Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Sweets And Sour Marge With Libby Watson

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

This week we're joined once again by awesome journalist Libby Watson from the fantastic Sick Note newsletter, to help us dive into the complex politics of unhealthy food. After some fun with world records, Springfield learns they are the fattest town around, which leads Marge to a quest for justice. Can she fix things within the system, or will the evil billionaires win? All that, plus a bunch of funny jokes about candy in this week's girthy podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking of the Hill, the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, brought to you by Big Red Snack Foam. I'm your host, the meanie, beanie, faux-feenie, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? It's Henry Gilbert, and the is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today as always.

It's Henry Gilbert, and the podcast is going to Mars! And who do we have on the line? I'm Libby Watson, and I'm known as America's Sorrow. And this week's episode is Sweets and Sour Marge. If I don't want them for free, why would I want to pay for them? Why do you always wait until we arrive to complain? I don't know. This week's episode

originally aired on January 20th, 2002. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy, Bobby. A Beautiful Mind and Moulin Rouge

win big at the Golden Globes. The Daria series finale airs and Parappa the Rapper 2 is released on the PlayStation 2 in the United States. So we're post 9-11 and two tragedies came to my life. Daria comes to an end and the new Parappa game is not good. It's all right. Not very good. It killed the series. Sure it did.

Yeah. I like all the songs about noodles, like, you know, the noodle invasion thing. It's a cute idea. Slurp it, suck it. You know we all like it. Yes, that's the line. Slurp it, suck it. You know we all like it about noodles.

You weren't memorizing Parappa 2 lyrics when you were 20 like me? I just like the dorky nerd going like everyone noodles it starts on a bad note though that you you're just excited to see your old pal chop chop master onion again and he's like a an unhoused man and he's just very poor and sad it's kind of depressing that he's lost his home he's got the little sprout growing out of his head because he's just an old onion yes yeah but uh. But yeah, that was Is It College Yet? is the Daria series finale movie. It was weird for me to watch Daria after high school because it started in my freshman year

of high school. So it was like, oh, the perfect show for me. And then after I graduated, I stopped watching because I didn't want to be reminded of high school. So maybe 10 years later, I did a Daria re-watch and finally saw everything again it had a great finale and I think it hasn't been cancelled the Daria reboot that's not actually about Daria it's about Jodie her friend it just it feels like no one has just made the announcement that it's been cancelled but I haven't seen anything about it uh Libby do you have any Daria knowledge or dario fandom going on in your life oh yeah i

i did watch it a bit um it was on mtv2 in the uk which was like i think in the uk mtv2 was like the alternative one that played all the indie music and stuff so that was where i watched like the strokes music videos and stuff and they would also play episodes of daria and i absolutely loved it i never watched it like in any kind of like order or anything like that but yeah i i you know i was exactly the kind i mean i would have been like 13 when i was watching it so i was very much like yeah this is absolutely me i'm really cool like daria and uh i i guess if she graduated high school in 2002 then she'd be like 37 38 now that uh daria morgendorfer yeah yeah the beavis and butthead their new movie just came out bob and i have not watched yet at the time of this recording but uh daria not not as lively as

beefs and butthead at this moment no we're still it's one of the few 90s reboots that haven't happened yet daria duckman uh a few others i mean like rugrats everything's coming back and we have we have oscars news as well? Or nomination? Oscar fever's beginning, Bob, because it's the Golden Globes, the road to the Oscars. The winner for Best Drama was Beautiful Mind, a beautiful mind. And Best Comedy slash Musical was Moulin Rouge, which one performs much better than the other at the Oscars. I see. which one performs much better than the other at the oscars i see yeah which that was where russell crowe finally won that uh that best actor thing for playing a guy with mental problems which

was easy if you had mental some mental issue but you can't go all the way with it as as a line i won't say from tropic thunder is all about that but what a what a challenging role yes yeah oh my god moulin rouge i had not seen it until your wife hate on moulin rouge quite a lot until months ago it's just uh i mean i feel like uh an old man complaining about like mtv style editing but i swear to god there's like a cut in that movie every six frames i felt bad for the editor for all the work they put into that movie but uh i would say i love musicals uh I'm not the biggest musical fan, but I love certain ones. I just saw Little Shop of Horrors performed in Berkeley.

This is excruciating. It's embarrassing. I don't like it. I still like it. I still like it. It's not, look, I like a more classical-style musical like the Chicago film adaptation that came out around the same time. I like that more, but I like how sweaty and over-the-top Moulin Rouge is and hideous.

You like burlesque shows, I bet. Burlesque shows are strip shows made for gay men. Okay, that's what I thought. Sorry, I'm too straight. Can't do it. I think I am too. I have absolutely no understanding of what it is that people like about musicals i feel like it's it's like a part of my brain that's missing i just i you know it's one of those things i i you

know i totally respect that other people like them but i just don't see myself ever enjoying a musical even when i was a kid like you know went to a couple and i was i i don't i don't get it i just don't get it uh what i mean everybody was, in 2002, weren't we all singing along to the Lady Marmalade cover? That was all they did. Oh, God. Yes. Yeah, that was on the radio a lot. Definitely had friends that liked that.

And again, I just felt like it just sort of washed over me. I think they played that song for about 10 seconds in the actual film. It's not really like a music moment. And he just made his new Elvis movie with Tom Hanks in a fat suit yeah it's not really like a music and uh he's he just made his new elvis movie with uh with tom hanks in a fat suit that's right that was the elvis movie that gave him covid wasn't it that was because they filmed in australia and he got uh that's where he announced it well he was in australia okay that's right wow so the movie that almost killed tom hanks that that alerted the world to the dangers america to the dangers of COVID. Anywho, that's what happened in early 2002 when this episode aired.

Joining us today once again is Libby Watson, who was last with us for the very weird episode, Old Money. This is a much funnier but also weird episode. Welcome back to the show, Libby. Hello. Thank you for having me back. I'm very glad to be here and uh yeah libby you uh everybody i'm sure knows that you're the the the journalist of of health care politics and the uh the great newsletter sick note and i i thought this would be a good episode too because this certainly is about like the politicization of health uh in america in a certain way about you know political diet movements though they i i

believe this came from the inspiration of like suing tobacco companies but this certainly then echoes with the later aughts the beginning of that of the the battle against big sugar and in the politicization of that yeah it does feel like a sort of interesting time capsule in a way uh you know obviously you're right that this this kind of like came back a little bit in the in the early 2010s but you know it's it's funny because like it is about health care but it's it's really not about you know it's about a health issue without being about health care which i think is very telling not seeing obesity or diabetes or whatever is a is something that can be managed with a health system and is it solely down to people's individual choices and, you know,

sort of personal moral failings is a very American way, I would say, of looking at, looking at those problems. Actually, the writer of the episode, uh, Karen Lomine,

we interviewed her a few years ago. I think it was a few years ago. It feels like a few years ago, but Henry, Henry's cocking his head. He doesn't know either. It was definitely, I think it was 2020. You can find it on our patreon patreon.com talking simpsons she came up with this idea because uh i believe the late 90s there were a lot of tobacco lawsuits

going around she didn't cite which one she uh based this episode off of but she got the idea because uh smokers were suing tobacco companies and the idea was well isn't that kind of silly yeah it takes some personal responsibility for yourself they didn't make you smoke cigarettes or whatever and a few years before this episode and probably like a year before it was written there was like a landmark massive civil lawsuits against big tobacco from our government it started with some states in the mid 90s but our government was like it wasn't for the sake of you know the public health or anything it was like we're sick of paying for all of these medicaid payments for cancer where these cancer patients are bleeding us dry you got to take care of them tobacco

companies so that's where all this came from you can read about it online there's very very long articles about all this legislation but because of this uh tobacco companies now fund anti-tobacco campaigns like the Truth Initiative, things like that. And also, this is what caused cigarette prices to increase. There have been many, many class action suits against tobacco companies. So I'm not sure which one she was looking at, but it was all happening around this time. But yeah, this was a very victim-blaming time, and I know it still is. This was a very anti-lawyer time. Every lawsuit was viewed as frivolous, and that's why the most frivolous ones get reported on the most.

But yeah, that's what's going on here. And I'm sorry, Libby, I heard you trying to jump in. No, no, not at all. It was just funny watching this because I literally just last week or something watched The Insider for the first time with Russell Crowe, which is about big tobacco. And there is a line in this episode that is directly from that movie. I mean, you know, shamefully, that is like pretty much the extent of my knowledge about this. But yeah, the lawsuits in that movie are, you know, specifically like, you know, Mississippi is suing big tobacco because of Medicaid costs.

And it's just so funny because like that is the closest that, you know, a conservative southern state could get to doing doing anything about public health is like hey you're making us pay for all these poor people's damn cancer and we don't want to do that you know i mean it really is um kind of wild yeah it's uh well that you know i get why uh it's it was very easy to fall into that way of thinking back then i don't want to uh be victim blaming myself on the on the writers of the episode because it was how everybody thought back then like oh everybody's suing everybody because it's there it's somebody else's fault but like yeah the tobacco companies for one lied about the dangers of tobacco for decades like they knew it

and kept it uh out of like so they actually did trick people into getting cancer like that and they should be sued for that on just on that level it can't there isn't personal responsibility there yeah and we're coming up on the era uh when the show came out of supersize me and of course every smart ass community was like really mcdonald's makes you fat oh you needed you need a documentary to tell me this? Things like that. But it's because of using the law to nag in our communist state of California. When you go to a fast food restaurant, it says this burger has 900 calories. And you think, maybe I don't want to eat that many calories.

And you make a wiser decision. It's because of all the March Simpsons of the world. Right, exactly. I mean, I don't know how much we want to get into this now. But, I mean, you are absolutely right absolutely right that like seeing calories on a menu i mean certainly for me it does sometimes make me make slightly better choice certainly i make better choices having that information than not having that information um as much as i hate being reminded of what i what it is i'm about to do to my body but i mean it's to me at least it is really not the issue for why... To me, America, even if you just drive across America, especially most of America, America,

not the cities that I have lived in, but most of the country, it is just so obvious that the entire country is structured in a way that makes it very easy, cheap, and often the only option to eat fast food, you know, to go to a drive-thru and get french fries and, you know, get a, you know, 64-ounce soda or whatever. And there are a lot of places where that is not even, it's sometimes literally the only option, but it is also just so much harder to eat healthy food like you know people always say oh you can always make your own you know healthy cheap food at home or whatever and i'm like first

of all that shit sucks i hate chopping vegetables i like you really want me to spend my whole life yeah i made dinner the other night and i was just thinking like god damn i've been chopping vegetables for like half an hour and i'm just making one fucking stir fry and i have just been like slicing this goddamn bok choy for this whole time anyway you know it is just simply harder to eat healthy food and even now after all the supersize me stuff and you know like fast food restaurants putting these like you know shitty little salads on their menus and stuff the structure of American I mean society in general you know with the focus on work and everything, but also,

you know, food culture, it is simply harder to eat healthier, especially if you are, you know, on the go, or, you know, if you have to, if you have to, for example, work for a living, you know, it is just harder to if you if I'm out and about, and I'm like, Alright, I want to get a snack, but I don't want to eat something really bad even in la i'm like okay well i can pay like 20 literally 20 or 15 for a salad or i can get something that will cost like three dollars and is you know laden with with fat and salt and sugar and all the stuff that tastes good i mean i think this is the um the sort of fallacy behind the whole like oh you could you could simply choose not to do xyz or whatever it's

like yeah you know i can still make that choice but there is so much around me that is pushing me to make the worst choice and then it just to just completely ignore that stuff you know it's just a very strange way to look at things i I mean, that's like so perfectly American that the structure is just ignored. Like, and it just, it just comes down to you. The structure, like you are a free individual that could do whatever you want.

Right. But it's like, it's not considered you have depressed wages. You have to work two jobs, let alone you're like raising any children perhaps like, and how. Right. Well,

and the other thing to me is like if you think about the sort of the food science that goes into producing these products like when i eat a cheeseburger from mcdonald's or whatever i'm like aware that the food is not high quality and yet most of the time you can just feel like the pleasure centers in your brain like exploding and you crave these things that are you know i'm craving these like nuggets that i know are made of pink slime like they are made of like you know chicken adjacent parts that have been spun in like a centrifuge and then you know compressed into something that looks like it came from a chicken once and i know that it doesn't even actually

taste that good when i'm eating it and yet i I still find myself craving it. And there is so much like there are, you know, billions of dollars poured into creating these products on these national fast food chains. And they like specifically, you know, they specifically create these products and recipes that enhance the number of these like pleasure center activating, activating activating ingredients not to make food that is good but to make your brain go this is good and that is so and you know and so you have this like whole system that is set up to trick your brain and then at the same time you have people saying well you know you should just simply not eat that stuff and yet you just have this like incredibly powerful like science behind these products that make them taste good even if they're bad for you and it's like okay so you've made this

thing that is like a drug and then you've yelled at me and you've made it incredibly cheap and available everywhere and you've made it hard to get stuff that is better and then you're yelling at me for eating it like come on yeah and you're also basically conditioned from birth to want these things i feel like only only kids born in the past 20 years came into a world where nutrition and eating healthy was a mainstream idea not like tofu and wheatgrass not anything like that because like henry and myself uh i'm sure uh it was the same for you henry a school lunch for all the kids in my class was like okay number one can of soda soda's unhealthy maybe some kids have a can of fruit juice with more sugar than the coca-cola also peanut butter and jelly on

white bread which is just cake and then chips and oh boy we need a snack in here too we need something like a little treat some cookies in there and maybe an apple you can throw away but it was like a bag of chips for all that a bag of chips salt and starch don't forget the salt but yeah and then if you wanted to buy a hot lunch in school was always like the saltiest most deep fried things that were frozen five years ago and shipped to your class yes and i feel like even in the uk yeah like even in the uk i was i mean i don't know if you know much about jamie oliver his whole thing is like you know screaming at schools and then also like poor mothers basically for not feeding their kids better stuff um and so you know while i was at school like the cafeteria at my school kind of like underwent a change where they started selling things that were not you know like deep fried

but you know for the first like four years i was there the food that you could get at the cafeteria was like a cheeseburger that was a pound uh there's something that is i think only exists in the uk which is called a turkey twizzler which is like turkey formed into like a curly fry shape and breaded and fried uh it's like a slim jam almost a little bit right well it's like it's it's more like it's more like a burger king chicken fry but in a curly fry shape um and yeah they were like 60p or something and donuts and that was the stuff you could buy from the cafeteria and like it was disgusting well you know the jamie olivers of the world or the you know i get i don't want to be too

negative because like i can see that their their hearts in a way are in the right place because they see children making unhealthy choices that will follow them for the rest of their lives like if if i could find younger me and tell him don't put so much like emotional investment in happy meals i think i'd be a happier person but and and and also i know when i eat garbage like yes part of me is making a choice to eat garbage and i try to make that choice less these days but optically having extremely rich people like jamie oliver or say michael bloomberg yelling at you about you need to make better choices like how can it not look like just like a rich asshole trying to take away one of the few things that's nice in the world that or that gives you any comfort in the shitty world right yeah i mean there's all there is kind of a like a what do you want me to do about it thing but you know i was kind of thinking like it's it's sort of like the idea

is that you need to make the right choice and it's sort of like you're trying to throw uh you know a ball through a hoop or something but they keep making the hoop smaller and smaller and smaller until they're still telling you why can't you get it through the hoop why can't you get it through the hoop but you know your ability to make that choice is shrunk and shrunk and shrunk until you know you have to be like perfect all the time you know you have to be perfect a lot to not get that to not get that wrong you know like i like i was saying earlier you know it's just it's hard to find these food the market certainly has not provided even though it's better than it was you know 10 20 years ago you know even just something like uh flavored

seltzer being more common now is huge. Because, you know, you can get a LaCroix in some bodegas and like gas stations and stuff, you know, you can get more interesting non sugar drinks, but it's still hard. It's still like, it's still not easy to make that choice. And that's just with drinks. So you know, when it comes to food, it is really hard because it's like, okay, I'm at the gas station, I can eat this like, you know, like fried thing that will at least activate the like crunch and salt center in my brain. Or I can eat this like, you know, single peeled boiled egg that may have been there for two weeks or this like, you know, like already brown apple or like some kind of like

horrifying, like, you know, vegetable sludge that has been there a long time you know it's it's still not the the market is still not providing i would say uh and and one last preamble question i have for you libby is i i've heard this from a number of british people when they they come over here uh like america in particular like obviously sugar and candy and cereals like those are there but i always hear like wow america you really love sugar like and that you can see just how much we have sugar in everything here yeah yeah i do think so i think i think living here has kind of changed my palate a little bit because you know when i go home and i eat the food i'm like god damn this is really bad and that is true british food is bad but i also do think that I have come to expect more salt and sugar and stuff like my palate has changed and now portions feel smaller

in the UK to an extent although I think you know we also we also eat plenty as well things taste flavorless that you know that didn't taste flavorless when I was younger and I think that is partly because I've come to expect the heightened salt and sugar and stuff. So, yeah, there is that. The availability of extremely large soda is something that is different in the U.S. You know, the first time. Free refills. Yeah. Oh, my God. Free refills.

I mean, free refills for sure is like one of those things where I was like, oh, my God, this country is amazing. You know, which is really sad. Does not speak well to my personality but i remember the first time i went to a movie theater in the u.s and i ordered like a medium soda and it was it felt fucking gigantic you know because it was like it was you know the size it was certainly the size of like an extra large soda in in the uk you know stuff like a big gulp you know it's just not so it's just not so common you know it's not it's not quite so and that's not to say that you know if you go into tesco's you're not going to see rows and rows of different sodas you know we're not we're not that different

but i yeah i would definitely say that there is i mean it's weird because we have the best like candy like britain has better chocolate and stuff than um than i had uh i had an imported cadbury cream egg once and it ruined american Cadbury cream eggs for me every after. Yes. Two sweets. Even now that Cadbury is owned by an American company, it is still better. And I did write an article about this a couple of years ago, actually. And it's to do with, you know, you can buy the American version of Cadbury here, but it's worse for some reason and I think the justification was that it was

closer to the taste of chocolate that Americans were like used to or would expect which I think is weird because I feel like if you sold just the regular Cadbury here people would go nuts forever whatever but yeah it is it is strange because we do we do have really good you know candy and biscuits as well like cookies are really are really top top cookies over there and so it's not like you can't get a lot of delicious sugar stuff there and you know, candy and biscuits as well. Like cookies are really, really top, top cookies over there. And so it's not like you can't get a lot of delicious sugar stuff there. And, you know, you have to remember that Britain is kind of the America of Europe. Like we, when it comes to most things like, oh, I don't know, like incarceration rates or, you know, like crumbling healthcare and bad education and stuff. Like we are more like America than anywhere else in Europe,

but we are still you know not america so um you kind of have to bear that in mind we should start talking about the show soon but because this is about sugar addiction one thing that i've noticed in my life as a child and adult is that it took people a long time to realize that soda could make you fat like they would think yeah if i eat too much fried chicken or cake or chocolate that's but i think it takes people a while to get over the idea like oh a drink can make me fat and you look at like those scare articles are like what are the most caloric things you can get and it's like the duncan donuts moo latte or something like that and people will uh get you know a

frappuccino every day at starbucks not thinking like i'm starting my day with 900 calories and most of it is sugar so i think like when you when you watch like weight loss shows that's the first thing they zero in on it's like you have to stop drinking soda and it's just because like you said libby soda is so cheap and plentiful in in america you get people who never have anything else and they grow up thinking like i don't like the taste of water which is just like a rejection of your status as a living thing. Like, ew,

water, the thing that I'm made of and I need to live. No way. Get that out of my body. Yeah, absolutely. In the UK, I definitely remember drinking a lot of soda as a child.

In fact, I used to have a very specific memory of my stepmom yelling at me because I wanted to drink a Coke on Christmas morning. And I was like, come on, it's Christmas. You know, it was pretty normal for me to drink Coke to drink a Coke on Christmas morning. And I was like, come on, it's Christmas. You know, it was pretty normal for me to drink Coke, you know, throughout the day. But you know, a normal thing for British children to drink is something that we call squash, which I think is available in the US. It's called something else. I can't remember it now. But it's

like a concentrated like fruit sort of, it's a liquid that you add to water that makes it taste more, you you know like a fruit it's somewhere between fruit juice and water and again it does just sort of add sugar to water it does make it taste better if you're for example six years old i i do think it is more normal and and it is quite shocking like it you know not not to sound like one of the people that wrote this episode but the amount of sugar that people can and do drink in a day here is, is a lot like sometimes, you know,

like when I go to Starbucks, sometimes, you know, I'll get like an iced coffee and I'll ask for like two or three pumps of caramel syrup. If I want to be like, if I want to treat myself, but like people will go full on,

like, yeah, like Frappuccino in the morning at the airport kind of thing. And that, but you know, it's, it seems nuts to me, but it the airport kind of thing and that but you know it's it seems nuts to me but it is also kind of a biological thing like once your body gets used to that and you know starts to require that sugar you know it's just like any other addiction it feels it feels normal and you feel bad if you don't have it and once you got to that point

you know like you say if you can get to that point by the time you're you know before you've even graduated high school then it's really hard to kind of um give that up i i do at least like this episode despite you know hearing caroline omine mentioned that before was like sort of about joking on personal responsibility they do make the the company evil like evil that they are controlling things and using that against people and i will say again carol amine super nice to us and also like one of the few i think one of the few bernie democrats in the simpsons writers room these days i don't know so there's a funny joke from al gino in the commentary he says can i sue the simpsons for making me fat because it makes everybody fat

yeah i though honestly the simpsons have given him so much money at this point that that is his payment. Just pay for the blasted liposuction, as Mr. Burns once said. Yes. Every episode of The Simpsons that's about gaining weight or Homer being fat, it is because they all get fat working on the show. Like, yeah, same Bill oakley the same same deal but yes uh one other bit i want to mention in the preamble is that al gene mentions a new york times article uh profile on the season uh and uh that published right around when this episode aired i was like oh i gotta read this and so finally found it it was written by a.o scott uh published in the new

york times in november 2001 first off i have to say i'm gonna blame the editor by a.o scott uh published in the new york times in november 2001 first off i have to say i'm gonna blame the editor not a.o scott it's titled homer's odyssey which i'm like terrible headline how many of those have been written with that title though just hack headline and then secondly uh that they do there's some interesting stuff in there of them doing the table read for old man and the key and also mac reigning and sam simon kind of sniping each other in it which is is funny through through quotes it's the i i shared it with you bob it is the exact same article that's been written about the simpsons for over two decades now which is hey this show's still on can you believe it let's ask the people who still

work there that they're hey lg what do you think of this show still being on tv that's weird right and i can tell i mean a.o scott is a good writer but i feel like yeah this is written every five years and it's al jean saying actually we're more popular than ever actually back when we were running the show in the 90s people online said those shows were bad like i can tell you all five of his canned responses which to be fair to him what else is he going to say yeah you're going to sleepwalk through every interview and it's exactly the same and every time we talk about this i'll say it again put this out there to aljean i promise you aljean if you finally do a podcast interview with us we will not ask any of these questions i swear to you aljean yeah i mean gq like literally this year published the exact same article as this one i think like two months ago yes two months ago

yeah i mean it's it's tough because if you're allergene you can't really just say yeah it sucks and i have loads of money so what do you it's loads and loads of money so what do you want me to do about it are you gonna fire me i don't think so are you gonna turn down 12 million dollars a year for this job i don't know yeah or is or is the fox network gonna you gonna turn down 12 million dollars a year for this job i don't know yeah or is or is the fox network gonna you know turn down you know yeah i mean it's it's i don't know i don't know how the economics of tv work you know i i don't understand the the child that is growing up watching the simpsons today it's like i haven't seen an episode of the simpsons that was you know released in the last i don't know 10 years or something so it's um i i think

of it as a different show um but in my that's my head canon is that it ended in you know 2000 you you think of this season 13 episode as a newer episode when really it's not even in the first half of all simpsons episodes that exist and it's over 20 years partly partly a function of how long the show has been on and partly a function of being old you know like it's over 20 years old. Right, which is partly a function of how long the show has been on and partly a function of being old. It's how it took me until about 2015 to realize that 1990 wasn't 10 years ago. The Simpsons will be right back. Oh, I don't know how to make anything fancy. Make something homie style.

Hey. Ooh, cheese, beef, more cheese, bacon, three more strips. I declare this extreme burger the winner. Homer, you've created a whopper. For a limited time, get the new Extreme Bacon and Cheese Whopper. Juicy flame-broiled beef, two kinds of cheese, four strips of bacon. You gotta have the Extreme Bacon and Cheese Whopper at Burger King now. Woohoo! Carry me home! Go!

How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans EV tariffs solar panels and much more making your usage clearer

your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the break. Hope you're enjoying your sugar with free donuts. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Libby Watson.

It's always awesome to have her back on and her insight into the world of health care meets politics in America that you can read regularly in her great journalism in Sick Note. So please check out Sick Note and Libby Watson on Twitter. And if you enjoy this podcast, well, you should know that Talking Simpsons is only possible because of supporters who are like you that sign up at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Those listeners get to hear every episode of talking simpsons a week earlier and ad free you can hear next week's right now with mike mitchell if you signed up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and also for five bucks a month you also get a monthly episode of talking futurama and talk king of the hill of me and bob covering

those series just like we do the simpsons super duper in depth we're in season three of futurama and season two of king of the hill it's been a whole lot of fun and you can hear the entire back catalog of those also is covering the critic mission hill and 10 episodes of batman the animated series all at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. But if you want something as nice as Choco Blasted Baby Aspirin, then you gotta sign up at the $10 premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because you get all that $5 stuff I was just telling you about and then you get our monthly what a cartoon movie podcast where me and bob cover an animated feature film super-de-duper in depth talking for

over five even six hours about animated feature films recent ones have included this month you're going to hear us talk about the disney renaissance classic beauty and the beast the month before that the little mermaid toy story 3 who framed roger rabbit south park bigger longer and uncut in a The month before that, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story 3, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, South Park Bigger Longer and Uncut, and a giant back catalog of almost four years worth of animated feature films covering things like Beavis and Butthead Do America, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, A Goofy Movie, Millennium Actress, Kiki's Delivery Service service and tons and tons more please check out everything in our massive patreon back catalog at patreon.com slash talking simpsons i i didn't clip it out like we did with the funny delroy lindo thing but this is a funny commentary because mark kirkland the director of the episode poor guy sorry he is really getting crapped on by the writers on this like it the thing with the animators is they are totally taken for granted and there's a giant incredibly hard thing they had to animate in this episode and the writers keep goofing on him the entire time when he's trying to say like boy this was really hard and they're just like oh did you

have to draw two balls and he's like yeah i had to draw two balls and they're like come on it's a comedy show mark we're just kidding around yeah kind of disrespectful yes yeah uh but and also they honestly the writers on this show who have worked in animation for years and years at this point decades even when they recorded this interview they are asking questions of him i'm like that you would ask somebody you'd meet at a party who you find out is an animator. Like, so how do you do this anyway? Is it like all on computers? You still draw this?

You still draw it? I was like, you've been a producer on this show since like 2000. Like you're asking this in 2009 on a commentary. I just feel like, you know, if you're a writer on The Simpsons, learn a little about how it's made. We're calling you out, Tom Gamble. Tom Gamble. He's one of the guiltier parties on it, I have to say. Yes, yeah. on the simpsons learn learn a little about how we're calling you out tom gamble tom gamble he's one of the guiltier parties on it i have to say yes yeah but all right he's a funny guy but anyway

yeah no he's very funny tom gamble's very funny he's friendly with the choppo boys i know that he's a cool dude but i'm just saying you know learn learn how this show's made a little bit more that's that's Yeah, just do better. All right. So the episode begins with a short intro because Al Jean's back, baby. Cutting those intros shorter and shorter. Straight no, no. Drive through the whole town.

It's straight to the garage in the opening. And man, in that couch gag, way Homer's head is yanked up is disturbing to me. I don't know. That's why he complains about his brain. Yeah. head is yanked up is uh disturbing to me i don't know that's why he complains about his brain yeah uh and uh and so this is uh act one begins with the simpsons go to the library what what comedy can be gotten out of the simpsons going to the library which the best joke in the library section to me is barge the opening clip i played of march just pointing out comedy conceits of like why do you always wait until we arrive to complain yeah i don't know uh but then uh we follow that up with

some very nerdy jokes about leonard nimoy and his many biographies that's right and i like how on the cover there's no uh there's the fingers uh they're only four fingers on the character so it's like a three finger live long and prosper thing so just they have to like make it work somehow but yeah so uh leonard nimoy he probably wrote another one after these but he wrote i am not spock that's his 75 autobiography and it is not him distancing himself from the character of spock as the title implies that title comes from an anecdote in the book in which a mother at an airport with her little girl said honey this is this is Dr. Spock and the little girl did not believe that he was Spock so that's what that was based on but he regretted that title

for his entire life because he thought he upset fans and he thought he was sending the wrong impression which is why his 95 autobiography was called i am spock and the foreword of that book is a letter written from spock to nimoy uh thinking the original title was very perplexing the title of the 75 books so highly illogical exactly i'm sure he used that and uh yes it is 10 years after their star trek 7 so very tired parody but they are still making scotty is fat jokes there are some real al gene specials in this episode yeah yeah and well you know james dewan's not long for this world in the odds so they got they got to do as many fat scotty jokes as they can yeah i mean they are wheeling out all of their 90s fat jokes which is why marlon brando appears christ in this

episode yeah yeah not the uh and you know what i uh just a few months after this episode aired with the jokes about i am spock and i am not spock dan castellaneta and deb lacusta released their comedy sketch album i am not homer oh wow okay parody photo of of as the cover of Castaneda doing the Live Long and Prosper, but with a little Homer head toy in between his his fingers. And then it ends. It's a bunch of sketches that are him and his wife who were a in and are an improv comedy duo doing scenes and stuff that are not Homer it's just like little comedy scenes uh but then the last track on the album actually is a it's an eight minute long song sung by homer crusty and abe so it's uh there there actually is uh you still get some homer even on the i am not homer album i have to i have to track that one down i think if you've got amazon music uh it's a free stream that's how i i listened to it yesterday following that we get a quick joke with dr nick riviera this also feels like aljean's back

and he's like you know what it's dr nick we haven't done stuff with him anymore he's a bad doctor remember that uh he hasn't spoken a line since trilogy of error and uh and after that even before that it had been a while since we've seen old dr. Nick. I think because they make Dr. Hibbert so bad as a doctor at this point, they don't need Dr. Nick. There's no need for a second crooked doctor. No, I do like him. That lady swallowed a baby. That's a good line. Yeah, that was a good line.

Also, Lisa watching in pain as pigs eat books. That's a good joke. Cletus has been to the library before because he said nothing cracks a turtle like leon urus and good you know i prefer that to the bridget jones diary by helen fielding joke that made me so mad i was like that is not a simpsons i mean i should i should say uh before we really dive in that i i have not i mean i watched episode you know seasons like what like 11 through maybe like 14 like a bit while they were on but haven't really revisited them since and so i am going to

be the extremely annoying um classic simpsons fan who refuses to have fun with any of this um and that one that one really made me mad because i was like that is such a lame bad joke this should not be on the simpsons i i find the i Bridget Jones's diarrhea to be pretty funny, though. In a vacuum. Yes. I mean, diarrhea, great comedy word. Very hard to spell. I can never get it right the first time.

You know, Libby, as a British person, how do you rank Renee Zellweger's accent in those Bridget Jones films? Oh, it was great. I didn't know she was American until years later. Oh, really? I will say, in general, I think British actors are generally better at doing American accents than American actors are doing British accents. But she is the exception. She's really good.

I think her British accent is better than the Doctor Strange american accent that oh yeah that's awful yeah i mean it's just it just bizarre to me to have benedict cumberbatch do an american accent like period like of all the brits to do to do an american accent like what are you doing and uh and there's only one deleted scene on the dvd that i'll bring up now and it's honestly i think a funnier joke than Bridget Jones's diary. And I wish they kept it in there. Before you continue, is this related to the fact that Homer puts away the poems of William Blake? No, no, it's not. That's not on the DVD.

Okay, because when we cut back to Homer, he is disgustingly putting a book back. And for a few frames, you can see it's called The Complete Poems of William Blake. I don't know if that was another joke intended there but yeah please continue i'm sorry no no so this one is uh it's a joke made perfectly by al jean for other nerdy kids who grew up reading encyclopedia brown books uh but it's bart and millhouse reading encyclopedia brown mysteries uh and it is called encyclopedia brown in the Case of the Strange New Feelings. And the mystery is, why is Bugs Meany taking such long showers? And then the characters skip, Bart and Milhouse skip to the solution at the back of the book and go, eww. I like specific jokes about Encyclopedia Brown and his nemesis Bugs Meany in TV shows.

But yes, then we come to our first clip of the episode as Homer finally discovers a book he loves. Lisa, you're not buying more than your weight in books. But I have to save them. The books no one buys get chopped up and fed to pigs. Helen Fielding's giving them pigs Bridget Jones's diarrhea. Well, what about this? The Duff Book of World Records. It's got pictures of deformities.

Okay. Oh my god! Wow, now that's a goiter. Why would Duff Beer put out a book? It was originally published to settle arguments in taverns. She said tavern! I'm going to Moe's! I never agreed to that rule!

That's a great line. Yeah, that's good. I like what was implied there. Yeah, that's a sign line yeah that's good i like uh what was implied there yeah that's uh that's a sign of a deeply troubled alcoholic but yeah as uh this taps into again uh a thing killed by the internet but i had a real childhood love for the book of world records the guinness book world i think every kid does and they really touch upon the first things you look up and the things that are cited like i know it's just like you immediately go to the longest fingernails page. Like, OK, who's got it this year or like the world's fattest man or what's the biggest tumor?

Like all of the again, deformities, you know? Yes. OK. I love Homer's pouty. OK. Yes. It's very much like a good thing for Homer's childlike mind to go straight to that book. Because like you say, it is something that I can't really imagine an adult being all that interested in because it is obviously just the most pointless stuff. So I think that is good and in character, I would say, which is not always something that you get in these seasons. And Lisa's brief history of the Duff version of sounds a bit like the real life one, isn't it? Yeah, I learned this 20 years ago. And it's one of those things that sounds made up, but you never think of like, what is the Guinness in the Guinness Book of World Records?

I don't know. Some guy. Well, no, that guy is Sir Hugh Beaver, who was the managing director of the Guinness breweries in the early 50s. So he was on a hunting trip with some lads, as they call them, and they got into an argument about what was the fastest game bird in Europe? And he thought, you know what?

If there was a book full of these answers, it would be a hit, and it was. So there was a very small independent printing in 1954, a much bigger commercial one in 55, and then in 56 it was available in America as an institution. And by the way, because nobody can read anymore, it's just called Guinness World Records, not Book Of.

And around this time, there was both a Guinness World Records and a Ripley's Believe It or Not show on TV. In season 11, we covered this already, but Take My Wife's S my wife sleaze that episode it opens with a parody of the fox guinness show oh yes okay that's cool and one other thing uh dean kane hosts the uh ripley show and i bet he thought like man i'm slumming it he wishes he wishes he was on that show 20 years later not in whatever like god's not dead for right the final godening or whatever the bits that kevin sorbo says no to he's like well i guess i'll take it if kevin sorbo didn't want it that's that well you know this this may surprise some folks but

yeah i didn't as a kid i love the guinness book of world records but i did not know what the guinness stood for as a company i just knew it is like well yeah it's just like it's the Guinness Book of World Records whatever that is and later in like my teen years I then I think I first heard of it on Mystery Science Theater they did jokes about Guinness being a extremely thick and dark beer which is different from popular beers in America like my mom and dad never drank Guinness ever and then it was only I think in the aughts or maybe like 2010 or something that it finally clicked for me of like wait the Guinness that is that thick dark beer also is the world the world record people wow right polar polar opposite experience for me because not only was I familiar with Guinness but my dad actually worked for Guinness so we had

yeah we had uh we had Guinness you knowinness so we had holy cow yeah we had uh we had guinness you know around the house we had the guinness like you know the books around the house and stuff and so to me guinness was always you know that that guinness i think by the time i was born he may maybe didn't work there anymore or whatever but i still have a pretty cool guinness vintage guinness t-shirt that um because they had that really cool logo with the with the toucan um they had a lot of like two i don't know i don't know why i don't know what the toucan has to do with uh with the beer um they got rid of that toucan a while ago i love seeing vintage guinness ads with the toucan which is like the opposite in tone of the dark like bready beer you're going to drink there's

nothing like tropical and fruity about it it's so disgusting it's like two cans like cockney rhyming slang or something for drinking a can of beer or something is that you know i don't know i've actually i've been to the guinness brewery in dublin um because uh i was on i was on vacation there and you know like someone had told me like oh even if you don't like guinness you should try the guinness at the guinness brewery because it like tastes different there because it's so fresh or whatever and i was like damn this stuff sucks this is just as bad as regular guinness it's really nasty so i i should i should try it again because i i i i'm finally becoming a beer drinker um now in my 30s so i think i see guinness as sort of the final boss

of beer that i would have to you know i've gotten i've gotten up to the point where i can drink miller high life and enjoy it so now you, further down the road is the Guinness Prize. My favorite record as a kid to look up was Fattest and Tallest. That was the two, especially, I mean, the gigantic twins who were also pro wrestlers. The guys famously on the motorcycle. They'll show up in the show a few times. Yeah, and the tallest man. But then all of them, I this is something the guinness also

wanted to get away from later in life that they're like well we don't want to inspire people to be fatter than the old record of the fattest guy and or if you look at the tallest guy it's like oh yeah he met gigantism and died at like 31 or something uh 22 no one will beat robert wadlow uh and i recognize that name because it's like who else is going to be the world's tallest man? No one is going to be 8'11". Oh, Jesus. No, yeah. Not really much you can do to get to that goal.

You know, you could try stretching yourself like Bard does, but not really going to happen. I think for me, I was into guys who put too many things in their mouths, you know? Like, how many pennies can you hold in your mouth or whatever? That's a good one. The balls yeah i was reading about them and it sounds like they have uh now like distance themselves from records that are like about animal cruelty or like self harm and things like that that's good although i was reading like john oliver in a minute yeah yes or like the world's fattest cat or whatever it's like please don't kill your cat with food uh i was reading like john oliver was like putting them under fire for uh basically kind of falling for every like uh dictator and whatever weird stunt they wanted to do like a

dictator that's starving their people it's like i'm gonna build the world's biggest blank and they're like we're gonna be there with our cameras so uh that's where they're kind of uh getting attacked by like people like john oliver so and uh one last bit of trivia fact we have actually had on a guinness world record holder as a guest on on our show uh which i totally forgotten this it's uh multi-time appearer dan reichert of giant bomb fame he's uh that that's the video game website he works for it's what his record isn't for the world's biggest bomb uh but uh his record is video game related and according to the guinness website it still stands he has the longest period of playing a mario video game without stopping at 50 hours five zero he said it in 2012 and it still stands to this day at one point he thought

he was a hummingbird but yeah so homer very drunkenly uh runs off uh to to mose and he winds up in the exact dream scenario of having the guinness book of world records or the duff one i do like that they duffify it instead of just calling it the Guinness Book too. But this is when Homer helps the guys with their clothespin questions. Let's see. Most clothespins swallowed, inserted. Here we go. Clip to face and neck.

116. Oh, jeez. I was wrong. But I ain't angry. And I'm magnanimous in victory. Wow. That's jeez, I was wrong. But I ain't angry. And I'm magnanimous in victory. Wow, that's the best book I've ever seen. Nope.

The best book you've ever seen is Tom Clancy's Op Center. That thing knows me better than I know myself. Oh, here's a good one. The world's most overrated saint. Francis of Assisi. Oh, I've used up all these records. Why don't you try to set a record, Dad? That's a great idea.

Do you think I could run a mile in three and a half minutes? Only on Mars. The Simpsons are going to Mars. So pack your... Or maybe I'll think of something else. Homer's pitching a better idea for an episode. This is going to Mars episode. And also, i was checking the time on the episodes like it's in three minutes the the characters are all actively bored of like

all right enough of this world record reading book stuff like we got to move on to a new plot line uh and you know what the the current record for clothespins on face 161 set by gary turner of the united kingdom on the set of reclar dunyasi in istanbul turkey you know what i have 163 but it was verified by ripley's and not guinness oh see i'm going by the guinness website one oh okay and yeah uh so they have the book open they have the picture of the guy with clothespins. It's the real guy. It's actually Kevin Thackwell. It's not a comedy name under the picture.

That was the guy who was on the Ripley's Believe It or Not TV show in 2001. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, and his record was 120, not 116. Wow, man. But it's clearly, how did people 40 more uh space for 40 more clothes pins since then again you just got to be born with a bigger face you know it's just who's who's got the biggest face the most surface area to put stuff on i guess you need a big loose face so this is not a stunt for the young i tried looking up kevin thackwell he's not online so uh i don't

know where he is the loosest face he had face loosening surgery adding extra jowls to his face and I have one more okay this is episode this is just I'm full of useless facts and I apologize reading facts to people but I love that Moe's favorite book is Tom Clancy Tom Clancy's Op Center

Op Center is a series of books that started in 95 and is running to this day not written by Tom Clancy, all ghostwritten. And they are mostly ghostwritten by a man named Jeff Roven, who in my youth wrote a lot of video game strategy guides. And he immediately went on to write right wing propaganda for Tom Clancy. so yeah i i saw the like the most recent thing mentioned on his wiki page was that he appeared on like fox news in 2016 saying i was like a secret fixer for the clinton family and i set up well hillary clinton with lesbian uh relationships or something i was like oh wow i in between writing guides to doom 2 he was honestly sounds like a very cool job so i don't know what he's complaining

about i mean i know him best for how to win in Nintendo games one, two, and three. That's what they were called. No pictures in those books either. It's so, you know, now Tom Clancy is obviously quite dead and there's still things labeled as Tom Clancy's blank

that he never once touched. But it's funny that even when he was very alive in 1995, he's like, you know, this is Tom Clancy's op center in that i had the idea for a thing called op center and somebody else is gonna write it like it's uh the the tom clancy is an actual writer uh thing kind of lost uh already but yeah i mean you know what they're already eating their frosting gobs in this first shot here just setting it up i have to say that i i did hate the simpsons are going to mars joke and again in my role as as a crotchety nerd uh it just irritates me because all of the sort of self-referential like here we are doing a joke about what the

simpsons does stuff really irritates me because it's like it's a sort of weird like ironic detachment from like you know being the simpsons it's like well we're not really being the simpsons because we know it's kind of not as good anymore so what we're going to do is kind of make a joke about how we are the simpsons you know and i'm like that's not a joke like that's not actually a joke though that's just a reference you know the joke is they would do something as crazy as going to mars like no we wouldn't have the simpsons go to mars we would have homer go on a secret special ops mission to steal sugar from a made-up island but yeah he's not gonna fly to mar it did feel like uh the late 90s is when they really started feeling the the baggage of history

and that's when the simpsons are going to blank what phrases started happening where it's like yeah we sometimes do vacation episodes it's fine and then uh in a very silly joke homer goes to the world record place and the people in the waiting room are there including what seems to be the world's fattest man but it's actually marlon brando that's the joke he's yeah he's still alive for two more years so you can do uh two more years of fat brando jokes and i feel like that joke fell out of a critic script. Like, we didn't use this one Brando fat joke. Yeah, there's multiple in here. They're like, well, that's just critic. Though, really, the next episode that starts with, like, 17 movie parodies, I'm like, okay, this was just a critic script.

But when it's a Marlon Brando joke, that's what I think. Like, yeah, critic had, like, 17 Marlon Brando is fat jokes, which I get it. You grow up and he's when you're growing up as a boomer, he's this skinny sex symbol. I get it. But and then he turns into a very heavy man who's weird and lives on an island. It's I get why you make fun of it. But how corny he but but a real corny joke comes from homer pitching world record ideas to the uh heads of the duff book fine i'll just play the banjo with this cobra

wait wait wait uh technically the cobra would get the record he's the one playing but it's my banjo mr simpson there are thousands of people like you with no discernible talent. Yeah, they're called Congress. Shut up. Okay. All the individual records were set by crackpots who half killed themselves. The only way someone new can get in the book is with some kind of group stunt. Group stunt?

Like that town that made the world's largest omelet. Denver? No, Spanish. Hello, Springfielders. I have called you all here so we can enter the Duff Book of World Records. We're going to build the world's tallest human pyramid. Finally, this town will have a real claim to fame. Aye, we can stop all the lies

in the springfield birthplace of the beatles you know i mostly know hee-haw through uh simpsons parodies we're revisiting season three right now we're about to get to the biggest one but uh it's always fun to see one especially in 2002 yes the only reason they it felt like so monkey cheese the like playing a banjo with a cobra, but it was just a setup. They knew they were coming to an incredibly corny joke of like Denver. No, Spanish. When Homer just looks at the screen of like, yep, we did a joke that stupid.

We felt like you can't stop us. Like you said, Libby, it's much like simpsons go to mars the fun they're having is rubbing your face and like yep we did do that joke like right you can't stop us but just not executing it as well as as seasons you know i don't know like what three or four through through eight or nine because they you know it's not like they didn't do weird jokes in in previous seasons you know all kinds of weird like sort of quote-unquote random seeming jokes that other shows would imitate poorly but they stuck the landing with those and they don't stick the landing here but they substitute not sticking the landing with

saying hey look at this it's a simpsons joke get it it's kind of weird it's very sort of early 2000s you know just like figuring out how to deploy irony and not getting it right well i have to point out homer really went through an arc because in the episode eight misbehaving he was bitten by a ton of cobras and then in the parent rap he had night terrors of cobras biting him because of events in the past now he can handle a cobra play the banjo with it he's gotten over his fear he went through a real arc you're right yeah he's homer's finally free of his cobra fears that he can play he went through a real arc you're right yeah yeah he's homer's finally free of his cobra fears that he can play he could shove a cobra all over a banjo and not also it's like i don't know i did

i didn't even have it in a clip because i thought it was just so empty just homer just going like just like oh homer's just gonna stand in place and make noises for 10 seconds all right thankfully not three days yes yeah but so bob did you look up the uh the human pyramid record as well oh i did not please please tell so uh the world's i'm reading this directly from the guinness website the tallest human pyramid consisted of nine levels and was 12 meters 39 feet high it was completed by joseph juan martinez lozano of cola vela del iquetz mounted in val's spain in october 25th 1981 it has been equaled but not beaten in china in july 2015 they did it again but they could only equal that guy's height they could not get higher than than it. And the one in China, I couldn't find a number listed

for how many people for the 81 version, but for the Chinese version in 2015, 450 people were part of that human pyramid. That's just how many. Wow. Now, I don't know about engineering or anything. Is the weight evenly distributed, or are the people in the bottom having a bad time?

You know, it actually doesn't seem, yeah. So Homer's is an actual like triangular pyramid. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar solar panels and much more making your usage clearer your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie the photo i saw the chinese version was more of like a bunch of

people at the bottom and then it gets way skinnier at the top like it's more okay it's more of like a bunch of people at the bottom and then it gets way skinnier at the top like it's okay it's more of like a three-dimensional pyramid not just like a just like an outline of a pyramid yeah it's more conical it looked like in the photo yes yeah so and boy oh boy this is where Mark Kirkland says that the second he got this script he got a migraine because he's like so one we have to draw a gigantic pyramid full of dozens of identifiable characters. Yes. Then they're going to have to have that pyramid fall apart into a giant ball of humans, a people ball, if you will. So a few shout outs.

Artist Matthew Schofield, layout artist Matthew Schofield. It took him a few days just to draw the entire pyramid of people, which they used the uh basis of the people ball like where the people would be so yes it's a very complicated drawing and if you look very closely there are a lot of painting mistakes but there are like 100 people on the screen so it's like skinner's hair is brown i don't care someone had to draw all this yes the ball is very impressive i will say we have a quick joke from crusty about elkie summers which he then follows that up with great lady elkie like he does he does first a joke about german sex symbol of the 60s elkie summer and then he's like but actually she's a great lady it really i appreciate that choice the specificity of that because i looked her up and it's like well

that is the perfect like old hollywood babe for crusty to know because she was on johnny carson a bunch she was on like bob hope specials and the dean martin show just like the busty blonde you stick in sketches with an old man who's probably gonna sexually harass her backstage she's an elkie still with us at 81 and but i didn't see a lot of charity work from her you know i looked up her philanthropy it listed some stuff but just general charity she's not you know like jerry lewis or whatever but yeah she's and she she also was in a shot in the dark and uh one of the carry on films which uh that's one of those things that like old british comedy nerds are like no carry on it's the best i'm like no it's not i would bet it's probably a very cancelable series now the carry on series undoubtedly yeah yeah no i always just something that i knew of as um just absolute shit uh really bad really bad thing but

uh very very stupid and annoying people liked uh and then uh we have a very critic like long parody of a movie people that was new then that people don't remember now uh please tell me because i'm like what is this sting what is this parody i don't know what it is so it did homer climbing and it's very funny seeing him expose butt cracks like that gives me it's a cheap laugh but i laugh every time but it didn't hit me the climbing in the music is like boy this is so specific it's when homer has to readjust himself and kind of turn around into his two arms uh and his like chest is out he's almost like you know like a crucifix position or whatever it's mission impossible 2 and tom cruise climbing the mountain at the start of mission impossible 2 that's that's

what it is parodying wow so that's that's a year 2000 movie yes so there are three year 2000 i guess parodies we have uh that movie a mission impossible 2 we have chocolate and we also have aaron brockovich yes yeah yeah it's you know hey they're doing current movies then it's uh i'll give them credit for that but yeah i but when homer turned around i was like oh okay this for now i maybe we don't remember mission impossible 2 as much just because like tom cruise has done so many more crazier stunts than that uh that mountain climb at the start of mission impossible 2 honestly him climbing the dubai skyscraper at mission impossible ghost protocol is much more memorable to me than uh the mountain in mission impossible 2 yeah i have to say that that that

didn't register with me as a as a reference a lot of a lot of simpsons references go over my head because uh i'm missing a lot of cultural canon due to being stupid and uh being not american and uh that one went way over my head and i have to say honestly the only thing it reminded me of is i'm playing horizon forbidden west right now and it just reminded i was like hey that's kind of like when aloy does a jump that she absolutely can't do but that's as far as my brain went towards understanding what was going on when homer falls after the bubble bee man's stinger breaks, there's an angle of him falling. I'm like, well, he's dead. And then the next angle, it's like, no, he's very close to the next one.

But Homer rights himself and climbs the rest of the way up. And they're still not breaking the limit. That's when Maggie magically appears and gets placed on homer's head and uh it almost counts but they can't stay still for three mississippi thanks to teen homophobia uh separating that gay panic yes gay panic does it and so this is when dozens of people hundreds really tumble all in one shot to then create eight people ball yes and this is before the show was digital so what they had to do was basically what old school animators did in the past and that's rotoscope so uh basically director mark kirkland he got layout artist paul

we which his name dropped a ton on these commentaries like they love paul we just a very talented artist he basically drew the people onto a globe that mark had painted white and they use that as the basis for the ball what it would look like as it was moving they just photographed it a bunch to say like okay when the ball turns here's how all the people on it turn they basically trace that uh in a rotoscopy way it's hard to explain but if this is a futurama episode they could just tell uh you know rough draft build us a people ball and then computers can rotate it but because this is pre-digital they have to do everything by hand every frame of this ball is drawn by a person and well and we we've also uh

take a shot at mentioning another interview we did but we also did interview Mark Kirkland and I I like that you know he's an old school kind of guy. Like he grew up loving the masters of old animation. So I kind of like that his way of meeting that challenge was saying like, oh, well, then let's just draw on a real ball and then photograph it in a rotoscope. Like let's do what Disney would have done in, you know, 101 Dalmatians or whatever. Like that's such a clever thing but this was the biggest part on the commentary where kirkland is trying to impart how impossible a task they were handed the huge amount of work done to make this stupid idea work and then the frustration he is feeling as the writers are just joking around about like oh yeah the people oh did you make two people

balls did you lose one of the balls like ah man i just feel i get that they're like trying to goof around with him or whatever but they should be like on their knees like praying to mark kirkland for the work him and his team did on this and that then leads to a whole discussion on the commentary like so do the computers help with drawing it oh do you still draw it on paper and then scan it wow i was like you know you guys should know this you so but sorry libby you were going to say some stuff i've been no no not at all no i had i had no no thoughts other than just that i agree that i i can totally imagine i haven't listened to the commentary but totally imagine that kind of uh writer smugness of thinking that you know writing is something that only only i could do because i'm the perfect genius you know and it's like anybody can write

down an idea it's for an animator to actually make it work on the simpsons that i think david silverman uh years before this they sent him like a very impossible scene to animate like a zoo train going out of control or something like that yeah the zoo train crashes into a sorry it's no it's a circus train that crashes into a zoo so all the animals start fighting each other yes that was it and he sent back a fax of a drawing of him losing his mind and they changed the actual joke just into a giant riot of people which also was very hard for them to draw yeah the the the animators are certainly taken for granted but uh but yes so then there's a big ball of doom scene people falling into it

marge mart saying my hairstyle that's a very random random thing to say i do like the guy jumping into it and say like hello ironic twist like but my favorite bit is after everybody crashes uh very conveniently onto a truck way station kearney is dead yeah in the next shot yeah i noticed that too i'm like what's that about well let's just say that he was resuscitated after this but i just love that he's like dude you're on me dude like that kerny kerny is a corpse but yes the the springfield accidentally sets a world record after all i am so far from my car dude you're lying on top of me dude wait a minute look at the scale divide by the number of people subtract belts and shoes everyone welcome to the duff book of world records springfield is the world's fattest town

in your face milwaukee you know milwaukee is a as fattest town. I guess that's good, but it's not, it's no East St. Louis. Like I watch the specificity a bit, their cruelty to the very poor town of East St. Louis. People are too poor there to be fat. Sure. Sure. Milwaukee is like the land of beer and cheese.

You can't go wrong there. Oh yeah. And fried cheese. I mean, oh man. Yeah. But yeah, so the Simpson, simpson the springfield is officially the fattest city it gets them on the cover of the newest edition of the uh guinness book of world records they are now a fat city usa so the reasoning for this was that when they were coming

up with world records that i believe omine says it was her that it hit uh it hit her they're like wait a lot of our characters especially the men in the show are drawn with at least a belly if not being very obese and so they they go straight for it in this episode it was there was the stock male character design of adult men on the show where if you look at uh characters designed after maybe like season 10 they're different but like every man on the show uh every little boy too is the upside down light bulb body they all have little guts yeah the graining style really loves drawing guts on people it's a funny it's a funny art style i i laugh seeing some of the guts on it but yeah seeing all of the hugest characters uh like undulating very unnaturally in the front row

uh you know i forgot this is another one of the homer penance you know it's the girth penance my eyes are always drawn to his fat pride shirt that i'm net i miss his his pennant that says girth another of homer's many wonderful penance i would put that on my wall for sure and i mean fat pride is a joke but it's like 20 years later, there's like more conversations about fat acceptance and things like that. So it's just interesting to see, like, well, isn't that a silly idea? But it's just like, well, these are conversations we have now, you know? Yeah. I mean, you know, I think I think body positivity is a good thing, though.

You should ask your doctor like, hey, you know, should I lose some weight? But there are some shitty doctors out there too but probably probably you don't need as many fudge stuff toaster pies probably that's uh though boy as a little kid into my early 30s i was a big fan of the real life fudge stuff toaster pies which are toaster strudel which uh they you know in my childhood the apple toaster strudel and cherry those are my favorites but then later in life i i didn't eat these ones i because i still like the fruit versions but they did just cut to the chase just like pop tarts of just like why don't we just fill this

with chocolate why are we why are you pretending that there's fruit inside let's just put chocolate or sugar where we full in now henry uh life hack did you put the little frosting packet near the toaster on the edge of the toaster i would yes yeah that's true yeah i see we never had toaster strudel we only had pop tarts in my poor deprived country um we only had pop tarts and i love pop tarts i have to say i mean again like as a kid growing up i ate so much trash and pop tarts right at the top of the list i remember when we had lucky charms in the uk and i want to say that they were i don't know if they were like taken off the market but they certainly disappeared from the market i remember being really disappointed um and seeing them in the simpsons you know parodied in the simpsons being like damn that stuff's that stuff's great i wish

we had those still i mean they should be illegal honestly that many of those i now i'm sounding like jamie oliver here all of a sudden but uh yeah i i do i mean again though here it's like marge you're buying these fudge stuff toaster pies like you know be the change already right wait why the children she's like oh you kids do eat a lot of sugar it's like well you're their mom i don't know they're not going to the store though clearly you know lisa loves sugar but it's not affecting her like she is you know see of of normal weight uh but bart you can still uh anytime they want to call bart fat i'm like i guess he is fat the way you draw him yeah that's true but uh but yes uh they uh as there's a cute little joke i guess it's oliver hardy acting who would you say like the way maggie moves the fudge from her eyes like it's a cute little joke, I guess it's Oliver Hardy acting. Who would you say? Like the way Maggie moves the fudge from her eyes, like it's a real silent comedy kind of.

Yeah. I don't know if it's everything a specific shot, but it does feel like, yeah, Laurel and Hardy, like someone just like wiping slowly and then flicking it away in anger. Yeah. Yeah. The the gradualness of it feels it. Yeah. I if you know, this really is pretty much just the same as Homer with the rice cakes joke. But I like that Homer is handed a grapefruit, which he only uses to cover in sugar, lick clean of sugar, and throw away a grapefruit.

That is why he bought a grapefruit. Not even to enjoy any of the grapefruit. You know, I noticed that bit because one of my, something I used to get from a restaurant in D.C. that was really good was a bruleed grapefruit you know i i noticed that bit because one of my something i used to get from a restaurant in dc that was really good was uh a brulee grapefruit it was a grapefruit heart with sugar on top that was like brulee like on a creme brulee and that was really good and i was like oh shit i'm homo so i was long as you ate the actual grapefruit meat as well not just the so whenever the simpsons does food parodies they always age the worst because this is hogtown everybody we gotta we gotta up

the stakes every year with what we're eating and uh yeah uh i mean back in the year 2002 i'm sure it's like you got your apple toaster strudel you got your blueberry whatever now i'm looking online like is there anything close to what the simpsons are eating? Yes. There is a Hershey's toaster strudel. The filling is chocolate. The pastry is chocolate. And yes, you do put chocolate icing on top. Good Lord. Yes.

Wow. That's so much chocolate. Boy, they wouldn't have done even that joke in this episode. Man, that's so much chocolate. Though I don't think yet we have choco-blasted baby aspirin. No, no, no. Not yet. Not yet.

But yes, Marge starts investigating it. She goes to the quickie mart where she learns about sugar with free donuts and how everything is full of sugar there. And I like that Hibbert never gets angry, but here he can go like, Damn it! And just slamming it. I was like, wow, that's shocking. A shocking thing to hear from old Hibbert there.

Not to go back, but I did love both the gluttony and the waste of Homer dipping the half grapefruit in sugar, sucking on it and then throwing it away. Yes. Into a pile of uneaten grapefruits. Yes. It reminded me me i mean neutral people understand nutrition better over time and like my grandma was a thin woman but when it was time to eat like strawberries yes we would put sugar on them and now when i eat them today i'm like well these are already sweet what were we doing oh yeah like uh i i need honey on these grapes like i don't think so uh so honey up your grapes boy uh so so yes marge is being her usual nagging self uh which is when uh she learns about the sugar company from apu apu everything in

this store is overloaded with sugar marge has a point sugar is not only fattening it's also terribly terribly addictive uh is my carton of pixie sticks in? No, it hasn't come in yet. Dammit! When they come in, you call me at this number. 9-1-1? I am sorry, but everything in this store, from the honey-glazed cauliflower to the choco-blasted baby aspirin,

comes from the mother-loving Sugar Corporation. Well, I'm going to have a talk with them where are their worldwide headquarters located why right down the street that's lucky so uh one thing we didn't touch on up front we had a big discussion up front about you know nutrition and public health and even insurance one thing we didn't touch upon is that this episode is definitely influenced by the atkins diet craze ah Ah, yes. And that had been going on since the 70s, but this was one of the peak years. I mean, like my parents, I'm sure I know they had the Sugar Busters book or whatever, like one of the many Atkins related books on the market. But this was a big time for Atkins. And

I misremember this episode as being the episode about banning trans fats. That would happen four years later when Mayor Bloomberg banned all trans fats from New York restaurants. So Marge is ahead of the game here in doing like, I guess you would call nanny state kind of thing. Or nagging. Yeah. Nagging through the courts. Using the law to nag. And also, you know bloomberg has

like the vice taxes on soda and whatever and i mean like yeah it's a tax on poor people and i say like my solution my ideal solution is uh make healthy food more affordable and give people more time to make it yeah well that's not gonna happen it won't happen no no yeah i mean you do just sort of have to look at other countries um you know it's just sort of uh easy to forget that you know it's not just like oh it could be different it's like no it is different in other in other countries that other countries don't have the same you know even though obesity is a problem across the world it's not just an american thing you know britain is more obese than it used to be and so on you do sort of have to think why is it so different here?

Is it that Americans are just inherently more addicted to sugar, sort of biologically? No, of course it's not. You have to look at, like you say, the reasons that people end up eating worse. And I totally agree that we've gone over this, but I don't know why you would sort of harp on the personal choice thing. Because at the end of the day, is making fun of people for being fat going to make them not fat? I really don't think so, because if that was true, people wouldn't be fat by now because kids get bullied for being fat all the time.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and also like, I mean, for Bloomberg especially, a truly evil, awful little man. Like he, it's part of like this punitive punishment thing. And also it's like, not to mention too, it is a bit of, you know, coastal elitism, I have to say of like that. Me and Bob talked about this beforehand, so I'm just stealing what Bob said,

but it's like, it is like, oh, in all these red states, they're eating, drinking their big sodas. We're not going to let that happen in New York. No, sir. Like, which again it's like i mean yeah there is in the red state south certainly there is a lot of obesity issues there but it's i i don't know me and bob also dug into some of like suing mcdonald's as well which they they joke about on the commentary they're like oh when we when march takes it to the sugar

company and we joke that it would be like suing McDonald's, but then that happened. Yeah, like one of the people who used a lot of nag, he got McDonald's to stop cooking everything in beef tallow, which made the food way healthier. If you can imagine McDonald's being worse for you, it was true before 1990. That person probably saved a bunch of lives, or at least like lengthen them

you know though uh libby i don't know if you've seen that in the uh in some of the right wing reactionary spaces the beef tallow going out of mcdonald's is kind of a is a sticking point i don't know if you've seen this interesting now i only know about it i think they mentioned it on dough boys is like the reason the fries used to taste better and i'm sure i'm sure they did taste better in in beef tallow but it's also just like fine with them not in beef tallow it's like not really that important um but yeah there's definitely that's the thing in in britain too the sort of reactionary the big one that i can think of in britain was when we have this candy uh at marks and spencers which is like a sort of nicer grocery department store they sell these uh like gummy candies called Percy Pig and they have like a whole line it's like for children they have like

a whole line of them where it's like Percy Pig and like Colin the Caterpillar and all this stuff and it's like everybody loves it it's all very twee and cute and they used to make the Percy Pigs with pork gelatin and I guess they changed the recipe so that they would be vegetarian uh and like the sort of sun daily mail you know Breitbart Nexus got really mad about that you know taking our Percy pigs away and all that stuff so yeah

that was our version of that and it's very stupid because get over it I think those McDonald fries tasted better in 1989 in your memory because you were like younger and happier it's not the happier like that it's not it's not the beef tallow it's your youth you miss you had a developing brain who just wanted base instincts like fat sugar pleasure yeah yeah although i will say the best fish and chips i ever

had were at a place where they would cook them in what we called beef drippings which i'm sure drippings and tallow are the same it's just fat you know um i think that you know they probably are really good but not not exactly necessary or worth waging some kind of cultural campaign for you know you can you can go to another restaurant that will that will serve them if if you want them but also some of the frying mediums i at fast food places in you soy so yeah well that's pretty embarrassing yeah yeah anywho when Marge goes to mother loving. Well, that's when the big old guest star of the episode who I always forget is actually done. The Simpsons.

Yeah. Like, I never remember that. Blink and you'll miss him in this episode. He's got like three scenes, even though he's drawn to look exactly like him. So you'd even remember it that way. But but yes, here's our big guest star in our next clip. Excuse me. I'm looking for the head of Mother Loving Sugar. Yes, I'm Garth Mother Loving.

I'm Marge Simpson, long-time customer, first-time complainer. Hey, Marge. I'm not up on the current slang, but did the kids still say, get the hell out of my office? I want you to stop putting so much sugar in everything. Or at least warn people that it's so unhealthy. Hmm, that'll boost sales. While we're at it, why don't I just change my name back to Hitler?

Don't you have any sense of corporate responsibility? Hey! Look, lady, if you have a problem, bring it up with your sewing circle, okay? But we're on hiatus. Everyone's everywhere. Note to Marge, get out. I'll play it later.

The Marge stuff is so funny, which is why I'm sad she disappears in the third act, once she gets her way. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, Homer has to be a wacky guy and yeah i mean marge episodes never get to be marge episodes really a marge episode is at best five minutes of marge and then homer captain wacky takes it back over but we were at a peak stiller saturation he just met the parents uh 2000 another 2000 movie and also jerry stiller transitioned from uh seinfeld to uh king of queens so no matter where you were looking there was a stiller in front of you so much stiller god man yeah i

ben stiller i think is a a fine comedy actor and also like he gave jobs to a lot of my favorite people like when he started the ben stiller show uh he hired Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. And also Andy Dick when that was okay to do. Though, honestly, he was committing crimes then, too. Hey, and Janine Garofalo. No complaints about her. But I do think that, I gotta say, Ben Stiller's jerk-a-guy character, I never think he's that good at it. It's like he's doing impression of like will

farrell playing a jerk boss or something like he's just i prefer regular guy ben stiller in the comedic role when he's like being dunked on as opposed to jerk boss ben stiller character i i don't know about you guys yeah i did think it was kind of a waste of ben stiller you know i actually i don't know if i've really seen that many ben stiller movies the main things i know ben stiller from are his role on arrested development where he's really funny uh because he's playing a dumb guy and his brief cameo in the trip um where he's in steve coogan's dream um and both of those he's really funny i think he has the i think he has absolutely has the capacity to be really funny and i think it was just like a total waste because he wasn't really i don't know he wasn't really like playing a particular like you say it's not really a

character just it just didn't really land for me yeah there's no real angle outside the fact that he's uh obviously evil yeah yeah i i mean i do like is like maybe i should change my name back to hitler yeah yeah i don't know that was lazy to me as do like it's like maybe I should change my name back to Hitler. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. That was lazy to me as well because it's like, okay, you just picked the worst thing. You just picked the worst name. I feel like previous Simpsons might have come up with a funny name. Like I'm thinking about Mr. Glasscock.

You can do that. You can come up with your own funny bad name. You don't have to just like, oh, Hitler. It's a very sort of family guy. I also do think note to self jokes, even by 2002, like, oh, this is getting old, I guess. But at the very least, they subvert it with him handing Marge a tape. And she's like, I'll listen to it later. But I also, I do like Marge treating her sewing circle like it's a like writer's retreat or something like everybody's everywhere.

That's an all right line so yes marge reflects on him as being a meanie beanie fofini and uh this is also when they find out there's one oompa loompa but he's kept in a cage and he wasn't moving i i forgot to say my thoughts on ben stiller i'm sure everyone needs to hear them immediately but uh i uh being like a comedy nerd i was like oh ben still in the 90s i was like ben stiller's interesting he's like directing he's attached to like darker movies like the cable guy he's also performing he's got like these lesser known sketch comedy shows like uh the ben stiller show it's got his name in it for christ's sake and this is the era in which i i was very turned off of ben stiller because he's like he's in all

of the cringe comedies where he's the guy i mean something about mary was fine but that kicked off an entire like decade of like uh long came paulie and all those movies where he's like playing the same hapless wiener and all of them and everybody loved them and i'm like where is the dark ben stiller the child of hollywood the the little ben that could and uh he just was making a lot of money yeah well now the last few i mean the last i'd say decade or so it's like he he just makes very safe choices or also though it's uh he has very well-meaning but kind of you know centrist liberal like just uh charity stuff it's it's good and all i mean at the time of this recording he just went over to the crane and did a bunch of stuff with like photo ops with zolinski just because there's

there's a general feeling and uh celebrities at his level of like this isn't getting covered as much as it used to and we need to keep paying attention to and all that which like again just in case people are thinking this is some podcast where we think that where we love vladimir putin no he should not invade that country and we agree it's bad he's he's bad and a bad guy just like ben stiller yeah yeah but but but yeah so lisa then brings up uh class action lawsuits which then just so it's right in our face bart just has to say you're like eric like no sorry like aaron brockovich homer says and then bart misconstrues it with a different julia roberts movie uh pretty woman saying the hooker with a heart of gold just to get in our face yes this is aaron brockovich who aaron brockovich the real one she actually recorded a deleted cameo in the simpsons movie

because she was going to like sue over the uh all of the ecological damage environmental damage that's the start of the Simpsons movie but they just cut her out of it they didn't use her but yes but Erin Brockovich was the talk of Hollywood mainly not for her like actual you know cause of helping people but because it got Julia Roberts finally that Oscar that she'd been wanting to get all this time she finally won it thanks to thanks to playing aaron brockovich that movie uh there was a lot of talk about breasts when that movie came out correct they're like she has quite a strong bustier okay i believe in her oscar acceptance speech julia roberts included thanking her wardrobe department for giving her more prominent breasts than she

normally has i believe that was one of the people she thanked yes i'm just doing some giggling here come on me oh yeah no i see it yeah all right yeah no that's that's good stuff good stuff let's see what see that's the you know that's the reverse of the you know charlize theron she put on a big ugly nose for monster or whatever but meanwhile like Julie Roberts she gets that Oscar by revealing her chest more but anyway so yeah honestly I'm shocked they didn't do boob jokes with her with when they do all these Aaron Brock yeah hey we're saving the Marge boob jokes for next season oh that's right that where they go nuts with them

in large yeah we'll get there we'll get there folks calm down everybody yes yeah so in the next scene well this is where the in universe they're kind of doing the behind the scenes thing which is basically the simpsons have had a problem for four years at this point who is their lawyer there's no more lionel hutz they're not going to recast lionel hutz and i think this is the episode where they just make it official like you know what if they're gonna have a lawyer it's gill it'll just be gill he works as a loser and he could be a lawyer who's bad like so at this point he's been on the show for five years yeah so he's he's he's not he's no longer a newer character and you know what in one lionel hutz's final appearance is gill works for him like he's that's that was gill's first appearance so it's kind of a pass of the torch to gill and look we all love gill gill is a great newer simpsons character in that he's only

23 years old uh 25 i think oh yeah you're right maybe maybe 24 let's not let's not count too many numbers here but uh but yes gill is hired as their lawyer then gill immediately says he will not do any of the work a lawyer will do because it has to be Marge talking to the clients for the next series of jokes. Pick me! I just passed the bar, see? Hop in. We want to sue the sugar industry for selling a harmful product. We have to sign up plaintiffs and take depositions from the townspeople.

Ah, geez, you don't want old Gil going door to door. Oh, I've made too many enemies selling suckless vacuum cleaners and Rick James Bibles. Don't worry, I'll do the legwork. I'm filing a class action lawsuit against Big Sugar. Would you like to give a deposition? Sure, I'll join your lawsuit. Sugar's made my Ralphie hyperactive.

I'm happy and angry. Oh, shoot, I'll sign. Figure them sugar folk owe me for what they done to my cousin. Die a bitty. I'm trying to slim down so I can fit into Mama's coffin. That's my reward marge makes a noise just so we know we're supposed to be disgusted the debut of diabetes everybody yep yeah she made more appearances than i thought she did

until i looked at the wiki uh i diabetes mean it's just a bunch of mean jokes about a fat poor white trash person but looking forward to dying i mean the darkness of a bunch of mean jokes about a fat poor white trash person but looking forward to dying i mean the darkness of the joke of trying to slim down so i can fit in mama's coffin that's at least good is like a shock laugh i i had there but diabetes obviously is a joke about you know in general white trash people who are overweight. But I think it's very specifically about the actress Darlene Cates, who is in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. The very large mother of that movie, who she, despite her character dying very quickly in the movie. Spoilers for that movie, sorry. But she lived to 2017 and in 2010 lost 240 pounds.

Hey, you know what? Speaking of Tropic Thunder, Leo DiCaprio in that movie. Oh, that's right. What's he doing? We're not going to say it, but you know what we're saying. Right. Also, changing the subject, no proven link between sugar and hyperactivity. Did you know that?

Oh, no, I didn't. It's all based on one faulty study done in the 70s. They've done several since. There's no link at all. How do you like that? And it's funny. This was happening back in the 90s where we're going to talk about Beavis and butthead there's a beavis beavis's alter ego cornholio he becomes cornholio when he eats a lot of sugary things and caffeine

in the second episode because they got so many letters about there was no proven link van drees and the teacher says you know that's funny i read a study that says there was no link between sugar and hyperactivity so within beavis and butthead they're addressing all the complainers oh that's funny i read a study that says there was no link between sugar and hyperactivity so within beavis and but they're addressing all the complainers oh that's great yeah so if you know kids people with kids and they're like my kids are bouncing off the walls after they ate this thing you say you're a liar your kids are monsters when i was a kid the um the thing that parents would say or that the kids would repeat that their parents had told them was that blue food coloring was supposedly the thing that caused hyperactivity i remember other kids saying like oh did you know it's actually it's blue smarties or you know like blue m&ms or whatever that that make kids

hyperactive and i was i i think even as a kid i was like no they fucking don't that's so stupid i think when we were kids in in grade school we would look at the the food dyes and like yellow five shrinks your balls or something like that one of one of those urban legends right exactly though i identify with you know sometimes as a kid i also felt ralph's pain of being happy and angry at the same time that's all the time that's just general anxiety you know that's the best feeling yeah oh and yes diabetes her she was last seen in the show in season 26 i think that's they've they've since retired her i don't remember seeing her in there was a very cletus focused episode recently and i don't

remember seeing diabetes in it uh well actually it was more literally not literally uh brandy brandy yeah thank you yes diabetes not missing in action also uh speaking of cletus lore Well, actually, it was more Lurleen. Not Lurleen. Brandine. Brandine. Thank you. Yes. Diabetic missing in action. Also, speaking of Cletus lore, that fancy signature he puts on there, I do believe this is the first time they make his last name Spuckler. Okay. This is when he signs it as Cletus Spuckler, which now that's uh which you know now that's everywhere you can go to you'll see cletus buckler written all over the place at the themed restaurant for his uh chicken shack at uh or where he serves

chicken thumbs at the universal studios hollywood which you know what libby since moving there have you have you been into springfield at universal no i haven't i haven't been to universal i have thought about it because it's not that far from where I live. The closest In-N-Out taking into account traffic is Universal, very near the Universal Studios. So that's why I know where it is, because I've been to In-N-Out a lot. But yeah, I mean, I feel like I have to go. But again, like being a crotchety comic book guy style nerd about The Simpsons, it might just make me mad. You know, they get more right than not. I think you'll be like, oh, that's the real thing.

That's the real. And hey, if all this sugar talk makes you hungry, you'll love one of their giant donuts. The big pink they sell there. All right. You've definitely sold me. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, The Simpsons ride is like the least interesting thing about it.

But it's still good. It's a good ride. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new net zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie everybody's heard us talk

listen to us on podcast all right we did we did all our talk about this but okay you know the very funny improv comic guy slash comedy writer sean Sean Clements, had this thought that I never forget. He says, every person's third sketch in sketch writing class is, what if candy was drugs? And I think about that every time I see, oh, see, sugar is cocaine. But at least it's a specific coke addict joke about a 70s coke addict guy. At least it's that specific coke addict joke about a 70s coke addict guy. At least it's that with old disco stew. And even on the commentary, they recognize that they wrote a lot of scenes where a character backs out of a room nervously. They really were doing it quite a lot then, which is what Marge does here.

There's a very good one coming up in which Homer catches Apu cheating on his wife and he backs away. And then we see him backing down the street and backing into the bedroom bedroom yes yeah it's very good that's a good one yeah yes we then also have another scene where marge is guilted just like an itchy and scratchy and marge the blame is on the mother for not taking care obviously a mother's job is to cook uh dinner every night she can have her dumb little hobbies but dinner's got to be cooked. And they got to guilt her about that. But I at least like the Homer's guilt trip here in this little clip I've got that starts our next plot device here. Well, well, if it isn't the woman who's too busy saving the world to save her own marriage. What are you talking about?

Is that dinner? It was dinner. Why didn't you just turn off the oven? I was hoping we could do that together. Hello? Hi, Simpson. Who is this? I'm an anonymous whistleblower.

I worked on a top secret projectret project called Operation Hoiven Maven. Professor Frank? Oh, what gave me away? Out of curiosity, was it the hoiven or the maven, or was it the whole hoivey thing that I do? So, Professor, tell us about Operation Hoiven Maven. Well, we knew perfectly well it was addictive. Candy was just a sugar delivery system.

We thought we were God. Hoiven Maven. Frank, you little weasel. I'll kill you! May I remind you we're an open court? I'll kill you too! I'll kill you all! Mr. Motherloving, that could be interpreted as a threat.

I'll kill you while you sleep. Objection! I'll kill you while you sleep. Objection! I'll allow it. So was this the insider stuff here, Libby? Yes. Yeah, okay. When he says it was a sugar delivery mechanism, that's Russell Crowe says that the cigarettes were a nicotine delivery mechanism.

I also love that when he's on the phone there and he gives himself away with Operation Hoiven Maven, that then when he's in court and being asked about it, no, it is Operation Hoiven Maven. Yeah, that is good. I also do love Homer's like just that he still eats the garbage after running out of the room. He's still going to eat it, but I don't think we can do that together. But yeah, Frank, there's some cute stuff with Frank here. Though also this whole bit about threatening to kill everybody in court.

That's, that's the Freddie Quimby joke from the boy who knew she liked. Especially those of you in the jury. Yeah. Yeah. I think he had the same lawyer too. Yes. The blue haired lawyer.

Yeah. New debut of another character. We have Diabetti and also Count Fudgula. Yes. Yeah. Not Count Chocula. Yeah. It's. And apparently he's friends with mr

burns and real yes but he can also be out during the day yeah they but and algae makes point of saying that it's dracula who's a member of the republican party in springfield not count fudgula this is a different guy though also complicating things even more when mr burns buys the cereal that looks like him and the old man and the lisa it is count chocula they didn't oh wow i think in between the fox lawyer that they work with got a little more in the few years between they're like now you can't just call him chocula you gotta make up a guy like you gotta i and and i'm gonna say it i never i love sugary cereals y'all if you gave me cinnamon toast crunch right in front of me i'd eat it and ask for seconds and that's why i don't buy it anymore but i never like count chocula

never it sucked it was like there's something about the chocolate didn't taste good the uh cereal bit consistency like it's just like i don't know i never like count chocula i bob i know you are uh you've enjoyed a monster cereal here and there i i bought a a box of uh monster mash which uh that came out around halloween it was a huge box uh i bought it because the box looked fun but i made it about two-thirds of the way in and just told myself i can't do this anymore like even eating a few bowls a week, I was never going to make it to the bottom of that box. That was me with the Dunkin' Donuts, like Frostichino cereal or whatever.

You know, you got to try it. I mean, at least with cereal, it's only like a few bucks. So if you only eat half the box, it's not the end of the world. But yeah, a lot of misses on that. There hasn't been like a really good new cereal in a long time, I feel like. Cereal innovation has ended. You know, they try some new flavors. Well, you know, once you get to Oops All Berries, you just can't.

Where do you go from there? You've already got all the berries. Yeah, just eat a candy bar. But yes, Count Fudgela has worked for them for 20 of your mortal years, which that's a great line. And also that, yes, he has gingivitis and uh now he must mash up his victims which it's like wait so count fudgela he eats sugar but also people he feeds on the living yeah yeah it's complicated this all this fudgela stuff but so then things

aren't looking good for mother loving sir this is a house of justice not a sugar shack it's hersey highwaymen like you who made me fat well your honor the court carries it well silence i rule in favor of marge simpson oh i'm so proud of you and thanks to marge simpson's damning evidence i hereby ban all sugar products from springfield forever get in the car that's a really dark uh act break joke homer may beat marge it feels like after this commercial break it's it's very yes yeah i so uh then when we come back from commercial break here's another of my favorite jokes of in the algin era some of my favorite jokes are when it's just jokes about being a comedy writer or whether it's saying like yeah sorry you're out of life experience when you're you've worked on the show for 10 years well they've used all their

life experience in the you know almost 300 episodes that precede this so all they have are jokes about being a comedy writer and pitching jokes and so uh here's here's a a flurry of aaron brockovich pitches or aaron brocco pitches how's that for aaron brocco pitch yeah they're real aaron brocco pitch in this clip good evening our top story springfield's cake hole has been shut forever under what has been dubbed marge Law, all forms of sugar are now illegal. Thank you, Aaron Choco Snitch. That was a group effort. I was just trying to make this a healthier place to live.

Well, good work, Blue Heron Brocco Witch. Okay, that was mine. And then they just have a joke that he's just reading off every silly name they pitched for for candy names which my favorite big red snack foam that's the best yeah that's why i opened with it yeah it's fun like the writers have so many memories uh of pitching jokes if you ask like bill oakley oh whose joke was this it'll be like well george meyer pitched it mike scully added this and the room came up with that you'll learn about every step of the joke dan graney is one of the top guys of of joke

deconstructologist because he's like he says i made up in biggin and then david x cohen uh came along with cromulent to big it up and then no people remember cromulent more than in biggin but he could have never come up with cromulent if i didn't pitch him biggin like stuff like that which that sounds exhausting to think about to have like to carry that around for like 30 years it sounds hellish hey if you almost made up cromulent or helped inspire cromulent i'd remember it too and again uh reality outpaced satire because the joke is there's a donut cereal but there there currently is one right yeah we just mentioned it yeah yeah there's yeah honestly it was one of the best snl parody jokes of the 80 of belushi jim belushi john belushi the little chocolate donut cereal was another classic one but which is just real yes and

uh yes then it comes to of course a music montage of first they they play two very obvious ones and i i want to agree bob with your charitable pitch of why they do that which is that they know it's obvious to you say i want candy in this scene and that part of the joke is this is an obvious song get ready for a lot of that yes yeah aljean aljean had a but he look he had a music budget and damn it he was gonna use it and now it's bleeding disney dry whenever they pick up these episodes they have to pay for every song you know what i like that it's costing disney money that's a positive there they have to pay the archies every month probably something that boomers never ever forgot about was the burning of

beatles records like this has to be the seventh time the simpsons is reference burning beatles records yeah it started with crusty gets busted right but yes then they do something we should all be doing these days burning our johnny depp uh figures in effigy we need to do that but uh and i saw that chocolate film in theaters and and it was all right, I guess. Did you melt for him? No, honestly, I melt for, well, for Alfred Molina. I almost called him Dr. Octopus, but for Alfred Molina. Please, Henry.

He's a great actor who shouldn't just be known for his wonderful portrayal of Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man. Actually, in two spider-man films yeah but but all right then comes my favorite joke of the episode because it is mean-spirited and backbiting towards a sponsor uh i'll just play the clip here that's it boys burn it all even this promotional johnny depp from the movie we melted for him now he's gonna do likewise all right time to throw in the butterfingers Now he's going to do likewise. All right, time to throw in the Butterfingers. It's not even singed.

Even the fire doesn't want them. Sugar! Need sugar! Aye, they're not riding the white horse anymore. My baby. Where's my baby? I had to keep in the darkness of Ralph saying, where's my baby? Yeah, that's good. That's good.

But Butterfingers. Yes. I was looking at the history of this. So maybe there was a lapse in the license. There's discussion about this on the commentary. But after 2001, there wasn't a new Simpsons butterfinger ad until 2006 or 2007 and the last butterfinger tie-in was the 2013 contest the who laid a finger on bart's butterfinger contest and that was the last time they were associated with that brand i looked up like what is a butterfinger ad today and i looked up the latest ad on YouTube it's about the BFI the Butterfinger investigators and when someone steals your Butterfinger they get it back

and I thought who could give a shit about this like who cares I look at the views 54 million views like thousands of comments everyone's saying it me I hungry too like yeah it's like people really I guess it doesn't matter like the brand is so strong yes that's you know see i knew those commercials because i i have seen them a couple times on the only time i watch live television is pro wrestling and i occasionally see these butterfinger ads and the only reason they're memorable to me is because the butterfinger cops in the commercials they bring back bart's catchphrase, but they say it is like, nobody better lay a finger on your Butterfinger because they're going to protect the Butterfingers from you and sell or for you. So in that stuff, it made me at least like, oh, okay, they're sort of bringing back the Bart stuff, but I had no clue it was doing that well.

People love these guys. And at the mention of Butterfinger, my tongue instinctively started probing my back molars, just because that's about five hours after you hit a Butterfinger, you're just excavating at that point, looking for treasure. That's part of the fun.

I will say though, in Butterfinger's defense, one, they are good. Two, I think they changed the recipe a couple of years ago. I remember Claire Saffitz talking about this in one of her YouTube videos. I think they changed the recipe. And now I think it is slightly less liable to get embedded in your cavities. But also, I don't know. I think that's a good candy bar.

Like, I appreciate the joke, obviously, because I love it when they make fun of sponsors. But I'll ride for Butterfinger. That's a damn good candy bar. Did you know it as the Bart candy bar growing up or uh we didn't have butterfinger in the uk we don't really have like peanut butter candy like at all well and well that's why i do love that this is them shitting on butterfingers because you know for literally 14 years before this aired butterfinger was a sponsor with simpsons like there bart was in butterfinger ads before he had a tv show like he was just they're like oh kids love him on these shorts

we gotta sell him and it's like it was the shorts team that animated the the first butterfingers commercials like it's how they it was probably the first like big it was probably the biggest paycheck macraean he got to that point was probably that butterfinger ad and so yeah it's how they it was probably the first like big it was probably the biggest paycheck Mac Rainey got to that point was probably that Butterfinger ad. And so, yeah, it's the Crispity Crunchy Butterfinger or also It's Neato. The first one. It's Neato. Yeah. But to know.

And of course, we've heard stories like Bill Oakley confirmed this for us. They had so many free Butterfingers in their office, like because Butterfinger would just send free crates of Butterfingers and Butterfinger because Butterfinger would just send free crates of Butterfingers and Butterfinger BBs to the writer's room so the the writers were intimately aware of Butterfingers and clearly they were not into Butterfingers after a certain point maybe just having access to it every day makes you turn on Butterfingers oh that would ruin it for you for sure yeah although it is sort of funny because we were talking earlier about the actual causes of obesity other than personal responsibility.

And I would say that, for example, advertising Butterfingers to children with a popular children's TV cartoon character is maybe something that you might be able to point to instead of just, hey make better choices it's like well maybe don't advertise like sugar drugs to children with you know cartoon characters would be one change we could make that doesn't involve uh just yelling at people for making bad choices you just want a nanny state i do that's all i want is i want the state to take care of me and to uh and to smack me on the when i do something wrong sounds kind of nice yeah yeah absolutely yeah i i also last thing about butterfinger i own one of the original butterfinger ads that bill morrison drew uh for bill morrison the amazing simpsons artist me and bob both

bought some of his original art when he was selling them that's uh sometimes when we feel like splurging our patreon money we we directed it towards Bill Morrison. And he did this great ad for it was on a cover of a package of Butterfingers that if you bought like a six pack of them, it also came with a free Simpsons comic book. And so it was Bart. I just loved it because it was a drawing of Bart reading a Simpsons comic, which I was like, oh, that's perfect. I love it. They're a rat boy. But yes, even the fire doesn't want them, that's a good line.

I still love that. It's a way to explain something that's shitty that even fire doesn't want it. But so yes, everybody's going through withdrawal to the point that Homer goes to Quickie Mart, there's nothing left in there, and he is looking up a pool of blood and vapor rub, which I'd say is a new low for Homer as a food monster in the show, perhaps, that he goes back to a pool of blood and vapor rub which uh i'd say is a new low for homer as

a food monster in the show perhaps that he goes back to lick more of it yes he looks extra depraved they like draw lines under his eyes when he goes back to the second lick he's very desperate yes so yes bob as you also said to me uh beforehand this then just turns into a caper they're like well where okay how do we end this well better just go to caper town for this yeah it's uh it's a choice they would make a lot where it's like well marge is boring who wants to hear about her and her problems let's have a fun adventure with homer when it's like i want to see maybe marge is having regrets maybe marge is saying well here are things that i miss in my life i don't know i feel like we we lose track of marge until she shows up to uh you know confront homer at the very end when he's got to choose between two different sizes he's in the middle yeah it comes down to homer at the i'm also sad that apu is

working with the evil company that like i don't know it sells out it sells out apu's character a bit that he's not the good guy but i guess though often apu is like a very capitalist dude who is all about like selling expensive things to people and he needs the the cheap sugars to to pay his rent to i don't know why mr burns is there other than it's aljean running this season and uh mike scully did not include burns a lot hey i like him there just weird to see uh count fudgela apu burns bard and homer on a yacht yes yeah yeah garth mother loving i feel like he's at the meeting and he should be on the yacht with him too but maybe also they're like you know this guy's not as funny let's just have Burns be the

the the the head rich guy on the boat let's have that though that also allows them to go on the gone fishing the yacht previously seen in Mansion Family in season 10 it's the delicious pun gone fission yes yeah I uh my enunciation didn't make the pun obvious there. We're not talking about the Joe Pesci, Danny Glover movie. Now that's hilarious too, yes. But just as funny as that pun. You know what? Also, I compare this to in season 33.

There's a very similar episode where Homer accidentally leaves a dog in a hot car and he gets like canceled by people online and at the end how does he fix it he goes on a secret mission with other characters to a pro to a secret island it's it's actually very similar to this ending but also but uh to show you that this is like classic uh episodes where al jean was in charge the axel f parody is back too they haven't played it in a long time the but their own version of it that they don't have to pay uh to use it was previously you know where it was last heard monorail okay yeah which scene which scene it was in uh but yes so they enter the back door of lard lad to learn about this secret plan. Gentlemen, I have found the final member of our cabal.

Count Fudgela? I thought you wanted to get off the stuff. I'm a monster. Don't look at me. Homer, we need you to help us smuggle in sugar from south of the border. Oh, you mean Tennessee? No, the island of San Glucose.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ah, good times. Is it really worth risking your lives just for some sugar? Dessert's on. I steamed some limes godspeed uh it's it's a very underrated uh subtle joke where they go into the butt of lard lad and probably they can now go down through this winding staircase that's like uh covered in stonework like yeah geographically it makes no sense but i like how that just cut from that to the next scene it's just like oh yeah i guess that was inside of him somehow right you know what listeners don't do

your comment i know it now it's when burns and smithers are hiding the toxic waste at the start of the monorail episode that's where the axolotl theme plays so there we go i can keep in the pit of me not remembering because i will now have remembered it they already made their comments and now they feel terrible but also i just love marge screaming like i'm steaming limes like but but it also is just the consistent simpsons joke of healthy foods gross right yuck it can't taste good yeah well that's the thing it's like which is it healthy food is bad but the sugary stuff is bad i mean it's fine. You can say both, but don't yell at me about being fat. You know, in the Simpsons world, everything is bad.

Yeah, exactly. Well, also, I do think a little of this is married writers in their late 30s, early 40s, whose wives are telling them you should lose some weight, and they're mad about that. Maybe because they spend 10 hours a day eating Butterfinger bb's out of a communal bowl all my simpsons weight is what paid for this house yeah we talked about it but like bill oakley said you gain 80 pounds or you used to gain 80 pounds because uh i'm repeating myself but there's nothing to do you either look in a dictionary or you eat all day before the age of smartphones when you're on a writing staff mike reese lost 80 pounds when he left the simpsons that's and he's kept it off it's funny to think about because my only experience or i guess not experience

knowledge of what writers rooms are like in terms of food these days is from a doughboys episode where i'm not going to remember the name of the guest but they had a guest on who wrote on brooklyn 99 i think and they were talking about how they would decide where to order lunch from and they're always ordering lunch from like sweet green and stuff like they're getting salads and stuff now so i feel like it would almost be easier for me to lose weight if i was in a writer's room where i could have i could like order you know some kind of salad or something every day and like if if that was paid for you know i feel like half the problem of like me not eating healthy is because like yeah you know i don't like i said earlier i don't want to get a shitty mcdonald's salad if i'm

going to get a salad and it's going to be good it's got to be like 15 bucks and that's like that's half the problem so if someone else is paying for it easy peasy you know the simpsons writing writers room they were more into jersey mics and islands that was their favorites i mean both great i think conan is actually very shamed that one of the few pics of him working on the simpsons is from uh profile they did in 92 where it's like and here's all the writers eating their big uh burgers and fries and they just look like guys just covered in grease on their faces yeah that's a greasy writers homer and bart they both get matching

burglar outfits obviously lisa's not invited on this trip because it's only bart and homer fun here lisa's back in nagtown with marge so i i also do like that homer realizes he is in a comedy as he falls three times and by the third time he's like it's the last time i'm doing this you know what seaweed is gross i'm with homer being grossed out by seaweed it's delicious oh hey it tastes great sure but homer battling with a toucan all right it's okay but no bird violence though so i approve of that you're correct i don't have to play the bird violence jingle rarely heard these days honestly but uh but yes this i do this joke's okay here okay man here's the trigger now you give us the money

that wasn't part of the deal he's right who wrote this thing how we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricarland.ie that's just funny i i mean it is uh yeah they're having it both ways but it's interesting how this this caper just is over so quickly with no complications very fast yeah losing that map doesn't cause any problems anyway he found the guys very easily and then

leaves with all the stuff doesn't have any violent problems with them either he's just like yep that wasn't part of the deal it hey it wasn't it wasn't part it's a bad it's a better joke about deals they never they ever mentioned homer's uh previous job as a sugar salesman you know they're very close to saying they're bloating things with sugar the way homer describes but loaded it with sugar uh so they then travel back a very easy trip from the isle of st. glucose wherever that is to wherever they are now this is when they use the miami vice parody theme uh which they had previously used in the wigham spinoff from the spinoff showcase okay yeah

which uh if you guys look up the music video for the miami vice theme song is an incredible video because it is the you know miami vice is about hot guys and hot girls and all that but the the man who wrote the song is featured in the video who you know is an average looking man with a receding hairline and so it's like it's all these cuts to miami vice and then it's like him playing the keyboard to go like no it's me i'm the guy and it's like him running on the beach like it's uh it's a real classic music video look it up to see this man it is with his average looks it's also very strange seeing apu lined up next to burns and count fudgela that's a it's an odd

trio it's it's a fun group they're having a little fun outing here and and of course because it's the year 2002 it's jokes about shoving things in your butt homer homer keistered his supply of the sugar which uh that's probably i mean you know butt chugging is very dangerous i would think a bunch of sugar in your anus also probably not good for you absorb it faster that way well it's even worse right i don't think uh so yes then homer they're cornered they really loved g al jean also wrote he wrote simpson tide which also involves a lot of boat standoffs they were really into boat standoffs in this time on the simpsons but in this case uh burns betrays homer and they leave and this is when burns is having a stroke which you know it's kind of a lame joke but i at least like his stroke animation it's kind of funny but uh but i i do

love homer's line remember what i told you about running away from our troubles yeah let's do it and they just leave and uh yeah i like any take on uh chase tropes so i forgot how this episode played out but when when they had the pane of glass come out but carry between two ships i was like okay what are they gonna do uh and it was great i really enjoyed it and then we cut to the woman pushing her baby in a stroller while on a jet ski uh my baby they're so good at doing all of these like i can think of like five other pane of glass jokes that they've done in the past probably this is this is one of the best well and there's also a uh police and woman pushing a baby you know if wiggum had done

his own police training then he would have learned that he has to hit the woman with the baby that's right yeah that's part of the shooting range test there was no blind man to run over right exactly yeah yeah i also like uh when when wiggum says i like to think we've made a difference today i do i do love any jokes that are about the cops being bad at their job is always good oh yes yeah though you know what these these jokes but also outstripped by reality i i feel like in the real life he would have just run over that lady and her baby and then said they didn't. Yeah. And withhold the body cam footage, obviously. Hey, buddy, they just work here, right?

Yeah, hey. It was a real risk not running over that baby and the woman. Right, exactly. But all right. So Homer then runs back into Ben Stiller, who didn't go on the mission, but was waiting at the dock with a forklift. And this is when Homer has to make a choice. Good work, Simpson. Before I bring the sugar in, I want to see the Oompa Loompa.

He's right over there. That guy is freaky. Well, here's your sugar. No, Homer! You'll be condemning this town to a life of obesity and diabetes. Don't listen to her, Homer. Oh, they both make such good arguments. Please, homie, dump the sugar for me.

And that leads to another of my favorite gags in the episode, which is there's no not to dump sugar button it's either dump the sugar or don't press it but there has to be a button that says obey bad guy like that's such a good i love that shot well now we have the meme of a guy uh who's going to be thinking about pushing two buttons i'm sorry i took i know i took the words right out of your mouth no i i i was wondering if it if it inspired the comic by jake clark that's who wrote the original the original comic is don't be a dick be a dick and uh the superhero is wiping his brow it's one of the greatest memes of our time now that it can be kind of anything yeah i mean my

favorite variation is pushing it with your thumb and both buttons with thumb and pinky together. Which I feel like that's the world we live in now is that people just press the both buttons at the same time. Absolutely. It's like the meme of getting two kinds of soda at once and each one is labeled something else. That's a good one, too. Yeah. But yeah. So I wonder, you know, I looked up the meme history on it from the Know Your Meme meme website which i'm sure is always correct and very well researched but uh they didn't say that they said clark had was

inspired by some things but the obey bad guy button was not one of them but when i look at it there i was like man how could it not have been uh some level of inspiration for that classic comic yeah but i will i'm gonna i'm gonna put in my my chip as a person annoyed by season 13 and say that it does irritate me that there are it feels like there are more jokes where it's just a thing written down it's just like the joke written down which i feel like is slightly less artful than having to work it into a character saying it you know it's like the one that people put you know how like people will post stuff you know you'll say like what's your favorite simpsons bit and then someone in the replies will reply with something from like season 17 and i'm like You know how people will post stuff? You'll say, what's your favorite Simpsons bit?

And then someone in the replies will reply with something from season 17. And I'm like, you didn't get it, man. You don't know what you're doing. Just don't be so annoying. And a lot of the one that they'll do is Chuck's Seed and Feed or whatever. You know, the Chuck's Suck and Fuck one. And that one irritates me so much because I don't personally think it's that clever or funny. And it's just things that are just written down like i don't know why like i'm sure there are examples

of that from classic simpsons there must be tons of examples but i'm like you can't just write the joke down and have me read it on the screen you know that's not quite good enough you know i i'm a chuck's uh the chuck's joke i at least i like that they got a suck and fuck joke by the censors i don't know it's it's a show with a history of uh sign gags and it's drawing from like mad magazines yeah i mean there are better ones than this one but i'm not opposed to the idea of that being the joke but uh but yes homer and then also yes like he said marge loses her own story that now it's just marge begging it's just a classic like marge begs homer to not be to be a good guy like it's just one of those but uh but yes homer does listen and he uh dumps the sugar but as usual it doesn't solve the problem it

actually just gives people a bunch of uh very sugar rich water and everybody dives in and this is when we have our uh after ben stiller's character just slowly backs out of a scene in a forklift no real comeuppance for him he just doesn't get his way no i wonder if they thought he'd come back or something but i think they were hoping for it yeah but but uh but yes we have our sugar-filled ending here. I guess you just can't use the law to nag. Maybe I should just stop trying to change the world. No, Marge, I love when you do that. You're a regular Karen Alatovich. That's the best one.

That's what I told Lisa. Sugar. Honey, honey. Hey, I found some pearls. Oh, wait, they're just my teeth. Well, I can still make a necklace out of them. She's wanting you. You know,

for real, that's the definition of a treacle cutter. They have Marge and Homer go like, aw, and hug. And they're like, no, we need to show people Lenny's disgusting toothless jaws. And that's got to be the last shot of the episode. His mouth is so decayed, his teeth instantly fall out upon hitting the sugar water. Yeah. Yeah, it's quite a shot to go out on, I'll say. Yeah.

But yes, also the Judge Snyder recognizes like, oh, actually, I really overstepped my boundaries here. And so sugar's back. The end. I guess every, oh, we have to revert back to normalcy now. There can't be a happy ending. I at least like that seemingly the moral of the story was Marge shouldn't try to fix things. And so much like in Itchy and Scratchy and Marge, Homerge homer has to say no no it's good that you

care even though the world will pervade you from caring and that your caring is destroyed by the end of our story uh it's okay yeah but uh oh and and uh lastly the sugar shark that mo is like these sugar sharks are great and then it bites him back that's kind of funny i like just the term sugar shark and that mo thinks that they're a naturally occurring phenomenon and that a shark biting you is surprising yes yeah it's got many levels on this weird ass ending uh sadly they use the archie sugar sugar which is like but it's already used for the perfect joke in boy scouts in the hood of homer dancing on the island that's the you can't use it again but they did yeah that that is that is a

shame to be reminded of a of a better joke is is always is always tough i was sort of surprised at the ending just i mean maybe i hadn't been paying close enough attention but i was like oh is that it like the show like the show's over like that that whole because it felt like you know it was building up to the caper you know the caper was kind of something that should have lasted a lot longer i guess but you know you're right because they did just use it as a way to end the show rather than like you know the actual sort of final act that everything had been building towards it was like oh yeah and then they did the thing and then the show's over and sugar's back the end yeah exactly and i guess i guess the uh the moral is like marge was right but she's kind of annoying isn't she that's what the show is saying.

It could be a little, you know, these ladies could at least nag a little less when they want to change things. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I feel like this episode has a lot of funny jokes, but it is very much a time capsule. And of course it is. It's 20 years old, but it's a time capsule of where we were in terms of knowing about like nutrition, where we in terms of uh being fat phobic uh compared to today and how much uh just knowledge of uh you know diet and nutrition has changed since 2002 and like just the idea like oh sugar is bad was kind of i mean people have been saying that for

a long time but it was kind of reaching the mainstream and this is when again atkins was on fire so yeah an interesting time capsule but obviously does not age very very well and I guess it gave us Diabetti so good old Diabetti and Count Fudgela maybe they could like are they both single sorry Libby no I was just thinking I mean not not to you know end on too much of a downer note but um you know it's you're right it is it is kind of a time capsule and I was thinking at the time like you know what what did i think at the time about about something like you know fat and sugar well i was you know 11 when this came out so i guess it doesn't really matter but then i was thinking when i was 11 i was really worried about being fat and like i was

constantly thinking like how can i go on a diet you know how can i like lose weight as a fucking 11 year old you know and so it's like it's just very sad to think about um you know how can i like lose weight as a fucking 11 year old you know and so it's like it's just very sad to think about um you know what children watching you know a show like this might absorb as as the message which is either um you know like sugar is bad or whatever which yeah is true or like you know fat people are to be mocked you know that they are uh morally failed people who um have made bad choices and or aren't i good for having made the mocked you know that they are uh morally failed people who um have made bad choices and or aren't i good for having made the good choices you know that that kind of thing and you know i guess i'm coming across as a real like bleeding heart lib on this but you know i am so

was this the year of shallow hell 2002 or is that was that the previous year i think it is i think it's the same i know i think it's 03 three actually really okay well i think a jack black 2001 okay all right so yeah they've also got all those great jokes about a fat woman as well outside of norbit i felt like that was probably the last joke where it's like haha fat lady comedy or whatever god norbit yeah that's that's why he didn't get that os man Eddie Murphy if he didn't make Norbit I bet he'd have Norbit won an Oscar for makeup oh hey so Oscar winner yeah there you go but uh but thank you so much Libby for coming back on the show thank you Libby I promise one day you will be on a good episode of the show but our show is always good no well that's the thing it's fun to

talk about even even the the less good episodes but i do want to come on when you you have to pencil me in for when you do homeless triple bypass next because that is the healthcare episode so oh yes that's right okay we totally will i may even i may even have even have written something about it by then so watch out for that i'm sure oh boy you have written a plenty about doctorbs on your newsletter is that correct yes absolutely the the doctor sub stack oh i should have called it doctor but that's so annoying i never liked the name sick note and now you've got you've given me doctor and i gotta go and get a new url um yeah um i write uh sick note it's a newsletter about health care um and how bad it is in the united states um and the

website is sick note.co and you're also you know you're great you're a great podcast guest as well i've also i've enjoyed your your doughboys especially those are good ones which is the all this talk about negative on on fatty foods that's the opposite of that on on doughboys yeah you know i think poor nick and mitch you know really stuck in uh in a hell of their own making they've got this really successful funny good podcast that everybody loves and to do it they have to eat all of this food that makes them feel terrible but unfortunately it's really good for the rest of us so they're just gonna have to keep doing it forever um and you know as as a doughboys listener much like with having to you know ration out and eat less you know fast food than i used to i also have to

listen to it just a little or listen to the i listen to the doubles just as much because they don't talk about food but the food ones i'm like i kind of need to listen once a month because i have a problem if i listen to it i'm like well obviously i gotta order popeyes tonight absolutely i know about it and since i moved to la and we have a car it's just it's it's game over for me you know we can actually go to fast food places now that aren't in walking distance so yeah it's it's it's a real struggle but uh but thank you so much again yes thank you libby anytime so thanks again to libby watson for being on the show please check out sick notes and as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free

please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month you get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that's over 100 full-length bonus episodes about animated shows you love and that also includes monthly new episodes of both talking futurama and talk king of the hill that is only at the five dollar level and only at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you get access to all of the five dollar stuff of course but also access to one extremely long often six hour long podcast once a month if you're a patron of that level or higher and what is that henry bob is talking about the what a cartoon movie, where we talk about an animated feature film

just as in-depth as we do an episode of The Simpsons, which often means going over six hours, or at the very least five now, I think is our normal length episode. In our most recent episode, you can hear us talk about The Little Mermaid as part of our Disney Renaissance Summer. Tons of interesting info in there.

At the end of this month, we'll be covering Beauty and the Beast, a perfect follow-up to that one. that we did a very long over six hour podcast about toy story 3 we did a six and a half hour long podcast about who framed roger rabbit and other ones have included akira a goofy movie i i just love starting with those two but also south park baker longer and uncut end of evangelion spider-man into the spider-verse batman mask of the phantasm and a ton ton more so please check it all out the entire back catalog and all that five dollar stuff bob mentioned when you go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons

as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is RetroNauts. That's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash RetroNauts. Sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. And Henry, what about you? Follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. That's how you keep up with all the things happening in the Henry Gilbert world. And of course, if you're following me and Bob on Twitter,

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we have ever done of Talking Simpsons and other stuff, go to Talking simpsons podcast.com thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you again next time for season three's lisa's pony and we'll see you then Pour a little sugar on me, baby I'm gonna make your life so sweet Yeah, yeah, yeah Pour a little sugar on me Oh, yeah Pour a little sugar on me, honey

Pour a little sugar on me, baby I'm gonna make your life so sweet Yeah, yeah, yeah Pour a little sugar on me, honey Oh, sugar Honey, honey You are my candy girl And you got me wanting you

Oh, honey, honey Sugar, sugar Sugar, sugar Honey, honey Goodbye, cruel world. Hello, ironic twist.