Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Special Edna With Scott Gairdner

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

As The Simpsons head to EPCOT for a special episode, we welcomed back Scott Gairdner, EPCOT lover/writer/actor/cohost of Podcast: The Ride! Not only do we dig into all of the theme park trivia that's stuffed into this ep, we also discuss the complex love affair with Edna and Skinner, special guest stars who might not read scripts correctly, and tons more. So grab some pie and listen while waiting to board Spaceship Earth! 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 more inspiring than great moments with Mr. Eisner. I'm one of your hosts, the Learning Derby winner, Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? As always, it's Henry Gilbert, and I welcome pissed-off Catholics. And who is our special guest on the line? Scott Gairdner is me. Hi, I'm from Podcast The Ride, and I'm happy to talk to you guys again. Hey, Bob. Hey, Henry. And this week's episode is

special Edna. Well, if I may dust off an old chestnut. Ay caramba. Ay caramba indeed. This episode originally aired on January 5th, 2003, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my god! Happy 2003, Bobby. This episode is slightly delayed by an NFL wildcard playoff game. The Catch Me If You Can fails to catch up with Lord of the Rings Two Towers at the box office. And Joe Millionaire debuts on Fox.

So a big week for 2003 culture. Yes, the Joe Millionaire. Didn't they reboot that recently? I believe the concept is it's a guy who pretends to be rich in a bachelor style dating show and then at the end he reveals he's not rich and the test is will his the woman he picks still want to stay with him i think that was the premise of the original uh series the surprise premise i think so i think so i feel like i vaguely recall that original the original joe millionaire was like a pseudo-celebrity for a second.

That's really your only hope of celebrity. If you're in the first season of something, then maybe you could be kind of a star. But then if you're on like season 15 of The Voice, it's a tougher road. You got to do something really extreme to be memorable on those. Yeah, gimmickry has to abound. Some crazy hair, some crazy braids that don't work on you but people remember them catch me if you can i remember that being a pretty good movie it does spielberg dicaprio hanks movie the soundtrack and it was really great i recall and also as a comic

book nerd back when the flash was like not a horrible horrible thing everybody knows about now but back when it was just like a fun comic book there's a twist in the movie of like oh we know this uh the the liar in catch me if you can he must be young because he's using names from comic books like barry allen's the flash and back then i was like wow only i know this about the flash instead of like everybody knowing who barry allen is that he's very well obviously it's's Barry Allen mania here at the end of Flash Summer. I read that there was some article that said that the value of old Flash comic books is now down because the movie left such a stink. It like cratered the Flash economy. Retroactively ruined the value of Flash things.

That's very impressive i think if we just pull out to see the macro view of the world economy the flash was devastating to all of us just there's going to be a dip the two weeks it was basically relevant in theaters there probably is some cause and effect like somehow our lives or finances are made worse by bread costs more now for some reason i don't know why but it's ezra miller's fault well no barbenheimer wiped all that out guys all that's gone now we don't even remember that yeah hopefully we will it'll be a historic boom for the entire world economy and now every other movie is getting delayed to next year so they're the only movies we have to think about the rest of this year yeah they're gonna have to keep these in theater like okay everybody likes

barbenheimer all right well uh enjoy it in 18 months when these still the only movies in theaters yeah you know the two towers still doing great i think uh scott you famously have not watched um have you not seen this one uh no i did say this on our podcast once that i only have seen some of the first lord of the rings on a school television a four by three tv with the super widescreen squish the opposite format you should watch it in so i think i got poisoned i saw it in the worst speak of christopher nolan he's very picky about how you see his film that was the worst possible screening of lord of the rings so i i got a lot of work to do i know they're good i should see him so 2003 was the two towers or is it the last one christmas 2002 was two towers and this is just being left okay christmas i didn't see the last one and i forget what it's called

beyond the middle rings what oh return of the king okay yes yeah meanwhile i saw it opening day after watching a in-theater marathon of the two extended editions though i was working at a movie theater then this is prime henry works at a movie theater era for me wow did you like feel ill by the end of that you don't feel great sitting that long and also when you watch the extended editions on the big screen instead of with the ability to pause you're like you know what these are too long especially return of the king is too long in the extended edition that's like i think 415 not counting the credits oh my god wow madness but uh joining us today is scott gerner of podcast the right of course scott is here because this is a uh tribute

in big quotes to epcot center and all of its wonders or shall i say blunders all right yeah thank you for allowing me to represent epcot center and speak on epcot center's behalf in the face of a somewhat critical episode i don't know if i'd call it a pro epcot episode although i think some of the jokes are done with Epcot love. When I was thinking, like, who have we had on before who's the biggest Epcot fan? And I think of you, Scott, especially the, you know, Epcot's becoming something different now, but the very 1982 feel of OG Epcot, I think, is a very Scott Gairdner style. I'm so happy to have you associate that with me.

It definitely, it is an aesthetic and a place that speaks to me a lot. Henry, as you and I were DMing, it seems like we had similar Epcot arcs where it's not necessarily born from a childhood love of Epcot because as a child, I could see some of what this Simpsons episode is saying, that it's a little boring and the educational aspect of it overrides fun sometimes, and even the education isn't always the most successful, and the weird corporate overlord nature of the sponsorships at Epcot Center. I saw that as a kid, and I recognized that. And that was your take, Henry, too? This is the boring

alternative to Magic Kingdom where my favorite characters live exactly the quick version of this that listeners maybe have heard me tell before but I didn't get to go to Magic Kingdom until a few years after I went to Epcot and this is a kid complaining about getting to go on a class field trip to Epcot but I grew up in Florida and so we could go on a holiday field trip to epcot but i grew up in florida and so we could go on a holiday uh like class field trips for the year would be to theme parks and it was insisted that we'd go to epcot because it was educational and we wanted the kids to learn something and especially if you're in epcot knowing that you're this close to magic kingdom that you've never been to before but you can't go like that that is very upsetting

and especially because like i didn't care about other cultures i was like i don't care i'm in france or whatever and and so yeah i i was very negative on it the first time and then once i became more of a parks person when i visited epcot in 2014 as a man in my 30s that was when i was like i actually love eating all the food in all the different countries i like the ancient musty 80s aesthetic of it and because kids hate it this has the fewest kids in it so i can like eat fish and chips and not be surrounded by a bunch of kids oh and also when i went there to epcot one day the one thing i was like well i can't do star tours which i never got to do in old version.

I never got to do old Star Tours. But I was like, well, they got Body Wars here. We can do Body Wars. But no, Body Wars was closed that day. I couldn't even do the fake Star Tours. You couldn't even do the Star Tours where instead of space, you go into a human bloodstream. And it's a ride that made people pass out

because it's kind of disturbing in its very realistic depressing depiction of anatomy it's kind of my journey with epcot and my wife's journey as well she's definitely somebody who like went as a kid was like boring i don't want to come back here and i kind of caught up to it a little bit before her and i got to share the magic with her i think it all clicked with me i did a family trip kind of around when this episode aired, I think in 2003. And I was like, all right, wow, great. Disney Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom, excited for those. And I'll do Epcot. I guess I'll go. There's a ride or two I haven't been on. And then the magic of it really set in for me on that. I just started going like, boy, this is weird. I've never stepped back and thought about what a weird place Epcot Center is yeah it's this vision of the future but also at this point

it's time travel to the early 80s it does feel like you were literally going back at that point 20 years I don't know how long been F40 and um it's it's just like it's profoundly odd that a place that you associate with like fantasy and fairy tales, that now they have this place with just big, scary, monolithic buildings and rides that are almost abstract in their level of like length and darkness. And what are they even telling us here? Like, I mean, for any listeners who haven't been to Epcot Center you know if you know pirates of the caribbean this i get all right so there's a ton of animatronics and it's like going into the world of pirates and now in epcot center there's rides where there's double the animatronics of pirates of the caribbean but it's to tell you about the history of transportation and it's's not like, you know, chasing people around and lighting fires.

It's like, you know, what if a buggy crashed? And like, what did scientists in the late 60s look like? And let's see Leonardo da Vinci doing his early works. And like, it's so insane. The level of money and detail put into these like not kid friendly. Some of these Epcot rides feel like the equivalent of like Barry Lyndon or something just like a like a big ponderous serious like you know no no this is not about fun this is an experience and you're gonna think and you're

gonna escape for a ride that takes 15 minutes and that's very dark I don't know I think the oddity of all this just washed over me around 2003. And then I started getting obsessed with it. The aesthetics of Epcot Center, I truly believe in and still believe in. And it really influenced my show, Moonbeam City. I just really wanted to make a world of like big, weird orbs.

And that's kind of future by way of 80s. So I remember getting to like turn my wife on to all this, that she's like, Epcot, Epcot sucks. And I'm like, well, but do you know there's a weird thing about it? And the old logos are cool and the old fonts are cool. Awakening as an Epcot fan has provided me so many thrills aesthetically and like fun with friends and meeting people who love that aesthetic too.

It's just, it is a true passion of mine. Hopefully I've kind of conveyed why. Well, I've been very silent because I have not been to Epcot. I've not been in Florida at any point in my life. A guy who has, though, is Al Jean. So this episode is based on Al Jean's axe to grind

with Epcot Center. He talks in the commentary that he and his writing partner, Mike Reese, were there on the ground floor the year that it opened, 1982. They were there like when it was new. And Al Jean's comments are, it was so lame and everyone was so angry we thought they were there like when it was new and al jean's comments are it was

so lame and everyone was so angry we thought they were going to riot he he like just felt it in the air was palpable the rage at how lame epcot was and then uh speaking of complaining about free trips henry al jean when he worked for disney before he works for disney now he would get the annual pass as a disney employee and uh he was busy being a showrunner and all that other stuff. So he could only take his kids to Disney World during the holidays. And Disney, the Magic Kingdom was always full. So he would always have to take his kids to Epcot Center. And they began to resent him for it by the second or third time.

They would say, are we actually going to Epcot Center again? So maybe his thoughts have changed. Maybe we'll see Simpsons go to Epcot Center again so maybe his thoughts have changed maybe we'll see Simpsons go to Epcot short on Disney Plus in the future but yeah he is not a fan of Epcot Center which is why the parody is so thinly veiled he really wants you to know no this is what I hate do not be confused it's Epcot wow yeah no you feel the rage look I can't pretend this stuff isn't real i know that there is this reaction i know that kids of a certain age went there and and and were bored by it i had that as a kid a little bit but i think if you it just has to hit you in the right way you know it's not

dissimilar from one of my favorite bands steely dan i like it can be a little bit challenging you know i think i first heard of steely dan and like oh he's like big indecipherable lyrics and the songs are seven minutes and maybe that sounds and then at a certain age i was like this is the greatest thing ever and i will never stop listening to this and plus both epcot and steely dan pair very well with wine so you put all that together and you've got a nice rest and you realize these things are more accessible than you think i don't know if it'll ever hit aljean but i actually think it's like the most likely to be your favorite park as an adult i think that might be true for you bob if you ever make it down there definitely a turn for me in my epcot love was being of legal drinking

age that that is for sure it's important You cannot discount in theme park world, like the park where you can drink. And like California Adventure, which had a really bad rap and was pretty bad, I feel like when it opened, that became like, well, one of the only bits of appeal for a lot of people is that you can drink there as opposed to Disneyland proper. And that there is this little wine area that's very charming. And that like the rides kind of like Soarinaring feels like a wine tour of a of a ride now there's so much more to now california adventure i think is a great park but i feel like that was you know the the uh the wind that it sails to victory on i think a lot of it was fueled by hey but you can drink it goes a long way it

goes a very long way one of my my favorite Podcast Riot episodes, most informative for this podcast too, was you're one of Epcot's Impressions de France with Matt Warburton. Yes. Who's also present on the DVD commentary for this one. Oh, gotcha. And you guys ask him like, oh, what? Simpsons had a real axe to grind with DCA when it was brand new. And he's like, that was Al Jean.

He really hated it in the launch and we put in multiple jokes in there mocking it like al jean is a big parks guy but i think an angry parks guy but he wants his basics he doesn't want to be challenged and he yeah what you said the joke was i don't remember the episode but it's it is there's there's something lame and then does lisa they're in a prison and lisa says still beats disney california adventure the whole family goes like haha yes oh wow well that's a big well you know hey it was a rough start for that place as opposed to a boy you know i also i kind of hate the opinion that it was horrible in 82 because i would go like give me a time machine i think one of the first things i do is go see fresh new epcot

center in 1982 when i fell in love with the aesthetic there are these videos and t-shirts and posters that you can get with these just cool stripes and it is this just very dramatic almost kubrick-esque like uh view of space and spaceship earth, the big, you know, the ball, the emblem of Epcot. And the very dramatic phrase, the future begins October 1st, 1982. I am in love with that phrase. Ever since any art I've seen with that, I'm like, I want to know how that felt.

If you bought into that and you were there in October 1982, were you like just blown away, like blown back by emotion? Or did you hate it like aljean i don't know apparently if you recently got out of harvard not impressed not impressed at all that might be the rule you've outsmarted it i'm too smart for i know about real culture i don't want to see the fake europe i also you know what's interesting with me too is that um world showcase is not really the full deal for me i i'm so much more future world oriented than World

Showcase. Future world being, you know, there's like the future, it's two parks in one. There's the big futuristic area, and then there's the tour of the nations kind of area. And I like that, but that's never been the appeal for me. And I could see if you were snarky about Epcot saying like, oh yeah, so people don't, you know know actually go to europe because they just go to the little fake europe i i that's a snooty thing to say but i guess i could understand if you were a little snobbish oh it's this cheap stucco mini golf course version of europe instead of the real thing but also shut up i don't know it's like everybody should go to real europe and go to fake Europe. Do it all.

I think there's room for all of it. For high and low. And apparently another inspiration for this was that Al Jean heard that they held teaching awards at Epcot. According to my research, it only happened there one year in 1993. But for a, I think, like 13 or 14 year period, Disney had something called the American Teacher Awards. And Scott, I know you probably love getting unsolicited podcast subject matter, but the Disney Channel did air some of these in full on their network. And one of them is on YouTube and it is as long as the Oscars.

Wow. Oh my God. That's insane. There are musical numbers. It's a big production, but it is still the American Teacher Awards. Yeah, I skipped around. Is that the 1992 one, Bob? musical numbers it's a big production but it is still the american teacher awards yeah i strange i skipped around and is that the 1992 one bob because i skipped around a little in that too uh the 1991 is the one i saw like everything is preserved all the commercials are there but it is

a three hour running time for this teaching awards they truly had nothing else to run on that network that you were paying for in 1990 i guess there was a lot of like as with all early cable channels i know there was a lot of like repurposed canadian content i've heard the show under the umbrella tree a very canadian feeling kid show the disney channel i feel like was doing a lot of repurposing so like yeah i guess if we're gonna make an original award show just stretch it out make it long and air it uh 12 times this month i remember that being on the disney channel and thinking that seems boring so i have never pursued it sounds very fascinating though i think joey lawrence might have hosted one of them is that the who was on your one henry i

saw a getty image from the like step and repeat of that so the 1992 1992 one that I saw, it's a full two hours only. They must have shortened it by 92. But it was famous as, we'll talk about this later in the season, but you may remember on the Krusty Gets Cancelled one, they mentioned how, like, this was one of the last times Johnny Carson appeared anywhere and spoke. And the other one was this award show in 1992. Johnny Carson appears at it.

That's bonkers. Like not even a year out from retirement. They got Johnny Carson. Was this just the power of Eisner? Because I know that was a real Eisner passion project. I saw just a little clip reel of that show. And it seems like in various years, they had Schwarzenegger and Dustin Hoffman.

Also, there's a 10-minute long intense and rather cringy play of, but I don't want to be too negative about it because it's written by high school students, but basically the Van Nuys High School does a full play and musical about the kids reacting to the Rodney King riots, the Rodney King verdict riots. And it's kind of intense and i'm like wow this is this is on stage like there's you know african-american students talking about how they're feeling and then an asian student is talking about how he has a gun on top of his family shop and he's gonna shoot anybody who comes at his shop and i was like damn this is heavy after that they would show like the apple

dumpling gang yeah condor man and then whatever we got lying around that's nuts what are we okay well we clearly have to pursue this eisner who is referenced in this episode boy it speaks to if he called you had to do whatever he said robin will Robin Williams had to come do original teacher material at the American Teacher Awards. Power he wielded, which I guess, hey, for a good cause to honor teachers. But then it is like, again, it's cool that they did that. That's a nice thing. And my mom's a teacher. I care about teachers and they should be honored by big stars. But it also makes sense to me that like people maybe didn't watch that the simpsons joke that there is no one in the audience for their equivalent of the teacher awards yeah i could

see that that makes sense i can't deny that side of things yeah i couldn't tell exactly when it stopped but you know uh in 2022 in a press release about walt disney world's 50th anniversary they're still bragging like and you know what we honored so many teachers at Walt Disney World in our 50 years like so they were still talking it up at the very until we could no longer write it off on our taxes and now of course Florida is such a great place for teachers they get it it's so great and when you think Orlando Florida and teachers you think safe teachers who are treated well by the government and parents. Yes, great treatment of teachers who have totally free reign to put any books they want. They were in no way victimized by, like, one crazy person who spends all their time trying to get books banned.

I did see recent nominees for the National Teacher of the Year, a different award ceremony. They were saying, like, since we got nominated, we have been sent death threats for having pro-LGBTQ views or they teach CRT. And so it made them, the nomination made them famous enough to be, like, targeted for death threats. Okay, so now you want to avoid being nominated for Teacher of the Year at all costs. But now Bart would do it as a punishment for Grabovel. It'd be one of his most epic pranks, you're right. So yes, there is a new writer for this episode, Dennis Snee. Let's talk about who he is. So who is this new writer?

I know what you're thinking. He is not Captain Hook's right-hand man, though I understand why you would think that. But Dennis Snee is another one of those Simpsons freelancers from this era of the show who are coming to the series with a lot of sitcom writing experience, so much so that this is Dennis Snee's final writing credit, and we just saw another example of that with Helter Shelter. Man, it's like back-to-back they're giving these guys up.

I'll just keep repeating myself on this, but it's like Al Jean's giving jobs to old guys, like not to new young writers, but to old guys on a pretty big deal to get a freelance Simpson script, you know? But I do think they have the feeling of, ah, we'll be rewriting the crap out of these anyway. So let's just get a trustworthy old hand

who we know can just get us the first draft pretty good and as we record this we're in the middle of the wga and the actors guild strikes and it is funny to look at a career like dennis sneeze in which he basically retired after 25 years in the business which is something that should happen but really can't happen anymore and you know aljean is the showrunner by choice he's not the showrunner because he has to make a living at this point but he is like in his 43rd or 44th year as a comedy writer professionally so we can see how things are different between different generations though i i should say uh yeah al jean has been very vocal online uh and in interviews about the currently going on when we're recording this strike and he's i saw one

of him even saying like yeah the young people don't get the opportunities i had like he's at least recognizing that which is it's good to see today yes i mean al jean could have retired in the year 2000 mike reese semi-retired in like 1997 and nobody can do that now mike reese after maybe i guess 15 years of being a professional comedy writer, had the the largesse to actually just leave the industry entirely and maybe work one day a week, you know, on The Simpsons. He also doesn't have children and has never been divorced, to my knowledge. So that probably helps Mike Reese save some money in Hollywood. No children, but one podcast to feed. Yes. Yes. So Dennis Snee, where did he come from? Well, he is one of those guys that I don't really think exist anymore and that he is basically just like a joke writer, a joke machine who occasionally wrote sitcoms. So he started his career in the early 80s as a writer for comedians like Rodney Dangerfield. Yes, he was a writer on the movie Back to School. He wrote jokes for Joan Rivers. Yes, he wrote for her talk show. And even David Brenner. And eventually he became a writer on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. But this was before Al Jean and Mike Reese's time on the show.

In fact, I forget if I said this earlier, but we just had recorded with Scott for two and a half hours, so I'm sorry. But he got his start in college by submitting jokes to Rodney Dangerfield. And Rodney's like, hey, this kid's pretty funny. And then he kind of sounded like Barney Rubble in my impression but I'm sure he didn't in real life you know again that's funny that here he is a young guy in college getting such a big opportunity and then when he's like 51 Al Jean's like well I don't want to give somebody fresh out of college an opportunity I want to give it to Dennis Snee let's so Rodney Dangerfield more progressive um seemed like a good guy with a lot of demons uh that Rodney Dangerfield but uh weirdly one of this like a good guy with a lot of demons, that Rodney Dangerfield.

But weirdly, one of this guy's, Dennis Snee, one of his longest gigs as a writer was for the syndicated music series Solid Gold, which was basically like American Bandstand or Soul Train. These are also old references, so I'm sorry if I'm not helping you here. But apparently there were comedic co-hosts. Arsenio Hall was one of them at one point, and I'm sure they needed jokes written for them. So I'm pretty sure this was a very easy gig for Dennis Snee, a joke machine, a guy who wrote jokes for stand-up comedy, a guy presumably writing monologue jokes for Johnny Carson. They just set him up, tell him what he needs to do, and he'll just shoot out jokes for a TV show. It's interesting he made that transition by the 90s from back to school technically is a like plot driven thing. But to go from like variety with sketches and joke writing to, you know, full 30 minute productions of sitcoms like that, it takes different muscles than just writing, you know,

jokes for Joan Rivers and Rodney Daydenfield, which does take skill as a comedic writer, but that it's not the same as writing a sitcom. Right. And I was looking to see if he crossed over with any Simpsons writers. And it's a possibility because he was a writer and producer on Empty Nest and Rob Lezebnik. That was one of his earlier roles as a writer. And he was also a writer and producer on In Living Color in the early 90s. And that's where Mark Wilmore came from. So those are basically the two times Dennis Snee was a producer on a show.

Usually he was just a gun for hire in terms of writing freelance scripts, just like with this episode. I mean, Solid Gold, that's a very, like, nobody remembers. I only know Solid Gold is like a reference on MST3K. Yes, it is just like, what is the cheesiest thing you can watch on saturdays that and you're just a loser because you have nothing better to do i'm at home watching reruns of solid gold the simpsons will be right back springfield usa road rage capital of the world, a driver's license is licensed for chaos and anarchy.

I have no insurance! The daily commute is a struggle for survival. Eat clown car, jerks! Even the sidewalks aren't safe. I hope that was a cat. And the police are helpless to stop it. Just think how fast we could go if my siren weren't. Where mayhem reigns and madness rules the road.

Time for some road rage. Simpsons style. Rated T for teen. 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. 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? Curious, is this true listeners hey it's henry gilbert and a big thank you to our guest this week scott gerdner big fans of scott and if you love the subject of this episode all of our park talk you're gonna love his podcast that he co-hosts podcast all right it's such a fun podcast where it just begins with the kind of nerdy talk about theme parks and grows from there you need to check it all out for yourself and follow him on twitter scott gerner and podcast the right thank you so much again scott it was so great having you back on and if you enjoy the talking simpsons podcast then you should know that we're

only able to do it as our full-time jobs because of support at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Listeners like you can go there to sign up for five bucks a month to keep this show going as me and Bob's full-time jobs. Plus, you can also get tons of exclusive bonus features. Five bucks a month gets you a monthly new episode of Talking Futurama and of Talking of the Hill. Us covering each of those series one episode at a time we're in season four of Futurama season three of King of the Hill as well as many of our favorite episodes of Batman the Animated Series every episode of The Critic every episode of Mission Hill and tons and tons more see it all for yourself at patreon.com slash Talking simpsons but if you want something even nicer than eastern airways you need to sign

up at the ten dollar level for our monthly exclusive bonus podcast on top of all the other five dollar things i just mentioned i'm talking about what a cartoon movie us talking about an animated feature film crazy in depth just like we do an episode of the simpsons often over four or five or even six hours long we just finished our summer of pixar where we covered a ton of movies that if you like all the disney park talk in this episode i think you'll love hearing us talk about toy story 4 the incredibles a bug's life and cars and this month we're starting out the spooky season right by talking about Corpse Bride, the spiritual follow-up to The Nightmare Before Christmas. And there's so, so many more on the horizon, including next month we're covering Project Echo.

We've covered everything from Akira to a goofy movie, Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse to Beavis and Butthead to the universe, and our longest podcast ever. You'll get six and a half hours long about who framed roger rabbit there's so much great stuff there so please check it all out for yourself once more at patreon.com slash talking simpsons I guess it also had like the Baywatch effect of like there were babes on it so you'd be watching oh sexy dancers I think the solid gold dancers of course yeah so yes he's a comedy gun for hire Dennis Snee he would write for sitcoms like uh babes and mr belvedere family matters the wayans brothers third rock from the sun and he was also a long time writer for mad

magazine between 1977 and 2009 he was writing on and off for mad magazine so uh he must have been greatly respected by the simpsons staff with all of these accolades oh yeah ignoring solid gold ignoring that completely yeah i mean well they love mad magazine at the simpsons as we've covered many times before and to end this little bio unfortunately dennis snee passed away at age 68 on july 1st of 2019 and and i learned a few things in his obituary uh one of the interesting facts was he helped coach uh george w bush and dick cheney for debates for the year 2000 election. And, you know, I would hold that against him, but pre 9-11 George W. Bush was very different from post 9-11. No, I wouldn't have voted for him, but honestly, how far much more to the left is Joe Biden from a year 2000

George W. Bush? Yeah. I, the, the bit in the obituary that gave me pause was how it was phrased of like,is was thrilled to assist the bush cheney campaign with debate preparation i was like you have to let us know he's thrilled though i was thinking like in the context of it was written in 2019 so it could be fueled by making it clear of like it also is very clear what a christian he was and and all that in his obituary too but it might have been him saying like hey look i'm a bush republican i'm an anti-trump guy it maybe is is flavored by that because again he wrote it in 2019 yeah but also i mean every joke about voting in the late 90s early aughts before 9-11 was basically both guys are the same who cares and uh bush seemed like much less of a threat before 9-11 so

he was probably conservative in in the 90 cent which is basically like a democrat today for all intents and purposes i did see he was like an rotc graduate too or something that was also in his obituary but i mean he seems like a nice enough guy but they got no stories about him on the commentary it really does sound like they handed him the script and they don't say anything of like and then dennis pitched this or dennis pitched that they don't say nothing about that on on the yeah i mean honestly i don't think he was in the room i think he's like here's your assignment he ended off a script and they punched it up and it went on the air and twenty thousand dollars see you later the the most uh i honestly think it was much more than that in uh year 2000 uh maybe one prices for a broadcast tv show i don't know but uh royalties were much different the only

story that's told on the podcast is i believe tom gamble saying dennis snee sounds like a johnny carson character name right yes well that's that's gamble for you he he's he always has tonight show brain i think he's always thinking of pitches so yes that is the story of Snee. But I guess the episode itself, after a cute couch gag about the Simpsons being deep fried, we then cut to the classroom. And I think something I like about, I like the intention of it, and it works sometimes, is that Al Jean is trying to remember the runners they did in, you know, 10 years earlier. And so like, hey, remember how, you know uh edna was a bad teacher and her and bark

connect or remember how like everybody hates martin because he's the class suck up like let's do those jokes again we haven't done those in a while and i kind of like that spirit at the very least which comes through in this opening bit here oh sure just good classic springfield elementary hijinks for sure and i like that martin martin prince is seemingly murdered like he he's he says the quickness that he's beaten between clips of trying to assign extra homework and then he's just gone and nelson's talking from an open window it's like okay so martin's dead martin is dead now that also feels very pre-personal computers the joke of like oh it's gonna make it harder for all the kids to type it out because the kids will have to get to a

typewriter to to turn it in it's more of a hassle instead of like if i was a child now and i had to write it longhand i'd be pretty pissed if i had even printed out to give in an essay to a teacher i'd be like can I just email this in? It's just a file. I feel like kids are going to have to start writing everything because otherwise it would just be them saying, okay, Chad GPT, tell me about World War I and make it look like a fourth grader wrote it. Go. And then spits it out. Yeah.

Oh, that's going to screw the essay world. Oh, boy. I got a three-year-old by By the time he's at essay writing, or I let him do it because otherwise I have to help write the paper. So maybe actually, maybe I take that back.

Maybe dad will turn to chat GBT. Just for that, not for scripts. I'm in the writer's guild. I'm anti-AI. But look, you know, I don't know how hard these essays are going to be to write. I'm just keeping options on the table.

It's one of the times where they forget Bard is 10 because I don't think I started writing 10 page papers until i was in college maybe in senior year of high school that's when the paper length got really bloated but they kind of forget that oh bart would not be doing research papers that are cited with uh you know multiple let's say three to five thousand words that's yeah world war one is it such a heavy top i was almost shocked by that uh entering the simpsons world in any way well world war one is so boring like and there's no like easy villains like the nazis and it's just a slog when i had to i never really studied world war one until

my first year of college and even my history teacher who i really liked and was he made he made learning fun but his even he was like, World War I sucks. It's boring. And also, for even Americans, you can't even be that proud because he compared it to, basically, there's a very long boxing match. And then on the 11th round, a third boxer shows up and punches one of them. And that's America. And so you're like, well, we can't even have that much American pride.

Well, that's going to help. You know, if I ever look into it, I'll use that as my guide. You just gave me the elevator pitch for World War I. There was just a World War I movie that got Oscar nominated, though it felt very perfunctory, that all quiet on the Western front. Like, that felt like the only Oscar movie last year I didn't know anybody who watched it. Yes, that felt like a chore, perhaps, yes. I blame the Europeans for voting in it. That in it i think they care more it was really the eat your vegetables pick for the oscars

that year well hopefully we get sound of freedom in uh for next year if we want to represent america and what america is all about if they aren't too scared to make that one of the 10 millhouse also he tries to do what looks to be is it the roger rabbit or the running man like we're not we're not dance experts here i only know the roger rabbit because it's named after my favorite cartoon character but he's uh but yeah so we then get reminded of edna and skinner's relationship which so do you okay this is a bigger question about this whole episode but i definitely think i'm curious what you guys think i think that al jean viewed edmund skinner as another of those inherited storylines from before his time and this episode is him trying to make it work in his world

of the simpsons and then by the next season he decides it doesn't work and we're ending this but well i'm curious what do you guys think it definitely does feel like that henry because i was looking at the timeline and they have about a year left in their relationship and they're broken up in a very uh i feel like the way they're broken up was not very clever or interesting uh they're about to get married and suddenly edna leaves him for comic book guy and i think it's because they thought of the title My Big Fat Geek Wedding first and then worked backwards from that. I don't know.

But I love them together. They're a great couple because they both kind of come out of their shells in their own way when they're around each other. And Great School Confidential, the great season eight episode, is probably in my top three. It's such a sweet, well-written,

and well-animated episode that I kind of hate seeing this all fall apart and then they're like uh what if she gets with dead oh uh now the voice actor's dead and net is now double cursed so it doesn't really go anywhere interesting and then they kind of make skinner even more of a loser after the edna breakup so but yeah you're right hunter i do feel like al jean um saw a lot of the canon changes as things he had to fix and he has been doing that uh so far in his two years uh taking back over the show again i feel like i tend to like when these relationships come together and then i'm i'm never as satisfied by like delving in more you know like i i agree

great school of confidentials wonderful that when the police light is shooting through the the colander and then it makes this beautiful light for them to dance in like what is what a sweet uh uh you know picturesque moment but i yeah it's like i i find the pairings interesting to start and then i don't necessarily want to see like the ongoing soap opera oh you know like a a poo manjula kind of similar like i get well i get i don't know like i i like the new i like that they got together and then i like all the kids that i forget how many kids there were octuplets um but then like like further steps of it don't like super do it for me i guess it is it's similar to me to the death of maude flanders where uh sure you can

break up skinner and edna but i wish you would have done it in a more thoughtful way because it just felt like let's split them up again who cares it didn't feel like people are invested in this relationship they like these two together let's do this in a way that respects the characters it just felt kind of thrown off just as a way to correct a choice that had been made not by that showrunner isn't it interesting to have that like like earlier ones like there will be a lot of heart in a relationship that even, like, comes and goes in an episode. Like, Fish called Selma, how much you, like, boy, what a journey you go on in that relationship

that starts and ends within the episode. And later, like, Patty and Selma, I feel like are just kind of arbitrarily shoved into... Like, I cannot think of any later satisfying Patty or Selma relationship. But remember, this is 2003. There's no time for heart. It's just, it's all gross-out comedy and darkness.

Yeah, yeah. It's often, like, disturbing. That's the thing I remember, because I probably drifted off from the show around this time. I just remember something where, like, Homer ended up with, like, a coin in his hand or in his head or something. He squeezes a penny so hard it enters his bloodstream yeah yeah and i don't know why that one it's not like that moment should be enough to get me to stop watching the show but it felt emblematic if there were a lot of things like that like characters getting hurt in ways that were less funny and more like disturbing cosmically we all

remember the panda love we all remember that uh hom that. Homer being loved very hard by pandas. Oh, I think I had forgot. I think I repressed this memory. Oh, no. Trauma. I mean, I feel like it was just the state of comedy in the early aughts. If you look at any studio comedy, they're just unwatchable now outside of a very, very select few.

They're just all so mean-spirited and cruel and just uh gross out usually yeah true yeah kind of the thing of the time unrated dvds again sometimes simpsons was chasing that vibe too i can think of like maybe uh okay uh anchorman is is a fine studio comedy of the era but that's just the one i can think of offhand but a lot of them do not age very well yeah yeah like i want to say wet hot american summer but that was not a studio comedy that was right scrappy barely came together movie here's a quick story that for just last night of experiencing this where i was trying to tell my husband about and look i'm not even like hey let's watch family guy clips kind of guy that's not me but i did say oh this is like that joke from family guy and he's like what what joke i was like it's the one where um peter

griffin is forced to watch fraser to try to get more culture that's the joke and and then i was like here i'll pull it up on hulu and when i did the very like in the same joke is a transphobic joke i was like wow it took like a second to have like a transphobic joke in this clip from a comedy and not in the year 2000 i was like it, it's just, it's that fast. You're maybe more likely to find it in that era than even like the 90s. I mean, I know there's, you know, Ace Ventura or like movies were like, oh, that's right. That is a big transphobic. But like, it feels like it ramped up kind of in the 2000s as you could get away with more.

And so all the targets were all put on, you you know people and cultures that didn't deserve it uh yeah boy yeah bummer time when you start adding up isn't it yeah i mean we have noticed an uptick in that kind of joke uh as we continue on with these early odd seasons for sure that there were maybe a few instances of in the 90s but now i feel like they think they have free reign with that sort of content listeners there's more coming in the next couple seasons we're talking about. Get ready. Steal yourselves. Bummer.

But yes, I do like this bit here of Edna and Skinner. Their quick first clip, because I sometimes have missed the point of dates with a partner as well, and had a Skinner-type reaction here. All right, Seymour. I'm ready for our romantic apple-picking trip. Yes. About

that mother's neck waddle got caught in a zipper. I've had a long night of boo-boo kissing ahead of me, but don't worry, I got you these store-bought apples instead. The apples weren't the point. Then why were we going apple picking? Why were we going apple picking? I mean,

come on. Apples were bought. We did it. You know what does work for me about some of this episode is the, like, yeah, you can feel the, like, chore nature to the Jean era of, like, trying to deal with this relationship. But the idea of mother being a third wheel is pretty interesting. Like, and a lot of funny stuff comes from that that is a pretty like good discovery and thing to deal with yeah and it is really true to the characters and their relationship so far because if you see where they started in season one they're so different now and that's through episodes like bart the lover and principal charming and sweet seymour

skinner's badass song it's just all of these evolutions of the characters are leading to episodes like this when they're just at a hundred 100 and they're just fun to watch with each other this does have a little of bart the lover in it as well absolutely yeah yeah but and then we cut back home to bart's he's trying to study and just like me in my school career around the same time if i was given three weeks to write something i would instead watch pro wrestling or cartoons instead of doing any research up until the last week. But I say it every time, but when there's jokes that remind me that we're after 9-11, they do make me just sad in a little way.

And this is one of the most like after 9-11 jokes they've done in the series in this little clip here. Okay, time to start this paper. World War I, WWI. That's a good start. Time to watch wrestling. I can't believe it! Uncle Slam has defeated Osama bin Laden!

Wow! Here comes Secretary of Hate, Colin Capow! He's dropping sanctions! By which I mean anvils! I like all that. I like Osama bin Laden. And I like, I think that's a good Shearer performance. I think that is, you know, sometimes he can feel a little, like, literally phoned in,

I think, for a long time on the show. But I'm like, oh, that's like a big, powerful announcer voice performance, which he's so great at. It did actually feel like him screaming for the first time we've heard him in a while, dude. Yeah, that's how it feels. It reminds me, it's getting into Derek Small's Spinal Tap territory, which is a cool... It sure is really good at understated, but then his loud yelling mode is very compelling, too. Now, Henry, were you watching Wrestling Around This Time? Yes, though. yelling mode is very compelling too now henry were you watching wrestling around this time were there yes though yeah were there any 9-11 let's call them characters uh floating around because i know when i was watching wrestling in the late 80s early 90s there were uh basically

desert storm characters reflecting current uh global politics but i i didn't know anything about if there were there was an osama bin lad Laden stand-in or what have you well this this is interesting and I could write an entire essay on this but yeah it's at the core of pro wrestling is racist stereotypes all fighting each other because it was born out of well technically it predates World War II but its big boom was the 50s its first big boom and that was full of like oh this guy's a former Nazi or this is an evil you know racist southern guy or whatever or and then of course with into the 80s the ussr and iran were our enemies so you had all this stuff and and they did it into the 90s but by 2001 there was this sense of like we can't they they definitely did stories with this but they were like boy if we get too broad people will

call us racist and we'll get like phone calls from sponsors so they tried to have like well this is just a guy who is evil who happens to be um Iraqi and and then they basically here's one example there was an evil Arab character who was a rich Arab who then attacked the undertaker with a group of hooded individuals who looked not unlike a terrorist cell and they did that around this time but their timing of it when they did it was when there was that horrific london bombing and when that happened in the news like the same week they ended the storyline there and got rid of the character because they're like ah shit this really it's not fun like this makes people sad so they do try to do these things around 2003 but i think good taste

had gotten far enough that they're like they couldn't be now they are racist in a lot of wrestling storylines but not in that way anymore wow it's amazing it didn't go further it's amazing they weren't like emboldened by 9-11 and Iraq War. It's like, well, now we can go as far as we want. Now, I mean, the xenophobia and jingoism of rah-rah America, that was as hard as ever around this time. But they just didn't make as many negative stereotypes. Those weren't as successful as they had hoped.

We have to look to backyard wrestling for the true political commentary yeah it's one of those things where the simpsons stays the same or it's as constant and shows you the passage of time like season two has a parody of wrestling that feels night and day with this one like that's how different like that one they're parodying like 80s wrestling and this one they're parodying like then current wrestling so it's interesting how times change through through the simpson yeah they kept up and rent brand uh brett the hitman heart was made a brief appearance between those two right yeah he shows up he sells uh he buys mr burns's uh mansion that's right yeah yeah that's funny but yes then bart tries to study at the library i also had trouble focusing at the library too,

though I never Xerox my buttocks as Bart does. God dropping Bart's pants and leaving him bottomless, like that feels like a joke. It's like, wow, they would not do that on the show now. Though also I'm thinking like part of Bart's prank now of distributing photocopies of his butt would end up framing uh Reverend Lovejoy be arrested for distribution of child pornography now is what it would be good to keep

an eye on Lovejoy just as a reverend just like make sure he's not doing anything untoward I forgot about this episode and I also forgot that this this prank goes nowhere there's no fallout from it it's just like okay next scene it's a fun, you know, not to go too far into the history, is this welcome pissed off Catholics thing a reference to the sexual abuse scandals from 2001? Did they go that dark? It's got to be related to that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like what religion are the Simpsons?

I think the- Oh, Presbylutheran? Yeah, Presbylutheran is the official designation. Wow. Oh, wow. They developed a little combo of what they are? They didn't want to commit the Simpsons to any one true faith. Yeah.

Wow. I also really like this joke with Ned and the eye soap. I think they made a really smart move there where he says, It's time for the eye soap, boys. And the kids spray it in their eyes. That would just be pure child abuse. But the fact that Ned then sprays his own eyes, it's like you know what he's it's a blanket thing for the family he is spraying his own eyes and facing the same burning his love pain as he's forcing upon his children you know

what i also really like the gag of like when bart is distracted again he looks at an algebra book he's like i could do a few equations like that's a good joke yeah yeah that's right yeah yeah that's a surprising one it's very telling how you can be productive in other ways when you have a deadline like i could clean my kitchen in fact i will and then you get everything done but the thing that is uh you know the deadline is approaching for you yes i find i was avoiding trying to do actual creative work and ended up cleaning up all the cobwebs on the ceilings. I was shocked.

This is how bad you're trying to avoid your cleaning cobwebs. The lengths you will go to not write. Well, because in your brain, you're like, well, if I was just staring at my phone, then I'd feel guilty. But I can just tell the guilty part of my brain that like, um, it was very productive. I sorted, I sorted through all my DVDs in my closet. I mean, come on. Wasn't going to do itself. I don't have a robot for that.

We have a very, also of its time reference to Blackhawk Down of Milhouse arriving in a Blackhawk helicopter with his cousin and Bart says Blackhawk up as a reference to that. Milhouse not injured, given access to a helicopter. This is the best day of his life. It's true. He even helps Bart with the pranking, which I feel like Milhouse needs to investigate why he wants to make teen boys kiss each other,

but I don't think he wants to. And so, yes, the very night that the paper is due, Bart is finally writing his next thing, and that's when this is another good joke of like, oh, you know what? They've never said they've had Abe Simpson be a World War II veteran, which with every year the show continues,

gets more and more ridiculous or it makes him like, you know, 105 now. But even here, they're like, okay, if Abe is going to lie that he was in World War I, then he would have to have been like 390 years ago. That's the only way it works. It's a funny needle for casting a letter to Thread to do an extremely young Abe.

That's a delicate assignment. I think he gets it right. And he has to play Abe as a kid to not sound like Homerer as a kid either and uh and yes also do you have to poop always that's a nice dirty joke i i also wonder how much they're lightening up on the old people joke as the increasing age of the the executive producers on the simpsons that's true yeah how can they hate old people when they employ many of them? When most of the staff is seniors now,

I wonder how they feel about these Abe jokes now. But yes, then Bart says he's going to spread it all out to ten whole pages. As we later find out, it was six pages of ads. And I like that it's full of local businesses. You see Costington's, the Android Dungeon, Herman's Military Antiques you see all real uh real businesses those are all homespun we know those are like truly one person is running them that's a nice you know you underrate the industrious spirit of springfield businesses i'm sad there is not a herman's military antiques fake storefront in the springfield at uh uh in universal that's one of the ones they missed out

on henry is it because harry sheer does his voice that is yep you gotta be right you gotta be right there's no harry sheer things there yeah all the years though i still find it criminal this we said this on our wonderful podcast ride uh invitation but it is criminal to me that the android's dungeon is not a functioning storefront that sells things like yeah but it should be another gift shop they i know they got the quickie mark gift shop and it's fun but it's like you have the androids dungeon right here sell more crap here like i i'm demanding more gift shops in universal yeah well they're gonna come up the the solution to this how they will rectify this is destroying the entire city and ride it seemed it's increasingly seemingly it's about to become the yoshi lot

i was just there in the encroaching i got scared for a second like i hadn't heard something that springfield had been closed but it's the thing that used to be right next to springfield the animal actors thing has been ripped apart and it's just it's where the that Fast and Furious coaster is going to go. Yeah, kind of shy. I just saw it for the first time this week. That's crazy for me because that was a childhood park for me. I'm sure I went for the first time when I was like six. So like a structure that's been there for so many decades, it was crazy to see it blank. I saw ride through like a like here's a here's what supposedly that ride is going to be like and it looks pretty fun like a coaster through the hills

that uses the hills and the elevation the bizarre two level many hills you must climb nature of universal studios i feel like they're going to finally like justify it in a cool way with this coaster that's cool man that but but how can it top the wonderful part of the the fast and furious ride that's already there oh yeah so many great fast and furious the 3d ride on the tram where vin diesel is either it's very small on a regular helicopter or giant on a little helicopter or the thing you know when i worked at universal studios i was a tour guide and knew that summer was this thing where cars pretend to fly at you and then just spin around and dance to the song gasolina um it's a proud history of fast and furious they've treated one

of their their biggest franchises so well this is also where we got the opening sound of when bart is told he's gonna have to to write himself. I carumba indeed. Like that's one of those jokes where it feels like the, it's the show feeling its age. And it's like Bart knows it's, it's corny for him to say I carumba. So I carumba indeed. And so, yes, now Bart is stuck after school and this is where it really feels like Bart the lover. And Skinner comes in, he, he mistakes her. He jokes that she looks like Pam Dauber, which is Mindy from Orchid Mindy.

Yeah, and you know what? If that's meant to be a joke about Skinner having kind of like a tepid reference of a hot woman to compare Kerbopple to, I take offense to that because I specifically have complimented my wife with the compliment, you remind me of pam dauber i couldn't believe when i heard skinner say it because i've i've said that and been a little like uh embarrassed or mushy to say it even like i don't know i just you know i don't know if this is weird to say you kind of remind me of pam dauber pam daubers i've always had such a crush on her just this like just just this this beautiful like book smart semen colorado beauty

i like her like fashion sense it's like you know it's khakis and beige and plaids i really was like oh if i could marry somebody who's like mindy and i did i tell her such uh so if this is supposed to be a lame thing from skinner, I disagree wholeheartedly. I choose that being that Pam Dauber is adorable, but I think it's Skinner. His very vanilla worldview is like, well, she's a bombshell. She is basically Marilyn Monroe to Seymour Skinner. Oh, I see what, yeah, yeah. Well, yes.

No, she's no porn star. That's not the vibe of Pam Dauber. But the vibe Skinner wants, that's the vibe I uh of pam dauber but the vibe skinner wants it's a vibe i want too we have a pam dauber reference and we have a robin williams impression later in this episode i just realized that oh oh yes yeah i didn't connect the two that's right yeah and they're gonna have an after school special which is i guess their version of an afternoon delight uh but it's canceled because agnes needs to be taken out of the tub there is this like weird sexual incestual nature to all of the skinner agnes stuff in this one like that the boo-boo kissing like he's gonna be kissing her neck waddle when he says boo-boo kissing and

same with like he's helping his mother in and out of the tub they share a bed together and most of all i mean this is getting ahead of ourselves but but like that as a baby, he crawled back inside the womb for two weeks. We're going to have a sidebar on this. And also icing her butt, icing her baboon red butt. Oh, yes, that's right. Yeah, it's the intimacy is they're really pushing it hard here. Does anybody I do think this is like a syndrome in the world and and do you guys do you know anybody who you feel like has a mom wife or a mom girlfriend because like i'm

flashing to people i know who like huh yeah this person's mom does kind of fill some girlfriend roles for this it's not it's nowhere near this but there is some funny truth. There definitely are mild Skinner and Agneses out in the world. I don't know what you mean. I used to see movies all the time with my mom. I was going to say a certain friend of mine may have been seeing every movie from 1986 to 2005 with his mother. Maybe, maybe. I think it's very sweet, but it is shocking when you tell me oh yeah i saw half bake my mom was there yes yeah i saw it any r-rated movie i saw in a theater my mom was there

i mean we like seeing movies together a lot it's uh even now i see her in person about once a year maybe twice a year but we we try to just see a couple movies just for old time's sakes we used to for the oscar season for a few years in a row we'd see every oscar nominated best picture together uh even when i came to visit so uh yes i had dates with my mom i guess one could say but i never helped her in or out of a bathtub any of those boundaries there must be boundaries yes yeah well now hey she's uh not to get too personal but i also think it's because my dad would never go to see movies with her ever and so um she needed someone to see movies but now i have a wonderful stepdad who likes seeing movies with her all the

time oh that's great okay okay all right so she's she's got a plus one. But yes, I see some similarities to myself and Skinner. I can admit that. It's true. We have told guests how long a show will be, like maybe less, but almost certainly more. I felt that when telling guests, like, oh, this will only be 90 minutes, but almost certainly more. And by 90, I mean two and a half hours. Hey, I know. Step in.

I have my podcast. I know what's up. Yeah, see, that's why we appreciate you guys the doughboys guys it's like you are helping set the standard of like hey this is a two-hour podcast you're signing up for yeah you're normal you guys though you have done some numbers that i'm like now here this i will not do what was the like toy story 4 am i remembering that right what's been your longest how far have you gone i think it's who framed roger rabbit which was almost seven hours but the trick is uh that was actually

two recordings but still two very long recordings and nothing nothing can be longer than that we simply can't allow it we can't your voices will just sputter out you'll lose them for days no i mean we're sickos but yes that but that was super premium content though our longest regular one i think was like 320 i think it was and that's because me and bob are both such nerds for japan that when the simpsons went to japan we talked for three and a half hours about it with with our guest maddie who was just about to move to japan oh wow wow okay so when another nerd dim enters the picture uh hey what you know epcot is probably doing hey the listeners might be looking at this and saying like

why are they saying this this is three hours and 40 minutes this episode we are about four minutes into this episode sorry scott but yeah there's there's a quick bit of edna very similar to and barthelover saying like who else I going to date if not this? The school is full of losers. But in this case, set to the I Believe in Miracles song, a favorite of Simpsons, rundown of all of The Bachelors, where they even plug in Surly Duff and Kang and Kodos. And George Meyer. And George Meyer, the official caricature of George Meyer in his bucket hat. I didn't know he was a sports welder. He's not even on the show right now right he left when scully left he had left the show yeah

lg was classmates with george meyer and friends with him so i'm not thinking like this is like a mean shot or anything but they're just like it'd be funny if george meyer was plugged in here that'd be funny yeah yeah also they were really in a Surly Duff era because of this in the large Marge episode he's also in the window leering at Marge just very randomly they're like you know let's have some more Surly Duff I love seeing Surly Duff at Springfield in Universal and that they actually had to name like all seven Duffs they're not named in that episode they had to make up a couple so oh yeah there's only a couple listed wow oh so the only canonical full list is in in the physical place universal studios that's cool yeah i guess they're not gonna have the party there well i will bet they're not having

a season premiere party this year for uh for the simpsons season premiere oh yes true yeah yeah no nobody nobody's having any fun premiere uh, COVID, and now all this. I don't know when I'll ever be at a premiere party again. Maybe I've had my last. You've eaten your last slider off of a tray. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. By paper flatbreads now. Have caterers spoken out about the strikes yet?

Yeah, I don't know. It is one of those industries that affects. My arm is weakening. I have no... Yeah, I don't know. It is one of those industries that affects. My arm is weakening. I have no, I don't know if I'll be able to hold a tray if this goes any longer. We have too many sliders. I'm sad too, because I felt like this was the year we actually maybe could have gotten invited to it.

I felt like we could have, I had a couple emails I was told I could send this year. And now I think that unfortunately it's not going to happen so maybe 2024 we might finally get to go to a premiere party so fingers crossed for you but guys you know now it's everywhere but let's flash back to 20 years ago when IMAX was a fairly not popular thing in small time I have a clip here of the Simpsons watching IMAX movie. From the widest gully to the deepest trench, holes define who we are and where we are going. And although Rover here may not know it, he is participating in a ritual as old as time itself. He is giving birth to a hole or considers the dolphin nature's most filmed creature even they have holes blow

holes thanks for going out with me tonight it really took my mind off stupid jerks and their mothers so yeah back back then imaxes were not much of a thing i mean i i looked it up imax as a format had been around since the 70s but it was very rare for anything to be filmed in imax and most of them back then were nature stuff like the living sea cosmic voyage that stuff i i yeah i associated imax of this era with going to a museum and i think the first two imax movies i saw inside the big dome were one about sharks and one about the ocean so basically the same movie right right yeah it was a very functional kind of like clinical format not that

some of those weren't uh weren't cool but yeah we weren't weren't Nolan era yet I was lucky in night here's another movie I saw with my mom New Year's day the year 2000 fantasia 2000 was showing in uh in the only imax theater in florida or at least in northern florida it was at a saint augustine golf course and so we drove like an hour to go see fantasia 2000 on the big screen in a very empty theater on new year's day oh god i saw that i that was a big family trip like we kind of did it the way walt disney intended where like going to fantasia is like going to the theater and it's like an event and you have to and and los angeles it's hard to believe los angeles did not have any imax theater at that time so they had to build a special one in like a in a field by the by the airport

essentially like there was a one-off imax facility what it was a really strange way to see a movie and a movie that's not that great then you're like we came for this well then now imax is like everywhere but i mean when i see an amc imax movie like it's not this size like it's it's a bigger screen but it's not real imax yeah well i mean the the real size is like what you can see in the simpsons ride in fact now that's a true mega screen uh and i'm curious if that theater remains if they do they finally get rid of that thing and just uh build a whole new type of attraction building i don't know i'm scared i'm scared yeah yeah i know they're coming for you they've started they're finding every scrap of land in that place.

And soon our Disney owned pals might get evicted from Universal Studios. It's going to become Doc Brown stroller parking. They still own that. I loved, again, on our VIP trip we did, we got the picture with Doc Brown. He was part of our character lunch that included dracula and doc brown i didn't hear about this oh sorry i forgot to mention there was so much going on that day yeah we we got to have a lunch is included in that and yes characters come to you and it was dracula who was the guy really was he's like hey i'm dracula hey uh oh and maybe we'll have you for dinner and then walks away but he's like yeah dracula you having fun yeah but doc brown was actually trying with the uh the difficult but it's a hard

thing as you guys covered on podcasts right doing a doc brown impression in a theme park style is not easy yeah keep it going pretty specific voice and like physical type too who else do they own like jason well the other one i was hoping to get jimmy i was hope i saw beetlejuice later but we didn't get beetlejuice that time we got a 1920s police officer which i thought was kind of bullshit i was like what it's like you don't have a name i want named characters only not irish irish accent henry no it's a new york accent unfortunately and he said he was the fun police and also though all of us at the table were like we were trying to be nice but we're also like we we're all not in the mood to talk

to the nice cop like we're not in that mood right now like oh we love funny police officer ha ha ha that was that's not where we were at so yeah we we hear a lot about how this digital layering they can do now in this first digital season help them do such a crazy long pan as this one they couldn't have done it in the the physical era of of the simpsons with the with cells and all that and also scott i was curious you know as a showrunner of a animated series do you appreciate that they reuse the character design for the dog of rover that it was the dog that bullied bart two seasons earlier and they're like you know we've got a dog design we let's not make the animators design a brand new dog oh for sure yeah that happened you know it's funny you run into that you are like in animation you can do anything and then at some point it's like well

uh within reason kind of rookie mistake on my part in my show Moobium City I remember that we like it just got to a point where like you know here's a bunch of like mobsters and then here's a cartel and here's I don't even remember all the time. We just we wrote a lot of like groups and gangs into the show. And at some point, the production people are like, you are bleeding us with how many you know, how many bodies have to be. Is there a way to tackle this? That is like they're all kind of the same bodies and we replace them like oh yes please oh my god i don't know i don't know how much it's all uh um but i felt so guilty after like oh yeah let's let's keep oh we have another great idea where a group of 10 people

most of whom don't have lines all have to be designed and do turns on them and uh so you know anybody listening who's ever trying to do animated shows or has to, you know, go easy on your assets. If you can, you can disguise it, but you know, it helps you put the money and the resources into something else. I've been noticing it a lot more in these later seasons where it was like,

oh, that was a, this plumber was a plumber like five years ago and they're just reusing the plumber, which is fine. I'm not calling them lazy. I'm just like, oh, that's smart. They don't need to make a new i really think at this point if they just write a dog is digging a hole in the script the animators just uh wheel over to the dog file open it up and say okay i need a brown dog this time i think so as you should i mean how cool to get to build a

library and a cool thing about this it is a crazy thing how quickly so many animated shows get canceled and then it's like you're just leaving all these at like it'd be so easy to start making a new one we drew all this stuff already now this will all just be in a file that can never really be reused on another show because no other show will ever look like this it's not like if a legal drama gets canceled and then you've got like the judge's bench or whatever then you can use it on another legal show like we can reuse that somebody else can rent that prop it is just like trash all these assets will never be seen again so but so we so these 30 season shows should really appreciate

that they have yeah uh infinite dogs already drawn and uh so then it's the next day and everybody is shocked that bart actually likes being with edna we even have lisa again this one of those like boy the show's getting old now kind of jokes lisa lisa references something that has not been thought about since 19 the christmas of 1990 she brings up that bart is the one who put the mothballs in the beef stew the lyric to the do the Bartman song. Henry, is it Do the Bartman or is it Deep, Deep Trouble? You know, actually, it's both, but... Oh, double mothballs.

See, I associate it with Do the Bartman. Yes, yeah. I think, definitely, I first think Do the Bartman, like, put the mothballs in the beef stew, in the air, the gloom. Yeah, it's right what he says before he puts on the music so he can feel the uh feel the tune that's right before he says just like you can do the part just like michael jackson i think i was confused because bart is grounded in both songs and now that i think about it that album has some serious flaws we need to talk about this oh wait we did yeah we did an entire two hour one oh geez oh wow you've been there that is did like did michael jackson write this line about the mothballs that feels impossible to me that that

man wrote a line about mothballs and beef stew was it macarini was it macarini who wrote that one i know uh dj jazzy jeff wrote deep deep trouble or uh yeah he and will smith wrote it i forget what it was no is is jazzy jeff working with graining and that's why it feels a little hipper but i do think it was it was mainly michael jackson i think definitely with the mothballs thing i think they say that like well yeah because michael jackson was like much older and so he's remembering like when I was a kid in 1968, like this was, these were the pranks you heard about. But let's not, let's not think too much about the Michael Jackson line.

You can do the part, you're bad like Michael Jackson. Like, let's not think about that. But yeah. Well, now you're just commanding us to Henry. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it's too late. We're all thinking about it. I always like when they bring up do the part, man.

I'm like, oh, remember when we did this dumb novelty song? We're all kind of embarrassed about now. Yeah, it feels like a confession. Yeah, yeah. Like we have to. We owe admitting this. I think they all got platinum records technically from writing songs on that. Now, we're being very clinical here, but I do want to ask all of you folks.

This thing about the gummy fish, it does feel like them doing a Schwarzwalder imitation. And we're seeing that more and more as his presence on the show decreases and he's actually kind of gone after this season, right? Yeah, yeah. He writes one more this episode, but he's pretty much a fully remote guy at this point. Though, we asked other writers about this before and they did make it sound like he came in kind of regularly by like the 12th season but it did sound like he had to be sequestered a bit by this season and yeah this there is a certain thing to like oh this feels like them trying to write a schwarzwälder style joke but it doesn't fully work but i mean homer using gummy worms to get a gummy fish and then it's just a fish on the wall that he's ripping apart and eating off like i mean also it's the feeling of they remember like oh remember when we used to do word well let's do that again trophy

like i feel like it's been a while since we've heard homer say trying to cram one of those in a classic yes well so uh marge okay here is definitely a runner i'm recognizing now they give jokes to marge that they're like well that's a little sweaty why don't we have marge say it and then she smiles is their way of saying like yeah this isn't our best joke and like saying like uh you know well they have a latin grammy it's like her shitting on the latin grammys then they pause for just a little smile on marge that she goes like yeah we said that joke we made we said the latin grammys are done marge should have been on the enron ride then in that case i was wondering we'll get to yeah what a joke i'm so curious yeah we'll get there but yes they they then cut to the substitute

teacher of the year and the teacher of the year buildings which we then hear it's the most difficult one day a year job there is. And I'm wondering, how do you guys feel now that he is sadly no longer with us? I totally get why everybody was sick of Robin Williams at that point in his shtick. We were all kind of going like, yeah, it's all the same. He does the gay voice. He does the black voice. He does the- Elmer Fudd.

And he says, Elmer Fudd. Come on. But now I just kind of miss him and i'm like well these but did we not appreciate his shtick enough or were we correctly mean to the way uh to his shtick in 2003 oh good question i you know i agree as you lay it out yeah i do miss him and it's honestly kind of funny to think about like yeah we were mad at this we were mad at hit like there's so much fucking worse shit than robin williams and the way that nobody parodies anywhere like like where this this is who we're mad at a man of a million voices seems very sweet and good natured yeah i think the issue was this is all he was asked to do because we've seen

earlier in his career he could be a dramatic actor that could do a great job but towards the end of his career they're like we'll just do all your bits people want to see the high energy comedy that they associate you with and that's kind of what he was trapped in until movies like world's greatest dad came along and it reminded you of earlier roles he was in oh yeah smaller smaller robin williams is great yeah yeah absolutely yeah and he he did it i mean he was in. Oh, yeah. Smaller Robin Williams is great. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and he did it. I mean, he was in Insomnia just a couple years before this episode aired.

I get that people were sick of Williams, though. I also do think that having comedies make fun of other comedy guys, it does feel like a thing. I mean, The Simpsons takes their shots at people still, but it does feel like there are some people like, well, we're not going to make fun of that guy. He's funny or at the very least like powerful. And we're not going to be mean to this other powerful guy on the level of Robin Williams today. You know, they might not be that mean. Yeah. Well, or maybe it's because all comedy is perfect. No, that's true.

Everybody makes fun of it. There's nothing to make fun of. No way you could possibly approach. everybody's great at their comedy everybody's funny all the time oh boy they bring up on the commentary too that it's also funny that dan is the guy doing it because he replaced williams as genie doing a williams impersonation there as well that's right right right um yes and in theme park mode i feel like it's him and there was this place called disney quest that was this like bizarre vr arcade kind of place at disney world and the genie is on the elevator ride up and i'm pretty sure it's dan genie not uh am i wrong though maybe i'm wrong

as i say that dan was parks a lot i don't think he's now the i think he still dan genie not uh am i wrong though maybe i'm wrong as i say that dan was parks a lot i don't think he's now the i think he still does genie sometimes but i don't think he's that much of a genie i think they have a new genie or something but like dan was genie in the kingdom hearts games i remember that i got so used to dan being the genie that when i went back to watch aladdin for our podcast it sounded weird to hear robin hear Robin Williams be the genie because I heard Dan in everything and I watched the Aladdin show probably every day for two years. Wow.

The animated... I feel like I've never seen that. Who is... Was Jonathan Brandes on that? Oh, it's still Scott Wenger or whatever the guy's name is. It's because they didn't hire anyone famous in quotes. It's kind of the original cast

but also Dan Castellaneta as the genie. But Gilbert Gottfried is there. Wow. Yeah. Wow. How interesting. There's a real face turn. Iago becomes a good guy and one of the central guys in the show.

Yeah. Oh. Oh, because they need him around. He can't be stuck in a cave. Or else they don't get the Gilbert Gottfried fun. That was the first thing they needed to deal with in it yes but yeah so after they all shit on dead poet society uh and robin williams then current shtick then bart nominates edna i like that edna's picture is her looking sad and smoking and the the reason they all pick her is just because they've all heard of bart and they're

like if she can survive bart then she deserves it They call him the devil in the blue shorts, a reference to the devil in the blue dress. The novel by Walter Mosley that became a Denzel Washington movie. It's one of my favorite detective series. I've only read like four of the books in the series, but the Easy Rollins mysteries. But they're great books. Walter Mosley is a great writer. But it's not shorts. It's not shorts in those.

So if you're after shorts, then you're not going to get that. So, yes, they announce that she wins. Edna is so happy she starts crying. Nelson laughs at that, that he wins his B is so happy she starts crying nelson laughs at that that he wins his bully of the year award it's posed really weird when he wins it that i think it's a slight animation mistake like the guy who gives him the award is like waiting to be wedgie by nelson like he's posed wrong it's a complicated move to have the character get wedged by someone sitting at a desk like how do you maneuver him so that's possible you know oh yeah yeah it's a tough

one then we cut to the next day of the press conference announcing it and so this one maybe it's it's uh the romeo and juliet joke is well how do you guys read because this is how i read it i first i thought oh is this a joke about the baz lerman romeo and julian she accidentally showed that version or did she do what I heard happen in my school of showing the Zeffirelli version that has nudity in it accidentally definitely the latter Henry because uh we watched that version in uh when I was a freshman and the teacher just let it play she said there's gonna be brief nudity you you can all handle it and you know we were kind of excited to see nudity in class but then it ended up being in a very clinical environment and not fun and there was an adult teacher in the room so yes we

saw the olivia hussey version uh in 1996 or something like that i think and there is a prominent nipple in that movie yes yeah well that's the way to play it as a teacher is to just like it's gonna be nudity move on shut like just like shut it down. We are not going to make this a thing. That's, yeah, that's what should happen in these Florida classrooms. Just like everybody deal with it. When we watched it, our teacher did basically just stop. And then she's like, okay, she planned the lesson to end right before that scene, which basically like in the middle of the movie slash play,

Romy and Juliet spend a night together and then they wake up in bed the next morning and uh both of the actors in it uh who were teens at the time and we'll i'll talk about that in a second but that they that they do they're naked and that romeo you see his butt and juliet you see your boobs very briefly in both cases uh the teacher cut around that and we had heard stories of oh the teacher got in trouble last year because she didn't know there was nudity in it. Because it's G-rated. It's 60s G-rated nudity,

like you used to get in Planet of the Apes, where you also see some buns in that one, too. Really? Wow. If you want to see Charlton Heston's butt, watch Planet of the Apes. Oh, of course I do. But yes, this also made the news recently because both actors, Olivia Hussey and Leonard

Whiting, are still alive. At the start of this year, they sued Paramount because they were, Olivia was 15, Leonard was 16 at the time that was filmed. And they said that they were pressured to do it by the director, that they didn't want to do nude scenes, but they were pressured to do it. And they were suing Paramount saying that it was tantamount to child pornography. But then in May, they lost the case as the judge said that it counted as free speech and not pornography. And so the scene still stands.

And so, yes, technically, it's also like it is underage nudity in that movie now as well by the government. Same with Best picture winner american beauty that's right they were underage and oh what an icky that must be so difficult to watch today how could you ever watch that now yeah for many reasons although spacey is in the clear on several juries how many fine how many not guilty verdicts do we need before we leave this man alone i need i need a dozen we gotta rack him we gotta rack up so much he's still you can we can find him not guilty as many times as we want i'm still gonna think he's creepy a jury can't tell me to not think he's creepy unless he's found legally not creepy

you're not allowed to think this anymore you know another trick i love in this that they this was another embellishment i liked is instead of having it be kent brockman or whatever in the audience they decide for this episode cletus is a reporter so they're gonna have cletus be the guy asking reporter questions, which is just great. I love that. And so this is when Skinner learns that he might lose Edna forever. We've had our ups and downs, but I can't imagine life without him. Bart Simpson.

I can't express how I feel in words, so I drew this picture. These stink lines stand for dedication, caring, and for letting me drink coffee in class. Way to go, Edna. Yes! Way to go! Oh, oh, follow-up query, Mrs. K. If you win this here learning derby, will you forget your kiss and kin and leave us all forever? Leave us forever?

I'd better pee on this fire. As principal, I'd just like to say a few words about what this wonderful woman means to this school and to me. Webster's Dictionary defines Mrs. Krabappel as...

Excuse me. I have anel as Excuse me. I have an emergency page from Mother. This press conference is over. Fridge Too Loud is a really great page. It's the only non-sexual message he's getting from Agnes. Yes. I also do like, I love a joke about drawing stink lines it's always funny too but now it's time for the real meat of the episode which is epcot

epcot talk as uh we see through the eyes of a dad though this clearly this is the opposite of how we feel homer as the adult should feel the it should be bart who doesn't want to do this but uh but this is when we learn where they're going. So because I nominated Mrs. K, our whole family gets a free trip to the awards ceremony in Orlando. Orlando? Are we going to SeaWorld? No.

Disney World? Uh-uh. Universal Studios? Afraid not. Leisure World? Sorry, Grandpa. Gator Coach? You wish.

Leisure World? Grandpa, you're not even going. Wait a minute. I know where we're going. Oh, it's horrible. Oh, it's even boring to fly over it. Oh, God. Wow.

You know, it wasn't until I heard the commentary that I realized they're saying F-COT. And the sign says F-COT. But I just I'm not seeing any real attempt to parody just like this is awful and we want you to know. Yeah, it's like if you said it fast, you wouldn't even realize it was a, they made it up. I mean, they make the F on the sign, they make it curve as much as they can to make it look like a P too. Like it just looks like Epcot, not Epcot. As direct of an attack as you can legally get away with. Okay. One thing that I always found weird about it, and I remember thinking this at the time,

like I don't expect people to have the hyper knowledge of, like, the theme park designations. And, you know, I, hey, we've had guests on the show who are great who still can, who confuse Disneyland and Magic Kingdom or whatever. These things happen. Or which castle is which. Disney World being different than EFKOT Center is really weird. That leaves a strange taste in my mind. Maybe they thought it was cleaner to a layperson to like,

well, a regular, for somebody who knows nothing about this, sees a castle and they think, well, that's Disney World. And then there's Epcot separately from that. But of course, Disney World is the entire complex and the castle park is the Magic Kingdom and there is Epcot Center. So when Bart's saying we're not going to Disney World, we are going to Epcot Center is weird. It's wrong that it just leaves them and i don't know this

isn't so nerdy many many people go to disney this is a very common place to go to i wonder why they land it's just oh it fucking gives me a headache i hate i'm just learning this now for the first time actually i'm sure at one point in my life yeah i i was like i i confuse it because sometimes i think oh is magic kingdom the entire complex or is that just the park within disney world because kingdom sounds like it should be all-encompassing but no it's just a park along with uh animal kingdom and uh epcot and some other things in there yeah yeah that's right these are these are the facts that have been firmly in my head since i was seven every exact delineation of what everything is. No, the entire complex is Walt Disney World.

So Epcot Center is within Walt Disney World. Magic Kingdom, it's very confusing because Disneyland and Magic Kingdom are equivalent things. It's like they are both theme parks with castles and main streets and Tomorrowlands and what have you. And then, you know, Tokyo, Disney, nothing else is called Magic Kingdom. Disneyland Paris is just Disneyland Paris. It's not Magic Kingdom at the Disneyland Paris Resort. We get it, boy. We got to keep all this shit straight on our show.

But I, well, I guess it didn't, so it worked for you. You understood the difference between Disney World and Epcot Center. I am overthinking it, maybe. Well, and officially it is walt disney world not disney world well i got the walt i'm just tackling one problem at a time of course we got a myriad of issues here but are there just giant walls between the how are they separated from each other by space or by actual barriers if you haven't been there oh my it's funny to explain these basics of disney world lore they're so far apart if that's what i thought you

get down there disney world is huge it's unreal so you are traveling miles between the parks and so yeah the separation you gotta take a shuttle tree after tree after tree there are monorails that connect these things. But yeah, as portrayed in the show, the idea that there is one fence separating. That's closer to Disneyland and California Adventure. Yes, that's what I'm familiar with. Which are essentially across a little street from each other. And it's more like that in Paris.

Tokyo, they're close-ish, but not as much. But only in Disney World are the parks incredibly far apart from each other. The sprawl of Walt Disney World is insane to me. When I came there most recently, I was like, oh, I can't. I was still in Park Hopper brain of California. Just like, oh, it was me and my mom. Oh, I'm seeing a pattern here. Have you been getting any texts, Henry, during this recording?

Henry, stop recording. Stop this episode. My mom loved Epcot. My brother got her a, when she lived in Florida, got her a annual pass, and she went down there like multiple times in a year just for Epcot alone. My mom loves Epcot. Oh, great, great. All right.

What kind of person. But yeah, anyway, gave me a headache um i was also happy to hear uh i am happy though here to hear leisure world reference because that's a real place in southern california like a huge sprawling retirement complex where people can buy little condos and my great-grandparents lived there so it's fun to hear leisure world where it felt like a very local something that as far as i know is not in florida but makes sense grandpa would be interested in it more of those hollywood specifics coming into simpsons yeah you can tell yes there's a west coast uh bias uh leaking through f cot center when everything else is booked which i mean if you are looking to get farther away in the least crowded part of WDW, Epcot's probably your bet that day, I think.

Yes, although I remember going. I went once on New Year's Eve with my parents. It was literally sold out, I believe. Like, it can happen. You can fill it up. This is very much joking about 80s Epcot, though Epcot by 2003 didn't have that many new rides. So definitely a few that they reference here were closed by the time this episode aired or were about to be closed for instance the first

other than the sphere we see the first direct reference i noted was the building that they're doing they're all meeting up for the award ceremony is the horizons exterior that's what it looks like to me i don't know about you yeah big angular building kind of like fans out from the top like smaller at the bottom gets bigger at the top it was exciting to see a simpsonsified horizons building it might be i am a real admirer it's one of the things i love is just those basic shapes of those big crazy brutalist buildings and the horizons building was beautiful rip so i'm glad they they simpsonsified it and uh then lisa says they're going to go into the future sphere which

is their version of spaceship earth but it's more like despite what lisa says it's more like what people in 1980 thought 2005 would look like really right yes in reality that's that's what it is yeah but that line it's what people what she, it's what people, what she says, it's what people in 1965 imagine life would be like in 1987. That is, that feels like an Epcot joke written with love. I wonder if that was a Matt Warburton. Of course it sounds lame. But like, that's exactly why it's cool and weird.

Like, what is it? There's a place you can go that's the future of the past. It's like, it's awesome. That's bizarre. Like, Lisa it's like it's awesome that's bizarre i like lisa's right to be excited about that the actual inside of the ride though well here i'll play the clip but i think there's a very specific walt disney world ride they are referencing here oh the future sphere it's what people in 1965 imagined what life would be like in 1987. Eastern Airlines presents The World of Tomorrow.

Don't walk, fly in your personal Eastern Airlines air buggy. And say goodbye to the Cola Wars. The victor, Eastern Airlines Cola. And we're not stopping there. Because at Eastern Airlines, world conquest is part of our master plan. Now enjoy the soothing music of the turtles. It's nice and cool in here, don't you think?

Air conditioning on a ride is very important to me, the older I get as well. It's in a big appeal of boring rides. Like, you'll let a lot of stuff slide if you can get cool in there. And this is where, you know, some of the, this era of Simpsons can lose me here and there. And I kind of like, do I care about the story? But I think this section shows that, like, sometimes it can still function as just a vessel for like great sketches. This is just like a full sketch about weird Disney future rides that's very well observed. And like you said, Henry, it's, you know, the Eastern Airlines presence. That is a literally true thing from a Magic Kingdom ride called If You Had Wings, which was pretty blatant, just like airline advertisement. And then Eastern Airlines went bankrupt. They just, they don't exist anymore.

So it's this huge presence of, and they just had to like turn it around quick. They made it just like, you know, generic flying, right? It's an idea. It's a right about the idea of airlines. And then I think Delta took it over. And it's so funny that they have to like,

there's a big physical footprint that disney has to deal with for an airline that went away eastern airlines cola i think is my favorite like laugh in the episode like they don't it's like you know we'll just say eastern airlines we have our own soda and that will take over also to us as well and then the design wise those horrible robots with the whips with airplanes for heads that rocks that is that's great silly and weird whipping all of these enslaved humans enslaved robot humans and then the eastern airlines flag is flying over the white house yes and the washington monument all right yeah it's so funny this is benign and this is some pretty accurate epcot stuff i feel like to evil corporations kind of laundering their plans and i like like using epcot using a theme park as a place to present a friendly face

to the public when actually they're quite malicious and have much to hide. I mean, it goes back to like, you know, there was a longtime Monsanto presence at Disneyland, you know, and another one, I mean, I'll talk about it more with Electric Car of the Future. But yeah, it's a funny and well-observed thing that these like horrible companies got to like pretend to be our friends at Disney World. It is part of the fun. Yeah. To know the propagandization to it is part of the fun yeah to know the propagandization to you is part of the fun of remembering these now yeah yeah just like isn't that weird and fun you just you have to embrace the weirdness that's kind of the flaws have to be something you like to be like a big epcot fan i mean we're not going to get rid of the propaganda smashed us at all seconds in america so we may as well laugh at it yeah you'll never avoid it. So let's let it be a ride instead of scary online accounts or whatever.

Aljean mentions he loves licensing Happy Together, like that it's an easy one to get, apparently, and that they put it in stuff a lot. Scott, especially one of your most controversial takes on Podcast Ride is your distaste for a certain Epcot ride, I think. Yeah, yeah. I've run into a lot of trouble about a ride called Living with the Land. And this is a boat ride where you get to go see how hydroponic plants are grown.

It's like an all-ride about food harvesting. I don't know. I thought there was, and I've seen it online. There is definitely the point of view. It exists. I swear that this is a deeply boring ride and i went on it with my wife one time and she is just like oh how long is this and i'm like 15 minutes there's some animatronics at the beginning and then it just becomes plants and i thought it was a more common or widespread theme park opinion

this right like i think i feel close to how how Al Jean probably feels about all of it. And I got honest about that on the show, not knowing it would be a torch wielding mob, Frankenstein style that has existed for years. People are so mad that I remember somebody saying Scott was such a villain in that episode. Or like, I like,

I guess like, like that happens on Twitter twitter sometimes there's that prompt like what's a take that would get you people would first you're doing an electric chair and that that is that ride i don't know but i feel like i i really i think an outsider not to throw bob under the boat but i feel like i think you go there and you're like this is the boringest shit i've ever i really think an outsider is like what is this hydroponic plant growing boat ride? I mean, yeah, I'll often toss off a comment about something I assume no one cares about. And that will be every reply in the podcast comments.

It will be about that. And I'll forget that I even said it. I have to like search through the podcast to find out. You just tossed off a hateful opinion. It was like a month ago. And then you're like, what did I say? Like, yeah. So, yes, we then head to their parody of world

of motion sponsored by general motors except this is about how electric cars are bad so this is also mixed in with the then current doc of who killed the electric car oh yeah but yes uh let's let's hear a little bit about how uh what what people think of you in an electric car welcome to the electric car of the future sponsored Sponsored by the Gasoline Productions of America. Hello. I'm an electric car. I can't go very fast

or very far. And if you drive me, people will think you're gay. One of us. One of us. of us so so yeah this uh world of motion was also very blatantly like the joke was that not so obvious on the ride but it is like oh what's the future of of cars it will still use oil that is the future of cars you do not imagine the future of cars any other way i mean i almost that's totally correct i almost view it as even more of a parody of universe of energy which is

probably the most malicious epcot attraction which is sponsored by exxon and that makes that explains that like you know one day there might be solar and wind power maybe but it's really not ready i mean they're trying to get off the ground and they're just they're so fucked on this it is not working out these solar guys there's they're so sweet but they're so dumb solar is not gonna work out maybe in like 300 years but for now oil is the way to go and it will be oil. And there's a comic that they put out where, like, Garsh, it's Mickey and Goofy, and, like, Garsh seems like wind power could be. Yeah, probably not, though, for a long time.

Oh, come on. It's like Trump's opinions. Windmills are going to take it. Goofy, yeah, look, you're dumb. I'm smart. I'll explain. Oil's the way to go. What else can I say?

Fossil fuel. They really put out something like this. It's nuts. Now we know electric cars are cool. They're made by the world's coolest guy. He's not gay. He's got about 13 children he does not take care of. So the question there is settled.

Yes. No homo and just like epic trolling and posting from the ultimate badass uh zuckerberg ran scared he couldn't handle it he couldn't be he'd piss his pants in the ring so yeah yeah the ultimate like yeah we just didn't have like the icon that electric cars needed yet you know yeah my reaction now when i see electric cars the feeling back then and even like six seven years later south park had their episode like oh driving electric car makes you too smug and you're a jerk or whatever now i think the feeling is like if it's a non-tesla electric car i do just i have no negative feeling i don't even think the person is like trying to show off

or whatever i'm just like oh yeah they have a hybrid like but whatever but if it's a tesla i do still have the like like i cross the street and a tesla almost hits me or whatever i'm like it's a tesla yeah yeah it developed a new kind of bad reputation yeah my tesla thoughts are mostly how do i open you when uber shows up just feeling along they like which which direction is that like why did you reinvent the handle we figured out the handle so yes i i do like the animat the the stereotypical homosexual animatronic saying one of us that's that's funny to me i i chuckle at that so yeah we then cut to skinner and willie interaction this was another bit where I was like oh Willie has not insulted Skinner with a weird nickname in a while and calling me brunch eating poppin j I was like oh

what is this season six like they remember the game also closed pistachio stymies fatso a funny headline funny Scott how how how much time do you allot in in a writer's room to coming up with funny headlines for newspapers? Oh, man. Too much. I really try to be like the freeze frame guy if I can. I try to bring that to the table. I even, you know, I got to work on a show.

My first Fox, my first network show ever called the show Housebroken. It was created by Jen Crittenden, Simpsons legend, who is a lovely person and so, so funny. That was the second stint I did on it. I was like, I saw a bunch of doors that needed like funny animal politician names. And I'm like, I'm going for it. That's, oh, there's my chance. I'm naming all of these fuckers.

And I did it. Oh, great. Yeah, I'd love to do that. Then Skinner is told he needs to go to her. He gets in a number five car and drives off that's a reference to the opening to the prisoner just so you know I was wondering thank you Henry I just was googling yellow car uh not not speed racers mock five but a different one well and also when you see his little tv in there my first thought is Austin Powers but it's parodying the thing

Austin Powers also parodied with the uh that was the little TV in the car that Basil Exposition would tell him things in in Austin Powers movies. Also, in a very 2003 joke, we get a joke about Chevron with Tecron. Wonderful. Which they're still selling. I still see that at gasoline ads. Like, oh, you want Chevron with Tecron, the best kind. Also, to give you an idea where Springfield is,

it's going to be 2600 miles of driving for skinner to get to orlando that's 2500 mile drive uh from los angeles to orlando just uh you know so where is springfield it's obviously there's no answer to this i'm joking it's impossible in space and so yes then this is the only really like international Epcot jokes we get here is this meal they have here. This is where the deleted scene that's at the end of the episode would have been. So just imagine Homer saying the song about pies and now Marge is telling her jokes about international food. Yeah, that was weird. Well, that's this is skipping to the end, but that's a practice that became very normal in the Algean years where they're like for time they cut a scene and they're like well we still like this let's put it over the

credits and i always feel like they do it slightly to fuck with fox so fox can't do an ad over it that they're like hey if we put this over the credits you can't put an ad for you know the next malcolm in the middle coming up or whatever over this magician secrets revealed. Yes, yes. This is a very fun mom joke here I like from Marge in this quick clip. Wow, this restaurant is so international. La pizza, the hamburger, senor grilled cheese. I hope I don't accidentally order an elephant. What happened to you two? And it was, honey, I squirted goo on the audience now this is the

reference i did get because i was uh in the audience for honey i shrunk the audience in 1999 but it was in disneyland and i know it opened in epcot first but that was lots of fun i feel like you're not squirted with goo but you're maybe lightly misted when a dog sneezes on you or something like that yeah that's correct yeah kind of on the way up. And they fake rats touching your legs or something, right? Yeah, like little air jets that puff out air around your legs to make you feel like rats are running by. A bunch of mice multiplying. I hate all of those things.

I don't. It's tough to be a bug is one I really don't like where a bunch of bugs crawl around your butt. I stand up. I'm just like, and I will hover above this seat. I do not want that on my body. You know what? I loved the alien encounter.

I'm one of the only people who liked that ride when it was new. I actually really liked it. I'd probably like it today. But as a child, I'm like, no way. No way can I handle. This looks like the scariest thing ever. How about the the terminator i guess it's called an audience attraction whatever you call those kind of

experiences where you're in an audience there's a screen there are effects and there's live action actors that that ruled i love that i think it was universal oh yeah that thing was unbelievable i still like and that like that they got to there was like a terminator sequel that was only in theme parks and that cam Cameron was a part of. And all the actors are in it. I mean, like, we all know the Terminator sequel brigade is a tough lineup of films. So it's like, really? They only got it right once.

And it was at Universal Studios. And it should be illegal that they closed it. I am so pissed. That's one of my most angry that it's not around anymore. It made it in Japan for a long time. I think maybe now it's gone, but I, or unless I could be wrong,

but like, I really thought about like, it would have been an hour further on a bullet train, but I, when I realized they had T2 3D, I'm like, maybe I gotta go. But then I enjoyed the beautiful city of Kyoto instead.

And I, ultimately I made the right decision. That's probably right. Henry is sitting squarely on probably. Some anti-Kyoto sentiment, Henry. Your beloved Nintendo is from there. No, actually, I loved going to Kyoto. I did choose to do that instead of Universal Orlando when I went.

It's a universal Osaka. That's an awesome city. And I'm like, you know, look, I know I'm an irony hound, and I know I'm one of the people behind the City Walk saga of long podcast series about City Walk, the mall at Universal Studios. But, like, am I really going to come across the world and choose a place with a City Walk over Kyoto? Am I going to go eat, like, a weird KFC in Japan

instead of, like, the greatest dumplings of my life? I'm mad. It all worked out. But you know, the, the fear of being squirted with goo in the audience, that was a heavy one for me as a kid. I was always scared of like any ride that teased, they were going to get stuff on you, but didn't filled me with so much anxiety. The biggest one, as I remember, uh, more rides that don't exist anymore or, or, uh, theater attractions, stuff on you but didn't filled me with so much anxiety the biggest one what eyes i remember uh more rides that don't exist anymore or or uh theater attractions it was the ghostbusters one they had at universal orlando and the the guy pretending to be rick moranis presenting it said before we went into the room because people are worried you're going to get slimed on the ride

because of slimer and all that and so he says you know if you don't want to get slimed don't sit in the blue chair was the joke he says and you then you go into the room every chair is blue and that's how he was like fucking with us but it made that's funny it made me so scared but you you didn't get it was just it was the usual universal mist like just the one little mist it's on all every single one of them but yeah, the international experience I had the first time, Epcot also was not good for me because for some reason they hire natives, I believe they try to hire native speakers of the countries to work in those places. And so, and when we went to France,

I simply could not understand this French guy in his, speaking English in his accent. I felt like he thought he was so pissed at me but maybe that was just like a French guy normal amount of anger but he was that I kept asking him to repeat himself he's like do you want this croissant I was like what do you want and he just and by the third time I asked him to repeat something I think he figured I was just some teenager fucking with him but I was I seriously could not understand what he was saying I feel really bad about it but only you knew if you remembered the name tag you could apologize and so then we see a little bit of the uh fireworks show which i would guess is illuminations

reflections of earth uh which was replaced by epcot forever in 2019 and this is where algin admits on the commentary something we've caught many times, right, Bob? Yes, he pled guilty to self-plagiarism because this joke is, you know, them saying we can make our own fireworks and they actually make them. And in Camp Krusty season four, Bard is away and Homer and Marge are watching fireworks, I believe. And Homer says, we've got all the fireworks we need right here. And it pans down to a box full of fireworks yes yeah weird whoa it's literally 10 years apart like almost exactly it's like 10 years and four months aljean says oh it's like a comet that comes by every 10 years we can just do this joke every 10 years what an excuse wow this is when Skinner reveals that he came to visit Edna.

And at first, it tricks Edna into thinking everything's fine. But no, he brought Agnes with her. He's going to ice her ass in the hotel room they're sharing that she paid for. This is when also we get the disgusting joke that Skinner crawled back into her womb for two weeks after being... Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games,

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charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. 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. 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? And I think we're also officially retconning Armin Tamzarian. Absolutely, yes. Yeah, because as we know, she did not carry him for nine months. That would be the real Skinner, not the imposter.

Oh, right. Yes, that wouldn't work. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Everyone forget it ever happened, like they said. Hey, we're defenders of that episode but we know lg not a fan it's bonkers that everybody's furious i just saw some list of like the worst decisions

ever made on television and that was on there like come on cool it's one episode that didn't work calm down she storms off homer then invites skinner to a thing i think the podcast the right has been campaigning for great moments with mr e Eisner right love this oh my god if there was an animatronic that was still there to honor the honor those days when you know we had a CEO who stood for something who was slightly charismatic when a camera was on him who was silly and acted and put on silly costumes and yes he was probably just as bad as the current people were striking against but you know what i didn't notice because he was in nice little skits with winnie the pooh or whatever um we love eisner and we're eisner defenders even though this episode's

airing probably in the eisner decline uh he's not spending money on the parks he's why california adventure is not great and hong kong disney Disneyland is not great and they're making all this straight to video movies. This is in Eisner decline but I, you know, I think that guy, I think he was ballsy, I think he dreamed big and oh I would die if there was an animatronic show of uh, kick Lincoln out, Lincoln's

out, let's put in Eisner. It's a better idea. Hello? That's what it is, I have to start with that every time. Well, you know uh yeah lincoln had iconic so lincoln has the gettysburg address and uh eisner has his hello he redefined hello yeah i also feel like the tone it's always supposed to have today's executives probably would be just as bald as him but they like he had the guts to be bald these guys the the billionaires today

they're they're plugging the hair in with the top technology i would bet david zaslav would have just as thinning hair as michael eisner but michael eisner had the guts to to just live that truth yeah he wasn't trying to be a the looker or anything yeah he was he was he was just himself then comes a joke they know is lame on the commentary oh my god i think i mean when i was younger and got uh much angrier television this really upset me and then you listen to the commentary 10 years later and they admit like why did we do this and gene is very critical of doing a carson joke at the end of this very long sweaty joke he's like it's 2003 why were we doing carson impressions yeah oh good i'm so glad he knows yeah

this made me so mad and it's not just carson it is a johnny carson character the you are correct sir that guy art fern i think his name is i'm not i'm 41 years old i don't know about johnny carson characters i know what a johnny carson impression is i just know that character because i think john stewart on the daily show would often like lapse into that kind of impression and i was not a fan of that either if any listeners know my franchise of the character craig healy and clip cup this kind of hack comedian that is a character i've been doing with my friend nick carossi for 12 years a lot of it was inspired by like this the insane mugging of john stewart around that era that he would show a clip of like republican hypocrisy or whatever and then just like and tug his collar and we're like why this is it's like i know it's supposed

to be bad but it's just bad and that's exactly how i feel about the line are you is it a clip are you playing no no i don't have the clip. But we know what we're talking about. It's like, that's good social satire. That's good satire. My wife had never seen this episode, and I told her that line this morning, and she was like, ah! Just recoiled. She made a face like she accidentally swallowed a bug.

Also, by early 2003, nobody's thinking about Enron anymore either like it's such a musty joke like for 2003 and this and it lives on a little bit too because this whole clip is in the Enron smartest guys in the room documentary oh so there's a little more of a spotlight on it that you know if you're curious about the Enron story and you want to watch the kind of official tale of it then you end up watching this entire scene I don't remember if they show that's good sad they might even have the sense to cut that I love Al Jean is like can we cut that now I think is what he says on the commentary you know it restores my faith in these writers and these people who've done so much that I that I do love that he is aware you know it restores my faith in these writers and these people who've done so much that i that i do love that he he is aware you know i've experienced it in the comedy writing career

there's like there's a point where you go a couple jokes too far they talk about this on the commentaries we're like we're tired of these jokes let's put in something fresh to entertain ourselves and then you realize you like went past like jokes that might have been funny seven times in a row for one that was maybe funny once and then never again certain jokes they just don't have like shelf life you can feel them you're like why did we put that in last minute that was no we should have had confidence in what was like it already been there for a little while so yeah cut this joke now oh my god this is like this is like a bottom 10 jokes in the series for me. I really hate this.

It's an all time stinker. And it just go. In my head, it went off for about three minutes, I think. But it really it's 20 seconds. But Jesus Christ, it's a long. You know what? Even the entire Enron thing doesn't bother me so much. But that's good satire.

And who's saying it? What voice is that? Is it someone in the ride? is it someone in the ride is it someone on the ride yeah i also feel like just if homer just said you know the ride of broken dreams then homer says oh you mean the enron ride you know we don't need to see it like that's just the title that's enough jokes too many and then maybe it like builds and like what if we see it and then if we say that and then yeah yeah maybe they're like hey you know what this aside isn't funny enough but if we see it maybe it's really funny and then they've already animated and they're like well shit it's not that funny but we animated it we man i feel like them saying that's good satire is also their way of

saying could this save it if we wink to the audience like well we know this is silly satire it's a little like pointed that it's like a you know a political cartoon in a newspaper it does feel like the uh the adr medic showed up to try to save that joke yes what if more people were talking you can yeah you can always like oh there's no characters on screen they don't they don't know who's saying i don't think even they know uh whatever but it's fascinating to like process, and now hearing they regret it. I'm glad they're transparent about that. Commercial break.

Cut back to we're in a good parody of the Monsanto House of the Future, which is where Skinner slept. And I think it was closed by the time we were children, I think. I don't think it existed anymore in Disney. Oh, that was a 60s thing. Yeah, that was long ago. But they get the look right for sure. But they also capture this melancholy thing I've thought about sometimes.

I'm like, oh, these animatronics will never get out of bed or go to work or whatever. They just will cycle through like waking up forever and they don't even have legs like this. Yeah. That thought is a little melancholy. I like that. Sad light. And this is when, again, we get a good explanation of what Epcot is. It's educational and offers mild thrillsoly i like that sad light and this is when again we get a good explanation of what epcot is it's educational and offers mild thrills just like that so so yes we then

have a quick joke of the teachers being uh tested for drugs which is when a guy jumps out the window rather than being tested i kind of wish they umped up that a little bit with adr and we heard him like die or splat on the ground i feel like like Merkin would have had a death sound at least a car accident happening in the distance yeah yes and this is when watching from the rafter Skinner Skinner realizes he's about to lose Edna forever because she'll make enough money to never teach again this is when he realizes he must make a deal with Bart and this reminded me of one of my favorite things at Epcot where he goes to meet Bart Innoventions uh it was it was the only thing i liked as a teen on that field trip because it was just an arcade full of sega video games like sega sponsored it big time so like this

was 96 and it had like including some like not released in america japanese only saturn video games it was just like wow this is this is a lot of fun this interventions like that and i guess you guys have talked about club cool a little on on podcasts right sort of this arcade still exists yeah yeah oh yeah club cool is the weird like coca-cola exhibit where you can try sodas from around the world and yeah i know jason loves this this arcade really good sega arcade and you know what i think think you got to thank Eisner for all that. I think he didn't build Epcot, and then he kind of did the 90s refresh of it.

And he's like, if kids are finding this place boring, knock out this whole exhibit and put a bunch of arcade games in there. And he was right. But in this case, we're getting Grand Theft Auto references here as Bart is playing Halloween Hit and Run. Though, funnily enough,

eight months after this episode airs is the release of Simpsons Hit and Run. Though, funnily enough, eight months after this episode airs is the release of Simpsons Hit and Run. Oh, yeah, yeah. So they are working on it at the time this episode airs. Like, Matt Selman's writing stuff for it and the developers are making it, which some regard as the best Simpsons video game. Oh, sure.

Probably true. Yeah. Yeah, it probably is. I mean, we're old because we think the konami arcade one's the best that was marge and the vacuum cleaner but but yes this is when skinner makes a deal don't look back just keep driving seymour glad you're here you can help me play halloween hit and run oh this game is gonna get some disapproving clucks

But for now I need my tongue to talk to you I don't want to lose Edna So I need you to sabotage her chances of winning tonight But I don't want to hurt Mrs. K Alright Bart, I didn't want to resort to this but This drawing was found on the wall of Springfield Elementary late last week. All right, I'm in. I'll humiliate the love of your life.

Because I like you, I'll even do it pro bono. It's pro bono. I know what I said. This is the worst thing I've ever done. Even worse than what I did in NAMM. You're supposed to jump to a horrific conclusion, but it's just stealing a cupcake. This also feels like they're remembering, oh, we used to do jokes about Skinner being in Vietnam.

We haven't done that in a few years either. Yeah, they did really bail on a lot of basics, didn't they? That line about disapproving clucks, but I need my tongue to talk to you. Like, that's a good, I like that line. Yeah, it's a nice Skinner over-explaining after being mildly clever. Also, like, Bart runs over kids from the peanuts halloween special too that's the last group of kids so bart makes this deal and uh isn't it i could not find the movie it's from but i feel like that's something you see in a million like movies of

where somebody gets in the back seat like don't look back just keep driving but i yeah i couldn't find a specific film it's referencing yeah i'm not sure either but you know the vibe as soon as you see it that's funny in an arcade yeah i like that and so we see the tickets are very available they're trying to figure out who's going to win the rampy and this is when the big guest star of the episode comes in well let's give a little listen to little richard little richard little little richard and now to present our final award for Teacher of the Year, Little Richard. I love teachers. In fact, I'm a teacher.

I taught Paul McCartney to go whoo-hoo-hoo. Purple Rain. Shut up. Michael Jackson just told me to shut up. We'll dine to our last three teachers, folks. And the winner will be decided by one final question. Asked by the students who nominated them. So, yes, there he is.

Little Richard, the legend himself. Yeah, I mean, he's one of those guys where he's such a cartoon character. I forgot it was possible for him to die. And then he did. And then I forgot when it happened because it happened in May of 2020. forget what was happening then i think we were all playing a lot of animal crossing and we just neglected to read the news that day but uh he did pass away at 87 in may of 2020 and i just i knew it happened recently but not during that pivotal period in which we were all distracted and going crazy yeah probably yeah not properly honored in a way, because what a legend. And I also, look, I'm a fan.

The same things that the Beach Boys cameo on, and I love the Beach Boys, and I love when they act on shows. And much like the Beach Boys, Little Richard played himself on both Baywatch and Full House. Might have been a character on Baywatch now that I say it. A Little Richard cameo is second only to the Beach Boys in terms of delightful cameo for me and kind of like inherent stiffness. But then he's good when he yells, shut up. You could tell he feels that. That's like real Little Richard energy.

I like him acting. There's this tape, Mother Goose Rock and Rhyme, where he's old King Cole and there's this big musical number. I love it. Love it. It almost feels like The Simpsons is just this general pop culture checklist. Like, have we ever had them? Have we ever had them?

And I'm so glad they made it to Little Richard. They're a little shy about telling the story on the commentary, but Algene eventually tells it in which Little Richard read the stage directions in the script because the stage direction was in parentheses furious. Edna, is that true? And he said, furious Edna, is that true and he said furious edna is that true so they um it is a story that they tell a lot and they're like well you know uh it could have been a bad day he he i i take it he's used to acting he's done a lot of acting but he was 70 then and he got to

enjoy all the good drugs before or he lived through that era let's say so the drugs were just in soda or whatever yeah i i don't blame him for not knowing what stage direction but it is very funny like because i think they had a similar not the same type of thing but when they had james brown on they just loved how he said like this stage wasn't double bolted yeah that is so that is burned in my brain yeah for sure and i'm looking at a bad you know musician delivery definitely love it i'm looking at imdb and apparently this was his last acting role and he lived for another 17 years yeah he was quiet yeah he didn't show up on too many things for the last last decade or so uh you know also i remember you mentioned him with the beach boys yeah him on

full house just like the beach boys like and they had a similar joke on that too where he's like i think he's in like a fantasy that michelle is having and he's trying to teach michelle how to say woo correctly i forget he's the i think he's the uncle of michelle's friend who's played by it's it's i don't know i remember her first name but small edge she's one of the smallettes and yeah yeah like yeah she's offering her uncle to play it said like oh your uncle's gonna come play at this thing who's your uncle i'd love to meet your uncle and then he's a rock and roll legend none of them realized um yeah he's he's delightful also these days they would not do a joke where homer thinks he's michael jackson that he's saying purple rain i don't think they do that joke.

But it does kind of refer to, it kind of acknowledges, I think Little Richard kind of hated Prince, thought he was stealing it, which kind of, you know, hey, the look and the manner of dressing and the mustache. Yeah, the joke they give Little Richard in this is basically him, the thing he would always say, like, I invented everything in rock and roll and everybody ripped me off. that was that was at least a stereotype of jokes you'd give little richard that he'd kind of play into there was some grammys or something where he was presenting an award and then he opened

the envelope and he said and the winner is me and then he just went on a rant about how all the grammys should go to him because he's responsible for all of it so yes simply perfect joke totally in character of how he actually is so yes this is when bart sabotages and pretend he can't read and i like little richard's little exchange with bart too of like please read son like he's just he's he's very sweet i though also i think like dana gould's in the is in the writer's room now and dana gould has this great joke about how one of my favorites how he says you know if you have your father's voice in your head telling you like you're not good enough or whatever then just imagine that

it's it's little richard saying those things instead of it and then he and his his imitation of little richard is ending sentences with whoo which is what they make him do in this so it makes me wonder like how much was that dana gould telling them to like oh little richard should punctuate every sentence with woo oh maybe yeah he was there by then he was on the show yes yeah there's i have a problem with over-attributing things they don't say dana gould wrote to like i bet dana gould did that i'm probably doing it too much yeah you never know but also people can just like you know affect the culture of the room they're in even if they didn't think of the thing so skinner reveals that it was all a plot and he apologizes i feel like edna suit should be saying anything in this sequence she is very silent this whole bit here yeah maybe react to

this heartbreak this dramatic scenario this is when skinner though pops the question and so uh i think this moment here it's meant to i think it's not meant to destroy skinner and enda it's meant to elevate it and try to save it of like oh well then let's continue the forward momentum with these characters and get them engaged and then we can do a wedding later and then i think it's by the next season is when they go like ah screw this flush it down the toilet no more no wedding like but i think they did this this proposal with the idea that they would get they're buying themselves a wedding episode in the future yeah maybe they thought they could pursue this and then they realized well uh skinner being lonely and boring and being you know

disaffected and surly that would change too much if they had love in their lives so let's make them both status quo once again everyone must be miserable for comedy i do like uh agnes screams at him skinner your feelings are ugly and raw and uh but of course this time skinner wasted all his money on an engagement ring for patty so he has no money for this engagement ring to edna but they get engaged little Richard gives him a ring and I like him putting the ring back on saying like I felt naked with that for a minute there that's a good joke about how many how much jewelry he wore and then one last disgusting joke with Agnes saying oh great three in the bed which meaning she's not gonna buy a new bed for him but she's

just gonna she'll have to have Edna sleep in the same bed with her just like seymour does then much like how they often fell to this time where they're running out of time or they're like oh we better cut to the chase the award givers are like we gotta cut to the we're running long uh this guy wins the julio estudiante the perfect little movie story within the one he is based on the guy stand and deliver is based on uh very similar names yeah yeah we all had to watch that in class right we all had to i think so i think it was that yeah the day before the lord of the rings on the little tv for me but yes it's a happy ending all around even for homer, I didn't win Teacher of the Year, but I didn't go home empty handed.

Do you want to check out the bed of tomorrow today? Ooh, Seymour. I love happy endings. Well, here's ours. We're going to Disney World. Step away from the wall. Step away from the wall step away from the wall oh it's so beautiful one churro please that'll be 14 dollars here one more use that song now you've both been to Disney parks more recently than me. What are we doing with churros?

What are we holding at in terms of the price? Well, I check the prices on the ticker every day. You know, I looked it up. CHU. You know, at Walt Disney World, I saw that a specialty churro is $6.25. So it's not $14 yet. I mean, it's creeping up. It's getting up there, but at least they're long.

At least you get like, you know, you can split that between two people if you aren't in the mood to fully consume a churro yourself. So that gives you some value potentially. If you're buying the dipping sauce with it, then you're getting close to $10. You could. With add-ons, yeah, you could almost. They almost didn't go high enough with that number speaking of how japan does it better it's hard to go back to the regular american uh disneyland circular churros because the churros

they make in in disney sea they are shaped like a mickey they're a mickey churro like as in you know it's a long cylindrical uh i'm miming a perfectly normal thing. Yes, as you crank up and down a shaft. That's how you hold a churro. But yes, it's a regular cylindrical churro, but if you turn it to face you, it's not a circle. It's the three circles of Mickey. Oh, I forgot that part of it. Mainly, I'm just like, they are so good. Their specialty churros are fantastic.

This potato churro I had in Disneyney sea it was like it felt like a like a very elevated breadstick like uh god i love that i dream of that one of the top 10 attractions in the park is the potato churro i'm a pro churro man i think it's a good way to start your day at a disney park i agree with you guys and then and mike mitchell that it's a perfect oh yes yeah that's right yeah we did a whole churro thing with him yeah yeah um agreed and it can be like a stomach subtler too you know if you're getting on a coaster getting off or you just need something really basic you know just like line the stomach a little bit so you know it can help you physically with your park momentum though if you're aljean buying like three or four churros for your whole

family i'm sure he's really feeling the cost of it that might be yeah this does seem to come from that place yeah for sure also on the simpsons ride it actually has a pretty good churro joke in it where when bob when saicho bob breaks into universal he finds a dumpster full of day old churros and bashes in uh barney's head to knock oh that's the weapon and the right we're right yeah yeah it is fun that that uh that ride has so many disneyland jokes in it because they're just like we are just going to do all theme park jokes it's not going to be universal specific yeah you get a little bit you're like wet and smoky stunt show like they'll hit universal a little but yeah you really feel that we didn't i don't think realized how much it was matt

warburton until we were talking to him on our show. And it was, that ride, I was always like, it's got to come from, like, somebody's got to really know. Or, like, a bunch of the writers do. And then clearly, I think I was fully a Matt Warburton, like, passion project. And it shows. And I bet he, he must have gotten jokes into this Epcot run, too. For sure. It is very well observed i you know

i don't like that it's a negative on epcot episode more than not because epcot has given me so much joy and i'm such an epcot fan but i do think a lot of it is very well observed so i i can't say they got it like totally wrong other than epcot being different than disney world which is stupid should i should have cut that one joke and you should have gotten that part right those are my qualms but otherwise a fun episode I guess final thoughts for me is you know I have to treasure the few Edna Skinner episodes there are and I do like that because of that content at the same time there's maybe five minutes of that in this episode it's mostly Bart studying for a uh to take a term paper or to

write a term paper and then just jokes at the expense of a theme park they hate but it seems very authentic based on what you you two are telling me except for the how the park is split up you're at the plot is very sidelined in this and i guess i don't mind because it's like the rare to get a ton of jokes about a thing that i really specifically love to run all that through the simpsons filter was it was very cool not to say a thing we always say but i do feel like in the disney simpsons era you wouldn't get this much meanness or jokes about why especially not being this outright of like epcot sucks you would never have an episode of simpsons now saying epcot sucks don't go to it like you would not have that that's nuts you go you have to go to disney plus to find homer yelling it's boring even to fly over it i am so weird but great

i love that they didn't like censor it or something or you know i'm glad they let it be there and when the simpsons ride eventually transfers to the disney parks if that ever happens they're not gonna have as many jokes about how like hey you know it's expensive to go here and there's crappy churros and kid rides suck and all these things like all that meanness is not gonna be there i don't think when they get yeah yeah true you gotta be too too brand positive which i think is great as i said i think the flaws of epcot you have to embrace that's part of it i think the flaws of you know our show we do shit on things about places that we love and places we go over and over again I think the flaws of, you know, our show, we do shit on things about places that we love and places we go over and over again.

I think the warts and all of theme parks is like part of the fun. Of course, they aren't perfect, idyllic places, but you got to embrace that. And I like when theme parks will make jokes about themselves, you know, they should. You know, my last thought on this episode, it pretty much mirrors all you guys, but I also think about how the last joke of the episode is the post-credits thing with the pie song. And the joke is that Homer just leaves and the song stops. And the, you know, March says I'm on vacation.

Meaning if I were to follow Homer, we'd have to write more lyrics to this, but no, we're, you're taking it easy. We're not writing a full song here, right? We're writing a few lyrics in that set. yeah that's bullshit i'm gonna drip yeah yeah though apparently they did have more lyrics to it or this could be matt selman being his sneaky little self he's the little devil on these commentaries matt's always but he's he's joking about how like oh they wrote a lot of songs about what's in pies across different lands and they were politically incorrect pie jokes and i was like did that i wonder did that really happen or is that just matt selman trying to say uh to get another writer in trouble saying he wrote

un-pc well i wonder we have to ask dan graney and i think we have his email address henry that's true that's our next question apparently he was the big proponent of the pie song but but anyway until then until our answer comes in uh scott garner thanks for being on the show please tell us where we can find you online and more about podcast the right in case our listeners have not heard it yet oh yeah sure well as evidenced in this conversation big epcot fan a big fan of theme parks and i do the show podcast the ride with my friends mike carlson and jason sheridan bob and henry were great on it not too long ago.

It should come back sometime soon. But we talk about different rides and theme parks and deep dive, and I'd like to think you don't even have to have all the stuff memorized to celebrate the kind of odd stuff that we find. And, you know, I could say look me up on Twitter or X, but what a wasteland. I don't want to do that. You know what? I mentioned it mid-episode, and it may be relevant to your audience. I was very proud to do that. You know what? I mentioned it mid-episode and I am, and may be relevant

to your audience. I was very proud to get to work on a Fox animated show of being a lifelong Simpsons fan. So I will say if you want to check out

a fun animated show you've never seen, the show Housebroken created by Jen Crittenden who wrote so many of the great season six, seven episodes, I think.

I got to write an episode called Who's Nocturnal that is up on Hulu. So if you have the Disney Hulu bundle for Simpsons purposes and you want to see what a simpsons great has done since then and something i got to help with to look that up i was excited to get to do that and listeners should definitely check out saturday morning all-star hits and we are our podcast about it we did with you too that was that's one of our favorites oh yeah show i did on netflix the great

kyle mooney and ben jones geniuses both good friends both and one of the best things i've ever gotten to do i hope the joy shows if you watch hopefully a very joyous tribute to 80s 90s animation and tv thank you so much absolutely oh such a blast as always guys so happy to do it thank you so much to scott gardner for being on the show please check out podcast the ride but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get these podcasts one week ahead of time and ad free, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. If you sign up for five bucks a month, you get just that, but also access to our vast, vast catalog of miniseries episodes. Over 150 full length episodes about things like Futurama, King of the Hill, Batman the Animated Series, The Critic, and Mission Hill. And that five bucks a month also gets you regular access to monthly new episodes of Talking Futurama

and Talking in the Hill. And that's all happening behind the $5 paywall only at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you can access all of the $5 stuff naturally, but also one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is thatry bob's talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast or monthly

exclusive on our patreon where we cover an animated feature film super in-depth just like we do an episode of the simpsons which often means talking for over four five or even six hours this month at the end of september we're starting up spooky season right by talking about corpse bride the tim burton well not directed stop motion film is spiritual sequel to the nightmare before christmas and before that we did a summer of pixar toy story 4 the incredibles a bug's life and cars all covered in super duper detail we are nearly at five full years of what a cartoon movies covering everything from akira to a goofy movie and our longest podcast ever who framed roger rabbit six and a half hours of chat all of that at your fingertips if you go to the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons today head over

there to check out everything you are missing so as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast isronauts. That is a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two full length bonus podcasts every month. And I have a book coming out this month in September. It is the Boss Fights book volume all about the classic point and click adventure game Day of the Tentacle. You can find that Boss Fight books volume wherever you find delicious wonderful books so henry how about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm always tweeting up a storm and you know in the other places i'm also h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g and if you're following me and bob on social media you should do the same for

talking simpsons because the official at talk simpsons pod on twitter and instagram and all these other cool places you should follow that to stay in the loop whenever new stuff goes live on the patreon on the free feed when we've got live shows like the one we just did this month at pax in seattle so many cool things at talk simpsons pod on social media and of course if you want an easy list of all of our free podcasts, we've released them talking Simpsons and what a cartoon head on over to talking Simpsons podcast.com. Thanks so much for listening folks.

We'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast. Talk to the audience and we'll see you then. Oh, this is great stuff. I can pad it out to ten pages. Good night, Grandpa. But I'm not tired. Good night, sleepyhead. Do you have to poop?

Always.