Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Old Money With Libby Watson

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

This week we're joined for the first time by awesome journalist Libby Watson from the fantastic Sick Note newsletter, and we're diving into an ep all about elder care. As Abe gets a date with an angel, she's gone far too soon, which he primarily blames Homer for. But then he forgives him pretty easily so the third act can all be about wanting to help people with money. All that plus the show's first trip to a casino in this week's sentimental podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

Riddle me this, pod fans. What's 90 minutes long arrives every Friday and is all about the Caped Crusader? Why, it's Blab and Bow Batman, the animated series, the newest Patreon-exclusive podcast miniseries on the Talking Simpsons network. That's right. For the rest of 2021,

we'll be covering our 10 favorite episodes of Batman, the animated series, with the same heavy-duty research, clips, and trivia you've come to expect from us. And if you sign up at the $5 level today at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons, you'll get to hear each episode as soon as it goes live. Remember sign up at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons to hear all 10 episodes

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I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's more disturbing than the Museum of Barnyard Oddities. I'm your host, the frequent Grandma's World shopper, Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today in the same room. Hey, it's Andrew Gilbert, and this podcast really only has evil purposes. It's true, and who do we have on the line? I'm Libby Watson. Hello. Thank you for having me. Mm-hmm, and today's episode is Old Money. Hello, young lady. Is your grandmother home? Oh, Abe. I can tell I better keep my good eye on you. Damn straight. This week's episode aired on March 28th, 1991. And as always,

Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, boy, Bobby. Dances with Wolves beats Goodfellas at the Oscars. New Kids on the Block star Donnie Wahlberg is arrested for allegedly setting a hotel room on fire. And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Secret of the Ooze tops the box office with a ninja ninja rap that's right cemented in all of our heads yeah the height of vanilla ice or perhaps the nadir depending on your stance it's it's such funny timing that they cast him in that movie when he was so hot and cool and then cool as ice perhaps cool as ice and then but then probably you know six seven months later when the film finally comes out after they film it,

he is as lame as lame can be. And everyone's like, oh, man, this makes the turtles less cool by association of having vanilla ice in your movie. And that was the year we truly learned the Oscars hate dudes rock movies because Goodfellas is all about dudes and how they rock and how those are all cool guys. We need to be like them. We need to emulate them and act like them in every way yeah they are they're always smart it's about learning how to be a man too like it obviously the film goodfellas is about the strong rules that make you a man and how every guy's got to trust each other it's certainly not about toxic masculinity

in any way it's about looking for coats in the back yeah and how to find them i certainly want to watch a movie i know that it's supposed to be a 100 accurate instruction manual for my life so and and meanwhile dances with wolves completely forgotten like nobody talks about it it's not it you know we got years and years of jokes of oh he's dances with wolves i'm uh walks over to bathroom or whatever i i i'm just saying all those like native american name jokes that we had to have thanks to the popularity of that film but it's it really is like nothing now and then goodfellas i i feel is still pretty pretty big pretty well well known and we'll see an episode based on it pretty soon in the simpsons yeah that's uh that was the

first production season three episode i believe uh was barth the murderer and yeah new kids on the block uh with donnie donnie walberg's thing it was that was also talk about like downfall of things like once you know that gave him he was the bad boy of the new kids i was gonna ask if he was the bad boy but this was too bad of a boy move i think on his part uh and so uh it also uh that got dropped down to a misdemeanor later so he he did not serve any jail time he can still vote donnie walbert i think so thank god yeah and still help run a burger restaurant as far as i know i think he's involved in wall burgers isn't he so uh you know that's the real that's a real heartwarming uh success story there ninja turtles

too secret of the use i uh loved that movie as a little kid it was one of my but i did even as a kid i think i noticed that the turtles were way less violent in it and weren't like kicking people in the face as much it wasn't as dark yeah that's the. It was dark and gritty. Once I saw at the start of the movie when Leonardo stabbed his swords into the ceiling to like swing and kick a guy, instead of at least in the first movie, not that he like chops people's heads off, but he at least swings his swords in an attempt to hit someone. Once I saw that in Secret of the Ooze, I knew things were getting a little too light after that. I guess for me, my opinion on this movie, I did see it in theaters too, Henry,

and I thought this is more like the cartoon and I like it more. But now I don't care about any of the movies. So my tastes have changed. I managed to entirely miss the turtles as a kid. I never saw a turtles movie or any other turtle content. So I feel like I really missed out there. Well, living in your neck of the woods,

I believe they were called hero turtles and and not Ninja Turtles for a time. Really? Oh, God, that's really lame. Because of the nunchuck ban. Yes, yeah. Nunchucks were banned in parts of the UK because... Is that true? Yeah, it was. You can find...

Look up Ninja Hero... Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. You'll see the logo of like for the british sold goods of the toys yeah at least until the late 90s they were censoring nunchucks out of video games sold in the uk oh my god wow i had apparently i had a nunchuckless childhood i have no idea i'm pretty sure i remember the the simpsons episode um where bart uh doesn't bart get some nunchucks at some point or want nunchucks?

He asks for them in this very episode. That's right. Yeah, he does. Grandpa doesn't know what they are. Oh, of course. Wow. Okay. Now, this is really embarrassing for me in my failing old person memory, although not

old enough to have seen this when it premiered. I was one when this premiered, so this was not among the first Simpsons episodes that I saw. Well, let's have a formal introduction, though, to our guest here. So joining us today is Libby Watson. She is the writer of the healthcare newsletter Sick Note, also a frequent podcast guest. If you like podcasts, you probably have heard Libby on something.

I guess that's true, yeah. The last couple of weeks, I've had to promote several appearances in a row, and it's kind of embarrassing because I don't have a podcast of my own I'm just like the person who shows up on podcasts so that's that's my moniker I guess person who shows up on podcasts yeah I was asking Henry before the show started I said to him I did research on Libby does she not have a podcast because I only associate her with being on podcasts as part of my podcast lifestyle that I live but no you are just in the orbit of many podcasts right yeah i'm gonna have to start introducing myself as a guy who goes on

podcasts i guess you know i'll just i'll just trash the whole sick note thing and be like hey yeah i'm the bi go on podcasts uh yeah i was like oh something does she not have a microphone of her own because how do you not have a podcast in this day and age but i mean yeah yeah you're a great guest on many many a podcast where we're honored to have you here we we wanted to invite you too because preview yeah that episode will go up before this one uh we had on uh brendan james of the the blowback podcast and he mentioned that like he didn't start watching simpsons until you told him uh it finally sold him on watching it in like adult years yeah yeah brendan and i have been friends for many years

one of the few good things to come out of having a twitter account is my friendship with brendan and yeah i remember him telling me that he was one of the kids whose parents didn't let him watch the simpsons which is not something i i don't think I really encountered that in the UK. I don't think British parents quite got the same anti-Bart hysteria that seems to have affected many American parents in the 90s because I don't think I knew any kids who weren't allowed to watch The Simpsons. I mean, I had pretty permissive parents anyway.

I was watching Terminator 2 and stuff when I was seven or whatever because my mom was cool. But yeah, I was not exposed to that idea. And now I've asked around my friends and lots of people have said they, even my husband, he said that he wasn't allowed to watch The Simpsons when he was a kid. And that blew my mind. You know, on our show, we've heard from two types of people growing up, that their parents were either lax and let them watch it regularly which was bob in my experience or uh we have folks whose parents

wouldn't let them watch it so they'd either go to a friend's house to watch it or once it started airing in syndication before five o'clock when parents came home or before like six o'clock that's when everybody started watching it like that's if you started watching in the 90s then if you're even younger than us then you uh just downloaded it on kazan your parents can't tell you what what not to watch well absolutely and quite right too um yeah i i mean for us i really have very strong memories of it being on bbc2 at six o'clock every day uh and i'm pretty sure that i had friends whose families would like sit down to eat dinner and watch the simpsons together like as a family so yeah kind of a far cry from the restrictive households that many of my friends grew up in well i have many questions about being

a british simpsons viewer we've we've talked to several folks who grew up on that side of the atlantic so i was like so yeah you watched it on bbc2 mainly not sky one i guess the dish service that a lot of people uh many british people watch simpsons on yeah yeah so i didn't uh i didn't get sky until i was about 10 i remember actually i have a very strong memory of coming home and getting off the school bus and my mom pointing out to me look we've got a we've got a sky dish now so that was huge but that was because I was excited to watch the Pokemon cartoon, which was a pretty short-lived interest for me, I think. Kind of grew out of that pretty fast.

But yeah, that was a pretty big moment. But I do sort of remember watching it on Sky, you know, when I was a teenager. Sky One tended to show the later episodes. You know, they would get the kind of new Simpsons episodes. So, you know, that was through... I was probably watching those through about 2005 or so um but it was also on bbc2 and channel 4 uh so you had lots of opportunities to watch the simpsons um on tv as a kid but i i did also have some vhs tapes that were like you know some sort of simpsons

collections on vhs that i had and then i had think i had a couple that we recorded off the tv as well do you remember when you started watching the show like what the first episode could have been yes i do very clearly um i remember it was the first time i went to my dad's house after my parents got divorced um and uh sad little story and um i remember it was um the monorail episode was being shown for the first time on on brit British television, which is kind of remarkable as an entry point. I think that's still my favorite episode. And I remember being pretty, I mean, I would have been four, I think, maybe five, but I'm pretty sure I was four. And I remember being pretty blown away by how funny it was.

If you're hovering around 40 like Henry and I, our stories are very boring. What was your first episode of The Simpsons? It was the first one that aired. It was the first time because it was the new you're hovering around 40 like henry and i uh our stories are very boring what was your first episode of the simpsons it was the first one that aired yeah it's the first time because it was the new one yes yeah i saw that sort of uh prompt twitter thing that was going around a while ago that was like uh you know your real horoscope or whatever is the first simpsons episode that aired in your lifetime and i think mine would have been the first episode of season two i can't quite remember i couldn't do that but i was able to do which garfield uh premiered on your birthday some people i know were too old for that and i felt superior to them just in that moment

yeah there's always something there's always someone older than you i guess i i was curious too with uh you know watching it on on sky one i saw that the it's Sky One is like shutting down or it's it's changing names or something so I was I didn't know this about the Sky One viewership of Simpsons but that like Domino's sponsored it for like a long time and people associate Simpsons with Domino's over there yeah I guess you're right you know I if you'd asked me who sponsored the Simpsons on Sky One I would have had no idea but now you say that that, I'm absolutely sure that that was the case. And I do remember seeing Domino's ads. I used to watch Futurama and Malcolm in the Middle on Sky 1 as well.

That was really the only reason to watch Sky 1. Other than that, it was just like total trash. The only other show I remember them having was Fear Factor, which is kind of strange. I don't really remember if they even had any like original sky one shows but yeah i definitely definitely remember seeing the the dominoes logo we didn't even i don't think we had dominoes in my town or if we did they didn't deliver to where i lived so it was always a far-off dream for me well i guess too you know you would later in life move to the

united states like what did did watching simpsons like shape your assumptions or view on america before you came over here totally yeah i have a i have an irish friend in the u.s as well and we always we're always quoting the simpsons back and forth and uh i do think it it's it's it's hard to say that like i thought america was good because of the simpsons because i don't think that the simpsons really portrays America in that positive a light. It's, you know, it's pretty satirical, and it makes fun of it a lot. But I, you know, I do think in my head, it was, you know, for many years, most of my childhood, you know, until I was what, 12 or something really started to become like aware of politics. America was where the Simpsons took place. And that was pretty much it. You know, I mean, when I got a little older,

I started watching Friends and like other American shows and stuff but for the longest time it was just simpsons land so i mean it's i think we can partially blame the simpsons for me immigrating to this ridiculous country well it's pretty accurate at least in this time period of the american experience it captures the 90s pretty well like uh you know they started drinking clear soda when we were drinking clear soda all the other things and was uh so in the uk too doesn't simpsons only have one commercial break there's not a commercial break every every act it's like right in the middle yeah so it depends so on bbc2 bbc channels don't have any commercial breaks at all so you would just watch the whole thing at once channel four they would you do tend to have just one commercial break in the middle.

I don't know if this has changed now because I've been in the US for like 10 years. And when I go home, I don't tend to watch much television because it sucks. But yeah, it was strange when I came to the US and I was like, wait, the show just started. Why is there a commercial break? It was very, very strange to me because growing up it was always you know 15 minutes of show and then a commercial break and then another 10 minutes and then a commercial break and then the next show starts you know that seemed more logical to me at least it's also logical to put day before month in calendars but we don't do that here either it still feels wrong

to me yeah yeah i assume it's because it's easier to get people to sit down and not go and make a cup of tea or whatever if the commercials are like sprinkled throughout it's easier to get people to sit down and not go and make a cup of tea or whatever if the commercials are like sprinkled throughout it's harder for the people to just walk away whereas the way we do it it's like a very clear like all right now you can go and get a snack break but uh yeah we uh me me and bob were uh we did see this live when it was new uh though actually i guess now's the time for henry's tale of the tape when i talk about how i recorded this or not you're running out of them in the later seasons now we're back to them we're back to them yeah well so um this episode shamefully was the first

one we missed as a family recording the simpsons like so is it because you were seeing a grandmother or grandfather perhaps uh you know i think it was a school event it's it's cloudy in my mind where we were but i do recall being in a car ride coming back from where we were and saying like we're missing the simpsons it's on right now we're not recording it like i was very upset and we got home like late we were there like 10 minutes into the episode we missed the first act and we started recording it but then it was just this incomplete episode and it made it was driving me crazy for the longest time a few years later it would then air in syndication and i would make sure to tape it off of syndication so we finally like had it complete but then i knew it was edited for

syndication and we were missing two episodes so i didn't feel complete with this episode until i got the dvd of it like that was when i finally felt complete with the simpson and you saw more of grandpa and b's not really funny courtship and that really made your life complete yeah the i mean the biggest cuts were in the syndicated version were just to the like conversation the the writing in a car conversation one so yeah i mean now that i think about this i'm like i'm glad if i could pick one season two episode to miss probably the very special episode with grandpa's girlfriend is was a fine one to miss yeah i remember when i first learned about that that syndication difference thing i don't know if that happened in the uk because i only had a few on vhs

and then i had a season six dvd when i was older but didn't tend to have it didn't have the whole box set or anything and then when i was at university uh there was like this internal file sharing network uh kind of underground file sharing network that was extremely fast and so instantly downloaded all the classic seasons of the simpsons and those were tv rips um and uh i noticed that there were jokes missing and i was like what what the hell why where's the joke about you know barking up the wrong tree or whatever you know in my brain it was like it's very uh disconcerting you know when something is missing from something you've seen so many times um and so then you know i didn't

really understand that until i learned about this thing where they get cut down for syndication. And again, I'm not sure that that doesn't happen in the UK, but I don't think it does. And I think that might be because the ads are, the ad breaks are shorter. Yeah. Our podcast is very, very thorough as you'll learn as a guest very soon, but we never go over the syndication cuts just because those episodes now, to see them with these cuts, you kind of have to go out of your way, don't you? You either have to download the wrong, you know, files or whatever, or watch them on broadcast TV, perhaps. I would guess I would I would suppose that, you know, I haven't turned on local broadcast TV in a very long time, especially not in the afternoon when Simpsons would air but if it were to be on I wouldn't I

definitely wouldn't think they'd have more time uh or they'd have less time for commercials now for syndicated ones I think they'd probably even hack away more yeah jokes in it I guess if you really want us to talk about these things I say to you Disney plus is like seven bucks right yeah and you pay pay once watch them all and then uh cancel or whatever one and the dvds have been out for so long with the you know non-syndicated cuts it's like syndicated cuts now it feels like work those are the rarer thing these days yeah yeah i guess the only way that you can do it is to go to warwick university and download the uh the terrible quality files that i downloaded back in 2010 or whatever i mean they were they were trash and they had a little TV channel bug in the corner and everything.

And I was just like, you know, I was like huffing from a paper bag or whatever to get my Simpsons fix. You know, I still see animated GIFs of the Simpsons made with those old files that have the little bug in the corner. And whenever I see a non-Frinkiac animated Simfrankie act animated simpsons gift i get upset because frankie act is there it's so easy to use i don't need these crusty 2002 era simpsons gifts in my life get them out of there no excuse at this point i mean i remember making my own screenshots for for meme usage from from those terrible files you know before we had frankie act and then frankie

i mean i i seriously think that i mean my opinion is the library of congress should buy the classic simpsons episodes anyway so that they can be free to all and not be owned by the Disney Corporation. But, you know, if we can't have that, then I do think the Library of Congress should buy Frankie Act. You know, I'd love for my tax dollars to go towards that. It's nice that Disney hasn't shut it down yet. And I hope they never do.

I hope they can at least recognize that it's a free advertising for their like stuff at the very least yeah i mean it's got to be that they just haven't found out about it yet so no one tell disney it's also funny to think of a time of like before it became so easy to like memeify the simpsons with you know they actually had to do your own work of like well VLC up here and then screenshots like yeah I remember making memes in the past pre-Frinkiac which is like pre-2016 I would go to

my shelf look at the booklet that came with the DVD say which episode is on which disc put that disc in load up all the menus load up the episode then do a screenshot in VLC and then export that into Photoshop so many steps It took so long before 2016. Frinkiac is a blessing.

I know. We really sound like old people now. You know, in my day I had to walk seven miles to school or, you know, I had to make my own memes without Frinkiac. The Simpsons will be right back. Will Grandpa Simpson blow the family fortune? Change, please! No!

The Simpsons. Friday night at 1130 on Fox 54. Welcome to The Break, everybody. Hope you're enjoying this as much as a trip to grandma's world and a big thank you to our guest this week libby watson it was so fun having libby on everybody should check out her very informative sub stack sick note you want to learn a lot about the horrors of the american healthcare industry and also follow her on twitter at libby c watson and you know if you enjoy this podcast you should also check out our patreon because that's how me and bob do this as our full-time

jobs at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can sign up for five bucks a month and get access to a ton of stuff in addition to just feeling good that you're helping me and bob do this as our full-time jobs each month you get a new episode of talking futurama we're going through the third season right now you'd also get access to a giant back catalog that includes us covering shows not just futurama but also king of the hill mission hill and the critic plus right now we're going through our top 10 favorite episodes of batman the animated series each week on friday you will hear a brand new one until the end of 2021 check it all out one more time at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. But if you want something as nice as Napoleon's hat and not the one he's famous for wearing,

you need to sign up at the $10 premium level of patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. For $10 and up, folks, you get all the $10 premium level of patreon.com slash talking simpsons for $10 and up folks you get all the $5 things i just talked about all those exclusive podcasts and you get one more exclusive podcast that is often over four hours long that is a what a cartoon movie podcast on our sister podcast what a cartoon me and bob cover an animated series twice a month and if you sign up at the premium level you get to hear the full what a cartoon movie of us talking about an animated feature film films such as the classic holiday special rudolph the red-nosed reindeer disney icons like lion king recent hits like spider-man into the spider-verse even some grown-up old classics like beavis and butthead do america

and tons and tons more please sign up today and you'll be able to hear the December one of us covering the Satoshi Kohn masterpiece, millennium actress. So many cool things at your disposal at that $10 level, please sign up today. Once more, that is at patrion.com slash talking Simpson. but yeah this this episode of simpsons is a real very special episode of a sitcom it's kind of like we said it about a few others this season but it definitely feels like in season two they they had too many like

tropey sitcom ideas like well this would be an interesting uh when flanders failed uh that's another good example of like well the neighbor is in trouble with his business and then homer helps them like there's in the future when they'd start with a trope the the truly classic simpsons would turn on that trope and be like oh well you thought we were going this way well now are like the simpsons get a new neighbor it's the former president george hw bush yeah that in this case it's like the second uca make a new friend you're like well she's dead like she's marked for death this character will not live it's going to be a very special lesson for everyone. Yeah.

I think they got the wrong guys to write this. This is Jay Kogan and Wally Wolodarski. Some of the younger writers at the time, they were in their mid to late 20s. They previously wrote Bart the Daredevil, another story in which the Simpsons car goes down the wrong path and it's attacked by animals.

But in that case, it was a robo animal. That's right. But they are like young, wacky guys. They like sillier scripts. And I think they were at a loss for how to put emotion into their scripts. So they just handed it was a robo animal. That's right. But they are like young, wacky guys. They like sillier scripts. And I think they were at a loss for how to put emotion into their scripts. So they just handed it to James L. Brooks, who wrote one of the most cringe worthy endings of The Simpsons to ever have been written. Sure.

This is not The Simpsons. The ending of this show is a different show entirely. Yes. Now, I mean, we'll get there. But when the episode ended, I was really thinking like, wait, where's the joke? Yeah, it's just how sweet. It's like things are sweet. Yeah.

At the very least, in the way we was written around the same time, Bart ends it by hacking and like choking himself like this disgusts me, this cute ending. But in this case, it's like, nope, just a big old hug of an ending. Yeah. Right. The writers weren't able to put themselves into the episode barfing at that point yeah and we were talking about like grandpa very soon would become the old man who poops himself who gets his teeth stolen by a turtle who thinks a porta potty is

an elevator who thinks a tool shed is a porta potty uh he's an insane old man but we're led to believe in this episode he's an eloquent old man who finds love and can quote Rudyard Kipling at the end of the story. Yeah. And then we learn was O Brother out there before this or after this? This is before. O Brother is before this. Okay. So we learn that Abe sucks and is awful to women, too.

Yeah. In that episode, he, like, abandons a child and who he never even looked for again and just tells homer about offhandedly yeah who also is like a crank who goes to movie theaters to complain but like he's not a complaining guy in this he's just like a happy a happy or wistful man yeah right i think making him kind of the protagonist of this episode is is a strange thing because he's such a punchline in in all of the rest of the episodes and a really good punchline as well. And, you know, other episodes even that feature Grandpa heavily, like the sexual inadequacy episode, you know, he's just a completely different character. You know,

you're not really on his side at all. Whereas in this, we're entirely supposed to be on his side. You know, he's got a rude son who doesn't appreciate him and he lives in a, you know, dilapidated nursing home and stuff like that you know the flying hellfish episode that also is about surprising you like oh grandpa is not who you think he is but that at least accepts it like yeah grandpa is a joke and everybody is right to laugh at him but sometimes he can get his groove back and remember when he was a war hero and he becomes like sergeant rock for one episode and it must be said i mean this is an episode about an old person dying this entire generation of old people is gone now like this

is my grandma's generation uh i think this is like what the silent generation yeah no i i have no grandparents left either it's uh not to get too bummed about you know death but it did make me a little sad because i associate this era of old people with my grandma who i loved and now i'm like well these people are gone now thanks a lot simpsons yeah it's like seeing a photo of an old you know it's the it's the kitty from uh hang in there kitty oh that cat's long dead yeah i i watched a movie a 1932 movie about the elderly uh for this podcast episode and uh when i watched i thought like oh these people like were born in 1850 that i'm seeing on screen here this is a very old movie i mean people grandpa's age now they run for president yes they're a different class of old people entirely yeah i know when

when we talk with bill oakley about like writing grandpa he mentions like it's just out of time now like when he he would write grandpa stuff he was writing his grandfather who was born before 1900 like that's how old his dad his grandpa was and that's not who abe can be anymore you know they did uh in the last season of simpsons the most recent one they just did an episode that still was about how grandpa was a world war ii vet and it just it can't work anymore like even even if he was drafted at like 16 that's still he would be almost 100 at that point i feel like at this point i'm the same age that grandpa simpson would have to be the current simpsons i mean me and bob are almost older than homer uh we consider homer 39 and we're getting close to being older than homer yes uh as of this

airing home uh henry and i are both homer's age canonically so the homer's 36 in this season two episode so we are older than homer at this moment yeah yeah that's fucked up but yeah you're right kogan i think kogan and walidarski they're not the right guys for this and also this feels like them uh not trying too hard there's a lot of moments in this that just feel like filler to get to a page count. Well, what if a parade of characters walked in? Well, what if a guy walked over there and then looked at things for like a minute? That'd cover some time. Well, I feel bad too that this is directed by David Silverman, who is the best Simpsons

director ever. He directed the movie. He's like like if anybody gets credit for why the show works in animation it should probably be david silverman like and this feels like kind of a waste of his abilities to give him the uh an episode like this one and then he uh silverman tells a very funny story on here that i've heard him tell before but it was like that he was essentially supervising director for the whole series at this time. And on top of that was doing four episodes for the season, plus having to do the Halloween

episode. And he said, while working on this episode, they also came up to him and said like, do you think you could direct the do the Bartman video? And he says that he very performatively flopped on the ground and started shaking as a way to express how overworked he was feeling in that moment and so uh eventually they went to brad bird and could convince him to do it and brad bird said he about lost his mind and what an insane uh turnaround and difficult job it was to do the bart man video yeah just to go back to uh to my britishness which is

obviously the most interesting thing in the world um i i remember watching the the early simpsons because like i it was about season four by the time i started watching it and so you know watching the early simpsons and then references in the simpsons to that kind of early era where it was all like bart craziness and like bart merch and stuff and all those jokes about like oh we wouldn't sell crappy merchandise or whatever that kind of all passed me by because again that didn't really happen in the i mean you could get like simpson stuff i had a bart simpson t-shirt or whatever but like i don't think it hit in the same way that it that it did in the u.s so i was always just like okay what are they talking about so that was one of the many many jokes that

i didn't really understand as a kid uh i mean too it's funny they talk about on the commentary they're like oh what are the kids watching this? You know, the Bart show for as far as a child in 1991 is concerned. And then it's just all about old people. There's very little Bart in this. And by the way, to answer your question from earlier, the youngest World War II vet turned 92 this year because he enlisted at age 13. All right. Yeah.

I can't make any promises that he's still alive. That was inil that he turned 92 okay i think that's just showing off frankly enlisting at 13 what a nerd real try hard there yeah exactly yeah uh and uh well yeah this episode has a big guest star like a sitcom legend guest star that's right great casting too i you know let's talk about her i guess when she appears right episode but i guess to start from the beginning here we head to the retirement castle as uh that's where abe's getting dropped off and uh the retirement castle was you know first seen in the thanksgiving episode i think what now that we've gone back through season two i've been noticing more and more where

they you know they do a one-off gag and one in an early in season two thing and they're like hey that could be a whole episode and i think once they wrote the thanksgiving episode where homer visits the retirement castle they're like oh this is really a depressing place let's spend more time there with it let's figure this out this is actually the first time it's called the retirement castle i checked previously it was just called springfield retirement home but i think it was named castle in this one to just highlight how run down it is but that name would stick after this episode so the first time it was called springfield retirement castle is in this episode and also yeah right from the jump abe is totally out of character he wants to be around his family

and is sad when they drive away like instead of instead of being an old crank he actually is a guy's like well bye kids but they just drive away like he wants to see his grandchildren that's uh though man a trip to the liquor store that's uh that's pretty bad of them that's pretty low at least buy him some booze yeah yeah he should be having some of the brownest of the brown liquors. That's what he wants. Stirred into his mush, as he says, right? So this descriptors of smells as they drive away when they try to think of what grandpa smells like. I never saw that one. That wasn't in the syndication cut.

I only got to see it in the DVD version because I can see why it's kind of like needless descriptors of things. But I like all of those things. Like just what it brings up, like an old chest that's wet at the bottom. Like that's what he smelled. Now, my grandfather, he smelled like pipes because he smoked a pipe. Like a lot of tobacco. I think of a rosy tobacco scent when I think of grandpa. I think most grandparents of this vintage did

smell like tobacco yeah just by default one that didn't i think they were just 100 tobacco i think for me it's like the smell of my granddad's car like the the sort of the seat being um you know there's like uh really old car seats that were like very fabric-y they were like way too kind of soft the fabric was almost like felt you know or velvet or whatever something like that being hot in the sun for me that's the smell grandpa which is much better than a hospital hallway you know i remember yeah that thought as a little kid of like riding riding in my grandparents car like my grandpa drove me center like this doesn't smell like oh cars can smell different like just just that thought uh as they're driving back they decide like oh wait a

minute we're gonna grow old someday and we better show the kids how to treat them well i maybe that was the first time as a child too that i realized like oh my parents can grow old and i'll uh the grandparent nobody stays the same age all the time yeah this this episode definitely was kind of an introduction to the concept of of death and also of like old people being able to be sad about death which is a very specific kind of sadness you know it's like it's not just that you lose your grandparents that but that your you know your grandpa loses his wife kind of thing is is an extra kind of sadness but yeah they they decide they gotta plan something good for abe next time in our first clip you know grandpa kind of smells

like that trunk in the garage with the bottoms all wet no it smells more like a photo lab stop it both of you grandpa smells like a regular old man which is more like a hallway in a hospital homer that's terrible we should be teaching the children to treasure the elderly. You know, we'll be old someday. My God, you're right, Marge. You kids won't put me in a home like I did to my dad, would you? Well... Marge, what do we do?

Well, I think we better set an example. Absolutely. Our third Sunday of every month should be a pleasure, not a chore. Where's some place fun we can take Grandpa next time? To the pony ride! No. Glory! Dancing on ponies.

Well, I always enjoy the glass blower at old Springfield Town. Oh, he saw that. The honor. The Museum of Barnyard Oddities. No, Bart, no! Gross. I got it! The Springfield Mystery Spot! That is just a dumb mud puddle.

This is Lion Safari. Lots of fun crosstalk. You can tell there's some ad libs. They're in the same room. I like it in this era especially. I love that. Homer is just saying he can't ride a pony. Yeah, exactly.

It's great. This is stuff like even in classic episodes you don't get this kind of cross talk with the characters because the actors aren't like recording together but this it does feel very different um i also love the like very kind of explicit kind of oh shit this can happen to me oh okay well we better do something about it then that is that is good it kind of i guess i kind of wasn't paying attention the first time but when i watched the second time i was like oh that's entirely the reason why he worries is just because he's all about himself uh it's i i like they write homer is getting stupider every episode in this moment

is homer realizing like i'll age i'll be old yeah this is is Lisa written as the pony lover. That's her main aspect is that she loves ponies. She also wants to be cruel to the elderly as well. Yeah, yeah. It's not the empathetic Lisa we know so well. This is just her wanting a pony ride. And then the pony, she has two pony jokes the same episode. And yeah, also the Springfield mystery spot.

I still haven't been to the San Francisco mystery spot. or well really it's i guess it's in santa cruz i think it is but the go to the winchester mystery house instead it's a more fun mystery destination it's true i should i was just down in san jose for some to go to the great america roller coaster place but i should have gone should have checked out that winchester house this was another thing that kind of it didn't exactly pass me by as a kid but there was a little bit confusing because i don't think we really have like roadside attractions in the way that america does in the uk we definitely didn't have mystery spots so i was kind of like what is that and like in um season three the the baseball one when you know just like the the bottomless pit or whatever stuff like that I was like it just seemed

like a completely wacky joke to me I didn't really get that it was like making fun of a thing that existed yeah this kind of stunned me when I saw this at the age of eight or nine because there were commercials for a thing like this on TV nearby I never went to it and I think the biggest risk that you run by going to one of

these is having a monkey rip the antenna off your car I mean I'm sure a lion can kill you if you the antenna off your car. I mean, I'm sure a lion can kill you if you get out of your car and taunt it. I'm sure like a zebra. I think I saw a video of a man being attacked by a lion. We did go to a discount lion safari in the UK. We didn't have mystery spots, but we did have discount lion safaris.

And a monkey did rip the antenna off our car and it was very funny. It really happens. Yeah, those monkeys are just collecting antennas. At what point do you have enough antennas, monkeys? What's their long game with this antenna plan? It's just a currency for them. They're trading it for bananas or whatever.

I feel like every one of these is a Joe Exotic situation and there's like a big lion graveyard somewhere we're not seeing. Oh, totally. Yeah, no, thinking about that now is very grim. Wob safari park that we used to go to near my my grandma's house it was definitely uh not not in good shape the tiger king documentary demystified a lot of that for us now anytime i see like on a talk show they bring in like oh it's a big cat and here's our guest who owns the cat and i think like well you have to run drugs or have uh be a bigamist or you were just in jail for uh for like spousal abuse something is wrong some sort of cult yeah a

cult definitely a cult is there yeah yeah the only zoo i trust these days is the the national zoo in dc anything else i i really don't i really don't like to think about uh also you know these bits here would be set up for later jokes they would do you know the all this pony stuff would be an episode but also uh old springfield town and the glass blower like in i married marge homer works as a candle maker in old springfield town uh making a really crappy candle as as one child cries uh i really do like the shot there's some really good animation here that silverman gets in like the shot of all of them screaming discount lion safari i really like that huge open mouths yeah just seeing everybody in the car talking at once again

feels very uh it feels early it does uh but then we get abe uh he's angrily dropping his jerky in his jerky drawer that's all it's filled to the brim with jerky. A lot of jerky and not wrapped. Yeah, I don't even have that many socks in my sock drawer. Also, for a guy with false teeth, I don't know. Jerky is a tough chew. I feel like somebody with dentures shouldn't give them jerky. I can't make out what he's muttering as he throws the jerky in the cabinet or the drawer, rather.

But it's something about his teeth. Oh, yeah. He is complaining about his teeth oh yeah maybe he is complaining about his teeth there yeah next time you should get a baby ruth bar or something i think uh just well i mean that's again why he's on a steady diet of mush going onward i think for a but nice smooth three musketeers nothing chewy in that just full of delicious foam whatever they put in it yeah so as we get a walk through the very sad retirement castle there's some really fun and wild designs of the elderly here like it's it's where some of

the biggest freaks of season two's background design come to play and i i love them i something about the wonkiness these old ones feel really you know warm and fuzzy to me i feel nostalgic for them but even on the you know the 2002 or 2003 commentary graining's just you know warm and fuzzy to me i feel nostalgia for him but even on the you know the 2002 or 2003 commentary graining's just you know whining like ah some of these people they don't look right look at that beard line that we wouldn't have a guy like that there yeah they did not eliminate all the freaks yet from their uh character packages here but uh yeah they really come out the shine in the old folks home i look closest at the snail lady I think of. Her neck looks like she just has a basically shell of a body and a neck that pokes out of it. But yes, we then head over to getting the pills.

And this is when we have a real meet cute here between these old folks. Hey, these aren't my pills. Now, now, Mr. Simmons, don't make me call Nurse Brownski. Good Simpson, damn it. And these aren't my pills. Excuse me, Mr. Simmons. Don't make me call Nurse Brownsky. Good Simpson, dammit! And these aren't my pills! Excuse me, Nurse. My name is Simmons and I think I have the wrong pills. I get two red ones for my back spasms, a yellow one for my arrhythmia, and two of the bluest eyes I've ever seen in my life. Then these must be... Then I have your...

They must have... Oh, yeah. Look at us. We're staring at each other like a couple of stupid punk teenagers. Oh, I wasn't staring. It's my lazy eye. i'm beatrice simmons but my friends call me b well i'm abraham j simpson care to tip their wrists with me

i would be delighted so that's audrey meadows uh sitcom legend she played alice cramden in the honeymooner so it's sort of a passing of the torch yeah and apparently she was lots of fun and totally in on it yeah she sounded like a real good time like telling them old stories about working on the honeymooners like the exact person you'd want her to be coming in and yeah i mean uh reading up on her you know she lived about four years after this episode aired she died in 96 yeah of throat cancer you can tell she's a heavy smoker just by her voice so that's exactly what killed her but uh a huge uh career yeah hollywood again this is kind of like with doris grouse but in both cases it's like uh i feel i know that obviously the the parties were fine with it the actors were like yeah i'll cough i'll do a stage cough but

now thinking about like a person who died of smoking related illnesses being told like hey cough no cough harder and sicker right now i i feel bad for them uh but yeah aubrey meadows is awesome and i think she has really good chemistry with dan castellaneta it feels like they recorded together like her like it feels at least he doesn't feel like grandpa but dan is playing an old man very well who's who's befriended her which i i think is very sweet and i mean it makes sense that she is b simmons and he is abe simpson so their names would be right next to each other in the chart but how many people have died from miss wrong the wrong pills being given to this retirement castle

yes i also love the just like immediate threat that she issues like that they're gonna they're gonna call nurse bronski or who apparently you know is someone to be terrified of in that you know sickly sweet voice you know i'm gonna call the nurse to abuse you it feels like it's the nurse ratchet of this establishment yeah yeah libby i was i was gonna ask in your in your career i i would guess you've probably seen much worse stories about elder care than uh than is is visible in this episode well absolutely yeah i mean that's kind of the thing of this episode is it's just like taken as a given that retirement homes and nursing homes are just horrible places where people go

to where the elderly go to ignore the inevitable but also um horrible places to live that are in bad condition and uh you know where people are poorly treated by staff or or whatever um it is it is kind of a grim uh i guess setting for this for this whole thing to happen and and yeah i mean it is obviously a thing where you know nurses and staff do mix up meds and give people the wrong meds and uh you know just kind of like take advantage of of patients and and are also themselves like hugely overworked and underappreciated not underpaid so it's it's a good it's certainly a good setting for like this very sad story um and it does kind of make the ending kind of even more kind of grim you know i mean it's

meant to be you know super sweet and nice but the ending is like oh you finally get to live in a place that's not awful you know it's it's really it's really not really not nice to think about and the jokes would only get darker yeah after this point about this place sure well and the year i mean the decades now of retirement castle jokes like they they are jokes made by men mostly men who uh as writers on the show uh who you know were joking about like oh isn't it funny that this happens to the elderly we'll never be old someday and i think now as they're approaching that age like oh these i think they've lightened up a little on the uh the crazy old man jokes in the show that they used to make in their 30s.

I definitely used to find and still do find all of the jokes about like ignoring the elderly and stuff. Like, I mean, the Simpsons is obviously like often very kind of biting. And those ones often do bite me just a little bit too hard. Like the one where Abe goes to pick up uh marge's mom and he brings out the wrong woman and he goes back to get her and she says can i come too that one just that one hurts me so much that's a really that's a really tough one but i don't know it kind of in a way like when when they treat the the retirement castle in later seasons as you know with the the kind of blasé you know like yeah this

this is you know they're really they're really dark about it i don't know i kind of feel like better about that than this like shocky thing that they do in this episode where they're really kind of hammering it home and then at the end it's like oh okay now you now i guess you get to you get to live in a nice place if someone happens to luck into $100,000 or whatever. There's something about the later ones that I guess don't necessarily hurt in the same way. It's just treated as a joke like everything else. Well, also to think that even Homer would visit once a month is like, well, no. There's so many jokes about, I never visit him, that he even comes at christmas and they close the blinds on him but yeah this this sequence here is you know i feel like they needed to up it just a little bit

more but the joke is this is like a romantic comedy yeah moment but it's with two very old people in it and the closest thing to a joke is them going like them having the little chuckle to themselves and then they fall into a hacking fit but and then they do this extended parody of a movie that was uh not very well known at the time and i don't think anyone would know it now i only know because it's on the commentary this whole pill eating scene is a uh reference to the movie tom jones from 1963 in which people a woman and a man are seated across from each other at a table and they're trying to one up each other by being like sexy with non-sexy foods and there's like a lot of gross chewing

and crunching and eating noises and it goes on for a long time that scene is on youtube if you want to check it out but that is a parody or that is a reference to uh that scene in tom jones a scene of grandpa and b sexually eating their pills to the point where they intertwine arms and drink the little cup of water that's also from tom jones right right that makes sense because it really is quite difficult to watch it does go on for quite a long time it's too long yeah i it's you know it's funny this in season two they got all these ideas of like oh we can do like shot for shot parodies of films let's do the birds or let's do psycho that was was the big one, you know, or, or tons of citizen Kane ones. But when they do Tom Jones, that was the one that just flew by.

Cause that's not in everybody's memory. The same as, as a Hitchcock or a Kubrick film, I guess too, with the Tom Jones, the only what I know it for two things is that it was a best picture winner. Oh, okay. Because I worked at a video store that had a wall of just like every best picture winner here it is and so every time i put tom jones there i'd be like oh right there it is tom jones and then i also know it because i did see the film big fish uh the tim burton movie and albert finney plays the elderly father in it and uh ewan mcgregor plays him in the flashbacks and they made ewan up to look as

much like albert finney in tom jones as they could okay to make it uh match the ages so if you want to see when albert finney was a handsome man uh you could also look up tom jones as well but i guess too he identifies himself as abe simpson or abraham j simpson that's the the first tier as well yeah that was the the first tier as well yeah that was the first time they named the character and i don't think he was named officially before this because uh mac grating said you know homer's named after my dad uh lisa is my sister marge is the mom yeah he's the other sister it's all about my family so i'm i want you to name uh grandpa i'll leave the room they name him abe. Abe is the name of Matt Groening's grandfather, and it's also the name of his future child.

Yes, yeah. Or perhaps the child born around this time. So I looked that up. Yeah, that was his grandfather's name. Matt Groening had his first son in 1990, and his second son, born in 1993, israham graining the his son and that that son would go on to be a writer's assistant for disenchantment who wrote one of the episodes in the third season so uh stay in staying in the family that episode is a good one that uh that a when i saw that abe graining wrote it i was like oh that that makes sense because it's an episode about being a rich kid like that

and worrying that everyone hates you secretly and no one's everyone's a fake friend like when i saw that abe graining wrote that episode i was like that's interesting that's you you can follow abe graining on twitter he's on twitter if you want to give him a follow well i can tell you mac graining has a lot more kids after that with another partner he needs to make more shows they all need writing jobs. Well, you know, that's another like 10 years. They were just born in the 2010s, those kids. He has a lot of little blonde children now.

Well, lucky for them, they won't ever have to worry about, you know, whether to put him in a home or whatever. At least they'll have the money to put him in a nice one. That's true. Yeah, great. Matt Groening, like he could own 17 retirement castles today if he wanted to to live in i i remember dana gould when we interviewed him he joked like oh yeah matt graining uh he's he's a very relaxed guy he's a billionaire of course he's relaxed like

abe also jokes that he has one working kidney which that does not fit with later continuity where uh abe has actually two amazing kidneys that then explode when homer won't let him use the bathroom you know a real goof them up there simpson somebody should have been fired for that nobody wants to remember that episode henry yes yeah i don't need trouble i hate that well there's funny stuff in that one on the honey bunch and all that but i homer is just so mean to him it's so crazy to think of that episode in relation to this episode this episode homer goes i miss my daddy yeah uh but uh also to give you some scary perspective on things uh so when this was

recorded aubrey meadows was 69 it's audrey meadows henry Respect the dead. Audrey Meadows. She was 69. Dan Castellaneta was 33. Wow. He is now 64. So he is close to the age of the old woman he acted with in the 90s. Hmm. Yeah. That hurts. That one I don't like. Hopefully he has many more years left. Many

many years. Yeah. You know I don't I bet he is not as avid a smoker as Meadows was. He looked very healthy the one time we saw him like two years ago so uh abe then asks her out i thought it's kind of cute how he's like and but it doesn't fit for abe that he's like bashful or worried about asking out a girl in his old age but i i at least like that she says like sitting alone in my room well if you got he got plans already although he does need advice later on for uh from homer about uh getting with um marge's mom that's right he learns to play it cool don't smooch her like a mule eating an apple

that's the wrong way to go he lost all his game he actually has some game in this episode where he like seems to remember what it was to date a woman but uh yeah afterwards he loses that but he he also hums a song as he's getting ready for his date uh when he pulls out his lucky lindy pomade uh and i finally know what that song is that he's humming it's the 1917 hit dark town strutters Ball by Shelton Brooks. I assume Dan is just ad-libbing something, but it had to be real. I would think Dan knows old-timey stuff enough to know this old-timey song. And old enough they wouldn't have to pay for it.

Here, why don't we give it a little listen to the section Abe sings. I'll be down to get you in the taxi, honey You better be ready about a half past eight Now, baby, don't be late I want to be there when the band starts playing Remember when we get there, honey The two steps, I'm going to have them all I'm going to dance off both my shoes When they play the jelly rolls

There we go. That reminds me, like, we had an old neighbor who I would visit because he lived alone. He was a widower, and we just were nice to him. And like, this was the radio station he listened to. All the songs sounded like this. The one where you have to dance with your fingers in the air. One finger in the air, yeah.

It's important to remember, I think, when people say like, oh, music these days is so terrible. You got Cardi B and stuff and music used to be great. It's like, no, it used to be shit like this. Just all one idea yeah the uh i i i also think you know it's an appropriate song for aid to sing because he's about to meet a girl for a date to go dancing so you know it fits though he just has to go to the next room over to to see her uh i'll say i didn't know what pomade was as a kid i would i would learn later i i'm not i'm not

much of a pomade guy but uh didn't didn't that in when it became a thing for dudes to be a madman madman style guy and pomade start coming back into the in into use yeah definitely i think so when we were watching this my my husband was like what the hell is pomade i was like i don't know some kind of goo you put in your hair you know know, 50s guys, they slick their hair back and they look like they dunk their head in a vat of chip fat or whatever. It's because you only washed your hair every two weeks back then. Right. Well, you see, soap was expensive back then after war.

Hey, now that's coming back around again. To be a cool person is to not bathe. To be stinky like Jake Gyllenhaal. Yeah, to be as stinky as Jake Gyllenhaal. People only don't point it out because he's rich. He doesn't understand that. There's a whole trendy don't wash your hair thing. I'm always getting bombarded with ads on Instagram about how you shouldn't wash your hair too often because it makes it more dirty or whatever.

And I'm like, okay, but even if that was true, I don't have three months to sit around waiting for my hair to heal itself or whatever. I'm just going to keep washing it, thanks. And so Abe and Bea head out for a dance. The Larry Davis experience returns and is playing some music. And yes, Larry Davis, once again, named after Jay Kogan's high school geometry teacher. So every time you see them, just remember that.

And you won't see them often because they kind of disappear after this. There's a lot of characters that if they first appeared in a Kogan and Wolidarski and it's a random name you find out it's like well yeah that was that person's friend like like john frank like john frank in this episode yeah and the embrace me song sequence like it's very sweet and all but it's it's too sweet for the simpsons like there's no extra joke to it yeah I don't know if the joke of them on like a tropical beach is supposed to be well I mean the scene of them there is that a joke I

don't know it feels like the heightening of the pedestrian things they were doing before but there's no like real jokes in this but maybe they just wanted to play it seriously because you have to be invested in Abe to feel for him when this woman dies well and that's the other thing is you know I was thinking like the actual sequence where they you know the montage where they're where they're dating it does feel kind of truncated you know we're supposed to kind of get the sense that they are dating and in love and that you know that it'll be very sad when she dies but it's actually a very short amount of time and you know she only dies like halfway into the episode or something so we don't really get that much time with her at all yeah it's supposed to be a month because homer uh will take abe out every month and then

he meets b right after homer dumps him back at the home again so maybe they needed another act together or something in this episode yeah but they they gotta speed it up they gotta kill the point is for her to die not to live uh plot wise yeah no i mean that these are the dangers in these shows any very special episode like you know in the 80s they this was used a lot more but like i think of full house episodes where right you know they can only have like three minutes of michelle tanner or stephanie befriending some kid who has a problem before then it's about the problem and the kid goes like well yeah my dad hits me or they they find out an old man has senility and and then it's the episodes about that you don't you don't get much time to hang out when in a purpose-driven episode like

that which it's too bad that this seems like the i guess the joke in this is that it's meant to feel more like a month like they're dating for like six months or something and uh i guess you know b's got all this money uh she can take them to hawaii pretty easy i guess though though why is she staying in such a crappy retirement home if she has all this money that's that's what i'm confused about yeah that's that's a good point and she's certainly not on medicaid because to get medicaid to pay for your nursing home you have to be basically broke. So I don't know why it's such a bad nursing home. Absolutely. Wow.

That's depressing. That's one of the depressing facts you can learn in Sick Note. I've got hundreds of those. But yeah, I mean, the song is, it's sweet and all, but maybe I'll even drop it in here. Embrace me, my sweet, embraceable you. Embrace me, you irreplaceable you. Don't be a naughty baby. Come to Papa, come to papa come to papa my sweet

then in the next scene abe is going birthday shopping uh for her and we we head back to Herman's place. Is this the last Grandpa and Herman scene? Might be. It might be, man. Because they were a pair. It was established that this is who Grandpa talks to. Like an unhinged middle-aged man who would probably go on to have like a militia or at least some sort of standoff is in his future, right?

Oh, totally. or have some at least some sort of standoff is in his future right oh totally no i've i said it before but it looks like if you wink at him he will show you the nazi memorabilia he had hides for special customers yeah he'd be a proud boy these days for sure well that's that's the funny thing that i i like about their friendship and i wish they'd have kept because abe you know is this man out of time he's a world war ii vet uh like he's and that that he'd fall into like oh who'd be a guy who like him a crazy gun collector like that too who has the confederate flag up in his place he'd be like i respect you uh you are the greatest generation but it it's also great that on the commentary walidarski instantly shouts out when he sees herman like

oh that's schwarzwalder that's john schwarzwalder right there on screen and then they kind of one up him back because they're like oh well actually you looked exactly like auto back then and we based auto on you and then he's like hey guys don't let's not bring that up he's he's a little sensitive about it i think too because he's like he doesn't have that hair no more wally walidarski i i actually if you want to know wally walidarski looks like if you've seen the darjeeling limited film uh he's the uh bald man that owen wilson keeps yelling at in the movie and and makes fun of for being bald that's who wally walidarski is did you know that he is the writer of those dog movies a dog's purpose and a dog's journey he's on some weird movies that's weird yeah yeah is he born

again that feels like a born again thing to write uh dog movies about how great dogs are well uh the dogs weren't doing so great on those movie sets i'll tell you that much all right that's right i don't think well i don't think wally waldarski was implicated no but uh hard name to say but yes he was in the darjeeling limited playing brendan and of course the director of sorority boys we pointed it out before right right wow what a weird what a weird when they when him and kogan split they went in very different directions uh work wise uh but yes as as abe is shopping in the wrong place he gets directed to the right one let's take a look at the bayonet case, huh? Hey, what's that? That, my friend, was Napoleon's hat.

It doesn't look like Napoleon's hat. Well, it's not the famous hat. It's the one he wore for a week in April 1796, just before he defeated the Sardinians. Ooh, how much? $400. Yeah, I'll give you a five bucks. That's not the kind of offer you should make

to a man with a Gatling gun under the counter. Why don't you try Grandma's world yo activewear i need a price check and a wool shawl yeah the uh you know i think they thought grandma's world was going to be funnier than it was there aren't enough grandma jokes and of course all of the design jokes in the background are associated with the old people of this era so all the things on sale are things like doilies picture frames uh seashell soap sachets and potpourri all things my grandma uh trafficked in sachets is really good that's a really good one because it's so non-specific i yeah you know potpourri was such a thing with with my my my mom and stepdad they don't give a shit about potpourri like they they're

they're more into collecting like driftwood or shark teeth. My mom loves collecting shark teeth. That's her favorite thing. Potpourri was the forbidden soup. You must never drink of the potpourri in the little crock pot. I never knew what that thing was in a house as a kid. It confused the hell out of me. And I'd want to touch it because I was a curious young lad.

Yeah, I don't even know where you would go to buy potpourri these days other than the internet that's what grandma's world is for that's why yeah no i uh and yeah bob you're very right that the herman's line there is incredibly adr they're like we need herman to tell it's not clear enough that he goes to grandma's world after striking out at herman's we need herman to tell him and yeah try grandma's world i did like the line this is the only story i know that was that was funny and that makes sense in the context of them having a little friendship i didn't really know about that because i haven't really seen season one or two since i was a teenager i'm i sort of strictly do three through nine so i like i like the implication of abe's world being that

small i like that that he has literally no one else to talk to. It's Herman and Jasper. I guess, you know, really, this episode is when Jasper comes into his own as Abe's good friend. And that's when you don't need Herman anymore. I can tell both of you that both potpourri and sachets are widely available

on Amazon. So Amazon kicked the grandma's world out of business. As they did so many things. Very sad. Also, the amazon kicked the grandma's world out of business as they did so many things yeah that's sad yeah also the guy doing the price check it's one of those uh he was the same surly cashier as in the uh homer versus lisa and the eighth commandment who does a price check on grapes he was great he was fired for being rude to march measly grapes he's uh you know they they he you think he'd come back more, but he's one of those, like, he's not as enduring even as just stamp the ticket guy.

Like that guy lasted, outlasted him. We leave grandma's world. Homer arrives. And as he picks up Abe, I, this also is just very different of their relationship. Like he's just very condescending to Abe and you're supposed to be on Abe's side here. Dad! It's the third Sunday of the month. You know what that means? No way!

Come on, Dad. I promise we'll have more fun this time. We're gonna see lions! I can't go! It's my girlfriend B's birthday! Oh, you have a girlfriend. Well, happy birthday, B. She can come with us.

Hey, there's room for all your friends in the car. No, she's not invisible, you idiot. See, it's her birthday tonight. Yeah, right. Hey, you kids, stop kicking the seat. I'm kicking the seat. Dad, don't you want to know where we're going? No.

This is called Lion Safari. Damn these child-proof doors. Hello. That'll be 1850, Bwana. Do not feed animals. Do not allow animals in the car. Do not make eye contact with animals. Are we in africa yet

and anybody knows this place sucks it seems that most of the animals are sleeping well let them sleep on their own time that bart comment makes me laugh really hard when i hear it it's just so flat and blunt and i think that's what parents were afraid of bart is teaching my kids to sass back just like this absolutely i bet I probably quoted that or just like, hey, this place isn't instantly fun. You didn't take me to a fun place. Like, yeah. Were you entertained, Libby, on a similar trip like this?

Or did it feel boring? My memory is of loving it, but that doesn't mean that that's accurate. That could easily be a false memory. I loved all zoo and zoo-related things as a kid. So I'm sure I was excited to go, even if the monkeys were asleep when they weren't tearing our car aerial off. It is a consistent thing in Homer's character that he does not like seeing sleeping animals and wants to wake them up. It pisses him off that anyone would sleep.

Also, you know, I think about this every time I watch this episode. It's really sad that Bea dies on her birthday. That's extra sad to me i was thinking about it and i assume b would have died even if abe was there so would it be worse if abe watched her die would that be more traumatizing than missing it i think he wanted to be there for her last moments and help comfort her and the fact that he wasn't there like that is what what really hurts him in that but which again is an emotional depth to abe you're not normally used to thinking about yeah i was kind of thinking about this actually because i mean not to get too grim but my mom died a few months ago and so i have kind of been

when i was watching it i was kind of thinking about this like concept of of death and like how important it feels for abe to have missed those moments and how that is kind of a bit of an illusion because the thing that is really sad is that the person died and so you know in her absence i'm sure it's a lot like oh i've missed her last moments blah blah blah and it's like i think i think we kind of impute more importance to that than than we there really is because we don't have any control over death and so in those moments it feels like those like very last moments you know how much you can have an effect on it matters more than it that it really does and that's very poetic i uh uh it's uh yeah i think i i think for abe that you know you think you want to be there for every single moment of it

so i guess that's why abe feels that way or else he's just you know trying to find whatever reason he can to blame his his son for what he did it's very frustrating that that moment where you know abe can't get homer to listen that he doesn't want to go and it's like one of those classic kind of sitcom moments where for the story to work the way it does it's it's just kind of not possible for humans to have like a real conversation you know i remember watching fraser a lot as a kid and i'm always like just fucking talk about it if you just talk about it for one second yeah this whole episode would fall apart and you would have it like a normal human

interaction here you know and in this situation it's like how like homo would have to at some point listen or abe would be able to like you know physically resist homer it's like how like homo would have to at some point listen or abe would be able to like you know physically resist homer and say like no i am staying for this party you know i think that's why i was frustrated by this as a kid where uh you cut from abe saying he won't go to just him in the car i wish there would have been some sort of larger trick in play here to get him into the car but yeah you're right like there had to be a conversation and homer had to not hear it or he had to teleport abe into the car i don't know how abe got to the car or against his will there could be a scene where homer lies and say like really this will only take

a couple hours we'll be back in time for your thing instead it's just homer very cruelly doesn't believe b exists he's just like well yeah yeah you're a crazy old man there's no and the cut to abe's angry face when homer's like oh there's room for all your friends in here and like abe is just pissed to be so belittled by his son which again is not an emotion they play in the show normally with a like you don't you're not you don't empathize with abe being mad he's not being taken seriously like to take a moment for his emotional his feelings is is not uh usually done in the show right the only other time i can really think of of you know dealing with abe as an old guy is uh when he he decides to get a job um at crusty Burger because he feels like a useless old man.

And that ends with him being like, no, actually, it's cool to be a useless old man. So, you know, it's a totally different kind of spin on that feeling. And Homer drives off the path and they're all bouncing around on the road. Silverman talks about how him and his team worked hard and having the family, like, bump at different times, realistically. Because, like, well, the front bumps and then the back goes so it should be these up

and them up i it's one of those you know details that don't really come in uh you don't super notice until someone points it out but i i like that and the the family's car has been destroyed many times it's also funny kogan walterski wrote the last time it got destroyed by truckasaurus now it's getting ripped apart by animals. It's the same car, right? It's the pink car, yeah. And when they get surrounded by animals and the lion lays on top of the car, I really do like the big worm tongue scream.

Like anytime their big wiggly worm tongues come out in a scream, I love that. I also really like in that scene how uh the the lines surrounding the car happened so suddenly and then at some point they're just eating a zebra on top of the car and it just like appears there like where the hell did they get the zebra is it like another attraction at the at the safari park they just killed and ate it's really good yeah actually that's not how it should be at a zoo that you that a lion can kill a zebra that shouldn't be happening there's a reason they should be eating expired meat from walmart like in tiger king exactly and then later you feed it

to your employees yes yeah uh and so the simpsons are there all night you know uh dan is abe does a great forlorn scream of oh b and then again in something that feels very old even in 1991 a dr livingston i presume joke like i think of those jokes as being in like old bugs bunny cartoons like no no i only knew it as a bugs bunny thing no no child in 1990 knew the story of dr livingston lost in the africa and being found like i mean also it's just like depressing and colonialist and it's like you know you don't want to hear about it these days yeah to this day i have to confess that that reference went completely over my head i was like why is this guy british this doesn't make any sense i thought they just liked doing the british voice because

it was funny uh now yeah it's it's a reference to a very old thing yeah and and so then yeah act one ends with like the very special episode act one played really entirely straight ahead forward like there's one kind of joke in it but uh i mean even as a little kid when i see a scene start with an ambulance outside somewhere i know bad stuff's coming but yes abe abe learned some sad news in this next clip out of my way i gotta take with an angel you don't know how right you are abe what i'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but uh b passed away last night oh no it was a ticker the dog said her left ventricle burst oh no jasper amy say she died of a burst ventricle but i know she died of a broken heart which uh i guess i mean the joke is that a burst ventricle is a broken heart that's the that's the

joke i think her health problem was unrelated to uh being stood up on that date kind of yeah why would she i mean yeah abe not showing up i mean somebody like when abe is pulled out of the place he couldn't tell jasper like hey tell b i'll be late or like i'm gonna be on this thing like how did i also the character b is written as to this point wouldn't be the type of person to be like oh abe has abandoned me oh i can't take it it's so painful like that she's a very like breezy fun lady like yeah i i mean i guess abe is just blaming himself guiltily you know that's that's death affects us all in different ways i guess yeah it is it is a really sad moment and i do remember that particular thing when i was a kid, that like particular concept of, you know, B dies thinking that Abe stood her up or whatever.

That really got me. That really hurt my my little child feelings. Yeah, yeah. But I like to think that, you know, B, well, B seems fine when she's a ghost later. And I take that as not as as an actual ghost from heaven and not a bit not like a crazy vision that abe has for some reason she's doomed to walk the earth as a ghost we don't know what she did she seems pretty well they have a haunting they have a haunting a family in texas yeah but why why would god curse her to that her work on earth is not done yeah you know maybe maybe she did uh she was a different person before abe met b maybe she maybe there's some dark stuff in her past you know that she must atone for where's the body of ralph crammed in

honestly yeah she killed her husband in texas and then in that old house and then she she moved up to springfield to get away from that and forget for me i just i like the idea that uh that when you die this is kind of a bored guy behind a desk who's like all right you're in texas there you go and then everybody gets assigned to some family i like i like you can occasionally just jump on roller coasters yeah single rider though you get single rider line you you put in your hours in texas and then occasionally get a weekend off to just float to where you want to and visit people right that's that's your department of labor mandated 15 minute break to go see your boyfriend oh man i would go on space

mountain oh yeah every day just if i could just teleport anywhere yeah i'd be you know i do pirates and then actually i would guess when i'm a ghost i would be less into haunted mansion than i am now i like the haunted mansion now but if i was really a ghost i'd think it'd be played off or maybe even insensitive to you would say this is so unrealistic we don't do this much ballroom dancing uh but uh but yes we we cut to the funeral uh we get to see hans mole man is among the pallbearers with her i do like this gag of homer thinking that that his father has gone deaf as as we get a reference to the 1980 version of the jazz singer in this in this next clip i can't tell you how sorry i am dad is someone talking to me i didn't hear anything oh no dad lost his hearing no you

idiot i'm ignoring you you made me miss the last precious moment of B's life. I'll never speak to you again. I have no son. So there you go. As famously said in the 1980 version of Jazz Singer by- Laurence Olivier. Good old Laurence Oliver. To Neil Diamond. Insane. 80 version of jazz singer by uh lawrence olivier good old lawrence oliver that to uh neil diamond i didn't say yeah i i believe the story was on that film that neil diamond you know really wanted

olivier to work on the film and he said he'd do it as long as he didn't have to do any promotion for it he would just show up and leave uh i i have the original version if you want to hear how oh sure because the way age says it is how you remember the line in your head but original version if you want to hear how oh sure because the way Abe says it is how you remember the line in your head but it's if you actually can pull up the scene on YouTube you're like ah it's not exactly the way he says it here

no no I have no son No. I have lost son. Father. And he rips his garment because we covered this a long time ago, but I didn't know this. I didn't know what this reference was. Why is Abe tearing his clothes?

I guess in the Jewish tradition, when you hear the news of somebody dying you tear the cloth over your heart or something like that you rend your garments yes yeah and that's why he does it and uh kogan and walidarski will the reference will return in like father like clown next year so the much more explicit jazz singer uh parody they kogan walidarski they're like we're not done with this jazz singer no no sir no way were they into this movie because it was bad this version of it i think so okay i think it was famously like well because i mean like neil diamond's no good actor and like why and then the i i would think even in 1980 it's funny to think of like oh yeah that old blackface mood the food the movie that's

famous for blackface let's let's remake it for 1980 uh i i've heard it i've never watched the film i've heard it's a a classic bad film i mean to also have like lawrence olivier one of the most like celebrated actors of all time in such a bad movie probably that's part of the appeal too uh so it's post funeral abe's crying uh and that's when we get the return of lionel hutz's second appearance after after bart gets hit by a car, they're like, oh, this character's coming back a million times. I forgot he's in this because he's in it once. But it's great to see him. And he's used in a way they would use him from then on, where they're like, we have hit a scene where we either have to make up a lawyer or reuse somebody.

And they're like, well, we've got Lionel Hutz now. No, he is every lawyer we need unless it's a good lawyer, then it's blue-haired lawyer. And unlike with Aunt Gladys, he doesn't try to steal the inheritance money. Yeah, he's not as dirty as he is yet. You'd be surprised how often that works. Right? Yeah. You really would.

But let's hear good old Phil Hartman once again. It was a beautiful service, wasn't it, Mr. Simpson? Who the hell are you? Lionel Hatz, attorney at law. I'm the executor of Beatrice Simmons' estate.

Mr. Simpson B. was a wealthy woman and surprise, surprise, she left everything to you. Really? There is one catch. You must spend one night in a haunted house.

Just kidding. Just kidding. Here's a check for $106,000 to enjoy as you see fit. Oh, I'm touched. $106,000?

Ta-ta, Mr. Simpson. By the way, old timer, I do wills. Why don't I just give you this pen with my phone number on it? It looks just like a cigar. Isn't that something? You know, hearing these clips

i totally forgot that uh you can hear deep deep in the mix people are coughing in the background yeah for a few uh first couple clips of this i was like is this us what that no but it's just the ambient noise of the retirement castle no i mean i love lionel hutz he's he's so funny even though he's like not half as skeezy as he'd be i just i do assume now knowing the character that it was really like two hundred thousand dollars and he kept 94 000 of it this is one of his many uh pieces of the like lionel hutz memorabilia that he has he has the cigar pen he's got the cigarette smoking monkey he's got the uh the business card that turns into a sponge yes yeah it's uh i i slow down there smoky that's my my favorite of them but also apparently they cut a joke in here which i'm really glad they did

they said they had a fallen and i can't get up joke in there which they recognized by early 1991 like as played out as it could be like we gotta stop this you know i i remember i i mean look as a mean little child we all laughed at this buddy what a funny scene of a woman who is struggling to get up and needs help we would yeah we'd fall down in the playground and do the line yeah oh sorry libby are you do you do you know this reference uh it i know the reference now i wouldn't have when i was a kid but i do know it now i've been here long enough to have heard about it it was for life call yes yeah yeah just the yeah it there was just something the way that lady said i like her bad acting of saying the line i've fallen and i can't get up it made us all laugh in in the in the late 80s still fresh to me i'm sure i just find it very

funny i'm finding out some shocking facts about this whole, this actor in this commercial. The lady who performed the line, an actual old lady, the person who took the fall was a stunt person. So they didn't push an old lady down for that commercial. That's good. I'm glad. I'm glad. And she passed away in 1997. So she lived through the many jokes about her.

That's great to know. That's great. Yeah. the many jokes about her that's great to know that's great yeah uh and uh so yeah they they also they've done many jokes since on the simpsons about having to stay in a haunted house they they're really into jokes like that i like the specificity of 106 000 like it's not it's not grandpa becomes a millionaire and it's not like a crazy amount of money that would change everything but it's enough money that you go like well i want that money like i die but but not like this everyone's lives are different you know yeah i would pay for about

one year at a nursing home these days in like a more expensive state so it's like in today's money it is kind of funny it's like okay i mean it's probably like you know enough to pay off some of his debts maybe you know it's like really not a huge amount of money it certainly isn't like wow what am i gonna do with all this money money you know well and i mean abe though could use it because as we find out like uh later the way the reason the simpsons own a house is because abe sold his old house to buy their house so he he kind of doesn't have a savings left anymore i think he's he's counting on that taunting to really pay off i think but i do love the cruelty the one one of the few times

abe acts like abe in this is him cruelly calling homer to say like oh i actually am speaking to you now to tell you you will never get my money fuck you just homer homer's dough on the end of it is good but then then we get like i understand why this the owner of the retirement castle never came back because he's just a creep like yeah he's uh i don't know implying that sexual favors can take place i guess yeah that was weird there are rubdowns yeah yeah this crooked administrator this could be his last appearance at least as a character right according well i double checked it on the wiki that he never appears for a spoken line after this he's one of those guys like occasionally you see him in the background but but nothing else i mean he does have a good line of him saying like

yes but it passes like that that's good just him admitting like yeah occasionally i do feel bad that i'm evil but goes away and i that's more realistic than somebody being angry all the time or evil all the time i think a lot of this uh nursing home stuff comes from matt graining because he worked at an old folks home as a teenager uh washing the trays and just like washing the mush that they ate off of the trays cleaning the mush off the trays of these people who were born in like 1870 so then abe decides he's gonna live it up he does the first thing to he's gonna buy that napoleon hat but not the real hat i do as a scam by herman that's pretty great that he he's selling something

as napoleon's hat which is like napoleon would never have worn a fez never been drawn a painted wearing a fez and he just has the audacity to say that's napoleon's hat and then once he sells it he takes grandpa's old hat and says it's the one mckinley was shot in uh which in artist renderings of his assassination he is hatless i repeat hatless so uh that's another inaccuracy there but uh yeah that herman herman got away with it he's he's probably i would think herman once he found out that abe was rich he's like well that hundred thousand dollars i'm getting most of that he's gonna buy everything at this store yeah he's uh marking up the prices of all of his surface to air missiles at that moment oh god the nuke the nuke the the hippie

killer nuke he's got in the back he was sure he was gonna sell it at this point today so then abe sets off on a series of fun things he's being driven by the same limo driver as in the way we was. And aged up appropriately. Yeah, this was before they decided that anybody could have the Bronson voice. And when Silverman heard the recording of the guy had the Bronson voice, he's like, oh, then it's the guy who drove Homer around 16 years earlier. So I got to age him up to that age. Or that he could exist without any

throughout any point in time like he could be the same guy in the 60s and the 70s bronson voiceman unstuck in time that's what he is abe heads around he goes to mud wrestling the uh the same mud wrestling place where homer was searching for princess cashmere in season one i just got the joke actually behind that instead of club med yeah it's club mud listen they're not all winners yeah i didn't i and i like i like dan's bemusement of that's it's cute that is good that's that's one of the the few like really good laughs that i that i got out of this is the way he repeats that over and over well that and that abe is a even with a bunch of money abe will be miserable no matter where he goes anyway because he's he's a grumpy old man and uh their first of many disney jokes they go to

d-i-z-n-e-e land uh which has a big sign up that says completely unrelated to disneyland or disney world uh but the last laugh was on them because disney owns them now like all their disney jokes they they didn't know that they'd eventually get owned by the mouse like all things do soon to be scrubbed from the disney plus version i'm sure i'm waiting for jokes to disappear honestly because they have cut things out of other content and i'm surprised some things have stuck behind on the simpsons except for the michael jackson episode that's the one you know what maybe they do recognize that like they could get a little press coverage happens when they like you know add some underpants to splash for instance but a cut to a simpsons thing will get a lot more

like digital footprint that i they probably like i have forget it just keep in the nazi superman or our superiors line because otherwise it'll just make people see it even more uh though you know in oh brother where art thou episode abe had a heart or a mild heart uh issue i feel like it's very risky for him to be riding a big roller coaster like that i shouldn't be doing it yeah he's he's inviting death he's trying to join b he's that's you know i think you're right that's really what it's that's why he went parasailing before this uh but this is when he's visited by b and in moments like this i also feel bad i think about this with so many old actors who have to

be in things where they die i feel bad for those old actors having to play like oh talk about being dead or how you just died or how you're going to die at least it's better than being in a live action role in which you will be in your deathbed acting yeah for multiple days you know that feels like it'd be more depressing yeah i feel like that was most of the scenes of burgess meredith like most of his last roles in movies were about being like very old and laying down or like the i'm watching the second season of sopranos now and like the majority of scenes for the the actress playing tony's mom are like laying in bed or sitting in a chair well on the great sitcom strangers with candy when jerry blank's dad died they had to get a different actor to lay in the coffin because the original guy did not want to

lay in a coffin being a very old man himself can you believe can you believe that he was right to do that yeah it was right to not want to do that but i mean yes a ghost visits abe i miss b i miss you too oh abraham calm down i'm not here to scare you. They've got me haunting a family in Texas. Oh, well, I'm glad you're keeping busy. Now, listen, Abe. I want to know why my money isn't bringing you happiness. Oh, B, I'm not cut out for the high life.

Abraham, if you're not happy with the money, why don't you spread it around? Make other people as happy as you made me. Oh, thanks, B. I will. And go see your son. He misses you. Oh, I miss him too, the big fat dickhead. Hey, B, I'm going to ask you, what was death like? Not as scary as this. It's a fairly dreary episode but i did like the joke uh we get a wide shot of the roller coaster going up the hill slowly that is when grandpa is

screaming yeah he's screaming at the wrong part that's fine i did laugh at that yeah why did no one want to sit next to grandpa on this roller coaster i mean because he smells i guess is that why that's why they're in an empty seat there if you're a single rider can't you say like i don't want to sit next to anybody and they usually shut well now in in uh covet times i think they'd uh you'd get more empty seats next to you but i i've i've been on disney rides with like no shove another person in there can't have an empty seat let's get this line moving well maybe he bribed the attendant with his b bucks it's uh it's cute too the uh the silverman uh kind of admonishes them on the commentary for cutting a line he liked which is when he says i'm not cut out for the high life his next line was if i live it up anymore i'll be dead oh no offense which that's funny i don't want to cut that

the the high life thing is funny because it's like his idea of the high life is like going to an amusement park it's like really not that high you know it's not like he's like doing coke or anything or you're like oh seeing the eiffel tower like i always wanted to go to france like something like no he he just went to what seemingly is a local amusement park very limited imagination on abe her comforting him is at least like his turning point in the episode when he abe makes a decision about what he's gonna do with it uh and that he's gonna forgive homer so it's it's good for wrapping up the scene homer like crying about missing his father it's it dan's playing it just too real it's just a sad person who misses their

is his dad like and who's he's like crying like a little boy it's it's sad it's it's only sad it's not really funny yeah and it's just completely incongruous with with future homer and future abe you know the idea of just the idea of homer referring to abis's daddy is just like completely not in character at all yeah even earlier marge calls him dad which just sounded off to me she usually calls him grandpa yeah it's much better she calls him grandpa it's it's like it feels too old school that like to have the wife call the father-in-law dad like that feels like a thing from the 50s that's that's marge becoming a 50s mom you know which occasionally she turns

into the mom of the baby boomer writers of the show but other times she's she's written more more as an a normal person we then get a little filler time of calling a Marvin Monroe self-help line of just listing things people have anxiety for her there's a

fun impotence joke uh snuck in here oh what was it at the end uh it's going down like press one for this press two for this if you have problems maintaining an error and then homer hangs up oh that's good henry you're not listening for the boner jokes there's one in every episode i mean until having it uh isolated here i miss that the guy calls them uh buona when they go to the play like that's what he said like oh good luck buona like what is buona it i he wasn't saying partner but on frankeak it says partner i i think that's like a swahili or zulu it's like if you were watching a movie about colonialist expositions like the the african friend uh in there would call somebody

buona it's like tarzan would say that word it means a boss or master so uh sometimes franciac will get the uh dialogue incorrect there you go yeah but i feel like that's from old tarzan movies where you know a native person in uh in one of those would would call tarzan buona but now that i know it's master that makes it even worse those scenes anyway so but abe abe arrives and uh a father and son reunion happens oh my precious sacks of gold couldn't buy me the pleasures of a simple family meal that's about you dad wait your turn pig. I have an announcement to make. I've decided to give B's money away. There are people who really need it.

I'm going to let them come to me and plead their case, and then I'll decide who needs it most. Grandpa, that's the noblest thought that's ever been expressed at this table. Give it us, Grandpa. Bart! Forgive him, Dad. He's just a stupid little kid who says the first thing that pops into his head. But you know, there's wisdom in his innocence.

You don't want it. Yes, I do. Too bad you ain't getting it. That gave me a chuckle. Looking at this realistically, Homer would have a grudge against Abe from then on that he didn't give him a hundred thousand dollars and instead invested it in a retirement castle instead like he's like hey you just spent my inheritance dad like i i could see homer actually uh carrying a grudge about that if he's if he's a realistic

person and not you know a crazy cartoon character i also like that abe is trying to give a speech about you know money can't buy you with simple, but it's just being belched through his corn is just flinging onto him. And it's cute that Homer says pass the bug juice, meaning fruit punch, I guess. That's, that's what you at a summer camp, you would call fruit punch bug juice. So some kind of cheap, uh, like mixed drink. Yeah. Kool-Aid drink. That's I, again, that's one of those ones like oh it was commentary or uh put the subtitles

on oh he says bug juice there that's it's an extra cuteness of homer asking for that instead of like pass the drink or pass the potatoes he says bug juice and uh and yeah i mean bart is correct and like he should want that money that's why that's why bart gets in the line to beg for it as well too it also feels very season two that they just fade out they're like you know what just the scene ends fade out like well we'll go to commercial it wasn't the strongest act break joke but I guess it was funny and then we come back from the act break with more continuity and and proof of them writing this right after the Thanksgiving one uh as noted by you Bob in the in the story of of kent brockman's uh

relationships in the thanksgiving episode it is rumored that kent brockman is dating the weather lady and when kent brockman introduces this thing he says is the most talked about thing since i married the stephanie the weather lady so it's uh it's accurate you know it's it is correct continuity for his relationship i believe not seen until the episode Tennis the Menace. Yes. Yeah. She she was cut out of the Valentine's Day Apu episode, but she would be first seen in Tennis the Menace, which we actually did a podcast about like about two, three months

ago. So you won't see his wife until a decade later, unfortunately. And the line of people waiting in weird costumes as jay cogan explained to us when we interviewed him that is a reference to how in summer of 1989 when writing the first season all the writers went to see the batman movie that was brand new and they said you know seeing it at its big opening night in la there were people dressed up both as like the joker and as darth vader and indiana jones in the line for some reason it was i wondered if it was some sort of early comic-con thing but it was their first experience with cosplay i think yeah yeah now now if you see somebody

dressed as joker in your theater run the other way that's this get get out of there or anywhere really yes yeah uh you know it was different to be jokerfied back then was to want the fancier things in life and to be cool like jack nicholson that was being jokerfied one weird thing i noticed was like quimby's outfit is different than it would be later he's wearing like a kind of waistcoat and a jacket and he looks kind of like the penguin or something yes yeah you know i think it was they pulled out the quimby that appeared in bark gets an f when he's he's in his winter costume saying it's snow day so he's in his winter he's in his uh dressed for cold in this line he's missing his sash yeah so we don't know he's the mayor he's

just some guy yeah and i guess yeah brockman is walking by a ton of uh characters we met before including some guest characters that are not voiced, obviously, because they're not talking. I like seeing Krusty in a sweater. That made me like, he's like, oh, it's a little chilly out. He's in his formal gear to beg for money. And it's funny that Brockman just joins the line like everybody else. So, yeah, talk about time killers. This is just now a sketch of characters come up and pitch why they'd want money to him so it's just it's a series of of sketches i like this part the most yeah it's a

bunch of rapid fire jokes and dan is clearly in the same room with these actors and they're playing off of each other in a very fun way uh we we first see auto's uh pitch to make his bus really awesome uh he drew a version of it this is back when Otto was an artist, because in Three Men and a Comic Book, he'll also be pitching his own comic strip series. And so the artist's rendition, though, is meant to look like Big Daddy Roth, the creator of Ratfink,

who also his art style was seen on the cover of cartoons the magazine Homer gets. A real magazine that we did research about. You don't see the cobra wrapped around the naked chick in his drawing i want to but still the level of detail they got in there i feel bad for the uh artist in south korea at acom being told like could you draw a hyper detailed version of this piece of art it was funny as well because i was thinking about how this scene is is a little bit like in uh who shot mr burns when everyone's coming to skinner to to ask for oil money and otto shows up there

too asking for a double guitar so he's clearly he's clearly a good one to go to here for like stupid shit to ask for they they really loved otto at this point otto comes back for the bus ride in a few minutes too for more jokes more jokes. They thought by season three, they do an episode they think is a stealth pilot for an Otto spinoff. Like that's the it's called The Otto Show. It's the one with Spinal Tap in it. And they really thought like, oh, Otto is our breakout guy, man. He'll be the star of his own show. You know, I prefer his double guitars thing.

That's that's more, you know, he's thinking smaller. It's more achievable. But yes, then we had a very funny scene of Burns begging Grandpa for money, which I really love here. Grandpa?

I can call you Grandpa, can't I? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. All right. I need that money. Please, please! Wait a minute, wait. You're the guy who owns the nuclear power plant.

Well, the ownership is divided. What the hell do you think you're doing? Mr. Simpson, I're the guy who owns the nuclear power plant. Well, the ownership is divided. What the hell do you think you're doing? Mr. Simpson, I dread the day when $100,000 isn't worth groveling for. Get out of here! You've just made yourself a very powerful enemy, old man. Here's the deal, Grandpa. A guy I think was an explorer left this in the bar one night. It may be a map to ancient treasure or directions to some guy's house,

but to find out, we'll need money, we'll need provisions, and a two-man diving belt. It's pretty stupid, but so far you're the front runner. I love that look on Moe, the drawing of Moe, when he goes, hmm, I guess that's a really funny drawing. But that also is a bad sign for this episode that when mo makes that pitch i'm like i want to watch that episode i want to see mo and abe on an event on a treasure hunt can we go there yeah better act three but yeah burns begging for money and saying that he'd you know it's he he doesn't care a hundred thousand

dollars would seemingly be nothing to him but he begged for it because it's worth it. He must have that money. That's totally in character for Burns as well. A huge part of the Burns character is just the greed to the point of the final dollar. That one is more in character, I would say, than other characters in this episode. Actually, I guess in Who Shot Mr. Burns, he also begs for money in the same way,

though he's the last one in the scene instead of the first. Also, it's always funny to remember Burns saying to him like, oh, I can call you grandpa. They are in a tontine and served in World War II together. They know each other very well. Burns is older than him. Burns is older than him. That too. Yes.

Yeah. But then Abe is just like, oh, don't you run the nuclear power plants? And I also like that the board that runs it that doesn't exist anymore after this episode too but it's a very funny thing to hear burn say uh then we get a cute little scene with marvin monroe basically describing the skinner box uh which what that's a real dark joke oh that's a beauty part it's already built i need to buy a child yeah i need money to buy a baby is a really good line. To prove that torturing someone will make them resent him.

Yeah, I love that too. He's like, oh, well, I want to see they'll make him harbor a deep resentment for me. Like, it's good. It's good. And then Bart, meanwhile, sits on his knee and treats him like he's Santa Claus, listing all the things. He must have been watching Ninja Turtles because he asked for nunchucks and he asked for radioactive man number 27 uh the first time he fought dr crab which uh we've interviewed him before bill morrison the artist for a bunch of

classic simpsons comics he actually really cares a lot about the radioactive man continuity and he made sure when he was doing the radioactive man comics in 94 dr crab was his lex luther and used him quite a lot they actually really respected the importance of dr crab i think he's an awful video game but yes yeah he's uh he's one of the top villains they face though in uh and i also think with this one-off joke here that's why they decided they'd write an episode where bart wants to get radioactive man number one i think oh yeah bart wants a radioactive man comic that's an episode and the baseball card with the guy flipping the bird is the uh billy martin 1972 detroit tigers card now there are a few cards like this my favorite is the one that

has the word fuck face written on the baseball bat fuck face is a classic one yes yeah i billy martin was famous as a drunk asshole that's his funny story. I only know facts about baseball players in relation to wrestling. And Billy Martin was present at the first WrestleMania. So I've heard funny stories about him being a drunk jerk. I have to assume because Al Jean is from Detroit, maybe this card was being passed around in his youth. Totally, totally. Absolutely. I looked up with other middle finger baseball card ones.

Apparently in the 90s, baseball player Frank Thomas had multiple pictures of him, baseball cards of him with one finger up. Now Frank Thomas, I just know him as one of the many eugenics sellers on television. If you watch broadcast TV at any time, you will see Frank Thomas going like, hey, your wife will thank you too if you get these pills. They really help you out, if you know what I mean. You'll never strike out again, Frank Thomas says. So now, after that scene, we get quite a first for the show.

One of a surprisingly endearing character in the history of The Simpsons. The professor who makes you laugh and makes you think. What the hell is that? Why, it's a death ray, my good man. Behold. Hey, feels warm. Kind of nice. Well, it is just the prototype.

With proper funding, I'm confident this little baby could destroy an area the size of New York City. But I want to help people, not kill them. Oh, well, to be honest, Ray only has evil applications. You know, my wife will be happy. Geez, hated this old death ray thing

from day one. I like the idea that he has a wife. It comes up again next year, I think. My wife is gonna kill me. Yes, when his son in a airplane flies out the window. I like to think she left him after that, and that's why there's no wife mentioned afterwards for Frank. Yeah, and this is John

Frank, named after who would future Simpsons writer John Frank. Apparently a friend of Jake Hogan. He was not a TV writer at this time so probably they went to school together, they were in LA together, or perhaps Groundlings together, who knows, but yes, John Frank would become a writer for the show

in the 10s, 11 and the 11s in the scully years yeah him and don payne were a writing team the the late don payne that's right so yeah it's funny that frank who was it was just frank on the page like he's you know we uh bart the daredevil has a proto frank in it which was also written by kogan and walidarski so it's funny now that this has full Professor Frank, though without his buck teeth, because I think it was they wrote a silly character, they designed him, then they heard it was a Jerry Lewis impersonation by his area, and that's when they decided, well, then he's got to have the buck teeth if we're going to, and let's just go all the way with the nutty professor.

And of course, Jerry Lewis in Treehouse of Horror 15 would play the father of Professor Frank. As just a scene of a wacky scientist trying to sell a death ray, just realizing like, oh, it's actually pretty evil. You know, my wife, like, that's great. I love that. It's so great how he's never considered it.

Like he's never considered that it might be like too evil to make a death ray that can destroy new york city the version he has now uh seems marketable it's a ray that heats up old people yeah and they're always cold it feels kind of nice yeah it's it's a pleasing ray yeah you should stick with it but yeah that he's that his death ray doesn't just want to like shoot a laser at someone to kill one person like he wants it to destroy new york city like he's thinking that big uh and it's so funny the idea that this little gun can go from something that is kind of warm to like something that is the power of a nuclear bomb like it's just it's so absurd it's very good uh and just how sheepishly he's like drumming his finger like oh well really

only has evil purposes he never considered it until now then we get lisa giving him the noble truth of what he should do which it's like i guess that that also makes this whole thing just feel like a pointless sketch of like lisa could have given the speech to him at the dinner table to direct him to it but they realize like we could get like two or three minutes out of just people walking up to grandpa asking for money but in lisa's speech she also looks very weird she looks she has a giant head it's supposed to be a perspective shot but looking down at her yeah yeah but it's a little off but uh when lisa then says or you can get me a pony and she says i'd name it princess and ride it every day in lisa's pony in season three she gets the pony

that she calls princess and does write it every day so somebody was making a note there too of like oh that's that's an episode a pony named princess even it would have saved homer a lot of trouble if he just bought lisa the pony he wouldn't have had to get the second job or any of that stuff yeah gabe should have i uh really i think abe in future episodes if he was the the Abe of this episode and he saw the many money troubles that Marge and Homer would have afterwards, he'd say, well, I really wish I hadn't put like, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars into a retirement castle instead of like helping my family with it.

Immediately went back to normal. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Becomes dilapidated immediately. We then get, you know, a of uh depressing shots of just people who are in need and how how horrible the world is like that's depressing and then abe wanders into nighthawks yeah there's having fun right yes well also you know gene and reese i wonder if they

pitch that pubic library sign because they do the same joke in the critic where when the critic is using his hey yeah wait a minute jay sherman gets a bunch of money that he decides he's going to use to spend to clean up new york city like he got that's the same kind of plot anyway in that one he cleans up the new york public library and blasts the letter l off of it so it reads pubic library that same joke there people run in and they're disappointed there's more to the joke so yes then abe heads uh home he's sad people have no sympathy for him because he's rich which is the right way to treat a rich person i think uh you don't want to you should you should say to every rich person who says like oh i'm sad it's like uh too tired from lifting your wallet but they decide they're gonna head to a casino realize he could double or even triple his money they they head out on the bus we get several scenes

of otto like screaming singing songs i couldn't identify the first one but the second one is aqualung it's oh first one is edgar winter's frankenstein oh okay all right but uh but yes let's let's hear a little of this ride to the casino. Go down. Are you trying to get us killed? It's too hot, you maniac. Turn on the air, Eddie. Hey, mellow out, old dude, or I'll jam this baby into a river.

All right? All right. Miss, I'm looking for Abe Simpson. It's important I get a hold of him. I have to tell him I don't care about his money and I love him. We get that a lot. He left this morning with a senior casino junket. Casino?

Ah! Come on, everybody. I guess it's funny that the old people are joining in with the mumbling of Aqualung. Yeah, that's fun. That's fun. Man, I'm disappointed in myself for not recognizing Frankenstein there. Yeah, that's a good line, too. Like, I don't care about his money and I love him.

We get that a lot. Like, that's a good line. I also love Otto's just delivery of like, all right. Yeah. Yeah. line i also love uh otto's just delivery of like all right yeah yeah i do love the idea as well that he would just commit suicide by driving into a river just to uh you know piss off some old people he's like i can't take this anymore i'll kill us all right now if you don't shut up right also you note the voice of old jewish man but it's a different character design saying it though

like that's that's the old jewish man though it's a different character design saying it like slow down you like that's that's the old jewish man though the design wouldn't exist until uh hey i'm your grandpa sonny hey look hey that from uh part uh that's from new kid on the block that's the one so the can your grandfather do this guy yes yeah it would eventually become old jewish man also the receptionist previously had been voiced by julie cavner but i think by this point they decided like it's just to if julie voices any character other than a bouvier it is distracting it really is and so yes we head over to uh plato's pleasure palace which i think it's a great joke of like a casino completely misunderstanding a historical figure and why why they're memorable like plato uh the you know famous philosopher would not own a casino and tell people about

how great pleasure is and gambling is didn't notice it until silverman points it out on the commentary yep which is uh when plato says my philosophy is. And he lifts his arm up. Behind him are many young boys attending to him. I don't know why I didn't get that until now. It's a very sly joke about, let's say, pedophilia in ancient Greece. Yes. Yeah. Hey, those are platonic boys. He's just teaching them, Bob.

And that's all I want to think about. Obviously, a parody of Caesar's Palace. Yes. And Plato's Republic is something he, a famous dialogue the republic it's it's cute that's funny it's clever clever writing yeah smart guy yeah i uh you know i've i've been to caesar's a couple times it's fine though my my my home casino is mgm which is just like its thing is i guess old hollywood though not even like you'll see a big lion there but that's really it at the at the mgm casino now excalibur that's fun that's

it's old-timey it's basically like medieval times except except it has like a dick's wings in it except guys with thin blue line t-shirts are walking around oh yeah punisher shirts abound all all over in vegas look that's why you that's why if you drink enough frozen daiquiris you don't notice them and you just have a good time the uh the whole concept of the the the senior bus trip to the casino is another really depressing thing that uh i feel like they don't linger on it too much like the sort of depressing angle of it but it really is very sad it's it's to take people to a place where they can all lose their pensions like yeah you know what when i worked at a grocery store

nobody played the lottery more than old people and they would come in every day to play the lottery hey you know you got to do something with that free time plus they they're from that generation they actually had like an inheritance or they had like you know a nest egg to to gamble away uh there's there's another really i did laugh pretty good at homer uh screeching to a halt and then revealing he was just going to the crusty burger the first appearance of crusty burger oh wow in the entire show i didn't know that that's pretty great oh that's awesome that is like uh you know it felt novel at the time to hear a joke about a bad drive-thru thing. I'll always laugh at that sound.

I have to commend him as well on his order. He orders a double cheeseburger, onion rings, and a strawberry shake, which is a really good fast food order. So he knows what he's doing. Now Homer would order like five meals. To limit himself to one double cheeseburger it's that's not extreme enough i didn't even get fries didn't even get a drink you know i uh you know i showed bob beforehand the a uh domino's sponsors the simpsons on sky one commercial and the ad for domino's was and we have onion rings now which i was like i it seems crazy to eat onion rings with a pizza. That's too much grease, too greasy.

I promise you that is not the most disgusting thing that you would get at a British Domino's. Is British Domino's just America food? Is that it's not just like pizza? Kind of, yeah. I mean, I remember we used to get it a lot when I was at uni because there was one near campus. And I remember when I went back to England a couple of years later, and I was like, I was like, Oh, maybe I'll get dominoes for old time's sake. And you know, I remember really enjoying it when I was at uni. And then after a few years in America, I had dominoes. And I was like, this is disgusting. Like, I can't believe I used to think

this was really good food. So I don't know whether it's the British dominoes is worse than American dominoes, or that British food is just generally worse or that i just got older and you know like the nostalgia factor was gone but it was really grim it comes with this like garlic and herb sauce which i guess is meant to be like british ranch but it's it's very semeny it's really that's a good descriptor yeah like the dominoes in canada are actually pretty good but whenever you order from them uh they recommend, would you like a tray of brownies with this? How about cinnamon rolls? And I'm like, I'm buying a pie already.

It's a pie. For many of those places, if you get like garlic knots or breadsticks, it's like, this is just more pizza. Like, this is just a different form of pizza that I'm getting. Now, Domino's in America, low on the totem pole of order out pizza to me like i as a kid we were a pizza hut family that was quite right too yeah it's uh i have one of those in my in my hometown in britain we had it we had a pizza hut and it was just like we had a sit-down restaurant pizza hut which was amazing and i had like the i don't know if the american

one has the ice cream factory where you like go and like do soft serve yourself and then you put little you know m&ms and like you know gummy bears and stuff on top of it but that was incredible yeah i considered sit down pizza hut fancy when i was a kid oh yeah it's like oh if it's my birthday i could ask to go to a sit down pizza hut yeah the pepsi comes in a pitcher. A pitcher of Pepsi, man. So going to the end here, they run off to the, Homer finally arrives at the casino. He needs to stop Abe from gambling. I really love the shots of Homer like running through the casino and just his screaming.

Like Silverman did artistically. This is an exciting segment here. Yeah, especially the scream where it cuts between three different angles very rapidly and some very crazy expressions on Homerer that are very just david silverman drawings and i also like homer saying like he looks like me but he's wrinkled like that's that's a great line uh but abe is playing uh playing the roulette wheel which is a favorite of mine i do like that roulette wheel it i like that you know know, if you play blackjack, it's just so fast. Like, A and bloop, 21, done.

The waiting for the wheel, like the waiting to pick your number and then the waiting for it to finish bouncing around. That's the fun part to me. The moment of tension for that. But yes, he meets up with Abe and Abe has quite a speech, which is incredibly un-grandpa-like here. I want to point out one thing first. So Abe does place a winning bet. He places a $5,000 bet on one number, and he gets it miraculously. The payout for that is 35 to 1.

Abe got $175,000 on that one bet. Wow. Wow. So Homer was right. He should have walked away. Absolutely. No, I'm just like, wow wow that's a lot of money he's yeah i guess you know when he walks away from the table with all of his chips i guess he's got like 500 000 or something because 100 000 wasn't enough to fix up the retirement home but then

maybe that what maybe 500 or uh he he definitely does pretty well here but yes uh he gives a homer tries to convince him and he gives a, Homer tries to convince him and he gives a speech back to him. Uh, during the speech, you will see David Silverman, Wes Archer, and, uh, Rich Moore all drawn into the sequence. Yeah. Rich Moore just comes into the foreground. Yes.

In that scene with all the directors. Beat it, boy. You're cramping my style. Dad, please. You got to quit by your head. You understand that? You're going to take all your money and leave now. Sorry, boy.

I have to get enough to help everybody. But you could lose everything. Come on. Homer, I think Rudyard Kipling said it best. If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss.

Yours is the earth and everything that's in it. And, which is more, you'll be a man, my son. You'll be a bonehead. Come on. Put it all on 41. I've got a feeling about that number. The wheel only goes to 36, sir. Okay, put it all on 36. I've got a feeling about that number. number. The wheel only goes to 36. Okay, put it all on 36. I've got a feeling of how's that number. Dad, no! Give me that! Give me that

money! Come on! Ow! Ow! 36! 36! Good screaming there. I do like Homer cutting him off like, you'll be a bonehead! But yeah, this is not Abe Simpson.

No, him knowing... A very different character from the guy who says he did the Iggy. Yes. That guy would not know all these lines from Kipling's If poem, which they note on the commentary that in the script, they had way more lines from the poem, which really does just feel like filler on their part uh if you look up the the poem yourself uh the line grandpa says he then skips like about 19 lines of the poem to get to the coda about being a man so i do remember

watching as a as a little girl and the ending of it being and you'll be a man and i was kind of like why would i don't want to be a man like shut up uh you didn't you know kipling he wasn't thinking about uh if kipling ever thinks about what a little girl thinks i'd be surprised kipling was like women don't read poetry yes the man was not woke i've seen the jungle book i know what goes on in there oh yeah uh but uh it's fun i also like the drawing of abe biting homer like when yeah like silverman got the lines of homer saying ow you're hurting me he's like okay i need to draw abe biting homer's arm in this shot

but homer actually saves abe and prevents him from losing all of his money on one on betting on 36 it ends on zero which you wouldn't even get if you bet red or black it's uh it's the worst number to land on uh abe in a very adr style says for the first time in my life i'm glad i've had children uh which he used a plural children which is correct because he does have herb as well but otherwise i wonder if they changed that if he do you think he had said i'm glad i had a son when he should have pluralized it to children since he has more than one son i think it's just more of a generic expression it's not meant to indicate a number sure okay just like i'm thinking

about having children and then you have one child and it's okay and uh then you know i asked him on twitter uh david silverman did not reply. So we'll never know why Abe's hands look the way they do in this next shot. Because you can't add detail to a character with three fingers without making him look like a Ninja Turtle. They are. As Abe reflects on who he would want to help, he looks at his old hands and turns them over. But to me as a kid, I thought Ninja Turtle hands. 100%.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Like these characters are not designed to add all of this detail to they just look grotesque i mean look at the realistic homer cgi head that pops up or the realistic mo the more realistic they are the more hideous they are well it's like uh in the one where uh the kids are imagined as humans with the when they're pink skin and the blonde hair and stuff. And it's absolutely horrifying. Well, and Abe goes off model more than most in these early seasons too. In the blowfish episode, when he says like,

let's go out fishing. Everything's wrong with Abe in that shot. The amount of lines on Abe mess it all up. But yes, okay, now it's time for the very sweet ending. I'll play the clip first then we can talk about it but abe realizes who he really wants to help in this final clip john you saved me from losing all my money for the first time in my life i'm glad i had children so uh have you figured out who gets your money Who gave you money?

Yes, Homer, I have. Come on in. Dignityities on me friends yeah on the commentary one of the writers said we did not write that we could not have written that it does feel like they couldn't finish their homework in time and they passed it off to james l brooks so they admit this is something james l brooks did that roger kipling thing is a james l brook thing right and like i guess whenever grandpa is acting out of character it's because james l brooks wants to make it more emotional yeah yeah well brooks writes for a parent and child an adult child and of uh aging parent things he wrote so many i mean terms of endearment won him an oscar and that that's what that movie's all about so i guess he's probably like oh interplay between homer and his dad that's all me baby but yeah the

ending is just with the music and everything it's just so sweet it's yeah sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but especially that it's like the beatrice simmons memorial dining hall and i also thought about at the end here of like so does abe own this place now did he buy it like does does abe own it from this point onward well and it sucks because like now that slimy retirement home guy gets what he wanted you know like he gave a bunch of money to the retirement i wonder if he got the rub down oh maybe that's post-credit scene yeah yeah it's uh i i guess people always say uh season two oh the show had so much emotion in this case i feel like it's really unearned you go to a classic

episode like lisa substitute i think they earn it absolutely they earn their sweet ending and this one it just kind of it's too much it's not earned and grandpa is not the character who we've at least known this far he gets way more exaggerated later but this is not the same guy that was in episodes before this yeah who at least was like an old crank asshole you know and also like by the time i see the point you know i see the the beatrice simmons memorial sign on the door i'm like oh right this is all because of b because she's been dead for 10 minutes and you've already kind of forgotten that it's that it's to do with her you know like we've we've gone so far away from that now it's the whole thing about like ape having money and feeling guilt and homer and

all this other stuff and by that point you're like oh right that's why he has money it's because his girlfriend died and he was sad about that uh i guess i mean at least it lets him close the book on that for her like it's uh and uh this is a reference to a very old film the 1932 anthology film if i had a million the plot of it is that a rich old guy who hates his family wants to give away his money and he's looking for people to give it to which leads to just basically a series of short films of like well what if he gave a million dollars to this person well that guy that guy would do this or this. And the last one that wraps up the film is an old folks home and an old lady is given a million. And at the old folks home, the old people are treated, you know, poorly.

But the way they're treated poorly is that they're told, like, just sit in a rocking chair, no excitement for you. And then when the old lady buys the place with her million dollars, she then hires the staff to make them sit in rocking chairs all day while the old people get to bake pies and play gin rummy and dance again. And so, you know, it sounds like it was made during the Depression. Yeah. If I had a million. Yes. Yeah.

No, a film about like, what if you had money? Like, yeah, that's the hit film of 1932. What if you had money like yeah that's the the hit film of 1932 what if you had some money but uh but yeah the that that film would inspire the the tv show the millionaire which was just about a rich guy going from place to place and giving people money and it changing their lives the bit about the old folks home especially that's taken straight out of that movie so and it's just on youtube if you want to watch it nobody nobody cares it's not it's not it's not on hbo max or whoever had the rights to it is not keeping it off and the the credits for

this episode uh they include who does what voice because obviously uh 1991 no imdb to look at uh maybe like a book about the simpsons could tell you this but people were curious so they let you know but there are some characters on this, obviously, that would not stick around. So Hank Azaria, we see who he plays. One of the characters is Smitty. We all know Smitty, right? Wait, who the hell?

He's the scruffy of the show. Oh, right, yeah. No, no, Smitty is a guy Homer talks to once at work. Oh, right, right, right. But that's it. But it does, like, people wanted to know, like who, like Dan Castaneda's in the show, who is he?

Like, who does he voice? And they tell you in the credits here because people were demanding it yeah i guess yeah you didn't have the internet then maybe you could read like you know a tv guide they might uh identify them but i think too you know it was good the people should know who does each voice like it's uh it's too bad they don't uh they they could have just stuck with the accrediting of voices they they would uh i think for the same, do that in the Simpsons movie in 2007. Yeah, they did. When a name showed up, they'd then have a picture of every character in the film that

they voiced, which... Including Phil Rosenthal. Yeah. But the Lisa one was funniest to me because it's just, you know, Yardley Smith. And then it's just, just Lisa. Just a big picture of lisa yeah the yeah i guess the final thoughts are the ending just it is uh the sweetness of it never bugged me too much in reruns as a kid but this was never my favorite but the the more i watch it the

more it feels completely out of character for the simpsons and just too cute and sweet and not as mean and funny as I'm used to The Simpsons being. But I think this is the last bits of Brooksie sweetness that they must defeat to then truly become the classic show it would be just a few episodes later. I agree, yeah.

That dignity's on me, friends. The kids today would call it cringe. I would have to agree with them. I didn't have a word for it until now it just is an awful period on the sentence I think and there are some fun bits in here I mean it's season two it's usually pretty good but it's one of

the episodes I don't like to revisit and there's a few towards the back half of season two I'm not a huge fan of because I think they're all just getting very tired and of course revisiting for me also reminds me of how I failed to tape it so i was like oh man my greatest defeat shame act one was your b simmons who died yeah i mean i guess it's kind of good to think of it as like this period where they were figuring out how to be the simpsons

you know is is important you know they had to go through this bad period in order to come out on the other side of striking that right balance between, you know, zany and weird and dark and also, you know, very heartwarming. But man, it sucks to like be, to be watching one from that period where they had not figured it out and where it was just like, you know, sweetness after sweetness

and like characters that don't quite work and everything. Although I will admit, you know, when I was watching the end of this episode and everything although i will admit you know i when i was watching the end of this episode i i could hear that you know i was thinking in words like man this is so schlocky this is so like you know sappy or whatever it's stupid and then realized that i was kind of welling up it's just so pathetic no no that yeah even a thing that you think critically you think oh, this is corny. Like, it can still touch you even then.

Yeah. I mean, I've had that same thing watching, like, you know, overproduced viral videos about cats, you know, whatever. I'm, like, pissed off at them for making me feel, you know, for getting me in the feels and for making me sad. But I think it was the Beatrice Simmons Memorial Hall thing. That was what, you know, it was like a direct route to my crying brain. You know, it wasn't something that I was conscious of. I was just suddenly starting to feel the tears in the back of the throat, which The Simpsons will still get me.

I mean, I've watched like seasons three to nine, you know, a hundred times. And I'll still, you know, if I'm watching, you know, Do It For Her or Homer sitting on the car and looking at the stars after his mom's gone you know that can still that can still get me going yeah i guess it is ultimately it's still scenes of human kindness but we are critical jerks yeah you say we need context yeah i and justification and and hey you know on this journey to the good times they still could discover guys like professor frank you know they're like hey actually this guy's pretty funny that it wasn't all for not so libby thanks so much for joining us on this episode please let us know where to find you online and uh what you happen to be

working on right now oh thank you so much uh so you know i guess you can follow me on twitter at libby c watson um although i would rather you just go straight to my sub stack which is sicknote.co. And that's where I write about healthcare. Maybe one day I'll do some posts about nursing homes. I feel like I've got to do that now that we've talked about it. But yeah, I do a couple times a week and newsletter about healthcare, you know, with interviews with people with their experience with our terrible, terrible healthcare system, and always looking for tips as well. So tips and healthcare stories stories sick note

at substack.com no it's great essential reading you know if you if you care about how awful medical care is in in this country uh it's very informative and even if i've learned from uh keeping up with your work that as bad as i think it is it's actually worse i'll try to do i'll try to find a way to do a funny post uh at some point maybe maybe by the time this comes out i'll have found a way to do one funny post about health care so uh you know check that out because health care is so bad in america i always have a trump card to play with my wife who is canadian where she says i can't believe you guys get hulu we don't get hulu and i say you get free health. Don't talk to me about Hulu.

It's similarly useful for me when I'm getting roasted for British food or our terrible history, you know, imperialism and blah, blah, blah. I could always just be like, well, we do have health care. So, you know, and also Americans are not in any position to talk. Exactly. When it comes to roasting Britain for anything. Yeah. It's like, you know, i'll take our food over yours

but i think we both have like yeah that if neither can own the other unlike colonialism or slavery or any of that stuff no no but but thank you once again libby yes thank you libby so thanks again to libby watson for being on the show please check out all of her stuff but as for us if you want to check out more of our stuff and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Sign up there. You'll get just that, but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall. That includes all of our limited miniseries, over 100 bonus episodes you haven't heard if you're not a patron.

And our newest miniseries is actually blabbing about Batman, the animated series. We're talking about our 10 favorite episodes of Batman, the animated series only on patreon only behind the five dollar paywall we're talking about that all through the end of 2021 10 new episodes just for you if you're a patron at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a 10 level as well when you sign up for that you get all the five dollar stuff of course but also access to one megalon podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob is talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast so you know we have our sister podcast what a cartoon where twice a month me and bob cover an animated series super in-depth just like we do with the simpsons and then at the end of the month we cover an animated feature film

mega in-depth as well often over, even over five hours long about films. Like last month, we did Batman Beyond, The Return of the Joker. The month before that, we did The Road to El Dorado. And then Disney Renaissance Summer. Before that, we are now three years deep into doing the What a Cartoon movie and the extended five-hour-long, even sometimes, podcast about films as diverse as a Kira to a goofy movie. You can hear the Giant Back catalog and a new one each month if you go up to that premium $10 level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So please check out all of that

stuff today. So as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And my other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. Find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts. Sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. Henry, how about you? Get all your news on Henry Gilbert if you follow on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G keeps you up to date in my world. And you can also follow on Twitter at TalkSimpsonsPod. At TalkSimpsonsPod. That's the official Twitter account of this podcast and all the related podcasts as well. You will stay up to date when new episodes go live,

when there's information on the Patreon, when we're doing a poll, any stuff that's going on in our lives for the Talking Simpsons Podcast. Follow at TalkSimpsonsPod to keep up with it. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for Season 12's Trilogy of Error, and we'll see you then. I'm gonna be a hero I'm gonna be a hero Dad, the next time we see it, we'll do something more fun. Oh! What could be more fun than today's trip to the liquor store? Thanks for the beef jerky.

Say goodbye to Grandpa, everyone. Bye. Good boy. Oh.