Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Pokey Mom With Griffin Newman

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

The awesome first-time guest Griffin Newman from the podcast Blank Check joins us for a Simpsons featuring the great Michael Keaton! Marge befriends an artistic prisoner, and we talk about how people in prison are portrayed, the show's fun comments on their lack of reality, and chiropractors all in one jam-packed episode. Listen now before there are too many aprons! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's more twisted than Sinbad's take on marriage. I'm your host, proud Smape Renwearer Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and I'll only record this podcast if you admit the irony, Bob.

And who do we have on the line? Well, I'm Griffin Newman, and Bob Dylan wrote a song to keep me in prison. And today's episode is Pokemom. Which way is Mecca? Because I've got to do a little praying. Oh, Mecca? Well, what... No, I'm just yanking your chain. I'm Jewish. Today's episode aired on January 14th,th 2001 and as always henry will tell us

what happened on this mythical day in real life history oh my god oh boy bobby some in congress are concerned about john ashcroft's nomination to the bush administration uh the forgotten film antitrust is released in theaters and the final episode of the Jamie Foxx show airs. Wow. The show that I guess kind of killed Mission Hill. It was partnered with Mission Hill every week. There were several culprits. It was like Murder on the Orient Express kind of mystery.

Everybody killed Mission Hill. Every WB show stabbed it in a row. But yes, that John Ashcroft thing, I recall people, if you were on Bushwatch then and starting to be into politics as a youngster, like me, I was like,

Oh, this John Ashcroft guy does sound bad. I'm just learning about him now. I know he's a monster, but the only thing I can remember about him is him singing a song about Eagles. Oh yes. Ah,

the Eagle song from the, uh, was that a Fahrenheit nine 1111 i'm sure they played a clip of it yeah absolutely and and they used it in the trailer too it was the big hit single from fahrenheit 9-11 the album oh didn't john ashcroft he put he covered the boobs on the statue of justice wasn't that one of his thing he put the drapes on like the statue of justice yeah i think his defense of that was it wasn't because he was a prude. It's because

he didn't want to be photographed next to a breast and have everyone make the obvious joke like, this politician's a real boob. That seriously happened. And yeah, that film Antitrust completely forgot it existed. Who's even in it? Tim Robbins. Yes, Tim Robbins.

Claire Forlani. Thank you. I believe that's the top three build. Am I correct about that? Can we check that? I think, well, okay, I'll have to wait. I didn't have the wiki open for this. Let me double check this here. Claire Forlani.

My guess is it's Ryan Philippe, Claire Forlani, and Tim Robbins. That's my guess. Tim Robbins sounds like an and, yes. Oh, no, Rachel Lee Cook goes above it. Rachel Lee Cook. Yes, but it is an and tim robbins i forgot rachel lee cook was in it too so she's rachel lee cook's the good girl and claire forlani's the bad girl in it is that right yeah yes that is correct i can't believe i forgot rachel lee cook considering 2001 is probably peak rachel lee cook crush for me i can't believe i

forgot her i can't believe i didn't see it in theaters uh no i never saw it in theaters i mean to look back on it now it's a fun it is a movie about uh how bill gates is like evil oh right yes right it's tim robbins as evil bill gates wearing steve jobs glasses yeah yeah i all i Bill Gates wearing Steve Jobs glasses. Yeah, yeah. All I remember, I remember the trailer moment of him showing him like a TV screen that's like a painting and he's like, whoa it looks real. I recall that. I don't remember much else

from that movie. But this is peak racial league, oh wait, what's her name again? Yeah, I thought so. Peak crush for all of us because this is her year. It was 2001 and she was also in Josie and the Pussycats, right? Yes. The best comedy of the 2000s, yeah. Our friends at Podcast the Ride reminded me of the term 2000 core as a look.

And Josie and the Pussycats is as 2000 core as it gets, look-wise. Yeah, and it's incredible to watch because it makes you realize not just how 2000s court is but how specifically the aesthetics of the 2000s before 9-11 were like i do think there's a very specific window of those 21 months right where it's like because i think culture like usually there's bleed over between the end of one decade in the beginning of a next but i think the y2k thing everyone just like supercharged the the style to be like we're post 2000 now everything needs to look different and there was like a very different look from 1999 to 2000 and i think different vibes and music and pop culture and everything and then 9-11 there's another massive yeah and jersey the pussycats is like a satire of that moment culturally so it's

all of that it ends up being the best time capsule uh of the hubris pre-9-11 but yes welcome to the show griff oh yeah a good thing for me to get into before. Talking about 9-11. Our 9-11 expert for this podcast. Now, Griffin Newman, actor, comedian, and co-host of the Blank Check podcast, which is amazing. Please check that out, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. But yeah, we did an episode on Josie and the Pussycats, which is, yeah, one of my favorite movies of this time period.

And a weird thing, there is, I guess this is the following season, I think it happens. But there is an episode that is almost identical oh no it is this season it's the in sync episode the in sync one actually is very similar yeah you're right it's incredibly similar because it's about the government using the boy band to hide subliminal messages and it came out i, a month before Josie and the Pussycats. Yeah, it was that spring. Spring of 01. Yeah, it's wild. That spring of that episode, Josie and the Pussycats, Shrek. Like, it's such a different feeling.

When you tell yourself that's 2001, you're like, well, no, 2001 is 9-11. That's that year. There was a lot of months before that. But, like, Shrek for me is another one that is like the ultimate pre 9-11 movie. Like when it when Shrek 2 comes out three years later and is a massive, massive hit, I almost feel like it's people wanting to return to the warmer vibes of pre 9-11, you know? Oh, yeah. Like at that point, Shrek becomes a comfort food.

But I argue to the end of the earth that Shrek 1 would not have existed in that form or been as warmly received if it had come out nine months later. No way. If it had come out right. Yeah, it would be. Nobody wanted that post. I mean, I think about how Fellowship of the Ring was a huge hit after that. I think it would have succeeded anyway. But like, didn't we all want to go to this fantasy world where nothing is like a wink or ironic or remind you of anything?

Well, and the first movie to really hit big post 9-11 was Monsters, Inc., which is like so sweet and cuddly and is a great movie and is a very funny movie. But I feel like is even cartoonier and warmer than anything Pixar had done up until that point. And that's the first one that David Silverman works on too, right? That's the first Pixar movie where you kind of have a little Simpsons energy infused into it. You have a lot of Muppets energy infused into it. And like that was the movie where it's like, oh, people are really returning to the box office. And then you have a Harry Potter and Lord of the rings where it's like ancient evils being fought against by like primal good everyone wanted to cuddle big blue john goodman and also frodo yeah in 2001 yeah little little hairy boys well i want to say that griffin i love your

podcast i'm a recent subscriber and i will confess something that will make me sound very stupid because in the first year of your podcast everyone was telling me me, oh, this blank check podcast is so great. It's so amazing. You have to subscribe to it. You have to listen to it. And for some reason in my head, I thought this is just like that grownups to podcast in which they watch the movie blank check every week. And that does not make you look stupid. You would not believe how many people think that.

Or when we tell them the name of the show, immediately ask, is it about that movie? Which is why I think it was our 200th episode, maybe, or 100th episode, we did, we covered blank check just so we could fucking say we did it and never have to do it again. I apologize for making the same mistake a lot of people do. But now that I think about it, the title for your podcast is Makes Total Sense. Can you explain it to our audience what it means? Yeah, it's a term that my father used to use a lot, which was like when someone just had a sort of like culturally defining success, right? A movie that wins a bunch of Oscars becomes a major hit, or really taps into the zeitgeist in some kind of

way, or all of the above, that that filmmaker then gets their sort of blank check to do whatever they want. My father used to sort of like throw out when that had happened, when someone had a movie like, oh my God, their next movie is going to be a total blank check. And then we would always kind of look on in fascination to see what the person does next. Because a lot of people think, oh, that's like the best possible position you can be in

where the stupid execs take their hands off and you finally get to like do whatever you want. And very often it ends up being a uh somewhat disastrous if not completely ruinous experience for filmmakers it is more rare that you get something like mad max fury road which in my mind is like the perfect blank check movie in every way a lot of times you get movies movies that are either like calamitous, like Elizabethtown, or you get movies that I think are sort of misunderstood, like Ang Lee's Hulk, which I love, you know? a perfect example of a blank check movie as um he makes crouching tiger hidden dragon right a a fucking foreign language like incredibly emotional spiritual kung fu movie martial arts film should i say rather that makes 120 million dollars and gets nominated for every oscar is the highest grossing foreign language film of all time still to this day by like a nautical mile and

everyone is just so perplexed by the fact that hit so hard that it's like i guess you know what you're doing hands off do whatever the fuck you want and they handed him one of the biggest marvel characters at the last window of time where marvel characters were not the most precious commodity in the world that needed to be protected and brand managed to all ends of the earth and just made like an incredibly small psycho drama chamber piece about fathers and children and lasting trauma that happens to have a bright green sea monster i feel like that's the last time i want to see hulk punch tanks again like he doesn't get to i another tanks are on our side, Henry.

I know. Hulk loves tanks. He just wants to hug them. The military's great. Henry, I'm so happy you said that because along with all the other things I like about the Hulk movie, which are the things that make it

so unsuperhero movie-like, I do contend that Ang Lee's Hulk, even if you remove the stuff that alienates a lot of people, has some of the best pure Hulk action ever committed to film. And I think people lose track of that because they're like, I don't want to watch 90 minutes of the guy arguing with his dad, right? Which I love.

That's like a hat to me. But I also think the stuff with just the Hulk in the desert fighting tanks and stuff is so goddamn good. I think the Hulk's performance in that is good. The secret of that movie is that Ang Lee did all the motion capture himself. And I do think people dislike how cartoony the Hulk looks, which I think

was very much a stylistic choice in addition to being just the style, the level of effects at the time. But I just think they get the spirit of just like angry, raging Hulk right. and watching him crush stuff is fun in that movie yeah yeah i uh i feel like blank checks aren't getting written as much

to directors these days i i wonder no i i do wonder if like i was trying to think of like who is getting written a blank check now i feel like bong joon-ho maybe we'll get it but yeah he already had snow piercer right like that i would feel like that counts as a blank check now i feel like bong joon-ho maybe we'll get it but yeah he already had snowpiercer right like that i would feel like that counts as a blank check i would argue i mean we consider him someone who already like snowpiercer and okja in particular i think is very much a blank check movie both of those are parasites obviously smaller whatever he does next has the potential to be a humongous blank check movie but i also feel like he's the kind of guy he's talked about how he's working on two scripts at the same time and one of them sounds a lot smaller which is sometimes strategically the smartest thing

directors can do after the huge movie is like make the tiny thing hold on to your check and wait to really spend it rather than rushing into the big thing because a lot of people blow their capital in that way but yeah no it's a thing we bemoan a lot is that so often it's like the people who have the blank check movie they then just do for other franchises right like they either stay in their franchise that they've already had the success with or they just jump from one to another and do a bunch of sequels to other things or adaptations of other things jordan peele's a guy who i think is absolutely at blank check status but i think he's been very smart about the fact that he turned down all those franchise movies and is like what i want to do is know that i have like blank check freedom by only doing thrillers that cost 20 million dollars approximately he can make whatever the fuck he wants within his budget range now i guess the russo's cherry was a blank check movie that and i

think that one did bounce baby it did it did and there's an argument there that if that was their blank check movie do the russo's actually have anything they're dying to express. You know, like, that's what's interesting to me is I feel like a lot of times blank check movies, what I find fascinating about them are just like, it's the thing that the filmmaker was too embarrassed or never felt the courage to put out there until they were so widely accepted for their last thing that they're like, now I think I can pull this off. and cherry just feels like the russo brothers being like this is the kind of indie movie they probably liked when they were in film school you know like this is them being really influenced by train spotting in the early

90s and going man i'd love to make a movie like train spotting and 20 years later making a movie like train spot yeah but it just it feels like a weird pastiche thing to me rather than like god this one really hits close to home for us this is really the thing we wish we could always make you know it's like he's someone who's in a blank check stage right now i mean there are a lot of people jojo rabbit's very much a blank check movie um but he's he's doing it smartly where he's cushioning it in between Marvel movies. Whereas someone like Ryan Coogler, it's like, what's the blank check he does after Black Panther? Black Panther 2.

What does Patty Jenkins do after Wonder Woman? Wonder Woman 1984. That's certainly a blank check. I feel like Black Panther 2 might be a blank check, but it's also a blank check within the safe franchise silo. Well, the big guest star on this episode made a name for himself in blank check movies yes yes and is i i will say this is the reason i picked this episode my favorite living actor oh cool he is he is my guy i have right here right next to my computer monitor i have a life cast of michael keaton's face wow that was gifted to me that's amazing

but i have at my desk. But yes, yes, very much. We've covered him a lot, especially because we did Tim Burton on the show. And he's my favorite kind of like, he's almost like a blank check actor to me because he is so odd and specific in so many ways that it is bizarre that he ever became

as big a movie star as he did. And especially because the breakthrough performances for him were all very unconventional. It's not like he had his major success by flattening out his weirdness, you know, and this episode comes in sort of the fallow period of his career, which is one of the reasons this episode sticks in my mind so much because I'm being so excited as a kid or you know a tween or whatever that he was doing anything let alone appearing on my favorite tv show and then now he's recreated himself as like the ultimate prestige actor and also like oh give him two million dollars and he'll be the villain or the supporting part in your big movie and nail it you know he really

wasn't a slump at this point in his career i was looking at his uh his filmography and he was doing things like jack frost and white noise and it wasn't until cars the pixar movie that he had a big movie but even then you're like he's the villain in cars right that movie is very much advertised as look it's paul newman and owen Owen Wilson in a Pixar movie, right? Like, yeah, one of the biggest comedy stars of today and one of the most legendary movie stars alive. And people were sort of like, whose whose voice is that? You know, and then they bring him back for Toy Story three a couple years later. And it sort of felt like, oh, maybe like, Keaton will be like a new John Ratzenberger. Pixar will use him a lot that will make me happy you know but

like that same year he does the other guys and he's great in that but i was like expecting like oh this is gonna lead to a renaissance of all these guys who grew up with michael keaton putting him in like the elder statesman role in their comedies and then that didn't happen and then uh you know it birdman it just suddenly everyone overnight was like oh right welcome back yeah we forgot about you yeah i yeah keaton he i i always forget that he had this you know he came from comedy but that's so evident in this episode like they give they give they they do for him in this episode what they pretty much only do for albert brooks of like hey just riff and well animated if it's good like yeah

that's what i find interesting about this episode like in a lot of ways for me this episode feels very emblematic of this exact point in the show season 12 and that it's sort of the season 12 version of like a season 4 concept not just in its plot line and its subject matter but also in its guest star both in terms of who they cast how they use him how they allow him to retain some authorship over his role and the way the guest star character is built and the episode is constructed around it does feel like an albert brooks episode or like elisa's substitute or something like that but you're at this midpoint where it it lacks the certain emotionality you know and and the actual story specificity of something like lisa's substitute but also the version of this episode in uh season 32 has none of that would just be joke machine this is still

sort of like between the two pillars you know well this in this era like they are doing more of i mean tennis the menace i think is a couple episodes after this where every guest star is playing themselves so having michael keaton play a character uh that feels like a throwback even in in the season 12 you know yeah right because there are two things that start to happen that bum me out on the show and i guess we can also after this get into sort of my bigger relationship with the simpsons but uh one is guest stars literally playing themselves all the time right which just becomes more and more of a thing whether it's the episodes constructed around it or just 15 poppin appearances of the style of bruceanche in this episode, right?

Like, bring in like six people for one line jokes and caricaturing them as themselves. And then the second thing that happens is like, I forget where the episode is, but there's one around this time period where Ben Stiller plays a character who is not Ben Stiller, but looks like Ben Stiller and is very much trafficking in the Ben Stiller comedy archetype of this time, right? Yeah, there'd be a Ricky Gervais episode like that. That's the ultimate example. I was gonna say, that's when you've gone completely beyond the pale. That's when I feel like that then becomes the, to a certain degree,

the mold for the special episodes from there on out, where it's like you bring in someone as a guest writer and or you build an episode around their comedic persona it looks like them they ostensibly play themselves with a different name they do their bit and the whole show warps around their thing right yeah though i mean they in season eight they the one with rodney dangerfield is great but that also that at least feels like a tribute to a different era instead of like lifting up a currently famous person. And it's also, that almost becomes closer to the use of Jackie Mason or DeVito or something where it's like, you're both cashing in on everything we like about that known performer

who is so recognizable, but you're also really weaving them into the emotional texture of the show, right? You're connecting with the characters we're closest to. This feels like one of the episodes from this era where they sort of set it up like that classic, perfect kind of Simpsons guest star. And it's so close and it isn't like a classic episode. I think it falls short in a number of ways, but it's one of the times where they almost have all the pieces right. I'm sure this is the thing you guys are reckoning with constantly. That like season 12 has to be viewed now objectively as still early Simpsons. Yes.

Even though in most people's eyes, it's like, oh, that's over the hump Simpsons. You know? Yeah, revisiting these, I'm finding myself liking 12 a lot more. Because I feel like after all of the lows of of 11 there are several polarizing episodes in 11 i think we were all just conditioned to hate everything that was coming at us when it was new in the year 2000 and now i'm watching these and i know there's not as emotional of a connection between me and this episode but i think there are so many times i laughed out loud and that still is is a credit to the show being very funny.

It just they're not as interested in the emotional aspect anymore. And that's fine. But I'm enjoying 12 a lot, I have to say. And I know this one was hated online in the year 2001 when it was live. Well, yeah, you know, I think 12 is a real uptick season on a relative scale. But you do start to see that thing where like you know what like consensus is like six seven eight is kind of like the peak run in most people's eyes where the simpsons has found this perfect balance between like joke density intelligence depth of characters breadth of story and also still retaining emotionality right and then i feel like nine

you feel the shift when i was a kid watching the show i'd be like what are you talking the show's always good you know what are you talking about it hasn't been good since season 10 or whatever and like nine you feel a shift 10 you feel a shift 11 you feel a real shift and then 12 is an uptick but it's an uptick to like back how nine felt you know it's like that weird thing where it's like, it's an uptick back to the beginning of the decline. And then I feel like from there on out, it's like weird, you know, peaks and valleys, you definitely do find seasons that are better than others. I will say so I in quarantine about six months ago, maybe I've lost all track of time, I guess maybe nine

months ago over the summer of 2020. I was like, I think I'm gonna try to watch every episode of The Simpsons. If I don't do it now, when am I ever going to have seen every episode of The Simpsons? I don't host a podcast about it, right? I got up to season 23, I think, and then felt like I need to take a break. I got to season 23 very fast. Like I think i did seasons 1 through 23 in four months or something like that four or five months and i was just watching it all day every day pretty much just very depressed not leaving my house i live alone and simpsons just kind of came my like my yellow noise running in the background to just sort of keep me relatively same and there was like a warm bath quality to just like oh the predictability and the repetition of the show in later seasons became weirdly comforting to me and then i just sort of felt like a i kind of

maxed out on it i need to take a break i want to watch some other things and b i got really stressed out at the prospect of finishing it before I was vaccinated. Like back in November or whatever, I was like, if I fucking finish the show and then still have six months where I'm locked up in my apartment, I'm going to lose my mind that I've been doing this so long. I watched all of The Simpsons and had time to spare. Right. So then I stepped away and I haven't really come back to it. And you guys asked me to be on the show, when you previously asked me over the summer, it was when I was in the midst of watching it,

but also was real heavy period of blank check and stuff and feeling really burnt out. And we're on like a little hiatus from recording right now. You asked me again, Henry, it was like perfect timing, but it also is interesting because it's like, I'm a couple months out from a couple months of like pure Simpsons immersion where I was watching almost nothing but and thinking about the Simpsons all day, every day. The Simpsons will be right back.

I think, What was that? A Butterfinger, Grandpa. Well, stop it. Okay. I said stop it! I did. Oh, darn osteoporosis. Bite my Butterfinger.

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Please sign up today at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons to hear it all. One, and I mean, you are similarly aged to us in that you so you probably grew up with with simpsons and i mean i i guess you probably weren't watching it like the very first seasons but was it like syndication when you super got into it yeah so i'm i'm 32 i'm the exact age of The Simpsons, but I am the oldest of three kids. And my mother was super overprotective about movies and television in particular. in the wake of The Simpsons, but also the post-Nicktoons sort of like more edge cartoon and also just a lot of fighting shows. I know Power Rangers was live action,

but the X-Men cartoon, all the superhero cartoons. My mother just like didn't want me watching anything that she thought was violent or sarcastic. Sarcastic was the other word she used. And Simpsons definitely fell into the sarcastic silo also falling into the sarcastic silo rugrats showing that my mother did not really have an understanding of what any of these shows were but i was forbidden from watching most things that my generation was watching so i was like a weird kid who almost exclusively watched looney tunes and

the muppet show which were both allowed because they were older and they were quote-unquote classics, but they're so cynical and so violent, both of those shows. I mean, like, but, you know, Muppet Show obviously has a lot of sincerity to it as well, but there's, like, a lot of cynicism to it. And that's a show where sketches end with Crazy Harry blowing up stuff. And, like, I mean, mean fucking looney tunes is like bugs

bunny tricking a hunter into shooting himself in the face and then saying ain't i a stinker like it's like i it's so weird that like she was trying to block me from those things and instead i just only like bugs bunny became my model for all behavior there was very little gunplay on rugrats i have to say, as a viewer. That's a thing. I remember, I guess maybe I was, like, seven or eight, I asked my mother for my birthday if I could watch one episode

of Rugrats, because I knew this is a show about babies. If she watches it, she'll realize she didn't know what she was talking about, and she lumped Rugrats in with Ren and Stimpy. So I did that for my birthday, and then she watched Rugrats with me and was like, Oh, this is true about babies. And then I was allowed to watch it again. But that very much began the period of me sort of like trying to filibuster my way into getting each of these pieces of media allowed.

And I feel like Simpsons, I finally broke that wall a year or two later so like i started watching the simpsons probably 1999 so i started watching it right at the time that older gen x people were saying oh the simpsons isn't good anymore right it's fallen off but i was simultaneously watching new live episodes and watching syndication obsessively like i would watch the two back-to-back episodes on fox 5 6 and 6 30 because i was like i need to catch up everyone else is 10 years ahead of me on i need to catch the fuck up so like i'm watching two episodes a day plus the new episode every week in 1999 2001 2001 the dvd box sets come out and then i feel like oh two oh three we have like bad dial-up internet and my main activity at night is going on like limewire or kazaa and trying to download episodes

that i haven't seen because i have that simpsons guide you know oh yes the big old guide amazing colossal no i'm thinking of mystery science yeah that's sorry but yeah the complete it was the first volume yes i i and the back of that there was a notes page and i literally wrote down every episode i hadn't seen so i could cross them off the list when dvd box sets came out or um i i found someone who was seating uh you know barbershop quartet or whatever finally i can see it and make these references make these jokes but so i was i was way into the simpsons it kind of became my my biggest pop culture obsession for a couple of years there and i do feel like despite the fact that the public perception was that the show was kind of declining at that point or at least was over its absolute golden age that there

was a little bit of like a resurgence just in terms of cultural prominence for the show. I think probably tied to like the 10th anniversary, but there was also a lot of merchandise again. And I was very into collecting the Simpsons action figures of that time. Yeah, so we charted that one. It was when they hit the 200th episode.

We looked up, I went through the variety archives and it was like literally these announcements of we signed it the the fox team has signed a new deal with the merchandisers so new right it was them finally figuring out how to sell simpsons things outside of the lens of bart mania yeah after about 1993 it was very hard to find any merch anywhere outside of like a few random things but once you're at 2000 2001 that's when the playmates figures start coming out that's when they're just all this new merch in every store right and i'm like a big merch dude i love merch and the history of merch and shit but um especially that day i was very swayed by merchandise like i was such a

comic book store culture kid that having that much merchandise on the shelves again is probably one of the main things that drove me to be like, Mom, you need to let me watch this now. I'm out of touch with with all this stuff on shelves. And I was like, so all in on that on that playmates line. I mean, my bedroom was like increasingly dominated by an entire corner of the room that was all the play sets and the figures. So I was just like so in it at that point in time but yeah i there is that weird thing where it was like simpsons was such a merchandising bonanza for like a year or two after it premiered with all the bart stuff which then gave way to all the bootleg bart stuff and then gave way to like

the bottom falling out on the merch overproduction being treated like, oh, that was a fad. And now they're on to the next thing, right? Yeah. And then there were suddenly like a surplus of heavily discounted Simpsons merchandise. And then late 90s, early 2000s is like 10th anniversary, they've reframed it, the merch is different. It's not so Bart focused anymore. It's more to sort of adults and going deeper into the character catalog. And that was a big thing that got me adults and going deeper into the character catalog and that was a big thing that got me I think deeply into the show and made me feel like I could be all in on it in a way like like a Star Wars obsession where it's like oh well now they're

like things to catalog there this many episodes you can learn all the references you can have all the figures you know yeah there's such a like depth to the world and things to collect and message boards and all that sort of shit was like perfectly cresting at the moment that I got into the show and was all all about it. I'm just thinking about that giant Simpsons poster, the very iconic one with almost every character at the time, seeing that and maybe 97 or 98 and thinking I can name everybody on that. And I have not wasted my life. Yes. Right. name everybody on that and i have not wasted my life yes yeah right and i very much was like a kid coming to the table a couple years later and was like i need to learn how to name everyone on that poster you know like i was like very aware of the fact that i wanted to be someone who knew every

character on the simpsons yeah they they learned i think to like suncoast, Hot Topic, those things were existing to sell, sell Simpsons things to larger audience. Maybe we can thank South Park for creating that kind of demographic to sell things to, I suppose. I think that was part of it. But I also think part of it was like you're now selling borderline nostalgic merchandise to the kids who grew up with the Simpsons. Right. So it's like if you were bart's age when the show premiered in 89 then by 1999 you are a college student you know where if you see that poster you're like oh fuck yeah simpsons yeah i'll put that on my wall you know like i i feel like it was like suddenly they were selling the slightly more adult merch for the people who had originally bought the eat my shirts, shorts, shirts, all the blue shirt Bart merchandise, which this episode makes such a good joke about.

That's a great joke. Well, I guess we should start our episode discussion now, though. So, well, first off, the chalkboard gag is a reference to Who Let the Dogs Out? Just to let you know, it's from 2001. It's our second episode of 2001. That song, it's not about dogs, correct? It's about ugly women. Is that the truth of that song?

Oh, no. It's like when the club is full of... Is it really? People think it's like, oh, it's a fun dog song. But I think the intent of the song is like there's a bunch of ugly women in the club. And when that happens, you sing Who Let the Dogs Out? Oh, jeez i only know the most recent time i listened that song all the way through was playing the children's version of it in just dance during my morning exercise and

and in that it's very much about dogs and literal canines oh i was gonna say because it's like it's it's sort of like a classic reggaeton song but but the Baja Man cover of it was specifically for Rugrats in Paris, the movie. So it's used in the movie in a montage where Spike the dog gets loose and runs around Paris. And the music video is also intercut with the Baja Man and the dogs being let out in Paris. Like it's used very literally. That reminds me of how the,

uh, the song all star, the music video is for mystery men and it involves mystery men characters, but everyone associates that music with Shrek. Right. Right. But the music video is intercut with scenes from mystery men. The first person who talks in that music video,

Dane cook. He's the waffle man. Yep. Oh God. Uh, then we get a quick vincent price uh couch gag which they clearly they're like oh this has mouth movements we need to have sound on this one it's not they don't always do sound on a couch gag but then start of the day for homer he is refusing to wake up in this first clip where marge she wants to do something for her. My juice box!

Sorry, homie, but you promised to take me to the apron expo today. Just give me ten more hours. Come on. You and the kids always want to do fun stuff, but today we're doing something I like. They're unveiling a combination apron smock. It's called a smapron. Did you say smock run?

No, smapron. Oh. Come on, it'll be fun. Man, that was a good apron expo. I'm going to wear my apron on the 4th of July. And this lead apron will keep me safe downstairs. Grill power. I'm a little disappointed.

There were too many aprons. It was great, all right. I mean, to set the tone for what this Scully era is about, part of it is Marge is the most boring character in everyone. And to the point that here Marge is like, everybody likes to do fun stuff, but I want to do things that I like that aren't fun. Right, that she self-identifies as someone who likes unfun things.

I mean, I do, I like that game with Marge for this run. And watching so much of The Simpsons over last summer, I sort of forgot how much a cornerstone of Marge's character is making bad jokes and things that she finds funny that no one else finds funny you know like things that she finds infinitely amusing which you know there is this sweet kind of running arc across the entire run of the simpsons you know that i they start to lose the thread a little bit because then i think some of the jokes start to feel a little mean and judgmental of marge the deeper you go on but at this period i still think they're on the right side of it which is like marge was this incredibly sad lonely girl right who kind of always had mom interests and never had anyone to relate to and and this

dream that she talks about like in several episodes she directly invokes that her dream was to have a daughter so she could finally have a friend that she wants lisa to be her friend and lisa is also kind of more sophisticated than her that she finds a lot of the stuff that marge likes kind of lame or retrograde and that marge is often left alone on this island just being like won't anyone else get excited about aprons so my favorite joke in this entire episode is just the reversal of marge being disappointed because there were too many aprons many even she can't be happy there i have no deeper insight into this but i really love homer uh being really excited about smockeron

but not excited about smaperins. Yeah. Right, right. It's a fun curveball in that you think this first set piece will be, they'll go to the apron convention and then find the plot there. But no, you smash cut from them going to them coming back. Right, right.

And a perfect joke of just like, everyone else had a great time despite all expectations. And Marge just thought it was too much. Like it was too ostentatious, amount of aprons you know uh for an apron expo that i uh and i'll yeah i like that smockron joke too because it feels like a joke about a pitch winning that smaperin won in the room and they're like my smockron was better should have used that. It also feels like a good Homer internal logic joke where it's not just this guy's so fucking dumb,

which I think sometimes the show gets wrong as it goes on. It's like his brain is just on a different wavelength. Like, as you sort of said, like the unexplained, what is the difference in his mind? And why was he so excited about one and not about the other? You know? And visually, they cut even closer on his face just for the word smock run yes yeah i i also just love the joke of the juice box that explodes like they get uh one of those scully gets his uh he was really

into getting away with the most horrifying visuals and finding a way around it and that seemingly homer has crushed it even if that broke his use box he is still bent in a way his body cannot which for an episode about back problems it it kind of foreshadows what will happen to homer later there's a lot of funny buttons in this episode and the bed has two functions full power sorry max power and full reverse yes no other dial or anything that opening gag is an example for me of one of those jokes where i go like fuck is that funny short term but really damaging big picture right like if you get to the point where within a gag homer's back can be broken and he can bleed out and recover

from it then what is the show anymore right yeah instead it's like no this is the double reverse joke of as you said he is doing something that no one could survive but the blood is a misdirect from the juice box which is a different type of homer joke about why does he have a juice box in bed right it's i do feel like like by season 17 they do this type of gag and it's actually just blood well you know they start to get to a point where the joke becomes like Looney Tunes levels of violence, including gore and stuff that are just recovered from. Well, just a dozen episodes before this, Homer, the badger tears Homer's guts out. Okay, I was trying to remember where that was in the timeline. That's the perfect example for me.

I thought that was later than this. But that's the example for me. I thought that was later than this. But that's the one for me where I went, fuck, you've crossed a line now you can't come back from. Like, that is just too disgusting and also too unrealistic where, like, he never recovers from that in the same way. You know? He never physically would recover. He never psychologically would recover. No one who saw that would ever psychologically recover he just says what am i a doctor yeah i i will say griffin uh you're meeting me and bob on

the other side of this tunnel of justice having to accept that like the show has thrown away reality and they're like the the only i know the only way to appreciate the show i i've come to like these episodes more when i just say like well obviously the internal logic of the reality of this family is meaningless so i should just appreciate scully and team's ability to make jokes like that's that's i want to be very clear that is the exact way i appreciate these episodes as well but it still bums me out it is like for sure a key kind of distinction for me it's two-prong it's that it's like jokes that fundamentally break the reality in a way that i have to think about too much right even if i just go like well shrug it still lingers in my mind like that image of the badger pulling

at his intestines is burned in there in a way I resent. Right. And I can't help but watching that start to think of the implications of what if that were to happen in real life. Right. So as hard as I try to just shrug and accept it as a joke, it stays with me to a bad degree. And then the other part of it is just the the emotionality that the show stops being able to balance the two. Part of it is the jokes go so far in that direction that it's hard to then accept the show telling a very small intimate

story it feels out of sync with that and the second part of it is i think they just start becoming so obsessed with joke density which i do think the sully run at least has a much stronger joke ratio, like hit to miss success rate, right? Yeah, yeah. But I think this is the best era of just pure joke machine for the show. But I do miss when you could have like an episode like Summer of Four Foot Two, you know, or Lisa's Up to. I mean, my favorite episodes tend to be Lisa episodes,

I think because Lisa is the most sincere character and is sort of the moral compass of the Simpsons. Lisa is like suffocated in these seasons. I created this. I have no reason to play this episode other than this moment here, but I created a jingle for how many times they shit on lisa in these seasons i'll play it now take that lisa's beliefs well griffin uh we were talking about this on some recent episodes and over the past couple of seasons we've been covering but uh

what something that we shouldn't ignore is that how big south park was and how envious they were of south park success and popularity and just it being the hot new show and I think that's that's why these episodes are a little crueler a little less about emotions because South Park was just like fuck all of that everyone is a hypocrite everyone is wrong the world is we're all just going to hell let's just make fun of it and that's why at the end of this episode it's like no the prisoner was not uh you know had a heart of gold he was he was an evil liar and he will hurt and kill people, and you shouldn't listen to him. There's nothing to be found, like no moral to be found in this episode at all.

No, and I do feel like a kind of classic Simpsons guest appearance or like, you know, peripheral character-based episode is like the Simpsons meet someone who kind of changed their worldview and then can't stay with them. Right. Like you're bleeding gums, Murphy, you're Mr. Nerdstrom.

Right. Like any of these characters. I mean, on the flip side of it, you have someone like, you know, an antagonistic character like Hank Scorpio or why am I forgetting his name? Grimes. Grimes. I was going to say. Who did you say? Oh, I said Grimey. It's his nickname. He preferred to be called. Yes. Yeah, like, you know, but an episode that sort of like makes them question themselves

or their dynamic or something. And I like those episodes because they, for me, are able to have their cake and eat it too, where it's like this encounter, this episode, this relationship was impactful for these characters in a show with little to no continuity. But because they leave, it doesn't feel like the show is ignoring them at the end of the episode. Right. Like versus what's her name? The next door neighbor from like Marge. Oh, Powell. Ruth Powers. Right. Right. Like I love Ruth Powers. but no longer affecting them versus something like bleeding gums you know where it's just like this guy was never going to be her best friend you know and i think it's good that they killed

off bleeding gums because it's like well he can last more emotionally in the show as sort of like a memory you know this feels like a setup for that type of guest star character you know that like marge forming this relationship with this convict can really kind of change her in some way. He can go back to jail at the end of the episode or go back on the run at the end of the episode and still stay with Marge. And he never has to be invoked again. But as a hardcore Simpsons fan,

you can kind of hold it in your back pocket and tell yourself like, yeah, but she doesn't forget him. Like he's still there somewhere in her mind. He's, he's impacted her life, but instead they do this kind of crappy. Um, yeah, but she doesn't forget him. Like he's still there somewhere in her mind. He's he's impacted her life. But instead, they do this kind of crappy. I know we have more in the episode to go. But they do this crappy sort of like, you know, for me, sellout ending of just like, well, it turns out he like kind of soft and he's like, yeah, and he just goes back off to jail and the whole thing is treated like, well, what a silly mistake. Marge misread this guy. The show punishes Marge for opening up her heart and trusting someone. And her last words are, get him out of here.

Yes. Right. Right. Which I feel like he can be. How do I put this? I think he can end the episode committing another crime and going back to jail without it being like this guy fucking sucks you know yeah like he's crazy and he lied to marge and she resents the fact that she ever even reached out to him because there is something so sweet to the heart of this episode being

marge taking to the fact that this person in this prison has such a sensitive soul and that they need to be uh nurtured in some kind of way well we've heard scully talk before about how uh he regrets not going for emotion as much as he could that like on he cut some scenes from the uh the mods death episode because they're like ah this is a little too touchy-feely like one of my least favorite episodes oh yes oh yeah we were there i uh but i guess uh so the next scene begins though and homer stops at a prison rodeo today uh and i will say this is based on real life there are uh there are real prison rodeos there haven't been any in the last year i think because because of all that stuff but i think this is a reference to uh america's oldest prison rodeo

that's been going on since 1964 the angola prison rodeo and let me just say it's incredibly depressing to research uh prison rodeos and it is uh full of horrible history like for example angola prison is named that way because that was the name of the slave plantation it replaced after the civil war and it's uh it's just a farm for a cheap labor to sell a whole bunch of farming goods so yeah it's uh depressing now may i circle back to lisa for a second here especially since you played the bumper i feel like it's worth bringing up here l Lisa, very much over time as I've gotten older and rewatching the show, is now inarguably my favorite character, right? And not only that, I think fundamentally at its best in its sort of glory run the first eight or nine seasons or so, The Simpsons is kind of a show about Lisa. Because there's obviously the recent thing where ted cruz was like the republican

party is the party of barton homer and democrats are margin lisa this idea of using lisa as like a slam i feel like there was a similar thing uh accusing uh kamala harris of sounding like marge and there was some other thing culture than last year i'm forgetting where someone was called lisa simpson oh it's like an insult right right this idea of just like oh we all agree that lisa's the annoying character right from like the worst fucking people and uh i i feel like if that's your takeaway from the simpsons you are so fundamentally miss watching the show because like everyone who grew up to create The Simpsons was a Lisa, right? Like by and large. And I think when the show starts to slip, it's less Lisa-like people taking over the influence of the show to some degree, right?

I do think it's like, I mean, especially if you look at like The Simpsons was notorious for being like this, like Tony, Harvard Lampoon, writer's room kind of thing, right? Most of these people are closest to Lisa of any of these characters. And Lisa really is the moral compass of the show, right? It's, you know, by and large, a pretty lefty show, especially when you look at like Matt Groening's roots, you know? I can't speak to, you know, him now, but, you know, him being this sort of like crunchy cartoonist, at the time, you look at the show's attitude towards police, towards capitalism, towards all these things. And Lisa is the one who seems most reflective of the show's sensibilities and also tends to be the key for the most emotional episodes on the show it's lisa learning tough lessons about how the world works right or making small victories uh at a price or something it

feels incredibly strange and telling of the ship the show goes through at this time that lisa not only has almost nothing to do in this episode which in and of itself feels like a mistake but an episode that is a kind about prison reform, right? Yeah. Like this episode is about like, this is bad for the human spirit to keep people locked up. You need to believe that there's like a better pathway. And Marge having her bluff called on this idea by having to live with the guy.

It is weird that Lisa has almost nothing to say in this episode. Her most prominent role in this episode is to be used as a flag to lure a bull yeah and you're just like i it's not that i dislike the chiropractic plot line that's fine but it also feels like in season seven the b plot of this episode would have been lisa becomes more politically activated by the prisoner right yeah I think so and I don't think Mike Scully was as Lisa minded as other writers because he was a working class guy he's a college drop

out he would go on to immediately work for sitcoms like he was his first job was writing for Yakov Smirnoff sitcom you create a sitcom with Mel Gibson not too long after this and I'll just say again we love Mike Scully he's one of the nicest guys we've ever talked to I'm a fan.

I am a fan. I like this era. But, I mean, he's also talked about that he was sort of the guy who came in and was like, I wasn't a huge fan of the show before. I'm just here to write the funniest episode I can. I don't really care about the things that have been pre-established, right? Am I getting that right? Well, Ian Maxton Graham, who he was a big part of this.

Oh, yes. Sorry. He's the biggest one of that yeah i'm sorry yes uh but well and later in the episode lisa i think she does say like mom aren't you worried like she kind of indicates like you should be afraid to take a chance on a prisoner to be around prisoners which is such a far cry from melissa who was who Marge, like, aren't the police just meant to protect property, not people? Like, it's so far away from it. Right. Like, it almost feels like part of this episode should be Lisa is the one who is the most adamant that we should not vilify convicts. And at the end, when he backslides, that she should be the one most hurt by it you know yeah they got no time

for her feelings in this i think it was like we have a marge a story we need a homer violent b story to keep everyone entertained but i do i will say i also like marge a stories especially when they're based around um guest star characters like this because the loneliness of marge is a really strong through line over the course of the show for me i like episodes where marge makes a friend for one week where she feels some kind of kinship and intimacy with a person who then can't stay you know i do think back to that great line she said when she's trying to force bart to be friends with ralph when she talks to ralph and says like i used to play by myself all the time too like that it speaks to a lonely childhood for her i do like that right and yeah

i i always love the loneliness of marge and especially when the jokes are tied to that when they're good character-based jokes like that not jokes at rick's fans uh so at the rodeo the the warden is voiced by the late charles napier yay he would come back he would come back a lot and we talked about him plenty on our talking critic miniseries we did like four years ago so we love charles napier died in 2011 uh the warden is an existing character do you remember in uh it's the same design you're right yes uh marge goes to jail bart has a fantasy about seducing the warden as Bartina. And the warden, they just recolor his mustache and hair to be gray instead of brown as they are in the fantasy.

But it's the same design. That's ancient design work there. That's smart. Welcome to Waterville State Penitentiary. The contestants you'll see today are actual prisoners on a break from their telemarketing duties now here comes our first outlaw doggy well don't feel too bad for him folks he's in here for erecting a nativity scene on city property there's so much evil in the world i would guess napier's most famous is the guard in silence of the lambs. I mean, I guess he's a Demi,

Jonathan Demi regular. We, we did Jonathan Demi's whole filmography on blank check a couple of years ago, and he's in almost every one of his movies in a very bizarre range of roles. I always think of him as being the, the main us military point person in

the austin powers franchise right uh when austin's getting unfrozen he's in that whole stretch of the movie and he has a line delivery that rings in my head forever where there's like eight different split screens showing like all the different things they need to prepare to uh upon dr evil's return uh and he's calling all the different world leaders need to prepare upon Dr. Evil's return. And he's calling all the different world leaders. And he says, like, you know, do this, do this, get Russia on the phone, feed my fish, pack my bags. I'm going to London, England. And he says, England.

And I love it. I always want to say england but he's like that perfect at this kind of despite demi chung that the guy had a lot of range it actually could be used in great many ways he is so perfect as this kind of gruff uh uh sort of force in people's lives we should also mention he is uh like the one of the main characters the ted turner style mogul who's jay sherman's boss on the critic and is so funny on that duke phillips it does feel like right after the critic they start using napier anytime they have a guest star like this for a couple episodes yeah i think this this warden character would come back a few more times then charles napier would play two additional characters before he passed away but aljean took over the show in the following year so obviously he wanted to get charles napier back in some kind of voice acting role and he he played

his fair share if he wasn't a general he was usually like some sort of prison employee yeah he's he's a guy who yells at people in prison like he got well it's like how arlie ermie was only that role or a joke about that role in most of his casting after Full Metal Jacket. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie.

I love the way the Simpsons use Napier. It's this thing I like where it's like he's not a guest star in the same way as someone like Keaton or like Valanche in this episode right where it's like the episode's built around having this hot new uh talent uh in the ecosystem of the show for one episode or it's a quick joke of someone playing themselves it's almost like they're sitting there and they go like well we could probably get Harry Shearer to play a warden or azaria and it would be funny but it also would be better if we just get the kind of guy who plays the warden in these types of movies who most people don't know by name would vaguely recognize by face but not be able to remember where they knew him from but it's like this weird kind of versamilitude of just like get the real

thing rather than having one of the other guys do an impression of a jack nabier well it's like how they just start they just go like let's just get jk simmons to be the jameson guy like right exactly yeah uh but yeah so the uh rodeo starts we see a man die on screen seemingly just land face first snap his neck and it And it, I, I think the joke is about, uh, how the ridiculous of it, but having a joke about like, he's in here for a nativity scene on private property.

That feels almost like a conservative joke, like a Fox news joke. It's odd. It is. Uh, it like, is that a Schwartz welder joke? You know,

it was like the one sort of voice in the mix at this point in time who's sort of like pushing back on overly liberal values invading everything yeah i can't i can only i really like marge's response to that though there's so much evil in the world so much evil in the world i can my only liberal view on it is that they're joking about how that that people would be that extreme about it or to think that it's that. Yeah. But otherwise, it just reads like a conservative joke. Yes.

Right. It's like an actual it would be a Fox News headline today. Absolutely. If that happened, it would be like, can you believe how dare they infringe upon his rights? It is fine. happened it would be like can you believe how dare they infringe upon his rights um it is fun i mean there is sort of like a meta joke to this opening chunk of you know march at the beginning saying we never get to do things that i want to do we're always doing what everyone else thinks is fun i want to do my boring thing and then the show cuts over her boring thing and cuts to the

kind of thing that homer would suggest at the beginning of an episode, right? Like, it does feel like the apron thing, the joke is not really touching on any of that at all. And the entire entry point for what the episode becomes about is Homer getting attracted to some weird sign on the end of the road, which feels like so many of the episodes at this point in time start with Homer reading something in the newspaper and going, we have to go, you know, and then it's a candy expo or chili cook off or whatever yeah the show could have just started here well here we are at the prison rodeo and then it could have been minute one

right the joke is marge saying i should have an episode i should get to start off an episode with the non you know the false red herring opener and then they go like not even worth the screen where's my set piece the show denies her her pitch for a set piece and uh yeah instead they're they do the thing that homer and the jocular spirit of the show is which is at the time which is just like violence done to criminals and it's like so consequence free while not cut this also comes during time of just like well well, someone's in prison. They're an awful person. And so they must be shown like you don't feel bad if a horrible thing happens to them is is a spirit of a lot of these jokes, too.

Yeah. This episode's odd in a lot of ways. And once again, it's just like it really feels like two seasons earlier. This episode would never be this apolitical and certainly the ways in which it's political are just a very passive coding of like well everyone in prison is snake right yeah yeah and i'm just happy that we dodged a sexual assault joke especially with prisoners especially with a conversation about oz at the end of the episode. Yeah, yeah. Fortunately, there's no drop the soap joke. Yeah, I mean, we talk about, too, the, like,

grainings away at Futurama and jokes, say, like, Panda Love get in because he's busy. And not there to say, please don't do a rape joke on this show. Now, can I say this? Because I feel like it starts season 13 it's either 13 or 14 there's a run of like two seasons where i noticed a major increase in super casual homophobic jokes you're talking about the influence that south park must have had at this point in time there is like suddenly for two seasons,

like, eight episodes where there's a joke that's just someone calling someone else gay in a derogatory way, completely removed from any actual sexuality. Uh, yeah. It's interesting to me how much it pops up and then disappears. Like, there's just this one two-year stretch

where it's part of the language of the show. Homer, like, bark don't be so gay you know and then it just goes away again and it does really feel like the south park thing of like well they're not going to be able to go as far as south park and they can't really curse because of fcc the one thing you're allowed to do is use derogatory terms against a protected group that are actually curse words you know like use use their terms in a derogatory way should i say well there's stuff with trans people too yeah even worse no i i i would be failing our friend drew mackie if we didn't uh promote his video he did of just charting every gay joke for 32 seasons of simpsons and yeah you can definitely spot in the teens there's like a real

mean streak just comes in there towards towards lgbt people in general yeah totally and there's stuff that's bad across the entire run of the show but it just what really jumped out to me is a two season stretch where there are multiple instances of what are you gay stop being so gay like it's always that you know it's like i dare you to go do this unless you're gay you know i guess the only homophobic joke we get is the gay clowns yeah they're more like drag queens yeah scenes and even on the commentary scully's like yeah yeah that's not the best like he he does i mean it's not particularly cruel but it is just like look at these queenie guys like that that mostly seems what it is but yes uh yeah that's where we also meet jack crowley right around then that he's uh bob dylan march had really looked up why

bob dylan wrote to keep him in prison but i and speaking of south park stuff mark gets to say toss his salad yes like i was shocked they got it was that chris rock bit in like 98 or something that's where we all learned the term toss your salad yeah i think so yeah yeah well this is also where homer tries to like kill lisa like kill her like it's insane here's something to gore yeah but the shirt joke is good because it's sort of like owning the misperceptions around the show based on things outside of the show right it's also fun homer logic well yes of course blue will calm you down calming blue right right uh and then there's the joke i guess it it comes up right after this but

like a perfect example of my favorite type of simpsons joke which is just a thing is repeated and it's only funny the second time the first time you're like is that a failed attempt at the joke the guard when marge tries to come in she's like i'm here to teach art class and he goes oh art class and you're like is this like them just trying to cram some joke in there so they think a guy judging her art class and saying it in a funny voice is funny and then like oh here's our next prisoner he's here for solitary oh solitary is like my favorite kind of thing i bring this up just because when you told me like roughly where you were in this season and where i could pick an episode from the only other one i was really tempted by was uh skinner's sense of snow which i don't love as an episode overall, but has one of my absolute favorite

Simpsons jokes ever. It's a perfect, perfect joke for me, which is when they're snowed into the school and I think Bart says, well, I think it's Nelson says, like, I'm part Eskimo. I can go out there and make my way through the snow.

And he goes, I don't care if you're Christy Yamaguchi. There's no way I'm letting anyone outside of this school right and then someone goes like but we're gonna miss itchy and scratchy and today's supposed to be the episode where they kiss he goes I don't care if they're kissing Christy Yamaguchi I'm not letting anyone out of this school

the idea that it's like the first time just feels like a shitty topical joke yeah right like name the person but it's actually not a shitty joke it's the layup for the better joke of skinner uses christy yamaguchi as his metric for everything he cares so much about christy yamaguchi and it's like even if it was that i don't care right and and once again it's like the guard joke in this where part of the joke is

making the delivery almost identical both times like the exact same rhythm the exact same line reading i don't care if you are christy yamaguchi i don't care if they're kissing christy yamaguchi you know it's like uh so my kind of thing well speaking, speaking also of Looney Tunes violence, Homer then gets kicked by the bull, flies easily three stories into the air, bounces off the guard tower. I just like the guard. His immediate reaction is just fire tear gas indiscriminately. I love that.

Into the audience. Into the audience. Next up, it's a real low life. Bob Dylan wrote a song to keep him in prison. Say hello to Jack Crowley. Go Bull, toss his salad. Oh, he's down. And it looks like old Tornado wants to caramelize his crème brûlée.

Yeah, do that. Somebody help him. Relax, they got rode Somebody help him. Relax. They got rodeo clowns. Is my lipstick even? Go like this. Hey, hey, over here. Here, bully, bully, bully, bully, bully.

That's not going to do it, Marge. You need something red. Wow. Hey, Toro, here's something to go. Dad. Not now, honey. Daddy's busy. But here's a perfect example i accept this as looney tunes violence the point where you break it for me is when you're seeing guts when limbs

have fallen off you know where there's anything that the show acknowledges would require emergency surgery versus this where it's like you can have him experience a comical injury and then cut to him at a chiropractor and say this is the solution right sure yeah i'll buy that yes so then in the next shot we get we see the infirmary sideshow bob is there which i always forget he just appeared a rare appearance of sideshow bob who they mentioned later he was not at all in scully's ears scully didn't really care about him. He will be in three episodes, the one where they suggest Dave Chappelle should be on Krusty the Clown Show.

That's right. But that's the only Bob one. He waits until the nearly end of his four-year run to be like, all right, I guess I'll do a Sideshow Bob. And did you also notice that the man who removed Bart's tattoo was the guy treating the bull? Like they're bringing back a lot of old, old character designs. So remind me, because you guys are fresher on this. Is Cape Fear the last Bob before the Sully run?

Oh, on the Sully run? No, no. The last one. Oh, Bob Roberts? The Frasier one. Yeah. Brother from another series. Okay. Okay. sully run oh on the scully run no no uh the last one oh bob roberts uh the fraser one yeah brother from another series okay okay because that does feel like at that point you've heightened the joke maybe take bob off the stovetop for a couple of years right well and i do think that all the post scully bob episodes are kind of diminishing returns oh yeah yeah it felt like uh oakley and weiss and i were trying to retire Bob

because they felt like the show was ending. So, okay, Bob is no longer psychotic. He was reformed. Unfortunately, he has to go back to prison because the prison is so corrupt. But when they bring him back, and we'll talk about it when we get to that episode, I don't like how they have to retcon Bob into being fixated on Bart again when it feels like he went through something. He had an arc.

Yeah, they finished it. You're right. It is kind of a perfect bob ending brother from another series yeah uh but yes while they're in the infirmary march tries to i i love how she comforts homer with like you like jimmy hendrix right oh that's so sweet and uh and she starts appreciating all this art that's in there i i gotta get bob anderson the director and his team uh credit they did really it's hard to make now this art style is very like mall kiosk but to do good art in another style that still is recognizably Simpsons is not easy at all no and you've already established that Marge has her own distinct

art style right and this is like very different from that you see a very specific artistic vision from this that still fits in the Simpsons aesthetic. Just want to call out another one of my favorite jokes in this episode is the how do you feel, homie? I can't complain. Whip hand to the sign. No complaining. I rule only a prize to the prisoners. Oh, it hurts so much. Like that's another perfect little Simpsons. That feels like a Mel Brooks joke almost. Yeah. Yes. And they touch

on it briefly but the reason marge cares so much about jack is that marge is a she wanted to be a professional painter yeah yeah right once again like i feel like episodes that tap into marge's fundamental loneliness and the sort of lost dreams of marge right the life that she always wonders if she could have had i I always think those episodes have a little juice to them because Ruth Powers is the same thing. Like it's a vision for Marge of like, what if I was my own independent woman?

You know? Yeah. And then she makes a new friend. What's it called? Love on the Fast Lane. The Jacques episode. Oh, Love on the Fast Lane. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, right. Any episode like that, I think innately is kind of interesting. And even though this episode is cruel to Marge, I like that it's at least acknowledging her aspirations to be an artist because I think the last time they referenced that was in the Tax Day episode in which Homer gives Marge a painting that she painted saying, thanks for using nuclear power.

She looks at it and it's a weird moment where she says, you had a lot of talent once, girl. Yeah, and she just walks out of the room sadly yeah and i think even if this episode ends up mocking marge a lot there's a fundamental kindness to framing an episode around someone who listens to marge and pays attention to her you know yeah um where she does have that kind of recognition from another person and they also didn't want to make this, as Scully said about figuring out this episode, a major thing for them was like,

they want to do a Marge episode that is not Marge gets a new job. And so. In a way she does though. In a way, yes. I guess she, well, she helps another person get a job. So it's. She's also an art instructor though. You know what?

She does get a job. You're right. I take that back. But then it doesn't have to do with most of the episode right i mean it's like once again this is another thing that i think i like in the scully area but really starts to fuck them over post scully which is these episodes just start running so fast right like there are like eight to nine set pieces per episode each episode has like six plot lines right that in an early season would have been an entire episode and by the mid you know 90s it would have been three of these per episode and now it's six you know and at the

worst i think you get to nine where it's like, what's the episode? Um, oh, it's, uh, Rainier Wolf Castle's daughter. Have you gotten to that one yet or is that after this? No, that's later. Yeah. It's coming up. Right. And that episode is also functioning as the Simpsons go to Canada episode, I believe. That's right. Yeah. And they don't go to Canada until minute 18. No, I really hate those like Simpsons go somewhere. It's advertised as Simpsons go somewhere, and it's like they spend three minutes in a place. Right, right.

It's just like you could do the episode. Like a Bart's girlfriend episode is a classic Simpsons format at this point. Right? The Simpsons go to blank episode is a classic form. Like we focus in on a character who's always been on the peripheral like rainier wolf castle that's a classic and then you get to these episodes where it's like it's all nine at the same time and each up each each episode plot line only gets four minutes before it moves on to the next thing it feels so hurried we're like once again it is bizarre how quickly this episode moves on from marge's job. But yeah, when Marge escorts Homer out of there,

they also kind of rip themselves off with Marge says heckhole, just like the pee-pee-soaked heckhole from Cape Fear. That's true. Although it's gosh forsaken and not pee-pee-soaked. That's true, yeah. And the sound effects all on Homer's back are just so painful. I know, Griffin, you've had some back pains in the past. I have.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I was going to bring this up. I watched all these episodes recently, recently enough in the last half year. You sent me the list of season 22. I looked at it. Pokemon immediately jumped out to me because it feels close to the classics and the presence of Keaton. But I almost completely forgot about the B plot for this.

And upon rewatching it, remembered how uncomfortable it makes me. Just because I'm like someone with a bad back. I fucked up my back working a couple of years ago. And like a year of lockdown, my injury has atrophied a lot i i'm i'm moving less and like there's just the episode feels this b plot feels visceral to me and then i'm also jealous that i don't have this magical trash can at my home to use i'm sorry you can just try falling across random objects in your apartment give it a shot i've tried i've tried it hasn't worked yet yeah i i'm sorry this michael keaton episode then turned into such a painful

b plot for you i mean it's better than that episode about the uh vaccine distribution right when media creates a frenzy about a pandemic that doesn't really exist that one was really tough to watch yeah yeah, yeah. Actually, yeah, Bob's wife was just talking about how uncomfortable that episode is now. I just was like, oh, I'm not finding any of this funny. Please, please move on from this plot line. So the kids are abandoned at the prison as the act break joke. And then it comes back from the act break. Homer is just in horrible pain, mainly thinking about how much he wants a BLT.

And then comes like my favorite joke of the episode. But it has to be. It's like you said, Griffin, these repetition ones. Marge looking out the window and seeing the prison. It's OK. It's kind of funny. Yeah. What it what it sets up is so funny to me.

I love that. But it also is a joke about them spitting in the face of like if you give a shit about where the map of springfield is or where things are in relationship to one another you suck like you're not supposed to care yeah which to be fair that's the exact kind of reality breaking joke i not only am fined with fine with but find funny like i feel like if you are demanding that sort of continuity from the show you are always going to be frustrated and the show is always going to take the approach that serves the joke best at that moment rather than trying to maintain any consistency the ones that bum me out are like

fundamental betrayal of essential spirits of who the characters are, you know, or just events that no one could ever recover from physically, emotionally. They would never stop referencing this, you know, like, you know, which, of course, that then becomes its own joke of like the Armin Tam's area and the Snowball 12 kind of like. And now we're going to pretend that none of this ever happened. But but that joke, I'm all for the window yeah i i love that joke and it sets up a better one later but uh but yeah so marge goes to the prison that's where we get the la-di-da bit like that the and again great repetition and i i also like in the design you can spot they took the care like

marge could have just walked in normally. They actually did bother to draw. She brought her art supplies back with her. I like that. And another joke setting up a future joke is when her joke doesn't go over well and there's silence and then a gun cocking. I love that. We'll hear that again with Skinner. But yes, actually I have another clip here.

Marge teaching the class. Mrs. Marge Simpson, I'm here to teach an art class. Ooh, art class. La-dee-da. This is Zach Pross. He's going to solitary. Ooh, solitary. La-dee-da.

Welcome to Freeing the Artist Within. Not literally, of course. Okay. Now, I wanted to paint fresh fruit, but the prison cafeteria would only give me sauerkraut. That's depressing. Let's let a little sunshine in.

Question? Can I smell your dress hey you show some respect this one here is not for smelling why thank you jack no problem now let's paint hey can i smell your clothes i always think now uh 20 years later of that image of sauerkraut lit by prison lights as the most depressing image ever so they really landed on something great it's a very good depressing image yes can i also say i'm so happy you played the real audio of the la-di-da clip to underline how good the execution is in the episode after i butchered it like it's it's identical the rhythm with which he says la-di-da both times, which is the whole thing for me. But another thing to spotlight here now that we've listened to it is

I love that Keaton's doing a character here. And that's what's similar to the Albert Brooks thing. It's interesting that you bring that up because Brooks played so many voices, of course, for so long on the show that every time he came on he couldn't just be albert brooks right it's like this time he's southern huckster albert brooks this time he's french lethargo albert brooks right this time he's like a corporate culture new age boss albert brooks or whatever i i love that like keaton comes on the character looks like a simpsons character rather than I feel like in

later seasons. And even at this point you start to get into like, Oh, it's just a caricatured version of the real person. They start to look off model with the characterization of the Simpsons characters get less rounded. They start to have smaller eyes and finer features and things like that. He's like a handsome Simpsons dude, but he still looks like a Simpsons dude. And he's doing a voice and playing a character and making comedic choices. And this character is just like immediately funny, just listening to what Keaton is doing. And I think it helps that he was kind of in a slump because

there was no pressure to make him look like he looks in his latest movie or, you know, not to disguise his voice in any way. It helped that was just in these these lesser movies where there was no pressure from the outside it also just feels like i remember being a michael keaton fan someone who was keeping the flame a lot at this point in time watching this episode live and going who is that you know like it which is my favorite kind of simpsons guest star where you go like oh i recognize some vocal quality there but i don't know who it is and it's like uh meryl streep uh as as the lovejoy daughter is another great one where it's like this is a real performance this is someone treating the simpsons like an acting job not just cashing in on their reputation or their pre-existing sort of

like character type or or michelle pfeiffer is mindy too like she's you know another great one yeah no i yeah yeah i don't think i knew it was michael keaton in in first watch until the credits like because i was a teen i probably was thinking his time was over because he had just done jack frost which everybody was making fun of like yeah my favorite fact i i'm sorry but my favorite fact i love to repeat all the time because it's a thing that you cannot unsee once you've seen it jack frost was supposed to be george clooney and he very wisely dropped out after batman and robin and was like oh i shouldn't make bad movies anymore but if you look at it the snowman is

100 george clooney the snowman looks nothing like michael keaton who does have a face that you could easily caricature on the snowman you could give it the eyebrows right and instead the snowman 100 looks like george clooney wow i did not know that i know for no reason i was looking up information about the movie return of the killer tomatoes and i forgot that it was an early clooney movie so all so yeah he could return to his bad movie roots but he didn't he didn't yeah uh oh but yes the the the prisoner who wants to smell things that's the late robert schimmel a uh stand-up who was a dirty comedian of the of the stern set he was a regular stern appearer uh he had a lot of health issues when when he recorded this episode he was like recovering i think from uh

lymphoma i think it was he cancer multiple times right yeah yeah and a heart attack too like he and a car crash am i wrong about this you know like a wildlife i think you're right yeah i i have totally for i had looked up like his old hbo thing he's like okay now i remember these bits about like fucking and it's mostly jokes about like is my dick inside of someone or not like not to be reductive i think he seemed funny enough it feels like he was just nearby and wanted to do a few lines i don't feel like this was he was cast for this i mean honestly scully could have come up with him in 80s comedy yeah you know he might have been friends with him yeah his final death was from a car crash that was the thing that was so wild about him is that

he had cancer twice he had a heart attack in between and then he developed cirrhosis from hepatitis c from a blood transfusion and yet the thing that killed him was a car crash wow that's uh that's insane yes but yeah he's good at playing like the creep who wants to smell things they that's the closest they get to barge in danger in prison uh joke as well which is nice uh but uh but yeah i i will say when he says there's a couple times where keaton a little bit of the b-man comes out in in him when he, when he's glad you said it, he's there, there's some,

uh, convict with the most, you know, kind of energy here. He doesn't have that sort of like when he, when he starts going faster, there's a little bit of that Beetlejuice like, you know,

which, which by the way, I mean, my, my favorite mode of key, it, you know, it's like,

I, I will never not laugh at Beetlejuice-esque rhythms. I do not resent in any way him going back to that well. Yeah, I love even when he's playing like, say, in Jackie Brown, Nicoletti and one of like most buttoned down guys he can be. But if occasionally he's just like, hey, look, let me just tell you here. Like it's I love that energy coming out of him. He was ready for Beetlejuice to go Hawaiian. It never happened. I know. I think that energy coming out of him. He was ready for Beetlejuice to go Hawaiian. It never happened. I know.

I think that thing would have been great. That's one of the examples of like, I feel like that movie is cited a lot as like, oh, this incredibly stupid idea that thankfully wasn't made that is indicative of how bad studio culture is. And I always hear it. I'm like, no, it sounds like a pretty good pitch that shouldn't be cited as a near disaster. That's a movie that should have been made but but i was gonna say like it's a thing i love about keaton where i always feel like keaton is doing

as much as a person possibly can while still being grounded right like he's a big actor he makes a lot of choices he does a lot of business right like he's very ticky he's very behavioral and yet i always feel like there's an emotional root there whether he's doing drama or comedy and i remember going to see a spotlight with my mom and there's a scene and that's like one of his most toned down performances ever if not his single most toned down performance ever and there's a scene where like ruffalo or someone comes to him and goes like hey sir i just found the new reporting he's like come walk with me and they do like a sorkin-esque walk and talk through the boston globe while he's like telling

him his findings and my mom and i broke out and laughed at the same moment looked each other and we just went like he can't stop being keaton and there's just something to like the way he was listening and the swagger and the way he was arching his eyebrows and pursing his lips and all of his sort of stuff. It's like he still has this weird kind of Keaton-y rhythm that's almost like his own version of the Elvis thing, you know? Oh, yeah. Like there's just sort of like a weird musicality to the way he speaks whether he's doing his own voice or he's doing a beetlejuice-esque character voice or this or that and then it literally is also just like posing with him i mean he does have like his looks and his angles and things like that and it's a thing i fucking love about him and it makes him i think such an underrated voiceover actor because

he's one of the voiceover actors where you can really cure his physicality you know it it gives the animators a lot to work with because you can kind of hear him behind the mic moving and gesticulating and whether he's playing a car or a convict it gives you a lot to do to either play against or to use and just let him do beetlejuice in a cartoon like just bring him back for that but but yes the next scene after this is homer going to hibbert about his back problems we see that his back is literally exploded it's in like five pieces should be dead your spine is more twisted than sin bads take on marriage so just give me some drugs and surgery.

Oh, I'd love to, but to be honest, modern medicine has a lousy record of treating the back. We spend too much time on the front. Yeah, there's some neat stuff on the front. I'm going to send you to my chiropractor. Hey, I thought real doctors hated chiropractors. Well, that is our official stance, but between you, me, and my golf clubs,

they're miracle workers. That's where there's that great line of like, your spine is more twisted than Simbad's take on marriage. I love he has to pause for a sec to think of, uh, Simbad's take on marriage. Another of my favorite lines, there's so many in here that like, I never associated with this episode,

even though I love them. Like Homer's saying like yeah there's some neat stuff on the front did either of you guys collect the the playmates figures at the time i had a few and now i buy them randomly because it's like oh i could just buy a chalmers figure on amazon for eight bucks that sounds fun i i had such a uh not a complete collection but a really robust collection and then I gave most them away got rid of them sold them off over years and then re-watching over the summer I started re-buying them with with some real limitations uh but it also has helped that

it's one of the the lines that has not really increased in value at all you can pretty much still find most of the things for how much they cost at the time. But I had most of the play sets at the time for listeners who don't know the defining thing of that toy line, which went really deep, and they did like 20 series. And so they got to real E tier characters and variants of characters and stuff. But they also made play sets of the most common environments on the show. And they all had voice chips in them. So like the figures had chips, the play sets had chips. And if you put the figure on the play set they all had voice chips in them so like the figures had chips the play sets had chips and if you put the figure on the play set each character would say like four or five lines in that play set usually ostensibly connected to that environment times they had been in that environment of course what goes on later is like oh series 18 is when they finally get

around to doing agnes skinner but like the play set at that point was like herman's military antique store so agnes has never been there but the only place that she talks in is that one because of release schedules and shit like that wow but i bring this up only because i did in re-watching most of the show i was surprised by how many lines and classic jokes there are where i just go oh wow in a million years i never would have remembered that this is the episode that that line comes from right it all just sort of gets blended together soup in your head but the other weird thing for me is i had all those play sets and and use them so much that there are lines that

are burned into my memory because i would hear them like five times a day in my bedroom right just for me talking to you right and like sometimes they would just malfunction and they would just go off i really wish i had more of those uh they came out when i was uh 18 or 19 they started coming out and i had my first job so it worked out to like i could buy a figure play set for every day's worth of work so i i was kind of more interested in putting gas in my car and stuff like that. But if I was a kid, I would have been asking for so many of them. I was like, right, like 12 or 13. And it was like peak allowance build up.

Now I'm ready to spend, you know. But yes, there are so many lines that are like burned into my memory. Not just the lines themselves, but the exact line delivery. Because I have heard them i mean truly thousands of times and the other funny thing is sometimes i will watch an episode and i'll recognize oh there are literally 20 separate playset lines in this one episode where you can tell that someone at playmates just was like let's just pick one good episode and call as many lines from this one as possible so i don't have to rewatch every goddamn

episode. This is slightly related and off on a tangent, but that's fine. This is what this episode is all about. Long, long ago, somebody made a Mystery Science Theater screensaver and all of the clips were from the episode Warrior of the Lost World. So now whenever I watch that episode and they say a riff, I'll

remember that was in the screensaver I heard a billion times right right right it's the same kind of thing for me it it like it throws me out of the episodes now because i'm like oh that's weird that they're stealing that line from that toy play set you know like that's how my brain right it feels like a stupid reference like i'm reacting to it the same way as if they made a like a fava beans and a nice chianti joke i will say we loved the critic but there's a bit later in here that's just like that's just a critic joke and it's lame but totally but but yeah so yes a theory sure because you guys are at the

the point you're on the precipice of Gene coming back and starting his complete dictatorship over the show for decades. Before even getting on my Simpsons run, I rewatched all of The Critic pretty early into lockdown, which I don't think I'd ever seen all of it before and certainly had not seen it all in order. And I liked The Critic a lot. I do think watching all of that, watching the early like Gene and Rice on Simpsons, and then watching them come back, it does feel like there is an animosity carried over to Gene's return, where not just you have him shoehorning in jokes that feel like this is more of a critic joke, this is more of a critic plotline, this is more of a critic character, but also that he kind of resents the show like he resents the Simpsons that the critic couldn't become the Simpsons and that he's

back at the Simpsons. I'm curious to see if you guys feel this as well when you get to those episodes. And I don't know if it was just because I'm locked up in my goddamn apartment for a year doing nothing but overthinking all of this shit and i was so deep dive immersion into all of these shows watching both of them pretty close together but i did feel that like it feels like there are gene jokes especially at the beginning of his return that feel like this stupid show like there's a lot of there's a lot of this show should have ended five years ago jokes when gene comes back a lot of them I feel like they had a lot of aspirations. They got their own shows.

They got The Critic and Teen Angel as well. And their experience with television was so bad outside of The Simpsons that Mike Reese just left the industry and now he just does a day a week on the show. And that's basically for the past 20 plus years. It feels like there's a jadedness in general, I think from how much they were kicked around outside the safe haven of the Simpsons and also a frustration that like,

we're back on the Simpsons now. I proved, well, I can see the gene going like, I was going to prove that I didn't need the Simpsons and now he's going back and he does need the Simpsons. And I also think the spirit of critic comes through me and Bob say this many times where something feels we know we don't know what those scripts were but we know there was a season three of scripts written for critic and it's it's just a question of how much of that was just gene taking those to the simpsons room and being like let's cannibalize

every joke that we can from this thing i i would imagine a lot of it i mean like guys like that don't ever want to throw stuff away if there is any way to recycle it you know it's like especially if it was your baby and your show and you put so much into it and never really got a fair shake i feel like almost to prove a point you want to make sure that all of that goes to you somewhere you put that somewhere in the broth you know yeah i i i think so i but it uh i mean we could go on all day about gene and his his influence but i definitely think that that kind of anger at rejection i don't think we had considered that angle but i think you're definitely on to something there keep an eye out for it keep an eye out yeah and so while marge is teaching the class

again where i love how complimentary she is to that man's very violent painting that's the sardonicus sardonicus yeah sardonicus sardonicus i like him a lot that is a reference to a william castle movie that's all i'll say oh i think it's dr sardonicus so i feel like the dana gould wrote that you know he's in the room at this time you're right yeah and also this is where uh marge learns that jack is in jail because he shot a guy named apu which leads to a very uh very dark and but funny joke about how that it's apparently not even it's a hundred dollar fine now to shoot apu because so many people have done it look we don't need to get too into the apu of it all i'm sure it's a thing you guys are reckoning with on a near weekly basis oh yeah but it is kind of startling to hear that joke and remember how much at this point in

the show he has become a guy who is constantly shot as one of his major games right yeah i understand the joke is that like oh places like 7-elevens get held up a lot but this is sort of the ultimate heightening of the like, he is so thoroughly dehumanized. And I'm removing this from the racial implications of it, but it's part of the soup too, of just like, he is so dehumanized that shooting a poo shouldn't even be considered a crime.

We've all shot a poo. Now my bigger problem with this is, my bigger problem with this is, and this is like jumping ahead to the end of the episode. Do we not think he should have been an arsonist from the beginning? Yeah. I think they really wanted that Apu joke. And it's weird because they really weren't doing those kind of Apu jokes post-Murkin era, post five and six.

I remember the last big one was Apu. He took the bullet for James Woods, but it bounced off a previous bullet in his chest. And deflected it, yeah. out smart meter plans ev tariffs solar panels and much more making your usage clearer your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricarland.ie which if i could go back in time it's like don't take that bullet let james yeah no no no no certainly he needs all the bullets he can get but um I feel like, A, having him be a dude who shot one of the show's beloved characters, right, makes him a little bit less reformable for someone who is only going to have 14 minutes of story arc at this point, right? Yeah. And secondly, when the joke becomes later in the episode, he can't stop burning shit.

I do feel like this is another glimpse at how this episode could have been stronger. I think the better version of this is Marge is trying so hard to argue for the idea of reform. And he is so compelled by whatever the guy's vice is, right? He is compelled. Whereas the burning stuff becomes kind of arbitrary at the end of the episode and just makes him feel like he's like early Daffy Duck. He's just like laughing maniacally and pouring gasoline on everything and setting flames rather than if it's just he has this compulsion. And Marge is vouching for the idea that he's cured now. It's a it's a far cry from the tender artist we meet in the first two acts. Yeah. I guess, you know, they do show that Apu forgave him and that maybe shows that Apu is like a saintly man who would forgive a guy who shot him.

I will also say in 2021, the idea of an Asian minority being shot and no one caring, that comes even more loaded than it did before. Like, that sucks. Yeah. That's the thing. It's how much of Pooh's joke was getting shot at at this point in time is not in and of itself a racist joke. But when that's one of the only Asian characters the show has ever had, right? And the most prominent one

and one of his biggest games is that level of it doesn't matter shooting him isn't even a crime it just lends to the overall dehumanization of the thing i do like as a solitary joke i don't think apu found it very polite when he shot him and then apu saying he actually was very polite yeah he waited for me like i do like the joke the joke of a polite shooter yeah i feel like he was the gentleman about shooting me. Not to take this joke apart too much, but I feel like they wanted to eat their cake and have it, where just, like, part of the joke is Apu is dehumanized,

and they care so little about him that it's not even a problem if you shoot him. He's just the guy who's expected to be shot because of his position in this world. Yeah. Though I think, you know, if already... This should have been treated like marijuana convictions once it's been decriminalized in states. Yes. If it's only a hundred dollar fine, then Jack Crowley should be out of jail because and have it expunged from his records. Like it should be retroactive, you know?

Yeah. I do like the gag of her asking what it's called. And he's like a time to kill. Titles are hard. Once again, it's like, that's what the meat of this episode should be more. Is just Marge really, really fighting for the idea that the kindness can overwhelm his inner demons. Right? And it just feels like that gets lost a lot. Then we get a quick scene at a chiropractor helping Homer where he says he does feel slightly better.

I feel a little better. And he's going to have to go in three times a week for many, many years, which I mean, the stance of it seems to be that like some chiropractors are scams, but maybe others are good. I have never been to a chiropractor. Just watching videos of people getting popped and cracked in it. Some chiropractors are scams, but maybe others are good. I have never been to a chiropractor. Just watching videos of people getting popped and cracked in it, it does, I just shudder a bit. I do like the joke. It's not cracking your back now. You're going to hear a loud cracking sound. That's a good joke.

Sorry, Griffin. That's great. No, I, look, as a person for whom this hits way too close to home, I will say the chiropractor thing i fall on both sides of it equally uh i have had great success from it and i also have had times where it feels like an absolute racket the joke that hit me hardest excuse me as i think coming up after this where marge makes the joke about him or maybe it was before this about if he's done his exercises his stretches for his back right oh yes when, yes. When Bart says, like, well, are you doing your exercises? Yeah, right.

When you did all your homework. Hey, high five. Because I certainly was handed, like, a 20-page brochure of things I was supposed to do on a daily basis. And I was like, oh, that's a reason I'm not in school anymore. Like, I had that exact feeling. I don't need it. Do you want me to do this every day? I do morning stretches now only because they have been video

gamified in the video game ring fits only yeah it tells me i'm a good boy for doing it but my my chiropractor isn't at home with me yes certainly not yeah uh but okay here's another clip here not only is this a great joke about marge's sundays uh but i in this bit here this is where i was like oh lisa doesn't give a shit about these prisoners no like no it's it's shocking so how was it in the slammer terrific bart sideshow bob says he'll be seeing you real soon oh that bob oh and guess who's up for parole my diamond in the rough that scary guy? Scary talented. And I'm going to make sure the parole board knows it. You going to bribe him?

I might grease the wheels of justice with some cookies. Oh, can I have some? Not until you finish your sundae. Is that enough? Two more bites. So I love this joke and it does have uh two different meanings that you could take away from it i want to know what you guys think so number one there is something wrong with marge's sundaes and we don't know what it is but number two is she spoils bart to the point where eating sundaes is like eating vegetables yes yeah yeah so this is the thing for me i think

this joke works because it's both at the same time right it's what we were talking about earlier where the joke becomes funnier the repetition when you realize the first time was actually just the setup for the greater joke later so the first time the joke fundamentally seems like they're so spoiled that indulgences now feel like obligations to them right and then the second time when they repeat the joke with keaton's character and she says what's wrong with my sundays that becomes so funny to me that it struggles like home bart has to like catch his brother like yeah uh like he's forcing it down and yeah and the two more bites thing is such a great like specific of what a parent yells at you like two more bites.

All right. I also again that like Lisa says, how is the slammer that scary guy? This is not the empathetic Lisa we are used to. She's just like everybody else saying, oh, Marge, what do you why are you caring about this monster? Like he's in prison. He must be awful. Well, Lisa's role in these episodes a lot of time refer to wander on screen and go,

Dad, you shouldn't do that. Yes. So it's Lisa pointing out like possible dangers. It's it's the Simpsons starting to think that Lisa's role is to be the annoying character, which I always get bummed out by. And then, of course, the worst perversion of that is like Lisa saying, like, why are people so upset about a poo you know in like season 30 or whatever that they're now using lisa as as the alternate mouthpiece earlier in this

episode actually the one other joke lisa got was her barbecue is murder apron which she's like i'm gonna wear this on fourth of july lisa celebrating that she can be a buzzkill not that she's helping vegetarianism but being a buzzkill once again the simpsons at its best fundamentally feels like a show about a girl who will grow up to write on the simpsons you know and it like there's a prism through which you can view in which you're like this is like the kind of upbringing and the sort of like person who doesn't fit into their community who then becomes a comedy writer and goes on to work on a show like this. Not that she has any intentions of working in comedy, but you know what I'm saying.

The worldview. Okay, so it then goes straight to the parole hearing, which I have the clip for it here too, just because like Michael Keaton is so great in this whole section here. I'm sure your macaroons are scrumptious, Marge, but I've seen this warden turn down brownies honest to goodness brownies next oh it's you well just let me ink up my old denied stamp warden please this man is a gentle soul

i know he's made mistakes but someone with his talent belongs on a boardwalk doing caricatures, not behind bars. Lady, I know he charmed you with some pleases and thank yous, but he wasn't so polite to the guy he shot. Actually, he was. He waited with me till the ambulance came, then ran like a deer. Well, that's mighty nice. But if I let this creep out, would you like him skulking around your neighborhood?

Honestly, it wouldn't bother me. Oh, what do you say? Yeah, let's do it. Well, lady, I'm going to call you bluff. The prisoner is hereby paroled into your custody. Oh, my goodness. I'm free. Oh, Mrs.

Oh, geez, I'm sorry. Sorry. You won't regret this. Once again, hearing the better line delivery of a joke I butchered earlier in the episode. And you're right. You can feel him. You can hear him moving around. You can hear the physicality. That's part of the Keaton thing is I feel like it comes from his stand-up days. You know, that he's really interested in where to stop and start the rhythms,

where to put the emphasis on a sentence, you know, like he really milks every ounce of opportunity from a line. And I just imagine, especially as a voiceover actor, I mean, he's known for riffing so much and doing things differently every take. He must just be such a joy and such a wealth of material for animators to

come in and just do like 10 different reads of the same line in a row each time probably totally different but the other thing that jumps out to me in that clip you just played talking about the napier thing that line about let me ink up my old denied stamp is in and of itself not particularly funny on the page you have to imagine and if it were azaria saying it he would do it, but he would sell it like a joke. There's something funny about the fact that Napier is playing it so straight. That it's clearly not someone doing a comedy voice version of the steely prison warden. That it sounds like a real prison warden.

Yeah, he's playing the character just like, oh, it's you. Like he's for like 20 years or just like oh it's you like he's right who's for like 20 years or 10 years seeing jack crowley here and he's sick of it yeah there's a genuine intensity and darkness to him which i think i think keaton flirts with too it's another thing i like about keaton's performance in this is he the part of him bringing that beetlejuice edge to it is there's something innately menacing about this guy right yeah it keeps you on edge for the whole episode because you're just like is this guy really on the level or is he like a wolf in sheep's clothing uh i mean the violence

done to my like the strangling of marge is so horrifying looking for just a second he's i guess the implication too is like that he he doesn't know his own strength or he maybe he accidentally causes this harm without trying to but yeah uh yeah so Crowley you know he heads home with the Simpsons it's like the 17th person who's lived in their uh basement yeah do you know what radon is yeah good night uh and and I also love like is, I played it as the first clip. That sounds like Beetlejuice asking which way to pray to Mecca. I love that line. Yes, yes. And I liked the Jewish joke as well. I'm a big fan of that.

I, as uncomfortable Marge is, but she's trying to not be, she's like, oh, you're Muslim. She doesn't know what to do. Not wanting to offend, but also has no clue which direction Mecca could be in.'t know what to do not wanting to offend but also has no clue which direction Mecca could be you know what I'm also just realizing I think as a Jew on a show where Krusty is pretty much the only regular representation I probably just like that joke out of some sense of pride that Keaton is playing a Jewish character I do think I just feel like oh man cool we got him on the team. He's part of the tribe.

He probably doesn't often play Jewish people. I don't think he ever has. This is probably why I like this episode to any degree. In the next scene, Homer and Bart are sweeping up and Homer's still in pain, refuses to do his. So then Homer falls over a trash can and it actually fixes back perfectly and i i love his little butt shaking animation for how loosened up he feels yeah uh and i wish this had turned

into a runner of him going patent pending just shoving people and saying pat i thought they used it more and the funny thing is and the eerie thing is actually this is called the spino cylinder and i i do my work in google docs just because it was easy to access. I typed in what I thought Spino Cylinder was spelled like and Google was like, no, this is what a Spino Cylinder is spelled like. And it was correct. So Google spell check realized I was spelling Homer's invention incorrectly. And I was creeped out by that. That's amazing. Occasionally I'll like lay on the edge of like my couch chair, armchair to be like, well, this cracked my back like the Spino Cylinder, but I should look into like those back rollers.

I think that's the miniature version of what the Spino Cylinder is. Did you do those exercises he gave you? Yeah, right. I did them while you were studying. Dad, are you okay? Yeah. In fact, I feel fantastic. Trash can must have unkinked your back.

Not trash can, son. Dr. Homer's Miracle Spino Cylinder. Patent pending. Okay, okay. And as you can see, the unique dents in my invention perfectly match the contours of the human vertebrae. Patent pending, patent pending, patent pending. Hey, who's this guy?

You remember Jack? He's that talented painter who had a little brush with the law. You brought a convict to live here? Near my unpatented idea? I seen your idea and I don't want it. All I need is three squares and a job. That's right. A job.

I know just where you can get one. I mean, here's another example of where this episode like frustrates me. Once again, pick this episode because it just represents so many of my feelings on both what this era does well and does poorly but it feels like this type of episode especially one centered around a guest star it used to be you could have three plot lines but especially if it's someone moves in with the simpsons all of them stem out of that shift right yeah instead here like homer is going through his b plot and then he has to like look off screen to be like oh that other guy's here what's his deal i feel like homer

should be involved yeah sorry yeah yes and also it feels like bart and lisa are weirdly more involved with this side of the story than the there is an ex-convict living in their home side of the story. But it also means that every time they cut away to the Spino Cylinder thing, it feels like Robinus of Keaton time. And any time you go on to the Spino Cylinder thing, you're like, they don't really have enough time to play this thing out at full scale. Like, I do think there is comedic potential in this sort of chiropractic industry as a mafia kind of thing. But it's so rushed, you know, because they have so little time to get to it. It just feels like it could be its own episode. And it also feels like this episode could just be multiple different family reactions to Jack. You know, I feel like the chiropractor stuff is just one long walk

to the chiro town joke that that was written first yeah and they figured out how to get there but i really yeah you're right i totally want to see homer in on this plot with jack him being suspicious the entire time more like some interaction between the two would be so funny outside of the one we see well there's and like lisa getting radicalized again yeah Yeah. And Bart being like, I mean, there's so much to make, but this shit writes itself. But it's like, if the premise is here's a, here's a gruff, badass seeming kind of James Deeny convict who Marge is convinced is actually a sensitive artist that he's now living in their home. And Bart is trying to pull out of him stories of him being like a badass criminal.

And instead everything is weirdly sensitive, right? Like that, that's like a whole running gag that the show never touches on. That feels like it's a layup for them. Yeah, it's such a missed opportunity that Bart, it could be everyone reacting to the convict in the house, but they all pretty actively ignore him. They're just like, he lives here. All right. ignore him they're just like yes he lives here all right well i will say they have to make room for the chiropractor stuff and then also a ton of industry insider stuff in the third act so right right no i i mean the wikipedia it says that there was a lot of pushback from the chiropractic

industry to this episode i do feel like in this era in particular every episode had some sort of backlash to it to that degree right like it just feels like almost always this era in particular, every episode had some sort of backlash to it to that degree, right? Like it just feels like almost always this era of the early 2000s is marked by whoever the Simpsons stereotypes in some large way, usually an industry or specific profession, sometimes an entire country like Brazil. It's like Simpsons has to apologize for making it sound like every blank is a blank i think brazil is this year and then in a few years is the catholic church which

who cares but oh yeah yeah the super bowl episode pissed off the catholic church hard that was oh that one okay yeah yeah right that was a big one yeah yeah i i think too back then there was just more reporting on when a group of people got mad. Like as in the Catholic Church, if they get mad at something, they got more publicity than they would have like eight years earlier perhaps. But I also feel like Simpsons was one of the only shows that was getting that kind of response on a regular basis. Like with other shows, you'd be like, oh, maybe once or twice a season someone else will do an episode that will piss people off and they have to apologize to peter right but it's like the simpsons it was happening like so regularly at this point in time the other thing you see in

all these wikipedia entries is this episode was criticized by fans at the time and i feel like the ones that are cited as having the worst fan responses at the time, which I'm also sure is like going off a pretty small sample size of certain message boards and the few kind of places that we're viewing since these episodes in the early 2000s. I find that those episodes tend to hold up better. Like you watch episodes that are a little more gimmicky, like the boy band episode coming up, and those ones get good reviews, you know? And it's something like this. It's like fans complain the episode was over long and didn't really go anywhere. Or like, I mean, you guys covered this last season,

I know, and I don't know where you landed on it, but in my mind, Saddlesore Galactica has always been an episode that people cite as like, that's like point of no return, right? That's like emblematic of when the show starts to transition into something else, and it's never gonna be able to return to the the golden age again and i had it saved in my memory like that and i got to saddle sword and i was like this is one of the better episodes of this season

kind that is kind of how we came out we were shocked to do that too because we thought we'd hate it but there were funny it was really funny jokes and a good musical number. And we're recording all these out of order. I don't know if Homer vs. Dignity is after or before this. Before, before. But we covered that and it was like, oh, outside of that one joke, this is hilarious. This is like very, very, very funny stuff. Yeah, yeah. It is interesting how these episodes have aged, you know, and a lot of the bigger stunt

ones or ones that seem like more radical character moves hold up worse and a lot of the bigger stunt ones or ones that seem like more radical character moves hold up worse than a lot of these smaller slice of life ones that people sort of criticize for being repetitive or low stakes or whatever at the time well i will say too bob and i have identified that at least like we were we're a few years older than you we were in our late teens and we were angry and sexually frustrated and so i think in general we were we're a few years older than you we were in our late teens and we were angry and sexually frustrated and so i think in general we were going to be more mad at a at a lesser episode back then yeah right i mean and i i stopped watching the show like live uh or new episodes rather like three years i think 2004 2005 is when i start to get off the train, which is the exact point where I am hitting that level of angsty sexual frustration.

But I think that's part of being a Simpsons fan is that art. But I do think it's another reason why I picked this episode. A common complaint is this is when The Simpsons falls into this weird transitional period right because a couple years after this although right around this time shortly after south park essentially evolves into becoming we're the topical animated show right like this is this is sort of the most fallow period of south park after the movie right when it sort of feels like is this show just going to slowly wane off and then like after 9-11, it kind of comes back strong. And then you have shit like the Elian Gonzalez episode where people are like, holy shit, how did they do that in four days?

Right. Like that becomes the competitive advantage of that shows that they can animate it so fast and they're able to come up with takes so quickly, especially in a pre-Twitter universe, you know, to see something that isn't just SNL doing one sketch or weekend update joke, but to see them write a proper three-act story around a topical thing becomes their advantage. And then I think The Simpsons starts trying to play that game, but they're playing that game on a two-year delay, right? Yeah, no. And I think a lot of the episodes,

right, and you have things like the boy band episode, which I keep on coming back to, but I do think it's one of the worst episodes of this season and is emblematic of things I don't like about the show at this time, especially because Josie and the Pussycats just run circles around it three months later. But I do think shit like that is Simpsons being like, fuck, we have to comment on the trends, right?

The episode has to be Bart doing thing that is now popular in the culture or big celebrity guest star comes on episode that's about metrosexuality becoming popular in the town of springfield i know metrosexuality is specifically a thing that's the south park did instead but you know what i'm saying it's like we have to talk about the cultural trends which i think simpsons has never been particularly good at and i do think what they're best at is this type of episode, even if this is on the lower end of the execution of it, which is new character changes the worldview of the family slightly,

but not in a way that forever alters the show. You know, there's just like an experience that's gonna linger with them a little bit, but it doesn't feel odd that they never acknowledge it ever again because at this point they've run through most of the organic story lines that these characters could arrive at themselves right well i think they were thinking like if we if we try to get sentimental just be compared to the other time we got sentimental so where that's just retreaded. Yeah.

I mean, we've we've heard on commentaries, Matt Selman going like, I wish we were as good as South Park sometimes. Like he would. There was definitely a spirit of envy in there for sure. Yeah. But I do think like at this point, they've done all the obvious organic storylines with the main characters. Right. They kind of rung the Simpsons family dry for all the obvious things to do with them and then they've also extended to most of their supporting cast this is the season where you get worst episode ever which is they're

like fuck it i guess we have to do emotional storylines about comic book guy right which feels like a real turning point where the show is almost like self-aware enough about being like any character is eventually going to have to be the emotional backbone of a storyline. And we're going to have to sort of joke about the fact that it's like, I guess it's a Gil episode now. Right. Yeah. Well, a recent episode this season dealt with comic book guys origins and him being comfortable being a father. That's how far we've taken complicated yeah right right right i mean it's like you have this episode uh worst worst episode ever is the agnes skinner episode and then you also have an edna krabappel episode like within a season of this like they do like two comic book guy ends up almost marrying someone he should never marry

episodes so close together where it just feels like at this point you're you're kind of pulling elements out of a hat if you're left between are you repeating things the characters have already done or are you just having the characters react to things that culturally didn't exist five years ago that feels less exciting to me then introduce a new character that will challenge the main family, the core family in some new way. Like put a catfish in the barrel, right? Like Jack Crowley, and let every Simpsons family member react to them differently. They totally do that with Marge, and then it feels like they leave all this meat on the bone with everyone else. But even watching

like Skinner's relationship with Jack is so much fun yeah it makes you wish more of the episode was they are trying to integrate jack back into society that you're seeing everyone else interact with jack that it's a little bit more like muchapu about nothing or something where it's like take a character and put them in a new light and have everyone reassess them yeah unfortunately i think it was just a reflex action at this point in scully's tenure and that uh they just said oh if there's a march episode or release episode the homer antics will be the keys that we jingle in front of you to keep you uh you know a tent overcompensate right i mean well the the super bowl episode i know you guys already called out is that this season when is that as a uh the season before i think it was tan i do believe

it was okay yeah because that has the joke where it's like oh the a plot line is about them going to the super bowl and the b plot line is marge and lisa on the phone trying to get a replacement part for a craft kit yes yep they have acknowledged that they pointedly tried to write the most boring unexciting onvent-like plot line for marge and lisa which really feels indicative of their attitude towards those two characters at this point in time it felt like the the inverse where it's like now that homer has the wacky adventure we need the most boring thing which is them looking at old craft kits in their closet right after that the net a couple episodes later well, while Bart and Homer drive a giant truck across country, they're going to buy a doorbell, Lisa and Marge.

Right, right. They just keep doing that where it's like the joke is that Lisa and Marge suck and their episodes are boring. Yeah. You shouldn't want to watch these, it almost says. And internally, I mean, they had that kind of sentiment because for a long time, if you were a new writer, you would write a Marge episode because no one else wanted to do it, which is why a lot of our favorite writers on the show, they started off with writing Marge episodes. Mind you, why Marginalist episodes are very often amongst the best, certainly in the first decade of the show, because it took more work to come up with them. You can have Homer and Bart do anything do anything right like they're dumb and confident and loud right in different ways but it means they could pretty much adapt to anything

be pot committed to any wild trend or idea or get rich quick scheme or fad or whatever and then margin lease episodes have to be more introspective have to be more emotionally grounded have to kind of speak to something a little bit deeper and I think they pay off better in that way and then I also find that like Homer Bart's stuff tends to be funnier in a good Marge or Lisa episode I think in this one like Homer doing the chiropractic stuff to his friends it's funny enough i mean i like lenny's reaction that he it's now just a calm numbness on his searing leg pain but yeah the the silly time with homer this could have been in any episode really like i i well but though a joke i really do love is homer demanding that the chiropractor recognize the irony of him trying to shut them down. Like, I do love that joke.

Yeah. Next. Yes, my car seems to have broken down, and I was wondering if I could use your... Oh, that's a pushing motion. Simpson, you're not a licensed chiropractor, and you're stealing patients from me and Dr. Steffi. Boy, talk about irony. The AMA tries to drive you guys out of business. Now you're doing the same to me. Think about the irony. You've been warned. Stop chiropracting.

Not unless you think about the irony. Right after that, Marge, while Marge looks out the window, realizes she could get him a job at the school because she sees the school right where the prison was she gets him a job with skinner lying about that he was not a convict saying like there's so much adr in this bit like voices change i thought it was insane the joke of skinner saying the only other person who applied was mo and he looks at his drawing he's like who could ever think that was making love i was like what this is for a school what the hell yeah yeah a weird joke and also just once again getting to the point where it feels like you're just picking things out of the hat where it's just like i'm not gonna be a stickler about the shit but also why would mo want to do that there is nothing in 12 seasons of mo's

character that implies he would have any interest in doing a mural he has no artistic side in that way it doesn't speak to like i love the loneliness of mo right and his weird brokenhearted quality but i also feel like doing anything like that where he's not the center of attention doesn't really track for that character usually his big things are about him trying to make himself look better mo has a weird presence in this episode in that he is he's at the rodeo he's the guy goes yeah do that when he's gonna caramelize his creme brulee and then he is the guy to tell homer it's cairo town and then he's like participating in this mural uh application mo was oddly sprinkled throughout this episode in a very

strange way right i mean this is sort of like when you get to the laziest tier of mo jokes for me which are just like he's a creep right yeah like he's just kind of like a scuzzy creep well i mean making love drawing you can imagine what could be the worst thing he would draw in that for making love or a lot of horrible things. Previously this season, we did have the Mo necrophilia joke where he says,

I ain't never said no to a dead girl before. Yeah. And then, so it's implied Mo has sex with corpses. Yep. I just prefer Mo being unrelentingly sad. You know, like I just like the specificity of just like, man, this guy's life is bleak over like making him like uh i'm trying to even think of um he's almost like a quagmire style character no he's very quagmire at times yeah yeah it's like half quagmire half

charlie from always sunny in philadelphia yeah i see i that's it's much funnier the the bits where he's telling homer about just how he's he has he had no connection with his father and just saying like you hug the mailman why couldn't you hug me yeah yeah like that's that's a good moment for me uh but uh but yes marge gets him the job i do love keaton's delivery too i'm just like third time but i feel real good about this one i really i really like how low the stakes are because school spirit is down 3.4 percent and all of skinner's threats he thinks he's threatening to send the guy back to college yeah that doesn't make any oh that's so good i i read in the daily fourth grade in that you need someone to paint the mural.

Yeah, school spirit is down 3.4%. Well, Jack here will do great work for you. Oh, any references? Well, to be honest with you, I spent the last six years in Waterville State. It's a small liberal arts college. Very law-abiding. No convicts at all. Well, the only other one to apply was Moe Zizlak, and his stuff scares the hell out of me.

How could anyone consider that making love? All right, Jack, you're hired. I'll clear you out of cubby. You told a lie for me. I know. But the Lord will forgive me if it helps you get a second chance. Actually, Marge, it's a third if you count that farm couple. Farm couple? But i got a good

feeling about this one marge i really do so then skinner has to become a character he never is which is not only a bully to the one guy he should never bully he's always kowtowing to everybody else but here he's being mean a jerk to this giant man and then also he becomes a fox network executive yes yeah do like that bit a lot and in this uh run especially like scully and his crew were really obsessed with the production of television and movies and there are so many scenes with executives this is the rise of lindsey nagle to the point where in this episode skinner becomes a tv executive yeah sort of in a way he does yeah so what skinner does to jack in this next clip is what many people who have made pilots for tv shows have experienced which is that you come in with an idea a producer tells you to do the executive tells you to do the opposite of that idea or to

tone it down and and sand off the edges and then when when it fails, the executive says, why did you do that thing? And blames you for it. Yeah. You see, I didn't want to go so cutesy-wootsy. Because? Because it's not my style. Well, if you want to keep this job, you'll make it your style. All right.

You're the boss man, ain't you? Darn right I'm the boss. Don't forget, I can tend you back where you came from, college boy That punk Skinner Add more freedom back at the joint Jack, I know you hate to betray your artistic vision But just do it. I guess that could bend a little.

Just till you make it. Remember, I believe in you. Thanks, Marge. Listen, if you're done with that washing machine, can I make some booze in it? Not until you finish your sundae. Yes, ma'am. What's wrong with my sundays a hat trick now in terms of playing the clip with the better delivery of my butchering of one of my favorite jokes in this episode no i just i love i i laugh so much i totally forgot marge's thing of like but just do it yeah Yeah. No reason. Just compromise your artistic integrity.

I will admit I am a sucker for the bit of people use industry talk, entertainment industry talk in non-showbiz settings. It always gets to me, and especially when things are treated with that level of dumb executive notes and shit. I think just because there always feels like there's some heat on it because you feel like the writers are making jokes about something that actually irritates them that it feels like cathartic but i also just i don't know maybe i'm just like a dumb easy lay for that shit and when i had a sketch comedy group i would always try to write in bits where people would like note sketches you know like where when sketch

like behavior happened in a sketch people say like i don't know that feels like a double beat like i'm just such an easy lay for that type of calling out the comedy uh trope shit but i i do like that they also extend it to that uh moment where skinner is at the board with yes the cafeteria schedule and they're trying to move it around like it's a network programming schedule. I also like that Skinner is like this crappy executive who also thinks he's an artist. So it's not just that he doesn't want to let Jack do his own thing,

but also he's got this terrible pitch that he's super confident about, and then immediately just lets Jack take the bullet for it and sell it down the river. You can really tell that the writers are still bitter about having been moved to Thursdays for five years. It still comes up and they're still mad about it. And a lot of these writers had worked on TV shows that did get moved around. So it's definitely personal, this story. Yeah. Well, one, Griffin, you talk about that they're running out of personal experiences

growing up to talk about, but they have tons they have continually getting new personal experience of working with executives they don't like so they can it is fresher and newer for them to grind those axes which i agree i mean that's the weird thing it's like i think that's a far more fruitful well of material for them than when they default into we're making jokes about how annoyed we are with our fans right which in a way predicts so much of pop culture where i feel like the simpsons was one of the first shows to have to reckon with fan culture in its text itself both because it last lasted so long and its fan base was so active online. You know, worst episode ever is like a joke that's spiting the fans. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland,

we can help guide you there. You see, our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar solar panels and much more making your usage clearer your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie for that you know by the time they judgment yeah by the time they have the episode worst episode ever it's been said in the show for like six years at this point. That's the point. It's like you're finally titling an episode with the character who went from being a parody of a thing to becoming the mouthpiece for the fans who they resent. And he's now hit that joke so many times that the entire episodes about him and called that to make fun of the fact that they're they've beaten that joke to a dead horse i also really love the delivery of him saying like i didn't want to go

so cutesy wootsy because like skinner doesn't even understand why he wouldn't want to go that way he's right he's just lost i love that uh but here's another thing, and I'm repeating myself a lot. He gets hired to do the mural at minute 15. Yes. In a 22-minute episode. And this is another example for me of just how overstuffed these stories get, how much they don't trust themselves to let one idea play out on the show, where it feels like now the last seven minutes of the show are going to become more about the frustration of working within a network studio system right yeah like the jack of it gets a little bit lost

because you're like if the episode's about someone gets hired to do a mural and then there are all these notes they have to deal with and then they have to get the criticism for a work that they weren't even proud of you could have done that plot line with march that would have worked nothing about jack being the one in this position really feels like it's paying off who jack has been up until this point especially because then when he goes violent at the end with arson none of that's really set up properly i totally agree there should have been more things throughout the episode testing his patience you you know, testing his morals. Yeah, he doesn't lose patience with anybody up to this point.

And Skinner is just enough to break him. And I know they're writing they at least write Skinner is enough of a dick in this episode that you kind of can see it from his way of like, God, this guy's a jerk. But but yeah, they also if they could have this could have sustained an entire episode, the idea of Skinner is the network executive who destroys arts. Right. Yes. And that could have been done with Marge or with any other number of characters. Right. And then we've already talked about how much you could have done just with Jack lives with the family. Yeah.

You know, you know, he could get fired from any other job, but it just feels like once again, these seasons start to feel to me like they start using every single thing that came up in the beginning of season brainstorm. Right. Yeah. So rather than saying, what are the 22 best pitches we got? And let's spin them out into their own episodes. They go for each episode. Let's pick five of the things that came up as a one sentence log line for what could be a plot line. Yeah. And like 10 years of the show has given them so many toys to play with they have the urge to play with all the toys sometimes yeah all at once well and well they don't say this on the commentary but we've seen enough where they

admit that they had a third act that fully was thrown out and they add a new third act to it and i don't know this almost feels tacked on enough that it could be like maybe, especially since they set up the whole thing with Apu. I feel like the natural thing would be he'd work with Apu or something new would happen with that. Right, right. I mean, it also like another natural thing that it feels like they would have done is he cannot hold down a job. They try to get him hired everywhere. Like it feels like that's a classic Simpsons thing. And once again, like taking a new character, Larry Byrne style and letting him play off of as many characters as possible. Have him work one day at most. Have him work for a poo. Have him work as a janitor for a day, you know, like, but put him in multiple different environments and make the episode about this guy's struggle to re acclimate to the world outside of prison real quick they do end the chiropractor thing with the after mo is cured they then homer's spinal cylinder stolen by chiropractors and smashed up with spines which i'll give it to the animators too bob anderson and his team they were told to draw people with swinging spines smashing a trash can and they

pulled it off they did it they did in the back of a pickup truck in the back yes yeah that gets but god that cairo town doesn't really sound like sound like chinatown like it's not even that much of a mnemonic pun i i don't know that's a sweaty joke and it's also this thing where i know part of the whole thing is that nothing is going to be held over from episode to episode. Right. But as I've said before, I do like Simpsons episode where it feels like this is going to linger with them, even if it's never mentioned again. Versus this era where I feel like episodes pointedly end with characters shrugging and saying, well, that was stupid to spend a week on this. You know? with characters shrugging and saying well that was stupid to spend a week on this you know it

feels like by the end of the episode the characters bail out the idea that they ever thought this would be a good idea for an episode they just go like whatever like yeah in this one it's just them literally like walking away from it and maybe i could see the pitch being like well we're just gonna have the characters walk away and they've learned nothing can we at least make it a reference to saying forget it it's chinatown right that and that's the other thing is like if we can't find a way to end this in any way that is emotional or genuinely good comedic payoff what thing can we reference right can we at least just make it an homage to a thing for five seconds so that functions like a joke uh so then we head to Skinner's speech as he's about to premiere the drawing.

I just have a small clip here of Bruce Valanche's cameo here. You know, when Superintendent Chalmers suggested a school mural, I almost thought he said a school murial. Murial to sister. And, uh... Oh, thank you you Bruce Valinch Whoopi would have made it work and now I present Puma Pride by a college

educated artist Jack Crowley uh case in point perfect example of the kind of dumb comedy world joke that I always go for no matter how lazy it is. People hiring Bruce Valanche to do Punch-Up, who are not comedians, always fine to me. I do love it.

I will say, as a heavier gay man who wears glasses. Your hair should be wilder, Henry. No, I don't let it get wild enough. And who also likes to wear funny t-shirts. I have looked to Bruce Valanche of like, I could be that when I grow up. I mean, is Bruce Valanche an easy joke about like, oh, that's a hacky old comedy. Like Bruce Valanche wouldn't have pitched that joke. Like, sure.

But I do still kind of like the guy. Like this was when he. I love Valanche. And the fact that he showed up to do it shows you that bruce valanche is very aware of his reputation and kind of even owns it and i do like that the joke gives him the power in a way to say like i mean i usually write for whoopi goldberg like yeah uh well because he was just doing hollywood squares at this time whoopi's hollywood squares yes and right. And there was the Get Bruce documentary in 1999 that I think made a lot of people outside of Hollywood aware of him.

Like he'd been writing the Oscars for like 15, 20 years at that point and a million other things, too. But he definitely becomes a little more front facing at this point. Like he's on Hollywood Squ squares a lot himself at this time he does hairspray on broadway a couple years after this yeah you know like he he starts to be a little more known but i just it's it's a it's a lazy fucking comedy goat i cannot tell you how many times i have made the joke about uh valanche wrote this you know and also writer of the star wars holiday special and I say put that on Disney+, we've all

seen it, we want the pristine version of it, just give it to us. Just do it, we'll pay for it. That's the Snyder cut equivalent that Disney Plus needs. Totally, totally, yeah. Yes, I always forget that he is also the writer of the Star Wars Holiday Special. One of his first things

he ever did yeah one of many not the sole writer but i do think we had him on the george lucas talk show which is this comedy live stream that i'm a part of when we were uh we did our life day special last year for the 2020 holiday season and we had him on to talk about uh the star Holiday Special, and I do think he took credit for the Be Arthur segment most of all. That's the best. Yeah, I mean, if you're excluding the animated segment, which is the one

thing they are officially putting up on Disney+, but removed from the special at large, that's the best. And when he started saying other things that he wrote, I was like, you're citing all the things that are the most comedically successful in the show. It's not like he wrote the Diane Carroll segment.

It's not like he wrote the 15 minutes of the Wookiees grunting without subtitles. He wrote the shit. That's kind of funny. Like he wrote the Harvey Korman shit in the B Arthur shit. I am shocked to find out Bruce Valanche wrote the cabaret scene from the, the holiday special. I can't believe it.

It's a great song. She sells out. That's genuinely a good song. Yes, it is a great song. And Bea Arthur rules. Like, she's amazing. And there's a weird level of pathos to that performance. She's so tender with all those mutants.

She's shutting down Mos Eisley's cantina for the day. She's like, come on, guys. We'll see you tomorrow. I've come around to the idea that she might be one of my ten favorite characters in all of Star Wars. Oh, man. But yeah, you're right. Bruce Valanche is having fun with the idea of Bruce Valanche.

He's like, I'm going to show up. Yes, Bruce Valanche wrote this because it was a bad joke that didn't go over. And also the gun cocking sound on it is great, too yeah so they reveal the mural it's completely changed everybody thinks it sucks it also feels like there's a missing beat that like everybody just leaves they're like well that's kind of sugary and everyone's gone like i feel like there should be an extra bit of people saying like let's get out of here there should be more commentary i guess right but uh but i do like skinner instantly you're at like minute 19 at this point it's true they have almost no time for

in the next minute they have to have marge think he's guilty then think he's not guilty and then learn he is guilty yeah and i love skinner Skinner's comment. Where's the edge? Yes. This is what I wanted. Which, once again, like a dead on network telling you to sand off all the edges and then complaining that your thing is toothless. I also love how much it hurts him for March to say like, but years from now, people will point to these cuddly little creatures and say that's a jack crowley because there are these creators who have to go like perhaps say aljean on teen angel that if you would say teen angels aljean he'd be like how dare you i had to do that for tgif right the idea that like if anything having these things become successful and beloved is cause for even more resentment because then you're being associated with a thing that

is like a compromise point of frustration for you and yes then comes the next scene of skinner planning out the schedule which as i wasn't as plugged into media then but when i first saw it i could at least remember like oh there was a scene like this in late shift that uh sure and murphy brown they were always in this room with this big schedule on the wall yeah you're right I remember that Paul Rubin's Murphy Brown where it's all about like he's helping CBS Gary Marshall Gary Marshall yeah and he's planning it all out you're right oh that was good an important moment lunch lady Doris is about to speak before Milhouse comes in she raises a finger and opens her mouth but she's Doris Grau has been dead for five years and lunch lady Dora does not exist yet

so I love that bit too. Like you said that about the stuffed peppers and then you lost the young males. Right. I, once again, just funny to me, funny to me. Anything outside of the entertainment industry treated like it is show business because show business is stupid. And the seriousness with which people talk about it is worthy of lampooning. Now, pizza's working well on thursday but i think the kids will follow it to tuesday that's what you said about the stuffed peppers

and your loss to young males principal scanner the school's on fire it's crystal clear who did this jack crowleyley. No way. You don't know that Jack did this. Just because he's an ex-con. Crowley's an ex-con? Dear Lord, I peed in front of him. Hey, check it out. Now that's a mural. It's so passionate, it almost leaps off the wall.

That felon could have torched the whole school were it not stuffed with asbestos we'll catch crowley and then he'll learn the fine art of police brutality and so marge reveals that as the fire spreads the kids are chanting spread which i had to go to Frankie Act to be like, oh, that's what they're saying. I had no idea what they were saying. And that's when Marge reveals that Crowley was actually a convict and Skinner's like, dear Lord,

I peed in front of him. That's an all right joke. Once again, when you get to like, he's been framed for someone else's crime. No, he hasn't. He was lying. Marge has to forgive him and move on all within the span

of one minute. It's just like none of this matters. Like none of this is given any space to land with any weight dramatically or comedically. Yeah.

It's all racing to an end. Yeah. Actually, I have the full last minute of the episode which it shows you how quick it all goes here in our last clip.

I'll admit I hate Skinner, but I didn't start that far. Then why are you hiding? Come on, Marge. With my rap sheet, they can't wait to send me back to prison. And you can't believe the foul language in that place. So you really didn't do it? Marge, look in my eyes. I swear to you, I did not do it.

I believe you, Jack. Now let's get you out of here. Wait for my signal. Oh, Chief! I found some evidence that points to the real arsonist. Well, let's see it. Not yet. You have to guess what it is.

We don't have time for guessing games. No, let's try it. It might be fun. Is it DNA? So it's like DNA. Um, a hatchet? You had a turn. I want to guess. Oh, jeez. My car!

Boomer pride! Boomer pride! Catch the fever skitter it is kind of out of nowhere that he just goes crazy and just is cackling yes it has not been his character at all and also it feels like that moment where he pleads with march to believe him is like parodying sincerity right it's like making fun of when these episodes used to actually be based around emotional connections with fleeting characters uh the way the Klausen music swells and how quickly they move on from it and it's like that's another thing this episode could have been about is ex-convict Marge is trying to convince everyone to give him a chance crimes start happening around town everyone bl. Marge is trying to convince everyone to give him a chance. Crimes start happening around town.

Everyone blames him. And he has to convince Marge to believe him and to fight to prove to everyone that he didn't do it. And you can still end that episode with, it was him. You know, he was manipulating Marge. But when it all happens so fast, it's just like, what's the point?

Like at this point. And I think it's a very funny episode, but it's a Marge episode. she gets no time to reflect on this so my truth to trusting of people is jack really a nice person she's just like get jack out of this show let's end the episode she lied to my face get him out of here i like as i said the episodes that leave the central characters with some sort of lingering thought not a lesson because i you know i think the simpsons also fails when it tries to be too pat in that kind of way the rare times they do but more like you know they've they've explored a gray area right instead marge is like you're a crumb bum get out of here you lied to my face yeah

uh she she's learned nothing she didn't even think his art was that uh in the end she's like you know what your art doesn't even matter to me i don't care right which was what drove her to him in the first place and it does feel like of this era the cynicism of this era in comedy writing where it's like no one is redeemable no one learns lessons no one is truly good you're you're a fool for thinking this man could have been rehabilitated the end right but i guess they needed to speed it up to get in. I mean, I do like hearing Keaton and Hank Azaria just goof around, mainly talking about HBO and how he can't watch HBO. Yeah.

It's a real snapshot of HBO in the year 2000, too. way in which it makes me wish this episode was less overstopped less overstuffed and and hurried because you're like man imagine if there was more air to allow keaton riffs to remain in the episode you know yeah they instead have to just tag it on at the end they're like well here's a scene of just wigum wigum talking with a guy which is not I I would doubt was on the page in there in there no I'm sure but I'm sure he also did this for every scene you know it's something like Julie Kavner never really gets to play around much with another actor like the yeah you get a little bit of that in the Jacques episode in season one but I would really like to hear her playing with Keaton and it could be that like

it could also just be keaton only had azaria around that day that he could be with they might not have been other people uh in person the day that keaton was available who knows but i just if i know anything about keaton it's that he gives people a lot of material to choose from he tries different things every take and he improvises a lot you know yeah and so it's like unsurprising that they're left with this sort of like bonus little gift at the end of an episode but it makes me immediately sad for thinking about how much they must have thrown out i i do like the bit of just everybody was talking oz jokes i love the show yeah but oz jokes were the go-to at the time it's just like oh it's like on Oz and

I just like that his character just throws down like well I can't watch I I don't know is it is this like Oz like that's that's clever I like and it's the chief of police asking about prison and what's it like yes he should know pretty well you're right but I guess this is also when like HBO is taking over all the Emmy Awards so it just just became a thing to joke about on TV, that it's all characters are watching. Even your fictional characters are watching HBO now, not network. Yeah, definitely. You crumbum. You looked me right in the eye and lied to me.

Marge, this is the God's truth. I burned the mural, but I did not burn Skinner's car. I just saw you. Get him out of here, Chief. Yes, ma'am. My wife and I like watching that Oz show on HBO. Is prison really like that? Wouldn't know. We only get basic cable. Ouch. Yeah, I also like that Sex and the City. None of those girls look like my wife. Sports Center's not bad. Yeah, I never got that sex in the city. None of those girls look like my wife. Sports center's not bad. Yeah, I never got that show.

What's to get? They just tell the scores. Yeah, I suppose. Hey, you ever meet any mob guys? Are they really like the Sopranos? I told you, we just get basic cable. Oh, right, right, right. Listen, if I'm getting too chatty, just tell me to shut up. Nah, I'm enjoying it. Hey, have you ever watched that strongman contest?

They're pretty good. Those guys look strong. A lot of guys in prison say they're gay, but I don't know. They look strong to me. It's just so weird that in the end, it's like convicts are not to be trusted, not worthy of sympathy. They lie to your face and destroy property. It's like that. Not the best moral to the story if they want but they don't really

give a shit about that they once again i yeah i don't care about morals i wish at least if this is what they wanted to do it would have been more of an episode about marge trusting people too much which it isn't that's an afterthought you know it could be an episode about marge always invest too much faith in the inherent good of people. Yeah. It ends up not really being about anything. Yeah. I mean, there's like nothing pointed about this episode other than chiropractors are kind of shady and competitive.

We've talked about it throughout our discussion here, but I feel like at this point they were losing confidence in just telling a Marge story. So they wanted to distract you with other things. But I feel like Gene, he had different issues with his seasons but i feel like he was more confident just telling margin lisa stories without wanting to distract you with other zanier things yeah well griffin you're also right they had they have more systemic criticisms of chiropractory than they do of parole or prisons or the the criminal justice system none of that for a show that has overall been very very critical of those institutions since the beginning

of law enforcement of the law of the prison industrial complex i mean these are things i've been dealing with the whole time it's weird for them to do an episode about it that's so toothless but also the chiropractic stuff feels fairly toothless as well i mean it's really just one beat at the end where the guys come in and like you know intimidate homer and steal the thing and beat it up with a spine but like it feels like like they could have gone further with that as well it's pretty easy shots all around i guess my final thoughts on it like it it's a funny there are funny jokes in this episode the but yeah i think they had we've teased out that there's like five different episodes they

could have pulled out of this but they just squished it so much together but at least when things are funny they they are there's some good comedy and keaton is in a time when a lot of guest stars are already starting to be like i'm me the famous person like he plays a real character who actually has a lot of fun with him i i cannot believe in 20 plus years since his episode he never came back he would have been such a great second guest appearance i i have to imagine they're gonna bring him back soon it feels like especially with the career resurgence he's been in i wouldn't be surprised if we hear him popping up in the next couple seasons i'm shocked post birdman he didn't already come back you know

honestly yeah i mean i'm sure there were three different episodes parodying birdman i mean there must be one episode where the title parodies birdman one episode where the plotline parodies birdman and one episode that's all faked one shot like Birdman. And if those three things haven't happened, I'm sure they will. And my final thoughts are, it was not remarked upon, but I love the title Pokey Mom

and I'm a big video game fan. So I think it's very clever. And a pokey is a jail. That's clever. It's a fun title. But I guess any last thoughts yourself, Griffin? No, I mean, it's just like, it's not my favorite episode.

It's not my least favorite episode. But, you know, from the list of season 12 stuff, I was drawn to it because of the Keaton and because it is interesting to me and how much it has on paper all of the elements of one of my favorite Simpsons episodes and leaves a lot of them on the table. Leaves a lot of stuff I feel like unrealized or unfulfilled. But it very much represents this exact moment in the series run for me. Well, Griffin, our fans love podcast girth, and this could be one of our girthier episodes to date.

Yes. Yes, thank you so much. Apologize for that. No, no, no. We feel bad that we took so much of your afternoon no i feel great about we made a three-hour episode about pokemon yeah i'm excited i mean everybody heard it at the front but griffin i mean uh where where can folks find all of your awesome stuff i didn't even mention at the start the george lucas talk show yeah uh so george lucas talk show is a

show i do with conor radliff who's an amazing uh improviser here in new york city one of the finest people on the planet for my money and uh he plays george lucas i play wado the uh toy darien uh junk shop owner from phantom menace and attack of the clones and we interview uh real celebrities as themselves uh we we had bill oakley on recently i'm trying to think of other since we've had on christine nangle who's a current writer for the show. Oh, that's great. Yeah, but we've had some Simpsons people on, and certainly no shortage of Simpsons talk, but we do that every week. People

like Whoopi Goldberg, people like Bruce Valanche, people who came up in this episode. We interview them in character. It's every Sunday night, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard time on, or Eastern eastern time i should say on planet scum dot live and then a blank check wherever podcasts are found that's awesome and you you are patreon supported as well now you're you're i think exclusively on patreon are exclusively

patreon supported now right uh no no no we have our, we're independent, but ads on our main feed. And then on Patreon, we do a separate show, which is we do franchise commentaries and then weird sort of one-off bonus episodes that sometimes relate to the director filmography miniseries we're doing on the main feed. Oh, that's awesome. Well, man, we'd love to have you back anytime, Griffin. That was so so much fun uh yeah i need to watch another uh the remaining 11 seasons of the show uh and then

i'll be reloaded with hot takes for another three hour episode we'll be ready for you yes for sure oh thank you so much again griffin my pleasure so thank you so much to griffin newman what a great guest so much in a very long podcast but we're all about being a very long podcast so no shame there but please check out Blank Checkout it's a really great podcast I recommend jumping in with the Back to the Future episodes but I like Back to the Future and also there's the George Lucas Talk Show which we brought up in the end of the podcast so yes thank you so much to Griffin you can follow him at Griff Lightning G-R-I-F-F Lightning if you enjoyed him on the show please tell him you did we'd really appreciate it as for, if you want to check out more of our show and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up for

five bucks a month to get just that, but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall. And if you're not behind the $5 paywall, you just missed season two, part one of Talking of the Hill, our King of the Hill retrospective. We do the same kind of attention and clips like we do talking simpsons and that was our most recent mini series and there will be one coming up in the fall of 2021 and we've done several in the four years we've been doing the patreon now and the second you sign up you get access to everything we've done since the summer of 2017 that is a lot of podcasts all waiting for you behind the five dollar paywall at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is also a ten dollar level if you sign up for that you get all the five dollar

stuff but also access to one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry that's right bob you're talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast if you like hearing talk about movies on podcasts why that's what me and bob do once a month we talk about an animated feature film super in-depth often for over four hours about films as diverse as shrek ducktales the movie the end of evangelion and a gigantic back catalog of over two years we're coming in on our third year honestly in a few months that's how many over 120 hours of premium podcast that you would get at the $10 level in addition to all of the $5 stuff Bob just listed that is a real bang for your buck at

patreon.com slash talking simpsons so please consider that 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 exclusive full-length episodes every month. Again, that is Patreon.com

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our sister podcast, What a Cartoon, our many, many series on the Patreon, or tons of other things, you will know when they happen if you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter. So please, please do that today. Thanks for joining us, everyone. We'll see you next time for Season 2's

One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Bluefish, and we'll see you then. That is awesome! Finally, art that doesn't suck! Dear Lord, what are you doing? You don't like it? No, no, it's all wrong. The shapely female form has no place in art. But what I thought is...

I sketched out exactly what I wanted. Yeah, I know, but see what I was going for here. Did you even look at the napkin? Oh, I was in the zone that day.