Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show With Jordan Morris

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Jordan Morris returns to the pod to join us in reminiscing about early Simpsons reminiscing about earlier Simpsons—check out Jordan's new graphic novel with Bowen McCurdy Youth Group, as well as his podcasts Free With Ads and Jordan, Jesse, Go! How did The Simpsons join the long TV tradition of the "clip show," and how did it wind up happening on April Fool's Day? Learn about that, the episode's many deleted scenes, other clips they almost used, and tons more in this amusing episode... of our lives! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast powered by an electrified fooling machine. I'm one of your hosts, the Ramsblood enjoyer, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Henry Gilbert, and podcasting is my Achilles heel, if you will.

And who is our special guest on the line? I'm Jordan Morris, and I'm in Pizza Face Paradise. And this week's episode is, So It's Come to This, a Simpsons clip show. It's a good thing that beer wasn't shaken up anymore, or I'd have looked quite the fool. An April fool, as it were. This episode originally aired on April 1st, 1993, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh boy, Bobby, Clint Eastwood and Unforgiven win big at the Oscars. Cop and a Half tops a while. It's written by somebody else about their show. And the cop and the half argument is one of their top three arguments they've ever had in the history of the show. It goes, I think Benji the Hunted is number one, cop and the half is number two, and Carnosaur

is maybe number three. Carnosaur. I forgot the cop and a half. Siskel liked it. And who was on what side? Ebert liked it. Ebert liked it. Oh, and then Ebert would get back at him.

He'd be like, well, you liked Benji or whatever, right? Wasn't that usually their back and forth? Yes. I forget who liked Benji. I just read the book and it's 300 pages long. But that also came up in an episode of The Critic. Their episode of The Critic. The Benji the hunted.

I think Ebert liked Benji as well. think he was the benji like her i saw your only objection with that book that you really enjoyed was it had just half a sentence about their critic episode which i feel it should be a whole chapter it should have been a chapter i'm going to blame the editor on that one i assume mike reese and aljean were interviewed for the book but yeah cop and a half very very forgettable outside of the fact that it was a landmark Siskel and Ebert argument. I love their voice acting in that episode of The Critic. Like, they are so funny in it.

I still remember Siskel's line reading of, he's interviewing for like a new replacement for Jean and he interviews this guy who like loves Tim Allen movies and he just sits there for a second. He's like, you're Satan, aren't you? And the guy does turn out for a second. He's like, you're Satan, aren't you? And the guy does turn out to be Satan. But just his, you're Satan, aren't you? Is so funny.

Who would have thought Siskel and Ebert would have nailed cartoon voice acting? I think it's the most acting they had ever done. A tiny oversight, but otherwise a very good book. Cop and a Half, not a great movie. Burt Reynolds, very bad time for him. I was shocked to see it top the box office. It doesn't for very long, but for one week it was number one in the box office. I also, only from this, I never saw it as a kid. I learned that it was directed by Henry Winkler. I did not know that

until this. And then apparently him and Burt Reynolds had a lot of fights on the set too. Oh, and it was supposed to originally be a Kurt Russell, Macaulay Culkin movie. And then that fell through. So what could have been? Yeah. I mean, B it was supposed to originally be a Kurt Russell, Macaulay Culkin movie. And then that fell through. Oh, what could have been? I mean, Burt was probably full of pills at this point, right? And I can't imagine he was super thrilled to be doing Cop and a Half. I think it's post-divorce. And I don't think he was thrilled to do Bookie Nights either.

You know, I guess we did a little on our podcast, Jordan, Jesse, Go. We did a little like members only min series reviewing burt reynolds movies and burt reynolds doesn't appear thrilled to be in some of his good movies his acting is very like late period bruce willis very much just like saying the lines and getting the check and spending it on i don't know let's probably pills right yeah i bet pills he's dead now he can't sue us. No, he can't. Let's just say it was pills. Sorry, just one more note about Siskel and Ebert. Gene Siskel liked Carnosaur.

Roger Ebert named it the worst movie of 1993. We're still in 93, so it's extra relevant. Oh, wow. Carnosaur was like kind of tried to rip off Jurassic Park, right? I don't think I ever saw it, but I definitely know it is the movie that Siskel kind of liked. Yeah, it was the Transmorph to jurassic park's carnasaur does that sat question make sense to anyone out there that makes oh i get it transmorphers is to transformers as jurassic park is to carnasaur yes i mean speaking of a good movie starring an old man the unforgiven

won at the oscars it was clint eastwood's big oscar win i think he was a guy who like pissed off the academy i believe he jamie franco style said he hated hosting one year and the academy like said they wouldn't give him any oscars for forever but then he got it but it's also the night marissa tomei won her oscar oh yeah for my cousin vinny not conspiracy watch the film she's great yeah controversial at the time right yeah i think we looked into it recently because there was a joke about it on something or marissa tomei was on an episode of the simpsons we recently covered and the thing was she was up against a lot of established actresses in oscar baity movies which my cousin vinny was not so that untraditional win raised a lot of eyebrows i think i remember her SNL appearance after it happened,

and the joke that she made was that, like, she had been winning awards for her whole life, but they've all been presented by the same person, so the joke was that that person was just rigging it, so she won awards. I forget who gave her the award. And I forget if this was a good thing to bring up or not.

A joke I kind of sort of remember. And, you know, the Vertigo Comics thing, I brought that up because we have a comic author on this very podcast, bring up or not a joke i kind of sort of remember and you know the vertigo comics thing i brought that up because because we have a comic author on this very podcast but i just remember when dc had been publishing all of these mainly written by uk writers but these more prestige comics like sandman and swamp thing and hellblazer and they decided those should get their own imprint where they can say dirty words in them. They formalized it as the Vertigo brand, and it launched with Death, the High Cost of Living,

a spinoff of Sandman that is one of my favorite comics. I love that comic. I read a lot of Hellblazer in my day. He smoked cigarettes. That was pretty naughty. Vertigo's still around? It can't be, right? No, I don't think so think so yeah they've tried to bring it back a couple of times and it has not succeeded but it has had some good things on the imprint in some of those attempts got snyder's the wake is a really fun book that was a vertigo reboot

title kind of an underwater abyss thing that goes into some crazy crazy places a lot of those vertigo characters are now just in DC continuity, like Sandman is just there fighting Batman. And yeah, Constantine has been there for a long time. So yeah, I think those characters, or the popular ones anyway, are still around, but just in the proper DCU. Yeah, apparently defunct as of January 2020. Okay.

I believe what happened was it was part of the general move to Burbank of all the New York offices that Warner did. And when they did that, they're like, Ed, we really need a Vertigo imprint when we're just going to publish. That's also when they launched the, I believe it was called the Black Label for DC, where it's like, well, no, we'll publish the mature stuff here. I think they're still cranking out that Black Label stuff. I've heard good things about some stuff. I remember when it launched, the big story was about that you could see Batman's penis in one of the first black labels. Right, right, right. And I think that's a collector's item now. I think they like, in future printings, I think you, the penis is

less prominent or gone altogether. So I think those Batman dick comics, if you got them, slab them up, people get some sturdy backboards in there to support Batman's penis. Yes, but enough about Batman's penis. Joining us today is comedy writer. Is there ever enough about Batman's penis? That's going to be a spinoff of our other Batman podcast,

but joining us today is comedy writer, podcaster, author of the upcoming graphic novel youth group, Jordan Morris. And I did want to point out Jordan last joined us for our January 2020 live show, where the only thing contagious in that room was laughter. My mom came to that one and she had a lot of fun. Oh, that's great.

Yeah, that was a blast. It's good to be back. And actually, we revisited season one in that live show, and this season four episodes contains a lot of season one content. It's funny. It does, yes. I know. Season one, you know, I'll show my hand up top. I loved revisiting this episode.

I had not watched this in a while. And, you know, season one, season two, a little shaky, sometimes not the most fun to just throw on if you're looking for yucks. But I loved that they pulled great moments from those first seasons yeah it was fun to revisit that stuff because yeah there's some great stuff in those you know those first two seasons even if it's not as consistent as your threes and your fours it's fun to see all the season one stuff in a season four episode and see just how much they grew in like three years between broadcasting. Yeah, no kidding. I know the growth. I mean, just how it looks. Yeah. And just how sophisticated the jokes are. Totally amazing. You're an Eisner nominated comic writer. I want to hear all about Youth Group. Your new comic

coming out. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So Youth Group is a YA horror comedy. I did it with a great artist named Bowen McGurdy, whose work maybe you know from the Spectre Inspectors series or some issues of Marvel. Yeah, kind of the pitch is, what if teenage exorcists? The exorcist, but funny. Yeah, I grew up in one of these kind of goofy Bible study groups where the youth pastor would sit backwards on the chair and rap to you about a pretty cool guy named JC. And I've always kind of had affection for that world and thought it was a funny, weirdo little time in my life. And yeah, I always kind of wanted to see it written about in some way.

And yeah, so I always kind of wanted to set a story there. And then I kind of had the idea, like, what if these goofballs had to do exorcisms? And that was kind of the germ of the idea. So hopefully you get Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes from it. Hopefully you get Shaun of the Dead vibes from it. Yeah, it was tons of fun to do exorcisms and that was kind of the germ of the idea so hopefully you get buffy the vampire slayer vibes from it hopefully you get shaun of the dead vibes from it yeah it was tons of fun to do bowen's a great artist the characters are so expressive and yeah comedy you know a little hard to do in comics but yeah i think their art really nailed it and it's coming out and we would appreciate a pre-order those pre-orders really big. So yeah, if the concept sounds fun to you, bit.ly slash youth group book, bit.ly slash youth group book, and you can see the cover, you can see a bunch of Bowen's gorgeous art, and you can get all your pre-order links there. And

yeah, if it seems cool to you, give it a little pre-order. It's a gift you give to yourself in the future. Also, another thing you wrote I had to ask you about is you're one of the writers on that in Jellystone this year and one of your credits is and I loved all the new season of Jellystone but you're one of the writers on my favorite episode of Jellystone the Space Ghost one yeah thank you so much gosh I loved working on Jellystone and I agree I think that season really turned out terrific yes if you haven't checked it out already Jellystone over there on your max Max app, it's kind of a mashup of all the old Hanna-Barbera characters and the season they let us bring in Space Ghost and the gang. By the gang, of course I mean Zorak, Brack, and Moltar. Yeah, that was so much fun. I'll say Jellystone is a board-driven show. A lot of the specific dialogue is written by that board artist, but the writer kind of comes up with the concept and outlines and, you know, kind of has a rough draft of the thing for the board artist to take home. So the board artist on that was the great Toby Jones. He did an awesome job. I think he

loves Space Ghost and the gang as much as we do. Yeah, I love that episode. It turned out fun, and it was so great that they got most of the old voice cast to come back. Yeah, it's been a real Space Ghost and Brack and Zorak renaissance for the past couple of weeks. I think it'll still be ongoing by the time we reach. This episode goes live in like a month or so for people out there. So I feel like we're going to get a new greenlit Brack something by then. It seems like it. Yes, Andy Merrill is getting his flowers on Twitter, and I couldn't be happier. That Brack VO performance is so funny funny i went back and watched a bunch of old space ghosts and cartoon planet when we were like doing that episode and i'm like this is an all-time hilarious vo performance he's so great it's so weird and specific and yeah i don't know i'm glad

people are like finding those old episodes and old clips in that episode annie merrill still got his fastball too like does he says if we were better you or me and i got the most fan mail on cartoon planet like i think that was rift too i think i saw him saying on twitter that that was rift so yeah that is a great joke i love that episode because it was space goes and also yes a team up on the writing side of two talking simpsons podcast guests and you and toby jones and they're gonna drop some more jellystone episodes from that season hopefully soonish hopefully during the summertime and some of the crossover shit that's gonna happen in that next drop is insane and they got a lot of great voice actors to come back for uh a lot a lot of characters i think i think people are gonna be stoked to see so it's teased for Jellystone. I can't wait. Well, Jordan, too, you mentioned to us ahead of time, like, you're working on a clip show right now, so this is not a new subject for you.

Yeah, no, it's so wild that you guys emailed when you did because I got the email while I was working on a clip show for an animated show. So, yeah, I'd kind of been, like, thinking about this format a lot for the past couple of weeks. NDAs forbid me from saying what show it is, but I hope we took a similar approach to our clip show that The Simpsons did to theirs, because looking back on this episode, it's got so much great original stuff. It's got some all-time great Simpsons jokes in it. And yeah, I think with our episode that we're doing on our show that I can't say what it is, I think there's a lot of great original content and there's a really fun storyline. And I think there's some fun like twists that will make it seem like a cool entry to the lore rather than just like money saving interest, which it kind of is.

But yeah, hopefully there's enough like cool original stuff in there. And hopefully the like clips are, you know, injected in kind of a fun way that support the story so yeah this is the first of four simpsons clip shows and the way it came into being was that al jean and mike reese the showrunners of seasons three and four were very very tired as were all the writers it's why most of them leave at the end of season four or some during season four. So at the beginning of the season, they tell James L. Brooks, we can't do 24 again. We did 24 in season two and three. It killed us. We're working these 80 hour weeks, some weeks.

And James Brooks says, OK, we can do one clip show. You tell me how many episodes you can do in a year. We'll make one of those clip shows. So they decide upon doing 22 and making one of those a clip show. And that's why season four has this clip show in it, because it's saving lives. And it helped them that they could see ahead of time. Oh, Thursday this year is April Fool's Day. So we could even have it air on April Fool's and give themselves a at least first act that is timely when the episode would debut.

I love the April Fool's premise. All the like April Fool's stuff is like, I mean, A plus 10 out of 10. It's so funny. Clip shows were so normal back then on primetime sitcoms, like not just in other genres of television in America. Like they were, you know, it seemed like every season you'd get one of like, you know, The Cosby Show or Seinfeld. I think one of like you know the cosby show or seinfeld or i think one of the most hated episodes of star trek the next generation is a clip show where they have to like make reicher remember things so he will get comes out of a coma not unlike this episode actually yeah the network loved clip shows and i mean they all love clip shows because they

cost less to produce and when you sell the show into syndication, that episode is worth as much as any other one you spent the full budget on. And it turns out that when The Simpsons was popular, Fox wanted as many episodes as the staff could possibly make. And at one point they pitched the writing staff, what if there were four clip shows a year? And they were very terrified by that idea, thinking it'll alienate fans. They'll think the show is cheap and has lost its appeal and has lost its quality so they shot that down but to save themselves one entire production cycle of work this is what they compromised on and honestly they put a lot of work into this there's at least nine minutes of new content yeah they worked hard on this one clip show this was the clip show they wanted and the future clip shows would be more

foisted upon them by Fox that's when after season four the math made sense to get at least one clip show a year on the Fox side if not more because that's when syndication began and a syndicated episode if it's a clip show is worth the same too so it was definitely more worthwhile for them to get clip shows plus when we had on John Beie, the writer of this and the next two clip shows, he said the future ones were because Fox wanted New Simpsons to air during the NFL season, once Fox got NFL. And so the only way to get them ready in time for fall was to at least get one clip show in there those seasons.

You know what? I i apologize there were five clip shows i always forget about gumpros because it showed up so late when things were already on dvd and you know it was very easy to find simpsons episodes gumpros came along so yeah there are five i was trying to see what were some of the more recent clip shows that were not a joke and of course you know if you watch say japanese animation like one piece they have a clip show every like two months just to help cover the production but in america like when the office did one in 2010 reviewers were like a clip show what is this like it's the episode called the banker oh and also the show i completely forgot about castle did one in 2013 that was the

most recent like prime time tv show during clip shows i could find but if you were there at the time these did have value especially if you were a big simpsons fan like me and the show would not be in syndication for another year you have memories of all of these scenes and it's fun to see them again that value does not exist anymore because basically if you want a simpsons clip show you go to youtube type in funny simpsons clips and let it show you all the popular ones. I do that regularly, yeah. Yeah, and I guess they don't get taken down as much anymore or at all,

but yeah, this did have value. But when it shows up on a DVD, you're like, eh, maybe I'll just hear the commentary for this one. So fun to revisit it for this because I had not watched it since it was in syndication, right? Like I certainly didn't boot it up on DVD I certainly have not put it up on Disney Plus or Simpsons World before it yeah I'm always like yeah that's the clip show I just blown away by how much funny original stuff there is in this one it was yeah so fun to revisit yeah in total there are 17 clips

or clip packages throughout and knowing the history of the show as intimately as we do from doing this show for nearly 10 years we know that this first show is them kind of playing their greatest hits here are the scenes people responded to the most this is before they knew about the internet or could access it they just knew here are the crowd-pleasing scenes the gorge jump them electrocuting each other some of the early season one stuff that would be written about in you know newspapers and reviews and stuff like that so they were kind of doing their greatest hits to a point some of the clips in here i'm not sure why they're here but they are kind of doing some greatest hits throughout and the episode has the full script online or a table draft dated

august 27th and there's only a few big additions or changes from it that I'll shout out though also funny is the DVD has a full animatic for act one which for real has like a minute of cut dialogue that I captured for this very podcast so we're gonna hear these classic scenes yeah there's a lot of great jokes in that animatic that i wish were in the episode honestly they all confused me like well wait why did you cut this to make room for more clips the finger thing i'm making the finger motion on camera they must have just had somebody above them like no no the two more clips here and also the gene and reese were apparently writing the critic pilot at the same time as this which is why they were also very exhausted so they didn't even oversee the rewrite of this one speaking of Siskel and Ebert

related television but yes so the episode begins with Bart getting a rude awakening in our first clip here oh no I can't see. I'm blind. Blind! Ha-ha! April fools! Ha-ha! April fools! I've been keeping that carton of milk next to the furnace for six weeks. Sucker! You're going down, Homer. I'm gonna fool you. You talk better than you fool.

I'll fool you up real nice. You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine. They're back and forth like boxers taunting each other is so great. You talk better than you fool. I love Homer's two cruel pranks. It really reminded me of, you thought your family was dead, but they're not. Yes, this is jerk-ass Homer for real. Yeah, perhaps the beginning of jerk-ass Homer.

And in the deleted scenes or the scenes they never animated, he's cruel to the entire family. Except for Marge, although I guess Marge has to clean out the disgusting rotting milk. Yeah, that's more of just him being a shitty husband than being intentionally cruel to her but yes these two deleted scenes okay well here's the first deleted scene what Homer the reason he rushes out of the room which is fun in and of itself that Homer like April Fool's room runs out of the room he does it because he's going straight to wake up Lisa and Maggie as well in these little cut scene here. The house is on fire. Every man for himself. Mom's already dead.

Ha ha. April fools. Maggie, your new parents are here to adopt you. Boom. Your mom's already dead. Yeah, pretty dark. Man, maybe that was cut for tone reason. I guess Bart's revenge makes more sense if it feels like he's being singled out.

Yeah, right, right. In the drawing, the look on Lisa's face, she's gripping her chest of like, oh my God. It's really good. Pranking the baby is great too. That's a fun angle. Normally a baby wouldn't know you're telling them your real parents are here, but Maggie's smart enough to know. Yeah. She's advanced.

We've known this. And the shot of Homer watching Bart drink it from the doorway is also very funny. He's just a big kid in this, a mean big kid. As Marge is cleaning out the milk, that's where there's another deleted scene which also is really good the radio is playing in it hey yo hey bill you got mustard on your tie april fools no marty what i got is an offer to do this show by myself, twice the salary. You didn't say April Fool's, Bill. That's right, I didn't. But, no, I can't go back to Kentucky.

That's some great Bill and Marty lore we missed out on. Bill and Marty! Yes. Yeah, there's some chunks of The Simpsons I have not seen. Has there ever been a Bill and Marty episode? They're so funny every time they're on. I don't think they've gone deep on Bill and Marty yet. Man, there you go.

I think the deepest they went was with them in The Elephant. That was like, they're the stars of Act One. Mm-hmm. Bart gets an elephant. That's true. But they've only recently done a comic book guy. Well, no, they did a comic book guy episode in season 10. I'm thinking of the later comic book guy one where they explore his issues with fatherhood.

So they're going extra deep on comic book guy. Let's hit some side characters up now and then, you know? How do Bill and Marty keep their acts going in the world of podcasting? I want to know. Yeah, great. I did see a recent-ish ep where like Kent Brockman did a podcast. And I think that was their kind of like, right that would make sense for bill and marty to you know pivot to some sort of joe rogan-y type show but you know they can find their spin i love sherry's delivery in

that of like i can't go back to kentucky that's so good kentucky's a great specific then we also get what wikipedia tells me is mostly true or could be true nobody knows exactly how april fool started is what the wiki tells me but lisa could be right in this next clip oh what noble visionary thought up april fool's day like halloween and christmas april fool's day traces its origins to pagan ritual. God bless those pagans. April 1st used to be the pagan new year. Blood for Baal! Blood for Baal! Blood for Baal! The Christians changed their calendar and ridiculed those who didn't. Happy New Year!

Hi-ho, pagans! New Year's was three months ago, but here's a present anywho. It's ram's blood for your godless ceremony. April Fools! Now who's laughing? Now who's laughing? And that's the story of April Fools' Day. Dad, I was telling the story of april fool's day dad i was telling the story oh right god i love that it's interesting one of the first things you learn when you work in animation is the expensive things are new backgrounds and new characters they really discourage you from coming up with new like worlds that haven't been in the show before and you know

new characters there's always some sense of like can we set this in an area we've seen can this new character be a returning cast member we've seen so like pretty wild in this episode that is supposed to be a money and time saver that they animated this pagan village and pagan clothes for all the simpsons and some weird instrument for lisa to be playing like yeah i don't know really speaks to like the kind of unnecessary tlc that they put into this episode that like there's just this whole new flashback background and new set of clothes for them it's really cool yeah new designs for maybe eight or nine characters that sounds like

a lot of work a lot of oversight people have to approve these things they have to be designed and just for a clip show compared to the season six clip show where they are in two rooms the entire episode and don't leave them yes yeah we can see when this is forced upon them they're less inventive i also just love the comedic idea that a flashback goes from informative to a joke and you learn it's because homer took over telling you the story in the middle of it so funny and lisa is being a classic nerdy kid which is to tell people that you know your christian holidays actually are stolen like That's classic smart kid. Yeah, that is one of the know-it-all loves to tell you what was originally pagan.

She didn't even bother to say Easter in there. Oh, yeah. You know, I hate to Monday morning quarterback this episode 31 years later, but it is my job. And I really like the Flanders joke that they cut that's in the animatic. Yes, let's hear. They had a great extra joke in here. God bless those pagans. Did the Christians ever come up with a good holiday on their own? Of course.

There's Pentecost. Nobody celebrates Pentecost. Pentecost, Pentecost, Pentecost is here. Oh, what fun it is to feel the Holy Ghost is near. Yeah. That rules. That is really funny. In the shot, you see Ned decorating his house in the cutaway.

They look out the window and Ned's decorating his house with it, which is a great joke. Yeah, why'd they cut that too? Yeah, I guess, again, for all these cut jokes these cut jokes it feels like well we want to come in cheaper and this could be a clip this space could be occupied by a clip this act one i think is maybe five minutes long it's pretty short yes yeah it's a very quick act one but i mean it's the animatic so obviously it hasn't gone overseas for the most expensive part, which is the ink and paint. But still, the artist drew it that much, so they've already spent some time and money on it. But yeah, that cutaway. Also, speaking of comic books, I didn't learn what Ball was until, B-A-A-L,

until Alan Moore kept putting him in all of his comics. He must work there or something. Ball works at Alan moore's office most things i've learned about pagan ritualism come from alan moore and his obsession with magic he's a great source for that he's a great source then we have a cutaway to april fools around springfield which is too bad because there's two other really good ones that are in the deleted scene, too. But the one of McAllister. Also, you could almost count it as the first clip of the episode because they reuse the frying Dutchman establishing shot from New Kid on the Block, though it's not really. Oh, OK.

Fun fact, though. All of the guys saying are back and forth. I love it. The sad R. Oh, so funny. Yeah. I also like that those guys don't really look that much like pirates. They just look like a restaurant waitstaff, but they all have the pirate R.

I think the last time we saw them, they talked like normal people as well in New Kid on the Block. And this is the second and final appearance of this restaurant in this era. It comes back much later in, I think, season 10 or 11. I just saw in a season 35 episode, they remembered his name was Captain McAllister, too. They have a funeral for his parrot, and it's Pauline McAllister is the name of it. I was like, wow, somebody remembered. This little aside where you go to the frying dutchman for this gag really makes me think that they planned some sort of little run where you go around springfield and see various april

fool's day pranks i don't know if any of that was in the cut scenes but yeah it really seems like it's funny that they do one of these and it's captain mcallister like is there a mo one of these we could have seen oh yes there is oh is there oh my gosh you're guessing correctly jordan yes so i have the deleted scenes here though to give quick context for them one is mo's bar and he has up a sign that says april fool's special beer 20 dollars and then the other one starts with nelson punching walking through the hallway. So let's give this deleted scene a listen. Ha ha! Oh, that's a good one, Moe!

Hey, where's my change? Get out. All right, who's the dork? To free this lock without a key, decipher well my riddles three. Digit the first. Ha! I'll open it for you dad i found a worse nursing home and i'm putting you in it did i say for fools oh well i'll talk to him next week

uh great i hadn't heard those homer feels more deserving of his explosion with the deleted scenes because it's not everyone's getting it it's not just parts well also you couldn't see in the clip mo points a gun at barney too so he doesn't just say get out he also puts a shotgun in his face as he robs him of his 20 dollars but i do love that that Martin he's basically wearing the mathemagician costume that shows up later in the show when he's trying to taunt Nelson with a lock over his locker that he has to unlock and then Nelson punches him once and Martin just gives it up that's great yeah seeing around town it just had to be money you can animate one of these pick which one they went with all the guys saying r which it is funny it is funny then in the script they actually were going to have a clip earlier this was going to be where bart watches the scene from itchy and scratchy where he gets his eyes knocked

out and they replace it with bombs and bart's watching it for an idea of like how to prank homer back but he decides he's, I don't have any bombs. The way they actually integrate that clip is so funny. It comes in people remembering Homer. And then Bart just says, I think there's one episode of Itchy and Scratchy we'll never forget. It's hysterical. I'm so glad that's how they ended up. It is great that by act three, it feels like the characters are tired of the premise.

Right. It was such an are tired of the premise. Right. It was such an amusing episode of our lives. Bart knows he's in a TV show at that point. It's really funny. And also in this next clip here, as Bart learns how to get Homer, this reminds me of how John VD is such a great writer and he took his inspiration or one of his early inspirations as a writer for a comedy was the Adam West Batman show because this thing Homer says here is exactly like a villain would talk

about themselves in Batman. Got to fool him before the day is out. But how? He must have a weakness. Ah, beer. My one weakness. My Achilles heel, if you will. Beer!

Beer is the cheese! But how to use it? Woo! It's a good thing that beer wasn't shaking up anymore, or I'd have looked quite the fool. An April fool, as it were. So yeah, I just love how he says, by one weakness, my Achilles heel. He states it right there for nobody.

He's alone. They're just saying it out loud. Again, the part is just handed it on a silver platter, even how he's going to prank him with the shaken up beer, which the way they build to it is also perfect. Though they head first to a hardware store, which Al Jean took from his real life. His dad, who passed away relatively recently, owned a hardware store growing up. And so he took the real paint can shaker from his childhood and put it in the show.

I found this very observational. When I would go to the hardware store with my stepdad, I would look at the paint can shaker and think, the things I could do with this if they gave me access. Why are people only shaking paint in that? It has so many other uses. That's why they only sell it to industrial license. It's just like why you can't just buy dynamite if you feel like it.

Well, now you tell me. And I related to Squeaky Voice Teen here here i was a big stridex pad user i had you know an acne problem i think a lot of a lot of people did at that age and yeah we i was a big stridex pad guy i was using that until i got an actual like medical cream given prescription cream for my right acne we were like the last generation before whatever that over-the-counter mega acne drug the kids can take today. I took that when it was under-the-counter. Accutane.

Oh, man. I was so jealous of you Accutaners. I just missed it. It was like a nuclear bomb on your skin, basically. If you survived the fallout, you were fine. There was something kind of satisfying about wiping with the Stridex pad and then seeing all the filth that it took off. You know, satisfying in the way that, like, looking at your Q-tip is. Yeah, it really stung.

And if you had any kind of, like, open wound on your face or tiny microscopic cut, you got a searing pain. Yeah, you know, just seeing that filthy Stridex pad was, I don't know, uniquely satisfying. Apparently, no one would ever send the Simpsons any free merchandise when they were name-checked on the show, but Stridex did send them free Stridex pads because of this joke. Wow. Oh, my gosh. I've heard it listed as the only thing,

which they were all men in their 20s and 30s. They maybe didn't need Stridex too much. I'm going to be 42, and it's still a problem. Can you still just go to the CVS and get Stridex pads? I haven't seen them in a while. I think they were found to be very harmful to your skin and caustic.

Not surprising. The Simpsons will be right back. It's the wildest night of the year. April Fool's. Thursday, Bart Simpson plays the biggest April Fool's prank of all time. April Fool's. And all-new Simpsons.

Then, if you like Martin, wait till you meet Jerome. Give it to me now, man. On an all-new Martin. And it's met on film. Well, touch me in the morning and then just walk away. In Living Colour, the first season. Then, Aldo's a handsome man, but is a woman? I'm kind of turning myself on.

And all-new Down the Shore. Thursday, beginning at 8 on Fox 5. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans,

EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricarland.ie. Welcome to the break, everybody, of an itchy and scratchy episode I don't think we'll ever forget. This is Henry Gilbert saying thanks to our guest this week, Jordan Morris, who's a guest we'll never forget.

It was super awesome having Jordan on. And don't forget to check out the Not Just His Podcasts, Free With Ads, and Jordan Jesse Go. But also his new graphic novel, YA horror comedy that just came out called Youth Group. Check it out. Pre-order it now or get it wherever you can get books. That's Youth Group by Jordan Morris. And we thank him so much for coming on. Love to have him back. And if you enjoy this week's podcast, you should know it's only possible thanks to the support of patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons.

Those subscribers for five bucks a month get so many things, including this podcast a week early and without any ads in them. You can hear next week's podcast right now if you sign up and with no ads. Plus, you get a huge number of exclusive podcasts we only release to the patrons. Each month, we do a new episode of Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill, us covering those shows just as in-depth as we do an episode of The Simpsons. There's over 150 podcasts in our back catalog covering all the previous Futurama episodes, King of the Hill, and every episode of The Critic, every episode of Mission Hill, and many of our favorite episodes of Batman the Animated Series. All of those are at your fingertips if you sign up at Patreon. being crushed by a candy machine then you need to sign up at the premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons ten dollar a month people get

all the things i just mentioned and then a super extra duper long bonus podcast us covering an animated feature film super in-depth in the what a Cartoon Movie podcast. For four, five, or even six hours, we talk about an animated feature film, super in-depth. This month, it's gonna be the Futurama movie, Bender's Big Score. We talk about how Futurama made its comeback in 2007 thanks to the support of a bunch of people

who bought DVDs. It is a fascinating story, and you're gonna hear all of it in a super-duper in-depth podcast. And last month, you would've heard us talking about teenage mutant ninja turtles the 1990 live action movie for six whole hours you gotta sign up today because you will hear those the new one each month that's basically three podcasts worth of content and then you also get the giant back catalog of over five years of them i would say over 250 hours by my estimate us covering so

many classic disney movies warner movies pixar movies the even crappy movies like cool world even the greatest even our longest podcast of all time who framed roger abbott for six and a half hours you need to hear it all for yourself please sign up today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons jordan do you ever get anything free at your writing jobs for jokes or references in shows oh you know you know, yeah. I guess we did a big thing. I worked on the original OG incarnation of At Midnight. And we did a thing for a stunt where we had everybody in the audience and at home spam tweets to the Cheesecake Factory. That was kind of a weird thing.

So we couldn't make fun of a lot of restaurants on the show there was a like network approved list of restaurants we could make fun of because they never advertised and one of those was the cheesecake factory so if you ever watched that show there were a lot of jokes about the cheesecake factory sabaro like you could just say anything you wanted but you could say the like sabaro pizza is poison and like they were fine with it but i mean i think if you watched it you're like what do these people have against sabaro they're just making jokes about it every night but yeah so we wanted to do a thing where we like spammed a corporate twitter account and we thought the cheesecake factory one was the funniest so yeah

i forget what and i think we had everyone spam the exact same message to the account. But whatever it was, they were super down with it and just sent over cheesecakes periodically. Like, they sent over a big thing of cheesecakes once, and then they would do it every couple months. I think they, like, loved it. I think it was, like, fun for them. And, oh, boy, you know, cold take, but try the cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. It's really good that's when twitter was fun it was for only harassing businesses not individuals yeah i know

yeah fun to harass the cheesecake factory not so much you know women or yes non-white people that also sounds almost like comedy central was running a protection racket of like you know we won't make fun of you if you advertise on our channel it was a little bit i mean i think it was exactly that it's like you were spared all of the weird tweets from at midnight fans i think the cheesecake factory leaned in and like had fun with it which i think was probably a good move on their part that's also funny because that sets up a behind the scenes secret on this episode a little later yes it's right around the corner first though there's another deleted scene instead of the stridex joke at the hardware store first off know that there is a sign gag that says wanna screw ask our cashier and lovejoy reverend lovejoy is looking at it, and then the employee says this to him. Double meaning? I don't see any double meaning.

Good Lord! Shake, shake, shake. Shake, shake, shake. Then kablooey. Then kablooey. I wonder if we could tell, did they have to pay for the use of that parody song on the animatic that played on the DVD? I wonder. Good question. Great question. A 2004 DVD money would have paid for that.

They would have cleared that just for the DVD. That's true. Oh, yeah. I would bet the Simpsons season four DVD had a bigger budget than most TV seasons on streamers right now. I would bet. I could probably confirm that for you then we cut to homer bart is waiting for him to get a beer and before i play the real scene there's another quick deleted scene so homer there's never a moment where homer decides to

get a beer in the original one of it like that explains. But he does see a different thing on TV. So I'll play the deleted scene first here. Good news on that fatal bus crash in New Delhi. The three Americans listed among the dead have now been identified as Australians. Woo-hoo! USA! USA! USA! Beer. Beer.

What are you doing, honey? Trying to get Dad to drink a beer drink a beer it's harder than you think that's a good line too it's hard like march can't believe it he's like it's harder than you think yeah i mean they certainly cut down on some like darker jokes yeah i don't know if it was part of why they were cut though the joke they added instead has a darker implication too but it seems entirely done to piss off beer advertisers right puff yeah or they risk defending them just because they wanted a gross joke in the show because there's a psa homer is watching it says excessive consumption of alcohol can cause liver

damage and cancer of the rectum homer reacts beer and that's when he goes to get the beer well s&p standards and practices had a big problem with this because number one the information could not be true possibly you know they didn't know that but number two beer is the one kind of alcohol that could be advertised on television so they could alienate potential advertisers so in order to get this joke on TV, they had to find a medical textbook that showed that beer can lead to cancer of the rectum and send that to the censors to get the joke approved. And even in its final form, it says consumption of alcohol will lead to cancer, not consumption of beer. Homer still says beer, but there was a long fight just for that very, very tiny joke. I don't know. Recency bias here?

I think this is maybe one of the funniest Simpsons jokes. I love how, like, plain that PSA is. I love how it's just someone saying it, that beer causes cancer of the rectum. It's not presented in any kind of creative way. And, yeah, I don't know. Mmm, beer. It's great. It's up there for me.

He just sees the picture of beer and thinks, I want a beer and tunes everything else out. Mike Rees says they could make fun of cigarettes all they wanted, but if they made fun of beer, they'd hear it from both beer advertisers or from beer advertisers complaining to the Fox marketing department and telling them like, hey, we're advertising Budweiser on your channel. And here you are making fun of beer saying that it's the cause

of all the problems in Homer's life. I also do love how Homer he's eating these pretzels that are making him thirsty. And he just says, eh, but what are you going to do? Like he simply will not stand up. He doesn't know you could drink liquid if you're thirsty so then i'd say the best animation of the episode which is when homer opens that beer it is like a flash like at first i thought i had oppenheimer on the brain but the actual original script references oppenheimer the historical person obviously not the movie that hadn't come out in for 30 years the simpsons could predict stuff i don't know they uh you know they're always predicting stuff he's got a point yes so in the original script

after homer opens the beer can and then it cuts away to the cops then it cuts back to the inside of the house you see all the damage which i can see why they would cut that to like well that sounds hard to draw or if we're trying to save money why are we going to design the inside of the house destroyed but homer is on the ground knocked out and behind him is the fallout shadow of a person who's been hit with a nuclear bomb of him opening the beer can and bart says i am become death the destroyer worlds like it's really there on the hey well there you have it before it became everybody's favorite catchphrase i think they didn't want to linger on the damage because when act one is over you forget the house's roof has exploded the like animation and the timing on that explosion are so

funny it's great yeah the way bart has it interrupted like bart also should be in a coma after this too and have his legs broken he's in the blast zone and yeah and also the shot of wigum running like a dog with his tongue hanging out i caught that it's an extra joke too that he says like a house exploded and he's like it's two blocks away and they're in a car he's too lazy to go two blocks in a car yeah there's some like wacko logic in here that i think is funny but also there's kind of like a i think lou says like there's beer coming out of the chimney and it's like what's one can of beer like but i think in the logic of shaking it up

not only do you cause an explosion but it like replicates the amount of beer that's in the can i don't know i do love the kind of weirdo cartoon logic of that yeah the house has exploded Homer's Leo Sayre record has melted oh yeah that was great too Leo Sayre and Bart killed a fish also so you know though that fish was gonna die anyway from the explosion though fortunately the other pets are fine after the explosion you know because it's my job I have to tell everyone out there that was his record Endless Flight which contains the hit single You Make Me Feel Like Dancing which Homer and and Barney sang, I Believe in the Way We Was. Oh, no. It's in the Homerpalooza one when he's remembering them being rocking guys.

Thank you. That flashback. Thank you. So clearly Homer's record. I love Homer's goofy AM radio from the 70s taste in music. That's always really funny. Well, now he's a millennial teen who grew up with 90s hip-hop the world has gone topsy-turvy not my homer so then we come back

into act two i'm not going to say every line they cut but the interesting thing is that in act two they did cut a few lines that are just again i think they should have kept it in bart they're going like i don't know how did it happen how did it happen and bart's like i don't know i don't know so bart is supposed to have a guilty conscience through this which makes the final scene you know have more emotional heft to it but they just cut it all like i guess if you keep it in there then it's not as funny to see bart not give a shit that he's in a clip show and just break the fourth wall. Yeah, that act break does a lot of work. You forget the house has exploded. You forget that a character should be asking,

why did the house explode? Yes. No one cares. The Simpsons, like, shouldn't be able to live anywhere for the rest of the episode, too. But yes, when we come back from the break, we get to hear Homer's diagnosis. Mrs. Simpson, I'm afraid your husband is dead.

April fools. He's very much alive, although I'm afraid he may never walk again. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Call me. March. Homer has many, many horrible problems. These shadows are brain lesions resulting from numerous blows to the head. And we're off to the races with our first clip, too.

Yes, clip package one has begun, the many blows to the head. Yeah, it is kind of interesting that in this clip show, we don't start the clips until act two. It speaks to how much good original stuff is in this clip show, we don't start the clips until act two. It's yeah, again, speaks to like how much good original stuff is in this episode. Can't recall if it was advertised as a clip show. I'm sure the title was published in TV Guide or your weekly TV insert. Can't remember if I was surprised by this turn in act two. As a kid, I vaguely remember feeling like after the first set of clips is when it hit me i think i

knew maybe what a clip show was but this episode is perhaps the first like time i really knew what a clip show was i mean i feel like saved by the bell had like eight clip shows or something so i probably saw this first yeah i feel like as kids the clip show usually happened when people would get trapped in an elevator or like yeah they're usually trapped somewhere i mean again making it cheaper you know having one location so yeah i'm kind of surprised they didn't use that convention or they're up in the attic moving around boxes and finding things yeah well when clerks the cartoon did their parody of it they were locked in the refrigerator isn't that like the second episode of that show they do a clip show about the first episode yes i believe they aired

it second but they didn't air the first episode first so when abc aired the clerk series they aired episode four and then episode two and then nothing else episode two the joke was we only aired one episode and all the clips are from that episode, but no one had seen the first episode, so it didn't work on TV. Yeah, that is really, really insane. And yeah, no wonder that show's not still around. And that is such an insane gimmick to do in your new TV show. But it's so funny. You really have to give them their props for that.

It's a great idea. I think it was really smart of them to keep the clips into the second act because at that point you're already invested. You're like, well, I've already watched it. So if you were going to be turned off at clips, you're like, you'll be like Homer. Like, yeah, what are you going to do? It's just like, what am I going to pick up the remote? I think I was very familiar with clip shows having watched like so much syndicated TV, so many reruns.

And they would obviously include the clip shows of the reruns. Like, oh, it's one of these. I know how this works. We find a photo album. We're in an elevator. There's a family sitting around reflecting usually that's how it goes but yeah i don't know if i was surprised or not but this doctor is a returning character from dog of death i believe he's unnamed but he's designed to look like the character ben casey from the show ben casey and when you see the establishing shot of the veterinary hospital you hear the Ben Casey thing I think

when he appears you hear the Ben Casey theme as well in this episode I guess I'm not familiar with that show or reference I'm guessing a medical drama from years gone by I believe we only know about it because of the Simpsons it was not a Nick at night hit it was from the 60s it ran 150

episodes but it stuck with these boomers enough to make this guy into events. You have to be retirement age to remember Ben Casey. Yes. Yeah. You know, I meant to say another great clip show was the ALF one. I've brought it up before, but it's because Gene and Reese wrote it and it's a full parody their framing of it is alf takes over the tonight show so it's just filmed alf sitting at johnny carson's desk and he plays clips and he froze to clips it's a really clever economical way to package clips together and you only have to pay alf to be in it the rest of the family doesn't even appear in the episode but yeah the clips in homer in order of homer's injuries it's from life in the fast Lane and Homer at the Bat, where both times baseballs hit his head.

You get two scenes from Lisa's Pony back to back, and then the Psycho parody from Itchy and Scratchy of Marge. I must insist, Henry, it's Life on the Fast Lane. You're on it. Well, yeah, hearing that Psycho theme in that clip really was a great reminder

of how, like, what pains they must have gone through to, like, get all of that music you know like the magnificent seven music like i don't know there's so many great little music cues in the simpsons over the years and especially at this time so like crazy that they got that psycho music which probably universal owned their music licensing is incredible when you think about i mean music licensing fees i also get the impression that in the 90s they were not even a tenth of what they are today. I've heard the reason is because music companies, they only have so many avenues for money these days.

And so they're charging way more for licensing songs for movies and TV shows. I will say that once we're out of Act 1, the framing device writing is not nearly as inspired. It's just setting up clips. But I do really love the doctor saying homer has many many horrible problems just so blunt and some of them calling it out many of them are unrelated to his current injury and as they're playing all of these clips then it's another good joke that marge goes i can't think of anything like no and then the one she can think of is after we see the no disgrace like home shock therapy scene which for a time

was one of the most famous Simpsons clips ever yes oh yeah that definitely was in season one probably the most famous scene in the Simpsons portion of that was in Die Hard 2 I believe and they just played that scene before Weekend at Bernie's as a little short in theaters. That's so great. I remember watching it and cracking up. Yeah, it didn't have the same effect now. I was kind of trying to figure out what was so funny about this at the time. Because it's not not funny now, but I don't know.

The better season one gag, I is like homer going into the bushes while he's hunting and coming out covered in those animals like to me i'm like hey that sticks as a pretty good joke i don't know the electrocuting didn't do anything for me this time in the year of our lord 2024 i think just the repetition of people being electrocuted and the funny drawings made it so snappy so unlike any other sitcom on tv in 1990 yeah and to see your sitcom family be so directly violent to one another over and over again in the age of like you know the cosby show it did feel very different at the time but yeah i was trying to remember why it was such a viral scene too but then the next one they show is i feel like the simpsons clip that quickly supplanted

the shock therapy the bartha daredevil cliff falling which i really feel like the Simpsons clip that quickly supplanted the shock therapy, the Bartha Daredevil cliff falling, which I really feel like is the most, they do a joke in like season 13 or 14 of joking they're going to cut away to the cliff fall. Then they're like, no, no, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing that. Yeah. I think internally it was one of the favorite things they had done. And there's a real Mandela effect thing going on with this clip because as it's presented it's

how you watched it in season two but then the bonus is that they actually animate homer's second fall down the cliff previously you just saw the kids watching and you heard the audio of homer you didn't see any animation of homer this time around they show you what happened to homer and i'm sure at the time in my head i thought well yeah I saw that a couple years ago I didn't know that I didn't know that was different oh my gosh and behind the laughter they reanimate it it's new animation right yes the second fall again as a kid I think I had the same feeling of like I mean I had it taped so I had rewatched it, but I was like, oh, was this there? And then later when the DVD came out, I thought this is a deleted scene from season two that they then put in here. But now I know from reading the script that the script calls out new animation of Homer falling down the second time.

So it was entirely intentional to mess with our brains it's also funny on the commentary because mike reese for no reason is calling out the completely forgotten 2003 movie the missing directed by ron howard and apparently the ending something similar happens in the ending and it's supposed to be harrowing but he assumes everyone is thinking of this scene from the simpsons it's also funny because he says i don't know why I'm making fun of a Ron Howard movie. I'm trying to get him to direct my movie, which I'm assuming that movie is My Life in Ruins, which is a rom-com nobody remembers.

Do you remember this, Jordan? I mean, I remember it existing. I forget why it is in my brain, despite having not seen it, but it is. It stars Nia Vardalos of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame. It's about going to Greece on a trip. It's inspired by Mike Reese's many vacations that he's taken and stars Richard Dreyfuss, produced by Tom Hanks

and directed by Donald Petri, who did Mystic Pizza, Grumpy Old Men, and Miss Congeniality. It's written by Mike Reese, huh? Yeah, he's done nothing but bad mouth this film. This is the only reason I know about it because I read a lot of Mike Reese interviews and it comes up and he's not very happy with how it turned out. Maybe that's why it's in my brain as well. I think maybe I read Mike Reese's book. I was just perusing the book again and I was like, oh, he has an entire page responding to the bad reviews of it and how pissed off he was.

That Mike Reese book is pretty wild. There's a lot of stuff that feels a little bit like filler, but it's done in a very charming way. It's a very charming book. It's fun to just see him pull out his enemies list. He's like, well, now it's time for a memoir. So hey, remember when you wrote this jerky review about my thing? Well, you did this.

Yeah, there's just a list of comedy movies he thinks you you should see oh yeah yeah it is a little listicle though i think my life in ruins could be good free with ads content jordan though i didn't see oh it's not free with ads on youtube you gotta pay to rent it they should be giving that come on free all right yeah i'm doing a new podcast with a great comic named emily fleming where we watch the weird free with ads movies that pop up on your youtubes and your tubies and yeah that would be a fucking great one um yeah if it ever pops up let me know we'll have you guys on to talk about it a forgotten 2009 movie actually the missing could be on there too like forgotten 2003 movie it was ron howard's attempt at like an old style western Western. Even the poster looked like a 50s Western poster, even. Yeah, Ron Howard kind of cranks them out.

He's got a lot of classics, but a lot of pretty whatever movies, too. Though we all love Solo. What a great movie that was. I'm a little bit of a Solo defender. I know there's some whack shit in Solo, but I think there's some good stuff, too. That's a hard argument to make. Solo is actually the Rotten Tomatoes score. Thank you. They do set up the vet just to then have another cutaway, which I do like that that

is written into the script, a reason for the cutaway. Marge recognizes him. This is when they learn he is a vet. In the script, he jumps out a window and rides off on a horse. I think the spaying deal is an improvement. Yeah, I think they discovered characters jumping out of windows around this time. It's happening a lot in mid to late season four. I can sense that instinct, you know. I guess Barney tries to smother Homer and then throws the water fountain through the window a la One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. So I guess that's kind of a window jump.

Well, you're right. In this very episode, there's a jump out of the window i was just thinking like oh yeah and homer's trip will bypass dr nick jumps out of the window but it's in this same episode maybe they're like we can't do two in one episode guys two in one act even i think oh also the vet just appeared in a recent season 35 episode he's in the night ofays. Really? Does he have a speaking role? Yeah, he's treating the chicken that gets hurt in the beginning of the episode, the emotional support chicken. Wow, okay. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And that's a very, I really like that episode. After that, we cut to everybody standing over Homer in bed. And yeah, this part feels framed like clip shows in live action of like one actor gets to just lay down and it's everybody standing in one place and they're like and i remember this and i remember this it feels made to get quick footage in an afternoon this really does like replicate what you think clip shows are which are you know cheap money savers and yeah this stuff and like how bare this hospital room is yeah not a lot of props in there. Not a lot of, you know, background characters coming and going.

Yeah, this is definitely where they saved their money. There will be no atomic size explosions in Act 2 and 3. No, there will not. They remember other times Homer was in trouble, like the Call of the Simpsons. I think that rabbit being flung is the funniest joke in Season 1. I think it might be. It's hard to, you know, Cressy gets busted. That's a very good jokes too.

But I think it's the silence of it. And also then the way Homer says in you step on him of just like, that's how they're going to kill that rabbit. Bart will stomp on his head. Yeah. I really liked revisiting that, that particular season one stuff. It was, it was a ton of fun. Though that is a pedantic child and as a pedantic man

i am still slightly bothered that they flash back to a fantasy sequence as like it happened yeah me too it's like that seems to canonize the treehouse of horrors it seems to suggest that the treehouse of horrors we see the kang and kodos trying to get hom Homer in a tractor beam and then having to use a second tractor beam. Yeah, the implications of this. I mean, I hope somebody got fired for that one. Well, later they make Kang and Kodos part of the world, right? That's true. I mean, I can see it's a funny clip. You know, with Lisa's clip, she says, Dad, I know you'll survive.

Remember that time you got stuck in the woods with Bart? And then we see the clip. This clip doesn't follow logically from the setup because Marge is like, oh, he's always had good coping skills. And then we see this UFO scene. I don't know how Homer is displaying his coping skills by being abducted by two tractor beams. That's true. Then Bart has the most helpful suggestion in our next clip. And there's one itchy and scratchy cartoon I don't think we'll ever forget.

Why'd you bring that up? It was an amusing episode. Of our lives. That's the unnamed cartoon that Marge is watching while taking notes during Itchy and Scratchy and Marge. So that's one of the few Itchy and Scratchy cartoons without a title, without a fun pun title. God, I just love how the way Bart pauses after episodes. He's given up. He doesn't care.

Outstanding delivery on that. Yeah, Bart's the MVP of this episode. In the original script, the cartoon Bart calls out instead, this rewrite is much better because in the original script, Bart calls out, and remember when Mom wrote that episode of Itchy and Scratchy? And it's the lemonade, please one, which is a funny one to cut to. But then Marge says, why'd you bring that up? Then Bart says, I thought maybe it'd help us forget our problems. But having a weird Itchy and Scratchy for no reason, I think is much better.

Yeah, I like that choice. Then the script cuts an entire scene that had no clip in it, which is everybody remember Flash Baylor, the isotopes player from Dancing Homer? Oh, God. Yeah. The seat they got that signed the ball for Marge? Yeah. Flash Baylor made a pass at my wife. Right.

Right. Okay. In the script, he shows up like Babe Ruth and visits sick kids. And he's shown Homer, and Homer asks him to hit a home run, and he goes like, I don't know, but Dave Shutton, the reporter, is there, and he feels pressure to do it. So when Flash does it, then they watch him on TV later, and he actually gets a triple, and then he tries to run to home plate to make it a home run and he gets tagged

out it's a good joke but it doesn't even set up a flashback to seeing flash baylor before that's not in the script it's just a baseball scene then we get a visit from barty and mo thanks for coming to visit me mo i uh brought you a little present no No! No! Beer bring pain! I can't stand to see him like this! He really needs a girlfriend i think it took three more times to see one flew over the cuckoo's nest parodies and cartoons to finally get me to watch it as a teen i was like god how is it in i feel like simpson did it like three more times and then the critic did it a few times there was an entire futurama where they traveled to the Cuckoo's Nest parody building. Oh, yeah.

There's a nurse ratchet, and she has a ratchet arm because she's a robot. I did want to point out, I'm getting a flashback in this flashback episode because in Homer's triple bypass, Barney and Mo visit Homer in the hospital, and Mo gives Homer a beer. Right. And he goes, that beer ain't free, you know, after he gives him the beer. You're right. So this is a beer. Right. And he goes, that beer ain't free, you know, after he gives him the beer. You're right. So this is a repeat. It's not a flashback,

but it's a repeat of the scene too, except now Homer doesn't want it. And Barney doesn't think Homer's getting a certain kind of operation anymore.

Oh yes, yeah. He knows why he's in the hospital. Barney thought before Homer was transitioning. Yes. And he approved of it. He had an open mind.

It was a progressive joke. Sure. A woke king before his time. Though I got to think Barney smothering Homer, that should have put him in the coma in the first place. Also, I wonder if they did it in animation, but they actually cut a line where Mo says from the script, you know I've always got your back, Homer.

Wherever you are, I am. And then it cuts to the flaming Mo's Mo fantasy where Mo's everywhere oh yeah that would have been a fun one to see yeah we do see a couple of like you know a treehouse of horror which arguably is a fantasy but yeah i guess we got the land of chocolate later and the bedtime thing so it is homer remembering things that happened in his head he really needs a girlfriend is also a perfect exit line for somebody they're really on it it's great emphasis then we have a little bit of marge and homer together which is just i have this tiny clip here because it's paced so weirdly i gotta think based

on the script i think they got rid of a cutaway here because it just is very flat after Marge says this. Oh, Marge, what if I wind up as some vegetable watching TV on the couch? My important work will never be completed. Society's loss, I suppose. But our marriage has been through hard times, and we always pull through. Yeah, society's loss, I suppose. I was just like, there should really be a cutaway

i wonder if that was supposed to be something else when i was watching it i was like yeah was that setting up like boy i don't know homer making the soapbox derby car or something and making wonder bad or something like i could see that being a clip instead we get more season one the fun officer and a gentleman parody and they paid for the real lift of where we belong that's the official name of the song by joe cocker and jennifer warrens an oscar-winning song from officer and a gentleman and also r.i.p louis gossett jr by the way they paid for that real song again that was totally over my head as a kid though when you see it in this episode you're again reminded like wow from season one

to just two when they do the psycho parody they get so much better at animating movie references like this is a fine movie reference but they get so much better at it yeah they still paid for the real song in this flashback which they don't do in the other part of the episode that was an expensive song when we get to it we'll talk about it when marge says we always pulled through they also had to cut away to colonel homer and the arguing over the your lifelong dream was to eat the world's biggest hoagie so they cut that bit too also i still laugh that homer is bragging he's gonna last 10 whole minutes in the backseat of the car with marge everyone's applauding they're applauding his stamina i love too and i think in our last episode that we did,

we talked about all the kind of wacko season one background characters that you never see again. This clip is all of them. Just like guys who work at the power plant who have these weird kind of flat designs. Yeah. That was a fun part of this is like getting to see some of that weird season one animation stuff without

having to like, you know, watch a whole season one episode even lenny doesn't look right he looks wrong yeah it's a relief to see lenny when you scroll past all of these season one nobodies who died shortly after yeah like oh i know that guy i know that guy folks go back on our patreon bob uploaded the video we did bob created an amazing video memorializing all those weirdos i forgot that i did that thank you that was that our show with jordan so then homer is failing at physical therapy and as we learn here people would succeed at physical therapy if they were promised chocolate that's the difference maker then it's all just an excuse to cut the land of chocolate because they know it's like one of the series high points.

It still is one of the best animated things they ever did. They want to cut back. This was the Pickle Rick of 1993. Then Homer gets up. He walks over to the vending machine. It crashes on top of him and he chokes seemingly into a blackout and maybe even death of chocolate all falling on him. I always forget that this episode contains two comas or just what he's injured. He doesn't get the coma from the explosion.

The coma comes later rather. No, it's poorly explained. Like the next scene starts with Homer just in a coma, but nobody says yes. After the chocolate fell on him, he choked and went into a coma no reference to that just you have to do the math yourself but you know they're taking it easy this week i get it they even milk a few extra scenes on just darkness of homer choking on a black screen so they don't even have to animate anything more there i wonder if those because i didn't notice those moments you know where there is a black screen and you kind of hear homer still alive

i wonder if that was a network note it's like we can't have them think that homer died i think i remember in some of those commentaries them explaining why when you see someone fall in a cartoon a lot of times you'll have that 80 yard i'm okay and i kind of wondered here if you kind of still hear him gurgling and going, mm, chocolate, because the thought of him choking to death before you go to a commercial is too intense. Yeah, and when Flanders failed, isn't there an act break fake out or something like that where Homer's choking?

It seemingly goes to an act break, but then comes back so Homer can stop dying. Yeah, yeah. You get to hear him swallow the thing inside. Yes, yeah. Okay, he swallows, yeah. Yeah. So we come back from commercial break and then

aljean actually brings up on the commentary an episode we'll talk about of happy days that we talk about in our next season four podcast it's the one where richie is in a coma and so they're saying that after he gets in a motorcycle accident yeah it's called richie almost dies i was looking into this apparently it's very famous for a monologue given by the Fonz. Those are all the clips I can find online. Hey, cop and a half director, Henry Winkler, right? That's right.

It's relevant. Oh yeah, fun connection, fun connection. Winkler was really going for his Emmy on that one, but I don't know if he got it. He just won an Emmy, what, a few years ago for Barry and well-deserved. Oh yeah, he's so funny in Barry. Oh, my God.

That show fucking rules. Great show. With all the streaming things, I was just thinking about it today. With all the streaming business stuff, but there's a thing. A plot point is somebody's show being canceled by algorithm the next day. And I was thinking about that recently with all the streaming news but so when we come back abe is looking over homer and he references a season 14 a song that happens as well the use of don mclean not don mclean don mclean vincent yeah vincent yes which is the song that ends

excuse me while i miss the sky which is a song about why usually i do make the outro song the song on the podcast but the lyrics in the song when i would have played it were about him talking about vincent van gogh's suicide and i was like i don't want the last thoughts on our podcast to be right after we plug the patreon some suicide lyrics to uh lull you to sleep i don't know you took your life as lovers often do. That's feeling you want people to leave a pocket. This is when Grandpa describes what a clip show is to the viewer. Poor Homer.

This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you. Ah! Kill it! Kill it! Grandpa, please. He's in a coma. Coma? Why I go in and out of comas all the...

French toast, please. Is a coma painful? Oh, heck no. You relive long lost summers. Kiss girls from high school. It's like one of those TV shows where they show a bunch of clips from old episodes. Yeah, well, anyway, I wonder what he's thinking now.

Oh, I love that Bart line so much, even though it's not clever, but I just love how Grandpa's giving too much away. He's too aware of what's happening. And Bart's setup for the next clip is just so pathetic. Yes, I wonder what he's thinking about, right? And also how Bart rolls his eyes like, yeah, well, anyway. I love anyway as a way to like toss something off. I feel like I use that in writing a lot.

Someone going, anyway. And it probably comes from this. That's probably why it's in my brain. I also love wrench toes, please. That's a great waking up thing to say. And then we cut again to Lisa's Pony, right? record it and use it on the show. This time around, they didn't feel like clearing it again because I assume it's very, very expensive. So Alf Clausen wrote a sound alike that is so close. It was only when we started doing this show that I realized that something was amiss. Yes. Here's the closing eight seconds of both of them. So you can compare it. Just appreciate how

cannily Alf Clausen updated this without having to pay the people who own the Beatles song rights. See, you barely even notice unless you listen to them back to back. Paul McCartney can't sue over that. They asked Alf to do a soundalike and he said, no problem. And he wrote for Alf, too. He actually did write music. Yeah, how crazy is it that Alf Clausen did the music for Alf? It's crazy. it's fucking crazy and aljean just reconfirmed this on twitter like the daily simpsons twitter account said this fact and aljean replied like yep that's true and it was that they

put golden slumbers in it and as aljean says they paid so much for golden slumbers in the lisa's pony episode he was sure it had to be the Beatles master. When he found out it was the song licensing right, he couldn't believe it. But they'd already paid for it, so they had to use it. And you can barely even tell it's Golden Slumbers. That's why they just did a sound like that. They should have just done in the first place to save, I would assume, you know, $120,000. Pitching a Beatles song usage probably doesn't go too far.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, anything music, I think these days it's cheaper to, like, do the sound alike than it is to, like, license any actual music. We heard that from our cartoon producing pal, Ian Jones-Quartey, he mentioned the like. And Toby Jones, too, they mentioned the like on regular show, for instance. They actually did have needle drops and licensed songs but then they said now it's way better use of your money to pay a composer just to do a new song that you can use forever i've actually been hearing even with non-famous songs songs are being removed from certain things like spongebob uses library music and certain songs are being yanked from

episodes because i guess they realized it was in spongebob and up the rates so yeah oh interesting i didn't know that wow that's nuts man i guess that spongebob's and this is something i didn't know until god who was i listening to talk about this i think that spongebob song sweet victory that is like the big meme of him, you know, it's kind of this arena rock song that he sings, was just like a library song

that they found. Maybe, oh, you know what? Maybe that was a C.H. Greenblatt thing. C.H. Greenblatt, my old boss on Jellystone. I think I was listening to him do an interview and he mentioned that.

So yeah, just wild that they found that like crazy, hilarious, perfect song just in a library. I forgot until you said that. I was like, oh, perfect song just in a library. I forgot until you said that. I was like, oh, right, he worked on SpongeBob, so he would know, wouldn't he? Yeah. Yeah.

By the way, his Peter Potamus is great, though I feel very attacked by every Peter Potamus scene. Yes, the classic Hanna-Barbera character Peter Potamus is now an anime nerd who cosplays and has an anime wife pillow. I don't have that yet. So you say. Maybe for your birthday. Somebody might be getting one for their birthday.

I liked his show, Chowder, very much. It should be more available. I don't think it is. Chowder's great. Yeah, Chowder's hilarious. He is a really available. I don't think it is. Chowder's great. Yeah, Chowder's hilarious. He hates Greenbottom. Really fun guy to work for. Totally brilliant.

Funny voice actor. He's one of those, like, you know, writer, cartoonist who is also a funny voice actor. Yeah, the dude does it all. He's great as Doggy Daddy, too. He is. He's really funny.

He's really funny. I mean, he does so many of those Jellystone characters, and I think they're all great. After all of these, the Beatles talk, now it's time for the most funny thing the american health care system and they just invented yoink not too long ago and it's showing up in every episode as well it's their new favorite word yes in our next clip mr burns shows up this man is costing my health plan $5,000 a day!

I demand that he die with dignity! Now look, I'm the doctor here. Well, I demand a second opinion. Hi, everybody! Hi, Dr. Nick! Oh dear, I see no signs of life. Just to be safe, we better pull the plug. Yoink.

Mr. Burns, how can you be so cold-hearted? You have no idea, woman, what that man's put me through. I feel an entirely intentional joke. Out of all the Burns scenes they could show, it's Homer asking for charity and being dragged away. That's what Burns is saying is what this man did to me. I don't know if we've covered this portion, though. A yoink is invented in Dufflis, correct, Henry? When Homer is taking the money that he saved from not drinking.

Then it's used in the next episode, Last Exit to Springfield. And now it's being used again in this episode. So we have three back-to-back yoinks. I mean, listen, yoink's iconic. I think if I thought of yoink, I would always be wanting to put yoink into things Jordan in writers rooms does like a mania come over you of like well we just discovered a great new runner like then it's like in the next like three scripts or three episodes oh you know god I guess me personally my personal style is to like when works, to kind of try and run far away from it for a while.

I don't know, that's just kind of like, personally I like sometimes bristle, like even when something works great, and I think it's like, I think it's to my detriment sometimes, sometimes I don't milk fun out of things. I don't milk fun out of something that still has fun milk inside it. But yeah, for whatever reason,

I think when something like hits and you can tell that it hits i want to like go the other direction i don't know something for me to work out in therapy i guess well if you discover yoink you're yoink put it in right in a row at least i will if i could be slightly critical i think they could have found a better clip of homer annoying mr burns this seems pretty on the low end of aggravation in terms of the amount of times they've interacted. Yeah. Also, they don't even pull a joke out of Burns actually remembering Homer here and knowing who he is. The $5,000 a day obviously is on the low end of how much a day in a hospital costs now. Also, I looked up, can your health insurance, employer health insurance end

while you're in a coma? And the results are too depressing. The sad thing I learned is the biggest example I found was that Kaiser Permanente got sued because they didn't do it to a person while in a coma. It was after they came out of the coma, I believe a Homer-style seven weeks, and then said, oh, actually, we found that you weren't insured. So can we, you owe us $70,000 now or whatever. No, actually it was 130. It was not. This settles it. I am never going into a coma.

Big fan of Kaiser. I'll tell you what, folks. I moved to a different country, but I still have to pay taxes to America and I needed proof of health insurance. You can't access their website from another country. Oh, cool. Another country is just Canada.

It's basically America. Come on, folks. Although I like that even though they know that Dr. Nick is an antagonistic doctor pulled in by Burns, everybody still smiles and says, hello. They just all greet Dr. Nick. Yeah, I like Burns doing it, too. Something kind of funny about Mr. Burns just smiling and going, hi, Dr. Nick. It seems like something he wouldn't do, but everybody's got to do it. And the sound Homer makes when he gets hit.

Clearly he is reactive. And also just to be safe, we better pull the plug. Hitting his stomach with a little rubber mallet is great as well. It's a nice little touch. Yes. After the dog of death scene, we get a quick little flash to Frank,

which does not cause a, nobody remembers a moment with Frank before. Like nobody goes, hey, weren't you the guy who had his son be in a little airplane that flew out the window or didn't you build a death ray? This also is more proof of boomers being obsessed with the movie Fantastic Voyage, why we saw so many parodies. And I'll tell you the one reason they're obsessed. Two words, Raquel Welch I forget that she's in the movie in a skin-tight outfit for the entire film and they have a lot of fun with that when they later do their own Fantastic Voyage parody in the teens season in Treehouse of Horror episode it's funny hearing him on the commentary say when this Fantastic

Voyage reference comes up Hal Jean's like oh we actually just did this in Treehouse 15, like they did. Except they go inside Mr. Burns. And yes, they also do the joke of Marge, her breasts are partially exposed in her suit. And Homer says that's what makes it a fantastic voyage. So they're still horny for Raquel Welch by Treehouse 15. Yet again, I had not seen this episode in so, so long. And these little things, this thing with Burns and this thing with Frank, these were kind

of new to me. I mean, as a guy who, you know, has much of The Simpsons memorized, it was kind of fun to see these things that read in my brain. It's like, oh, these are new clips. I don't know. Really fun. I like these little bits and they're great. They were fun to see.

I love the nerdiness of Frank saying the like, well, yes, you're going to have to go through this lower intestine, the drawing of it Frank saying the like, well, yes, you're going to have to go through this lower intestine. The drawing of it going through the butt as well. Then when Futurama did their Fantastic Voyage, they did the same joke or a similar joke. Fry opens his mouth and then Farnsworth says, try again, I believe is how the joke goes. I actually think it's mandated that every cartoon do a Fantastic Voyage parody I think I mean it's an easy parody it's fun 2005 they never remade it as far as I know they never remade that film how as a kid I always wanted to ride the Disney ride Body Wars which is basically just a rip off

of Fantastic Voyage but also Star Tours it's like Star Tours meets Fantastic Voyage and it's been closed for a while now you can't write it I swear the drawing of nude homer that's a david silverman drawing if i ever seen one that they just put on oh yeah that chart is really funny that chart is a fun little piece of like original art for the show i yeah i like that too so then we're nearing the end here lisa is already she thinks homer's dead like she's saying in the past tense, I'd wish I'd gotten to know you more. Like that's an extra little tinge of sadness for me here. Despite this being a goofy clip show that is beginning to not take itself seriously,

they are trying to get actual emotion out of you with the setup and the clip. And then Lisa playing a joke-free song she wrote for Homer. Yeah. They show the clip from One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Bluefish, which also out of context, Homer just seems to be a very depressed person who just starts sobbing

out of nowhere. When you know the context that he thinks he's about to die in like 12 hours, it makes a lot more sense. I'm such a sucker for the Homer-Lisa relationship. I think it is so sweet and unlikely, and I think that they do such a good for the Homer-Lisa relationship. I think it is so sweet and, like, unlikely, and I think that they do such a good job with it. And, yeah, this does come out of nowhere. Yeah, it does not, like, hint it at that Homer and Lisa are, like, drifting apart or anything like that. It works on me.

And, you know, anytime Lisa's playing the sax, I'm loving it. This worked on me. It's a sweet song, and it's nice that it goes from one sax scene to another to a fresh one i get this moment slightly confused or not totally similar to her playing music with bleeding yams murphy when he's also dying in the hospital like homer is here they also from the script they did have another flashback of lisa and homer on the couch together and lisa the greek as another like Homer and Lisa memory so then it's time for Bart to visit Homer and Bart cuts to so many things at once here he first cuts to the Indiana Jones parody scene from

the opening of Bart's Friends Falls in Love we've been talking about Lucasfilm a little bit here I was just thinking about it too because I somebody gifted me a nice little poster my husband's co-worker it was 50 years of Lucasfilm was the poster. And it's posters of every theatrically released Lucasfilm movie. And that includes Twice Upon a Time and More American Graffiti and Tucker. Like all of these forgotten things. Only Conor Ratliff George Lucas ever brings up as George Lucas movies. Apparently David Silverman, very famous director on The Simpsons.

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. We care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part.

Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? He had his own kind of college show that he would put on when he would be invited to speak at places. Like, here's a bunch of fun clips. And I think a lot of what's seen in here was taken from his show just oh david played this and apparently he had a much longer doe compilation that he had come up with on his own that was much longer than what's featured here the doe montage is fun in concept though when i see they have repeats in it i'm like oh man you could have others in here maybe

it was like a weird licensing thing or something i don't know and you know this is my logic thing with this bart didn't cause all those does there's a lot of does in there about other things the kind of premise of the setup is bart saying like i'm sorry i you know was a pain in your ass didn't say that but something like that so yeah i don't know to me this absolutely doesn't work well what's up with the licensing thing henry does dan castaneda need to sign off on every doe like i'll give you eight of these i just wonder if it's like oh you can't use one from every episode or something or maybe it was harder to get the footage from it i'm just curious why they wouldn't use actually every dough like and in season four it wouldn't be that long to do a video of every dough ever if you were to make now, it probably would be like five hours of every dough

ever. I think they're just trying to cut corners where they can to make a faster episode. And if it means repeating five doughs, they're going to do it. You know, I think it's the next clip show where they do the montage. I think that one works a little better. I like that one better. Then Bart also says, and I've gotten in trouble, which it's him being bullied, which I do not count as getting in trouble. The scene from Bart the General. Right, right, right, right.

Though in the original script, they also cut to when all the mobsters point a gun at Bart in Bart the Murderer and Bart falling down a well from Radio Bart. But here it's just one scene. And again, a season one that still it looks really weird when you see it next to all the other season two and three stuff him coughing up his hat though still very funny yeah then we get a quick reuse of the three men

in a comic book lightning scene which they already reused this season a few episodes ago tonight on wings uh who cares who cares? That's it. That's it. Yep. Okay. You passed the test, Jordan. You remembered. Thank you.

We'll keep this podcast going. Wow, you guys would have canceled the podcast if I would have gotten that wrong? Deleted. Oh, you just would have dumped me off the call and then continued without me. Hang up on him. I can't see what you were getting at. Yeah.

No plugs. No plugs. No. Yeah, cut out the part where he talked about his book also originally when bart says i'll never forget the advice you gave me it's a funnier montage where they cut to the times homer gave terrible advice like being popular is the most important thing in the world and if something is hard to do it's not worth doing i think they wanted to be emotional here i suppose so that's why they used the one from blowfish but i'd have preferred the bad one yeah makes sense based on what you said is that there was something kind of cut out a little

runner about bart being guilty about all this and i think that makes the emotional stuff in this make a little bit more sense it does kind of come out of nowhere but yeah i think you're probably right i think they picked that clip based on that other stuff being in the show well now you've seen so many clips and on top of that first you thought homer couldn't walk again and now unrelatedly he's in a coma you are so far from april fool's day and the beer exploding when bart says it even when you're watching it with a close eye you're like right right but bart admits it was an april fool's prank and that is what finally it is a good joke in the clip show that all of these happy memories can't stir homer out of his coma but anger at bart to make him strangle him that's

what brings him out of the coma and a good visual gag of his ekg turning into bart's head too yeah that's funny and you, we recently had some discourse about the strangling of Bart Simpson. A lot of it was in bad faith. A lot of people saying the Simpsons is woke now. And then the Simpsons gave a rebuttal saying, Bart will still be strangled. Don't worry about that.

On this commentary from 20 years ago, Matt Groening protests this strangulation in particular, where he says his rules for the strangulation of Bart are, it has to be impulsive and it can't be prolonged. And here he's saying, well, I don't like this because it's lasting far too long. And I don't think this is funny. But, you know, Algene is defending it. I think the humor is that it's happening while the family is celebrating and he's just not focused on the fact that he is now awake and alive but yeah macraening he always had like certain rules about the stranglings that were altered

over time to find new strangling jokes i think he also kind of objects to like the intensity of seeing it in first person too he's like wow first person strangling first time we did that feel like homer strangling his son. Right, yeah, it's like the beginning of Halloween. You are Michael Myers. Strangle who I strangle. It is a funny tableau of Homer still strangling Bart while Lisa says, we're a family again,

and then the rest of the everybody hugs. So then we've got one last april fools prank from homer as they wrap up the episode this calls for a celebration we're all going to hawaii gotcha it's april fools for two more minutes dad it's may 16th you were in that coma for seven weeks uh-huh. You lost 5% of your brain. Me lose brain? Uh-oh.

Why I laugh? I love me in place of I. Gets me every time. This episode and the previous one both end with the family laughing in a medical facility and then cutting to black. The last one is the dentist leaves the gas on. Oh, yeah. This time, Homer, I feel like his caveman talk is to say he has lost part of his brain like he is dumber now than before right though his body should have atrophied too i just love how everybody nods like yeah it's may 16th that is a great ending of like

what you've watched in this clip show did not happen in one day period like this was over a series of weeks that you have been watching is there like a fan theory that this is maybe why homer started getting dumber over the course of the show because i think this is around the time people kind of started talking about that of like yeah is he too dumb is the fact that like he lost that little part of the brain is that an explanation well jordan the simpsons predicted it thing is very annoying what came before that were simpsons fan theories that the show had to address and one of them was right that homer has been in a coma since the early 90s yes that this was it and he never came out of it and the fan theory was and that's why episodes got crazier after this one right yes they knew they're like let's

make the show crazier but how will we explain it i'm sure they had that conversation and it was plenty crazy before homer got in his coma too a better fan theory is what you said jordan that like oh no homer losing five percent of his brain is why he's dumber episodes after this one and he gets dumber every season you know al jean even has been asked that and he's likeumber episodes after this one and he gets dumber every season yeah no al gene even has been asked that and he's like no of course not i have a quote from him given to tmz in 2015 he says quote it would mean back in 1993 we would presume the show was going on for years and years more and right before we left through this hidden monkey wrench in for all of our successors that's a great reply but now we've seen so much simpsons

predicted it i would prefer the return to fan theories the bart is dead fan theory all of these things over just oh trump predicted by simpsons again that kind of right is it ralph's father or nelson's father one of those yeah ralph ralph ralph yeah ralph eddie the cop is ralph's father just because of their design bring back back the theories. Those are fine. Trying to figure out how all the Pixar movies are linked. I don't know. Nobody is putting the theories in their manifestos. They're putting the predicted stuff in their manifestos. Let's get back to the repetitive fan theories, guys.

Yeah, the show would deal with this themselves, well, in multiple episodes, but in the fake clip show episode of all new clips that they did last season where bart and lisa pretend they're gonna compete to be boy scouts but actually then it's just a bunch of fake clips in that one it's that homer's been in a coma since he fell into the gorge in season two to end with the laughing two episodes in a row is very strange also it's presented so flatly in just this hospital waiting room it feels designed in a low budget sense too we go out on a laugh and then silence too when homer goes why i laugh and they just quiet over the credits and then the song

for a clip show obviously it's the other two acts are mostly clips so there's still some funny stuff in there if they are deciding to do a clip show this is them trying though of course yeah the best clip shows 138 i think a good clip show yeah i agree henry if this is done out of necessity this is fine work for how overworked they were as jordan was saying some classic jokes do come out of this but like you were saying henry i do prefer the 138th episode spectacular because it is so vicious about this mandatory clip show premise. But it also showed you things that in 1994 or 95, you couldn't see anywhere else. And there was a lot of value in that.

The deleted scenes, the Tracy Allman stuff. There's some really, really funny jokes in the framing material in that one as well but yeah this good attempt the other ones up and down I think in terms of quality Jordan any final thoughts on this clip show uh yeah no I was a real treat to have an excuse to re-watch it thank you thank you for asking me to do this it's awesome and yeah if this is one that you I think if you're watching this show you're probably a like Simpsons in the background person. I'm a big Simpsons in the background person. And yeah, I've been skipping over this episode for years, but yeah, maybe put it on if you're looking for a, you know, end of the night Simpsons, something when you're opening mail. I don't know. These are things I

like to do while I watch the Simpsons, but yeah, definitely check it out. It's so funny and you might see some gags that you kind of forgot. I definitely did. Thank you so much for being on the show, Jordan, for joining us once again. Please let us know more about what you're working on, your new graphic novel, Youth Group, and your new podcast, Free With Ads. Yeah, I'll tell you about all of that. Starting with Free With Ads. I host that with a great comic named Emily Fleming, who you might know from the Good Mythical Morning YouTube-averse. And yeah, we watch weirdo movies that we find on Tubi, YouTube, Pluto, et cetera. So yeah, we've done Grease 2, we've done Over the Top, and we're about to do The Godfather. So yeah, runs the gamut. Yeah, you can watch The Godfather for free on YouTube right now. So hot tip for all those classic movie fans. And yeah, and I'm really stoked about Youth Group. Again, it is a wacky horror comedy about teenage exorcists.

There's lots of jokes. There's some teen feelings. There's a little bit of romance. Art by the great Bowen McGurdy. And yeah, if it sounds like a cool book to you, please consider giving it a pre-order if you're listening to this before July 16th when it actually comes out.

You can go to bit.ly slash youth group book, bit.ly slash youth group book. And yeah, check out some of the art, get those pre-order links. And yeah, I'm really stoked on it. I'm really proud of it. I hope people check it out. It's always great to have on, you know,

somebody who we've had on for a live show and then also, you know, one of our podcast forefathers from Jordan Jesse Goh all the way back. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. You are my sons and I bless you. I feel like we did not bow low enough when Jordan joined the call. You didn't,

you didn't. It was, uh, I noticed it. I clocked it. I didn't say anything cause I'm classy, but I noticed it. But thank you so much,

Jordan. Yeah. Thanks for having me. This is so much fun. Thanks again to Jordan Morris for being on the show. Please check out his new podcast free with ads and his upcoming graphic novel youth group but as for us we want to check out more of what we do and get 150 plus bonus episodes all full length head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up for just five bucks a month and when you do you'll unlock nearly seven entire years

worth of bonus content shows about futuramaama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, and The Critic. And that five bucks a month also gets you regular monthly access to new episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill. And that is all happening at the $5 level only at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that you can access all the five dollar stuff naturally but then you can also access one extremely very very big podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob is talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast our premium animated feature film

discussion we do each month for ten dollar and up subscribers. Last month, you get to hear us talk about the first Futurama movie, Bender's Big Score, the direct-to-DVD return of Futurama, and that's just the most recent one. The month before that, we covered for six hours 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action film. We have done over 65 What a Cartoon movies, some as long as six and a half hours we had covered a ton of pixar movies a ton of disney renaissance even japanese animation like porco rosso and akira everything right there including six and a half hours about who framed roger abbott our longest podcast ever you should check out everything you're missing on that level and the $5 stuff at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And as for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo and on Blue Sky as Bob Servo as well. And hey, anywhere you go, type in Bob Servo, you'll find me. And my other podcast is called Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Retronauts and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. And Henry, what about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Also that on Blue Sky and I'm Talking Henry on Instagram.

And if you want to follow a social media account to stay in the loop on when things go live for our podcast and all the related stuff follow at talk simpsons pod on all of those places at talk simpsons pod and head over to talking simpsons.com to see a list of all of our previously released free episodes and we also have a ton of our episodes officially on youtube now subscribe to the at talk simpsons pod account on youtube thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast. Talk to the audience and we will see you next time.