Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Principal Charming With Drew Mackie

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

We welcome back once again our pal Drew Mackie from the great Gayest Episode Ever Podcast for a look back an episode full of Homersexuals! Drew helps us navigate the complex love lives of Patty & Selma, not to mention Principal Skinner's own proclivities, plus we deconstruct the first appearance of Groundskeeper Willie, and so much more. So grab some tater tots and listen along! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that makes happy hour bitterly ironic. I'm your host, the humble figurine collector Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and I had to limit my pork to six servings a week. And who do we have on the line? Possible homosexual, Drew Mackie. And today's episode is Principal Charming. Selma, hello. Stanley?

It's this seat patient. Hey, beat it today's episode aired on february 14th 1991 valentine's day and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god happy valentine's day 1991 bobby the first pete and p Pete special airs on Nickelodeon. Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid begin their decade-long marriage, and The Silence of the Lambs is released in theaters. Wow. So, yes, not a lot to say about Pete and Pete because we did a two-and-a-half-hour podcast for our sister show,

What a Cartoon, but an amazing series. It's not just good because you're nostalgic for it. It is actually a very well an amazing series it's not just good because you're nostalgic for it is actually a very well done series and meg ryan and dennis quaid i believe they were broken up by russell crowe is that not the the hollywood goss i think on the set of a movie yeah it was uh proof of life i was gonna guess kate and leah polder that's too jackman though it's a different movie never mind i'll shut up uh no it's the proof of life movie that yeah, that was apparently her and Russell Crowe got together on it. And it was like, oh, they broke up this Hollywood super couple.

I said it before. I'll say it again. They were so happy together. And then also the Silence of the Lambs would turn. With a February release, that is not best picture material back then no it was a real dark horse winner back then that was a photo finish for that movie uh beating the first i believe the first movie at least for a long time to be in the best picture category beauty and the beast oh yeah that beat beauty and the beast for the academy awards of that year yeah the first

animated film to be nominated for best picture yeah i you know what i should have looked this up beforehand but i believe that meg ryan dennis quaid child is an actor now of course i think let me look is it is it the kid in the boys is it the boy in the boy i think it is the boy in the titular boy let's see here if it's that actor he's also going to be in that new scream movie that's coming out in the not too distant future especially when this actually releases and he has you know sort of a villain face so when i heard he was cast i'm like he's the killer uh yes that is jack quaid we're thinking of here yes uh he's i you look at him like that he's got a real just like how when you look at skeet alrick and you're oh, that was definitely the villain of the first Scream.

You're like, oh, yeah, this guy's the villain of the new Scream. He's got a real pre-Nicholson look to him. Yeah, called Murderface. You know, that wedding on that day when this episode aired, it would lead to the creation of Jack Quaid. Yeah, that Pete and Pete, it was a Valentine's Day special. In my memory, it's the Tasty Freeze episode that was the first like full length episode

but it was the Valentine's Day one they made a series of specials before Nickelodeon would finally commit to a series I believe the short started in like 1989 so by the time they had started the TV series the kids had already aged four years they had like two years left before it was puberty town for little pete they were they were challenging the puberty gods on that but uh but yeah that's that's what happened this valentine's day of 1991 and joining us uh once again is drew mackie from gayest episode ever welcome back to the show drew

thank you for inviting me back um another time i'm always surprised when that happens well you know uh on on your Gayest Episode Ever podcast, you've covered many Simpsons episodes, and that often does mean covering Patty and Selma episodes. And so you're quite an expert in podcasting about Patty and Selma, so a perfect guest for this, I'd say. And I think you've proven, Drew, that you can cover episodes past, like, season 12 and everything's fine. I think

for a long time, people assumed that if we covered anything past the 8th, the computer would just shut down. It would not record audio. But we've proved them wrong. Yeah, there's some good stuff beyond season 12, and then there's the episode we most recently talked about, which was extremely,

extremely problematic, but makes for a really good conversation. Yes, the season finale at the time of this recording that you just released of gayest episode ever uh your podcast with uh with uh with glenn lakin uh that you uh talk about an episode that i sadly hadn't watched in a long time and i think on this podcast had mistakenly said it was a good gay episode of tv when it really isn't we made henry wear a hair shirt for this recording yeah i i feel very bad that the you you explore with uh two great guests from the the podcast totally transed about how disgustingly transphobic that episode ends up being and it's uh very very sad yeah yeah and uh it's worth it for gay people and not gay people actually to uh note that sometimes

a lot of uh pro gay rights stuff or pro rights for gay men and lesbians can often end up being kind of transphobic uh if you don't know what you're doing and that's what that's what that one ended up being that episode i now think about like just 2004 and what the you know mainstream political arguments were about being gay and it's so much is about like the commodification of being gay and have also just like no see they can be normal and spend money they're not they're not all freaks and that that uh sadly also led to just a lot of awful awfulness towards people who don't fit the very strict rule of what a good gay person was allowed to be in America in 2004. And now we're working past that. And so is Patty, in fact.

Yes. Yeah. Interesting evolution of this character. the first time they're really like diving into the emotional lives of these characters who were just written as cruel jokes uh on the family members of sam simon sorry the in-laws of sam simon as we've learned patty and selma based on sisters-in-law he did not like they've evolved beyond that to fully fleshed out lonely women who have desires overlapping sometimes and sometimes divergent desires is this the first episode where they actually do a good job of like differentiating patty and selma do you guys know yes absolutely yes yeah it's the first episode where they draw a distinction and it's also the first episode in which uh the spotlight is on side characters completely like this is not a homer story it's

not a bart story it is about principal skinner and patty and it's it's definitely the first time there was a scene where patty is in a scene without selma and vice versa like they they always appeared as a duo in every scene like the the thanksgiving episode went a little more into who they are as people just a tiny bit with like the every joke with them until the thanksgiving episode was they hate homer and that's it but in the thanksgiving one they actually show that they like being favored oh uh over marge and they're like oh they brought food went to in case marge's turkey ends up being crap and that you got to see that they're also kind of mean to marge but this episode is really the first time you ever care

about them as people or you think of like that they have emotions other than hating Homer. Yeah. And that's like pretty remarkable to think about. I mean, I know I think they were in denial about how much of their viewership was actual children, but like a lot of it was little boys our age at the time. And that's a big feat to make like a nine year old boy who just likes Homer and Bart care care about these two antagonistic characters and i think they actually do a very good job and uh this this episode made me very happy to watch you know i think as a kid i probably didn't like all this love stuff and didn't understand the idea of like someone in their late 30s or early 40s struggling to to find love that that was very uninteresting to me as a kid uh but i would bet that just having

some bart shenanigans in the middle probably kept my attention back then i and and now i love this episode and since we were apologizing up front i i will apologize because so this is written by david stern he wrote bart gets an f that's the most viewed episode of the simpsons ever on that podcast i assumed and i thought he was a full- writer. He was not. Based on the amount of episodes he wrote, I thought he was, but he is not a full time writer. He would come in occasionally, but he also wrote another great Selma episode is Selma's Choice. So he writes a Patty episode here and then he writes a Selma episode in season four. Both very nuanced portrayals of these characters who were just one note jokes in conception yeah as far as i i tried googling as much as i could find about him and there's not that much about his personal life i assume he's just a straight male comedy writer and i have to give him a little bit of credit for uh it's not something straight male comedy writers are known for doing to be able able to step outside their experience and like find humanity in um these like single unmarried

women and like what their motivations might be and he does a fantastic job yeah uh reese on mike reese one of the executive producers at the time you know he tells the story on the commentary like it he admits like this was kind of out of their wheelhouse of most of the writers on the show like they're all just a bunch of guys who most of them went to the same frats and they didn't particularly feel that interested in writing stories just for Marge and Lisa, let alone Patty and Selma. I think Stern really does find a niche. I think from the sound of it, it sounded like he had some production deal with Gracie and was just like around. And like, I think he was probably working on like, well, could this be a movie or could this be a pilot with Brooks? And while those were not coming to fruition, they're like, well, you're around and on a

production deal. You want to write another Simpsons? Like we've got an open slot again. I guess it would make sense that that's what his like side gig was, aside from writing Simpsons episodes. But even more so than a lot of episodes this season, this has a very James Brooks-y feel to it. Yeah, in fact, we'll get to it in a while, but James L. Brooks essentially wrote the ending

because they were stuck. So the scene with Skinner and Patty, it's just him writing it. Like, here's how we get out of this problem. I'm James L. Brooks. You can helicopter me in. I'll write your ending. Yeah, well, it's funny that compliment we give to Stern

is very similar to what, you know, Brooks got famous for in the 70s as a writer of like that he was there weren't a lot of women in most writers rooms back then but uh he was known as a guy who could actually like write women well back then and i there's something uh have you guys seen as good as it gets in a while no i only saw it not in a while yeah i saw it like on video when it came out uh 25 years ago well when i whenever i talk about brooks getting compliments for doing well at writing women i do think of how the jack nicholson's character in the start of that is getting compliments for writing women so well and he then in a very negative way says like oh how do i write women i write a man i think of a man and i take away accountability so that the fact that brooks wrote that line about rejecting a compliment on

writing women well it makes me think about what he really thinks about being told he writes women well but anyway that's uh that's a whole other theory i have but the the point stands at stern i think is just really good. He is really good at Patty and Selma, especially. And like Patty takes an interesting journey. And we talked about Drew's episode that he did for Gayest Episode Ever, in which you cover. There's something about marrying where it's fully revealed after lots of hinting that Patty is gay. So they start off presumably that Patty is just possibly possibly asexual selma is very interested in men

and throughout the history of the series there's jokes about possible gayness between the not between the two but each character could be a gay character because the the instinct was for these male comedy writers these mannish women well of course they're gay and then they decide to turn that into well no this could be a gay character for us. It's sort of like how Smithers was a vehicle for gay jokes. Then they could be like, well, Smithers can just be a gay person and not be a walking joke. That makes sense. The interesting thing about that is that unless I'm mistaken, there's only one instance of them ever really projecting real mannishness or like a genuine lack of femininity onto Selma. And something I actually neglected to put in my video recap of

all the gay moments in the series history. And it's one of your listeners in I think on Patreon pointed out that I missed this. And they were right. But in the Cape Fear episode, when Sideshow Bob is at his parole hearing, the lawyer asked, like, who's thinking about killing Selma right now? And everyone in the courtroom raises their hand, including Patty. And a guy sitting next to Patty, like looks at her and makes a surprised face and patty's response is she's always leaving the toilet seat yeah actually there's another joke like that and i think it's patty it's it's actually in season 12 when uh mr burns takes over the church it makes it very like a corporate church uh i believe uh they're taught like lisa hates it and all the parishioners are talking

about uh the improvements i believe patty says they put ice in the urinals. So, yeah. Yeah. But it is interesting that even before I think they realized Patty was gay, they were always putting the Patty is mannish jokes more on Patty. And Selma was her thing was like either manless or like unable to keep a man, which is an interesting choice. They might have made subconsciously. You're totally correct about that like patty i think was always uh viewed as the uh in the writer's perspective the more mannish one because i remember when marge is offering them

tickets to the ballet and margin lamb patty is the one who snorts and says that's girl stuff yeah right yeah which like she speaks for selma in those moments but this well this is the episode that makes them two separate people they feel everything together in equal amounts every and they're pretty much like drawn next to each other in every shot before this one so this is the first time they become separate characters from one another and and yeah i mean i i totally understand that in the 90s if you tell male comedy writers that you have two butch-ish women they it's just naturally going to travel in that direction of like oh we have a joke in here i kind of like how they do a joke about how her she has hair on her upper lip but uh at least that she doesn't care about it but But once you introduce that idea,

it's like, all right, how much farther are we going with this? Like to literally have Otto say to her face, like you were born a man, right? Like you can tell me I'm open-minded. I mean like women, if they choose to, they can maintain the hair that can grow on your upper lip,

but they're not like, how does a woman realistically prepare for a date? It's like, it was a cheap joke. Yeah, it was a cheap joke that like oh pat patty has a mustache because she is such a butch person yes and i was looking at like the the direct statements that patty is gay in the series and drew you covered one of those it was in uh the clown without pity uh segment of treehouse of horror in which homer runs out of the room naked and then patty goes there go the last lingering threads of my heterosexuality and then in season 13's jaws wired shut i believe there is a parade and there is a stain in the closet float it's smithers and

patty you only see their hands and they do a little chant they say uh we're gay we're glad but don't tell mom and dad yeah that uh that pride parade that was also boy that has a joke in it that also i don't love that like i think lisa like acts bored by a pride parade or she's like yeah you do this every year it's fine yeah i was like yep yeah just this i mean it's a very like liberal hollywood pronouncement of well everybody's fine with gay people now why even have a parade like right yeah but patty yeah she kind of became uh it's funny that the jokes about her being the quote-unquote man-hating dyke stereotype that then turns into just like well no we have a gay character now and hey bring on the glad awards like that kind of uh spirit is an interesting uh travel for

any character uh but i uh drew i i've heard you you know say this theory on on your podcast before and i i do i like it the the idea in this episode that patty just is a person who is uninterested in sex and dating like she just doesn't care of like hanging out with her sister every day and doing that like that's the that is fulfilling for her and just a life she enjoys like i i not and that she doesn't do it because she has to be in the closet i i like that reading uh of the character you you put you put out onto the show i like that they did eventually make her like an out gay character and i think it's interesting that she actually made that transition faster than Smithers ever did, because like, there's a lot more Smithers is gay jokes and Patty is gay jokes leading up to the coming out. But um, yeah, if you just look at this episode on its own, you haven't seen the rest of the show, there's not really any hint that she might be a lesbian. And as I have said before, if you were just an asexual person who was watching this episode on its own you might actually get something uh it might it might ping your interest a little bit be like oh this character's sort of reading like an asexual character and that's not the direction they eventually chose to go with her and uh it was just too bad because there's very very few asexual

characters on any tv series ever but um had they let her do that it would have been actually a really good representation of someone who is just very happy with the way her life is and is not interested in. She's interested in being friends with Skinner, but she doesn't want to kiss him. Clearly. Yeah, she. No, I. Well, it's funny on the commentary, though, hearing Reese say like Patty's gay, right? He just he straight up asked it then, but they couldn't. They didn't know yeah they i mean in 2001 even when they would have done the commentary that it was a spicy thing to make a canonical character in the show explicitly gay

like and have you know it does show a certain level of progress like yeah now if a show has no gay like any queer representation and just not at all on a show it's suspect to me i'm like what how can you like everyone straight on your show like really yeah we talked about the uh the sexuality stuff i will also say on top of this i feel like uh the writing about the relationship between twins is very good because for the past 20 years i've been good friends with a set of twins and i they're probably listening to this and this is a compliment but i consider them to be the male patty and selma and that they are inseparable. They've lived together forever.

They've shared a womb for Christ's sake. And I don't know if they would think this of themselves because they've just been together for so long. But I think they're each other's best friends, too. Like they just get along so well. But and I see that between Patty and Selma because ultimately they choose each other over over this possible schism in their relationship. And they often end up choosing each other in the end. I think only recently we got to a point where Patty is in a steady relationship and isn't always choosing Selma, which I feel bad for Selma. But yeah, my dad is actually a twin and he and his twin live on different continents now.

And I am still jealous of their relationship. And just that I think it's a closeness that like you can't even make words for necessarily it's just a beyond words thing that uh i am jealous of as a single born human being you know as a kid at the end of this episode that it it hinges upon the closeness of twins i didn't fully get it i was like well that's a weird thing this but now i totally it it is it feels genuine the end of it it's not like a cheat about it yeah I I think this really showed the the we talk about how they're like episodes teach the writers lessons in season two of like oh the first Lionel Hutz episode shows that they can uh have a whole lot

of fun in a courtroom we we need to keep going back to a courtroom and and the first Troy the cable episode they're like we can just have them watch tv all day we can have just jokes on the tv and i think this one is one of those ones are like we don't have to have the characters the family cannot be in scenes yeah and we can do a side story sometimes they're explore stuff yeah they're like the side dish like some the homer can be in a place where patty is or where skinner is but he's not like the main focus of the story and now he's not even in this episode hmm yeah and well this also has uh two and a half first appearances i saw on the wiki they say this is the first appearance of another

character and i don't fully agree with that i think he really first appears in brush with greatness but i'll i'll get to it when he's in it but uh but yeah uh this yeah and mark kirkland this is one of his uh best episodes too like this just looks good like the coloring and the the tone and feel of this one is so so different from when you go into patty and selma's world it feels different like it looks it feels different and also to be asked to to do two pointless Vertigo parodies where, for this episode alone, the Springfield Elementary just has a Catholic mission-style tower with a bell in it for no reason. I have a retread for that. Oh, boy. The Simpsons will be right back.

This is Lisa Simpson. I just wanted to send a Valentine's Day wish to the people I love, and who love me. My mom, my dad, my baby sister Maggie, and even though he'll never admit it, my brother Bart. Happy Valentine's Day from Fox. Next week, Danny DeVito guest stars as the voice of Homer's long-lost brother, Herb, on an all-new Simpsons. Now stay tuned for Babes, coming up next. 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 electricarland.ie.

Welcome to the break of the Greasy Joe's Bottomless Barbecue Pit of podcasts. And Talking Simpsons is always happy to have back on Drew Mackey, our guest this week, co-host of the great gayest episode ever podcast check out that podcast i was just on it recently talking about the he-man series also if you're a fan of our podcast you should definitely check out patreon.com slash talking simpsons because that is where me and bob are supported by listeners just like you who subscribe and help us do this as our full-time jobs.

And if you support us there, you get to hear every episode of Talking Simpsons a week early and ad-free. You can hear next week's episode right now if you signed up today. And the same goes for our sister podcast, What a Cartoon. You get to hear that early. And a whole bunch of exclusive podcasts will be at your fingertips if you're a $ dollar and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons us covering shows like futurama king of the hill the critic and mission hill and coming very soon us doing the same for our 10 favorite episodes of batman the animated series you can only hear those and so much more if you're a five dollar and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons.

But if you would like the podcast equivalent of Cherry Cordials, you should sign up at the $10 premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Because on top of all the $5 exclusives I just talked about, you also get our monthly super premium podcast, What? A Cartoon Movie, where me and Bob go super in-depth covering an animated feature film, often for over four or even five hours long. We just finished a whole summer

of Disney Renaissance classics, Lion King, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and now we just put out our Rotel Dorado podcast where we cover that underrated 2D DreamWorks film. And coming next month, Batman Beyond Return of the Joker, one of the best Batman cartoons there ever was. You sign up today,

you'll get three years of exclusive What a Cartoon Movie podcast over 160 hours and all the $5 stuff I just mentioned in the previous break. Check all of it out at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Well, to start the episode uh we do have a chalkboard gag about belching the national anthem

uh this comes seven months after roseanne's national anthem uh controversy so i feel safe in saying that's probably a reference to that yeah uh which uh then we get a cute little couch gag of uh the couch the the rollout couch gag. It's cute. I think it's cute when their couch gags are still grounded in some sort of reality because I thought they had to do that. Oh, we can just do anything, actually. It's fine. As we go back through season two, I'm waiting for like, when do they just fully shatter reality with these?

When does the couch eat them? When does the carnival come to town when they're short on time yes yeah uh that's a gene and reese special but uh so then we then get a rare bedhead homer in the first clip here i i wish they'd kept doing this i love like the wavy lines on his hair it's such a small thing but I can just like feel sweaty, ruffled hair read through that. I wish they'd have kept it. I like that, but I don't like how they draw extra stubble on his beard line. It's like, how do you make a bearded character look more stubbly?

I don't know. Just like put little dots on his face. Does he ever have bedhead again? Because I don't recall ever seeing this version of Homer again. Boy. I'm sure he does here and there. And I'm trying to think. I think his hair definitely gets ruffled on like a hot day in future ones like to show sweaty hair.

But it's a rare look. And this also is still when he has just wavy hair in general. It's the wavy ends instead of the sharp pointed turns on. Macaraning. Must be spinning in his, well, outside somewhere. He's not dead. In his diamond mansion. That's what he's spinning in.

But yes, Homer is awoken by a call from his good buddy. Hey Homer, it's Barney. Did I wake you? I'm up, I'm up. How are you? All I wanted to tell you about was this new barbecue joint. Ooh, barbecue. It's called Greasy Joe's Bottomless Barbecue Pit.

Ooh, I can still taste the sauce between my fingers. And are you ready for this? It's all you can eat. This is like some beautiful dream. And one, and two, and three, and reach, and five, and six. Mars, honey, I've got five words to say to you. Greasy Joe's Bottomless Barbecue Pit. Remember you promised you'd try to limit pork to six servings a week?

Mars, I'm only human. Now look, here's what we're going to do. We'll unload the kids on Patty and Selma Saturday night, and then we'll eat until they kick us out of the place, just like old times. Hmm, Saturday night? I'm not even sure my sisters will be available. I'll take that bet.

It's very funny that they realized in season four, like, hey, this Homer shutting down an all-you-can-eat restaurant, we didn't even see it happen. Yeah. Let's make it into a B-plot. Right plot right and also when he said just like old times it doesn't seem like we would in a later episode would get a cutaway to like a remembrance of homer doing that and we don't hear because i don't think they were as eager to do that yeah right this is totally a setup for a family guy style cutaway or a simpson style cutaway yes they did it first i i like the as just a subtle implication

that their pre-marriage dating life was making her go to rest all you can eat restaurants with him and watching him eat until they shut the they closed down that's uh that says a lot of what their relationship was that is a that is a valid romantic dynamic for some people but apparently it is not for march yeah she's yeah yeah she seems to put up with it of just like well this is the man i married it's not a feeder scenario that they're into now uh and like at this point in the series of barney and homer are best friends and i think it's the idea of barney calling homer is very cute to me i love it because in a few years barney would not have the faculties to make a phone call it's true also would not be like sober or non-hungover enough in the morning to like use a phone and um apparently he didn't drink last night he just ate barbecue which is

very un-barney like i i gotta think beer was involved with that barbecue at some point well also the fact that he's calling homer at eight in the morning my assumption was he has not slept he was up all night and then he's like counting the hours like i can't go to sleep i'll never wait i won't wake up until like nighttime so when it's eight o'clock homer's awake enough now i can call him and tell him about the barbecue also just the sound of him licking it off of his fingers over the phone like barney's near his most disgusting in this i mean this is not sneeze guard gross barney no but i do love the dynamic of barney is homer and barney were great friends when and very close roommates when they were both

single barney remained a single, seemingly living in the same apartment he lived in with Homer, his roommates, but he doesn't understand the differences that Homer is an adult now with children. And so he's just like, hey, come on, Homer, do this. Come on. It's a more realistic portrayal of this dirtbag

until he is just the joke if you need someone to drink out of an ashtray. Yes. Or drink turpentine. Yep yep the dynamic barney has with homer i think is very funny and cute but i'm like wait is that what i am to my friends who are like married and work nine to five now maybe oh no oh no maybe maybe i am that i mean i could see the writers also who all were childless at the time thinking like oh i'm i'm the dirtbag who calls my married friend and tells them like hey i know you're a father but let's have fun how about you have fun instead of being a dad you know this is at a weird time where homer is not equal gross as barney and then homer could

like be disgusted by a belch in his face by barney i feel even a year later definitely two years later homer would just be equal to barney and disgustingness and not grossed out by him. It's weird that Barney gets the food monster jokes and then Homer doesn't really. I mean, his belly's bulging. He takes his pants off and stuff. But still, Barney is the more disgusting one in this equation. And then Barney has to push Homer to be a food monster. Yeah.

I also like seeing the morning workout routine by marge that's how she has big ropey muscles describes them so another like little subtle animation i love the way homer says like i've got five words for you but and as he gets to the fifth word he like stops for a second and looks at his fifth finger come up like that is five like uh it's very subtle i also read it as a joke of their four-fingered nature. Right, like he forgot that in this universe, people only have four fingers for a second. They had to figure it out.

And this also feels very early 90s to me of like that when pork was seen as the unhealthiest of meats, of like, oh, if there's one thing you shouldn't eat, it's pork. Like now, no, it's a doctor told me recently, red meat. No, no, no. No more of that for you. When did pork become the other white meat? I guess, yeah, the mid-90s with the proper ad campaign, I suppose. Yeah.

For me, servings of pork once a week, pretty much. I'll have, and usually, boneless pork chops lean and cut down. That's the rare. It's pretty rare I have bacon these days as well yeah i feel like bacon should count for like two servings of pork if you're really though you know what if i go out to a thing i had to tell myself recently like you know if you think you're not having bacon when you have like pork belly you are having bacon that's the same deal pork honestly probably worse i've been proudly pork free for 15 years wait no 16 you'd

have no fun of the greasy joes but no no i'd be eating like the celery they give you beforehand uh yeah it's uh and marge also uh she i i like that she is innocent enough to think that patty and selma might have a date i you know don't assume they're dateless losers hey they've got plans they do and they do have plans yeah so here's another first the first visit to the dmv we've never seen them at their job before who knows if it was stern or whoever but they came to a point in the script of like well where do patty and selma work where do the miserable mean awful uh ants of bart and lisa where do they work the dmv is like the perfect choice yeah and you know what i didn't really get these dmv jokes until i moved to

southern california because in my small ohio town the dmv was like one room with two folding chairs you were there for like five minutes when i had to get my license renewed uh in california uh when i had to actually get a california license to change over my ohio license it was it was a day off of work i had to take a day off of work and i couldn't believe i was like this is where all the jokes came from yeah it's crazy but yeah like most most people they they're they're not used to that kind of a dv uh not dvd dmv my dmv is the glendale dmv and i actually have it in my notes that i it didn't these jokes did not make sense till i went there i'm oh, that's probably what they were talking about. As a little kid who never even knew how to get a driver's license, these jokes were meaningless to me.

All the jokes were like, oh, I guess DMV. Eventually, after they did about two or three of them, I think I understood the DMV is a bad place. You know what's distracting in that line? Barney is seemingly in that line with a kid on his shoulders it's like it's like barney's body but a different person's head and also the uh the boss from moe's bar in the arcade game is in line too so one another rare appearance of him and uh i i believe this is also a first in this uh first appearance of the dmv crusty the clown is in that line and i do think that is the first casual crusty in full clown costume appearance like

that we just fully accept it as crusty the clown walks into the scene and says like and he just says a line it was meant as a joke that he's always in costume and always crusty the clown and this i think this is the first time i can't remember a previous time in episodes we've done uh since revisiting season two and three one and two uh and then at the front of the line we see auto uh he's close to it which auto must fail here because he reveals in the auto show he does not have a driver's license so he must fail his test here. Sorry to go back a little bit, because maybe I was just taking notes, but I neglected to realize the line for this DMV goes out the door into the street.

Yes. It's very bad service. And then we get the first appearance of Ralph Mellish, the Hans Mole Man. So at the front of the line, it's just a guy taking a test. And I think they just wrote old man and he was drawn in such a crazy way of like a three foot tall potato looking dude. I, Matt Groening's, the story goes that Matt Groening's reaction was like, he looks like a mole man. And then I think as a way of like dunking on matt graining they kept putting him in there because

they knew matt graining didn't like him and eventually uh named him hans mole man in bark it's famous right yeah yeah he's named ralph mellish uh i guess an animator or layout artist written into this that is a character in a sketch on the fourth monty python album there you have it wow okay it's on YouTube. Look it up. I should have realized such a specific name. It had to be their generation. They made the Simpsons.

They didn't have the Simpsons. So their dorky names, they couldn't do Joey Jojo Jr. Shabadoo. They had to do Ralph Mellish or whatever Python did. And one other Mellish fact is that he was born on August 2nd, 1921. So he's already passed his hundred birthday by the time you hear this but very soon hans mole man will be 100 years old ignore what he said in

dufflis yeah he had dementia he had dementia yes he was in the wrong room i like that he i think was started as a dmv character because that's where his next like major scene is in the series all right question mark smiley face but yes the sisters can take care of them uh babysit that night after they go to the wedding because they're not going to stick around for the reception uh this is where we learn a difference of opinion between the two characters for the first time because you'd think both of them hate the the happy couple but it's selma was you see in a flashback she was deprived love with this man uh or they they had a very cute meeting that patty then cuts short instantly and shoves him away and the woman he meets at lunch is who he marries yep yeah that's how that's how it can be in those workplace romances you know did you notice that given this is their first work appearance i think the

explanation for why that there are uh little extra things added onto their regular costumes might be that they're getting dressed up for work but like they have like um collars and like the dresses have added elements so i guess these are just like an elevated version what they normally wear but also unless i'm mistaken is this the first time Selma's wearing the S earrings? Yes, it is. Yeah, you are correct. You are correct. I think they return in Selma's Choice.

It's just that when they want to make a visual distinction between characters, they will have her wear the S earrings. Oh, that's interesting. Because I thought this might have been the only time we ever saw them. I tried Googling the history of Patty and Selma's earrings did not generate any real results. And I was like, I don't want to have to make that video. But yeah, yeah. I thought it was interesting that like that that is a stylistic choice they do. And you have to differentiate the two sisters in my head because I'm just such a Simpsons freak. I just know Patty has the giant Afro and Selma has the split Afro.

Hans Wollman, like he's he's blade almost like a normal person like but driving is my livelihood like just it's uh that it's kind of dan doing a smaller walter brennan it's not before he fully became as crazy uh well and also this is uh back when he had a a darker skin tone i i feel like it's like four or five appearances before they just settle on they they kind of shift i i i feel like it's not until homer adopts him uh as uh thinking he's bart is that's when they fully commit to like hans woolman is yellow like the simpsons he says calabunga dudes actually i'm looking at other appearances this could be the only

appearance of the s earring because in black widower and in uh selma's choice seasons three and four episodes uh they're wearing their patty triangle earrings and selma circle earrings so wow yeah mentally i just drew in the s in my head in all those appearances yeah yeah i thought it was more widespread than this it might have just been because this is the first episode that ever made me i differentiate the two in any meaningful way uh then we head to the church of springfield uh it's the i think this is the first time we have seen the church used for anything other than sunday services and uh and i like love joy well welcoming work related acquaintances saying it's hey this is also perfect patty and selma they are wearing black dresses to a wedding like i love that that's such like intentionally jerky of him uh and it was also

interesting to me in the flashback that stanley is attracted to selma like there is there is chemistry between them they've so many times they write selma as being a one-sided sexual attraction yeah and the show is very uh i say i would say flattering to patty and selma because So many times they write Selma as being a one-sided sexual attraction to a man. And the show is very, I would say, flattering to Patty and Selma because the perspective of the show is that Homer is fat and disgusting. Not at this point is the perspective of the show that Patty and Selma are fat and disgusting. Homer can call her fat or gross, but the show isn't like, look at these gross women who are just vile and awful. They're like, no, they're just two two average women and one of them is very lonely and then a man like stanley who is written to be like average dude uh would be attracted to selma like yeah there's you know in selma's choice there's the different bit of like

when she is really throwing it out there to the bag boys and at the grocery store and they both have been treated like i don't want to have sex with this woman yeah like yeah back to the lock for you nessie yes yeah exactly that's what willie says that's correct i wanted to ask you guys on as the relationship between patty and selma versus homer evolves it is more like them calling each other fat and disgusting and trading barbs and that is something that happened a lot in sitcoms we used to watch when we were kids and some of it's really toxic and awful. Like most of the time, Al Bundy is making fun of fat women on Married With Children. It comes off as like hostile and punching down.

But I feel like it's not punching down when Homer spars with Patty and Selma. And I can't really explain why. I want to know what you guys think about that. Well, I do think there's some parity or there's some level of equality because they are both fat. And so it's two fat people calling each other fat and and throwing insults at one another it's like well i can say this because i'm also heavy and so let's just both throw barbs that way but i do think homer has a lot of like misogyny on his side when making fun of them and calling them like trash bags that's also true of i'm thinking of

married with children again where al and marcy would get into these back and forths where i mean it was always much uglier the things coming from al but often they would let marcy win yeah or she would give as much as she would get that makes sense and it's not like him saying uh walking in the door and saying a fat woman came into the shoe store today and the audience explodes and waits for the story i think i remember that episode actually happening but okay i'll take your word for it that didn't actually happen yeah the idea too that like patty is just sick of this while meanwhile she she also isn't paying attention to selma feeling different from her like she's like well yeah we both agree let's

get out of here she doesn't see that selma is like wistful and sad of like oh there went another man i could have had i will say like the one unflattering thing that they show you a patty and selma is uh that very funny drawing of patty just to sleep on the couch barefoot with her mouth open but it shows you like patty she doesn't care what people think of her yeah so she's not interested in a relationship she is just who she is it's not like look at this gross disgusting woman it's like this is just relationship. She is just who she is. It's not like, look at this gross, disgusting woman. It's like, this is just Patty and that's who she is. When I was watching this episode to talk about it for this, I tried to see if I could find the cell of Patty asleep on the couch to buy and hang in my home. And I could not.

It's a really funny drawing. I love that shot. Yeah. Before Homer and Marge come home, we have a cute little scene between Lisa and Selma, which honestly, Lisa's a bit mean in this sequence. Brandy, you're a fine girl. What a good wife you would be. But my life, my love, and my lady is the sea.

Poor Brandy. And Selma, do you think you'll ever get married? Oh, I don't know. Why? You know somebody? No. And since I'm sure that you'd only resent the pity of an eight-year-old niece, I'll simply hope that you're one of the statistically insignificant number of 40-year-old single women who ever find their fair prince.

Nice. Jeez, yeah. jeez yeah ouch ouch on lisa you know you you think she'd be a little nicer but you can also tell that they're in the same room yeah like with how sharply lisa says no it just feels like it's a real back and forth between julie and yardley uh the way selma's desperate so you know somebody no oh okay like yeah i have i have a reading for why they choose brandy um brandy is skinner and the sailor that is telling brandy you're great but i can't marry you because i'm in love with the sea is patty and like in the same way that patty recognizes there are things she likes in skinner but it's just not going to work and she has to leave him in the end and i would love to believe this was chosen on purpose but it might just be a very harmonious coincidence i think you're right i think yeah i i think that's uh very intentional i think well also it's just you know for selma she thinks she's singing the song about how lonely she is and how like oh another man left

me but i i think it much more fits for for patty and skinner's relationship later it's it's thematically appropriate and it's very funny to hear julie cavner sing it in that voice yes yes i love that i think julie cavner um i think we kind of take her for granted more than we take other voice actors on the show but she does a great job in this episode giving depth to three different characters who sound very similar and she has to differentiate them all i think she does a very good job but um do you guys listen to you must remember this i do yeah yeah are you did you listen to the season she did on polyplat and her work with james l brooks i did but it's been a while so um this made me think of something that is one of my favorite julie kavner stories and that's the fact that julie kavner starred in

this movie called i'll do anything which was j James L. Brooks's musical that they later stripped all the musical numbers out of because whatever reason it didn't work. I still have not seen it. But in the podcast, she talks about how some pop stars actually wrote the songs that were using that movie. And one was written by Prince. And Prince was on set to see his song be sung in the movie. And his song was sung by julie kaffner and there's a very funny like memory of prince watching julie kaffner like gravel voice her way through one of a song that he wrote and being like okay well i gotta go and leaving and this made me think of julie kaffner uh singing and how it's it's great in its own way but it's maybe not what a professional

songwriter wants to hear yeah Yeah. Oh, wow. And it's always funny to think, like, when Julie Kavner signed on for The Simpsons, she did not know she'd be singing in these voices. Yeah. That was not on the table. I mean, maybe, I would think she prefers Patty and Selma to Marge lines these days. Like, she can at least go, I think it's probably more comfortable for her to go into a lower register with them than to be i with marge all the time yeah i i have to the listeners expect me to yeah marge's voice it's a hallmark of the show it's great i expect it uh but yeah the brandy song too i'd i'd never

heard the original uh as a kid i i think i heard it a little after i probably had it's one of those ones where i was like mom what song is that she's like oh that's brandy i i had that growing up and the song by looking glass and it was a is a major plot point in guardians of the galaxy 2 uh so that's right that's uh when i heard it in that movie i was like oh that's selma's song they're playing that when that song plays at the start of that movie i was like ah kurt russell's the villain got it got it he's he's the bad guy here those movies are okay but they are the ready player one of classic rock so all your favorites are here uh hey if it let a new generation appreciate the song brandy by looking glass stepdads aren't driving their kids around anymore they're not hearing this music it's not what they play in grocery stores anymore they play our music from

the 90s and 2000s in grocery stores now it's weird yeah these grocery stores should it should be like us and reject the idea that time has moved forward the 80s were in the past yeah yeah that was the last decade that happened so elisa's i was trying to find unfortunately that guy 3002 i normally can count on he has not got a hand on a copy of the table read version of this script but i feel lisa's very mean line about women over 40 never getting married uh is adr because the lip movements are all off and i think i know uh the source on that uh i i stumbled upon this because i was trying to say like okay what's the stats now but

like if you're over 40 and unmarried will you ever be married and those are uh hard to pin down i could find a psychology today 2020 article that said it's more like 25 percent like if you if you're not married by 40 25 says you'll never be married like that's that's where the stats at now uh but from that article uh they brought to my attention what this probably is referencing in 1986 newsweek did a cover story that a lot of people remembered which said quote a 40 year old woman who had never married were more likely to get killed by a terrorist than to ever get married and uh 20 years after that news week took that back they're like we were wrong we read the stats wrong uh it's it's not

that unlikely for a 40 year old woman to never be married after that i got married when i was 38 you're you're testing the the numbers there but but yeah so when lisa says the statistically impossible thing of a woman unmarried woman over 40 getting married i think it is that newsweek piece that that she's recalling well there was a lot more terrorism in the 80s right especially planes being hijacked it was more likely well i'm 39 so let's just move on okay yeah the well i mean too back then i think it was much more mainstream than it is now to guilt a woman in her 30s to not being married like it was a much more normal thing to do i mean also like back then it's like the thought was well why don't you get married and buy a house

like you can do when you're married like yeah but that's what i love about patty and some of the unspoken thing is why they take all those trips is because they don't have you know fucking kids taking all their money away they can travel the world they're real uh dinks although they are related and not married yes they do seem to go to places that we're supposed to interpret as being unpleasant even if like i would go to egypt but the way their version of egypt sounds very unpleasant i want to visit lenin's tomb they still can it just sounds like no matter where they go Their takeaway is they hate everything Which that's so great

They spend must be thousands Of dollars to do All this traveling and when they come back It sucks They really drop that aspect of their characters After like season 4 After that their job is to be hateful and smoke And for Patty to be gay Do they even smoke in this episode yeah they buy cigarettes but it's a very smoking

like episode for a patty and selma focused one yeah actually the one smoking thing i can remember is when uh uh lisa tells i'm sorry bart tells selma that skinner is going to propose to patty the cigarette ash falls like as a reaction yeah it's uh it's funny you think she would like uh skinner wouldn't like a smoker but he's just so smitten but homer and marge get home i do really laugh at the animation of homer's freed gut from his belt i've had nights like that i've had those moments if you want barbecue which i don't think was the animator's intention but it really works yeah yeah it's again they're really holding back in season two you don't even see this feast yeah you don't see marge being humiliated like you do with uh the sea captain's restaurant

and i also like patty pat you know patty being passed out on the couch she's a bad sister she left it to selma to tuck the kids in you know this you got you've got bart and lisa and maggie to tuck in that's a two-woman job at least you know but i i don't think patty has a maternal bone in her body it's just not in her and selma has that biological clock that's ticking and she gets something out of it yeah yeah homer sits next to patty a joke i did not get as a kid yeah yeah oh uh yeah like i think we talked about it in the last podcast but i just i sort of regot it this time and that homer is calling barney to be like oh it was amazing barney and then patty is snoring next to him on the couch he's like oh no that's just my sister so barney

thought homer was just farting yeah that's the conversation or his stomach was being very loud i choose farting yeah i choose to think barney even thinks i think barney's line on the other end was saying like, are you calling from the toilet? Like Homer's like talking to him on the toilet. It's one of the most subtle fart jokes in the history of the show. No, that's just my sister. This is when Marge is taken aside by Selma.

I think that too shows like Selma doesn't want to say this in front of patty like she she wants marge only to know i need a man she closes the door to the kitchen which almost never closes on the show yeah yeah usually there's not even a door in the doorway the door is there to hit someone in the face accidentally occasionally or to swing to reveal that the clean kitchen is now dirty yes yes and i really love when she like is just so earnest to marge and just like i need a man and then marge like her reaction like well i'll try uh the marge actually her trying is telling homer to do it yeah like she she doesn't really go out to find a guy for her homer leaves the house more often that's true march march she

goes nowhere and meets no one and has no friends so it's got to be homer to find somebody at work i think homer is just around more more men you know that's true though i've never you know i i've never been tasked with setting up a date for a friend or anything i haven't it's it's too much of a responsibility you know i've had that conversation with heterosexual women and then i have to say like i i all the heterosexual men i know are married yeah exactly and when i was single no one was setting me up with anybody yeah what does it say about me i don't know it worked out just fine for you we all know the story yes yeah let me tell it again podcasting got us all together yes podcasting sweethearts uh but yes so uh marge then tells homer he he owes her in this next clip

do you remember our last family vacation when you made us go to the bowlers hall of fame in st louis missouri so you could see that car shaped like a giant bowling pin? Remember? Who could forget? Then you'll also remember that you owe me a favor. Oh. To be called up whenever and for whatever reason I desire. But that was just an idle promise. Not to me.

Oh. I want you to find a husband for my sister Selma. Find a husband? Wait, which one's Selma again? She's the one who likes Police Academy movies and Hummel figurines and walking through the park on clear autumn days. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I thought she was the one who didn't like to be, you know, touched.

It's Patty who chose a life of celibacy. Selma simply had celibacy thrust upon you will find her a man all right and not just any man okay he should be honest and and caring and well off and handsome hey why should she have a better husband than you do i love that line about celibacy so much that i wrote it as I was watching the scene. Like, I already know this line. It's so perfect. It does feel James L. Brooksy, too.

I love that line so much. In some of my single days and years, I thought about celibacy being thrust upon me at times. Yes, I love that. I love that line. And I always love Julie Kavner saying vacation. Instead of vacation, she says vacation yeah i don't know i didn't notice that she says it a lot in itchy and scratchy land oh yeah um celibacy thrust upon you this is a great word choice verb choice uh line that is made better if if they had used that instead of any other verb you know yes i agree

you know another first in here is i believe this is the first time they do a homer do you remember the time you blank and then they have a picture right there another great joke structure they would only escalate the where they went jokes where it's just a bowling uh a car in the shape of a bowling pin and marge looking very bored and i guess also this is like original year simpsons of like well homer loves bowling so much you'll make the family trippy about it and then instead of this episode it has both keys of it of like oh you've got you've got an early homer food monster joke of him being like a dumpster you fill with food and then a joke about bowling and you see the choice they made later. But for me, you know, it also feels different that Homer even gives a shit about a promise he made to Marge. And he wouldn't just go like, well, who cares?

I got what I wanted and I was lying. Like, I'm not doing what you want. Yeah. And like he even like sorts of sort of makes an effort to find someone who doesn't suck to like pair Patty up with the witches. But better than he normally does. Yeah. He would pull in the first wino off the streets. Exactly.

Barney would have just been his first choice. Right. In this case, Barney is his plan B, which is not much better. But 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 electricarland.ie. What do you guys think of what Marge says about the celibacy story with Patty? Do you think that she is assuming that Patty had celibacy thrust upon her? Or do you think it's something Patty told her because she didn't want Marge to get all up in her business if you think she's actually quietly gay this whole time you

know with the hindsight of what they later established with her character it is easy to read it as patty was in the closet did not want to tell marge about it or any other member of her family other than selma i would assume and so she just tells when asked like well why when are you gonna try to get a husband where's you never go on dates and she just says i'm celibate i just i'm not into that like i i could see patty just being like confirmed bachelorette uh type of person you know or she's just so private with her love life it's not even on the table for discussion people assume oh yeah she just she likes living alone or living with salma rather that's just her. And that's how she lives it.

Now you mentioned it in the one where she comes out. You don't actually see her come out to Selma. That happens off screen. I've been like before that episode even takes place, presumably. And it's a bummer that we never actually get to see that conversation happen because it would probably have been interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I guess, especially when it's your twin and roommate. At a certain point, you'd have to.

They would know you're dating women. I would think Selma would know yeah this clear line to homer marge describes it like selma is depressed and lonely patty is angry and not interested in men like that that is the clear delineation there and because this isn't a very special episode it wouldn't be about patty being gay which is the only way you'd be allowed to have a gay character on the simpsons if they did a very special episode back in 1991 like that was on on rosanne when they could have a lesbian it was either like a joke that like oh this character has a girlfriend now or the episode where they go to a gay bar i oh sorry i do love the description of selma loving and police academy movies oh right i wanted to touch upon that as like a hallmark of bad taste where i

think uh 20 years later it would have been like oh she likes adam sandler movies i don't know what it would be now though boy what would she likes marvel movies take that henry oh no no they wouldn't say that it'd be some feminine movie like i don't know it would have been 50 shades of gray or twilight movies like a decade ago yeah yeah i don't know what the coded joke for it would be now i guess well what rupaul's drag race maybe no it wouldn't be that i mean there are there are like two other police academy jokes in the series and i think we talked about it in that there are other bad movies that are way worse it was just safe to call this bad in your in your tv show right homer then he's given his job we cut to a very random scene of uh mrs graboppel teaching chemistry

which is not really her thing no and 10 year olds don't do these kind of experiments yeah actually this feels like a full-on sequel scene to bart the genius where he's given the uh acids and bases mixing together that somehow turns everyone green so it's interesting that in a storyline that it's like primarily about principal skinner finding a romantic interest that we see edna for like a few seconds and it's not even in the writer's heads at this point that he might eventually have romantic interest for Edna, I guess. Yeah. It'll be another year before Krabappel says his mommy won't let him out to play.

This does feel like a nice prologue to Springfield Confidential. In that Skinner falls in love with a woman who is also very brusque. She's also very hateful. But that's why he loves her yes he's got a type and uh this is a rare appearance of a non-rucy taylor martin this is pamela hayden voicing martin so uh there you have it huh i didn't even notice yep yeah it's so distracting when they don't get rusey in these early ones so i i charted it for season two rusey taylor they bring her in for a major Martin episode and Bart gets an F because Martin is like all of act two of that one.

But then Martin has like a line here or there for the rest of season two. But then it's Lisa's substitute when Martin is running for class president. They get Lucy Taylor back. So that's a return. So it sounds like uh budget-wise they're like well let's not get russi if we don't have to for one line where she explains what uh sodium tetrasulfite is yes yeah uh which there's many lines in here that almost so i i know other people write like this on the show but george meyer and john viti are both you know uh science students from

harvard and also love batman the adam west show and there's several lines that feel like an adam west batman line and that includes how martin says it's also a potent herbicide and they both also worked for snl and which is why both bart and homer tent their figures and say excellent because that's what jim downey on snl would do that's why a deal mr burns bart and homer all do it very early in the series because they're all cribbing from jim downey the snl writer i did not know that until now that's uh then they just decided you know just mr burns yeah no one else does i wonder, that they give Bart this prank. Do you think at this point they're being told, like, don't give Bart an imitatable prank?

So, like, okay, we'll give him a thing no kid can have access to, so then he can deface school property with it. It's also, like, a very dumb prank in that he doesn't think it through at all. Other pranks, Bart is way more diabolical we see with task even yes uh with big butt Skinner we see like different designs he has for it like he has documents and things like that this one he's just defacing the lawn with his own name the second he's got a chance then uh you know Mike Reese he brags about a little on the commentary and I think he's right to do so they do a terminator vision joke of homer walking around and seeing people through terminator vision in first person terminator 2 wouldn't come out for a few months after this it's true it's actually uh july of 91 we just passed the 30th anniversary as of this recording so is this a robocop uh you know i still they say it's terminator

but it does actually you know the vision is not red. Robocop doesn't have the red vision. He has the clearer vision. So it could actually be Robocop, not Terminator. Yeah, I think you're onto something. But either way, they are not referencing a recent thing. And also, like, I feel a Terminator vision joke became a lot more mainstream in comedy after t2 came out so the fact they beat t2's release when terminator was just like you know i think people definitely knew it as a movie but terminator

2 is what made it like a mega hit series and uh and yes uh as bart as homer's walking around we see that he views carl as too attractive that's why what i think of when i think of carl he's a handsome guy. And you notice that they spelled it with a K, like the other Carl and not Carl. You're right about that. And then also it's funny then too that the next two people he looks at, one is Smithers, who's the other major gay character. But Homer only thinks he's a jerk. And then the next person he looks at is a woman, Miss Finch, who Patty would be down for that one.

I will restate that I think it's RoboCop. Here's my case. I'm going to lay out my case for you. Terminator 1, 1984, seven years before this. People like the movie. It's not something people think about. RoboCop 1 is 87. RoboCop 2 is 90.

Comes out probably while they're writing this. I think this is a RoboCop reference. You're wrong, Mike Reese. It was retconned in his thinking to be a Terminator 2 reference. I rest my case. I think you're right. You know what? It's fine.

You win. Thank you. Thank you. I need validation. You know what? Also, the reticle on him is more of the aiming reticle that Robocop uses instead of, I think it's like a square thing in Terminator Vision 2. So, all right.

What is a reticle? Oh, it's a, you know, the, the bullseye, the aiming thing you use in like a video game with a gun. Oh, okay,

cool. I didn't know that word existed. Now we've learned two things this episode. So this is, this is, we're on a roll. Henry and I both read about video games for a decade. I think we use the word reticle a thousand times each.

Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. There's only so many words to describe HUDs and all the, all this, these words I learned for a job that doesn't exist anymore. My health bar. Then we get the very funny scene of Skinner. Well, first we kind of have a sequel to Bart the Genius as well of Skinner telling him like, hey, don't you guys do this? And it's almost like the classic pathetic upshot of Skinner.

It's funny how much, and I like it because Skinner's my favorite character. I like how they soften him because up until he falls in love, all the shots of Skinner are like looking up at him from a child's perspective. Like he's imposing, he's humorless. And then we soon find out he is a lovestruck, fussy nerd. And then Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein will really dial down on that with uh the season five uh finale where he loses his job like that is really where he comes into being but they're slowly developing him this is the first time he is more than this one note character from life and

hell like macarating's principal uh then we get a shot of uh homer at uh quickie mart uh eyeing apu funnily enough in season seven selma will be asked to marry Apu, but she turns it down because she only wants to marry for love now and maybe one more time for money. She married Sideshow Pop twice. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Terwilliger Bouvier, Hutz Bouvier, no, McClure Bouvier. You know, we've like in 30 years, we've outlapped a lot of the food parody jokes. So I don't know if a Homer getting a seafood burrito at the Quickie Mart is supposed to be a joke because I thought that sounds delicious.

I like seafood burritos. I think in 1991. Is that when this is? Yeah. We're supposed to is it's funny when you visit uh say japan where 7-eleven has plentiful fresh fish everywhere and uh you can just get a sushi uh any kind of sushi plate there but 7-eleven near my house sells sushi and i have had people tell me it is not terrible, but they were drunk when they had it.

That's the right time to eat 7-Eleven sushi, I think. Hungover, but still alive. It's a little cute how Apu breaks Homer's concentration. It's funny to hear even Homer say, like, oh, sorry. An apologetic Homer for being lost in thought is also different for the show. Homer walks by a random guy and he thinks like just a guy and i love how that guy gets sick of homer staring him like yeah it's the perfect beat of just silence and him frowning and they drive by a laramie cigarette

sign and homer thinks pro smoker con just decide the debut of laramie cigarettes right that's right you are correct and then their name checked later when patty and selma go to buy their own brands that's great man laramie what a what a constant in the show you know there's there's not as many people just don't smoke anymore so there's not even really like cigarette brand jokes anymore i guess i don't think patty and selma vape yet in the yet No people were still smoking In the writers room so That's true I think there is a vaping Episode but I think it has to do with them burning their

Mother's house down this is like This is like reaching way back into my watch through The entire series but a few years ago I think there's They try to switch the vaping because they burn Grandma Bouvier's house down There's an episode called Puffless which Is when they stop smoking because they learn We learn the fate of marge's dad that he died of lung cancer oh maybe i'm probably misremembering you're right but uh then we cut back to skinner as a kid i

laughed at the idea of an adult loving tater tots but now you put a plate of tater tots in front of me i'm like this is the greatest food i've ever had this is the skinner i like where he is just tickled by very mundane things and talking to himself and just being very corny that's the that's the skinner i love it's a very performative like weirdness for no one yes yeah that that's the bit that really feels like adam west to me like that that's how batman would say but he's he'd be saying this to Robin, not to himself. He's just like, I smell sodium chloride mixing with sodium tetrasulfate. Just saying that out loud. Batman enters the room like, I smell that.

If Willie had been introduced earlier, he would be in the room to say something rude to Skinner after he said this statement. But Willie is not his constant companion yet yeah you know i just went to disneyland and had one of the the giant chicken sandwich thing that is at the pim test kitchen in avengers campus and and that came with tater tots and at a certain point i had to be like i cannot eat more tater tots stop touching and throw them away because you're just going to eat every tater tot on your plate and your husband's plate that's how they get you yeah uh but yeah then we get a very random vertigo reference that just feels like they knew they could they're like we can just do a hitchcock revelance do it yeah the seldom seen um uh bell tower sorry drew so it does only exist in

this one episode correct this never existed before since okay yeah and it's in a different architectural style too it's like the classic mission style that exists in san francisco where the movie takes place so i actually grew up next to the san juan batista mission which is where they filmed vertigo so it's south of san francisco in like nowhere middle of california and the bell tower does not exist in real life they the bell tower was completely fabricated for the movie and is not part of the actual mission they just picked the mission that didn't have a bell tower to throw kim novak out of a bell tower from which is very strange interesting wow man that's now i've learned something so but i my theory so i i'm sure like they say in the director's commentary that like there was no point to doing this vertigo reference other than just to do it

but if you watch vertigo and everyone should because I think it's a very, very good movie that holds up very well. A major plot point is that twinning is something that happens in this movie, and that the main character is suspicious of these two women who look inexplicably alike. And it is interesting in this movie, Principal Skinner is confronted with identical twins, but he thinks Patty is like a love goddess and Selma is just like a sack of nothing and uh he's like doing a reverse of the jimmy stewart character in vertigo i'm probably overreaching that was probably all accidental and not something they intended to do i think you've uh reverse engineered into being justified now i think so yeah it's also funny that skitter could just

walk out to look at the lawn he didn't need a bird's eye view uh and then he has to stop to look down and get vertigo just like jimmy stewart does in the film yeah again way over my head as a kid i watched vertigo because of all the simpsons references and i was uh way too young to fully appreciate how brilliant it is yeah as an adult i i now do i thought it was boring until i saw it in my 30s and i liked it but the crowd thought it was funny and I got mad at them. You watched it with ironic San Francisco jerks. I'm better than this old movie.

I live in the Bay Area. I pay too much rent. I can laugh at this all I want. Bart gets caught. I love his thing like maybe it was one of the other Barts sir. There are no other Barts. The most proactive Skinner just screaming at the top of his lungs like righteous and he's correct about something for once in his life skinner doesn't make many mistakes in this he's actually shown

to be like pretty on the ball like not pathetic like impresses people with his memory and also the respect people show him which is very much not Skinner's life. This is what happens before you add Agnes to the mix. It's true. And it's implied that he lives alone, too. Yes, yeah. Agnes had appeared before. Right.

But it was treated like my visiting mother, not the woman I live with. So it's time to call Homer, which is very if a teacher said i'm gonna call your dad over my mom i'd be like i am in so much trouble right now like you're supposed to call my mom don't call but they just uh they decide homer kind of uh randomly here we see the simpsons home phone number it is 555-6754 a far cry Klondike 53226, which is seemingly both their home number and the Mr. Plow phone number. Which one is on the shoes? Oh, I got to break my shoes out of my Mr. Plow shoes that have the number. Also, a very dark joke that Moe's is the third thing on his.

It's homework, Moe's. Because Homer is an alcoholic. I remember one of the few times I got in trouble in grade school. They wanted to call my mom and I forget what I did i think i said something about the principal and uh they only had the home number and they wanted her work number to call her at work and i wouldn't give it to them and i successfully stonewalled them until the end of the day and i got out so yes they eventually realized this is more trouble than it's worth. Yeah. They just let you, like, they bring it up again the next day. They're like, well, he won this one.

It never came up again. I think I just got the tension that the mother phone call never happened. Almost as if it didn't really matter in the end. Yeah. Yeah. My record is clean. And, yeah, so then Skinner makes a real mistake turning away as Bart makes his phone call because he should maybe watch on Bart as he does this.

But instead he calls Mo. And I mean, what a brazen of Bart here, too. He's calling from the school phone line with a witness there. And he still is going to prank call Mo. He can't not do it. And as a kid, the term homosexual definitely flew over my head in this next clip. For sure. I had no idea what that joke was or what a homosexual meant at all.

And I guess I probably laughed at it, but didn't understand why. It was one of those ones where you laughed along with other people like, well, I must. I don't think I was particularly mature, but I did. I did get it. OK. I think I was just watching too much cable TV because I was living with my grandma at the time when we had cable and I was like, what's on HBO?

Homosexuals was apparently on HBO. So yeah. And I think at this point in time, I remember watching a lot of kids in the hall like as a seven-year-old. And I would tell my mom about these sketches and she'd be saying like things like, are you sure you should be watching this?

So maybe that's where I learned the term from like watching buddy cole sketches at age seven that'd be the right place to learn yeah that's uh you know that takes me back to a funny tweet i saw just saying that uh part of the gay elder millennial experience was watching hbo real sex and hoping it would you'd finally get a gay segment on it because you get like one out every five was like a gay segment on it uh but but anyway yes uh here's a crank call hello is homer there homer who homer sexual wait one second let me check uh homosexual uh come, come on, one of you guys has got to be homosexual. Don't look at me. No. You rotten little punk. If I ever get a hold of you, I'll sink my teeth into your cheek and rip your face off.

You do what, young man? What? Wait, who is this? I think the real question is who is this and where is Homer Simpson? Whoa, whoa, sorry, Principal Skinner skinner sorry it's a bad connection i think it's for you i think bart's in trouble again what you done now well i'm afraid this time the victims are the innocent blades of grass on groundskeeper willie's award-winning playfield you know henry it is low-hanging fruit but i thought the opening line was going to be is anyone here a homer sexual uh i well you know i'm glad i i left it alone uh

because that was drew's uh possible homosexual i i gave myself backups i had kaloo kalay and um bottomless barbecue pit to go if you chose for a homosexual i i planned i planned around that i was ready to go don't look at me uh that you know that would have been good uh but i'm sorry i'm not giving you notes i was just i was expecting it uh you chose a classier route and i appreciate that i love that mauve still chalks it up to a bad connection not and he even knows like oh bart must be in trouble again because principal skinner calls a lot but he makes no assumption that it's like bart called him he still can't think of it if it does feel like in a way

um they're they're kind of sick of these jokes and this could be the last one they're like what if there's some twist on it and then we're done with these they're getting close to the end yeah yeah the uh and yes this is when homer eyes up skinner as he's talking homer just shuts down he's not hearing what skinner's saying uh and he sees you know all these positives about him he's a handsome guy he's got a job uh he hates the boy uh the only con possible homer sexual and drew i wonder what do you think of of skinner's sexuality because i think just based on one joke in the 100th episode about making a pass at his commanding officer and skinner being very comfortable with that that i see skinner as you know a uh not straight man and uh though maybe maybe mostly leans towards straight but not straight so it's interesting because at this point i don't think homer's ever been given uh any information that would lead him to think that skinner is anything other than

straight but he suspects it and i guess it's just because he's fastidious and fastidious men tend to read as gay in TV anyway. But there is also in Great School Confidential when they're hiding in Martin's tea house. And Edna says like, what kind of boy has a complete like tea set or something? And Skinner's response is a lucky boy, which is a very gay response to that question. But then he ends up in a relationship with edna so yeah maybe skinner's uh too dense to explore anything that's going on his head and he's just act uh answering all these questions uh very off the cuff without thinking about what the ramifications are i don't know i like that that tea uh set joke because you think it's going to lead to like a homophobic comment about a little boy but then it's also just a very sweet comment like oh he's so lucky to have such a nice tea set to play with i wish i had a tea set as a

kid yeah but also a gay man would think that is a nice thing to have there are very few straight men who would think it would actually be nice for a little boy to have a tea set or to be jealous of the little boy who had a tea set growing up i think homer's uh thoughts there too are like well skinner is they write skinner here with a joke later to be at least in his mid-40s so i i think it could just be he thinks like well he's a single man at this age he's it's you should think he might be gay yeah no one would blame you for thinking he's gay i love when homer invites him over and first asks about are you married that should have closed it down, but Homer is just so blunt that he has to say, if you weren't married to your job,

you tend to go for a girl, right? I don't know why that says, like, I'm straight because these pants come off at night, just like any other. That's not a real straight proclamation. Your pants would come off, if you were having sex with men, your pants would come off at night, too.

Frequently they do. Yes. What an odd remark. But, yes, this is when Homer decides it's time to reel him in. But enough about bark. Tell me, Principal Skinner, are you married? Only to my job. But if you weren't married to your job, you tend to go for a girl, right?

Well, of course. These pants come off at night just like everybody else's. But tell me, why all the questions? married to your job, you tend to go for a girl, right? Well, of course. Well, these pants come off at night just like everybody else's. But tell me, why all the questions? No reason. I was just wondering if, you know, you'd like to come over

to my house for dinner? Payback for all the crummy things Bart has done to your school. Well, a home-cooked meal would be a nice change of pace i'd be delighted excellent yes homer's classic catchphrase excellent yes very homer yeah i uh but you talk about these season twos with great acting like this is such like naturalistic in time for like all the bad stuff he did like it also does feel like harry and and dan are in the same room too is there they're playing this

off one another so when homer does the excellent you're saying that's not a mr burns joke it's not a joke that homer's using this burns catchphrase this is before it's been established as being a burns only thing yeah i think i think george meyer just thought it was funny when characters did that because jim downey did it on snl all the time when he liked something so i think we i think we might have seen a deal do it before mr burns and then mr burns did it and now we're having bart do it and then homer do it to kind of show that they're similar characters homer and bart really but they just like the idea but it's stuck on burns to be the character who does that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's always funny when other when you see other characters pull it off.

But it's like because it was it was so weird in the governor episode earlier this season with Burns. He does have his fingers steepled because excellent. He's like excellent. Instead of a more sinister tone. You know, when I think about episodes with long act ones, I don't think of this one. But this is a really long act one. It's 10 minutes. Yeah, over 10 minutes.

It's a big wind up to this very quick relationship between the two. My only real fault with this episode is that Skitter and Patty go from a first date to engagement in like about five minutes. So we don't spend as much time seeing the evolution of that. I guess it doesn't really need it. But it is weird to look at the runtime and be like oh we got here very fast i guess you know uh too if they're worried about we don't want to spend too much time away from the core five family members then the first half of the episode really is just the homer adventure of trying to find a man and and then bart doing a prank like that's that you front

loaded with that stuff so we come back from the break bart is on his best behavior welcoming skinner into his home that also this is just one of those things where it's like oh yeah later in the show they just give away this artifice of like barbara just be like hey skinner you're here like nothing feels special about anybody being in the simpsons home i do like bart ushering him in quickly so no one will see him. Because he's just so embarrassed to have the principal at his house. He's like, get in here. I mean, I die of embarrassment of having just my teacher over for dinner, let alone the principal. Like, have you ever met a teacher with your mom in the grocery store?

You're like, kill me right now. I can't meet this person here. I think about the Calvin Hogg's where he says that he just imagines that uh teachers just sleep in coffins all summer yes yeah skinner is there selma is all dolled up i do think that this uh is a reference a little bit well i get the vibes to the tennessee williams classic the glass menagerie okay you guys are familiar with that uh play which is about, you know, an unmarried daughter who's getting into spinster age and her brother brings home a work friend and he doesn't know he's being set up with her. And so it's all about like the tense dinner party of, oh, can we, can we, will he fall in love with her? This is her last chance, you know, kind of thing. And so that's what this

feel i get the vibes of that for a little bit but there's there's no twin sister to the uh lead woman in the in that play i would not be surprised that was a high class uh reference they were making uh but yes uh selma you know she gets some of the blame for this because if she hadn't if she'd gone for it and actually talked to skinner after everybody went to all this trouble to bring him there if she hadn't been so nervous and talked to him do you think he would have fallen in love with her at first sight or that there's just something about patty that's different from selma that he fell in love with her and wouldn't have fallen in love with selma had he seen her first. Well, Patty is closed off emotionally and physically,

and that would remind him more of Agnes, as we learn Agnes is down the line. So it would make sense that he have an attraction for a woman who is completely unavailable, as opposed to a woman who is desperately wanting to give away love. But also, Edna is kind of that in her own way. He does fall for Edna eventually. I think the joke is that it shouldn't

matter if it's love at first sight why does Selma not interest him and Patty does he just is wired a certain way where it's all about Patty immediately and he has like he's like openly like shrugging off Selma like has no interest in anything she says and anything she does it's all about tell me more about Patty even though they are identical twins outside of their hairstyles. I think the original intention of the joke is that like, oh, Selma blew her chance. He would have fallen in love with the first of the two twins he saw. But I much prefer that he, you know, is responding to Patty's vibe, which is different from Selma's. Yeah. And when they're looking at Homer and Skinner in the living room uh i'm like what are homer and skinner doing like homer has his armor on skinner and he's like

gesturing and i guess he's talking about this bowling certificate he has on the wall so i want to hear that conversation i want to like go further into the room and hear what they're talking about and that's also where there's a slow motion football accident which kirkland mark kirkland commentary is like we really hate animating slow motion it's pain in the ass but this one looks better than other slow motion they've done in a very choppy fashion in other episodes of the show it actually looks fairly okay yeah but then graining you can tell he's just kind of annoyed that the the the player who gets hurt looks like bart that's the bart hair yeah i like how uh mark kirkland is trying to explain why it's a pain he's just like yeah

more drawings and mike is like oh really and then they just move on yeah yeah i think i think most of the time being a producer for on the simpsons uh one of the writing producers you hear something from the animators you're like oh and you pretend to remember it and then you just continue doing what you were doing you're like who let these below the line people in here get him out uh but yes skinner meets patty in our next clip here he's here what are you waiting for get out there and shake your money maker i'm too nervous you do it no you do it no you do it no you do it no you do it no simpson i i had a discomforting thought on the way over here this this dinner wouldn't be a master plan of yours to set me up with some unmarried relation, would it?

Because I can assure you that I... I... Oh, be still, my foolish heart. Here we go. Boy meets beast. Principal Skinner, allow me to introduce you to my wife's lovely and available sister selma hey chums i'm patty what wrong one you know i think homer he doesn't get it he gets he should get credit for being a

matchmaker here he actually did get uh you know one of the sisters a man he found the right guy for selma wore the earrings for homer's sake i think yeah but back in the background there you could hear the recurring song theme uh throughout this episode the love theme of skinner and patty yes it's taken from the 1950s musical Hans Christian Andersen starring Danny Kaye. And the song is the Inchworm song. Actually, when Skinner goes to take Patty out for the first time, he's singing the prologue to it, which is him like doing the multiplication tables. But then the theme, that theme is used as a leitmotif for their relationship throughout the episode. Him doing the multiplication tables as a kid i just read it

as oh well he's like a teacher and i guess you have to remind yourself of that all the time if you're a teacher or he's that square he wants to like brush up on the multiplication tables right did you guys watch the clip of the one that's on youtube oh i've got it right here inchworm inchworm measuring the marigolds seems to me you'd stop and see how beautiful they are yeah no explanation as to why alf clausen chose this or if it was his idea they just point out that's what it is and i think boomers know this more than any of us because i know this because of this episode and also references on mystery science theater when a character is named anderson and it happens a lot because a lot of the movies are about white people uh they go

anderson that's me and that's from the musical. And that's all I know. It's like from 1957. It's a color musical. And yeah, that's the only facts I know. I believe Danny Kaye sings this song on his Muppet show appearance. And so that's the only other place I'd heard it. But I've never seen the Hans Christian Andersen musical. It looks terrible.

I watched about like 20 seconds of this and this is one of the worst things i've ever seen and i like old stuff and i have an appreciation for stuff from previous decades i'm like this is absolutely terrible i can't listen to this anymore yeah i i think maybe it was chosen because skinner is in apprentice a principal and it's a like a song that school children are singing so i think that's why it was chosen and it's also a sweet song and skinner is a sweet innocent man no it's a very adorable thing well also it's a guy singing it like with a kid to teach him something and so i guess that that fits totally with like skinner

yeah i thought maybe it was a fox production and maybe that's why they had access to using it without paying for it but it wasn't it was samuel goldwyn productions and rko radio pictures so unless fox acquired that at some point which they might have my explanation for why it was in there might have just been like they had access to it and didn't have to pay for it but i don't know you know it being an mgm that would tell me that like turner bought it with the mgm collection of stuff for the the goldwyn stuff so or and same with the rko so could be that that's this is the persisting like memory of inchworm now is it being in simpsons i think and yeah and like any movie made before 1980 it's not streaming anywhere of course not of course not why would you want to

watch an old movie i mean watch a better old movie but still yes yeah uh homer's wrong one and then the reaction shot of skinner clearly done in post adr stuff like but the next shot i love the shot of like what a great tableau the whole family you have skinner just mooning over patty patty staring at her dinner plate trying to not like uh respond to him as little as possible and selma looking at the back of skinner's head like pissed off of like why aren't you looking at me? And then Marge with this concerned look on her face, like, oh, no, it's all going wrong. Yeah, there's, like, seven, eight characters in that one little scene, like a four by three shot.

It's really well done. Yeah. But not Maggie. No Maggie. Maggie's there. But she, yeah, she's right next to Marge. I think it's the only time we see her. The establishing shot of the dinner.

I was under the impression that she was completely absent from this entire episode. I must have missed that, though. The whole family is there. The kids are on camera side of the dinner table. Yeah, that three seconds might be the only shot of Maggie unmoving. Just like, here's the back of Maggie. Yes, Skinner gets to know her as they try. They give one more shot to Selma, but skinner's not having it in this next clip tell me tell me more about your trip to egypt

nothing more to tell really the nile smells like cattle rot and they've got horseflies over there the size of your head marvelous just marvelous well selma hated egypt too a camel spit on her oh yes i've heard they can be difficult. Patty, the parents' advisory board has asked that I attend the premiere of Space Mutants Part 5 tomorrow night. Would you be interested in joining me? I don't really think you'd be delighted. I'm going to cancel. No, you're not.

We already have plans for tomorrow night. Patty, your first date in 25 years is a little more important than playing hearts with mother i tried to repel him i really did yes skinner we find out in season eight that he until great school confidential is a 44 year old virgin so it feels like this is really the first time he's allowed himself to become smitten so he's acting like like a teenage boy in love where he's just out of control. I mean, how forward of Skinner to ask her out in front of her whole family at the dinner table. Like, that is way gutsier than the Skinner we're used to. I also, I read Patty and Selma as being in their early 40s. So the first date in 25 years, to me that sounds like she went on like one date in high school with a guy

and then after that, never again. Yeah, that checks out and i also like how they still have their uh what i consider a surplus army jeep because they live very economically so they can afford all these lives vacations uh i love their hideous car i also love how someone's saying like we both know it could have been me very easily like and like what is i don't understand like the quite the point of the scene where they're in the quickie mart is it to establish like no they are different people with their own taste because they have different brands of cigarettes is that like one way of showing the audience like no these are

different people that's the only explanation i can think of for what that scene was in there for we already kind of got that anyway but yeah i the the only other read i have on it is that selma doesn't normally buy high tar and that she's feeling extra self-destructive. But instead of getting drunk, she wants the most cancerous cigarette she could get. And lottery tickets. And lottery tickets, yeah. So I do like Apu's response of smoke them and good health. He's just a friendly guy.

But also, who would sell a high tar like you can i would guess you could get like no filter cigarettes but the fact that something is branded as high tar is i wanted to say you pointed out that you called it a surplus army vehicle have you guys talked about how it's like an act that is an actual existent car that they drive i think so yeah is it an army jeep it's a volkswagen thing okay yes yes uh vol yes. The name of the car is the thing, right? Yeah. I don't know why that is a thing. But yeah, it's a very specific choice they gave for them.

Have we seen that car before now or is this the first time we see it? I think they pull up to the house with Jackie Bouvier in the Thanksgiving episode in that car. They drive off with Jack. The mom comes in a taxi, but they drive off with jack the mom oh right comes in a taxi but they drive off with her in it that is there yeah you're right yeah okay but uh yeah i guess too it's just to show a slice of their life well when they drive home they stop at the quickie mart to get smokes and lottery tickets that's that's just their normal function uh patty and selma always do that but uh then boy do we get another first here what a first one of you

wouldn't think when he first appeared would be one of the constants of the series with it with entire episodes about him yes yeah the the world's most famous scotsman i'd say willie there's a whole field for you to reside yet. Bart, you wouldn't happen to know what sort of candy your Aunt Patty likes, would you? Cherry cordial, sir. Oh, very good. Now then, regarding your punishment, do you feel that you've learned your lesson? Have I ever? Just the thought of doing anything bad again just makes my stomach turn.

Well then, you're free to go. Well, Willie, you can take it from here. Adios, dude. You'll be back! You haven't seen the last of Willie! It's weird to hear Willie's somewhat restrained and like just a normal person who's good at groundskeeping. He's an award-winning groundskeeper, as we heard earlier. His play field, yeah. Yeah, so the the story behind this we talked about it before at like with the episode with the bowling instructor they swerve on an accent and makes a better choice so the the uh life on the fast lane was called bjorn to be wild how we use electricity can be smarter, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there.

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world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricarland.ie. And the bowling instructor was supposed to be Swedish, right? So when Dan Castaneda is in the booth for this episode, they are like, try out accents. Because Dan is like, who is this guy? And he goes through the first one he lands on is a Spanish accent. They're like, no, that's too expected. And, you know, I'm glad they didn't choose that one.

He goes through a bunch. They land on Scottish. They're like, that's too expected and you know i'm glad they didn't choose that one uh he goes through a bunch they land on scottish like that's funny that's an idea we haven't heard before so like albert brooks choosing a french accent for a bowling instructor dan choosing a scottish accent really defined this character and his entire like life in history and they thought he was not going to be recurring but they just loved dan's performance so much they brought him back it's one of those ones that once they hear the performance they're like well then we just got to keep bringing this guy back and like it's the difference between what he is on the page and when they hear the actor they're like no that's not who this guy is he's like i think lionel hutz was a big one of those like lionel hutz on the page is you you know, sleazy lawyer. Like that's just this thing. But once they heard Hartman's performance, they wrote so many more jokes just to hear that performance say new lines.

And I think Willie is a big part of that, too. Like the opposite end of that is when they whiff with a character like J. Lauren Pryor, where they're like, oh, we're going to have J. Lauren Pryor around all the time. And after two appearances, they're like, this guy's not funny. And he sounds like Mr not funny. Yeah. And he sounds like Mr. Burns. Yes.

Yeah. Also, the Willie ends up being like one of the most popular Scottish fictional characters in the world. Like I'd say Scrooge McDuck ahead of him. But other than that, of the Scottish people. Scrooge, Willie, and then Shrek. Shrek. Right. In that order.

The people of Scotland, when they think of fat bastard i wonder all right another scott what do the scotch people feel about him but uh you know in the rare cases i ever see a cherry cordial in real life i think of it being patty's favorite candy it's they're disgusting yes i i guess that's the joke that patty her favorite candy would be the grossest candy that's just like a chocolate shell around like a slug of like just an ugly candy cherry i i've never enjoyed a cherry cordial drew feelings no so this is um there's another thing coming up again that like watching this as a kid made me think of something you just encounter in your adult life and i've never actually seen or had a cherry cordial i just know they're a thing that exists somewhere.

It's a cruel trick when you're a kid. You're like, ooh, chocolates. You bite into one. It's like, my chocolate is bleeding. I think the world is wicked. I think buying someone a box of only cherry cordials feels like a prank. In the limited experience I have with that candy,'s like i got i was gifted a box of candy or i might buy a box of chocolates uh you know i'm like hey when i'm in my sad patty and selma phase

uh valentine's day chocolate's pretty cheap a couple days later i ate a jar of expired olives but and so in one of those there might be one or two cherry cordials around an assortment. And whenever I get to those, I'm like, bleh, yuck. It's like the sour quince log covering up Homer's face and who shot Mr. Burns. Which I understand there is no mistaking that a sour quince log is supposed to be anything other than disgusting. But as a kid, I'm like, to people, I was not clear if it's supposed to be a gross joke. I just don't like the weird candied fruit that's in some chocolate. It just tastes nasty to me i don't it's not for me skitter obviously knows bart learned no lesson

but he's talking himself into it as a way to like get in bart's ear and bart instantly is like oh i know the deal here now you have to be nice to me because you uh are in love with my aunt so i i can do whatever i want now this this this is this is getting too specific i'm sorry but like this thing that bart tells willie feels like something on a t-shirt like later dude it's like this is what bart says right what does he say like oh yeah sayonara dude i think here i'll replay it real quick just the end of it adios dude yeah exactly that's on a that's on a hat somewhere, right? 100%. Yeah. And so, yes, it's time for Patty to get ready for a date.

I'm with Patty, though. Skinner liked her with her upper lip as is. Why does she got to remove this thing? I know Marge may think she looks like Yosemite Sam, but Skinner already loved her with facial hair, so who cares, you know? It reminded me of the scene when she goes to prom and her mom insists that she has to pinch her cheeks and not use rouge because this is something you just have to do i think marge got a lot of that stuff ground into her worse than her sisters did yeah you're right i think you're i think you're right that mother bouvier just gave

up on them and she's like i gotta put all my feminine views onto marge like that pressure needs to be put onto her. And I do like the name of the product before I knew it was a parody. Gee, Your Lip Looks Hairless is a parody of the late 70s shampoo brand. Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific, which is just, it's one of those, like I can't believe it's not butter style product names where it's just, it's perfect, but it's also ridiculous. Yes, actually, i got the clip right

here betcha he will that's ridiculous betcha he will don't be absurd he will too suzy i did not borrow your g your hair smells terrific shampoo so jimmy would notice how good my hair smells oh no i used it to get my hair really clean and shiny like yours and that's the only reason the only reason gee your hair smells terrific he said it he said it i i think hygiene standards were changing in the 70s because i remember whenever you watch those like mystery science theater riffs of old hygiene shorts like remember to wash your hair every two weeks yes at least every two weeks i'd like to think that that product was named in like a response to someone to me like jesus your hair smells like shit

uh i love that back then you could have these like a thing called just a sentence like gee your house hair smells terrific it is it is i can't believe it's not butter people really like no one really zeroes in on hair as being stinky like whose hair smells in here yuck i i don't know smokers hair stinks oh yeah that's true sure but then their whole body smells like smoke so that's true it retains in your hair is sometimes in a way that it doesn't like you can change your clothes and if you don't like thoroughly wash your hair you can still smell like cigarette head it's gross it's true i i dated a smoker once and i couldn't get past kissing this person because i just thought of my grandma when i kiss you i think of my grandma's house

it's my problem but you know yeah i had to move on and this is also the debut of patty and selma's depressing single people's apartment complex which i just love i always love the design of it it's just gray on gray everything's hideous on the soviet it feels like their idea of what like soviet apartments will look like yeah like like a brutalist housing complex and i remember on the commentary mark kirkland says oh yeah like they did the stucco ceilings because when you live in a big cheap apartment you have a stucco ceiling and when i was living in a cheap apartment in 2002 watching the dvd i look up and yeah stucco ceiling so yeah i was like i live in a big cheap apartment, you have a stucco ceiling. And when I was living in a cheap apartment in 2002, watching the DVD, I look up and yeah, stucco ceiling. So yeah, I was like, I am in a cheap apartment.

I'm living the Patty and Selma life. And Kirkland and his team also wanted to design the hallway to be endless. Like there's no wall at the end of their hallway. You just see it vanishes into a point. It's seemingly like a three block long apartment complex so is this the apartment that in some episode they refer to as being the spinster arms apartment is that what this is okay that's what this is i believe post 96 it was called spinster city to reference the the classic spin city covered on gay's episode ever right yep uh and this is where skinner while waiting for his

time uh he's he's singing inchworm to himself but the the kids background part of inchworm not not the danny k part would you think he'd you'd want if you're an adult you sing the danny k part not the kid part the first part is more educational that's true is he just literally singing squares like is he singing like two times two is four four times four is sixteen is he just like literally naming off like square roots uh well yeah but the the multiplication tables is what the kids are singing in the background during the original inchworm song so he's yeah you you hear that first and then danny k comes in and sings a song over the uh the chanting of the the tables yeah romantic and uh and also like uh patty's you know dinner outfit looks way better than selma's dinner

outfit later like her selma's date night outfit it's like polka dots and very like you know uh curvy and and and cleavagey well meanwhile like patty's actually looks like oh you'd wear this to like an award ceremony or something see i feel like patty looks like the mother of the bride at some wedding and uh selma is dressed to have fun and showing off like oh she's curvy as hell like i actually think she looks really cute and what we're supposed to assume is like a too much outfit i don't know what the word for it i'm sure sure yeah yeah you're right you know yeah yeah i mean in the future we'll see that they're wearing old halloween costumes for dresses oh i love that old joke that selma feels nothing about wearing a slutty what society would call a slutty outfit i think

she doesn't care she's like well yeah i got hey i got some curves on me i'm gonna show them off like that's how she feels i like that so the peppery for my taste yeah uh okay so i gotta talk about this um at a certain so like i was watching bob's burgers with my wife and they're they went to a revolving restaurant i was like you know what i've had it i've seen so many revolving restaurant jokes we have to go to one so i surprise bought her uh a reservation to the top of vancouver which is like the most notable building in the vancouver skyline because it's a revolving restaurant. I have now been to a revolving restaurant. You know what? It's overpriced.

The food is average at best, but the experience of seeing a big city from the top, the novelty value is worth it. We saw the entire cityscape as the sun was setting, so we saw all kinds of different lighting. Of course, I looked up to see, has anyone died in a revolving restaurant?

Yes, children have been crushed to death. Oh, yeah. I grew up thinking that revolving restaurants were another thing that was going to be a bigger part of my adult life than it turned out to be. But I had trouble thinking about other TV shows that made me think that other than this, this is maybe the only TV show I could actually point to. But also, we have one in downtown Los Angeles in the Hotel Bonaventure. It's been a revolving restaurant since the 80s. It's also the setting of that sitcom It's a Living. And I was there before the

pandemic and it was magical. And as cheesy as it was, it was like everything I wanted in a restaurant experience. So I encourage everyone to go to a revolving restaurant. It actually is kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you're on the same page Drew because like I said, you're there for the novelty, but the novelty is worth it. And it is a good experience to have but yeah uh the most fun part was like when you get up you're

like oh the bathroom is moved where's the bathroom so yes i can also see the places where a child would be crushed exactly exactly um nina and i avoided being crushed we survived the revolving restaurant experience this very day and i gotta i gotta join the revolving restaurant club the next time i don't think there's one in the san francisco area so uh me and the hubby will look up something else i think unfortunately in real revolving restaurants they don't revolve fast enough for you to see a bunch of jokes yes you'd get sick wouldn't you i mean if you went that fast i but but it sounds like it's a pretty good first date spot. Skinner, I think, picked, he has much better taste in a first date for this than he normally would as he becomes more of the pathetic loser virgin Skinner later on. Yeah, it's good that he chose a movie for the second date because movies are not a good first date.

Because you need time, like FaceTime with the person, you know. A movie will give you something to talk about, I guess. But i never liked it as a good first date that's just me is the revolving restaurant and the movie not one continuous date oh you're right it is a dinner and a movie thing yeah you're right yeah dinner is first they do dinner first yeah then the movie yeah so it's part two of date one that order i do recommend uh and i also love how skinner just replies to all her negativity with just smiling agreement he's just like yeah i love she's just complaining the whole time anybody else you would you would typically think on a first date if the person you were with is just complaining the entire time and hates everything that's a bad first date you know skinner is having an unforgettable luncheon.

And this is where Skinner gets to kind of show off a little bit. Two and two are four. Four and four are eight. Eight and eight are six. Hello. Cherry Cordials. I hope you like them. Yeah, I like them okay. So come on, let's get this over with.

Oh, excellent suggestion. I suggest we start with the Springfield Revolving Restaurant. You know, food tastes better when you're revolving. Yeah, right. Well, I must say, so far the evening is a big disappointment. Indeed. Truly terrible. Hey, can we get some service over here?

I've asked for water three times now. Is everything all right? Well, well, well, if it isn't little Jimmy Pearson. Class of 71, I believe. Good evening, Principal Skinner. Pearson, get this woman a glass of water immediately, and tuck in your shirt. Yes, sir.

Nearly 30, and still working as a busboy. Hey, standardized testing never lies uh you know and the sound design is the first time i noticed how creaky the restaurant is it's like the sound of the axle spinning it it feels unsafe this jimmy pearson thing it sort of works with they haven't yet made uh skinner a Vietnam vet. That'll be season three. But were he to have been a POW, it is possible that by 1970, he would have started teaching and he'd know a student from the class of 71. And the guy knows, he recognizes Skinner like he was his principal. So if Skinner's in his early 40s and this is 1991, it is possible he'd be. But a 21-year-old or 25-year-old principal seems unlikely.

I think maybe they also envisioned him as being an older man back then before he was officially aged in season 8. When they just gave him a number so maybe they thought like oh he must be in his 50s based on how he looks and how he does have a toupee yeah yeah but they just never talk about it oh that toupee you technically you can go bald way before you're 50 i just want to point it's true it's true there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with being a bus boy in your 30s okay no that that either it is interesting that that is what gets a smile out of patty is like him berating this poor kid and i think it is because they're both falling for each other because they remind each other of their mothers

who are both like harsh unforgiving women oh wow yeah i like i like that that that that makes a lot of sense for that that does explain why uh Skinner falls in love with Edna, because he likes her ability to be personally offended by broad social trends. Yeah. And her tart honesty, which is what Patty has. Yeah. No, it absolutely makes sense that a guy who falls in love with Patty would fall in love with Edna, for sure.

And, yeah, then we have a quick cut to selma clipping coupons with homer and marge i this is so adre like every i i feel like the original line would have been her saying thanks for clipping coupons with me me and patty do this every saturday night or whatever uh but i never really pay attention to the i've never paid attention to the lack of lip sync because i'm usually very distracted by the bikini girl on the bancroft english muffins because it's just so random i'm like what the hell every time i i do like the uh the sweats on uh selma just to make her even more like frumpy and just like i'm in for the night. I'm wearing my sweats I got in college. This is just like an indoor night,

clipping coupons, being very domestic. That's a great design, yeah. And also that she describes like, oh, this is why Patty is seen as more desirable than me. And it's like, you are literally identical. And bosoms till Tuesday. Skin like a China doll. Just like, yeah, Patty and selma are equally stacked

she shouldn't feel yeah we learned that patty is two minutes younger too uh yes uh then homer is just set up with an easy thing like plenty fish in the sea too bad you got the wrong bait or you don't have any bait so then we head to space mutants 5 this is the second to last time we're going to see a space mutants movie in the theater uh and the sixth time will be in colonel homer but when they show that uh that will be a reuse of the footage from this right okay but in bart's friend falls in love they actually do watch a new space mutant seemingly space mutant 7 Mutant 7. So that's the final time you'll see a Space Mutant in the theater that they watch. It does make sense because by the early 90s,

we were reaching the end of the Friday the 13th and the Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween and stuff until they were revived like in the late 90s or early 2000s. So the jokes were getting kind of stale. I think the Australian setting of this one is a reference to what they talk about in the Australia episode, where Evan Conover talks about Amerigo-Australianian relations and how the Aussies thought that the American infatuation with Australia was going to last for a long time.

But it was really just this brief span of time. And it's probably a general reference, but also there is a howling movie. It's either the third one or the fourth one where they go to Australiaralia and there are werewolf marsupials it's not a big film do not do not watch it my god well like when crocodile dundee came out it made an incredible amount of money it was made for nothing so everything was starting to take place in australia then crocodile dundee 2 came out it made an incredible amount of money so like there was like a maybe uh five or six year trend in america i was the perfect my dad's from new zealand so this is about as close to any sort of representation as oh wow would get so this was these were all a big deal in my growing up and like got grounded to me especially hard uh compared

to like non down under descended kids they they ran out of dundee so they even released things like young einstein and that made money yeah uh also i like that the movie they're watching it's laid out the exact same as the scene in telltale head where they watch it except they just say australian specifics of uh i just think that pulled dingo back there that's probably just a wallaby uh and so one could think that this is the first appearance of squeaky voice teen because a teen in front of them uh goes like oh and then puts his arm around the girl and the yawn definitely sounds like dan castellaneta doing his teen voice but it's such like a just quick it's a noise it's not even a line and it's not drawn to look like

squeaky voice teen uh yeah i posit we must hear the squeaky voice not a squeaky grunt right i i think it is then that the first appearance of squeaky voice teen counts as at mount splashmore the guy saying roger like that that's the first squeaky voice teen there as at mount splashmore the guy's saying roger like that that's the first squeaky voice teen there's a lot of firsts in this episode without giving it to the squeaky voice teen so yeah we're good yeah uh and uh so that's when patty actually gets at first she tells him like don't be stupid i love how she's like don't be stupid like uh but then once she actually does get scared, hello, Dolly. You know, Skinner, no means no, Skinner.

Yeah, yeah. There's some early 90s sexual politics happening here. Yes, yeah. It's the end of the date. He thinks he's entitled to a kiss. He says, I don't have cooties. And then she hits him with a Miss Piggy hi-yah, which I like. The way he's drawn and slumped he broke his

neck he she has killed him like the the quick animation reminds me of in the uh cable episode when homer throws mo into the living room and burns at the door he just flies across the room it's very snappy animation you know it implies too that as part of patty's all her free time she also took you know self-defense classes. And she just can like just did a of a man gets even closer. She's I just, you know, especially when she says to Skinner, Skinner, you're touching me. Oh, come on. Like that's that was your warning, buddy.

Like you. But but then she pities him slumped on the ground like that, I guess. And, you know, this is also the word microwave cookery a favorite of the simpsons yeah her microwave which who takes a class on like how to cook with a microwave that's uh that's the joke i know they're being developed as characters they're not only going on vacation they take like adult and learning annex classes too yes they're just filling their lives with whatever they can to get over them being single allegedly although it is nice that like if we're going with the patty is asexual reading of this it's nice that like she got time away from selma for like 10 minutes and she's actually seeing there's something nice about spending time with someone

who's not your identical twin sister and like she almost is into it until he tries something physical with her and then she's like please please don't do that why'd you ruin this nice night by trying a physical thing yeah we. I thought I made it pretty clear. I'm not into that. But yeah, you know, probably for her, you know, if we're trying to reconcile this with Patty as a gay woman, as a lesbian, then I like that explanation. You know, she spends no time with anybody and just having a a friendly night out with anybody else feels novel to her yeah and that's why i think later when she except like she decides i'm going to kiss him and enjoys it i i wonder if that's just her just you know the entire weight

of the expectation of heterosexuality onto her she's just like fine i'll give it a shot all right i'll kiss this guy i'm friendly enough with him let's try a kiss he wants it fine like that that's my reading yeah just like well i wonder what this is like let's let's see what what this is feels like and she's not really into it that is something most non-heterosexual people do do at some point or if not several points in their life where there's like, OK, fine. Let's see. Can I make this work? No, I'm expected to.

And hey, I haven't I haven't actually kissed a person of the opposite sex yet. Maybe I will like it. I don't know. So we learn that's how Peggy Hill lost her virginity. Yes. Yeah. I love I love her description of their her night with that man. I love that.

Especially when she said they had to move aside a whole lot of pillows off of his bed. Decorative throw pillows. We get a little love montage of them slowly falling in love and Bart hitting Skinner with an egg. And Selma sadly in her Springfield U sweats looking at all the photos they they had from going around the world frowning in every photo i love that and like a very a very cute shot of uh skinner pushing patty on the merry-go-round at the school it's like no joke there she doesn't get sick or anything it's just like they're having fun they're having a frolic yeah she actually seems to be enjoying what's happening and there's no weird baggage there's no bitterness going on there

she's just happy to be doing something it's a very sweet scene actually i think it's probably the first time she's been drawn smiling in the entire series i think not not meanly at something that was said at homer or something not in reaction to like being mean yeah yeah the also though the act two ends with just like them kissing and selma feeling bad and then oh is that when they're kissing and like you get the fisheye lens it's a very funny drawing i love that really really unappealing kiss it still breaks selma's heart but like lol she's sad because she thinks she'll never be married yes yeah even though she'll she'll have more marriages than she knows what to do with but

yep uh and yes uh we then get another callback of bart doing graffiti gets caught with it but this time skinner's totally fine with it in fact he thinks the crude drawing of a woman reminds him of patty yeah i do like i wish there was a little a sound effect when she winked at him but uh yeah i do like when her face materializes on the the the crude woman with a huge boob drawing that bart does an oddly sexual graffito tag from bart yeah right right it's not it's not it's not a terrible likeness of patty i know that's not what he's going for but like you could have been further off from patty yeah uh and this is when skinner does something an adult really shouldn't do which is tell a child first that he's going to

ask his aunt to get married like no child keeps a secret you can't tell a child you're like i'm about to propose to this woman that you know like the kid's gonna tell before you do but skinner's that excited i think he's just like he can't keep the news from anyone who else is he gonna tell he doesn't have any friends that's true yeah and i love bart is his best friend as we'll learn later in the series true yeah and i love bart is his best friend as we'll learn later in the series yeah and and i love bart's reaction like your funeral seem more like bart bart is adult enough to know that most people would view marrying patty as a mistake or not good like yes uh then comes another of my my favorite favorite lines you're making happy hour bitterly

ironic like i love that line so much it's really a happy half hour at moe's though but uh but yes bart bart's helping skinner and barney isn't picky in this next clip yeah bart i hate to pull you away from your daily exercise but well i wanted you to be the first to know i'm going to to ask for your Aunt Patty's hand in marriage. Your funeral, Seymour. Homer, lighten up. You're making happy hour bitterly ironic. Oh, Moe.

I gotta find a date for my big, fat, snotty sister-in-law, Selma. Hey, I'm intrigued. What does Selma look like? Like my wife's ugly sister. Well, all right, Homer. I'm not a picky man. See, now this is Homer. I'm not a picky man. See, now this is Homer just going like,

I look, I got to find another guy. Fuck it. Barney, you're here. His Robocop vision is failing him. He's giving up on it. When he belches,

does something fly out of his mouth? Is it a fly or is it a tooth? I think it's spittle. I saw it as a big glob of spit. Yeah. I was wondering what it was, but yeah, I was hoping it wasn't a tooth. Yeah, I was wondering what it was. But, yeah, I was hoping it wasn't a tooth.

Barney is at his worst in this. Like, he is covered in sauce. He can't tuck a shirt in. There are flies following him. Yeah, yeah. I also love that when Homer describes her as his big, fat, snotty sister-in-law, Barney's like, I'm intrigued. Like, hey. Barney would be lucky for a night with selma like that

would be he's he is he is bull he isn't worthy of her i know homer and marge have a fight after this of like are they equals or not and and no she's better than barney her house is not a train wreck she is not an alcoholic she she has uh income and a steady job like she's she's better than barney this uh this sets up a weird thing with barney and uh patty and selma like that's carried through in a few episodes in which like um isn't barney maced by a patty twice yeah first in uh war of the simpsons he sees her at the party he's like i remember you i remember you being so beautiful yeah and it gets maced after that and then the second time is when they have the mary tyler moore haircut it's like are you mary tyler moore like it is you

yes so yeah like uh like there's a weird runner where barney remembers uh selma and patty and gets maced by patty twice uh yeah i think patty yeah yeah i think i'm looking and patty does have the mary tyler moore haircut in this uh in saturdays of thunder that is another uh that episode is another one where they have like a gender joke about patty because she's looking at the pictures in a magazine she's like i want that hairstyle and mars Marge looks and says, Ed Asner? Her initial, she's going to get Ed Asner's haircut. She's like, no, Mary Tyler. 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. Marge is more like, I didn't read it. You're so right. That is Marge reading it first of like oh

you want to look like it as now i guess that makes sense like no uh i like that the barney runner is so good too because it does feel very like realistic like you could imagine you set up a friend with another friend once and they it didn't work out and then you're both still in the same social uh world so the guy you'd have a party and the guy would go up like hey you know that first date maybe didn't go so well but let's try again let's give it another shot god yeah it is it is patty and is she the one who uh no i think it was selma who bought stock in uh pepper spray before society collapsed that's yes that's right so a lot of jokes about pepper spray and patty and selma in these early years uh but uh but yeah then we have

a quick cut to the family jewels uh jewelry which uh abe simpson's not happy with that name no but family jewels but uh the apparently the accepted rule of thumb for an engagement ring is that it's two months salary not two years that's well that's the joke i think skinner uh doesn't make that much money no no he's two years salary for skinner probably still well it's established in season 12 he makes 30 000 a year i believe is his uh his salary so that'd be a sixty thousand dollar engagement ring i had a life hack with my engagement ring and that my uh my got my grandma's wedding ring oh nice and so cha-ching so if you have a dead grandma see where her ring is if your grandma's alive you know what to do this is not an endorsement of grandma murder no no i i like too that bart is able to pressure

him into like seymour because bart just wants him to spend his way into debt and to me it was implied that uh skinner bought bart that ice cream oh totally because bart is making the most of this this connection uh i i like to i hope that skinner was able to return that ring i really hope he could get his money back for that engagement ring I really love this bit here of like Marge is so pissed off that Homer even like the way Kavner plays this scene of like you Barney no like she's just like no no way someone should know Barney though because like they all went to high school together and if Patty and Selma remember Homer from high school they probably were around barney at some point too but i guess barney was less of a mess back then i think maybe patty and selma are like six or seven years older than marge

because uh they're still living at home when she goes to the senior prom and if marge is 34 and they're at least 40 they probably didn't have a lot of overlap in terms of their school oh you're right i guess i imagine that they were closer in age, but you're probably right. But Homer is, you know, well, we all know that they didn't have a wedding that they met at. But you would think at some function previously, Selma would have been in the same room with Barney. But yes, here's Selma accepting her fate after getting the worst news she could get. Homer, my sister is not going out with Barney Gumbel. Hey, Selma's no prize pig herself, you know.

Bart, come cheer up your Aunt Selma. Okay. What did you learn in school today? Principal Skinner's going to ask Aunt Patty to marry him. Thanks, kid. You made my day but nothing mark she's a heifer plain and simple and oh there's the little prom queen now can the sweet talk you're right it's time to ash can my girlish hopes and dreams and grab hold of the next train out of the station bart having no emotional intelligence at all yeah just uh before we ashing is just so good i wanted to ask both of you how do you feel about

uh discount meat hut being next to the family jewels oh that's good i didn't think about that that is good i just connected the two in my head so that's good stuff that's no accident no i uh i just uh you know as plotting it's really good that like selma has to learn this now because she probably would have said no to barney otherwise especially the way homer's talking about her but finding out that patty will be proposed to and she will likely say yes that's when she is just like i'm just done you know what if you got a date with barney i will do whatever it takes to make it work because i need someone i can't be alone that makes it 10 times more heartbreaking and she's like just the way she says ash can my girlish dreams and give my love away like oh it's so so sad i like how this

interaction with bart kind of mirrors the interaction with lisa earlier where they both say devastating things that like force her down a path that she doesn't really want to go down yeah it's true the the harsh honesty of children the brutalness of a child makes her rethink her entire like life too yeah i yeah probably you know if i'm patty before meeting skinner i just told her like we've got a good thing going here why are you letting some kid make you feel bad that you're not married like let's just keep this uh twin thing going all right yeah even though homer is a jerk uh he's more human in these seasons so i do like how he then will play along with uh hooking up uh selma and and flatter her in an unconvincing way

but still ring-a-ding-ding is that selma wow take it to the hoop selma yeah yeah so like future homer would not he would just not care and insult her continuously but he wouldn't show up he wouldn't he wouldn't go to their apartment where where is that's where he reacts to her like coming out in her new outfit and i love that selma is just like i can't add like she she actually would wish homer was being meaner to her him being nice shows that's how much he pities her and it actually is more hurtful but yeah she's also going she's wearing a very aggressive dress uh for this date she's she's really trying to make it work she reminds me of wendy okupa

if like wendy okupa had like a human version of herself i think that's what she would look like an adult wendy okupa would wear that dress yeah she needs like the big ring earrings though yeah oh man barney in this scene uh according to the commentary uh james o brooks was like very upset by the fact that a fly was buzzing around Barney because it's like well that's so that's so broad yes yeah it is it's a little corny I like that the fly physically occupies

space though and can be slammed behind the door like it's left there I mean it's bad enough that Barney has like his his tie when he's tucked in his shirt but it's coming out through his open fly as well like look what i brought schnapps like yeah he's surprised that he's so drunk that he didn't know what he bought i guess uh who dressed him too did homer dress him or did he actually

think like well time to pull out the suit for date night he was already wearing it he just had it on all right for reasons he doesn't remember he went to bed in that uh patty witnesses this and she's just like oh god my sister has given up like this is her heart is broken by this and uh this is when we then get uh it's adr but patty fully uh patty brings up the stakes of like yeah my sister's on a date with a rummy and he's like oh that's terrible anyway let's when you see the establishing shot of the school with the bell tower it looks like

so just plopped on there like Sim City or something just happened where it doesn't belong at all like you never saw this bell tower sticking out of the school before or since but it's like a different architectural style completely it's like yes we built it for a parody they're gonna go back there now and also quite a a bonus uh this is another pro in the skinner column he's he carries her up like to like five flights of stairs like

he's this is a strong man like he's he's got many positives for him. I'm surprised there wasn't a second parody in which a nun scares Patty and she falls to her death. Spoilers, by the way. I'm sorry. I think they were like priming us to think that like someone was going to get tossed out of that bell tower. Then they just don't, which I guess is itself a joke that like if you got the reference, you were expecting things that just do not happen at all. I will say like the show is mostly kind to Patty and Selmama but they are making a kind of a fat joke with skinner yeah it's either i mean you could read it as skinner being weak but it's definitely like patty is not the kind of woman that he should be carrying around yes no well also treating her in such a dainty way

is kind of a joke about how unfeminine she is yeah i uh yes skinner surprises her by writing marry me patty in the lawn ruining it once more much worse than bart did julie cabner screaming in this room you could just feel the room marry me patty yeah i i stuck with me forever like jeez i'm crow look at the size of that rock like just the way i just her expression of jeezum crow like i didn't even take it as you know a replacement for saying jesus christ but it's just such a great jeezum crow like what a great word like i love it but but yes patty she's intrigued but she she has to let Skinner down. Marry me, Patty?

Jeez, I'm crowed. Look at the size of that rock. It's the second most precious jewel in this bell tower. Patty, the question before you is, will you marry me? Seymour, I don't know. I mean, this is so... Oh, just say whatever's in your heart. Okay. You see, it's not that I don't love you.

You love me! Calookalay! Yes, yes, but... But? But? But I'm a twin. And as such, I have a special... Special tie to your sister.

Yes. And the only man I can marry would have to understand... That you couldn't leave your sister for any man. Oh. Yes. So I know you appreciate why you can never... See you again? Exactly.

It's kind of a catch-22. Farewell, my patty cake. Good night, sweet principal. Aw. Yeah, it's a sweet scene. It's better to know now in retrospect that they do have love in their future. But it is also very bittersweet because the status quo for them is not great. Maybe Patty thinks she's happier alone, but maybe there are things about herself she doesn't realize yet.

And maybe Skinner thinks, you know, being devoted to work is fulfilling, but he doesn't know that he needs love in his life. Yeah. And she's regretful about the entire thing. And he's understanding about her decision that they can't be a couple anymore. So they're both respectful of each other's hard choices, but they both feel like shit at the end, which is what good entertainment is. Yeah. That's what feels so Brooksie about this, that it is a way to return to a status quo because you can't patty can't get married and skinner can't be married into bart's family like that's a huge status quo change that in season two they're not going to do so you have to go back to normal and so how do you write a scene for that and that's what brooks is so good like he's a sitcom master

at this point he's like oh i know how to write a great scene for that and that's what brooks is so good like he's a sitcom master at this point he's like oh i know how to write a great scene between two people that explains why they don't move forward in the natural progression of their lives which is like marrying a person you love but and it i also love that it's an interplay of skinner completing her sentences which shows he understands her so well the speech she's going to give is actually kind of like most people would not assume that's how they're going to be turned down but that he understands her that well but that's why he she has to leave him because he understands her that well that she can't stay like yeah they do it all in like 30 seconds yeah so yeah it wraps

up very very quickly but it doesn't feel really all that forced it feels like very believable something i was thinking about uh because it's funny to think about continuity in the simpsons where whenever uh homer's in the quickie mart you have to think well he and apu were in a band together and they recorded gold records and were like merchandise and stuff like that so i was thinking like i don't think skinner ever talks to patty or selma again in the history of the show not just in terms of referencing the relationship but just like they don't think they ever share a scene again maybe they're in like the same town hall but it's never like hello patty i'm skinner they never like have a uh like an

inter like an exchange with each other well it's also funny to well now that you brought that up it's funny to think of like skinner comes to dinner being treated as this new thing when march just go like well of course you traveled the country for that whole summer yeah you guys were the hit band the b sharps you know skinner pretty well so of course you what you should also know he's not gay you spent months with skinner in the 80s. You both sold 500,000. You wrote songs with Seymour Skinner. Yes. But that episode ends with them fully saying,

like, these are questions for another day. Leave them alone. The interplay, too, is just so great. Like, Harry, Shearer and Kavner don't do many scenes together, not a ton compared to most other people in the show. So having them act off each other works really well too i will say a possible spec script for the simpsons i'm going to mail this to myself so please don't steal it uh because they like to revisit things now in season 32 or

33 uh of course marshall wallace is dead which means there's no wife for ned there's no there's no uh girlfriend for skinner let's let's find someone new for skinner i think there's still more to be told there yeah i agree perhaps selma so or miss hoover that's my two you said you were wondering if there was an ever an interaction between patty and selma and skinner after this and i can't think of one where they talk to each other but now that i think about it and i didn't bring this up in my podcast, but it's worth pointing out. When Patty is getting married to Veronica, Skinner and Agnes are there in the congregation. And it's not everyone in Springfield.

It is a bunch of characters we've never seen before, presumably representing Patty's girlfriend's side. And then it's like the Bouvier's The Simpsons, Sideshow Mel, and then Skinner and Agnes. And that's it on Patty's side. So it's nice at least that in my head canon she would have invited skinner to her gay wedding interesting i think with a choice like that somebody either a writer or a layout artist or someone decided like oh no skinner should be here they have a history together they do yeah i hope so i thought that was the idea and skinner would only be happy for her he's like i'm so glad you found love in your life yeah i well i also think it's sad you know in retrospect that patty does this

when selma multiple times is like well i'm moving out i'm getting married see you later which which is brought up in that marrying as something about marrying episode i also forget like in the episode with troy mcclure is is her separation from patty like a um a point of contention at all or do they just not cover that you know in the sideshow bob one she says like oh tell me what i want to hear like oh i'm so jealous i'm aching with jealousy like so they commented on it there do you recall in drew in the in this it's yeah all the all the animus in that episode is between marge and selma i don't remember patty saying anything that like criticizing or like trying to keep selma from pursuing this

relationship uh with troy yeah boy i'm i worry the pot someone will tell us we're wrong about this but if please commenters if we're missing a scene just let us know i i welcome them yeah but uh and but you know i've been too in the past in previous episodes of seasons where we find out that james l brooks rewrote the ending and i think like in dancing homer it kind of sucks and uh and also in bark gets hit by a car i think it kind of sucks but in this episode and in way we was which he also heavily rewrote in the third act because those actually have emotionality to them and needed emotionality for the story they're telling they actually work really well and he he i think improved those scenes by rewriting them yeah and i think in some cases like in dancing homer he came in too late to fix it and that's

why they had to like like chop it up and like use animation in an unconvincing way to tell a story that it was never meant to tell and that makes it a lot weaker and so then just as randomly as they had a vertigo reference before skinner then is framed like the end of gone with the wind as scarlett o'hara's uh you know says that she'll never go hungry again the uh yeah tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow is another school day. The funniest Gone with the Wind reference is the Trampompoline fatalities.

Yes, yeah, that's the best. But yeah, again, I don't think I've seen Gone with the Wind all the way through ever. Like even it was in our childhoods growing up, it's like Gone with the Wind, one of the most important movies. No one will ever forget. And now it's like, it's kind of nothing.

I mean, it's problematic in ways, which is why people don't go back to it all that much. Yeah. I have not seen it. I will never see it. It's just there's a million other movies that are more worth my time. But in this case, it's a happy ending for some characters. Oh, Springfield Elementary,

I will have you back again. After all, tomorrow is another school day. And then when they got out of the service, well, the next few years are a blur.

Patty, where's Skinner? We decided we loved each other enough never to see each other again. I hope I can find a man like that. Patty, are you throwing away your last chance at happiness just for me? Yes. Thanks. Now let's go get some pancakes. Listen, Barney, I...

She broke my heart, Moe Don't worry, Barney Time heals all wounds Well, what do you know? You're right And look, a whole picture to myself i told you you'd be back willie gets that last line yeah said over like a frozen image of him with his arm in the air and i i wrote this down in my notes but uh in some of the scenes at moe's i think almost all of them they are still doing the thing where they're playing music in the background, not by Elf Clausen, like either a library track or a licensed song.

Before, the joke was you'll hear the song. It's a chipper song that will contrast with the depressingness of Moe's. But now I think it's just like it's so low in the mix, you can't even tell what it it is but they're still putting in like a radio is playing or something like that at Moe's. I didn't even hear it. Until isolating the audio for this right now I never noticed the music in these sequences like they were so so low in the mixer. I think too when it's coming out like my TV speakers and not headphones like i just i just hear the dialogue in when they have the music that low and i think like before you would hear patsy cline music or i've got you babe or whatever but now it's just like yeah you can't even hear it unless you have headphones on

so why bother putting this in the mix and i i love all the acting there like the way she goes yes thanks like it's like again one woman talking to herself uh and what else do you say when you ask somebody like are you throwing away your last chance at happiness for me and the person doesn't lie for your feelings it's kind of like yes you what else can you say about like thanks and pancakes are the perfect way to chase depression yeah yeah i i also love that selma at first treats barney like a person and then she's like why why even be polite like he's not even sober enough to let down easy he won't he won't even retain any of this information oh i'm saying like the last the

next few years kind of a blur i mean patty knows too that like she is saving her from barney like she doesn't she probably thinks like don't have sex with barney i bet you'll have sex with barney tonight at the very least don't don't do that you'll regret it i think we're supposed to view it on some level as sort of a sad ending in that patty gives up a chance at love which like there's all these like maybe she's gay maybe she's asexual we don't know what's going on in her head at the point but um i think her rescuing selma from barney is a very sweet ending and then them going off to have pancakes and like i think a lot of people viewing it have like the default mindset of like oh like they're not gonna find like romantic

love that sucks but like their life is like not terrible they get to go on vacations together and they both understand each other really well and seem to like each other a lot so happy ending yeah i think so they haven't even entered into the their macgyver phase of characters yet and find that together they'll both lust after richard dean anderson and eventually kidnap him in like season 15 oh yeah and they'll both find love and i remember on the commentary mark kirkland says he remembers watching the the color screening of the animation. And Willie says, I told you to be back. And the entire crowd was like, yeah, goodbye, Willie.

We'll never see this character ever again. You're never coming back, Willie. And then Willie is a beloved. You can buy an action figure of Willie now. So many Willie action figures. You know, it's Barney happy with his picture. He's like, oh, I got a picture all to myself. That's sweet, even for him. He's like, oh, got a picture all to myself like that that's sweet even for him he's like oh hey look at that a door door is open i have a whole picture of beer that i

don't have to share with anyone uh and i also think though that it's a very season two move that despite the fact that you have a natural ending with patty and selma that they're like no the final shot has to be bart and the bart scene is really just important to show that skinner's back to normal too and he's back to giving bart shit i wonder if in their original uh sequencing of scenes they would have ended in mo's bar instead of going to a bart shot but for this time you know especially for the nine-year-old boys watching at home like me uh to give us a scene of bart just remind you like see bart's still in here yeah you haven't seen bart in a while but there's bart that part

did bum me out as a kid i'm like oh poor bart because uh skinner like uh just ripped the grass out of the entire play field that bart now has to ski by hand it is skinner's fault that he's having to do that yeah that's true well patty broke his heart yeah he's gotta take it out on somebody it's true but yeah that was uh it's a sweet episode i like getting to explore patty and selma uh you know there's now ways to talk about it in and view it that were different than the author intent in 1991 just because of how they they change up both characters going onward but i i i do like the just that patty chooses celibacy like that's why and that it was just her going the one time she decided i'll try dating someone eh it almost worked out but i'm not really feeling it you know and i

i feel like she kisses him once like i don't think they had a physical relationship that much anyway yeah yeah like this made me realize uh much I miss Patty and Selma, especially we're going through the Scully years. I think they just had no interest in Patty and Selma. And then when Al Jean took over in season 13, I think he did want to bring them back and we saw a lot more of them. But for a long time, I think Homer versus Patty and Selma was like their finale for like five or

six years before they just kind of went away outside of like background jokes and mean spirited jokes some of which were kind of funny but yeah like I do miss these characters I like them and I love Skinner and it's a sweet episode and again it's very important episode for the show because they said what if

the show was not about the family not about the core family so they were able to get away with this and this would lead to a lot more episodes in the future where it's like the sequel to uh one of these styles of episode is a fish called selma in which it's like selma and troy mcclure so it's like another bouvier sister and another side character having their own story with the simpsons on the sideline yeah and um skinner who became like patty and someone might have gone away for a while but skinner never left the show this is actually a very important skinner who became like patty and someone might have gone away for a while but

skinner never left the show this is actually a very important skinner episode in getting us an idea of how he functions sort of outside the uh principal mindset although he's never that far permitted in this episode but um ideas of him being like a man child a little broken uh we get a lot more in this episode and it's kind of nice. Totally agree. Yeah. As a Skinner fan, we're seeing a true Skinner start to emerge. Coming out of his shell. But thank you so much for being on the show, Drew. Please tell us all about Gayest Episode Ever and how we can support your show

and what could be coming around the bend here. Actually, we are now in October. So it's possible that you are in production right now on Hot New Episodes. So yeah, we are coming back from a hiatus at the end of summer and we'll be doing our regular episodes. right now on Hot New Episodes. So, yeah, we are coming back from a hiatus at the end of summer, and we'll be doing our regular episodes.

In October, we actually have some fun Halloween stuff planned for the entire month. We're going to be taking an exception to what we normally do, and that'll be a surprise. But if you like talking about sitcom history, I think you'll love these episodes. They'll just be a little less gayer than normal. Gayest Episode Ever looks at gay episodes,

LGBTQA plus episodes of classic sitcoms uh gayest episode ever.com if you want to listen to us and then uh during the summer which is when we're recording this uh we are going to be running um a little side feature that's going to be looking at gay episodes of classic cartoons uh and some of that will be on patreon some of that will be on the main feed and we'll have special uh podcast uh famous guests to help us talk about queer cartoons. So look forward to that as well. And I haven't been enjoying your Shelley Long podcast as well.

Almost done. Literally, we recorded Irreconcilable Differences, which is where she plays the mother of Drew Barrymore. And it's about a child emancipating herself from her parents. It was actually very good. We finally finished it. We're going on to a more lucrative uh patron podcast bonus so yeah i i really appreciate it we did a muppet show uh for what a cartoon recently and i i sourced you on the the the seven o'clock programming thing i never heard that history until uh i heard it on your podcast and i i learned quite a lot i'm glad i

really liked doing that episode. But it's really cool when you're just talking about a specific episode of TV and you end up learning something that's core to your experience of being an American growing up watching TV and not understanding the way things are. That was really fun for me to do too. Thank you so much, Drew. It was always

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the ten dollar level you get all the five dollar stuff plus also access to one make a long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry well that's the what a cartoon movie podcast that bob is talking about we have a sister podcast what a cartoon where twice a month we cover an animated series super in-depth just like we do with the simpsons and we each month cover an animated feature film in the same style but only for our premium patrons we have covered this last summer we did a disney renaissance summer of hercules hunchback of notre dame and the lion king all of which everybody super enjoyed often over for four hours we talk about those going scene by scene just like we do with the simpsons i think you'll really enjoy it if you sign up now you have three whole years of what a cartoon movies at your disposal over 150 hours of

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