Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Pygmoelian With Louis Peitzman

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

We talk about beauty and balloons this week when we welcome back Louis Peitzman (be sure to check out his awesome newsletter!) onto the podcast! Moe is feeling unattractive after winning a contest, so he completely changes his face. And thus leads to a plan of revenge and stardom occasionally interrupted by a balloon chase. Listen now before Moe gets a third, different face! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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Shut up and take my money. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's full of shocking story twists and endless pillow talk. I'm one of your hosts, local lug Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today as always? Why, it's Henry Gilbert and this week's podcast notes are printed on goldenrod and who is our special guest on the line this is lewis pitesman and today's episode is pygmalion this guy here this is the guy today's episode aired on february 27 2000 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh boy Bobby Pokemon Stadium is released for the Nintendo 64 a favorite movie of mine Wonder Boys

is released in theaters and Shakira's MTV Unplugged CD is released in record stores an eventful week of things that Wonder boys that's some sort of marvel yeah marvel property i'm guessing yeah yeah it's uh well i mean he tried to write the script for spider-man 2 michael chabon did but chabon i always mispronounce it uh but uh wonder boys is uh it was a really great movie i like it's a get this bob a writer wrote a book about writers and writing. I don't think that's happened before. Wait, there might be one short story by Stephen King.

But it's a really good movie based on a really good book, too. It was like one of Robert Downey Jr.'s first things after getting out of prison. I think it was. And you got Tobey Maguire pre-Spider-Man. If you wanted to see a movie where Iron Man has sex with Spider-Man, well, you just might see it in Wonder Boys. Did they wear the costumes? They hadn't yet been cast in that, unfortunately. With CGI, you can make it happen.

I really appreciate your take on history. This is a very, I mean, most people might not call those historical events, but I would consider the release of that movie and of the Shakira album to be important in history. Pokemon Stadium as well, right? Yes. Yeah. You mentioned that as well.

Very important. Was that like the last MTV unplugged that was a big deal with Shakira's? I feel like there weren't any after it. I mean, I had aged out of the MTV age, I guess. I was 20 after this album came out. The only one that i remember that i was very into was the dashboard confessional one yeah that one is very very popular oh i did not all right that's how out of it i was i don't know how i don't know how cool that is but it was

incredibly important to me at the time and and and still it's the one i think of after the nirvana one okay one of my favorites to go back to after his passing was the george michael one like his the unplugged freedom he did right yeah or was that just on an mtv awards but anyway about one other thing i want to say about wonder boys though is so i saw the theaters with with my mom as as a good gay boy taking to a movie and it was and it was nice to be like oh this movie's kind of gay. I like that. But when I finally read the book, I read the book like a decade after I saw the movie.

And when I read the book, I got to realize that like, I think Michael Douglas insisted that his character get like 10% cooler in the movie. Cause in the book, his character is just like a straight up loser. Like he's just a total loser in the book. But in the movie,

he kind of, he has, he's a bit more loser in the book but in the movie he kind of he has he's a bit more assertive i think it's if you've never seen it a good movie this is a wonder boys podcast i guess at some point in about 10 years we're out of simpsons then we can move on to wonder boys page by page uh but yes welcome back lewis pitesman thanks again for coming uh how's it going? Have you been watching any Simpsons in this time to relax? Funny you should ask. I watch The Simpsons every night before bed.

I fall asleep to it every night. I used to be a strict Golden Girls before bed person, and I have transitioned ever since Disney Plus started. I've become full Simpsons before bed person and i have transitioned ever since disney plus started i've become full simpsons before bed wow do you did you stay up through the whole thing or do you sometimes not off while it's playing oh it's i fully fall asleep during it i i watch maybe you know this is after i've taken my nightly klonopin so i i get about 10 10 minutes in before passing out you know i'm i'm up to season 24 now and i've never seen these episodes so i uh it's it's wild it's like you know i catch little bits of episodes and i'm surprised by what i'm seeing and hearing and then i fall asleep are you like quoting season 24 and

people are asking you like what would the homer say that i don't remember this i mean i may be i am maybe subconsciously taking in things from these episodes and repeating them but i i'm not consciously quoting it yet sometimes with the season 24 episode you can't be sure if you dreamed it or if it really happened yeah i mean i really you know i having half watched a lot of it now and these seasons are very unfamiliar to me there are there are times when i genuinely enjoy it it's just it's all so high concept it's also you know it kind of every episode sort of feels a little bit like a treehouse of horror episode that i i i can't always tell what i'm watching

and it's an it's a good place to be before before sleep it's good to watch in that kind of like dreamy klonopin state i'm gonna have to try this but but only after i get prescribed klonopin my videos of choice as prescribed as prescribed i guess my sleepy time videos of choice are people with froggy voices narrating video game footage uh i used to in the summertime i more nap to simpsons uh in the past there'd just be too many laughs for me i couldn't fall asleep uh well and also lewis i i wonder with this episode that's uh you know about plastic surgery one of the many things you you cover as a media critic like uh you you're a chronicler of the real housewives so so i am

curious like what do you feel is like the feeling or general stigma to plastic surgery these days as compared to when this episode aired 20 years ago i don't know i was thinking about this because i feel like men having plastic surgery is still not really discussed that much but i also think that plastic surgery in general has become kind of less of a of a topic of discussion we only really bring it up when it's like egregiously bad you You know, you only really talk about it when you see something that you simply cannot remark on. I think we've kind of accepted it as part of our culture. And people also do a lot more of, you know, fillers and things that are milder. So you don't really, you know, it's not exactly subtle, but it's also kind

of just part of the look of a lot of even much younger celebrities today. It feels less like something. It's not, you know, I don't know if it's anywhere near as controversial as it was at the time. Yeah, this is not my own thought, but people make all of the jokes like, oh, you know, Paul Rudd never ages. And on a podcast, somebody said once, no, no, he just gets lots of like very subtle good treatments to his face that's why he never ages it's all it's like i'm not saying this is like something he's doing that i know of but it's very possible we just don't think of men being the type of people who do that sort of thing yeah i mean i i think there are also um even even with the sort of

advancements that i'm sure we've made in plastic surgery the idea of getting a totally new face is still not really a thing which is so sad because um not not not in this self-deprecating way if I want a new face but um I just like always thought it was so cool that Mo got a totally different face I mean imagine if we could do that in a non-face-off way you got new hair you got new posture uh they got new clothes uh you know i think it was uh julie klausner i believe uh the comedy writer actress great funny person she had this thought i always remember about plastic surgery it's like every famous person gets plastic surgery it's only the bad ones you notice yeah yeah when i think of famous men who people talk about plastic surgery with it's like definitely kenny rogers the late kenny rogers uh people talked a lot about that

i think nick cage's face doesn't always it's more his hair though really like the robert evans oh robert evans i mean yeah come on did he get plastic surgery yeah i think you bet he did you bet would he ever do it again you bet your life on it but but yeah i think uh i i think it's a little less stigmatized i remember i wasn't was it renee zellweger who made an appearance and just was like unrecognizable to people recently and people were like i mean that was that was a few years back i mean she had gotten some fillers i guess that hadn't settled right um or whatever it was and and she got mocked but then there was all the pushback yeah how dare you because you know you created this industry with impossible beauty standards and then you're now criticizing someone

for trying to keep up with them you can't even you know mock plastic surgery anymore and and and you know cancel culture has gone too far yeah that it feels so different like when this episode aired it was so normal unlike you know an afternoon on e-news you would just see like plastic surgery fails like the most fate like it like it's a really cruel stuff said about some people yeah i think that's now and to be clear the cancel culture comment was ironic yes yes oh yeah out of text and then cancels me there are there is like an industry of like you know these shows like botched about like plastic surgery gone wrong now but it's much more sympathetic toward people who have had you know

procedures that didn't go the way they wanted them to. It's much more about how can we help people? Whereas a couple decades ago, we had The Swan, a show that is so dystopian. I don't know if people have, I feel like people have repressed it. But for those who don't know, it was a show in which women who thought they were ugly did kind of do the Pygmalion thing

and get and get fully new faces they got like new faces and new bodies and then competed in a beauty pageant and there was this weird I mean it was so dark such a bleak concept and like a real uncanny valley thing of like seeing these sort of like overdone women because it's not like it was bad work but it was just so much at once it was like you know really we're going to give you a completely different face which so i guess maybe that does exist but it only if you're willing to have like 25 procedures done at a time and uh this this episode the the pitch of it apparently was even more about plastic surgery

because the larry doyle the writer of the episode on the commentary said the original pitch was the first act would be homer buys marge breast implants for her birthday and she rejects those like he gives her like the literal implants like he's like here i bought these you can get them put in marge turns it down and don't worry the real breast implant episode is still on its way yeah so yeah but uh but so instead homer trades it in for facial surgery for mo at the same place and a factoid about larry doyle in this commentary he had just written the hit book i love you beth cooper and the movie was about to be made uh starring paul rust playing the world's oldest high school student of 28

i love paul rust uh i guess movie stardom was not in the cards for him. The world's oldest high school student is Stockard Channing in Greece, but that was a good second. Damn, you're right. That's just objectively true. She was like 35. Wow. Yeah, but that movie, I'm glad he found

a comedy. I mean, I think he was still, you know, he was doing his comedy thing, but nobody talks about the movie. Nobody likes likes it it was not the Mean Girls of its time no one remembers it but Larry Doyle did write the book which became the movie that he also wrote Paul Rust is a very funny guy like I love him on any improv podcast yeah he's that was when Hayden Panettiere was like the it girl at the time instead of stuff's been weird for her i haven't kept up with it but it sounds like things are weird he sounds weirdly down about his book on the commentaries like you can get it on ebay for a penny so uh he also jokes about like

oh you guys are rewriting the my scripts now aren't you like and also they uh mark kirkland was on it and he talked about how they uh often they let mo get off model because he the more hideous he is the better but in this one they were strictly on model i feel like they finally hit upon something in this episode like just looking at the character and saying you know what mo is so ugly and you know what's even uglier any character facing the camera this entire episode it hinges on how ugly simpsons characters are when they face the camera it's true which became like a you know it was like what a twitter thing oh for not facing simpsons yeah yeah it was very much a thing but i do

appreciate it because you know you can it's it's amazing that i never noticed until this episode how hideous mo was and then as soon as it's pointed out it is largely the front-facing thing but everything from you know including his little cauliflower ears it's just it's a deeply upsetting caricature of a man yeah i just feel bad for poor rich hall who mo was patterned after the comedian uh if you don't know who he is look just google a picture of him he's mo yeah he is mo uh i also remember that uh producer on show, Mike Reese, got offended once. Somebody said, oh, most based on you, right? He's like, how dare you? He's Mr. Bergstrom. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, Mike Reese is Mr. Bergstrom. That's who he is. That's who they intentionally drew him to look like. But yeah, so the episode begins with a very like kind of Tracy Ullman short opening of Homer, not for a bomb shelter like in the Tracy Ullman thing, but he wakes everybody up with a fire alarm. And Homer is so committed to this fire alarm thing that when he's alone in the hallway, he acts scared. Like, so he's really committed to this. Lisa, you know, she's shaking awake and I love seeing her grab her perfect attendance award. Like that's such a nothing award that she should really have a more valuable award than that.

Well, clearly Marge played the arcade game, The Simpsons. She knows what's important to her, the vacuum cleaner. And I guess she can throw snowball too, like you can in the game. I appreciate the amount of preparation that Homer did here. It's like almost out of character the work he puts into this and and and his commitment to the bit he even he even has the car parked in the middle of the lawn not even in the near next door driveway like it would be easy to just pull out of the driveway but instead it's on the lawn i totally missed that i i love all the staging of

this like the dutch angles when lisa wakes up you see her feet shooting to the air first before her the rest of her body rises up yeah i also love homer likes shouting like he for real says this is not a drill like he's uh he's extra jerk ass especially even when march tells him like you did an awful thing he's like i know i'm a character then homer has found a new love of polka as he takes them on as he announces where they're headed good work everyone we're sure to be first in line for tough days you set off the smoke alarm to rush us to a beer festival i know i'm a character now a little beer music to get in the mood. Looking for these?

I only made you listen to so much polka there. I actually like polka. I grew up in a town with a big Polish population, and there were two AM polka stations. So I have a lot of affinity for hearing polka music because it happened a lot. I grew up with Weird Al, so I feel much the same way. It's heartwarming. This whole Oktoberfest feel of it, it makes me feel like it's Scully pulling from his New England roots there.

I don't know. I didn't grow up with any polka or Oktoberfest going on in in southern florida so i don't know how how regular these october fest type things are though i like that it's all duff and it's run by duff this duff days thing it's there's you get a little flavor of duff gardens here i will say i only wish homer was more drunk during this he's surprisingly sober uh acting throughout this entire thing he should be just tanked and being dragged out he's very coherent i mean given that they have they have the whole designated driver area and you're assuming you know the worst kind of drunkenness but he's never really that sloppy yeah it's true he gets he gets drunk or went later in the episode there's no for an episode

that's about mo homer doesn't drink as much as you think he would in this one also i like the the action on homer saying looking for these that feels exactly like how in uh how marge in miracle and evergreen terror says and i've got all your alarm clocks all right back and forth too and yeah this episode has a lot of callbacks and that starts with this two of the seven duffs are back in here a lot of new lore too we'll get to yeah i wish uh surly is a little too nice like he should be fighting back on homer there that's true he could be in recovery we don't know are there we we have to assume there are multiple people playing surly right yeah maybe the guy from duff gardens was like a method actor when it came to being surly uh though well then the new guy they cast is surly looks exactly

like him though but there's a type yeah it's a type uh but yes as they arrive we get to hear from surly and marge gets to go to a rock and fun zone drink duff responsibly drink duff responsibly now which one of you is our designated driver? Twist. Oh, damn it. I guess I'll be driving. Right this way to the Duff designated driver's rockin' fun zone. Rockin' fun zone?

That sounds fun. I don't see the need for razor wire. Oh, there's Ulysses S. Grant, Babe Ruth, Ben Franklin. Early to birth. Early to rise. You think you're better than me? They really got like the perfect drunk quote because I've heard drunk say that out loud. Maybe more than four times in my life. This feels to me a little like the Duff Gardens president's gag.

That is true. But I do love seeing the Babe Ruth robot trying to like seemingly spontaneously pick a fight with the Ben Franklin robot. And yeah, I looked this up on, you know, Ben Franklin. He was a distiller. So I read several articles like the biggest drinkers of the founding fathers. Ben Franklin doesn't compare to like John Adams apparently drank way more than him. It's because all the water was poison. You just die of dysentery if you drink any water.

So you don't afford not to drink. Exactly. Though Ben Franklin was the horniest of the family oh it's true yes yeah and and like all but three of the founding fathers he also owned slaves but i will say he was a strong abolitionist in his later years unlike a lot of other founding fathers but i believe uh from looking it up the only founding fathers who did not own slaves were john adams samuel adams and thomas pain all the rest at one point or another owned slaves not to bring people down uh oh and the ulysses s grant stuff i looked that up apparently it actually was in the news recently because uh

the good old president he was he made some he said something about grant being drunk and so the washington post had to say like oh is he though like yeah so trump in 2018 he sort of misquoted a thing that lincoln said about grant like lincoln had said about grant like oh if he's drinking too much then i need to send that liquor to all the other generals so they can be just as winning as him like but apparently in grants like when he was alive newspapers were uh saying like is this guy a drunk he shouldn't be president like so uh like it is not one of those things you find out later and posthumously like he was called an alcohol apparently in 1854 he was discharged from the military briefly because of his intoxication which like if you're

too drunk for 1854 how drunk can you be like but uh but then he won two presidencies so hey must uh must have cleaned it up eventually that's an impressive attention to detail yeah i'm frankly sick of all these teetotaler presidents they're not human uh you know that i mean bush i understand he was in recovery he was an alcoholic Trump is just a psycho as I've said about Joe Biden I think he'd have a beer with me anytime and that's all that's the only reason I'm voting for him he's got my vote

yeah The Simpsons will be right back hey everybody welcome to the rock and fun zone break this week's talking simpsons a big thank you to our guest lewis pitesman always fun to have him back on the show follow him on twitter read his stuff he is a really great writer and expert in the world of entertainment and if you enjoy this podcast you should really consider signing up for our patreon because this is a patreon sponsored podcast thanks to listeners just like yourself me and bob are able to do this full time five dollar and up subscribers not only get the peace of mind of helping us but they also get a ton of extras you get here next week's talking simpsons right now

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a ten dollar and up subscriber you definitely can so please consider going up to the premium level today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons also homer trying to rip off surly's head is pretty uh pretty funny i like that and and that marge is locked in a pen with barbed wire which uh george meyer on the commentary he even kind of pedantically points out like hey that's not razor wire that's barbed wire you guys drew the wrong wire i really want to know uh who skinner apu and kirk van houten went to the uh duff days with because they're all in there very surprised to see apu there yeah was manjula getting soused i guess so i well who they get to babysit their eight children anyway maybe he chose that just to be away from his eight children could be they can't get him in there look so sad though yeah he seems that he does seem more imprisoned than uh choosing

to be there uh then we get a bit of a gyrosphere humor as bart is uh gets to experience what it's like to be drunk by being dizzy i want to see him ride that with the beer goggles on so he can hit on a family member and be drunk with millhouse boy you're right this is hitting a lot of duff gardens jokes from season three hey it was it was eight years uh millhouse never gets to do drunk acting or you know pamela hayden doesn't get to do drunk acting as millhouse too much so she does it pretty funny there uh i've never been in a gyrosphere those things scare me also they look kind of painful but uh i guess either of you guys been in one it's something that i remember wanting to do as a kid and knowing that i would be very nauseated if i

did so i don't think that it actually ever happened it never appealed to me and on the commentary carolyn omine says it's actually a lot of work you actually have to move your body to keep it going oh that's bullshit yeah i definitely got it into it that sounds terrible they'll seem to be in like every mall up until a certain point in time. Maybe there's now, I mean, when malls eventually are open and functioning again, maybe just an entire hallway of those. Because now there are just rides in malls because there's nobody shopping in them. Tons of VR headsets as well.

Lots of, now this could be an offensive term, but in Ohio we call it cornhole. That's throwing beanbags into a slotted board got it we all we all real familiar with cornhole yeah there are cornhole courts in my local mall now when i went there last time henry looked shocked when i said that sorry where i grew up in florida it was just called like you know beanbag tic-tac-toe or whatever we never cornhole was never and believe me we all made the jokes okay at least you were aware of it yeah uh but uh after after some fun you know what actually they this is the fourth fair they've gone to this season this is like the food they did the food

fair they did the fair with the faith healing tent um there was another fair after that i know there was and then this one we talk about the state unfair that's right that was the one so yeah that's four four fairs in season 11 that's a lot it's just like a great set piece for little jokes like what's at this booth who's attending this what's this show yeah it's uh i think it's uh more fairs more fairs in general and uh the main event of the fair, though, is the Beer Tender Championship, which that feels like a funny bit of just corporatism that Duff is like, no, we can't just say bartender. It's a beer tender.

And we get to see good old Duff Man back again. All right, Springfield. Rally up for the Duff Beer Tender of the Year contest. Now, fresh from his appearance before the House Subcommittee on Teenage Alcoholism, Duffman. Are you ready for some Duff love? All right. Today we're going to find out which of these bartenders has the right stuff to dispense stuff.

From the green potato pub at O'Hare International Airport, Michael Finn. Yeah! From juggernauts in Hollywood, California, Titania. And now, the local lug who fills your mug with the drug you chug. Oh yeah. Give it up for Moe Sislak.

Hello, Springfield. How you doing? Hearing the titanic stuff free of the images, I'm like, boy, this is horny. They had fun drawing her. Yeah. I'm impressed that they flew people out from all over for this fair. But only those two. Mo is the local guy.

Right. But still, they put some money into this. I thought a lot about the joke about the Irish pub in an airport, and I thought it was very funny. Just like, anytime anything in an airport tries to have culture, it's just very silly. Although, I would die to go drink in an Irish pub in an airport right right now and you will you wouldn't die if you it's true it's true we all we're both reaching for the same uh put it in my veins as barney would say this was when i finally got that joke that like this very irish beer tender who you think came from ireland he's from chicago's airport like he lives in chicago i think titania might be the most like

boobage the show ever did i think yeah the way the way her breasts move like very realistically is uh they're having fun with her yeah it's uh i know you know in season 14 they introduced the character of booberella who they she's based on an established boob lady though yes yeah the yes you don't need to ask animators twice to draw realistic breasts they they did you know duffman dated booberella as well i found out wow wow and uh yeah they talk uh scully mentioned something interesting on the commentary that they have that little scene of mo nervous backstage so you could feel any amount of empathy for him that you normally wouldn't feel if mo just came out and you didn't see that he was nervous you wouldn't care as much for him yeah usually would you have to humiliate

mo first yes before you can love him and uh and yeah i mean they're very proud of getting tits tanya on the show as well but um it's a shake for reference i mean that's you know a real a real achievement uh they were trying they were just trying to keep up with family guy in south park they're like we gotta they they're getting away with all this stuff we gotta do it that's highbrow fox content in the 90s oh no 2000 i'm sorry yeah we were finally we're out of the 90s can you believe it uh and so then we get to see the characters pour beer in different ways uh they're playing the georgia satellites version of hippie hippie shake which is from the bartending classic cocktail okay so that's why they chose it the uh though i think

most people know the beatles version of it though that was just a cover too but i i wondered why they use it like i'm not i don't know cocktail very well i've seen i've seen like three gifs of tom cruise spinning a bottle and i'm like i've seen the film cocktail now that's all you need to know really yeah though i think the irish guy should win the competition that like gravity defying poor that's the best like i i think uh i think that deserves to win mo was most effective i appreciate this competition is very much like Quidditch in that the story doesn't really matter until the end. That's Quidditch or Mario Party,

although I think they fixed Mario Party in the last 10 years. I have never gone back. Yeah, I also... Well, it's all going for Titania anyway up to that point. She gets to win on the mountain goat question. Her pouring was terrible. Yes, yeah. Well, you to win on the mountain goat question. Her pouring was terrible. Yes, yeah. Well, you're not watching the glasses, Bob.

But yes, we get to hear Titania answer a question here as Mo's friends support him. Duff beer is brewed from hops, barley, and sparkling clear mountain what? Goat. Close enough. You can really taste the goat. Now our final round, which counts for 98% of the total score, making the previous rounds a complete waste. Don't forget, today's winner will be immortalized

on our new Duff calendar all right guys one two three mo lennie you were supposed to be e see what happens when you skip rehearsal this made me nostalgic for seeing shirtless guys in arenas again you know that i miss it now we didn't know what we had uh maybe they're still spelling things in Zoom, in Zoom Windows. But then it gets reversed in the camera. That's true. That's what mirrors are for. You gotta be creative. Oh man,

can you point your, you know how you basically have like per app of the rapper style cardboard cutouts in the stands now of like they're digitally placed there? Yes. Can you be shirtless in those? Will they allow that? They gotta put shirtless dudes in there like spelling things out yeah yeah maybe it'll happen by the time this goes live you know if any of us was watching sports currently now we'd have an answer to this but uh but it's just it's not coming here a laugh uh i know one of my favorite

drawings in the episode is after he says completely uh complete waste his towel like rubbing the towel on his butt dance that's squeaky noise too they love they love the squeaky noise on the show i always forget duff man's a bill and josh character that it's like the last unless you count arvin tam's area and it's the last major character they created i think that's true yeah uh or frostilicus if you count that as a new he's more of a jasper variant yeah yeah so it comes to the final test which is throwing out drunks and uh titania then refuses to throw a barfly and brings up that uh duffman had tricked her into having sex which that's a different joke now yeah although i did like duffman says a lot of things. Yes. Yeah. That's I mean, I say a lot of things.

That's a good cover for lying out there. But I wanted to use this as a jumping off point to discuss the sexuality of Duffman. Oh, please. I know you've done serious research on this. Yes. You know, Duffman is usually seen surrounded by ladies. But I think this is the first time canonically he has said he has had sex with a woman. And after this, be seen with multiple other women, including the previously mentioned Booberella. But then, late in the teens, in I believe season 17,

it is revealed that he has a relationship with Grady, Scott Thompson's recurring gay character in the world of Simpsons. Homer says he's got a call from Grady to help him break up with somebody. And then the cut to is like Duff Man still wearing the sunglasses and hat coming out of the shower. You can never see a true face. And so I like too that Scott Thompson, like Grady is basically just Scott Thompson, I think. Honestly, a less camp scott thompson i think so is duffman canonically bisexual well that's the complicated thing because

i think he could be read as by your pan or fluid or whatever but because he's never said like i am gay after that but it's also though that uh duffman is in season 13 it is set up that there's been more than one duff man and they often die so i mean he doesn't i think it's assumed that he dies in this one i think mo kills him in this one yeah so so it's also possible there's a gay duff man and that one had sex with grady but the one who had sex with titania and bubarella those were straight duff men do they hire new people do they just spontaneously regenerate after one dies i think there's like a duff lab where they create duff men i would think just springfield has one of the many duff men it's like bozo there's like multiple bozos so just the springfield duff man is one of

many duff men i also noticed another like a lot of deep cuts in this episode i don't think it was intentional but mo with his board with a nail in it chasing barney reminds me of how he defeated the aliens in triasa 4 was a two or three three uh no it was it was two yeah yeah yeah the uh enslaved humanity will you yeah exactly he was keeping that on just in case uh he's even running with like the same posture there too yeah it's uh so again though i have to call bullshit on this contest because the contest is throwing a drunk not making a drunk jump and like mo didn't move a drunk at all he just made him if it's if it's how far a drunk will jump if you ask them to or make them do it

then mo won but i it's that's not a drunk toss he should have brought one of the later drunks from the bar not barney it should have been uh barfly number two you're very upset about the integrity of this contest but mo does win by a tongue It's Barney's abnormally long tongue wins it for him. And so Moe wins and he is going to be put on the calendar. And as he turns for his front-facing photograph, we see Moe in all his smiling glory. They pretty much just reused the front-facing drawing they did for Uncle Moe's family feedback commercial. Oh, yeah. I was surprised that they will often, or depending on who the director is,

if Wes Archer directed this episode, he'd have his missing tooth. I know. But he's on King of the Hill. But, yeah, that missing tooth does add to the Moe-ness of him. I miss the missing tooth. I do. Without Wes Archer there to defend the integrity of Moe's missing tooth, he's drawn with a big toothy grin.

I thought we just did one with Moe somewhat recently within the past year where he had like missing tooth in every scene. I think it was a mansion family. Okay. In that one, there's definitely some shots of missing teeth there. You can hear the controversy

on our Bart sells his soul episode. He may have gotten his tooth fixed. That's an easy fix. It's easier than what happens to him later in the episode he could just have a single denture for that tooth perhaps for special occasions like this one yeah but uh phil angelides takes a photograph of mo which on the commentary they're like oh is that a exec? But I think it was the Cali. He was a Phil Angelides was the California state treasurer in 2000. So maybe they knew him from like local California politics who he would make national headlines. Phil Angelides because he would lose big time to Arnold Schwarzenegger in a governor election in 2006. So that's that's where I knew his name from.

But that's the name of the the duff executive photographing him speaking of names duffman canonically is larry uh the name of the writer of this episode that's right also larry's a good comedy name and i say this i have a comedy name so apologies to larry's but your name is funny bob is a funny comedy name uh and yes uh mo wins the contest though but he's not going to be so happy with the results. Oh, that's great. Thank you. Thanks a lot. I just want to say that it was an honor for me to compete with the Mick and the chick with the rack there.

Yeah, all right, Moe. That's my move. And now, to take your official calendar portrait, DOF's vice president in charge of calendars and fake IDs, Phil Angelides. That's a mug you don't want to chug. Knock it off, Larry. We can't put this face on our calendar. I love that he's like, you're offstage, Duffman.

Stop giving me the shtick. I also forgot that you can't just say that slur against the Irish on TV. I think there was still a TV show called that at this point. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, so as Mo is celebrating, Marge is freed from her rock and fun zone. That's where we see skinner's even smoking

there who did he go maybe krabappel i would guess krabappel yeah well though i could also see agnes saying you're the driver go in there and maybe he got uh he was given smokes by somebody else in there then we get the one of the most unexpected b stories ever the purchase of a balloon yeah you get about two scenes of this bad boy i wonder if it was supposed to go if they originally planned for it to go over all three acts and then they realized like the timing of this of most of the b story has to take place over like the period of like two hours or something yeah i expected there to be a third scene with this i thought there was one because after they get it back there's just nothing i was like okay what's the payoff and there really isn't one when you have it such a

strong b story you don't really need to pay off are they gonna get the balloon for itself i mean it's a you know it's balloon it made me aware of log cabin republicans as like an 18 year old so we'll get to that we'll get to that will we okay great uh yeah uh though yeah the the kids also it just feels weird to me that bart and lisa want a balloon so bad i don't know when i was a kid i didn't give a crap about balloons i thought they were gross just the i don't know the the sound of fingers squeaking on a balloon just grosses me out something fierce it's a it's a it's a thing about me i don't know i were you guys in even in childhood fans of balloons no they're scary because they they can pop very easily yeah i never liked the popping i

i do appreciate i don't know i like when lisa is an actual child i i i don't really believe that bart would care about the balloon but i can like buy that lisa had a moment of just being like it's pink and pretty and she wants it uh though lisa does engage in some hyperbole there because uh at least from google results that i looked up like most balloons take six months to four years to biodegrade not a 10 000 years so it's only it's only kind of horrible to the environment that it sticks around for four years just let a letting go of a balloon is really just littering in the future. Yeah. And it's also funny.

I think it's an extra joke that it's sleazy of the seven duffs who's giving away the balloons too. I kind of like a joke about Homer like trying to convince the bouncer to let him back in. Like remember my face. I like that. What if it's remorseful working the gates next time? There's a time cut of some kind. They must have printed those calendars pretty quickly, but Mo's pacing back and forth

as they wait for the calendars to arrive. Oh, the new dump calendars are out. The ones with your picture. Oh, boy. Move over liquor license. Hey, Mo. This license expired in 1973, and it's only good in Rhode Island.

And it's signed by you. Yeah, yeah, I've been meaning to get that updated for this state and real. Now, let's see the poster boy for the new millennium. They put a sticker over my face. Hey. What? Hey, off with the lovin', Jeff. Ah.

Oh, am I really that ugly? Moe, it's all relative. Is Lenny really that dumb? Is Barney that drunk? Is Homer that lazy, bald, and fat? Oh, my God, it's worse than I thought. See, this is why I don't talk much he looks right at the camera too so he knows the foot like this is carl is so smart he knows that he's in a tv show this is the second

i think uh character addressing the camera this season uh the the criticism episode i'd like we'll be right back that's right over over just but this this time was also pretty rare that carl gets the end of commercial joke as well good for him it's like he earned it he's i mean this is quite a major episode for carl as well yeah we found out his lineage uh but the the all of the sticker jokes i really like the drawing of uh it feels very realistic the sticker residue leftover Moe's picture there. I really like that. Homer, he can also be called stupid. Lenny, I don't think of Lenny as stupid.

I mean, I don't think of Lenny particularly. I just think of him as Lenny. He's a loser, right? Yes, yeah, that's true. He wants no one to know how he lives, that's for sure. And when it comes back from break, everybody uh is trying to comfort mo they describe uh how ugly things are there's it's interesting to see who they feel safe and calling like ugly in this there's a lot of there's a few celebrity names said in here that i'm like oh you guys felt it

you could get away with that you know which uh hey i'm all for insulting bill maher though not not on looks i mean you don't you don't have to make fun of someone's looks to dislike bill maher i did agree with the president on that part so broken clock he's a terrible exhausted gone and weak but uh actually here i'll play the clip i must be the ugliest man alive. Oh, Moe, there's lots of people uglier than you. Like you ever been to White Castle? Oh, boy. Pigtown, USA. Come on, look at me.

I'm a gargoyle. What with the cauliflower ear there and the lizard lips. Little rat eyes. Capeman brow. Don't forget that fish snout. Okay, I get it. I ain't pleasant to look at. Or listen to.

Or be with. Come on, Moe, don't feel bad. There's too much emphasis on looks these days. That's why they won't let Bill Maher on TV before midnight. Hey, Moe, if you're tired of being an eyesore, why not get some plastic surgery? Plastic surgery, huh? Yeah, maybe they could dynamite Mount Crapmore here

and carve me a new kisser. Oh, I don't know. Plastic surgery might make you look good on the outside, but you still might feel bad on the inside. make you look good on the outside, but you still might feel bad on the inside. But I look good on the outside, right? Yeah, but you'd feel bad inside. Plastic surgery it is.

Carl Carlson, you just saved my life. Hey, get out of there. Great extra gag that Homer decided to rob Moe all of a sudden. I think it was effective but i like i think the joke might be lost where it's like you hear the cha-ching like oh what a good idea and it's actually homer stealing oh that's the joke yeah totally missed it i don't think it's communicated as well as it could have been but that that's the joke it's really good that's the joke but yeah carl carlson it wouldn't be until season 15 i think that we learned lenny's name is lenny leonard i'm surprised it was it just that they thought lenny leonard's too obvious

after they did carl carlson so they weren't sure they'd do it and then by 15 they're like nah it's lenny leonard yeah they've got to be so similar you know i mean they're they they get gayer every season together lenny and carl but uh they they But I think they've been like full-on coupled together at this point, I think. I know some – I haven't watched the episode. Maybe you'll get to it soon, Lewis. But somebody – there was a viral thing that in a more recent episode, Lenny and Carl are just like casually holding hands together. Yeah, I I, I,

I, I, you know, I may be sleeping when that happens, but I look for it. I, you know, I've been surprised by how gay the show gets in the twenties,

like that. There are just more, there are more gay characters. I wouldn't call it, you know, fantastic representation that, you know, has meaningfully changed the way I engage with the show.

But it's gayer. There's more gay. I will say I recently rewatched the one where Homer is gay marrying people in town. I forgot there's some borderline transphobic stuff at the end. Oh, yes. That's a really bad one. But there is some wildly transphobic stuff in the episodes oh oh yes there is uh that that's a really bad one but there is uh some wildly transphobic stuff in the episodes i've been watching uh that has not aged particularly well

but they but but for for cis white gay men there's plenty of of of you know laughs to be had well that's all i care about is a lot of cap and republican as well i've said this before but uh scully i mean every showrunner starts by saying we're gonna get back to the family and then they're like what's mo doing uh but scully i think is very like after working in the business for so long and working on the show as a showrunner for three years a lot of his episodes are about show business yeah this is another one where it's just like it's about plastic surgery and show business and also like the production of a soap opera later so it's yet another one of these ones where there's like a trespick neil executive character and just the shenanigans of

behind the scenes of a tv show yes the as the show goes on they're more into i mean you can make you could say it's because they've used all their life experience they had before they were tv writers in episodes already so they're kind of out of life experience to draw on other than the experience of making a television show but yet it feels uh this is also the time in every episode where i say i guess matt graining probably wasn't there because i feel like he wouldn't be okay with this uh episode perhaps just because it's again so hollywood and inside but but he's too busy with futurama it's uh so scully's time to shine well so i thought you're gonna say scully does a Again, so Hollywood and inside, but he's too busy with Futurama. So Scully's time to shine.

Well, I thought you were going to say Scully does a lot of stuff with alcohol and drinking. That's true, yeah. I think he had a lot of personal experience, not as a drunk, but as growing up around a lot of drinkers. But yeah, so Mo decides he's going to do it. He's going to get plastic surgery. Then it cuts to another like very Tracy Ullman shorts kind of thing. Because like how many, when we watch those, how many of them were like Lisa, Bart and Maggie just like standing in the middle of the living room saying, let's play spaceman. Exactly. And this time they're just like, mom and dad are gone. Though it's cute it's cute seeing maggie like just enjoying a balloon like just like a baby but that's dangerous the baby shouldn't have a balloon

it could choke not alone with a balloon no that seems that seems dangerous on their part though also it's a pretty awesome balloon to still be like fully inflated that what what has to be at least the next day but that's also the problem with this b story that it can't line up with like surgeries that take days and days to recover from tv yes yeah bart and lisa try to grab the balloon it almost goes out the door and then in a very like weird moment it flies up the chimney instead impossibly that that's a it also looks like they sped up animation like that i think it was supposed to move slower originally yeah so they just sped it up with video effects and uh and then we even get a reference to hover bikes which we

heard about in the cult episode the joy of sex yes you need some fishing line and a comb and some wax paper to make your own hover bike and uh then after the they go off to chase a balloon we head to mo getting uh his plastic surgery appraisal i don't feel on the commentary they say it's supposed to be kind of like george harrison uh oh hamilton hamilton yeah george harrison sorry thing but i was like it definitely doesn't feel like george harrison but i don't really get hamilton either just as like in the terms of like he's just an orange man like a very leathery old man i only know george hamilton from like the talk show he had in the 90s with

some other person i forget who that was so that's that wasn't tammy faye that was um never mind i apologize but no i yeah i know what you're talking about i just knew him as a guy like he's he used to be in movies but like he was in zoro the gay blade he is troy mcclure he's a troy mcclure type he very much is troy yeah you're right though now when i looked it up like i i thought oh could this be based on a real guy who you know the surgeon to the stars he does look a little like dr 90210 from the E series. I don't know if you watch that any, Lewis. No, but I appreciate you thinking that's the kind of show I would watch because you're not wrong.

But no, I haven't. I'm not looking down. I thought for research purposes at least you might have. Absolutely, yes. No, but I have not. Yeah, I mean, I think he looks like a might. Yes. No, but I have not. Yeah. I mean, I think he looks like a generic plastic surgeon. I can see that.

I think it's a giant mistake to not have this be Nick Riviera, honestly, though. Well, you know what? You're right. We have like a fraudulent surgeon on the show with an accent played by Hank Azaria. You got him. But he's a good surgeon. He's a good plastic surgeon. Well, that's true.

I don't know if I can suspend disbelief that Nick Riviera could do the kind of work that he does. No, that's true. This guy is too competent at his job. Did not give Mo a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg. And by the way, the George Hamilton talk show was called George and Alana. I only know about it through Talk Soup. Yeah. It was his ex-wife he was doing a talk show with in the 90s.

Oh, that was the gimmick. Yeah. What a fascinating frame of reference. That is not how I think of George Hamilton, but I appreciate that your mind goes there. I know Jim J. Bullock had the show with Tammy Faye Baker as well. Again, Talk Soup. The Talk soup connection. I also, you know, Mo says he only wants stuff on the face, but clearly he fixes Mo's back,

unless having a better face improves his confidence enough that he just stands up straighter. I think so. He carries himself with more confidence, exactly. No work on the genitals, though. We hear they're a mess. Also, then there's Amin as he draws all over his face which i guess i that must have been happening in movies i i feel like it's more of a recent thing you'd see like oh this is

how plastic surgery works they just put a marker all over you like here's how we'll change you but and i've seen them drawing on people's faces with that with that like purple marker and then a mean joke at faye dunway's expense that it shows you who they feel safe making fun of i think yeah i mean it's cruel but if you google pictures you can understand sure yes she's also a very she's a notoriously mean person yeah yeah hey you know what yeah that's right okay she's never gonna be on this show not with that attitude we then cut to briefly bart and lisa chasing after a balloon which uh yeah that balloon also it's staying at a certain level of catchability instead of just

going up and away staying in the frame uh and yeah then it quickly cuts back to mo about to be operated on and i will say you know i don't think I've gone under anesthesia since seeing this episode. I've been lucky to not need that. But this would you like to see his genitals thing that has scared me ever since. And just like, what's to stop the doctor from looking at my genitals while I'm asleep? It's like the laser eye surgery joke in Bart to the Future that's been scaring me ever since, too. That's a very rational fear. Yeah, but I mean, they've seen a seen a million i've got nothing to hide but i just love how he offers it

up so casually like would you like to see his job and mo has to go like hey i'm still awake the new car smell uh in an aesthetic dispenser was very funny i do like that it caused a lot of mishaps in the operating room i think uh. But yes, Moe gets knocked out in this brief little clip here. Sorry, Doctor. Oh, Silverbells. Silverbells. It's funny to hear him sing Silverbells. I like that. Though we know Christmas is a tough time for Mo. It is, yeah.

It's bringing back some trauma. But all right, we get to the very sped up end of the balloon bee story here. It's all just for this one joke isn't it i guess so and i chuckled at it at the time so i mean i think they existed for a while but in the year 2000 i think was when i first heard of the log cabin republicans uh and for the you know of course it's the kind of thing like the new yorker or npr would write about because it's like oh you wouldn't expect this this person is gay but also a republican what so you got a lot of like human age stories honestly far more pub press than those

shitheads ever deserve in my opinion i i've always you know i they're horrible people, but I've always admired the name. Because I, you know, just because I was told when I first learned about them that it was because of Lincoln's secret gayness. I don't know if that's actually why they chose that name, but if that's true, I like it. I don't like them. I do believe it is that. Yeah, I do believe it is that. Yeah, I do believe it's that about that. The there was apparently specifically one member in his cabinet that Lincoln like people could find proof that like Lincoln slept in the same bed as this guy on trips and stuff. But I've heard other historians say like, as just what guys did. It was very cold. I thought it was because it was like the big gotcha i'd be like you think republicans are bad what about abraham lincoln well sure yeah i mean i think i think they're

they're reclaiming him as a republican i mean he was a republican but not really they're they're claiming as a republican and as a gay man however there was an actual gay president james buchanan James Buchanan, who I believe was Buchanan, who was not married, but had a live-in friend nicknamed Aunt Fancy. I forgot about this bit of history. You're right. Yes. I just think about Aunt Fancy a lot because that is my ideal term of endearment. I, yeah, so they could have been, you know, the Aunt Ant fancies would have been a much fun much more

fun campier kind of name but these people strike me as pretty humorless and what was their bumper sticker a gay president in 20 84 I will say it could be Pete Buttigieg if he gets elected at the age of 102 that's what when I saw

that I was like oh a gay president seems much closer now in time than it did in 2000 when i saw that i was like oh a gay president seems much closer now in time than it did in 2000 when i saw it but i said to myself like fuck it's gonna be pete budaj isn't it like i i hope i hope it's a different first gay president than that guy he's just look there's worse people than mayor pete's out there i don't want to be like too mean but i he's so fucking boring he's i just don't like him but that's just me but that's i think boring. I just don't like him. But that's just me. But that's... I think with our luck,

it'll be an actual gay Republican instead of a gay centrist who it might as well be. So we'll see. Honestly, I think you probably are right there. I think so. I mean, law-capping Republicans in general,

I don't like conservative queer people in general. As a gay dude dude i kind of hate them honestly because i feel that it's look it's one thing to be you don't have to vote democrat all the time if you're a queer person like whatever like that you totally you have reasons to be disappointed with them but to be like oh i mean i am going to support the republicans that is insane to me like that feels truly bonkers to me. And when I see those articles that like, I feel like it was like a couple of years ago,

the New York times did a thing of like these two husbands, they voted for Trump. Can you believe it? I'm like, well, yeah, you're rich white guys. Yeah.

Fucking duh. Like, I think, I think it is interesting though, how much has changed in the past 20 years in that, you know, Republicans, at least now are so much less, you know, Republicans, at least now,

are so much less, you know, wow, this is not really true. But like, the sort of Trumpy thing of like, they're not actually that socially conservative. And certainly Trump himself probably wasn't aside from being like a racist, like, I don't think he actually cared that much about gay stuff before having to pander to religious conservatives. But it's much more likely now that there would be, you know, a gay Republican president than there than, you know, 20 years ago, when that seems unfathomable, when, you know, even Democrats weren't, you know, super pro gay. Yeah. So I mean, times have changed in many ways, mostly for the worst, but in some ways for the better. I don't I don't know i don't know if

it's progress that like we could see a conservative gay man in the white house that's that's not exactly what i'm looking for but uh it is a notable change i i is can we call ellen a gay republican yet i feel we're getting closer day by day i i feel like a republican by proxy i mean i you know she she she close enough uh no i will also like the litmus test now it does feel like cis gay people don't i like i i feel like the donald trump election was when republicans nationally just had to give up on gay marriage like we're just done with it fine marriage equality you got it but but i i now feel the litmus test is like if somebody would have been a homophobe five years ago they're a transphobe now like that's yeah absolutely i mean that's sort of where they where they they can say like donald trump is the

most pro-gay president and they're not even i mean they're not even that far off which is kind of sick but not really but in terms of what he'd set up to that point yeah um and and and yet as soon as you bring up trans rights they're like well not you know not then we said gay we're not talking about trans people they're kind of moving away from from that side of queerness so i could have you know i could have a fuzzy memory on this but uh not to get too bogged down in modern politics but i believe our current president has not said uh a whole lot or really any anti-gay things but definitely anti-trans things we're just like you know we're not going to pay for trans people in the military you want them out of the military he's done some anti-gay stuff too in terms of like uh adoption and yeah that's right and basically and basically

you know kind of allowing for more religious persecution definitely that yeah so that that that affects the cis gays too but um yeah uh trans people are definitely more affected by by most of these laws than than cis gay men especially wealthy white ones though uh we i mean he's kind of a non-factor usually but mike pence is there and he is a classic republican like he's he's the old school version of it uh that probably will just be the guy next time anyway. But but all right. Anyway, I don't want to get too too off topic, but I'm just remembering that woman now who voted for Buttigieg and didn't know he was gay and asked for her vote back. I think I think of her often and I wonder how she's doing.

People just prove that even gay men can be like bloodless uh corporate climbers like it's it's capable of all of us uh anyway all right so that's the end of the gay republican bit they uh which he kind of does just standing a cul-de-sac where they're just like no that won't be our mascot anyway here's your balloon the end and a free bumper sticker as we discussed yes yeah uh and so then they come back to mo's facial surgery being unveiled i love how long they make it take yeah and the first one the first they unwrap a woman and it's a parody of that twilight zone episode i have the beholder where they you find out like they're doing surgery on a woman the entire time you find out she's a normal human woman from earth that's what she looks like everyone else is a hideous alien but but it's in the eye exactly what a twist eh i watched the episode again not that long ago it's it's so even if you i mean yes

we know the twist now but it's very unsettled because you see no one else's face the whole time and you're kind of like why aren't you seeing their faces so i don't know i'm saying i'm saying that 2000 episode is overrated great concept though it's yeah it's all building up to one thing over the course of the 30 minutes i do want a very obvious twist yeah i gotta wonder if i'm watching this in 1965 uh as a fresh viewer i'm like they haven't shown a face for 20 minutes now you're thinking about your buddies that died in the war. You're not caring about these plot twists. You're as drunk as Babe Ruth. Like Eddie never saw it coming.

Chug. Yeah, they also, I do like Homer going like, hurry up. I need to pee. That's great. And yeah, Homer's like, okay, now do Mo. And even the guy starts sweating as he takes it off. It's just so many pauses for the reveal of this. And then Mo's beautiful face is revealed.

Though I like when he thinks it was destroyed. He's like, I'm going to go hide in a cave periodically emerging to sue you. I like that but yes mo's face is revealed and he's he is a handsome man by simpson's character design standards do you think it's partially inspired by hank is area's real face or um i feel i see a little of it in there i yeah maybe it may be like the hair at the time yeah but like this is some magic cosmetic surgery and that he's ultimately healed immediately like i had like a clogged pore like cut open with a tiny scalpel i bled like a pig for like a week it's a very visceral uh image so thank you for that oh thank you uh i i think i think mo

is handsome by my standards beyond just simpson standards oh sure i think i especially like that they kept his hair color we love like a handsome sort of silver fox he's definitely well as he will say later like he applied for that show 25 years ago so most like pushing 50 by at least by the age established in this episode anyway the little rascals joke cannot be canon no okay let's just say he was lying about, well, no, he had a poster, so it'd have to be a fake poster, too, when he said, nah, I was the ugly kid. No, he's not the ugly one. He was smelly.

Speaking of this episode being a horny one, we got sexy nurses, like four sexy nurses saying goodbye to him. And, yeah, also that there's a little gag about Mo briefly dying on the operating table which that was when it hit me like wait this should have been nick riviera doing it but but i i now agree with you lewis that it's uh the abilities of the a doctor matter quite a lot he has to be good he has to be a good doctor uh but mo realizes he has a second chance. And your new life begins today.

A new life. A second chance. For revenge. That brown patch needs a little H2O. Oh, yeah. Hey, Duffman. Let's see how you like a sticker on your face. Yeah.

Duffman, can't breathe. Oh, no. Oh. So the thought of a doctor seeing your genitals made you afraid of surgery but not the idea of dying on the operating table and having to be resuscitated I guess not no I don't know why that's a good joke I don't know well

honestly now I'm more scared of suffocating in the way that Mo kills Duffman. Throw away all your stickers. I've been keeping all these giant face stickers. It locked away all this time. I love the fresh start. For revenge.

That's so great. And then Mo approaches a woman who turned him down for the springtime pumpkin dance. I never thought that was a joke till now yeah and she's actually apologetic until homer breaks her window uh homer homer should be arrested multiple times this episode i think i like in these seasons where homer is suddenly like another character's best friend and always hanging out with them and just very invested in their lives like apu and mo ned ned yeah it uh well again we know he doesn't have a job anymore we've we've he doesn't go to work at all uh and and also though on the commentary

matt selman cops to like these are the fantasies of many comedy writers who dream of getting revenge against women who rejected them so i mean what was her crime she had she had turned him down yeah that was it she just wouldn't go to a dance with him like didn't even really embarrass him yeah yeah but uh you know obviously homer homer didn't take that apology too well so he smashed her window but uh and so they head off to their final bit of revenge. words ugly i wanted marianne on gilligan's island ugly not cornelius on the planet of the apes ugly tv ugly not ugly ugly i've been called ugly pug ugly fogly pug fogly but never ugly ugly well it's time to get some closure. Extreme closure. Homer wants to kill everybody.

He is going to, as we saw his plan, was to light the building on fire. So I think he was planning to kill everyone there. Yes. I can't believe they got away with Fugly. Right? Yeah, you're right. That is pretty close to the line of dirtiness. I love Pug Fugly.

Pug Fugly is pretty great. the line of dirtiness i love pug fugly pug fugly is pretty great yeah but i mean this is what's dark about this is that is how casting directors talk you know yeah shows that's uh with with all the pushes for you know having much more diversity and casts on shows and all that like i i think a lot of shows don't they always cast conventionally attractive people no matter what other diversity goals they have in mind they often are still casting with like well obviously it's a conventionally attractive person we're going to have on television there's a great jim gaffigan joke about watching british television and just being shocked or seeing a movie with Halle Berry and he's like, she should just be a model.

She can solve all of her problems. She's gorgeous. Or that's like Arnold Schwarzenegger in any movie. I'm a construction worker. I want to talk about soap operas really quick because I grew up watching a lot of them because my grandma was a major soap opera watcher. And my theory now is soap operas were anime for old people

because they just never ended. There was thousands of episodes and they've been running forever. So as of 2020, and I don't know how things are being handled in the COVID world, there are currently four of the oldest soap operas still running.

A lot of them just recently ended within the past 10 years. So they are The Young and the Restless that started in 1973. The Bold and the Beautiful that started in 1987. General Hospital started in 1963, but that was also, there was lots of radio stuff before that. And then there's Days of Our Lives started in 65. I believe there are over 14,000 episodes of General Hospital to date, and that is still running. Again, I don't know what COVID has done to this. they're on hiatus or whatever maybe this will kill the soap opera

but i grew up watching a lot of soap operas my favorite one was all my children watching it as like an eight and nine year old um that's the one i like the most i watched passions i was the only one that i watched because it was supernatural oh and i'm glad you brought that up Lewis because that started in July of 1999 right before this episode was probably written and the weird plot lines on this one like with the resurrected Cleopatra that feels like they had just got

into passions and started watching it like this soap opera is so weird I think they're drawing from passions even though it had just started around this time didn't all my children have a demonic possession plot line yeah they did and also the the parody show soap they did uh i mean that doesn't shouldn't count the same but yeah on soap they did a rosemary's baby uh story arc as well my my question about this is that like you know i didn't really think about this until we re-watching it

but there's like this soap opera trope that i'm not sure if it's a real trope or just a joke about soap operas but the idea of a character getting plastic surgery and being replaced by a different actor is that a thing that actually happened on soap operas or is that just you know a thing that people said because they often recast their characters i think from time to time it happened but it's not i don't think it happened a ton it was more they'd an actor would leave the show and they'd kill them off. And then, you know, five years later, the actor comes back and they're just say like, I was dead. Or another of their fun casting things is where someone will have a baby for a big baby event story. And then the writers will decide like, like well it's going to be boring to

watch him raise a child for 10 years so then they just age up the kid like 15 years in a day or or a kid goes upstairs and never comes back so i was wondering if these shows are still running and i went to general hospital's twitter account and they're talking about current plot lines as of two hours ago. Yeah, so they I know that one of them was using dummies, I believe, for sex scenes. That was a whole thing.

I don't remember which one it was. Maybe Bold and Beautiful. But I think that one of the soaps was like the first show to come back and film during the pandemic because you you simply cannot not film a soap opera yeah i'm reading one of the tweets it sounds like a description of a plot from it never ends does spinelli have the ammunition he needs to bring down peter august west coast tune in and deduce for yourselves i yeah i you know i was a bit of a

for a few summers i watched them with my mom. Oh summertime. Yeah that's well so like for me it was I'm watching The Price is Right and then my mom comes home for lunch hour and she's like alright it's Young and the Restless time and I'll just stay on CBS and just continue

watching it so I watch Young and the Restless and All My Children a bit. i was so sad when all my children ended i watched i watched the series finale of that because that almost never happens a soap opera season finale and or series finale and of course i always still watch the soap opera that is pro wrestling they are the same yeah i i always appreciated about soap operas that things were dragged out so long that you could dip in and out and you would still know what was happening because storylines lasted forever. Yeah, and a lot of them were just characters reiterating what happened.

Like, I saw you with Glenn at the pool. Yeah. For weeks and weeks. It hit me, I think, as I became more of a observant TV viewer that I realized like, oh, this entire week of episodes has been these two actors in the same place. Just constantly restating stuff and they're never finished. Like they won't get to what I'm waiting for them to do. And lots of meaningful looks at each other that eat up 20% of the episode. Yeah, like I watched a lot of this in the 90s, a lot of these. And then in the late 2000s, my grandma couldn't drive anymore. so i would go over and take care of her and drive her around to

go shopping and stuff and i would sit and watch these with her and i was like these never changed they still are so cheap and so cheesy and i love them i love the acting level they work on and to be like a good soap opera actor takes a lot of different skills that that you know other legitimate actors can do like i don't know could could matthew mcconaughey do a great job but having to do like 80 hours a week on a soap opera acting james franco tried that he uh that was what was general hospital he was on that yes yeah i was like his experiment to see if he could pull it off most most soap stars now and and i'm exaggerating

it's not most of them several several soap stars have uh transitioned to real housewives now so um you know beverly hills housewives is like largely soap opera stars at this point uh and they've cycled in and out but uh it it makes sense but like what they what they bring not everyone can be a good housewife and not everyone can be a good soap star. So it is a specific skill set. I also remember now that like right before Buffy, Sarah Michelle Galar was Susan Lucci's daughter. She played her character on All My Children. And I think she even came back a couple of to be like a week of episodes with with buffy

is there sarah michelle appearing on the show again uh i think in that case they did recast character but and susan lucci finally won that emmy in 1999 over yeah actually this is like right after she finally won it they couldn't uh how much of our audience did we lose yeah we've lost everybody now though i wish it was search for the sun i wish they were going on search for the sun i was that was i looked it up it only made four appearances search for the sun basically three times in season two and three and then in season seven homers watching search for the sun would like i'll make sure you don't get apricot that's right yeah that was in king size homer and that feels like what could have happened in this episode where a generic soap

opera is written and then you know the writers realize hey wait we already have a soap opera in springfield don't we let's let's do that instead but in this case they just make up it never ends i don't think it had the prominence of like I on Springfield or itchy and scratchy or any of the other fictional shows in the universe. Yeah. Or McBain. McBain. Yeah. But yeah.

So Homer, Homer and Moe, they confront the producers here. And we also get to meet a poor actor getting replaced for daring to ask for more money. And I've been Dr. Ted Winslow for 25 years. It's time I got a raise. Oh, shut up, you windy old hack.

And another thing, you have to stop calling me that. Me? 25 years ago, you said I was too ugly to play Dr. Tad Winslow. I did? Well, that's why pencils have erasers, hon. You're our new Dr. Tad Winslow. Really? You mean it? But there can't be two Dr. Tad Winslows that's going to...

Oh. I've been waiting all my life for this moment. Whoa, whoa, Homer! Change your plans. Whatever. That's a good act break, even though it does not put Homer in the greatest light. Homer was like, fine, I won't burn down a building i just remember too this kind of was happening at the same time as friends uh the dr drake ramore stuff was a lot a few years earlier in friends but uh that had a similar situation for daytime tv actors i think these the though okay we just did alone again

natural diddly which is about an actor wanting more money and getting fired and replaced oh no you're right and this later comes in of just like hey i found out you're killing off my character fuck you like that both they i feel like it's more than a coincidence that this is coming right after they let go of an actress and killed off her character out of a pay dispute i never thought of that but you're totally right oh wow yeah that's a dark undercurrent there and and also i want to give a shout out to a helpful twitter user actually so um on our other podcast what a cartoon a couple months ago we did the anime ronma one half and a twitter username malcolm rambert he shared with me the latin american dub of simpsons the scene with this with the original tad he says that he's been tad winslow's voice for 25 years and the voice actor for ronma like so it's so

it's an incredibly random joke by anime dubbers shoved into the spanish language version of the simpsons i love it it was shocking to hear so uh so thank you malcolm for sharing that with me i've there's it's uh it's always interesting to see especially you know in the many different dubs and localizations like changes have to be made sometimes i still wonder if just like you know in in any non-english language or even for english speakers in like england or australia do they get all of these very specifically american jokes and what part of the thrill of it though is the you know the americana of the simpsons i know like when comedy central would air british stuff like in the late 90s they would have their website with like footnotes like here's what they mean when they say this i would really i would love the

idea of like an australian dub of the simpsons though where just all the jokes are are redone for an australian audience uh all duff has just turned changed into fosters i actually australians don't like fosters i make i'm making an american changed into fosters i actually australians don't like fosters i make i'm making an american-centric assumption there i think australia was the one place where they actually made duff in the 90s before it was shut down for breaking copyrights that's right uh and so mo is cast in the show as dr tad winslow and marge is a regular viewer of It Never Ends. Cleo, Cleo, you brought music to my heart, but this relationship can never work.

I'm a doctor and you're a 5,000-year-old mummy I brought back to life. But I love you, Tad, and together we can burn all the cities of the earth. It's against hospital regulations, damn it. And Clive dances just waiting for me to slip up. So, Lenny, how are things working out with you and that girl next door? Eh, it's over.

She got a window shade. Whoa, whoa, whoa. If you must grope me, ladies, please. A little softer. Okay, now, heart. Hey, there are women in our ball. Hey, whoa, fear me. I'm a little busy, Homer.

You can pour it yourself. And that's where Homer just relaxedly starts breathing beer, basically. Looks pretty nice. That's a very vaudeville joke to the woman you're seeing. She got a window shave. Though at the core of the joke is that lenny is stalking a woman it's a classic joke that maybe hasn't aged super well uh and i also love that clive dancer is literally watching him at all oh that's a hilarious drawing that's great uh that but yes it it only hit me on this viewing that when he said calls her cleo he means she is

the mummy of cleopatra reborn. Again, it's got to be a passions reference, right? I think you're right. And also they said that the drawings of the people in the opening, that's from character designer Joe Wack. It's just straight up his drawings on screen. That's great. Yeah, I know like the initial thing you see is a parody of Days of Our Lives, like the hourglass. Instead of an hourglass on the beach, it's a grandfather clock on the beach, which is funny.

I like that. I love the statement of it never ends because these shows are seemingly endless. Though I'm shocked that Moe can even run his bar because soap opera filming seems very time consuming. Yeah, I'm impressed that he is juggling those two jobs, which he wouldn't really need to do if he had a soap opera salary. I guess they're underpaying the actors. So perhaps he has to leave the bar. As Homer, then they cut to Homer and Moe running lines together in his dressing room, which I love that Homer and Moe were very comfortable with Homer being turned on by this performance. You only care about your ear ear nose and throat pavilion uh and then mo describes having acting heartworms basically that uh when

homer says yeah our dog had that then it comes uh they on the commentary i love how they're just fully open of like there's like five arched things that have to happen for the rest of this episode for it to work starting with the top secret envelope that is clearly labeled that it's a bunch of spoilers uh but that's when mo finds out some bad news i didn't bring you back to life so you could make a fool of me at the club you don't love me the only thing you love is your ear nose and throat pavilion i've dedicated my life to diseases of the head holes. But the one hole I've never been able to fix is the one in my soul. That was amazing, Mo. I'm actually a little turned on.

Yeah, hey, I got a gift. As a child, I was bitten by the acting bug. Then it burrowed under my skin and laid eggs in my heart. Now those eggs are hatching, and I and the feeling is indescribable. I know what you mean. Our dog had that. Looks like my character gets back together with that evil Contessa. The one with the amulet?

Precisely. Then I get in a skydiving accident and have to be rushed to the graveyard? They're killing off Dr. Tad Winslow! Let me see that. Interior coroner's office. Close up on Dr. Winslow. Let me see that. Interior coroner's office. Close up on Dr. Winslow's mangled corpse. Coroner, let's get that brain out and wait and call it a day. Yep, that does sound kind of bad.

Well, if they're going to stomp on my dreams, the least I can do is go out in a blaze of sour grapes. I love that thing that makes no sense. Rush to the graveyard when you imagine it is like lines on a page yeah uh close up how are you gonna get that on tv close up on mangled corpse let's get that brain out i when i was watching this again i was surprised because i thought i remembered how the character died and then i i was supposed to die in this sequence and then i realized i was thinking about uh friends and how dr drake remora dies falling down an elevator shaft that's great i love that uh that bit where he falls down the elevator shaft and they have to be clear like no he definitely died but i think in a later episode he gets to

come back as and then he uh drakeore lived there yes i i my my my friend's knowledge is rusty at this point um i had to look up the death just to make sure i was thinking of the right thing and i learned that uh joe lieberman complained about that friends episode because there was a whole talk about condoms wow right it's where they there's only one condom in the house, and will Rachel or Courtney Cox, Monica, who will be the one to use it? And they're kind of arguing over it. Well, Joe Lieberman was appalled, just so you guys know. That episode, yeah. That episode, by me, it's just like, just do oral and hand stuff then.

Come on. They treated like, oh, the night's over. No, no using the condom. Figure it out. Right? Yeah they come on it's not a they treated like oh the night's over no no using the condom but figure it out right yeah come on uh but uh but yeah that uh that drake remori thing too i always wondered if that was like an internal joke in the show because he gets killed off because his actor he was bragging that he writes all of his lines and i wonder if it was like actually a writer on the show was mad and one of the actors saying like oh he improvise a lot actually for the sake of me and our listeners what the hell are you talking about oh sorry on on friends on

friends uh the character you know joey's on the soap opera and he is killed off after doing an interview in which he claims that he writes the lines for his character okay yeah they uh i think he comes by in a body no i'm thinking of a different joke from friends and the body bag joke is when he thinks he's going to be on homicide life on the streets but then uh a body bag walks by and he's like oh that's me uh this i've been wakening so many friends memories here with none of the homophobic jokes and i deleted that from my memory but uh but yeah so mo decides he's gonna burn every bridge on his way out it's gonna he's going to be just a total asshole about it uh though actually when you know the twist at the end here why is it why is a dream sequence describing in detail like a corp being cut up by the coroner? It's a nightmare, I think.

Sure. Okay. Yeah. I can go with that. That's fine. It's much easier for me to suspend disbelief about that than Homer and Moe's revenge plan, which I have real trouble with. I think we're going to burn down the building. Not that.

I mean what they actually end up doing, which requires them to be filming the soap opera live. Yeah. I mean, they definitely know what they're doing here because there are so many things you have to buy into. Like, number one, the soap opera is live. Number two, they wouldn't just turn off the cameras immediately. I think that's why they cop to it when the producer's like,

no, no, let him talk. And then waiting until the last second now yeah uh it's uh apparently larry doyle bases on like tootsie because there's a similar thing in tootsie i haven't seen it apparently but apparently there's like a big confession on the air and uh it's allowed to play no one's just like okay turn this off this is dangerous we can't let this happen at least on lisa the simpson they have a line of saying like no don't i'm trying to get fired exactly exactly that yeah that that's yeah okay yeah uh but it's very funny but also again with a horny episode like this one they cut to mo in a hot tub with a woman who is seemingly topless yeah like there's so much so much boobs in this episode uh but and

she does have her amulet on as described though so uh so yes i i guess in springfield they still do soap operas the old-fashioned way of being a live teleplay like they did in the 50s as the scene's about to play out homer walks in with sexy results. Dr. Winslow! Why, who are you? I am an angel from the future. Angel? What the f***? Should I cut him off?

No. Let's see where this is going. And what do you have to tell us, oh angel of the future? You're going to die in a skydiving accident. How tragic. Tell me more. Gabriela's baby shower will be invaded by terrorists with sexy results. Ooh, that's unexpected. What else?

Well, Sister Bernadette will leave the convent and start a softball team with sexy results. What's Dad doing on the show? Who cares? He's dishing out the dirt. And only then do we find out that Professor Galloway's half-sister is plotting to take over international perfume and wine. He just gave away a year's worth of storylines. Cut him off. No. I love Marge underlining sexy results twice. It's a fun but also very strange joke that the guy says fudge and they bleep it.

Yeah. I always enjoyed that. I never caught that until today. They leave just enough in that you can tell it's fudge at the end. Like, bzzz, is there. But, okay. I also, I've said before many times, like, I think this should be a meme. But I think Homer coming in as the angel who spoils everything, I think that could totally be a meme.

Like, Homer the spoiler angel in a tweet spoils movies or whatever. We at least need to cop, you know, with sexy results. We need to steal that. Yes, with sexy. Look to the camera, as as he says with sexy results uh and i i mean homer's outfit is also crazy but homer is a crazy sitcom character in this sequence here too and another very insider joke i didn't realize until listening to the commentary the first time was that the just the different types of paper and what that means in movie i think this was the first joke about uh script pages being in different colors i'd heard before which is is usually not

about a dream sequence but uh i i it works in this context yeah usually uh as they explain on the commentary you start with white paper in a script and if you do rewrites the rewritten pages are then on like pink page yeah and if you keep doing rewrites there's more and more colors and they they say on the commentary if you get to goldenrod you've done quite a lot of rewrites uh but yeah i the only thing i can remember uh before this hearing about like scripts on different pages was like in interviews about the x-files movie they said oh these are printed on un-xeroxable paper like red text on red paper so you can't spoil everything kind of thing i i think scream scream talked a lot about how they couldn't be spoiled i recall i think the simpsons movie was like that too oh yeah yeah though they rewrote that so many times that even when I read spoilers,

like, Oh, Aaron Brockovich is in the Simpsons movie. It's like, no, she is not. Oh no. What could have been?

Uh, and, uh, yes, we get, you know, I thought I said that once Lindsay Nagel was fully established earlier in this season,

that there were never other cousins of Lindsay Nagel, but this is a cousin of Lindsay. Definitely. Yeah. She's more of a producer than an executive, but she serves the same role. the very cynical businesswoman they really were not into cynical businesswomen who represented power in movie television structure back to take them down i mean they they're mad at guys who are executives in this season too but there's there's

something specific about the energy they give to lindagle as a note-giving woman, I think. But yes, the Moe finds out he is fired. Yes! What the hell are you doing? Sticking it to you for killing off my character. You idiot. Dr. Winslow was only going to die in a dream. What?

Pink pages always mean a dream. I thought dreams was on Goldenrod. No, Goldenrod is for coma fantasies. I see. So, uh... What time tomorrow? Escort these men out. Now.

Get your hands off me. Get off! I don't need your stinking show anyway. With a mug like this, I can get on any soap in Springfield. And then the accident happened. I forgot that it just fell on his head. It's a great drawing. Which should decapitate a man, I would think, or at least break his neck. But hey, we're in a cartoon world here i i i definitely recall in my first viewing

of this at at 17 uh thinking like looking at the clock and going wait there's really not a lot of time left how's mo gonna is mo keeping this face like once he said uh that he was leaving and slammed the door that's when i realized like all right okay the face is going away too he's not just losing the job and we get a reference to the classic buster keaton gag except this time he does not dot there isn't a window hole in it it just crushes his face which should have just mangled his face it's a weird line they put in there like oh they told me i'm not supposed to put any pressure on it which i guess is how it reverts is if you right uh i mean trying to trying to decipher the logic of of what happens to his face feels like a futile uh effort but i i appreciate that line um i think i find that line funnier than the than the kind of ending bit because

uh it's it's such a half-assed explanation that it's like in and of itself very funny to me yeah i mean mo is really underselling the danger he's in he's worried about pressure on his face when there's like a part of a set crushing his skull he's not like i can't breathe or or also just making noises yeah because it seems to the top of it is on his neck but yeah this all has to happen you cannot have survived it we can all agree on that. But instead, his face is revealed, and it's back to the old Moe face. He then reflects on his old life.

What? Sorry about your face, Moe. Nah, it's just as well. That handsome face was nice, but it was too much maintenance. I had to wash it, rub it with Neatsfoot oil. You did me a favor, Homer. And to think, I was about to sell the bar to Hooters. Yeah, you were...

I guess that wraps it up. There's one thing I don't get, though. When my face was crushed, why did it go back to my old face? I mean, shouldn't it have turned into some kind of third face that was different? Don't make no... Perfect time for that music to cut in. I do enjoy that. First off, let me complain again about horny Homer.

I don't like Homer being horny and him welcoming a Hooters in the place of Moe's. I don't know. I just don't like when Homer's too horny. I don't think we enjoy a hooters experience over most not as not as like an every night thing he missed the day i know it's a hooters is a family establishment uh but but yes also the i love the posing on most one thing i i don't get though like he kind of has like a jacket his dishrag over shoulder. So it's almost like a Columbo type of thing or just like the end of an old sitcom kind of thing. I was reading some review of this episode on and by reading a review, I mean reading a quote on Wikipedia.

And it was someone complaining about this meta ending and how they had used it several times. And I was trying to think of other times they had sort of acknowledged the very sitcom thing of reverting back to the norm at the end of an episode with like a massive change. I can't specifically think of very many examples. Oh, I thought about the end of Das Busch with, you know, the sort of like half-assed Moe Saved Them ending. Are there others that I'm forgetting? Well, I can think of a few uh the

reversion thing you mentioned remind me of king-sized homer where burns is going to make homer exercise off his weight loss and then at the end he's like i'll just play for the blasted liposuction that's it like uh but isn't uh also i think it's uh homer loves ned where it's like next week on the simpsons yeah and it's just like he just says, screw you, Flanders, when he walks by. Because at least it's like, oh, my God, is Dad actually friends with Flanders? Then you see next week and Homer hates him again. Yes, and they have to go to the sleep in Haunted Mansion. That's right.

That one's even better because it is just like by being the next episode of The Simpsons, it reverted without it even being explained on camera. And they're back i mean the only like i i obviously think of the armin armin uh tamazarian episode in terms of like a massive character change that's that is never addressed again under penalty of death yeah um or whatever it is uh so i guess that's the the best comparison but i i don't mind the ending personally yeah i do like i'm a fan of these jokes where they have to acknowledge like we have to hit the button and uh it's so contrived that

we're just gonna shrug and admit it because every sitcom has to do this in in this in this fashion in this style though i was talking to you bob before recording that this is this is a lot of this in this season so yeah grift of the magi nine episodes ago eight episodes ago that ended with them going like here's a bunch of christmas endings at once to explain away how the school got their money back and then they just kind of did a lot of like they did bill clinton shrugging at the end like yeah what you gonna do like they did and i mean right before this one right before this one is missionary impossible yeah that's the worst example i mean it's the best example it's the worst version of

this because it's just like well there is no resolution yes homer's about to fall into lava with lisa jr and then betty white cuts in and goes like oh that homer anyway and then it's just like i i think it uh it feels like a just defensiveness on their part i'm just like look we know you're gonna complain on no homers so we're gonna let you know we know you'll complain so screw you in this case i find it's more acceptable because most story is over they just need to change his face in many cases the story isn't over or they find a cheap way out of it i mean yeah this is this there is a very cheap uh deus ex machina of his head being crushed but there is an explanation so we do see what happens and he did have pressure applied to it which he was expressly told not to do it it does at least fit of like a story had a beginning middle and end it

wasn't that the ending was coming and then they ran out of pages and they just have to have betty white come in and be like there's no way to get homer out of lava uh so forget it and by the way neats foot oil is used to treat leather so that's the joke that he was putting leather treatment on his face uh but i do think any any good use of like though you know also-ba-ba-da. Though, you know, also the Manchin family ended with Homer like crying over the credits and him going like, it's not exactly the same, but it was Homer like being given a lesson

and then going like, no, I reject the lesson. I didn't learn any lesson from this. And then there was also the weird ending to the football game where the leg flies off of a guy and then Hibbert just goes like, more work for me. That's in Faith Off. That's the one.

But I do think they were doing it a lot at this point. This one is funny. Even I laughed at the end of Missionary Impossible when we did it, but it's such a cop out. But then again, the last season they had the loch ness monster that was uh almost as much of a cop-out as this too i think they're just being they're personally tickled by these non-endings and they got a little excessive i agree yeah it gets excessive but it is funny and i mean their main job is to be funny so i can't i don't want to complain too much not that i haven't complained this entire podcast but i mean you know

normally well i mean i think that you know one of the things that happens obviously is that the show becomes more heightened and they're doing more episodes like this is you kind of have to have these cheat endings because otherwise it won't really work if you're gonna have every episode be a reset but you also want to take things to the extreme and give a character an entirely different face you kind of have to take some sort of narrative shortcut there. But this was a fun episode, at least for like Moe sillies. I mean, Moe's always a fun guy to hang around with, with his disgustingness, his horribleness as a person. It feels like a breath of fresh air in this part of the season because spring of 2000 was like just a weird, dark, for the show with all of these famously uh hated episodes and mods death i feel like it's like ah this is just

like a regular episode full of yucks no and i welcomed it i am i mean yeah watching it again i was actually surprised because i do have a lot of memories of watching it at the time or watching these episodes and being put off by the direction the show was going in and i i don't know watching it now it seems it seems pretty harmless and and and funny and uh a little bit more cohesive story-wise than some of the episodes surrounding it yeah i'm starting to think 17 year old me was maybe too harsh on these things and was was maybe releasing some uh other pent-up aggressions in the direction of simpsons that in an unhealthy way maybe though well just i mean is this the same this is this the same season as saddles or galactica oh yeah yeah i didn't even hate that one we're we're in very different you know this feels more much more grounded even even with the uh you know kind of

sci-fi fantasy element of uh someone getting a new face and then losing it very easily yeah and there's no kid rock in this one so that's a positive too i feel like i said it before on this podcast but there are more important things to be mad about now but i think up until a certain point in time like being mad at a tv show could be part of your personality like i hate family guy and i'm gonna talk about it all the damn time i was one of those people and with simpsons as well so i'm glad we've moved past that as a culture i remember being in a uh oh god what do you even call it you i were you it was like not a message board but you you would it was like an email list like and you would email people with your simpsons opinions

you know what do you call that a list serve I don't yeah let's serve would be right yeah this this was like pre you know this was early I don't know must have been around this time and I remember um writing a really sad post about how I wanted to understand why the show had changed and why I didn't like as much as I used to and i i remember someone writing back and just saying yeah mike scully yeah yeah yeah that's who you blamed then i i was part of the community back then uh reading all tv simpsons the news group and just every day was just uh calling out different writers names like who do we hate this week uh i yeah i i agree that you know somewhat revisiting these episodes i enjoy them a lot more than i remember at the time i think a lot of that is the nostalgia of it but also kind of taking in the

context of of how far the show you know has gone and how much it's changed since then that there's something kind of like as wacky as this was it's like relatively down to earth i agree yeah I'll I'll be back for season 24 and and we will still be doing it then for sure yes yeah uh but but Lewis thank you so much for coming on it was it was great to have you back I mean what uh what do you want to promote uh what's what's going on with you these days absolutely nothing um nothing to promote by the time this comes out maybe I'll have started uh the podcast I keep threatening to start but for the time this comes out maybe I'll have started the podcast I keep threatening to start but for the time being people could just follow me on twitter at lewispitesman it's a it's a fun twitter feed to read even it's it's been a light in in my days

on the the poison site that is twitter I've enjoyed your feed thank you I appreciate that so thanks again to lewis for being on the show please check out all of his stuff and as for us you want to check out more of our stuff and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up for five bucks a month. You'll get just that, but also everything behind the $5 paywall that includes all the bonus podcasts we made since we started this Patreon

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if you sign up at ten bucks a month and you get the monthly what a cartoon movie podcast where we cover a different animated feature film each month this month uh you know it hasn't been decided yet at the time of this recording but i'm sure it's something scary last month we did the direct-to-video disney classic aladdin's return of jafar and there is a giant back catalog of them if you sign up now over 100 hours of additional premium podcasts you can only hear if you are a $10 and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so please consider signing up right now so i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast by the way

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