Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Saturdays of Thunder With Dan McCoy

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

As Homer once more fears he's a bad father, we welcome on the cohost of The Flop House Podcast/Emmy-winning writer, the fantastic Dan McCoy! We dig into this ep about soap box derby racing that features some of the funniest cutaways in the series, as well as references to some then-popular famous monsters. All that plus the tragic death of Scoey on this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking of the Hill, the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Mackie and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons who is here with me today as always. Hey it's Henry Gilbert and I'm still trying to be half the man Henry Winkler is. And who do we have on the line our special guest today? Dan McCoy that's me the voice you're hearing now. And this week's episode is Saturdays of Thunder. I don't always keep my cool like the ponds but my love for my kids has given me plenty of happy days. This episode originally aired on November 14th, 1991.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, boy, Bobby, the Cape Fear remake is released in theaters. An instance of going postal happens in michigan that kills and injures five people and michael jackson's black or white music video debuts right after this episode all around the world oh okay yeah so uh both cape fear and a postal worker going postal two things that will be later lampooned on the simpsons yes quite quite heavily the uh in both cases yeah i think both in season five yes yeah though i guess cape fear was at the end of production four but it did air in season five

yeah and that cape fear remake as a little kid i really only watched it because the simpsons did an entire episode parodying it shot for shot uh but when i later looked into it you know at the time it was seen by movie fans as uh almost like martin scorsese selling out because it's like oh he's making a remake and it's produced by steven spielberg boy scorsese's really selling out like that was seen as him doing a marvel movie of the time i think even well i mean sorry to jump in but like it is my understanding that like he he was to the degree that like he needed a a hit like he's like what can i make that will actually you know make a significant amount of money and that you know that's how you get a career i i uh you know as someone uh nominally in show business i, and this is funny to say since I have a podcast where I make fun of movies, but like I always like bristle when people are like, oh, they're selling.

I was like, well, no, I mean, yeah, he had to make money. Like you want a successful movie. Well, Dan, as a movie expert, who's scarier? You know, Robert De Niro in K-Fear, the original one with Robert Mitchum. Who's scarier, you know, Robert De Niro in K-Fear, the original one with Robert Mitchum? Who's scarier? I mean, I just, look, I understand that De Niro is, you know, perhaps the most lauded male actor of a generation, you know, fighting it out with, I don't know, Pacino, Daniel Day-Lewis. But I don't know. He's not my Day-Lewis. But I don't know. He's not my guy.

I like Robert Mitchum. I love. What's the character's name? Max Cady? Is that the name of the character? Let's say it is. Let's say it is. I feel like the Nero's version would knife you,

but Mitchum's version would just beat you to death with his bare fists. He was a much larger man. He was a much larger man. He was a much larger man. I mean, yeah, Mitchum did not have to work hard to exude an aura of dangerousness and, like, mysterious dangerousness. Like, dangerousness that would take you off guard. He would be perfectly charming one moment and then, like, dumping you in the river. Well, he had to be scary with the haze code meanwhile like the hero had this you know r-rated creepiness to deal with with uh

he him and julia his stuff with julia lewis so creepy in that movie yeah yeah and yes the the going postal thing when i looked it up like oh yeah this was the first instance of it it was like oh kills and injures five whoop-dee-doo like that's that's not even headlines in america these days i tell you yeah i mean it was it was such an isolated incident that i think until uh maybe this is gonna get dark i'm sorry but maybe until columbine people will be like oh yeah there was the guy in the watchtower there was like the luby's cafeteria and the postal service guy three shootings there were more but now it's just like who can keep track yeah impossible yes yeah but yeah that's not funny at all yeah but who but who is funny is our special guest dan mccoy of the

flop house podcast welcome to the show dan and sorry to segue from uh spree killings to your to your name there i apologize that's fine i i haven't said i realize i haven't said anything funny yet and i've probably alienated many in the audience by poo-pooing uh robert de niro who i do who i do actually like uh a lot he's just not my favorite but uh yeah that's me dan mccoy i won't get sidetracked on worrying what imaginary listeners are thinking about him and i do believe you know we've had some emmy nominated guests but i do believe you're our first emmy winning guest on on the podcast that's true i i still have half as many as my co-host elliot uh but i have a couple from my days at the john stewart iteration of the daily show yeah well yeah and we're we're so happy to have you on like uh me and bob are big fans of the flop house and

you know we had stewart on just a little bit ago. I guess we just need Elliot left for the full set. But it's so awesome to have you on here. It should be like the Saturday Night Live Five Timers Club. We should work up some sort of special T-shirt we send to other podcasts that have gotten all of us. Because there's a few out there. There's a few who have collected them all, as the Pokemon trainers say.

Well, Dan, I would guess as a comedy writer, you grew up enjoying The Simpsons. Do you recall watching this one live back in 1991? Well, listeners at home will not know this, but my jaw dropped when you said that about the black and white video because i stuck around to watch the black and white video afterwards because they made a big huge promotional push and i remember very well that that that first time infamously then had michael jackson after the video sort of proper like as you would see it on mtv and he went around breaking car windshields and dancing atop them and screaming and a lot of crotch grabbing and then he turned into a panther at the end which was something that now you know with with time i understand what he was trying to

get at but as a child was the most confusing thing to me because I'd just seen a normal music video. And then several minutes of him shattering windows and screaming. With no music accompaniment. No, that was the thing. Silence. Yeah, and there's a big cultural pearl clutching about it i remember you know people were not happy with that and i think later they uh digitally added racial slurs to the things he was breaking to explain like no he's fighting racism he's not mad about the media

yeah like they were trying to like retcon it into some sort of message about you know to give a little more context to it yeah i i do have a light history on that here uh we we talked about michael jackson quite a lot in the episode he guessed it on on the simpsons but just a short version is and also this episode where we got to talk about bill cosby and michael jackson so not but you know he had had the bad album that was his last one then he had been working on this video uh and the that would be the rollout of his next big album uh that was going to be you know for the christmas season of 1991 you could even assume that like his partially the reason he appeared on the simpsons

as well uh was to start the uh lead up to the promotion for this so he did the black or white music video with the director of thriller slash uh murderer john landis and he um and and so man felt like it's like a it's like a three-peat of problematic people on this episode yeah um but but so so it was planned to be this huge event even bigger than his uh like the bad music video or any of these ones before. It was seen for a simultaneous worldwide debut on networks all over the planet. So it wasn't just America. We remember in America it aired on MTV, BET, VH1, and Fox on network TV all at the same time. And it did the same in many other countries as well. It had, according to one article I read from the time,

they estimated 500 million people watched it at the same time when it debuted. And the big part of it was too for Fox was they saved this episode because it's a Bart episode and Bart is in the music video. The music video starts with Macaulay Culkin and nobody remembers that Bart's in it because thanks to the stuff Dan mentioned

of the dirty bit at the end end it ends with Homer seeing all that and then seeing Bart going like yay I love watching Michael Jackson and Homer comes in like turn that off and he turns off the TV and that's how the music video ends but nobody knows that because after this first airing, it got so much disapproval, at least in the U.S., that they never played that pretty much ever again on broadcast TV. Like, I found a New York Times article from just the day after talking about it and saying that it led to Fox's highest ratings to that point. But that also a ton of negativity, like of concerned people calling in and so on 7 30 on sunday they were going to do a michael jackson whole special like a 30 minute special and they were going to play the music video again but they cut it down to the version we all grew up seeing replayed a million times on tv it ends with morphing yeah it ends with the amazing face morphing which was

pretty crazy to see the first time you know you're solving a mystery that had existed in my own mind just now because i was like yeah why did i stick around like look i mean as problematic and probably evil a figure you know depending on what where the truth lies as as at least confusing at the very least confusing a figure as michael jackson is i have you know grown to like i think he's a brilliant musical artist i didn't when i was a kid though like when i was a kid my parents only played like classical music and show tunes around the house like it took me a long time to like catch up to like pop music to the point where i could understand like what a figure michael jackson was in that world so i can only assume that i stuck around for the promise of bart being

in the video like that that was the tissue i mean and i i assume that's what you know they counted on yeah henry and i i think we're both too young to be into michael jackson like as i was getting into music he was getting canceled for lack of a better word. And then it was like, it was a joke to even be into him. But I think I, I got into him for the first time when he died and all of his music started being circulated again.

And then we were all like, let's forget about, don't look anything up. Just enjoy the nice beats. Nice songs. Can't do any more harm. Let's just think about the music. Not until I was an adult that he,

he wasn't like a playground joke. No, I, i love this music video as a kid i watched it uh happily or the first part anyway like i i thought it was a good song as a little kid but also what pulled me in was that macaulay culkin like is at the start of it which it's like you know honestly a very calculated thing that it's like you start with macaulay culkin and you end with bart bart simpson i mean calculated in that these are the two most popular like kids in america at the time the kids were there for macaulay and the dads were there for george went yes that's true yeah let's not forget his i mean cheers is huge yeah i was like i knew that the guy was somebody i was like was it john goodman no okay yeah we're forgetting Cheers was the number one sitcom in 1991. Actually, you know what?

Cheers, right after this, an hour after this music video aired, there was a brand new episode of Cheers that got more viewers than this black or white airing on Fox did. Just on Fox. Well, that's making it funny. For me to think about, for me, George Wynn's character, Norm in Cheers, was just like, as a kid, I did love him because he's like this big, lovable, like sad sack, you know, guy who just, you know, wants to hang out. And, you know, now looking back, I'm like, oh, it's so bizarre kind of that I love this character who the whole point is he's sort of a sad alcoholic. He had some good quips yeah oh yeah great quips yeah and hiding from his wife for years and years at that at that bar the bart simpson bit of it was

not seen for many years like officially i think you know i remember in the late 90s vh1 sometime when i watched it they made a big deal of like we're gonna show the full black or white music video that hasn't been seen in years like but i mean people taped it so it was out there and now you can just watch the full thing on on youtube uploaded so yes it was that's the history of the black or white music video that aired with this which caused about uh i'd say a little under two minutes to be cut from this episode to make room for it because it aired between this and an episode of drexel's class that's uh so you had simpsons black or white music video drexel's class that had to be the highest rated drexel's class ever yeah it's like one short pitiful season but it but it didn't save

it from being uh canceled after one season poor dabney coleman yeah the other thing i love unlikely as a kid was dabney coldman because i love cloak and dagger that movie so i'm like i'm all in on this guy i really like the movie where he thought he was going to die i think it was called short time so he was living very recklessly but it turned out he wasn't going to die yeah in the end spoilers you're not you're not a dabney coldman fan henry you know i liked him in tons of stuff like nine to five he's great he was great yeah but as he's always a great mean boss was he now he wasn't in problem child what other kid movie or was he a problem child well not a kid movie but i saw him a lot as a kid when i would watch war games all the time he was in that too oh yeah yeah i remember that yeah but

one other behind the scenes thing to to deal with in this one is that this is an episode, if you're always wondering, like, why are they so mean to Mary Tyler Moore in this episode? Well, the reason is because this is the second episode written by Ken Levine and David Isaacs, who had a bad time working with her. Yeah, they created her sitcom, her post Mary Tyler Moore sitcom. Apparently, she has a history with alcoholism and she had just gotten out of rehab and not in a great mood and she was not very far away from the suicide of her son well the alleged suicide they say it was a shotgun accident let's not yeah yeah yes the death of her son at the very least yeah there's a very one of many sad things about Mary Tyler Moore's life was that like right after ordinary people her son actually died i think it was before oh was it before oh she carried that into her role oh boy yeah that's harsh boy i mean

see i've not seen that movie it's uh but ken levine uh on his blog back in 2006 he was very clear about like oh yeah who's here's what somebody asked him once like who's one person you'd never work with again and aren't afraid to name mary tyler moore wait let me rephrase that all caps mary tyler moore is that why they also make fun of linda lavin later i think so too i think somebody else didn't like working with linda lavin yeah i yeah so the the i mean also mary tallemore's career was not in a good place either because she you know she was huge in the 60s on the dick van dyke show then in the 70s with her own show the mary tallemore show which started her own production company and she's a huge like incredibly successful producer but the 80s less good to her and she works with levine

and isaacs to create a show called mary in 1985 and it just does really really bad it does not and it's and so they are having a horrible time working with her on it while she's getting bad reviews and oh and also too yeah she had diabetes also like she's suffering through all of this as an aging woman in hollywood who also everybody i mean maybe she wasn't i could believe that she wasn't nice to work with but also like she was a an executive a female executive in hollywood working on creative things probably was is um doubted at all times on any choice she ever made did also went through a very bad marriage at the time too like it and oh and people are making fun of her all the time for the cosmetic surgery she's getting. Like, she was having a rough time.

And I do think after she died on his blog, Ken Levine was a little nicer to Mary Tyler Moore. I think he understood better what she was going through. Sorry, apologies. This is jumping ahead a bit. But one thing that kept striking me while watching this episode, there's a lot of things in it that have a different context or had a different context when it was originally aired than anyone sort of would be aware of now and on the you know the the topic of feuds you know of course i'm sure it's been mentioned before but there's only a lot of bill cosby material in this and cosby was their you, time slot rival that they were up against a lot.

And there was, you know, no love lost in terms of, like, making fun of Cosby. But now it plays as, like, a totally different. I mean, number one, it just plays like, oh, level of how Bill Cosby's place in culture has plummeted into the depths of the tour. At the time, it was just a fun rivalry. And I think, I mean, the show moved to Thursdays for a few years to go against the Cosby show was a huge mistake because it dropped out of the top 10 immediately. And I think the one time they did beat Cosby uh was a rerun like once and that was basically it so it amounted to nothing and they moved the show back to sundays and what season six yes yes i mean cosby ended before they they went back to sunday they're in their last season right now cosby show

yeah 92 there's uh and we'll play it when it happens but there's also a funny bit about them wishing him well and say like oh he wanted to end the show before it it outstayed its welcome which also a joke that feels different uh with time but yeah the oh well also the just the behind the scenes on this where the idea come from well al jean and mike reese are very smart at like remembering a line from a previous episode and thinking that'd be a good episode which in the itchy and scratchy and marge episode when tell of it there's no more cartoons on tv and the kids stop watching uh bart and lisa describe all the fun things they were doing while not watching cartoons and uh they're building soapbox racers together it's the line as part says come on lease let's go finish

our soapbox racers but also it's kind of a thin premise so characters watch tv for about five minutes of the episode there is so much television watching in this one yes yeah yes uh it's it's such an easy thing i'm like well then they watch tv and so we got another joke here let's watch a movie let's watch an infomercial you get uh yeah i mean that's the best stuff in this episode is all of the tv parodies like this is some of the best movie and tv parodies they ever had the the racing stuff it's all right i think but the like there's some of the best funniest stuff they ever watched on tv in this episode for sure let's begin in earnest then the uh the chalkboard gag is first uh bart talking about faking rabies which he will do in season four episode but only because they have to change the line due to sensitivity concerns uh but then we get uh i got the whole clip here for our first

clip infomercial uh series first scene in lisa versus the eight commandment is back i can't believe they invented it products you can only imagine before. The Phone Dome. The Jet Walker. Mr. Sugar Cube. That baby changed our lives. I'm actor Troy McClure. You might remember me from such TV series as Buck Henderson, Union Buster, and Troy and Company's Summertime Smile Factory.

But I'm here to tell you about Spiffy, the 21st century stain remover. Let's meet the inventor, Dr. Nick Riviera. Thank you, Troy. Hi, everybody. Hi, Dr. Nick. Troy, I brought with me the gravestone of author and troubled soul, Edgar Allan Poe. One of our best writers.

Yes, but unfortunately, a century of neglect has turned this tombstone into a depressing eyesore. So what? I guess we're going to have to throw it away. Not so fast, Troy. With one application of spiffy, you'll think the body's still warm. Quoth the Raven, what a shine god i love every every troy mcclure is the greatest yeah it struck me upon this viewing that uh nick riviera committed a crime by stealing the gravestone yes yes of a uh very popular author just to show off his cleaning product yes yeah it's uh i mean also it's like a crime against good taste like to just steal a gravestone just to clean it off god mr sugar cube is also another

of my favorite jokes like one that you see that it even in their demonstration it takes a whole bag of sugar to make three cubes and then you see homer's actual cubes are just lumpy ugly cubes too so it doesn't even work well well yeah we covered this on the first i can't believe they invented it but this was the era of not just infomercials but ones that were kind of like fake tv shows with a host and an expert and mr show has a really good uh one of those two with the magic pans yes yeah yeah but yeah this this era is long dead i assume there are still infomercials but i don't think any have taken this format in close to 30 years. Right. And that relates actually heavily to what I wanted to say about this, too, is when I talked before about how, I don't know, just having lived at this time and revisiting it now and like seeing how the context of things have changed this really felt like the time period to me for a number of reasons

uh that have since changed like whether it be like you say they don't like really do this type of infomercial anymore at least not sort of like in the middle of the day like they used to but like the specific format especially but also that back then there would be so few channels i mean particularly if you're like a home like the simpsons and maybe you don't have cable you just sit around on a saturday and you would watch an infomercial about a thing you know like part of it is homer's personality but part of it is just like yeah you know you might do that no that's true i mean after cartoons ended i swear i probably watched that uh infomercial about the food dehydrator maybe 30 times and i seriously thought

it would change my family's life like think of all the things we're not dehydrating in the house missing out dad yeah yeah it makes food smaller and drier i i also love uh the that homer is in an undershirt too like just he so rarely is drawn that way, but I like that Homer, he's like, you know what, time to take off my work shirt. Like it's time for the weekend and just to drink my orange drink with sugar cubes in it for extra sugary sweetness in it.

You know, that foam dome, it pays off later. He'll be wearing it in act three. I also, Buck Henderson Union buster is such a great idea for an ep like that it's a proud tv show of the 70s that's about breaking unions instead of being on the side of the working man it's like yes the union buster finally his story and yes dr nick is now graduated to being a TV pitch man as well at this point. And I also love that he describes Edgar Allan Poe as a troubled soul. That's what he's remembered as.

It feels like McClure is throwing in one of our nation's best writers. Just the most generic fact about him. Yes, yeah. Well, it feels like that's almost how he got the gravestone he's just like just bring me one of the top guys uh though if you'd like to see the real uh edgar alpoe gravestone which is much more involved and nice looking than the one here you can visit it at the westminster cemetery in baltimore maryland which uh can you clean it are you allowed to you know i would guess they probably have a guard who

makes sure you can't touch it no it's not like jim morrison's grave and also yes the great line like oh i guess we're just gonna have to throw it away and not so fast right uh this this thing where someone throws a chair at troy another thing that is just without context, you're like, oh, it's just a physical comedy gag. But no, it's based on someone throwing a chair at Geraldo. Ah, yes. Which you can also see in the parody in the movie UHF from Weird Al. Right. So this entire episode of Geraldo is on YouTube.

It's the November 4th, 1988 episode. It's about white supremacy. And a brawl breaks out on the stage between the two groups. And a chair is thrown at poor Geraldo. He comes back from the break with a huge bandage over his face which you can see parodied uh more specifically in UHF well I also like that he offers a uh a state of Kansas jello mold which is just a rectangle like it's just it's not actually the the people are ready to kill him but as soon as he mentions that they're they're waving their money it's the first uh shut up and take my money right yes yeah well you know it's the difference

between 39.95 and 29.95 you know that's what really i i also love the genuine distress that dr nick seems to be going through when he's asked to make it cheaper like you get the feeling that unlike you know most things where it's like we've thrown some cheap plastic together and they're making a mint. Like, Dr. Nick actually can't afford to go any lower. And Troy's just like, just do it. Like, I forget his line. Find a way. Find a way.

Yeah, this is not a scripted infomercial. He's bartering live on the air. He's like, but how can I make it lower? I just love it. He's like, but how can I make it lower? I just love it. He's like, but how can I make it lower? Find a way. I'm offering three bottles, enough to clean 1,000 tombstones, for only $39.95. I'm afraid you're going to have to do better, Doctor.

Yeah, give us a break, Doctor. But, Toy, how can I make it lower than 39.95? Find a way. Hey, Homer, I can't find the safety goggles for the power saw. If stuff starts flying, just turn your head. Oh, check. Okay, I'll throw in a fourth bottle, the applicator glove, and a And a state of Kansas Jell-O mold, $29.95. Okay. Calm down. So, yes, he offers all the stuff, and that's when Homer just loses it. And I just love his feverish hitting of the keypad, just like his fingers can't hit it.

He's like, this is a pre-dialing wand. Right, right. He's mashing that thing i love that but yes uh then meanwhile as homer's making all that uh of calls we're getting uh the visit of patty and selma and uh they're they're checking in on potential hairstyles it's the gals go to the to the beauty salon for this episode and they're having a joke at patty's expense and the perceived sexuality of her with her rejecting a haircut is too butch by her standards which makes you wonder what it is but um but yes they they finally decide on a hairstyle and that's when homer is put in charge with the kids in our next clip what's the matter can't you find a hairstyle you like? Hold the phone. That's the one for me.

Ed Asner? No. Next to him, Mary Tyler Moore. Expiration date, June 1989. 2012, yeah. Homer, are you ordering junk off the TV again? Shh, they'll hear you. Who's using the power tools?

I don't know. Some guy, I guess. Well, we're going to the beauty parlor. Maybe I should do something with the kids while I'm gone. Oh, sure. Great idea. I'd love to. Oh!

Did you hear that? Yes. How much? Everything. What's the quickest, cheapest, easiest way to do something with you? Uh, take us to the video store? Anything for my little girl.

Bart! You can't weld with such a little flame. Stupid kid. Well, Bart's retinas are charred like hamburger. That boy is blind. Don't do that. Yes. A lot of things you should not be repeating in this episode

it seems like it is the oh go ahead dan you know well you're so much more polite than my co-host i guess we're the we're the anti-aliens wait you're deferring to me no i just wanted to say that i think that julie kavner maybe doesn't get the credit that some of the others do just because she has such a distinctive voice. She can't, you know, do a lot of other ones, you know. And so some of the people whose voices are more elastic, you know, get a lot of credit. But the way that she said, Mary Tyler Moore, like the reverence. She's so funny. I mean, yeah, she can only do a few voices, but nobody else sounds like her. Yeah, yeah.

It does seem like the most useless hairstyle book because it's apparently grouped by TV show. It's just like there's a bald man and also Mary Tyler Moore on the same page. Yeah, I love that joke so much because when Patty points at a photo of Ed Asner and Mary Tyler Moore together, Marge's first thought was like, oh, well, she must mean Ed Asner. She wouldn't mean Mary Tyler Moore as her haircut. Yeah. I should have mentioned, too, during Homer watching all this stuff, Bart is just moving in and out of the scene, doing stuff that Homer completely ignores. The Simpsons will be right back. Bart enters the race of a lifetime.

Where's your loser mobile? Loser mobile. Wait a minute. Another episode of The Simpsons is next. Now the moment you've been waiting for. Don't touch that dial. He's bad. He's cool.

He's dangerous. He's the king of pop music. My main man, Michael Jackson. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans,

EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter. Find our Net zero hope at electricireland.ie. Hey everybody, it's Henry welcoming you to this break.

And we hope you're enjoying this with a nice cold foam dome on your head. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Dan McCoy. It was awesome to talk to him and we love the flop house so it was so cool to have him on to talk about this classic episode of the simpsons and to really set it in time for such a big night of the premiere of a certain music video too so thank you so much dan please check out the flop house if you haven't yet and follow him on twitter and if you enjoy this podcast you should know that Talking Simpsons is only possible because of listeners like you who support me and Bob

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up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons to hear it all yeah i love homer's defensiveness of like they'll hear you of ordering stuff 2012 once a distant year yes now a decade ago decade ago only older well also like he nothing that marge is saying at that moment is going to incriminate him like she's just like are you ordering crap off tv again and he's like they'll hear you because he's just in the midst of his unrelated scheme to try and just lie about an expiration date as if that's going to go through he doesn't want to offend the company he's like if you call this if you if you insult their product they're gonna look down they might not sell it to me also homer's like some guy i guess like he doesn't he's too distracted i mean let's talk about the joys of the video store as a kid oh yeah i mean i i love how this uh this kind of fairly useless scene in

the grand scheme of things how it it luxuriates in the video store and just brings me back to the idea of being a kid in the video store with just almost limitless possibilities, just paralyzed by choice in a fun way, not like in the streaming network way. You have to leave with something. Yeah, you got to pick something, and that's the movie you're watching, and you got to think hard about it.

It takes a lot of work in the video store. Well, I also love that homer in that scene is like the video store clerk's worst nightmare in that like you know the the normal person is not going to be satisfied with just seeing one movie one like little clip of a movie they'll want the whole context they'll want to see the whole thing. But I feel like his response of like, why would I? I just saw the best part is kind of like what video stores feared back in the early days where they didn't kind of know what the whole thing was. They're like, oh, if we show a movie all day, is that taking away part of our revenue?

Like it's such a specific thing from the time, I think. Well, Homer is right. This is the best Mccbain short yeah you want to call it that all the scenes of mcbain we ever see and it's so memorable that there is now an action figure based on skoey yes yeah you can get the whole uh sold by super seven they did a full set well full that's three figure set mcbain senator mendoza and skoey and it's scoey with his gunshot wounds and he has the live forever photograph with him like of the boat did uh rainier wolfcastle mention like scoey in another context was he like on his talk show yes he was the band leader and up late with mcbain yes that's

right who who uh is jack and made him look like a homosexual same yes so i guess uh he never realized that that was like a callback basically yeah mcbain has a real life name but he just calls the actor who played scoey scoey yes yeah i yeah but but yeah i as as a little kid uh it's funny to see this joke from both sides of it because as a little kid i was like wow the video store mom's gonna take me and my brother to the video store i can pick one maybe even i can get one new release and one old movie because that's cheaper and then that's my whole weekend i can watch all these movies and i thought saw it is so luxurious but we can see it from homer's side where he's just like all right what's the cheapest easiest thing it's like okay video store like 20 bucks tops you're out of there you know yeah well also my confusion there too is that like do the

simpsons have two uh vcrs because uh because he rents the football injury video while they're there but the whole ostensible purpose of it was to give lisa something to do so is she just uh i mean i guess i she could be picking it out for later but it really felt like she's like he's like getting her a video to get you know her off his back for the next couple hours too yeah it seems like a very homer thing to rent her and him both a video and then he doesn't let her watch it and he just watches yes yeah it seems like a very Homer thing to rent her and him both a video, and then he doesn't let her watch it, and he just watches it. Yeah, it seems like he watches that tape as soon as he gets home. They head to VHS Village, formerly the Beta Barn,

and this is when I also, if you can chart, I got to play the whole clip because I love the Mendoza scene so much, but you can chart the history of Mccbain uh as a film through the continuity of the series because so in the way we was the first mcbain uh appearance we see it being reviewed on the cisco and ebert type show then uh you know brother where art thou episode in season two later abe is seeing it at a discount theater with jasper so that's the ending right yes this is the ending and so it's gone to the cheaper theaters it's theatrical run is ending and now here in season three it's out on

video so time has passed in the uh in the for mcbain they really had a plan with this they really did it's surprising uh but yes here here is the famous mendoza scene. Come on, live a little, Scoey. No, thank you. Got me a future, partner. I'm two days away from retirement. My daughter's graduating from college. Little Susie's going up. And as soon as we nail Mendoza, my old lady and I are going to sail around the world

like we always wanted. We just christened a boat. Oh, yes, sir. Everything's going to be just perf- Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Ah! Ah! Ah! Damn. Damn. Damn. McBain. Yes? I'm not gonna make it. Oh, stop talking crazy.

No, no, no, no. Just do one thing for me get mendoza mendoza you want to rent it sir why i just saw the best part yeah usually when i watch this i'm just stunned because it is actually well directed action despite it being so ridiculous the one new thing i caught this time was we see the shooting from many different angles with some that actually make it look like less exciting so we see it once through a keyhole oh yeah and then once from behind like a ship's wheel in the restaurant just like what where else can we show the shooting from

it's they're not necessarily interesting shots but they're just trying to get every angle on the shooting the the big new joke i caught this time was i love mcbain's very flat mcbain yes like he just he doesn't he's looking at his completely shot up friend he's just like yes like it's it's a great joke about schwarzenegger as an actor too yes well that's exactly what i was going to just to say was like look i i really like arnold schwarzenegger and a lot of his movies i think he's extremely good at what he does like the specific thing that he does and he has a like a flair for comedy and he's as he's gotten older he's even gotten pretty good at acting on top of all that but at the time like that sort of thing that i don't know this like it's not just a schwarzenegger impression it really captures his complete inability to do the emotional part of acting

you know in those types of movies and then he has to like pull up the like then after that very flat yes he's like okay and now mendoza he just screams it so hard yeah harry sheer is trying real hard you know harry sheer these days people talk about how he doesn't try as hard. Harry Shearer's trying real hard. You know, Harry Shearer these days, people talk about how he doesn't try as hard as he used to. He's also like 80 years old now. He is giving everything in that Mendoza there. This is great, but remember, this is the second time it's like we're watching Homer watch something in Act 1.

And we're going to watch him do that two more times. Exactly. So I also love love it feels like such a perfectly observed thing about schwarzenegger films then of the 80s where the script was clearly written for like a regular guy when they had the line like man you keep eating those hot links you're gonna you're gonna die early and it's like he's saying this to a man with a mr olympia body the the line doesn't make sense but they kept it in the film which is just so so great also you know i'm thinking about how the black or white music

video comes after this and gets all this like you know negative attention for him grabbing his crotch and smashing stuff in the violence but this is so violent for a show that was watched by so many children like blood everywhere just exploding everywhere scoey dies like that one guy in robocop yes yeah oh and you know it's actually funny you mentioned robocop uh because what this is parodying is more directly is the dirty harry films because in most of the dirty harry films uh usually he is given a partner who is then murdered and then that drives dirty harry to do more violence uh the two i think most famous versions of that partner death thing they were both african-american actors uh and and both the black actors were in magnum force felton perry uh who was uh in robocop as go robo like

the classic thumbs up guy uh and then albert popwell in uh in sudden impact so gene and reese love this joke about dirty harry's partners dying so much that they make an entire parody of it in the critic as well where it's he's given like 17 partners and the half of them explode by the end of the sketch so but well dan what's uh you know what what's your professional movie opinions on the the dirty harry films have have you seen many of them i've seen i think i've seen them all except for there's there's some in between dirty harry and like the latin deadpool is the last one like those are very distinct in my mind and the ones in the middle

kind of get mixed up like which one is it and i keep being convinced that there's like one of them that i haven't seen but i can't remember the title so i'll like repeatedly watch those middle ones trying to catch it and i think by now i probably see them all well but i don't know i like that i like the first one very much it's like total fascist very it's a fascist movie yeah pleasing i like all you have to be able to accept that as camp or whatever gets you through it but it's i don't blame you dan all the movies run together because their name like romantic comedies where the names don't indicate what they are it's like maximum force like well which one is this you know magnum force is a funny magnum force i've got it wrong those are the only two i i

remember the first one in magnum force because in magnum sudden impact i think you got it wrong. Those are the only two I remember, the first one and Magnum Force, because in Magnum Force... Sudden Impact, I think, is one. Magnum Force is the second one, and that's the one where Suzanne Somers is in the opening and she gets killed in it. But also that, in that one, I think is a response to people bringing up how fascistic the first one was about how it's like, finally, a cop can shoot people in the face. About time.

I think their attempt to uh alter course on that is in magnum force spoilers for magnum force a bunch of dirty cops are the villains in that and uh ultimately dirty harry kills a bunch of his evil cop brethren in it to show that see dirty harry doesn't like bad cops either i i think i think that was their their attempted response in that movie. Guys, the one that I forgot is The Enforcer. How could I possibly forget a distinctive title like The Enforcer? And also this joke of just screaming to the heavens.

In that movie, I remember laughing when it was used legitimately in the movie wolverine origins or x-men origins wolverine because he literally he screams to the sky no like twice in that movie it's incredible that they just so hackily do that but yeah so after that that's when homer shops around for other vhs's we walk through a whole sports section and also there's an elvis section too there's there's a little comedy in the in the vhs boxes here but now all these clips of sports violence that's just what you watch online like you don't rent a whole vhs to see it like sports clips that's just the internet now you want to watch a guy yeah the most recent one of those i remember was there was some uh major league player

i forget but his a foul ball it was not a horrible injury but it was that a foul ball bounced off his butt and it it was like wow this guy's got his shit oh yeah right right yes yeah yeah he had a good butt but uh but homer then gets football's greatest injuries which uh is also funny because we just recorded though I think you're gonna hear it after this episode listeners the half decent proposal episode where there's a joke about homer buying marja hockey fight tape so homers they're keeping it consistent yeah but yes i also love his big excitement at lisa we're going just like let's get out of here like all the movies are great yeah but but yes uh so i sorry listeners it's time for the return of henry's tale of the tape

because i taped this one off of tv when it aired and re-watched it a million times and so the version that's on the dvd and on uh streaming for disney plus it's the not edited down to make room for black or white episode so there's the 80 seconds i've never seen before or i've now seen many times re-watching it on dvd and disney plus but it still feels like new scenes to me because the one ingrained in my brain from the vhs is from that and so lisa asking about the happy little elves tape not in the original broadcast it's uh it's it's brand new to me to this day they were pretty much done with happy little elves jokes at this point i think for for it's a late appearance yes then we head to the the beauty salon this is when they're reading uh basically

people people magazine not people people is it when they find me the fatherhood test which uh aljean says he gives himself that test all the time to make sure he's still a good dad and he can answer these questions about his his own kid i like this uh the supposed quote from henry winkler that you mentioned up front uh henry another henry yes because uh listen to what he told a close friend i love that yeah it's yeah it's like close friend and it's such a carefully curated pr statement he would not just say offhand to a close friend well also i mean this is another thing where i'm like oh this played differently at the time because you know of course everyone still had great affection for henry winkler because he was

the fawns uh a very you know like one of the top memorable tv characters of i guess just before my childhood but like you know still everyone would watch it in reruns and such. But he had not yet become what he is now, where he's had several like late career resurgences in highly respected TV comedies. You know, and now he I feel like people really think of him as like this elder statesman. And, you know, it helps that everyone says that he's like a really nice man. Oh, yeah. I mean, but I think at this period, like it was more of a campy reference to be like oh henry winkler remember that guy he was kind of on his yeah dip no yeah he's i mean uh you know arrested development uh made him famous to a new generation and then on barry like he's getting like the kind of accolades like that bob odenkirk or brian cranston got on on breaking bad now he's getting it on Barry. I'm just like, wow.

I believe he's already won an Emmy for it, and I think he's nominated again this year for the most recent season of Barry. And I should mention, too, that literally every time I hear people tell a story about working with Henry Winkler, you would believe he is an angel from heaven. Everybody's just like the nicest person that ever has lived who remembers everything and is just so nice and and right now he's going viral uh because he's tweeting a lot whenever he catches a fish he is oh yeah it's like hey look at my fish i'm seeing that in my feed all the time of old henry all of his pictures look like uh tinder dating profile

pics just a guy holding a fish yeah and also you know what he'd later appear in season 11 take my wife sleaze that's right uh future guest yeah so uh helmer watches this tape right yeah and there's this voice you've never heard before you're like who is this guy it's the announcer it's not harry sheer it's not hank azaria it's not dan it's this guy named larry mckay and i assume he's a fox production person because his only other credits are doing a TV announcer voice on Married with Children. So for some reason he's in this episode, but he has like three roles to date. I don't know if he's alive still, but it's just weird to have this different voice. When all the male actors on the show can do an announcer voice, here's this new guy.

I don't know why they brought him in, but there he is. It's very distracting, yeah. This galloping gazelle scene and the guy getting his neck snapped, which that was not in the original airing either. I missed out on that. Did you miss the Joe Theismann joke? That was in there, which I love that Homer, that is so dark that Homer's like, you made me miss Joe Theismann,

which like, who wants to rewatch his horrific injury and his career-ending injury? It makes everybody sad. Homer's this sicko who wants to see it. Homer reacts to the sisters arriving too and thinks they look ridiculous. I believe Selma's hair is supposed to look like the Farrah Fawcett of the 70s. Definitely, I think it's Farrah Fawcett from the famous poster. But this is when Homer must take his fatherhood quiz.

Question one. Name one of your child's friends. Let's see. Bart's friends. Well, there's the fat kid with the thing. The little wiener who's always got his hands in his pockets. They want a name, Homer, not a vague description. Okay.

Hank? Hank? Hank who? Hank Jones. Homer, you made that up. Question two. Who is your son's hero? Steve McQueen.

That's your hero. Name another dad you talk to about parenting. Next. What are your son's hobbies? Well, he's always chewing on that phone cord. He hasn't done that since he was two. Then he has no hobbies. Oh, really?

Well, maybe you should go out to the garage and see. Bart. Bart! Bart! What? You don't have any hobbies, do you, boy? No, not really. Well, that's what I... Wait a minute. What are you doing? Building a soapbox derby racer. That's a hobby. Hey, so it is.

Oh, my God. I don't know jack about my boy. I'm a bad father. You're also fat fat i'm also fat it's a nice act break yeah uh so great he's so defeated he even agrees he's also fat with some yeah he's so willing in his misery to just go along with it i i always thought that that's millhouse he's talking about there with a little wiener kid yeah yeah a little wiener kid yeah and also their homer's hero is steve mcqueen that's a great gag there but i i i mean you know some dads are more perceptive than us i don't

think my dad could have said told you what my hobbies were other than that he thought they were a waste of money pretty much i guess they would just say nintendo sure that's easy that's a hobby right but you know my anime tape collection he thought was stupid as same with the comic book collection also felt very stupid but oh and also uh some simpsons history or homers they love that clip of homer from oh oh geez but they cut it short on like whoa it sounds like a keyboard sample or something. Yes, yeah. But yeah, I guess to date, Dan, they've used it like six or seven times?

Yes, yeah. In this run up from the first episode. And this is like the 50th episode, so they've used it quite a lot, yeah. It premiered in the Christmas special. That's how old it is. I guess they thought it was going to be like once they found the perfect burp,

they could just reuse it, but eventually they would have to say no uh do more does yeah we don't have just a universal dough or in this case bow yeah but but i do love that marge marge is just having nothing with homer and his his terrible parenting i just like that and also that i like to the the great this is such a great animated episode like the animation just is so good in this one by by uh jim reardon and his team homer is like barely making eye contact with barge like that's very realistic as well just like he's looking at the tv while talking to her the whole time yeah have we talked about that the test is from like the fatherhood institute yes the national fatherhood

institute the nfi yeah this feels like a which i mean we're coming up on you know actually seeing the institute but i just want to say that i love number one the gag that i feel like there were a lot of these and and i guess this is something that still remains but it also felt accurate to the time a lot of these like very fake, just like made up institutes, you know, to sell whatever thing it is. And then to have it be revealed to be actually this deeply caring,

full service, real institute later on is, is, is really funny. The concept reminds me of when later in the show marge mentions the fruit punch advisory board yes yes exactly this place is legitimate and they seem to be like uh very philanthropic i guess there might be a non-profit they're incredibly well funded and you would think that a thing like this would be a front for like you know the church of

latter-day saints or something like one of those you know pro family groups you'd hear about but uh but yeah homer calls the nfi and this is uh the second of the runner brief runner of hearing a song on the hold line that makes somebody cry through its reference in this this case it's harry chapin's cats in the cradle which as a kid didn't honestly lots of these things i was like my first time hearing a kid didn't honestly lots of these things i was like my first time hearing it i didn't know who henry winkler was when i was nine didn't know mary tyler moore was didn't know cats in the cradle our harry chapin's uh catalog it was it was all news to me but uh yeah the i also love the guy on the other side when homer says to this five question test that he got a zero the guy's like good lord a zero

just loses it uh and he sends a wood paneled station wagon for uh for homer which i i love that joke too yeah so this is when we get a quick bit of uh bart showing off to the other kids and i do think this really captures how it feels as a little kid to become briefly super obsessed with something you know like uh like you you see like yo-yo tricks on tv and you tell your mom like mom give me a yo-yo and then you you know after a month or so you realize like yo-yos aren't for me like similar thing there's also uh around this time all of these ideas from the previous generation's childhood that would not be a part of mine so when i was a little kid i thought like well sure at some point i'll be in a soapbox racer i'll probably go to summer camp too like every kid absolutely not never happened but it was a more common thing uh for

these guys who grew up in the 60s and 70s now dan you didn't uh you didn't do a bunch of soapbox racing either as a child sorry i i feel like i'm just i'm just listening now i uh but like i don't have as salient a point why i just love that uh you know that that bart is is also so into ronnie beck like he became a ronnie beck expert and he's just throwing out like well ronnie beck says this ronnie beck says that ronnie beck says steal from construction sites yes yeah which and also yeah no it makes me wonder like you know where is he getting his ronnie beck information like there is like i imagine this kind of like team beat style but for soapbox racer like magazine that he you know picked up down at the like 7-eleven or

something i don't know for all his ronnie beck interviews red one interview yeah yeah i mean it's 1992 he's not following the the tiktok the ronnie beck tiktok uh and uh the specific names in episodes is usually somebody doing a reference and levine and isaac's were especially guilty of this like in the previous one the dancing homer episode which has so many like very specific names for baseball players like yeah levine is in it playing the announcer too yeah they're just saying like oh and this announcer's name is this guy this this guy so Isaacs is not on the commentary but Levine points out like yeah Ronnie Beck's just a friend of David Isaacs that's that's who it is it's just shout out to friends as we found out from other interviews

with Levine he didn't get these guys are cheers writers who are kind of taking a pay cut to write on The Simpsons, but as a gift to them that they can just name whatever friend they want in the show and just make it up over and over again. Wow. What an amazing perk. And so, yeah, I also like that Martin is just there to scope out the competition. He's like in between things, you know, and he's he's got a wind tunnel rented as well to test it uh and this is when homer is taken away which i love bart doesn't care he's just like maybe it's for the best well homer was just yeah casual yes oh that's true yeah this is the second time homer's been institutionalized in like three months in this you're watching on disney plus you won't know that oh that's true it's the last that's the last episode because it's the Michael Jackson episode, Dan, in case you don't know.

Coming back to that guy. Another guy is coming up soon. Oh, yes. Well, all right. Let's talk about it. So Bill Cosby's Fatherhood, published in 1986, actually written by humorous Ralph Schoenstein, who also wrote the 1987 Cosby book Time Flies. It was so popular it later inspired the Paul Reiser books Couplehood, Babyhood, and Familyhood.

And I'm guessing it also inspired the movie Parenthood. I think the blank hood device inspired everything because the book was so popular. Look, it's no surprise that there was a ghost writer but you know just hearing that fact outright makes me wonder if there is any way that writer can or has looked into like what if we just reissue parenthood under my name do whatever tweaking i need to do to take as much cosby as i can like if that's even possible like where he's like look the book never had anything to do with that man can we agree that the book was great you want to buy the book under my name maybe his estate can do that because he passed away in 2006 so he didn't live to see the downfall of cosby man why couldn't cosby have died in 2006 instead and that's the that's i

no i mean uh you know these are not funny things to say but yes if you look up a timeline of if you look like a up a timeline of Bill Cosby's accusations he was doing very horrible things at the time this episode aired uh too busy to write a book yeah it's more like monsterhood am I right everyone as far as in the time Dan like you like you said, these jokes feel different now. In the time, I like that it's kind of a sideways joke at his expense by Homer when he's handed the book. He's like, if he's as smart as he is funny, I'm sold. Like just these very light, loving tributes to him that really just come off as like oh this is so bland it must be an insult

that you're if you're saying this i just wonder what a new viewer thinks about this character handing homer a book by bill cosby about how to be a good man yes like what do you think of how do you process that without knowing this history now i you know i looked up the cosby episode that aired against this one too and it's also an episode about his character huxtable is teaching very strange huxtable is teaching a class on how to be a man and be like etiquette classes for men which i think was just normally is his usual his whole thing back then was and yeah i've anyway all right but so yes homer takes a tour of the fatherhood institute where he makes a new friend for starters mr simpson why don't you take this complimentary copy of fatherhood institute where he makes a new friend for starters mr simpson why

don't you take this complimentary copy of fatherhood by bill cosby if he's as smart as he is funny i'm sold mr simpson if you want to be a good father you have to spend time with your son well that's easy for you to say you preachy egg-headed institute guy how much do you see your son why don't you ask him yourself? Homer, meet Dave Jr. Oh? How's your research coming, son? I think we're near a breakthrough. Good work.

Thanks, Dad. Oh, how I envy you. Homer, that easy back and forth that you just witnessed didn't happen overnight. It took years of effort. I've never been afraid of a little hard work. Oh, that's the spirit, Mr. Simpson. Now, step one is to find an activity the two of you can share. Does the boy have any interests?

What boy? Your son. Find something he likes to do and share in it. Well, he is building a soapbox derby racer. Oh, that would be perfect. Dear God, not again! Harry Sharer's screaming all throughout this episode. Not again.

That's the best part that this is the impossible thing of this very small tank of water has a shark in it and more than once it has eaten the child inside it with the fuck like i love that so so much like and also you see in the next scene when homer approaches bart he is wearing a cosby style sweater it's like he's also decided to wear an extra sweater to be more friendly. Not colorful enough, but I appreciate the effort. And also I like that Homer, the second part says like, why don't you just go back to the couch and watch TV?

Okay. And he walks away. He's like, no, no, I'm going to do this. Speaking of other callbacks to Itchy and Scratchy and Marge, that's where Homer builds the spice rack. Homer, very poorly, this is where Homer says like, I'm good at building stuff. Remember the spice rack?er uh very poorly this is where homer says like i'm good at building stuff remember the spice rack the it's shitty as it looked last time the bird feeder dead bird is like the jimberie which nearly kills maggie what was that who cares uh yeah but but

yes you know what dan we have a jingle for just this type of thing a bird is killed in this episode or at the very least nah bird's dead type of thing a bird is killed in this episode or at the very least nah bird's dead right it was killed before the events of this episode uh and that means it's time to play the bird violence jingle everybody hates birds right it happens more than you think yes simpsons that's why we have a jingle for it i'm loving learning the the the hidden patterns that only the true the true experts get to see uh but uh this is when homer decides uh to use he actually quotes the book directly cosby's first law of intergenerational perversity that's the real thing in the book uh it sounds crazy to say out loud uh as in today's logic but yes uh he's he's

able to convince part to help him in our next clip what was that uh who cares son please let me help you come on dad it'd be weird oh this isn't working at all it's hopeless wait a second. Hmm. Cosby's first law of intergenerational perversity. No matter what you tell your child to do, it will always do the opposite. Huh? Don't you get it? You gotta use reverse psychology. That sounds too complicated.

Okay, don't use reverse psychology. All right, I will. Son, I don't think you should let me help you. Oh, come on, Dad. If you really want to help, you can clean these paintbrushes. Thank you, Bill Cosby. You saved the Simpsons. And again, that's a funny line to say when they are running against Bill Cosby at the time.

He is hurting their, damaging their ratings very hard at the moment. And Bart gives Homer the one job that has no effect on the building of the oh that's true yeah soapbox racer i never can say that washing the paintbrushes it's already done its job like yeah that's good i'm very curious to see well i'm not very curious look it's all fiction guys you know i don't i don't need to know i don't need to know for sure but i'm curious to see bart's version of this racer would it have been better than what we see like is homer to blame for the sorry state of the racer or you know would bart have you know kept homer from doing the the whatever bad things like this is basically the racer he would have made on his own because he seems pretty competent early on with the tools even if he is staring

right into the welding flame no i think bart would have made a better racer yeah maybe not a winner but definitely this i mean because what homer builds through the next montage is incredibly boxy not sleek not a thing that will that also has stroller wheels on it all the wheels are different yes yeah i think there's one stroller wheel everything is bad about it and i have never heard this song outside of this episode but the boomer writers love cheesy 70s ballads this is one of them it's called watching scotty grow from bobby goldsboro his 1970 album we gotta start loving what a one of the cheesiest songs and yeah i've never i've never heard it outside of the i've heard cats in

the cradle and other songs in this episode elsewhere but i've never heard it outside of the... I've heard Cats in the Cradle and other songs in this episode elsewhere, but I've never heard Watching Scotty Grow other than in this episode or looking up the original song on YouTube to hear it just to be sure like, oh, is this a cover or is this the real thing? And I'm pretty sure it's a real thing. Though it could be Kip Lennon singing it, but I think it's the real thing. I think it's the real thing. Yeah. Yeah.

My favorite in the bit is Homer with his giant cigar in his mouth and then putting it down next to like open gas cans and the welding torch like that's that's great what a terrible picture it is that's the sort of like joke that i probably loved as a kid and now that i'm a middle-aged man it genuinely makes me cringe like i've seen these episodes so many times too i i know that the that homer simpson does not suddenly die in a gas explosion but uh but you know i don't know it may i have a soft heart now when you're a little kid you don't think about like you know honestly now as an adult uh roughly homer's age i think like man my knees would hurt yeah but the story is refocused back in bed as g al jean was told to do many a time i feel like james l brooks was helicoptered in to write this one line from homer it feels like so him oh yes yeah he reminds me of me before the weight of the world crushed my spirit yeah though you know what

i like that that's a good homer line i like that but yes it's it's not as i mean i guess if it's not watching tv then it must be a rewriting by brooks not not gene and reese yeah i think they'll reuse this footage in a later episode i forget which one we'll get to it i'll i'll note it but you know with all this derby talk this is uh they they bring it up on the commentary bob you did, you really looked into the history, the scandal that rocked the world of the soapbox derby. So the story was the day the derby almost died, the magnet car, because it was in 1973, a racer named Jimmy Gronin won with record times in soapbox derby racing and people couldn't believe it and it was because his uncle who was an engineer built a car with a magnet in the front and the way the soapbox derby works as you see in this episode you're on an incline then a thing is

holding you up a metal block is holding you up the metal block goes down and you roll down if you have a magnet in the front but it's an electromagnet it has to be turned on and off and when you turn it on and then off on the block it will pull you and give you way more speed and an extra launch basically and the kid won and then soon after it got discovered that he cheated and he was stripped of the title and it it almost killed the Derby that day. And if you happen to find yourself in Akron, Ohio... Leave immediately.

I say this as a former Ohioan. Get out. But if you're in Akron, Ohio, stop by the All-American Soapbox Derby Hall of Fame and Museum at Derby Downs because you can see the very magnet car itself is saved there for posterity. I have a hot take on this soap soapbox derby scandal which is this kid uh totally deserves the crown like i feel like this is uh you know does it obey the letter of the law probably not but it shows the spirit of the soapbox derby which is to build a car that will race the fastest

and to come up with such an ingenious scheme. I don't know. I think that this is great. It's innovative, is what it is. They should outlaw it for all future ones, but let little Jimmy have this win this time. He was basically inventing the boost you get in Mario Kart when you hit the ignition at the right time.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I appreciate that innovation but i'm with daniel give him a badge yeah but uh but you know i'm uh i don't know what happened to that kid afterward did he did he go on with his life or did the shame follow him through the rest of his life he was forced to stay in akron a home of uh devo who left oh oh yeah like like all good ohioans yeah leave the no no we've we've we've had on many uh great ohioan guests who are i'm an ohioan and it burns me up every day but uh but yes is the race is about to start this is another bit where there was the hard cut because a couple of these lines by nelson and the officiant cut to make time for black or white your father's not supposed to help build your eraser but you should at least consult him about it you're in heat four whoa where's your helmet son helmets are for wusses sir no i don't think i can let you go without a

safety helmet this is my son and if he doesn't want to wear one you can't make him okay fine i want to get out of here sometime today. Attention, everyone! I say to those who question the value of the space program... Behold! Ay caramba! Hey, you're not supposed to smoke in the pit area. Fine! Hey, Simpson, where's your Losermobile?

Losermobile? Hehehe. Wait a minute! Uh, it's your Losermobile? Losermobile. Wait a minute. It's over there, Nelson. Whoa. Talk about your pieces of crap. You know, Bart, I don't care who wins as long as one of us beats that guy. Same here. Careful, boys.

It took me months to steal that bumper. Help. What was that? You didn't hear nothing. Are you nervous, son? Don't worry, Dad. as three-time soapbox derby champion ronnie beck says gravity is my co-pilot you know bart the murderer was a while ago but they're still sneaking in goodfellas references oh yeah the guy that's billy batts in there you're right you're right i had forgotten nelson's two like flunkies that he had before he started hanging out with dolphin

kearney like uh i mean i think you see them in the background of things later on but like they kind of disappeared yeah in these early things he had like this whole i don't know bugs beanie crew they're kind of being faced i think they're kind of phased out by season four this might be one of their last lines yeah close to it yeah i i love though that they offer him a switchblade he's like thanks but then still bashes their heads together uh though though that switchblade not in my vhs cut either and same with the gravity is my co-pilot which that's a funny line but man now yeah now i'm just shocked at seeing nelson smoking like just drawing a child smoking and putting out the cigarette on his tongue. I don't think they could do that one today.

You know, I love that line by Martin that he says, for those who question the value of the space program, behold, because it shows he's really come at this with a political idea. Like, you know what? This is to finally prove to people that NASA deserves to exist. Everybody thinks it's a waste of money at this this point no way it needs to keep existing well but also it's such a like it's such a silly corruption of an actual like notion like you know all these innovations that we've gotten through the space program whether they be like velcro or something much more complex but the fact that nelson's making that argument with something so frivolous as a soapbox racer that no one would care about that's yeah yeah that he's uh

and it's one that is honestly too good and will nearly kill him soon but yeah i this this whole race is fun you know bart's uh car actually does kind of all right at first. Yeah. Yeah. It's just when it gets down. But it's that Martin was not prepared for how high it was. And he instantly just flies down it like he. And man, Lucy Taylor, the late Lucy Taylor, her screaming as Martin here is all so, so good. Like, yeah.

And I'll tell you what, I was alive at the time, obviously. And that deploy, damn you. That line, it rocked the pages of Simpsons Illustrated. There was maybe like a two-issue dialogue in the letter section. Some people were upset that Martin says damn. Wow. Because I remember, and I couldn't find it, it was the one issue that was not scanned and put on archive.org. But I remember someone saying, like, I don't like hearing the voice of baby gonzo saying damn wow so people they were making it like a political issue in 1992 we had nothing better to do these mini mouse saying damn yeah that's true but yeah

they're they're making the kids swear a lot more yeah it means early season i mean martin for this episode becomes basically just a weathered like racing vet like that's what he is like this it's it's also i we should have said it earlier but the title is a parody of oh right days of thunder which is a racing movie but they said this was more uh levine says on the commentary he's pulling more from death race 2000 and instead in this yeah i i this is this is where i was actually going to do some research and just fell down on the job i was gonna read a synopsis of days of thunder to see if it was more than just a clever title but i forgot you know it is about racing it was but it wasn't a successful tom cruise movie like not not all that much the the only thing i i've never seen it i just remember seeing clips of it

with the weird line of rubbin is racing that was the line from it which is you don't with the spirit of that means you're not trying to crash the car like that would be wrong if you're trying to intentionally make another guy crash but if you rub into his car that causes them to lose you know some traction and so and i believe it's robert duvall who says to him like hey kid rub rubbing is racing like death race 2000 i know that a little better david carity and running over people i didn't realize days of thunder was it was a tony scott film oh yeah yeah it's uh i i didn't know they was supposed so man it kind of is a failure then it was it was the top gun you know

reteaming it's it's tony scott and Tom Cruise back together. Directed by Tony Scott, written by the guy who wrote Chinatown. Oh, what? Figure that out. That's crazy. It is. Wow. It's true. That's crazy.

Martin's car crashes. He's lit on fire. Bart's car falls apart, and he's laughed at. And Nelson is a strong second place. He also, Nelson whips him as part of the the ben-hur style the first ben-hur joke of the episode so yeah we then go to the hospital martin is being taken care of hibbert shows up wearing the exact sweater that cosby is wearing on the cover of fatherhood in the episode in case you didn't get it yeah in case you didn't understand that and i just love how martin is like

he does become one of those like guys in a sports movie, like save it for some other person, but save your palliative cliches for the next poor sap doctor. I also just love how he treats himself as like the shattered monster when he's literally just broken his arm, even though we've also seen him in flames, which for my money is as horrifying as anything in this episode this small child running around on fire and then the firemen come and shoot the water at the car uh i mean obviously also very funny at that point on the commentary the showrunner said uh we were getting kind of mean yes because we were very tired uh but yes later in this scene martin does utter the titular line

from the 2022 movie drive my car oh yes yeah that's a joke i don't think they actually say will you drive my car and drive my car i guess henry has not seen drive my car everybody man quit shaming me sit through all three hours of that movie a car is driven and you'll enjoy it i've been meaning to watch it i will i will that's the only movie i from that year i saw i watched all 17 hours of the new season of stranger things i didn't watch that but that was a really long seat but every episode was good i enjoyed watching it but when i got that last episode of season two or season four i was like two hours and 10 minutes really really no i yeah i really enjoyed it as well but i also you know

you you have a different mindset when you commit yourself to watching a television show and watching a movie and it felt like doing the movie commitment every time they were taking advantage of my binge worthy way of thinking of like well no this isn't a movie it's a tv show and then like no each one's a movie like i what's with all these bed sores where am i you know i parsed it out over over a series of weeks i did not binge it all in one week if they make these episodes longer people are going to die of blood clots during stranger things that's gonna cost netflix subscribers yes they're already losing too many as it is. So yes, Bart is given the choice to drive the car or not. Otherwise, Nelson will win.

And I just love Bart weighing it. And then he's like, on the other hand, I'll do it. He decides he must. And this is when Bart quits Team Simpson to some legitimate heartbreak on Homer's part. I'll never race again. If you don't race, then Nelson will win. Well, even if I wanted to, I'm in no shape to do it unless... Bart, will you drive my car?

Oh, I don't know if I should do that. My dad and I built our car together, and if I drove someone else's, it'd kill him. On the other hand, I'll do it. Okay, Bart, we've got a lot of work to do on the car, so I'm going to pull you out of school for the next couple of weeks. Dad, I don't know how to say this, but I don't want to drive your car. It's slow, it's ugly, it handles like a shopping cart.

Bart, the car has a few bugs in it, I admit that, but we're Team Simpson. Dad, I love you, but you taught me to win. Why did I ever teach you that? Well, I picked it up somewhere, and if I drive Martin's car, I can win. I'm you, but you taught me to win. Why did I ever teach you that? Well, I picked it up somewhere. And if I drive Martin's car, I can win. I'm sorry, but... No, go ahead. Leave me. Dad...

Go on. Go on and win. No, go on and win without your dad. I'll just sit here a little lightning, wish the Simpsons built, and remember that for one brief shining moment, I had a son. Oh. Kind of ruins the car there.

Yeah, it's destroyed it. He's setting Bart back days. I also love that he's going to take Bart out of school for two weeks. Like, just may as well, like, cause Bart's already not doing great in school. He can't miss two weeks of school i love that this is one of the rare occasions where like you know homer's emotional reaction is perfectly reasonable like like that the the core of it you know is not unreasonable but the way he handles it is so hilariously petty yeah like you feel for him but he cannot it goes beyond bad parenting into like just i don't know like child childish like schoolyard kind of like no no it's fine i mean they're kind of playing it like a breakup because when he sees martin he says homewrecker oh yes yeah that's it yeah he's he's so mad at martin like he's gonna he almost beats martin

like he probably was about to strangle him which you know it's funny when it's your kid your own kid of course but some stranger's kid you can't just strangle that kid so we come back from break this is another bit big cut from uh the the VHS version or original broadcast version. It just picks up when they're driving to the doctor's office. Lisa asking to go and Homer watching is not there, which I just love how Homer says, like, that's how you get your kicks, isn't it, Lisa? He's just like so, so mad.

But yes, Lisa wants to get a tetanus shot, which Homer will need to get one of those by the end of this season. That's right. That's right. When he steps on a nail in one of the most painful looking pictures in the entire series. Great foley on that. Yeah. Fiddle-dee-dee.

And then there's also a great joke that Bart driving the soapbox derby racer is actually faster than Homer's car and just out racing it this little side trip side trip to the doctor is is just sort of a bit of a baffling scene for me for like a an episode that you said had to be shorter because of uh because of the michael jackson video this scene seems so completely added to pad the time i don't i don't know i think they were also adds anything to the emotional sort of like arc of the thing it just and it's such a weird side quest i think this is early enough that they're also being very literal about the writing where it's like well why would homer be at the doctor's office well lisa needs to go okay now let's show him drive there now let's show him there yeah uh like let's show him there. Like a year or two later, Act Three would start with him there with Lisa,

not necessarily needing these two scenes to proceed it. And also in the scene when Homer says, you homewrecker, cut from the broadcast version was Martin's attempt to like, no, Mr. Simpson. Like it just is him going, run. And then he runs off, which Hibbert is very relaxed about an adult man threatening an injured child. He's just like, he certainly gave him the EBGPs.

I love it. You know, maybe, Dan, you're right. This could just go straight to the next episode, but I do kind of, or the next scene of Homer on the couch. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more.

Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hope at electricireland.ie but i i think they have it there so you can see homer knows who martin is so he'll pass the test later like right yeah that's my only guess on it but now you're right if so that feels almost like it was thrown in at the end to fix that problem you know but uh who knows who knows but homer is pouting despite what he is protests say and so uh in our next clip uh this is when everybody gives up on homer dad aren't you coming no no don't pout i'm not pouting you, you gotta come. I just got your hat out of the fridge. Sorry.

Don't you at least have something to say to Bart? No. Can't think of a thing. Homer, I've always said you were a good father. I've always defended you when people put you down. That's for sure. She ain't lying. But I guess I was wrong. You are a bad father. Leave me alone.

He's pretty mean. Yeah. But because of this episode, I did research on the foam dome. Oh. All I have to tell you is it was patented under the much less interesting name Beer Helmet. Beer Helmet? It's so boring. Yeah.

Simpsons invented foam dome, which is much better. Much, much better. Man. Yeah. Throw a comedy writer at your product. See what they come up with. You know, he just did a King of the Hill episode that also featured the Foam Dome for a plot point as well. This is the first time I caught it that, like, the joke is that you should just take the beer out of the fridge and put it in the hat.

But the entire hat is in the fridge. Oh, yeah. Hey, maybe it's going to be a hot Saturday. Sure, yeah. your hat is in the fridge oh yeah hey maybe it's it's gonna be a hot saturday sure yes yeah well i gotta admit um you know i watched this this morning on my way to work i i was commuting and watching the simpsons and so i i saw this you know recently uh and then still listening it to it right now i forgot for a moment that it was a foam dome and was just imagining that homer for a second had put his hat in the fridge because like that's a thing that he always does before he goes out to have a cool hat and i found both ideas equally funny so i like

that this combines yeah like you pointing out yeah it doesn't have to be the whole hat. That's so great. And yeah, Marge is, it's funny too, that Marge is used to Homer strangling Bart. But this passive aggressive cruelty to Bart, that's a bridge too far for her. It's like, you know what? No, you are a bad father. Yes, Homer, then we cut to him watching TV, drinking out of the foam dome. And I love that they frame the boxcar races uh from the carefree days of the great

depression and that that the full that the soap soapbox derby is racing down the steep decline of the stock market like that's that's a great visual and uh these two announcers they got sick of them pretty quickly but they debuted in dead putting society i think they're just one of them now in this episode then they were in barth of daredevil as the wrestling commentators so they got over the idea of like wouldn't it be funny if these like stuffy british guys were hosting a kind of like a lowbrow event this is the last time i think i think you're right yeah these this guy you know i pretty much from then on it would either be i think bill and marty or kent brockman as as host of local events.

Or maybe Arnie Pye, but really it's like Bill and Marty mostly host these things, which they are funnier than the British guy. He does say Junior Al Unser Jr., which he was a big name race car driver at the time. To let you know what's going on with that guy now, he has his own section called Personal Issues on a wiki page. So I'll just leave it at that. Homer sadly drinks out of his foam dome noticing the cans are empty and so he heads back to the fridge uh there's a fake commute monopoly community chess card on the fridge which is uh distracting in hd but i never really read it as the i couldn't tell what it was until the hd earrings but this is when homer realizes uh he can pass the test in our next clip name

your son's hobbies building a soapbox racer name one of your child's friends martin martin i'll curse that name till the day i die huh who is your son's hero three-time soapbox derby champion Ronnie Beck. Whoa. I'm one question away from being a perfect father. Name another dad you'd talk to about parenting. Hello? Hey, ho, Simpson. Shut up, Flanders. Flanders! Flanders. Flanders. Um,

uh, when should a boy start dating? Well, sir, there are two schools of thought on this subject. Great, thanks. I talk to Flanders about parenting. I'm the perfect father. Hold on, son. I'm coming. Yeah, I mean, so Homer said shut up, Flanders, in Call of the Simpsons season one.

But I think this cements shut up, Flanders, is the first thing he says to him whenever he talks. So I think this is when it's set in stone. Like, if Flanders is there and he says something, shut flanders is the first thing homer will say i i love the staging of flanders arriving in the window he's just like yeah talk to him just he's right there in the window it's framed so perfectly i have a question so is the implication that marge put this uh test on the fridge because otherwise i'm like why is homer's failed fatherhood test clipped to the fridge it must be to shame him yes yeah marge put it there to remember like this was your zero homer get better or to remind homer like hey learn these things yes yeah i wondered whether this was yeah her final push that her plan actually worked, that she left this for him.

I don't know. If you put it where the beer is, Homer's going to notice it. That's what I think she realized. And director Jim Reardon points out a thing I never noticed in previous watchings to the commentary, which is Homer's car shifts from reverse to drive with his hands doing nothing. He doesn't shift. It just instantly goes in, which makes it seem funnier to me, really. And then comes a mean joke at Mary Tyler Moore's expense here,

which is Barney has already – this is a return of the joke of Barney being maced. Because when he – at War of the Simpsons, he gets maced by Selma at it. When he's trying to ask her out there, he says, like, oh, new kind of mace? Really painful. I think the joke, I mean, if you follow the limited continuity at this point, like, he went on a date with Selma, but every time they're together, he always hits on Patty or talks to Patty.

Right, right. So, yeah. Patty maced him in War of the Simpsons, right? Yeah, yeah yeah yeah and so this is the second one where he says like uh he he thinks she's mary tyler moore and once he is horribly maced that's when he says oh i i so it really is you like that again to make it very mean towards towards mary tyler moore it's also like one of the first times they're letting mo leave the bar yes so he's out hanging out with his best pal barney him and barney huh it would hung out a bit uh but it's better when mo is friendless i think though but it's actually

kind of funny you know mo also is being out of character that when barney is maced he actually kind of comforts barney he's like tapping on the shoulder like oh man i'm sorry buddy bart is getting ready for the race and well, he's losing some confidence. Bart, if she breaks up on you, steer away from the grandstands or else you might kill hundreds of innocent spectators. Bart, what did I just tell you? Kill spectators. What is the matter with you? It's my dad lying there on the couch drinking a beer, staring at the TV.

I've never seen him like that. Don't give up on your father! You're dragging for me now! Do it for your old man, boy! Simpson, prepare to die. Let's rock. Ladies and gentlemen, to drop the green flag, our beloved mayor, Diamond Joe Quimby. To everyone participating today, I salute your vigor. Check out the wreck on the blonde in the fourth row.

So is that the first joke about his philandering ways? I think it is. Because definitely in the other ones, he would joke about, like, nobody leaves Diamond Joe Quimby hole in the bag ones he would joke about like nobody leaves diamond joe quimby hole in the bag or get that punk's name nobody talks that way to diamond joe quimby neither of those involve hitting on a woman so yes this this is when they hit on like you know what he should just be a a cheat like that's his thing what other kennedy things can we do with yes yeah

and uh also that do your four-year-old man boy that shot us from the natural i'm going to watch the natural when we cover homer at the bat because they reference it so much and i assume after two hours i'll say yes he ran around bases in slow motion and he shattered the lights and that's everything they're taking from this movie and the music and the music yeah you know i've still i've never seen it either i've seen clips and stuff uh it's on fubo or tubi one of those look all those made up name things that show you a movie with commercials yeah i yeah well that's it's good to know that's a reference because i did notice that shot like it's a shot that stands out as different like the the perspective on it is uh very sort of

from below and distorted the natural is such a forgotten movie like i i feel like nobody i don't i i never heard my parents reference it like it's just you know i i guess if somebody was doing like a listicle of like top 10 best baseball movies probably would be on there but like i heard way more about like bull durham growing up than say the natural or major league or major league or even the babe like yeah i well two and a half hours yeah maybe maybe yeah maybe i'll watch i just looked up the running time it's what happens when robert redford gets final cut on stuff and it's as long as he wants it to be well also i i do like the uh the many slaps and and bart

saying that he's never seen his father like this describing how homer is at all times uh but yes apparently the i think the let's ride might be something tom cruise says in days of thunder i believe it was a let's rock or let's was let's ride oh maybe it is rock yeah yeah let's rock but uh but yes then more smoking from nelson yeah that's great too and then as the race begins they do another ben her reference which i love that the commentators literally call it out like this is just like ben her like as the as he's running his his uh cart wheels into his so yes they have a fun race back and forth but then bart wins in the end and this is the rare time where one of the simpsons wins something uh this is a fun episode but i was

kind of disappointed by the lack of like a creative resolution to the soapbox derby race i mean there's an emotional payoff because homer is there but like there's no reason that bart won well hey they make that into a good joke with martin's line late at the end that's right actually uh yeah i guess martin does underline the kind of disappointing payoff so uh congrats technically bart i guess bart won in that there need to be a racer in it and the wheel must work and so bart must keep the wheel steady but otherwise the the driver doesn't matter it's just you're inside a log that falls down basically and which one moves the fastest if the billion dollar movie top gun maverick has taught us anything it's uh it's the man behind the stick oh that's true yes yeah what are they saying i don't know yeah so

the pilot is not ballast in top gun maverick not in top gun oh yeah which though you know at the start of that movie he's trying he tells ed harris uh maverick not in top gun oh yeah which though you know at the start of that movie he's trying he tells ed harris uh maverick's telling ed harris like hey you can't just invest in drones you need the pilots to do this and then when they are describing the suicide mission in the movie uh which by the way is a war crime against iran in the movie is what they're doing but uh when they describe the mission the whole time i'm thinking like boy they just had a drone that could just like do a crash into it that would save a whole lot more trouble and wouldn't risk like 12 people's lives in it you know i think ed harris is right about the drones no no i look everyone seems to

be pretty positive on top gun maverick and as a uh as a technical feat it's certainly very thrilling but i was actually kind of grossed out by all the things it was trying to sell you know among them the nostalgic idea like that you know it's got to be a man behind the thing like nostalgia for top gun a movie that wasn't good the first time around uh like this like bullshit like military superiority that they're trying to sell and like nostalgia for like glory days of america as fans of talk but gun might see it i like i don't i don't this is more ranty than i also intended but no no i was distressed by that movie in a lot of ways honestly well also the movies about how tom cruise isn't old and how he's as good and even better than

any young movie star right now that he's he's way cooler also selling tom cruise who i you know i adore the mission impossible movies but i don't need to be like sold the idea that you're some sort of like super robot man tom cruise we all we already think that about you though though i will yeah the the technical aspect of it though i've been feeling it more and more because i watched that that new thor movie which was a fine enough time it's a nice new episode of the marvel tv show it's fine but the special effects are like the green screeniest emptiest stuff i ever seen and so i was just thinking the whole time like boy remember in top gun maverick where like you can actually see the sun move on them and it's clearly filmed

outdoors and in a real place like yeah yeah it sounds like i liked the thor movie even a little bit better than you and you seem to like it better than most of the internet does but but the one problem that i had with it not the one problem but like the only major problem i had with it because i basically liked it a lot was that what you're talking about there would be like darks and lights on the screen and yet my overwhelming like impression was of just like the same mid-tone and i don't know what they're doing digitally like what the technical reasons for that are but it looked so flat to me no matter what was happening well i'm being quiet i didn't see top gun maverick but i am a graduate of the top pod program and i've been told i can never die so uh try and stop me you have a need for speed it's

exactly talking yeah i have so bart wins there's some fun photo reveals bart doesn't like being kissed by the bathing beauty and then uh we see that that same chesty lash is being uh talked up to by quimby in the next photograph it's a it's a thing they did on the tracy allman show right the uh the snapshot showing different like moments of a scene yeah it goes back to the family photo short from uh from the first season or first uh i think the second season and open stuff but yeah the one of the most classic uh simpson shorts and then the announcer references uh lucky lindy being taken off a liboget field which that is a reference to 1927 when charles lindbergh lands at the labor che field airfield outside of paris completing the first non-stop transit clinic

flight and becoming one an instant celebrity oh what do you do after that uh you know let's not talk about that uh he's uh well his he a child was lost and then he uh you know he thought hitler had some good ideas he flew bobo part of the way to uh mr burns to the ice uh bag factory oh you know he's the one who gave it to hitler right yeah yeah put some grease in your god or lindy but but yeah so the simpsons get to win and celebrate uh that's when he also meets up with ronnie beck which great reveal of showing the shot of all the people and then ronnie Ronnie Beck is this tiny little person behind them, even smaller than Bart.

And this is when we have a happy father and son ending. Congratulations, Bart. Seeing you out there brought back a lot of memories. Thanks, Mr. Beck. I was alone out there, but someone was riding with me in spirit. This is for you, Dad. No, son. You earned it. I might remind you both I did design that racer.

The driver is essentially ballast. The better man wants, Simpson. You can really drive. Thanks, Nelson. Put her there. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Loser! Nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan. Bart, you know there is such a ha ha ha. Loser. Na na na na na. Bart, you know there is such a thing as being a bad winner. Mom, I never won before. I may never win again.

Na na na na na. That's my boy. Na na na na na. Na na na na na. Na na na na na. Na na na na na. Na na na na na. Did you ever know that you're my hero? I love the little scene at the end.

I always forget about it. It's funny, but it's actually touching. Like, I'm happy that Dave and Dave Jr. They solve this mission. They like this NASA mission control somehow watching Bart and Homer. Yes. Yeah. It's beautiful that they hug at the same time Bart and Homer hug again.

Yeah. And that we hear wind beneath my wings from beaches, though it's a cover of it, not the Stride's Inversion. Although Bette Midler will be on the show. I guess when you sign up for this National Fatherhood Institute program, you also consent to being surveilled. Oh, you must have signed up for that yeah now homer place these cameras in your home i i love i mean too it's funny they use that and then in a matter of months the next may bet middler will sing that to johnny carson at the final carson show which will then be parodied a year later on the simpsons when she sings it to Krusty the Clown. Before people complain, was that the penultimate Carson show

or the final one? I think it was the final. I think it was. We'll cover that in season four. Yes, yeah. But yes, as a kid, I did not know what the word ballast means, but literally it means anybody could sit there in it. That's what ballast means in a scientific sense

but i i feel like that was them at the very end of the episode they're like oh this is turning into just a regular sitcom where everybody's happy we need to undercut it somehow and it's that bart teaches kids the bad lesson of like no rub it in your the other guy's face don't take the high road let him know like ah fuck you loser like that's what you gotta say it's true in racing and in the podcasting world yeah stunt on your the people who fell behind you that's how it is in the podcast world rubbing is podcasts also that's uh it's another rule of podcast but but just know that you hear that i i can still feel my nine-year-old self hearing that song beaches the song for beaches and seeing the hugs and then it goes to the credits and bart's over the credits saying and now stick around kids

the michael jackson world premiere music video coming up next and i'm like oh well i better just stick around for this i gotta go see this the tv gave me a command yeah bart my best friend bart told me to stick around and plus drexel's class drexel's class coming up right after that yeah i think it's on the bubble waiting for season two you know i do think i didn't watch that so much and my parents were watching cheers by that point they they we weren't a cosby house so much i i could control it enough for simpsons but after simpsons it was time to turn tune into well i guess it wasn't called must see tv yet but thursday night on nbc yeah i i guess in general this episode is full of like some great

great animation and some classic things playing on tv but you're right bob i think the emotional through line of this about homer's a bad father and then he becomes not a bad father anymore pretty standard stuff like more of a season two one and as gene points out on the commentary three in a row they did yeah airing homer the bad dad or a bad father because it was the crusty bad father episode homers being a bad father in lisa's pony homer being a bad father to bart in this one and i feel like they only played this one right after lisa's pony because they demanded a bart centric episode for the michael jackson one i think i think that's why yeah and soon he'll be a bad father again and lisa the greek yep yeah yeah like i feel that this episode is very funny but season three has

been moving so fast in terms of jokes and storytelling that maybe it's because it's written by two like died in the wool sitcom guys that it feels a little slower a little more traditional but there's some things in it like the uh the infomercial parody the mcbain uh parody and some other things like the national fatherhood institute that make it rise above the soapbox story but this is like one of the lackluster season three ones in my opinion but still very funny yeah any final thoughts on this one dan no although you did remind me i just wanted to say about the seasons. You know, season three, probably not like the funniest season. Like they do get funnier in the next couple or few, but I don't know if this is a controversial opinion or not.

I don't know where the state of Simpsons fans are on seasons these days but I feel like season three for me might balance the very funny comedy with a genuine warmth of emotion best for me I think you're you're dead on about that because uh future showrunners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein they ran seasons seven and eight they patterned it after season three because they thought that was the best season of the show yeah yeah they've uh bill oakley has said uh like it is he said it on our own interview with him to listen to it back in the archives but yeah he says that season three of the simpsons is the best season of any tv show ever in his opinion he wanted he wanted to pattern it on that i i think me and bob have been on the record that like five or six is usually our favorite but three three is great great great great but yeah i think if you want the wackier stuff from simpsons

it doesn't get as wacky though by the end of the season they're getting pretty wacky yeah yeah yeah i mean the spinal tap episode uh where their bus explodes that's that's pretty wacky yeah i think so i i love lisa's like probably a top five episode for me. So, and that's a, you know, that's here in the season. And that has that, you know, very funny and warm thing I was talking about. You know what, Dan? I forgot to say. We got so sidetracked with Michael Jackson stuff.

Like, yeah, you probably, you know, were a pretty, I mean, is season three your favorite season? Or do you think about that you know for a while i said that i i do think that i get i get hazy between four and five like what's in which but like i do think that it hits its peak more around that zone but in terms of just like hilarity at least but i do i just feel very warmly towards three us too yeah thank you so much for being on the show dan please let us know where we can find you online uh more about the flop house and whatever else you happen to be up to right now well you can i don't know if you're still sticking around twitter uh for some reason i'm at dan k mccoy you'll probably read it as at dank mccoy that's fine you know it's gonna happen um and uh

you can find the podcast the flop house wherever fine podcasts are found but we also have our own dedicated website called uh flophousepodcast.com it's not called that that's you know that's the address uh it's it's our it's our website for a podcast where um you know i'm you know i'm maybe the sleepiest sounding member if you're scared of my energy level uh we have a very uh energetic guy and a cool guy uh and me talk about bad movies um our most recent episode was on the remake of fire starter which uh was a boring boring movie a movie that i i texted everyone i knew to angrily complain about how boring the movie i had to watch was i really enjoyed uh of your recent ones i really enjoyed the venom let there be carnage one because i am also a hardcore comic fan boy uh and so you you guys joke about it with elliot of saying like

oh he put a coin in him he's getting started but like i when he's describing what happens with all of the new gods and their history and uh in another recent episode i was like yeah i know all this yeah finally somebody's talking my language on these and the flop house going strong for i think over 15 years now you guys started before the the rogans and the maron showed up to cash their paychecks yeah uh i i will name check jordan jesse go and you look nice today as the two podcasts that i listened to way early in podcasting and made me think yeah I could I could try to get in on this and it was the one time in my life that I saw actually I had actual foresight and joined a wave at the right time now yeah you guys are podcast elder statesmen and we we respect you it was so awesome having you on Dan yes thanks again Dan thank you so thanks again to dan mccoy for being on the podcast please check out the flop house but

as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and add free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there for five bucks a month you get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes over 100 bonus episodes covering shows like The Critic and Mission Hill and Batman the Animated Series as well as regular monthly access to our ongoing Patreon exclusive series those are Talking of the Hill and Talking Futurama all happening behind the $5 paywall only at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a $10 level as well when you sign up for that you get all the $5 stuff but also access to one extremely long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher

and what is that podcast Henry? Bob is talking about the What A Cartoon Movie podcast the premium podcast we proudly present each month at the end of a long month of podcasts where we talk about an animated feature film super duper in depth just like we do The Simpsons and that means often talking for over five hours sometimes over six hours about an animated feature film going into the history and then scene by scene this summer has been our summer of the disney renaissance so at the end of this month in august you'll hear us talk about the rescuers down under uh the month before that we did beauty and the beast month before that the little mermaid and that's just our most recent ones where we've talked for over five hours about animated movies you can hear us talk for six

and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit other movies include recent ones like toy story three south park bigger longer and uncut millennium actress and in the back of catalog two classics like aladdin a goofy movie akira you gotta hear it all. Almost four years worth of What a Cartoon monthly episodes. I'd say over 270 hours of podcasts at this point. In addition to all those $5 things Bob just said, please check it all out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo.

And my other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find retronauts wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and henry what about you follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i am certainly tweeting up a storm there and if you're following bob and me please also on Twitter, follow the official account of this podcast network. That's at TalkSimpsonsPod. Follow at TalkSimpsonsPod to know when new episodes go up on the free feed,

on the Patreon, or when we have polls or other news going on for the podcast. And finally, if you want an easy-to-search directory of all of our previously released free podcasts of Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon, please head over to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 13's Half Decent Propos have your TV and your nightclubs. Lisa, we're going. But Dad, I can't find Happy Little Elves in Tinkly Winkly Town.

Just grab something. All these movies are great.