Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious With Will Sloan

Episode Date: October 10, 2018

This week we've got Will Sloan, co-host of the Michael And Us podcast digs deep into Disneyana with us for Shary Bobbins' only appearance ever in The Simpsons! We go through all the great song of the episode, the many references to pop culture sprinkled throughout, and discuss how much this Jean & Reis-run episode stands out in this more hardcore season! We promise not to do a half-assed job! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! If you're near Portland, OR, be sure to see our live shows on October 20! Ticket details at tinyurl.com/talkingsimpsonshalloween! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!

Ahoy, ahoy, Talking Simpsons listeners. Do not skip this important message because Talking Simpsons is going on tour. Isn't that right, Henry? That's right. We are finally doing our first live shows outside of the Bay Area. And it's all happening in Portland on October 20th, 2018.

That is a Saturday. We'll be performing at Kelly's Olympian at 2 o'clock p.m. and 5 o'clock p.m. And we have a very special guest for our 5 o'clock p.m. show. Henry, spill the beans. It's Bill Oakley. Yes.

Food reviewer slash co-executive producer of The Simpsons slash co-showrunner of season seven and eight. Bill Oakley will be doing a live show with us at 5 p.m. at Kelly's Olympian in Portland. And at both of these shows, we'll be going over our favorite Treehouse of Horror segments with live video clips. And again, at the 5 o'clock p.m show bill oakley will be there and to get tickets go to tinyurl.com slash talking simpsons halloween and it is very important that you get tickets if you want to go because we've heard from the venue they are going super fast especially the 5 p.m

bill oakley show tinyurl.com slash talking simpspsons Halloween. We'll give you all the extra details of location, place, time, all that for our 2 p.m. and the 5 p.m. show that will be with Bill Oakley. Yes, you can find all the details to buy the tickets ahead of time at tinyurl.com slash Talking Simpsons Halloween. For the details on our 2 p.m. show and our 5 p.m. show, don't risk it by buying tickets at the venue. Both for the 2 p.m. show and the 5 p.m. show with Bill Oakley buying tickets at the venue both for the 2 p.m show and the 5 p.m show with bill oakley the tickets are going fast and that is not all a week later on saturday

october 27th 2018 we'll be doing a show at our local haunt piano fight in san francisco and admission for that one is free oh it's all gonna be a big scary simpsony time at all those shows as we celebrate best segments in Treehouse of Horror history. We hope to see you there, boils and ghouls alike. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where every day is Guy Fawkes Day. I'm your host, mon-old-muck superfan Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons.

Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert in my butt polishes the banisters. And who do we have on the line? My name is Will Sloan, and I guess all the good precedents turned you down. And today's episode is Simpson Califragilistic Expialidocious. Don't you mean Annoyed Grunt? I refuse to say that too clever by half title. She seems too good to be true.

I'll say, her butt whacks the banister. Oh, I can see myself. Today's episode aired on February 7th, 1997. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Go fly a kite, Bobby. Steve Jobs merges with his next company, with Apple paving the way for the technocratic hellscape of today. Oh, thank God.

Lennox Lewis defeats Oliver McCall in one of the weirdest boxing matches in history as oliver is crying too much to continue the match and this episode aired on a friday for some reason next to a rerun of king of the hill replacing sliders on that night on friday so this week was actually there was a simpsons on the sunday and then this one on friday and then poochie on the sunday there were three simpsons in a seven day period why burn this off on a friday that's bizarre really weird yeah i think it was just to support a rerun of the king of the hill premiere which was like a month old at this time so they were maybe just trying to see how Friday night cartoons work.

That's right. King of the Hill just started in January of that year. Yes. Yeah. We heard about it in a previous episode when it premiered with another one. We sure did. I can't remember that. So we have Will Sloan on the line. Will, can you tell our audience who you are in case they don't know? Well, I am the host of a podcast called Michael and Us with my friend Luke Savage, where it's a political themed movie podcast where we look at, you know, political movies and judge it from a perspective that I guess it would be fair to call

left wing. It started as a joke podcast, where we went through all of the movies of Michael Moore, because, you know, my friend Luke and I, this was one of the subjects that kind of bonded us early in our friendship. And enough time has passed since Michael Moore's period of relevance that, you know, I think it's fair to say his movies are a little bit dated. But we enjoyed doing the podcast. And we started the podcast during the Democratic primaries. And then it ended around the time that Trump became president. So we decided to continue. And I also hope co-host a podcast called The Important Cinema Club as well, which is a regular sort of movie film history podcast. was really drawn to michael and us because i was a i was a michael moore maniac in the early 2000s like i i read stupid white man and whatever the book was he did after that one dude where's my country oh yes yep i read that one too i believe that's the one that has the uh let's elect oprah as the last chapter perhaps yeah after sucking off wesley clark and the military industrial

complex for about 20 pages that's right he. He endorsed Wesley Clark in the 2004 primaries because Wesley Clark was a general. Therefore, he would have more legitimacy against George Bush. That was the line of thinking. We can always trust the Army with all of our decisions in life. Or the Killbot Factory, as the Simpsons call it. People often wonder, is there reason to be optimistic now? And I think the fact that in 2004, somebody like Michael Moore, who was the most left-wing voice in the media, was endorsing somebody like General Wesley Clark on those grounds. That's no longer the most left-wing position in the mainstream media right now. So that's a reason to be optimistic. Oh, thank God. I was getting depressed. And another of my favorites of your guys' was the one you did for the Jackie Chan film, because I'm also not as big as you will, but a big Jackie Chan fan.

And I've spent the 90s watching a ton of Hong Kong action movies. And then to hear what he has kind of become now was like shocking and sad, but also funny in a way too. Well, the movie we talked about was called Chinese Zodiac, which is a movie where he plays a treasure hunter who goes around the world repatriating artifacts for China. And this is an example of the kind of movie that Jackie Chan makes in China now.

He is a very popular and well-paid actor in China and he's very kind of in with the Chinese government now. He is, you know, a very popular and well paid actor in China. And he's very kind of in with the Chinese government now. So he basically makes propaganda films. And you can see this Chinese government influence over a lot of the career decisions he makes now he makes a lot of US co productions now that are kind of about this soft power agenda, you know? So it's, yeah, for all of us who are Jackie Chan lovers, it can be a slightly heartbreaking turn of events. That said, he's one of the greatest entertainers who ever lived, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. I think you can trace that back to Supercop. Better start making a film about how

cool the mainland people are and it's about cooperation well the final line of super cop which came out just a few years before the handover is the whole movie he is the hong kong cop and michelle yeo is the mainland cop and it's sort of mismatched buddy comedy and then once they get all the money from the bad guy at the end of the movie they say uh who gets to keep it hong kong or the mainland and jackie chan says oh you keep it after 1997 we'll all be chinese and you know that was a pretty innocuous line at the time but uh it kind of foreshadowed the direction his career went because he was such a sorry to digress so much on jackie chan but he's something that means so much to me he He was a real Hong Kong

mascot for so many years. And now the colony has sort of turned on him. They regard him as this guy who's very much in bed with the Beijing authorities. So he's a controversial figure in his home city. I guess, yes. This is a Simpsons podcast on Jackie Chan. I almost forgot. You can cut out all of that. I just can't start talking about Jackie Chan and then stop. It was a fun digression, but this episode, sorry, Henry, go ahead. Oh, but yeah, I was just curious what Will's history is with The Simpsons. And like, when, when did you watch it? And you're, you're another of our Canadian guests as well, I believe, right? I mean, The Simpsons at my school was one of those

things that united all of us. And in the late 90s, when I was a kid, you could watch in Toronto, The Simpsons probably four times a day on TV, you know, it'd be on at four o'clock, 430, then it'd be on again at seven, and then again at 11. So you could like, I think I've seen every episode of The Simpsons probably at least six times. And it was like a language among kids my age. I read all the comic books as well. I had all the merch. I played Virtual Springfield on CD-ROM. So I think I have Simpsons credentials. We were talking about it with another guest. And I think what really unites us, you pointed it out, Will, is that we grew up in that era of just constant reruns. So we were indoctrinated. It's a good show, but we were like indoctrinated into memorizing all of it while our brains were still elastic. So I feel like that's what unites all of us within this like 10 to 15 year period, just being subjected to all of those reruns of this great show. Oh yeah. I'm sure this will come up in conversation today and I'm sure you've talked about it many times, but so many pop culture references,

I and everyone I know learned first from The Simpsons. And I think that's particularly true of this episode. How did The Simpsons inform you politically too growing up? Not a huge amount, but I would say that they're kind of like Mad Magazine in the sense that they teach kids that it's okay to distrust authority and that, you know, these institutions that you're supposed to revere, whether it's the public education system or religion or, you know, big businessmen like Mr. Burns, these people and institutions are not necessarily worthy of reverence.

And I think that's an important lesson for an eight-year-old child to learn. Yeah, I definitely think you can give the first maybe three seasons of a real Marxist reading. But after that, it's just like, well, they can have money whenever they want and the politics are all over the place.

But yeah, I totally agree with you. They are a real working class family early on. And there are many episodes that are about their kind of money troubles. Well, though, they still have John Schwarzwalder in the room putting libertarian rights into the show, though. Yeah, there's no discussion of what a nanny will cost in this episode, by the way. Yeah. We offered up several of our upcoming episodes.

What made you want to pick this one, Will? It was just an episode that whenever it came on TV, I was really excited about watching. It's an episode that for those of us who are interested in pop culture, it's absolutely dense with allusions to pop culture. And I also have a particular memory of watching this episode with my dad and the scene at the end when sherry bobbins gets uh sucked up into the airplane turbine my dad was so offended by that that how could they do that to such a beloved you know cultural figure he actually said that oh my gosh i'll always i'll always hold this episode like close to my heart for that moment alone i do remember he associated with this episode in that uh one of my high school chums we were way into the simpsons

uh like me and henry we just we would talk in simpsons references and i remember now like oh a friday episode and it's new and it's a musical oh this is awesome isn't it dude i'm not watching that looks gay so the fact that it was a musical i believe he he thought he would turn gay just by watching it and i'm friends with him on thought he would turn gay just by watching it. And I'm friends with him on Facebook. He's not gay still. So maybe it's true. He stayed away from it.

Yeah. Unlike you who are gay. I'm thinking about it. No, I am gay and I watched it too. So I'm the test case there. But I want to get into the history of this episode in particular. It's an odd one because this was written by the sort of satellite freelance office run by Al Jean and Mike Reese. The showrunners for seasons three and four.

And they worked on seasons one and two, of course. So Al Jean, Mike Reese, Reed Harrison, and David Stern together writing this, Simpsontide, and what's the other one, Henry? The Springfield Files. That's right. Which we did a couple episodes ago. And they had a similar deal with Round Springfield and A Star Is Burns, but that was the entire critic writing staff.

Here, there are only four writers. So it's a real skeleton crew compared to the, what, like 15 to 18 writers of this era? At least 18, not to mention the like once a day, once a week guys. Well, and this whole thing came from Fox saying that they needed as many Simpsons episodes as possible made in a year, get as many syndication license fees as possible through production. And so when the regular staff said, we can't make that many episodes, we can't make 25 in a year, 22 is the cap. And so that's when they started doing satellite offices with Gina Reitz. And also Dave Merkin did a few satellite episodes as well.

That's right. So far, Lisa the Vegetarian and team homer i believe yes yeah and in season nine we'll get two more so and that that's the kind of thing that leads to this being a little different of an episode i think because it is a very small staff who you know also it feels in a way when you watch a show that's like oh this is kind of a cheaper episode of a show it's where it's like say in rosanne they never leave the house they don't have to build new sets yeah that's true i do want to ask will though have you seen algae and mike reese's other animated series the critic before yeah yeah i've seen bits and pieces of it i remember watching a lot of it when it aired in the mid 90s and i'm a big fan of the episode that actually has Siskel and Ebert on it. Oh, that's my favorite. Yeah. So we did an entire series called Talking Critic on our Patreon,

looking at all 23 episodes. And this, from closely studying that, going back to this episode, it is so critique-y in that the Simpsons basically live in a world of movie references from beginning to end. They basically live in Mary Poppins. I almost said Sherry Bobbins. Just like how Jay Sherman, at first the film parodies were fake movies he was watching. By episode two, it was like, no, Jay just lives in movie parodies. That's sort of what this reminds me of. And Mike Reese, one of the writers, was against the idea because he thought this will break the reality of the show. Sherry Bobbins can do nothing magical, which is why she mostly just sits around for a lot of this and kind of just stands there.

Does feel like it is a non-canon episode because it just feels a little off to me in terms of the reality of The Simpsons. Well, if I can raise a possibly controversial point, people are always trying to figure out what was the moment that the show started its decline. And people often point to an episode like the principal and the pauper but did this episode as much as i love it did it seem a little family guy-ish to you when you were watching it this time yeah it really did i mean uh so i don't want to i i do enjoy this episode but compared to the tone and the level of writing in season seven and eight and the showrunners have a very different sensibility this does feel a little a little cheaper in terms of the humor the references seem a little too obvious and i feel like they are going for the easier jokes but again for writers and uh if you listen to the commentary mike reese

just complains throughout the entire commentary he's like we have one act worth of story spread across three acts we don't know what to do with this character used every bit of filler we could he even shits on a joke in the episode he's like i haven't seen this since it aired so i don't remember the joke but uh i think i know where this is going he says about lightning uh almost striking mr burns oh right and uh they also use the extra long intro which we have not seen often or at all in the bill oakley josh weinstein. Mike Reese and Al Jean were always short and Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein were always over. So they're using all the tricks in this episode, but I must say the songs are so good. And I have them all memorized by now because of that great Simpsons CD that came out around this time. How does everyone here feel about the film Mary Poppins before we get into it?

That was a movie that I saw a lot as a kid which probably added to why i liked this episode so much growing up because it was an episode where the primary cultural reference point was something i was very intimately familiar with yeah unlike when we'd see episodes about citizen kane and i didn't know it was about i didn't know what citizen kane was her streetcar named desire i i somehow missed this movie and i planned to watch it before this recording, but I didn't have time. I ran out of time. But people are genuinely surprised when I tell them I've never seen Mary Poppins.

But I feel like it's one of those movies where you're like, oh, I get the gist of it. I know what happens in the movie and I've seen the penguins dancing. You think that. You think that. But sit down and watch it and you will be confronted with a two and a half hour movie very long scene where they go to the bank oh yeah yes singing up the bank or then there's also a long scene with the bird lady these are not necessarily the scenes that you remember when you think about oh that that fun light uh children's movie It's not a drum-tight experience,

but I do have a lot of fondness for it. I prefer the Digest version because I believe this movie came out at a time when movies were getting bigger and longer to compete with television. So they were just spectacles. It's like, why not go to the bank and spend 20 minutes there?

And Henry was DMing me last night and like, just this movie is so long. Yeah, so I hadn't seen it since i was a kid when i saw it in in its entirety as a kid and when i watched it then i the only things i remember was liking the animated crossover scene and then also being scared of the bank people because they were just like so scary and they were demanding your money and they wouldn't let that kid feed the birds it just that fucked me up and now when i watched it it seriously i was like this film is so fucking long like my husband came in he's like hey is it over yet i'm like let me check the time there's an hour

how can there be an hour and the actually the most overlong part of it was okay they have gotten home and they're gonna talk to the dad and he'll realize he made a mistake. And like, no, first they need to dance with chimney sweeps for 10 minutes. I don't know. I think that's one of the good scenes, the chimney sweep dance scene. You know, I think I related to movies much differently when I was a very small child because a lot of the things I liked about Mary Poppins at that age were like the British accents or the way the old timey phones looked. So many things like that, that I was just very easily pleased and fascinated by as a small child that I could, I didn't mind the movie's

rather slow pace and endless running time. Yeah. You know, I, as a performance, the, I agree as a performance, the chimney sweep dance is really fun, but when I've waited, when I'm over two hours into the movie and I'm just waiting, I'm, I'm counting the seconds. I'm like, I don't need to watch like half of this dance sequence would be okay. But they're like, no, no, no. Gotta, they have to dance for five more minutes now. And actually the worst thing about it now is that, okay, so Julie Andrews, Nick Van Dyke, like, treasures, legends, the greatest. They're amazing in this. And meanwhile, the kids in it are just like, I hate them.

I hate them. They're weird-looking kids, aren't they? And they can't perform. I feel like we just weren't as good as a culture. We weren't as good as making children into culture we weren't as good as making children into better child actors through like uh torture and so these kids they can't sing they can't dance their main job is to like look impressed at magic happening and they're kind of shitty at that too it's it's it's uh they suck i hate them there's one more scene that's really great in Mary Poppins.

And that's the first scene in the animated world. It's a jolly holiday with Mary because Dick Van Dyke sings this song to her that is so adoring. He loves her so much. And then she sings a song to him that is, I hate to use the word friend zoning, but that's absolutely what the song is. And you can see it. Dick Van Dyke's performance in the scene is so subtle, how he communicates, like just being crushed by this song.

Yeah. Watch it again. I did love that scene, actually. It's pretty great because he just finishes all that. She's like, yeah, a woman needs to not worry around you, Bert, and that you're not one to press your advantage. You're a great friend. More like a brother. A sister. All of it is on Dick Van Dyke's face in that scene. It's so powerful.

Yeah, it's... Okay, you know what? I like this movie again. I say watch it as if you're watching a series of music videos and cut out everything in between because who cares? That's my... Yeah, that's my strategy. But I want to do a special shout out at the beginning of this episode to Maggie Roswell the voice of Sherry Bobbins they wanted to get Julie Andrews that didn't work out

she wasn't gonna do this yes that's true she was never gonna do this in the first place but Maggie Roswell is just one of their female players she does a lot of female voices on the show and she would eventually leave the show shortly after this because they wouldn't pay to fly her in from Denver to record. Fox making billions off of The Simpsons, famously underpaying all of the voice actors, and they threatened to leave multiple times. Maggie Roswell did leave. Eventually she came back, but because she left, that's why they killed off Maude Flanders. Yep. But she is so good in this episode.

And she's such a great, she has such a great voice. Yeah, her singing is absolutely incredible i assumed for a long time that i knew it was maggie roswell but i assumed for a long time that they just got somebody else to come and sing but that's not the case that kind of skill it's so sad that they undervalued it to that extent and also that when she has a key role in this you really think like boy it's it's crappy that she mostly only does like two or three lines here and there in episodes otherwise. If they had just paid for her flights, like they wouldn't have killed Maude. That never would have happened.

Like a $200 plane ticket would have saved the show. At least that era. Yeah, this is the first episode with a written by credit from Gene and Reese since Lisa's Pony, the 1991 episode. I mean, obviously they were writing the whole time, but they're written by credit. So, were they working on Teen Angel at this time? Teen Angel would premiere in September of this year, so they must have been...

At the time it aired, they must have been working on the pilot some. Yeah. So, they're also tearing apart... Well, they're not tearing apart Disney, but they are mocking Disney while they are Disney employees working on the upcoming Disney show, Teen Angel. I never thought of that. That's very, very subversive. Okay. That's another thing about calling this a lazier episode is that they are watching TV for at least five minutes of it.

It is a real hallmark of the Algin and Mike Reese style in that it will open with a long parody on TV. On the commentary, they point out that, yes, I listened to the commentary. They used every trick in the book to try to get this up to 22 minutes. So, you know, there's an itchy and scratchy episode. There's that whole thing with Charles Bronson later in the episode. And yeah, there's this crusty comedy classic bit that starts it. I'm glad you pointed that out because by their own admission, they did use every trick in the book and they,

they did come up short. So it's not just us complaining. The writers were complaining too. It's funny too. You think of how it at least works with, if the messages they're also lazy and using Sherry Bobbins, like the characters are lazy. They're constantly watching TV.

She's like, do you guys want to do something like TV? But it's crusty comedy classic. She's like, do you guys want to do something? Like TV. But this Krusty comedy classic, it's again, I feel like they weren't confident enough in the joke when he has to say KKK, that's not a good idea. It's like, no, we get it. It says KK. We get it, Krusty. Yeah. If we're allowed to do a joke postmortems, I would have preferred if he just turned around and went, oh. Yeah. And they already said it was at the Apollo Theater. We get it.

Yeah, yeah. As they're watching the show, Lisa finds a hair in her soup. I've always wondered how famous Krusty is supposed to be in the diegesis of The Simpsons. This episode has him performing in a nationally televised special at the Apollo Theater. And I believe there's another episode, Camp Krusty, I think it is, where we see him getting knighted. But then in the Radioactive

Man, the movie episode, he's like begging for a part in the movie. It's never clear to me the extent, the scope of his fame. Well, Al Jean and Mike Reese especially, they wrote for Carson, Johnny Carson. They view him very much as a Carson-style late-night figure, even though he is hosting a kid's show. So Krusty Gets Cancelled is probably the best version of that, where it is Carson retiring. Sometimes he's a local clown show, though, too. But really, you know how much Mike Reese hates Carson now, when you think of all these jokes about Krusty being terrible at his job, not funny at all, a total joke thief. You just can't stand him.

He's also a bit of Jerry Lewis, isn't he? Oh, yeah. Actually, let me play this clip real quick of Krusty, an example of Krusty's terrible comedy. And now our parody of Mad About You, entitled Mad About Shoe. Give me a kiss, baby. No tongue. You're not gonna

like our NYPD shoe sketch. It's pretty much the same thing. Ma, could you get me some milk? Can't you get it yourself? No, that's okay. I'll just go without liquid. Oh, all right, all right. I'll get your milk. Thank you. Does anyone else want anything while I'm up?

No. Marge, give me a beer. Uh, Mom? What? Um, there's a hair in my soup, but I'll just eat around it. What kind of hair? Well, it's blue, six feet long. Ew!

It's my hair. Excuse me. Your mother seems really upset about something. I better go have a talk with her. During the commercial. The Simpsons will be right back. I think you'll find it's even more fun if you listen to this on Patreon. Hey, everybody, it's Henry Gilbert this week to welcome you to the break and say thanks for listening.

But the show is even better if you're a subscriber at Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. If you sign up there for just $5 a month, you'll get to hear every episode of talking simpsons a week ahead of time and had free if you would like to hear me and bob talking about poochie the dog right now you could be hearing that for just five dollars a month and let me tell you our guests are incredible for that we had rebecca sugar the creator of steven universe as well as ian jones cordy the creator of ok ko and toby jones executive producer on okko all animation veterans who give us a ton of insight into how accurate or not accurate the poochie the dog episode still is to this day not to mention if you sign up at patreon.com talking simpsons you'll get access to all of the exclusive podcasts we've done there such as talking critic we talk a ton about the critic on this sherry bobbins

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I'll tell you who doesn't do a half-assed job. Nina Matsumoto and our friends at Shirtsickle. Nina Matsumoto previously appeared on our Summer 4'2 podcast. She is an amazing artist and a good friend of ours and she designed a great new t-shirt to fit for these halloween times but really anytime you're feeling goth it's called the death stalker t-shirt which is inspired by our classic death jingle from this show it's a great design of a baby type character who's also the grim reaper i I think you get it. And you can find it at shirtsickle.com on our page. Popsicle, except for the shirt in it. That's where it is.

Be sure to check it out. Just starting in 1999. It ships relatively internationally and is a super quality. And the folks at Shirtsickle do great work. So once again, check it out. Shirtsickle.com and look for the Talking Simpsons page.

That Mad About Shoe thing really reminded me of the big ear family from a brother from the same planet yeah which was when he was hosting saturday night live tuesday night live sorry yes that's it's actually one of my favorite lines this episode because whenever i see a bad parody on like snl or mad tv back when that was a thing, I would just think back to like, you're not going to like our other sketch. It's basically the same thing. I like this Krusty Comedy Classic thing just as a really antiquated reference. I assume the parody is of like Bob Hope type primetime comedy specials.

You know, all the comedians of that generation, like Hope and Jack Benny, would have had really lame comedy specials like this. And I think that would have been a really antiquated reference, even when this episode aired. Yeah, I think by then, Bob Hope had stopped, even.

He didn't stop literally, but his career sure did. Yeah. The last couple of Bob Hope specials are like literally just Bob Hope like being propped up on a chair while Tony Danza talks to him. Yeah. I mean, on Gilbert Gottfried's podcast, which comes up a lot on this podcast, he talks a lot about the latter days of Bob Hope. And his wife was just getting revenge on him for all the cheating he did over the years.

So she would just dress him up in ridiculous costumes. And he would just be kind of a corpse on stage and she'd be feeding him lines via an earpiece. So public humiliation was the last stage of his life. But this hair montage coming up, we can complain more about this episode. This is more of a complaint for the future of the show, which I'm excited to get to, by the way. But one of the things Al Jean did a ton or does a ton in his second reign is the joke for the montage is, can you believe we chose this song, this so on the nose song for what's happening during this montage? And that's, I just get echoes of that in this. And that could be kind of unfair because I think it is the first time they've done something like this. But all I

can remember is everything he did in the future where there are so many montages where the joke is, yes, we chose the most obvious song, and that is the joke. I hate that, though. When I heard this hair song, I'd forgotten they had that licensed song in here. And again, they mock it on the commentary because they know it's bad. But like, it's a musical episode. You don't need a separate song montage in it, you know? I do write some comedy from time to time.

And I'll tell you what, when you're doing a piece where it's like The joke is it's lazy writing You also get to be lazy I don't know, I think this segment I think you're looking at it a little bit Through your later disillusionment I think it lasts just long enough I will give it a pass

Because this is the first time they did it And they're funny sight gags They are funny sight gags Of her hair losing its consistency and just flopping around and i do like the cut uh to hibbert peering into her hair it's a hair pov as if it's her throat or something like using the tongue depressor on her hair hole i'm sorry i'm very sorry i apparently they had gotten that from a golden girl spec script they had done too. So a lot of recycling. Yeah, I believe Blanche was the character who would be losing her hair if they made that episode.

But there is the quick Gerald Ford gag there, which nothing really added to that except that my theory is they said they tried to get a president for Krusty Gets Canceled. And they couldn't get, they got none of them. They said the closest they got was they got Elizabeth Taylor to ask Ronald Reagan on their behalf. And they turned out, for obvious reasons, Ronald Reagan to do it. But I wonder if they were mad they couldn't get Gerald Ford. And so they were still just thinking, yeah, fuck Gerald Ford. Returning from Two Bad Neighbors.

Yes. And I do like the faces Krusty is making behind him. They're very silver mini and they're great. The use of Gerald Ford reminds me a little bit of the use ofusty is making behind him. They're very silver mini and they're great. of forgettable one-term presidencies. And I guess since this was also coming out in the second Clinton term when voter engagement was so low, it just feels like a bit of a dispatch from a different time in American politics. Yeah, when you just have a president on TV

and you're like, yeah, it's a president. He's a famous person. Yeah, boring political stuff. Or, yeah, it's just, it's a president. He's a famous person. Yeah. Boring political stuff. Yeah. Or when presidents, when they retired, they would do philanthropy instead of, you know,

writing books or having Netflix deals. Talking to wall street. I mean, I would prefer if they just talked for free about the boy scouts. Like the, so it, I, I really feel for Marge in this episode.

They make it, she's, they, they sometimes try to laugh it off, but otherwise it's just like, no, she's like a sick animal or something. Her losing her hair is just like, ugh. There's one particularly

tragic shot of her. It's when Sherry Bobbins leaves at the end and everything goes to hell. She's like in the window box trembling and she's like tucked into the fetal position upright and her hair's just falling out in clumps. It's so, It's so like almost kind of scary. Yeah, it's chilling.

And it comes right after a shot of Homer literally throwing Bart out the window and like strangling him. This is, you know, as much as I love that visual gag, this is another reason why this episode seems a little family guy-ish to me and that there's no kind of internal logic to the universe. Like we've never really seen the Simpsons act this way. I mean, I guess we've seen Homer

strangle Bart. We've never seen like the house devolve into this sort of chaos. I think they're playing by the treehouse of horror rules in this episode. It's definitely a non-canonical episode, I would say. When Marge comes back from Hibbert, this is also another one where whenever I see Marge treated poorly by the spoiled kids, it makes me think of myself being probably a spoiled brat who also owes my mom an apology. My mom wasn't losing her hair from stress, but I just feel guilty any time. I was like, oh, I probably did that as a kid. When Marge returns back and is asking everybody to, they're talking about if they can do sacrifices for her. No one is making eye contact with her. They're all just half-lidded staring at the TV.

I didn't notice that. That's great. It's cool to show how just unengaged they are with the family. And that was a common scene in the Algen and Mike Reese era where there's a money problem and all the characters go through what they're giving up. And there's always comedy that comes out of that. There's a gag in this episode that I like so much when Homer says, I'll give up the Civil War Recreation Society I love so much. And something I love about Simpsons episodes of this era is that you forget,

you know, which episode, which gag appeared in. And so revisiting them is just like constantly being reacquainted with an old friend every 30 seconds. Yeah, it's such a non sequitur that if someone told you the joke, you would not know where it fell into the timeline. Yeah. And I might get it mixed up with Homer getting a bunch bunch of monkeys making them be in a civil war recreation society they would certainly hurt other people i'd say it's a very apolitical civil war reenactment too that like in that carl and apu are on the confederate side i forgot yeah they're trusting gray right yes yeah well doesn't one of them say they're not so sure about our stonewall jackson

seeds of this like reactionary impulse are clearly creeping into the civil war reenactment society now it seems insane to think that anybody would be in a civil war reenactment society without a racist belief system in it yeah is there anybody who's willing to play the north in a Civil War reenactment society anymore? It's all the people who lose the bets. They have to be the union. They draw the short straws. But, no, they're going to hire a nanny.

And this is another, like, this next clip I'm going to play is another, like, such a critic-y scene. The critic actually has a scene kind of half this in it. Oh, God, you're right. Hello, I'm Mrs. Pennyfeather. I understand you're looking for a nanny. Pleased to meet you. Wait a minute, Marge. I saw Mrs. Doubtfire.

This is a man in drag. You're phony. Fakey phony fraud. Get me out. Homer, if you're going to do this to every applicant, we're never going to find one. Sorry. Hello, I'm Mrs. Pettywinkle. Ah!

And the critic, it was Franklin Sherman dressed up. Yeah, he said it was Mrs. Doubt Franklin. That was, uh, I feel like... There's also kind of a variation on this gag in Austin Powers, which I think came out later that year, in fact. Yeah, they beat they beat austin powers to the punch on this one by like a few months i think yeah i think that was the summer of 97 yeah i of international man of mystery i mean these she's a man baby jokes uh they they haven't aged as well but i mean in this case it had like no believe me when we watch critic there

were a few transphobic jokes in it i would not say this is one of those types of it's more just like you're you're for mrs doubtfire you're just a man wearing a wig yeah and it's tied to the idea of a nanny as well yes and i wonder too if they made all this they mocked mrs doubtfire this much that it was like hated in comedy writers rooms do they think it was a bad movie or just like a bad comedy it was uh i strongly suspect so i mean robin williams you know in the late 90s i don't think was kind of the most respected figure among comedy nerds no and i'm sure like i i like that movie at the time but if you're a comedy writer you'd be like oh that's so treacly and it is i. I mean, it really is.

It gets cartoon voice acting all wrong in the beginning. That is not how it's done. But also, I was 10 when I saw it, or 12. It was the perfect movie for me. Like, wow, Robin Williams being big and huge, and this is great. And speaking of on-the-nose song choices, they used Dude Looks Like a Lady in the trailer. Yep. A whole lot.

Speaking of movies that are very much, much slower than you remember them, Mrs. Doubtfire. If you watch that movie again, what's incredible about it is how kind of like it's shot almost like a drama. They take this absurd premise and treat it so deadpan. And I think he becomes Mrs. Doubtfire like minute 43.

You've got to wait for the Doubtfire to happen. Oh, yeah. I do think it feels progressive, at least, that they had the gay uncles that helped dress him up. That's not really all that progressive, though. I think they put Harvey Fierstein in there

because they wanted to say, okay, this is a movie about a man in drag, but don't get us wrong here's a real gay guy oh yeah no you're totally right about that wow i never read it that way ruin the classic film mrs doubtfire for you oh well it still let me see harvey firesteam when i was far too young for it and so i appreciate that not to keep plugging michael and us episodes i love but the man of the year one was such a good one. Oh, thanks. That's an absolutely unbelievable movie. Uh, almost unwatchable. I just bought the

new Robin Williams biography that's out only because I wanted to read about man of the year and it's dismissed in one sentence. I felt so betrayed. God, that's, that's so, that's disappointing. I mean, at that time, he was just doing anything. Like, it's just the man of the year, like you said, with such a disappointment in that it's supposed to be a movie if Jon Stewart was president, but then it's not even that. It's well, yeah, he it's a movie that really shows the limits of the liberal imagination at the time, because the premise of the movie is, what if somebody like Jon Stewart got elected president? And, you know, who is a really cool, hip comedy figure,

a guy at the Zeitgeist in 2006? Robin Williams, of course. So he plays Jon Stewart, but the movie doesn't even commit to its premise because it also becomes a movie about voter fraud and about you know malfunctioning voting machines so he doesn't actually win um it's an absolutely baffling historical artifact and i recommend anybody with too much time to watch it and just the number of scenes of characters in the film going like he's brilliant it's amazing it's always

so good. So funny too. Yeah. It's like, you know, those episodes of the West Wing when they're watching somebody on a debate and they're behind the scenes of the debate and they're saying, yeah, you got them. You know, oh, this is a game changer. Imagine that, but it's them doing it to a Robin Williams standup act. I'm just imagining the writer behind those scenes, basically praising his own writing within the scenes. Like, wow, I'm so good. I'm gonna have a character say how good I am.

I highly doubt in Man of the Year that those scenes were written. I think there was a lot of Robin Williams make-em-ups going on. Yeah, which are basically just reconstituted jokes that he would have told in 1979. Oh yeah, his gay voice, his black voice, you know, all the stuff that you love from Robin Williams. Did Elmer Fudd come out in that movie too? It's just such a dense thicket of references and allusions.

One can't remember them all. He did redeem himself with World's Greatest Dad though. That's a good movie. The songs are great and also the animation for the songs is really good too. A lot of these scenes were laid out by Eric Stefanifani the brother of gwen stefani who left no doubt before tragic kingdom which in itself is very tragic he had songwriting credit on their album so he was making the money oh yeah on a future episode commentary david silverman will

talk about how eric stefani is still doing animation for them. And then he's getting gold records shipped to the office. And it's like, we're not going to have this guy for much longer, are we? You know, the songs in this Simpsons episode, I know them so much better than the songs from Mary Poppins at this point. Some of them have so overshadowed the Mary Poppins songs. That scene in Mary Poppins when the kids sing about what kind of nanny they want, I can't remember even what the melody is because it's been so supplanted in my brain

by this Simpsons song. Yeah, Alf Klassen beat the Sherman Brothers at their own game. No, 100%. I have that as an avid L. Yankovic listener as a kid growing up. The Weird Al version of a song will replace in my memory the more popular thing he was parodying. And that's how I felt when I watched Mary Poppins last night when they sing the Perfect Nanny song.

It just sounded wrong to me because I was like, no, you're off tempo. It's supposed to be done, done, done. I have to say, too, that on the writing staff, there will sometimes be a songwriter like Jeff Martin or Ken Keeler, but other times they will work with Alf Klassen to create the music for the song they want. In this case, it's all Alf Klassen, not the lyrics, of course, but it's him creating these compositions and they're so good. He's not on the show anymore and it sucks because he was too expensive. Too expensive for who? Just get it out of the library. Who needs to pay for new music, man? Well, they got to cut the cost on The Simpsons.

It's just, it's a real money losing. It's losing money. But I mean, I will check into the new episodes and I've said that before, but it just sounds wrong now without Alf Clausen. If you wish to be our sitter, please be sweet and never bitter. Help us with math and book reports. Might I add, eat my shorts. Bart is get away with moiter.

Teach us songs and magic tricks. Might I add, no fat chicks. Homer! The nanny we want is kindly and sage. And one who will work for minimum wage. Hurry, nanny, things are grim. I'll do it. Anyone but him.

But yeah, the song itself is really, it's a cute, funny song. I like when Bart talks like a comedy writer saying, like, cutting through the treacle. And Homer's no fat chicks. And then he gets scolded for it. I don't like the sentiment, but his motions on it, no fat

chicks, his arm movements is pretty funny. It might be lost to our listeners, but that was a popular t-shirt for a fashion. By the way, I'm also a big fan of the cutaway gag when Homer says, you have my undivided attention. And then it cuts to his brain and it's playing like kind of a Steamboat Willie type cartoon with turkey in the straw. There's a specificity, I think, to the pop culture references in this episode that I think maybe help redeem the laziness that the episode shows in certain other regards.

Yeah, I mean, they did a version of this joke in the Simpsons movie, and it's not nearly as good. It's a little toy monkey with symbols in Homer's head instead of this very specific fun cartoon thing happening. And then when it cuts away from Homer, he's singing Turkey in the Straw. Yeah. There's still a lot of great jokes in this. I don't want to savage this one too much too. Though I will also say after having read Mike Reese's book, he talks about how much they love songs when they write scripts, because you're likely not, he said, you're likely not going to cut a song and rewrite.

So these are three to five pages of your script that won't be changed in rewrite, so it makes the rewrites go faster. Oh, speaking of cut songs, we have one of the cut songs from this episode uh it's patty and selma singing a duet called we love to smoke i believe a parody of chim chiminy no no i love to laugh oh it sounds like chim chiminy because they say like a chim chiminy oh well yeah i think they include that too but it's it's specifically

like the i love to laugh and i know nothing about Mary Poppins, it's clear. But you know, let's play a little bit of it. We love to smoke till our lungs turn gray. We love to smoke 17 packs

a day Keep it going. Like a chim chim money Although we'll croak Before 2003 The far off year Okay, sorry. The far off year Okay, sorry The far off year of 2003 But I love Patty and Selma so much

And I wish that That song's actually on the first CD Oh yeah They claim that that song didn't get any laughs When they did a rough screening of the episode But I don't know It seems as good as anything else in the episode It's very catchy

Also, the far off year 2003 everybody yes no they they should they should have had a little more confidence in it i think or julie cavner the last like 20 seconds are patty and selma both coughing their lungs out and she's doing it she's doing all the coughing uh for for a probably then i wonder too i don't know that julie cav smokes, but she really sounds like a smoker. And I wonder if she appreciates all these jokes about lung cancer and eventual emphysema death from smoking too much. Well, I mean, Al Jean and Mike Reese on The Critic wrote a lot of smoking jokes about the character of Doris. And then Doris Grau would die of lung cancer. And she had a famously raspy voice.

Her voice is so good. They made her cough quite a lot on microphone. Now that song in Mary Poppins is sung by Ed Wynn, aka the Mad Hatter from Disney's Alice in Wonderland. And it's just about loving to laugh and how that makes you,

and telling bad jokes. And it lasts for like 10 goddamn minutes. But I love it, but it's also like, all right, I get the point, guys. Hey, buddy, I love for the song to be over. How about that? Well, I like that scene a lot, but it's a good example of how the story of Mary Poppins

doesn't exactly unfold like, I'm going to mix my metaphors here, but unfold like a well-oiled machine. It kind of goes from one thing to another. And I think maybe one reason why you might get very impatient during a scene like this or a scene like that

chimney sweep musical number is you're like, where even are we in the story? Remember, the whole story of Mary Poppins, it's not really about Mary Poppins. It's all about the dad character learning to become a better man. That's the narrative arc of it. And it takes such a backseat to all these digressions.

Yeah. Mr. Banks disappears for about two hours, for about an hour in the movie, I think. And Henry, I know you've seen the very historically accurate movie, Saving Mr. Banks. Oh, very much so. What is the story behind the making of this movie? Is that one of the reasons why she didn't like the movie? Because it was just this kind of a mess? I mean, it's a fun mess. Yeah, well, I would point people to definitely check out Lindsay Ellis' YouTube video.

Oh, yeah. Or YouTube essay. It's very good. But basically, the real story is that the author of Mary Poppins never wanted to sell it to Walt Disney. Walt Disney's kids loved that book, and he absolutely saw himself as Mr. Banks in there, aka the absentee father. It's about the period in which he grew up as a boy, right? Like the early 1900s?

Well, yes, but in England, not middle America where he grew up. But Walt Disney, he clearly projected himself into Mr. Banks, and he wanted to make the movie about him and he it's eventually him convincing pl travers to let him ruin mary poppins and to make it into a disney thing but of course disney's telling of it is that she learns to have fun and realize thinking that the the fun of the disney world world is a beautiful thing, and she shouldn't stop that. But it's also about how if your dad sucked, maybe it was okay and he was actually good. And that was the message of Saving Mr. Banks to me, and my father really liked that when we saw it together. Give dads a shot, everybody. I didn't see Saving Mr. Banks because I was so offended by the idea that the Disney Corporation, you know,

having already won a battle of wills against this woman, you know, like the biggest entertainment company in the world goes up against an author and crushes her. And then the fact that 50 years later or whatever, they then feel the need to create this tribute to themselves for having done this. We're still writing. We're not mad about it. Yeah, that is so offensive to me. Yeah, no, it was.

And it was also when you watch the film, too, and see Tom Hanks play Walt Disney, which that was a big thing for them, too, that they said that they had never allowed a fictionalized Walt Disney to appear in an official Disney production. So they got the world's most likable man. Exactly. And they absolutely hoped that Tom Hanks would win an Oscar for that as Walt Disney. They pushed it very hard as an Oscar film, which it wasn't. I mean, there's worse films to watch with your family over the holidays, but even by Oscar bait standards, it's not the greatest.

It's fine as long as you admit to yourself, like, no, this is all bullshit. Like, this is just a lie, and it's just to make fathers feel better. Though there is an interesting bit of truth in it in that, for one thing, Mr. Banks in the books did not have a mustache. Walt Disney made the character have a mustache in Mary Poppins, so it would look more like Walt Disney. Sex him up. They should do a prequel to that movie where Walt Disney welcomes another creative to the Disney studio, Lenny Riefenstahl,

and they can have Tom Hanks play him all over again. Oh, that'd be great. Beautiful. So when they sing this song, too, it's the only time they pretend the music is diegetic, too. The kids have a boombox and they're playing it as they sing. Yeah, you're right about that. I forgot. They give it up in all other parts of this.

It's like a song they prepared for the family, although Homer wants to chime in, too. Yes. Which he's lucky that on the tape the kids are playing, they had made a part of the song where Homer would interrupt them. That's very clever. But they just don't know where that person is going to come from. But then the wind direction starts to change. Hello, I'm Sherry Bobbins Did you say Mary Pop?

No, I definitely did not I'm an original creation like Ricky Rouse and Monald Muck Now, as your nanny I'll do everything from telling stories To changing diapers Put me down for one of each I like that gag that takes them out on the commercial break After he says that

Everyone else looks at the ground of just like oh grandpa he proved himself uh so if you look at that we don't see the spelling of her name in this episode but if you go online and look at the official spelling of sherry bobbins it's literally spelled s-h-a-r-y it's not spelled like how you would spell the name sherry so even spelling wise they're leaning into how much of a ripoff she is. Yes. Yeah. I looked up this character on the official Simpsons wiki. And in the intro paragraph, it says Sherry Bobbins was the Simpsons family's magical nanny and the former fiancé of groundskeeper Willie, which is something that I forgot about until I read that Wikipedia intro, which I think says something about, you know,

this episode's respect for the internal logic of the Simpsons universe. Oh yeah. Sherry Bobbins. What do we all know her as? Yes. Groundskeeper Willie's former fiance. She was, she was blind once.

Yes. Well, for some reason, while blind, I, that, you know what? I think that Ricky Rouse in Mottled Muck

is the line of the episode. It's great, yeah. It's so on the nose. Let's play that jingle. That's the joke. That was a little loud, that jingle. Sorry. It deserved a loud jingle.

I like just hanging the biggest lantern on. Yes, you know what we're doing. Let's not pretend this is anything else. And that was the only, the flying in the banister that's the only magic mary poppins gets to do sherry bobbins did it you know all you know speaking of the original mary poppins too one thing that isn't incorporated to this is the suffragette stuff that's in it which watching it now in our current political climate, it was really interesting. The mother, Mrs. Banks, being a suffragette in 1910, that her song, Sister Suffragette, is about how, you know what, men as a group are rather stupid. We got to get the vote

ourselves. And she also is talking about her co-protesters getting arrested and them going to the jail or getting eggs, spoiled eggs to throw at the prime minister. I was just like, has she never heard of civility in both sides of this stuff? They should debate. Stop singing, start debating. because i'm not quite sure what side it comes down on the suffragette debate because that character the mother character becomes very docile whenever her husband is around so it seems like the movie's kind of having a laugh at the suffragettes but then the husband really is stupid in the movie and you know he needs a strong woman mary poppins to come in and turn his life around

so the movie like does have some laughs at the patriarchy as well. It's an equal opportunity offender. That's the best kind of comedy too. I know it's equal that it's okay to laugh at these jokes at minorities. That's why I know it's okay. We come back for commercial break

and they are testing out Sherry Bobbins here. Who was your last employer? Lord and Niddy Huffington of Sussex. Arch, do we know them? No. Come on. Isn't he the guy I poll with?

The black guy. That's Carl. Oh, yeah. So, you work for Carl, eh? I have a question. Pop quiz, hot shot. I'm supposed to be doing my homework, but you find me upstairs reading a play, dude. What do you do? What do you do?

What do you do? I make you read every article in that magazine, including Norman Mailer's latest claptrap about his waning libido. Oh, she is tough. Did we all get the speed reference, everybody? Oh, yes, of course. I love that Norman Mailer joke, by the way. He was getting pretty insufferable. I'll admit, despite being an English major,

I have never read a full Norman Mailer novel. I don't particularly plan to. I think I'm good. David Foster Wallace had a great line about him where he called him a penis with a thesaurus. And I like that they called a play dude which is what a playboy is within the universe of the simpsons instead of just saying playboy even though we all know what it is and that that too is like yeah it's full of it's full of terrible articles that

they just keep paying norman mailer to keep doing like, it's the prestige of Norman Mailer writing an article. John Updike on the martini. Actually, yes, that speed thing though. I have the clip that is based on. Pop quiz, hot shot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50,

it blows up. What do you do? What do you do? So the bus that couldn't slow down. Yes. The previous year, Dennis Hopper played King Koopa in the Mario Brothers movie. He really bounced back. As a kid, that was how I was

introduced to Dennis Hopper. I first saw the Mario Brothers movie, then the next year saw Speed. And then Blue Velvet. His performance in the Mario Brothers movie is not that different from his performance in Blue Velvet either. No, they're basically the same guy. I mean, too, it's, oh, wait, oh, my God. I was just thinking of that movie because on Michael and Us, when you guys did the bill maher episode is you are correct that bill maher's hair is king koopa's hair i forgot about that that's great yeah a very

unpleasant man i also like homer going like yeah you know the black guy carl like oh you say did go for carl you work for carl i like that exchange too and so she goes up the banister and that's when we get our second song of the episode and that's do a half-assed job which i do feel like is the writers telling on themselves a little bit there of just admitting like yeah just do a half-assed job it's the american way i do love that message at the end now now i know a little secret that will make the job go twice as fast if there's a task that must be done Don't turn your tail and run Don't pout, don't sob

Just do a half-assed job If you cut every corner It is really not so bad Everybody does it, even Mom and Dad. If nobody sees it, then nobody gets mad. It's the American way. The policeman on the beat Needs some time to rest his feet Fighting crime is not my cup of tea

And the clerk who runs the store can charge a little more for meat. For meat. And milk. And milk. From 1984. If you cut every corner You'll have more time for play It's the American way

I love this song. I think it's one of the best songs in Simpsons history. It also, I think, goes against the Sherry Bobbins character and everything we know about her for the rest of the episode. Does she preach this gospel of being, I wonder from a plotting point, what is it supposed to be? Is it that Mary Poppins comes to work for the Simpsons? Sherry Bobbins, Henry. Is it that Sherry Bobbins comes to work for the Simpsons and she is practically perfect in every way and is then ruined by the Simpsons?

Or is Sherry Bobbins a Simpsons universe version of Mary Poppins who believes in half-assedness and laziness and drinking like a simpsons character would but if that's the case then how does she get broken by the characters if she's already been bent to the will of this universe the reality of this is weird yeah i mean the reality is tell me on this i came into this thinking that i really liked this episode and now you're kind of persuading me. It's terrible. I do want to ask you guys.

I love this song. You've seen the famous movie Mary Poppins. What is this song a parody of? Anything in the movie? Spoonful of Sugar. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm not supposed to know these things, Henry.

Also, that song, Spoonful of Sugar, is supposed to be about how fun it can be to clean your room. Okay, okay. Though that song is bullshit in the movie, too. Like, it should be, oh, it's a spoonful of sugar, it's so fun to clean up your room. But the kids just have magic to clean up their room. It's not teaching the kids to clean up their room. If anything, they're learning a worse lesson than do it half-assed.

It's that, yeah, snap your fingers, it'll do it. Find a magic person and they'll help you though in the uh in spoonful of sugar mary poppin sings with herself in the mirror that's replicated in this with her on the milk carton singing with apu that's a great little duet yeah meat and milk from 1984 and the uh sings very well. Yeah. This lets everybody sing great. Dan is both Homer and Barney in this sing amazingly. Hank is area in the objectionable voice of Apu. He sings so beautifully. And he rolls an R on four while singing.

It's great. And they even draw the hot dog. The hot dog has the bandaid and bug on it just like it did in the episode where they go to India. Fuck, what's the name of that one? Homer and Apu. Homer and Apu. Yeah.

How did I forget the name of that one? It was too obvious. There was nothing clever about it. And then when they just slam the door and everything falls apart and that they had abandoned Maggie. Though also Maggie is left locked up just as happened to the boy in the song too he gets closed up in the in the other closet i think the honestly i think the animators cared more about direct references to mary poppins through animation than maybe the the writers did in the song yeah i

wonder how much was in the script in terms of staging and in terms of direct references uh visually then they they head out for their outing at the park which is where they just kind of slam together a dozen references at once though when uh when willie spots her he identifies her by her silhouette which is exactly how bert identifies mary poppins when he first meets her again and we get a nice flash dance parody too yes yeah again you don't Again, you don't need a flash dance parody. If you're doing Mary Poppins, you don't need other parodies. So we've got Speed, Flashdance, Andy Griffith, lots of stuff floating around in this episode.

Guys, I like the flash dance parody. I'm sorry. Oh, no, it's great. I love the animation, too. It's so complicated, just how he falls backwards after the water dumps on him. The animators are asked to do, to draw a man as a one man band to then has to imitate flash dance. It's it's,

it is very impressive. I'm sorry. I, I, I'm really rag ragging on this just because I, it's, it just feels like you checked a box. You got parodies.

You can do something. I just want them to stay focused. I love them so much. Just stay focused guys. Come on. I like when Nelsonelson says i picked you some posies sherry bobbins i also like it when skinner does the boy for sale boy for sale i don't know uh i like almost every in this scene except for perhaps the mr burns kite flying gag I do love his mangling of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It's great. Oh, here, let's hear the

Willie first here. I'm a maniac, maniac, that's for sure. And I'm dancing like I've never danced before. Gah! That's the stuff. Yeah.

Thank you, you ungrateful boss. Sherry Bobbins, is that you? Hello, Willie. You know her? Hey, Sherry Bobbins and I were engaged to be wid back in the old country. Then she got her eyesight back. Suddenly the ugliest man in Glasgow wasn't good enough for her. It's good to see you, Willie. That's not what you said the

first time you saw me! Great screaming from Dan. Did you hear that? Sherry Bobbins is from Glasgow. Or at least she arrived in Glasgow blind? At least working there, maybe. Blinded in Glasgow. I always got the sense in the movie

Mary Poppins that Mary probably had a boy in every port. Like perhaps there's a version of Dick Van Dyke in every town she goes to. And perhaps it's also the same with Sherry Bobbins. Yeah, I'd imagine that. You know, in the world of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mary Poppins is God. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, Mary Poppins shows up and kills the

antichrist and the antichrist in league of extraordinary gentlemen is harry potter so wait is the character in the public domain no but uh it's uh in the same way that you know it was them with michael jackson and dustin hoffman yeah it's written to that you know it's mary poppins but they can't say it. Same with Harry Potter. But, I mean, that's just Alan Moore being a grumpy old man. But I love the guy. So, yeah, actually, let's play the Mr. Burns clip, too, since we were talking about it. Boy for sale.

Boy for sale. Is this legal, man? Only here and in Mississippi. Oh, Sherry Poppins, this is ever so much fun. With you, every day is Guy Fawkes Day. Uh, humbug. Oh, Mr. Burns, I think you'll find all life's problems just float away when you're flying a kite. Balderdash, this is the silliest load of oh look at it fly

look at me smithers i feel practically super duper fragile it's this strange sensation in my chest i think your heart's beating again oh that takes me back god bless you sherry bobbins i think it's a super duper fragile yeah xb ali doe i i feel like that was the world punishing him for making that reference i believe so yeah well that boy for sale thing that is an oliver reference reference to the well i think at least the musical oliver okay there's a boy for sale song i i didn't know if that was in mary poppins or not no that was uh they they shove in in an Oliver line within, an Oliver reference within this Mary Poppins stuff, but at least it fits time frame wise. Within the era.

Sure. Though that's also a reference to Mississippi and the 13th Amendment there about why it's only legal in Springfield, Mississippi. Ah, okay. Because famously, obviously slavery wasn't actually still legal in Springfield, Mississippi, because famously, obviously, slavery wasn't actually still legal in Mississippi. But as a sign of racist protest, they never signed officially the 13th Amendment until 2013, which at that point, it's like, why even bother? Just never sign it. It's already a national humiliationiliation finally safe to go to mississippi again no it is not i do also love that the kids just become british they are just transformed through just being around sherry bobbins and everyone knows who sherry bobbins is too yeah well that

too it's like that's like in the movie when mary poppins shows up everybody's like oh it's that mary poppins ooh mary poppins joel and the kids just like really who is this mary poppins what more need be said and uh they they head back home and they have a song that's it's kind of a combination of the song stay awake and feed the birds because it's the kids going to sleep song in mary popp, but also feed the birds, tuppence a bird. And more of Barney's great singing voice. Yes, yeah. Let's hear a little bit of the Ballad of the Boozehound. It's eight o'clock, children. Time for bed.

But we're not sleepy. Sing us a song, Sherry Bobbins. Yeah, sing us a song. I've been singing you songs all day. I'm not a bloody jukebox. Oh, all day. I'm not a bloody jukebox. Oh, all right. In front of a tavern

flat on his face, a booze hound named Barney is pleading his case. Buy me a beer, two bucks a glass. Come on, help me, I'm freezing my ass. Buy me brandy, a snifter of wine. Who am I kidding?

I'll drink turpentine. Move it, you drunk, or I'll blast your rear end. I found two bucks. Then come in, my friend. And so let us leave on this heartwarming sin. Can I be a booze hound? Not till you're 15. $2 a beer sounds like a pretty good deal.

That's a good price for 1997. Not happening here. Not in San Francisco. No, it's more like $8 a glass. How much is a beer in your neck of the woods, Will? I think at a local bar you can get them from between $7 and $9. Those are Canadian dollars, though. Who knows what that's worth?

In my hometown, when i left a decade ago one bar still had dollar drafts but it did taste like the inside of a can of uh manwich and i don't know why it was disgusting it's a cute song that lets you also see mo brandishing his famous shotgun and i do like the turn then come in my friend i like that it shows what a kind of uh cold relationship that mo and barney have yeah it is you know just an something i've always liked about the barney character is how kind of unsparing it is and the depiction of his alcoholism he will drink turpentine i believe in this season he did drink varnish he drank paint varnish yeah yeah

and then of course there's don't cry for me i'm already dead all about his alcoholism it was puke a hauntus henry oh god you're right i i i messed up there i like the i only remember because it's so bad and has nothing to do with the with the parody the uh and and i like the cherry bobbins finally snaps of like i've been singing these songs all day. Come on. Not a bloody jukebox. Not a bloody jukebox. I've never had kippers.

They sound kind of gross. But anybody else here had kippers or blood pudding? No kippers. I'm pretty sure I have not. No. No. I've never been to England. Bob has spent, I think, 20 hours there once.

And I got the worst flu of my life, so I don't remember any of it. You're not blaming England for that, though. I kind of am. Wash your hands more, British people. I don't think Britain is really known for its cuisine, as your experience clearly attests. As they remark on the commentary, the episode is over

10 minutes early, because Bobbins has fixed everything. But I love their reactions to her on her way out here I believe my work here is done Thank you for everything We'll miss you Sherry Bobbins You've changed me as well

I'm no longer the money driven workaholic I once was I love you all To think I'll never hear those sweet voices again. Oh. Oh. I'll just unpack my things I think we got our umbrella Sweat Whee I never felt so

Alive Before we mentioned The scene of basically Homer strangling bart through the window breaking it i think they can get away with that because bart was strangling him back i guess it would have seemed a little too intense and and just a little too over the top if it was homer alone strangling but they it was a mutual strangle i don't think homer's ever been so violent with bart that he smashes him through a window while strangling him. What incited that act?

I really want to know. What unseen thing incited that? It may not work really within the logic of the Simpsons universe, but I think it is a great visual gag. Oh, very much. Yeah. They just smash back to such a degree. All of Sherry Bobbins is doing her tearful goodbye to like oh i'll never see them

again and i think lisa's is i mean we talked about marge quivering in the window box but lisa just having a thousand yard stare and marching around banging a pot uh that's also pretty sad too just becoming just silent just not speaking any longer and i also love homer's reference to mr banks's plot in the movie where he's like oh and i'm not a workaholic anymore you taught me my lesson oh i didn't i never read that as a mary poppins joke it's just like homer lying about how lazy he is that's great either way it's funny him falling asleep on the umbrella is funnier than just like i think they just had him screaming but they said on the commentary that you could see his mouth moving and so like we gotta write we gotta have him say something there it's it's funny though it it's it's typical grandpa humor though there's there was more grandpa in this than i

remembered there are two grandpa act breaks in this episode that's true and he'll be there for the last scene too uh as well so yeah they they talk about how the third act is a little thin on the commentary they seriously watch tv for most of the third act but uh here's i i love this gag that opens up with homer rejecting the idea of singing another song welcome back to before they were famous we all know reyner wolf castle is the star of the blockbuster mcbain movies but here's his first appearance in a commercial in his native Austria. Mein Bratwurst has a first name, it's F-R-I-T-C. Mein Bratwurst has a second name, it's S-C-H-N-A-C-K-E-N-P-F-E-F-F-E-R-H-A-U-S-E-N.

Jerry Bobbins, I want another beer. Well, you know, Homer, if there's a job that must be done, you'll find it's much more fun. You'll find it's even more fun if you get it for me. But the beer will taste more sweet if you get up off your seat. Lady, the man asked for a beer, not a song.

Do re mi fa so. I just caught that for the first time Her saying do re mi fa so I only heard do in previous viewings Only in the isolated audio I was like, oh, so that's a I guess a sound of music reference Out of her as well It's also a cute play on do

So Henry, you were saying earlier You were thinking these are the writers The Simpsons are the writers Saying we're not writing another song. It's like, no, I'm not doing the song. Let's all sit down and watch TV. Yeah. Well, and I feel both of these jokes about

celebrities. So I think this Raymier Wolfcastle joke was originally an Arnold joke. We've talked a lot. Actually, when we interviewed Mike Reese, we asked about that unproduced third season of Critic, which they did write episodes for. I would suspect that this was Arnold Schwarzenegger in a season three Critic joke. And then the Charles Bronson, Andy Griffith gag was also just a joke on the Critic.

They were in real Critic mode. And I believe his baloney is named Oscar Snack and Pfefferhausen. Fritz. Oh, Fritz. F-R-Iack and Pfefferhausen. Fritz. Oh, Fritz. F-R-I-T-Z. So it's Fritz Snack and Pfefferhausen. I was putting it together in my head. It's a real made-up word.

You know, if they were introducing a character like Rainier Bolkastel now on the show, they would just have it be Arnoldnold schwarzenegger yeah whoever the current equivalent to arnold schwarzenegger is like ben diesel or somebody yes they wouldn't bother with that you know extra distancing satirical lair i'm disappointed in that i yeah i mean that's exactly what they did in the simpsons movie they it should have been raymier wolf castle but it was ar was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.

In the critic, they didn't. They're just like, no, it's Arnold. We'll just call him Arnold. Though the critic commentaries are funny because they're recording it during his election, like during the day he's elected, and they're laughing at Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes. I love a Charles Bronson joke about him being a murderous fascist cop who shoots people in the back. Like that's funny, but it's just not the

play in the Simpsons. This was in stars burns as well. The critic crossover, whenever they directly name a person that they're like, this is Charles Bronson. Like, I don't know. I expected, I expect more of like that. Like you were saying, well, well the distance like just an extra layer on top of it well i do like this gag just as a gag uh charles bronson in 1996 or 1997 may not have been the most current pop culture reference so i think i like it for that reason alone that's true it was a weird go-to for this era i believe he was still alive uh he wished he was dead oh yeah wait which one was that voice that hank azaria does for all of the peripheral characters the the charles bronson voice just charles uh bronson voice guy or wise guy i believe they call him in the scripts

was the i wish i was dead is that was that from the simpsons which one was that death wish nine okay wish i was dead if that feels like a critic joke so hard. It was the critic writers putting it in. That's why I had to ask. Was that a critic joke? I couldn't remember. It all kind of runs together, I have to say. I mean, when you're doing our job, it does. Speaking of direct references to movies, then we also get some Quentin Tarantino.

What I'm trying to say in this cartoon is that violence is everywhere in our society. You know, it's like even in breakfast cereals, man. Lisa, don't sit in front of that telly like a fly stuck on a toffee. It's a great big world out there. Been there, done it. I know. We could have a tea party world out there. Been there, done it. I know. We could have a tea party on the ceiling. Shh, TV.

You people will be the death of me. What an absolutely dead-on Quentin Tarantino impression, huh? Oh, yeah. So real. I do like it. We're complaining so much, but I'm going to say it's not annoying enough. Yeah. It needs to be more annoying. More manic. Yeah. If you're going to go for it're complaining so much, but it's, I'm going to say it's not annoying enough. Yeah. It's not, it needs to be more annoying,

more manic. Yeah. If you're going to go for it, go for it. This gag is interesting to me. I don't think it's all that funny, but like, it's just an interesting reminder of how ubiquitous Quentin Tarantino was in the

pop culture landscape at this time. Like he was hosting Saturday night live. The worst. There are very few film directors have hosted Saturday Night Live. And I'm sure you know that Quentin Tarantino was offered a chance to voice himself in this episode. And he declined on the grounds that he thought it was insulting. But later on, I've seen pictures of Tarantino wearing T-shirts with this version, this Simpsons caricature of him on them so I guess he change of heart I guess I I would think at that time he maybe was more well okay this is the secret

to getting Quentin Tarantino to do a bit part in your thing if he's not directing it you just tell him write what you're gonna say you just do it like when he or you can tell him you can say the n-word well that too and then he'll do. But when he appears in Robert Rodriguez movies and his, he has this say in planet terror, he has a speech about how awesome a gun is and how it's the perfect, like the gun is like a, a plot personified or it's narrative awesomeness. I'm like,

I know he wrote all that. And it's just, so if they just told him, Hey, you know what? Write 10 words that you'd say here before itchy and scratchy kills you. He did just done, he did done that. But instead they wrote things that are supposed to sound like his rambling nonsense, which also it didn't even work is that you needed, he didn't reference a movie as he was speaking. He was talking about violence. He should have said like, you know, like in Top Gun or in A Star is Born. Either way, it's all this violence, just like out of the Sergio Leone movie.

The one time they don't reference a movie in this episode when they could. Listen, fellas, I think we're looking at this gag a little too granularly. Have you heard our show? I think in the context of watching the episode when it's just 20 seconds on the screen, I look at it and I think, oh, Quentin Tarantino just had his head cut off. That's fun. Yeah, that is fun. And I'll give it to them. They paid for the Andy Griffith theme and Stuck in the Middle.

They paid for both of those songs like the masters on them, which doesn't make this seem like a cheap one, at least in a song rights fees. They paid for hair? Yeah, and hair. Three saws, three on top of all the songs they wrote in this. That's a lot of songs to pay for. I mean, The Simpsons has more budget

for song licensing, I guess, than your average show, but it's really good animation on them doing the pulp fiction yeah it's a great little dance very well observed and uh but meanwhile sherry bobbins is just broken and uh we get to see like what if sherry but what if mary poppins was drunk i think it'd go a little something like this wasted away again in Margaritaville. Searching for my lost shaker of salt. Oh, here it is.

Oh, that poor woman. We've crushed her gentle spirit. You people should be ashamed of yourselves. Sherry, you did the best you could, but you can't change this family. Neither can I. From now on, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the ride. But haven't I taught you people anything? Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope. And then we get Just The Way We Are. Yeah. A nice little song to go out on. I like that scene because like the implication being that you know she just picked up barney at the local bar like do you guys think that perhaps sherry bobbins and barney had a one-night stand possibly on the simpsons couch i like how barney has to

has to disappear yes but then he's there at the end saying goodbye superman but outside the house also that so she can be in her regular outfit for the last song they just have to have like a one second as marge is talking to her she straightens her sleeve and buttons up her coat so she's in the regular outfit in the last scene they they really speed that up there was no other place for her to change clothes because it just goes straight from her being drunk to them apologizing to her. The sort of non-ending to this episode, which I think is clever, it reminds me a lot of

the Ren and Stimpy cartoon, Stimpy's Invention, where it's just like, I love being angry. Thank you, Stimpy. Where it's just like, no, everything was always fine. Don't worry about it. This reminds me a little bit of the Homer's's enemy episode from this season where it's like an outsider infiltrating the simpsons home and kind of regarding it as this toxic environment sort of revolving in horror uh i think maybe this episode's a little less successful at that than homer's enemy because homer's enemy has more of a satiric agenda it It's sort of positioning Homer as, it's more coherently positioning Homer as like everything wrong

with a certain kind of comfortable, entitled American male. But it reminds me a little bit of that episode. I can't wait for that one. Yeah, I think in this episode, it is still a fun, sad message that people almost never change and they would much rather just be in

their familiar miserable rut than learn a lesson or be a different person even if it would make them happier or at least healthier and they just kind of give up i i feel like that is their closest thing to an explanation of why marge doesn't keep losing her hair after this episode when she says i'm just gonna sit back and enjoy the ride. That's her saying like, oh well, nothing will change for me but I'll somehow be less stressed about it. Just having the status quo. Something that status quo is kind of comforting

for Marge. It's very tragic. But yes, we get the final song here. Happy with things the way they are. So you like it this way? Indubitably. Around the house I never lift a finger. As a husband and father, I'm so par. I'd rather drink a beer than with father of the year.

I'm happy with things the way they are. I'm getting used to never getting noticed. I'm stuck here till I can steal a car. The house is still a mess, and I'm going bald from stress. But we're happy just the way we are. They're not perfect, but the Lord says love thy neighbor. Shut up, Flanders. Oakley dokely do don't think it's sour grapes but you're all a bunch of apes and so i must be leaving you

and yeah the sad message is how even Lisa's just like, I'm getting used to never being noticed. Like, whoa, boy, that's sad. They're revealing a lot about themselves there. And Bart's going to commit grand theft auto and become a booze hound at the age of 15. He's got big plans. And then we get our wonderful farewell to Sherry Bobbins.

Goodbye, Sherry Bobbins. thanks for everything so long superman do you think we'll ever see her again i'm sure we will honey i'm sure we will god i'm laughing just hearing it uh i think this is one of the best simpsons gags in history. Yeah, for as much as we, I would say, whined throughout this episode, we being me and Henry, well, it's fine. I feel like that joke salvages it. It's just a big middle finger gut punch to that character. And shitting over the entire intent of this one, too. Just like, eh, nah, she's dead.

We're killing her. Never see her again. And originally, that gag was an an opening gag for the critic that never got made so the uh the mary poppins getting sucked into a plane engine would have been the it stinks film parody you would see at the beginning of an episode but just that you get to see her like not just die on screen which is still as dark as simpsons can get it's still kind of rare when they kill someone on screen and you get to see like her tatters of her corpse just coming out of the engine of it it's it's and it and that it's over silence and then the fun music of the credits will start playing the nice medley which we heard a lot at simpsons land in california

they played quite a lot of universal and i remember the first time i heard it while walking around with bob at universal was like no fat chicks and then after the first time I heard it while walking around with Bob at Universal, I was like, no fat chicks. And then after the fifth time hearing it, I was just like, now I'm like, yep, yeah. It's very powerful how kind of cold the ending is. It doesn't end with a more comforting beat afterwards. It's just absolutely heartless. And did they never bring Sherry Bobbins back? I mean, it seems like something they would do in season 27 or whatever.

So according to the wikis, in season 23, when they went to London, you see a robot of Sherry Bobbins in the area. And in a couch gag in the season the season's 20s she will appear but also i wonder i didn't double check these couch gags but quite honestly they could have just drawn a mary poppins in there and it's the same design and they don't call her sherry bobbins that's true so but well the couch gags aren't canon no because if they were then the simpsons would have been killed by a big maudie python foot in like season five or their own couch yeah at least three times over that would have happened the so yeah it's uh it canonically no she has never come back i think again for the this should be just treated as a Treehouse episode because they've never since met a person who can fly and do magic.

That is true. But did we mention this is the first all-musical episode of the show? Oh, no. There will be a few more to come. The next clip show will be all-musical. And also, the other one I know that they did was a parody of Evita. And there's lots of songs in that episode, too. Yes, yeah. I like a few of those songs.

Yeah, there's some good songs in there. Well, boys, what can I tell you? I came into this episode really enjoying Simpson, Califragilistic, Ex Piala, Annoyed Grunchus. And now, coming out the other end, I'm not really sure what I think anymore. Well, it's our mission to suck the fun out of anything by being overly analytical.

And we've done our job, frankly. I can't really dispute much of what you've said. You're right. It does seem like a pretty shoddy piece of work now. What was several Hall of Fame gags? No, there's, yes, there's tons of great gags in this. The songs are some of the best songs they've ever done. And that, you know, when they have just one song in an episode, like say

Spring in Springfield, that's a great song, but you wonder if they were tasked with writing four songs for that, if the overall quality of the songs would dip because they're having to write so many songs for one episode. In this one, all the songs are great. There's no stinker song among them. I love all of them. There are no duds. I do really like it. It's just not, you know, you can pull at the threads a bit, or at least I was, but this is still what I would classify a good Simpsons episode. I think this is the first time we've been negative about an episode in a while, it feels like.

Maybe Homerpalooza. And then we were just like, well, it was still fun. Yeah. What do you think of my theory that this might be showing some of the seeds of where the Simpsons would go? Do you see the negative tendencies that would come to overtake the show

starting to begin here? Yeah. Like I said a bit earlier, the on the nose song choices for montages, I see a lot of Al Jean's bad habits popping up. That would be things that would make me too mad on the internet in about a decade from this airing. So yeah.

Yeah. Well, on the Al Jean, well, the Al Jean situation too, is that this was, you could tell that Mike Reese was kind of pulling back his creative side of things in their writing partnership as Al Jean took on more of the responsibilities

and would eventually become a solo writer slash executive producer on The Simpsons. So I wonder if that's why we're seeing a little of the worst tendencies of the show come out in this more Jean-centrically written episode of the show, perhaps. Thank you for joining us, Will. Yeah.

Please plug your podcast. You have a Patreon. You have so much going on. We you for joining us, Will. Please plug your podcast. You have a Patreon. You have so much going on. We're big Michael and us fans. So yeah, let us know where we can find you and support you. Oh, thanks very much.

It's an honor to be invited. I have two podcasts. One of them is Michael and us with Luke Savage. The other one is called The Important Cinema Club with my friend Justin DeClew. Michael and us recently

launched a Patreon account, so I expect every listener of this podcast to immediately subscribe and help keep the lights on over here. I subscribe and your bonus stuff is totally worth it. Oh yeah. Thank you very much. I like anybody who will knock on the West

Wing and the one recent at the time of this recording that you did with Nathan Robinson was so good of just like the failings of the Obama administration through the vision of the West Wing a bit was just so such a good podcast. Nathan Robinson's a really excellent writer, by the way, for Current Affairs. So I'll also just plug him. So thanks again to Will Sloan. Again, check out Michael and Us. It is a leftist perspective on the sort of both liberal and conservative movies and TV shows of the past.

So that might not be up your alley, but we really love it. So I fully recommend it. I'm a big fan of their episodes. I got into them also because they threw a connection to the Citations Needed podcast, which I really enjoy. Their one on Bill Maher is so good like so ultimately it's our job to turn all of you into full-blooded communists of course that's the secret agenda of talking simpsons i mean that's why that's why we're getting paid by the russians to do oh no all of you comrades out there keep listening to talking simpsons if you want to support our crooked operation uh check out our patreon at patreon.com slash talking simpsons

that's how we support all of our shows that's how henry and i live and everyone has been so generous we've done so much over the past year in a few months uh because of your support and if you give at the five dollar level you get all of these bonus podcasts immediately uh mini series like talking critic and talking futurama exclusive, season wrap-ups, monthly community podcasts, so much is going on on the Patreon at the $5 level. Henry, can you please tell our nice listeners what are two amazing things they should check out

if they sign up right now? Well, some of our most recent ones included an interview with Dan McGrath, a lesser-heard-from Simpsons writer who worked on seasons 4, 5, and 6 and was also a writer for Mission Hill, King of the Hill, and Gravity Falls, and Saturday Night Live. We ask him a ton of stuff about his career, and he is super giving with his time. And we talked about him a ton on this

episode, but Mike Reese, you should listen to our interview with him about his 30 years with The Simpsons and working on The Critic. It's really informative. And yeah, both of those are great. And we've got some really cool interviews coming in the future. Ooh, look out, guys. So yes, patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. If you can't afford $5 a month, even $1 a month would be great just to say thanks a lot, guys. Keep up the good work.

Keep going. Keep going forward. So yes, that's it. As for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And I have another podcast, by the way. It's called it's called retro knots and it is a classic gaming podcast i've been doing it since 2011 but it's been going on since 2006 so that means there's like 400 episodes to check out so listen to all of them in order for the best experience and check it out at retronauts.com

or look for retronauts in your podcast machine or app of choice henry how about about you? I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. If you follow me there, you can see when episodes of this go live and other things that happen on the Patreon, along with my political feelings. And if you liked my political chat with Will on this a little bit, then you'll love seeing those tweets from me, H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Thank you so much for joining us. Next week, we get Rastafied with the Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show.

We'll see what else is on. Hey, where's the remote? Hello? Hello? Stupid cordless phone. I'll try the old-fashioned model. Ah, that's better. How you doing, Gertie?