Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - 'Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

It's time for another Lisa-centric episode that speaks to all of the gifted kids who grew into confused adults. A documentarian played by Eric Idle shatters Lisa and Bart's sense of self, leading Lisa to battle light pollution (something your hosts never heard of before this 2003 ep). Listen for a podcast dissertation on that plus the Up series, Python troupe rivalries, songs about Vincent Van Gogh, and much more! Support this podcast, experience it ad-free, and get over 150 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 talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we brush the teeth of dead monsters. I'm one of your hosts, the surviving beach boy, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today, as always? I'm not John Ritter or that gorilla from the zoo. It's Henry Gilbert.

And this week's episode is, excuse me while I miss the sky. I haven't seen such a natural pair since half sandwich and soup of the day. I'll just leave you two alone. Remember, as far as he knows, we still teach math. This episode originally aired on March 30th, 2003. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby. Legend of Zelda Wind Waker is now released in the United States.

Chris Rock is the president as head of state tops the box office. And Chicago and Roman Polanski win big at the Oscars. Oh, Roman Polanski. He's a winner all the time, although he's in hiding. Okay, Henry, we got to go back. We got to circle back to point number one. Yes. And I have to be the enemy of Henry Gilbert on this podcast.

Oh, no. The Legend of Zelda, colon, The Wind Waker. You have executed two Zs, sorry, two Thes out of the title. That's how righteous your anger over the word The is. You're like, two of them? Take them out. It's just a time saver. Legend Zelda Wind Waker.

When will Of be next? When will Of fall? Legend Zelda Wind Wake. Yeah, there you go. On Game C. On GC gc yeah we both played this we were we were both excited about it we've we've talked about this many times but it was a major moment for gamers in a bad way in a negative way we have talked about it a bunch before but as i've said before working in a game store this was largely known

as the gay zelda because it was 2003 and i remember a repeat story coming through everybody get ready i remember a manager who loved this game trying to talk people into it saying it's like it's like you're playing a looney tunes cartoon and it's so cool and the adventure is so big you get to sail across the ocean he would hand people the box they would say oh that's the gay zelda and they would just turn them down immediately because in the game you uh fuck men and that's really the point of the wind waker you have to fuck eight men and then you uh fuck gannon and then uh and then for the u.s version they added an extra extra part where you fish for men a little less than you did in the Japanese version. Tingle comes a lot faster in the U.S. version.

Jesus Christ. Hey, I'm not the one who called it the gay Zelda. I was trying to add a new twist to my gay Zelda story. But, yeah, I mean, terrible time for gaming culture. This is like the beginning of G4 TV. Things are very bro-y. Everybody has learned to, like to accept this game in their heart now. I will say the big one flaw

of this game is it's really unfinished. You could tell where they had to cut a lot of content because the GameCube needed something. They just needed games, and the GameCube was a miserable failure. And we're all hoping, you know, we're kind of in the last year of the Switch, that the Wii U port of this game will eventually make it to the Switch because it's a great, great port.

It's a gorgeous, gorgeous port. And I think it's like one of the truly final Wii U games of any consequence that isn't on the Switch. Hey, Xenoblade Chronicles X, I'm looking at you, buddy. All right. That's the true holdout. But in the movie front, to give people perspective on how impossible it once seemed to have a black president, even though it would happen five years after this episode aired, you know, Chris Rock could have a very popular movie on like the comedic, crazy idea of like, what if a young black man accidentally or not accidentally but through random occurrences ended up the president of the united states that could never happen in america yeah it was uh pure fiction until five years after the uh making of this movie and and you can only envision it as one of two things, either Chris Rock or Morgan Freeman. Those were the only two versions of a black president you could imagine in the United States.

Would Obama have been president if not for Deep Impact? So you're saying it was a psyop from Jeffrey Katzenberg? Yes, yes. He was getting America used to the idea. And hey, Jeffrey Katzenberg, I think a big Obama donor, right big time big big time he uh in the obama history uh he kind of uh turned uh things in at least when it comes to hollywood elites giving money to one or the other like in 08 the story i had read several times is everybody was behind uh hillary as as we all expected in 2008 but Jeffrey Katzenberg was one of the first big time donors in the

Democratic Party to go like you know what I think this Obama guy's got it and so it was a big change thanks to Katzenberg and this film was directed by Chris Rock believe it or not he did not direct a lot of movies and I think there might

be only one other one IM imdb is really burying his directing credits so i'm not sure where to find uh the other movies directed the it was the number one either the five or the ten like top five top ten that was it i i think he's he's either in uh in it or directing that remake of Another Round, the film you really enjoyed. Oh, yeah, yeah, the Mads Mikkelsen movie. And, yeah, that Oscars that year, Bob, you've only recently seen Chicago. Yeah, yeah, I did really enjoy it. I don't know.

I'm now enjoying musicals as I enter my middle-age years. And I did have a great time watching it. So this was the, what is this, Best Picture? Yeah, Chicago won Best Picture, but not Best Director. It was up against The Pianist, which is also what won Best Actor for Adrian Brody, which also is another one of those, oh yeah, wow, he was a big deal once kind of things.

Now Adrian Brody, I think, exclusively in wes anderson films and nothing else well i'm not a big fan of the director of chicago he did a fine job with chicago but if you look at what he made after that uh rob marshall it's uh things i don't want to go anywhere close to. And I half-watched his Little Mermaid remake on our flight to Tokyo, and it was appalling. And I don't know if you've seen this. I recommend that you don't. But for some reason, they chose to add a titular Little Mermaid to the Little Mermaid because I feel like they got a lot of really dumb focus group questions about, like, who is the Little Mermaid? She seems fairly average size for a

mermaid so the little mermaid in the disney remake is a little figure that prince eric gives her no i did not know this i didn't i i've only seen clips all the reviews i read said that like you know the actress playing the ariel does a good job with crap and that everything else around it sucks. I mean, I wasn't very impressed by her, but also I wouldn't want to be in that movie either. No, no. Was it Rob Marshall who did Cats or was that the...

No, it was the Les Mis King speech guy, wasn't it? It wasn't Rob Marshall. Yeah, whoever that guy is. Yeah, Rob Marshall is Chicago member. Memoirs of a geisha, not members of a geisha. Nine Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides and Mary Poppins returns. Oh, yeah. I forgot Mary Poppins returned.

They brought her back. That's right. No, I also nine sucks. Like nine is such a maybe it's a good musical on stage, but boy, it's crappy. And I'm somebody who, you know,

loves the eight, eight and a half, the, which it is a, uh, musical adaptation of eight and a half. Oh, this is something I'm hearing about for the first time.

Oh man. You haven't heard about nine. Yeah. It's a, yeah, it's a, it's not good. It's a don't,

if you're feeling good about musicals now, Bob, don't watch it, or it might make you stop watching musicals. I choose to follow your advice. But yeah, Roman Polanski won Best Director and obviously could not attend the Oscars because he is a wanted man. Protesting the war, right? Oh, no, he's a pedophile, rapist. I forgot about that.

You got it mixed up with why Hayao Miyazaki wasn't there to accept his award for Spirited Away. Right, right. Yeah, it's insane that there was a time where it was like under conversation. Like people, not to, it's a depressing topic, Roman Polanski, but I feel like I've seen multiple people who on Twitter in Me Too conversations who have been like saying, well, you know, me too. We need to do we should address it this way or that way. Like these type of commentators.

And then somebody digs up like, here's you 10 years ago saying Roman Polanski did nothing wrong. Or like we should we should forgive Roman Polanski. Yeah. I mean, the clock's running out for old Roman. So I feel like we won't be talking about him for very long. He's going to be exiled to a graveyard soon. A French graveyard, perhaps. Yeah.

Somewhere without extradition from the graveyard. Oh, I did want to say, too, another thing. The day this aired, the actor Michael Jeter passed away. He was in The Fisher King and Evening Shade and this led me to pull up of horribly ugly SD episodes of Evening Shade that are just on Prime Video but man that's a good show I watched like three episodes of Evening Shade yesterday just in the background as I was doing notes I don't know what else was on that night on CBS maybe Murphy Brown but I recall I recall being an Evening Shade viewer at some point.

We talked about Michael Jeter on Talking Simpsons because there's some episode we did within the past year where it ends with a Hollywood party and Michael Jeter is there, but he's not playing himself. That's in the last clip show. It's a drawing of him. Oh, sorry?

That's in the last clip show. Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, Gump Rose, right. Yeah, it's... No, he sadly passed away uh which uh he was an hiv positive actor though um his partner at the time had to correct people like this was not an aids complication or hiv complication thing he he had uh like an epileptic seizure apparently but it's but my main tip is watch evening shade on prime video

if you have it in the u.s or steal it do that too but it's just if you love designing women this is from the same creators designing women but even more southern because it's all set in arkansas and uh burt reynolds is part of that organization right bur? Burt Reynolds. It's an amazing cast. You got Burt Reynolds. You got Mary Lou Henry. You got Michael Jeter. Charles Dunning. Ossie Davis. The amazing Ossie Davis.

And Hal Holbrook. Like, come on. Possible miniseries incoming. We've already picked out our live action one for this year. Next year, perhaps, it shall be. It'll be a tight race between that and like i don't know 30 rock or something which to do which to do but anyway that's the history sorry it's okay this episode is uh excuse me while i miss the sky and we have a new writer's corner

the writer of the co-writer for this episode is Alan Grazier, who wrote this episode with Dan Graney. Dan Graney was on the show since, I think, like season seven. And we have an interview with Dan Graney on our Patreon. Yeah, we should do. He's another one that, like, now that we've done more seasons where he was a writer, we could ask him even more questions. So to everyone's asking, who is Alan Grazier? Well, he would write three more episodes with Dan Graney over the next 11 years of the show. He's actually on the commentary for this episode, but he doesn't say very much.

So I had to do all the work into finding who this guy was. And I say that's extremely rude of Alan. He should have been thinking about that recording this commentary in 2010. What future podcasters would have to do with what Little Lee said. This is how people will make a Wikipedia page for you is what you say on your Simpsons commentary. I'm curious about this too, because yeah, all I noticed was that he seemed very deferential to Dan Grady on it, you know, even 10 years later after they had done the episode yeah he he just he introduces himself and he might like respond a few times throughout but i think because joe montaigne is on the on

the commentary uh he's taken up all the the space on the commentary because everyone loves him and they want to hear him do fat tony voices he at least montaigne's got better stories this time and actually has a couple stories that are like oh you know that's sort of related to the episode okay that's fun so i have no idea where alan grazier came from or where he went but the simpsons is his most notable credit on his imdb entry and it's also his first tv credit so because he only wrote with dan grainy i'm guessing um speculating here that possibly he was a friend of dan grainy looking to break into uh tv writing and uh this is where he began he had a leg up thanks to his pal i really can't see why these two would be paired together just for four episodes and then uh well his career didn't really go super far after that. Yeah, I would definitely see it as a, you know, he's helping a friend type deal or just giving somebody a leg up.

Or also maybe Graney is like trying to work a little less hard and he's like, you know, I'll be a writing team. What if I just become a writing team at this point in my career? Yeah, it could have been him flirting with that idea because at this point we had i think only frank and pain were a writing team at this point on the show yeah it's uh and by the way dan graney i was just reminded of this when i was re-perusing uh mike reese's book uh memoir and uh this we were talking about him just a minute ago, this 2003, I believe, is the last year that Dan Grady was more famous than his classmate at Harvard Law, Barack Obama. Right, yes. I was actually thinking of the Barack Obama connection

because I remember Dan Grady joined the show because he was just very sick of being a lawyer and he was looking for something else to do and luckily he had a few connections thanks to Harvard. Yeah. He he in 2003, Barack Obama, you know, was doing things and starting his climb to the top. But on a national scale, people did not know Obama until 04. I believe he spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

That was his big explosion on the national scene. I think so. Yes. Yeah. And then 06. Yes. Yeah. That because everyone's like, boy, this John Kerry guy sucks. And then everyone's like, you know, this Obama guy. Like, I remember Al Franken was saying, like, the future of this party is Barack Obama. Everybody needs to look at this guy. And, you know, Al Franken, a name you can trust. Yeah. He would never steer us wrong. So let's talk about Alan Grazer. So after The Simpsons,

he would write a segment on the early aughts Nickelodeon show Chalk Zone. And then he would write a handful of Simpsons episodes with Matt Graney through 2014. So after that, he co-created a mockumentary called Never Say Nyet, which is about a Russian actress who's sick of being typecast

as like sex workers and spies trying to teach the world about Russian culture. And I looked this up. There was an Indiegogo for it. And I think it was made for YouTube. But when I went to the YouTube page for the series, the episodes are no longer there if they ever were. There are simply just behind the scenes videos. So I'm not sure where you can watch this, but it was a series of Internet shorts that were independently funded.

Interesting. at least or at least a clever one of like yes that russian actors not unlike you know uh any arab actors are always given like two types of roles you're supposed to play yeah unfortunately i don't know where to see this but it looks like it was funded and made there there's an imdb credit anyways uh so following this grazier has some writing credits for kids series like Word Girl, Talking Tom and Friends, My Night and Me, and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. And his last writing credit is in 2019. So I looked as best as I could. I'm not sure what else he does outside of writing freelance for kids TV. But yeah, just briefly was a writing partner with Dan Graney and has not written an episode of The Simpsons with him since 2014.

Interesting, man. It is funny when a Simpsons person ends up in kids stuff because, I mean, that is a very equally good. It's not worse than primetime, but it's not seen with the level of prestige. But then when you said the names of all those kids shows, I was just like, never. I never heard any of these. Yeah. Word Girl, I think I did because it won an Emmy at some point when we were talking about Emmys. But that's basically it.

All these newer kids shows, I really don't know what they are. It's also funny you mentioned that one of his other, that his Indiegogo is a mockumentary because this is, his first Simpsons episode is a parody of documentaries. That's true, that's true, yeah. Yeah, maybe that was just a format he likes. Although, we'll talk more about it later. They do a lot more with this idea in a later episode,

and this character in a later episode. It's funny, there's some great classic dan grainy dan grainy i love he was great for us and i love him on commentaries because he is one of the top guys on it who jokingly but i think not entirely jokingly goes i came up with that joke first i came up with that premise first like he he likes to let people know who came up with the joke first if it was him. I think he's also the one survivor from the Oakley and Weinstein era and the oldest writer on the show in terms of tenure next to Al Jean. I think so. Yeah. It's surprising he got to survive the Bill and josh years honestly yeah yeah and i believe now uh he is uh not as a hands-on of a role on the show i believe he's a consulting producer now i i get a feeling there was a quiet

shift in the disney era of you can't pay these many eps you have yeah you have to see if they'll stick around for less money well if you go go back to our interview, which was maybe like four or five years ago, he voices similar concerns about his own career. Like, I don't know how much longer I'll be on the show doing what I do now. He is paid based on his seniority, I'm sure, which he deserves. But that's not what Disney wants to do also, I would bet. Absolutely not. Well, you know, this episode too reminds me of, we've talked about other episodes feel like, oh, this is like a season four or three one,

but they're doing it again. This does feel like separate vocations, but from another angle, like it is about Bart and Lisa questioning their futures and where it takes them. Except this time, instead of a standardized test that destroys them it is a documentary filmmaker yeah and i guess the original pitch for the episode or the original

script for the episode was more about bart trying to explore a life outside of being the class clown bad boy but then the idea of him being a hood ornament vandal seemed more enticing i i'm with uh i think uh the the pitch of bart learning what happens to the class clown after the class clown is over like that that does sound interesting to me yeah yeah and one more preamble thing uh they say this episode was nominated for an environmental media award and lost to clifford the big red dog but i looked at on the website for the environmental media awards and clifford won the 2003 award in the children's television program animated category and in the television episodic comedy category king of the hill won in 2003 and it should be noted that the simpsons has won a total of seven of these awards in the television episodic comedy category.

So I'm skeptical the show was nominated in the children's category that year. I couldn't see the list of nominees, but I have to assume that The Simpsons does not enter that category. It goes into the television episodic comedy category and not the children's animated programs category. I think you're right i think they're just remembering grumbling that uh you know they don't want to grumble that they lost a king of the hill because it is a show they respect and with friends working on it and like i i believe granny went to the same uh is in the same harvard class as greg daniels if not he's friends with him so they're not going to talk crap about king of the hill but they can complain about Clifford, and they can be like, we lost to Clifford.

So, yeah, I have to assume this episode was nominated for that year, and King of the Hill beat it. But like I said, The Simpsons won this award seven times. I think it won the first time they had these awards for the Burns Runs for Governor episode. I'll also say I was just thinking about this. This was in our February talk to the audience, but I was just thinking about this is in our february talk to the audience but i'm still thinking about it that the simpsons whenever they complain about not getting awards or nominated for something i just think like you you guys are like the yankees complaining that you didn't win every world series or the patriots winning every super bowl because like for the

wga writers guild of america uh animated category would say 60% of all nominations ever since the category for animated started in 2003. It's The Simpsons, and they've won most of them. Yeah, whenever I see that category, I'm like, oh, it's The Simpsons Award. Who won it? The Simpsons. Wow. Yeah. And yeah, on top of that, The Simpsons has a very good odds of winning in the animated Emmy category.

And I mean, I at least like the gradient myths on the commentary. They're like rather cravenly. We wanted to win that environmental media award. We wanted to pick an environmental topic that was fresh and get an award for it. Like so they're they're honest they're honest yeah and this is a subject that i had not really seen covered on tv at this point which is very very relatable if you live in la or another a big city like that uh if you're out in the burbs maybe not as relevant to your life i i will admit this episode is how i learned the term light pollution it was from watching this episode i'd never heard about it before.

Oh, yeah, me too. And it's where I learned the song of Vincent by Don McLean. That too, yes. Which I guess we'll get to that too. Yeah, we learned a lot for the first time in this one. Thank you to Dan Graney and Alan Glazer. Yeah. Or sorry, Grazer, not Glazer.

And again, we think this is one of the better episodes this season. Like, it's funny. Oh, yeah, last award thing is one of the better episodes this season. Like, it's funny. Oh, yeah. Last award thing I thought of, too, is that on the commentary to also show how awards mean or don't mean something to them. They are complaining like, we didn't win an award for this. And then Stephen Dean Moore, the director, goes like, I won an Annie for this. They don't even remember an award that the animators got like who cares yeah they don't show up to those ceremonies no oh your little doodles did you get a you got a

doodle award there who hosted it Mickey Mouse and I guess this title is a reference to a thing that only boomers and Gen Xers know about which is mishearing the line from that jimmy hendrix song excuse me while i kiss this guy is that purple haze yeah yeah yeah yeah excuse excuse me while i kiss the the uh yeah this guy yeah i think uh it was one of those was like uh that everybody got wrong or it was like it was enough for i remember this in like the humor section in barnes and noble was you could sell a book uh song titles everybody gets wrong and the cover is excuse me while i kiss this guy and it's a drawing of jimmy hendrix kissing a man hilarious yeah he can't do that he's dead uh but uh this episode begins with them replaying the jumping the shark couch gag

Which we already talked about this season, it was on the Rolling Stones episode But again, I'm like, wow, the conversation of Simpsons jump the shark is 21 years old now It's still nuts Yeah, it is weird to see this gag, I guess, now Not even in the middle of the series no no you're right god this is early simpsons now if we're talking mathematically this is early simpsons and uh then we have a very 2003 opening gag about how uh websites were created uh well how websites existed that first of all, that's very 2003.

Remember those? We're sitting now after the mass execution of more websites. Yeah, it's like vice.com. Why even have it anymore? Who needs it? The brand will continue on on its own in a new form that isn't a website. And who needs all of the content written to date on those websites?

Nobody. Who needs the old articles? Yeah, but so in this case, though, they turn it into, I think also to a reference to Frogs in a Blender, the old Flash game for Skinner and a Shredder. Yeah, yeah. We covered the whole Joe cartoon industry

in the episode with Angry Dead. Oh, Curious Yellow. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the New Grounds era. So, yeah, there was the frog in a blender thing. Very, very popular Flash interactive animation. And then after that little joke, and Bart has a laptop, by the way, which I have to assume he stole from somebody. Yeah, and given that it's the year 2003, it's got to weigh at least, I don't know, seven pounds.

And it's burning Bart's legs as well. In his short pants, he's going to have very red legs. But after that, this is when Skinner gets right to it with introducing the big guest for this week's episode. Now, today we have a special guest, a documentary filmmaker whose works include Lost Luggage, Shattered Lives and Upskirt Dreams. Please welcome Declan Desmond. Thank you. Now, when you think of documentaries, you probably think of the Maisels Brothers and Barbara Koppel. Well, they're not good enough to wipe my lens. Here's a look at my work, a film I made about Krusty Burger.

Do you want lies with that? Does it bother you that Krusty uses mad cow beef to save money? No, because they pass the savings on to me, the consumer. Aren't you ashamed to lend your likeness to substandard food? Look, I give people a meat-like burger and some kind of cola, and they still get change back from their 50. Well, your customers may be shocked by my footage of you stapling together abandoned, half-eaten burgers.

So there it is. Eric Idle as Declan Douglas. Declan Desmond. Declan Desmond. Ah, why did I write that down? I was getting it. But yes, Declan Desmond. A good, a good character name.

Eric Idle, of course, a man who needs no introduction unless, of course, he does. And if so, he's from Monty Python, the British comedy troupe. Apparently, he was on the Fox lot man who needs no introduction unless of course he does and if so he's from monty python the british comedy troupe uh apparently he was on the fox lot three years before this episode aired and he sort of invaded the writer's room i'm sure they welcomed him in and he was like put me in an episode and then they finally got around to doing it with this one and uh i feel like he may be the

most bitter member of monty Python, at least publicly. You know, I was thinking about my Python personal rankings too. I think I'm a bigger, was a bigger Python head than you. I mean, I still love Monty Python. I've really only seen the movies, but I mean, I know all of the dudes. You were offended by the dead parrot sketch and swore them off. Yes. Too much bird violence in that in that program no uh well so yes eric idol uh he actually was just in the

news to this week because he did some new interview no he did a new tweet saying like people think i'm very rich but the python money has been running out and I have been working for a living in my 80s, which he has gone on to say he's not complaining like I'm by being a guy who's only worth like a million dollars that he's poor. But he did get used to apparently after spam a lot, got him a lot of money about 20 years ago. I think he raised his his level of living and then he didn't keep making that amount of money and so he is feeling a little tightened belt these days. I hate to break it to you but Spamalot was 30 years ago. Man, 30? Yeah, mid-90s.

And yeah, he's been going off on Twitter. Now keep in mind, I don't know a lot about Monty Python but the podcast Michael and us, both Will Sloan and Luke Savage, have been on this show. Through them I learn about the modern state of Monty Python, which is very pathetic and sad. But, you know, they're all guys entering their 80s now. But Eric Idle, he recently tweeted about the state of Monty Python as an industry.

He said, quote, We own everything we ever made in Python, and I never dreamed that at this age, the income streams would tail off so disastrously. But I guess if you put a Gilliam child as your manager, you should not be surprised. One Gilliam is bad enough. Two can take out any company. So I believe Terry Gilliam's daughter was put in charge of the Monty Python finances, and it was not a good scene, according to Eric Idle. There was a lot of Python Nepo babies in the world. And look, I don't blame their kids for wanting to maintain their parents, you know, legacies, like because the Monty Python is an amazing legacy. almost the truth which was like a seven hour monty python documentary which was great he's a lot better than gilliam's kids but it's also like to be a python fan is to go through different stages

of who you think is your favorite like when i was a kid cleese was my favorite and then when i became a film nerd i was like oh no terry gilliam's my favorite and now honestly eric idol i think is my favorite because he's the least embarrassing in his old age. John Cleese is just a shitty old asshole and Terry Gilliam's not far behind him. And apparently Michael Palin's a jerk. And then the other two guys are dead. Yeah. And not annoying anyone by being underground. No, I also think that Eric Idle is like in that documentary, they kind of talk about how like, you know, they, they had their own little pairings, like Cleese and Chapman were their own and Palin and Terry Jones were

their own. And then Gilliam and Idol kind of did their own thing. And I'd say as a solo performer, Idol, I think has had a good like run of things. Like he's even in this, it's like, they're clearly telling him do your eric idol thing of just like oh well and so this is like that very specific type of british snark he's perfect at it yeah it just seems like they're i mean again i don't know a lot about the organization i only know it through uh super fans of it but it seems like they're not interested in making new material together michael and us uh refer to them as a comedy troupe that has not made any new material since 1983.

And if you see reunion shows, it's just them playing the hits. I mean, I've seen Kids in the Hall. I've seen, you know, other sketch groups. And yeah, they will play the hits, but they also like writing and performing new material. That was not the case for them, it sounds like. No, no, compare the Kids in the Hall reunion season that they did, which was all new material and pushing themselves to make new things and be creative again.

Like when the Pythons were their age, they were not doing that. No, no. Like the Kids in the Hall reboot for Amazon, it would have been like if Monty Python made new episodes in the late 90s, early aughts. Yeah, yeah. Which is, but they were all doing too good in their own solo endeavors that like, you know, they all became, Terry Jones became like a real director. Eric Idle was writing his own. He could just do things without them. He did Monty Python's complete waste of time. John Cleese was starring in real movies.

These days, I actually prefer Eric Idle because he does call out Cleese on being a shitty old man who says dumb stuff about kids today. And also, he's been funnier longer into his old age than John Cleese. The Simpsons will be right back. The Simpsons is brought to you by DreamWorks Pictures, head of state. In theaters March 28th, free to TG-13. They needed a candidate.

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Why don't we just call it Mac of State? Starts March 28th everywhere. Not bad. Welcome to the break, would-be stargazers. Henry Gilbert here, and a big thank you to you, the listener, for checking out Talking Simpsons this week. It's me and Bob's full-time job, so we are pretty proud of it. When we're covering either a classic season 14 or an even more classic season 4,

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you can only hear it at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Please visit it today to see everything you're missing out on. One more time, patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And this character, Declan Desmond, he is basically an excuse to parody the Up series of films, which will actually be tackled more explicitly in the 2007 episode springfield up they don't really touch upon this aspect until

the very end of the episode so i feel like it gave them the inspiration to say let's explore this more and it'll be a fun excuse to do flashback episodes uh flashback scenes with uh characters we love over time. And of course, the Up series, which started with the film 7 Up, is basically a reality show that releases a new episode every seven years that has the same cast. The original subjects were all seven years old,

which is why the first one was called 7 Up. And every seven years, a new one checks in on the same group of people to see where they are. And the last one, called 63 Up, was released in 2019. And Dan Graney points out that his criticism of the Up series is that it feels kind of mean-spirited in that it started as

looking at ordinary people in their ordinary lives, and then it quickly became, here is how being the subject of a documentary changed all of these people forever. Yeah, no, I think they, they definitely think that the director, Michael Afton has like kind of a mean distance to him.

I think a little bit though. They, though they make Declan like legitimately just like, Oh, aren't I so much better than everybody else. But though that adds another aspect to Declan's character, I think how Eric Idle maybe plays him, because as I learned from this commentary and confirmed looking it up, because Joe Montagna says that he was in a film directed by Michael Apted, which was the Richard Pryor film. What was that name of it?

Critical Condition with Richard Pryor. uh what was that name of it the critical condition with richard pryor oh is he like on a gurney making a wild face or something on the cover of that yes yeah it's like him as a doctor making a crazy face and so uh but but that montana working with aptid he said he learned that he was a classmate in cambridge with john cleese and uh if you if you're a python fan that class divide was definitely a play in the monty python group where cleese and chapman being cambridge boys made them feel superior to guys like eric idol and so i do wonder if idol knowing apted and cleese are cambridge uh classmates uh it's kind of bringing a real snobbishness to Declan in his performance. I can see that. And like I said, this episode would have a sequel kind of

with Springfield up in 2007. And then this character appears a total of four times in the history of the show. And because Eric Idle needs the money, I assume he might be back. Oh, for sure. Isn't it also crazy that david merkin always bragged about how he's friends with eric idel on the commentaries and yet it took this long for him to be on the show yeah yeah and these these documentarians he's mentioning uh the mazels brothers are i've actually seen some of their movies uh they're known for gray gardens and gimme shelter barbara koppel, I'm not as familiar with her. She mainly, at least what she's famous for,

are documentaries about labor strikes. The two that I believe she won Academy Awards for are Harlan County, USA and American Dream. Yeah, yeah, I remember those being, when I looked at her list of movies, the only ones I saw were the Dixie Chicks documentary she did, up and sing and then a 30 for 30 on the house of steinbrenner which are the people who own the yankees but i

felt it was a little too nice to steinbrenner that one but that's how you get access for your documentary that's uh all i know about him is the way uh he was played by larry david yeah but the you should just assume he sounds exactly like larry david yeah but you should just assume hey he sounds exactly like larry david uh talking about eating a bowl of soup every day out of a bread bowl but there's something too i really like about british filmmakers who come to america and then go like boy this place is fucked up like that's that's always fun to me hey uh accurate and uh though this bit here with him confronting crusty or also talking to Homer, it feels more like a Michael Moore kind of thing, too, who he'd appear later in production season 14 for the Evita parody. Right, right. I believe it's called The President Wore Pearls.

And yeah, I was thinking this kind of expose filmmaking does feel a lot more like Michael Moore. But Michael Moore was in the air around this time. Probably by the time they were writing this, Bowling for Columbine was popular, you know, among certain crowds. And not too long from now will be Fahrenheit 9-11, which is like the peak of Michael Moore relevance. Which are, again, the previously mentioned Michael and us guys did an entire podcast about what a crazy world that was. You know what? I'll save my Michael Moore blockbuster renting experience. I worked at a blockbuster in Florida during the Michael Moore peak of popularity.

And because there wasn't social media yet, I got to be the brunt of conservative people being mad about Michael Moore coming into our store and complaining to me. People were just saying their future tweets right to your face. Yes, yeah. But I saw Evita a long time ago. I guess I'm going to have to, but I don't want to watch the Madonna movie. I want to see a filmed stage production of Evita, not the version they made for Madonna. Well, that's probably what I'm going to end up watching when we do that episode, because I've never seen it. And so this is where one of the two deleted scenes is where after the stapling of the burger scene, they cut it where Homer breaks into the footage

of the black and white footage and says, oh boy, it's the new staple burger. And he takes a bite and then he says, oh, it makes its own ketchup. Oh no way, that's my new staple burger. And he takes a bite and he says, oh, it makes its own ketchup. Oh, no way. That's my blood. Hey, I like that. It was funny.

But they needed more time for the music at the end, I guess. And also the bit of Homer having his freak out is really good. It's one of those rule breaker scenes of like, oh oh yeah, you're not supposed to animate Homer this way. Well, later in the commentary, we hear how David Silverman, uh, you know, contributed some Homer drawings to this episode.

These feel like his wild takes his Homer wild takes. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Both in style and with his level of power on the show, he could get away with it too. And actually have Homer drawn that way. And so after showing the clips then skinner

does have a great line of saying like and i'm sure though this will be different from all his previous ones when he covers our school he didn't know what he was signing up for and so this is when declan also when he's on stage he's clearly already making the plot of his film in his head when he sees the nerds in the crew. And he's telling his cameraman, stick with the dinks like Milhouse. Milhouse is like, what should all his cool kids do? And I think we see one of the super friends is next to him. Is it cosign?

Is it email? Oh, it's multiple of the guys. Because he's sitting next to Database. But also, I definitely noted Ham in front of him, and I think also Cosign, too. Definitely I noticed Ham in front of him. And this is where Declan starts

filming. And now he's going to make a documentary about Springfield Elementary, which I assume will be glowing and positive, unlike all of his other work. Right. Now, everyone, while I'm filming, please be yourselves. I want to see troubled children brooding, bullies doling out what for. What about us cool kids?

Should we just chill out? You're doing great. Stay with the dink. America is supposed to be a democracy. But in the schoolyard, cool rules. And Springfield's Machiavelli of the monkey bars is one Bartholomew Simpson. On today's

royal agenda, digging up dirt clods to throw at his school chums. I chuck them at nerds, girls I like, whatever. Ow! Munch mud, Simpson! I'm telling! Oh, man.

And in a flash, Bart's glory has gone the way of England's masculinity. That's just a thing John Cleese would say now, like, not as a joke. Oh, yeah. If we look that up, we could find the tweet, I think. I love that Declan does his narration live instead of in editing afterwards.

He's like, oh, I know exactly what this is. Just going to talk right over it. Yeah, and he praises it. It's like, oh, that's good narration. And it does feel a little real for such a crazy episode that this gets to be. Having Bart just crying on camera and then realizing it's going to humiliate him then he goes oh man like that just feels very realistic yeah uh realistic crying realistic reaction it's not played for comedy really

and uh this is uh where they cut to uh ralph and millhouse talking about hall monitors i like seeing ralph doing his moves as Ultraman. That's a lot of fun. Milhouse saying, you know, you don't know if you're going to be kissing your dolls goodbye for the last time whenever you leave the house. But this is when Skinner tries to divert things by saying they're not all nitwits and Nelsons.

And this is when Declan is directed to meet with Lisa. And this was an interesting scene for gifted kids to watch, I would say. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wish this had hit me a little earlier than when I was watching this when I was 20. But jokes on Declan, you can be a Jack or Jill of all trades as long as you can then turn it into a podcast where you can cover everything you've learned that's true that's true they they weren't aware of podcasting yet that's where all the gifted kids uh sorry failed gifted kids were funneled into after everything shook out well as uh as his joke directs us like we don't have a barnes and noble to manage anymore so that's true yeah yeah i mean where are all the uh people who got their phds gonna work now uh the university

i don't think so no way there are no borders to manage anymore uh but yes this is when lisa gets taken down a peg in a way that i'm sure people like dan graney got to experience in their own lives hmm lisa i can't help but wonder if this is a bit of a put-on. Why, whatever do you mean? Me? Huh? What? Go Aberdeen! Hey, you can't blame Principal Skinner for wanting to feature his best student. And that's you. Well, I am young, gifted, and yellow. My interests include music, science, justice, animals, shapes, feelings.

So you see yourself more as a buffet-style intellectual, picking and nibbling until one day you're 38 and managing a Barnes & Noble. Hey, that's not going to happen. Lisa, I'm afraid you're a dilettante. Pick a path and follow it, or you'll just grow up, slog your way through Mount Holyoke, and squeeze out babies. Stop it! Dang. And you know what? Mount Holyoke was one of the ones she could have gone to in the Seven Sisters College.

Yeah, yeah. It's the twice-in-one season and probably never again. Mount Holyoke is referenced. But yeah, all of this here is what you think about when you are the gifted kid who gets all the praise because you're good at so many things or you know more than a child to know about so many things. But then, yeah, you maybe don't want to pick a path. I mean, I didn't want to pick a path as something. I just like doing what I wanted to do. I don't want to belabor any of this, but it's not fair to put this on kids who will have no idea how the labor market will have changed. They will have no idea, like, oh, your job is done by a computer now. And now even creative jobs are going away, where that felt like, well, you can roll the dice and maybe get a creative job, but then no one else can do it. It's like, well, now everybody wants AI to do it for now at least well i like the people who 10 years ago were told learn to code like nah it's not really probably not no yeah i'm wondering because we go back and forth on this as a society

at least in the west it's like we grew up in the uh in the like big push for more literacy where it's like the most important thing to do is read you must be reading it doesn't matter what if you read we'll give you pizza just keep reading and then by the time we graduate high where it's like the most important thing to do is read you must be reading it doesn't matter what if you read we'll give you pizza just keep reading and then by the time we graduate high school it's like reading why'd you do that it's all about stem stem stem stem and now it's just like well then stem is all like done that seems to be like an easier job for ai than than being creative seems like yeah it seems like that can do the computational stuff uh and uh also uh lisa is referencing the term to be young gifted in black uh which was a nina simone song that was done in tribute to the title of the 1968 play that was about lorraine hansberry the writer of a

in the sun okay yeah it's also the 18th aretha franklin album title yes yeah yeah which has it has a cover of that song on it but it's uh nina simone did it first okay cool yeah uh yeah but yeah i mean this thing too of calling her a dilettante you know that's a little it's like ouch ouch man but uh like i uh there's a deleted scene secret deleted scene scene on the DVD. This is the other one where I get why they deleted it because I think it just drives home the point or they have a better version of the show later in the episode. Declan, after he says all that mean stuff, Lisa says, you're just a hypocritical snob. And then he says, yes, because I committed to that at an early age. And now I'm really great at it. I guess I committed to knowing a lot about TV shows at an early age.

For me, I was like, well, I do want to know a lot about TV shows, but I also want to know a lot about comic books, but I also want to know a lot about movies, but I also want to know a lot about wrestling, but I also want to know a lot about anime. It's tough to pick. It really is. You have to specialize, I guess.

Even now, as you know, comfortably we're in the back half of our lives, I'll say. Yes. If all things go according to plan, hey, maybe in 40 years we can run for president. Who knows? But now it's like, well, the years are not as plentiful as they used to be. I have to make even more careful choices now. No, I think, well, I'm thinking this is a script written by some people who are around our age when they wrote it that are like boy i wish when i was eight i'd have

could tell myself commit to something instead of picking and choosing how it is but like you know i mean when i got into the games press i gave up being a video store clerk type guy i was like oh i guess i guess i should just put all this energy into video games instead, which, you know, worked for a small amount of time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, like, it was just a constant shell game for me where I wanted to specialize, but the economy was not cooperating, where it's like, okay, now I'll do this.

Oh, I can't do that anymore? Okay, now I'll do this. Oh, wait, that's gone now? Okay, what about this? Oh, I can't do that anymore either now i'll do this oh wait that's gone now okay what about this oh i can't do that anymore either okay then i landed on podcasting and it's stable at long last it's stable finally oh and in the deleted scenes there's some fun animation of like the declan shows off like he's such a good snob that he's able to roll his eyes independently of one another in two different directions oh i like that uh but then we cut to millhouse giving bart a rundown on how he's unpopular the line about like the kid who wears

diapers to school uh our pals on choppo discussed a whole news story about this recently you remember this oh oh was this the thing about how uh the kids pooping their pants? It was that a conservative politician, I believe in Utah, wanted to outlaw kids from coming to school wearing diapers. Because the implication was, from the conservative angle, was, oh, parents are so woke and coddling now, they won't even teach kids potty training before they get into kindergarten. And then the article makes the point of like yes that's what conservatives think but children who wear diapers to school at that age it's because they have a problem they would love to stop of not being able to control their uh their waste release but they can't right right yeah i assume that uh most people do master you know the toilet functions by that age but there could be something something in the way that could prevent them from you know fully achieving toilet mastery and then and the kids who need that help

if they're not wearing diapers to school well then you're just asking for trouble uh and who's cleaning that up the teachers yeah yeah hey i mean i don't want teachers like changing diapers that should not be maybe the school nurse in a pinch no pun intended uh there's also a great joke about bart uh having the shame of calling a teacher mom accidentally i feel like i did to do that once, but it buried it deep, deep in my memory because it was so humiliating. Did you hear an entire class explode with laughter? That feels like something I buried, yeah. Okay.

In my memories, yeah. Well, Ralph did it in the past to Miss Hoover. And that destroyed him as well. And I also like how Milhouse says, even I beat you up that day after you passed out, which like that's a horrible. It's so good. It's the only way Milhouse can get a get a hit in on Bart. And then we get the introduction of how Bart's going to fix things, which we see about stealing hood ornaments, which apparently like Dan Graney said he did do in his bad boy youth. Yeah, as a sixth grader.

And I don't know. It feels like an attractive nuisance. I don't know if cars still do this, have these hood ornaments. Clearly, we haven't thought about owning a car in a very long time. I mean, definitely they have the logos on the front, but a hood ornament? Is it a thing that sticks up at the top? I don't know. I don't think I see those anymore.

It seems a bit tacky now. But this is when Bart learns the secret way to be popular once more. The only way to be cooler than him is to do exactly what he does. I've got to steal me a hood ornament. But how? Was something wrong, kids? You haven't touched your dinnerables. Nelson steals a hood ornament, and now he's king of the school. All that's left for me is to become the biggest drunk this town's ever seen.

Talking won't get you there. Lisa, what's bumming you up? The counselor test or something? Dad, my life lacks direction. It's a concern, a serious concern. Hey, I never chose a path. Because I kept my options open, I can finally do what I want. And what's that?

I'm going to die alone. Gotta make a career. Gotta make a career. I can find a good career at this museum. Or at least see if they fixed that mislabeled raccoon I complained about. I love that Lisa complains about a mislabeled raccoon and takes it all the way up to management. I was wondering why the dinner scene, this is something for our podcast to talk about, no one else. Why the dinner scene is in the kitchen. That's the breakfast table, not the dinner table.

And I thought there'd be something in the kitchen that would necessitate the scene to take place there but there really isn't no and not in the deleted scenes either maybe it's just for grandpa placement for him to like yes yeah i guess you need a more circular table for grandpa placement that's the only i mean and his choice of like dying alone is what he wanted that's a great horribly dark joke i don't it could be grainy because he does dark jokes but I also think any jokes about dying alone feel like Dana Gould to me. Yes. I could wager it was a Dana Gould choice. And Bob, I was not a Lunchables eater.

I looked at friends who got Lunchables and were like, oh, those look kind of cool. But I had a PB&J at lunch every day for the entirety of kindergarten to sixth grade. But were you a Lunchables boy? Occasionally, but they were expensive. I guess you were paying for convenience and they were fine. I just remember like you would just get the sweatiest meat in those. Because it's just deli meat that's trapped in plastic so you're just putting like a sweaty piece of bologna on a cracker i guess the cheese was okay but uh

yeah i uh i was not like lunchables all the time kid and you could put a marinara-esque sauce on top of a cracker with like three pieces three strings of mozzarella and call it a pizza yeah yeah i mean by the time they got around to you know making your own pizzas with lunchables i thought you pushed this too far for me it was always crackers and cheese and meat and that's that's that's you know i don't want to i don't want to explore the lunchables universe outside of this simple equation i i was looking up where lunchables were in the pop culture when this joke was written. And Lunchables were one of the, you know, all food for children is unhealthy. But Lunchables was definitely a big target because of its extreme unhealthiness.

That one headline I saw was like Lunchables had more than half of your daily requirement of sodium in it for for example yeah i was gonna say if i had to guess probably just a mountain of salts to keep all that stuff preserved salt and fat and like the only things they could advertise like uh it's 10 grams of protein but uh but lunchables was able to pivot slightly and they survive they're still around they don't have dinnerables yet but they do have basically the things that feel like this is lunchables for adults called lunchables maxed out and uploaded where it's like slightly more mature things in it you can even get a walking taco lunchables walking taco you know you haven't heard of the walking taco bob no no enlighten me please oh well it's well this is them co-opting a street food uh creation which is basically like uh you get a

bag of some sort of dorito type chip and then you put taco fillings inside of that bag open up bag put in you know nacho cheese some of the chili sauce or whatever and then maybe some meat and then you'll walk around with it in that bag and then dump some in your mouth as you're walking around sir that is just the frito pie renamed it's it's true but now you get to have it in like a dirty bag great great you can just lick the the meat and cheese out of that bag when you're done no well you got to turn it inside out and lick it clean, I would guess. I've never had a walking taco. But now it's being co-opted by the Lunchables brand

for their own walking tacos. God, okay. I mean, again, we pushed it too far. It should just be basically a cheese board in a little box. It's also funny that they're eating it with the big red handy snacks scooper thingy. Like that's what they're all eating their dinnerables with is a big red stick, which now handy snacks and spreading it out with a red stick. I had my share of those as a kid.

Yeah. And that was referenced in Marjorie Not Proud with Don Brodko. Yeah, that's right. And he did break the cracker, which was very, very common. And so Lisa heads to the museum that has now multi-ethnic cavemen. And she's walking around the museum trying to see what she wants to do. The dinosaurs, she learns that it's only for guys who have to clean bones. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was my opening gag because I love the dinosaur express saying, don't do it. I wasted 30 years brushing the teeth of dead monsters.

It's also great that it's like a droopy adjacent voice. It's not exactly the droopy voice guy, but close, close. And unlike a Martin Prince, Lisa does not want to be a geologist. No, no. She gives up immediately. She starts reading a placard. She's like, oh, geology, that's it for me. She starts reading a placard and just sighs and disgusts because it's so boring and then lisa heads into the astronomy room uh and this you know the thing of pressing a button

to make the lights go out and then a thing auto plays like i did love that when going to museums as a kid the specific memory i have is watching is watching a little movie about how the meteorite killed the dinosaurs thing. And then I feel like I hit the button twice. There was just something about the power of turning off all the lights and making the video play. These I associate with children's museums, these kind of things. Oh, yeah. No, when I was a kid at the like now i did i definitely think there are still those children's museum i think we did a podcast in an exploratorium type

museum like that in san francisco oh yeah yeah yeah that was great that was our first live show with hey with dana gould with you're right and i'll say you know uh you know those kind of things great to check out not great if you're hosting a podcast. It's not a big cavernous room. The sound doesn't project all that well. Not really. No, well, at that same place, we went into the room where the stand-ups were doing their performance,

and literally you could not hear anything in the back of the room. Yes, I think we were the lucky ones i'm very grateful for the opportunity but i'm glad we got to perform in real uh spaces after that i think that was an experiment that they never returned to uh at sketch fest no but it was uh well yes it was very nice of that and and they're the ones who connected us with dana gould so even nicer yes but yes as lisa learns about all these things, she does learn that like, oh, yeah, space is so big. I could actually discover something.

There's so much of science that is already been covered and you might not be able to find something new. But it's like, hey, space is infinite. I could find something new. And according to this Harry Shearer announcer, Rigel 7 is real. Which it isn't, right? I couldn't find like it's a star trek planet it's a star trek thing yeah yeah okay that's what i figured uh it's i i'm taking back again to when we did monorail the clips of conan talking to al jean every time al jean made a reference to like star trek

conan called him a nerd and dumped on him for it. And also it's fun that it seems like Lisa, I get the joke on second viewing of like, oh, Lisa on the spotlight thing. It seems like it's a real announcer doing it, but actually it's just a recorded thing. And that at the end, he's asking somebody to press the button again. Yeah. Thankfully, it's not like a sentient robot that is begging for its life, as we've seen before on the show or tungsten tungsten yeah so uh then we go to commercial break we come back at teenage paste land a cute name and i bet a lot of simpsons writers went to these places growing up because it's the only place you can go to get glue to get high from oh no bob to build models come on uh i remember uh it's been a while since we referenced

this uh but the gilbert godfrey podcast his dad ran a model store and he knew kids were buying glue to huff it so he said you have to buy a model if you're buying glue so he would sell models and glue and then at the end of the day he would see all the models thrown away in the trash can outside of his store they don't even bother with it that's uh i that also i i would just saw somebody pointing out on twitter that they're now just getting ads that are like this is just whippet hits you're just selling like this is drugs being sold on here yeah yeah you know uh the proliferation of all of these marijuana stores it can be kind of annoying because they're everywhere now. But people are not giving themselves irreversible brain damage by huffing inhalants. Yeah, it's much better.

I didn't know. I'm one of those kids who didn't know about that you could huff paint until the things that told me to not huff paint showed what huffing paint was. And I didn't do it. But it's how I learned, like, oh, you can do that to get high? Yeah, most of the anti-drug things just taught me, oh, this is how you do drugs. Nice. Yeah, it was the actual version of the reasons they don't want sex education in schools. Because it's like, oh, teach kids how to have sex.

But, like, that never did that to me. But seeing how to huff paint i did learn to do that yes uh henry and i have never huffed paint like the most scuzziest thing friends of mine ever did uh pre access to marijuana was do robo tripping oh right yes i i had now i did have paint huffing friends oh nice it was the nelson of our group uh he he he definitely talked about yeah huffing paint school i was like well hey have fun with that that's the same friend who i told the story before about how after they saw the crow the brandon lee film the crow they're like i bet we could draw the crow with lighter fluid on the street too and light it up and did it that sounds like an idea from someone with irreversible brain damage. Or a teenager, kind of same thing.

It's a fun guy to hang around when you're a dumb kid too, and you'll think it's cool also. So while at Teenage Pace land, you can spot clay dough and leather craft stuff in the background that was previously used as one of the classic Simpsons closet full of things gags, which they did a lot in the Scully years. I think a lot of these props are from the Sunday Cruddy Sunday episode where Lisa and Marge are trying to decide what craft they should do because they were bored.

Yeah, they didn't put the Vincent Price egg thing, though, in the background. I missed it if they did. They did not. At least I didn't put the Vincent Price egg thing, though, in the background. Or I missed it if they did. They did not. At least I didn't see it. And Aljean points out that the telescope Homer buys is thousands of dollars and still is if you want to buy one like it on Amazon, which is why it's helpful that Homer basically stole it by doing a bad check. We could still bounce checks in 2003, I guess.

Could you pay with a check anywhere now? Would any place take a check? I mean, I go to places that are like, all I have to sign got a checking account and everything like you could write a check and kind of guarantee that the store wouldn't cash it for a few days. Now, I think they just run those numbers immediately and suck the money out of your account. There's no like depositing involved. It's all just online. It's all just done, you know, through the Internet. Also, my fear with checks now when I look at them i'm like wait this has all of the information you need to like take money out of my bank like this has all the routing numbers and everything i shouldn't hand this to anybody yeah i mean uh i guess there is like a huge amount

of information and then when i worked at a grocery store we made our customers write their social security numbers on checks for reasons i'm unclear of i guess uh to prevent identity theft or maybe to encourage identity theft from people who saw the checks uh the last time and i think this will be the last time i ever use a check though i still technically have a checkbook is that i wanted to be more official when i like put down the deposit on this current apartment and so we wrote them a check and then they had to alert us like uh this check got stolen from our uh office so yeah i had to cancel my checking account and and all that and it restarted but i mean if it wasn't written to cash then only they could cash it right

no yes yeah it was more like that they they're just like oh yeah this has your routing number on it and everything so one you can't just kill the check you also need to change your bank account number and let your bank because when you tell the bank or at least when i told this bank hey this check of mine got stolen and it could cause fraud problems they say you need to kill this checking account right now and just make a new one. You have to spend the time doing it, not us. The one upside to it was that they, as an apology, they waived the, basically they're like, all right, you know what? The landlord said, we don't need the security deposit then.

You can just, you just have the, we'll, will as our apology just you zeroed security deposit as our gift to you for the the mere price of identity theft you can get your deposit waived i guess and of course you will be giving us still thousands a month uh for rent for the foreseeable future but yeah so homer though playing the game of that with the bronson voice guy i feel like it should be gill i feel like it's a miscasting of the Bronson voice guy. Yeah, he should be a little savvier. Bronson voice guy, he's always smarter than Homer instead of Homer outsmarting this guy. Yeah, yeah, I feel like he should have put an end to this, but I guess Homer being this obvious is pretty funny.

And, I mean, the act outs are funny drawings, too. And then, you know lisa should have been asking principal skinner for help with this he knows all about this that's right yeah totally i was getting some bart's comment vibes uh from the end of this episode actually though his his hatred of kohotak uh is is sadly not present here but and uh you know what i also like that they they find a new one up for the gag of like homer's so stupid he doesn't he doesn't understand these things of when lisa tells him this is not a kaleidoscope his response of like you may be a smart kid lisa but you don't know much about not hurting people's feelings and then just walks away sad lisa's a real monster

and uh leave it to al jean to have a joke about ed mcmahon and star search in 2003 hey not the uh only super dated joke in this episode we'll get to it though mcmahon i guess was uh he was co-hosting with alf around this time so he was as prominent as ever his last brush with uh stardom i guess was being paired with alf and then and bob did you know that al gene and mike reese were some of the first people to pair alf and ed mcmahon on television yeah with what were the alf clip shows yes there's an hour-long alf clip show called tonight tonight where basically to present the clips alf is on the set of The Tonight Show guest hosting for Johnny in fiction.

And it's him with Ed McMahon. It's him with the producers on the show. And it was like Alf said, oh, Al and Mike, you guys wrote for The Tonight Show two years ago or a year ago. You should write this. And so they wrote the jokes of Alf alf and ed mcmahon playing off each other and i yeah i remember them saying that they used a lot of the jokes that did not make it to the tonight show because johnny carson made you write too many jokes he would barely use any of them it let them finally get their revenge on johnny carson killing funny jokes they're like

well johnny wouldn't say this is karnak but alf will and uh this is when lisa starts her star search and uh first it is obscured by the light from a concert which that's a great i i like this joke of thanks a lot surviving beach boys yeah hey uh bad news for brian wilson he's still alive as of this recording but uh he's been placed in a conservatorship i guess oh dear i, dear. I didn't know this. Yes, thanks to, I believe, dementia, faculty's not quite what they used to be, things like that. That's very sad. I knew a little bit about this, but thanks to our good pal Scott Gairdner, previous podcast guest, he did an entire podcast, The Ride, where he explained the Mike Love Beach Boys situation.

Yeah, I received so much instruction in the ways of love. Mike Love troubled, troubled. But, you know, Scott does point out that when you peak when you're like 19, this is what happens to the rest of your life. Yes, that's true. My favorite clip on that, Mike Love when the Beach Boys deservedly are getting in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And instead of it being a nice night of like celebrating your accomplishments, he is extremely bitter concert are obscuring Lisa, but also bright lights from the hotel. Or sorry, a sleazy motel, which I forgot that we had back to back appearances of Miss Springfield in this season. Yeah. With this Harley Quinn style voice that Tress is doing.

She's fun. i like her i also like that in the previous time where we saw her post coital uh with with quimby that's one thing but this time when they leave the hotel room she didn't put on clothes she's just like walking around i guess in a bikini she just wears all of the time yeah i guess she never left the swimsuit competition. She's like, I can just walk home in a swimsuit and a sash. And also, any mayoral sash joke is great. And the sash confers power. And you was a goyle! She finds a lot of humor in it.

He finds the situation very serious. And so then Lisa heads over to the mountains, thinking she'd finally get some clear skies. No, she does not. And this is when Professor Frank shows up to just say the almost PSA style definition of what environmental problem they're talking about, which is specifically light pollution, which is still a really bad problem to this day. And I just read a National Geographic's guideline for children about how it's still very bad. Yeah, I had a professor, an astronomy professor at YSU. His name was Dr. Young. Ironically, he was very old.

And he was always very very very mad about light pollution as an astronomer and he just basically said you know when they started putting lights everywhere in like every neighborhood uh it would like it just changed astronomy forever and made things much worse for the entire field and i guess it's that's probably just uh for what they talk about in this episode that like tough-crime fears and everything makes them put lights everywhere. I mean, I do think streetlights are probably good for public safety in a way,

but it can go pretty far. Yeah, and I don't know what the movement was. I feel like the push to have streetlights everywhere might have been racially motivated. It might have been like when there were tensions a certain period of american history yeah i mean they and they portray it as an anti-crime thing in this episode but about juvenile delinquency yeah but yeah the the national geographic thing if i can quote from it here some of the problems beyond not being able to see the

stars which obviously you know is is a bad thing and also that like uh an increased amount of light at night lowers melatonin production which results in sleep deprivation fatigue headaches stress anxiety and other health problems and it also warns about blue light found in cell phones and other computer devices as well as leds are the kind of bulbs that have become popular at home and cause the most problem problems a yeah it's like that it makes it very hard to go to sleep it's like one of the apparently one of the worst things you could look at right before going to bed is your phone or a computer monitor you know that's what i've heard i guess it's semi-related but uh because we we live in our ivory tower now in vancouver we a skylight in our apartment, which is the first time I've ever had one. And my sleep has never been more regular because my body is always aware of what LED lights is that my husband stays up a little later than me, only by like an hour or so.

But basically, it's why I started using what Lisa has later in the episode, the sleep mask, like full darkness eye mask. Because if I wake up and I see that the TV's still on, I have real trouble getting back to sleep. What cartoon character's eyes are on that mask henry i need to know i do have some fun cartoon character eye mask but honestly they don't fit right with my c-pap so i just have them to the side like i have a fun snorlax one snorlax and teddy from persona 4 but they just don't fit right with the sleep mat or with my c-pap mask as well. So instead I just get cheap bulk purchased ones you can get that are just a uniform color on Amazon.

You can draw whatever eyes you want to on those. I should stitch some into it. That'd be fun. Oh, and also not just does it hurt humans, but also yes, the light pollution is very bad for animals as shown in this episode too. To quote National Geographic one more time, studies show the light pollution is very bad for animals, as shown in this episode, too. To quote National Geographic one more time, studies show that light pollution also impacts animal behaviors such as migration patterns, wake, sleep habits, and habitat formations. Yeah, I think Dan Graney was talking about on the commentary, like seeing how animals reacted to an eclipse.

Oh, yeah. And how just the sudden disappearance of the sun just made them go crazy. When we had the eclipse in, I believe, 2017, the really nice eclipse, I actually went to where the, like, I guess the occlusion was the highest you could get, the highest you could see.

The most of the sun was covered up. And, yeah, like, as soon as the sun sun went away all the animals started getting very loud wow man i didn't know that because they're like oh it's nighttime it's time to party and then uh that lasted for about 90 seconds no wonder people a thousand years ago thought that was witchcraft and they were right i still believe it is and uh yes here here then, Frank chases off other astronomers trying to take his space. It's why he can't help Lisa. I always like Frank and Lisa team-up episodes.

You know, one of the most recent episodes they did this season is a Homer-Frank team-up, which was an unexpected one. You know, maybe I'm thinking about Bart's comment because we see the observatory in that episode too. That's true, yeah. For that that one they made up new scientists for it instead of now they're just like you know it's like how police chief Wiggum is on every cop call if you go anywhere where science happens Frank is there and so then we cut back to the school after Lisa hears this and and uh declan is doing more of his live narration he's

talking about bart trying to impress the kids and this is where he brings up that bart is a beta to the alphas which this was very this was starting to get very popular at the time the which apparently is a total myth the wolf packs having alphas and betas and all that other stuff. Yeah, the guy who made that claim has since recanted and said it was an inaccurate observation. This is not true. But the terminology stuck around, unfortunately. Oh, yeah. I read a 2023 Scientific American article about it being a myth and how it's like in Wolfpack specifically, they're just a family. It's like this is the father

this is the mother and these are the kids they are not betas and alphas and all that and rarely do they fight for dominance to be the alpha or beta of a group yeah it's it's a pack they they need to cooperate if anything they're communists yeah yeah and but no i, we've seen this thing spread so much that, like, the people who pitch this garbage to men who are sad, like, they've moved beyond alphas. It's sigma. Sigma is the way to be, not alpha. I can't keep track of all this Greek. What's Omega like? What's the Omega rank?

Omega? Well, in the original article, I don't know if it's changed. Omega is the lowest like you're an omega wishes they were a beta damn omega just sounds so cool no i think omega is cool well of course i'm a big fan of kitty omega the professional wrestler okay well my my love of omega is not wrestling related well he also calls himself that because he's a big fan of megaman games oh okay yep hey i thought sigma was in a megaman game is Oh, okay. Yeah. Hey, I thought Sigma was in a Mega Man game. Is there an Omega as well? Well, he gets to call himself

the Omega Man instead of Mega Man. Ah, I see. That was the reason he did it. Yes, yeah. But no, you're right. Sigma was the big bad of the X series, wasn't he?

I think so. He fought X a lot. Not Mega Man X, just X. Oh, wait, what? Canonically, his name is X. In the games, they don't call him Mega Man X. They just call him X.

Okay, we have to ask Elon Musk if this is legal, if he can do this. Oh, you're right. Oh, no. Now you're making me hate the Mega Man X series, Bob. When there's four at least good games there. You can't say X-us anymore. You can't ever be called Max again. That X is just, it's washed.

It's ruined. I have to hope that in the MCU soon, the X-Men take it over and reclaim X for that corporate branding away from Tesla's owner. The X-Men movie is just going to be called Men. And unfortunately, there's an A24 movie with that title. So there's going to be a huge lawsuit. Well, Disney will buy A24 first

to make sure there's no problem. But okay, but yeah. So we see that Bart fails to entertain the kids with his stolen hood ornament because he just took one of Maggie's pacifiers and painted it silver, spray painted silver. I hope Maggie doesn't put that back in her mouth after it's been spray painted. No, no. She appears on the scene to snatch it away from him in a huff, but we don't see her. Speaking of huffing paint, actually, I don't know why I used the word huff. Oh, my God. Maggie's going to get high.

But this is when Declan not only has more comments on Bart, but also to Lisa. Hey, check out this hood ornament I stole. With this glinting giggle, the beta male attempts to reclaim leadership of his herd. Oh, that's good narration. That's not a hood ornament. The beta male attempts to reclaim leadership of his herd. Oh, that's good narration. That's not a hood ornament. It's a pacifier you spray-painted silver. Oh.

Wait, that's not right. Oh, look. It's Jill of all trades. So, what's the ambition du jour? I'm collecting signatures to bring back the night sky. Wow, the night sky. How'd you come up with that? Tilt your head up. Does it make you feel superior to tear down people's dreams?

Yes. Does it make you feel smart to question people's motives? Yes. Well, all right then. I like Nelson using the pitch pipe too. He got so confident, he lost the ha-ha. That's great. I wonder if that's pulled a little from like,

has Nancy ever been like, wait, that's not ha-ha. Does she do it perfect every time? I think she's a professional and she knows uh she could like write out the the the notes on a musical staff like where ha ha is supposed to be each the ha and the ha you're right she takes her her craft very seriously and it comes through uh but yeah that i mean also like that is just such a Eric Idle, like, very well then. Like, that just is to me, if you were writing a parody of how an Eric Idle character would talk, it would be, well, all right then. Yeah, they know his voice.

You know, another thing with him that was just a point in his favor in the ranking of pythons, like, he was one of the ones um when stuff came out about how uh sarah polly as a kid was treated on the the set of baron von munchausen uh which was poorly she was one of the ones who said like eric idol was one of the few adults on set that was trying to like save me and keep me safe oh so yeah okay so he is definitively the number one surviving Python at this point. It seems that way at the moment, yes. Yeah, but who knows what could come out in years to come. But currently the ranking is Idle number one. He's been really tweeting up a storm lately. Well, and it made me sad to find out through our Michael and us pal, Will Sloan,

because he reads all the books that i thought that eric idol and michael palin were cool but it seems like idol actually has even more anger towards michael palin than john cleese which i could not i was shocked at that i mean at this point uh i mean even shatner is being friendly with the star trek cast i think to a certain extent the remaining live-in ones. Yeah, yeah. I just heard William Shatner, he's a voice in the new season of The He-Man Show. And I was just imagining, like, did he take any direction?

Yeah, yeah. Maybe at this point, he just is grateful to be alive. Maybe. Though it was such a funny thing to hear him say, he pronounces it Skeletor, not Skeletor, and you can bet nobody wanted to hear him say he pronounces it skeletor not skeletor and no you can bet nobody wanted to correct him on that it's a real sabotage kind of deal exactly he man you have to watch out for skeletor you say skeletor i say skeletor it sickens me uh but uh so lisa goes

on her uh her quest for signatures they only have one joke in it though, of, of her getting sea captain to Scrimshaw it. Yeah. I was setting myself up for a montage where she gets a bunch of signatures, but no, it's just this. And I like that he lives in a, in a landlocked boat. Yes. That to me looks like steamboat Willie's ship. I mean, Scrimshaw is a fun, is a fun word.

And I like his little illustration, his little nautical illustration, but scrimshaw is the carving of whale bones. So I guess he was just being cutesy with his terminology. I guess it looks like a drawing that would be put on a carved onto a whale bone, but you're right. Yeah, he's not correctly using the term scrimshaw. You're right bob and so uh after lisa gets many signatures uh off screen she has convinced quimby to uh turn down the lights and i love that he has a long description of what is essentially blanche dubois as we learned from covering uh streetcar named desire except he's modernized it by making the delivery guy deliver pizza even in 2003 newspaper delivery boy not uh good enough uh not not a

regular enough job nope and uh it's also interesting that he has the centralized thing to turn off the lights and that other than a couple like um bits where he doesn't even talk mr burns is unrelated to this story of controlling the lights in Springfield. Yeah, yeah. It's very, like, there's a shot of him and Smithers watching the meteor shower at the end. I feel like that's an element that they could have steered into because it feels like he'd be essential in all of this. It's weird that Quimby is suddenly deciding how much power the town gets. I guess maybe they realized if you give burns a little in this he kind of it just turns into a burns versus lisa story but like this is like the

inverse of his blocking out the sun scheme oh yeah you're right yeah well yeah maybe that would be like too similar even though it's the opposite idea but it put people's heads back into the who shot mr burns space and instead burns just look just, he has a joke at the end and he has a joke where he looks at the sky and sees a dollar bill and then Cletus looks in the sky and sees a sense sign.

Yeah, I guess we get two unvoiced Mr. Burns scenes. And then another joke about Ned fearing Judaism. Yes, yeah. When he sees the Star of David it gasps in horror and then it transforms into the cross. Because Lisa's saying, you know, for centuries, people have looked up the stars and stared into their own souls, and this is what people see, a reflection of themselves.

This is just like how he, in his nightmare, he feared that his sons would convert to Judaism. And now he sees the Star of David, and it freaks him out, too. Yeah, the anti-Semitic Ned is a strange thread in season 14. That's true. And then it comes in after Mike Reese is working on the show, who he loved to do jokes about mocking anti-Semitism. That's a big chunk of his memoir is him talking about him just laughing off anti-Semitic people he's met around the world. Yes. It turns out no matter where you go uh you'll

encounter that if you're mike reese yeah he's it's a great bit in his book where he talks about how uh religiously he is incredibly non-religious as a jewish person he said he would eat he'd eat a ham sandwich in this in a synagogue on passover like he doesn't care but people look at him and he is he is treated very poorly due to his Semitic features, as he would put it. Oh, and then we also get a Lenny and Carl joke that Lenny sees Carl and Carl sees Carl. Yeah. Well, they steered away from the gay joke, which is it's nice that they're at now lenny and carl are are always together but i feel like uh five years ago they were like oh lenny and carl just like fuck now off screen it was almost the

implication and i think they moved away from that well where was the uh the the helicopter rescue scene oh yeah that was in uh the uh the half decent proposal episode. Right, right. Like, there's nobody in that helicopter for me. Don't be so sure, and it's Carl. Oh, yes. And a couple years before that, Bart was paying them to kiss each other. Mm-hmm. And they never got paid.

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Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. And then we have a little bit of a mean joke about movie stars, which they've done before. But here their choices are Matthew Modine and Charlene Tilton, who one of them I did have to Google. We all know who Matthew Modine is, or why do. Yeah, Charlene Tilton, I guess she was on Dallas? Yes, yeah.

For a lot of years, which was a highly rated show, though we didn't see it. I did read that she was the person who gets Charles Rocket to say, or she prompts Charles Rocket to say the line that makes him say the F word on SNL. So she's there for that bit of TV history. Oh, was she the guest? She was the guest on the episode, yeah. Wow. Okay. history oh she was was she the guest she was the guest on the episode yeah wow okay which uh if you don't uh know the story in uh snl it was the season premiere that year they were parodying who shot jr which she was in the show and she as the host asked charles rocket who the the comedian who is playing jr and he says i just want to know who the fuck shot me and that that caused a lot of problems nobody had heard that word in I don't know 1983 whenever that thing aired though Matthew

Modine I do think he was at a lower point at this time but now you know uh eight years ago he got his big comeback thanks to being in the first season of stranger things oh that was him okay paul reiser is has been in more episodes of stranger things but matthew modine was uh he was very prominent at least in the first season of stranger things all news to me and also charlene tilton these days has been like one of those people who has done many hallmark movies which hey you know good work if you can get it i feel like uh people who remember dallas are watching hallmark movies and though now you saw there was a hallmark movie this year bob where uh clarissa explains it all as melissa joan hart plays a grandmother in it right uh yes uh i assume a young grandmother but still it's horrifying it uh no that's uh it's coming for us now we are the demographic now

they just did one where lacy chabert is in it with like scott fox i think from uh there or is it matthew fox and scott wolf yeah that's it from from uh she's in one of those hallmark movies with her old co-star it's a reunion movie from party of five okay so not not for me is what you're saying no no i mean I didn't even watch Party of Five when it was new. I figured, Bobby, you might have had a crush on maybe Neve Campbell or Jennifer Love Hewitt

and gave it a watch. Oh, sure. Sure. I guess I was like, well, if they show up in a movie, sure. But I'm not seeking this out. They're better as screen queens. I like them both in their horror films yeah but uh but yes springfield's latest cave to the powerful astronomer lobby is uh is how uh kent frames it but this is when abe admits to lynching the irish

again they're back to talking about how they murdered irish people and he did a fine job of it too except there's there's no living Irishman to compliment the lynchings they did. It is one of those, another of those decade echoes like we're getting, well, the Wacking Day episode's not far off in our season four chat.

And this is where things start going bad. And as I've said before, they've rediscovered a lot of old jokes. They're bringing back the mmm jokes this season. Yeah in this case bad eggs Look out Matthew Modine and Charlene Tilton. There are new stars

in town. Sky stars now visible thanks to Springfield's latest cave-in to the Astronomer Lobby. The best part is next week we'll get to see the Deadly Meteor Shower Deadly Meteor Shower. Deadly Meteor Shower? Named after its discoverer, Professor Artemis Deadly,

who was, ironically, killed in the shower of 1853. The last time those meteors came, we thought the sky was on fire. Naturally, we blamed it on the Irish. We hanged more than a few. Uh-oh. Named it on the Irish. We hanged more than a few. Uh-oh. Sounds like some bad eggs are cooking up trouble. Mmm, bad eggs.

Homer wants to eat bad eggs instead of not eating them. Yeah, I don't know what the last mmm joke was, but they're not happening as often in this era, I think. Well, you know what was happening often in this this era a blackout that then causes looting because that's the plot of season 13's finale right right yes yes i think that's another of those la rich la resident fears coming into the show as well this fear of like well if the electricity went out the bad eggs uh as it were are going to be looted they're just waiting they're just waiting for their chance if only there were more cops there's also same deal when there was the looting in that episode they're like oh we need more cops and they're like oh we don't uh we don't have enough cops need to be more cops more cops equal

safety it was uh calling for higher police budgets. It was a strange moral. Well, you know, that was a liberal tough on crime stance back then, as it is still now with half of the Democrats, I'd say. But I'm being nice saying half there, honestly. I think it's 85 percent. No matter how many articles and studies come out that say you can't criminalize things enough to fix these things. Like you just can't keep throwing cops at a problem and that fixes it.

Like you, you could deal with it in different ways. Hey, they're going to try. They're treating it like Pikmin. Every time. If you just overwhelm with force and yeah, I mean,

like we go on about this, but, uh, so, but in this case, the bad eggs are merely just stealing every hood ornament, meaning Bart can't get any of them. And this is where it's time to play another jingle because Bart spots the one car left with a hood ornament, which in this case is an Emmy. Yeah. Why does it. OK, I forgot about the fat Tony thing, but I thought it'd be a celebrity or something.

But he's got an Emmy hood ornament. It's very straight. I mean, obviously, they are covetous of the Emmy on the writing of the show. And it's a fun thing that that's how fancy it is that it's an Emmy. But yeah, they don't even say on the commentary why they made it an Emmy of all things. Though a legally distinct Emmy. So it's not the exact copywritten design. It's not the Burns Emmy, though.written design it's not it's not the

Burns Emmy though oh yes yeah that's that's the best one but uh but this is where uh I don't have the clip because it's mainly visual but uh it's it's time to play the another jingle everybody hates birds right yeah a bird lands on Fat Tony's hood ornament and the goons start beating it. Hey, we don't see it die on screen, so let's just say it was hospitalized and it had a slow recovery and it's doing fine now. He does say you're going to be eating worms through a straw, which seems to imply a horrible beating but not killing. Yeah. Yeah. I still don't approve. And yeah, this Bart then realizing like, well, to take this one, I'm going to be threatened by Fat Tony.

And then we also see the headline, Hoods Rob Hoods in Hoods, which clever. Yeah, yeah. Clever. Then comes in also a knock on the Detroit Tigers, which is Al Jean's team, which they say they haven't won in two centuries, which is not true. They were recently doing something in the world of baseball? I don't know. I had to Google this so I can tell folks that when they did this joke, it had been almost 20 years since the Detroit Tigers won the World Series, which was 1984. And they still haven't won since this joke happened.

So this year, if they don't win, it will be 40 years since the Detroit Tigers won. Maybe I just saw Al Jean tweeting about the Tigers and I thought something happened. Really, I think he was just seeing a game. The Tigers also, when they were last in the World Series, they got swept in 2012 by our San Francisco Giants. Yay. Though now I am envious of somebody like Al Jean because now my local team is the Seattle Mariners who have never even been in a World Series.

It's not that they haven't even won it. They've never been in the World Series. That's why you got haven't even won it. They've never been in the World Series. That's why you got to get in on the ground floor. Buy low, sell high. You could say you were a fan before they started winning. That's why I bought a couple hats when I went there last week. A couple of hats? Last year.

Yeah, I got to have the away team and the home team hat. So white and black. Yeah. Well, you know know obviously my main enjoyment of the mariners is related to knowing that the nintendo owned them for a good chunk but not anymore not anymore though clearly nintendo was not good corporate owners because uh they did not spend the money to have the players who could win i mean they had to king griffey jr but not much else they were too busy funding quality uh- to late-90s video games.

You know what? Yeah, they looked at their spreadsheet, and they're like, do we put this on the Seattle Mariners or on the Wind Waker? Which do we do? We went with Wind Waker. You could either have Mario Kart for GameCube or Mark McGuire. Who are you going to choose? Yeah.

And you know what? My Double Dash wasn't using performance enhancement drugs. No, no. It totally cleaned there, Rob. Those mushrooms actually, I guess, are performance enhancing mushrooms, but they make your car go faster. But you know what? It's allowed on the track. Yeah.

There's not a rule in the rulebook that says you can't have mushrooms on the track. And then we also have a joke about how useless terror alerts are in 2003, which, again, very 2003 joke. They were useless. It was just to make you feel scared all the time. They were right to make fun of it. We just had one of these in C.E. Doe. Oh, yeah, that's true. Like Vermillion.

Burns was like Vermillion or Maroon or something like that yeah they did that terror alert joke yeah three years later on american dad it becomes a permanent joke when that show premieres of just being always on their fridge uh and this is when uh bart decides that they're going to target fat tony and him and millhouse work together and this is where I see another of these jokes I never recognized as a running gag until our friend Drew Mackey who did the gay Simpsons history video pointed it out which is Milhouse seemingly almost coming out to Bart though here it's him just saying like I like hanging out with you a lot and then Bart cuts him off I just I mean I could read it either way I thought it's like a millhouse wanted to have a moment just like i enjoy our time together you know but what they're doing is just committing crimes no i i agree it's not exactly the same

as like uh in the previous episode where they're about to watch batman and he's saying like i i think i know why i was crying in class and the bart's like, hey, why don't we watch TV? That feels more like he's diverting a coming out moment. That seems more explicit, yeah. But yes, this is where they trick Fat Tony. But on the set of Fat Tony, I park your car the way Mama used to do. Why, thank you. And may I say, your mustache looks thick and hearty. Fully Italian. I thought there would be something more clever to that cheese pizza thing, but it's like, oh, no, it's just very, very potent racism against Italians.

Yes. This episode takes big swings of the Italians and the Irish. It's I mean, I love Milhouse and Bart in their ridiculous, you know, bad costumes, fooling Fat Tony to such an extent, which later he later he says like you mean that 10 year old with a mustache was a phony yeah they're doing a real uh bugs bunny or like when scooby-doo and shaggy would dress up to fool the monster exactly yes yeah even with their accents uh and i also like too that uh that montagna on the commentary he's being, when he sees the Italian map, the map of Italy on the wall, he says like, hey, where's Sicily in there? Like he's, Montaigne is a proud Sicilian ancestry and doesn't like it being left out. He also talked about going to a restaurant and like noting there the Sicilian flag and the waiter said that is the flag of the Italian mafia. Yeah, that's right that she's in a respectful tone like she's like yep i'm representing the italian mafia right here now i liked hearing montaigne talk about how uh almost certainly in

his life he has met many i would think a number of gangsters who have said like hey you do good work yeah he was talking about when they were filming godfather part three they were filming a scene across from like john goddy's headquarters and like some of his goons came out to to praise his uh acting or something i forget i forget what the whole story was i i you know on sopranos they make the great point of like that that's one of the early beloved celebrated scenes from The Sopranos is the mafia guys doing their favorite lines from mafia movies and their point of like, yeah, we love mafia movies. That's a major part of characterizing The Sopranos crew. And also I like that, one, depreciate a mafia don's car. Not saying you're going to steal from a mafia Don.

You're going to depreciate his car. Yeah. The biggest crime you can commit is lessening the car's value. And this is though, as the whole city is turning on Lisa and they have another great bit of like that. I think it's definitely ADR, but I love how Quimby doesn't even really talk to Lisa. He just brings up that she shouldn't be able to be there. Yes. You think they're going to have a scene together,

and he's like, why are you here? You should have no say in this. This also is worth playing the jingle as well. Take that, Lisa's beliefs. Not just because it's like Lisa tries to do a, you know, political action, but also the episode begins with telling Lisa, like, your belief that you're smart, actually, you're not so great, Lisa. Like, it's taking her down in two ways, this episode. It's forcing her to reevaluate her beliefs. And this is when the lights come back on.

Mr. Mayor, you can't flip-flop on this. We'll miss the meteor shower. I don't know how you keep getting past security. Luigi, I appreciate your courtesy valet service. I made a note on your card in my Rolodex. Don't whack.

Thank you, Fat Tony, thank you. But at the risk of enraging you by making you look stupid, we have no valet parking. You mean that 10-year-old with a mustache was a phony? You know, Bart, I really like spending time with you. Just hold the light. I can't see nothing. Let you. Just hold the light.

I can't see nothing. Let's fire blindly into the dark. No, you might hit a made man. They want light. By God, they'll get light. We just hear Lisa struggling to pull him away. From his master control of all light in the town, which again feels like something Burns should have instead of him, right? is in the audience when uh the initial dimming happens and he has

he's not protesting in any way yeah which would really hurt his bottom line i would think yeah yeah he i mean he's charging for this power it does again it feels like a a missed opportunity to involve uh burns for at least a little line here but uh but yes that uh the only reason fat tony doesn't want them shooting into the dark is they could hit a made man accidentally uh which in uh you know in mafia terminology means a uh a high level officer in a mafia crew yeah yeah that's that's where the title of futurama bender Gets Made comes from right right right yeah I think being getting made is it means like you are officially part of the mafia like you you have your initiation yeah yeah well because you can be a guy who works for made men and you're

working up your ranks but once you get made it's also like you would be told oh that guy's on another crew but he's a made man so we can can't kill him, or you got to get permission. In Sopranos, there's constant arguments of like, well, you can't kill this guy. He's a made man, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, I'm thinking about Goodfellas, and that's what Joe Pesci's goal is to get made. And he does get made, except he gets made into a corpse. One of the greatest scenes in film history and that's that's also where bob you learn about uh how you know that uh hank hill in henry hill in the movie

and also uh robert de niro's character they can't get made because they have irish ancestry you got to be a full-blooded italian to get made and uh but yeah so the lights come on barton millhouse have to run there's a great gag of them getting on a trolley that instantly stops and they they are continuing to still uh chase some more end of the line yeah and uh then there's a little joke i have a tiny clip here hey you're not john ritter and you ain't that gorilla from the zoo now it was partially distracting to me because i thought it was patty for just a second because it's it's patty's dress color but it is selma it's selma's hair and earrings and all that

yeah you know what uh this is only for talking simpsons hosts but i wrote down patty is kissing mo because i saw the dress color but then i realized i saw the hair i was like oh no that's selma so uh yeah strange because i made a note of it briefly of like, oh, this is the last time they wrote Patty as kissing a man or wanting to. But then I realized, like, no, no, no, that's Selma, who, of course, we just did Selma's choice. And here's another joke that Selma is a hideous gorilla and that Mo wants to make out with a gorilla. And we'll keep doing it with Selma, even if she's not a gorilla. And, hey, at this point, you only had about six months left to make out with a gorilla and will keep doing it with Selma even if she's not a gorilla. And hey, at this point, you only had about six months left

to make out with John Ritter. So, you know, do it while you can. We just recorded the Futurama where we also talked about the death of John Ritter. It's, man. He was having his comeback. He was having his comeback in the early aughts. He was doing great.

You know, he died of the same thing that the creator of berserk did the like aortal dissection or whatever like when a ventricle in your heart rips oh right that's also what killed uh yoshi fumikondo the director of uh whisper of the heart that we covered too terrifying yeah no i mean uh with those two artists it was definitely characterized as overworking and sitting and being stationary. I don't know why that happened to John Ritter as well. They can also just be genetic.

Your body just stops it sometimes, and that's scary. Also scary is that you might drink house wine that is just dishrag squeezing from Old Model. Hey, it's white wine, so I'm going to avoid that anyways. I like red wine. I'm a rosé fan, as I've said before on this podcast. I like to meet in the middle. You've got to branch out, Henry. You've got to try the dry reds and the bright whites.

You know, I've had some whites. The reds are too robust for me. I don't know. I'll give a red another shot. But this is where Mo is. I wonder just how many nights of the week Homer stays till two in the morning. That was when like that's when bars closed in Ohio, at least when I moved to better states. I found the bars shut down a lot earlier because I think people just had more reason to live.

But if you're living in Ohio or any any other another number of states like most of them, bars will shut down at two. And I shut down a number of bars in my 20s. You know, in my 20s, I learned about this in my neighborhood at the county line in Northern Florida, where I lived. There was a Bennigan's over the county line that basically all the bars had to close at midnight or even at 11, I think sometimes, in our county. And if you just drove like two more minutes over the county line to the Bennigan's, it was a bang in Bennigan's up until 2 a.m. serving drinks. Oh, so I guess whatever. County line or state line?

You said county line. In this case, it was a county line. The rule was different per county in my my area yeah yeah so once you left clay county you could get to be really specific once you left clay county you could drink it too what was the party county oh god what was i think it was uh i think it was duval i think it was the extended to do duval as jacksonville Jaguar fans say. No one parties like Duval. They really don't. And then this joke I think is a reference to, well, Insomnia is in Face.

The American movie is not set in Iceland. But it is about how when you get up that level on the planet Earth the on the planet earth it is light out all night uh and that's the plot of insomnia a really good movie and yeah uh carl mentions you know what this reminds me of my icelandic boyhood and they would dig deeper into this in the 2013 episode the saga of carl which i had not seen that episode until there was last year's Carl Carlson Rides Again, which dealt with his background another time. But this joke here is great because he throws out there something that his friends should be interested in and they just completely ignore it. And maybe it also is a joke about how like, oh, Carl doesn't. Carl acts like somebody who grew up in iceland

and then moved to america i guess it adds a new perspective on him his friends have no follow-up questions and then in carl carlson rides again they don't undo his icelandic background but they basically say okay we found the parents who gave you up for adoption or we found out what they did and it gives him you know his his background and that that is a very good episode that feels like the first time carl carlson is written as a realistic black american or at least that's how it felt to a white guy like perhaps it's because he was recast that could have something to do with it yeah and and i believe the episode is written by a black writer as well probably Probably helped too.

But yes, Carl gives his background and people start going crazy. Hey, what happened? It's bright in the middle of the night. You know what this reminds me of? My Icelandic boyhood. It's this new anti-crime dealie. The mayor turned the streetlights way up. My daughter Lisa feels really strongly about it.

Pro or con? I don't know. What am I, super dad? Boy, this light has really screwed up the animals. I'll bet somewhere there's a horse drinking coffee. I haven't slept in seven days, and I've gotten so much ironing done live from New York it's Saturday night dad this lack of sleep is making mom and Maggie crazy don't you think you're overreacting talking gumball machine it's always great to hear marge

going slightly crazy though uh i think this is funnier but mr spritz goes to washington was two episodes ago where also the family couldn't sleep and goes crazy oh yeah because of the uh the planes flying overhead yes yeah so it's uh it's two insomniac insanity things uh in two weeks for the show but i also like hearing uh homer homer did pay enough attention to know lisa cares but doesn't know about in which direction i i suppose that's also a take that lisa's beliefs too maybe because she was so rude to him about the telescope not being a kaleidoscope that she that he was like well i guess oh i'm not investing myself in this anymore i also love that homer and so they show a funny visual of a bird digging underground like it's a worm that's how upside down things are but instead

of showing it i think it's much funnier that homer imagines what a good psych gag would be yeah he uh i mean it doesn't naturally follow from the sun being out at night, but Homer's like, what would the most funny thing to me be? Let's imagine it. It's Homer pitching a joke instead of them showing it.

Then we also have a joke that the only thing you can see now in the sky is the Fox satellite, which looks dinky and broke down. Were they doing that joke now? It would be about how Disney's streaming platform is strong and worth signing up for. Yeah, and in fact, the satellite is too powerful. They're kind of scared of it.

And it's overloaded with wonderful content. It's flying so low because of all the new shows to keep adding oh man we had to launch a third satellite because demand for the newest streaming show echo is is too great well you know maybe they'll celebrate the third plusiversary i was very sad that there was no new second plusiversary short you're right you know it's been a minute since the last advertorial content from the simpsons uh i think it's a coming i i think uh i think disney signed some like taylor swift deal or something so i feel like i don't know if she would stoop to ever voicing on the simpsons because she is the most powerful entertainer in the world and possibly in all of history

but uh they might be trying to make something work i bet they could get her for a one minute commercial on disney plus like they were able to get billy eilish as opposed to a full episode appearance we're i mean we're going to live through, I'm going to say, Beatles schmiedels. Taylor Swift blows them out of the water in terms of popularity. What do they have, like five years? Who cares? Did you know that we covered this actually a long time ago when we did the Roasting on an Open Fire. She was born the week of Roasting on an open fire she was born the week of roasting on an open

fire like she is the age of the simpsons yeah i mean i i first felt old when uh one of her albums was called 1989 and the year where she was born which is not that much younger than us but i was like how can an entertainer be this young and and now she's a a matron of pop music. Yeah, and she's America's homecoming queen now. Yeah, though you know what? Dark branded jokes about her aren't funny, Joe Biden. Don't do the... Yeah, I would not engage with that.

Old never funny meme to try to make yourself seem more relatable. Or at the very least least if you're going to do it don't be doing a genocide while you do not at the same time jokes are less funny while you're also supporting genocide usually yeah yeah so uh so yes as barn and lisa realized they have similar goals uh this is where the show all admits i love that this little clip here you have them admit that there's actually no reason they should work together and two that the show forgets plot reasons why bart wanted to do anything i got my eyes on the prize the hood ornament i desperately want for reasons i can no longer

remember the only thing stopping me is those lights bart i just realized we both want the same thing, darkness. And we can get it if we work together with my brain and your, your assistance. You can say it. I add nothing. You can't have lights without power and all the power comes from here. How'd you get dad to go along with this? In his sleep deprived state, he's very suggestible. Okay, Dad, you are now playing patty cake with Maggie. Palm recognized. Access granted. Oh, my baby's first words. Now we merely push this switch to overload. Yet once we do, we'll be breaking the law.

Can good truly come from civil disobedience? Gandhi thought so, but Gandhi also said, let's talk more rock. That whole I had nothing thing reminds me of an earlier line. I'm not saying it was stolen or borrowed even, just the Bart saying, with your book smarts and my ability to exploit people with book smarts yes we've gotten to this point several other times where they would team up and you see that bart adds nothing but this is the most direct they've been of just like no like you you don't have to pretend anymore i know i had nothing no but bart also

doesn't add nothing because lisa is too much of a dweeb to commit civil disobedience, while Bart, in his love of destruction and being a bad boy for nonpolitical reasons, breaks the thing. Yeah, Bart is the one who commits more felonies in this scene. Yeah, I would hope Lisa's feelings on civil disobedience are less embattled today. I mean, if you want to talk about plot inconsistencies it's a funny episode but the dial to uh lower the power and raise the power is on a lamppost outside of city hall and then there's another switch inside of the power plant but mr burns is not uh concerned about this or has no say on this you're right yeah there's there's a lot of switches uh plot important touches in this episode frankly too many switches and

please eliminate one i like how homer is drawn as a zombie zombie homer who's just stumbling around very funny drawings and uh yes this is when the lights go out the cops are scared we we talked about that and then boy oh boy on the commentary they at least make fun of themselves for this. But this is too much, right, Bob? Yes. So we're back to our old favorite movie, The Natural. We watched it, so you don't have to. Please don't watch The Natural.

And, you know, because they're overloading the power, lights are exploding. And lights start exploding in the town square. And the natural music from the 1982, 1983 Robert Redford movie, it starts playing. I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, you're doing your natural thing because lights are exploding. And then we cut to an explicit natural parody where lights are exploding on the stadium. Sorry, not a stadium. On the baseball field where Willie is tending to that. At the school.

And the joke there is he's going to catch the glass on his tongue, but they're going for an explicit natural reference. And we recently had an episode that cut their natural reference and saved it for, uh, four years later or something like that. Yes. Yeah.

It's in, I'm spelling as fast as I can. We talked about how Bart was going to do a checklist of him, all the things he has to do before summer's over. And one was winning the big game and he wins. And it's the natural home run sequence. And they cut it out and then put the like two minute thing at the start of the monkey suit episode. Yeah. And I mean, I find it very fun that The Simpsons is the only thing to ever reference this and it keeps doing it. And I feel and again, we covered this in Homer at the Bat because we watched it for that episode.

This was not a popular movie. This was not a critically liked movie. But I think maybe just because Al Jean loves baseball, this movie had an impact on him and he thinks that more people saw it than actually did because it i have to i have to wonder if it's come up on the show in the last 10 years the natural yeah i you know i couldn't find more recent ones of it but i i mean al gene also loves the music and jokes that they can use it essentially for free because it's fox it was a fox movie but uh yeah, it was, it was so weird to finally watch it and just be like, Oh yeah, this is it. And it's like, uh, I, I did take

account of all of the natural references up to this episode. I didn't, couldn't find ones after this, but I didn't look as hard. I just wanted to cover the ones we've done up to this point. So in chronological order in saturdays of thunder when homer gets up in the stands and tells like win it for your old man boy that's the natural homer at the bat many things in it yeah um and then when homer wins his uh 300 perfect game of uh in hello gutter hello fodder it's the natural again with the things exploding then in hungry hungry homer when he breaks hunger strike, he's running the bases and the things are exploding. And then the spelling as fast as I can one. And then this.

So that's one, two, three, four, five, six, six natural references. That's that's incredible. Yeah. Any play. Anytime a light bulb explodes, you can just do your natural joke. And again, that scene happens at the end of the movie. Anytime a light bulb explodes, you can just do your natural joke. And again, that scene happens at the end of the movie. If you just want to see what they're referencing, only watch the end of the natural because that is what they're digging into with all of these parodies. I don't think they parodied a scene yet in the show where a femme fatale finds out that somebody's great at something and then shoots them to prevent them from being great less iconic though they should have a joke about how somebody who's like 50 plays a 20 year old yeah uh remind everybody that robert redford is like i don't know three or four years younger

than wilford brimley in that movie yeah it's crazy he plays he plays himself in every age okay not the little little kid version of him, but he plays himself at like, I think 19 even in the movie is how old he is. Yeah, but thank you to The Simpsons for keeping this movie relevant because if you're ever wondering like, what is that?

It's like, oh, it's a natural reference. And then I assume that makes at least three or four people rent the movie. And then there's also some funny animation of homer going to sleep like a dog as all the animals are passing out but uh you know done a little better in homer the vigilante but i i like this i this is a funny drawing and also speaking of drawings it's funny on the commentary to hear uh i always love when animators like david silverman and steven Stephen Dean Moore jokingly complain about like, and here's the angry mob.

As always, you gotta draw it. Yeah, and this mob especially seems very complicated for a TV episode. And I was definitely getting echoes of the Simpsons movie mob, that famous shot of all, I mean, on a much bigger scale and budget, but similarly shots. Yeah, yeah. bigger scale and budget but similarly uh shots yeah yeah it's uh and in this episode they're doing it like multi-layer as in there's a shadow layer on the characters too who are lit by their torches which uh i mean they have a fun little aside in it of more talking about how in general they had to alter their color theory a little bit because it's night and day color models, which they do, you know, depending on what time a scene is set. But they had to mess with that a little more because this is about day versus night.

Yeah. And the sky, because they're in their first year of digital, that has like a gradient effect because of the light pollution, which would be much harder to do, at least with the old look. But now that mob in the Simpsons movie, I appreciate a lot more than when I first saw it because it really was Silverman and the other sequence directors deciding we've done mobs hundreds of times, but now we have a movie budget. We are going to do the biggest mob we will ever draw, and we're going to draw it so every member of the mob is a named Simpsons character who has been on the show. That's why you saw it in every trailer and every commercial, because they worked very hard.

Though I call it the Wikipedia ruiner, because if you want to figure out when was the last time a random character appeared in something, it always lists the movie, which is true because they're part of the mob but it it's not really their last appearance yeah it's just uh they had to pull as many named characters with recognizable faces as possible for that mob yeah it's like oh when was ruth powers next on the show and it's like in the simpsons movie it's like you know technically yes if you look for the spoken rules speaking Speaking rules, sorry. And yeah, this mob is easily codified, though, because they look at the beautiful lights above them. And I also, Krusty, though, as he complains about reading his porno by candlelight like Abe Simpson, you know, not a problem. Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln. Sorry, yes. Not Abe Simpson. No, he did that too.

Oh, yeah, obviously. But now Presti doesn't need to, you know, your phone, even when the power's out, your phone will provide the light and all the needed light. They didn't know how advanced pornography would get. And then the meteor shower starts, the deadly meteor shower. And I also like hearing Otto say, I don't need drugs to enjoy this, just to enhance it. And here comes in another song. And I really like this song. It's a very pretty song that I don't think is overused in television shows.

Yeah, the song of Vincent by Don McLean, more famous for American Pie. But I like this song more because you aren't forced to hear it so much. And it is very pretty. And it's a third as long as American Pie 2, I think. That helps. That helps. Yeah, it's a very pretty song, though also a sad song, because it's about how Vincent Van Gogh eventually killed himself, as lovers often do.

I have a personal connection with this song because a friend of mine in college uh we were all on facebook remember facebook when it was fun and kind of new well he would do like ms paint uh versions of people's facebook pictures on demand like really crappy versions of them and i i took all of those and i made a video about he was like an artist like a very special kind of artist who passed away. And I said it's a starry, starry night. That might still be on my YouTube. I'm not sure.

But it looks like he was a man who made MS Paint portraits and then died. But it was very funny to me in 2009. That's funny. I like that. I have comedy connection to the song long before i heard it because uh because i don't think it really got a lot of radio play certainly not on the oldie stations where i heard american pie a million times um but the line of like one as beautiful as you like that's what abe says to homer when he's in his coma so i knew it from Right, yeah. And also in one of my all-time favorite

mystery science theaters, Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. I'm laughing just thinking about it, by the way. They have Ernest Borg, or a joke is they have Ernest Borg 9. They pretend he says, he took his life, his lovers often do. But yeah, it's a beautiful song.

Al Jean overuses songs in his years, early years especially, but I approve of the use of this song. It is an on-the-nose choice because it's literally a starry, starry night. But hey, it's a song you weren't hearing that often then, at least. And everybody's in love as they're looking at it. Also, they do cut in the version of the song they play in the episode you don't hear the suicide come up you don't hear that yeah yeah that's a real bring down but uh yeah the as as the song is going it's it's a romantic night for everybody

even burns and smithers um and then we get another like great you you were telling me before i'm bob you thought this this is a great great line and the show. Yeah, I don't like the bit that plays after this. So this should have been the final line of the show, and then we cut to the credits. Because Homer's like, I wish God was alive to see this. Also, it's paired with Marge going, this is better than our screensaver. And I love our screensaver. Those are both great great lines yeah so sweet and and they're great lines to take you into a lovely song and a pan up and it's like

though i and well here i have the little clip here i wish jimmy the snitch could see this or just open a trunk and i thought this was gonna be a bad night! Oh, great! Glaven in a glad bag! That meteor contains carbon-based molecules! I may be able to prove the existence of life in outer space! Shut up.

This is even better than our screensaver. And I love our screensaver. Nicely done, Lisa. Thanks, Mom. I wish God were alive to see this. They would not listen. They're not listening still. And then a very sweet pan up.

But yeah, and this should be the end where it plays over the credits yeah i mean uh i think this little scene at the end with declan desmond is kind of a dud but i guess they realized at the last minute like oh we are parodying the up films and we kind of forgot to do that because this is when the like what will you be doing in seven years kind of thing comes into the equation which i don't think was mentioned before. No, no, no. Because this makes it as direct as it gets in the episode. I also forgot that a real space alien appears and slaps Frank. Shut up.

It's Surly. That's his Surly voice, too. Yeah, a little more energy with that alien. But I like how it's just like a very flat voice.'s hank azaria telling himself to shut up but i think i can see from an editing standpoint when you're pulling together the episode they're like well we gotta show or we should show what the actual documentary looks like we've seen him film it why don't we see it but i think they're realizing like well where do we put this in in the third act like it's going to be in the third act but it will distract from all of the talk about the lights and this adventure that if in the middle of the act three

they go like and let's see declan's uh special or his documentary that's weird but instead it just makes the ending much flatter this feels like the uh act structure they would have to adhere to in about like five or six years where now there's a four act structure and the fourth act is either the epilogue or just an extra little sketch and that's what this feels like yes yeah it does feel ahead of its time and how they plot out the show soon after but yeah there's i mean there's a couple okay jokes about how like ralph's gonna live under live with underground grandma and jimbo gets beaten up for having small dreams and and called to sell out and you know look millhouse is bad at baseball we know that but

i think it goes a little too long i mean it's fun to watch him get hurt sure yeah and then twitching yeah and also the deckland walks away and helps him in no way and just lets him be in heart pain but i mean ultimately like i'm going to mose is not as funny as i wish god were alive to see this oh yeah can't can't compare and then and then the music comes back in just briefly of a vincent yeah odd choice yeah and uh because it's and it should just be fully over the credits but then it comes back to the the regular credits music which you know that's uh you already spent the money on vincent play it over the credits yeah i guess you have to avoid that suicide line though it's true it's inevitable if you play the more of the song i get why they wanted to show the declin thing and

also it's a big chunk of animation like I think it's it's 41 seconds so they spent real money on that sequence so because I have the clip I might plug in after the fact but it's like you know it distracts from the story they're telling even using it as a post-credit sting basically American boneheads a day in the life of Springfield Elementary. Where do you think you will be in seven years? I'm going to live with underground grandma. I'm going to go to a two-year technical school, then work in a garage. Sell out. Yuppie.

Soccer mom. I'll be batting.352 in the majors. yes did you get that simon brilliant right let's go to mose yeah it might have it could have worked like under the credits honestly yeah it just feels like oddly placed where it is now. But other than that rough, or not rough, but like a slightly deflating final minute of the episode, this was a really funny one. I thought this had a lot of really good jokes in it. Yeah, we're on a roll, weirdly, in the back half of season 14 with Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington,

C.E. Doe, this, and there's a few other good ones I recognize just looking at the titles of what's coming in season 14. So I think it was hard for LG to get adjusted as a showrunner, but it feels like things are finally getting figured out around this time. Their general batting average, which is the end of this episode, ends with a batting average joke, but this show's batting average joke but this shows batting average is going up into the season unlike in 13 where it felt like they really were just like searching for what they are now yeah yeah it feels like they found a tone and they found uh just a style that works and this is what i associate this period with like this level which i'm perfectly

fine with uh but 13 was so rough 13 was it was quite a journey for us yeah i'm uh i wonder if we'll be feeling the same by the end of the season or then we'll be feeling so good about 14 then we get to 15 and we're like oh yeah this is why i was falling off watching the show we're gonna be the the dorks who now like eventually over over time, we can differentiate the teen seasons. Like most people can differentiate the single digit seasons. That's my goal in life. My next goal. Yes.

Yeah. So we have so many goals, much like Lisa's shifting goals. This is our new dream. This is our light pollution to be able to speak about these seasons like people talk about five, six and seven. But that has been another episode of Talking Simpsons. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to support the show and get over 150 bonus full-length episodes on top of that, head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons.

Sign up for five bucks a month. You get early access to episodes that are also ad-free. And also, like I said, access to our vast catalog of miniseries episodes. Nearly seven years worth of miniseries episodes that are all Patreon exclusive.'ve covered shows like the critic mission hill batman the animated series futurama and king of the hill and that five bucks a month also gets you access to regular monthly episodes of talking futurama and talking of the hill and it's all happening at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you can access all the five dollar stuff naturally but you can also access one mega long podcast once

a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob's talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast which is our premium podcast we do once a month super in depth of an animated feature film just like we do on a podcast about The Simpsons, and recent ones. We've had a real good string of them. I've been enjoying them all this year. We started the year with Bambi. Then we did Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. Then we did the crappy movie Chicken Little. And this month in April, we're going to be talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the 1990 live action one for our live action april as we do each year that tradition and you can only hear all of those that often go for four

five or even six hours long if you are a subscriber at the ten dollar level head over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons to hear everything including our longest podcast ever about who framed roger rabbit we had so much fun with that too 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 by the way is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two full link bonus episodes every month and henry how about you follow me on twitter and all the other places at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g or talking henry on instagram and if you want to keep up with both of us on those platforms you should also follow on all those platforms at talk simpsons pod that's the

official twitter account of this podcast stay in the loop when new podcasts go live if we do live shows anything new on the patreon it's all there at talk simpsons pod and of course if you need an easy to explore list of all our previously released free podcasts head on over to talking simpsons.com thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast talk to the audience and we'll see you then. It's a dangerous life being a hall monitor. When you leave home in the morning, you may be kissing your dolls goodbye for the last time.

My sash says Ultraman. I think we've seen enough.