Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? With Chris Wade

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

For this ep of early '90s wealth, we're joined by Chris Wade from the awesome podcasts Chapo Trap House, And Introducing..., and Hell of Presidents! After we discuss the greatness of Danny DeVito, we chat about Homer's discovery of a missing brother who happens to be a rich car manufacturer. Somehow all this leads to Homer ruining Uncie Herb's life, though we have some opinions on that. Listen now for something as strong as a gorilla, yet as soft and yielding as a Nerf ball! Support this podcast and get hundreds of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the only podcast with rack and peanut steering. I'm one of your hosts, the born-in-wedlock Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today in the same room?

Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and this is the podcast for the common man! And who is our special guest on the line? Hello, it's Chris Weyand. And this week's episode is oh brother where art thou oh brother where are you take it easy buddy they moved across the street oh sorry this week's episode aired on february 21st 1991 And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby. Phil Collins' Another Day in Paradise wins at the Grammys. The ridiculous film

Scenes from a Mall is released to very bad reviews. And Katie Couric joins the Today Show as co-host. So a big, big day in 1991. I don't know if you guys know the film scenes from them all i know the itchy and scratchy parody screams from them all well well that one doesn't have that woody allen in it but it's it's basically like if a guy hired woody allen to be in a film that's like a woody allen film except it's all filmed in a mall and woody allen is like a like he's kind of

a yuppie which is not it's like woody allen is cast against type it's all wrong it's just all all wrong that was back when woody allen was allowed near malls and schools yes yes i mean here's a question was has woody allen ever been in a mall just on his own accord uh boy i would think not i would think he's other than for filming that uh film with bet middler unless there is a mall in manhattan somewhere like a suburban mall somewhere that just transplanted then i would say no there's like kind of a fake mall in herald square but i can't really imagine him going going to that i he i imagine i always imagine him basically not leaving the uh upper east or Upper West Side unless he's making a movie.

Well, you know, Barbra Streisand, she has her own mall on her property. She built a mall in her home. He could have visited her and gone to that mall. Isn't that an Oprah thing, too? Or are these just urban legends? The Oprah one, I don't know about. I know Barbra Streisand has her own mall. I do know that.

Henry, that's a great point. If I can imagine Woody Allen having ever gone to a mall, I can more easily imagine him going to Barbra Streisand's fake mall in her basement than a real salt-of-the-earth mall. She offers reasonable prices. I'm just walking through a JCPenney's. What would that even be? It feels like I'm setting up an improv scene.

I am not. In that Phil Collins song song it may surprise you but paradise is being used ironically it's about the play to the homeless oh have you seen that depressing music video yes on ph1 uh probably five times a day at this point in history and and uh and yeah katie couric she was the the smiling fate my my home was a Today Show home. That's what my mom would put on in the morning in the bedroom when she was getting ready to go to work. And on Thanksgivings, it's hard for me not to think of a Thanksgiving of my childhood, not hearing Katie Couric's voice talk about Thanksgiving things and setting up the parade. And that's a New york institution as well just like woody allen and of course he is about to release a new book that is full of a bunch of

bullshit defending matt lauer but we don't want to talk about that but hey welcome to our guest chris wade for this classic episode yes chris w Wade, the producer of Chatbot Trap House and the co-host of his own podcast, Hell of Presidents with our friend Matt Chrisman. Yes. Hello. It's great to be here. Great to finally be here. As we were talking about before we record, I have been chuckling in the background of

several of your episodes with Matt on them, as I am usually the one who is manning the knobs on the recorder when Matt needs to record because he can't do it himself. On Trash of the Titans, I believe listeners heard you weigh in on U2 and their quality. Yes, I did. I did weigh in on U2. I was in a big U2 thinking about U2 kick around that time. I believe that's around when I saw them at MSG. And Hell of Presidents is a lot of fun. It's a really fun history podcast to just hear you and Matt wax about the history of America through the lens of the presidency is a really fun podcast. Thanks, guys. I'm having a lot of fun doing it. It's actually a good overlap for this episode because I'm currently finishing up the script segment for our recording next week on the H.W.

Bush administration, during which this episode takes place that's perfect henry and i are also podcast producers and we really appreciate your expert use of clips and sound effects well you got to put those in for the podcast i believe you're your pals with some of our other friends in the uh we hate movies podcast because you you have them on your amazing frequency festival oh yes me and steven go way back in the um you know bumming around the new york uh improv and sketch comedy scene i've known of those guys for a long long time in fact we hate movies is one of the first podcasts that i listen to like regularly i mean those guys those guys have been at it for a decade or more

uh they're great i love we hate movies oh that's awesome and well so chris i mean what you expertly put in simpsons uh clips in in choppo from time to time and i i i have to think you have a lot of experience with the simpsons uh growing up i would bet uh you know like any person my age i am very very familiar with it but it honestly was never one of my like key touchstones my golden era of watching the simpsons was probably like season five through season 11 which is a good time to be watching the simpsons uh but the earlier seasons were i i definitely wasn't watching them as they came out and was mostly just picking them up in reruns though i did have that like book the simpsons encyclopedia that really covers like every episode from the first

five or six seasons in depth and so honestly for the first like two or three seasons the way that i know them more is like reading the official simpsons guide of these episodes like many many times before i actually saw them and i've probably only seen most of the first three or four seasons maybe once or twice like this is definitely the first time i've seen this episode in 20 years or something so and to be honest when it came out i then immediately was more of a futurama guy okay yeah that's interesting so you you were not part of the bart mania uh devotees in in the 90 91 i was not doing the bart man though i was enjoying the simpsons a little you wanted to be like bender in your early 20s yes exactly uh yeah you know that encyclopedia

the the simpsons amazing colossal i say it every time that's the mystery science theater one sorry but the simpsons episode guide i think was like a given as a gift to most of us in our at some point by a parent i i bought it and this explains why i do this job i thought it was kind of a rip-off because i was like all this stuff is free online all these episode guides i can just go online and read them for free so i was like i wasted 15 dollars at uh walden books but they don't have the level of graphic design that's true that book has it's a very pretty book yes well i guess too you know i i always curious like how this informed you know your politics as well as uh as as a series like that's a good i mean i guess it

this to me the simpsons has always more have been an interesting crystallization especially in the first like decade of its run of a certain kind of like gen x aesthetic uh i find it more interesting as like a guide to a type of culture and people of a certain age than i find it like actually shaping my own politics but yeah i think that kind of acerbic take on and just the general worldview of everything being stupid and then just trying to do the best that you can inside a stupid world probably the the most that it has affected my general life philosophy uh and i think that that is is something you know i i was thinking and we'll get more into that that especially these really early seasons have in it that kind of

melancholy outlook on on the world in general but you know trying to find at least your own little spot of goodness within it that's good that's a good way of looking at it i agree well now well this episode is uh an interesting one that it is a very like star driven episode that also uh that even on the commentary that they recorded like 15 years ago they're not reflecting like incredibly kindly on it they i think they they like this one uh look the writers of it but i think they like this one, the writers of it. But I think they also kind of feel like they wrote it very hastily and it's full of like some filler that they just copped to. Like, oh, yeah, that scene's filler, that scene's filler.

And I guess the idea of a long lost brother is, boy, the series is getting out of hand, isn't it? Yeah. Even in season two. Yeah, I know. This is the type of thing that you know by the sixth or seventh season they would goof on they'd be like and who said long lost triplets like it's it's just such a stock and formulaic story that they don't that the that later seasons would start with that stock story and play with it more but in this case it really is a pretty straight ahead

sitcom plot of oh a long lost relative played by a famous person and then by the end of the episode they are gone to with hopefully to never be seen again because it would disrupt the entire world of the of the series and the um the very bizarre title uh this was nine years before the coen brothers movie in 2000 and it comes from the uh preston sturgis movie uh sullivan's travels yes and that is the name of the book the main character is adapting into his like high art movie he wants to make and he's traveling amongst the common people to observe them and be informed by their stories before he realizes they just want to see a pie in the face yeah people want low art yeah that's so what a funny you can see why the coen brothers also love that movie i mean and

like preston sturgis you know the coens though a lot to him or they you can tell they took a lot from him but for jeff martin to name it that like it is it is was a very urbane and deep comedy reference uh to make in 1991 that most people didn't get. And now when you hear Homer scream the title in the episode, you just think of the, you know, George Clooney movie about hobos in the South. Except Jeff Martin's title has an H in it because you couldn't just go into Wikipedia and say, what was the name of that thing he was adapting? I guess it was this. And then they just write it as the title the as martin recalled it on the commentary that he sounded like he was told we need an episode really soon he put together an outline as a pitch and

sam simon liked it so much he's like write this right now and he just grabbed i believe the normal timeline is outline. And then you're given your script and you go away from the office for a week and write your script and come back the next week with your first draft. But Martin said he had to write the entire first draft over a weekend. And that was very, very rough. And he completely cops do like, oh, the are we there yet? The pork chops, the all these things just are fillers on a page to get to a page count.

And same with songs. The one that really stuck out for me is the kind of Marge subplot of her being like, is this going to spoil the kids? And that not really going anywhere. Yes. Yeah. There should be a moment where the kids are now disappointed they won't be spoiled anymore. But there's no more story to that. Yeah yeah the kids are largely unaffected by this you know also from martin's description of it it's it's hard to tell where devito came in at first i thought it was like

they thought danny devito wants to do this and then uh we wrote a script for him but the the haste of writing the script in the long lost brother thing, now it sounds more like to me that they wrote that script and they said, who could be Homer Simpson's brother? And they said, well, we know Danny DeVito and he's great.

So let's have him be that. I think this is the first time Danny DeVito plays an animated character that does not look like Danny DeVito. That's true. He's playing an attractive character, which is why the voice kind of seems wrong coming out of the clone Homer's mouth the more attractive Homer mouth yes I kind of love DeVito's voice performance in this I find that it's like just modulated enough away from the

the actual DeVito voice to feel like a real character and I think that I don't know I it came it came across really well to me. I was really enjoying hearing it. Well, and we love Danny DeVito. Oh, of course. He's great. Everybody loves him. I think now he could come back and it'd be a whole new level of fandom coming in. It'd be all the Always Sunny fans and younger who just know him as like, oh, that old little guy meme. Like, that's like...

The guy coming out of the couch? Yes. That's Homer's brother i mean honestly what that would be a great concept for uh whatever a season 35 episode of the simpsons is reconnecting with homer's brother and he now works at a bar in philadelphia with uh four deadbeats uh yeah i think uh and also in in your world chris have you ever come in contact with DeVito? Because he's a more left-wing celebrity in the Bernie sphere. I know he did campaign events for Sanders.

There was a moment, I think, when we were trying to pull on some threads to get him on the show, but it never really came together and also you know just that it's always a tantalizing offer or possibility of being like oh DeVito is kind of a lefty and he's also great we love everything that he does we should have him on the show but then you actually like realize what that would entail and you're like well I mean but to do to do what you know just to

compliment him to say like you're great just do the Chris Farley I was gonna say what turned into the Chris Farley show yeah you're you're half a you're half of that half a movie underrated uh well so you know i don't want to do a full history of danny devito himself but i was curious what his relationship to the simpsons was and really it is just he and james l brooks and and also sam simon uh have a long working relationship uh together but specifically with brooks like they were thick as thieves when this aired in 1991 uh so you know many people may know this the danny devito's breakout role he is he is in one flew over the

cuckoo's nest and he has like a bunch of small roles and he also was like you know a a filmmaker in his own right in the 70s like there's he did short films and and interesting experimental stuff but his big breakout role was in 1978 when james l brooks and sam simon cast him on taxi as uh as the mean boss and it was you know perfect like one of the most perfectly cast roles ever like he's he's amazing like that taxi is a really underrated just like ensemble cast uh and and also on taxi he uh devito even directed a few episodes and it was the start of his work as a as a filmmaker as a film director and he also devito would be in james l brooks's big big movie terms Endearment, in 1983. Then in 1989, DeVito's biggest directorial film, War of the Roses, to that point,

that was made with Gracie Films. It's a Gracie film, executive produced by James L. Brooks. So him and Brooks were really good buddies at that time. And I also recall that in 2011, i wish i'd have gone to this but pals of mine went to it at the san francisco sketch fest james l brooks did like a retrospective on broadcast news which like that's a fine movie but i i don't i you can see why i didn't like go like oh one ticket right now but when my friends who went to it, they said the reason to have gone was not to watch broadcast news, but to see Danny DeVito interview James L. Brooks.

And DeVito was just going all off script. They said that he told some story about, oh, yeah, some unnamed cast member on broadcast news was doing coke. And he's like, we were all doing coke back then. It was the 80s. And James L. Brooks just putting his face in his hand like, oh, oh my god danny don't tell these stories like that sounded so awesome and i i was really sad so it is possible to assume that danny devito and james l brooks have enjoyed uh coca cola together i don't want to speaking of cocaine devito and the 80s i i want to relay this the story that i heard recently,

which is something I didn't know, that Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito were roommates in New York in the late 70s. And as DeVito was breaking on taxi and Douglas was still trying to get his career going as both a producer and a star, DeVito actually paid for their apartment i believe while while doug douglas was uh still like trying to get his shit together i would love if michael

douglas was the messy one uh you gotta pick your towel off the floor michael come on man that's that's a movie that is a movie right there they we're getting all these old guy movies now like have those two guys in a movie now as new as roommates in their in their 80s uh and uh and yeah i mean devito coming on in in bart mania totally makes sense like that he would say yes to it and i think at this time he was directing hafa or maybe he was finished directing it but it came out in 92 so he would have been working on some process of the movie at this point oh yeah yeah I'm sure someday

we'll return to the sequel episode that he's in but but that would be uh he would appear one other time in the series DeVito uh in a one-off cameo joke in a season 24 episode where Homer sets up a joke of like, you know, we don't abandon our family in The Simpsons. And then their answering machine goes off and it's a call from Herb saying he needs help again. And he's broke one more time and Homer hangs up on it and turns it off. So that's the one other time DeVito has been on show.

It's really like, they gotta bring him back. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's only so much time left for DeVito in been on the show. It's really like they got to bring him back. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's only so much time left for DeVito in The Simpsons. Well, never mind. It's more about DeVito than The Simpsons. DeVito, hey, DeVito will live forever. I choose to believe that. Yes, short men, they last a long time.

Hey, I just take that pitch that I just gave. Do the Always Sunny crossover. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Apparently, both these shows are going to run forever, so they should intersect at some point. It is amazing to me that Always Sunny is like, it'll just quietly go to like season 28 and we'll just be like, oh, wow, I guess it never stopped. I mean, I really admire those guys' commitment to just, no matter where their careers go, just keep doing like a six season, a six episode or eight episode season every year.

I mean mean it seems like they all still really love it and you know whenever i i don't watch every episode of always sunny but whenever i check in it's still at least entertaining and it's it's always so fun to see all those guys just doing whatever like in this in the same um you know in the same frame so yeah whereas you know each new season of the simpsons green light feels like uh you know a knife going into your back each new simpson of the uh each new season of always sunny all i can think of is like you know what good for them yeah i guess nobody pulled a shelly long and thought you know i'm too good for this i'm gonna make troop beverly hills and i'll show you uh you know it seemed like

glenn might leave and then he didn't leave like. They even wrote a thing to write him off because he got AP Bio, and then the next season they teased that he isn't coming back, and then he came back, which is great. The Sentence will be right back. 35 years ago, Homer's dad had an illegitimate son. Since I'm the one you kept, that must mean you really love me. Interesting theory. And when The Simpsons track him down...

Grab the next plane to Springfield. We got a couch that folds out. I'll tell you what. Why don't you come here? They're going to get a big surprise. A millionaire? No, I kept the wrong one. Danny DeVito guest stars. Uncle Herb, can I sit over the side? Pack your brains out.

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Welcome to the break, everybody, for the podcast that's powerful like a gorilla, but soft and yielding like a Nerf ball. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Chris Wade. You know we love all his work on not just Chapo Trap House, but also his Stitcher Premium podcast, Hell of Presidents with Matt Chrisman, and his other podcast, and introducing All About Music. It's really great.

Please check out all the cool stuff Chris Wade does out there. And if you enjoy this podcast, you should really check out all the cool stuff we do at patreon.com slash talking simpsons this podcast is only possible thanks to subscribers there who let me and bob do this as our full-time job if you sign up there today for just five bucks a month you get access to every episode of talking simpsons a week ahead of time and ad free you can hear next week's episode right now if you sign up and you also get access to a giant collection of exclusive podcasts only for patreon subscribers our monthly talking futurama podcast

we're covering every episode of futurama we're deep into season three now and also coming at the end of this month our blabbing about batman the animated series podcast where we're covering our 10 favorite episodes of BTAS. You can only hear that and so, so, so much more if you are a $5 and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. But if you want something as luxurious as a car called Persephone, then you need to sign up at the $10 premium level at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. As you may know, we have a sister podcast, What a Cartoon, and once a month we do our premium $10 podcast, What a Cartoon Movie,

where we cover an animated feature film super in-depth like we do The Simpsons and What a Cartoon. Just last month we covered The Road to El Dorado, an underrated DreamWorks film. The end of this month, the controversial at the time, Batman Beyond Return of the Joker. A whole bunch about that classic film and the troubles it had getting released. And not to mention a giant back catalog that covers things like The Lion King, a goofy movie, Shrek, Beavis and butthead do america and so so so much more please sign up at that ten dollar level to get all those what a cartoon movies over 200 hours of them plus all the five dollar things i just mentioned one more time

check it all out at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. I guess this chalkboard gag with Bart that starts it out, I couldn't find anything about the Florida real estate market that it could be referencing. I think it's just broadly referring to the idea of selling people a lot of land in Florida, it turning out to be unusable swamp land. Some of these board gags, Chris, have been very specific about things happening at that moment in time, things that we've all forgotten about. This one I don't think has been. Yeah, just the concept of real estate in a far-off place that might be a scam. Well, now that market's totally underwater. They're still building down there.

But then we come into the episode with, it feels like, if not the first, like one of the first where you don't see the family to you know situated as we're watching the family is watching a thing it just starts as a full misdirect of a movie that is playing and this was the first mcbain written but the second one to air yeah so i was looking at the episode production numbers and so the first mcbain to air the one in the way we was where he pushes his uh his captain out of the window that makes two of us yeah but uh but yeah gene on the commentary says they wrote this mcbain first and then retroactively put it into that which the production numbers do not reflect that but there it definitely was a time of concurrent episode writing but then production number is more of the animation team being given

the the scripts and we talked about it last time we cover this episode and other episodes there are five mcbain clips in the first four seasons a split if you piece them together they are parts of the same movie and we're seeing the ending of mcbain here yes but we'll see another encounter with mendoza uh in another, I believe in season four. Yes. Yeah. In season four, he fights Senator Mendoza in the last exit to Springfield. That's the one where it is this giant shoot up, much bloodier than this one.

I feel like that's why in last exit to Springfield, the shootout is so crazy because they're like, well, we already got away with that one. Let's get even bloodier in this season four one. And yeah, see the i i the most classic mcbain scene is the death of scoey and and the screaming of mendoza but you hear the name mendoza in every one of these and then you see him twice so this is the same story because mendoza dies this this is the defeat of mendoza which that makes it even better were this to have been experienced in the order they wrote it, that the first McBain scene is the end of McBain, and then every future time you see McBain,

you see scenes that happened before it. That's pretty funny. I think Mendoza probably lives the 40-story fall into the gas truck to survive for the McBain sequel. We were talking about high concept episode pitches like the Always Sunny one. I think a great one could be just make this movie. Just make this movie as a 22 minute episode, a parody of 80s action films. I think it'd be great.

And it's like when they wrote this then, they were mocking current action films. And now when they would do it to were mocking current action films and now when they would do it to do the same style it would be a throwback episode and an all kind of like we love the 80s type type gag i always pictured mcbain as specifically a riff on arnold and commando his you know his jokes are commando level jokery like he i mean also in running man he is is quite a quipster uh arnold is but i guess commando is probably his jokiest film yeah i also really appreciate in this mcbain clip the it's literally one second i had to go back and pause it just to clock it with the pan up from the map that mendoza is looking at of central america with two circular arrows showing

the flow and one is just labeled money and the other is labeled drugs it's perfect yeah they needed that visual aid and this is the first time i noticed that it's a monitor they're looking at because when mcbain comes out of it there's electricity crackling around his gun and a really cool touch yeah that's a really cool like like, after effects-y kind of thing on that electricity, too. I like it a lot. Yeah, the boardroom of guys is a really great design of, like, all these different evil freaks sitting around the board. It's funny because we then have a boardroom scene later in the episode, too, Mendoza picks up that gun just to give McBain the slightest of justification of self-defense. It's like, oh, no, see, Mendoza had a gun, so it's okay that McBain murdered this guy

who is like half his size, really. And also a U.S. senator. Yeah, it just explodes. Oh, God. I mean, I have a clip of the end of McBain here that then goes into Abe's reaction to it, but just Hank Azaria's scream all the way down is just amazing here. Oh, McBain!

Meeting adjourned. $2.50 for this? What a jip. He certainly broke up that meeting. Right now I'm thinking about holding another meeting in bed. Oh, McBain. Hmm. I want to see the manager! The screen was too small.

The floor was sticky. The romantic subplot felt tacked on. It's right, we demand a refund. Sorry, it's against our policy. No policy, you, you! Hey, don't have a heart attack, old dude. Don't you tell me what to do, you, you, whipper, snapper. I'm shocked Abe survived this.

I guess he'd have worse heart attacks. If you ride the Simpsons ride, you get to watche have a heart attack and an aneurysm while getting the uh safety instructions so but uh this mcbain theme written by jeff martin it's like a 45 second song you hear maybe 15 seconds of it before they leave and talk over it it's all on the first album of simpsons songs i believe uh actually it is go simsonic with the second one i have the copy of it right here that's how i checked it yeah uh the song is called blessed be the guy that bounds that's awesome yeah and uh yeah this great like shirley bassey style uh mcbain theme jeff martin writes it you barely hear it in the episode but he talks about on the commentary going to the recording

there's a 50 piece orchestra playing his mcbain theme it was one of the best moments of his life i mean it's amazing they got yes i actually yes chris let me show off to you right now actually do you have the um so here's here's the album for go simsonic with the simpsons and here is the original cover art for it by artist bill morrison the wow that's that's that's a good piece of um simpsons ephemera bob bob has some other great simpsons original art by by bill morrison there was a bill morrison sale recently yeah but but i looked into it as well the uh the singer of the song is uh uncredited in the episode but on the cd it names her it's sally stevens uh she's one of these session singers who's just been in like a million movies she's still working at 81 years old she has credits on imdb from dr chivago to guardians of the galaxy 2 and it sounds like

she sings the homer carr song at the end of the episode it's the same singer it sounds like she sings the Homer car song at the end of the episode. It's the same singer. It sounds like. Yes, yeah. And get them in for one session and have them do both. That just makes sense. I'm now looking at songs in the key of Springfield on vinyl on eBay, which is only $12, which actually seems like a steal for that. Yeah. That is absolutely worth it in framing. You know, I need to get a vinyl.

If they ever put a vinyl one out of Simsonic, I got that and put that on the wall i'll put it on me wall is this the first uh pimply teen uh but he's very assertive yes yeah this is not a squeaky voice team this is i think this is the first pimply voice team though uh no principal charming uh that guy the servant for uh seymour skinner is another like proto squeaky voice right right we're sneaking him in it's the idea that like all of our service jobs are run by pimply teens but yes but they haven't discovered dan castellanet is perfect teen voice that will overtake all other teen characters they write i well it's a real quick sally stevens uh she has two other big simpsons credits as well uh she uh after you hear this song it's very obvious she's also the singer of the hank scorpio theme yeah that's right scorpio and if you remember at the end of homer they fall the boxing episode the song people people who need people she's the one singing the cover to that. Though, you know that the right to remain,

you have the right to remain dead has never come out in the world of Simpsons. It's never, we've never seen McBain too. That's no less ridiculous than No Time to Die. Yeah, yes. Which is a real Bond movie. That is, yeah. Which it's now been delayed five years.

I would say Quantum of Solace is a sillier name than You Have the Right to Remain Dead. That's definitely the most self-parodying Bond title, I think. But we'll never see that movie. It's never coming out. I want to see Lionel Huxley write it as, No, Time to Die.

I always think that when I see that title, it's like, oh, that's a typo. But I also like, you know, it's a fun afternoon for Abe and Jasper they go to a movie watch it in its entirety and then complain to the manager about it and see if they can get a refund I bet they do that every weekend I bet that's just their their normal weekend outing I like uh complaining about the plot insufficiencies of the movie rather than just the uh you know the facilities of the movie theater the romantic subplot fell tacked on thus you owe us 250 back which i guess them saying 250 like

that was not the price of a first run movie back then so it seems to imply they're at a you know a second run movie theater as well second second run matinee senior discount oh boy get down to the 250 uh and so after that heart attack we cut to the the simpsons at dinner a homer gives a prayer validating nuclear power no fatalities in this country yeah which i looked that up according to wikipedia you know there were dozens of deaths in nuclear power accidents in spain the United Kingdom, the USSR up to then. But they're also named like multiple ones of like, oh, these are disputed ones in America before 1991. I was like, well, then we killed them, too. We just didn't.

But by our count, we didn't. Well, look, here's what I got to ask about those, because you know what? He's right. Nuclear power is good. But, you know, were those deaths by the actual uh nuclear power or did like somebody fall off a ladder uh it seems somewhere like extreme radiation poisoning yeah like i'll hold my mouth for those well you know i would i would say the the safety of it has probably improved in the last 30 years you know you don't hear was well in fukushima but you know that that was an

earthquake yeah uh and actually Homer's nuclear prayer reminded me of a funny update to a story I told previously on here uh so listeners on the Burns for Governor episode uh may recall I mentioned that there was a listicle published by the Department of Energy in 2018 about how all the things the Simpsons get wrong about nuclear power and how it's and it kept referencing things from that episode. And since then, I have to give compliments to a Vice article digging into that because just a couple months ago, back in July, writer Aaron Gordon at Vice tried to get to the bottom of who wrote that article

and they had to do a freedom of information act request and got a heavily redacted by the government article back from them about how it's made it's uh people should just look up the whole article it's amazing but so the uh the department of energy is very protective of who wrote that listicle about the simpsons and nuclear power but yes homer then gets called away the kids do a pantomime bit which definitely feels like a graining life in hell comic strip to me like yeah it's also a time killer too oh yeah as we talked about earlier uh lisa's face when she goes crazy like that just is a matt graining drawing to me it looks like yeah i find the kids very sweet in this episode.

I know that a lot of their bits don't really go anywhere, but I find their presence to be... They're definitely in the background of the plot for this episode, but I found them to be very cute in all their little interactions. Yeah, Lisa's having fun. I guess in a future episode, she'll be looking into the labor uh the labor market of this uh this car company or whatever they'll look at how how the rights are going and things like that but here she just wants to watch cartoons with her uncle or just the opulence of it would make her feel bad of like oh why am i why do you have so much when others

have so little okay her like yeah but here they're just fun kids having fun goofing with each other at the the table and i mean as a little kid they gave me ideas of like oh yeah me and my brother would do that at the dinner table or this is how we would goof off and and mess with our parents while not breaking the rules that is cute also uh just on the the faces that you were just mentioning like the graining life in hell drawing i'm sure sure you guys have probably already talked about it on the show. Did you guys see that Twitter comment the other day or the other week about in the earlier seasons of The Simpsons, the eyes don't focus directly.

Like they don't, the pupils in the eyes don't look at exactly what they're supposed to be looking at. And it makes it everything a little more. Yeah. No, I thought that that was a good observation. And while I was watching these, because it was the first time in a little bit that I I thought that that was a good observation and while I was watching

these because it was the first time in a little bit that I'd gone back to some early seasons episodes I just kept looking at the pupils of everybody's eyes and seeing how they were all slightly unfocused or not in direct line with what they're looking at and you know what? It is funny.

It is, yeah. They reigned in a lot of the quirks like that and I did call out a few moments in my notes of the wall i like when homer goes oh my god on the phone his eyes are just bugging out the pupils are pointing in different directions i mean it's mostly done with homer because he is just a vacant dumb character but it could be used to great effect on other characters as well but yeah i totally agree with you the eyes are too under control in later episodes oh these days everybody is the they're just too everything's too under control in later episodes oh these days everybody is the uh they're just too everything's too under control but the eyes especially uh it's like homer can't i there's lines in here where just for a word for emphasis eyes is the eyes will bulge like oh like oh what are you yeah or there's

uh later in the episode when marge says oh homer was an idle threat like her head kind of like squashes and squishes around in just a very funny way. I think it's the result of, obviously, things are getting cheaper. There's less time for these flourishes, but also with things getting cheaper, they're also afraid when we send this overseas, they might think this is an accident and try to correct it.

It'll come back worse, and we'll have to pay for retakes. So it's all a result of just the show getting cheaper. I love the great joke of emeralds like the hospital yellow like that's that's great and that is his arcade video game catchphrase according to the the startup for the arcade yellow we're still in the yellow uh era of homer but they head to the hospital they find out that abe only had a mild arrhythmia not a full heart attack uh they say it on the commentary and i double double-checked this to be sure. Dr. Hibbert had appeared four previous times in the series to this episode.

And while he would sometimes, you know, make a pleased noise, he did not chuckle in reaction to something. This is the first time Dr. hibbert chuckled his classic uh but he is laughing appropriately in this case in this case yeah it is he is laughing at like that abe is gonna hill out live us all you old goat but i i like how mean like abe abe needs to be mean there's we're gonna do old money uh recording soon too and in that one he's just too sweet he's too like i prefer this abe who's just like an asshole he's like an astute old man who quotes rudyard kipling uh sorry chris oh i was just gonna say the the revelation about abe's

past in this episode is genuinely very dark i did not remember that that being part of simpsons canon at all yeah in a few episodes were asked to care about him and his girlfriend, not knowing this part of his past, too. Like, this old man deserves love, even though he cheated on his wife and has an illegitimate child. Yeah, he was impregnated with prostitute Carney. And it is cruel to Homer at every turn as well. I also love another great stupid Homer jokeer joke is 80 plus year old father

who just had a heart scare says i'm going to die someday and homer's like oh you and your imagination like uh homer really does live in this childish world that he's like well my father could never die no but yes this gave abe a moment to tell homer something he'd never told him before which this also is just a very this gets darker than most sitcoms would but it is a very sitcom setup of thanks to this health scare i am going to tell you a thing that i would never have told you before thus making it a new plot for this episode and and homer learns a shocking secret in this new next clip homer you have a half brother a half brother it all happened when i was courting your mother i was checking out the skirts at the local carnival when i first saw her hey handsome want to dunk the clown? She did things your mother would never do,

like have sex for money. A year later, the carnival came back to town and she had a little surprise for me. We left a baby at the Shelbyville orphanage and I never saw him again. A year later, I married your mother and we had you. Abe, I want Homer to grow up respecting his father. He must never know about that carnival incident. Okay. Promise you won't tell him. I promise. Whoops! Forget what I just told you. What are you blubbering about? This

makes me feel special, Dad, since I'm the one you kept that must mean you really love me hmm interesting theory and i think it's like one of the only times we hear julie cabner voice a non-bovie she is the uh the woman who's who got a clown dunked in her if you want to call it that oh my a very a very sexy voice on her yeah i mean dunk the clown what a great euphemism for uh sex i really love that and yes the like have sex for money an amazing line like that's something your mother would never do i i mean too it's uh this is an interesting thing because they have to deal with homer's mother for the first time but they don't want to commit to his mother being officially dead or not one can assume she's dead because she's not in the picture and they're referring to her as like yo this was

before your mother but nobody says and your mom died a few years after that or blah blah blah no they don't want to commit to that for this episode which is smart like why give up a possible story later by committing in this episode like and of course your mother died here or whatever yeah i do like the you know as you're saying this is a classic sitcom setup i do love the way that it is written of the story ending on him promising never to tell homer and then immediately being like oh forget i said this his flashback reminded him of the promise he forgot and he's like oh crap. Something that really made me laugh, it always does, is that when this woman is presenting Herb to Abe for the first time at the carnival,

the baby has a beard line. Yes. And it feels like a mistake. It feels like somebody painting this scene was like, why is Homer so small? Oh, they forgot to draw the beard on him. Okay, I'll take care of that. It's just very weird to see a baby with a five o'clock shadow. That is a great extra to it uh and yeah this is the second appearance of shelbyville in the series

they were previously used in homer at the bat as the rival team to springfield but uh this will be the first episode they visit shelbyville not that it seems all that special compared to the you know bizarro world shelbyville will see in season six. But, and yeah, this, I mean, too, with the, the mother Simpson, like this is nothing like the Mona Simpson we will see, but let's just consider this her traditional wife phase before she becomes a wild hippie. Yes. And also fitting that, you know, she, she would later be voiced by frequent Brooks collaborator Glenn Close as well. It also that flashback sets Abe like Homer's birth in the 50s or late 50s, like just how everything looks.

That makes sense. Yeah. And just thinking about it, like in the season three episode where Herb comes back, he never confronts Abe like, why did you abandon me? There's never a scene like that. He's not interested in Abe at all yeah it never Comes up wait just when we're talking About Simpsons chronology so I To situate myself I also watched the episode before

This about Skinner Dating Patty And I something I clocked in that that I Thought was interesting is that when They're on a date he gets served By I believe another like pimply face Kid teen and he says whatever the kid's name skinner says whatever the kid's name is class of 71 and the guy says yes and then

later skinner says look at that kid almost 30 and he hasn't made anything of himself so the simpsons at least the second season can't take place any later than 1983 oh yeah trilogy tracks well yeah that definitely in in the 90 91 i think up to 93 they just treat it as well this is now and if you count backwards like they commit to a 10 year old bart being conceived in 1980 when empire strikes back came out so they even even in season three they commit to stuff like that so yeah they and well so that doesn't you know that skinner timeline does not fit with him being a vietnam vet but that would be a season three thing so they haven't committed to that yet either i mean not that i'm super sickler about this i just like you they it seems like from early on they pretty assiduously avoid giving like precise chronologies like that so i i just thought it was funny especially you

know again from from the perspective of watching these episodes 30 years later to be like wait so when does this take place yeah i mean canonically uh canonically in quotes it's like homer and marge graduated in 74 bart's born in 80 lisa's born in 84 maggie's born in 93 none of these dates made sense like a few years out from the episodes airing yes yeah yeah and now like by now what the they do episodes where like homer is a teen in in like 1994 or something yep yes and that they and when they flash back to like oh remember uh five years ago and they treat it as 2015 when they talk about five years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess you got to do it, but it is, I don't know. It's funny.

Well, Chris, you are on the right podcast to talk about Simpsons chronology and how it breaks apart over time. Homer Simpson is a proud member of the class of 2000. Yes. Yeah. And one, yeah. Then another moment that feels like filler, which is Homer saying, I'm going to find my brother or die trying and leaves. That should then follow to the next scene of him looking.

But instead, it's them driving in a car back and recapping the thing they just learned with the with the time killing bastards song, which I like the bastards. I love that bastard song which i like the bastard song i love that bastard song i when i do believe when we interviewed john viti that was the one he brought up as uh so john viti who was a writer on this season as well uh he talked about how they liked writing bart casually swearing uh but they said they toned it down uh not because of censor notes, but because friends of theirs would say, hey, thanks for teaching my son the word bastard. Like that was really great. Thanks a lot.

Well, I especially like that joke of Bart finding a loophole where he can say the word legitimately in its proper context. It's kind of a sequel to the hell thing they did before where Bart's like, I sure as hell can't talk about hell without saying hell can i so and now now they get away with bastard which also is just the writers going like we snuck this one by you censors by saying like well this is the real term he is a bastard he was born out of wedlock also i think when lisa says like how dickensian like that's them copping to boy this is a real like old corny plot of,

Oh, a lost half brother. Wow. It's also, that's what, you know, is makes the show great. Even when it's doing stuff that is kind of lazy,

that it will write jokes about how lazy its own plot was, which, you know, is now again, 30 years into the era of the self-reflexive sitcom, uh, you know, feels more, uh, de rigueur but

you know at the time it's like wow this this show knows can you believe it this show knows it's a show yeah lisa has a similar comment uh when homer's mom shows up she said this is something out of dickens or melrose place yes so yeah it really is like kind of a sequel line i apparently also have you listened really hard in the background of that scene. You can hear a jingle for Bancroft's English muffins, which Jeff Martin wrote that jingle as well. But it's almost inaudible. And that does not come back for another 10 years. That product name.

That's right. That's the one of the this year giver English muffins. Is that the. No, that's not even on that billboard okay there's there's uh i believe it like in season 11 because we just covered it not too long ago there is an ad that marge is clipping a coupon out of it's a bikini lady holding muffins that's right and that was the return of bankrupt english muffins it's one of these brands from this early these early years that didn't stick around like shakespeare's fried chicken right

right look i would go to a place called shakespeare's fried chicken and he's a public domain figure anybody could get him but yes then uh we cut to homer arriving in shelbyville he can't find where it was he asked a bronson voiced man though it's not the mustachioed and hair and bald one it's just a guy a random guy i think silverman at that point he was the only director who was like oh no the bronson voice guy looks like this archers wes archer the director of this his team didn't know yet bronson voice guy is that specific character model and yeah i think this is just when they started learning that like dan castellaneta screaming his homer is funny and he just needs to do it all of the time he should

scream every episode title yeah in every episode and so Homer uh thinks he can't find him and is then sent across the street and resets uh this is when he runs into Dr. Hibbert's twin brother which is so great that Homer has no realization of this. He's like, yeah, yeah, we're talking about my brother. Like, just shuts it down. And seemingly both of these guys are the brother of Bleeding Gums Murphy, who is the older brother of Hibbert, as we learn in Bleeding Gums Murphy's death episode. But yes, this exchange with Harry Shearer and Dan is just so funny. Like, God, his anger at the detroit bit is so good i myself have spent years searching for my long lost twin brother yeah yeah yeah well

i wish i could help you but we're looking for my brother today can you tell me his name according to our records uh mr and mrs pow Powell adopted your brother and named him Herbert. Herbert! Herbert Powell! Great! Where can I find him? I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to release that information. Oh, please, please! This is my life we're talking about here! Please! Well, I do sympathize with your situation, Mr. Simpson. After all, your brother could be anywhere. Even Detroit. I know he could be anywhere! That's why I want you to narrow it down, please!

You know, Mr. Simpson, if you ask me, the city of brotherly love isn't Philadelphia, it's Detroit. Well, if you ask me, changing the subject makes you the most worthless, heartless excuse for a human being I ever- Read between the lines, you fool! No! Oh, I get it! Okay, here's 20 bucks. Oh, I get it. Okay.

Here's 20 bucks. Now will you tell me where my brother lives? Just take it and tell me. Detroit. He lives in Detroit. Fine. Thank you. I love Homer's sarcastic, thank you.

It's a great premise where one guy thinks the other guy is playing hardball, but he's doing the opposite of that. He's just, I want to tell you and if you ask me i think changing the subject god it's just so good like over over and dan and harry are just so big in that it's it's a really funny exchange and that's it's the kind of energy they they mentioned it a ton on the commentary of like the actors are all acting together like there is this extra energy to everybody talking and talking over each other at the same time yeah when he when castellana fits in that like extra plaintive please under sheer's line i think that you know it gives it that real sense that you know they're actually interacting yeah yeah i uh which you know they they just, by even the classic seasons,

they weren't always recording together. Like, by even season, like, seven, everybody's busy. Everybody has other jobs. They're filming Godzilla. Yes, they're all filming Godzilla. Some people have other jobs. Some do, yes, yeah. Hey, Nancy Cartwright has a very busy job at the Scientology Center, you know?

Like, that takes up a lot of time. And, boy, there's only two acts worth of Unky Herb material so we get a minute of Homer dialing the phone okay I love this phone montage yeah I love this phone montage I think it is uh even it's it's Jeff Martin writing smarter than it reads at first which I really like Jeff Martin is one of the best right I think he's underrated as a as a Simpsons classic writer but uh so homer gets the phone book you we get a montage of seeing him hang up the phone three times and in your brain you think oh a montage means he's called many people and we're just seeing three of them then it cuts to him crossing through the third her pal in there and he says i've called them all so in this montage

that is supposed to look like he called a ton of people you actually just watched it almost in real time of him calling three people and giving up it's so subtle that even on the commentary i don't think they understand the montage yes where it's a fake out and uh this makes me think of a better version of this where the we called aronson and zakowski the biggest gossips in town where the fake out is they call only two numbers but this is like so low key that you forget that this is they're they're going for something with this montage they're not playing it straight you're right they could have maybe upped arched it just a little bit more to make it clear but once you get it i'm like oh fuck that's funny that's so funny like they won't also talk about time killing

like homer just reads name he literally reads names from a phone book to fill to fill like 30 seconds of the episode yeah i really enjoyed that montage joke i mean any like joke about the secondhand language of filmmaking is always going to kill for me and and also as a great bit about trying to turn something into an interesting like plot. Marge saying, well, that H. Powell could be it. It's a long shot, but I'll give it a try. It's so good. Boy, Powell is looking for trouble putting his office number in the phone book.

Yeah. A guy this rich should be unlisted, really. We were going to have a lot of notes with how Herb Powell runs his business, but this is the first one. Like, you should be unlisted, you know? But then again, we have found out that a lot of people, like a lot of very rich people's emails are just their name plus Gmail. Or usually if they're old, it's at AOL.com. Yes.

Yeah. So, you know, maybe it's realer than we think. I think it's very funny. They go to such great lengths to uh disguise his face and then every commercial for this was the window rolling down and you see herb powell's face so it was spoiled by every commercial i love you know again for how like simple the animation is here i i love the car window rolling down and revealing the the homer's exact profile in the car yeah i just feel so bad for archer and

his team that they you know were instructed hide his face for like two different long scenes and then after they go to all that work then the fox brought the fox ad department just says well no we need to show the shot of his face in the first commercial like we just got to do it right there and spoil the whole thing but yes uh, the H does stand for Herbert, we learn in this next clip. It would just be great if I could get, you know, a Silicon Valley area phone book and look up E. Musk and do crank calls.

Yellow. Is this H. Powell of Detroit, Michigan? Yeah. By any chance, does the H stand for Herbert? Yeah. Woo-hoo! The H stands for Herbert! Herb, were you adopted?

Yeah. From the Shelbyville Orphanage? How did you know that? Because I'm your baby brother, Homer. Hello? Hello? Hello, stupid phone? Hey, hey, knock it off.

I'm here. We're just silent because of the emotion involved oh sorry homer i think we need to get together okay brother grab the next plane to springfield we got a couch that folds out i'll tell you what why don't you come here and i you know rich guys like powell as well who they make clear that he is a self-made man, that he didn't he wasn't adopted by a rich family and all that. You would think those guys would never want to hear from a relative they've never met before who just showed up to probably ask for money. But he seems so desperate for any connection to somebody. He's like, please, come into the house. How we

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run into a because homer is blameless in this he was born after herb was given up for adoption but i would think he would hate abe with all of his being for abandoning him as a child yes and never looking for him and by the way all of the buildings we see in detroit are frank lloyd wright's buildings this was west archer's idea i'm not going to name all of them because it's not that important but just in case you're wondering yes they're going for something here that's a very funny detail i did not notice that yeah i mean i kind you kind of herb's idea that like homer should design the car that you know maybe this was like one rewrite away from giving herb the motivation of being like hey and every man i could i could use this in my business

but yeah it is it is very funny to be like no i think you should come here in the pool out that he's in a gigantic mansion but he won't buy plane tickets for homer homer's got to drive because we need a minute of scenes in the car yeah there's not enough story to go around here you're right pay for it like honestly he looks like a private jet kind of guy but even if he isn't in 91 it's like just buy get your brother first class like if even if you're going to put him in a mansion and spend all this other money when he's there but i guess you know homer's enough of a dim bulb maybe he just insisted like okay we're gonna drive and he hangs up before herb can say wait i can fly you or whatever uh this is a far cry from a decade later

mel gibson flying directly to their house in a plane and picking up homer in an airplane to fly to hollywood to work on the movie together to work on a movie together yes yeah uh so yes we come in with an are we there yet which again on the commentary they're like boy that fills up script pages don't it uh but i love marge's like marge doing the classic mom thing of we'll turn this car right around and homer believing it more than the kids that's such a great joke like homer it was an idle threat yeah come on she's just like sick of it even when they're talking about you know from the writer's perspective just kill uh filling up screen page pages with gags like this i mean it goes a long

way to what i was talking about at the very beginning of like the kids just being very sweet and kid-like and you know again when you're looking at like cartoons these days and you know especially the simpsons where like everything is you know ratcheted tight for efficiency mostly just having shows that that can feel like a vibe even if not every lie line is a funny joke i mean you know i i appreciated it a little bit yeah there's just a really simple joke in here about homer going over a pothole and spilling his drink over himself and the kids laughing it's exactly yeah exactly it's not like an inspired joke that's super clever just like a man fall down kind of joke but it's a nice little moment yeah i think you know it it it feels pointless i almost thought that they did it

but they don't do any other bit like this but later in the episode when homer is listing all the things he wants in a car he does mention like there's not enough there's not a cup holder big enough for my type of drink and so him spilling it at the in this act would set that up but there's no other moment of him experiencing a thing he'd want to improve in a car i guess the annoying kids in the back seat would be one of them yeah but there but then there should be a scene where he's like where's a horn to honk i'm always looking for one like he's uh in in this section also all these guys mistaking him for herb he doesn't i mean okay everything in his face from his eyebrows to his chin looks like Herb.

In every other way, he does not look like him. I don't think it fully works as a joke of like, wow, everybody thinks he's Herb. People should be saying Herb Powell has fallen apart. Something is wrong. Oh, God. I do love the Herb's subtly skinnier character design. Yeah, they are still able to evoke homer while flattening the gut on him yeah i though as a kid i did learn the important lesson that a cop will

treat a rich guy differently like i did need to learn that as a kid when homer gets pulled over i love homer's like see how well i handled that like where he's just cowering in the sheet in the seat and i i also love the framing of that shot where you're like looking at the cop's giant gun in the in the uh in the foreground and like shrinking in the background uh the exact type of scary like other states officer you don't want to run into on a long car ride yes yeah yeah and yes then we we cut to the boardroom with Herb. This is a very late 80s, early 90s automotive industry thing, which means you're scared of the Japanese and American auto is dying and all those fears of that era, which all come through in his speech of like, you know, this is why our company's losing. It does sound like his company's on the bubble as it is right here uh yeah all the all the egghead executives uh you know saying that they need to chase the uh the japanese car trends and isn't there a

joke in there about all of them going to ivy league schools yes yeah they uh well first off they blame mushy-headed one-worlders in washington and some kind of gypsy curse uh but yes they knowing the show writer's room especially then being full of harvard guys who all knew each other it's very funny to hear them all go like him say ah y'all you harvard deadheads and they're like well weren't you in harvard too yeah but i was mopping the floors and cleaning your toilets like oh yeah that's why i remember you like i just they're overeducated but have no practical advice yeah for this sort of thing i love which you know in the writer's room i think there was a disparity between you're the harvard guys and we're the some of the guys who aren't harvard guys though jeff martin was one of

those harvard guys uh as were gene and reese and i also i think too of like this talk about among this feels like a very ivy league joke of course but it's a joke about within harvard alums there are distinctions disparities in class like there they probably went to harvard with a ton of people who were just like oh yeah your your family got you in your rich people even in the 80s that was their experience but then you know al jean well i mean like his dad owned a hardware store in detroit but he was not like from the you know from the boston jeans or whatever like al jean and he was like a 16 year old or no even younger than that going to to harvard and really i did not know that about

al jean yes al jean i don't want to compare him to ben shapiro in many ways but in that way as he was like a kid genius he was i'm sure he carried a briefcase at 15 uh and and jeff martin too comes from like more like not in a fancy pants background as as a harvard alum and i think it's same with uh with reese too reese's dad was a doctor so it's up in the air all right you know know what? I'll take that one away from him. He's got some class signifiers more on his side. Have you had Reese on the show? We have. Oh yeah, yeah.

You were party to an interview with him, weren't you? Yeah, I mean, he was very kind. I really liked talking to him and his perspective on these early seasons was funny, but the thing that he said where he lives in New York and flies out to LA one day a week, like flies out on tuesday night works in the writer's room wednesday and flies back wednesday night for like 20 weeks a year is i mean all

respect to mike reese for living the lifestyle he wants but that is like genuinely one of the more insane lifestyle things that i've heard i think unfortunately mike reese's grift is over now because of covid now he can oh yes now he can zoom in but but you know hey if i i figured fox is paying for those flights every time he's he's just getting the miles but no it is pretty insane to be like well if you want me one day a week for a rewrite room you gotta fly me 12 in two overnights and i'm i would be i would be sure it's business class at least if not better on those i'm I'm sure. I just hate being on planes so much that that feels like torture to me.

Yeah, two six-hour flights in, what, 36 hours? Yeah, exactly. Sounds awful. And then you have to be funny in a rewrite room of like, well, hey, let's have some fun. What's a funny joke for Homer to say? I would just be like, I am dead in my brain. Or I'm just already experiencing pre-flight stress for my flight yeah exactly yeah if i fly out to la i'm like yeah i can i can do

some work in like i don't know three days no we need five jokes about tiktok yeah right now where is it yeah uh hey i mean you know that's maybe that's why they're paying reese the big bucks for that stuff that he can he can jam it out out. But yes, we've thought about that many times of that crazy, crazy travel life he was living in the before times. And yeah, this is also where I've been playing a lot of the video game Hades in that, which is a really fun video game. And the name Persephone comes up a lot. And every time it's said i just think of devito's like persephone persephone nobody wants to to drive around in some hungry greek broad yeah i love that and and also it's funny because then like uh six years later he'd be in the greek

uh disney comedy hercules talking about all this greek stuff as as phil the the trainer who looks exactly like danny devito it's also very funny uh but set in a dark way of how the scene just like peters out and he's just like i'm just a lonely guy and just walks away and everybody's like good lord that's uh that's how uncomfortable it would be in a meeting room if your boss just like walked away just like sobbing and left a meeting you're like oh man this guy's messed up yeah it seems like a good way to get a vote of new confidence from your board you know that's the secret behind you're right the board is conspiring against him they're like well clearly he left the room crying and now once his brother shows up he just checks out completely like that's really why he

ends up destitute that they outmaneuver him in those meetings there's an interesting relationship with this board though because they don't like him they're like put off by him but some still want to kiss his ass that one guy's like i want to hear more about your roots and what they can teach me yes yeah yeah it is in that little scene of a pretty good send up of like Ivy League obsequious snobs. Yeah. They also want to show off that they know the story of Hades and Persephone and pitch a thing that no person like no one would buy a car. He's right. No, no average man would want to buy a car called Persephone. Like it's a silly thing. Also, I guess actually speaking of Mike Reese,

the guy who says, we'd love to hear from you and all that, the way he's designed looks like Mike Reese. They say he's supposed to look like Reese. Nice. But yes, then head to his home. We see Homer on the outside. He doesn't believe it. He still doesn't know he's rich which i guess that too shows uh maybe that was a test from herb he's like i'll just let him

discover i'm rich but see how he treats me like on the phone when he doesn't know i'm rich just so i i know that he's not just using me or that he's not even really my brother he's just pretending he is to like scam me but uh but this is when homer the brothers meet up and it's it's a really sweet little moment i i like this you look just like except you got a little more and a little less god i feel so Welcome to my home, brother. Holy moly, the bastard's rich. Herb, allow me to introduce my family. This is my wife, Marge. Hello.

Hello. You old dog, she's gorgeous. Thank you. And our three children, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. Hello, sir. Hello, Mr. Powell. All born in wedlock? Yeah, though the boy was a close call.

So, Lisa, are you the little hellraiser your father told me about? No, sir, I can assure you I'm not. I'm the little hellraiser, sir. Would you like to hold the baby, Herb? Oh, I'm afraid I wouldn't know how. No one's to know. Just dive in. Catch!

God, that new baby smell. Homerer you're the richest man i know i feel the same about you what uh that uh you know if you look at it from a time filler perspective having a scene where care the main characters of the show are reintroduced to another character that also is filling time. But it's all very cute and funny. I think that Herb is very interested in the out-of-wedlock status of the kids or not because he feels a lot of internal shame about being born out of wedlock. So he's worried that that would be... He asks anybody.

I would think he probably asks a lot of people, like, was your child born in wedlock? Good. Then they are a worthy child. Not like me, a lesser. I think this caused me to ask my mom what wedlock meant. And I got a straight answer from her. I do think this episode probably taught nine-year-old me the term bastard and what it meant in a textbook definition term.

It is funny after they had a whole scene establishing that herb is literally a bastard that homer then under his breath refers to him as a bastard offhandedly it's really getting off on the wrong foot with your brother to call him a bastard like even under your breath next to him yeah so this this next scene i want to talk about with the uh the pork chop uh back and forth now pork chops were a consistent thing in Homer's life up to this point because it was his favorite food. There were several references to it, Marge making pork chops. But this is really the last pork chop joke.

There is one more in Dog of Death when they have to save money to get the operation for Santa's little helper, and Marge is going over all the changes the family will have to make. The one is pork chop night will now be chub night. And Homer goes, I don't even know what that is. And that's really the last pork chop joke until we get to season 11. When we get the episode where Homer becomes a food critic and Marge gives him pork chops and he hates them. And she goes, you always like my pork chops and he hates them and she goes you always like my pork chops so i think pork

chops were not a funny enough food for homer to enjoy as he got more disgusting like in this episode we're seeing the first joke about him being stinky yeah so homer is gross jokes are escalating so he needs to start drinking skittle brow and eating uh disgusting sandwiches things like that like pork chops are not a comedy food anymore do you think there is something funny about pork chops and i'm wondering also if there's like some kind of cultural connotation of pork chops that that of the like early 90s that that you know we're missing or something because in the episode i watched before this the skinner one uh there's also a joke that uh homer promised to limit his pork intake to six nights a week i i mean i do think even back then

as as far as like a family of five and what they would have like pork chop seems to be a cheaper meat you would get you know you wouldn't get you wouldn't get beef or you wouldn't get like you know a full chicken or whatever you'd get you'd get pork and a pork chop especially which are you know known as if you cook it the wrong way it's just a real chewy rough piece of meat and especially if you're like frying up pork chops as homer wants them done like that's a that can be tough especially like in in an unseasoned kitchen that many people had back then i i definitely think it's a statement of homer's low class taste especially that here he's meeting a brother who's telling him like, cook will make you anything.

And Homer's idea of like, well, by anything you mean a pork chop whenever I want it. Herb could even say like, you can eat other foods too. I mean, don't you like steak, Homer? But he's just like, no, pork chops. I just, oh, lots of pork chops. Great. 4 a.m. Christmas morning. Yeah.

Yeah. I was looking it up in uh 87 is when the uh pork the other white meat slogan was invented to redefine pork as a classier kind of meat but these jokes are making fun of the low classness of pork and also i he might even be doing this episode but like an early background joke for homer is he's eating a bag of pork rinds light yeah and i think he's he's got a bag of chips in this episode when he meets her if he throws them down and the limo pulls up and it might be a bag of pork rinds yeah yeah homer i guess pork in general but yeah you're right homer by season three he's just the food monster he's just i eat lots of food that's the

homer we know not one who's like like in brush with greatness even which is late season two when homer is you know breaking his diet just to eat something he doesn't like start chewing on pork chops or whatever he fills his mouth with you know frosting with or with with whipped cream but i you know one last i i just have one other thought about the wedlock thing on bart question knowing now that they say that this episode was written before Way We Was, because this was the first McBain they wrote, then that also means that they did this joke. And then when they did the Way We Was, which has the answer that Marge was pregnant out of, got pregnant with Bart before they were married.

And that's why Homer proposed to her. This was the answer of like, oh, because they had this joke of homer identifying that it was a close call that bart was born in wedlock that's why then in the way we was they can do the flashback to show that marge got pregnant with bart and that's why homer proposed to her so but yes this run of pork chop jokes it really is a time killer and and same with uh i also do like bart is instantly complimentary to uncle her like he calls he calls him uncle herb he calls him sir like i really like the uh the line i'm the hell raiser sir yeah he knows unlike homer who doesn't realize like the you know benefits of being nice

to a rich relative bart instantly is like i'm very respectful yes sir unky herb you're great oh he sure is uncle herb like yeah i i love that with bart and uh and then him telling like do you think you could call me unky herb sure thing like yeah and just like that he's crying at just the idea of like oh i have a i have a nephew he get my nephew's adorable like he's just so happy he's feeling the uh the emotional power of being an uncle. Which, yeah, Uncle Magic. He's feeling that classic Uncle Magic. I have a very brief clip here, but this joke of Marge is also very dark, which I really like.

Marco! Hello. Will you kids shut up? So, Marge, a little about yourself. Well, I met Homer in high school. We got married and had three beautiful children. Wow. We have so much catching up to do.

Actually, I just told you pretty much everything. That's it. Marge has no other interior life. She can't say, oh, and I have this bridge club, or I do this, or I do nothing. She do nothing she's like well by having i met homer and we had children and that's it i'm not there's nothing else to me i feel like that's how they felt about writing marge like well there's nothing else interesting about marge she just is like she's the mom it's i it's i guess it's hard to tell like how much self obviously that by virtue of being a joke they're making fun of that about marge but it's hard to to tell how much the writers feel in on that joke or if they're it's

at the expense of marge's character they're saying like marge actually is boring or being like oh we should probably fill this out a little bit at some point and then we get a montage of just the family having fun together and just all these new rich people fun they can have of, you know, going boating or going to the boat. A pony on a boat. A pony on a boat. Yeah. I love this shot of Homer calling Abe. He's gone Hollywood.

He's like he's got a cordless phone, sunglasses, and he is drinking the Quickie Mart Super Slaker. That is the drink he spilled on himself earlier. There is no mention of this style of drink ever after this episode, but it's obviously a big gulp right yes it's it's clearly a big gulp yeah i one he'll and it's the one he'll mention later when he's talking about how big cups can be but yeah at quickie mart that yeah like in season one bart asked for like a jumbo jumbo super squishy or whatever you know he's not using that super slaker name for it uh also just Abe's reflection of like I kept the wrong one I feel like in season three Abe would have just said that to Homer instead of pulling the phone away to save his

feelings he would have just said I kept the wrong one uh but but it's fun to see the shots of like them throwing the coins too and you just see homer's unlucky in every way that herb is lucky and homer's just like he's a loser homer's a loser herb is a winner and uh he's he's the successful big brother and also yeah there's a spitting over the side thing which bart learned about that from his near-death experience about the joys of spitting over things and having it land on people on the way to heaven uh and uh and we get one little joke of homer calling up cook in the middle of the night i would think by this point cook would already have it like pre-seasoned and ready to go they're like all right homer's got

another let's just have a pork chop ready for this idiot yeah look we we know at some point he's going to test this midnight pork chops uh availability also that feels like a very specifically observed rich guy thing of like oh yeah like the harvard writers know their rich friends just call the guy cook it's like oh yeah cook doesn't have a name it's just like we oh cook will do that for you okay but yes homer is about to get the benefits of having a rich brother as well of getting a free car uh which they mentioned on the commentary complete fabrication that there's only 40 of steel in a car that is not true i don't know too many car facts but i i'm sure that is not true uh but but this is when homer impresses herb to such a degree i feel like

herb has a death wish of his company honestly like it's an internal death wish at this point yeah he's he's become as successful as he can and now the only like possible joy is in risk yeah so he knows that he has to throw it all away and then so he hires homer in this next scene are you sure you want to give me a car hey you know what these things cost me there's maybe 40 bucks worth of steel in them. Oh, okay. I'd like a big one, then. We don't have a big one. Why not? Because Americans don't want big cars.

Well, then give me one with lots of pep. Sorry, our cars don't have pep. Why not? Because Americans want good mileage, not pep. Homer, tell the nice man what country you come from. America. Do you hear that, you morons? This is why we're getting killed in the marketplace.

Instead of listening to what people want, you're telling them what they want. Homer, I need your help. You do? Yeah. I want you to help me design a car. A car for all the Homer Simpsons out there. And I want to pay you $200,000ons out there and i want to pay you two hundred thousand dollars a year and i want to let you i think this is a time maybe you guys can correct me if i'm wrong when

cars were still being designed based on the fears of the gas crisis of the 70s so they were smaller they were more economical it wouldn't be until like the late 90s where we would get like the the suv craze every suburban owning a gigantic pickup truck totally things like that but yeah this was very much of the time yeah i mean there's a decent sociological commentary in there it's not that americans didn't want uh big cars with lots of pep it's that they couldn't afford big cars with lots of pep and so cars had to get you know smaller and more fuel efficient uh during the time but you know we're fucking americans of course we want a gigantic car that gets three miles to the gallon but you know goes zero to 90 in two seconds uh and be a garish monstrosity like yeah exactly

one yeah this is very much about the car market at the time which was like you'd have traditionalist guys like homer who would complain that like all these the tiny japanese cars they can't do x y or z or they're uh and they but then they would see the american companies trying to catch up with the fuel efficiency and price of a honda or a toyota and so this was it it's a clever idea of a just a scene for friction of the guys, the executive saying our market research says that this is what people want. And then the most average of men Homer saying, but this is what I want. Like, uh, and, and also I think this has a statement about art and making art that you

can creating something by committee of people out of touch that will leave you on one end of the spectrum but if you give complete power to a dumb idiot who thinks he knows how to do something it also will lead to a very giant mistake but yeah homer i would like to think that homer at least got a few months pay of that 200K a year. So he got some pretty good paychecks out of this. And a free car. I mean, come on. He's making way like a bandit here.

You know, I don't think they drive home in the same car. I don't think Homer got that free car. He should at least, not to get too far ahead, but he should at least get to keep the one Homer they made, you know? That's true. Yeah. But unfortunately, not the case. But yeah, he gets 200K a year. They seem to at least work on that car for a month. the one homer they made you know i guess that's true yeah but unfortunately not the case but yeah

he gets 200k a year they seem to at least work on that car for a month i think homer homer got one of those paychecks i mean from conception to production you gotta assume it's at least you know 60 days to a prototype for sure question for the experts do we see the homer any other time in the season in the series oh boy like even as like a background or you know in like a auto yard or at an auction or something you know a classic simpsons background joke in the series i think bob is gonna look i'm looking it up now i in my belief is in the series proper i don't think it ever appears like in animation but in side content like the simpsons hit and run game for example

yeah i mean obviously yeah it's it's a drivable thing and the homer also is made into like multiple toys most famously there's a 2013 hot wheels toy of the homer which you can get for very reasonable prices on ebay if you want so i have shocking news for both of you. The Homer appears again in the opening gag of How Lisa Got Her Marge Back, episode number 592, aired in April of 2016. So one other appearance. There we go. Okay. I mean, I always love, you know, that's such a classic Simpsons thing. Like, I always love when you see the Olmec head in their basement.

Yes, yeah. But in this case, so with the hd opening when you see the simpsons logo there's always something that flies by the screen like frank or whatever in this case it was homer soaring by in the homer oh so it's nice non-canonical i guess it was not in the story or anything but they just remembered that reference but only one time only one other time yeah i i was also thinking of the logistics of homer getting this 200 000 a year uh salary position that when the mass layoffs happen later in the episode shouldn't homer have at least gotten some level of severance like i think he should have got like at least 100k severance like six

months pay yeah what was his uh what was his benefits package like in powell motors well her pal is homeless after this so this business there's something going on with it uh it's all a paper tiger really that's the uh i mean yeah it's almost like some would uh like like the elon musk business of like oh it's all just a scam like this homer the homer was just his next fake thing to present like a robot that's not really a robot i do want to talk about elon musk more when we get to the unveiling of the homer okay okay great we then cut to homer uh Musk more when we get to the unveiling of the Homer. Okay, great. We then cut to Homer getting his new job. They, on the commentary, completely own up to this. Herb has to make many decisions that are incredibly stupid to set up the end of this episode.

And that begins with this act starting with him saying, I don't want to see anything until it's finished. Why? Why? Why? Other than to set yourself up for incredible failure, why would you make that rule of I don't want to see anything until it's finished? This time I think. It kind of tracks because he does say that you got his advice.

Like it fits together because his advice to Homer is like, you have to have perfect confidence in whatever you say. And that's how I run my business. So, you know, I do think that it is characterly consistent in that he's like i shoot from the hip and just say whatever i want with like perfect belief in my own uh my own truth and accuracy so you know it flows even if it is stupid uh and this is when herb really shows what he wanted to do the real reason he gave us all the homer i think is so he can take a month off and just like goof off with the kids taking the kids like i love march thing i hope this doesn't spoil them

as bart is driving a yacht and lisa is riding a pony on a yacht like uh that's amazing now everybody's a freaking boater with all their boats but i that seemed like wild opulence at the time of a pony on a boat also very dangerous oh yeah yeah you're gonna hurt that that that pony was put down like it broke its legs at one point on that i've seen the ring i know what happens when you put a horse on a boat oh yeah oh man nice pull that is a very intense thing seen on the ring god the ring's such a good movie it's great then we get to see the designers working with Homer and the designers are smartly keeping his Homer as far away from actually being able to do anything as possible.

Like they. And they are right. Yeah. Even though they're very patronizing and saying, you know, your brother said to help us and you can help us by getting us coffee. Yeah, exactly. They. Well, because for their own jobs, they know this idiot who's never designed a car before

probably shouldn't actually be doing this. So it's i mean we've uh working in the corporate world i've definitely had experiences of being assigned to somebody and having to work around them as carefully as possible while not upsetting like the bought their their higher up person uh in the company like that but yeah we homer is just uh marginalized in the office they then cut to homer at home at herb's home where they are playing baseball indoors because he has a meeting room that that that is that big like that's amazing like i think this is a a nice little early it feels very early in the run a homer moment where he comes home and he's like dejected and sad because he like has has a concept of his own inferiority and is a little ashamed about it, which feels like something that gets ironed out of Homer's character pretty quickly. Like even in another few seasons that he would just be like mad or blithely unaware of being marginalized in the office you know i mean homer gets unearned confidence at the end of this scene but i think he just always has it in general either

or he's just too stupid to know that people hate him like that that's that great joke later uh in season four where homer realizes that everybody at work is picking on him he's like i'm gonna punch lenny tomorrow. He does it. But yes, this next clip is when Herb gives Homer a pep talk that again will lead to the destruction of his company. And when Herb even lists all the reasons he hired Homer, it's like, well, then you're an idiot. Like you're, but yes, here's the clip.

Homer, I gave you this job because you're an average schmo. Oh, great. All you need is a little self-confidence. Oh, lucky Herb. I don't know anything about cars. Listen to me. Here's the clip. Homer, answer me again with self-confidence. Sort of. Now go get him. Yay! All right, you egghead. I want a place in this car to put my drink. Surely, the car has a beverage holder. Hello.

Hello, Einstein. I said a place to put my drink. You know those super slakers they sell in the quickie mart? The cup is this big. Extremely large beverage holder. I'm not done yet. You know that little ball you put on the aerial so you can find your car in the parking lot that should be on every car little awful

and some things are so snazzy they never go out of style like tail pins and bubble domes oh man every i love the one i love that homer calls him unky herb as well which like it puts him in such a diminutive role to him oh unky herb yeah and and secondly the great animation and voice and and sound editing homer runs out screaming and enters the next scene with a continued scream like he's screamed all the way from uncle herb's home to the office again like it's just so good i'm realizing that he says in that scene that he wants shag carpeting in the car and i i know that it would be very uh you know awkward to show the interior of the homer given the directing of this uh thing but i i do kind of wish we got to see the exaggerated shag carpeting on the inside of the whole the homer

homer is very much a man of the 60s and 70s in these early years so all of these ideas like tail fins and bubble domes are directly from that era for sure yeah when now you know listener if you're gonna build your own homer to try to go viral with like the guy this guy built his own homer car you have to get the interior right too you gotta have shag carpeting in it shag carpeting in the oversized cup holder you you can't just be on the outside looking like the Homer. You also have to be the Homer on the inside, too. That's another just like great joke that always just flew by me until now. When Homer says he wants those things on the antenna so you can find your car in a parking lot, every car should have one of those, thus defeating the purpose of having one of those

on your car because everyone would have one. So you couldn the purpose of having one of those on your car because everyone would have one so you couldn't find your car that's i like that i yeah that's a good gag how we use electricity can be smarter cleaner and greener at electric ireland we can help guide you there you see our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. And I did look up a little history on the cup holder in cars i'm not gonna go too into it but i recall uh growing up seeing the cup holders in my family's car so we we had an accord

a honda accord and then a jeep and then a newer honda accord that was my childhood to adulthood cars my my family owned and in those i got to see the cup holders grow like when we got the jeep it was like oh this is a bigger cup holder and i apparently it was like in the 80s as uh it started getting more and more standard in cars because it was seen as like oh your drive-thrus are more more regular people are stopping in drive-thrus and they need a place to put their cups when they're driving through drive-thrus. And of course, just a few years after this, there would be cup holders all over the national news or the lack of them because the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit would not have happened if that woman had a cup holder in her car. She was holding it between her thighs in the car because she didn't have a cup holder in her car okay she was holding it between her thighs in the car because she didn't

have a cup holder that i i forget what the thing is but isn't there like a revisionist history story about the lady with the hot coffee where you know she was like a national joke for saying ah the coffee's too hot but actually she was like totally in the right absolutely yeah mcdonald's malfeasance there's a documentary about it i think it's called hot coffee or something like that where yeah it was all like pro-corporation propaganda we were all told can you believe this dumb ass spilled coffee it's hot coffee it's supposed to be hot yeah it's like oh we gotta warn people that coffee's too hot when actually yes a mcdonald's had far too hot of coffee they were in the wrong but that's why mcdonald's even when they lose that lawsuit

they pay the big bucks to make it look like a useless lawsuit and a sign of like, oh, the overly litigious America when it's really about like for once a giant corporation was actually found guilty of a bad thing they did. I have to assume coffee at like 300 degrees or whatever. I have to assume Dennis Leary wrote at least 20 minutes of material based on that incident. Oh, my God. He was so minutes of material based on that incident. Oh my God. He was so mad when he heard about that story. I can see him pacing and smoking and ranting. I would bet Jay Leno did 70 jokes about it at the very least. Just in monologues, not just outside.

I'm just saying in monologues, 70 different nights of monologues about it. Homer is asking for all of these insane things. The designers are doing the right call of like this is terrible i have to tell the boss right now that this is a giant mistake and has to stop and herb's reaction again this is a self-destructive man like everything he's told anybody who has been successful in the car industry you think he would listen to especially this guy who has his home number he's probably worked with him on cars before he should know and trust his his business but this guy wants to fail i think but this leads to another very funny clip of uh be

him telling the guy to say the opposite of all of his uh problems to impress the kids okay this is what you're gonna do you're gonna hang up call me back and say the exact opposite of all of his problems to impress the kids. Okay, this is what you're going to do. You're going to hang up, call me back, and say the exact opposite of everything you just said. Goodbye. All right, Lisa, come over here. What is it, Uncle Herb?

I want you to hear what the guy's down at the plant thinking you're an old man. Yellow. Homer Simpson is a brilliant man with lots of well-thought thought out practical ideas. He is ensuring the financial security of this company for years to come. Oh yes and his personal hygiene is

above reproach. Whoa, I'm dancing great. Way to go dad. Yeah, I mean we're crossing a line here in that Homer is now disgusting. He started the show as a normal kind of dumb dad, but now he's a stinky man. I think this will escalate to the point where in season four, people working in a rendering plant can smell Homer nearby.

And then they back off of these jokes a lot after that. I think they were just getting very punchy in season four and overworked. So Homer is just a very disgusting man who eats rotten food and smells worse than melted hog fat uh but i i also love the drawing of herb with like the cigar in his mouth like yeah like that's a great drawing i i guess you know if you want to view it as anything other than her being self-destructive it's that he wants to impress the kids that he loves his niece and nephew so much that he just wants them to hear up compliment about their dad so he they can all feel good maybe that's why he's in such deep denial but but really i think he's just a self-destructive man

like yeah that's another moment of the kids as i was saying earlier being like sweet in this episode i enjoy them being like proud and happy for their dad getting compliments where again i feel like by another few seasons going on that their reaction would be more like that doesn't sound like dad i know that guy no way yeah i mean this may seem obvious but comedically i like how we only hear the other half of the phone call where he says the reverse thing we don't hear the first part yeah it really pays off just as he's saying everything you think of what the opposite of that is that he said before it's just yeah it's it's a great concept just as comedy lines and that's why i think it makes sense that in the next scene every designer is just egging homer on because they're like i tried so fuck it yeah whatever you want homer like Like, oh, yeah, tail fins. Yes, sir.

It's a hell of a toboggan ride, as Superintendent Chalmers would say. I mean, but these things they're pitching, like if you have a Tesla, and again, we'll talk about the Elon Musk soon, you can play like Stardew Valley with your steering wheel while you're in park. Yes, that's very true. So these aren't so crazy, these ideas. No. So I love that Homer is mad at that guy. He wants to fire him because Homer's complaining that the kids are annoying. The guy presents a practical and maybe good idea.

And Homer's like, who's giving you like, what's he paying you for? Because he does not want his kids to be happy. He wants a thing that punishes his children so that yeah that is a very funny joke of him being like what about the wildly at the time outlandish idea of what about video screens in the back of the the car which would become of course reality in like 15 years then meanwhile we cut to one more unky herb having fun or another unky herb having fun moment which as far as lines go are good ones for me and bob's careers but uh they they watch an itchy and scratchy it's a fun it's it's not the funniest itchy and scratchy but it's very bloody i do like that it's the one i can think of where scratchy he can actually reconstitute

his body because if you look at the tv screen while they're rolling around on the ground scratchy in the milkshake glass sucks himself up and reconstitute his reconstitutes his body back into normal so usually a cartoon will end with scratchy in a bloody heap but in this one he recovers like in a tom and jerry cartoon uh it's a self-suck jesus hominess of the of the uh scratchy milkshake is particularly gross in the animation there uh and uh and as they all and this is also the first of many times where like this happens and you know burns his air bart shows burns itchy and scratchy and every adult once they see itchy and scratchy are hysterical with laughter like they lose it like it's the funniest thing they have ever seen uh but this reaction from Uncle Herb is great.

I love how DeVito delivers this brief line here. To think I wasted my life in boardrooms and stockholders' meetings when I could have been watching cartoons! This old fool has wasted his life. Ah, wow, nice. nice how fun i love that that's one of the last bits of joy he will ever have uh and yeah then we get uh some clips of like homer being tested for the like it's a luxury carcass like testing his aerodynamics too he's in a wind tunnel for some reason i like that there's a in that scene there's

a nice little touch of the aerodynamic diagram of homer's body in the control room uh and then we cut to bart and lisa getting to play with penguins i would think bart killed at least one penguin that day i would think not not intentionally just accidentally and then another of my favorite drawings of this whole episode homer tearing down their things and then when he like crudely draws his homer the look on his face as he points at it just like stupid yet determined yes yeah the the stupid self-confidence is in his face as he points at it i love that drawing so And yes, so it's the big unveiling. Here we are at the very fancy Herb's company office.

Again, another thing to place it in time. I love that the sign says, the car of the 90s. Yes. To really let you know this is 1991 and to hurt it in any kind of rerunning of it. Watch it in the year 2004 and see that it says the car of the 90s uh and yeah herb has invited everybody this also reminds me of the uh the premiere of poochie with how the the very fancy presentation of it that even the pope's there for it but yes this this has more there were opulent presentations of cars back in 1991 as well.

But yes, now that we've seen so many clips of ridiculous Tesla press conferences, it's hard not to be reminded of it when watching this. And that's what ruins the ending for me is that it happens a lot, you know, but satire is now falling behind in the face of reality. We have outpaced the satire where if you look at the things that Elon Musk does, we are maybe a week after his press conference where he says, I want to make a robot. And to demonstrate, here's a person dressed as a robot. And he is not ruined. He is not brought down by this. In fact, it makes it more popular and gets some more attention. So I feel that if this happened today, there would powell stands online absolutely fighting for his behalf absolutely that's a great point that the the elon musk guy in a suit dancing like a robot is absolutely a simpsons gag that is something out of classic simpsons and it goes by and like obviously there are people like us who are like this is stupid

but you know it just goes by and it's like i'm that elon at it again like how is this dumber than cyber truck absolutely no this is cooler than cyber truck really with cyber truck was at the press conference in which he said this is unbreakable and then the window breaks immediately and again they're like perfect simpsons gag yeah yeah or he's like we made the hyper tube and it's just like it's a it's it's a tunnel underground like with neon lights on and you will die inside of it yes yeah every time like every but i i like i remember seeing just this hilarious video compilation of of his stands who made videos of like yep i got the self-driving updated and nope oh it's uh okay you gotta put your hands back on the wheel sometimes and all right now i'm I'm going to let it self-drive. And oh, it's almost ran into that.

Well, I still think it's really great though. Like just, it's incredible. The classic Simpsons meme online I see from the Homer and Apu episode where Apu is jumping in front of James Woods to absorb the bullets. Apu is labeled weird nerds online and James Woods is Elon Musk in that classic meme.

Yeah, that is why this the the biggest problem with this now is that this would not ruin anybody seemingly but but here let's first hear the uh the commercial for the homer a good parody of uh early 90s late 80s luxury car commercials ladies gentlemen, esteemed stockholders, members of the press, your holiness, tonight, we are going to witness

automotive history. All my life, I have searched for a car that feels a certain way. Powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a Nerf ball. Now at last, I have found it. Ladies and gentlemen,

presenting the car designed for the average man, the Holder. The squeaky turntable it's on or whatever platform the squeakiness really highlights uh really just uh the deafening silence is what i like and a full 3d turnaround of the car too and again it does as a little kid i just thought it looked like an awesome car like it's kind of batmobile as well it has every it's just a bunch of things shoved together that a child would like of just you know there's no true form to it it's just ridiculous and covered in accessories uh it's protruding hot rod engine the bowling trophy front piece is very funny yeah that even when they

it's stuff that homer didn't reference on screen you can just imagine homer said like you know people don't have front pieces the grills are too small these days we got to make them bigger yeah i was zooming in on this during our conversation i was like what is the uh the hood ornament it's a little guy bowling like on a bowling trophy and then that that the horn is like an air horn on top of it and the kids are in their own bubble like the back seat is a bubble all the way like no and again when they say the car for the average man designed for the average man and it is impossibly expensive like you can't make a car like that uh the average man couldn't afford it when when they say the price tag i i looked this up apparently in 1990 the average price for a new car was 15 000 of of the average car that a person would get now an eighty thousand dollar

car doesn't get you much like brand new eighty thousand you're it's an okay you get an all right car like i was prepared for this joke to feel wildly out of date like them saying something like saying something like it's it's completely unaffordable at thirty five thousand dollars you know is a lot of a lot of money but you for a car today, it would not be that much. But honestly, $80,000 is a very credible, too expensive for the average car buyer price. And this is a quick clip I love. DeVito does such a great freak out here. Any questions?

What does this monstrosity cost? Jerry, what's the sticker price? $82,000? This monstrosity cost $82,000? What have I done? I mean, the zoo was fun, but I'm ruined! The smile on Homer's face when he beeps that car horn. He should have at least looked behind the curtain before the unveiling or asked asked about the price so this is really where her

feels like a total asshole to me as an adult and he'll feel even worse in the sequel episode which is he blames homer for everything which it's like you gave you did this this was your fault you could have looked at this car at any time. You could have checked in on it. You could have listened to anybody who warned you about these things. And you didn't. You did exactly what you asked of him. Yeah.

Homer succeeded in the thing you wanted him to do. And then instead, like in the next episode, every time he sees Homer, he punches him because he's like, you ruined my life. You destroyed everything. It's like, no, you did, you asshole. Like, how dare you blame someone else for this? Well, this just proves Mr. Burns was correct in that family is one of the three demons you must slay to succeed in business. Very true. Very true.

But yes, I mean, what we know now is like this was made before we all knew the phrase too big to fail. Like there have been many American car companies that weren't allowed to be ruined and sold off like DeVito did or Herb does with Powell Motors. And just a decade later, Powell Motors would totally have been bailed out for this. Yeah, a big old check, just like blank check handed to him. And he could give himself and Homer a big bonus for their performance that year. I have some very, very pointless trivia that I will waste people's time with. So they're taken over by Kumatsu Motors. We'll actually hear that later in Mr. Plow.

That's who repossesses Homer's truck. Yes. Which I believe it's a Kumatsu truck. So Mike Reese put this in the episode to reference a film that boomers saw a lot on tv in the 60s and 70s called skinny and fatty it is a uh japanese movie that was localized and just shown on tv a lot and one of the characters name is komatsu and the uh the fatty character oyama will yell komatsu a lot in the in the movie actually i put on the movie it's on youtube i watched two minutes of it and it happened so it happens a lot in the movie. Actually, I put on the movie. It's on YouTube. I watched two minutes of it, and it happened.

So it happens a lot in the movie. It's very quick. So Mike Reese puts this in on the commentary. He's like, I was so proud of this, and none of my family and friends got it. And Jeff Martin corrects him. He's like, isn't it supposed to be Komatsu? And yes, it's Komatsu.

And yes, boomers have seen this a lot. Actually, a former girlfriend of mine, her mom would reference this. She would say Komatsu for no reason. That's very funny. I had never heard of Skinny and Fatty before. And, you know, me and you like Japanese films and anime and all that stuff. But yeah, until looking it up this time, I had not heard of Skinny and Fatty before.

It's as, you know, I don't think i'll be watching it because as uh as a fat kid with one friend in growing up in school i don't need to watch a movie about the fat kid and his one friend it's it's all on youtube and uh yeah it's a black and white uh japanese live action movie about kids 1958 it came out and called the chibi deca monogatari in in japanese little big story yeah uh i just a a good reese reference of hearkening back to a time when there were three networks so everybody only had like what 20 cultural references yeah we've all seen skinny and fatty am i right it played on nbc on one night and when you were 10 and we all watched it if twitter was around in like 1991 there'd be skinny and

fatty memes on there absolutely bring it back let's let's do a uh you know the skinny and fatty fandom is dying we need to revive it uh but that's so funny that like reese you know that's also a pre-internet thing like reese was like i remember it being kumatsu right that and then he finds out like oh it was kobatsu damn it uh Damn it. And again, I think about like, okay, did Herb and Mass produce these? Because then fine. Then he made a bunch of cars they can't sell and they lost a bunch of money. But is he ruined just because this car is so ridiculous? It made Powell Motors a laughingstock and ruined the company.

Did it cause a vote of no confidence because he made this ridiculous car that nobody would buy? And then his board of directors were like, we're selling to Kumatsu. We're not. You're out of here, buddy. But also then it's like they say it on the commentary, too. Where's his golden parachute? How does he leave with no money? Seemingly, he owned that house.

Sell that house. You have $8 million. Or if Kumatsu bought your company, they bought your stocks, didn't they? Don't you have money from that? Maybe it is a – we could assume that it is like a Elon Musk situation where the entire company is built on, like, leveraged debt. If, like, one thing goes wrong, if just the development costs alone of the, of the Homer are enough to like knock out the,

the bottom row of the house of cards. And then like, I don't know. Yeah. His house was like mortgaged to input into the company to keep it afloat for another two months. Yeah. I mean,

that also makes her even more of an asshole. Cause it's like, yeah, Homer was the domino that fell that even if you, you could be mad that Homer made a bad car and it made him look bad. If he had a more stable company, it could easily survive one mistake like this. Maybe her pal was like John DeLorean. He was trafficking cocaine and Palo Motors was just the laundering operation for that drug trade.

What's not seen between scenes here is his plea deal to get out of his drug trade. But, but yeah, so instead Herb just blames his brother for it. And, but obviously they do this because they have to reset at the end of an episode. They, if the Simpson family just has a rich uncle that they can ask for help whenever they need it, then there's no problem. Like, you know, like they, their problems are all gone. So they have to get rid of this. So we have a, honestly, pretty sad ending here. I can't help but think that maybe you would have been better off

if I'd never come into your life. Maybe I would have been better off. Maybe? Why, you sponge head? Of course I'd have been better off. As far as I'm concerned, I have no brother! Well, maybe he just said that to make conversation. His life was an unbridled success until he found out he was a Simpson.

I'm here! Now where's that millionaire chip off the old block I call Sonny Boy? Get in, Dad. I'll explain on the way home. Oh, I knew you'd blow it. Dad? What is it, boy? I thought your car was really cool. Thanks, boy.

I was waiting for someone to say that. So Herb is so immediately financially devastated, he's got to take the bus away from his closed-down company. And he'll be a hobo the next time we see him. So if he loses what money he had in that suitcase there and his nice clothes there, he'll be like a 1930s homeless man by the next time we see him. I do love hearing DeVito just scream like, You sponge head like the the venom in his voice as he's like uh yelling at homer's is very uh good and well

delivered by devito there and and homer just like you know if you take this you know too realistically emotionally homer was just told by the brother he only just found out he had that he's that homer is dead to him and he lost the this deep connection that had him sobbing earlier in the episode it's now dead and he'll never have it again and it's just that's heartbreaking and uh they said behind the scenes james l brooks did not like this ending after all he's like oh i don't like him leaving a failure that they wish they could have written a scene where on the bus he was leaving on herb goes wait i got another great idea and he's on to the next big idea which is why they then had to write him getting his next big idea and being a success again for a sequel episode that also is very like hastily written

feel to it with a lot of uh with a lot of filler it's towards the end of the season yeah just like this one but uh but yeah i think i wonder how late in the game that scene with homer and bart is because i think they really did want can we get at least one nice little moment like all right uh let's add like six seconds where bart compliments homer and homer's like thanks boy like but meanwhile lisa was doing her season two thing of saying the moral of the story right that with even that same sound cue i think behind it was like when she said uh in treehouse of horror one after the aliens fly away like there were monsters on that ship and truly they were us

i also like that grandpa simpson arrives in a cab and then gets mad enough and instead of riding back with the family gets back into the cab when it's really shown that it's like a road trip long enough for marge to like sleep with a pillow on which means that i don't know grandpa simpson's taking a thousand dollar cab ride to and from detroit it's the uh the prince of bel-air style cab ride yes yeah uh yeah i love that homer's like get in dad i'll tell you on the way i knew you and he just leaves he's like fuck you you ruined it i didn't get one i didn't get one second of the good life with my kid but i also feel like if herb punches homer the next time he sees him i feel like he'd murder

abe if he'd seen him in that moment so probably it's it's uh good for abe that he didn't run into herb on that day yeah maybe homer said dad is dead yeah don't ask about that don't ask about that oh it's so sad he uh had a heart attack recently and died that's how i learned about you anyway like yeah yeah it's too bad for homer he doesn't even get to keep the prototype of the homer maybe i maybe got sold off for parts to cover the remaining debts i don't know i think by the late 90s you could buy the hot wheels version of this uh the 2013 they were selling it at san diego comic-con i think they made other ones but when i looked up uh homer homer car toys on ebay mainly the 2013 and 2014 models were the ones coming up there was also

like a model kit i think made in the last decade of the homer uh those were the only ones i saw i think i would you would think in the playmate set they would have made a homer as well to sell or the or the mcfarland toys run in the late 90s early aughts but uh in my little search on ebay the the first ones i saw were the the the 2013 and 14 hot wheels ones which again eight whole dollars eight bucks get your own hot wheels in in mint condition in still in box uh homer hot wheel i mean it it's a cool toy i it would look good on anyone's desk uh put it on a little turntable, a creaky turntable of your own. It's a fun episode with a good guest star, but the closer you look at it,

it has a third act that has to make a million obvious mistakes to get to a final destination they have planned, and there's a lot of filler they fully cop to in the commentary, and I wish they'd have brought back to you know more often but i mean it's not like the best season two episode but there's worse ones in season two yeah some part i mean it's a bit flawed i think i would uh dislike it more if there wasn't a sequel and uh herb didn't get his groove back but yeah it's it's a bit a bit messy but i do love devito so much and again like you said henry i wish he came back more they have this this star player that

they only use one other time and uh just to right the wrongs from this episode but it's still enjoyable yeah i mean just dropping into this season randomly and watching a good early simpsons episode i i you know i totally enjoyed watching it. And I did also from watching this and the previous one and just vibing out with Simpsons season two, I, you know, there, as I said at the beginning, there's like a kind of melancholy, but also sweet, but not saccharine-ness and like kind of slowness to the pacing of these episodes that I really appreciated and, you know, makes the characters feel real and funny in a way that I haven't thought about the Simpsons in a long time.

So I definitely didn't have that many problems because I wasn't in it to nitpick, I guess. That's where we come in. Yeah, I just appreciated watching some good classic Simpsons. I felt like this was a good, standard classic Simpsons app. So Chris, thanks for being on the show.

Please let us know where you can find your podcast, including Chapo Trap House and Hell of Presidents, which you're on with Matt Christman, of course. Yes. Chapo Trap House, you can find anywhere podcasts are available. But if you want to subscribe, it's on Patreon.com slash Chapo Trap House. Hell of Presidents is available on Stitcher Premium. If you go to Stitcherpremium.com slash hell, you can start a free trial and start listening

to all the episodes there. I'll also plug that I do a podcast with my wife, Molly, called And Introducing, which is about music and musicians. We typically listen to

or read an artist's memoir or a book about music or even just a long article and interview and kind of talk about the musician's career and their place in pop culture and listen to their songs and just generally try to uh you know appreciate and look at a wide swath of different kinds of musicians and bands and that's

and introducing also available all episodes always free no ads um wherever you get podcasts awesome man with your music expertise the next time if we if you'd like to come back we got to pick a music centric episode for you that'd be a good one i mean i don't know how you guys do this but i would i haven't watched it yet i would be interested in watching that morrissey episode oh that's you know that's a little out of our order but it is uh as somebody who grew up liking the smiths to the normal amount of you know of a gay teenager would in the 90s i i did i did like that episode about how it feels to like morrissey as a kid and then realize he's a garbage person as you get older that could be a talking simpson special because no one will hate us if we don't wait

until 2043 to cover that one yeah we might have to wait till then if not but yeah but but if not also uh i would love to come and talk about the lollapalooza episode which i think is a little uh closer in your your order though that i imagine that also might be a few years out but what we will keep both these in mind chris but i don't i i i'm sure we will have you back sooner than later that's for sure so that this was so much fun thank you thanks guys so thanks again to chris wade for being on the show check out his podcast chapo trap house and also the stitcher premium podcast hell of presidents and also his podcast and introducing a lot of podcasts for him but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week ahead of

time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month to get just that but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall. That includes over 100 episodes of our mini series, our exclusive mini series, but also coming very, very soon at the end of October, we're going to be launching Blabbing About Batman, the Animated Series, our exclusive 10 episode podcast about our favorite episodes of Batman, the Animated Series, only behind the $5 paywall, only at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Find it there. And also, we have a $10 level.

If you sign up for that, you get all the $5 stuff, plus also access to one Megalon podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob is discussing the What a Cartoon movie podcast. We have a sister podcast called What a Cartoon, where twice a month, we cover an animated series super in-depth. And we also do the same for animated feature films. But only at the premium level can you hear the often over four hours, sometimes over five hour long podcast about films like this month's Batman Beyond Return of the Joker.

We're getting real Batman-y on the Patreon this month. And before that, we did a full summer of the Disney Renaissance. If you liked you liked hearing this talk about devito here we talked a shitload about him in the 1997 hercules podcast we did check out a giant back catalog of almost three years worth over 170 hours of what a cartoon movie podcast in addition to all of the five dollar stuff bob mentioned if you go up to that ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons today. So I have been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And my other podcast is Retro Knots.

That's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. Find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro not sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month henry what about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g stay up to date on the life of henry gilbert by follow me there and if you're on twitter following me and bob you should also be following the official twitter account of this podcast at talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod we'll keep you up to date on whenever we do new podcasts on the Patreon, on the free feeds, new polls, new information on upcoming stuff. Follow at TalkSimpsonsPod to stay in the loop. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next time for

Season 12's Bye Bye Nerdy, and we will see you then. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Get a little further. Get a little further! Mark! Lisa, if you don't behave, we'll turn this car right

around and go home. But, Marge, I want to see my brother. Oh, for God's sakes, Homer. It's an empty threat.