Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Monty Can't Buy Me Love With Conor Lastowka

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

This week Conor Lastowka from Rifftrax and the 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back podcast returns for one of season 10's most uneven episodes! After a new Megastore opens in Springfield, Mr. Burns is no longer the most popular billionaire. In his quest for love he'll go on the radio and fly to Scotland, all leading to one of the weakest endings in series history! Listen this week to hear how Nessie ends up in Vegas! Be sure to check out Talking Simpsons next live show at SF Sketchfest, January 14, with special guest Jordan Morris!! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product ahoy everybody and welcome to talking simpsons where mega means good and store means thing. I'm your host, the silver dollar throwing morphine addict Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, and I don't know how much longer I can complain. We'll see about that with this episode. And who is our special guest?

Hey, it's Connor LaStoca, and I have Frog Exaggerator is constantly running. And today's episode is Monty Can't Buy Me Love. All this commotion just for a store? Hey, it's not just a store. It's a mega store. Mega means good, and store means ding. Homer stole my bits. Today's episode aired on May 2nd, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh my god! 1999 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh boy bobby an f5 tornado kills 42 people and injures over 600 in oklahoma city john elway announces his retirement from the nfl and the very first episode of spongebob squarepants airs on nickelodeon starting a new era of cartoons that we are still living under. Did they find out who started the tornado? They were not brought to justice. Damn it. Those people didn't have to watch this episode. The entire city of Oklahoma City was probably saved from this episode.

We count on you, Connor, as our guest for football information. That John Elway retirement set any memories? He went out on top. He negated all the Denver Broncos jokes and the one where Homer's envisioning himself winning the Super Bowl. They were a punchline for a while. They were the Cubs, essentially. So I think he won the last two years he played. So good for him.

And then he went on to, I think, later draft Tim Tebow. So he didn't stay on top for long. Oh, well, we all make mistakes. And how about that SpongeBob SquarePants still running to this day, and the third movie, Sponge on the Run, is coming out in 2020. Yeah, coming very soon, full of all the... The CG animation, you know, I prefer a 2d spongebob to a 3d spongebob but the animation in that trailer for it looked pretty all right it looks pretty good and i like the tiny in

the yeah the original spongebob squarepants cartoon has that wonderful tiny tim song which is probably playing under us right now on the soundtrack and of course check out our what a cartoon episode of spongebob squarepants i think we recorded that right before Steven Hillenburg passed away, the creator. Yes. I think it was like right before. So yeah, he passed away last year, but the show is still going strong. And I think it won't stop until we're dead, probably. Until they make a movie where the animation makes him look like a half-melted, good humor

SpongeBob. I'm not interested. Oh boy, that's the ultimate evolution. But hey, welcome back, Conor Lestoka, to the show. Thank you, guys. It's been a treat every single time. It's a good excuse to rewatch Simpsons I don't always rewatch. And, well, I mean, let's get the promotion right out of the way here.

You're coming to SF Sketch Fest just like we are in January. Yeah, it's coming back there for the man i don't know how many years we've done there for riff tracks but this is the second year that i've been doing something that is uh my own so it's gonna be a treat we're going to be uh doing a show called the internet read aloud uh it's something that is uh hosted by me and uh josh fruehlinger who runs the comic curmudgeon um among other things and it's a show that we want did for the first time about five years ago in Baltimore. And Josh has since,

uh, taken it to LA and, uh, essentially the, uh, the garbage that you find on the internet, uh, presented,

uh, to, uh, unwilling and unsuspect. Well, I guess they're willing and unsuspecting audience. So before we've done a series of, uh,

about, uh, forum posts from a baby for a forum, that's, that's furries who are also adult babies. We've done Wikipedia entries as movie pitches. We've done, people have done improv off our entire show. And we've got a whole new lineup this time

with Bill Corbett from Riff Trax is joining us and a couple other comedians who will be there. It's going to be a great show. It's Saturday, January 18th. It is at Piano Fight. I think that's the name of it. Oh, wow. That's our venue. Yeah. Oh, nice. Sweet. Yeah. We're there like five days after you, I think. So it'll be a good time, 10 p.m. January 18th. Come and check it out. And of course, Connor, you're part of Riff Tracks, the great riffing collective. Can

you talk about what's coming up for Riff Tracks? Anything good, especially holiday related? We've had a good month. We've had a movie starring Steve McQueen's loser son, Chad McQueen. I'm probably making that up, but that was a really good one called Martial Law. We just did one called Robo Vampire, which does not feature a robo vampire, but it is absolute madness from Godfrey Ho.

He's the, I don't know, the James Wynn of kung fu movies. And we have a Christmas movie coming up called Feeders 2 Sleigh Bells by a group of Kung Fu movies. And we have a Christmas movie coming up called Feeders 2, Sleigh Bells, by a group of DIY movie makers, to be generous, called the Polonia Brothers. So if you ever wanted to see a Santa

who talks like Barney Gumbel and it's not supposed to be funny, this is the movie for you. That comes out on Friday. I think that's going to be the 13th. I always associate Riff Trax and Mystery Science Theater with great Christmas episodes. And you have had some really good ones in the history of Riff Trax.

Some of my favorites. It's almost a decade old. At least the riff is Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. I think you guys put that movie on the map. Both versions of it. Yeah, it's truly, truly cracked. The day we discovered that is still like, you know, I can't remember the day I met my wife, but I remember the day we found Pan and the Ice Cream Bunny. Christmas brings out the, just people trying to make a quick buck, I think.

So it's just, they don't put much effort to it and just slap some stuff on screen as the Hallmark Channel continues to demonstrate. I would describe it as Manos, the Hands of Fate, but a Christmas movie. It's that level of professionalism. Yeah, and the kids may have been in more danger in Ice Cream Bunny. Yes, 100%. Oh, man. Well, Connor, I think we've talked about your time as a Simpsons viewer. Were you regular with the show up until late season 10 like this one when it first aired?

Yeah, I had to look back and check. So this would have been my right up nearing high school graduation. So there was episodes that I definitely watched and there's still good ones in this season leading up to it. And I probably watched until regularly until like my first or second year of college. I don't recall seeing this

one in real time when it came out though. I think I flipped to it late and Willie was talking to his parents and I don't remember when I saw it. I definitely seen it again because I remembered lines it late and Willie was talking to his parents. And I don't remember when I saw, I definitely seen it again because I, I remembered lines from it and, and, and moments, but this wasn't,

I guess when it had started to sort of become less appointment TV for me by this point in time. Well, up front, this is not a very good episode, but I do like how on the record, on the commentary track for this episode, everyone is ragging on it completely.

Well, it helps that they're extra punchy because it's their last commentary session for season 10 and they're trying to get out of there fast because Michael Bay is coming in to do Transformers ADR and they're like, oh, this new Transformers movie looks great.

I just saw the trailer. Boy, were they wrong. But they were right about this not being very good. So I would check out that commentary if you have the DVDs. But also I think what this suffers from is

I think they would often defer to people like George Meyer and John Swartzwelder because they were the season one guys. And I think this is an example of them maybe deferring to John Swartzwelder's wackiness a little too much by letting it control the episode to the point where there aren't really stakes. It becomes a new episode in the third act. It's all over the place. And they're up front with how much they were tired and how much some choices they made were not very good. Well, for a showrunner, for every showrunner, the second season's harder than the first, because when you're running your episodes, you're just doing the creation, the way animation takes

so long that when you're getting to the end of season nine, though you're working hard hard you're overseeing the writing and you're a head writer and all that but you're not doing as much post-production stuff but by season 10 you are doing post-production and pre-production on episodes concurrently and so like i could see them coming up with uh going over this script while Mike Scully is also checking on the sound edits for the end of season 9 or the start of season 10. There's a lot of exhaustion going around in this one, I think. And a good indicator this is a troubled episode is that it has the full-length opening and the circus couch gag, which saves you a minute and 36 seconds of comedy time. Yeah. Is that a sign of padding that we've seen in the past? A bit, yeah.

Actually, like in the quote-unquote golden years, Al Jean and Mike Reese would use the circus opening a lot because their shows were always short. Yeah, they were always short. It's also a sign of like, if they animated the normal 23 minutes of content, they cut more than they normally do. And they're like, oh, shit, we're low on time because we cut a lot of crap.

Let's get back out the circus opening. That's all they got. The circus opening, at least, is pretty, though. Yeah, it's very nice. It's always nice to see that as the animation slides down in quality in these seasons, It's nice to see some season four in there. Not quite as pretty when it's forced to be squished into a rectangle for your Disney Plus subscription, though. Oh, yeah.

They don't crop that scene. It's like, I'll squish you down into a rectangle. We'll be complaining about this constantly until it no longer becomes a problem. So I'm sorry this conversation is dated. Well, that's why on this trip, on our recent podcasting trip, which listeners are going to hear those episodes for a few weeks. On that, we just had Disney Plus to watch, and I fully experienced it this time. I just got my DVDs and watched it as a square again.

I welcomed back that 4 by 3 ratio. It is amazing. You always wonder, when it seems to the common man, it should be like, just flip the switch. Do that. I wonder how much actual hours and work and effort are involved into doing something like that. To fix the problem that seems to us like it should be just an insta-fix. How many meetings you need to have at Disney? How many interns have to drag and drop files into a thing? Yeah, it's probably way more work than we can comprehend. Well, I was surprised when I saw John Schwarzwalder's name at the beginning of this one,

because obviously he's the highest regarded person of all these people. And I've read a bunch of his Frank Burley books and stuff like that. So I know that he's able to just pack things front to back with more jokes than you think are possible. And and uh and this one yeah just seems sort of sparse or phoned in or uh just sort of you know like he was making the jo motion the entire time going through the motions i don't know yeah yeah i when i do remember watching this live the first time i it was one of the early episodes of the simpsons not the first but one of the first where i was like i don't think i liked that or i the very least didn't i knew i didn't like the ending but i was like really the loch ness monster yeah really i never liked this episode it didn't help that uh so i was working in a very very depressing uh basement job like in the basement of a bank i don't know what my job was because the temp

agency hired me after the company after the bank was purchased by another bank. So everyone was just sitting around waiting for their jobs to end. And I was freshly hired to just fill a seat. And this was like one of three jobs I had in my lifetime where I was hired to do nothing, but pretend that the workplace was real. So I would just read books on gutenberg.org. No one ever trained me. And I was just so depressed every day. I eventually quit the job because it was too boring. But to cheer myself up, I bought a Simpsons calendar. And this was in the middle of like a bleak, sunless February in Northeast Ohio. And of course, the image that was on the Simpsons calendar for that February was this episode. I had to stare at this all February long and then come home and drink a

lot of gin and go to sleep at like six o'clock. So that was my life in mid-2007. That sounds wretched. And now you truly must watch Feeders 2 because my favorite scene in the entire movie is the guy's, is the husband's basement job. It's truly delightful. It's the most depressing office computer setup you've ever seen. His boss is full of rage that is unprovoked and hilarious. So you'll appreciate it more than anybody than anybody can i pre-order this

well and now i mean seeing the giant purple nessie probably really uh hurt you in a special way i mean giant sometimes or sometimes yeah but again it doesn't make it right but i like that some of the joy of these commentaries back when they were new was like wow they agreed this wasn't good it's amazing it was fulfilling it was a fulfillment of like an eight year long journey i had with this episode of like am i wrong to feel i didn't like nessie and then once they finally get to the end of it and i just hear them admit they know it's a bad especially a bad ending and they're dumping on it i'm like okay all right a really fun one we'll get to soon is the commentary for saddle sword galactica famously uh disliked episode it's matt groening's first time watching the episode and he likes it he's in there saying this is great why does a lot of

people hate this episode uh so there there you have. I guess we'll see when that episode comes for us, how we'll feel. It takes all kinds, I guess. That's famously the one about the jockeys that are actually a race of elves, which I guess is no crazier than seeing the Loch Ness Monster as a real thing live on screen, I suppose. Now, I do like, conceptually, the idea of this episode of a classic old school billionaire like burns versus this new era of fun pr loving billionaires like yeah that is a good starting place for an episode and uh we're living in the idea of them trying to push the good billionaire concept on us oh yeah really

taking on a different uh watching it yesterday was like, boy, this is a, people don't feel the same way about these guys these days. No, no. And I was looking up, we'll talk more about Richard Branson. I was looking up his fortune.

I was like, only four billion. They must spit on you at the Billionaires Club. Yeah, it's incomparable to other billionaires. I think Two Simpsons, this is them making fun of billionaires, but I think they even came to actually love the real life fun billionaires too much. In the future, we'll have on as real life guests, Branson, but also Elon Musk and Mark

Zuckerberg and Mark Cuban, all of the thrillionairesaires as the term was uh so yeah i think they just got into like i mean later simpsons are uh they really like famous people in later simpsons so it's just kind of a favor they did but it's it's a bummer for me to think that there's an entire episode about homer befriending elon musk from like four years ago yeah see it's just uh that's the sound you should make uh but i guess i mean let's start with the beginning of this episode uh to really set this in 1999 there's several jokes in here that make it feel like 1999 and that includes an antiques roadshow opening yeah a fairly new series it started in january of 97 so this was a fresh parody every i think every sitcom writer was watching it with their spouses. And so it was like,

Frasier did a very long, a whole great episode about Antiques Roadshow. And I feel like every, many shows had Antiques Roadshow parodies. In my mind, the greatest one of them all was the short-lived Onion TV web series, where they did Lake Dredge appraisal. Oh, I've seen that. It was tremendous. I mean, it's very, very dry, but it goes in some unexpected directions.

I forgot the Onion had an era of snackable videos. Yeah, it was that and Snack's House. They were both really funny. Oh, and also, I think this is the fourth episode in a row that starts with them just watching television. Yeah. But I like that Marge is like, are you watching TV again? She's commenting on the last four episodes where it's like they get the idea of where to go based on the television.

That's true. That's true. But yes, here's the first clip. And welcome back now to Cash in Your Legacy. This week we're appraising antiques in Springfield. This gentleman's beer tap dates back to the turn of the century and remarkably seems to have never been washed. Yeah, yeah, I've been meaning to wash that, but it's been such a century.

At auction, I'd expect this to bring $20,000 to $30,000, except that on the handle somebody's carved Homer Rocks. And I do. Woo! Appraised value, $15. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him! Ah, jeez.

So yeah, he grabs Skinner's musket, and it evaporates in Moe's hands. Where did Skinner get that musket from? It must be one of real Skinner's family heirlooms, I guess. That's true. Now we know the dark truth. The tap was appraised so highly, considering it must be so rusty when it cut up Homer's gums so much that it was fucking on the end of it.

So I was looking this up. There's a famous clip, but it was an Antiques Roadshow of just an antique breaking on the air. I think it was an antique record or something like that. But apparently this does happen on the show. This article is a decade old. This is the most recent one I could find. It's a Telegraph article.

So it opens with, in a response to a request from under the Freedom of Information Act, the corporation admitted there had been 17 incidents of valuables being damaged by the show's experts or other staff since the beginning of 2005. Scandalous.

Just in the handling of these things and, you know, under hot studio lights and all the other things that need to go into making a TV show, things have been broken or damaged the uh person who had happened to this 17th time was to be like my god has this ever happened before like surprisingly regularly actually you signed the waiver right yeah i wonder if they must have to sign some waiver of like uh hey if we you can't sue us if something happens when the expert touches your valuable. I mean, those antiques roadshow shows are fun.

They always, just to see, like, how, to be surprised of like, oh, you thought this was worth $500? It's worth $30,000. And then people do just cash in on their legacy and sell it off. I like when they ask them at the end of like, well, are you going to sell this? And they usually are like, oh, yeah, totally. And it's still running at uh 817 episodes so slightly more episodes in the simpsons just slightly and yeah then they cut away from the tv to the uh the family all being very lazy it does you know in ages 10 to 13 my mom actually did get a bit of marge here and she was like you guys need to be more active sundays we're gonna go for like a family walk and we'd like drive up to first you try yes well

well we would drive though to like a hill or something for a hike so we do like a nice little nature hike uh but i don't remember enjoying the hikes but i do remember enjoying that we would go to dairy queen afterwards and we'd have ice, which does seem to invalidate the entire activity of the thing. Yeah. I would go over to a friend's house in the neighborhood, but I would be given the instruction that I could go over there to play, but was not allowed to play Nintendo or computer with them. Which is like, you know, it was unenforceable, but it sort of loomed large when you were still young enough to want to obey that. But here the kids are so lazy they can't even finish a sentence. I don't know how you can all just lay around the house on a nice day like this.

When was the last time we went for a good old-fashioned family walk? Well, we stopped those when the kids said I was too fat to carry. Oh, come on. Let's go for a walk. This family's getting so lazy. I'm not lazy. I'm just, um... Uh... Lisa, finish my sentence for me. Why don't you finish your own, darling? Fine. If we're not going for a walk, we'll just talk about our day. I wrote another poem about a duck.

Can we go home yet? My feet hurt. For a walk, we'll just talk about our day. I wrote another poem about a duck. Can we go home yet? My feet hurt. All this fresh air is making my hair move. And I don't know how much longer I can complain. Still a horse! Did we march? Could we get a horse?

We're walking, Homer. There's some dogs. We could all ride dogs. Forget it. Nobody's riding any. Hi a really cute uh little animation bit where when marge is reading the duck poem maggie is jumping up and down excitedly she's into the duck poem it's easy to miss when it's cropped by disney plus okay i will stop talking about disney plus i swear. Well, the detail I liked in the duck poem that maybe I was so distracted by, the fun detail that Marge wrote her duck poem on a piece of paper shaped like a duck.

Oh, I totally missed that. I did see the word quack a bunch of times. Yeah, I was trying to get a read on what the duck poem said, but I didn't want to rewind and go back. My favorite moment was Barney yelling, get a horse. Because I remembered my grandmother on my dad's side had a bookcase when we would go up there to visit. And one of the books was like the only book that was suitable for me besides the Peanuts books was called Ask Henry. And it was from some like local 11-year-old boy who got an advice column in the paper.

And so it was just a collection of his columns, which when I was 11, I thought this was fascinating. And one of the people who wrote in said that her brother or their son was always disobedient on car rides and he would yell things to people in other cars, such as get a horse. So I guess this was like a 1950s heckle or something like that. So it's a deep hole for someone on the staff.

It's the name of the Oscar-winning Mickey Mouse short, right? Yeah, yeah. It was a really good one. The 3D one from about five years ago. I want to go back to the Get a Henry archives to see if anyone asked him adult questions. Like, dear Henry, I think my wife is cheating on me with my best friend. Yeah, I found their underwear in my... Barney really shouldn't be driving around, though.

No, it's weird to see Barney driving shouldn't be driving around, though. No. It's weird to see Barney driving a car. He's like, well, he's always drunk. That's the character. They dump on Marge so much in these seasons, but I like that they at least show by now Marge is learning to weaponize how boring she's written. But like, okay, then I'm going to bore all of you until you go on a walk with me. I like that the march has this

creative outlet too of writing duck poems like just and yeah lisa falling asleep mid-sentence and falling off the couch that's funny i i like that it's good when lisa gets to be a kid occasionally yeah and uh and in the next episode bart rides a pig this time he's riding a dog he's got his clothes on this time though yes it's it's even weirder him naked riding a pig in the next episode. And I like the animation of the dog chasing its tail until Bart falls off. That was well done, too. But yes, as their walk continues, Homer also really craps on Marge in this next clip. Oh, look.

There's the store where I buy my yarn. But you don't want to buy your buttons there. Phew. Well, I dodged a bullet. Now, there's the place you want to buy your buttons. And that's where the bookmobile lady used to live. If you love me, you'll kill me. Hey, Mom, look.

Oh, looks like something exciting's happening. Well, we'll have to read about it in tomorrow's paper. Why can't we see it now? Well, it's not really on our walking route. Bookmobile lady used to live as a great escalation of boringness. Yeah. No one would care that she currently lives there. Now to say, like, nobody lives there now.

I also like marge's i feel like i've been in marge's position too where i have plans that i'm starting to lose people on on like a group thing and they're like well can't we do something interesting and then i have to go like well it's not really in the plans for today though i have to go back to like well we all agreed on these plans let's not cancel my plans for something more fun the worst is when like people sort of hold that against you when they're you know people are like i don't care and then it involves into into like a uh big lebowski-esque like calmer than you are type of thing it's like i'm not i'm not in the wrong here i i'm the only one who's trying to do to stick to the plan we made we all made your personal experience yeah we all made this plan

okay come on. That's what you get for having friends. Yeah. Just don't do it. Friends in your late 30s. It's a mistake. It's just there's no time for it. I have one friend I just had.

We every three to nine months. We are still friendly and like each other, but we'll have this moment of like, hey, we should hang out. We really should. In the next two months, I'm not free. Me neither. Well, we'll make plans soon. You're playing a game of friend chicken.

Racing towards the cliff. Homer, man, I'm sad that Homer's so bored with Marge, though. And he's just like, I don't have to pull it there. Like, come on. Some very blunt sarcasm. The Sentence will be right back hey there all you macarena monsters i hope you're enjoying this week's episode and a big thank you to our guest connor listoka please check out his podcast and all the other cool stuff he does at Riff Tracks and follow him on Twitter. Now, did you know that this podcast is supported by Patreon?

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spider-man into the spider-verse a goofy movie aladdin and so many more you should really consider signing up at the ten dollar level to get all the previous $5 bonuses, plus that extra exclusive one a month. So please, check it, these were huge. And, of course, the internet killed it because it's brick-and-mortar retail. But I think they were more of a big city operation. I never was in one in my life. Maybe when I was la i don't think so either i think when i was visiting la at this time in 1999 i think i did go to one and i was like wow i'm in the thing they made fun of

but uh so now used to be a huge brand uh now only 40 locations remain exclusively in north africa and the middle east yeah so that i feel like there's some some off the record story about why those are the only ones to still exist that's like when you hear about how there's like a garfield restaurant in dubai you're like what why why dubai oh yeah i guess the uh maybe maybe they just prize and honor virginity more in the uh oh our values were lost which is why the virgin megastore had to close well it's like uh but richard branson i i feel like in the late 90s that was when he was starting to become a celebrity known in america like he's he was known in england i i think for much longer because like virgin records was his i believe that's what made him really rich and like they

they signed the sex pistols and culture club and a bunch of like 80s bands that that made him really rich and like they they signed the sex pistols and culture club and a bunch of like 80s bands that that made him very rich and then he uh even before he came to america to do a bunch of stunts he would do crazy stunts about he's opening some new venture or he'd you know drive the english channel or something like that uh and then once he started extending his brand to the u.s then we started getting all of his stupid stunts. Yeah. And also Virgin Airlines, which just closed recently, just shut down. I mean, I would fly them semi often because it was still like a fart tube in the sky, but they tried to make you think it was cool. And I did like that. I liked the lighting

on the plane. I liked the little areas you waited in. They tried to make it a little classier. But one thing I hated about Virgin Airlines, and weigh in on this in the comments if you've seen this before, I was flying them a lot in one period of time, and they had a too clever safety video where it's just like choreographed dancing, a little girl raps. Not only is that bad, after the video plays, you watch a making of the safety video. There's a mini documentary about how they made the safety video. Yeah, that girl really wrecked. Have they no decency? It was excruciating.

And so maybe they deserve to die. Maybe. But I did like those blue lights. I do like when people use, you know, like just they, when people who work in something that, where it sucks

and everyone knows it sucks, such as an airport or an airline. And there's, you know, there's the one group that's like, what if this didn't suck? You know, what if, what if we had restaurant options at this airport that weren't sbarro and you know chilis to go it's always just like oh yeah that could that could work that's so crazy so i i do

tip my hat when people when people try to improve our lives slightly in that respect well we just flew southwest and they're the suckiest bunch of sucks whoever sucks i i dislike delta more, but I mean, well, our flight yesterday was bad. Yeah. Well, I think the open seating system of Southwest is a psy-op. Yeah. I think it also saves them like $20 per flight. Like, we don't have to figure this out. It's up to you.

Fight amongst yourselves. And boy, do we. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. You have any airline preferences? You know, I might Southwest. I have always had good experiences. I think it's like $10 extra to get the early bird and to not have to deal with the swine in Section C.

So that will reveal my bias there. I kind of wish other places did that. But no, we live in Burlington. So it's a small airport. And it's like the first one to get canceled. So my preference is to have a credit card that has travel insurance because we've had like five opportunities to use that with flights getting canceled for no plane or winter. And it makes you appreciate it. It makes you go into like sort of a crazy mode where you're like save every single receipt and duplicate it because they want to screw you out of an opportunity at every given thing. I'm finally earning points through an airline, and it feels great.

I'm waiting to escalate to one of those like Ruby, Platinum, Iridium passengers. I could be like, oh, zone four, really. John Hodgman's new book is all about that, Medallion Status. Oh, yeah. I've heard good things. Maybe I'll get the audio book as a holiday gift. He talks about my two favorite San Francisco Corgis, Chompers and Linus in it. I need to look into these corgis in San Francisco.

Yeah, so they head across the street to this giant party that's happening for the celebration of the opening of a fortune megastore. It seems illegal to me for a clown to just serve alcohol to people on the streets but homer looks like he's uh remember that one that guy guessed his weight and age he looks like he's 56 or something like yeah i guess he should uh he's the noodles should feel safe that's a funny as far as clown names go noodles is a funny one i approve of that but yeah this shows how much things have changed now because like richard branson got rich off of the well among other things these virgin mega stores and now jeff bezos is like worth like a hundred richard branson's for having no stores and not trying to be cool or sexy or anything uh but yes we head into the mega store and there's this really you

know kind of impressive camera scan across the whole store i will say uh there's no jokes in that but it's a very well done like 360 uh pan across the room back to homer so it's just one really long piece of art that they're panning across really nice and uh then there's a homer butt scratching joke that's like i mean that feels like a you to see that in like a home alone movie or something i don't know didn't tyrannovision show us that before oh yeah it's actually yeah his uh he needed to zip up his fly in one of those oh yeah that might have been in like uh dancing homer yeah xyz homer well why should i examine my oh who him scratching his butt and though those cameras are pretty good too even they catch up the sound of him scratching his butt it's that cameras are pretty good too even they catch up the sound

of him scratching his butt that close up we'll also talk about like weird editing like it's a real hard cut to bark going whoa from homer scratching his butt oh yeah and then there's another joke that's like this could have been an episode gag they say that on the commentary i like how if you're watching this for the first time, you could think, oh, it's Apu versus the Fortune Megastore episode. At least if they needed to fill out time more, they could have had that as a B-plot, you know. But I guess the joke just is Apu is ruined by the Fortune Megastore and he never recovers. Right. Just like the Megalomart exploding, and it was about Hank losing his job because of the Megalomart as well. My favorite gag was, I mean, I don't know if it's upcoming or I forget the chronology, but just it was something very small, but everyone approaches Homer for money, but he's sitting in front of one of those, you know, like, best buy walls of TVs watching a monkey playing the banjo.

Which is just, you know, it was a classic touch that I appreciated. Something that might be, you know, on the inside of his brain in another episode. That's Mr. Teeny, too. Oh, yeah. I missed that was what was distracting him so much from handing out money. Thinking back to how poor the Simpsons were written in the early seasons, having Homer's wallet just have all the money necessary. They've not been sports in season three. Yeah.

Yeah. It's true. And then comes the joke that took me a really long time to get in my teens, which was that Otto listening to the music. Like, I didn't. Yeah. it's just not done very well. And even on the commentary, they're like, yeah, this didn't really land. Yeah, it was just confusing. I, again, wanted to go back, but didn't.

But he's listening to Judas Priest, but you can hear it. But then when he's saying the new music is no good, run me through it. So Otto is, as always, wearing his own headphones, which when he walks away, it's revealed he is listening to Judas Priest. He has headphones over his headphones, and he says all these new bands are just trying to rip off Judas Priest, meaning he's listening to his old Judas Priest music, but thinks he's listening to a new song that is the Judas Priest song, so he thinks the new bands are ripping off Judas Priest. It's a clever idea, but it's just too hard to communicate quickly. It's just, yeah. And like, this time I really sat down and thought about it. I was like, okay, that's the joke.

Yeah. I get where, I get it, but it's really complex, especially like you only, they paid for a real Judas Priest song. That's the Judas Priest song, Living After Midnight, that plays in his headphones. There's some real 80s metal in this first act. And just think how much money they paid for that, like, original Judas Priest recording for you to, like, hear it low in the mix for, like, four seconds. It's very complicated that joke though at least finally they got some use out of otto's character design always having headphones on it's maybe the first time they've done that joke in like a decade yeah when the headphones actually turn on yeah and then comes the joke that i'm glad we've got connor here for because it it's a joke that I'm glad we've got Connor here for because it's a joke about a crappy movie

and commentary over it. How synergistic. Yeah, sadly, it's a movie I've never seen. I never had an Irishman-esque chunk of time carved out to watch The Postman. I was privy to this being watched twice in one day. It was my stepdad was laid off, and it was like we were snowed in, and I was just playing on the computer, and he had nothing better to do. So he had rented the Postman and hadn't watched it yet. So he watched it. He's like, oh, this is really good, and he watched it again. So he watched it twice in like one very, very long day.

Wow. Back to back. Well, hey. Yeah, that was just, it was, you know, before there was really the internet or anything, you just had these movies that were punchlines from like the day they came out and they never had a chance to redeem themselves.

So that this was a, this was one of those. Cause I, I've liked Kevin Costner and a bunch of other stuff, but. I remember when I never have seen the postman. I just remember when it came out, people were like,

uh, I think it was the christmas of 97 so it was like 18 months after water world and when people heard about like kevin costner in the lead of like this another post-apocalyptic film i think people were really turning on it instantly from there and seemingly it's substantially longer than water world so yeah it's uh two uh, two hours and 57 minutes. So not quite your Irish man. I did like their decision because I was thinking,

I was like, the guy sounds nothing like them. He sounds like a generic businessman on The Simpsons, like the Lindsay Nagel counterpart. But then I was like, how would you do an impression of Kevin Costner? And it's like, he's one of those guys that's pretty down the middle of the road in terms of what you could isolate and heighten about him. I don't know how it would work. Dan did him in an earlier episode that I remember was all right.

What was the joke? Oh, it was when Milhouse plays Waterworld the game in Springfield Files. He's just so nondescript. That's why he became a movie star. You project your own fantasies onto Kevin Costner and your own wishes and dreams. And he still stars in like three movies a year. He's still a very busy actor. Yeah, I wondered, Connor, why there was not a Postman Riff Trax,

but I think it's because it's three hours and just boring, right? Yeah, I mean, I think in the early days like i think we got water world asked a lot but it was like does anyone really have a dvd of water world sitting around so like i i think the other postman just would have been a would have been a even more of a disaster and then god forbid if you queued it up to uh your dvd of ill postino and then we're like why does nothing even match up here that would be but i like this is like one of the probably the first no the first joke about dvd commentary i ever saw possibly the one that first ever aired on tv yeah dvds being fairly new at the time like two years old yeah this is also like the simpsons first ever dvd joke even let alone the commentary joke and uh and i think it's ironic that simpsons

joke about dvd commentary completely misunderstands what a director's commentary is. Like, as in, it's like a picture-in-picture view of the director. I mean, when they were getting ambitious and when they were like, we could do anything with commentary, there would often be, like, video commentary. Like, the Mallrats DVD had that. Oh, that's, yeah. And the Goonies did, too. Like, a little window would pop up and you'd see, like, segments of the recording as it was playing, which when they realized no one really cares about this, they didn't spend money on that anymore, but they used to. But I love that Lisa's line, I've heard this really sucks. You hear that at the end of the episode after the credits over the Gracie films. They knew it. That's right. Yeah. Well, here, let's hear the landmark first director commentary joke.

This is so much nicer than the Quickie Mart. I'm sorry, but it really is. Yes, I know, but still. Hey, Dad, give me 50 bucks. I gotta buy some things. Better make it 100 100 Yeah, me too Homer, don't you think you're spoiling the night? New music?

Man, all these bands are just ripping off Judas Priest Oh, I hear this really sucks Director's commentary I'm sorry, I hear this really sucks. Hmm, director's commentary. I'm sorry. I am really sorry. Ugh! I don't know what I was thinking. But Field of Dreams was good, wasn't it? Made us all believe again. Oh, poor Mr. Costner. He tries so hard.

Aw, thanks. You're sweet to say that. Uh, where are you? I'm back here. Hi. Will you bring me a sandwich, please? No crusts. No crusts for Costner. Yeah, I mean, that also, that gag feels a little family guy-y to me, too. Like, oh, Kevin Costner's just really there.

Or also critique-y, actually. Real critique-y of having this, the real-life celebrity there, and also taking a pot shot at a movie that everyone agrees is bad, so it's kind of an easy joke. It's safe, yeah. Yeah, safe, yeah. Not easy, safe. It reminds me of how Ishtar would turn up in Farside cartoons and stuff.

So I was eight years old, and I was like, this must be the most loathed movie in the world. And nowadays, people are like, no, that was good. It just got a bad rap the first weekend. Yeah, yeah. Ishtar was a punchline for the longest time. Same with Joe vs. Volcano. Yeah.

Nobody ever taught, no one even thinks about that film anymore. Then we, right after that, go to a joke of Bart killing children with his train penny. I like the, I mean, the animation on the tiny train wreck is good there. There was no twist on it other than the fact that it worked. You know, it's not supposed to work, I guess. Yeah, I did a train penny or two in my day because I lived right across the street from some train tracks.

So me and my friends... Which side of the tracks, Henry? The good side. Okay. But yeah, we put them on there and then come back the next day and hopefully find like a squished nickel. I had a real prized one of those. That's a federal crime.

But the nickels are so thick, they're fun to squish. Yeah, this was a sting, Henry. Sorry. This is a 10-year-long con of entrapment. Yeah. It's all been leading to this. Get them, boys. Also, the train driver looks like gill's younger brother oh that's a story we we could tell in this episode

but i think it's really they just miscolored gill in the designs that's when burns arrives in the episode he's on his way to close down an orphanage but that's a funny thing for burns to arrive with i noticed twice in this episode he says deploy something like and so he starts with deploy the cow catcher which transforms his car kind of like batmobile style uh into having a what's at the front of a train which also this comes right after that train joke oh that, that's right. Schwarzwalder could have been a foamer. I think that's what they call fans of trains. Oh, yeah. I would bet that.

I mean, I know Bill and Josh are... No, Josh is a big train fan. Josh Weinstein. Though he's off the show at this point. Did you see that recent cover news story of Rod Stewart's collection of trains? Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes.

Yeah, sorry. Oh oh he's just a big model train fan boy uh that rod stewart is which that's you know if he's going to be trending for anything these days i'm glad it's uh i'm glad it's model trains they were uh mike scully's era was very light on burns i'm trying to figure out what the last burns episode was that i can't remember in his era because i think the stories they wanted to tell in Mike Scully's era were talking about families and, you know, their own family experiences and also making fun of television, which they did a lot in his era and how bad it is, but they didn't have room for Burns. Huh? Yeah, no. And well, and then when he shows up in later parts of the Scully season, it's usually only when they can partner him for a disgusting

story with homer it's like they they made him more of a gross character than an evil character and i mean burns transforms from the musty old man who references things to uh oh the the cuba episode that was the last trillion yeah so like again he just appears in like the the last 40 percent of it really it's okay it's much better than this one though yes this is sort of like i don't know i don't know what the difference is but he seems sort of defanged to me or on the on the verge of being defanged or he's literally he's not you know he's not as as 100 evil he's more more incompetent i guess he's he's needy in a lot of aspects of this yeah well he didn't put in his fangs today yeah

that's true now he does electrocute people he does do that yeah yeah all of his cruelty is really at the front of this uh uh but yeah they i do think it's interesting though right after he gets caught on the cow catcher he's then electrocuting people and uh in this next clip you can hear if you've watched no disgrace like home recently uh it's the same sound effect and animation. I like that ref. Step lively, Smithers. The orphanage won't demolish itself. Sarah, although I do enjoy your loud, excessive honking, it doesn't seem to be moving the crowd.

Deploy the cowcatcher. Once again, my underwear has become tangled in a cowcatcher. Oh, tarnation. I've got to see what the excitement's about. Make way! Doctor coming through! Excuse me. So sorry. Pardon me, good sir.

Well, hi, deadly. That's a good lid. It even has the sound of the button, like the buzzer. Yeah, yeah. I think they just pulled that from their sound files or something because it's identical. They're making that reference for sure. Yeah, that's fine. I used to watch a series of videos that this crazy old, like 90-year-old psychologist would do.

I forget. His name was Loren something, L-O-R-E-N and his whole theory was that he would talk up your problem whether it was like chronic cold hands or sexual guilt or something and then he would hit a buzzer that sounded exactly like that and he would say disconnect

disconnect disconnect and that was supposed to just that would make you not want to use heroin anymore was him hitting a buzzer that sounded like that and saying disconnect it's almost like the spankological protocol uh i i think ned is the one the reason he passes out is he's instead of like being zapped in his arm or back he gets it like right on his heart which i think probably causes him a a brief heart attack i think which she's a 62 year old man like he or 64 he's he's not gonna survive that though i guess agnes gets zapped too and she's uh she's relatively

fine but she's a tough old we don't see her again i don't think but uh well then when they enter the room burns is like what's next a talking banana like that's just a little too monkey cheese for me i don't like that yeah i like that he by monkey cheese but i i saw that and i was like i don't understand what i'm missing here i i kind of like the uh angle where he's waiting to see it and then sort of wistful that he won't so that's his own like private uh wish to see like that's good yeah no well i guess when i say monkey cheese i mean the random combination of silly words just saying like what next monkey cheese like yeah yeah it's it's just easy silliness like a ninja pirate is here right sure yeah it was a uh

that was one where i was like yeah i just feel like this was either uh the first draft or the placeholder you know insert the better joke later and then it was like yeah you know yeah life love day's fine it's the end of a season let's go with the first draft and then they introduce uh the made-up guest star of the episode arthur fortune uh i think with quimby introducing him that means that he gave arthur fortune a lot of tax subsidies to uh to come to to springfield uh arthur fortune arrives in a hot air balloon with alice cooper's million dollar babies playing which again expensive expensive little reference there but just the the type of classic rock that mike scully loves uh and him arriving in a hot air balloon is a direct reference to branson

in 1995 and 1998 attempting to go around the world in a hot air balloon. And in both cases, he failed. That's why they were referencing a then-fresh Richard Branson stunt with him. Yes, let's hear the first lines from old Arthur Fortune. Attention, good shoppers of Springfield. Someone very special has just entered the store. The world's most popular billionaire. Oh, please. All this fuss for little old me.

Please welcome the owner of Fortune Megastores, Arthur Fortune. Million dollar baby. Hello, Springfield. Hello, Arthur. You know, I've done a lot of exciting things in my life. I went down Mount Everest on a boogie board. Climbed Niagara Falls.

And just last month, I knocked out Muhammad Ali. But this is the biggest thrill ever. The opening of my 112th store. I love the joke about him assaulting a retired boxer. Yeah, and I was trying to remember what the timeline was of him. And that was definitely in the throes of his Parkinson's. Because when he lit the torch in Atlanta in 96, he was shaking as he held it up. Oh, yes.

Yeah. Ali was a very infirmed old man then. Well, this billionaire is a monster. You can't get there without being one. That's my favorite joke. Actually, I'm going to give that line of the episode. Marge's reaction is good, too. Yeah, yeah.

Well, because she's the only person who seems to realize, like, this is wrong to sucker punch an old man. That's the joke. But everybody else celebrates it,'s he's proud of it it's also like you can tell he got a film crew to like follow me there i'm gonna ring his doorbell and then just punch him right in the face pay off the police oh yeah i mean he can do whatever he wants uh but now classic swartz welderiness of of climbing Niagara Falls. That's pretty good. Going down Mount Everest instead of climbing it. Yes.

Yeah. Up, up, down a mountain and up a waterfall. That's pretty good. Yeah. I think his craziest stunt, the closest one to that I could find in a list of like crazy stunts Richard Branson did was like Bungie jumping off one of his 400 foot tall buildings. Like, I mean, that sounds exciting. On the commentary matt

selman said if i was a billionaire instead of just a millionaire i would quit my job and go somewhere where i would be very low you know not likely to die yeah that's what you figure but uh well i mean these days richard branson is just like uh barack obama's retirement buddy like that's what they are they're windsurfing while the world burns having all types of fun uh and yes in real life richard branson has appeared on the simpsons three different times this is right after i right after i stopped watching so i missed his uh the decade of branson for the simpsons my god was he just like you know i'm i'm available i'll be around i'm on call like i you know i wonder as a british person if he just loves The Simpsons because I think per capita, British citizens love The Simpsons more than American citizens. I watched it on me sky.

I like when they're cutting to the people cheering at him, punching Muhammad Ali and doing all this stuff. There's a guy in the audience who I don't think I've ever seen before, but there's a guy who's like he looks very strong but he's also got like bart's lucky red cap on backwards he's in front of the audience he's a he's a weird springfieldian oh i think uh i think i recognize that guy i think he might be he looks a little like nelson's dad i think just slightly uh bob's pulling it up on frankie act here i think it might take a while but yeah well uh well bob looks at it let me quickly say yeah the branson his first big episode was in season 20 where he was part of a cadre of billionaires who appeared in the show it was him and mark cuban and mark zuckerberg and i believe they were like teaching lisa how to be like an entrepreneurial

success i think he had brie for appearances in season 22 and 26 which it's like i don't know the the third time branson shows up it's just like get a new get a new rich guy you know yeah really that's a uh that's a weird thing to give nobody who was asking for it uh maybe he did ask for i think if you're famous enough and you ask they'll they'll give it to you as well i meant the loyal viewers oh oh well yes yeah this that guy in the front is pretty distracting like a burly guy who looks like nelson's dad in bart's colors with a red hat backwards it's a it's an odd background character so arthur fortune is beloved by everybody who other than marge i guess and then he's gonna

hand out dollars which that's a great gag of just like the extremeness of the charity and how little that is to a billionaire. And I like Homer just storms the stage for two whole dollars. It gets called young man. Yeah. It's like, I don't know, give me. It's funny to see Ned get zapped again, but I'm most laughing because he uses like the old term poor box. Poor box. And that feels like Schwarzwelder.

That's a $100 bill he has. It's drawn as a hundred. Oh, they goofed up there. Poor box is, I've heard it from Friar Tuck in the Disney Robin Hood. He's one of the Sheriff Robs from the poor box. He's upset about that. Yeah, that was the last. Yeah, that's right.

That's the only place i think i've heard the term poor box actually i think like a christmas carol had some mentions of poor boxes oh yeah yeah it's a it's a very i guess it's weird to hear poor box said by somebody with an american accent i think and also like smithers is here supporting burns at the store but he vanishes after act one like he's not involved in any of this stuff yeah he should be a part of the overseas adventure yeah i feel like once burn says are you still here at the end of this act like smithers just goes he goes home i guess i'm leaving that he should have been like yeah tracking down the florida skunk ape or some other crypto

usurps burns at the end. Love that Skunk Ape. He's underrated in the cryptozoological world. I think we've had three better pitches for this episode so far. Apu dealing with closing his store, Smithers helping them. Yeah, I mean, look, it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback on writing a show. But everybody loves Arthur Fortune. Burns is jealous. He threatens Smithers to start a conga line and he can't do it.

I'm guessing he got shocked right after the next scene was over. Yes, Burns the next night is still not happy. Greenfield is still swooning from the whirlwind visit of playful, pluricrat Arthur Fortune. The man has no idea how to behave like a billionaire. Where's the dignity? Where's the contempt for the common man? This new breed of fun-loving billionaire is a welcome change from the classic joyless miser brooding in his cavernous mansion.

Grasping a glass of brandy with his thin, claw-like fingers and a superior smirk on his greedy, soulless face. I thought I had everything. Money, good looks, strong, sharp teeth. But what's it all worth When nobody likes you I like you sir Are you still here He's not even talking to Smithers

Just having a monologue I do like the drawing of Burns there In his evil Billionaire look Very Grinch-like Yeah Both landed on Grinch It's not the first time He's looked like very grinchy like yeah both landed on grinch uh it's not the first

time he's looked like a grinch in the show uh the line about the money good looks and strong sharp teeth i was like my theory was that they just they sort of like more embraced the rule of the comedy rule of three in these in these later seasons and but just didn't bother to make the third one particularly funny or anything like yeah i always try to put my finger on what i find different about it and i feel like stuff like that where it's like money good looks yeah placeholder we'll punch it up later and then they just used it i don't know yeah that could have been a more punchier third joke like the fun the comedy option should have been better yeah you should say i mean if he thinks he has it all he could like mention like some special dungeon he owns or or a crazy Ferris wheel in the back.

He'd be proud of the 40 times he uses the bathroom every day. Yeah. 37 members of parliament. I don't know. I killed some famous person. This is just a lot of us pitching jokes here. I, one thing though, Burns doesn't realize about the new class of billionaires is they still do hate the common man. They just hide it better than he does. Yeah. They make cyber trucks for you to explode in. Yeah. Or Jeff Bezos just kind of looks down from you from his spaceship. With his evil eye.

He's got an evil eye. Check out folks it's gross the uh oh and so then we come back from break it feels like another like season one callback of homer wearing his safety gloves and dealing with carbon rods too uh the the juggling it's it's a fun gag i guess you're wondering what he's why he's bothering to pick up three of those at once. He's being careful because he's trying to juggle. And then Burns accidentally sexually harasses Homer. I need your help. I want to be loved. I see. Well, I'll need some beer.

I want you to look at me the way I saw you look at Arthur Fortune. Oh, Arthur Fortune. Yes, that's the look I'm looking for. What would make you and your slovenly kind look at me that way? Well, you don't have to call me slovenly.

Yes, exactly. That's the kind of pointer I need. Tell me more, Fatty. This is a great idea, Simpson. Three silver dollars, compliments of C. Montgomery Burns. Oh! Oh, take it out! Take it out! No! Put it back! Put it back! That was a close one.

Want to go bowling? Maybe you should see a doctor about that cord in your brain. Maybe you should mind your own business. Afternoon, miss. Oh! I do love that. All the Lenny damage that happens during these late Scully seasons. The spring in the eye. Are we like

pre-spring in the eye or is that next? That is before this. Okay, so we're reporting these all over the place, but we just saw the spring in the eye. Now we have the blood fountain with the garden hose foley. So much blood. It's shocking to see so much blood outside of a Halloween episode. He doffs his coin. He rolls with it.

He's like, I guess I doffed my coin to you, man. I wonder if that sort of mayhem had happened when J.D. Rockefeller was tossing them out of his blimp and Grandpa was picking him up. Hey, yeah, this is another boy. Yeah, you can find an old joke over and over again. That really is like, yeah, drop coins on people. I had a big old washtub. Nobody's got their big old washtub here. They could have gotten a lot of money.

Well, we've all passed the washtub. Also, Homer and burns having this uh this makes me feel like it foreshadows homer versus dignity of homer and burns having silly uh pranky stuff together and uh burns like knowing who homer is at this point right yeah yeah they're just a couple of chums now i mean this this also gets into like the more jocular feel of scully seasons that they're like instead of Burns being his weird, crazy boss, what if Homer and Burns were a team and just did silly things together? I do love Burns, but I feel like the element missing is Smithers

and Burns' ignorance of Homer. Where he'd be like, Smithers, find some man to make me more marketable. And you're like, I'll get Homer Simpson. Sorry, I'll screw it up completely. And that would be the plot. But Smithers, he did leave, as we saw in the first act he's like i'm not still here i'm out of here in my notes i had written out like you know homer is juggling carbon rods for no apparent reason burns seeks out homer for no apparent reason but i guess it was just that he

saw him on stage you know making googly eyes at arthur fortune so that was the that's the pretense for why he's he's seeking seeking out Homer of all the people. It's very thin. Yeah, it's a little thin. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm trying to think back to the first time Scully might have discovered his love of like Homer and Burns just being pals. I think it is in Pin Pals, the bowling episode, when they joined a bowling team together.

That is great, though. It is great. I like seeing Burns with the common man uh with his leprosy dropping fingernails and in beer and yes homer does briefly consider having sex with mr burns because he's scared of being fired so he's like i'll give it a try he does need beer but he'll meet him halfway i guess yeah but i i think yes that lenny pain too is just like they realize i think it's just the writers fell in love with the sound of lenny screaming they're like this is funny to hear him screaming uh then we get to billionaire beats like a tiger beat gang and that uh burns is seeing he's not in the 10 most popular billionaires

that adam sandler is in there which like i don't know it feels weird for simpsons to even mention adam sandler that again feels a little critique he was at the height of uh sandler dumb this was uh what a water boy water boy probably uh we were like pre big daddy yeah yeah i know he was he couldn't do any wrong he was on a real hot role i, he still gets to be in everything. And now we need to prepare ourselves for like, Adam Sandler could get nominated for an Oscar with the kind of buzz Uncut Gems is getting.

It could be Oscar nominee Adam Sandler soon. Every 20 years, he's in one good movie. That's all the energy he's got. But Celeb Net Worth, though though still says he isn't a billionaire he's only worth 240 million god so boring uh i mean he's he's worth that much because he knew like oh i need to produce the films too not just star in them like he's he was right to start his own production company and that make all his friends be in all his movies for all time he's got to be sad to find out you're no longer his friend when you're not given an easy job in

his movie that films in like monte carlo or maui i have to heartily recommend the uh the we hate movies podcast about i now pronounce you chuck and larry oh yeah i was not aware of how vile that movie is but uh they they really have fun taking it apart. It's great. I never saw a movie in theaters. I was... It shows you how much times have changed that the film was like, well, your protagonist

can just say homophobic slurs the entire movie and it'll be normal. Wow. Yeah. That was a... I was a big Adam Sandler fan

because I was at the right age. I had the first two CDs and everything, but it's been a... You know, it because I was at the right age. I had the first two CDs and everything, but it's been a, you know, it's been a grim times, I guess. The 21st century has been rough for Adam Sandler.

I'm looking forward to Uncut Gems though. I got to say, I kind of, I wanted to, I, it feels like a good, just one, two punch of old dude movies to have that and the Irishman together.

You can just see, especially because they're both like autobiographical crime things where i feel like uh in both cases things are going to be explained to us quite a lot in voiceover by an old man but homer talks burns into doing what all rich old coots do which is make a bunch of donations late in life to buy their way into heaven um there's it's a kind of funny joke that homer's pants explode with the uh the giant bill unfold or check unfolding in his pants and i think my favorite non uh vote non-dialogue joke in this episode is the point the cricket poison button i was thinking about that too i also like the uh the statue of homer at the hospital yeah with the children at his knees they built that they made that statue real fast too that was like overnight

statue building here's a question i have i i wrote this one down because i i agree that the cricket poison was a very good turning that trope on its uh on an unexpected direction but this one i wrote down i was like explain this one to me he says uh a charitable donation huh well there's a first time for everything the way he hits charitable made me think that it was that that was the thing as opposed to a a charitable donation well there's a first time for everything so interesting maybe he's hitting charitable because that's like the one kind of donation you can make like a donation implies that like you're giving for the sake of giving which is charity so yeah maybe he could be giving to the uh you know he could be giving to the Republican Party

of Springfield or something. He's been doing that for a while, yeah. We saw him. He's a member with that vampire in Sideshow Bob Roberts. So again, it was just the sort of thing. I was like, why am I thinking about this? I shouldn't have to think about what they meant,

these wealthy comedy writers. Come on, Harvard boys. And so Burns demands his kudos uh but he isn't getting them because homer accidentally took all the credit for it uh though it's funny homer is uh still surprised that he took all the credit when it's like how they made a statue of you at some point you should have realized they thought you were giving the donation though also i think it's on the hospital because like the check is on montgomery burns's account and everything like his he signed it like they should

know it was him giving the two hundred thousand dollars burns then goes home to the simpsons and he's he's full of morphine and uh trying something new wait a a minute. Because I brought the check, they named a wing after me? Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Oh, you must be mad. Well, I will be when the morphine wears off,

but until then, dee-lee-lee-lee-lee-lee-lee, dee-lee-lee-lee-lee-lee. Yeah, I feel bad. If people knew the real Monty Burns and not the silver dollar-throwing morphine addict you've become, they might like you. Yeah, if you want to change your image,

you've got to get your face out there. Oh, on the radio. That's it, the radio. I'll go on the most popular program of the day. I assume that's still Don McNeil and his breakfast club? Oh, give her the times, man. It's Jerry Root and the Bathroom Bunch. Oh, I don't think Mr. Burns would like that show.

What's the matter? Think I'm not hip? I don't have enough voodoo do? And they just stare at him. Yeah. So I did want to point out that Don McNeil's Breakfast Club is real. It's a radio show that ran from 1933 to 1968 with Don McNeil. And here's a clip of the intro song, which Don McNeil kind of talks things his way through.

From the clouds room of the new Hotel Allerton on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, we invite your family to join the millions of families from coast to coast and around the world and listen to America's favorite, Don McNeil and his Breakfast Club. And here he is, your Toastmaster, Don McNeil. Good morning, Breakfast Clubbers. Good morning to you. We welcome back to our business the Howdy Do Ya. First call to breakfast for all of you out there.

America, wake the Breakfast Club. It's on the air. So the band Cake applause People were stupid. Yes, they were. And the band Cake would later steal that talk singing shtick for their own. Massive lawsuit. It reminded me of the I Think You Should Leave sketch with Tim Heidecker

where he keeps talking about the Colgate Hour and Roy Dawn. Oh, that is one of the best sketches. The whole season of that is great. I can't wait for more of it but that might be the best but yeah the i should have known don mcneil and his breakfast club was the real thing at least that's that's the closest to a classic monty burns joke in this episode yeah bringing up an old thingy vo deodo which is like scat singing associated with the charlest. These are all like 20s references.

But yeah, so up next is a strange Howard Stern parody. Before we get to that, there's a visual joke that of course we cannot see as a listener to this, but when Lisa says, if you can just get your face out there, and he turns around, and it's like a weird red and stimpy sort of close-up, do you find

that the morphine caused that? He's got red veins in his eyes, and I wasn't sure what to make of that. I think it's a result of the morphine and also him being a 102 year old man, 104 year old man. Sorry. Yeah. I think he always looks like a lizard, I guess is the implication. If you were to actually look at him, I wish it, you know, when you say Ren and Stimpy, I wish it had the Ren and St like, like shock sound effect. Like a painting of Burns. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, now when I think about how Burns is out of character this entire episode, I can just tell myself like, well, he's full of morphine for the rest of the episode.

And that's why he acts so crazy. But yes, shock jocks, right? It might surprise our listeners to know that uh i know an incredible amount of information about howard stern and his radio show when i was a kid my uncle was way into him his radio show didn't play in our area but my uncle would listen to him a lot when he was driving his trucks around uh he was a truck driver listen to the truck driving homer episode whatever that one was homer to the max no maximum homer drive that was it and he would uh you know get way into howard stern and bring home you know so

via my uncle as a very little boy i read private parts and i read miss america and i found out so much about the world and sex and other things and celebrities and i watched the e-show and i just got very much into the whack pack the the gang of crazy people sort of like tim heidecker would have a a better version of that in the future a less exploitive version kind of yeah in the future but just like finding these weirdos to come in and do their weird talents and i recommend you go out and find it it's very available now but um because after howard stern moved to sirius they did a oral history of his show that's just like dozens of hours of clips of interviews from the show and just like every year they would do like another like two or three years of the history of the

show and those are really easy to find a lot of it is like a bad a lot of bad homophobic and transphobic and racist sketches that do not age well yeah but um it's always fun to hear him as an interviewer especially uh as a non-millionaire a-touch millionaire, because recently as of this recording, Hillary Clinton was just on the show and it's just like, he's just agreeing with the most establishment Democrat. Like, who is Howard Stern now? Yes, yeah.

Times really change. The first thing he would ask in 1993 if we were in the timeline, he'd ask about Epstein up front. Yeah, yeah. Or he'd at the very least ask her about like, what was your first gay experience? Like jerry rude does in this episode but uh i mean enough about howard stern being out of touch i like i don't like this parody because it's like it's not a commentary on

howard stern it's not like a really a parody just like here's our character doing similar things yeah it's not nothing is criticizing or or really turning it on his head it's it's easily things you could you could have a quiz of being was this something from the Simpsons parody or actual Howard Stern? And I probably wouldn't have had too much of an idea. Yeah, it's not even like a heightening or there could have been a joke like, well, actually, Howard is a serious intellectual. He wants to ask about this. There's no twist on it. Just like, it'd be funny if Burns is on Howard Stern and Howard Stern won't be on our show.

So let's just have Michael McKeon come in and do a Stern impression. I mean, Michael McKeon's a great actor. I think it was fun to hear him return to the show. Last heard in the Otto show. Yeah. And when he came in to do the voice of Jerry Roode, is that the character's name? He asked like, which Stern do you want? He did like a bunch of different Sterns from different areas.

That's cool. That's good. I didn't realize Jerry Roode is funnier than you think it's uh because it sounds like very rude oh okay oh yeah one more thing baba buoy ah bob just left the room he got out of the room this entire five years of this podcast had been a prank just to say yeah i i watched i did uh didn't have stern in my area uh i didn't have a relative that was into it i did in in my late night viewings i'd uh more often i'd be watching mtv or comedy central but i'd pop over to e and check out the the stern show from time to time thanks to reading private parts when I was 10 or 11,

I knew an incredible amount about disgusting sexual acts and depravities. It's like, I feel like I was very worldly thanks to that book. It was your internet before the internet. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. See, this is why like sexuality was ruined for our entire generation by all of these things. Yeah, you're right. Jerryerry rude is just like i understand why jerry rude never returned because he's just a real like just down the middle kind of joke like he uh i mean he's there's not there should be a joke at his expense or something too or or he

should surprise you in some way by doing what he does but he in in uncharacteristic to Simpson's writing style, he's just what you expect him to be as a shock jock. A shocking disc jockey, as Scott Aukerman would say. I had shock jocks in my area. I liked listening to a couple of them then in your edgy teen years. Yeah, and I mean, if you don't like Howard Stern, the sub-Sterns are so much worse.

Oh, Bubba the Love Sponge? Bubba the Love Sponge. Truly awful. Bob and Tom, I'm sure you had your regional Sterns. They were all just like stealing his bit, basically. The way that he gets, you know, the question he asks Burns and then Burns' description of his first gay experiences is just talking about sub-Stern, sub-Simpsons. Just like it's something that, you know, Joey and Chandler might have encountered or you know and what is the worst show than than friends that would have been on at the same time it's it was just like oh man i guess everyone was doing that

but you're you've got to you know strive to be better than that yeah although my friend and i when this air did quote the i had my share of wieners that day joke we had a quite a few laughs about that joke uh it's it it is more uh jocular than simpsons normally is yeah actually it's uh i i've got the shock jock in two parts here let's hear the first one in this clip thank you nick knack and patty whack the siamese midgets will be sure to catch your new series on fox good luck mr burns and if you get in trouble i wrote some jokes about how white people are different from black people. How you doing, Mr. Burns? Jerry Rude. Welcome to the show. I'm pleased to...

All right, let's get this geezer out quick so we can bring in the lesbian gladiators. You see, white people have names like Lenny, whereas black people have names like Carl. Now, Mr. Rude, I just want you to know I'm a good sport. If you want to make fun of my legendary love of cashews, you have at it. Uh-huh. All right. How many times a day do you go to the can? Oh, about 40, I suppose. When are we going on the air?

We're on the air now, Skeletor. What? Question two. How long is your wiener? Seriously. Great heavens. What kind of radiota show is this? People should know how long his wiener is. The nude portrait is on display in Springfield. I gotta say, knick-knack and paddywhack are no high-pitched Eric or Beetlejuice or Gary the R-Word. Oh, yeah. Yep.

Both of those are things that are not preferred nomenclatures at this point in time. Yeah. It's changed a lot in 20 years. See, I only knew the Whack Pack for when they'd appear in other things because they did turn their celebrity into like, well, we can appear on things without Howard. We'll just get hired for it. I think Hank, the angry drunken dwarf, was the, like, he was elevated the most by back when, like, you know, magazines and other media things did not understand the internet. They're like, let's have people vote on the sexiest man alive. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And people voted in Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf. Maybe it was another magazine, but that's when they learned, like, democracy doesn't work. Well, Beetlejuice made a number of appearance in pro wrestling as well like i i got to see uh jeff jarrett smash a guitar over his head and just leave him like uh seemingly legitimately knocked out and oh yeah it's also r.a.p crackhead bob oh god boy that's uh listen i know too much about this uh i do like that uh that homer the tease that homer has jokes about the differences between white people and black people and it's just about how he has two friends that have different names that is the one joke that has persisted from this episode that's what people have

carried with them from this episode it's a very funny joke and i do like homer's uh act out of like it's going right over your head like zoom that's good yeah and also i mean howard stern loved him some lesbians too he i think uh few episodes went by without him asking a woman if she'd well actually i guess uh he'd ask anybody about their first gay experience like in this next clip how about this when was your first gay experience oh well when i was, my father took me on a picnic. That was a gay old time. Oh, I ate my share of wieners that day. Oh, that sounds lovely. Queer. Queer. Um, ever murder anybody? Murder? Well, mistakes have been made. Monty, I've heard you're a pretty flatulent guy. Any comment on that? Oh, now stop that attention wireless listeners most of the sounds

you are now hearing are not being made by me do stop stop won't someone please stop the farting don't worry folks he's not dead i still hear some faint sounds of life it's just a bad stern bit i think stern's bit would be funnier he wouldn't have just farted like he wouldn't have just farted like he wouldn't have just hit a fart button a bunch of times yeah and i don't know you know burns burns is being offended by it or embarrassed seems out of character too yeah yeah he wouldn't even destroy him yeah and also like have the rolling stones killed type of thing also i feel like yeah burns wouldn't even know the word fart i don't't know. That feels like too current era for him.

Yeah, I got to say the Animaniacs had a better Howard Stern parody because Robin was in it. Yeah, yeah. And she was an actual Robin. Yeah. Well, also, I got to think Harry Shearer did not like saying the word farting. Like, won't someone please stop the farting? I got to think the normally grouchy Harry Shearer was like, I got to say this. I got to record the show todayouchy Harry Shearer was like, I got to say this. I got to record the show today.

That's real comedy, people. Also, it's still shocking to hear the word queer said on The Simpsons as like a slur. That's shocking. I mean, I get where the comedy is there that Burns being so old doesn't know what the word gay means in a modern context. Like, there's a kernel of a joke there yeah yeah but it really is just so a guy can call him gay in a gross way i don't know i still laugh that i ate my share of wieners that day but i'm sure i'm very immature sometimes i i like that burns

is proud of how many you know hot dogs he ate that day that was though i mean this kind of thing of billionaires appearing on the modern day stern type shows not just stern but like uh they're joe rogan podcast yeah the rogan podcast gets its share of billionaires and they took up and very embarrassing uh pictures yeah musk musk got uh toe up on that show yeah which uh i get i like joe rogan better when he hated all pot instead of being like the guy who tells you how pot is the greatest it's the one guy who was more appealing as a straight edge i i hated hearing burn say farting like it just doesn't feel right that his character would say like if you had a chance you know if you were if you were going to keep

that in your quiver and you're going to deploy it, you better have a damn good reason to do it. And this doesn't seem earned. I don't know. I think we should start the episode with, stop all the farting. Thank you, Not, for pulling out the fart button for me. That would be just as embarrassing as him. I don't think I could recover from that. I'd probably collapse in a heap like he did.

We're not a zoo crew uh i well also you know if i want to if we want to say why burns is out of character this episode he did die briefly and so maybe maybe his brain is uh you know he suffered a bunch of brain damage from his brief death there uh when the lesbians gave him cpr and resuscitated him and uh i feel bad for those lesbians having to like kiss me like give the kiss of life to mr burns of all men that's uh haven't those poor they're already probably being exploited by jerry rude by being on his show and the fox network yeah then uh burns is brought back to life and uh he's run out of ideas, as the episode has at this point. Good thing it's really... I looked down, because all I knew, I was like, this is the Loch Ness Monster.

I paused, looked at the timer, I was like, seven minutes to go, and we're still not even talking Loch Ness Monster. Homer has got an act three pitch for Burns, though. Oh, yeah. That didn't go well, did it? Good thing those lesbians knew CPR. Oh, what's the use? I'll never be a popular beloved billionaire like Arthur

Fortune. Oh, Arthur Fortune. Ah. You know what that fabulous man just did? He gave the Springfield Zoo two male pandas and got them to mate successfully. And a stunt like that impresses people?

Oh, yeah. And a stunt like that impresses people? Oh, yeah. And I'm not easily impressed. Wow! A blue car! If a couple of Chinese bamboo gobblers can win people's hearts, I'm going to bring them something that man has searched for since the dawn of time. A sober Irishman?

Even rarer. Eh. On the commentary, they're like, yeah, it was really worth it for that Irishman gag. Yeah. Man, yeah, 20s vaudeville,

just of all the things. And like, I do feel, I mean, it doesn't make it better, but I do think there are cries of help coming from this episode

from the writers where the next shot is before the act break is them on a helicopter flying to Scotland and Homer's like, that was one long helicopter ride where it seems like there wasn't a joke there before the joke is like can you

believe it well yeah as George Meyer would say later now I've seen everything uh yeah I like the uh I like the description of the pandas I forget what that was but Chinese bamboo guzzlers yeah yeah it reminded me of sandal wearing goldfish tenders from the casino episode. I did like hearing Bert say, goblers? Yeah, that was funny. I gobbled my share of wieners that day. Well, also the helicopter's arrival, it feels like a Jurassic Park reference, too, like how people arrived in Jurassic Park. Yeah, it really did. But then there's no music cue to sell it.

That could have been the joke. Again, we're script doctoring here. Yeah, El elf is a composer like he he kind of misread that scene there maybe i don't know go direct with it this episode is all about directness and not not going against your expectations also gay animals are all over the news lately i just was reading a viral story about two male lions that are having sex in front of tourists at some place wow so uh yeah it's uh uh gay uh also though this uh i feel like that joke uh about a panda's having sex also horribly foreshadows homer versus dignity as well two seasons we got oh god that we'll survive it

once we were to survive panda love that we'll all change the people we got a low point coming up too i don't know if you have the peter graves joke isolated uh no i don't i wrote he says what are they talking about but the line is peter graves couldn't find ugly at a radcliffe mixer and that was i was just like that has to just be you know they john swartzweiler wanted to make that joke that he knew three people would be down with. And they just had to let him because he was a legend. I mean, I had to look it up. It's like, oh, yeah, Radcliffe was the, like, the female sort of.

Lady Harvard. Lady Harvard, exactly. And he's a Yalie. So that is what it is. Oh, jeez. But you'd have to, like, know that. So it's an old timey joke. But also, I don't know peter graves

feels too young for uh mr burns to have heard of him like he was in movies starting in like 1950 you know yeah but uh often referenced on mystery science theater oh yeah i'm peter graves yeah we did a couple movies with him at virtue we did the tehran incident which was a movie they did like right before the uh the ayatollah, sort of the Iran revolution. So he's over there and it's sort of just this exotic Tehran location. Peter Graves walking around. They reference that the Loch Ness Monster has alluded to both Leonard Nimoy and Peter Graves. So Leonard Nimoy, I think they're referencing the TV show In Search of that kids of the 70s remember.

I've never seen. Which they already referenced in the Springfield Files episode. But Peter Graves, I think they're talking about, I looked this up, it's a 1976 documentary in scare quotes called The Mysterious Monsters. The whole thing is on YouTube, but the Loch Ness Monster is part of it along with Bigfoot and something else. The 70s was full of the excitement over crypto animals. It was easy fodder for television specials and films i uh like there's venture brothers did a whole episode about the episode of the mill six million dollar man where he fights bigfoot because like oh yeah excited people were over animals i just

know that's referencing the venture brothers which is the only reason i know it but this third act it is tangentially connected to the first two acts but you don't need to see the first two acts just watch this as a complete story which is so weird just like well now we're here and this is what the episode's about now now it's about this I mean where was anybody here like a Nessie fan or interested in the mystery of the Loch Ness monster as a kid my wife has been to the Loch Ness on a study abroad in college. And Burlington is right on Lake Champlain. I can see it from my house.

But we have a monster called Champ that lives in our lake, as they say. So he's like the low-level minor league baseball team's mascot and stuff like that. I've never seen him. I don't know. That's fun. I've never heard of Champ before.

No, yeah. He's our regional cryptid. But yeah, the Loch Ness Monster, I watched a few. It was interesting to me. But I guess as technology improves, it gets less and less believable as a possibly existing thing. A drone would have shot down Bigfoot by now. We figured it all out. There are no cryptids.

Yeah, we'd have watched them with all the cameras we have. But the doctor's photo of Loch Ness also gets referenced in here. But that's the famous photograph of seemingly the Loch Ness monster, which everybody is pretty much heavily debunked at this point. Also, I'd talk about Random 2. They get in some jokes about Scotland being just a gray place full of uh quiet bored people i any any scottish listeners out there what did you think of how your fan your country was portrayed in this episode i think they're used to getting shit on by the show

yeah that's true yeah but the jokes seem to be like they say i yeah yeah like i guess you got them there they're just emotionless northern europeans speaking of random they're just like you know what frank and willie are there no smithers they're just there that's why it's like what what like how i mean they do explain how they got there i guess i guess like it's not explained how willie got there only that burns is not paying him but uh burns did kidnap frank so there's a reason why i i considered willie's payment is the flight to scotland like he gets a free trip back to scotland which he certainly can't afford he lives in a shed behind the school so you know that's not bad for payment as a local tourist guy there but uh yes they sort

of lean into that at the in the back half where they they they gloss over capturing the monster but then they just they sort of do it they do that twice in this whole uh in this in this last four minutes maybe that's why they wanted to do the Loch Ness Monster because like we at the very least can squeeze a bunch of Scottish jokes out of this that'll that'll fill this time out uh but yes let's hear Willie's introduction to Scotland do you really think you can capture the Loch Ness Monster? I mean, he's eluded Leonard Nimoy and Peter Graves. Peter Graves couldn't find Ugly at a Radcliffe Mixer. Hey, let's see now. We have the Monster-O-Meter, Flipper Finder, Hoax-O-Scope,

which is important for the looking and the finding. The whole town's turned out. I've never seen them so excited. Hey, Willie, that old couple looks just like you. Aye, it's my ma and pa. They own a tavern hereabouts. They still have the same pool table in which I was conceived, born, and educated. That's good.

So you're a box, son? Aye. I suppose you'll be leaving soon. Aye. I suppose you'll be leaving soon. Aye. That's a good rule of three jokes, where the third one is a good joke. Yeah, an unexpected one. He was homeschooled on that pool table. Like, that's funny.

But, of course, discontinuity. As previously been stated by Willie, he didn't cry when his father was hung for stealing a pig, but he'll cry now. And I love Lisa. But, again, they own up to it on the commentary. previously been stated by willie he didn't cry when his father was hung for stealing a pig but he'll cry now for and i love lisa but uh again they own up to it on the commentary like yeah we know i wondered about the uh if the pub they own is the the pub that homer is in within a minute from this it's a weird if it's if it is that's a weird thing not to acknowledge and if it's not it's a weird uh sort of uh tossed off tossed off gag yeah you're

totally right i think there was more to that because it's like why would they even mention that and then have homer be in a pub if it's not their pub but also then why'd even build that in if there's not going to be there's one joke in it too yeah maybe they cut at least a scene of them reacting to him at the pub or something or serving him yeah who knows it's a good it's a good definition of a pub at least like i think it's a good drawing of one i uh i also like that he's uh you would at least think homer's like been drinking all day in the pub but he's playing pinball like that's that's at least like oh that that undercuts an expectation yeah an easier if they were treating this like some of the other jokes in this episode they would have just been like and homer's blackout drunk at the pub like that that would just be it it's not on

this commentary but i believe it was on another commentary where aljean said it was the overseas animators that goofed with the coloring on the monster that it was supposed to be green yeah and it was just too much to fix because there was just so much of it. Well, this was before digital ink and paint, so they would just have to fully reanimate about three minutes of the episode to get him the color they wanted. Yeah, I know that the guy I mentioned at the beginning of the show, Josh Frulinger, who runs a blog about the daily funnies in the newspaper, will often point out sometimes the unpaid 11 uh 11 year old who's doing these colorings like doesn't know what this is supposed to be and sometimes it's just blatantly wrong uh yeah it's i i think i know why how the mix-up could have happened though that like they have three lochness monsters in this episode or like they have two fake ones and then the real one yeah and so the macarena monster is pink so maybe that caused the miscommunication that

like okay we do that one pink we do the the homecoming float green and then we do a purple monster well the colors for animation are often described i think always described by like a like letters and numbers like just to let people know these are universal so these codes are universal so maybe the wrong one was written down or maybe one letter was chopped off or misread and then carried through to the end of production. So who knows? But I'm guessing it's something like that. But I guess the most evil thing Burns does in this episode is kidnap Frank and violently, too. He floods an entire town of innocent Scottish people.

Frank kills hundreds. Frank brings their major tourist attraction. Yeah, that's true. They both, Frank and Burns together, kill hundreds of people. Okay, that is pretty low. Frank brings their major tourist attraction. Yeah, that's true. They both, Frank and Burns together kill hundreds of people. That's true. Yeah, also to set this

in the time frame of Macarena reference on the toy. And it's 99, so the Macarena is a bit dated. So it's funny that like, I mean, I don't think

it's the show being dated. I think I'm like, of course this weird trend would take a long time to get to Scotland. Yeah, it was a weird sort of like ADR'd. i thought it was like a visual adr because they sort of like cut to it then he's holding it like in front of the camera to show macarena monster but it is kind of a long insert that feels like they're like maybe people didn't read it let's uh let's pause on this shot real quick i could see that after After we reveal why Willie and Frank are there,

things are getting pretty quiet after Homer fails and going into the pub. Oh, good lavin', it's on my show! It's a... a small frog. Just get off. Just get off there. Just get out of it. Get out of it! Stupid machine. Oh, wait a minute. This isn't the Monster-o-meter. It's the Frog Exaggerator. We're the laughingstock of the town! So here, Mr. Burns. We're gonna find that monster no matter how long it takes. Besides, I'm getting kinda used to wearing a kilt. Can you believe I'm a size four? Woo! See, this would be funny the delockinator just him pumping water out of the the lock it would be funnier if this episode wasn't already full of cheats like you only get so many cheats and they're just too many happening where i'm just like well this is i mean like if this was the

one funny cheat it would stand out as like can you believe they got away with that but there's just so much they're getting away with that one more thing to the pile just like come on he pumped the lock and then flooded the town and no one stopped him and it was all done by a like stringy armed uh nerd too yeah yeah you know wacky so wacky episode like this it's uh i think though it's also an execution because like in merkin episodes did have crazy stuff like this too like the homie the clown has some really crazy shit that happens but i think it's it's more it's presented better it's like more arched and ridiculous and like it's not just like a man pumps a thing dry and that's it. There's more to it. There's more of a clever twist to it. The delivery is stronger of the ridiculousness.

And this does feel just a little more tired. And then a minute later, there's another mega huge story cheat. Oh my God, is there? Yes. Yeah. So yeah, they drain the entire lake of the lock kill everybody in town uh somehow that's not an international crime and it doesn't put franken burns on a tribunal or anything um and then they have a joke that there's a float there which i do like the design of the float

though i i don't think scottish high schools have homecoming like we do i don't know correct me if i'm wrong here scott of all the things going on in this episode i think that's one we shouldn't dwell on like is there really homecoming come on i do like homer's aberdeen rules i do yeah but he immediately did like picks aside uh but then in like another extreme crazy joke they clearly miss like a 30 foot 30 story tall monster that smashes the Loch Ness monster float there and I just remember watching this the first time and seeing like the the Godzilla style pan up and and monster cry of Nessie and I'm just like this just really happened. Like even in, even in the craziest non Halloween episode of the show, they would have had an, a slightly

realistic excuse of just like, oh, well we think that's Nessie or it turns out to be a robot by somebody or any other thing. But they're just like, no, 100% the Loch Ness Monster, the missing link, this ancient dinosaur is real and would also not die if you emptied the lock and is 60 feet tall and sounds like Godzilla. It's just like... And we'll work at a casino. It's all too extreme. It's all too extreme.

The fact that they did do a great Halloween bit of King Homer where they echo so many of these similar beats of this third is uh is also just like ah i feel like i've seen it done better yeah you know what that also did hurt it for me that from this point on in the episode it is the king homer short from treehouse three which like it it just reminds you of how funnier that was i will say they have a really funny twist on that, though. I do like the twist that we'll talk about later. I think that's one of the few very solvable things from this episode.

But yes, the design of Nessie when you see her, it reminded me of Purple-saurus Rex, the Kool-Aid flavor. I believe there's like a mac and cheese mascot, too. Cheese-a-saurus Rex. Yeah, Cheese-a-saurus. Yeah, yeah. Are these both craft food brands i think they are i suppose that uh costco yesterday and they sell craft like macaroni cheese powder that they just sell the powder as like a topping for your food now oh yeah like a canister

of parmesan cheese i was i was aghast to see that this was come to oh i'm sad to admit i enjoyed that in my younger days well because like it's not cheesy. Oh, I'm sad to admit I enjoyed that in my younger days. Well, because it's not cheesy enough. I like to just pour in a little extra into my craft mix. Doesn't it get just gritty then? Good and gritty. The salt and bauxite increases 100% in there. You can feel your arteries hardening.

So much riboflavin, and you know that's good for you. But yes, they catch Nessie somehow. God, it's him! Come on, boys, overpower it! Fine. I'll do it myself. That was amazing, Mr. Burns! I was a little worried when he swallowed me, but, well, you know the rest.

And now for my triumphant return to Springfield. And part of the joke you don't hear is that Homer and Willie look at each other like we don't know what happened. So they don't know, along with the audience, what Burns did. But another huge cheat, like if that was the one cheat in this episode it's a little lame but they get away with it but it just came after the the lock draining and so many other things that will follow yeah i mean again merkin got away with lines like this too like in the homer's dream of like and uh everyone has this particular product uh sometimes three or four you're the one who invented this particular product like but that's at least a joke about dream logic too yeah yeah and now homer can't get the one thing he needs to solve his problem it's there in his head but he still can't see it yeah yeah instead this is just like we all know you

couldn't think of a way that they could actually capture the loch ness monster but you need it to be caught for the next scene to start because there's not much time left in the episode so fuck it like it happened off screen it does feel like something you pitch in the writer's room just to make everyone laugh and you're like you know what that could be part of the show a lot of that was going on in this episode yeah it's uh you know it's it's late in season 10 we are just slaved over the past 20 episodes we need to like uh chill out now yeah it's like we gotta go home we're tired uh so yes then it just becomes a king kong episode for uh about 30 seconds here i uh but yes there there this is a funny little twist yeah i i thought this was very funny that

apparently george meyer came up with this and that the monster loves the photography the flash photography uh during the day by the way and, during the day, by the way. And Burns is the one who goes on a rampage. And I do like, Mr. Burns will kill us all. Monster fever has gripped Springfield by the throat. And it's all thanks to one man. Montgomery Burns has captured not only a legendary monster, but also our hearts. And by the way, girls, he's single.

Single? Well, he passes the Selma test. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. And now, presenting the ninth wonder of the world, the eighth being Gomer Pyle's heavenly singing voice, I give you the Loch Ness

Monster. Thank you. You're too kind.ess Monster. Thank you. You're too kind. Yes, that's it. Let it all out. Clutch me to your common bosom. Hey, look. He's getting up.

No, no, stop it. Stop it. You'll enrage the beast. No more pictures. You're driving a man. I like they even admit on the commentary, no, stop it. Stop it. You'll enrage the beast. No more pictures. You're driving a man. I like they even admit on the commentary, too, like, this should have taken place at night. It doesn't make sense. Or indoors, maybe.

Yeah, yeah. But it's perfect casting for Milhouse to be the boy who points at the monster. That's good. I forgot that was a reference, too. Yeah. Is that a thing from the original King Kong? Because Barney does that in King Homer, too,er too or just look at the size of that platform yeah i think it's supposed to be a child that points uh that's that's why it's also funny with the look of the

size of that platform the i also i don't like that burns knows who gomer pile is like he should know that that burns was 65 when that show aired that needs to be another old-timey reference talk about another one where it just seems like a placeholder got used as the uh the first thought got used as the as the final joke yeah you should reference like al jolson or something like that like anything pre-jolson yeah some vaudeville act who knows other vaudeville like he's a guy who normally think who previously thought the ritz brothers is too current for him but that's true but now he's aware that gomer the of the character of gomer pile and that he sings very well which is what jim neighbors did in the andy griffith spinoff which i can't

imagine burns would see though i guess burns had heard of sheriff lobo in a classic simpson that is true i i could uh his continuity is not on my side entirely there uh but yeah the sound of the monster loving the attention i do like that like like the weird purring of the i guess too it's just like nessie nessie goes from like godzilla to a continually shrinking like puppet monster continually uh like human like yeah it's like the reverse of one of those like foam ones that you put in water and it's supposed to increase a hundred times its size yeah also the i don't know selma selma should marry mr burns that's not a bad that's a story idea for you there so another joke i do like though not just that it's

burns is the freaks out by but that it does show that like burns can't handle being popular once like he's never been liked in his life and so this little bit of celebrity is like oh i hate this this is awful yeah i mean i guess uh i think they could have found a way to put him into this show but i guess if you want to make an episode about burns needing to be liked you can't have smithers around because smithers is the guy who's always like you know kissing his ass and always liking him so i understand it but i think there's something missing here without smithers around because smithers is the guy who's always like you know kissing his ass and always liking him so i understand it but i think there's something missing here without smithers uh being the one that to suffer for burns yeah so then we get to the ending which uh let's just experience it and then we can talk about it wait don't go love me

well if you wanted people to love you you sure blew it with that insane rampage but you know what to be loved you have to be nice to people every day but to be hated you don't have to do squat you know perhaps you're right. I got so swept up with the notion of being liked, I completely forgot who I am. I am a selfish old crank, and that fits me like a speedo. So what do we do with our friend here? Throw him in the dumpster? No, no, no.

I really want to give the lovable scamp a good home. No! Tough luck, Simpson. Come on, Nancy. One more pull. Okay, okay. Want a shrimp cocktail?

Yeah, they're not great. What a... I kind of admire how what a fart that episode ends on. Yeah, they're not great. Run it into a tree and walk away from its smoking husk. And then like the capper to that is Lisa saying, boy, this really sucks. Or I heard this really sucks at the end. It's just like, they know, they know. Yeah.

Boy, that, I mean, okay. So good in that is Homer saying like like throw him in the dumpster like yeah that homer is just so quick to kill the loch ness monster like immediately callous he is yeah but then going to the casino town or sorry vegas town casino yeah i bet someone was thinking doesn't mr burns have a casino then they realized they exploded it yeah yeah so they couldn't do that instead it's just the yeah vegas town casino not very creative for the joke to work the loch ness monster has to go like at least half as big as he was in the previous shot uh i mean it's a silly it is when they say on the commentary they're like we all just fell back with exclamation points on our heads like that is a last panel of a Bazooka Joe comic kind of arrival at a joke, too.

And I also just don't like that, like, oh, I guess from now on in the world of The Simpsons, the Loch Ness Monster is a known thing and it works in Las Vegas. He's a croupier. That's what they call him. They're croupiers. Yeah. God damn. Yeah. God damn. Yeah. This ending, I didn't like it then.

I don't like it now. I also do like right before the goof out scene that Burns even just says, oh, yeah, I've been acting out of character this entire episode. This isn't who I am. Yeah, I don't know i feel like i've nitpicked a lot but it does seem like yeah just uh if you're not ending on a uh you're not you're not going out on a high note you're not leaving them laughing and it's uh it's funny they yeah i think they deserve having that clip of lisa at the end there because if they are going to take shots at the postman as a creative endeavor, you shouldn't do it in a week episode like this one. That's true.

Yeah. Again, I have softened to this just knowing that they know it's bad. And it's not just that they know it's bad, but that they can be honest about it on the commentary. They say on the commentary, like, look, we work equally hard on all all the episodes it's not that we didn't work hard but i do think it was like it was a late night and it just it wasn't their day and they had to get a script out and they did oh yeah that purple i mean nessie should return in the show and just they should visit her in las vegas from now on uh yes yeah and maybe it wouldn't even be implicated in a card counting scandal or something.

And maybe it even wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't a giant purple Loch Ness Monster. Maybe that even makes it stand out more. Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's harder to get over. But yeah, I think I've said enough. But we will survive this, people. We will.

Our podcast will triumph over this bad episode. The next episode's a little better. Yeah, yeah. And I hope you had fun listening to us. Take it all apart for your listening pleasure. But Connor, please remind us what you're doing lately and talk about your podcast too. Oh yeah, you should definitely listen to 372 Pages

We'll Never Get Back. Me and Mike Nelson from Riff Trax and MST3K host a bad book club where we read books we're probably not going to like. And since we've talked to you last, we've done some absolutely batshit books. We did one called Trucking Through Time that was written by the guy who

drove the equipment truck for the University of Tennessee football team. We're currently, we did a book by Bram Stoker that wasn't Dracula called Lair of the White Worm that was very bad. We're currently doing a book that seven you know, seven years after the movie Willow came out,

what everybody wanted was a novel sequel to the movie Willow. So George Lucas and a guy named Chris Claremont wrote that. And it is, boy, it is bad. Oh, man. It's one of the worst we've ever read. Okay, I got to hear this because, like, I, well, I know Chris Claremont as the X-Men comic book writer of my youth and

I liked his comic books but him together with George Lucas in pure prose form without like both of them depend so much on gorgeous visuals to distract you from their dialogue

it's a grim scene so yeah we're currently about gorgeous visuals to distract you from their dialogue. It's a grim scene. So yeah, we're currently about halfway through that. So come listen to 372 pages. We'll never get back. Check out Riff Tracks. I'm going to, me and fellow writer Sean Thomason are going to record our own couple shorts. Oh, cool.

Next week or two. We found some good ones that we, I actually watched one of them growing up so it's uh they hit close to home and yeah we're always releasing fun stuff over there and yeah if you come see me at sketch fest i would uh i would very much enjoy that i hope to see you guys there oh yeah for sure yeah we can't wait to see you thanks so much connor for doing the show again absolutely guys anytime so thanks so much to connor listoka for everything he's done and including this episode and check out his stuff at RiffTrax.com, his podcast, and check out his Sketch Fest show if you're going to be in town for ours.

But as for us, if you want to support our show and get every episode one week ahead of time and ad-free, please go to Patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And for the low price of five bucks a month, you'll get just that and also access to everything behind the $5 paywall that includes all of our miniseries to date, which also includes the one that just rolled out recently. That's Talking Futurama season two, part one. That'll be wrapping up by the end of 2019. But if you're not on the Patreon, you can listen to all of it and a hundred plus bonus podcasts that you haven't heard yet. If you like listening to our voices, there's so much you haven't heard. If you're not on the Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And Henry can tell everybody out there what is happening at the $10 level.

One extra long supersized podcast every month that's voted on by our patrons. That is correct. That's the What a Cartoon Movie podcast at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. For $10 and up subscribers there there they get to hear our exclusive monthly podcast about a different animated feature film we've covered so many in the last year sometimes for over four hours and our next one is going to be great and you'll definitely want to hear it if you're a fan of the simpsons it's going to be the iron giant the brad bird directed classic which has many simpsons animator alums working on it.

We talk about the cult classic animated film for your listening pleasure, but only for our $10 and up patrons. So please sign up today at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts the classic gaming podcast every monday and occasionally on friday please go to retronauts.com or just look for or just look for retronauts in your podcast machine if you enjoy video games i think you'll like the podcast

henry how about you you can follow me on twitter at at h-e-n-e-r-a-y-g i tweet out whenever new stuff goes live as does the official talking Simpsons Twitter account that everybody should be following at TalkSimpsonsPod. Every time new stuff goes out, we tweet about it and we also promote our upcoming live shows like the one we've got at SF Sketch Fest on January 14th, 8 p.m. at the Piano Fight Bar. Check out those ticket listings. I think they're still available. And we've got a really cool guest you guys are going to enjoy so please all of those at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g at talk simpsons pod and sf sketch fest coming real soon thanks so much for listening everyone next week we'll see you not for they save lisa's brain but for a very special episode of talking simpsons and we will

see you then.