Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Tales From The Public Domain With Conor Lastowka

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

For this week's episode, we needed an expert on goofing on public domain media, so we invited back our pal Conor Lastowka from Rifftrax and the 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back podcast! It's time for another non-Treehouse trilogy, which means lots of sex, violence, and songs from the '70s as Homer tells the kids stories about Odysseus, Joan of Arc, and Hamlet. Grab your Ghostbuster soundtrack and listen along! Support this podcast and get over 100 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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as well as the 100 plus other exclusive podcast episodes we've produced so far. So become a patron and join us through the rest of 2022 for another great miniseries. Same bat day, same bat podcast feed. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's never about Joan Van Ark. I'm your host, the beloved tyrant Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Styx music defender Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? Our special guest. Hey, I'm Connor LaStoca, and I thought two seasons ago they said this was going to be the last season. And this week's episode is Tales from the Public Domain.

This is the biggest frame-up since OJ. This week's episode originally aired on March 17, 2002, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my god! Happy St. Patrick's day 2002 bobby wrestlemania 18 happens in toronto ice age debuts ahead of resident evil at the box office and the sims overtakes mist as the all-time best-selling computer game at that time selling 6.3 million copies nice who are the headliners at wrestlemania 18 ah what a story to tell there the short version was the main event is jericho and triple h but they are fully overshadowed because the match right before them is the rock versus hulk hogan

a icon versus icon match that was hulk hogan's big return to the WWF at the time. And it was a big deal at the Rogers Center. It's called now the Sky Dome. We talked all about Rogers Center versus Sky Dome in our Toronto episode with Will Sloan. And yeah, so Ice Age and Resident Evil, a pair of, you know, they both had longer tales that I would have thought in 2002.

Like Resident Evil, I think, has had eight movies now? And that's just counting the Mila Jovovich ones. Right. Yeah, I guess there's original CGI movies, too. I've only seen the first, whatever, Paul Thomas Anderson or W.S. Anderson. W.S. Anderson, yes. Thank you. I apologize.

The husband of Mila Jovovich who puts her in all of his movies and hey for good reason she's a fine actress sure but a lovely lovely lady also Joan of Arc she was Joan of Arc she's literally the messenger that's right yeah Ice Age I saw in the theater with friends

I was 19 I don't know why I saw it maybe you can I was quite stoned when we saw Ice Age, so that was it. I quite thoroughly enjoyed it when we did that. No access to marijuana for me. I think we were just like, oh, look, it's not a Pixar or a Disney. What is this like? And it turns out to be, it's fine.

You know, it's crazy. I've never seen a full Ice Age movie ever, any of them. I've seen clips and stuff and and I know that Simpsons veterans like John DeVita and Mike Reese worked on them but never never watched the whole thing and yeah now it's like Ice Age which was core to the business of Blue Sky and Fox Digital Entertainment now just like flush down the toilet by Disney. They're like, we don't need, we got like 17 things better than Ice Age. See you later, Ice Age. You're canceled.

We can make Ray Romano voice whatever we want. He can be goofy if we want him to be. The little rat in Ice Age was my AIM icon for a long time after that movie. So it made quite an impression. Scrat to the squirrel rat? He's a classic extreme character character like the honeycomb monster he is yeah he really was born out of the early 20 times he looks like something that could be on an energy drink can i think uh but you know what i played so much sims i i really played a ton of

sims it was a good time only sims one not i i didn't really play much of the sequels i played a ton of one a little of two and then I dabbled in some of the later ones, but then I realized I only play these games when my life is at its lowest and most depressing because it is the meritocracy simulator. What if the amount of work you put into life, you actually got a return on it, which never happens? Then you realize, oh, I'm just playing an idealized version of what I want the world to be.

Now I'm even more depressed. What if I could build a house and put a couch there? That'd be great. Yes. I played Sims probably two summers before this, I guess. And the main memory I have is that my friend was living with us that summer. And we found somehow, I don't know whose idea it was, but we found the patch that eliminated the blurring when the characters were showering. So it made The Sims into a vaguely dirty game like that so that's that was a lot of lots of

woohoo was happening as they call sex in the sim universe uh but but that's what was happening on saint patrick's day in 2002 and joining us once again our special guest connor listoka a writer from riff tracks he's been on the show plenty of times last with us for a bart's dog it's an f yeah i'm happy to be here again guys this is you're venturing into turf where i guess i was doing more important things like going to see ice age in the theater at this point in time so i hadn't seen this episode yet but i'm a big fan of the public domain i was i was watching and i was like oh yeah like it is nice to be able to take stories from the public domain and interpret them because i did that with the christmas story a christmas carol one time you know dickens's story where my interpretation was that was just giving scrooge a boner throughout the entire story which

well it was higher brow than it sounds there's like lots of different like jokes to put in stuff i mean it was more effort than it sounds this is not uh me throwing shade a large part of rip tracks's business plan relies on there being a public domain for things to fall into, especially when it comes to industrial shorts and things like that. Absolutely, yeah. It benefits a lot of people because the people who made grasses at your fingertips or Mr. B Natural probably aren't around anymore, but their things can live on and reach countless more people than they ever thought was possible due to the public domain. And it seems like the public domain is sort of working again in terms of like Winnie the Pooh just entered it. That's right.

It benefits art to have that happen as it should. Yeah. You know, Disney's fighting that public domain for decades, but I'm shocked they let Winnie actually fall into it and let it happen. Well, then it was a race for the first person to make their ironic winnie the pooh movie and it happened or it is happening i salute the person who got out that horror winnie the pooh thing yeah as long as he doesn't have a boner i'm fine with it uh one you'd know immediately without the it's his as winnie the poohing it means spot being bottomless well connor too you're you know about classic literature and cover it all the time in your podcast.

Absolutely. I was recording an episode today of, was it The Odyssey? No, it was Super Constitution by Charles Kim, which is the book we're currently reading on 372 pages. It's about a super constitution, but a septuagenarian costume jewelry dealer from New York decided to write a book where he put all his theories into the air about how there should be one world government, and we should rewrite national borders. And everyone is extremely young, sexy and horny in the book also. So that's, whenever that falls into the public domain in 85 more years, I hope that there's a Simpsons parody of that at some point in time it sounds like a lot of death and uh the murder happens in that that guy's vision of the world like just getting to kill whoever you feel like well so that's important you have

to they they enforce their whole one world government by having a killing ray which they can kill anybody whenever they want to so his his utopia as grand as it seems sort of hinges on a very important detail which is having access to that death ray the ray only has evil applications my wife was right the whole time uh so yeah i guess the the premise of this story is kind of flawed at least the framing device which is i'm also thinking like why even have a framing device because it's like we're gonna read this read this book, Classics for Children. One of them is the Odyssey. One of them is a historical account of a real person.

The other one is a Shakespeare play that starts with once upon a time. Yes. So I like at least in the Tall Tales episode, they run out of Tall Tales, like two stories. And they're like, yeah, shut up. It doesn't matter. We're're gonna read from mark twain like let's just i i believe the the storyteller when lisa points that out he says let's just do this thing yeah that's what he says uh i remember seeing an episode of wishbone when my brother was watching it that was about the odyssey but it you know i guess in that sense it was dumbed down for

children but it's still incredibly violent and sinister and i mean there's so much sex and death in the odyssey like yeah you have to you have to really de-fang it for for the kids of wishbone i'd like to go back and revisit wishbone perhaps uh via podcast series no absolutely not somebody somebody is probably doing that but i remember watching that as a teen and being amused by it because the dog was cute but also they would put wishbone in some of these violent stories and often like wishbone i mean wishbone is only the only animal in these stories and if if the character had like a lover or a wife or a girlfriend it'd be they'd be like a woman caressing a male dog right right all right some real sickos are watching that this weekend then yeah uh yeah this is this is the third of the non-treehouse trilogy

episodes they did bible stories and tall tales before this aljean uh really liked it and wanted to continue it in his era of the show which this is his first one he oversaw uh he brings up that as a kid he loved when mr magoo would star in things like the christmas carol which didn't have boners a lot in that one, Connor. I've written letters about that, but I've not received a response. Restore the boner cuts is what I say. Yeah, I'm glad Al Jean at least recognizes the amount of work they make animators do for things like this, because it's three stories. Every character you see needs to have a new design that has to be approved and has to

be on model and in three distinct settings and also two of these stories have giant battles yes yeah huge battles tons of violence and swordplay i mean if somebody tasked me with like okay draw bart in the setting of hamlet and then draw bart in the setting of the hundred years war it's like how different can it be you know like the clothing it's not gonna be that different they find a way even with crusty when i was like wait court jester crusty and and stage actor crusty and hamlet not that different in designs they they do there it's a multiverse of crusties very popular these days but then you get stuff like mr teeny dressed as queen marge in

hamlet time which is again just sort of putting a hat on a hat on a hat and doing all that stuff for this episode, which, you know, it's not like it's a canon episode or anything like as much as there's canon. So it seems like it's sort of it's not like you're making it for a movie. You're making it for a seven minute segment that people are probably not going to remember as fondly. So I can understand the animators frustration at that. I just I just had an issue with have they have to rename all the characters so in my notes i'm like and then mo uh backspace backspace claudius does this it's like and then ralph uh laertes or whatever does this it's just everybody it's like every time they do a new segment everyone has a different name and it really it takes you a minute to sink into it you know yeah i'm surprised he didn't at least go

like homer odysseus or whatever, and they just call him Homer, but instead they change it. Yeah, like Homer Cleese, yeah. I also think another reason they do these is because their bloodlust grew. They could do all the violence they wanted in Treehouse, but it was just once a year. If then six months later or so you do a storybook one you can then again have like tons of violence again and get away with it just like you do in treehouse like it lets you double up on all that and also you can't have a joke about disco stew

wanting to molest bart in the real world exact thought yep. Exact thought, yep. That came as a surprise. Discus Stu, which is the best name they came up with. Yes, that was pretty great. They should have come up with a pun for every name. Yeah. I challenge you, 2002 writers. They also sort of paved the way, I think, for just the idea of making a Simpsons short

that's like the Disney Plus stuff, the Star Wars, and have they done Marvel stuff like that? Just, you know, let's do everything but with the Simpsons as that sort of general thing going forward, which I don't care for, but I didn't mind this short as much as I thought I would for this episode. This sets the template for it.

Well, you know, this at least isn't to advertise like a Fox Odyssey adaptation or whatever, like Fox is making a new Hamlet and they're advertising that. Yeah, at least it's not that. Although they said they were inspired by some then-recent Armand Asante version of The Odyssey that aired on TV. Oh, man, I don't remember that one. And this episode, Rife with New Writers. And Bob did a ton of research on those new writers. Yes, I certainly did.

So this episode has three new writers, and i will only really be talking about uh two of them because one of them is going to be doing his own solo stuff throughout the series uh so we'll we'll cover him when we get to his solo episodes but for now let's talk about uh the first few writers unfortunately one of them has been in the news a lot and not for his writing talent he's making headlines but not for the many shows he's producing. Not like headline, a show written excellently. Yes. Says Variety.

No, we've covered him in Talking Mission Hill. Andrew Kreisberg. I'll tell you before the troubles what he's done. So he wrote the episode. Andy joins the PTA for Mission Hill. I mean, we did an entire series about Mission Hill. We covered all the episodes and the unmade episodes. And we interviewed Bill and Josh, the creators for Talking Mission Hill.

Check that out on the Patreon if you're not a patron or if you are and you just missed it. So Andrew Kreisberg, he started as a writer's assistant on the Jeff Foxworthy show in 1996. He and he wrote one episode of Malcolm and Eddie before moving to Mission Hill. That appears to be his first job as a staff writer. 96 he and he wrote one episode of malcolm and eddie before moving to mission hill that appears to be his first job as a staff writer and he seemed to jump right from mission hill to the simpsons but didn't stay to for too long uh so christberg started at the beginning of season 13 and stayed until nearly the end of season 15 so he wrote the first segment of this episode and he also wrote seasons 14's barding over which is notable because it was advertised as the 300th episode but it was actually the 302nd to air and the 301st to be produced tsk tsk yeah i

remember i remember in the articles at the time aljean had to go like look it's we're calling it the 300 give us a break so they cheated a bit but uh notably andrew kreisberg is the creator of the arrowverse collection of dc superhero shows and that's where i mean i'm sure he was doing bad stuff before that but that's when uh he was caught i mean once you're in charge of the arrowverse i could think he also would get he's given more power and corrupts him more like you know the arrowverse wasn't supposed to be a cinematic universe it just kind of grew over time from spinoff to spinoff to spinoff and as as we learned as i learned uh from from all your nice friends in vancouver it also is like employs half the people in vancouver the the arrow verse

shows or they did for a time because it was so many shows being filmed there like i think even i was briefly in the flash i believe your uh your wonderful uh wedding reception venue was like when we were there one of the uh your wife's friends mentioned like yeah this was like a supervillain's hideout or something in an episode of the flash anytime you need a dome go to the blowdell conservatory uh or avi or whatever it's called so uh yeah arrowverse he's the guy behind all that stuff he's like technically the creator of the shows even though they're established characters or whatever so like he is or was like the paul feig of that of that kingdom right right yes yeah or the or the uh al jean i guess yes yeah only in terms of his show writing capabilities so yes yes uh not the bad stuff in 2017 19 people who work

with him uh 15 women and four men came forward as part of the misu movement to blow the whistle on his inappropriate behavior now this is a comedy podcast i'm not going to get into what he did but it's all disgusting and and if you can read about it on your own it's very easy to find articles we just type in andrew christberg hey they're all gonna pop up yes uh and it's it seems like he the cancellation did stick because uh he was not credited with anything since 2017 outside of things he is like the created by credit on although i'm sure he's making tons of money in royalties and i know he got like a big settlement with warner brothers after they fired him like his golden parachute or whatever yeah so he's still

like a multi-millionaire but he won't be working in this town again i assume he found some uh rapey friends behind the scenes to consult with or whatever like all these guys in every industry yeah yeah i'm sure he helps on stuff but yeah if you base on his imdb hasn't worked since that which i mean that's the best you can hope for sadly in a lot of these things is like these guys who do criminal things like and and as described by his you know many accusers at least 19 in the first article about it yeah like nothing criminal often comes from it but at least he doesn't have a job anymore and can't continue it but i mean and hasn't done some teary-eyed comeback story uh profile piece in in anywhere i've seen either so no not yet but i mean oh he doesn't get to write fictional things for like the flash and arrow to do anymore it's like who cares he's like a rich asshole in his mansion

now you know like it's still like fuck him and they really don't talk about him on the commentary i don't know if he's on the barting over commentary but there's no mention of andrew kreisberg or like what he was like because he was there for two years he was in the writer's room and this was the commentary recorded well before uh arover simwell before any sort of accusations public accusations of his behavior so there you have it andrew kreisberg he sucks i hope he never works again hope he trips in his mansion yes that's what i hope uh also writer of uh hot child in the city the jonah mark segment that's josh lieb so uh liebb was an Al Jean hire he started on uh She of Little Faith so he was hired at the beginning of season 13 though this is only written by credit he would

only stick around until the end of production season 13 so he's just there for one production season because his last episode is the production season finale Helter Shelter so yeah he's uh seems like just one of those bouncing around between years kind of deals yeah finding stuff to do and he found a lot of very very good stuff to do so get this he's a harvard graduate who worked on the lampoon of course how did he get hired although he's like uh but more than a decade younger than aljean and mike reason and as i saw uh what happens if you're a lampooner who's a little younger than Al Jean you're friends with Paul Sims and Paul Sims hires you to do things instead yes we'll get to that soon so his first

role in TV was a writer for the Jon Stewart show the talk show the one that nobody remembers right right which is not the MTV one either right I think it was like it was MTV for a bit and then it became syndicated and it was never never popular but he was a writer for that show he'll go on to do a lot of like uh late night tv writing in terms of like talk shows but he went from that to a showtime show no one has ever heard of uh the one season twisted puppet theater and that aired in the summer of 1996 and it is a dirty puppet show made a decade before wonder shows in wow and you can never heard of this i've never heard of it either and you can watch a chunk of the episodes on youtube but i guarantee this is not on the on the showtime streaming platform or whatever twisted puppet

theater which you have to like upgrade your paramount plus to do that or whatever i was i saw that now it's like showtime and paramount plus are the same but it's basically you pay yes extra on paramount plus it's like it's like h HBO Max won't put on the old shit that made HBO a name, and now they're embarrassed of it. Yeah, there's a real sex on there. Where is it? Tales from the Crypt, Dream On, they won't put those on there because they're like, no, no, we're Prestige. It's like, I knew what HBO was in the late 80s, early 90s. I mean, it wasn't as in the gutter as Cinemax or the Red red shoe diaries on showtime but this was they still had

their dirty stuff yes and i was skimming through an episode of twisted puppet theater it looks like i would have loved it as a 14 year old there's even like a like a kill barney sketch in it or whatever perfect and uh i was like oh uh there's a segment with uh mark weiner the the puppeteer and uh comedian mark weiner you might remember his show on nickelodeon for a few years wienerville he's doing the same shtick where he's a head on a tiny puppet uh doing stuff so except he says filthy things yes i think so i didn't actually pay that much attention but i was like oh that's where mark wiener ended up he was uh he was a hoot i loved wienerville except for the really boring cheap upa cartoons they would show the worst yeah at the time of this

recording our pal on the pop arena knickknacks just talked a little bit about that that's true i saw mark i saw the wiener in two places it's me staring at wieners for my research uh so this is good this is fun uh fun coincidence so he and fellow harvard grad brian kelly worked on twisted puppet theater and around the same time they worked together on news radio so it sounds like they did Twisted Puppet Theater during a time when News Radio was on the bubble between seasons two and three. They're like, it might not get renewed. Let's just do this fucking puppet show. It looks fun, right?

Yeah. And plus, it's cable at the time, pretty brief, probably can cover over the summer. That's cool. Yeah, we talked a ton about News radio with josh leaps co-worker lou morton in a class in a recent interview yeah these guys are they're all day one news radio guys uh as is lou morton i'm sure lou and josh were friends and maybe still are but yeah lee was a huge part of news radio he wrote a ton of the uh the show for the entire length of the series from season one to season five it looks like he's only solo credited on one episode but

he's like on like almost like uh 20 of them as like story by or because there are very few episodes of news radio that are just like one writer yeah yeah that it uh from the descriptions of the commentaries it was a real like the dudes stay up all night and write it together right before deadline kind of thing and josh lieb was one of those dudes and he wrote some with brian kelly so uh another interesting fact so they are together on twisted puppet theater they go together to news radio and guess what he and brian kelly basically hired for the simpsons on the same day oh wow okay their first credit is they're both their first credits are on she of little faith wow okay man the brian kelly though sticks around yes brian kelly's still there yes

21 years later yes uh and josh was like i'm leaving in a year so goodbye so uh after the simpsons josh lee was a consulting producer on drawn together listen he was just consulting yeah he came in for a day he said may have the pig make a rape joke i'm out of here and he collected five thousand dollars real ups and downs on his imdb page yeah we have to let people know uh and like it's a lesson from the past there was a time when adam carolla was a hot property we have to look at that and say what what did we how did we become that how can we avoid that in the future everybody wanted in on the adam carolla business yeah they wanted on that gravy train yes it was it was a huge mistake but guess what he went on to the daily show he was a huge mistake but guess what he went on

to the daily show he was a major part of it specifically he worked on the show from 2006 2010 eventually rose to the rank of whatever a showrunner would be on the daily show that's great wow showrunner that's impressive man and that i mean that shows though that i didn't know he had worked with i saw a daily show in his resume but i didn't know that he had worked with john stewart so early in his career so it seems like you know stewart was keeping track of his pals in this yeah i'm sure it was his connection with stewart and he's also very funny oh and that was a good era of uh the daily show too it's funny he left in 2010 after a few years of obama where you're like this isn't as fun anymore yeah yeah because well the entire premise they had to deal with it

was just saying over and over again well obama did kind of disappoint us with this he said he'd do a different thing but did you see what they said on fox news like that was just yeah and i mean it worked on me i watched it like yeah fox news is crazy they should give obama a break which i mean fox news is crazy fuck them but also i probably soften the blow too much on viewing uh accurately the disappointment of the obama administration yeah uh hey trevor noah just left the daily show as of this uh recording he just announces departure or whatever yeah who uh who will take the seat next who can replace all of his classic bits yeah that we all remember we all watched all the time he's such a memorable host i've never seen one episode of that with him i never even fucking

if i ever saw clips shared of it it was usually dunking on it of like oh this guy's not funny yeah like yeah well let's hope they find somebody better but yeah he was on daily show for like uh four or five years he won a ton of emmys he's also the co-author of Earth, the book, which was the follow-up to America, the book. Yeah, that's funny. I never read Earth, the book, and I was like, do I have that? And I was looking for Earth, the book on my bookcase. I was like, oh, no, but I do have America, the book

because no used bookstore would take it because everybody bought it. Yes, yes. But it was very, very funny. I love America, the book, yeah. And Earth, the book is very good too. I put America just above it, not to diss Josh Leavier. The thing is like i like the onion books better because uh our dumb century

and then like our dumb planets uh those were both very funny uh and uh the daily show was kind of doing the same thing there back when there was a market for these things yeah when people bought books i guess people still actually people buy lots of books now everybody's selling books like comedy bang bang's just about to put out a book really yep yeah oh my god every podcast did a book and we're not doing a book yeah you know let's aim for 2024 on that book deal yeah so josh leap other shows he's written for uh include the tonight show with jimmy fallon what we do in the shadows yeah paul sims show as well that's a paul sims show yes he's okay i think the showrunner definitely an ep on it yeah also i hate my teenage daughter and uh sasha baron cohen's who is america

oh the show where he's covered in prosthetics yes yeah and uh and also i saw it was the silicon valley with the the lou morton uh yes well i think you wrote one silicon valley uh and i saw you wrote an episode of nicky which uh if you want to learn all about that listen to the gayest episode ever i did on nicky with uh with our pals drew that did surprise me i was like i guess they were just like they had slots available like could you write a nicky it's like i could do that in my sleep yeah here you go oh i actually typed the draft as you were saying it to me put her in three skimpy costumes per act uh yeah they'd say the only rewrites would be like, no, it needs to be a bikini in this scene. Describe the bikini in your stage directions.

And he's also written three comedic books, mostly for kids. There's the young adult books. I am a genius of unspeakable evil and I want to be your class president. That's one of them. The other young adult book he wrote is called Rat Scalabur. And he wrote a picture book for kids called Chapter Two is Miss is missing so he's really has a very prolific career we can we can forgive him for writing for uh drawn together and the jimmy fallon uh late night show maybe he's just good at make uh doing late night monologue jokes you know i'm sure you wrote a lot of great ones for uh the daily show and for

the john stewart oh my gosh yeah i mean that's uh to to pump out that much is is a talent in himself it's It's interesting all over the place that he does. He did live action sitcoms. He did Simpsons. He did tons on The Daily Show. He did Prestige. He did all this. He did Drawn Together. He worked on The Rally to Restore Sanity. All the ups and downs. I left that out because I was like, oh, he was like the showrunner of hooray for centrism. Yeah, that's a great hey it was a bad it was a bad time not like now which also is bad yeah yeah it was uh it was not a good look for the daily show um but uh yeah that is josh lee just one production season on the simpsons and just one segment

credited to him but you know probably a lot of jokes in season 13 are his and the one we're not going to go over uh in any major details matt warburton because he will get his own writer's corner in season 14 with three gays of the condo an episode i don't like but one that won an emmy and guess what guys also a harvard grad i think he's got a phd or something but he was a notably young simpsons writer he was the youngest hire he was born in 78 so he was like 23 writing his first simpsons script that's pretty impressive for her back then yeah and they were all amused like he's almost as old as bart would be he's the guy they talk about on the commentary and say we just hired a guy who's almost as old

as bart is wow now now people born in the 90s right for the simpsons right oh i mean people much younger than yeah people born i don't think they have anybody in the aughts but definitely 90s kids are writers on Simpsons now. Just wait for some of those writers kids to get old enough. We'll see what happens. Yes. Actually, you know what?

I would bet that Jenna Martin was definitely born in 93 or so. What about Johnny Lezebnik? He seems certainly in his 20s. Okay. Okay. And also seems like a nice person. They're only getting younger and more related to people already on the show. But yes, those are our three writers for this episode uh last thing i i wanted to say too is that

mike b anderson mentioned that this was like he had done treehouse seven but hadn't done a trilogy up since and after this he would do two more of their storybook ones they do magical history tour magical history oh i wrote it down and The wettest stories ever told. There's more to come for him in his very design heavy episode. I remember those being better. I'm not a big fan of this episode except for the Hamlet chunk. Hamlet's the strongest. I agree with that too.

Or maybe that's just because I like Hamlet more as a subject than the other two. What was the wettest stories ever told? That sounds potentially quite no don't don't get too excited it's just uh it's one set in on the ocean it's like stories of like uh lois and clark no sorry lewis and clark i was thinking of like the superman show just like this like historical things that took place on water maybe Maybe like Moby Dick is one of them.

I forget. Right. Lisa Sacagawea. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. The Simpsons will be right back. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Wow, Milhouse, that frozen black cherry's turned your tongue black. My tongue's black, too. Let me try.

Hey, let's... Must have black tongue. This Halloween, the Simpsons are at Burger King. Now in every big kid's meal, you can get a Simpsons spooky light up. They gleam, they scream, and you can collect all 15 at Burger King. Where else? hey everybody welcome to the break of this odyssey of a podcast this is henry talking to you and a big thank you to our guest this week connor listoka of riff tracks and the podcast 372 pages we'll never get back we always enjoy having connor on and we super duper appreciate him coming back

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of season four and just wrapping up season two of Futurama and King of the Hill, respectively. And the giant back catalog also includes episodes of us covering every episode of Mission Hill and The Critic. Please check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. but if you want something as nice as the dessert god wants you should sign up at the ten dollar level of the premium patreon at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because you get all the five dollar things i just mentioned and then you get an exclusive podcast every month what a cartoon movie me and bob covering an animated feature film super in depth just like we do the simpsons often for over four or even five hours sometimes over six hours even talking about animated feature films recent ones have included this month we're talking about

laika's paranormal the month before we covered the 1986 cartoon toy commercial the transformers of the movie and we have a huge back catalog that covers everything from a care to a goofy movie south park bigger longer and uncut to beauty and the beast and so so many more you got to check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking But all right, the episode after a quick flip book couch gag, which I think was kind of cute, and they say the hands are a professional model, not Matt Groening's. Previously, when they did the spin art couch gag, did see the top of mac the back of mac rainings hand uh no but apparently they did not do it for this one um and you know what al jean is back and that means bringing back old

runners from his time on the show such as starting a scene with marge reading bills yes when we're doing three and 13 side by side i was like wow marge reads bills a lot and now here it's back again in season 13 we break thumbs the i kill you that is also them like double referencing something i i believe in cape fear they sort of put that in there too because it was like written on the side of a car they saw when the writer saw once just i kill you that uh they then but march just registers that as another bill and this is when homer finds out that he has a long overdue book at the library which as you heard from the opening clip uh that inspires him to realize that oj did commit those murders and that he was guilty

and all flat in 2002 what an interesting time to do that joke but well he has a framed picture of oj and a uh an odyssey the uh the minivan now i mean that joke has been sitting there for a long time they did homer's odyssey the episode in season season one episode three and uh matt selman uh over a decade ago on the commentary correctly identifies every article about the simpson is called homer's odyssey and i think there was one recently they're really there's four real was it yes yeah connor somebody who appreciates hacky writing i think you're you must love that like wow they you that somebody is a journalist who says like no one's ever called a story about the simpsons history Homer's Odyssey before.

Yeah, I mean, I guess to their credit, they probably aren't coming up with headlines a lot of the time. But, you know, it's probably just the, you know, something like Homer's Odyssey, but better. You know, Homer's Odyssey, fine with everybody. Let's go. Yep, absolutely. It's good. It's good. Yeah. The OJ joke reminded me of my friend who worked in restaurants in D.C.

who for a long period of time, like right out of college, so early, The OJ joke reminded me of my friend who worked in restaurants in D.C. who for a long period of time, like right out of college, so early aughts, had a framed picture of himself when America's dad, Bill Cosby, stopped into his restaurant that he pretty much had to do the same thing as Homer did at some point in time over the past decade. That's unfortunate. Man, that probably was a very nice photo for so many years. Yeah.

It was by a beloved heirloom that he probably put in the trash bin right next to OJ. You know, in 2002, we're still four years away from Juiced, his prank show that he did a pilot for. Was that a show or like a $70 VHS tape? You know, I think it was a pitch for a show that then failed, and then they sold it to the tape market. Yes, I guess DVD market. Oh, man, it didn't even register to me that he was a free man then, because he went to prison, I guess, in the early teens and then, for unrelated crimes, non-murder crimes.

Wow, that's hilarious. I mean, it's darkly hilarious. And now the juice is loose and has been posted on Twitter. He's a real poster, that O.J. Simpson these days. This is all just set up for Classics for Children, which Homer says he had originally planned to read to Bart in our first clip. Classics for Children? Oh, yeah. I checked that out when Bart was born.

I was going to read to him every day. What happened? Stuff kept coming up, mostly car-related. Piece of crap. Why don't you read to him every day. What happened? Stuff kept coming up. Mostly car-related. Piece of crap. Why don't you read to us now? I decide who reads and when. How about now? Hmm. Homer's Odyssey.

Is this about that minivan I rented once? No, Dad. It's an epic tale from ancient Greece. That minivan had the biggest cup holders. And chain slots for every coin. From penny to quarter. Dad, I loved it too. But it was seven

years ago. Fine. It was the end of the Trojan War. You know, if Homer's car is such a piece of crap it keeps distracting him, I see why he loved renting that Honda Odyssey that one time. It probably was a much better car and you know what bart says it was seven years ago that does fit with the timeline of the existence of the honda odyssey in america because it debuted uh for sale in 1994 so it would have been a brand new model of honda

minivan that to that time so the timelines line up well you know how i feel is that i think too too few kids are reading the odyssey and too many kids are playing super mario odyssey you know fewer cyclopses and uh pig man i guess you know no he doesn't turn into a pig in the game mario turns into a lot of things in that game and uh in my memory not a pig we can pokemon go to the weird islands yeah bart too you know he's playing a gba or what looks like i mean it's a very tiny screen on it but i guess if he's if he's playing any sort of handheld game i would guess a game boy advance the then new game boy advance i kind of like homer's long uncomfortable threatening of lisa

like he poses that way for like five whole seconds before he goes let's do it now a lot of uh a lot of meanness towards lisa in this episode too she is burned alive soon yes yeah but the 10 minute mark you know there's some funny stuff too on this commentary because al gene honestly he does like a riff tracks on the odyssey in this like yeah he has a lot of uh fun funny notes on what's wrong with the odyssey as a story i mean part of what makes this slightly uh irritating is things like the odyssey and shakespeare is a chance for people to prove how cultured they are it's like actually i like this play the most did you know this fact it's like when you start talking about the beat Beatles and you want to just back out of the room when you hear everyone's opinions like,

I'm more cultured, excuse me. So it's like, yeah, we're hearing on the commentary like, well, actually, the Aeneid is the superior story. What are you talking about? God. Yeah, proving you're cultured by having opinions about the most well-known works of culture in history is a choice it's a

choice to make i mean i i think gene has some very correct things about like a problem with the odyssey is it takes 20 goddamn years he's on that boat it's such a slow story and also because odysseus you know this is uh i'm trying to cancel homer right now the original poet because you know odysseus it's all about how his wife, Penelope, stays true to him for 20 years and doesn't get with any of those suitors when he's assumed dead. Well, meanwhile, while Odysseus is on the road, like, he is unfaithful a ton. He has sex with a lot of ladies, which, you know, again, that's just how it was in stories back then. Well, he's not on Twitter.

That's true. Yeah, I can't cancel. I can't let Homer know he's canceled. I always love it when they point out that when Al Jean has petty little grievances in funny ways about stuff, they then bring up like, you sound like the guys on No Homers who talk crap about The Simpsons. I think that, you know he i think he feels a certain kinship with them that he doesn't want you know i've said this before on uh on these podcasts but

if they were still making commentaries they would stop complaining about no homers and start complaining about us and that's the biggest loss in our lives that we don't have personal complaints about me and henry on these commentaries no i know Yeah, like, you know, the comics curmudgeon Josh Bruellinger, he's one up in some of the comics that he critiques, that sort of thing.

That would have been a big milestone for you guys. And that was the No Homers Club that Charlie Sweatpants used to write? Yeah, I think

that's what the writers were making. I think that was the Zombie Simpsons blog. No Homers was a message board and still is and still is um and yeah it still exists oh yeah dead homers sorry yes right sorry there were two there are two simpsons uh homer based uh names for those groups the no homers club was theoretically started in the sense of positivity towards simpsons and then quickly went away from that while i think dead homers

started with this sucks now yeah i mean i mean soon uh we will get to the point in this podcast series where i can go back in time and read my uh no homers club reviews of episodes so stay tuned for that folks so we start with the trojan horse which uh as as they nerdily point out on the commentary that's in the aeneid not in the odyssey uh the odyssey starts after the trojan war is over i like that ned plays the king of the trojans who is incredibly nice and i really like him accepting the wooden horse when he already has two wooden horses already well it's like well i don't have one from you like that's it's cute it's nice but uh this episode there's some good stuff in here and i but i feel like uh this was all like done by freelancers as we talked about in our commentary

in our writer's corner rather and i feel like maybe the eye was not as close on the script as it normally is because a lot of the most obvious jokes are are really done in this episode so it's like when you think of trojan whatjan, what's the next thing you think of? Well, yeah, they do that joke. I've got a quick clip there of that, yes. Now, throughout history, when people get wood, they'll think of Trojans. Trojans.

What are you laughing at, Dad? If I'm laughing at what I think I am, it's very funny. Anyway. I like that Homer told the joke, but doesn't uh get it yes i think it kind of rescues that tacky joke that's why i kept that part in there homer reacting to it meaning that it was like written in the book homer was reading which is classics for children like that extra level to it makes it funnier than just the the typical like when people get wood they'll

think of trojans like just the usual boner joke there was nothing worse than like the uh pop music station i liked in like fourth or fifth grade uh when they would like just play a trojan man commercial as my mom was like driving me home from cub scouts or something this is this is just like can i open the door and leap out of the car right now that That's called pulling a ladybird. That's for all you ladybird heads out there. But the joke from the Dial Z for zombies when Bart is summoning them by saying the other names of condom brands, like Ramsey's Magnum Chic is a little more subtle. It's hard to be anything but more subtle than this joke, but it's a little more subtle than it. Yeah, no, I mean, if you're doing a Tro trojan horse joke it's impossible not to do a trojan i mean like it was the kind of the obvious

joke when mel brooks made it in uh history of the world part one of like hey you seen a pack of trojans like i just ran out like yeah uh but uh but yes homer laughing at it and then saying if it's if i'm laughing at what i think i am it's very funny i think it also lets them say like well if homer thinks this is funny yes it is a low class joke like yeah that he almost gets it but the guys pop out of the the horse they see all the sleeping trojan soldiers and just butcher them and like uh it's mostly just off screen but you do see like severed heads flying like this is pretty violent and mo telling everyone to mutilate the decapitated corpses yes yeah which that fits for mo yeah i like that mo has a place in in a lot of these stories yeah it's a very it's mo heavy this one yeah so then after they they win the fight and kill everybody

though we didn't get to see ned die, but you can assume he dies. This is when Odysseus makes his grave error. Now I can return to Ithaca and my sweet wife Penelope. Odysseus, do not forget to thank the gods for our victory with an appropriate animal sacrifice. Forget it. Sacrificing animals is barbaric. Now have the slaves kill the wounded. No sacrifice? We'll teach that mortal to trifle with the gods. I got it.

You fat lusk, you just destroyed Atlantis. You used to be fun. Where's the Zeus who used to turn into a cow and pick up chicks? He grew up. Maybe you should too. Poseidon, you take care of Odysseus. Yar, I'll send him far. Of course.

I like that they bring up that they all own slaves. This is a true thing in history about the greeks like it it reminds me of thing and not meant to be a joke in that 300 movie uh which is bad i don't like that movie uh but there's there's a scene where the spartans try to feel they have moral superiority over the persians that they're fighting and they say like well yeah we have slaves too but we treat them nicer it's like oh wow what great what great characters the ones who have the treat their slaves well their baby pit is way deeper yeah yes also i note that aljean is back to the drunken barney he did not like sober barney he gets in drunk again and here he is as dionysus but he is drunk again that's

right i wasn't even thinking of that that because sober Barney on the show in the reality of The Simpsons can't be drunk yet, but they can make him into the god of wine or whatever. I like those gods characterizations, Barney and sea captain. Again, it's something that you can easily abuse

as the show would go on to do, I guess, but those fit pretty well and were pretty entertaining. Poseidon as sea captain is great that's my favorite well and i i do like the exchange of of zeus and dionysus being like zeus is the now sober friend of a guy who's still drinking like and he's like he grew up maybe you should too like and and uh the the turn into account up chicks, that is a joke about the myth of Europa, where he turns into a bull and a woman rides the bull and then he rides away with her. And then some stuff happens. Not good stuff happens.

Seduction in mythological terms. Someone needs to hold Zeus accountable. Yes. And it's going to be us. Talking about obvious jokes here uh very critique jokes to uh mo saying greece is the word that's a tough one just like uh so what's the first thing you think of when you hear greece oh the famous musical yes let's let's roll with that my parents have been vacationing in greece for the past two weeks

and they're flying back today and that was one of the first instagram captions my mom posted when they were there so you can the writers could take that to heart that was though of the first Instagram captions my mom posted when they were there. So you can, the writers could take that to heart. That was though said like off camera, right? It was sort of like probably dubbed in after the fact. For sure. Yeah, it's like they're on a boat. Somebody come up with the line about Greece. This feels very empty of just panning by them dancing

and they're not saying anything. So, okay, Greece is the word. Like, there, got it. What is older and dustier, a reference to Greece or a parody of the Barry Manilow song Copacabana? Yeah, I wonder. Man, geez, they're about the same era, isn't it? I guess, you know, Grease in the late 90s did have that popular supercut of Grease songs that at least made it more in the zeitgeist again though i think the boy i think it's a little after this is when the star wars cantina parody of that remember that guys hey you remember remember that yes

the uh the song at the star wars star wars cantina the craziest place you've ever seen uh yeah was that an internet video or was that something else i heard it first on the internet yeah okay yeah it feels like one of those things that was just played on you know morning zoo shows and nobody knows where it ended up and then it ends up on napster being credited to weird al right yes yeah it's like that the uh donald duck blowjob yes exactly we landed on the same thing man i i always assumed that was like my local morning zoo show that came up with that it's a once i grew up and realized that it wasn't bird mark and lopez uh on 98 rock it was very a little part of me died i think yeah you know what one that that our shock jocks were the last that

could pretend they came up with a thing that gets passed around to every major station and and make it their own thing once it goes once the online culture existed people could say okay wait that guy did that uh played that song two months ago in my markets i hope it's addressed in the weird al biopic movie that's coming is his uh lengthy discography on napster they are getting really drunk drinking at greek vases and that is when Poseidon blows them off course uh as as happened in in the book too uh though I think it happens I believe in the original version it's that they kill the Cyclops uh they get stuck on the Cyclops's island and when they kill the Cyclops he's the son of Poseidon and then poseidon knocks him off course for that reason but uh you you will spot a brief upskirt of homer during this uh this wind thing you're not your eyes don't deceive you

it feels like some sort of error and that they weren't sure like what went under uh his his loincloth or whatever sorry what went under is like toga whatever he's wearing and it's just like it's not underwear but you actually can't see his butt cheeks. So just like a fleshy orb is underneath his torso. Wow. I missed that. Damn it. Pause. It's for quick pausers online.

Yeah. Instead of getting back to Ithaca, they are sent to the crazy islands. You know, they got all this trouble of writing this Copacabana parody, but then they cut it up too much. Like they don't play it. They play a lyric, and then characters will say something, and then they play the lyric again. I think they're hamstrung by the fact that you can't see who's singing it. So be worried if you just heard the song over characters listening.

Yeah, it's true. I do like the line, our hot sex will have you perspiring. That made me chuckle. And also, I recognize again, the runner of this time is saying stage directions aloud when they say, let's steer heedlessly towards it. Those always make me chuckle. But, you know, I don't like jokes about the women being ugly. I really just don't like these are back in force now in this era of Simpsons.

Yeah. I mean mean i wrote down like oh no two moderately overweight women who want to have sex let's tear her eyes out yes disgusting they don't shave their legs sisters-in-law you know i guess so yeah that makes sense but if it was like agnes and like mrs glick or something it would have been funnier but agnes has to be uh she's like later in this bit that's right yes to do a uh Phil Stiller gag yes exactly now old women are disgusting sure yes we can all agree on that no one would want to have sex with them yuck but well you know it's everybody on the boat it even breaks Frank's glasses as well I like to think in Lenny requesting someone gouge out his eyes is an oedipal joke we then cut

back to penelope she's uh being visited by a bunch of suitors i gotta give him credit for designing greek versions of so many of the men in the show like that's really especially did you notice that crusty has a bouquet of flowers with a hose attached to it that so he has a squirting boutonniere even there oh no that's very clever yeah i mean they only needed three suitors really but they they drew like all six and like every scene there's six of them right i think yeah and they all have to have accessories just for the skewering kebab joke at the end of this act and of course this is when disco stew hits on bart discus stew discus stew yes it's the one really good joke in this in this act it is really great i they they joke on the commentary that they start with a disco stew pun and work backwards

from there with the rest of the episode yes he offers up some ouzo for twozo which is about a greek a greek liqueur i believe uh and yes he wants to have sex with bart probably the most direct pedophile joke they've done in the show i think on the simpsons i i hate to think they did a more direct top 10 oh there's some big ones coming folks oh yeah it's true yeah though i mean they were in an arms race with family guy which you know around the same time was making a regular character who was a pedophile old man you know oh that's right yeah yes yeah they so simpsons is only they're just following where the trends are going and quagmire was like in the pedophile spectrum

i mean he wouldn't not do it but i mean you really can put any horrific act onto quagmire back then you know that's he would have had one of those olsen twin countdowns website though like that was oh that yes that quagmire would have done yeah uh we're just pitching horrible jokes for quagmire but but yeah bart's doing a shudder to that it almost feels like that's not enough but uh yes and uh so there are a few deleted scenes in this one uh we're getting to the biggest one, though, is right here. So originally after this scene, there was a scene of the Cyclops. Okay. I didn't watch the scene, and I might be remembering it from when I watched it on DVD like a decade ago.

Is it Wiggum? No, it's Comic Book Guy. Okay, that makes more sense. Comic Book Guy is the Cyclops. It starts with him having caught them. He eats Frink. That's's why frank is not in any scenes uh you don't see him die unlike the rest of the guys he eats frank pulls out frank's bones and he says and he's basically a living skeleton skeleton talking and he says well at least i'm

not dead and then he looks at his bones and you guess what he says he says oh my gosh i look like calypso flockhart oh good lord yeah yes wow of its time yeah and calypso flockhart yes you get a you get a pun you get a great pun and you get to uh body shame calista flockhart uh for his fin was that something that was ever aired or was it only just a deleted scene on the dvd only on the dvds yeah and they poke out his eye or actually they do hit his eye but they do not leave him one-eyed he just is like blinks it away uh then they escape and he says i promise not to eat you i just need help with combing and wiping and i was like wow wow i'm glad they cut this one but it's a lot of action. The humor of that era, her being the sort of punchline for all that still pervades, you know, some recess of my mind.

We were doing a short where they were talking about nutrition and it was like, you know, what happens if you stop eating? And it's like, I'm not going to, you know, you can't certainly not going to make a Calista Flockhart joke in 2022. But like, it's still there from the late night talk shows of that era yeah yeah it was a style at the time i'm not saying simpsons was uniquely mean we all were just like yeah yeah look at this famous lady how dare she uh want uh be thinner than what we feel she should be but also we would guilt her if she were to gain weight as well yeah but hey you know what her and harrison ford still happily married they still still together. This segment is all about telling chicks how big they should be. That's true.

Don't be as fat as Patty and Sama. Don't be as skinny as Calista Flockhart. Honey. As old as Agnes Skinner. Exactly. Boy. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's almost like this segment was written by a jerk.

Oh, yes. Who can't make TV shows anymore. Yes, yeah. You guys heard all those sad facts earlier. But okay, so then Sea Captain, Bugs Bunny style, sends them off with an eye stinker, even doing the Bugs Bunny hand motion for it with no carrot in his hand.

And this is when they land on the Isle of Circe. Very horny design on her and i'll tell you i only know things about cersei because uh she appears in a lot of comic books as she's one of those public domain mythology villains who can like fight wonder woman or thor or whatever like marvel or dc both have their own versions of cersei but in this case cersei meets the guys and transforms them into pigs thanks for your help with the anchor, guys. Guys? That pig looks like Lenny.

Hey! That's the next best thing to eat in Lenny. I'm still hungry. Didn't you eat enough of your friends? Those were my friends! Yes, I've been saying that for hours. That's it. I'm going home. Which way to Ithaca?

It's not so easy. You must go through Hades, crossing the River Styx. Oh, my lady of the morning Oh, this truly is hell! Now, I want to know what Connor thinks about this. Everyone can weigh in. I really think they wanted Mr. Roboto, and they either were told no, or that they found out it was too much money.

Because that's the obvious cheesy song to go to. I didn't even know this song, to be honest. Yeah, that's a very good point. I mean, that is the go-to, and it is an obvious joke when you're sending someone to the River Styx, so that probably is what happened. I mean, I feel like Lady is probably, what, like one-third of the streams on Spotify as Mr. Roboto,

so I bet you're right. Also, Mr. Robato is known as a officially like bad song in that it's incredibly cheesy and like look i love these sticks is a great band to sing like at a karaoke bar i like sticks but i think that lady lady is seen as a cheesy song but is it one that really makes you go like this is how i though i also think it's funny like like what level of approval did sticks have over this or was it just the record company is like yeah you can shit on this song like we'll take the money we don't care like if you if you pay us the rights to use it you can make fun of it it's probably one of those bands where the

second bassist is still the only member that's actually part of it so they you know he signed off on it and cashed the check. Mr. Roboto has 55 million streams on Spotify. Lady has 20. Also, it could have been Come Sail Away. He's on a boat in the lava river. Yeah, it makes way more sense. But again, I think it was a pricing issue.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think, man, they draw so many skeletons in this. There's all the skeletons on the river Styx, including one skeleton that their shirt up uh as a way of revealing their boobs where they where they just still have skin which was a fun drawing but when you see here homer say this it really is hell like that you'll see the the skeleton behind him i never noticed it until they mentioned yeah i didn't notice either and uh but then also like when he eats his friends, the very accurate pig skeletons there, too. Homer ate everything. And he ate live pigs. He did not cook them.

He just ripped apart four live pigs and ate them all. He also ate Lenny and King Homer. That's true. Hey, Homer, quit eating me. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Yeah, Cersei, again, in the poem, originally did. She does turn all the men into pigs, but in the poem, Odysseus sleeps with her and then convinces her to turn them back into humans. So that's, uh, this, this is very different here.

I wondered when I saw Cersei being slightly flirty with Homer when telling him about Styx, I wondered if they were headed in that direction or not, but they were not. But I did like Moe's mo's line boy who decided to give every weirdo an island that's that's a good line uh but yes the homer eats his friend oh you know what also it's a very sitcom-y line delivery of yes i've been telling you for hours i don't know there's another very sitcom-y thing that feels like a placeholder they didn't uh overwrites later in this segment yeah there were a couple like i felt like that just as the are you gonna ask if it was vase or vase this whole way type of thing it had are you gonna ask the whole way similar vibes yeah then we cut back

home it's been 20 years though bart hasn't aged a day in these 20 years all the suitors have been waiting a long time i like that burns is among them and again note that they all have accessories it's all just because when they get skewered by homer you need like basically like the pineapple or peppers or whatever that would be in between the meat on the skewers it's their accessories like the urn or the uh the bouquet or thing mel has a a harp yeah but yes homer gets home and uh hell after greek agnes does a phyllis diller joke and i gotta say i love her when her head goes back to laugh it's a crazy drawing i actually really like that drawing of her with her with her head backwards there homer gets home and kills a bunch of guys we came here ellen of troy hot. Now look at her. This is the face that launched a thousand ships.

The other way. Honey, I'm home. Look who the fate's dragged in. Oh, I'm sorry I was gone so long, but I'm gonna do something I haven't done for 20 years. Take out that trash.

Sweet Penelope, you're just as beautiful as you were when I left. I can't stay mad at you. Brave Odysseus, it's been 20 long years. Regale me with tales of your adventures.

Quit suffocating me. I'm going to Moe's. Hard end there, yeah. It's also, again, as we talk about how this one treats women, it's like, God, these nags won't leave you alone. I got to get out of here. What a one to end on. I thought it was interesting that they didn't incorporate Santa's little helper there

because I feel like if you ask the average Joe, you know, three things about the Odyssey, that the dog approaching him and dying at the end after he gets back would be one of them. And they had it right there. The pets seem to be missing from these stories. Yeah. I like how all the guys go, oh, on the skewer and then let out their death rattle. I was paging through those frames on Frinkiac. And I was like, this is the last year they're doing cells i would love a cell of all these guys

spirit even though i hate this segment it's like all my favorite characters just like on the about to die they're bleeding out inside what did they switch to after the after this season uh digital all digital animation so nothing is literally drawn onto cells and then photographed yeah they you can still get you know the line art for these episodes exist and you can buy them but it just doesn't look as special you know it is just like it's it's pencil i mean it looks good but then those pencil on paper got scanned into the into a computer and then colored in the computer so yeah no more physical cells like the wonderful physical cell behind me on the wall there of

crusty can't can't get those anymore that's why it's guaranteed to increase in value guaranteed exactly so they did delete one other scene from this right they had a different ending on the deleted scenes uh which i'm glad they cut because it's kind of a repetitive joke marge and homer say they're going to return to their marital bed their odysseus and penelope are jumping on their bed up and down and over says boy i can't think of a better thing to do in this bed and marge is like you know i think there might be and he's like nope there isn't and uh and of course we've seen many jokes like that in the show uh but yeah but they do cut to dionysus and the rest watching from the heavens and saying do something hot and then zeus says ah quit looking at them look at those niads in the dryads over

there and it seems that uh which are wood and water nymphs uh they seem to be canoodling and so that's that's where it ends with zeus ogling nymphs off screen having sex i guess it's less hateful to women by saying, let's watch lesbian sex. Yeah, I guess that's better. The book we're reading on 372, Super Constitution. He often refers to the hot, super genius women as nymphs. So that's, it all ties together. Man, nymphs.

Yeah, it's a gross way to describe it. Yes, I was just listening to your most recent episode where you know uh as they describe you guys mentioned like oh what is the the this avatar of a woman look like well of course it's a beautiful blonde who speaks with a new england accent like that's of course of course what this alien thing would look like yeah of course uh but hey speaking of a more positive uh thing for women it's time for a the feminist lisa segment of the episode they joke on the commentary about how in the previous one they had to gender swap johnny appleseed into connie appleseed just to give lisa a story because most

fables are not about women and that's also in this case too they just are like you know let's just go with joan of arc the real or jean d'arc and let's go with the the a real person again not an actual like a fictional story from uh european history i mean in that case they could have went with a woman who wasn't executed yeah yeah if they're going with that i guess like the story of susan b anthony is not as fun as uh this i guess you know they didn't wanted to get out of the americas perhaps i mean it is fun it is interesting to see lisa murder a lot of people like you're not usually seeing that in simpsons episode joan of arc was also the token woman they brought back in the phone booth and bill and ted so i guess she's used to filling that sort of role played from that

woman by the go-go's oh yeah yeah she's hey she's cute and has a pixie haircut perfect for uh joan joan of arc which is different from joan van arc which is what marge wanted hey if you want to know who joan van arc is she's more famous than you and she'll make more money than any of you listening because she was on uh the dallas spinoff knots landing for 327 episodes good Good Lord, man. Wow. And I think it was like the longest running drama up to a certain point or was up there because it ran from 1978 to 1993. That is so many years, man.

Knot as a soap opera, as a primetime show? As a primetime show, yeah. It was like Dallas was a primetime soap, so was this. And so you could watch Mr. Plow in the same week watch a new episode of Knot's Landing. Starring the Joan Van Hart. art yeah who marge loves i love that marge is a disappointed fan of hers who's like you know what she deserves a comeback this joan van arc she's uh she's underappreciated as the star of knots landing i think i think she's well not retired but you look at her imdb she's not doing a lot these days. Well, she is like 80 now.

Yeah. But yes, Marge disappointedly learns this is not about Joan of Arc, as instead Homer begins our tale of Joan of Arc. Oh, here's a story of Joan of Arc. Oh, did you say Joan of Arc? No, Mom, Joan of Arc. It's never Joan Van Ark. This one takes place in a make-believe kingdom called France. The French were fighting the English in the Hundred Years' War,

which was then called Operation Speedy Resolution. You know, as we're just about to start the Iraq invasion in 2002, a joke about misnaming something is speedy resolution. I like that. I like that joke. But also, this counts on, you know what, listeners who are not in America, you should know, we don't get taught shit about the Hundred Years' War in America.

I know if you're in England, it's probably that and the Tudors is probably a huge part of your schooling. We don't know shit about it. Like, I don't know about you guys i i learned a few things about the hundred years war today just so i could make sure i don't say an inaccurate thing about it i know the annoying like cocktail party trivia like you know it wasn't actually 100 years and you you back away because you have nothing more to add bill and ted is where mine starts and stops so that's probably burned out a little too early i would guess yeah the the only thing i

know the hundred years war for really is a or where i first really learned about it was from the great joke in red dwarf the character of rimmer is about to be stranded uh in a time vortex or whatever he's like well how long am i going to be and he's's like, well, how long am I going to be? And he's immortal. He's like, how long am I going to be stranded here? He's like, well, do you remember that long war in history? The 30 years war? No, the other war. The hundred years war?

Yes. Now multiply that by three and you're pretty much there with how long it's good. I guess it was a good joke. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care

that's all i know about the hundred years worth well i have to say that i have uh english blood in me and henry gelbert is a filthy frenchman family i also everything i know about joan of arc really is just from clone high and the character oh yeah so clone high and uh i guess the messenger and uh bill and tad yeah i guess you know we've never seen have either of you guys seen the the classic uh black and white joan of arc film the passion of of uh joan of arc i think it's called have not no i've heard it's uh it's a rough one to watch when you know that the actress i think went through a lot on that set i think but it's uh there's got to be like an iron maiden song too or something like that there has to be some sort of metal song that's about her a concept album and certainly you know i've played a number

of the shin megami tensei games where joan of arc d'Arc is a summon in it. She's basically a Pokemon that you can fight with. Her ghost appreciates that. I also, speaking of appreciating things, I appreciate that Mila Jovovich got that very unflattering haircut to play Joan of Arc. The period appropriate like page boy haircut. You know, nothing's on it. She's a supermodel. Nothing's that unflattering.

That is true. That is true. First, we have a quick joke about well i gotta play the bird violence jingle actually for this one everybody hates birds right bart makes or bartron uh makes goose pate by crushing a live goose and squeezing it out through a sleut it's lots i guess a sleuth a sleuth yeah that's sure yeah i guess they wanted to find a way to make foie gras more cruel yes and that's just by mashing a live goose into a machine i mean pate is basically like it when i looked at it i haven't

had pate uh ever where i looked at photos of it like it just looks like liverwurst or whatever like just like a a loaf of of meat squeezed out of a... You can make pate out of lots of stuff, but goose liver, I think, is the most famous. When I lived in Vermont, we would go up to Montreal for these dinners they would do twice a year at this sort of nicer restaurant. They would do all these crazy presentations

and bring all these things out. And the restaurant focused... Joe Beef maybe was part of it. I don't know. It focused a lot on foie gras. And foie gras is something that like, you know, regardless of how you feel about it, it's a little bit of it can be tasty.

They brought out enough of it and that you would take it home and there's absolutely nothing that translates to leftovers worse than foie gras. Like big, congealed liver is not something you want to like open the fridge and rummage through the next day now we're not made to be put in a microwave foie gras yeah mashed organ meat is kind of like mcdonald's french fries you need to eat it within 40 minutes at

least i do like barge earnestly saying the the english lyrics to frere jaca that's that's fun i guess uh we are nitpicking the hell out of this but uh it bothers me when uh they name characters like bartron and lisa of course is joan of arc but then i'm just like and then marge says yes because march and homer are just like the parents so i'm like i guess that's marge i guess it's homer as a note taker this is my issue with this episode it's a hard one for note taking so i didn't read up on the whole history of joan of arc but i did see you know one of the things about her when she was 13 it wasn't that god directly spoke to her it was that multiple saints include primarily saint michael spoke to

her but i think it's better having it just be the light of god here and it i think it it pays off in a good joke at uh at the end of her trial with with god but why complicate it with a bunch of saints showing up like i mean it's more character design right yeah yeah i mean sure could carl be a funny saint michael or whatever perhaps but as joan is uh is God speaketh to her. Joan of Arc, I am your god. Hi. I have chosen you to lead the French army to victory over the English invaders. But I'm just a little girl. I know. I have three eyes. Now get cracking.

God wants you to lead the French army to what? Victory. Victory? We're French. We don't even have a word for it. God spoke to me. I must obey. Joan, give me your dessert.

That's just you, Bart. Joan, give me your dessert. Yes, sir. And then the eclair floats up into the air, which, of course, you think of French dessert, eclair, that maybe is the first one you think of. It sounds French. And it should be pointed out, like,

this was definitely written, like, on the cusp of 9-11 based on, like, when it aired. So the coward Frenchman jokes had a different, had, like, not as much baggage then as they did when this finally aired. Oh God. It's true. I was thinking, you know, your Mel Brooks Trojan joke,

that sounds like one he could have done too. We're French, we don't even have a word for it. But combine that with Freedom Fries a year later and Dark Territory. You know, I didn't put that note in here, but it actually, there's a better version of the joke about french characters speaking english and things and obviously you know for if you're making something for an english-speaking audience even if it's set in france you don't get people normally you don't have people speak the language of the characters you just have them speak in an

accent and they have a good joke about that in here but i actually preferred the one in the history of the world part one because as they're complaining about how poor the all the french are before they're about to have a revolt they said like we're so poor we don't even have a language we just have this accent but though i in general i do like that in movies where uh you know they point out the like like if you saw the movie enemy at the Gates, which is about Russian snipers in World War II, the Russians speak with British accents, like Cockney almost British accents, and then the Germans speak with fancy British accents,

and it's very weird. Though also in this, I mean, I like the line too of like, God wants you to lead the french army to what victory you know what french have at least two words for victory la victory and le triomphe so you know what that's uh homer's joke is incorrect yeah again uh i remember uh ken keeler the writer for the simpsons and Futurama, he wrote the Willie cheese-eating surrender monkeys joke, and he took issue with people appropriating that sincerely. He's like, no,

Willie hates the French. You're not supposed to be emulating groundskeeper Willie. He's not the hero of The Simpsons. But that got used a lot. Every fictional character reflects 100% the view and worldview of the people who created it. That's how art works

these days yep yeah every if if somebody made art they agree with the character that's why they do it yeah no yeah the the joke was always about that like that he's a gross scottish guy who hate who openly hates the french and is disgusted by them like that's what the joke is but but yeah the you're right bob in 2002 the meanness to the the french in this plays very differently uh and it's also funny too because al jean he's like uh i believe he says he's half french on he's like i believe one parent of his is from a french background the other irish al jones al jones yeah that's right uh and so then we go to the front lines and uh it feels almost Schwarzwelderian of the Frenchmen being shot out of the catapult and then uh worried about losing

their job as a rock like that oh it just sort of reminds me of something that might happen to Frank Burley in one of uh John Schwarzwelder's books is being shot out of a catapult repeatedly yeah yeah it's either like a swords welder suggestion because he is uh on the staff this time although working remotely or it's somebody like a lot of a lot of times you'll see people saying like i want to do a swords welder joke and they do their own version of it yeah they have a joke about not speaking french uh even though they're all french and then i I do love Joan's suggestion of like putting bigger, harder people in the catapults or how about rocks? And I laughed at the bloodied Frenchman saying like,

I don't know how to feel about this now. He's losing his job. He's losing his job, but he's not going to be hurt too much. And so then, yes, once his supervisor watches him, Wiggum, he lets Joan do all the work and then he goes off to help too as as he feels the guilt of his supervisor they they even bring up monty python's holy grail on the commentary but the british guard here that pops up really does feel like a like call back to the absurd frenchman guard in the holy grail uh that john cleese plays if you they they probably wanted to even just do absurd frenchman guard in the holy grail uh that john cleese plays if you they they

probably wanted to even just do the frenchman bit but then they realized like oh no uh the french people are the ones who are storming the castle so it's like what's another silly accent oh cockney i mean i do love what's all this thing for uh said by anki's area it did yeah i was watching and waiting for it i admired the restraint to not do something there because the whole thing echoed it very well. And then Lisa just stabs him right in the chest and kills him. And then kills like a bunch of other people too. And I really like the design of her helmet fitting to the points of Lisa's hair.

Like that's a fun, fun helmet design. Then Lisa is going to meet with the king, which I looked this up because it's so specific i was like this must be in one of the joan of arc movies or stories i couldn't i googled it i read the wiki pages some wiki pages i could not find anything about the relationship between uh dauphin uh of the viennois viennois uh who would be charles uh like he did meet her and he put her in charge of the army like that's all true but none of this finding the real king thing was mentioned on any of the stuff i read so not even as like as historically inaccurate thing the real story like it wasn't

even mentioned as a thing that's wrong like it just wasn't there and honestly it feels like a reference to phantom menace with the uh with the fake fake kings it feels like they're doing a lot of work to make millhouse the king when they could have just thrown him in that chair from the beginning but i mean hey it's funny seeing uh quimby pass the sash to uh to the dauphin uh which is the title given to the heir apparent of the throne of france that's that's what wikipedia says so uh lisa is correct using the word dauphin is correct and fancy i google it too then there's another deleted scene crusty makes a different joke at millhouse's expense at the start of the scene uh and that he's that the king is so effete he bathes every week and uh that's when he already tells crusty to be

taken away to be beheaded so if you wonder why crusty then rushes into the scene in the next shot that's because he already was being uh dragged away in the deleted scene okay uh but yes this is when uh joan meets the king it is customary to kneel before the king. I would gladly kneel. Were you the real king? You are the true Dauphin. You had this imposter try to fool me to see if I was truly sent by God. Bravo, Joan of Arc. You are as brainsome as you are toothsome.

Quimby, you may resume your regular duties now. It would be my pleasure. Vibrate for me, footstool! Loyal subjects, let us drink to Joan of Arc, who will conquer the English. And has already conquered my heart uh God says we should just be friends I wouldn't say King Milhouse is a loser but that's the 12th girl he struck out with this week boil him in oil so no 10 30 show so at first he was ordered to be beheaded and then he ran back in the room to say one more joke to be boiled in oil i mean i love how millhouse commands boil him in oil i think that's

a good good reading uh by by hayden there i like the uh voice acting to make mayor quimby do the sort of uh cartoony head shake noise it's it's impressive when you think about what it takes to be doing a you know broad john f kennedy impression but then also to have to do weird stuff like that while maintaining the the voice of the character you're doing i tip my hat that's why you paid dan casaletta can you be kennedy and also a footstool that vibrates uh and great i also love the drawing of him with his wavy mouth when uh when shaking too yeah there was i don't think it was this scene but what crusty's doing the jester and this and hamlet and in one of them he does a um eye bulge which i felt like sort of trailed off by this point in time but i was i was i was pleased to see it yeah i miss eyeball just

for emphasis it's it's always fun yeah uh and then uh i i did also chuckle at the joke of Joan saying that the reason she wants to do this is to stop people who view individual liberty over the monarchy. That's a fun way of framing it. I mean, I believe the Hundred Years War was just a battle between kings. Like, though, I guess England had a better view. They did have the look. i'm gonna mess this up in political history here forget it forget it but yeah so the fight continues they kill a bunch of like fancy british guys uh who are sipping tea this is when joan gets a little too full of herself and then gets stuffed in a sack by willie who says he's he's captured a little girl i'm england's

greatest hero there's a very like i feel like it was another animation error where willie rides off the screen and for like three frames you see the fight going on in the in the background and english soldier is fighting a french soldier the english soldier is like swinging a teak pot at him and the french guy's blocking it but it's like eight frames and just like well this is a gag they didn't like linger on it really long yeah you know that's that is awkward there's some awkward editing here but yeah that the emptiness of that shot is a little distracting yeah i also i looked up of like hey wait a minute scottish guys working for the english back then and according to my research uh as a dumb american yeah the

scottish sided with the french in the hundred years war pretty much they so i i don't know if i don't know if that was an extra joke here that it's willie the scottish guy who is on the english side helping them capture joan of arc or if it's just a funny coincidence this is when joan is put on trial in real life she was put on trial for a lot of these things and told to renounce that she heard god uh and apparently, it was the thing that finally got her in trouble was she would not stop wearing men's clothes. Yes, which she had done most of the time as a general. That's like busting Capone on tax evasion. Apparently, they were going to let her go or that history says, and that they then caught her wearing men's clothes again.

And then, you know, the pants that was, that was the last straw for them. And then when I say straw, I mean the straw, they put on the pyre that they then burnt to kill her. It's like,

look, as a jerk in men's clothes is a doublet. It's a hard, all these things are sound made up. I don't know which is for men and which is for women back in those old times. Everything was so loose. so loose just a loose thing you draped on your body and maybe like you tied some sort of like rope around it and of course smelled horrible at all times yeah yeah caked in uh everything uh oh god i'm sorry i'm

now being taken back to a riff track compliment to make the the visit to medieval times one you guys did recently i'm sorry i forget the title of it the seneschal the seneschal we all learned about seneschals from life in a medieval town yes of course if there had been a seneschal in this that would have made my day a word they acted like everybody knew and it was all new to us this is when joan calls on god uh which is a long walk to it but i do kind of like that you hans walks in and people hans woldman they think he's god and then opens up the uh a door in the ceiling to letting god's light that was fun uh and i mean i do also like this felt different after 9-11 though but the a joke about how both sides in a wharf are like hey god's on my side

no god's on my side oh that's true that's true yeah uh but they play it as the god is like two-timing them of telling them both and then he just like slinks away old god does that taking none of the blame in that just the way have you uh have they showed god recently because they used to show him and they would always have five fingers on his hand, right? Did they keep doing that or is that to get phased out? I think he comes back. I mean, it's weird that in this one, I don't like these jokes where God is like, I have three eyes, don't I? And five thighs.

Yeah. And it's also one of those, oh, this is going to go right to my thighs jokes, which is, it's a taste like chicken check, please style joke. Even if you dress it up with five thighs, don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, also having got, you know, God also had that delivery of, I know I have three eyes, don't I? Yeah.

It's all, you're right. Very boilerplate comedy sitcom writing. Yeah. Yeah. No, it doesn't fit with their vision of god beforehand or i i definitely know they go to heaven they go to heaven so many times but definitely in a couple years when they do the left behind parody they they go to heaven and god is you know just back to his five-fingered self none of this okay you know three eyes five legs thing oh one thing i forgot to mention is

that all of these acts have their own names yeah uh the first one is doe brother where are thou because i believe oh brother where are thou was a uh a version of the odyssey is that correct yeah yeah uh this one is called hot child in the city and i know that's a reference to something it's on tip my tongue i did not want to google hot child in the city yeah does anyone on this podcast know what it is no i mean it's an 80s song um is it okay i would say it's uh you know traffic or something like that like hot child in the city but yeah okay because i feel like go even going into incognito mode uh there's like there's like an fbi guy at a computer's like we got him we got him yeah the vans roll out it's like i wasn't looking for a hot child at uh you know that was also where i made sure to not search the age of marriage

legal marriage in france for similar reasons this i was like wait a second that that looks like i'm looking up age of consent laws internationally i don't i don't want to be on a list for that just find your local pervert yeah they'll tell you it's by a guy named Nick Gilder, who you probably haven't heard of. And it's from 1978. And it's based, you are right to not want to Google it. It's based on his experiences witnessing child prostitution in Los Angeles. And he turned it into a breezy little pop song. Jeez, wow.

Boy, that's darker than I could have imagined. So it's not a metaphor. Disco stew joke in the uh in the first segment man here they're just talking about a teen girl being burned to death and saying that in this title uh but yeah i like after all of the god stuff is done then lenny just pronounces that was weird let's burn her uh and so they make the they say like they did not want to actually show damage to joan too much as the fire surrounds her but uh they have a quick joke about the disneyfied ending to uh to this story joan renounce your faith save yourself don't beloved parents. God won't let anything happen to me.

Huh. Getting kind of hot around here. What happened, Dad? They didn't really burn her, did they? Of course they didn't, honey. Just then, Sir Lancelot rode up on a white horse and saved Joan of Arc. They got married and lived in a spaceship. The end.

Well, it's easier to chew than that Bambi video. Uh, no. You know, look, I like jokes about parents keeping the sad things from their kids. Because if you show a sad movie to your kid, you've got a lot of questions and then you got a long night with your kid and well i mean so many of these jokes in this episode particularly feel like uh this needed like another another go like what's what's another thing we could do because yeah bambi was the touchstone this is the year 2002 you could be like the lion king or when optimus prime dies these are all like up these references need to be updated occasionally a bambi's mom joke pretty old yeah yeah honestly mustafa in lion king would have been a much mustafa uh sorry uh mufasa there you go there you go yeah i'm thinking of a pro wrestler named mustafa when

i thought so yes i'm sorry stop thinking about him uh but uh yeah that i mean marge eating the paper and saying that they ended up on a spaceship that makes me chuckle but you know i want to give a compliment to a more recent episode the simpsons i think did a funnier job with this concept uh there's an episode in season 22 that begins with millhouse uh he's kind of despondent and bart's like well And he said, did you know there's a chapter one on Finding Nemo DVDs? Because I thought it started with chapter two. And if you're aware of the film Finding Nemo, it begins with Nemo's mother dying. And it was a good concept that Milhouse's innocence was shattered because he finally

saw the start of Finding Nemo that his mom always skipped, so he wouldn't be sad. I think it's a more clever version of this joke. There's also an episode where the B-plot is every night Homer reads a little bit more to Lisa of their version of Harry Potter, but he's reading ahead, and he sees that that version of Dumbledore dies, and he's got to improvise or delay the story because he does not want to scar his little girl. I guess is Dumbledore dying?

The new 30-year-olds today are like, oh, Jesus Christ. Yes, I mean, yeah, that happens at the end of the sixth book, The Half-Blood Prince. Nobody sees it coming and all that. Yes, that does happen. Dobby was traumatic for people, too. Just seeing him. No no dobby sucks i don't miss dobby at all he's like actually being a slave is good yeah he signed me up you know they treat dobby as the weirdo because he wants to be free all the rest are like no they it's actually pretty good for them to be how

house elves bobs they're not slaves no i mean i still chuckle anytime i see it in my feed the picture of the puppet of dobby being held by harry potter like just this lifeless corpse on a beach uh that makes me feel better i'm not the only cynical one about that character i mean also dobby sucks because he showed up around the same time Gollum was in movies, and Gollum is so much cooler than Dobby. They're similar things, and it's like, no, Gollum is cool, Dobby's lame.

They never fought. They missed an opportunity there. We'd all be happy if Elmo died and Dobby's pretty much the same thing in a T-pillow. I mean, if they wanted to make a fourth Hobbit movie it could be like 45 minutes Gollum versus Dobby battle through the forest uh you know I uh Jeff Bezos can get that done he can pay enough money to make it happen uh that or Ernest Cline you know I would yes

actually the this the patron saint of your podcast Ern Ernest Cline, he would make that happen for sure. Him and Spielberg. I do believe when Gollum won an MTV Movie Award, he made fun of Dobby and said, Dobby sucks. I believe that's a faint memory I have. Wow, that was a simpler time. But anyway, enough of that crap. Let's talk about Hamlet, the greatest story ever told. I took a Shakespeare class when i went to college

but we didn't read hamlet so uh we read macbeth bob that's the podcast curse oh no the scottish play on here uh we did we i've never read or watched a version of it so uh my knowledge of hamlet comes from this and the lion king uh i've uh i am alet fan, though I've never seen it performed live, but I've watched filmed unabridged versions of it as well, especially the Kenneth Branagh unabridged version of it, which is truly great. If you want to see a great version of Hamlet as a movie, that's a really good one.

Connor, what's your experience with The Bard? It's funny you should ask. I took a Shakespeare class in college too, Bob. Ooh, another college boy. And I played Julius Caesar in our sixth grade production of it. So that was pretty cool. I got to have a blood capsule in my mouth. But Hamlet, I never read either.

I don't remember if I got assigned it and opted not to and went to see Ice Age or something. But the group called the Reduced Shakespeare Company, I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with them. They're someone that I really admired almost as much as the Simpsons when I was younger. And they toured something this year called Hamlet's Big Adventure, which was a prequel.

It's like three guys on stage playing all the roles. It's very rapid fire. It's very funny. But before we went to see it, I was like, well, it probably is worth a refresh. Should we watch the Mel Gibson version? Because it was half the length of the Kenneth Branagh version, which really helped before you saw the play,

because there is just all these things you don't realize come from Hamlet sayings. And that I will not be able to remember off the top of my head, but all sorts of weird things that they referenced in that production. So it was a good refresher and it was a really fun prequel. If you guys ever happened to get a chance to see it, I think they're touring the country. Yeah.

No, I, yeah, it's something when you watch when i just watched the uh the joel cohen macbeth film tragedy of macbeth the one with denzel washington in which i had never seen a full production of macbeth before either when they just say lines you're like oh right that idiom there's another one like eight eight million idioms you say in your life are just sayings or are straight from William Shakespeare like he does. He has still such a touch on society far more than Stephen Bochco. Yeah. We forgot about him and he's dead. Yeah.

Watching him really made me reappreciate my my my infinite jest reading because there's lots of references in there. I assume you guys can all relate, yes? Yeah. Absolutely. You know, Bart is forgetting about Capital Critters, as we all have. That's funny, yeah. So Steve Obachko, yeah,

at the time he was creator of NYPD Blue, that's where people most knew him from. But yeah, in the time where you could make a simpsons show uh or a simpsons ripoff and get a bunch of money for it he did capital critters with uh uh the hannah barbara as the animation company it sucked we did an entire podcast about it on our what a cartoon podcast but uh but yeah hamlet though you know revisiting this i do think this episode captures one pure thing about hamlet which is he is a whiny teen boy who can't make up his mind like

he constantly just goes like yeah do i know enough now to kill this guy i don't know and he's just hems and haws why also just like being a dick to all of his servants all the time like he's this is why people love playing hamlet because he he's a jerk who gets to have all these funny lines and he also gets to have these amazing soliloquies uh that really just amount to him going like but should i or shouldn't i just over and over again and you know claudius is the real star of the show i think he's he's he's a more interesting character than that melancholy Dane that's what I say but then again I uh you know who's more interesting in in Lion King Scar or uh Scar the Mufasa Simba Simba Timon uh no Timon Timon or Timon and Pumbaa Rosencrantz and Guildenstern right right it all

it all links up folks uh and also dot the don payne who's on the commentary the late don payne he also mentions that uh the one of the doctor who's david tenant or the doctor uh he was told them they were doing a production of hamlet and watched this while working on it just uh that they would entertain themselves i like that al jean uh is making fun of don payne and saying you were a comic-con the writer of fantastic four two and i was like don't don't say he wrote that it's not no it's not good it's not a compliment to him writing the yes that movie like the rise of the silver surfer yes yeah yeah terrible crap crap movie i'm sure he wrote a good script no yeah i don't want to impugn uh especially a no longer

with us person who wrote that i don't think he's probably the one who's came up with the idea that galactus is a cloud of gas i don't think that was his uh idea for the movie but uh but yes bart is not interested in hamlet there is a very strange line here again that makes me go like, what is going on this week in this episode? They're predicting pornography trends 20 years in advance. That's true, yes. In our next clip. Our next story is Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Dad, these old stories can't compare with our modern super writers. Stephen Botko could kick Shakespeare's ass. Look, this story is more interesting than you think. It starts with Hamlet's father getting murdered. Cool. Does he get to marry his mom? I don't know, but that would be hot. Once upon a time, there was a young prince of

Denmark. Hamlet! Avenge me! Dad? Yes, I have returned from the dead. Looks like you've returned from the buffet. Why, you little... Don't!

My son, I have some shocking news. I was murdered. Murdered, I tells ya! I like that he says, I tells ya. That's good to hear in a hamlet hamlet adaptation i tells you but i don't know what's weird it's grosser to me bart saying that he wanted to marry his mom or that homer agrees that it would be hot like both of those are disturbed in front of his children yes yeah it's also funny i mean like i said earlier uh by the

way this one is called do the bard man that's a good one that is a good one uh and uh it's weird to think that this begins with once upon a time but homer is reading the children shakespeare's longest play it's like three and a half hours it's so long i have to think this is an abridged version in this children's storybook yeah i think but yes it does begin as hamlet begins with a ghost of hamlet's father telling him to do it though in most adaptations he does not have a pennant that says feudalism on his on his wall which pennant jokes still going strong in the show we had the xfl pennant last episode or two episodes ago and now a feudalism pennant wow that's a timeless one and uh speaking of walls bob are you guys in the same room we are

or because okay i was wondering why you had a framed portrait of henry behind uh that's it's very sweet of bob and his home to have a framed portrait yeah really that's so whenever something bad happens i just noticed it oh sorry connor that's whenever something bad happens to henry i can grasp the picture and go not henry as long as you don't throw it to the ground like the oj simpson yes uh but i also like that in the painting of the wedding bart is sad in it like that's a good and then he just goes like yeah it was quite a weekend but uh it's you know they play it just as they do in in a lot of hamlet uh productionsertrude, there's a question of what did she know?

What didn't she know? Like, is she a victim herself or did she want plot with Claudius to kill him? And I also do like how much they stick with the very specific thing of ear poison. They're like, yep, that's how he poured poison into his ear and that killed him. That's my biggest takeaway from what I know about Hamlet.

It's mostly about ear poison. Yes, I mean, it works great for you know if he just stabbed him or something that's one thing but ear poison when he does the play to trick claudius into admitting it if you make it a specific like ear poison that's the kind of thing that will set a guy off like how'd you know it was ear poison a ghost told me it was think about like have you ever put ear drops in your ear like little if it was not even poison that would be something that would wake you up it's one of the most unpleasant sensations you can have so i gotta question the bard's commitment to realism here you know maybe back then your poison was all the rage you had to sleep with like earmuffs on or something to make sure you weren't poisoned well later when

they recreate the the murder it's like they're dumping an entire two liter bottle of pepsi into crusty's ear i feel like that would kill anybody just any that amount of liquid in your ear probably kill you that's why i'm like uh then homer uh sorry uh the the king's ghost flies through a wall and then flies back leaving behind a bunch of ectoplasm which i believe that is their justification for the ghostbusters line later i guess i should point out that in 2002 there was not this like evangelism for ghostbusters that there is uh now i mean it would start soon but people would be like oh yeah that was a fun movie there wasn't like i i wear my peter vancman jumpsuit every night to bed and i curse the name of melissa

mccarthy i refuse to answer my phone because that movie promotes answering the call and i just don't do it anymore god yeah it's uh like i feel like in 2002 we just all agreed like i liked ira oh yeah that cartoon was cool when i was a kid and oh yeah first movie second movie sucked all right and you know you just move you moved on with your life it was more novel to see a ghostbusters reference well also all the guys in it were living and working but they didn't want to make a sequel then none of them did well maybe not none of them but most of them didn't want to though what i guess there there's all that weird to look back on that time it's not knowing what you know not knowing what was to come in the in the Ghostbusters

discourse what yeah how much more uh innocent we were yeah I mean if they were to reunite the living Ghostbusters to make a movie it would be like canceled eight weeks in you'd hear a new story like Bill Murray made a joke on the set he thought it was funny and now they can't make a movie anymore yeah it's true I feel like Bill Murray can't be on sets anymore it's what it seems like. Though, honestly, I haven't watched that new Ghostbusters, but the thought of seeing a very old Bill Murray, I've seen photos of that very old Bill Murray in the costume,

and I'm like, eh, this makes me kind of sad. I don't know. Seeing Mark Hamill wearing the Jedi robes in his old age, I was like, yeah, I've seen Obi-Wan Kenobi. I'm used to an old Jedi, but an old Ghostbuster felt felt different well it felt a bit older to me as we say on the podcast grandpa no and then uh as he leaves i do also like uh hamlet saying could that fat ghost be telling me the truth and so uh we then get a quick shot of the castle. They make a joke on the commentary. Like, oh, yeah, there's sure a lot of castle establishing shots in this episode. We get a joke about you might be a redneck, except it's you might be a Viking, which I

do like that the Viking says that's what I get for sitting up front. The implications of what he does next is also quite dark when he takes those two women. There's lots of lewd jokes in this 8 p.m. show. I was surprised, yeah. those two women. There's lots of lewd jokes in this 8pm show. I was surprised, yeah. I guess the Viking wasn't an established character, so it's like he could just be disgusting. He could be reprehensible. And this is when

Hamlet realizes the play is the thing. I love these jesters. They're exactly what I need to forget about my first husband. Yeah, I really miss the old guy. It was all I could do to put on his jewels and score with his wife every night. How you doing, kid? Nice to see you.

Now, we would like to warn you, our performances tend to make audience members blurt out hidden secrets. Oh, boy. Aha! Me thinks the play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king Catch my conscience? What? You're not supposed to hear me That's a soliloquy

Okay, well, I'll do a soliloquy too Note to self Kill that kid Okay, we're gonna open it up with a little improv Somebody shout out a location This castle Okay, how about an occupation? Usurper of the throne.

I think I heard usurper of the throne. Now finally I need an object. Ear poison. Do you have diarrhea? I have diarrhea. Sit down. I like framing it as improvisers

taking suggestions. That's a good framing of it. That's a way to 2002 up the joke. And yes, that is the couplet that closes Hamlet's soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 2. The play's the thing we're in. I'll catch the conscience of the king. To put it in parlance for the youth today, it's really like Hamlet does an epic subtweet of claudius because he he does an entire play about how he murdered the king with with the ear poison up on stage

i'm sick of all these fake friends who murdered my father just to give him my mom and my hot mom who i'm in love with yeah it's that uh i mean that's really what hamlet is he's jealous about i think when it comes down to it he's he's man claudius got with his mom before he could i like seeing teeny and mel even dressed up as claudius and gertrude on stage like mr teeny with the marge wig on is is a funny design he kisses crusty a sleeping crusty it's very tender though also talk about you know boiler plate jokes of 2002 a note to self joke yeah i'm into i like mocking improv comedy but notes to self like yeah we get it we get it guys then uh he says he didn't use that much poison when ear poison do not get in eyes is is used which then uh he says that it's about using poise

son a little corny but i guess it's supposed to be a sweaty pun that's that's the point of it simpsons taught me about poi uh from when mo and renee are going to go to hawaii that's right when he's singing about all his hawaii stuff i mean it's a fairly like hack you know premise in shakespeare that he would be unable to watch this without blurting out his own confession. You know, that's a that's imposing something that has never happened in the history of humanity that would happen in this play. Like you'd be unable to to watch your own acts being committed without revealing yourself. You know, Claudius wears his heart on his sleeve. That's what that's what we love about Claudius. So this is when Hamlet really starts to freak out

and Ophelia gets jealous, which I have this little clip here because I really do like Yardley's recitation of the real thing the character Ophelia sings in Act 4 of the play. Wait a minute. I didn't use that much poison. I mean, I didn't

use that much poison at I mean, I didn't use that much poi, son, at the Royal Luau. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care?

Daddy, it's true. Uncle Claudia's murdered you. Oh, great. Now Hamlet's acting crazy. Well, nobody out-crazy's Ophelia. Hey, naughty, naughty, with a hoo and a ha and a naughty, naughty, hey! So that is quoting Ophelia from Hamlet, okay. Yes, yes.

When she goes mad with grief over her father's death which actually would make her father wigum in this and her brother is ralph uh laertes ophelia goes mad with with uh grief and that and then drowns herself but off screen so uh yeah that's that's what happens to ophelia that's why you hear? Yes, that's why she jumps into the water. So Lisa is burned alive in Act 2, and she kills herself in Act 3 by drowning. You know, only as I said it did I realize, like, oh, I guess that is what they do with her hair, yes. Something that I learned from the Hamlet's Big Adventure preview or prequel was that there's no, it's like a historical thing that nobody really knows what the deal is with Ophelia's mom she's never mentioned and she's it's not addressed in the thing and it's just sort

of a it's a Shakespeare scholar speculation that goes on about like who she might have been throughout the play that's smart the fact people who write prequels they got to look for the gray areas in stories like that and that's a smart one to identify like what what is the secret of ophelia's mom finally revealed so right after this there is a quick deleted scene where hamlet tries to kill claudius but auto is a minstrel right behind him and he kills him instead and uh then hamlet says okay i know i'm gonna kill him this time and then auto's ghost is talking to homer's ghost and he says i gotta pee and they said well you thought you should have thought that before you died which means auto will forever

feel like he needs to pee for the for eternity i guess as long as he's a ghost which that's pretty horrifying ghost rules that's worse than pushing a boulder man this also is what happens in the play too which they mock pretty funnily that hamlet here's a guy behind some drapes he isn't sure it's not claudius and he just stabs the dude that's behind it he's like oh whoa that's not him uh and uh yeah he's uh hamlet hamlet must run off after killing a guy what i tell you about running with swords? Someone's behind the curtain. It could be Claudius. Only one way to find out. Ow! Ow! Polonius, what are you doing behind the curtain?

I hide behind curtains because I have a fear of getting stabbed. Daddy's stomach is crying. Lertes, you gotta do a special big boy job for Daddy. I need you to avenge my death. I like revenging. I'm going to kill Hamlet. Here's my mad face. Ah.

Ah ha. Cute kid. But just in case you don't kill Hamlet, I put some poison on the food, on the drapes, even on Rosen Karl and Gildan Lenny here. If Hamlet touches either of us, he's dead. Boo-yah! That doesn't make sense, but it's funny. Yes, yeah, it's great.

The poison being all over them doesn't kill themselves, but if they touched each other... I also like how Gene on the commentary jokes that they probably were there all night arguing about, okay, is Carl Rosencrantz or Guildenstern? Which one is which of those two? I think it's the second greatest booyah in The Simpsons history after props to Mindy on the grid. I also like Ralph's mad face that he instantly pops back into his friendly

face and is there ever a scene before between mo and ralph i feel like it's never happened it's such an interesting combo of characters that's the first time we've seen ralph uh bleed out on the floor yes yeah i i do love that ralph stabs himself to death with his one free stab, just kills him and kills himself. And then there's so much suicide in this, really. But hearing most like, boy, did I bet on the wrong horse? Now, of course, of course, in the real play, just so you know, the it's Hamlet fights Laertes during the duel.

Gertrude drinks poison that was meant for Hamlet. Then Hamlet and Laertes pretty much stab each other to death but then hamlet learns that gertrude is dying too and then he kills claudius right before he dies so that's the real instead of this where it's like it's just an accident or marge bashing her own head in at the thought of cleaning up all of the blood yes yeah i also i do like that mo offers him like uh you sure you don't want to finger the drapes a little like that's weird what a weird commandment to give to him but yes this leads to a bloody ending plus a random reference in our final clip here laertes here gets uh one practice stab. Oh, boy!

Boy, did I bet on a wrong horse. Now there's nothing to stop me from getting my vengeance. You sure you don't want a nice piece of fish or to finger the drapes a little? This ends here. Remember me as a peacemaker. And now to celebrate life. Whoa, bloody floor! No way I'm cleaning up this mess.

And that's the greatest thing ever written. Are you crazy? I can't believe a play where every character is murdered could be so boring. Son, it's not only a great play, but also became a great movie called Ghostbusters! You know, watching this 20 years ago and not liking

the episode for the most part, the ending really made me laugh, even though it a big it's a huge shrug it just is like the wildest curveball i i think i was more humorless back then about these kind of ass pull endings that are jokes about how they have no ending but now just hearing the ghostbusters who you're gonna call song uh and very smartly done with an instrumental with no audio, so they don't have to pay for the master. Yeah, that's why it doesn't go out over the credits. I was expecting the whole song to play out over the credits,

but nope, it cuts off, you get the Simpsons song. And their dance is funny. It is a funny, I like their silly, bad dancing to it, especially Homer smacking his own butt during the song. In front of the children, no less. Yeah, but Ghostbusters is a surprisingly good karaoke song, if you ever need. It's a crowd music. No, it's great.

If you're with a group, it's a call and response thing to your pals. So let's everybody join in. Yeah. But also you're like, I forgot the song had this many verses. There's a bridge I wasn't aware of. It's over four minutes, that song. Yeah. There's also a video of, you can do Closer by Nine Inch Nails over it. It fits the meter almost exactly. So if you really want to do a high wire act. That's fine. video of you can do closer by nine inch nails over it.

It fits the meter exactly. So if you really want to do a high wire, that's fine. I didn't know that. I, I also do enjoy that instead of any of the famous death soliloquy of Hamlet, that Bart just says, like, now to celebrate life, bloody floor. Like, that's his last words. Like that. After all of that death, the Here I Am would say, now to celebrate life. Like, that also made me chuckle. Again, when it was new, it really pissed me off, that Ghostbusters ending. I was like, Ghostbusters? What?

We're just ending on the Ghostbusters song? What the hell is this? Is this Family Guy? That was honestly. You were angry about Ghostbusters before it was cool. I did take it as almost a Ghostbusters or you were before it was cool uh i did i did take it as almost a ghostbuster or a family guy style joke of like remember ghostbusters but i mean yeah it also at first too i guess i didn't i thought it was rando humor because nothing about it seemed

like it actually connected to ghostbusters but hearing them on the commentary bring up like no we had we had the ghost of the king leave behind a slimer style trail that's why it's a ghostbusters but hearing them on the commentary bring up like no we had the ghost of the king leave behind a Slimer style trail that's why it's a Ghostbusters reference oh okay alright sure partially earned I guess we've made the thinnest connection

he left two ghost stains behind so that's enough but we have to wrap up soon so final thoughts from me I think the first two uh segments of this are not good uh there's some fun designs and of course the animation team went like above and beyond by doing all this work but they just kind of went for all the easiest jokes and again there's some in there where it's like well that was it and you didn't you didn't think of like what's a second joke we could do but the third act i remember a lot from it and it's still

all i know about hamlet so uh if the episode was just that and the ghostbusters ending uh i would like it more but uh it's just kind of mediocre for me you know if i this is monday morning quarterbacking or i guess really like uh 20 years and then a monday morning quarterbacking but the hamlet stuff is uh so strong and it's such a long thing long play it could have filled all three acts just the simpsons reenact hamlet kind of thing you know they yeah it's the choice they just made recently which we at the time of the recording it hasn't come out yet but they chose to instead of doing an it parody stephen king's it parody in one act they extended it to a whole episode this

season i you know hamlet could have easily been the same thing i think they weren't into doing those stunts then because the internet isn't what it is now and it's like uh there was no going viral with like your fun poster art for the crusty the clown it show and also it's like well the people they're not going to pay attention to an entire 22 minute shakespeare parody i think that could have been their concern but it's something they definitely would do now. I think. Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, it's not too late. Do it again or do it or whatever play they haven't. Man, they definitely did Caesar and they've done Macbeth. Let's say a 12th night. Sure.

Yeah. An extended 12th night. Sure. Any final thoughts on this one? My dad would love that. Yeah. He, he would,

he was in 12th night in college. So he was, he would be a big fan of that. Yeah, he was in Twelfth Night in college, so he would be a big fan of that. I liked it more than I thought it would. I had never seen it before, and I'm a Simpsons elitist that doesn't like to watch this later period stuff and applaud you guys for going through it. But I think that it was probably influenced more

by just the fact that it was three distinct episodes where you said they could go for the low-hanging fruit and make some rapid-fire jokes. They didn't really have to establish a story or anything like that because all the pre-existing stories did the same thing and the art was fun and like you said the last time they had done the hand-drawn animation so i liked it more than i thought it would but it's not going to be something i revisit or make memes of or pull references off freaky act 2 or anything like that but it was you know I enjoyed it more than I thought I would if you want the Simpsons dancing

on a loop this is the best episode for it you can just easily Frankie Act that I had seen that gif so many times and forgot Ghostbusters is playing over it I have to admit I had forgotten that much but thanks for joining us Connor once again you write for Riff Trax which we love

and you also do the podcast 372 pages we'll never get write for Riff Trax, which we love, and you also do the podcast, 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, with Riff Trax and Mystery Science Theater star Michael J. Nelson. He tells us coming up on either of those projects. This will go live in early to mid-November. Yeah. I mean, so right after this has come out, we're going to have out our live show this year, which was Return of Swamp Thing, starring Heather Locklear,

which you guys went and saw in the theater. Amazing. I had a very fun short called Danny's Dental Date before it, about the horrifying adventures of a part puppet, part boy who goes to the dentist alone and has the dentist drill on him with no gas and drill his initials into his fingernail. You should check out Riff Track's Friends. You can subscribe for six bucks a month to watch just hundreds of stuff that we've done over the past 15 years. We've got a Halloween movie coming out. We're going to have a Christmas title that's going to be pretty fun

from everything I gather. And me and Sean Thomas and the other senior writer at Riff Trax released a couple of shorts recently. One of them is about how the San Diego Chicken, the famous baseball basket, teaches people economics in a 20 minute long short

that really never needed to exist. So you should go check that out on RiffTrax..com uh and dune i think dune will be soon out after this episode comes out as well that was a kickstarter obligation so we're doing the part one of dune the uh the timothy chalamet one that should be quite a journey and you guys just went into the realm of video games too with rifftracks the game yeah check out the game we're doing a whole christ pack for that too. Riff Tracks the Game is sort of a, you know, Jackbox style, you know, answer from your phone and make your own riffs. And we write a bunch of riffs for every clip that goes into the game. So our Christmas stuff is some of our all-time favorite stuff in terms of like the ice cream bunny and trees that are small and have no account. So we picked some

of our best clips through the years that we've been in business and made a Christmas expansion pack for that. So that should be a fun thing to gather around the holiday table and amuse your funny friends with this year. That is great. I think I put it, that's up before Connor, but for me, we're heading into the holiday season soon. And for me, Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny,

both versions, that's a holiday staple for me going back to 2010 or whenever the original riff came out it's one of my favorite nightmarish holiday movies and if you're looking for a fun watch uh the riff tracks version of that is uh recommended do not watch the original it's uh you won't make it like 10 minutes in it's its own thing it really has no business existing but i'm glad it does me too me too But, but thank you so much, Connor. Thank you,

Connor. Yeah. Thanks guys. It's always a treat. I hope to, I don't know, maybe sketch fest next year or something. We can hang out once again or,

yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll just fly out to San Francisco to see the celebrity corgis that live out there. Chompers and Linus. We technically have a show barring any extreme misfortune. Oh, that's true. Yes.

Yeah. We have our show from last year moved to next year. Yes. Thanks again to Connor Lestoka for being on the show please check out riff tracks of course we don't need to tell you about riff tracks and also check out his podcast 372 pages we'll never get back with uh the great michael j nelson of mystery science theater and riff tracks fame as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get these podcasts one week at a 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 lurking behind that five dollar paywall there is over 100 of our past mini series episodes covering things like the critic and mission hill and batman the animated series and we also have a regular monthly access to both talking futurama and talking in the hill and guess what folks when this goes live uh if you're listening to this on the free feed, Blabbing About Batman, the animated series, the second season of that will be on the Patreon. If you're on the Patreon, I believe it's just about to launch.

So you'll want to be on the $5 level to get eight new episodes to the end of the year, a new episode every Friday up until the end of 2022. That's all happening behind the $5 paywall only at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you get access to all of the $5 paywall only at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you get access to all of the $5 stuff naturally, but also access to one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry?

Bob is talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast. We talk about an animated feature film, super duper in depth, just like we do the Simpsons. Last month, we covered the 1986 classic uh transformers the movie and the month before that we did beavis and butthead do the universe the brand new movie so if you sign up at the ten dollar level you get four years worth of what a cartoon movies in addition to all the five dollar things bob mentioned i would estimate that is over 270 hours of exclusive podcasts in addition to all that other stuff you can see it for yourself if you visit patreon.com slash talking simpsons and 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 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 how about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm always tweeting up a storm there and you can also follow on twitter along with me and bob the official twitter account of this podcast which is at talk simpsons pod if you follow at talk simpsons pod you stay up to date whenever there's new stuff on the free feed on the patreon if there's polls if there's news if there's live shows you know what's going on if you follow at talk simpsons pod and as always if you want an easy to search back catalog of all the free episodes we've done of talking simpsons

and what a cartoon head over to talking simonsPodcast.com for that list. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 3's Lisa the Greek, and we'll see you then. I'm afraid of no ghosts. Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! If you're all alone, pick up the phone and call Ghostbusters. I ain't afraid of no ghost.

I hate likes to guess. I ain't afraid of no ghost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! If you can't don't stop a freaky ghost Alright, garçons! Trois, deux, un!

Huh? No, un! Youis, deux, un! Huh? No, un. You know, French for one. Well, you keep switching back between French and English. Just fire the damn thing. The Crippler!