for both Mo and Linda Hamilton. They're overdoing it by putting a poisonous substance in there because if you just had a syringe full of air, you can cause an air embolism. You just put that in the bloodstream,

and you will likely kill somebody. That was also in a Simpsons episode a couple years before this where Marge and Homer are knocked out with hypodermics, and Homer goes, there was just air in mine, and he falls over. That's right, Homer dies then. That's right. Also that Moe is so deep in sadness, he would rather be shoved down a hill just to get human contact.

And even then, Wiggum denies him that because he just nudges him with the edge of his baton, the least contact he can have with mo there's a reference somewhere in here to james coco's ski boots like a man like this is one of those things where at the time when i finally saw this episode i think it had been like 2005 2006 and i was like dude i'm listening to like the rapture in junior senior you're gonna throw a james coco at me like that is way like i know that they do that a lot but it's usually i guess i'm more used to it being like old comedians and not just a stage guy i was like struck like whoa really that's out of nowhere okay but i think maybe their second james coco reference because we have james coco went mad in minutes no that's

right yes yeah and even now i barely know who he is he is not a notable large actor in my head maybe to the boomer writers he definitely was when i looked him up again i was like the only thing i really know him from is he played sancho panza in the film version of man which is a musical i really enjoy and to play sancho panza you probably are a little thick in the middle but i mean he's 70s fat which is like the body type I'm working to achieve in my current weight loss goals. It's when you eat nothing but steak and drink nothing but whiskey. Yeah. I did take it as Krusty just throwing out a bad Carson-style joke that he's been sitting on for like 30 years at this point also big credit to laura mcmullen that she got a script that says it very intricately a giant plant blooms releasing hundreds of spores

and then a giant crowd tramples thousands of plants that is not easy to animate on a tv budget it looks right also i love crusty jumping into manure which is mildly better than the scent of the flower the cut one the internet tells me that a blooming century plant or at least the agave century plant there's contradictory reports some say it's kind of a nice smell others do say it is stinky but it doesn't make the air green all around in a very bright green tint as happens in this show it's not a full plague i feel like this was what i got from me and my cousin and we always were told like if you open a durian it smells like a corpse

so we went to a specialty market to get one and i was it's not a good smell but i wasn't like passing out i didn't feel like i was in a law and order episode or anything like that the fruit's actually pretty good i don't know if you guys had it you know i've had it prepared it also durian flavored things but i've never like gotten it fresh and cut it open or been party to it being cut open i've never cracked open the corpse fruit but it's been put in things for me i was very lucky that my cousin d shay are big on youtube so they looked up like how to open it the right way, and they did the whole thing. And I was like, oh, man. Okay.

So that was honestly what made me start using YouTube for research and stuff like that was knowing, oh, you can just figure out how to do stuff. That's fantastic. It's where I always learn how to tie ties. Me too. Every five years when it's tie tie in time, head on over to YouTube. Whenever I want to know how to promote Nazism, I just go over there. Well, that's your next suggestion. Everybody runs out of the place.

Homer crushes the remaining flour. Moe thinks everybody's having a good time when he hears the screaming. And then he thinks at least he's better than some hobo. And then a beautiful woman comes up to the hobo. And I kind of like that they play it that the homeless man is surprised, too. That he's like, oh, okay. Like, seemingly a woman who is a stranger to him just grabs his arm out of nowhere and starts walking side by side with him. It feels like there should be another joke there.

There should be some sort of exchange between them. If this was 2003, maybe the woman could say, oh, are you Robert Downey Jr.? And he goes, uh, yeah. Or something like that. I'm thinking with my 2003 brain that's a perfect joke that's the james coco joke of 2003 yes i guess what it bounces off when the lady tries to pick up mo at the crusty burger there's just this like team of women in springfield picking up the most homely men that you can find and just taking them home. There's some sort of mental problems with the women of Springfield.

Everybody gets caught in traffic trying to leave. This is where we have a joke about how in 2003, you were really swanky if your minivan had a TV display in it and you watched DVDs in your car. Now I think every person who owns a car has at least one tablet to hand to their child to distract them while driving. Though in this case, it also brings in sort of race relations in Springfield or like I was a little confused by it. I feel like they're only now recognizing that these characters are black at this point in the show. That sounds right. Because at this, there's just like such a sense of trepidation with this like

when this joke is being made like the brother brother joke and the dream denied quote i was like this is a little sweaty a bit sweaty here i don't know guys we're we're just a couple episodes from a break my wife please where hibbert carl eddie Dreddrick Tatum are all driving together in a car. So that was the first time in a while it felt like they recognized that there are black characters in Simpsons. But now they're being like, there are black characters, but Hibbert views himself as a higher class than Carl and is not going to help him. And by the way, I'm shocked that there wasn't a direct-to-DVD Beverly Hillbillies sequel movie because I feel like whenever they put out one of these junkie kids movies based on an old thing for kids in the 90s, like Inspector Gadget and The Addams Family

and Dennis the Menace, they would always do at least one or two direct-to-DVD sequels or direct-to-video sequels to cash in on it. And yes, we brought up Dennis the Menace. There was a Dennis the Menace sequel called Strikes Again, and it's fun to see who is recast. Like, who is the cheaper version of Walter Matthau? Why, it's Ed Asner. And he's going to tell you all kinds of conspiracy theories if you get him in a corner. He'll just tell you how everything has been planned by the government.

In this case, you the jim varney had passed away but it wouldn't have mattered because they always recast the leads in the direct-to-video sequels like those i'm shocked too it didn't happen right up there with f troop simpsons writers love talking about the beverly hillbillies it was another one they watched in syndication eight million times as kids and this is about hunky jethro and how what a hunky was i think it's because tress mcdeal does a very good irene ryan impression who ryan ryan played granny on the beverly hillbillies and oh by the way it's don rickles as mr wilson in dennis the menace strikes again not ed asner they're similar they're basically clones of each other he's gonna say

some stuff that's worse than what Ed Asner was telling you. He has some words that you shouldn't be hearing anymore. What's funny about the Beverly Hillbillies movie, I feel like why they never did the sequel is because there is that. The translation between a big star, I consider him a big star, Matthew Broderick in Inspector Gadget, and then bring him down to French Stewart. That makes sense. What would be the B version of Jim Varney? He was already in B level in a way. Ernest, the movies did well,

but he wasn't a star outside of that in any way. This was one of the few things he did outside of that, as I remember it, and The Simpsons, of course. Jim Varney would have 100% done the direct-to-video Beverly Hillbillies sequel. Oh, yeah. He would do stage productions. He'd show up at your birthday party as Jed Clampett.

You would think they'd go down under in the sequel. It was the problem with most of those movies when they get to the sequel. If you have the setup, is your movie for the Brady Bunch or this one for the Beverly Hillbillies 90s movie? But once you have the setup, it's like it should just be like regular sitcom episodes then, you know, it shouldn't be like another adventure movie unless they travel to Hawaii or Australia or whatever.

Of course. And yeah, the Carl quote, he is saying a dream deferred is a dream denied as a reference to the poem by Langston Hughes. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore? It was the inspiration for the play Raisin in the Sun. That's right.

They're mixing Beverly Hillbillies comedy with Langston Hughes. What other sitcoms would do that? A little edgy there, guys. Yes, the one scene that was different in the animatic was it was a joke with jed clampett interacting with granny and none of this didgeridoo don't stuff which i think this is a funnier joke didgeridoo don't it's a joke that would have been on the program in the 60s there's another great animation bit of when homer wakes up like the camera like zooms out these are all like needlessly good additions to it that could be played much flatter and just when homer wakes up like the camera like zooms out these are all like needlessly

good additions to it that could be played much flatter and just like homer wakes up in the car but this is the lauren mcmullen difference like she pushes to be like this will take 20 more effort but it's gonna look better for a simple shot i appreciate it every time it happens in this episode i think that was the other thing I noticed about, other than liking how they're expanding Mo in this episode, it is a much more visually intriguing episode than I think. Again, like these middle seasons before it goes like everything, the texture is lost.

Like I still can feel it in these seasons, but like in the very recent seasons, I feel like it's all been destroyed. It's funny you say it now, and I hadn't even thought about it, but like there were all these little things. I was like, oh, that's's all been destroyed. It is. It's funny you say it now, and I hadn't even thought about it, but there were all these little things. I was like, oh, that's an interesting little touch you did there. When Moe pulled out his syringe, he kind of pops around. It's very cartoony when he's squirting his syringe around.

It zips back and forth. It's really good. Laura McMullen's a big fan of the Fleischer style. She put that in her Mission Hill show quite a lot. It's hard to explain this without showing people video clips, and we have not advanced to that level yet, but there's so many great camera moves in this that really remind me of season four, which we're doing alongside season 14, where they got away from that. They weren't giving artists as much freedom because they were worried about mistakes overseas or

things taking too long. And we all know as the years go on, they get less time and less money to make the show. Then the car crashes into another car because homer goes too fast rear-end somebody maggie's back seat buckle breaks she flies out to the sunroof that they never have in the car but for this moment they have a sunroof in their car that maggie can fly out of and this made me think of like also going back to maybe there's another reason i like this episode is it feels like it is going back to the roots of the simpsons because i think a third of the shorts when we re-watched all of the tracy ullman shorts are maggie almost falls down to her death scenes like she's always getting into calamities like this well yeah you don't need

voice actors for that yes so they're much easier to to put together in no time i like the focus on the crap e latch and then with the direction like the fact that we cut in like two times three times to see what is happening with maggie in that moment when they crash like that is genuinely like affecting and maggie getting in all these problems it also feels like she's you know sweet pea in a popeye short she may as well be crawling around in a construction site on heavy beams maggie's day out homer chases after her saying your baby is after march says my baby which is a good runner for the first two acts of homers that Maggie exists and is his child. You said it right, Bob.

Moe is rather realistically about to kill himself in this next clip. Oh, no! This is it. The last call for Moe. God! God! God! Wow! Moe, thank God you saved my baby.

That hideous man is a hero. No! Life don't seem so hard no more. You know, this is getting into deep simpsons lore but i noticed that lauren mcmullen respects the missing mo tooth that you rarely see that was very controversial amongst producers and i guess some of the animation staff yes thank you bob i wrote down the mo tooth too when he does his big wow you can see it and for previous reference in the most family feedback episode that wes archer the director apparently had a bit of a discussion with bill oakley and josh weinstein the showrunners as they said why are you drawing

mo like this he doesn't have a missing tooth and then wes archer pulls out the character model sheets to be like there it is there's a missing tooth we drew it right he shouldn't have a missing tooth. And then Wes Archer pulls out the character model sheets to be like, there it is. There's a missing tooth. We drew it right. He shouldn't have a tooth there. And also, I just love Azaria can never go too big on a wah. Like, it can never be too big. Yeah, I forget when the wah came in, but it has been his catchphrase at this point for maybe three or four years, possibly longer. I definitely think they do it

in homer's barbershop quartet i'm trying to think of an earlier one but when mo says like oh what you pay these girls to scream i didn't pay any girls what like i can't think of an earlier one than that he's good at exclamations i think of mo sigh all the time like just in my head i can just hear it him saying i'm so desperately lonely that's we have hank azaria on the commentary talking about he's like oh he's listening to the mo performance from i guess 10 years earlier and saying oh like oh mo was up here and now he's down here he's doing like different fluctuations and he explains my pipes are just aging that's why mo sounds deeper he's got a deeper voice now. And if we on this podcast have all been podcasting for 15 years, if you go back to our early

ones, we are all like Jim Henson's podcast babies. I sound like a Looney Tunes character in early WHM episodes. I am just a zany character that blusters. I'm a Tasmanian devil in those episodes. Yeah, I try not to listen to him anymore because I'm just like, God, no, I can't. No, I don't want to reflect that much. Now we all sound like Krusty. And it's funny to hear Azaria and Castellaneta in 2013 commentary talking about how like,

oh, our voices age when that is the main topic people say about any voice acting in a new clip of The Simpsons. Also, I love the camera move from Maggie to Moe it's just like and Moe's mouth impossibly turning into a smile like it's not supposed to happen and I think they saw that it was such a sweet moment of Moe feeling loved and appreciated for the first time ever I bet they wrote a joke after life don't seem so hard no more but i think they realized like no we should really just go on the nice feeling instead of whatever the joke was after this yeah i feel like that is also a joke i've seen before is mo's like getting it like a rictus smile for some reason i think we went over it but the joke

that really i groaned the heaviest at because i feel like i've seen it 50 times on this show when the flower blooms and kills everything the little flower that is left and homer goes back and stomps it can't like pick out where it was but i feel like i've seen that joke in this show at least a dozen times well that kind of style of oh one thing survives and then they destroy that one thing too or there's one thing left and then they break that too like oh they broke every bottle well except for this one that a person shows up and smashes it or whatever or it's like parts smashy smashy and he just goes back to break the window that's an example i can think of

maybe an itchy scratchy land like they go away and it's like mostly destroyed and makes a noise and he runs back and stomps on it they come back from the break and this is where it's being reported on and they are showing what could have been the full plot of the episode but i like that when homer sees the headline that could already make him feel mad at mo or jealous and it says baby saved by local hero comma not father homer is too stupid and instead can't believe that a pair of pants are floating on their own in an advertisement then when mo comes to visit and see maggie marge is giving him a sweater she knitted which is so cute with baby ducks on it and mo is so self-hating and unhappy that he's like okay what's the deal what's this can't be like this it's full of chiggers he says

yeah for a moment there i was like can we say that word anymore uh but it turns out it's just like little spiders that are on food that's grown and stuff like that have chiggers all over them they're called berry beetles or berry bugs or something that's better to call it i had to look it up that's like changing yes master bedroom to primary bedroom in things. Yes. Yeah. That term has been renamed just because, well, it's, you know, slip of the tongue, you could be in deep water if you are talking about that insect. I worked very hard on my enunciation just now when I quoted it. And Homer, meanwhile, just runs by, gets into what I assume is Mr. Smithers' hatchback where these carpooling with Burns and then Mo thinks he's going to leave. But Marge has to run after Abe, who is gone crazy.

I think it's kind of funny that Marge can't babysit her baby because the oldest member of the Simpsons family is going insane instead. I kind of liked that. I mean, I don't know. Like, maybe I'm just forgetting this season. I feel like at this season I feel like at this point Abe also is no longer a major character anymore like he is more like a bit guy like you bring him in to do some funny bit or like just to fill out time like the way you bring in Tony to end your episode yeah like with Moe and the self-harm stuff and Abe and the crazy stuff they're playing it a lot more real where abe will have fantasies about being the queen of the old west but here is a realistic episode you could have see a senior

having where they're walking down the street stripping naked like slamming their bedpan it's playing it very real yes i always chalk this kind of thing up i'm sure it's a mix of writers but when things get realistically dark in a way that makes you more sad than laughing it does make me think of Dana Gould being in this writer's room because that is his style of stand-up a lot of the time which is funny I'm not saying and that's bad it's funny but that this extra tinge of darkness one when we interviewed Dana Gould a long while ago he said Moe's his favorite character also. Moe ends up being an accidental babysitter in this next clip. Hey, Mag, Raggedy Andy over there has been giving you the button eye. I'll get rid of him. All right, come on, out you go. I finally caught up with Grandpa.

I found him crying in the cemetery. Thanks for taking care of Maggie. Oh, no problem. You know, it gave me kind of a good, warm feeling. Like when you get drunk and fall asleep in the snow. Yeah, well, I better go. Oh, there, there, Mags. I'll be back sometime. She really likes you.

Maybe the next time I need a sitter and you're not busy? I'd love to. Let me just check my schedule here. Well, I was going to erase those two apostrophes and replace them with Gs, but that's about it. So, you know, call anytime. Why's she crying? Oh, that's right.

I still got a nose. Here you go go you little idiot i do feel like if a friend with an infant asked me to watch their baby i would be like more like how's it going okay would not know what to do it's great i only know how to talk to kids as an adult like i can't do the uh you go what you doing i can't do that i have to like hey how you doing nice place you have here yeah i moved 2 000 miles away when my nephew was born and i'm just waiting for him to become an adult so we have something to talk about then i'll see him again i will say i have found that kids react to it very well like maggie does

like they genuinely like like being talked to like that and they're not going to be as serious as you, of course, but it's different from what their parents do. I've always thought it was the right way to do it. Yeah, you're not patronizing them with baby talk. You're like, hey, what are you watching on Apple Plus, there, four-year-old? No, yeah, I can't wait for Severance to get back either. Yeah, it's a crazy show.

I'm waiting for more of The Problem with Jon Stewart, underrated. Now, it's a crazy show i'm waiting for the more of the problem with john stewart underrated now it's very funny i love how marge does not connect abe crying in the cemetery with any other sort of mental distress like how silly is that he's crying in the cemetery that's so great that they go from him calling marge tojo and acting like speedy the alka seltzer mascot and then just sobbing in a cemetery marge doesn't even care what grave he's at or if he was at a specific grave or he just went to the cemetery to sob and like then it conjures a nude abe simpson crying in the cemetery which is even sadder i like his wrinkly butt

design too we don't see him naked too much in the show, but it was funny. Not really. Yeah. I always remember when it might have been this episode where you see his wrinkly legs a lot, I feel, and those were always really well done, I thought. I'm still haunted by his Ninja Turtle hands from... Old Money. From Old Money. Yes. Thank you, Bob. Yes. When they zoom in on his hands as he looks at his hands and moves them back and forth, they look like Ninja Turtles.

Put some nunchucks in those yellow claws. Get to work. Come on. They're another famous painter. Moe's little couch cushion bar is very cute, too. I like that. And that he is giving you the button eye. It's also where they're getting a lot of the old bartender lingo in Moe,

which, again, feels just like how other Moe episodes in this era are from the writers dealing with going to bars with their father and learning all of these drunk sayings from their drunken fathers. You know, the bad fathers used to really give you something to write about at least. These days, I'm not sure if they're still doing that, but you know, the good old fashioned alcoholic fathers, they at least gave you some stuff to write about good for them now the young people who are going to be talking about their bad parents they'll mainly be saying they put me in youtube videos when i was five oh man i was gonna say all the bad fathers they're just always on their phones

they're not actively abusing you anymore no good stories just neglect i have a little bit my brain starts like setting on fire for a minute whenever i see the there's a father and his two sons and it's like is this boom or something else like they go to a toy star and they're like this super soaker is doom but this super soaker is boom and like they did it with chocolate chip cookies and this is apparently a very well-known a channel or a guy who does this and i'm just like those kids you think giving the kid the fucking pad is the thing that's going to make them screen obsessed that thing is ruining them for good they are just going to be in front of their computer waiting for someone to notice them for the rest of their life i've seen now a couple articles in major publications talking to the now 18 year old kids who like when they were six years

old in 2012 were made to be video stars and they're talking about how their parents you know made them film dozens of videos over the summer because they're like you're only gonna be six for this long we got to get a whole year's worth of videos in this month or also the parents would tell their kid like a seven-year-old tells them mommy i don't want to do this anymore and the mom says well if you want us to move into a smaller house i guess you can but you know we really we've made a lot of changes for this i don't think alcoholism is funny, but maybe it was better. Who knows? I really don't know.

Until they're 18, we should just make kids have to use a little tape recorder to make their own talk shows that nobody listens to, like we did. I recorded several episodes of the Bob Mackie program. The Ghostbusters always showed up on time. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games,

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, Thank you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? So then, Maggie, there's a weird fade. Actually, in general, this episode has some unsimpsony edits of just fades to another scene. Like there's none of the, you know, start the next scene with bump, or, you know, any musical sting.

It's just like a quick fade. That, to me, feels like they're trying to fit in as much as possible they're like oh we don't have 10 seconds for establishing shots we gotta just fade to the next one i agree there's this weird after the queen montage the uh intro to the dim sum joke it's like a shrieking break like it just comes out of nowhere and for what the fact that they're eating chinese food? It felt like a new episode had started. You mentioned the queen montage.

I wrote the heading, Queen Montage, but then there's just only one joke. And I thought, you can't play music and just have the one joke. You got to give me two more at least. Oh, yeah. It's very strange. But first, Mo successfully fends off a beautiful woman. Ball pit. That's nice. One, two, three colors. You got them all.

Oh, what a face. She looks just like you. You calling her repellent? Well, no, I was just... Because you ain't exactly Karen Allen yourself, you know. You idiot. I was trying to pick you up. Oh, great. Well, why don't you play with the baby while i go rent a room boy that's one for the christmas letter what a nut that's great to know mo's taste in women was arrested around 1979 it feels like

yeah yeah you're right there's other ones too like all of his beautiful woman ones are so out of date but joey heatherton yeah that's the but also that he's told you know even when he's finally told like i was trying to pick you up he's like then he blows it on the other way first he's so defensive of like oh you're calling her repellent because she looks like me and i'm ugly and then she's like i was trying to pick you up then he's like okay well okay, well, let's go fuck right now. I'll get a hotel room and we'll like, he doesn't ask her out. He, Mo can't get it right. Never. Also one, two, three colors.

You got them all. I have definitely said stuff like that to my niece when we're at a fun place. He really likes one of those party cities where they have all the different like party stuff. Yeah, no, they have the ones with the stars and they have the ones with the horses and yeah that's nice covered all i like that yeah those are that seems right and yes it's be wrong to call it a music montage set to queens you're my best friend because it's just one sequence i wonder if they plucked this did they set it up to make the montage at the ending be a callback or did they pluck this out of the ending for later i wonder i wish there was the original script out there but

my idea is that they paid for the song and they wanted to use it twice because they only paid for it to put set behind one joke and they're like ah let's have a reprise of it at the end yeah i would buy that because i mean this was back when those i don't know i've read a little bit about it but i haven't gone full dive on this but i do know that streaming music has affected music rights and how much they cost nowadays it really fucked with that number but back in the day yeah of course if you buy a queen song you're like can i find another place to put it can we put put it in a commercial maybe? Bob, you've made the great point in the past that Al Jean putting all these montages in these teen seasons of the show is him almost retroactively punishing Disney by then making them pay a lot more to license it for streaming. I mean, to their credit, they could have changed

all this music and most streaming networks do. If you go to an old show from the 90s, they will almost always replace the licensed song with just some you know generic library stuff that they purchased oh man we do a show on our patreon called the melro 210 we go over melrose place and now 210 it is nuts how much it makes me think there's this part of the economy that is just filled with like mid-range bands who make this kind of music like maybe sony and them just have bands like this they're the beck and call to make like well look we are absolutely not going to be paying for millie vanillie we're not going to be doing that but if you could do a millie vanillie type song guys we'd be happy to pay you ten dollars

yeah chris my wife and i we follow millie210, and we've noticed that whenever an episode is not on Paramount Plus of 90210 or Melo's Place, it's because a character in the show sings a song, and they cannot get their way out of that corner. They can replace a song that's playing in the background, but when a character is performing a song,

they have to either just kick it off of streaming or cut out that scene, and often that scene is essential. It shows you the Simpsons are on another level they have to either just kick it off of streaming or cut out that scene. And often that scene is essential. Yeah. This shows you the Simpsons are on another level above 90210 and budgetary-wise what the companies are willing to pay. Hearing this song too, I looked up the use of it. You're My Best Friend is one of my favorite Queen songs.

I love that song. I would listen to it all the time on my double CD of Queen's greatest hits that I got for a Christmas present in the 90s. And I was trying to find where it was used in things before then. Now it's appeared in a lot of stuff in the last 10 years when I looked at a list of it's in movies and TV shows. But this is one of the earlier ones on that list. And a year after this is when it's used perfectly in Shaunwn of the dead oh yes that's a perfect way to

end that movie it's the credit music it's about being your best friend and how you're making me live which is my god it's perfect it's perfect now it feels like this song has to have been put in many a medication commercial right yeah i can ride a bike again. Yeah, yeah, finally. I have a boner again. You're my best friend. I feel like you probably got a lot of these in like the bromance run of movies and TV series. I feel like that probably you had to bring this in. I was happy that it's a less known movie.

I love you, man. It's just all Rush. Like they're both, I think Jason Segel, who is obsessed with rush and so i'm like that's a break thank god because i hear a lot of queen in these movies yeah i mean queen is so popular it's international it's an easy shortcut to like but then movies like shawn the

dead earn it with multiple queen songs in it too which are diegetic to the scene even with the use of mr fahrenheit the weirdest one is i think it's encino man they use stone cold crazy for like going to amusement park and that's just like what okay all right man cool also mo smashing nelson's bumper car reminded me of another mo is sad in a surrogate parent episode season 34 is Top Goon where he becomes a surrogate father for Nelson oh yeah that's right I have seen that one now Goon has a different context and we can't say it anymore yes it is about being a hockey goon just so listeners know the episode is not about the other meaning of Goon they could do an episode where Moe gets really into gooning and that would not make it to disney plus him being on social

media in general i don't think you should be seeing that on disney in general but yeah him just going after e-girls for a whole day that would be pretty frightening most porn jokes in this episode are basically 2003 gooning jokes alice in wonderland versus alice in underpants was it yeah yes yeah yeah the one that i was actually like what the fuck was baby kidnapper or worse or worse yeah yeah i don't know guys that again i chalked up to dana gould as a particularly dark joke so the simpsons have so much free time that marge is able to do a fully themed chinese meal which which seen as very fancy. Bart says it's the year of the rat.

It's not the year of the rat. It was the year of the sheep or goat in 2003. We all know that. Yeah. Homer's cruelty to Bart. One that Bart desperately wants his attention. And he says, like, I'm not getting my fingerprints on that train wreck and then bart still is trying to join in he's like i said pipe down amtrak like oh he is a horrible

horrible father and we then go to mo taking care of maggie she eats a penny which when i looked up this apparently it says 80 to 90 percent of the time your baby eating a penny is not so bad as long as it's going to pass unobstructed. If they're not instantly choking, then you're probably okay. It might be toxic. But the hardest part is going to be in four to five days, you're sifting through that poop to make sure he or she passed it. So you're going to be looking through poop for pennies. And then the penny goes up in value so it's worth it i do feel like that is a kid's book waiting to be written poops for pennies i pooped a penny that has to be one and if not it should be cartoonified penny that talks to you and talks you through what happens. But then again, wouldn't that, now I fear it would make kids want to eat coins even more.

Yeah, you don't want to be blamed for that for sure. Unless it was you were an evil kid storybook writer who wanted to make children eat pennies. Children's book author imagined by Alan Moore. I think now we're all sounding very old. I don't know if children have access to coins anymore i think they're all tapping their phones and using apple pay at the lunch line at school that might be true i suppose paper money and physical coins in most american homes are not

around where a baby is anyway i was gonna say i had this issue yesterday i went to go see my dad for lunch and i was parking in new york city and i was near a meter and the meters don't take coins anymore you can't use coins for them like if it was a bunch of different things you could do they won't take cards anymore even like i have to have the app and my phone was dead so i was like okay and then i just got a ticket when i got back i was like well all right i guess that's how it goes now boy more of that punishing people to oh do you not have a phone that can have an app on it to do anything well then you're not a person anymore well then pay us more you're gonna have to pay a little extra then we have a tickle me elmo joke which 2003 i'm not i'm not too sure about a tickle me elmo and it's also the third

one in the series where the joke is that you're basically molesting elmo when you're doing this act yeah that's the thing about the tickle me elmo jokes is it was always the same joke it was like nobody had a new take on it was like no it's kind of like you're you know fingering elmo like okay guess funny i don't know at least when millhouse had the tickle me crusty it makes it simpson specific to the universe and then he says hey kid get your finger out of there is what he says and then we hear about how slinkies are terrible i've had more than two seconds of fun with a slinky but the biggest problem to me was that they get very tangled up oh yeah every time oh my god i must have bought there was like maybe a year where i was really

into slinkies because not my house but but my grandparents' house had a huge staircase. So I was doing that shit all the time. Right in the middle, you would have this big bunch of them. And you were just like, well, now I have to buy a new multicolored. If you got the old like a chrome one, the big exciting thing was now they have rainbow ones. So I had like I bought like three of those rainbow suckers. The plastic ones wouldn't get tangled, but then they didn't have the heft to them that made them go down the stairs so efficiently so that was a big drawback of the plastic slinky yeah then maggie wants to be read a book this is

what reminds him of alice in underpants he thinks that it's adapting the pornography he had never heard of it before and then he makes the also kind of obvious joke of like oh alice in wonderland is full of drug references which is like yeah yeah we get it this is when it turns to him telling a story that is basically he takes the story of the godfather and turns it into something he can tell her and i really appreciate that the happy little elves are actually important to the plot for once in the show 14 14 years in. Possibly the first time they've been animated since season one. I think you're right.

Maybe there's an early season two where they sneak in for something. But they're referenced in season three when Marge goes to Rancho Relaxo. And it's like a title to happy little elves because he's not the duck. But you don't see it. You're right, Bob. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, I think it's the babysitter bandit episode where we actually see footage of the show we see them moving and here it's not footage of the show but we see the characters moving right they're doing like this thing yeah yeah they're on the tv later when mo is watching oh yeah the happy little elves have been sitting around forever in this show i

was just reminded of this when the previously mentioned guest we've had on before the real gyms he did a youtube video of just ranking all of the best bears and simpsons and one of his earliest entries was the bear from the fuzzy little elves and he was like yeah you probably never noticed it but it's on the wall in lisa's bedroom and in many classic scenes it's just right there oh look here it is in this scene in that scene so in l Lisa and Maggie's room, the happy little elves have always been there, but this time they actually transform into something and have plot purpose. Godfather stuff, pretty out of date. I mean, it's a great movie. This got me, I watched the Godfather again and then rewatching scenes from Godfather part two. I was like i was like yeah yeah there's a reason

everyone loves this movie it's a great movie it's funny that you say it because they later they make the joke about godfather 3 and this really made me want to watch coda i haven't gotten to it yet but the recutting of godfather 3 although i've read a few defenses of the original cut of godfather 3 that are very convincing richard brody has been on that shit for a while now. But for me, the issue with the Godfather thing is I feel like it is just a rev up for the call girls joke.

To me, that's the funny part of this. Every other part, I'm like, okay, that's clever, I guess, or amusing. But that was the only time I was like, oh, yeah, that's genuinely funny having the little Skinnamarink toy there. And Bob, you say you've still not seen it. I'm not trying to be a stinker, everybody.

I still haven't seen these movies. And I think it was because at a point in my life, I kind of was like the Gen Xer who hated the Beatles. I thought, I don't need to see The Godfather. And it's because it was so heavily referenced. Again, we needed that law in the year 2000 saying if you put our godfather reference in your program we are arresting you and we're taking you to guantanamo bay because i learned everything i need to know about these movies via references i understand what all these references are without having seen any of the movies so i feel like i'm going to

enjoy them when i finally sit down to watch them but the fact that so much of this has been spoiled for me makes me reluctant but hey the same thing happened with citizen kane and i saw that when i was 19 and it's not one of my favorite movies so well also i only watched the godfather in my teens in the 90s because it was referenced so much on everything but especially simpsons i was like well i need to know this and then i liked it so much that then i watched the part two almost immediately and then it's funny i feel like not long after i watched it for the first time i then saw the movie you've got mail where the godfather and men loving godfather is a huge plot line in you've got mail leave the gun take the cannoli we're going to the mattresses you know i do think it must have been partially that i had like just heard

in movies but also funny thing about me with coppola is i saw one from the heart before anything else from him my mom loves one from the heart she was a raw julia fan and i remember getting like i think i was like 10 or 12 and like my dad was like oh man i know you like that movie you know you should watch the godfather. It's about mafia family. I'm like, guy who made one from the heart is making a serious, what? That doesn't make any, what? I was just used to him being this big,

like buoyant technicolor guy. And then like, no, no, a very serious, a lot of dark browns, Godfather movies. I was like, yep, okay, finally I watched it. I love those movies. I assure all of our listeners, I have seen quite a few movies in my day. I think the only couple of movies I've seen have been Apocalypse Now and Jack.

Oh, wow. That's the two. You just got the ends of the thing, the spectrum right there. Both extremes. Not bad. Honestly, a good way to start. I haven't seen it. Chris, have you watched the dramatized making of The Godfather called The Offer, I believe?

Oh, man. It's so... I guess if you have a very... I spent like two years writing reviews and news about TV like day in, day out for like 10 hours a day. So TV kind of became toxic to me in a way. But I heard so much about it that I finally did watch it. And it is such a weird thing because

people have been talking about making that movie and that show forever like well i think jake gyllenhaal is going to play robert evans in a movie coming up where it's about the yield to make the godfather i just watched it i was like this is just so campy i almost respect it like it goes so far from being like flat out serious about all this stuff that I kind of have to respect it. But it is like a total background noise for me. I couldn't engage with it. Mostly because I've read most of what they're going to talk about in that movie. The making of The Godfather, the first one, is such an interesting thing.

It's a huge chunk of Robert Evans' memoir. And then also in Easy Rider's Raging Bulls, there's a huge chunk of Robert Evans' memoir. And then also in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, there's a huge chunk of it in there too. Like, yeah, hearing the sides of it are fun, but now this Godfather stuff, it leads to the weaker Mafia third act. I do think it makes a natural storytelling sense that Mo knows so little about interacting with kids, but being a man of his age, he has seen The Godfather and remembers that in The Godfather, a trick for entertaining a little kid in that movie is cutting up an orange rind to make it look like you have monster teeth and chasing

after them. So he's like, oh, I'll act it out like Don Corleone does in the movie. That's clever enough, but I feel that when the mobsters start congregating outside the house to plan their next attacks or whatever, it gets very contrived. Even if the show does really hang a lantern on it when they ask Marge,

do mobsters ever congregate outside the window? All the time. One time I brought them lemonade. They know what they're doing. Sorry, go ahead. What I like about the orange thing is that it is, a spoiler here, Bob,

I'm sorry to do this to you. The orange thing happens right before Don Corleone dies. It's not like a big climactic death. It's a very matter of fact, soft passing in a field with his grandson. But like I was just like, oh, well, you're talking about the Moe has been like death rattled the whole time. And then you have this scene. It kind of fits. I kind of see it.

You know, oranges represent a lot of bad things thematically in The First Godfather. And in Sopranos, they follow that the same way when Tony picks up his orange juice in season one, as we all remember. It almost seems like a stand-up comedy bit they're doing here where Mo gets children's toys and acts them all out. The rest of the plot in front of Maggie.

Like, you know, when he acts out getting shot in the eye, the little bear gets shot, and he indicates it being shot in the left eye and it is the right eye that mo green is shot in so kick him out get him out of here and of course mo green played by alex rocco who has been on the simpsons numerous times incredible voice one of the great voices i think of him and that thing you do he has one scene and he knocks it out of the park because of the roaring voice the roaring voice cuts through all like the cutesy stuff that's happened before all of a sudden it's just raging voice of capitalism all of a sudden comes to meet the fucking i forget what the band was called even but uh the wonders aka the oneeders the wonders yes of course yes the oneeders yeah a Rocco, not on The Simpsons nearly enough.

Wasted time. They could have had it more. Voice is great. And his life story is an amazing one, too. Everything he did before being an actor. He was a major mobster. Mo acts out the whole plot of The First Godfather and then gets straight to, he begins telling the story of Part 2. Save that for your next babysitting appointment, Mo, you know?

No, he's got to bully Apu's kid. He's got to move appointment mo you know no he's got a bully a poos kid he's got to move on you know you got to be the mafia for children chris you are reminding me to now watch coda i haven't watched this recut of part three either you know i never gave part three really a chance as a youth because it was the one everybody crapped on all the time it's so crazy that that's like nobody even thinks about part three of godfather anymore and like list of disappointing sequels or whatever disappointing sequels is a really different topic now than 20 years ago i think i especially have been wanting to because i know megalopolis is coming so i have to watch godfather 3 and coda again there's like three cuts of twixt now i'm

like i'm maybe gonna get through two of those'm not going to really go for the third one, but I feel like I should watch those two. What's the other one? I haven't seen Tetro, which I hear is good. The one with Alden Ehrenreich, I think, was his first movie. You know, for as little as I've seen his movies, I have drank a lot of his wine, and I had some this past weekend. He makes a good middle-of-the-road Cabernet for your

dinner, I will say. I've always liked that. Even the whites are good. And that wine is what pays for Metropolis, right? Isn't that't that the megalolopolis like just a word i never reached that level in sim city so i won't be watching the movie so after all of the godfather talk it's now maggie's birthday party i think at least the third maggie's birthday party we've had in the series yeah well i mean there's obviously the one where abe and marge's mom fall in love yes i feel like there's another one i can't remember here this isn't mcgaggy's birthday this time and they have to have apu and mayanjula's kids here because there are no other like named

babies in here though i'll tell you what's distracting i was waiting to see if the one eyebrow baby aka gerald was here yeah i didn't see him, but in the background, Homer is talking to a dad with one eyebrow. He looks like he is designed to be Gerald's dad, but Gerald's not there. Huh. I didn't notice that. Oh, sorry, Henry. By the way, the other Maggie birthday,

I'm sure there's an episode that features it, the other Maggie birthday is in a commercial for Butterfinger ice cream nuggets. premise is it's maggie's birthday there we okay they should have those ice cream nuggets at this party too i never had those now i'm kind of champing at the bit pretty good i mean they're most of the ice cream versions of a candy bar that's just like the Twix ones. It's like it's a Twix wrapping around just vanilla ice cream, pretty much. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that radioactive Butterfinger filling is best in ice cream. It's not really good in bar form, but if you mix it into a Blizzard or whatever, it's great. After watching the new Linklater movie, Hitman, I was so charmed by Glenn Powell, I wanted to watch his men's health workout routine. And he said that his cheat day meal is ice cream topped with a crumbled up butterfinger. And I was like, man, he's just like me, this Glenn Powell, oh yeah.

No, I didn't think that. Not bad, man. When I saw the trailer for that, I thought a movie about a hitman? Well, now I've seen everything. And it's funny? What? Can't do that. Chrisris did i see you say that compare it on letterboxd is saying it has like the netflix sheen on it or whatever or am i i think it's someone else's but i'm a big fan of that movie it's a problem with all like

even defy bloods has that issue where there's a certain amount of sheen to it especially in the big action sequences i have come to when it's at least a movie i otherwise really like i've come to forgive the sheen when i watched i did come away thinking all right yeah glenn powell you're good i'm sold okay you can be a thing the first time i noticed him was as the scene stealing smugster in top gun maverick and now this i'm like all right you've earned the right to be a movie star in my estimation len powell you should absolutely i don't know if you've seen it before his link up with link later before that everybody wants some it's about college baseball players it's a hangout

movie for the most part so he duches also in it it's so so good it's one of his best i think it's like dazed and confused except for like at an actual college i'm gonna check that out sorry the last bit about hitman when i saw that like glenn powell was being like a co-writer or producer on it that made all the sense of the world like it's an actor getting to play a role of a guy who pretends to be a bunch of different people like this is the exact thing an actor wants to do in a movie to showcase their acting bart meanwhile is helping daddy which they have done this joke before too and the topic of them doing jokes before millhouse with the i'm calling daddy toy when they're testing out for funzo in that christmas episode same joke same

joke i love the shot of lisa being between patty and selma and complaining about everything it's just you don't even have to make the joke. It's just right there in the visual. I think it's perfect. It is rough to be an eight-year-old at a one-year-old's birthday party. You do feel like you've got nothing to do. But then Mo arrives, and he's pissing everybody off. This party's boring.

Everything here is for babies. I'm helping Daddy. Lisa, it says one year and up. Oh, there she is, the birthday girl. Oh, your mommy tied a bow for you, huh? I'd better retie it the way you like it. I know it don't seem like it matters, but, you know, she hates looking like crap. Hey, hey, hey, Ashkosh Bagosh!

She don't want what you're shoveling! Mr. Mo, my son was only playing next to this girl who is not your daughter. Yeah, sure he was, Nahasa Pasa, I'm raising a pervert. Back off, Mo! Maggie wants to be with me! Hey, this is how we play. This squirmy, wormy fighter squirts out of daddy's hands. Daddy feels rejected. He's going to eat some cake.

I don't know what it's like to parent a child, but I do know feeling rejected and then eating cake. That I can identify with. That was my partner watching this with with me that made her crack up him rejected newfield cake whereas i think my favorite line of the whole episode is most saying like a way to break five yes yeah mo loves maggie but he can't not be a jerk to everybody else and that like even marge is getting sick of him i love the look earlier in the episode where mo is describing the warm feeling of like freezing to death when you're drunk.

And Marge smiles like, uh-huh. But this time she can't even pretend. He's like, you know, she doesn't like looking like crap. But he's telling Marge that she doesn't know how to dress her own child. I really love this play set that Mo, I guess, builds, because it is a direct parody of the Simpsons toys that were out at the time. And yeah, as a kid, you could buy toy drunkards in the little bar that they lived in and make them talk by putting their feet on the right little microchip things. Oh yeah. I mean, I bought the bar fly set very early on. I think I was nine when I bought

that. Yeah, Bob, you're right. They must've had the playmates toys in their offices for this and brought it in there and i love too how they say and look classic drunk barney because we just did a commentary uh for on season four for whacking day they're begging al to make barney drunk again and this is a joke reflecting that same time frame of them going like yeah remember classic drunk barney i'm sad we can't write them like that anymore oh actually it's funny you mentioned these toys bob my husband just gifted me one of them here the bill and marty set i didn't have any of them before but i was like uh i had mentioned to him before like oh if i ever wanted one it would be bill and marty because they're the closest to podcasters of the toys wow wow i gotta say there was such a market for those toys at the time that

they made a bill and marty play sets yeah that's nuts were they the last ones on the list i don't know how lower you could get on that i mean i love them i love them in the show but like that does seem very i haven't opened it yet the The try me button, though, no sound comes out. I think I'm going to need to replace the battery. Hopefully that acid hasn't eaten through the plastic in the past 20 years. Also, I do like that Homer was recorded saying he just peed his pants, and then he recorded that for private use. It was not to be used in toys.

This is where it goes too far, where Mo breaks into their house at night and is taking care of maggie i mean he does look like a real creep when they turn on the light and he's sitting in the rocking chair with her that's a big creep move again though like this is so long from your reference point i'm pretty sure the reference point is hand that rocks the cradle i think there is literally a shot of rebecca de mornay with the kid in the middle of the night. And they're just like, oh, OK. OK. And I was just like, I guess you can still make this joke.

I don't know. I found the, well, of course I have a baby monitor. The video has no sound. I was just getting tired of it. I thought that was funny. I thought Homer's delivery of, OK, this is just too weird. That's a very Chandler delivery. I think he even does his hands out like the late Matthew Perry would say it,

which he was friends with Hank Azaria. And also, Hank Azaria, he's going on tour in August with his Bruce Springsteen cover band called the Easy Street Band. So, you know, look him up if he's coming to your town. Well, now I'm going to. I didn't know this existed. Jesus. Is he not doing a tour behind

what was the umpire show he was doing for a while oh god i want to say brickleberry but it's it's some guy's name something like that yeah yeah brockmeyer it was on ic yes yeah yeah god currently he doesn't have a live action show going so he's got time to cover the boss it would be great if he took to the stage and said you know i know a lot of you folks are here because you love my tv work so i'm gonna do five minutes of your favorite character brock meyer and then he launches into the greatest hits of brock meyer all the things you laughed at over the two seasons of that show there's one old guy in the way back who is losing the whole time it's just having a day of it and some people

wonder what brockmeyer would think of bruce springsteen well i think it would go a little something you said the name of their band for a moment there like death entered my heart because i thought you were going to say he had an easy e cover band and i was like no please oh by the way there were four fabulous seasons of brockmeyer i'm sorry to all you Brockmire fans out there. I'm sure it's a fine show. Yeah, I'm sure it's good. This is where Mo gets kicked out. Your turn.

No, it's your turn. I got it. It's okay. Mo, what are you doing here? Well, Maggie was crying. I heard her on my baby monitor. You have your own baby monitor in our child's room? Yeah, I had to. It's so weird watching a video and not getting any sound. That's it, Mo. This is just too weird. You are not allowed to see Maggie anymore!

Well, can I at least give her this mobile? Huh? Huh? Get your own family, Mo. Hey, you never cared about Maggie till I started paying attention to her. Last night at the bar, you called her Raquel. Get out. Is that, uh, get out like leave,

or get out as in get out? You banged Bridget Fonda? Get out! Get out like leave or get out as in get out. You banged Bridget Fonda. Get out. Get out. Okay. Maybe I can catch a late show of Alice in Underpants. Or maybe put them on the looking glass. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Now this is more credit to Laura McMullin as a director. I would bet the script says Mo leaves back out through the window. But to frame it, fisheye, moving camera style in black and white,

it adds so much more to it. And it makes it such a more dynamic scene. And the fact that there's no Marge like, you know, Mo, you can use the front door. You don't need to tap that one. I think you're fine letting it just play. And you know, Bridget Fonda also in Godfather Part 3. And this is around the time where she just left Hollywood completely.

Probably because she knew Mo had a thing for her. And also Monkeybone. Right. That's right. Well, hey. Is she still with the Elfman? Is that? The Simhmm. Mm-hmm. The Simpsons theme songwriter.

They don't take, like, I didn't know this, but, like, there are, like, weirdo paparazzos who are just trying to get photos of Bridget Fonda now. She's been squirreled away for forever. She has some rare disease, I think. Oh, no. Some condition. And she's just been, like, off living with Danny for all these years, of course. Now, Danny's got his own troubles of his own making.

Well, because Monkeybone was after Jackie Brown. Yeah, 2001. It must have been. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting where, I'm not sure what her condition is, but Danny Elfman went in one direction. He became Carrot Top Buff. And if you look at recent paparazzo pictures of Bridget Fonda, she looks like she could have been your substitute teacher in 1992. It's wild to see it. I felt really bad because I guess like there were people who were still like

banging on her door the whole time like do interviews do whatever and she's like you know what I'm fine I I'm good here I respect that I believe I heard it on We Hate Movies as well about how you guys were talking about how Gene Hackman keeps getting photographed and it's like he retired leave him alone let him just be old. I am very happy to know that Gene Hackman is, his main thing every day is walking to the local gas station just to get cigarettes and coffee. That does make my heart feel good. But also, yeah, you got the little snippet from the Guy Fieri show.

Like, leave him alone. He's fine. He's very happy where he is. Yeah, I feel like every eight months you get a new photo of Jack Nicholson standing in a window of his mansion eating a giant sandwich yeah you know what maybe it was better gene like you don't have a hot dog in your mouth every time they photograph you also the animators made the brilliant choice to the mobile of his face is the cursed front-facing smiling mo from both Pygmalion and the Moe's family

feedback commercial. I love that. I have a couple of creative friends. I'm going to ask them to make this mobile for me. This seems like it could be done pretty easily. And I like Moe bringing up the, like, oh, you called her Raquel. Like, that's great. When he leaves, this feels like the opposite of the end of act one for me.

Act one, they just go out on the emotion. Here, they're like, well, once Mo's off screen, we need one more joke. Let's get in some pun parody titles. Start pitching. What's another Alice in Wonderland porn parody? What do we got here? Though now, again, this porn title comedy feels so dated to me because I feel like porn titling now just is a description of an act for highest SEO discoverability, I believe. I mean, I still think you can get a movie title, the XXX parody.

And I guess that also is probably good for SEO. I assume if you're giving the rights for them to use it, the title, yeah, it's good for SEO. Why not? Throw it in there. Why not? Put it in the mix. Honestly, you're going to get much more success selling the Avengers a XXX parody than if you try to come up with some overly clever pun

that's just going to confuse masturbators. Yeah, I'm not running the Convengers, okay? Now I'm pro-pun titling on porno now. Yeah, the Juice-Ass League. uh now i'm pro pun titling on porno now yeah the juice ass league they come back from break and we're seeing mo first sat at his bar and we get to see him the very cursed image of lenny carl and barney all as maggie which is horrifying to look at happily offering their little tummies that's so great when he's like tummy kisses and then barney's like barney's lifting up his shirt already he's like you don't want to do it right now mo but

we know that that barney is in love with mo like he wanted to be his valentine in season four then we see mo sadly eating baby food alone in his studio apartment which i also designers his studio apartment in a basement is so great like disgusting like i think my favorite little detail is his bathroom has like closing doors like it's not like a regular door to close it's more like a closet that has a toilet in it oh okay i always like that apartment because absolutely dated a girl who had that exact apartment and i was just like yes these do exist and they are for people who are lonely and just barely making it and it makes

it a perfect place for him to sadly eat baby food by himself wrapped in the sweater that marge made him so it's even more pathetic too yeah this is where he watches the happy little elves on tv and i love that it could just be a teletubbies parody or something he watched but it's the happy little elves it's a simpson specific this is the clip i was mentioning that is the first time we've seen them depicted as they are in their cartoons since 1989 at this parody of smurfs cartoons of the early 80s still alive in the show and actually a happy little elf toy was used for as a major plot device in the 750th episode just last year so they don't fully forget about the happy little

elves and then it fades quickly to maggie and it's a very good joke too of homer just saying like looking at this sweet precious child makes me want to have one of our own. Homer still doesn't remember that Meg is his daughter. As we've been talking about, well, the Mafia must enter into this story, as must always happen. Oh, here comes the airplane. All gone.

Toys and cakes and pets and brotherhood. It's our song. Now there'll be no more trouble from that meddlesome bartender. Yeah. You know, looking at this sweet precious child makes me want to have one of our own. Tonight, I want you boys to take out the Castellaneta family. I don't know, boss. My passion for whacking is waning.

Perhaps this will cheer you up. Oh, that's better. I can whack my own mother now. I'm glad you brought that up. Kill my mother? She makes such good pasta sauce. It comes from a cane. She's a corpse.

Now, Dan Castellaneta did appreciate the gag of the Don Castellaneta of the Castellaneta family. He got a good chuckle at that on the commentary. One of the rare times they mention something that's happening on screen on the commentary. I think he even voices Don Castellaneta in the show yes i believe don castellaneta is the other boss at the table in the meeting oh really that's funny now my passion for whacking is waning that gave me a chuckle i laughed at that as sopranos taught me louis shouldn't be saying she makes such good pasta sauce he should be calling it gravy it's so confusing when you first start watching sopranos as a dumb white guy who doesn't know

that italian americans call pasta sauce gravy c-state act from our show we hate movies he tells these stories about when he grew up on the bronx and near like arthur avenue where all the really big italian restaurants are in the bronx he talks about he went to school with a bunch of Italian guys and a big joke between them was making fun of each other's mom's sauce. Like they would be like, your mother's sauce is so lemony that you're going to pucker up the first bite you have. You won't be able to put anything else in there. And he will go into this just randomly.

I know you're going to record with him soon. It's one of my favorite bits he's ever done we can start him off by insulting his mother sauce yes i live in the little italy neighborhood of vancouver and i just see lots of old italian guys in track suits with gold chains smoking lots of cigarettes never once have i heard the word gravy or seen it on a menu but i will try it out on a waitress at some point. Gives you a side and is like, okay. At the very least, it's always distracting in Sopranos that the New Jersey Italians at least are calling it the gravy. Also, then it's funny in the later season when they go to Italy, like Italians think that they have terrible taste. These Americans who want like cheese sauce on everything.

I love that. I also like the idea of you getting so into calling it gravy and then like you just do it automatically. And then you go to Pennsylvania and they give you like a plate of pasta with brown sauce on it. And like, you're just like, Oh, I guess it's what he wants.

Okay. Do you want curds in this? By the way, our listeners, there is a talking simpsons bingo card i think sopranos is on it and if you have one of those squares you got really lucky this time so maggie runs off after them very quickly she's able to walk across i would guess miles and miles of town to get to luigi's restaurant the next time we see her. Then when Marge sees that Maggie is missing,

it's another amazing, like, they remembered how to do something bit. Like, in season two or even season three, for big emotion, they would have colors shift. Like, the big ones I remember are in the first treehouse when Lisa notices she thinks the Kang and Kodos are cooking humans. She goes like, what?

Like she presents the cookbook. The color shifts entirely. Marge's scream at seeing Maggie missing is that same kind of color theory, which they really had dropped by this point. We just recorded Wacking Day, and when Bart has the fantasy of the exhaust pipe on Willie's tractor taunting him, it does shift to red to let us know this is Bart's twisted imagination.

I love they're bringing it back, that kind of thing in here. And then Homer enters the room thinking that Marge is mad about a foiled bee plot in this episode that was Homer starts a snake farm, which we didn't get to see. Don't think they've done that yet. They weren't calling their shot.

If we're talking about this sounds like an older joke, this kind of is the emu farm joke. When Marge tried to sell Homer on starting an emu farm. They then decide that it was probably Moe. The cops corner Moe in his basement apartment. And yeah, I mean, they get to have a very dark joke. A baby being put in an oven on The Simpsons. He's making a california cheeseburger

california meatloaf they break in the only thing that makes them not the world's worst cop is that they don't just shoot mo to death right then as as most cops would they instead arrest him but what a great the camera move again when they slam mo against his fridge his face swings to camera and then back on it it's like a needless motion that makes it such a more compelling animation moment and they then learned that yes it was a ham a very important ham as we'll learn later they then leave him to it i just love well boys looks like we solved the case of the missing ham and they're walking away though also he's crapping on it like that's why sitcoms are dying which they were feeling sitcoms were dying 20 years ago how are they feeling now about the state of sitcoms i wonder wickham has a lot of little asides about comedy writing we had that episode recently where

he's throwing out subjects they could riff on that That's right. Yeah, that was in Bard of War, the previous one right before this. Yeah, he's like, come on, join in, Lou. These are good topics. Yes. But yes, they leave it to them. Marge is fed up with it that she just says the subtext aloud of like, you guys are the worst. So then after a quick joke about Homer's serious drinking problem

that no one addresses that he spit up on the ground and crashed the tricycle that's when they discover the orange rind and yes as you said bob marge just admits like oh yeah they're in our backyard all the time sometimes i bring him lemonade because there's no reason for the mafia to be in their backyard it's just for bad plotting so at least they make a joke out of it. They decide they're going to go to Little Italy. It's funny, we go to Luigi's, but no Luigi in this episode.

I missed him. I would have liked to have seen him. They thought there were too many stereotypes in this one room. We can't push it any further. As we go into Luigi's, we're having a big meeting of the Don. That's Don Castellaneta there.

He is voiced like Michael Gazzo's Oscar-nominated character, Frankie Five Angels from Godfather Part 2. I love his voice. I have to work with these guys. Isn't Phil Hartman doing him in Birth of the Murderer? Like, what did I do to deserve this Manhattan? Yes, it's a reused joke too there as well but i forgot he was nominated for an oscar only when i looked up the actor i was like oh wow he's so great in it it's totally deserving at the meeting tony and his crew go off to the bathroom this is just like in godfather part one when michael corleone goes to the bathroom during

his meeting with the police sergeant to get his gun from behind the toilet. And this is when Maggie walks into a dangerous situation. Oh, Bambino. Who is it a Bambina? I don't speak any language so good. We have considered your proposal and our answer is no. Boss, they hid guns in the men's room. Oh, clumsy me. I dropped my fork.

Boys, help me pick it up. Now hold on here. I'm president of the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League. And this really burns my cannoli! Ooooooh! Maggie's right in the middle of that Italian-American-Mexican standoff! Oh my god, I gotta save her! No! You got a family. I'm the guy with nothing to no one. No, no, don't try to stop me! We're not! Your sleeve got caught on that tree. Here, let me unhook you.

Off you go. Yeah, thanks. The Anti-Defamation League joke always gets me. That one I was like, because I remember when, I think it was Goodfellas, when they really went hard on it, how they were depicted. And I'm like, it's a great movie. You should be so lucky that people think you're cool now to mention sopranos one more time this character reminds me of the dr melfi's ex-husband

who they basically make up to make fun of guys who complain about italian american defamation like he is a total like loser cuck who's jealous of how cool mobsters are. He's played by Richard Romanis and he's great at it, but it is completely David Chase going like, man, fuck these whiny Italian guys. I'm going to make up a guy in the show just to make fun of those guys. It's perfect that it is Richard Romanis because he plays the main gangster other than Harvey Keitel in Mean Street. Yeah. And I was like, oh, and he is the buttoned up gangster in that one. He's not the wild card like De Niro and Keitel. He's like the real professional one.

And, you know, we mentioned Godfather Part 3. I think it should be pointed out that that was a new movie when they were working on the first season of The Simpsons. So I think they were really in a mafia mindset when they were building the show. And there are a lot of references to not that movie, but Godfather-y stuff when they were building the show and there are a lot of references to not that movie but godfathery stuff as they're building the show and seeing what kind of references they can make so i think the release of that film was very influential on the simpsons i mean that's why they got montania for fat tony in the first place anyway and on top of that in this episode they have joe montania say i haven't cried this much since I've seen Part 3.

He's dunking on the movie he is in. Yes. I mean, I guess you've earned it. I mean, it's always funny to me to think because I knew him other than The Simpsons. What I know Joe Montagna the most from, this is embarrassing, is from the Stephen King adaptation, Thinner, where he plays a mafia guy who is helping the guy who had the Romani curse. And to see him in this, and then all of a sudden I'm like, oh wait, yeah, he is in Godfather 3. He did do the round.

They did get every Italian in that series. Every actor who's Italian. They got him in there somehow. And they also are using good plotting here by having Mo's suicidal tendencies again pay off. Like it's the speech he gives to the mafia, but even he's telling Homer and Marge, I've got nothing to live for, so let me risk my life. So him being suicidal leads to this scene here too. So I got to give them credit for good plotting.

But when Mo walks into the middle of all these guns, this is where we get a happy ending as he convinces them all to put away their guns. They love this adorable baby too much. And it leads to a happy ending for everybody, especially Homer. I ain't cried like this since I paid to see Godfather Tree.

Here's your baby back. Thanks, Mo. I'm sorry we thought you were a baby napper. Or worse, am I right? Hey, hey, the important thing is little Maggie is safe. Well, I gotta get home. There might be a telemarketer calling or something. I'll see you when you're old enough to drink, okay, Magpie?

Oh, great, I'm caught in another tree. Lousy shirt-grabbing, sap-dripping... What? I don't think Maggie wants you out of her life, Moe. Moe, I was just thinking, if Maggie and I were in the neighborhood, maybe we could drop by and have a play date. With you and your ham. We'd like that, Homer.

I love the I know it's the cheesiest thing in the world. I actually do love the snapshot endings. Like, I think they've done that a couple of times in Simpsons. But just in general, I just always laugh as long as it's original enough yeah going back to i think maybe camp crusty could have been one of the first yes this is the end of season 14 season 15 does not premiere until november viewers have a very long time to forget that mo and maggie have this connection because it'll never be touched upon again your final shot of new simpsons for five months is homer and a ham together i also love that after mo's big speech about how maggie gave him something to live for they call back to the shirt snagging on the tree that first it's used as like homer goes like no no go die it's

fine get out of here but this time he builds it up so much like lousy sap suck it and then just to give another one last wah like though it's not as big as the previous wah but it's great it's another wah and then he calls her magpie i thought it was like oh that's adorable they're scared of having viewers say oh too much and i get it but it did make me go oh in a good way it's a sweet scene yeah the whole ending i thought was sweet the fact that you're just showing maggie to all the criminals is what does it that it finally gets them to put down their weapons they actually fat tony when he's hugging another person and then he looks at maggie and he like dives to the ground like he's so

scared of her he's like ah they're this terrified of this sweet Bambina or Bambino, however it goes. And yeah, we get to hear more of the play the queen song one last time. It probably doesn't cost them any more than it did play it once. If we're doing final thoughts here. Yeah, this is a beloved episode and people who are very cranky about the show, including me at this time. We're happy to see this one i don't think it's aged very well but i still like how it looks and i like some elements of it but then that act three it just it doesn't sit right with me the references feel a little too dated especially because the show has done so many godfather things up to this point it's just

a tendency they have to hit that third act wacky button when they can't find their way out of a story but i do like the connection between mo and maggie i just wish act three was about homer evaluating how he has failed maggie and trying to like win her over or or something along those lines i feel like they lost that part of the story just to replace it with fun mobster violence the sweetness of it overwhelms my tiredness of seeing the Mafia show up for a third act again and again. And also, I do love The Godfather, so I am not so tired of seeing it. I will once we get to that season 18 episode.

I think I'll be pretty sick of it by then. But I think the reason this is my favorite of 14 now, watching it, is just it is the best animation they did all season and that includes a halloween episode directed by david silverman that was like a step up budget wise i think that one is like you know in a technical sense i do think it's better but no this is my favorite like animation whole season and it makes me again i wish laura mcmullen directed stuff more it's been a while she was a a story artist, I think, on Wreck-It Ralph 2, and that's her most recent credit.

I want to see her work more. But this had the best animation of the season for me and a lot of great Moe stuff. And Hank Azaria is killing it the whole episode. This is still my favorite of season 14, I'd say. Is the Treehouse of Horror one the one with the bunch of homers? Yep. Yeah, I like that.

I thought that was a really visually exciting episode this you know i compare these a lot because the two anime shows i was obsessed with when i was a teenager were the simpsons and south park and the contrast to me is always as this goes on i'm laughing less but the stories are still relatively okay when we venture out of the ones i love there's still stories i like like the stories are still relatively okay when we venture out of the ones i love there's still stories i like like the connections are good the way they sketch how certain characters are connected it works for me whereas south park even these late seasons occasionally will get a laugh out of me like a big one but the stories are so fucking shit at this point like stuff i would never want anybody to watch but like as a clip i can see it being like oh

they have a joke writing apparatus that i can't deny but also their vocal performances are still there i still think sona parker really know how to do that part of it but this i think it is just a matter of like i like the story i like what it does with mo and i like how he connects with maggie and i do agree i would have loved to see it be another like, well, Moe's being a better father than Homer is. That is a tangled web. There's something that you can really plumb there, but they don't really go that way. So I was kind of disappointed.

But as you said, it's a very sweet episode and it's not saccharine necessarily. It's not like completely, what's the word I'm trying to think of? Like built up falsely. It's organics. It feels like they didn't try too hard to do it it's just like this is what these characters would do that i both respect and it made me enjoy it

so i'll segue into the wrap-up here well thank you again chris cabin for being on the show please let everyone out there know about we hate movies what's going on with that podcast we love it all the stuff you do you put out an incredible amount of content you've done live tours recently you're doing live podcasts. And yeah, so much is going on. We're always working hard over here. It's patreon.com slash wehatemovies. We do a bunch of shows. Melrose Place, 90210.

We do an animation series. We recently revisited the Men in Black animated series, which is horrible. As I said, you guys have just been on for despicable me too but we also did i think yeah we did logan for our we love movies this month one of the few superhero movies i still like and i can still kind of defend without being like well this part works but this part doesn't it mostly works as a movie to me i think i have like slightly better relationship to it than ethan hawke does who's kind of like, that's fine. Yeah, now come on. We also do, as I think Henry mentioned, we do Gleep Glossary, which is a

Star Wars character wrap up, just generally like going through their stories. We try to do the smaller ones because those are actually the funnier ones with what the detail and what they actually, the expanded universe is nuts. I haven't read any of the books, but apparently they go deep. And I've learned way more than I should have from these shows, but it's been a blast. actually the expanded universe is nuts i haven't read any of the books but apparently they go deep and i've learned way more than i should have from these shows but it's been a blast we'd love to have you guys listen but and we've loved having bob and henry on the garfield episode is fantastic and we haven't recorded yet but i'm betting despicable me too is also thank you we can't wait and i wanted to congratulate you and the rest of the guys eric because on your side show the

nexus where you cover star trek and the next generation to congratulate you and the rest of the guys, Eric, because on your sideshow, The Nexus, where you cover Star Trek and The Next Generation, you have now reached the end of the original series. So you've covered all 72, 74 episodes of that. And we don't know at the point of this recording, but I'm really looking forward to whatever's coming next. We did finally decide. We actually just recorded the last one. It's amazing to think back when the series finale wasn't a big deal. So you didn't put a heavy hitter at the end because like the i don't know if you know this the last episode of star trek is a body swap episode kirk and his ex who hates him switch bodies and i was just like

really this is how you end star trek okay but we decided to stick with the impressions mostly. We are going to go through the entire animated series, Star Trek original series. We had done an episode, I forget the name of it. I think it's something of Magus 5 or something like that. Kirk Meets the Devil. I remember that one. That's the one we did just off during Animation Damnation.

But we're going to go through, start to finish the rest of it, mostly to buy us time to make a decision of whether we just want to finish tng or maybe just do something else we'll see how that goes but for now it's going to be the animated series and well we will sign the nda once we're off the air with you chris don't worry that's perfect thank you yes thank you so much chris it was awesome of course thank you so much guys so thanks again to chris cabin for being on the show please check out we hate movies and everything they do we love them but Of course. Thank you so much, guys. over seven years worth of full-length bonus episodes about Futurama, King of the Hill, The Critic, Batman, the animated series, and Mission Hill. And that five bucks a month also gets you monthly regular new episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill. Again, that's over 180 full-length episodes. And if you enjoy listening to us talk about The Simpsons,

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patreon.com slash Retro Knots and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and henry what about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm that on blue sky as well on instagram i'm talking henry and if you're following me and bob on those social media sites be sure to follow at talk simpsons pod because that keeps you in the loop whenever cool stuff is going on in our worlds that is at talk simpsons pod, because that keeps you in the loop whenever cool stuff is going on in our world. That is at TalkSimpsonsPod. You'll know when new stuff's on the Patreon, when it's on the free feed, when we guest on shows like We Hate Movies.

All of these cool things, you stay up to date if you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod and all those places. And lastly, if you want a list of all our previously released free episodes of Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon, you should head over to TalkingSimpsons.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 4's Marge in Chains. And we'll see you then. Grandpa, stop! Sayonara, Cho-Cho!