Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Selma's Choice With Rebecca Sugar

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

For this special episode about Selma Bouvier, we have a big-time returning guest, the creator of Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar! (Check out her new album, Spiral Bound, now!) After discussing her history with the show, we dig into this story of parenthood, theme parks, funerals, and lizards that all have something to do with the fourth season of Murphy Brown. Learn about all of that and whether grocery employees wear belts in this week's podcast! Support this podcast 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, Talking 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 featuring Norman Fell as Zeus. I'm one of your hosts, the sweat hog initiate Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today, as always? Henry Gilbert, and anything this bad has to be educational.

And on the line we have... Hi, I'm Rebecca Sugar, and I've been swimming in the fermentarium. And this week's episode is Selma's Choice. Bart, warm up the car, we're going to Duff Gardens! Yay! This episode originally aired on January 21st, 1993, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history Oh my god Oh boy Bobby, it's Bill Clinton's first full day as president

The Canadian reggae musician Snow's album 12 Inches of Snow is released And one I put in just for myself is that the irresponsible captain tyler tv show debuts in japan not to be released in america for five years i'm guessing yes it was uh i got it for my 16th birthday the uh the vhs box set of of the full irresponsible captain tyler series and we we stayed up all night watching the first eight episodes at my slumber party. I guess, no, that's not very male. It was a boy sleepover, not a slumber party. A male sleepover.

So I can see it now. First day of presidency of Bill Clinton. He's sitting in his big office chair listening to Informer. A Secret Service agent hands him the tape, and it is the tape of the irresponsible Captain Tyler fresh from Japan. And he kicks back his feet and he says, it's good to be the king. This is all fan fiction. All the anime immediately when you're the president.

That's why you should run for president. Well, I guess you don't have to now with Crunchyroll. So that's why we got some real bad candidates lately. No, I loved Irresponsible Captain Tyler. It was a great... It starts out with such a silly concept, and then by the end, it like turns into like a very interesting, like sci-fi story of like pacifism and also like a big Star Trek. The last like six episodes are like a Star Trek four or no Star Trek six parody. Rebecca, you're a big nineties anime fan.

Did you, did you check out Irresponsible Captain Tyler? I don't know that one. I'm going to have to watch it. You're selling me on it i did watch it all not until the dvd era and we are alienating so many people right now by lingering on this topic but it also it also is part of that trend where they would make a great tv show and then they thought hey for these ovas let's make them bad and boring yes what if we did the opposite of what people like wouldn't that be fun and that's what they did with Tyler. I hated those OVAs.

Tyler has a perfect last episode, and then the OVA picks up from the end, and they go like, what if we just undid that just to reset the plot for a worse storyline in the next movies? Yeah, it all started from a light novel. It was one of those early, like,

well, I guess Slayers is even before that of a light novel adaptation. But yeah, I think it just got a really, well, I guess Slayers is even before that of a light novel adaptation. But, yeah, I think it just got a really, well, I don't think. I know because I bought it. A really good Blu-ray re-release with a gigantic book. I think it might exist in the room you're sitting in, Henry. Perhaps. Yeah, it actually does.

Yeah, right over there. But, yeah, then, and yes, the Snow song Informer. He was a one-hit Canadian wonder, the Informer, that song. We all know it. And yeah, it was a short-term fad in Canada, white reggae, I guess. Yes. And the song Informer was apparently about how he actually had gone to jail for not informing

on somebody or something. He had a criminal record. Snow did. He was as real as it gets for Canadian reggae rappers, apparently. It is. I mean, it's a silly song. It is very much a Vanilla Ice kind of kitsch. But if someone does it at karaoke, I am impressed. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And joining us today on the show, she is back since she last joined us, I believe, in late 2019 for the Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show. It's Rebecca Sugar. She is the creator of the animated series, I believe, in late 2019 for the Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie show. It's Rebecca Sugar. She is the creator of the animated series Steven Universe, and she just released her debut album, Spiral Bound. Welcome to the show, Rebecca. Hi, so glad to be here again.

It's awesome, awesome to have you back, Rebecca. I was listening to Spiral Bound over and over and over again over the holiday break. I also went down to the art exhibition. You had a gallery nucleus in Los Angeles, which was really great. Oh, thanks so much. Yeah, it's been really wild to share a bunch of personal art from the last 10 years. Everyone saw all the commercial art television show stuff. So opening up years and years and years of sketchbooks and pulling out all the things that nobody has seen before was really surreal yeah you had mentioned that like spiral bound was the first music you've released is maybe the the first music you've released it was wasn't first appearing in an

animated series of some kind yes ever yeah yes that was that was really really felt like a leap which is odd because i've written like 60 songs for television, but there was always a I always had a cartoon character to kind of hide behind with all of those songs. And so even if they were very personal, it's like, well, there was there was some sort of smoke and mirrors. And so this, this was really different. I actually took me many years because I early on, I thought, well, maybe I'll make a new make a cartoon character and write songs for the cartoon character and find someone to sing the songs. And then I was like, maybe I could make a cartoon character of myself and I would be the voice and I would sing the songs. And then like three years later, I'm like, maybe there's just no cartoon character and I sing songs, but it took, it took

a long time to get there. And I mean, was the album a little bit inspired by, or, you know, the, the, the lockdown everybody went through was, did, did some of it come out of that? Yeah. I wrote a lot of the songs in quarantine. And it just also happened to be when I was, like my last day on Steven Universe was the first day of lockdown. Like I had my stuff in a box at the office, I put it in the car, I drove home, and then I didn't leave the house for two years. And I was going to, there were all these things I was going to do. We were going to go on our honeymoon. We were waiting to travel until the show was over. So instead I ended up taking years and years of a few years of just guitar lessons two

or three times a week. And I learned music theory and that was great and really exciting. I'd been writing all these songs, but not really understanding how to, I didn't know theory and I'd never, I didn't study music the way I studied animation. So it was, it's been cool to return even to the older songs and sort of understand now the sounds I kept gravitating towards now that I have the language for that. Yeah, the creative project Henry and I started during COVID is basically working four months ahead on this podcast. Yeah. Is that good? Does that feel good to do?

My anxiety brain loves the sound of that i love oh yeah i mean it felt good because we knew we were working towards when eventually when we are free we can take a month off and it did happen at some point but uh yeah just just knowing that the road had been paved so far in advance it was like the silver lining of the covid cloud i guess for us yeah that was so crazy uh at time, like how I, you know, I'm watching the end of Steven Universe Future and this, you know, big chapter is for all viewers of the show. And then as it ends, it's like, like just life like stops at the same time as that happens. And it was, it made it extra weird, just as a viewer, it made it extra weird.

I can't even imagine as the creator of the show, how that felt. Oh yeah. I mean, well, I mean, I moved out to California to work in animation and all of my friends are, are, were at work and everybody I knew. And I had this fear as, as my last day was approaching just, you know, how am I going to, how will I see anyone? Like, how will I ever, will I, will I hang out with my friends? Like, like, I didn't know how to connect with people over something other than making a cartoon show together. And then as if to fully realize my deepest fear, I then couldn't see anyone for and we were supposed to have a wrap party. I mean, there was all this, um, we were going to celebrate that that we had done this thing for eight years and we never got to.

But yeah, instead, a lot of introspection and a lot of reflection. And then also figuring out, I mean, I was already going to have to figure out how to connect with people in some other way. So there was just so many other hurdles to that. Eventually when we could, I was seeing people outside and we were watching movies together on video chat with friends and yeah, just figuring out. It's hard to remember. It's hard to go back to that mindset before we knew what was and wasn't safe. And before we were all vaccinated and everything was, I mean, it was so scary. Yeah. I mean, I feel foolish for having done certain things, but then I realized, well, I didn't know any better. I had a cloth mask on outside uh and there was no one within a mile radius of me but i thought

like i must keep it on who knows what could happen but then i realized i was kind of probably always safe in that situation unless i was directly sneezing into someone's mouth as they were passing me i think everything would have been okay but you know we didn't know any better right which we all love to do that was that's a hard thing to give up yes yeah um yeah i definitely have a sense memory. It was my hobby before the pandemic. Right, exactly. I had a cloth mask and I had slipped like a coffee filter scent while, while walking, like you said, walking around outside, you know,

with, with a room's worth of space between me and whoever else is nervously taking a walk. I just remember smelling my own coffee and my own gum for about 10 months constantly. But then I also like, I remember, oh my gosh,

the first time I got, after we were all vaccinated and I got to see, see friends in person and tell it the first time I got to tell a joke in a room with people physically in there with me, and then they laughed and like, the feeling of that energy, like I had forgotten what that felt like. And it was so electric. It was so amazing. It's just like this immediate, lagless response. And it's not quantifiable, you know, whatever it is that makes being in a room with people so different than this. Also, I really loved getting to record the podcast together in person with you last time. I've fallen in the rhythm of video calls, so this is also great. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that was the last L.A. trip that Henry and I took, I think, because we took them kind of regularly. Our fear was, oh, if we do too many remote podcasts, people will become alienated.

No one will listen to the podcast. And then soon everybody was doing everything remotely, even talk shows. So we all just kind of met at the same level and we've been mostly remote ever since. Now Henry and I don't live in the same city. So we had to adapt and I think we adapted very well as did most people.

Right, right. Yeah, I've been nostalgic too for Henry when I used to see you at comic-con all the time um for any because it's yeah no I miss a while since that yeah no I I miss I miss comic I was just seeing the comic-con plans again or also like Bob went out to um New York recently and it reminded me like oh yeah I miss New York comic-con that was a lot of fun like the one you guys had uh a panel geez i went to that it was like the first time tom sharpling had been on stage with many of the other voice actors in the show because he had always been he had been remote the whole time on the series right yeah i yeah i like new york comic-con it has a different a different character

than san diego but i always loved just getting to be back in new york because that's where i went to college and so it was like as soon as i would touch down i'd be like have to get a lox bagel have to go to all my like favorite spots i want a hazelnut coffee from chock full of nuts i know these aren't authentic experiences i have to go to raise these are the things i did when i was in school um so just get like as much new york something about stepping foot back in new york was like since that's how when i entered adulthood that's some of the things I did when I was in school. So just get like as much New York, something about stepping foot back in New York was like, since that's how I when I entered adulthood, that's where I was, it feels like stepping back into real life. And also just good public transportation.

Well, and that's I'm sure, you know, was a whole different story during the pandemic as well. But a world of difference from Los Angeles, I really missed it. Those cons to that. I it was those, those were so fun because I'd get to go there for video game stuff, but then I, you know, would be able to tell an editor of something like, actually, I know more about Steven universe than any other person you could assign to this. So can I take the Steven universe one too, and just kind of branch out from, from just the video game coverage while I was there too. That's how you met Adam West. That is, yes. Yeah. I did want to, we should get to The Simpsons,

but I did want to ask Rebecca, if people are interested in Spiral Bound, where do you prefer that they buy it? Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, I have it on Bandcamp. That's the most direct, you know, because I did it independently, but it's also streaming on Spotify or Apple Music

or just everywhere. So really any way, any way to listen to it, I would appreciate so much. There's also my friend, Takafumi Hori did a beautiful piece of animation for the song Good Morning Afternoon, which is on YouTube and kind of floating around is on my Instagram. So it would be awesome if everyone could check that out. He is a brilliant animator. He animated the other friends sequence and the Here Comes a thought sequence for steven universe and we got to collaborate on just a beautiful little piece for one of the new songs um and that was so much i love that video so much like especially the uh in the midpoint like he starts like drawing like these deep lunges on your character that are

are just so funny like he's i mean he's any collaboration between you two i i always love to see that's uh and my you know uh i guess it's not a uh surprise for like such a nerdy uh retrospective podcast is this one but i think adams morgan 1991 is is my favorite of of the the songs on there oh just all these memory very specific memories you you um evoke in in the song. I really love. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, that one's about I went to preschool in D.C.

and a very loose kind of hippie preschool. And those were all my memories from that time. It's very it's really great. I also, you know, to tie it into The Simpsons, too, I've heard you mention Spiral Bound. It kind of reminds you of your indie comic days. I mean, we talked about it a little last time you were on, but would you say your most famous indie comic is Don't Cry For Me, I'm Already Dead? I don't, probably. That was such a surprise to me. I don't even really know how that got around

because I used to put, I wasn't really, I had comics on the internet, but I wasn't really sort of a web comics. Like I wasn't really in that community and I just kind of threw them on a website. And sometimes people would find them, but usually they wouldn't. And I think that comic circulated on Metafilter because at some point it reached Matt Groening, which really shocked me. But yeah, that comic is really, especially I pitched that comic to Ian, Ian Jones Cordy on our first date. And he thought it was funny, which is why I made it ultimately. By the time I was drawing it, we were already living together. And I was really sort of lost. I was trying to figure out how I wanted to draw at that time. And so I was referencing a lot of, I was doing a lot of life drawing and referencing a lot of real people. Ian shows up in the comic, he's kind of makes a cameo as a doctor. But yeah, yeah, thinking back on that is, and I was learning to ink with a brush. So there's a lot of practice there too. But yeah, it's funny. I remember showing that to one of my teachers and he was annoyed because one of the quotes I had from The Simpsons was really just a quote from The Twilight Zone. Just to tee up this episode,

because it sounds like, and that's what's also so great about Talking Simpsons is I think there's so many things I think originated in The Simpsons that are just references to things that I was not aware of, which it sounds like this episode is, just from what you were chatting about before, it sounds like this episode is also that, and I just didn't know. Because this is my first exposure to so many of these ideas. We weren't all cool enough to be watching Murphy Brown at age 10, but the hosts were i will say right what year did you say this was this is 1990 so january of 93 93 okay right i was i was six i don't i wonder how much i understood about i didn't know how much i was aware of ifv when i was six but i may have been i know i saw this i

feel like i saw this when i when it was Well, I mean, at least it was eight. And so she knew about it. So it wouldn't be so crazy to know about it. For me, it was TV shows like this, especially Fox sitcoms. They taught me everything I needed to know about sex. And then there were some gaps that health class filled in. But it was mostly TV. Well, Rebecca, I've also heard you talk really well about growing up and how gendered cartoons were and and are and and you know you've been steven universe partially was trying to to deal with that genderedness in

in american cartoon growing up as as a simpsons viewer where did where did simpsons like fit in in that gendered view of of tv um gosh i mean we were mostly playing off of you know things that that were sort of in the 6 to 11 demographic you you know, the toy, you know, the toy aisles that are either, you know, the pink aisle versus the boy toy truck, you know, action figure aisle, that kind of stuff, which is so targeted. And then the animated sitcom Simpsons or Flintstones, or I mean, I think I think I loved the Simpsons because it wasn't one of those toyetic shows that slotted into either the girl slot or the boy slot, which was welcoming. I mean, I was a member of a family of four. So I really identified with, I mean, I mostly identified with Lisa, because I was also sort of a poindextery nerd. But then, I don't know, sometimes a little bit Bart as well. I mean, I was an older sibling, but I was never that much of a troublemaker. But I think there are definitely things, I mean, I was thinking about this returning to this particular episode, because there were definitely things about particularly Patty and

Selma that stuck in my mind, because they were presented as so grotesque of characters, you know, and this episode has some of it too, where, Simpsons occasionally will make jokes about the manishness of a character that should be more feminine. And those little moments would always sort of stickparable. It's like, it's like the things that make them so repellent. It's like, they work at the DMV and the DMV is bad, which I guess at six, I was like, Oh, the DMV is bad.

I like, that's something I just knew. Cause I watched this and I guess it's, you know, it's depressing to be at the DMV. I always loved, I don't know what episode it's in. I'm sure I'm,

of course you do. When one of them sucks a shellfish out of a hermit crab out of its shell. You could just suck them out. It was the chaos of horror seven, I guess the Homer cubed. Is that it? Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. I mean, I loved that's the kind of Patty and Selma that I, that I really loved where it's just like the, you know, the visceral feeling of like, of like, they don't care if they're like chewing sand and has this thing.

I mean, it's like, and then all the smoking, of course, course you know but then i think on the flip side when they would talk about oh they they don't shave their legs or like you know are sort of emotionally unavailable or you know these other things that just kind of get lumped in with sucking a crab out of its shell um you know when we were working on steve i remember we worked really hard on the episode Island Adventures, like Sadie and Lars get are stranded on this island. And one of the things

I really wanted to show that I felt like I hadn't seen is just someone who has hair on their legs, where it's not there as a punchline or to be grotesque, because obviously, she's like, you know, Sadie can't shave her legs, she's stranded on an island. And that was really difficult to do. It had to be boarded. We had to do multiple designs to have the different stages of, you know, hair growing on her legs and little things like that. I was excited to try and reframe as not an inherently negative or horrible thing. And I do think that that would come up fairly often in The Simpsons. I think it's interesting, too, you know, that Patty and Selma are there to kind of give

context to Marge. And I still, even watching this, I just just i love her relationship with them and how and how next to other members of her family she just seems so delicate and innocent and yeah uh i will say uh i will retire from this show in shame because that was trios of 406 but uh yeah i i will also say that uh this is really a case of the author being dead because david m stern the writer of this episode uh has some sympathy for patty and selma but in in concept they are repellent characters they're supposed to be dislikable but when i watch them as adults i think they rule i love that they're so comfortable with themselves and have such this tight bond that no one else can understand but they were born out of

sam simon hating his sister-in-law and you really can't escape just this this the concept of these characters being a hatred of of a woman um but then more came of it and i like how they've been developed over time although you get some of those unfortunate jokes about what are perceived as their mannish qualities that have not aged well but i just love now seeing these episodes 20 or 30 years later like oh they're funny they're sarcastic they have this bond and they're just so comfortable and i kind of envy them in that respect i know know and julie caverner's performance as patty and selma is always and i think it's incredible in this episode i mean it's just so you get to see so much range of like this character that you know that would usually

just deliver a deadpan joke and there's empathy and there's but yeah i think too you know the fact that they're there so often to make fun of Homer and and they're usually right you know that's always really that's always really nice eventually they they make so many jokes to degrade Homer over time that you're like I think they're right that he is a bad husband for Marge this is the right they they have their good points here well I also yeah it's it's interesting on the gender thing too because it was a very I mean it's still it still is a predominantly male writing staff but back then it wasn't all male writing staff but the david stern you know he found his place in writing for the show like he really loved patty and selma as characters and humanized them in a way that rarely but i don't think any other writer really did on

the show like his this is pretty much a sequel to principal charming the one where patty ends up with with skinner yeah and david stern was the one to make them distinct characters where they have differences between them and they really come out in his episodes right it's it's also interesting uh rebecca that we we picked this one because you know i uh this is an episode about the uh ants patty and selma and you know some can say steven universe is a lot has a lot of ant vibes to it as well i guess yeah yeah they sort of yeah early early on the sort of crystal gems and steven they were supposed to kind of fill an older older sibling role but they definitely since since they're all his mother's friends they definitely they definitely have some aunt related um energy as the kids would say i was

trying to sound youthful with the hot vibes thing yes yes and two it's when i think of the gendered ness of the simpsons too i do think that like the writers you know all dudes but they usually say most of them would say like i was just reading this in mike reese's book he says like they're a staff of lisa's like they all identified with Lisa much more than Bart. They had trouble writing for Bart as the mischievous bad boy. They're just like, no, they had much more in common with Lisa. Right. That makes sense.

There's a lot of Ivy League writers. So that would make a lot of sense. This episode, though episode though yeah a sequel to principal charming though you would know it from the commercials because uh the commercials the i listeners will hear it in the break here the commercial is just i i found one of the classic commercials it's just 10 seconds they're going like they're going to the craziest theme park ever and it's just part of the roller coaster on the roller coaster right oh my gosh um oh the what the roller coaster that doesn't that's not finished um i mean that's just it's a that's a really great visual gag i was

excited to return to this because i was like oh duff gardens like i didn't realize it until now i'm like oh this is like bush gardens and i grew up in maryland and i was close to bush gardens and the end like i went there as a kid and so coming back to it i was like oh i wonder how in what way it's going to be if itchy and scratchy land is like disneyland then in what ways is this going to be like bush gardens and then i watched them like oh it's just disneyland yeah yeah i think itchy and scratchy land is the better disneyland parody but whatever they don't parody here they will parody a few years later so i think they just cover all the bases with those two episodes but they spend two acts at the theme park in Itchy and Scratchy Land. Here we just have about most of an act.

And, you know, one last preamble thing. I found another cool bit from the Twitter account Daily Simpsons, which has tons of great Simpsons history. They shared a video of Nancy Cartwright. It was like from their, you know, press release documents back in 92. But it's it's nancy cartwright being directed for the voice acting of this and she was talking about how like what uh let's just do one more from the voice director really meant eight more takes and then she was gonna have to do like like way more takes i i was curious rebecca you know did did you do

much to uh direction of the actors on ste Universe? And what was your philosophy on that kind of thing? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes I would get in trouble for going over because I'd really want to solve this or that. Although everyone was so, especially as the show went on, we were writing the characters to their voice performances.

I got to know them better so often. I mean, everyone would just be so on it. So usually when we, I feel like we would end up going over, especially when we had a song because we were never given any extra time to record songs or to write the songs or to do song sequences.

So we would always be getting ready and try to have all our ducks in a row and we were coming in with a song because that took a whole different amount of setup. And I just remember we would, especially early on, sometimes we would have everyone in at the same time, which was amazing.

And the most fun would be doing efforts, because there were a lot of fights. And we'd save them all kind of for the end. So just in a row, everyone would be making punch sounds and hitting a wall sounds, and just one after the other. And everyone else would have to be covering their mouths to not crack up, especially as Didi, Pearl's voice, would just do these gigantic,

you know, ridiculous takes for her fights. And then Estelle was really funny with all of her like fight actions. And, you know, since our show would cast a lot of people who were, you know, from musical theater or musicians, that would also be kind of new to be just doing a lot of sort of sound effects together will be really, really fun. But yes, I had a I worked with Ken Osborne for many years, who's the lead writer on Adventure Time was also our voice director, and the two of us would be there at every record. And then the movie had so many songs that that I voice directed the movie myself. And then worked with Christy Reed after that, who was the voice director for OK KO. But yeah, and Sit Behind the Glass. And I remember I got directed once because I played a brief part for Adventure Time. And I would always be nervous

when it's like, I never want to give line reads. And I, you know, I don't want to make people do things 1000 times. And then when I was back there, I was like, Oh, it's so nice. Like I loved I really enjoyed getting direction. So that made me feel a little better about giving it every every week, every Wednesday. Yeah, we'd be in the booth recording. That's funny with the singing thing, too. Because me and Bob often say with poor Julie Kavner that she picked a Marge voice in 1987 and did not plan on having to sing in it or have to do all this acting in Marge's voice. And she's kind of been trapped in it for 35 years.

Here she's playing five variations on the same voice in this episode very impressive where where is her emmy for this episode yeah yeah she should get a handful of them forever every single one of them yeah it's so good yeah her selma in this episode is just oh my gosh the end singing natural woman it's really i got really moved why like again even though i know it's like again it's sort of rough it's like oh you know a little version of you is a lizard it's like okay you know but then but then it's i don't know you want to see her happy and especially after everything she's been through you see her just so kind of broken in this episode and then she gets to love jeb jeb and i don't know i I was I was like tearing up a little bit hearing her sing sing in that in Selma's voice you know when do you get to hear that it's very sweet it's great yeah but the episode itself now uh begins with their first of many of a few

references in this one but it's the they begin with the Duff Gardens commercial we see the return of Daredevil Lance Murdoch uh who was introduced in barth the daredevil uh and he jumps over 16 flaming school buses that number is important because back in 1975 evil kenevil the guy who they're referencing the gen x or boomer guys writing this show he jumped 14 buses so lance murdoch beats it by two and they're on fire this is his last appearance for a while because uh he shows up here and then in homer the smithers we find out he has cirrhosis of the liver liver liver and then in uh viva ned flanders which david emstern writes he makes his grand return to the show but he is such a lesser

character you thought would have a lot more legs based on being in a big important early episode i think they they love doing horrible things to him but i guess they got kind of like uh how many times how many times can we break his body in every bone in it i just love that the commercial is set up with like if maybe i'm overly deconstructing this but that like much like the thing it is referencing they knew that the camera people were going to go up to him at the end of the trick and ask him where are you going to go next and he's supposed to say i'm going to duff gardens but because he horribly injured himself he still has to say it and so he's like saying it through horrible pain like i'm going to duff gardens and i don't think this has lost the time because they're doing it again but this is a

reference to an ad campaign from uh that started in 1987 where after the super bowl they would have a spot the disney company, they would have a spot, the Disney company, where they would go up to a player, like the MVP of the game, and say, you just won the big game. What are you going to do now? And they'd always say, I'm going to Disneyland or I'm going to Disney World. And this fell out of fashion after a while. It came back in the early aughts. And I think I was reading in 2023, they did it after that year of Super Bowl with one of the Kansas City Chiefs players. so it stuck around enough in the cultural memory where they can keep referencing it and then in 1992 they did an ad campaign where there was a song called i'm going to disneyland and it was

referencing a previous ad campaign that was popular yeah i've got i got a quick clip here the the original uh commercial from the the mvp of the uh the super bowl that year phil sims you just won the super bowl what are you doing next i'm gonna go to disney world and because we live in the age of social media and blogs and everything now uh maybe there are still blogs i don't know but now when someone does one of these there's a disney article about well he went we went with him to disneyland and here's what he did so i think with that recent guy they actually followed up on this uh promise wow so they still do this campaign yeah it comes and it goes but they did do it in 2023 that's incredible oh my god i i was definitely familiar with this only as jokes. I never saw like the original.

I just like didn't watch sports. So not a big Super Bowl viewer. No, I mainly knew it through references, but I do find it very funny that the commercial is implying going to a Disney theme park is as good as winning the Super Bowl or perhaps better. Right. No, I mean, it sold me on wanting to go to two theme parks. Like, yeah, Rebecca, you've been, like you said,

you've been a SoCal resident for a good while now and an animation pro. Like, do you feel different about theme parks, especially, you know, like the big Disney and Universal ones now that they're practically, you know, next door to you now, as opposed to when you were growing up? Yeah, I mean, well, since I was on the East Coast, I had, there's a place called Wild World that then became Adventure World that I think now is Six Flags. That was

sort of the close one. Bush Gardens was a little further away. And we took a trip once to Disney World. So I had seen that, which just felt giant to me as a as a little kid. And it is kind of giant. And then when we moved out here, and I finally went to Disneyland, I was kind of blown away by how kind of quaint it is. Like it's a piece of history. Having gone to Disney World first, you go to Disneyland, and when you see those old rides, also having studied animation and illustration, they use so many illustration techniques, you know, in something like Pirates of the Caribbean, in order to create those little dioramas that you're passing through. And when you're walking through, you know, fake New Orleans or whatever, the way that

they use illustration ideas to, you know, to make the tops of the buildings feel further away than they actually are. I mean, there's like an artistry to it that really struck me. And I love the pieces of it that have been maintained from some of the earliest days because they have so much of that like you go through, you know, Sleeping Beauty's castle and you see just those those simple little scenes one at a time with some some effect under them. All that stuff I think is really, really cool. I'd never seen I'm also I love Mary Blair. I studied all of that in college and to go there and see her influence over so many of those rides was really exciting. So yeah, I definitely love Disneyland in a very

different way than I was expecting to. And I'm really fascinated by the history of the parks. I find the whole Epcot story just absolutely incredible mean i've been to epcot and obviously it's not what it was originally intended to be you know but the uh the parts of disneyland and disney world about kind of creating an ideal society where all of the workers are underground and you can't see them etc etc where people live in houses but they don't have the right to vote or you know make any decisions about where they live all that stuff is like wow that's like you know holy smokes the story is really great and the end disneyland's really interesting too the stories about uh you know how fast they tried to open and the pavement melting other people's feet and i think too as as an adult i can now appreciate

you know how much of the how much the park actually supports the animation and everything else that disney is able to do at this point i don't know if i'm like there's like a there's like a parks kind of person i don't think i slot into it i don't i don't go like once a month or anything like that um but uh i have i have a story related to disneyland i'll bring it up later when we get to some of the deaf garden stuff i was thinking you know why did i like this so much as a kid i think it was the theme park stuff especially the disney parodies because uh disneyland is the world that was never an offer on the table when i was growing up that was not even a possibility that was talked about so i thought i need to know what's happening at these theme parks and the only way i can know is through parody so i always loved uh parodies

things like when they go to happy world land in the tiny tunes movie uh this itchy and scratchy land before the internet i needed to know what was happening at these places i remember a friend of mine he went to disney world uh because his grandma signed up for some timeshare thing where you go it was one of those old scams where you go and as long as you sit through the meetings you can go to the park and so she sat through the meetings he went to the park he came back with the big map and i swear to god an entire week of recesses i just sat down with him with the map and i like, tell me what's here. What's inside of this? What is this like?

I just needed to know what was happening at these places. I presumed I would never, ever go. Did you have one near you, though? Like a local park? I grew up in western Ohio. So there were things nearby like the Geauga Lake theme park. Cedar Point is a very popular theme park if you're a real roller coaster fan. Unfortunately, I am not, and I still kind of am not to this day. So I miss the point of Cedar

Point. That was never a destination for me. And then I think there was like Kennywood in Western Ohio. So there were theme parks. We didn't really go that often. And after a certain point, we just didn't go anywhere. But nothing had the same appeal to me as as a disneyland or a disney world just the forbidden fruit that i didn't go to disneyland until i went to visit a friend in california when i was 18 and then not again until i was uh close to 30 and i've been back since i moved to california uh and then you know i'm in canada now but when i was there i i did go every couple of years because it was the novelty, but it still feels like this place that is just so foreign and so unreachable because it had that status in my mind as a kid. For me, Busch Gardens was a local one, which if listeners don't know Busch Gardens, I think they still exist, but they were owned by the Anheuser-Busch beer company,

which is why this is duff gardens in there but but yeah when i was a kid i did not like bush gardens because it was a zoo plus a bunch of roller coasters but i wanted to you know let's say i was at least very properly marketed to by nickelodeon but i wanted to ride the movies at universal i wanted to see all my movie friends and i i didn't want to just ride a roller coaster that was just named after something that like wasn't on television so why would that also roller coaster scare me like i'll if my best friends spider-man or some other character are on a roller coaster then i'll brave it with them or like the incredibles are on this roller coaster

okay i'll do it but if it's just a roller coaster, I am still kind of unable. I am too scared to do it. Yeah, there's still parks, Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay and Williamsburg. And it feels like a Simpsons joke, but it is real. These are theme parks designed to market their beer to you. Yeah, that went right over my head when I was a kid at Busch Gardens. I had no idea. I only found out that related to beer as I was getting ready for this episode. I was like, wait, oh, Busch. Right, okay. I don't know. I was like at Busch Gardens. I had no idea. I only found out that related to beer as I was getting ready for this episode.

I was like, wait, oh, Busch, right. Okay, I don't know. I was like, Busch Gardens, that's where you go for roller coasters. No, it was only hit me a couple of years later after this episode when I went to Busch Gardens for a kid's field trip. I've told this story before,

but it's a funny one I like to tell that it's just, it was a childhood realization of homophobia in a bad way, but it's it's a funny one i like to tell that it's just it was a childhood realization of like homophobia in a bad way but it was that basically we a nice thing about being at a at a school in florida is that you might get to go on a big end of your field trip to disneyland or disney world or universal and so we had scheduled a thing the the school for like sixth grade was going to go or fifth grade was going to go to uh at the early june to magic kingdom and then some busy body homophobic teacher found out that that was the

you know the unofficial gay days that happened at disney which you you know where a bunch of lgbtq people would show up in red shirts to celebrate the day together and they just have fun it was not it was nothing evil but just the idea that the kids would be taken from school to gay day at magic kingdom they canceled that and we went to bush gardens instead and it was like so i was finally gonna get to magic go to magic kingdom and instead no we're gonna go to bush gardens and it's because parents are homophobic like right so send your kids to the beer. Exactly. Yeah.

Get away from those gay people. Come to the beer park. Yeah. Come to the beer park. The Simpsons will be right back. Look who's headed for the wildest theme park on Earth. Are we yet no are we there yet no the simpsons oh that isn't good welcome to the break everybody henry gilbert here eating a questionable sandwich and there's no question this week that Talking

Simpsons is proud to have back on the show Rebecca Sugar we had so much fun chatting with her oh my gosh we've loved having Rebecca back on the Creator Steven Universe and if you have not checked out yet her brand new album of music Spiral Bound please check it out wherever you hear music she did such a great job on it and it was so awesome to talk with her about simpsons her music thank you so much rebecca we love having you on oh and also follow her on tiktok as well she just started up a brand new tiktok that is well worth signing up for thank you so much again rebecca and if you like listening to talking simpsons you should know we're only able to do cool episodes like this with rebecca sugar if you are a subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because that supports me and bob doing this is our full-time

jobs listeners there get to hear every episode a week ahead of time and ad free you can hear next week's episode right now of talking simpsons all of our previously released podcast is well on that tier and that means a monthly episode of talking futurama and talk king of the hill are coming your way too us diving into futurama king of the hill just like we do an episode of the simpsons super duper in depth and you get all the previously released 150 plus patreon exclusive podcasts us covering every episode of the critic every episode of mission hill and many of our favorite episodes of batman the animated series you need to see it all for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpson but if you want something even nicer than drinking

water on an amusement park ride you need to sign up at the premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because we have all the five dollar things but then for 10 bucks a month you also get our monthly What a Cartoon movie podcast where we talk about an animated feature film, crazy in depth, often four, five, or six hours long, just like we cover in episode The Simpsons. Last month, we covered 1942's Bambi from Walt Disney. And this month, we are covering a real classic, Porco Rosso, the 1992 Hayao Miyazaki film that we are big fans of.

Rebecca Sugar, too, big fan of as well. And we have so much to say about its interesting development, release, and reflect on just how long it took to come to the United States. If you sign up today, you get to hear all the new episodes of What a Cartoon Movie and the 60-plus previous ones we've done. I would estimate that's over 200 hours of us talking about animated feature films. Everything from Akira to a goofy movie. Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. To Beavis and Butthead to the universe. Many films from Disney, from Pixar, Studio Ghibli.

Too many to name. Including our longest podcast ever where we went for six and a half hours about who framed Roger Rabbit. You should sign up today at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons to see everything you are missing out on. One more time, that's patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. in happier news though what i like about this episode is phil hartman is all over it yes he's playing so many characters it's so great oh my gosh i'm not a doctor really that's one of his right i think that's hey's the one who says, we found her swimming naked in the fermentarium. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. They give him like six voices in this one.

They're really working out Phil in this one. He's the announcer on this and they never actually say if it's Troy or not or if it's just his general announcer voice. But I love that forever that this joke will be to be completed in 1994. Like forever the joke is like in the to be completed in 1994. Like forever. The joke is like in the far off date of 1994.

Oh, my God. Now we are 30 years past that. Oh, yeah. And this episode has Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure. I wonder how often that happens. Hercules, right? He gets the doobit. Oh, man.

That's true. Also, it's funny, too, with the Simpsons ride. This is just in the news recently. It is rumored that the days are numbered on the Simpsons ride because it's said that a Pokemon ride is going to be replacing it soon. It's going to get sunsetted. So never in the Simpsons ride yet. Oh, the one at Universal with the screen? Yes.

Yeah, yeah. It replaced Back to the Future, and soon it might go through the same thing with being replaced by Pokemon itself but it's nestled in that whole simpsons area i would guess they're gonna have to get rid of all of the springfield eventually it's uh if if they lose the simpsons right then springfield itself would be gone which would be really too bad you'd think they would hold on to it as long as they can since they can't do that ever again probably yeah though i guess you know disney world would probably really or disney itself would probably love to have a simpsons thing at their park but uh right i'm sure it's

just a matter of time right no it's uh the the rumor always was that it was just a 20-year deal not an in perpetuity deal so we we we shall see but yes we get to we get to see some examples of crazy uh theme park stuff including the washing machine which is just a ride that just sprays water directly into your mouth. And soap. There's soap present as well. Yes. There's some great crazy faces on them in this one. I really like it. this one, Anavision, that they draw like some of the cutest Simpsons. Like they have like the biggest eyes and cutest like dimensions to them that

eventually I think they got rid of because the producers in America didn't like it as much. But I love these, the cuteness of these. The big pupils, the big eyes. Yeah. Yeah.

This episode's full of great drawings. Google will tell me the sad information that fish do not live long in beer. So don't do that. Don't do that in real life yeah those those fish aren't long for this world i mean funny they found maybe three different gags for drunk fish which was very nice yeah yeah they i mean that seems to be the text here they the fish are not doing well uh so yes the the family though sees all these horrible things they're like well we gotta go so they instantly run off to go do it

homer it's so great that homer is they're fully writing homer is a big kid now like the second he sees a commercial on tv for a theme park he's like warm up the car we're leaving right now like let's get out of here right well i love how yes the kids are both just like we completely accept that we can't go to the theme park now and it's homer that it's just like now that's so cute he can't take it but yes this uh they they then as they're making their plans this is when marge comes in as the uh the wet blanket as she often is now what do we say when we get to the ticket booth we're under six and i'm a college student kids i have some bad news. Your great Aunt Gladys is passed on.

Gladys. Gladys. About yay high, blue hair, big dent in her forehead? No, honey. Gladys looked more like your Aunt Patty. Oh, yeah. There she is. The funeral's in Little Neck Falls. Looks like we'll have to go to Duff Gardens another time.

We understand. No, he's complaining about something he can't change. But I want to go to Duff Gardens. Right now! No, Homer, quit pouting. I'm not pouting. I'm mourning. Stupid dead woman. Homer, not respectful of

Aunt Gladys' memory throughout this episode. Right. I love when he's upset about the catering and like pounding on her coffin. But it's such great. The way he like, I just love the animation. Director Carlos Baeza. I wish he's another of those, like he's never done an interview. I think he like, by the time they were doing the DVDs, he had moved back to Cuba, but unavailable. But he's one of the best directors back then and he's

i just love how homer like stares at the ground and like kind of just shoves his arm down like a like a giant toddler just like so good yeah but i do i do wonder now if you can get away with that with theme park tickets as much as because now you gotta you can't just go to disneyland now like you have to know but weeks in advance if you're gonna go they they really they really despise the californians who just wanted to drop by and work on their screenplay i think you're taking up space these families want to spend money i have been there at disneyland about to go in and seeing the people who show up and just go like well i can't buy a ticket today like Like just these heartbroken families and learning the very draconian system of going to Disneyland.

It's so confusing that we have kind of stopped going until they figure it out because I'm not sure how it works now. I think it was actually easier to go to Disneyland in Japan than it is to go to Disneyland in Anaheim. I'd believe it. Well, and also like you can still just pay 20 bucks to get a better ticket. Like, just jump in the line. Instead of having to, you literally have to watch a 20-minute video on here's how to get Genie Pass. Genie Pass is different than Lightning Lane, which is different than this other thing. Yeah.

It's okay. And by the way, Steven Universe now lives on Disney Plus, unbelievably. Like, it's a very strange thing. Right. By way of Hulu and only some of it. Right. I can't believe the Steven movie is on Disney Plus, which is very bizarre. No, I think I saw Ian JQ talking about that on Twitter, how you guys put in stuff in the

Steven Universe movie, especially the storybook opening to kind of you know evoke classic classic disney films and now you're on the same app as those yes yes that's unreal also if you if you go looking for it you type in like st and it's like steamboat willie steven universe like right next to each other and it's like what like i don't i just i can't really fathom it it's's kind of awesome. It's kind of great. Yeah, we were definitely, I mean, we're always nodding to Disney movies with the show. So that's full circle, I suppose. And so the family loads up and I feel like this was intentional that they have every joke about what, like the things you aren't supposed to do in a car.

Bart and Lisa are sitting in the way back, really, you know back where the suitcases are, no seatbelts or anything. Maggie is in the front seat, which is not where you're supposed to put a car. And then later when Patty and Selma get in there, they're smoking in the closed doors. But this is how the writers of the show drove around as kids on family trips. Oh, I didn't even think twice about that. Everyone used to smoke everywhere. That was yeah that is really yeah i mean i grew up with adults that would smoke in the car and if it was cold outside the windows aren't coming down yeah it felt more observational like here is what a road trip was like in the 60s or 70s for the

writers the kids are in the hatchback rolling around having fun i remember like doing carpool like i used to carpool to hebrew school and this person had this sedan no um a station it was a station wagon and they and they used to have seats that faced the back you're basically sitting in the trunk like looking out the back window and and it would be so exciting it's like yeah you get the i get to like see everything moving backwards and now i'm just like that's wild like if you get rear-ended it's like you just hit a couple of children. It's the worst design ever. But I definitely remember cars like that. Was it even a rule at that point to keep kids out of the front seat, keep babies out of the front seat? Oh, no, I think it was the normal thing to do back then. Yeah. Now, probably from working on

cartoons now, you guys became very aware of all of these safety rules for kids and cars and the like oh sure i mean yeah every everything would be like seat belt everyone has to have their seat belts we even make a point like there's a episode with the teenagers who are sour cream is like always wear your seat belt which we like we want to keep people safe we'll put those helmets on it's a little extra work it's good they're they're driving there they uh the the wizard of oz joke of marge i mean i like that marge is playing like kevner is playing marge as like she's in mourning but like you know it's you know it was an older aunt so it's not like a shock but she's still sad and then here everybody else around her is making jokes and she's asking them to be serious though in the commercials for the episode you could see

that the wizard of oz thing was originally just an are we there yet joke which is just the kids repeating i was i was wondering because i could you could see that the lip sync didn't match i was like oh this is an adr joke oh it was an r that that makes sense that's not certainly not as harsh as uh ding dong when which is dead the pause homer has on like uh well or how bart even just calls him back to be like which old witch and then homer goes the wicked witch just to really drive it home and this is where patty and selma enter the picture and like in principle charming when patty is in a scene with selma selma has the s earrings on because they were concerned and they might lose it after this one i think they understood people if an episode is about one of them they will have the dominant role and you'll get to know which one is which

right yeah i noticed the hearing another mnemonic i later learned from watching the animators talk about it is that patty's hair is uh circular and is meant to evoke like a a uh you know a patty of a burger like isn't a beef patty So another way to keep it straight. It also struck me that like Homer actually like the joke isn't that Homer hate, they hate being hugged by Homer, but Homer is not like grossed out to hug them. He actually just puts his arm around them to comfort them legitimately. Like there's not, the joke isn't that Homer doesn't care. And they're thinking of MacGyver months after he's been canceled. So he's no longer with us either. It's though.

Also, this is another time where like Patty is this shows you how things change with, you know, how queer characters are portrayed in Simpsons that like Patty. Patty is just written as, you know, like a as the celibate character on the show. Not she'll slowly mature into the closeted lesbian to now just like the fully out lesbian character she's been for like 15 years now in the show right but yeah here she's still thinking about macgyver uh right yeah the drive continues uh homer is tricked by his own brain into saying out loud the legend of the dog-faced woman in reference to which is very cruel but it's i at least like homer homer is

getting so stupid his brain tricks himself into just saying out loud the way he goes like what like he didn't realize he said it out loud that that's good then we head to the buzzing sign diner which i i really like that's a great it's a great gag and i also just love the design they have on the kids puzzle that homer doing, because especially because the turn to the treasure chest is so clear. And then he instantly like he chooses to go into the crocodile's mouth. It's so funny. Speaking of 2016, that game The Witness came out then and I hated it. And I would give this scene a lot around that time to show how you're just kind of doing placemat mazes.

And then they you watch little speeches between between them it's not very fun i'm still grinding my axe over that game i apologize i haven't thought about the witness in a long time that's oh the oh the um the video game yes oh my god yes have you oh my gosh have you played the looker no everyone is telling me to play the looker because i'm a known witness hater. It's so, oh, you have to. Oh, it's great. It is. It is part of my Steam library. It was also free, which helped.

Highly recommend. So, so funny. Not since Pissed, I think, has there been such a great send up. Well, Henry and I, we were both Berkeley boys, so we're allowed to make fun of Jonathan Blow. It was all in good fun. Yeah. He was our neighbor for many years. Oh, that's cool yeah i love how um you'll have to remind me exactly what he says but when when they offer him another placemat and he like

homer's homer's answer is is like so it's so subdued which i thought was was such a great topper he's like please yeah it's sort of like he's trying to reclaim his later at the uh in the date with hans moment when he was like very good when he's trying to reclaim his dignity. Later in the date with Hans Molman, when he was like, very good. So we have two men being embarrassed by the server. I've used that very good in my life. I've used that a few times. Then we have a quick reference to Marge says, while we're all waiting for our pile,

let's take a minute to remember Aunt Gladys. They kind of take this straight to the critic, but a character just has a memory. And then they say out loud, like, wait, I'm thinking of a movie. has a memory and then they say out loud like wait i'm thinking of a movie they just say the movie name out loud this has nothing to do with the actual content of the prince of tides the film but even as a kid i had seen the commercial so much and they used that shot in every commercial that i recognized it like oh this is from the trailer of the prince of tides and i didn't do my Prince of Tides rewatch, but for Fear of Flying, I will do it when we cover that episode again.

That's a more direct one. Yes, Lowenstein. This is a very Streisand episode because you've got this Prince of Tides reference and then Yentl in the third act. Like it's a very Barbara episode. Right. But it's, yeah, on The Critic,

many times characters will just think they have a memory and then they're like oh wait i'm thinking of a movie i i think uh marge might have homer's brain condition now where uh he he thinks he was in an episode of happy days earlier this season yes that's right i like it coming from marge that's that's really sweet at least she knows it's also just funny to have a character just say like, wait, that's Prince of Tides. Like just say it. Then we head to the funeral and we have some eulogy funnies. Again, it's another like the Bouvier women are mannish jokes brought in here.

But I do like the way he says like, well, I guess most of what I said could be salvaged. He thinks he can rebound from this i really enjoy a point of reviewing that uh everyone is here because they presumably have some attachment to this woman but whenever patty launches into the very cliche eulogy they all get up and start groaning they're like oh god when when when patty goes she wasn't a rich woman they all just get up oh i thought they just wanted they were there hoping to get like a piece of her fortune oh you know what that i think that's another part of the to me it was like oh she's gonna launch into the same

eulogy we've always heard oh interesting yeah i just thought i thought they were all sort of hangers-on hoping yeah i took it a little as an inheritance thing like oh you're not even an inheritance let's get out that's when the guy goes forgot my head right it it's the first appearance of droopy voice man who will have a much bigger moment in the union episode the dental plan it was him that's his first one oh wow yes that's wild though the the simpsons wiki folks droopy voice man still doesn't have his own page simpsons wiki like get get on that he should have his own dedicated he was the leopold of this season he showed up twice to make the same joke and then was never seen again.

Yeah, but he has a unique design. So he should definitely be counted. And this is also, I love that Patty, this is a joke I got much better as an adult. Patty's speech is just like, she seems to be saying like, well, you live alone and you die alone. It isn't that tragic. But instead she's like, she lived alone and she died alone in a way she was an inspiration to me yes yeah right and she and she maybe means i like i like how bright patty is through all of this she's excited about what

she gets she gets the clock she's like all right yeah yeah the these invocations to like have a family all these things they just like water off her back. Like she doesn't feel it at all. Like she's like, yeah, oh yeah. She is very secure in who she is. Yeah, they got a clock. She's excited to go get the record of the dogs barking jingle bells the next day. Right. She's got plans. Then we head to, after a quick eulogy, the family visits the body for some corpse comedy. Bart, like touching the corpse that actually is pretty pretty grotesque um parts case there but i love that yes homer sobbing over it not being catered but even better getting to hear nancy cartwright do her imitation of marge or of a cavender voice is so good that is yeah that is really nice it's very much shades of, he sure can. From The Auto Show, I think.

Yes, yeah, that's right. Then this is where Lionel Hutz comes in for his big appearance. It's such a great scene. And I tried to do a little research on this, but I could not find. Maybe this happened in season 23 or something. But this is Julie Kavner playing five characters in the same scene and i don't think this has ever been topped of the number of characters like you know five characters in the same scene that's you know dan caslanetta has done that many times hey harry and hank have done it

many times but and and even nancy for like at a school scene probably has but but for julie cavner this is net i don't think it's ever happened since yeah and it's weird that uh aunt gladys is closest to her own speaking voice i saw somebody else online say that ain't gladys i give a listen to her here but it sounds like she's just like julie like shouting like she's just like going and that has made all right yeah sorry i really enjoy her shouting this beautiful poem presumably she was shouting the entire thing, but they were fast-forwarding through. I'm Lionel Hutz, executive of Ms. Bouvier's estate.

She left a video will, so I earned my fee simply by pressing this play button. Pretty sweet, eh? I would like to start by reading a passage from Robert Frost. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and... Homer? Robert Frost. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And... Homer. All in favor of skipping the poem?

Thank you. And that has made all the difference. Now, let's get down to business. To my executor, Lionel Hutz, I leave $50,000. Mr. Hutz? You'd be surprised how often that works. You really would. He's not ashamed of being caught at all.

He's like, you'd be surprised how often that works. It's inside baseball. It's so great. That's the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken, which, you know, it's a great, for planning her own video will, it's actually well done because the message she's going to have at the end of the video is like, have a family. I didn't have a family. You should have one.

So The Road Not Taken is kind of about her. So it's a good choice by her. And it's also not a long poem. If you look it up, like you can find a reading of it that takes one minute but homer just fast forwards for it and it's still so funny me marge is the only one who's like you know we have to listen to it the rest of gladys's family is also like yeah skip this we don't want to hear this poem it's uh it's a mean joke but we're so great that homer is like you know they're on my side even patty and selma who hate homer they're like nah skip this poem we're we're bored we don't got the time for this is where she starts bequeathing her things

which uh starts with her potato chip collection and uh we did some hard research on this because this is a reference to what was at the time one of the most famous clips from television ever and i was reading uh the wikipedia article about the person and it cited that tv guide once named it what the funniest tv clip of all time but i couldn't find the actual issue or a scan of it so perhaps that could be made up but this is a reference to the tonight show from october 16th 1987 uh al gina mike reese were writers for the show at that time and one of the guests was an old woman named myrtle young who presented her collection of potato chips that looked like things and she's going through the chips like oh this one's a cat and this one's a cow or whatever and at a certain point ed mcmahon points at something

off stage or asks her a question and johnny carson sneaks a non chip that looks like things from behind his desk and eats it and when she turns, she briefly thinks he ate one of the chips, but they don't let this ruse go on for very long. Almost instantly, he's like, no, here's the bowl. Your chips are safe. But by scamming or pranking this old woman, they made one of the funniest TV clips of all time,

according to people 30 years ago. And if you want to know more about Myrtle Young, there is a whole Wikipedia article about her because she was a micro celebrity with these potato chips. And I learned from this that she was actually an inspector at a potato chip factory which is i guess how she got these chips that look like things so a simpler time folks but the people knew what this was when they were referencing i think i even knew because they were doing like johnny carson show clip packages in prime time like here are all the

funniest things and here's a monkey peeing on johnny carson and here's him eating the chip so yeah it's very visual so i didn't want to pull up like the clip for it to play out here but it's it's it's adorable now to watch because this nice little old lady is just saying like this is bob hope and he's like wow look at that and just puts it down it's just you know it gets kind of repetitive but he's but to know that really carson and the writers were just thinking like, the only reason they invited her on was to try to trick her very briefly. This nice old lady, she's showing off her chips, but she laughs along with it. Yeah, I mean, she seems very sweet.

One of the funnier things about her collection is the chips don't really look like anything until she gives you a suggestion. And you're like, kind of. Oh, you have to hand it to the these are beautifully designed props in this episode i mean really you really can see the caricature in the silhouette of this potato chip these potato chips look much more like the actual things like i feel like it's an extra wink to the tonight show that jay leno is the most recent one of her chips and that homer i mean also that homer so thoughtlessly like he's like uh-oh and he just takes the next bite of a chip i would assume all those chips are are gone afterwards and then and then here comes another big behind the scenes moment as well i guess also related to another tonight show

host yes uh conan o'brien jub jub came from what i believe was an intrusive thought he just started saying jub jub all the time in the writer's room so they let this out of his system by incorporating into the jub jub character who makes about like eight to ten appearances throughout the history of the show if there is a selma centric episode they'll usually remember jub jub like when they do a fish called Soma in season seven, Jub-Jub is along for the ride, and they walk off into the moonlight together at the end of that episode.

Yes. Oh, yeah, that, like, Troy McClure promises a nice hot rock for Jub-Jub as part of their marriage. That Conan, this whole time,

had been just, like, just saying Jub-Jub all the time in the writer's room, just a repetitive thing, that it instantly just falls into, like, when they're like,

so what do we call her? This lizard that's going to be so important for the ending and they just look i i feel like they the story i'd heard before is they all just kind of turn to conan like well conan you're gonna just say jub jub like come on i also love the extra layer that like marge's mother who's i always forget they say her name in this i always thought that she didn't have a name uh and it was like one of those things you only learn from the back of trading cards but she says to my sister jackie yeah i mean well i mean to us i mean to older people yes to us it's like kind of lost what's like oh yeah marge and the rest of the family there the bouviers which is the name of kennedy's uh wife before she became a kennedy jacqueline

bouvier and before before she became an anasis much later in life and it's such a great like again dark joke that like you know the the mother uh marge's mom who you know just lost her sister her only reaction is just like why didn't she just leave me the bowel obstruction that killed her like yeah oh she's the only one more negative than patty and selma in the room is uh jackie it's something they lose with marge's relationship with her mom that was like really there in the thanksgiving episode they kind of lose but i i always liked it like oh but marge in classic marge writing like tells that her endless positivity might partially be because her mom was just negative her entire life and told her like you've never at the risk of losing

my voice let me just say this you've never done anything right. Like, just lines like that for Marge's mom, they kind of, they lose that with Marge's mom over time. Right. But you always get the sense that Marge sort of, she's unlike the rest of her family, that she's so much more sensitive and kind of this sweet sort of flower that bloomed from this, you know, dark place. I think too, it kind of gives a little context to, you know dark you know place i think too it kind of gives a little context to you know like when you see like patty and selma and homer all want to fast forward through that poem it's like how much of this has to do with why she's with him you know yes like this is this is what she knows you know this is the this is her family yeah and jackie bouvier makes about as many appearances as jub jub i i think julie cavner didn't like doing the voice it was interesting to

see that Marge's mom returned in one of the recent seasons and I think Kavner had to just completely re-change how she was approaching this character's voice though the her less she appears much less in Grandpa but it's another of those things of like thanks to the time drift of of the Simpsons she and Grandpa both have to be like 110 for their old references to still work right well with the sliding timeline i mean forget it yeah well speaking of clocks ticking this is where patty and selma get their grandfather clock and selma is given her instruction like now now now by her you know dead aunt who did not have a family the look on patty's face you can see while selma is like spellbound by this patty's like hey grandfather clock not bad yeah no it

doesn't mean anything i mean it's an obvious but nice metaphor they don't say biological clock but that was a popular term of this time i'm sure it has sexist connotations now where it's like well every woman feels this correct but it's uh the ticking clock with selma in the back seat realizing her uh her new goal is is very effective and yeah this is a real upping of principal charming because that one has you know selma coming to the realization half i need a husband if she wants a husband and homer is tasked with it now she's like no i need a baby i want to have a baby let's even just bypass the whole husband thing as we as act two is all about that but i love the reaction on maggie is like maggie as a baby fully understands the word selma says and she's she thinks she's about to be

kidnapped and tries to break out of the car as at the end of the scene the way the camera just like passes by them for the shot like needlessly great animation to to close out the shot of just like this big moving perspective actually i didn't put it on my notes but i did remember that when they pull up the patty and selma it's all in camera animation where they're faking the camera move around the uh the front of the apartment right that's wild i can't begin to understand why they would do something so hard this looks great seem like a lot of extra work for that establishing shot but hey i like how it looks and uh so then it's time for uh video dating which was all the rage at the time now again the joke

then was was like oh you would date somebody via like this instead of just meeting him in person like literally nobody i know now knows somebody because they met in person unless they've been together with a person for like over a decade otherwise like i i met my husband via podcasting so that's wild yeah i'm gosh you and i've been together for a long time we met we met in person but uh like i feel like i really feel how long it's been because i know his phone number. Like, I know the numbers. Like, I didn't have a phone that, like, had his number in it until much later. I don't know my wife's phone number.

When I have to give it to put it on forms, I'm like, oh, I'm a bad husband. I don't have this. I mean, yeah. Who has to remember? Who has to ever remember a phone number anymore? No. Yeah. It's that's what the little i button on the my contacts is for my husband's phone number i'm like uh oh right that's that's how i can put it in this this this

form but apparently aljean and mike reese were doing a lot of these video dating services mike reese found his wife his current wife to this day through video dating and i'm looking at the scene now the guy in one of the chairs looks a lot like how they drew mike reese at the time so i'm wondering if they snuck him in because he was a much larger gentleman. You can see a better caricature of him later in the front where he's sitting with Al Jean talking about writing the sitcom about the sassy robot. It looks a lot like him, but he talked about what modern dating is now where it's very easy to find a date and there are too many dates. And it just becomes like a marketplace and you lose any sort of romantic notion as to like what even love can be but hey he's still with his wife to this day and they're traveling all over the world together he better not go on any more subs is what i'm saying

no that was to learn that mike reese had been on the sub the that that imploded last year what to know that he oh yes yeah he didn't he wasn't on the sub that imploded he year. What? To know that he had... Oh, yes, yeah, you didn't know this, Rebecca. He wasn't on the sub that imploded. He was on a different voyage. He's still with us. Yes, no, he had ridden it like months... Within the same year, I think he had ridden it. Yeah, and it definitely had major issues when he went under.

He was in the news a lot when the Seagate, correct, Seagate? Yes, that's it. It was named after a tragedy before it happened. But yeah, he was being interviewed a lot when it happened because he was one of the notable people who went down and came up to talk about their experience. Oh, my gosh. Also, you know, the video dating thing, too.

It's our pals at the Found Footage Fest. Go see them live. Oh, it's so good. Yes. Oh, man. In the newest one that me and Bob saw, and they're coming to Los Angeles. Well, they will have been in Los Angeles. They're coming next week at the time we're recording.

Anyway, in their new thing, they have a sequel to their dating video series called Video Mate. And before they had the guys, now they have the women. And it's some incredible, there's some great, great folks in it. I think my favorite is the woman who says that as she's talking about her plan she says she hopes to start her own religion someday like that's her that's her big plan cool wow well that tells you that's smart that tells you a lot about this person's personality and this thing with uh selma tying the uh the cigarette in her mouth now that i've seen it i

know this has appeared in other places, but I'm pretty sure this is a reference to Twin Peaks because Sherilyn Fenn does that with a cherry stem. And Twin Peaks at this point when they're writing it is maybe two years old, one to two years old. So I feel like that had taken over their minds. And that was a very iconic scene from that show. Is that where that comes from? The tying something in a knot with your tongue? It's a very popular moment from Twin Peaks, and I'm sure other people have done it, but Twin Peaks had been such a new thing and such a big phenomenon that I really feel like it's a callback to that.

But let me know if anyone has seen it elsewhere. Also, I love how when Willie reacts to it, he's dressed like a swinging singles guy from the 70s. That's his like, like oh i'm going to the video dating thing he's dressing up too and he's like big open shirt and all that but i mean you know i know they there's constant jokes about willie being like an unattractive man or a catch but like i i know he's not rich but he is he is a buff huge dude like he he shouldn't he shouldn't have too much trouble but i again it's another mean joke at her expense, though,

of just like back to the lock with you, Nessie. Another, another put. Right, yeah. And the ending. I do like her throwing it out there. Just like, hey, you're looking at free lunch, boys. Like come and get, like, she's like, look, I don't know how much more explicitly to put this.

Like, I want to have a baby. Come on. Like, let's get to it, okay? We then cut to Princess Opal for her second and final speaking appearance on the show. She almost got to three, which would have, I think, really cemented her in Springfield. So she was in Bart the Murderer, correct? Where she talks about Willie Nelson will stun his fans by swimming the English Channel. Really?

You can still do it. It's not too late. I know he just turned 90, but he still could. Delta Burke never split up with Gerald McRaney, so she was incorrect about that. you can still do it it's not too late i know he just turned 90 but hey delta burke never split up with uh gerald mcgraney so she was incorrect about that that's another bob's favorite ones too they're like i seem so happy that is stuck in my mind as well whenever there's a breakup especially one that i saw coming miles in advance and i really like the joke with princess opal that she is selling her a thing that she then admits is fake but the way she admits it's fake is by taking truth serum which actually it's very complicated this joke yeah cut to uh the the

grocery store and uh and yes you know bob this used to be your job is this did this ever happen to you no thank god uh i loved being a bag boy though it was so much fun it like i don't like the tetris part of my brain love going to work at a grocery store and uh i still say uh when i step into a grocery store i am i could be one of the best baggers in there no matter where i go i never had any competitions i know there are some but selma sorry yeah selma is just so desperate she can't find any qualities about this guy so she's like so uh wearing a belt and i love after this is just me repeating the jokes i apologize but i love when she's like no suspenders for you huh and he goes i guess not yeah i i like the i like the friend who's just like yeah i like their little like back and forth you get the sense that they're like they they goof

off a bunch of work and they've got a good uh chummy relationship i i say uh whoever this guy was should have went for it although i do want to hope this pimply voice teen is in college let's say yeah he's yeah i don't know that hans moment too it's like yeah swinging wild with the age differences here the age gaps give you pause but let's let's assume that this is a pimply voice teen if that is or squeaky voice teen if this is him again let's just say he's 19 let's say that uh for this scene yeah i if we assume that i'm also with his friend arnold who's just like no man go for it like come on what do you like also like squeaky voice teen who are you to turn down selma you know but no i also love dan the way dan plays it of him like not liking this attention and the way he goes like i guess not it makes us wear this i i also like how he kicks

his friend too like you who says like no it's not like he's letting him know but bob you didn't wear suspenders no we had to wear like these polo shirts but no no suspenders i had to wear belts at amc we had specific belt uh wearing i didn't, that was, I don't know any place where I would have had to wear suspenders. Actually, well, here's a funny, Rebecca, actually, here's a funny story involving suspenders related to Steven Universe. But that was for our first Halloween together. My husband and I both dressed as Steven Universe characters. I dressed as Steven in his, I guess, coach attire when he's coaching everybody and strong in the real way. And my husband went as tiger philanthropor.

And when he put it on and wore suspenders, he was just like, I think I just love wearing suspenders. Like this was an outfit choice, but this is much more comfortable than a belt. Yeah, they exist for a reason. I'm so flattered. That's so awesome. I love that. You know, Henry, he can go that far but if you see a bow tie and a straw hat, you have to intervene. He will disappear on a steamboat one day.

Right. That's a pro for Uncle Grandpa cosplay as well. Front and center suspenders. No, I don't know what gave suspenders a bad name. Probably all the corrupt southern guys who would thumb them and go well well well i think it's probably a casualty that it's like people just don't layer as many things over things anymore right like if you're wearing a suit then

it's like you have that then you have a jacket over top and then you have you'd have a vest over them the the elimination of vests from our vocabulary got rid of the suspenders because they would neatly cover up suspenders i think so then we see the elimination of Vess from our vocabulary got rid of the suspenders because they would neatly cover up suspenders, I think. So then we see the desperation of Selma that even as they bring back Hans Mole Man, who this is another of these moments of like, oh, this is a Principal Charming sequel. Like this scene was in Principal Charming as well. Pivotal moment because he is named Hans Moleman here. I was looking at the two scenes because they take the design of his license from Principal Charming, but they age him down to being 31 years old based on the scene in Dufflis. So in Principal Charming, he's born in 1921. In this episode, he's born in 1961. It was written in

1992. So they're having fun. They're following continuity of the jokes. Right. I think they need that for the joke later of all the little hans molman juniors running around that it's like oh that's just sort of like what he's it's not his age it's just the way that he is i don't think they stuck to the 31 years old joke but they were this early i just love that they had that attention to detail on the license but yeah they finally gave him a name he was ralph mellish in his original appearance based on some bit from a Monty Python record. A very deep Monty Python reference. Yes.

Yeah. One so much that I was like, yeah, sure. Because I know some Monty Python. But like if it's from a Monty Python record, I'm missing that. And I mean, we talk about this all the time, but things that camp out in your brain whenever I'm doing a vision test i do think question mark smiley face yeah i i love how he's doing it to the menu if they include emojis in future vision tests and they should i think that we can start saying that like hans mole man i also love his reaction of like when she's starting to ask him out his reaction is like did i do wrong like he's just this poor

little old man and i i thought she was going to go on a date with jasper but then i realized that was bart the lover and it was edna that's right yes right and there's some overlap yeah to some of those yeah you know this was when aerosmith came to town in the show but they originally did the like man hungry uncomfortably man hungry woman older woman thing with edna but i think they realized in those episodes like edna's more attractive than they want the the recipient of those jokes to be like it doesn't play as you're supposed to be like disgusted at this woman and edna's too hot that's the problem you instead go like well yeah edna should get with all these guys

Selma takes him out I also I had this very good moment a couple times in Japan recently on my trip to Japan because I can read some of menus but uh there was a couple times where I would point to an item on the menu and several things would be then said to me in reaction to that and that I couldn't fully follow and i would just have to basically do the japanese reply of like very good like yep whatever you said yes yeah i agree i mean i i had the cheat code of having my wife there who was fluent in japanese but the few times she had to like get up to go to the bathroom and i'd order something there were questions that followed and i kind of just put my hands up and said, Samima Sen.

Yes. That's basically the equivalent of very good. I just pointed to the bathroom like, she'll be back to talk to me. Wait for her. There was a very nice, the worst time that happened, there was a very nice person at the ramen place where basically I ordered three ramen instead of two bowls. And when he saw the three tickets for me, he just got back from behind the counter and gave me the money back. And I was like, oh, thanks. I would have just let you serve me three bowls of ramen, but thank you.

Because I felt like a genius at first when I got there, because I could tell my husband who couldn't read anything. I could read like, well, that's his pork and that's his shrimp. But once I sat down and had ordered it, a question comes that i later learned is like hey do you want garlic in this i just have to go like yeah after he learns it's the wine list and this is when selma takes mole man home she considers their possible future together sees a bunch of near-sighted children i sorry i love how long this scene lingers on because the kids just keep running into each other one falls out the window and i think it is a very video we pause on selma as they zoom in on the couple it just i it just stays for too uncomfortably long but i do love it

it feels like they were like we need five more seconds out of this scene like just pause i mean it makes it funnier just to see how long they hold on them after the kid falls out the window and that selma in the vision doesn't react at all to it but selma in real life realizes this is not what she wants she chucks mole man out of the car and again it's just not like this is in my house it was like just they they learned how funny it is to have poor hans mole man just make a pronouncement at the end of the scene to end a moment it's this pitiful world man so then we head back home we get to see more be re-reminded of duff gardens uh and this is when we get another commercial uh that includes a reference that completely flew over my head as as a kid come to duff gardens where roaming gangs aren't a big problem anymore. Now featuring the clean-shaven sounds of Hooray for Everything.

Hey, kids, take a walk on the wild side. And all the races sing. Do-do-do, shooby-dooby-doo. Do-do-do, shooby-dooby-doo. Yeah! Can we go to Duff Gardens this weekend? Sure, unless another ant dies. Salma, your date's over already?

Yeah, I was so depressed I ate a jar of expired olives. I guess I'll never have a baby. Aunt Selma, this may be presumptuous, but have you ever considered artificial insemination? Boy, I don't know. You've got to be pretty desperate to make it with a robot. I knew that. Yeah, I don't think I had heard the Lou Reed song until maybe the 2000s,

so I wasn't aware that they were changing a lyric. Hooray for everything. A lyric that's problematic now, but that's's what the joke is that they change it to all the all the races say that's the nice hooray for everything version of it hey their last appearance hooray for everything uh very short-lived i think people just weren't as into making fun of up with people as the 90s progressed we had moved on right right is i i thought this must be enough with people yeah it's uh we we talked a bit more about them in their previous reference. But yeah, it was like in Bart versus Thanksgiving, George Meyer grew up hating up with people,

loving making fun of them. They're just so aggressively clean cut. And I watched a whole documentary. When we covered it that time, I watched a whole documentary on it. I loved that documentary. I thought that was fascinating. It's so intense how dedicated everyone seemed to be that sort of joined this group. And then when you see what it becomes later where it's just so much more polished and it's like that energy is gone. And it's really interesting.

But I was only familiar with it because The Simpsons made fun of it. I didn't know anything about it aside from that. No, yeah. I loved – one of my favorite bits from that documentary is when they talked to one of, like, the gay members of the group who was, like, said, oh, yeah, it was, like, one of the best places to be. If you're a closeted Christian teen, it's a great place to hide because you just get to sing and dance all the time. But it's not gay if you do it there right oh gosh but and uh yes this uh is that i'm sad to see hooray for everything go was great they were a joke out of time but it was so i mean also just hooray for everything what a wonderful name

for a group that's just great they just love everything hooray. This brings us to a very fun staple of sitcoms and comedy movies of the 80s and 90s. It's the sperm bank jokes. And it's a way to, because it's a plot point, it's a way they can say, well, hey, this is just part of the plot. They've got to go here. And that's where they can make all their dirty jokes. But here they use artificial insemination. That's an older term. I thought it was in vitro fertilization.

That's another older term i thought it was uh in vitro fertilization that's another older term now i'm learning it's called intrauterine insemination or iui so as as time passes we come up with new terms artificial insemination does sound like weird and alien and strange but uh they found more medically sounding ways to communicate the same information also that yeah as a kid the joke on the sign, put your sperm in our hands, a shocking joke they got away with in 1993. Now that I've grown up, I think the funnier joke is

established 1858. Yes, that is a good one. You're so distracted by the shocking gross-out joke that you miss the date, I think. Oh my gosh. Much like other subjects in the 90s, when comedy writers learned about it, they're just like, oh, this is the cheat code to do filthy jokes about bodily fluids and

masturbation on television. Like, no, this is about a thing in the news. And it's, yes, I think uh stern david stern talks on the commentary about going to a sperm bank for a research trip on this and he said that his only real finding was that they had a speak what amazing pornography i think he said an outstanding collection of pornography i think that was all and you know uh these comedies really misled me into thinking that the world of sperm donation was this lucrative because if you've ever donated blood or plasma they're very picky they're like

no tattoos or whatever and sometimes some have concerns about like are you gay or whatever but i mean sperm is being made to make another person you can't just walk in off the street and say but you know i'll donate give me money i i feel like if there are studies they're doing sure but i feel like how things are depicted in comedies, if you can believe it, are not anything like real life. These jokes are inaccurate. But like when I gave Plasma for $30, enough to buy Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga for the GBA,

I had to fill out all these forms and answer all these questions about the quality of my plasma. But here Barney just gets to keep donating over and over again. And that's what I assume is what turned Selma off from using the local supply. Supply is a good word for it. All those kids will probably have a beautiful baritone. It's true. They'll all sound wonderful.

They may be inclined to you know start drinking but hopefully the baritone thing will be more likely for them also i noted this time the the man who runs the sperm bank is the head of the fatherhood institute he is he's uh moonlighting i guess you can see you know related feel too many kids died in that shark tank he He had to start a new business. Not again. Not again. This is when instead Selma decides to shop around for it. Note that Troy McClure is on the cover, her future husband. Yeah. So she almost had a kid with him before that.

Some nice freeze frame jokes. Jacques is on the cover. Marge does not comment on this at all. Dr. Frank is on the cover. And there are a few frames. It feels like an animator's joke, not something the script where as marge opens the magazine they cut to the table and all of them looking at it as she opens it you see a snake and a few other convict looking men on the first page she flips to oh yeah it's it's maybe like two frames of the episode well the animators were

always drawing jock in there he was like kind of a forgotten dude of to the writers they're like no jock's just once but the animators put him in so many times in every opening recently he had that huge that huge uh reappearance oh yes yeah he had a whole episode of a few years ago and and jock is in every opening from season two to like season 19 or whatever the hd switchover was and uh another great joke that selma and marge when marge sees it's one of the uh the sweat hogs which is the group of guys from welcome back cotter everybody would think it's john travolta like that's but but what they wanted was horse shack like ron palillo yes you know uh this drove me crazy as a kid because i didn't know what a sweat hog was my parents

couldn't answer the question. So it wasn't until Nick at Night started airing Welcome Back, Cotter did I get this reference. And I was so elated. Like, I know what the sweat hogs are now. Yes, I did ask my mom, what's a sweat hog? And she didn't know. So I don't think she was a fan. Well, also just the word horse shack, if you don't know the show, like it also greatly confused me as a child.

Like, huh? the show like it also greatly confused me as a child too like well of course later in life we'd we'd all learn about him too because uh he'd he would appear on his show right after the simpsons boxing dustin diner yeah celebrity boxing uh now both men are gone correct yes r.i.p yes yeah that's most i mean yeah it's that they weren't boxing accidents unrelated then they have a mail order husband joke as well which like, it feels like there's like one step missing from it. It's just, they sent her a cardboard cutout. I was like, I feel like there should be one more joke.

I don't know. Yeah, it's strangely soft for The Simpsons. Yeah, I guess we were talking about old lingo before, the mail-order bride, mail-order husband joke. They were tossed around a lot. And as a kid, I assumed like, yes yes a person is sent to you in a box i didn't realize it was a pejorative for you know i guess the the idea was or the the idea behind the term was somebody from another country is seeking a partner in a more developed country to live there and yes there are very negative implications

behind that term yeah it's uh now, now I guess it's more, people know it more as the 90 Day Fiance show, which is a very popular reality show I do not watch. It seems gross to me, to be honest, but so do most reality shows. They then are trying to talk her out of it. And I just love that Selma has an answer for everything here. Sorry, my mind's made up.

I want to have a kid and this is the only way I can do it. Why do you want to have a baby so bad? I got a lot of love to give. And right now, my only outlet is my ham radio. Are you sure you've thought this through? A child can really change your life. You don't have to give up smoking.'ll chew no man will want you all i got now is sperm in a cup great great line reading that didn't make me it's a sad line it did make me laugh though it

reminded me of the like you could just suck him out of it her like all i've got is sperm in a cup just very resigned and it is a gross image too and now meanwhile we all have a equivalent of a ham radio to talk to each other and then people all the time it's it's good i like that she i like that she has a ham radio because it paints this whole something's going on behind the scenes she's communicating with people over this thing that seems really nice but yeah i don't know that this whole sequence there's just so much judgment there for you know wanting to like i don't know it's kind of heavy i feel like even at the time and ever since people have got to be watching this who you know are excited and want to be a single parent it's like oh yeah that's just really so much uh it's kind of it's it's yeah it's heavy with oh yeah i mean this is them

tackling the then current ideas of just like oh well to be to be even just a heterosexual woman who is wants to have a child without a partner that is still treated as like out of the ordinary and something that has to be like fully interrogated like though marge does have a point of like that selma doesn't really get what her life will be like with kids that's that's the great lesson she's gonna get in act three but otherwise they're they're just hitting her with all of like these mean things of just like why you wouldn't want to have a kid i think that's true but but i mean who who does know nobody could know like you know from everyone i've spoken to who's ever you know pursued having

a family it's like you can't really be prepared you also don't know who the you know the person would be so so yeah the idea of being like oh it's like you don't know what you're getting yourself into it's like i don't know who does it's sort of a poor poor selma i like too that the ham radio represents these broken dreams like at some point she bought a ham radio like all right this is going to be me now i'm going to build this i'm going to connect with people all over the world this ham radio and that's just an unused thing that where somebody just who all they do is say i have a ham radio that's all it's for right you're right all you get to do is connect with people who are also interested in having a ham radio and that's where it begins and ends we then cut to a little side story of food poisoning uh which this little clip here well the way they react to homer here this is another one

in our lives where i think bob has said use this uh towards me i think do you remember this no sorry i thought you're going to play the clip but i'm not recalling it it was when we we all traveled to uh los angeles and we were going to to the Simpsons table read and I accidentally woke you guys up because my I listen to podcasts when I sleep but my headphones died and so my the podcast just starts coming out of my phone speaker and I have on my CPAP machine as well so I'm just covered in noise and you guys open the door and try to wake me up to say like, hey, we can hear your podcast. And I'm just not responding. I believe you told me later, you said like, oh, great, Henry's dead.

I think we had that thought. While we assumed you weren't. No, the good times have been, I can't believe that's going to be five years this November since we went to that. That's insane. This is where Homer is not doing so good and the culprit is, as usual, food. Come on, come on, get the lid off. Come on, Dad, we want to go to Duckers. Mom, Mom, tell them we're going to Duckers.

Oh, great. Dad's dead. Have you been eating that sandwich again? Sand-wich. Jeez, we hardly made a dent in that 10-foot hoagie. Oh, give it a good hope. You've been eating that thing for a week. I think the mayonnaise is starting to turn.

Two more feet, and I can fit it in the fridge. Homer, I found this behind the radiator. I really think you should throw it away. Suggestion noted. Marge, I'd like to be alone with the sandwich for a moment. Are you going to eat it? Yes. Yes, Homer's dead.

Dead serious about going to Duff Gardens. Now, I will say, it wasn't until I actually got for real food poisoning that I appreciated this scene Now, I will say it wasn't until I actually got for real food poisoning that I appreciated this scene because, I mean, there are varying degrees of food poisoning. It's a real spectrum. But like a lot of people like, ooh, tummy ache. I have food poisoning. No, my friend, if you have food poisoning for real, you are like Homer. I got it like very severe food poisoning twice in my life. And I was, like Homer, delirious, hallucinating. I had a fever. It is intense. So yes, you can eat something that disagrees with you. But for real,

food poisoning is fever, delirium, and I don't recommend it. Wow. I'm sorry that happened to you. Good luck. And I'm a responsible eater, but both times it was from restaurant food. And I think I've told this story before, but it's funny, the things that run through your fevered brain as the food poisoning is being removed from your system. I got it in 2004 while like the previous night my wife and i were watching a lot of 90s music videos including ones from cake and as the fever was coursing through my body the song from uh sorry a lyric from sheep go to heaven goats go to hell was running through my mind and that lyric was a barber can give you a haircut a carpenter can take you out to lunch and that was just cycling through my head for hours and hours and hours as i was just rolling

around and covered in sweat and running to the bat it was terrible so this is finally people stealing food poisoning valor this is an example of food poisoning on the screen this is the real deal yeah it's the no i mean i i've had some bad uh i've had a couple moments like that too but the though i also have had the the homer not food poisoning but definitely the homer thing of uh i i improved my diet a good deal during covid but beforehand i would if i had like was in my fridge that was leftovers and and i ate one bit of it and it made me sick i several times would talk myself into thinking like, it was probably something else. I want to keep eating this old pizza or whatever. I'm sure it wasn't the pizza.

And then you get struck again in your gluttony. And this was ripped from the pages of Al Jean's biography because it happened to him. And they name checked Subway on the commentary. I'm surprised that they were allowed to do that. Yeah, it usually gets muted. I love when aljean can pull out of food graining does not like when homer or back then he did not like when homer became a food monster like where there's storyboards where he puts a note on it like come on guys like when

homer like is over a pile of candy just shoving candy in his mouth there's that was one of them but i i wonder if they were able to slip this one in because aljean's like hey this we're not making this up this is for real life it happened to aljean a normal man a non-food monster and uh oh also this sandwich thing reminded me too rebecca you recently uh shared with the world the a lost sandwich song from from steven universe history oh the oh the meatball sub thing yes yes that was very that was really central to the lost first episode not not quite like this nothing about eating uh horrifically expired he just he just likes likes a sandwich and identifies with it yeah but yeah i don't know you can't these you can't go wrong with like a good sub or sandwich joke, I feel like.

Especially a big, long sub is always funny. It's a funny thing to see. Though they draw this one extra disgusting. I mean, when it's purple, it has... Mushrooms. Yeah, there's little mushrooms growing out. Yeah. That seems far, even for Homer.

Finding it behind a radiator is vile, too. I've never seen a radiator in the Simpsons house, but just the fact that one spawned so a sandwich could hide behind it is very funny to me. Right. Well, you have to know that it, like, not only was it not refrigerated, that it actually got hot. It was traveling around the house, yeah. And it's, like, on the floor, and it's also experiencing heat in order to turn it into the thing that it becomes i love that he still wants it even to the very end yes i i i think i have had a couple moments with my husband where he's like you're not gonna eat that right are you gonna eat that

i'd be like yes did he slap it into a garbage can immediately afterwards henry usually he's he's thrown away a couple things from well, I have a liberal view on the five second rule on the ground that my husband does not share. And so that's usually where he's had to insist on like, no, come on. I was on the ground too long. I'm like, ah, come on. Have you ever seen it? There's like a Bill Plimpton short with someone like sopping up a piece of toast, like on the dirty ground. I don't know. I'm sure it's, since Matt Groening loves Bill Plimptonpton maybe that was something people had i mean when you think of the five second rule just think of the the hot dog on the floor of the quickie mart well sure but that was filthy before well i've eaten some hot dogs the five second rule you have to ask yourself how

clean are your floors because there's a real sliding scale it should matter yeah that should be that should really be factored in. And the food, too. It's like, is it sticky? Like, what fell? Did the pizza fall cheese side down? Because that makes a huge difference. If, like, a peanut falls on the ground, sure. A pretzel, sure.

Can you blow the dust off of it, or does it stay? Yeah, a meatball. How do you guys feel about a meatball? I think there's no seconds there. It's wet. It's a sponge. And are you recreating on top of spaghetti in your home? Did somebody sneeze?

I've cut out carbs enough that the spaghetti is not, it's just straight meatballs now I have occasionally. Spaghetti is rarer in my house these days. But fine. All right. I guess. Clearly I identify too much with Homer in this one. have occasionally spaghetti is is rarer in my house these days but uh but fine all right i guess clearly clearly i identify too much with homer in this one but yes also the way homer says suggestion noted that's also a great agree like just you know that like it's instead of i was

gonna say henry to follow up on that vegetables they can hit the ground you just rinse them off you're good to go so yeah can you wash it that should be yeah slam a carrot on the ground wait a few minutes you can pick it up, rinse it off. You're safe. So yes, Homer though, he's trying to tough it out. I also did have this near the end of my Japan trip. I was starting to feel a little sick and I still, I had some Duff Gardens hurrah moments in there,

but I was able to rally for a final night of karaoke. And I did test myself though. I didn't have COVID. So just in case people worried i was like you know i i wasn't rallying with covet to be like yeah it's time to get out and go to a closed off uh karaoke room and damn the consequences it was a different infectious disease it was fine yeah exactly but yeah then so homer has to give up as he's shaking and and very cold i his lips turning blue like his the he shakes, too, is like, yeah, such great animation.

I really love that. And this is when Selma takes over. She's going to be the good aunt. And I love how Bart says, like, to get to Duff Gardens, I'd ride with Satan himself. And Selma goes like, that's the spirit. And they taunt Homer as they go away, too. They go, I won't be any fun without you yay uh but i love solids and also to the way marge the way marge slaps it back into the uh

the garbage can too is very funny i guess again i love that gene on the commentary he's telling the story of just like oh yeah when i related this people thought when they didn't know it was from him they're like oh this is ridiculous though and he's like oh but it happened to me so so he really ate like a non-refrigerated out for multiple days sandwich i think it was heightened for the sake of homer but on the commentary he says you know every day he'd take a new piece of the sandwich out of the fridge and think you know it's it's still hanging in there i can get i can get a few more sandwiches out of this thing okay okay i buy that not the radiator but i also like that homer says like two more feet and i can fit it in the fridge so it hasn't been in the fridge for weeks

at this or for at least well lg knew you put your food in the fridge or a cool wet sack now i do refrigerate my food i'm not like homer in that way they're heading to duff gardens this is where we're getting uh all of the big disney park jokes here the the duff pyramid is their version of the uh the the castle or the the uh the spaceship earth ball for epcot and what a dark joke that like one that that duff gardens would advertise that 22 immigrant laborers died during the construction but then selma's like brutal like plenty more where that came from. Like, geez. That's really not.

That's not okay. I guess like it's such a dark joke. And then this time I noticed, and I'm sure I always saw it, but I never thought about the implications. The workers are buried on site. There is a graveyard next to the pyramid. Yeah. The tourists are looking at it. Yes.

It's a very, it's a very dark joke they got away with there and then they get past the turnstiles and i for real had this very moment when i went to disney tokyo disneyland uh just last month of like the second you get past the turnstiles there are the characters waiting for you there and i really you know yeah for me it's like ah goofy mickey all those folks i see them everywhere but they had uncle scrooge there in his ducktales blue coat and my husband i really didn't like oh my god uncle scrooge uncle scrooge we just ran right over to try to picture but uh but here it's the seven duffs and i have a quick history on the old seven duffs because there's only four named here tipsy queasy surly and remorseful now uh when they get to the pygmalion episode which is where uh mo changes his face they get the pink elephant balloon sleazy is there and named then uh

it would be two years later in the simpsons hit and run game where they have to name two more and they are edgy and dizzy and so if you go to universal uh orlando or hollywood you will see topiaries of they basically have a little part that is like duff gardens in the area and you'll see topiaries full size of the seven duffs i thought they made up the three for the universal did it but it was taken from the hit and run and second episode yeah me too i i thought i mean i guess like whoever wrote whoever wrote the theme park came up with those. But yeah, they made previous appearances. And to me, Dizzy is a lesser version of Tipsy.

I think there's too much crossover there. Yeah, that's a bit redundant. I agree. I do like that they follow the Snow White rules for the seven dwarves where everybody ends with a Y except for Remorseful. Remorseful is the bashful of the of the group as surly is the grumpy who is everybody's favorite or at least grumpy was like

the star of the 90s like he was he was on all the shirts before it became the minions memes on on facebook it was like grumpy with his arms crossed going uh saying something he was a very like it me kind of character. If you didn't have the grumpy shirt, you had the Tweety jean jacket where she's crossing or he's crossing his arms and looking badass. That's the thing about Snow White is that it's really a movie about Grumpy. And he's the character that arcs. And he's the it's like that's the he's he's the entry point. He's the person who needs to be convinced.

Everybody else kind of just doing their thing. it's really maybe about him him and his relationship to snow white and then at the end it's like you know he's the one that cares the most oh it's great that's i feel like there's lots of great reasons to love grumpy but if disney it's kind of like how like sleeping beauty is really about the fairies yeah i agree and if disney was allowed to continue their direct-to-video efforts i I mean, they were going to make Dumbo 2. They had already made Bambi 2. I think we would have seen Snow White 2, Grumpy's Quest, or something like that. Yeah.

I love how committed Surly is to his character in Duff Land. Oh, yeah. Surly is right up there with the people you see go viral of like oh this is the best gaston actor in the world at that at disney world like same deal with with this early face characters yes yeah yeah no those are some of the most fun at the at the parks the face characters especially well i mean it's the villain face characters like if you meet a a corral deville who's having a lot of fun you're like that could make your your day or i i watched a very funny video of these gay theme park fans i i follow online there they were so excited to meet maleficent and

maleficent was just like oh yes finally the my adoring fans you see henry all of these things scare me i don't want to be close to them you ran you know screaming up to george uh sorry george mc no scrooge mcduck whatever his name is, George Duckley, whatever. When I was walking around, I saw King Louie and he had a coterie of monkeys with him and I thought, we have to get away. I do not want them interacting with me. This is terrifying. Oh, I was at some point, it was post-pandemic, I went to Disneyland and I wanted to check out, there was a new Star Wars ride that I had never gotten to see. And part of it was that the line, it has one of those clever lines where it's like a lot of, the line feels like ride and the difference between line and ride gets a little blurred.

And as you're going in, it's like you're a rebel, but you're being captured by these Imperial soldiers. And it was one of those things where the cast playing the Imperial soldiers were all doing the part. Like they were all stern faced and they were all ribbing the park going quote unquote rebels. Like as you were filing in, they're like telling you where to go and they're yelling at you and they're shoving you around to get you in the right line. But also it's like they're supposed to be capturing you. And there was this one soldier, there was a kid whose mask was down and she points to the kid and she's just like wear your mask properly it's not that hard and this this kid's mom flipped out was just like you do not talk to my son that way like totally missed that this was like oh part of the bit like oh this you know they're like hassling all these uh and they were ribbing every i mean

they were ribbing everybody they were like like they told you to like stand on a color and if you if you stand on the wrong one they they tell you what an idiot you are. Anyway, it was really fun, but it was definitely lost on. I think people, especially when it comes to masks, were so hair trigger about it. That's what Thoroughly reminds me of, though. It's like, oh, it must be fun when you get to play a less than positive theme park character and run around and kind of hassle people. I love that ride.

But during that part of it, I just felt hot and and afraid i thought i please don't talk to me i think my greatest fear is being pulled up on stage for anything or just i'm not ready to be part of a bit yet i don't have material and they're like okay you have to play along with the thing and i just i completely just like whiz it down my leg i fail in every instance of this i got shamed i forget how they shamed me for something i was like i like stood in the wrong place or i looked at the wrong spot i totally i like felt it i was like sorry surly duff is one of the all-time great characters just like i love that hank plays him with such a certain like meanness just like i mean because they they even say he like improvised like the shut up

the shut up is like the perfect tag on that joke we see later but yes we we then head to a well it's called the beer hall of presidents so it's very direct like hall of presidents but when they start with lincoln standing up like then it's much more the great moments with mr lincoln uh i don't know if you you folks have seen this but uh i watched the great moments with mr lincoln thing. And the entire performance is waiting for a robot to stand up. And then it's over once the robot stands up. So the second we cut to the Beer Hall of Presidents, Lincoln stands up. So just cutting to the chase.

Right. That's true. And similarly, I feel like I've seen that in an almost entirely empty theater as well. If you're looking for a place to sit down and feel air conditioning go to the great moments with mr lincoln it's uh but like a lot of disneyland things it's such a cool piece of history you know it was such it was such a huge deal that he that he could stand like that yeah you know i like it much more than the the hall of presidents i visited once and it's just like it's like mr lincoln overload it's just like oh well you liked mr lincoln what if it was every president and and then on top of that of course like now it's just like they just need to blow it up like it's just a problem it basically for the last like 20 years it just

turns into this far more political than i think that they uh they imagined when they made it in the 70s oh even in the 70s it's like they should have figured like nixon was going to get booed at at the hall of presidents when i am now a bigger fan of these sit down and be air conditioned robot attractions the first thing we did at disneyland in japan was see uh the country bears it was delightful and i also love like the kitschy disconnect of seeing hillbilly bears sing to you in japanese very charming no it's wonderful i i enjoyed it too especially because occasionally they'll sing in japanese and then they'll cut to their English instead. And it just bounces between.

Though that was another, my hubby had to direct me that I accidentally like sat in front of this like family blocking their view at the very start. And then I was like, oh, sorry. I like had to scoot away to give him full view. I felt pretty bad about that. So we have two food poisoning jokes in this episode. We also have two foam dome jokes because we cut from the Beer Hall of Presidents where FDR is wearing a foam dome as he's sitting in his wheelchair. We cut from that to Homer in bed wearing the foam dome with Pepto-Bismol on the sides of the foam dome. You're right.

It's a vision of foam domes back to back there. Though I always miss that FDR, I mean, that's the most insulting one that they put it on FDR's head, like the foam dome. And I forget, I think it was in Radio Bart where the foam dome came from, but they named the foam dome,

I think in real life it was called the beer hat or something very uncreative like that. Foam dome was way better. Oh, yeah. Four score and seven years ago, we took the finest hops

and barley to brew a refreshing full-bodied lager. Twelve! I'm Rappin' A.B. and I'm here to say, if you want to drink beer, duff's the only way. I said the only way. Break down! This is a disgrace. Settle down. Anything this bad has to be educational.

Bart! Let's see if they wore underwear back then. Yeah! Do you feel any better? No. What are the odds of getting sick on a Saturday? A thousand to one. Well, to cheer you up, I rented a couple of videos. Boxing's

Greatest Weigh-Ins and Yentl. Yentl? What's that? It deals with a bookish young woman's efforts to enter a binnacle school. Sounds great! Oh my god, you're delirious. I also love Selma saying anything this bad has to be educational

while Lisa is disturbed at how it's destroying history though i mean as far as the animatronic go that he crushes the can on his head and then it must have to like pull back every time like that's impressive animatronic work too so when they cut to the the parents at home this is where i caught another thing that stern really loves to put in his work because he also he wrote homer alone and he wrote camp crusty and both of those have like what do the parents do when they're free of children type moments and uh this is another just wonderful moment of like march starts by convalescing homer and then it uh

it grows from there but yeah the the joke here too again it the joke is no man would want to watch a barbara streisand movie especially yentl of all movies but that homer is interested that's what makes marge pure sure he's delirious right yeah this third act is so packed but i like how they can ricochet between what's happening at home fun theme park stuff and then uh selma kind of failing at what she thinks motherhood will be but uh but i just love that how that homer is just like very up for for yentl and he still you know as he gets better he still likes watching it even then i i've not yet seen that movie i need again uh it's been a simpsons reference for forever i have not seen it i especially i need to see it because our our pals at blank check have started their streisand

era of covering all her her films and so i'm gonna need to watch it to to be able to keep up with our blank check buddies oh yeah yentl's great homer comes up with a better tagline than the poster than the official tagline i looked it up on letterbox and the like the tagline for the film is in a time when the world of study belonged only to men there lived a girl who dared to ask why i think i think she puts the she in yeshiva so great i also love how it's it's slightly later but the way uh hartman plays the line of like oh yentl i might have known i assume not a line from the movie no i don't think so um that i'm trying to remember what it was there's a line in a song in yentl that's one of my favorites of all time it's where she's like trying to remember what it was. There's a line in a song in Yentl that's one of my favorites of all time. It's where she's like trying to figure out what she's going to cook for this guy. And this

the lyric is like the question to roast or to not roast, or maybe I'll make him a pot roast or something like that. I don't know the rhyming of not roast and pot roast was as I was studying musicals for the Steven musical. I was like taking notes on this. I was like, that's transcendent. Oh my gosh, but it's wild because there's so many songs sung by barbara strice it's like it's it's so much from barbara strice and as the character vientel doing solo song it's like it's like if you're watching something where everything is people who love people like just like back to back to back to back which is which is what i think makes it sort of a unique musical because you're really just following this singular

character singing a series of songs but the story that it comes from it's interesting because in the because the movie version of the movie version of yentl is very much like oh she's a she's a woman but she has to sort of pretend she's a man but but the story that it originates from at the end um is much more ambiguous or sort of like winds up genuinely questioning her gender. Not so much in the movie. It's like not to spoiler the movie, but in the end it's just like, yes, I'm a woman and I can fully be a woman again.

And that's actually a bit of a departure from the origin of the story. Anyway, I love Yentl. Well, thank you. See, I was hoping you'd know something, you'd school us on Yentl. We will both watch, we missed Yentl. We'll both watch The Prince of Tides for Fear fear of flying we'll see you again in 2028 right i haven't seen prince of tides like i should check that out they then cut to another another great joke about beer goggles

uh which i well they they don't sell those glasses there but they do have uh you know i shouldn't say great joke because it's another like mean selma's ugly joke, but it's well visually executed, I'd say. It's also very disgusting as well, where Bart thinks his aunt is trying to seduce him. Yes. Yeah, that joke is really disturbing. It's like when he has the things on, he's just like, what? Now he's excited to be talking to his hot relative? What is this?

It's kind of weird. But you can't buy the beer goggles, but many Duff-branded items are a big part of Universal. It makes me wonder, if Simpsons were to get to the Disney parks, would they have as much of this beer-themed merchandise as they do at Universal? Because it's not like they don't sell alcohol at at disney anymore like it used to be but they they at universal they really lean into duff at it maybe they centralize it because like you know you can like go into the star wars cantina and like have a drink so maybe if they like built a like concentrated all that stuff inside of a mose or something thank you rebecca and then took you to make like a separate reservation to get in there probably sorry to interrupt you um and then there should still be a little robot dj

for some reason at mose because that's he stole it sorry to interrupt you rebecca that has been my pitch for the longest time if they if they absorb simpsons theme park things into disney world disneyland make the star wars cantina experience at mose that way you can actually get the flaming mo that's on fire yes that would will be $35. They'll let you keep the glass, but still you'll have the experience. It'll be purple, not orange, like it is at Universal Studios. That would be nice. There should be a Homer that comes through the rafters and does the whole cough syrup bit. Oh, that's great. Yeah, every 30 minutes. Like every two hours on the hour or something. Yeah. Of course, it couldn't be Aerosmith there. They'll have to get

a current band to be animatronics there as well and perform every like 10 minutes then comes another line i've said many times in in my life oh this looks like fun a bench kids what do you say you go get your aunt selma's beer smoothie no come on we gotta go we have stuff to, come on, Anna. We got to go. We have stuff to do. Come on. Let's have fun. I've had to explain it to my husband when we've been at things and I go like, oh, this looks like fun. A bench. And I just want to sit down and I'm like, hey, you need to know this is a Simpsons record.

Before you go to a theme park, Henry, you need to screen this in itchy and scratchy land for him. I think I did before in between visits to parks, because after the first one, we, when we went to Disneyland together for both our first times, I think I made enough references that I'm like, all right, you're going to just have to watch this.

When I, when I referenced Nazi Superman or our superiors, you need to know it's a Simpsons reference. And I'm not just saying that. I'm going to be saying a lot of crazy things. You have to know. I didn't hit my head. I didn't have a stroke. These arepsons references just the feeling i as i

got older i learned to embrace the like i understood selma's excitement at seeing a bench yeah that's very real do they ever have this is just going back for a second do they ever have b sharp performances at universal no no although you could you could have seen the dapper dance at i believe it was a disneyland henry oh they're still around not the original 1992 or 1983 dapper dance though that seems like a slam dunk if you you know especially if it does end up at disneyland to have a you know a barbershop quartet doing simpsons tunes and and anything you know that would be so nice yeah it's really too bad the dapper dans don't do it yet and have been i i've been wanting to hear it this whole time but yeah i feel like universal sadly they're not going to employ the barbershop quartet like that that they deserve in in springfield i

mean you know it's a budget thing i probably right or have them do that have if they ever make that look somebody's got to tap both of us bob to make this nose because they should they should have them perform on the roof that would be so great they could do that like every day and myself both consultants on this paid consultants on this project yeah well i don't they should probably pay the people that wrote the apps 70 000 too let's say yeah that would be good but that would just fit right in on main street you know just absolutely this then uh you know also as as a as a person i still have not gotten to be an uncle yet to anybody i've not experienced this but this does feel like how it feels like the window of a childless person who's just like oh going to a theme park with kids

is they make you stand in line for things you don't want to and then they are just like grabbing at you and yelling at you to do things and it's like it's it's what finally turns around i mean it's also the joke is that bart and lisa but especially bart are so bad that it'll make you not want to have children like that's that's what it does to for selma i think there's that i think i think the the real climax of it is when she tells Lisa to drink the water. I think everything else is just like, oh, this is okay. This is going to be stressful for anybody who's doing this. But it's like, that's the one part where it's like, as a parent figure to these children,

you have truly failed. Well, yeah, when they're stuck on the ride together, when she just commands her like, okay, this is how I can get the kids to stop arguing bart shut up but lisa you do have to drink the water like it it makes a certain sense to uh if you're if you're not really both what they want the quickest path to shutting up is basically what she's looking for right uh and also those beer smoothies they do remind me of just like all the treats i eat it like that was i loved going on the rides in disney tokyo disneyland but they were second to making sure i ate every treat that was on a list of like the best food at the tokyo disneyland then we cut home homer is loving

yentl and this is when marge sees that homer's got his energy back and she introduces the thing this is a very good parody of the kind of like comedy adult entertainment of the 70s. The one I looked up, I was like, and I only know this because of the Muppet Babies, but Flesh Gordon was the one I was thinking of. I assume this was sort of like a European kind of thing, too, that they roped in Troy McClure and Norman Fell, a.k.a. Mr. Roper from Three's Company. They roped in Roper, yes. I mean, Norman Fell is Zeusuce that's a great joke but yes the the flesh gordon was made in the 70s that was a parody of the flash gordon things that i mainly know because they did it as a cutaway on muppet babies without them realizing it was taken from adult entertainment

of the 70s and so it's another of those list of like oh this will this is another reason why muppet babies will never be replayed anywhere. This also is like a callback. Troy McClure set this up in Mr. Plow. Like it was one of his movies he named that he was proud of. Yeah. And now they're watching it. In the Circus of the Stars parody.

That's one of the things he named Chex, right? Yes. Yeah. Though also, again, as a kid, just the idea of my parents having fun without me, I didn't even understand what was happening with Marge and Homer. But these just jokes fortunately flew over my head. To adults, these are good jokes about like, oh, you're finally free of your children. What do you do?

What do you do with the afternoon? Homer enjoys the week, the weekend, the day. The time period is unclear. I guess he does say it's a Saturday. He says like, what's the opposite of getting sick on a Saturday? A million to one or whatever. week the weekend the day why the time period is unclear i guess he does say it's a saturday he says like what's the saturday sick on a saturday a million to one or whatever so i guess it's just the one day it's a fuzzy timeline because so like patty's like see you tonight and then it feels like she comes back during the day so maybe there's like an overnight stay we're not privy

to i don't know right it might honestly that could just be a missed palette or they forgot to put crickets in the music bed or the sound bed when they return though also i i have to say like it says something about marge's attraction to homer that right after he has had horrible food poisoning she's like ready she's like ready to go you know like it's not i think a shower was in order here but that's just me but okay then we cut to the big small world parody like now this made me think small world was the worst ride in the world before i ever wrote it like because this is i think i saw other jokes about it too but this one especially is like small world sucks like is the is the point of this joke it's annoying and repetitive but i mean that's been in

so much stuff there's still i feel like that was even in the new psychonauts game which is very new oh yeah like still making fun of it's a small world yeah i i didn't really write i didn't write until i was 18 and i thought well that was fine it is unconscionably long because a disneyland ride is 90 seconds to two minutes this is like a seven or eight minute ride which is an eternity at disneyland when it comes to a very slow moving vehicle. But I mean, sorry for name checking Tokyo Disneyland a million times. Or I guess this is Disney Sea. But Henry and I have now been on Sindbad, the Sindbad ride.

And it's sort of like a much more heightened version of It's a Small World. Where you're on a little boat, you're moving through this this fake river and you're seeing like puppet dioramas but a story is being told even though the same song is playing throughout albeit with uh different lyrics as you're reaching different scenes no yeah it's um the best right i wrote it like five times it's incredibly easy to ride by the way uh thanks to podcast the ride for letting us know about this because they they broke the news sindbad good ride it's uh you know i've written small world twice in my life i was tempted to go on it in japan just because i was curious how they pace it differently you know because of course it's a small world written by the sherman brothers i watched a funny clip of one a while back of one of the sherman brothers introducing

the song and he's like even he joked of like either you love me for writing this song or you hate me for writing this song and he starts you know i go every time because it's just instead of sitting on a bench and looking at your phone for seven minutes you can sit on a little boat and look at your phone for seven minutes and it's you're not looking at all the cool sculptures and puppets i still am but it's just it's also like like sinbad it's very easy to get in line and go on that ride. It's like the boats are crammed full of people, the lines constantly moving. It's not like, you know, a high profile ride where you are in line for two and a half hours. Right. That's true.

I did wonder, I didn't get the answer to this because I didn't write it, but I wondered if in the Japanese version, you know, that it must start in Japanese, but then you must go to one room where they're singing it in english as part of the many different uh ways that his song in a different language i can't remember we did go on it but i i didn't i didn't flag that I want to get off. You can't get off. We have five more continents to visit. Hey, Lisa, dare you to drink the water.

I'm not sure that is water. Chicken. Quit it, Bart. Quit it! Quit, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack,

quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, They're all around me. No way out. No way out, I tell you. What's wrong? You just put your head right here. It's time that we now turn to Simpsons predicted at corner our favorite part of the show oh yeah and i'm surprised i think the world is just burned out on simpsons predicted at stories or that like search term no longer gets people money so it's now being pushed down

because in november of 2023 a man likely on an acid trip uh he said they said he was on a controlled substance that was not revealed what it was. He did strip naked and get loose on It's a Small World. Surprisingly, in Anaheim, I thought this was going to be a Florida man style story. But no, it happened in California. And many videos of this man in various states of undress. People are stuck on the ride for 90 minutes. So this would have been a park-wide debacle if lisa got loose and uh you know got

out the emergency exit as she's doing in this scene here it's amazing that this actually happened and that it only it took this long though maybe this has happened before and disney could keep things more under wraps but in that and they are when everybody has a phone i pulled up one of this uh like witness things from it and it just also is like the person says once he got to a different part of the ride he ended up walking into the water and started drinking the water so he even officially drank oh my god he had i mean this guy was not like an old man he had to have seen this episode and it's something that we all think it is an intrusive thought like what if i got off the ride and explored here i mean that is why uh

i love the monkey island games and that's where they came from uh the creator was like what if you could get off of pirates of the caribbean and hang out in this world wouldn't that be fun and but i mean it takes a lot of drugs to actually get you to do that i guess and the story about drinking the water and making you delirious came from then at the time mary with children writer but future simpsons writer now passed away kevin curran who seemingly told al jean this as a big goof as a total lie that he drank the water once on pirates of the caribbean and was delirious for three days the water is that septic or there's something in it that's that's the the theory there but apparently he denied it later so al jean is not sure where the story came from but it's something that he heard once that was passed

on him obviously fake but would it be funny if it really happened if a little girl had an acid trip on a on a music park right well here it is well it's such like a cartoon thing too that like they you know your characters in the simpsons can't like legitimately take drugs but in a cartoon you can do a thing that is technically not drugs and then just it lets you draw your ralph stedman acid trip in your cartoon i mean watching it 30 years later i'm thinking this is so subversive that this little girl is allowed to go on this journey and then they do it again this season when lisa gets gassed at the orthodontist oh yes that's true oh the yellow submarine i used to think that was so funny.

It's great. And then Marge gets dosed later in season six. Has every character been dosed at a certain point in history? I don't know, in the show. Bart has the squishy, the super concentrated squishy. Homer obviously has his spiritual journey. Much later in the series, Homer does eat the baking soda that's in the fridge that's been in the fridge for decades and he does go on a trip as well so right well there's

the chili chili pepper is the most famous one yeah so yeah you know are they all the all the characters i mean right rebecca that's one of the fun things animation you can have characters go on these psychedelic trips but it's not really like you're not doing a drug story your characters aren't taking drugs well it's it's funny because the site the psychedelic animation sequence is such a staple and i feel like that's a really classic disney thing too right yeah like pick elephants like that used to just be the climax of just about everything it's like uh you know entering some sort of totally surrealist psychedelic fever dream nightmare and then coming out of it for you also old musicals too like if you're watching like

oklahoma it's like you you know you hit the hour mark and it's like you're just in a complete like just yeah it's like a dream there's a 17 minute interpretive dance sequence in oklahoma that has no dialogue and everything is very impressionistic it's there there it's not no part of it is ground in reality it's like on stage basically singing in the rain it's like yeah you just you have to depart i i love that in old movies but um yeah i mean it's so fun to do in animation to try and capture that kind of thing i like what they're doing with the trace the traces left behind by lisa's arms and her dancing and but yeah the chili pepper episode is definitely the and and yardley is having so much fun with her just

screaming like no way out no way out i tell you now her scream turns into a laugh like it's it's so great also i just love how they repeat uh they say they wrote more to those lyrics but they decided like nah just repeat duff beer just repeat the one lyric over and over again to make it as horrible as possible that was a good that's a smart choice yeah it really it really stays with you too though you know in real life if you want to know the why the the pirates water it has a very specific smell to it i look this up it's because they don't use chlorine and they use bromine. So that's why it has this very specific scent to it. So you're going to get sick just because it's full of a

cleaning chemical. It's not that it's filthy. It's that it's far too clean. And you're not going to trip. And I would say I swallowed as much water as Lisa did just by riding Splash Mountain. Like that much water just went in my mouth from getting far too wet on splash mountain yeah they must take some because that stuff does get all over you they must take some sort of precaution i can again i've complained about this too like when before but the last time and the final time i will have ridden classic splash mountain the on the first little drop i was in the front seat and a bathtub full of water just fell on me. And I was like, I'm just ruined for today.

Like, this is just, this sucks. Never again. After going to DisneySea 20, sorry, no, Journey to the Center of the Earth is a better Splash Mountain. It has that awful drop that I hate as well that I didn't know about ahead of time. See, I can take those drops if it's just one in a ride. Like I said, a regular roller coaster, too much, too many of those drops. But if I know it's just one, I can take it. The first one I ever went on like that was this Pompeii themed ride.

I can't even remember where it was. Maybe that was at Busch Gardens? Oh, yeah. I think that was at Busch Gardens. Yeah. Yes. That sounds familiar to me. Yeah.

That had a pretty substantial drop. At least i thought it did when i was like eight and uh see uh uh lisa freaks out she she runs off this is when selma completely loses sight of them and this is we have it we have a quick sexy cutaway to erotic adventures of hercules and then we're back to another great parody of the main street electrical parade it's it's I love all the duffified drawings of the stuff in the parade, even the music in the background. That is great animation of Lisa, like basically kind of dancing, just kind of like then later Itchy and Scratchy Land has much more jokes about the Disneyland police state that aren't coming through here. It's not as intense here where they're kind of stormtroopers and not the Star Wars kind in Itchy and Scratchy Land. You know, when you watch the TikToks of that guy, to go back to that guy, he is more, I mean, eventually they do grab him. But I think the videos start with the employees going like please you're gonna hurt yourself please stop please like yeah

it's a lot they're being nice until they realize force is necessary they're like sir come on come on now let's go come on no nope sir no no and then it keeps going until until they get the the strong arms out there meanwhile bart sneaks onto a ride and uh this is another one i just say all the time like when he says i better ask my supervisor better stop it like that i have said that so he says better stop a lot of squeaky voice teens uh bart being condescending to the guy and the guy going thank you sir yes you're doing a bang up job mitch this is when the kids get caught my mom loved i remember talking about uh re, you mentioned, you know, the joy of watching things with loved ones.

I remember watching this the first time with my mom and she loved the bumper cars joke. It was just so ridiculous and impossible. She just laughed so hard at that. Right. And they set that up too. Watching it again, I'm like, oh, the gangs are no longer a problem a problem and it's like obviously they are because they just stole these three bumper cars now that since we're going through these early seasons again i'm this is the time i was watching with my parents i do remember my mom laughing very hard at uh selma saying i think their father's

missing a chromosome when mentioning homer yes uh and uh yes this is when Selma finally catches the kids. Stop the ride! I'll have to ask my supervisor. Better stop it. Better stop. Can't you do something? Hey, Surly only looks out for one guy. Surly.

Sorry, Surly. Shut up. Don't blame these kids. It's not their fault. I think their father is missing a chromosome. Miss Bouvier, while we were rescuing this boy, Hoodlums made off with three bumper cars. And I don't think George Washington will ever be the same.

We found this one swimming naked in the fermentarium. I am the Lizard Queen! Give her this, and this, and then these. Oh, thank you, Doctor. No, I'm not a doctor. Yeah, Phil Harvey, naked in the fermentarium it's a real uh charlton heston kind of delivery yes they also said on the commentary that the uh the actors did not recognize that it was a reference to the doors either yeah they did not the lizard queen being the you know the i am the king thing jim morrison yes but just the idea of this man

handing uh selma like 40 pills for lisa to take and they're just like oh i'm not a doctor like yeah it's like i think that's my favorite joke yeah i'm not a doctor this is like yeah what is what is this what are those the and then these is just two big handfuls of pills and then they later get like right after this lisa is taking her pills and they get away with her saying like can't talk coming down i'm just like wow like she is she is using lisa is using drug vernacular even to explain this she knows she knows she is coming down from a trip marge homer's reverie uh which almost burns the beans uh gets interrupted as as they're brought back down to earth and this is where we have a very touching ending first off I want to say that like it's this rare moment of

tenderness I never really noticed with Homer before where where Selma says how do you do it Homer and Homer like cups her hands he's like oh it's like it's really sweet I think this time I did notice the the tender touch of Homer that I was not expecting. It's so unexpected for Homer to be like, oh, it's so hard for you. Like your dreams fell apart or made you realize you didn't want to have kids. And Homer like feels bad for her. It's crazy. It's unexpected for Homer.

Yeah. Well, her reaching out to him in that way is also so unexpected. They never really open up to him or give him credit for anything. Yeah. just hearing her say like how do you do it homer when she thinks homer normally is like the worst man in the world yeah oh yeah she's very she's like indirectly giving him a lot of credit and i think uh i'm sure we'll heal the clip but i think part of this is uh selma realizing uh i won't say uh they were selfish but maybe it misguided her her reasons because

she says homer like all i wanted was a little version of me and i feel like the show is acknowledging and it needs to be more than this like i think the show is acknowledging selma maybe needs to think this through a little more of course bart and lisa watching them is not the idea child experience but i think the writing is saying it was maybe uh an impulsive decision of selma and she needs to have some more thoughts. And eventually she will adopt the child much later in the show's history. Right. I think that I feel like, you know, in the beginning of the episode, it doesn't seem like that. It seems like it has so much more to do with not wanting to be alone.

I feel like at the end here, they're really just teeing up the punchline of a small version of her being this yeah terrible wizard but even so i just think you know performance wise it's so heartbreaking that you know it just sort of it falls together yeah it's uh well here's the uh the natural woman ending here and uh then then we can explain why this seemingly random thing happened. Come to Homer Cleese. I can't. The beans will burn. Homer Cleese cares not for beans. Hi, kids.

How is Stuffed Gardens? Can't talk coming down. How do you do it, Homer? You take an ordinary bed sheet, fold it around like this. No. I mean raising kids. I just couldn't cut it today. All I wanted was a little version of me that I could hold in my arms. Oh, jug-jug.

When I went to pick him up, Mom was trying to stab him with a hat pin. Shh. You make me feel... You make me feel like a natural woman. And then they just play the full cover, but they play the song over the credits even. All the way. I always forget they sprung for the whole song. Yes.

And so you've been listening for three hours. Now, finally, on the edge of your seats here, we're going to talk about Murphy Brown. Because this ending scene is a reference to the season four finale of Murphy Brown titled Birth 101 that I know Henry and I were watching. And this is not a joke. We were watching it when it aired. It was a big TV moment, event TV, 33 million people watch us. It was a big deal because after she gives birth, she's being videotaped. She's holding the new word baby and she sings this song in a very sweet way. It's a very memorable scene of television and a great episode of murphy brown and um this aired in may of 1992 likely right when this episode was being written so it was hot off the presses a big tv moment everyone

was talking about it especially because of what would happen later when this was referenced later by dan quayle in the run-up to the 92 elections where he was saying some not so nice things about you know the state of the american family and how these shows like murphy brown are are saying there's something wrong with the two-parent household because in murphy brown she decides okay i'm pregnant i'm a working woman i'm deciding to raise this baby on my own and it was it sounds very you know not controversial today but this was 30 years ago and it was a controversial choice so uh yeah and apparently i was reading more about this and this scene is a callback to the uh first episode where after murphy brown returns to work after getting back from rehab she kicks off her shoes and she sings this song alone in her

apartment so her singing this to her child is a reference to her in the first episode that i'm sure many viewers at the time remembered but i sent you the clip package of what happened to this episode and why it became even more popular after it aired. Yes, here's some of the then-Vice President Dan Quayle commenting on it. Looking out on the morning rain What's the matter with you people? My water broke! It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent,

highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by burying a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice. Get that thing out of here. There's no way you're taping this. I don't want bootleg copies of me spread out like a wishbone winding up at some Republican fundraiser. My complaint is that Hollywood thinks it's cute to glamorize illegitimacy.

You make me feel like a natural woman See, even 30 years ago, they were mad about the sickos in Hollywood. But yeah, I mean, the reaction to this was the same as the reaction to when George H.W. Bush made fun of the Simpsons. Dan Quayle knew nothing about this. Bush knew nothing about the Simpsons. But they spoke negatively about a thing everyone liked. And the response was, boo, you stink. We hate you.

And they didn't win. So that's so moving. That's actually making me cry. I can't believe that. Yeah, it was ugly. Yeah. And they had a lot of, I mean, it was an ugly moment. But when Murphy Brown came back in the fifth season,

the two-parter was about the response the the the response that dan quill had to the show's content that's just wild saying like promoting illegitimacy it's like oh my gosh it's so no the very lowest loaded term of lifestyle it's it's ugly it's ugly yes oh no for just that on a show about just like a a heterosexual woman just having a kid like that yeah it's i i mean i i remember watching it as a kid and like now i look back on it as it was a very you know intentionally like political choice by by canis bergen who you know was really uh you know leading her show that like the point was that she would have a kid with you know she didn't need to include uh any man in her life to have the kid and that was a major statement on it

and yeah i mean dan quayle was just looking for headlines and then the joke the the the great they have tons of funny jokes in the episode when it came back i remember as a kid waiting all summer to like oh boy are they going to talk about this and again i'm like i'm not even 10 yet but i was waiting for it the whole time and then when they do make fun uh mock him they they also have this really powerful scene like they there's a joke like uh i think it's fontana on the show goes like come on he's damn quail who cares what he thinks but but then uh murphy brown uh and cand Bergen, by extension, she has on the news show in the show a bunch of real life single mothers or single parents. And the point is to show like, oh, does he think these people aren't real parents? And she brought this level of reality to uh that i thought was really just like

it was also very memorable as well like the the response as well not just that moment but her response to yeah and that episode is what won murphy brown the outstanding comedy series emmy for that year which defeated the simpsons which really bothered the simpsons yeah actually was that one of the years they weren't nominated in that category it's where they did it's so they got to be taken out of animated for a few years to go up against real real live action sitcoms what are you saying henry their feeling was the simpsons feeling and i think it's slightly legitimate that they felt like that they then get ignored because their animation so they don't even get considered for nominated and it's this difficult thing for the simpsons where so instead they get to be the big fish in the uh in the animated section which you know

is unfortunately rebecca i'm sure you've you've been on the side of this like oh well the simpsons are always gonna be nominated there it's it's tough competition right yeah that's still i mean that's still that's still tough and it's but it's so rare for something animated to end up in a category with things that are live action that, you know, I remember I was actually a little involved when, cause I've done some work with the GLAAD Kids and Family Council, you know, as they're talking about their awards and there was some talk of, you know,

should there be a animation category? And, you know, that's like, that's always just a difficult choice because as soon as it exists, everything's gonna go there. And it's not a genre. It not like like animation is a medium you know you don't have the live action category you couldn't do that there would be everything would be in it so it's you know it's not yeah that stuff that stuff is still trouble but then at the same time on the other side of the of the coin you want to make sure that you know these brilliant pieces of art are

being recognized and how do you do that if they're you know these brilliant pieces of art are being recognized and how do you do that if they're if they're marginalized out of all these other categories which they almost always are yeah i i mean on the commentary mike reese 20 years ago was saying you know we we assumed everyone would remember murphy brown and not the simpsons we you know it was a much bigger show but you know 20 years ago he's saying nobody remembers this and now i think you know uh now nobody remembers this moment but murphy brown i'm gonna put this out there good show it's on paramount plus and uh there was a reboot like in 2018 i don't know what if that was good or not but uh i enjoyed the show as a kid and then it came to nick at night in the 2000s

i re-watched a bunch of it and i still thought it held up that's cool well animation it's yeah animation it's so timeless it's hard to you know i i think it it tends to live past yeah yeah i don't know it has that power in a way other things don't i remember when murphy brown went to nick at night the onion had a headline of like that area man can't believe that murphy brown old enough to now be on nick at night and i i i that sticks with me and now Nick at Night is just what Friends probably Friends is starting to be too old to be on Nick at Night yeah that's true it's like what is Malcolm in the Middle up to is that that's pretty old now yeah

wow yeah yeah oh my gosh no actually I'm looking at it it's the Welcome Back Cotter that we watched all on Nick at Night far too old to be on Nick at Night now i'm looking up nick at night schedule now and it is three shows uh friends mike and molly and mom wow and that's it they're not telling me anything else cable's in a weird place right now what's that oh yes cable's

weird right now i mean this reminds me either there's so many things that i know that you know from the from radio or from movies that were from like the thirties and forties and fifties from watching cartoons that it's like, I have no idea what they're a reference to. Cause it's like, they're making a joke about it in a Betty Boop cartoon or, you know, and, and the, what's great is like, I feel like those are always the funniest jokes because they seem so out of

left field. It's just like, what, what is this? This is, you know, those always would stick with me and then simpsons would do that too like the the guy who's like yes yes i had a stroke that guy it's like those are like these are radio jokes like i didn't know i don't know what that is it's just like a funny voice yeah i mean you said you're watching a bunch of old looney tunes rebecca and it is fun to learn like oh this thing that bugs bunny is saving us for saying that's from fibber mcgee and molly but you wouldn't know that right or like even the carrots thing is like are they're making fun of um clark gable clark gable yes right so many i mean so much of that stuff is pop culture references that i only know that i only know from

looney tunes that's why we're here we're here because murphy brown is the fibber mcgee and molly uh in terms of where we are now right i feel like i'm being too i'm being like i was being too harsh i i feel guilty because i think there is something about this ending that is so beautiful and that it's not just that she didn't want to be alone i i retract i retract my statement she says she has a lot of love to give and that's why this ending does feel so good because even though she says i just i just want a little me i feel like the full the full circle part is that she she wants to give love. And that's what you see her doing with JubJub. And that's why I feel so right.

It's like, oh, she really does have a lot of love to give. And you really do see her give it to JubJub from this point on. Even the promise of Terminus's promise of a warm rock. It's like, you know, she's really taking care of this lizard. They remain close companions. And she saved Jub-Jub from death, from being stabbed to death by her mother. Right. Yeah.

And it tells you, too, you know, that Jub-Jub really does need a good home and someone to care. It's a sweet ending, again, that she's singing it. And my last Sawdai episode, I do love that they let let the song play this cover of natural woman play over the full credits but they let selma have the like the last line of like oh yeah like she gets to you get to hear her reflect on it one more time yeah it's a very nice touch yeah i guess uh my final thoughts on this one again i reiterate i don't know why i like this one as a kid as much as i did but i remain a selma's choice liker as an adult and i just love patty and selma so much and i feel like the show drifts away from them and in a few years they're not as interested as and them as much as they are interested in them as like punching

bags you know or for gross jokes but uh i love this era and i love david stern writing these characters and i love the emotional stories told that you wouldn't expect when you see their first appearances so uh thumbs up on selma's choice for me yeah the uh the theme park jokes too uh are good are really great but they they get overshadowed by better trips to theme parks they do in the future they're more expansive but i mean well i'll never i'll never forget surly duff or the love of a bench uh as well but it's still it also has an emotional tale to tell with selma that i think as at least for a bunch of harvard dudes writing a uh a sitcom i think is is uh has has something to say about a woman uh in her experiences that uh is is not just about how

a hideous hag that everybody should be disgusted by yeah i feel I feel like I would be, I would give pause to recommending this to people's sight unseen just because of the sheer amount of ugly jokes that are contained in it. But I think that the performance from Julie Kavner across this episode is so amazing. And that makes me personally love to return to it. And returning to it as an adult after,

because I feel like I only remembered the kid stuff from when I watched it as a kid. Like I only remembered the theme park stuff. So coming back and kind of hearing her performance across all these different characters. And I always love anything about, I mean, I would always like cling on to anything about Marge's family

because any insight into Marge was so exciting. But it's interesting too, just to see how this fits in in I guess it's more than a trilogy but I think of it as sort of a trilogy of Selma episodes within the when I was really obsessively watching Simpson and the one I think of the most is the Troy McClure fish called Selma oh yeah yeah which is this would that be the sequel to this one is that there another one before that? Yeah, I think it would be the sequel because we have this, we have Principal Charming. I mean, the story's about the sisters. So Principal Charming, Black Widow are this

and A Fish Called Selma. And of course, Homer versus Patty and Selma, but that's not dealing with their personal lives as much. Ah, so it's really more like fuller in this kind of thread. But yeah, I think it's interesting and it's really nice like full in this kind of thread. But yeah, I think it's interesting. And it's really nice to just get a window into their life and see them be expanded on as characters. And if they did not adapt Dana Gould's actual experience with his own adopting a child,

maybe Selma would never have had a kid. But she has had Ling as a daughter since season 16. And who still occasionally appears though she has the problem that happened with apu's kids too where when you introduce a kid that's born after maggie but then you want them to be a little older they then they then basically maggie has to stay one and they have to become like three and it's one of those things you can't think about too much it's kind of creepy oh yeah but uh rebecca thank you for joining us on what i think is our longest episode ever.

I'm not going to tally it up right now. But Rebecca, please remind us about Spiral Bound and let us know if you want to plug anything else at the end of the show here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I have an album out called Spiral Bound. It's streaming everywhere that one can listen to music. Super thrilled to be able to share personal work, which I have not done in a very, very long time.

As mentioned earlier, the Steven Universe movie is somehow on Disney+, so that can be seen there. And, of course, Steven Universe is streaming in various places. I think it's still on Max. I should probably have checked a lot of it, some of it some of it but not the movie which is on Disney plus so yes and thank you and to everyone who is still watching and talking about Steven Universe I really appreciate it I'm on I'm on TikTok at Rebecca Sugar and Instagram also at Rebecca Sugar and I'm sharing some music stuff and also just some behind the scenes show stuff there as well.

Yeah. And super grateful, as always, to reminisce about The Simpsons, which is such an important formative piece of animation for me. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time, Rebecca. I've been really loving your TikTok has been has been great for fans of the show or all of your work, like to see all the rarities and stuff you're sharing and i you know also i i really liked a lot of the this is back in november but you did uh the retrospectives because it just hit 10 years of of steven universe and i i don't know if i've told you this uh off mic but i've just friends of mine i i'm sure you've heard this from a million people but this just happened with friends of mine where their their kids uh they have two daughters one's 10 the the other seven and they just what they just consumed all of steven universe in like a four month period and they they loved it so much and my my friend was like oh i've you know my watching it with his daughters was this whole new level they're going to cherish it forever and it's just i just love that the series can still be that for, you know, these kids to like, she was, she was born like right when she was like one, when I started watching

Steven Universe in 2013. So that's so, that's so intense. It's very intense when I meet people who go, I loved the show when I was a kid. They're like in their twenties, like they are an adult person. I'm like, whoa, my gosh. Whoa. But it's so exciting because even as we were making it back then, we were like, what the show really needs is to be watched,

you know, start to finish because it's this continuous story, which was so hard to do at the time. You know, we were honestly in a lot of trouble for it because it made it very difficult to rerun it. And so we would all just, we were all just waiting for it to somehow, somehow, we didn't even know how it would work, be able to be seen from start to finish in that way. Without giant gaps in the scheduling, without, you know, it taking X amount of time. Sometimes they would marathon episodes and then we'd have to X much time in production to catch up.

So it's amazing to hear that. And I always dreamed, I feel like as we were working on the show, the idea of it streaming somewhere was just first it wasn't even a thing on anyone's mind and then as that seemed more and more like it could be a possibility it was like oh this like this is really how how it should be watched someday and to have arrived there and have people get to experience the story from start to finish and hopefully the only thing is hopefully people can go in spoiler free i don't know how that's possible. Anecdotally, my friends were able to stay spoiler free. I told them when they started, I was like, do not Google The Light and don't Google a thing about the show.

Don't go to YouTube and watch anything. You just have to go all the way. And even when they were watching it, I had to ask them like, so what episode are you up to now? And I had to be careful not to say things around them they they i believe they made it entirely spoiler free and all the surprises were surprises for them so that's good because that's amazing you spoiled alan wake too for me and i'll never forgive you uh oh no which part you're like oh and i really love this thing it's like well i didn't know that was in the game. Thank you, Henry. If I drink enough wine tonight, maybe I'll forget. I'm sorry, Bob.

I thought if it's one specific thing from Alan Wake 2, I was like, ah, but they did a whole award show about it. I figured it was. The next half an hour of this four-hour podcast will be us deliberating this. Go. And I apologize. Rebecca, you've been a lovely guest. And thank you for all of your time. Oh, my gosh.

Glad to. Please, cut it down. Cut out some of the stuff I said. This, you've been a lovely guest. And thank you for all of your time. Oh, my gosh. Glad to. Please cut it down. Cut out some of the stuff I said. This is such a commitment. Thank you. If anyone really is listening to this podcast. Thank you so much for all of your time, Rebecca. Thank you, Rebecca.

Glad to. Glad to. Thanks for having me. Please have me. Please have me. Oh, absolutely. We'd love to. Of course.

Thanks again to Rebecca Sugar for being on the show. Please check out her new album, Spiral Bound. It's available on Bandcamp or wherever you find good music. But as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week ahead of time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up there and get just that, but also access to our vast catalog of miniseries episodes, over 150 full-length episodes to date that you haven't heard if you're not a patron. We've covered things like Futurama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, The Critic, Batman the Animated Series, and if you sign up, you get access to all of those, and then also new monthly episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill,

and that is all at the $5 level, a steal, I say, a steal, at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons, and we have a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you can access all of the $5 stuff naturally, but you can also access a one mega long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that podcast, Henry?

Bob's talking about our, what a cartoon movie podcast where we cover an animated feature film, super in depth, just like a classic episode, the Simpsons, which often means talking for over four or five or even six six hours like we just talked about the classic bambi it's one of the best of the disney classics i think it holds up pretty well too and we have a ton of interesting history on that one check out our bambi one this month in the end of february you're going to hear

us talking about porco rosso the ghibli classic well. We have a ton to say about that. So please check all of that out in our over five years worth of What a Cartoon Movie podcast, including our longest one ever, six and a half hours about who framed Roger Rabbit and not a second wasted. All of it's there at your fingertips if you head over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. So as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And my other podcast is Retro Knot. It's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games.

You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to Patreon.com slash Retro Knot and sign up there for two full length bonus episodes every month. The other place, Blue Sky, is Bob Servo as well. And Henry, how about you? Follow me on all of the social medias as at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G, except on Instagram where I'm talking, Henry. I am always posting a lot there, and you should be following on those social media accounts our official Twitter account, at TalkSimpsonsPod.

At TalkSimpsonsPod will keep you in the loop whenever new podcasts come out or whenever we're doing live shows or any of that other cool stuff. Follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on all the socials and of course go to talking simpsons.com if you want an easy to explore list of all of our previously released free podcasts 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 will see you then oh baby what you've done to me what you've done to me

What you've done to me You make me feel so good inside Good inside And I just want to be Want to be close to you. You make me feel so alive. Cause you make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like a natural woman Oh yeah

Get out of my car! This isn't my house