Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Tennis The Menace With Chris Cabin

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

We're joined once again by Chris Cabin from the podcast We Hate Movies as we discuss one of the weirdest episodes of the show ever! Not only is it full of hostile first acts, aging digital animation, and an ending that's a giant shrug, we also get some Oedipal complex thrown in for good measure. So grab your racket and get ready to surf the net with us on this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where our clowning puts you at ease. I'm your host, Bob Kille, McGee, Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today, as always?

It's Henry Gilbert, signed Super Psych. And who do we have on the line? Chris Honeymush Cabin. And today's episode is Tennis the Menace. Hey, hey! What do you think, folks? I hope I don't get arrested for racket earring. Ha ha. Huh? What do you want? I'm not gonna do

hay material for charity. This episode aired on February 11, 2001, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my god! Oh boy, Bobby! 2001 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh boy bobby british and u.s forces carry out bombing raids on iraq i'm sure that won't lead to nothing uh the east beats the west in the nba all-star game and at the box office hannibal beats saving silverman for the number one position. Oh no. That is the... No, that is not the

You're the Man Dog Now movie. That's Finding Forrester. Yes, that's Finding Forrester. Different Jaron movie. That's an Alien vs. Predator situation right there. Hannibal vs. Saving Silverman. No meme came out of Saving Silverman.

I'm surprised there's no gif of Arlie Ermey kissing Jack Black. Was that how it went down? Yeah. That sounds right. Yeah yeah you would think that somebody would have like come back from that or just like a good neil diamond uh gif comes out of it yeah or uh that shot of the well when i think of that movie in my head i see the shot of uh steve zahn nude uh doing like yoga and basically almost doing a self suck position and also Amanda Peete acting sexy with

like mustard on a hot dog I remember that scene as well that was the pie man's last leading role and on the other hand Ray Liotta's exposed brain yes and I think a famous Italian actor whose name is escaping me right now giancarlo

something gets a gutted oh yeah i only i only remember leota acting out eating his own brain that's cooked in front of them and as as i recall like the jodie foster didn't come back because the book version of it really fucked up her character and didn't want to be in it like uh it's oh yeah yeah it's the it's a terrible book uh it's not a very good movie either but it's a much worse book uh that hannibal's erased in everyone's mind they just think of you know the sexy tv hannibal yeah but yeah the other things i mean you know it's the build-up to the iraq war but they don't necessarily have an excuse yet if only they did uh but and then also the yeah the nba all-star game there was no tennis was being played this week unfortunately i think tennis season starts

in like the spring it's too cold for tennis it's february yeah i guess so they should have saved this for when like whenever the u.s open happens they should have aired it that way you've seen those little shorts you can't wear those at this time of the year oh geez yeah i mean i should admit i know nothing about tennis nor do i know anything about tennis stars i watched the funny uh andy samberg mockumentary on hbo about tennis and that was kind of fun but i know nothing of the i know pete sampras because he's married to veronica vaughn i i know people for who they are married to the same for andre agassi like for both of the men in this and i go or who they at one time were with and waltz i was like wait well who's the one with cindy crawford because i i was brooke shields

was with andre agassi yeah but i have so little interest in tennis. I don't even like Mario Tennis. Now that I like, but I don't like it as much as Mario Golf. That's better. Much better. Yeah, absolutely. Now, I'm embarrassed to say I don't know much about tennis either. I did do some research on our tennis guests, though. But if you're an actual fan of tennis, please forgive me if any of us say something like,

Why is tennis even played this way that's stupid but this episode doesn't have much interest in the rules of tennis no not really i mean this episode has a rich person's view of tennis which is uh networking that's what that is true yeah but but hey officially welcome back chris cabin from we hate movies hey guys thanks for having me back chris is joining us after a very successful podcast we did with Four We Hate Movies about the Simpsons movie, Soon to Win a Potty. I think we're up for the potties. Is that a real thing?

Am I out of the loop on this one? There are podcast awards, but only Earwolf podcasts win them. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. And serials. That's to be expected. Yeah, yeah. win them yeah yeah oh okay and cereal that's to be expected uh um yeah yeah i i we had a great episode with bob and henry about the simpsons movie which i remember loving and i came back to it and it is terrible it's like one of the worst things i've ever seen we filled many hearts

with hate which is our goal here yeah yes absolutely i love those podcast awards and like i've heard earwolf people complain about them because They lose to Conan O'Brien. Even if you're the biggest podcast on Earwolf, the people from Comedy Bang Bang, they're like, well, I guess I wasn't as good as Conan O'Brien in his famous podcast. sweeping the parties yes yeah exactly oh yeah man they need more uh like plaques i guess for their trophy room just random awards you would get like from the golf association and shit like that but another honorary phd come on oh and for what doing like 10 episodes that are 20 minute mini series like whoop-dee-doo obama's like we're yeah and and to cook it all up to like it's tough yeah it's tough i mean that's about it yeah there was going to be a clinton podcast but unfortunately his co-host took his own life in prison so that's not going to be happening i would have won a lot of parties i think that I think. That one would have swept. But yeah, Chris, you said to this before we started recording, but you did not see this one when it was new back in 2001.

If I did, I have successfully, like, April 2000 and August 2001, where I'm like, you can see the writing on the wall a little bit about where we're going here. Charlie's Angels I rewatched recently. That gave me the feeling. And this gave me the feeling. The opulence of America on display. Yeah. And, like, us entering, like, a really intense loop

where, like, nothing matters and it's just regurgitation after regurgitation. We've gotten back to that. Don't worry. But at that point, like there are little pieces of media where I'm like, that really feels like an omen. Yeah, we are heading into the spring of Shrek in this time period right now. Yeah, it's Shrek time. But yeah, I mean, I feel maybe the height of that is the NSYNC episode

in a couple weeks after this because that one, they literally blow up a building in New York City and the joke is like, oh, everyone's fine. Oh, Jesus. I buried that one too if I saw it.

Chris is on the show when we're covering a very infamous episode, but as we've done this season, I've walked away thinking these are funny. And like you said before the recording, Henry, I think they know this is not good. So they're really leaning into it. Even on the commentary, Mike Scully brings in Phil Rosenthal because I think he knows. Let's not talk about how people hate this episode.

Let's see how Phil reacts. And by the way, he's the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond loves raymond yes yeah which they just goof around with him about him he pretends that they're doing a commentary for raymond for some reason uh but yeah i i have turned a corner on this season in general not so listeners have to hear me say the same thing over and over again which is i hated this when it first aired and now when i watch it again i am forgiving of it uh which is how i feel about this i really did hate this one when it first aired i the ending and the first act and the ending rub in my face so much that they don't give a shit but now i've turned the corner of like scully and his team we're in full-on self-parody mode of the show of like oh we got assigned my theory is that somebody said let's do

the softball episode except for tennis and they were handed four tennis stars and like well shit how did we get to a tennis story all right let's just dick around for like 18 minutes until we have the tennis people show up but there there are so many jokes in it of them dicking around that makes me go like that's funny that's a funny turn of phrase or they get into such disturbing and weird places that i have to just laugh in shock that they went to such an odd place yeah there were so many moments where i was like i see where like it's just a dullness versus the sharpness. I guess at this point, I was just like, all the gags are something I've seen in another episode before. And you're right.

They are very open about how bad it is when the court is being laid down. They're like, you didn't see this coming, right? Yeah. And stuff like that. But so many of these jokes, I was just like, I don't even know where you were going with this. I like I'm truly like at least sometimes I can see the contours of it. But these ones are like I think the chess people was like the one where I was like, that's very close to what I would want from a joke here.

It does also feel interchangeable with a family guy plot peter griffin would act the exact same as homer does in this entire episode i think i really this would be a one-to-one replacement and and maybe i think that because this looks like a family guy episode because of their production choice at the time that's right this is the second episode in the show's history to experiment with digital coloring uh they would have to move to that permanently with the beginning of production season 14 but this is their second experiment and it's much more successful than radioactive man which was their first everything looks very washed out here things look too saturated and that's going to be the look of the show from like 2002 onwards especially on disney plus it looks like really bright. Yeah. I noticed something was off.

I was like, I don't know where the changeovers happened, where it started looking not good. And I'm sure this looks fine. I'm sure it's as good as animation could look at the time in this sense. But like, it just looks off to me whenever I see this kind of coloring. Well, if you don't know the mechanics of digital coloring, what that means for the show and what makes it different, up to this point, the Simpsons would draw the drawings on paper. They'd send that to Korea. They would put those drawings on paint and cells, and then they would photograph those the way Walt Disney was doing it a hundred years ago. But when digital coloring started at first, it was in Korea.

They would animate it and then scan that and then color it scene by scene digitally on a computer. So there would be no cells. That's why you can't buy cells of any episode after the 13th season out there for The the simpsons which you know uh that's fine by me but um but but uh but then these days they have left behind even that paper thing i think like i i believe it is entirely digital now like i think it's fully digital components of the characters they're not drawing on paper and then scanning it and coloring it digitally. There's like an animation software tool set they're using. I mean, things do start as drawings,

like storyboards and stuff. A human drew a drawing, yes. But here it's just like you're digitally coloring something someone drew on paper. And if you listen to the commentaries on later DVDs, you can hear the artist saying, God, I miss this. Because the show had to get cheaper to exist.

And that's why it looks a little cheaper on the screen because they can't put the amount of work into it that they used to, even in the digital era with the digital coloring. That's one of those things like you always wonder if like somebody was going to take a big risk. I guess nobody takes big risks anymore but if somebody was just to make a like old-fashioned 2d movie in america uh like not 2d what the fuck like old school animation like the regular like old simpson style old disney style how have they not just like go full blast on that or have i missed it no you have a great point uh Chris because when uh they started making shorts with Maggie they uh they don't use traditional animation in fact they look pretty cheap especially for some things that they want to win an Oscar and I feel like if you're going to spend money on

traditional animation do it there for two minutes just for two minutes of animation full animation you don't do it through the machine I mean, this was the nice one of the bigger compliments I gave on our Simpsons the movie podcast, which was that I felt like the animators led by David Silverman were pushing against those limitations of the budget and digital as much as they could. draw something crazy but you can only especially if you have to color inside the line so much of what the writers demand and what they say like no no this scene is this joke or we're cutting that joke whatever they do their best with it but it i think the structure of it is just it causes way too much friction with being creative like artistically creative with what with the art you draw like i i think too you know something we never a real thing that clicked for me i've said it before on this podcast but a thing i never really thought about until we really got into this was you can see starting season nine they lose brad bird they lose david

silverman the budget starts to shrink there's still great animators there but it keeps shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and when everybody thinks like oh the show got worse or whatever they just blame writers or producers like who left the show when it really is like the even if the jokes were as funny execution is not the same because they don't have the same people or money to draw the uh the joke at the end of the day yeah you're you're more leaning towards competence at that point and you never get the weird laughs the unpredictable ones that came out of nowhere just out of animation flubs even you could or like limitations you had to get creative with how the joke was structured and the old seasons and you can't allow for that anymore really they do they've they've structured it they've turned it into a a file that you just

have to write out i love the look at grandpa even in this episode when grandpa makes his like faces to homer and pulling at his face i was like well that breaks rules that's fun these are funny drawings that that are not like specifically on model like it gets to be crazy but yeah you can't do that these days uh but one uh the writer of this episode is uh everyone's favorite ian maxton graham we all love the very tall man yeah the uh and and uh he uh says this came from a childhood playing tennis just again a class signifier of him being a fancy lad a little fancy boy a real fancy boy but he tells the story of like oh i've never beaten my mom at tennis someday i will i was like

where's that silver spoon in your that was always my boyhood dream yeah someday uh i i wanted to beat my mom at uh dr mario that was uh and she's still she's too damn good can't do it and also he and maxton graham went to high school with john mackinrow even uh but did not use that connection to get him on the show and john mackinrow even uh but did not use that connection to get him on the show and john mackinrow tennis star who i mainly know for his appearances in comedies uh somehow has not done the show yet even which uh seems kind of strange might be too late for that he seems very temperamental i'm not sure how much you want like that's the whole thing with him right is that like he's an angry guy yeah he gets very pissed off. I watched the documentary about him.

He seems very funny. I'll give him that. So funny he got to have his own talk show on. I think it was MSNBC. Oh, man. Shit, really? And MSNBC doesn't hand those out to anybody. You're right.

I totally forgot about that. Jesus Christ. Let me look that up here. John McEnroe Show. Could it be worse than Gutfeld? No, God, Gutfeld. Yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry.

It was CNBC. Even worse, really. It was called McEnroe, and it aired from July 7, 2004 to December 15, 2004. A tidy fall season. Is there like a big plump exclamation mark at the end of mackinrow uh let's see uh cnbc executives sent a memo to him on december 3rd saying the show was being canceled uh he was given the option to stop production immediately or allowing the show two more weeks mackinrow decided to let the show last two more weeks to give behind the scenes

workers more work before the show went off the air. That's nice of them. That's nice. So the wonderful six months of the John McEnroe show on CNBC. Look, we've never had to use the bleep machine this much. You broke three of them in your tenure of four months. You have to go. It's giving off a lot of fumes. It's not good for the grips. And, yeah, I uh and the director we

we've talked about her before but one of the uh least talked about people in the show directors even though she's one of like five i think she was the fifth woman or fourth woman to direct simpsons to that point yeah she directed a kill the alligator and run another great episode we love yeah and which also is an insane punchy end of the season script yeah we talked about her in that episode but i believe uh she wrote a book about it like an eating disorder basically uh is what drove her out of the animation industry and kind of ruined her life for a bit and she wrote a book about that so you can look that up on amazon or whatever jen kenterman uh but uh yeah she's she's an interesting figure but in dipe uh yeah i am i guess actually third

because it would have just been suzy dieter then nancy cruz and then her lauren mcmullen wouldn't have come until later but yeah this is uh digital coloring on the dvd it looks better than it does on disney everything looks worse on disney plus they run it through the uh the the ruiner it's like a film isn't it like it's just like every time i turn on i'm like i feel like i'm i'm putting something on my tv to make it look worse yeah i think it's because they do that to all of their old movies too if a child sees one speck of dust on pinocchio they will say this is old i'm going to play roblox with a nazi and that's the end of the story uh it's another argument for keeping around your DVDs.

Don't throw away your DVDs, everybody. They're full of extras Disney Plus doesn't want you to have. And they're free. No, I turned into the question mark guy there. Well, this episode starts off with two set pieces. I forgot that one leads to the other, which leads to our plot. That's amazing that it's like oh actually it's uh well first we get like a minute long just like simpson short of of homer like this is just like

tracy ullman short about water in the shower and then we get another set piece which would work enough of a central set piece like that could just end with hey you guys want a free tennis court and then it's that but they're like no we gotta get three more minutes before we get to there i recall on the internet because i was reading the news groups at this time people were confused by this opening joke because not everyone's plumbing works this way oh i see i that was that it was that way in my house uh it was not uh it was more of a toilet if the sink in the living room wouldn't mess with it too much, if, say, your jerk brother came in and moved the faucet in the same bathroom where you were showering, maybe then. But the kitchen shower wouldn't affect my hot water. Yeah, I had a similar situation where I, but I never, I always assumed I would be able to do this trick to my mother mother or if like my my uncle's over doing work

or something like I could do this to them and it never worked it only worked like when my mom came in to like wash her hands really quick while I was in the shower and turned it on and then all of a sudden I would yell I uh I like the musical screaming of Dan and I like that though i not to be too uh gross but you really especially on the dvd i think they thought tv safe was higher because you should see the base of homer's penis with how low the screen goes i'm mad that we don't yeah yeah come on let's go for it or the very least a little like uh pubes though homer you know he shaves his chest he must shave everywhere i guess he was he was way hairier in season three.

Yeah, the joke is he's supposed to be hairy, like a Bigfoot, but it takes a lot of time to draw those hairs on him. If you're going to have the joke tempo of Family Guy, have the

attitude, too. Yeah. Show his balls at some point. Go ahead. Well, with Family Guy, they have a cheat in that Peter is so fat,

his gut covers his private area. So they can just draw him naked whenever they want. That's true, yeah. Well, actually, speaking of drawing Homer and Aang, they mentioned on the commentary that after this would be the Janet Jackson nipple moment. And after that, Fox would not have told them, you can't draw butts anymore. Like, no butts in cartoons allowed. It's a very weird way to to translate that like

what is like i i because i there's been a huge re-evaluation of that right the whole incident and like i i don't even remember it was for a super bowl right yeah yeah and i was always incensed by that because you didn't even see a nipple you saw a pasty yeah it was a pasty which also well who cares yeah well i mean also when they have to pretend like we didn't plan it it's like she was wearing a pasty and you you pulled it off like this was planned and i mean uh people definitely gave timberlake a bunch of shit because he then like slunk away and just like i didn't know anything hey i'm just i'm a confused white child and then we had uh i don't know anything. Hey, I'm just, I'm a confused white child. And then we had, I don't know, eight years worth of wardrobe malfunction jokes.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Worst. What an awful period of culture. Terrible. Early 2000s. And hey, the whole 2000s. Just a bad time to be alive.

I mean, that was like three seasons of SNL. Yeah. Well, and also the, I mean, I think fox did it because not just out of like puritanical fear of you know parents groups or whatever but literally the government like the republican controlled government was talking a whole bunch of like this filth on the air i turned into senator tankerbell there there's filth on the airwaves we can't allow it i think they probably they came down from on high of like, don't. If you were to show Homer's butt, that's another clip that can be used on Capitol Hill against Fox and their dirty programming. Yeah, that makes sense.

The Simpsons will be right back. our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans EV tariffs solar panels and much more making your usage clearer your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our Net Zero Hub

at electricireland.ie Gang do you hear that? Indeed my sister Look! Whoa! UFOs spotted in Springfield. Homer! Night, boy.

Whoa, alien dudes. You ingest this earthly confection for pleasure. We shall study this Butterfinger. As well as you. Um, let me take you to my leader. There's nothing like a crispity-crunchity peanut buttery Butterfinger from Nestle. Ah! Aw, not again.

Night, Homer. Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger hey everybody it's Henry Gilbert and look I'm surfing the net also a big thank you this week to our guest Chris Cabin from the We Hate Movies podcast it's always awesome to have him on. We love talking about episodes like this one with him. You should definitely follow him on Twitter.

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to check it all out. But if you want something even fancier than a coffin with a camera inside you should sign up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons to get our monthly premium podcast in addition to all of that five dollar stuff i just mentioned that podcast is what a cartoon movie me and bob have a sister podcast that you can hear twice a month where we cover animated series like, say, Gumby or Laverne and Shirley Join the Army. But you can also, at the $10 level, hear us cover an animated feature film in the same super in-depth style. We just did our longest podcast ever, five hours and 11 minutes long, about the 25th anniversary of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. We had a whole lot of fun talking about that film.

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We talked about the original space jam last year there's tons of them there you want to check out that entire back catalog right now at patreon.com slash talking simpsons i uh i do like the reality like the little touch of reality that bart is pouring water into a dog dish like i they usually forget their pets ever exist so seeing a normal moment of them uh preparing things for a dog or a cat like what you often forget their pet owners and uh yes then uh after all that water stuff's done and we get to hear dan uh screaming uh many songs we then head to the old people stand up bit which you know this also reminds me of when they make us think they're going to the apron convention and then they instead go to the prisoner rodeo a couple episodes earlier.

Well, we never see the inside of the apron convention. That's true. We do see this. They couldn't draw it. There were too many aprons, as Mark said. So that's way too much work to draw that many aprons. But yes, let's hear some old man stand up. Ever notice after dialysis you always get the munchies.

He's saying the stuff we all forgot. And you know what I can't open? Cabinets. Can he say that? You know what else scares me? Everything. These days, old man stand up are the-ups of 20 years ago going on stage saying, you can't say anything.

That's what old man stand-up is. That is true, yeah. You used to be able to be racist. Now you can't be racist no more. You guys laughed at this a bunch 20 years ago. What's the problem? I'm 65. How can I be out of touch?

Yeah, I mean, back then, you'd go to stand-up things and people would say, you know, can he say that? Or so many times on the show, they said the line, he's saying what we're all thinking. Like, that was a reaction shot of, like, Lenny says it to Krusty. They say it about Homer another time. The kids say it about Bart. Like they say some variation. It was a beloved saying in the writer's room. I think because it's like unintentionally bad line.

You give a character to say, oh, how do you let viewers know a standup is good? Have a character say, he's saying what we're all thinking. Or that it's like controversial. Like, oh my God, it it's gonna set off a riot finally he's speaking for the silent majority right yeah well yeah that was like a label that gave dennis leary of all people the guy who talked about coffee i'm i'm drinking coffee flavored coffee right now he's my hero man is it is yeah it's not a mocha frappuccino is it is it an aventi i mean come on like uh come on i want to eat red meat and uh also that's just bill hicks yeah that's what's controversial about

him he just stole bill hicks and not even his bill hicks his best things either no yeah and that was the good stuff after that it was just jokes about how he didn't like being married and the coffee and beer stuff yes yeah it's i mean there's a reason dennis leary became an actor in things and other people write for it and not didn't really do much stand-up after that smart move then uh we get a denture plate spinning gag which uh that's cute enough the thing that makes it funny is homer's reaction to it yeah he's his constant fretting he's the perfect audience member for it but then abe wins the prize after doing a tom jones joke which honestly feels a

little like you know tired i guess it goes on a bit too long i uh the free autopsy joke is great yes that was good a free auto read father now i, Honey Mush sounds pretty good right now also. I wouldn't mind trying some Honey Mush. I'll be honest with you. Just pour it into my mush. Yeah, come on. Do it. Also, I'm surprised.

You know, I think because the old Jewish man is the MC, that's why they had to create like a doppelganger for him to be the stand-up because he can't be the stand-up in the MC. That guy never returned and he's not named according to the simpsons wiki the uh the stand-up we have to assume he died after this episode i i do really like sales from the crypt and this this makes me think like around this time in the 90s there was investigative reporting about the funeral industry and just like the wedding industry it's a huge ripoff and they try to guilt you into buying everything when really you're just going to be a rotting corpse in the ground that worms will eat

no matter what happens absolutely i think that should be highlighted bob well they and they take advantage of people in like their worst scenario to push them to spend money like well i guess you didn't really love your mother did you if you're not gonna buy the best casket like that kind of high pressured sale they're just car salesmen except for you know what's gonna carry a corpse i i i'm creed also it's like you're taking up space and a plot yeah like i mean and who's really gonna visit you like you know i bet after like one maybe second death anniversary by the third one everybody just says like and we'll remember her in our own way

just whenever you drive by oh grandma's in there anyways we're going to mcdonald's i mean it like around where i grew up like you use cemeteries like park spaces like they essentially are just like the it's the same land kind of use in a way but like there's just a bunch of dead bodies there um but yeah like i i walked around cemeteries all the time and that and i almost never went to parks when i was young and it wasn't a goth thing it was just because it was closer uh they they said they uh for research they went to uh where marilyn monroe is buried which i looked up that is uh the westwood village memorial park and mortuary in los angeles california didn't one of the writers sneak in saying he was uh like a

relative or something like they were gonna use it just i mean if you want so i mean on your on our next la trip let's let's uh go star spotting at this celebrity graveyard i've never been but that does sound like it would be one of those things i would enjoy because watching this i just got like i i just kind of thought they were all like evelyn Woe ripoff jokes for the most part. But I would actually like to see what those places look like because I don't know. I've never looked at the pictures. And, you know, up to season 12, they hadn't yet done jokes about the Simpsons take on a funeral home. So that they can dig up some new material here.

You know what? I did intend that pun. You did. I was smart. Admit it. But yes, they get a crash course in the many funereal uses in this next clip. What other funerary services may we provide for the pre-deceased? Oh, the whole deal.

Coffin, tombstone, anti-stink spray. Sir, we prefer the term casket to coffin and monument to tombstone. We have all the leading brands of anti-stink spray. What funny names. He's heading into Dead Man's Curve. Oh, the living.

Well, fortunately, this model features the cadaver cam. Look at him go. That thing got picture in picture? Of course. This is the Contempo. How come they never call traveling anymore? There's really great jokes in that. Yeah.

I like in this episode, okay, it's not the best episode, but I like their commentary on the writing of a show in this first act where when we get one of the, like the million sign gag in the series, Homer pauses to point out like, yes, we wrote three jokes. Here they are. Yes. What funny, what funny names. I, uh, then Homer has never said that before when looking at joke names of things like that's just so great. This time he finally says, what funny names i uh then homer has never said that before when looking at joke names of things like that's just so great this time he finally says what funny names and i think there's

a later joke years down the road where homer goes did you read all those yet good and then move on after they show you the sign that's good okay this did bug me at the time too of like okay the use of a camera in there are you supposed to watch someone's corpse rot like why why would you have a camera in there otherwise it it would only be used for people you're gonna bury alive and torture right oh yeah there would be a very sad like to imagine the person who buys that for real is very sad that's like go verner herzog i don't well i mean it's just i don't know man it's just an extension of the funeral industry where it's like, yeah, pick out your pillow for your grandma. Pick out the little mattress she'll be rotting on.

It's just an extension of that. She's just going to turn into a putrefied skeleton. Why does any of this matter? I just imagine a Jackie Earl Haley troll sitting down at his little chair, turning on the tv and watching his mother rot yeah that's like the only image i have when i think of this joke and then it's just like no it's bart scrapping at the door uh i i do love the endless cycle of him just scraping at it like that's so great i mean now that that cadaver cam that's uh really you can just do that with any camera so many people can just do cameras like that now and what also we do picture and picture all the time but that's just looking at your phone while your

tv is also on uh though i feel like this guy isn't funny enough the the funeral home manager he's like sort of vincent pricey but not enough of a goofy he's also like uh secretly a zombie when he goes oh the living yeah yeah i wish wouldn't it be funnier if this was lionel hutz i mean we all know why it's not lionel speaking of uh graveyards henry yeah i know uh i'm just they are okay dr nick what if this was dr nick dr nick runs a funeral home because he kills so many people as a doctor boom there you go dr nick is barely in these scully seasons i don't really recall like when he shows up they're pretty much done with him yeah i feel like dr hibbert is just like now

he's the worst doctor ever uh the joke of him in this episode is a dr nick joke but they preferred to have it be him yeah that's one thing i do think i'm not sure if it was an animation choice or not ultimately but like that is something i did notice with the change over uh after bird left was the you were less likely to just have nick riviera be the guy who who owns the the home like you had to create these characters you had to there's no more management about the realism of these characters i think to the producers uh the writers are more like back in the day they thought oh we're really in love with you know groundskeeper willie now so why doesn't he just uh host this

event or oh man the sea captain we love this guy uh who cares that like he owns a restaurant who cares he's on a boat now where we just want to have a joke there yeah you can see who they're fixated on i think around this time it's definitely uh we're getting into like the gill years you know this could have been gill this could have jinx this could have been gill if uh you know if i ever want to pretend like i know something about basketball i think of this line and like you can say this and people think you know anything about basketball i only know traveling because it was a thing in early basketball video games. Yeah. It could be called on you.

That's the only reason I know anything about the term traveling in basketball. Yeah. If you come to my sports terminology vault, it's empty. I know absolutely nothing. I know double dribble. That's a thing. And I know space jam. And apparently there's no rules in basketball there

you can just shoot people on the court in that movie but uh yeah another bit i really love uh that i feel like i can just credit to the animators is so they end that scene with bart in the casket in the next scene as they're walking to show off the nice plot the good area of the cemetery it's just homer and abe And then Bart runs into the scene and he has the lines under his eyes that shows like he's stressed. So it implies that Bart was abandoned in the coffin and had to get out himself.

That's a nice little background gag. I totally missed that. It's really good. It's very subtle. But I, so which makes me, I mean, it could have been in the script too, but upon closer inspection i thought it was i thought that was a good gag uh the crying lady it's okay goes on a

bit too long yeah it's uh the the time it takes her to read the name and then re-say it i was like it takes a while but but trust me you know i mean she's always good and uh yes then uh we find out that god prefers people who travel in style which and i guess too there's too much back and forth here that like okay so homer is shocked at the price tag then the guy says no abe won't go to heaven and abe then scares homer by saying i'll haunt you forever and then homer says okay then i will pay the price then they go to the office and he says here's how much it is over it's like oh i can't pay that price and then they have to cycle around that like three times i will say i like to see the wolves the wolves were nice yeah yeah this is uh you know we just had that wolf joke in uh skinner's

sense of snow as well where the the wolves were going to eat the kids who were in the school. The wolves were on fire at this time. That's true. Oh, yeah. And years ago, we had, I'm cold and there are wolves after me. That's right. So these wolves are waiting to get a grandpa's soft flesh. You would think the wolves would be pickier to not want to eat the old, the infirmed.

That wouldn't taste as good as, like, Bart it's been finely aged though maybe it's like a really good steak you know homer is convinced to do it then decides he's not gonna do it and then is told that he only can uh help him nine hundred dollars worth which i love his outstretched arms like well that's only nine hundred dollars and then in uh what is literally the fifth time in the row homer for no reason decides to make a giant expensive purchase that but this time they don't even explain how he got the money he didn't have to say oh i better empty out the uh savings account or I better do a fifth mortgage on my house. This time he just spends a giant amount of money. In this next clip that has echoed in my mind ever since. Dad, I love you this much, but that's just under $900. I wish I could go $17,000, but hmm?

Sir, if I may, think of it as an investment in extravagance. $900. I wish I could go $17,000, but... Hmm? Hmm? Sir, if I may, think of it as an investment in extravagance. The Mazo Palooza can be seen from space. It will consume as much cement as a regulation-sized tennis court. Tennis court, eh? Oh, I can't believe we went through all that just to wind

up with a tennis court. I bet you didn't see that coming. You don't care what happens to me when I die. Of course I do, Dad. Oh. And if it were up to me, you wouldn't die at all. But try telling that to Kelly McGee up there. Hey, what on earth are you doing? tennis that's tennis oh then what's the one where the

chicks wail on each other foxy boxing yes that's what i wanted i love that hard cut there i just i really wish they would have cut this at, but you didn't see that one coming, that commercial, because what follows is not very funny. No, the Foxy, I like him sobbing more, but it really should just be like, but you didn't see that one coming.

In my memory, the scene ends there. Me too. And this is them just revealing the secret of the show in that you usually have an unrelated first act, so you only have to write one act break that actually matters. One act break of consequence. It was a cheat they always used,

but now they're just like, look at how artificial this is. We jump from one thing to the other. Usually they find the guest star or they find the topic they will eventually make the show about in the end of the first act or by the end of the first act if it's a successfully written show. But here they're like, yes, it's all farce. Yes, yeah. Witness how little we care.

Yeah, I think that is the difference in the scully era it's not that he used it you know too much more than other simpsons writers did but at this point they're like they know you know and they want you to know that they know you know like we oh you know that we just waste a bunch of time in the first act with a set piece well screw you we did like i also know this is only at six minutes in like they've done much longer act ones in this season yeah waste a bunch of time before the actual plot comes in yes that line bet you didn't see that coming has echoed in my head ever since i think that's another reason i hated this in the first time i watched it made to personally anger a teenage henry gilbert yes yeah i well in in ian maxton graham's interview that pissed everybody off online he said

beetle browed uh people on the internet uh don't like us and i was like i was that beetle brow boy you combed your beetle brow and posted uh but uh but yes that i'm sure i've said it before on the show but now that we've reached it it's time to christen a new jingle uh that from now on anytime there is a big act one turn in a story we're gonna be playing this jingle i bet you didn't see that coming there we go i like it we're eventually gonna need a weird third act jingle too we're just like oh yeah what why are they here now uh we should call it the g al gene rewrites the third act story that's we the al gene special i was just thinking of that we were talking uh to the writer of the episode that brought back where lean lumpkin and he just straight up told us like oh no this third

act i can't tell you anything about it because it was 100 rewritten to add the dixie chicks to the episode and not my plot for that one so but anyway yeah if i mean they know what they're doing they're rubbing in your face and i and i was I was looking on Frankie Act just to see this scene. Like, the smash cut to After Homer says tennis court, eh? They have spent, like, $10,000 installing this thing. Their entire yard is now occupied. It's also a much bigger yard now. And it's occupied by, like, workers and a cement truck.

And it's, like, the extravagance. This family, they should not have it. And they know that. It's not a mistake. They're just like, yeah, this is what we're doing now. Deal with it. Yeah. I don't know if the, like, I always am wondering how much I'm over, you know, am I giving Family Guy too much credit when it comes to how, like, this lowered at the same time that came to prominence? scattershot joke formula does like the the uh disinterest in narrative versus joke delivery

just non-stop joke delivery not having to be pretty good even uh like that is what struck me with this episode the most like this does like the the cut like the the bet you didn't see that coming kind of thing does strike such a family guy note for me yeah uh and well also you know we're doing season two concurrently with this and i i'm not saying all the time but most of the time they are very observant of this is a lower middle class family that can't afford x or y and like in the thanksgiving episode they they want to make it clear of like this is how people like it's it's cranberries from a can that like slush out of it like that that's their level of class and in this case it this to me feels like rich hollywood writers wanting to write about how they built a tennis court in their backyard yeah it is about networking with other famous people like lenny yeah i mean

that's probably you're probably dead on i just i, it's so weird for me to think like that. I have to think like that. I can't conceive of it. No, I mean, I, I would never, I, I don't have a house, let alone a backyard, let alone a big enough backyard to then pay $17,000 to, I also feel like that 17,000 number is probably what some Simpsons executive producer paid to build that tennis court that they have. Yeah, I mean, you're starting to see people run out of life experience. So they've been on the show for a while.

They're making a bit more money in Hollywood. So it's like, I'm friends with Mel Gibson. What if Homer is too? I go to the Magic Castle to eat. What if the family did? Things that are not in the realm of the average American experience. We're seeing now the writer's experience. Which can be funny. But it's also like this is not the Simpsons.

They can't afford a tennis court. They don't personally know Kent Brockman. And Stephanie the weather lady. I'm okay with silliness. But then I wish the episode was about something. And it really isn't after this. I wish it was about Homer having to become more serious. To play tennis.

It's kind of about that until it becomes this weird Oedipal story that's unsettling. And then it becomes the entire family fighting amongst each other. And then they don't even care to resolve that. Yeah. Also, Homer's interest in foxy boxing is well established. It's true. He went

to, he took part to a foxy boxing night when searching for Princess Cashmere in season one and in season six he said girls should stick to girls sports like hot oil wrestling foxy boxing and such and such uh that was at least on ice uh so there's weirder fetishes out there but it does seem the idea that homer in the 90s liked watching like hot girls punch each other with boxing gloves on that's just i don't know i guess hey it takes all kinds i feel like the foxy boxing competitions ended with

the wet t-shirt contest where that's where our imagination was like what if a shirt was slightly wet yeah what if a woman and another woman were kind of slippery i guess i just think from like porno production standards or as a as an erotic event you're just putting all of these things in front of your ability to eroticize you're just like well let's get rid of these boxing gloves and just go straight to like you know wrestling at least then you don't have these giant gloves and once that's part of the turn on of like oh they can barely use their hands they have giant gloves on i look i'm trying i'm digging too much into the set this sexuality thing here i mean i do think they were they they always focus on the foxy not the boxing of it like and everybody was i do think everybody just thinks of like the the mud wrestling scenes

and stripes and shit like that when they think about that yeah yeah mud wrestling that's something i haven't heard about in like 20 years just the idea of mud wrestling but it was everything like al bundy types were like oh my god mud wrestling oh yeah i mean that was up there with catfights like it was insane there had to be foxy boxing jokes on uh no ma'am would have gone to a lot of foxy boxing events i feel like oh i'm sure or at the very least uh what biggins uh the big foxy boxing issue like peg like buys a new i don't know wig and now it's like that was my foxy boxing money pig uh writes itself uh there you go no pig um okay so we come back from the commercial break uh we get a second Santa's Little Helper joke. He's getting it all in this episode.

And then we get a reference to, you know, oh, Mel Brooks owns it. And they make a joke that he is called Sir Mel Brooks. Apparently that's true. He was like doubles partners with Carl Reiner. And he played against Gene Wilder and someone else. Oh, okay. They regularly play tennis together. It's just like a footnote in his very, very long and storied life.

And by the way, he's an old man. This episode goes live in two months. We are not responsible for anything that happens. I want Mel Brooks to live forever. Forever. He's wonderful. Yeah, Mel Brooks I should have figured that was a fact that

70s comedy nerds who were writing this episode, they knew that about Mel Brooks. Which, like, that's cute. Him and Carl Reiner playing with Gene Wilder. And, man, that's now just bringing me down, saying all those names of people who are dead now. But, hey. But Mel Brooks being American has never been knighted. but in 2016 uh when he received from a barack obama the national medal of the arts he jokingly got in position like he was about to be knighted and then obama was like oh you silly man no no no and then they did the the photo op we've all seen of like obama behind you putting the battle

best friend award yeah it's the best yeah which like i i that shows what a difference four years makes when that happened i thought like oh that's cool obama's honoring people who were great americans and then once i saw trump making the same pictures i was reminded like no this is all a joke forget this like this country's garbage i would have preferred a president brooks to a biden oh i will say that oh yeah i would have far preferred that one and he seems like a good uh corollary to trump as as far as like the good celebrity oh yeah if he wanted it especially uh if he did the thousand year old man joke two thousand year old man joke i'm looking i'm looking at all these congressional sorry

national medal of arts and obama gave out a lot of them mostly just as celebrities i'm seeing uh herb alpert got one yes writer of spanish flea and tijuana taxi uh of course jeffrey katzenberg got one he's a great man i mean he literally gave obama like 20 million dollars when obama needed it but when he was running against hillary in 08 so uh you know linda ronstadt james taylor former simpsons guest so yeah there are a lot of these by the way well i mean part of it is like that is if you're jeffrey katzenberg that's why you give all the money so then the president will later put a medal on you and then you hang it up in your office and you get to say i'm i'm friends with obama that's me like that's uh i think ellen got one i remember seeing ellen on the stage too and she's noted nice

person ellen uh but yes then there's a good bit of homer you your first thought is that homer is going to invite ned over to play and he instantly tells ned go away i keep walking faster the lenny and carl stuff is good i like seeing uh discord in their now gay relationship yes yeah they they are simply a couple who gets invited to places uh but yes here's here's lenny and carl having some fun and it's gonna do wonders for our social life yeah it'd be nice to entertain friends and have people over hey you got a tennis court keep walking flanders will do faster sorry I grunted way too early hey this was a lot of fun guys yeah we never knew nobody with their own tennis rink so what happens now is the food free or do we pay someone of course not they send you a bill

well that's why i asked that's how you learn by asking you dumbass i just love the crudeness of their interactions uh why must we fight on this double date like yeah but i like that you know they're so low class that they think these refreshments are like they're going to be charged for it. The Simpsons, though, they spent all that money on that tennis court. Now all these finger sandwiches and the table and the crystal pieces, that can't be cheap. Yeah, at that point, get the fancy sportswear, too. I mean, they have all the material you would need for it.

I'm not used to seeing Homer's's knees that much and that's true too yeah and uh so yeah they play against uh kent brockman and stephanie the weather girl or woman or whatever i forget what her official name is but i have i've stephanie the weather lady origins on this podcast all right so in season two bart versus thanksgiving we find out that he is dating Stephanie. Later in Old Money, we find out he's married to Stephanie. And so this is ancient Ken Brockman lore. And his little weird daughter is probably the offspring between him and Stephanie or previous wife.

We don't know. But we see her after he gets married to Stephanie. And apparently they're still together. Their daughter, who makes him do a story about the dolly. She just looks like she favors Kent so much that it's hard to tell if Stephanie is biologically her mother or not. And I think this is her only on-screen appearance because I did a wiki search for her. And she is in Simpsons Tapped Out in her tennis outfit. So I think they finally decided, okay, what does she look like?

Let's draw her. Yeah, well, so that one i do uh we we in our i'm with cupid episode uh from season nine there is a deleted scene of her doing her job and i like kent brockman when he's saying his if you remember it i'm with cupid which is the apu valentine episode. Kent is complaining on TV that Apu's making everybody else look bad. And then he says in the deleted scene, and now let's hear from Stephanie, the weather lady. How's it going, Steph? And she's like, a cold front's coming in,

and it's going to be staying for a long time, Kent. So we could have seen her earlier. Yes, yeah. But that's what's extra funny to me, to see that her tapped out design is still like in tennis it's like oh she just is a tennis player as far as fans know stephanie the weather lady always wear that tennis outfit and homer uh apparently extremely racist yes yeah i was like it's funny that he mishears but i'm like do like, do I want to think Homer is just upset about an Iraqi person being in his yard?

Yeah, it's a dark time for America. That really took me by surprise, I'll be honest. I was like, really? He just blurts that out? Like, no joke? It's just like, okay, I guess that's supposed to just be there. You know, I went on some websites and i learned that's connected to george w bush's project for a new american century it's the same it's part of no i'm kidding uh but but you should hey guys google that but i mean clinton was bombing iraq too in his time like there's i only remember it as a joke to snl but remember during the

thing they did the joke on snl that uh clinton called saddam and he's like hey can i do like some bombings on you guys to distract from this like so we were still i mean i know we you know in two years after this we uh truly commit to war crimes but we were doing them to the people of iraq for a long time before that uh but yes homer uh is he is getting friendly with the brockmans can you believe it kent brockman playing on our court match point and how about that stephanie the weather girl homer ball that's game set and match to us but the real winners here are march's hors d'oeuvres whoa how do you come up with such witty remarks well come on come on hurry up i guess you could say it's my racket i guess you could say i'm iraqi get off my property uh i guess that you know the joke is that homer no one would be that offended

at someone is a rocky but in pre-911 you would think but that's i guess that's a joke that uh six months later that joke has a very different feel to it yeah or uh seven months yeah is this this feels like the 88th reference to serena de bergerac like or i guess this is more roxanne because that was like he had to actually use the earpiece and everything yeah i just always remember diesel's story this this specific story coming up in the simpsons yeah they like well i think this joke too is about how it feels to be a comedy professional hanging out with people and how it feels to be a comedy professional hanging out with people and everybody expects you to be on all the times like ah shit i need a writer

in my ear telling me jokes yeah i guess now they would make a joke about like having a twitter writer or something yes yeah i i also you know hearing that again i've come up with a new conspiracy theory okay i think they wrote this scene for a real celebrity, and when the celebrity dropped out, they're like, oh, I guess we'll just make it Brockman then. No one was willing to say, I guess you could say I'm Iraqi. This feels like, wow, the way Mark says, wow, I can't believe Blank is playing with us,

I feel like that joke would work better with a real celebrity instead of Kent Brockman. They already got Kid Rock on the show. And Jay Leno and Mel Gibson. Every great celebrity. I mean, at that point, reach out to Fred Durst. What's he doing? We get a weird...

I love this line of a potential B story that just doesn't happen. The best things in this for me are the ones that are jokes about writing an episode. And it's just the very lame story about hats being banned from school that goes nowhere never ever again i left homer saying i've had it with that school yes he's really mad yeah i like that one it's uh for barton bonnets yeah for barton lisa a whole other story is happening today that the show doesn't give you crap to show you i just have this image of martin prince running around with like a big texan 10 gallon hat and then being like kicked out of school and saying you stole my assy uh man well think of all the funny hats millhouse could wear i'm missing out on hat comedy right now yeah just her hat it seems perfect uh but then

that gets uh interrupted by more people coming over to do it which by the way this is very similar to when the simpsons got a pool plot wise or when they got cable and everybody came over for cable it's uh you know kind of just remixing that stuff including including with Mr. Burns visiting unexpectedly. Would you boys like to play tennis? Why, yes! Yes, we would. Okay. We'll be right out. Let's roll, Lou. Take it, Lou. Well, hello, Mudge. Lovely day for Tennessee.

I thought you had your own court. He did, but he had it converted into a human chessboard. Hey, been gone for a while let's make a run for it come back fools protect me that's great and i like him being the king being horribly beaten is pretty good some people have been there so long they just can't not adhere to the rules they've gone native that's like that was the one joke that really hit for me that one i actually like could call it out like just guffaw complete i uh i also love that some people there is going like oh let's get out of here he's not here we can take time off and then everyone else is very committed uh i i also as far as a writing joke goes somebody on their script uh wrote wigum hums and then

lou picks up his humming like i love i love the hands off a hum that really feels like an adr joke to me but it works because they're not on the screen when that's happening uh you're right it is bad pacing of them like i think they realize much like Homer saying, what funny names, that's to cover for weird timing that was harder to edit around, I guess. And I also like the Wiggum and Lou that they came with their rackets in their holsters. Like, you know, anytime a cop doesn't bring a gun somewhere, that's a positive, if you ask me. Then there's a very odd moment of Barney is playing barefoot. And even on the commentary they don't know why it feels like there's a deleted joke or something that was going to

come after that but uh yeah yeah it's weird well also because there's no deleted scenes for this episode on the dvd either so there's there's no answer but i would guess there's a joke of barney forgot his shoes or barney likes how it feels on his feet but all this barney footplay i wasn't ready for this uh my shoes in the toilet unfortunately barney is sober at this point so we can't really yep he will be not sober uh like in a few years though thankfully when gene takes over he still has to start drinking again just to make it through an episode but homer talking about he's one of the lovable clowns of uh tennis like other sports uh john rocker oj simpson and dorff i forgot about john rocker oh yeah this was recent news so atlanta braves player john rocker he made waves with controversial interview he gave with sports illustrated in 1999 over whether

he or not he want to play for a new york. And he had a lot of feelings about, you know, the different types of people you meet in a city. And I have a quote here that it has words I'm allowed to say in it. So John Rocker says, quotes, the biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You could walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there.

How the hell did they get into this country? And that is the lovable scamp John Rocker, who would eventually write for the conservative website World News Daily. And I have a few headlines from him I can tell you about. Just a few of the headlines. They're all online, these articles. So we have Thanksgiving Table Talk, get mad. Time's running out on the race card.

Michael Brown protesters marching for a Myth. Oh, God. Give Me Your Tired versus We the People. And let's find another good one. I Want to Hear Obama Concede Defeat. Holy shit. Man, this guy. Oh, this is another good one.

Water is not a human right, says John Rocker. Wow, man. A few weeks earlier, there's no free lunch or free water, so he was against the idea of people just drinking free water. Freeloaders. Oh, man. We just came ready for the free lunch bill from Bernie. Oh, man.

Okay, so I'm glad you found those because I was trying to see if he was still on Twitter now, and as far as I can see, he isn't, which seems like, well, see, he should have been if he obviously he was able to get away with that, you know, grievance and anger bullshit in the Obama era. It's a perfect time for like a racist guy like him. But I guess he wasn't in the Trump troop, I suppose, because he should have been getting more exposure, not less in the Trump years i suppose because he should have been getting more exposure not less in the trump years or or maybe after trump got elected uh because he did survivor in 2014 as

well i saw yeah maybe after trump got elected that's when producers said you know maybe we don't have a funny racist on tv for a little bit people might get mad well we have the biggest one on already at this point so yeah maybe that's why rocker went away it's like who needs this guy we got trump says funnier things all the time yeah i you know the tom cruise of old funny racists yes yeah that was it was sort of new uh breaking news because it happened in 1999 this interview late 1999 i the one quote that always stuck with me is he described sitting next on a train next to some queer with aids he says among other things and he uh reading about it on the wikipedia it's like oh well he then apologized and then six months later said another racist thing and then he apologized and he's another

racist thing and then once his baseball career was over um after like a couple crappy seasons at with the texas rangers he then just went away he was like you know what no more even apologizing i'm not even gonna do that dance i'm just gonna be racist like another of the stories that i wish there was a quote for i saw that when he moved to Texas to play baseball there, like in 03, he went to some fancy dinner place and in a gay neighborhood and said slurs around there. So yeah, that John Rocker, what a guy. But it's funny to hear Homer say John Rocker.

That was a shock back then. I was like, I don't want Homer to Homer say John Rocker. That was a shock back then. I was like, I don't want Homer to know who John Rocker is. And poor Dorf being compared to them, too. Yeah, don't do that to Dorf. Jeez. And also, for my research, but hey, I'm up for commenters to prove me wrong. A bloopy is nothing. I don't know why Mo said, here's a bloopy is nothing i don't know why mo said here's a bloopy for you and i it seems like it's

like what he means is in context a ball anybody could hit and then homer just takes it in his uh pants instead but uh google google didn't give me anything for bloopy oh yeah i just took it as like it's here's your baba like baby talk like here's a nice easy one for you. Okay. I like that. I'm going with that. The sound on Homer's testicles being crushed too. Yeah. And all of his friends just laughing at his intense pain writhing around.

You know who I also feel bad for in this episode? Eddie. It's Lou and Wiggum on here. Eddie of the trio. He's not invited to the doubles play. He a less funny voice that's why the the nut shot it was almost identical even like the animation looked identical to the george c scott uh groin hit i was i was a little taken out by that i was like but he looks exactly like what that that what he did in that scene they could have pulled those files like what does a man getting hit with a ball in the nuts look like yeah we have reference now let's not imagine it

let's just reference it uh but then we get my favorite scene of the episode because again it is a parody of a script moment like in i could see in an outline it says then marge overhears everyone making fun of her and the level to which they take this uh dramatic moment is so funny to me i forgot about the never ever ever yeah that comes at the end and i that made me laugh hey chief we're gonna bust up that crack house tonight we did that last night yeah but this time we got the right address uh you coming well i'd love to lou but uh i'm playing tennis at the simpsons again oh maggie are your ears burning the simpsons again. Oh, Maggie, are your ears burning? The Simpsons?

You mean the L.A. Clippers of backyard tennis? Yeah, they're easier to beat than a suspect in shackles. Pretty easy to beat a suspect in shackles, Chief. Well, that's a joke, Lou. It's on the Simpsons and their easy-beat ability. I think they enjoy being humiliated. I don't know what's sadder about the Simpsons, the fact that we mock them or that they shall never know.

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Ever. I like that Martin is shocked again. Over and over. Yeah. The fact that we mock them or that they shall never know. Like, what a great line. Also, the LA Clippers, that team is, you know, they very controversially moved to los angeles in the 80s and for the longest time were seen as terrible especially compared to the lakers who were you

know winning championships left and right all through the 70 uh in the early 80s and they were always seen as like far worse of a team and also they very famously had a very racist owner in don sterling oh that freak yes that's who oh man yeah he that's the only that was the first time i ever really heard about the clippers was uh like the trial of don sterling and just all the quotes coming out of that like holy shit we hear about all of his weird sex with much younger women yeah he also has weird sex stuff yeah and i mean one of the stories was that he would like take the a girlfriend i believe the story was he took a girlfriend into the locker rooms to like gawk at his nude players in the showers and i i mean it sounded disgusting like and uh but yes five years ago he sold the team to Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft guy, the bald Microsoft guy, not that other one.

The one who apparently wasn't friends with Jeffrey Epstein, as far as we know. But since Steve Ballmer took over of existing the la clippers have never been in the nba finals which is a record uh but they've they've gotten to the playoffs a few times they're they're not so bad these days can i ask what is a clipper or it's like a nail clipper i'm a little i've always been a little confused by that i feel like it's named after like ships or something uh we can answer everybody's uh everybody's dilemma about here la clippers let's see here i i i want to know now okay i got it so according to google uh they had previously been the buffalo braves and then when they moved the entire team franchise moved over first to san

diego and then to los angeles when they moved to san diego they had a local naming contest and because san diego is a port town they wanted to go with sailing ships the clippers so that is why which la i mean is not really what you think of as a port town or like boats i mean i guess it's like near water but you don't uh the nba died for me when they changed the name of the washington bullets uh you know with that braves name i i'm still kind of surprised the atlanta team gets to hold on to the name the braves i mean obvi it's not as insulting as the old washington football team name uh i would guess but still i'm like how are the braves hanging on and henry so no one corrects you because they will.

They went to San Diego first, which is a port town, not Los Angeles. So they were the Clippers in San Diego, then they went to Los Angeles to remain the Clippers. To this very day. But once you move to Los Angeles, I know rebranding is a big deal, but at that point, just turn something that references Los Angeles. The L.A. big lanes. The L.A. sellouts. The L.Aouts yeah the la traffic uh the la nose jobs huh no well it's also funny because the lakers are also not named after a thing from la they they come from the great lakes and then they just stayed to the lake we've got a few lakes in la lake hollywood where all the stars are well so uh last thing i'll

say about the clippers is that i follow a lot of like la comedy people they make great podcasts those la comedy people and i've noticed that for some of them it became kind of a cult team where they're like no i'm actually into the clippers you know oh you like the lakers i'm more of a clippers guy like so it became i don't know if it's still that way, but for a time it became the hipster thing to be the Clippers fan instead of a Lakers fan. Well, is that just like another version of the Buffalo Bills guy? Oh, yes, yeah. For your region, that's the Bills guy, yeah.

That's the type I run into. But, yeah, I would love to meet a Clippers. I've never met a Clippers person. Or for the Bay Area where we live oakland a's fans who soon we're about to lose them to the we already lost the raiders now we're gonna lose uh the a's as well it's uh dark times for uh and then the fuck and the warriors moved over to san francisco and uh sorry these these are local sports references you don't expect from me they moved back to san francisco they were there originally once they got rich enough then san francisco wanted them back

anyway uh also isn't it distracting to hear pamela hayden do helen lovejoy's voice i don't know who that is but based on the credits i assume it's pamela okay it's weird yeah like just don't make her talk if maggie roswell's on the show right now so we head back to the bedroom homer is doing his uh cootie catcher test uh then we get homer finds out they're the laughingstock of the town instead of dingbat charlie which that character never returned afterwards but homer has an autograph that's nice uh i think you know that guy is pretty legible with his name for being dingbat charlie and drooling in his uh picture and i like that uh that marge gets very direct with homer like no we suck and like marge it feels nice that marge actually cares about winning and being good at

something i liked it at the beginning but once it's sour so i'm like this is insane like what like marge like when marge ruptures it's always such a an event and this just felt so like passive like okay it's happening like usually usually you would enter an episode like this like i was really surprised that you find out that bart's talented at the very end yeah like yeah you would you would feel like that would be the entrance into the episode would be like bart all of a sudden through some chance you find out Bart is fantastic at tennis. And then you go from there to get the fucking tennis court. But like I was so befuddled by all these decisions.

It's a weird turn that Marge is even like great at tennis like that. They win. It's not just that they all play tennis together, but they win like an amateur championship. Like they are that good at it. Then it's so weird. I mean, obviously they explode. The second you see that ball machine, you're like, well, that's exploding. That was the line too far.

I was like, all right, they can afford a tennis court and they're just renting this ball launching machine. Yes. Which I'm sure is a drop in the bucket compared to, you know, remaking your entire yard into a tennis court. But still. in the bucket compared to you know remaking your entire yard into a tennis court but still yeah uh though mate you know if we're if we're looking at this from the bougie hollywood angle this also feels like a comedy writer complaining how his wife nags him to be better at tennis like that also it's kind of what this feels like like we bought a tennis court you need to be better at it i had to marry a comedy writer writer. And then we get a death on screen.

I was shocked at that. That guy dies. He is a corpse, and Hibbert laughs at it when the tennis ball lands in his chest and kills him. And we just did the first Hibbert appearance, and he is a good doctor who cares about things. This feels to me like a riff on uh having class outside when it's very nice and as a former teacher i did do that a few times and nobody learns anything oh no it's so nice it's too nice but nobody died on my watch that you know of it can't be it can't be linked to you yeah so you say uh but yes homer then knows just the way to fix it he's going to enter them in a tournament which

marge is very disappointed in uh homer then tears his own pants off when trying to uh again we've had this kind of joke before but the idea that homer's pants are disgusting and people just like get it off get it off get it off uh we've had that type of joke before but it's still funny i like hearing julie cavner scream get it off yeah i just assumed that his underwear is haunted uh i also did chuckle at the posing on homer kind of like sheepish with holding his racket like how embarrassing he just walks away and also like how his butt crack is visible as he walks into the house too. But this is when Bart starts practicing instead. I'll be right out, honey. Oh, that's okay.

Bart's doing fine. You just have another beer. Now that's the kind of nagging I can live with. So Barney's like, you're on your own, dude. And I'm like, not even. I don't know what this has to do with the Civil War. I'm getting to that. Looking good, honey.

I think you and I might just win this tournament, Deedee. Hey, Bart. Yeah, you got your daddy's hustle. Too busy to reply, huh? I know how that goes. Well, I think I'll go lay out my clothes for the tournament.

Homer not getting it is very good. They extend it as far as they can, which is great. Like Homer just not understanding he has been fully replaced, that he goes up to his room and happily lays out his clothes for the tournament. I do like that we see it, too. Yeah, he's like, suit, clothes for the tournament. I do like that we see it, too. Yeah, he's like, oh, he's so satisfied. And also, in the next scene, when he walks into the scene, like, it is such a big sketch.

Like, it's like a Carol Burnett sketch. Just like, well, I can't wait for the tournament. The walk down the stairs reminded me very much of the bridal when he has the gown on. Yes. And he's coming down the stairs reminded me very much of the the bridal when he has the gown on yes and he's coming down the stairs like but yeah it's hilarious barb being like having to tell him like oh well she she's got a new partner the amount i got a new partner uh this this all stretches for like two minutes straight like this uh i i have the next scene. It just goes so long. I really do like it. Well, I'm ready for the big tournament. Hey there, son.

Oh, hi, dad. With that little outfit on, everyone's going to think you're playing in the tournament. I am playing in the tournament. It's going to be tough without a partner. I've got a partner. Well, good for you know yeah you know her oh good morning partner there's something I should tell you the name of Bart's partner I'm all ears well actually the name of Bart's partner is... Yes, darling? I'm Bart's partner.

No, no, no, no. You're my partner. Dude, I think the lady's made her decision. I'm sorry, homie. We'll talk about it later, okay? No! Oh, man. I guess already the Oedipal stuff's coming in there with bart saying the

lady made her choice and like walking off with her holding her hand yeah the stern dude i was like oh wait don't don't do it please don't do it whatever you're doing don't do it god yeah uh i will say i'm not a fan of this i don't know if they ever tried this again although it did result in my biggest laugh while watching this episode uh we'll talk about it soon but let's let's not do this i know again it's it's a bad time for comedy because you know south park is huge family guy's a modest hit and every movie's about getting cum on you in some way sure yeah and that's why they're going here incest jokes were all the rage then they really were i mean yeah but like even in that sense i prefer you listening to homer simpson and talk

about his cum if it's come to that if it's between bart's gonna fuck marge or homer talks about his cum a little bit i pick him talking about his cum a little bit. You know, you're right about that. I never thought I'd say this, but I want to hear Homer talk about his cum instead of hearing about this. Absolutely. Back in season four, we had to see it under a microscope, if you recall.

So it's not unheard of. It's set up already. Come on. We have seen it on screen. You're right. Yeah. I mean, to tell you where we are in the history of comedy,

we are like two months away from Freddy Got Fingered. Oh, man. That's jizz the movie. It is. Working title. I have never seen that movie. I have been putting it off for years because I never found...

In hindsight, I find Tom Green funny, but at the time, I didn't find Tom Green very funny at all. So I just never saw it uh you know i'd save that for podcast content now chris okay valuable podcast content okay i think i will say i liked it more every time i saw it even though because the movies don't get to be that anymore it's such a wasteful crazy movie made by like one guy who just did whatever the fuck he felt like that's it's fun and also just riptorn screaming all the time just fucked up and screaming every second i don't know it's a daddy would you like some sausage i've never seen it but i know that because of the trailer and the commercials well also it is connected to animation

because his character if he has an arc wants wants to become an animator and cartoonist. I believe his name is Gord. That's right, Gord. My hooves. That's what he says in the movie. Can I ask, is it possible that, because I just recently rewatched the Charlie's Angels remake from, I think it was 2000. Tom Green is in that for a little bit because it was when he was dating Drew Barrymore. The whole joke is, did you like the chad and i was like is that the virgin chad thing is that where it originated somehow like because it's about him being like a manly stud

sex man versus not being one and he's like am i was the chad good and was the chad good that's that definitely is tapping into the chad content of or like the what would finally be crystallized as the virgin versus the chad for sure yeah i knew a chad growing up uh in middle school and he was a chad like he was it i was the i was the virgin uh uh no i i wish you know when that happened i wish they'd uh done the drew barrymore marrying him on snl like they almost did it and then she decided not to do it because i mean that's not how you should get married if you actually care about your nuptials but if it was all a joke anyway have some fun on tv get married on tv it's all it's all fake yeah if you're rich you get married as

a hobby that's what you do for fun so i i don't understand why you wouldn't do it and then maybe you know this and this was before the kardashians made a wedding like just a uh heavily sponsored event oh wait oh the pom-poms joke yeah the act break again i think it's another adr joke that's done after the fact but i don't think they saw me. It's funny. We just see his little head poking out from the window. Which, like, of course they know he did it. You're their husband.

She knows you did it. That's so great. And that the pom-poms are so, like, heavy they can shatter a window if Homer throws it at them. It's a good joke. But, yes, they come back and they've won they've uh they're on the same wavelength about putting it on the mantle and they then have a shot of homer waiting up for them i wish it had more dynamic lighting but i

guess it's the coloring you know and the digital coloring homer should be like in shadow here yeah that's what i was thinking and like they could like close the curtains to justify it i guess it was just an artistic choice i mean that you can you can like select a different darker color from the paint box yeah it just reads much flatter even though homer i you know seemingly was going to murder them when they came back well yeah that's like usually it's referencing usually when you see those shots it's referencing some interior shot from a famous movie. But you're coming into a moment in cinema where there's a lot less shadows. Shadow work is on the decline.

So I kind of see dramatic, what are you going to make an American beauty reference two years after the fact? Maybe. You know what I was thinking about this Oedipal plot we're going to get to very soon. And we're kind of knee deep in it. I was like, have they ever went this weird before? And I was thinking of the episode Brother from the Same Planet when Homer's waiting for Bart to come back. And it's a very weird scene in which there's a joke about Bart faking an orgasm. And that's the joke. Yes.

Actually, that's more disturbing than this episode. Higher, Daddy. Higher. No, no, no. Haven't daddy higher haven't you haven't you yeah it's i mean when i got that joke as a teenager i was just like i was allowed to watch this all right yes yeah sure oh god i yeah as an innocent child i was like oh he's pretending he did like being on a swing. I like swings. That was my thought when I was 11. But yes, here is another really good couple of lines. Yeah.

Though creepy, but funny. We were good, Dad. They asked us to play in the Krusty Classic. It's for charity. It benefits victims of balcony collapse. We can wipe out BC in our lifetime. I don't care about BC. I care about M.E.

My enjoyment! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! It's obvious what's happening. I'm being replaced by a younger, more in-your-face version of me. Dad, you're just going through a classic Oedipal anxiety. You remember the story of Oedipus, don't you? Maybe five bucks would refresh my memory. Dad, you're just going through a classic Oedipal anxiety. You remember the story of Oedipus, don't you?

Maybe five bucks would refresh my memory. Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. Who pays for that wedding? I'm just saying you feel threatened by Bart, but it's all in your head. You're right. But just to be safe, maybe I should chain him up. Dad, I think you're overreacting. I think you're underreacting. I think you're underreacting.

This session's over. This session's under. Goodbye. Bad bye. My biggest laugh was Homer overcomplicating that B-C-M-E. My enjoyments. Oh, that's so good. M-E, my enjoyment.

Oh, that's great. The five bucks got me. Yes, yeah. You know, this is already a weird plot line but i don't want lisa to be aware like oh yeah my father is afraid my brother will have sex with our mother yeah and that's yeah and i'm totally aware this is an eight-year-old child yeah well also the like as uh for her to bring a medical complex also this is a bit of an electric complex too with him reconnecting with lisa over this but oh god

the way like who pays for that wedding is also a funny just like broad reaction like that it almost feels i don't want to say street joke but of like that for a million years that like that who pays for that wedding feels like that joke could have been made like 50 years ago it's a real wisecrack yes yeah i know a ton about edda the oedipus play because my college teacher in humanity so i really liked she was great uh she was really into uh the oedipus story and uh about how she just said like yes yes everybody talks about the sex stuff but what's interesting about it to her was that it was about how if you are doomed to fate you still try to live a just life like if you believe in fate Oedipus still is like well I was fated to do this but

I'm not blaming everyone else for it and I still try to be a good guy there's there's like from the Greek original plays there's a sequel play where Oedipus comes back and he is like this wise old man who learned a lot like i so that's uh i i learned a lot about oedipus back in that florida community they were allowed to teach you this in florida well that's why she was the cool teacher i when i now for a stereotypical story about uh republican florida that was the good humanities teacher when i took humanities the next year with a different teacher she was like yes this is about world stories and there's no story older than the bible and it was like great i it became bible study for the first three stories uh before he finally got to even like uh the odyssey i was like god damn this sucks there are older stories by the

way yeah i had to and we were already invading iraq so the we the year we were invading iraq i then had to be like uh yeah the story of of lot what a story oh boy i mean i was very familiar with oedipus because like oedipus is the foundation of one of my first attempts at making like a film comment to my father oh i was this is a loaded uh little story here but uh i was watching a lot of woody allen movies already a problem and i just mentioned to him at some point i was like you know woody allen brings up oedipus a lot and he's like this i i start this is exactly what i said yeah i bet huh i don't know if that's a sharp criticism or just his disinterest in general but like it works either way it's on the knife yeah oh man that's funny oh god there's you can enjoy classical greek plays as and leave alone all of the Woody Allen stuff. There's like multiple of his things are all about that classicism stuff.

It's also, it's hard to talk about old Greek stuff because racists just pick it up. Of like, old West, this is the core of Western values. Look at this architecture, these columns. Yeah, all that bullshit. But it was just like, you know, the Greeks believed in lots of stuff, guys, that I don't think we should be following, perhaps. The sublime beams. I also love Homer's line of like, just to be safe, maybe I should chain him up.

Like, that's so cruel. We have to get to this dream. All right. Creepy dream time. This did cross the line for me in 2001. I was just like, what even is this I'm watching now? But now there are two there are two really funny jokes that come out of this and they don't like i don't think bart and

marge ever touch which is good but she's in a slinky yeah i don't i mean i'm aware of that but they don't touch and i think if they did touch or embrace or whatever or like god forbid kiss this would have been just like i'm i can't do this anymore check out check please this is not capital critters sorry yeah i'm sure i know i'm absolutely certain somebody was in the room be like they cannot touch like that somebody was on top of that from game one like absolutely they already caved in that like i don't know if i ever want to have my attention drawn towards marge's tits like ever i don't it doesn't shouldn't happen but like when it does happen it's usually for a very specific joke and to just have it on

display in this one i was like no no no no no no let's go this makes me think of in season 13 there's an episode called monty can't buy me love where Homer helps Monty Burns get a girlfriend as Scully admits in the writer's room they were joking around about like oh uh Burns can't finish the job in the bedroom we should have Homer do it instead and then they're like oh no we can't get away with that so if they were having those jokes in the writer's room i bet they suggested farther and realized like hey we're getting away with some stuff here under brooks and gratings his nose we are not getting away with this matt gratings on futurama right now i'm sure james l brooks is working on draft five of spanglish yes yeah yes the opus yeah talk that one instead of being about a tennis court it's

about the other like hollywood writer thing like i'm falling in love with my domestic servant and i'm becoming a chef i can make a blt it's very hard i'm tired of these if you hear any rich person say they're like oh i'm a big foodie it's like you can buy expensive food that's all you're saying you're not a foodie it's not a anyway hey let's hear this disturbing dream sequence darling you're so much handsomer than my first husband i may have the looks but he's the trophy husband he thought that trip to the guillotine factory was just for fun, but it was the perfect place to shoot him. That's the guy.

That's the guy from my dream. Go ahead and smile, smart guy. I'm going to mop you up like turkey gravy. Yeah, so that's the guy from my dream. Laugh out loud, funny. And also the construction of seeing a beheaded homer and him saying the guillotine factory which was the perfect place to shoot him like that's a good line like that's a funny joke construction yeah i'm not sure if it was delivered correctly but i liked the line

fortunately the overtly edible things are over after this yes it's just about competition now you know as far as novelty goes they pretty rarely do stories of homer and lisa team up against marge and bart like it usually is margin lisa have a story where homer and bart uh do the thing the writers actually wanted to write about and have fun yeah it felt like they threw homer and marge into the uh hockey episode hmm yes yeah no very much in the especially in the uh the the dinner table scenes uh like when they're looking back and forth at each other and chewing at each other i remember they're passing aren't they passing things at the table it's like i asked for ketchup i'm eating a salad here uh no mo invading their home in this scene but yeah as homer sells it to lisa i love the uh

joining up i love that he talks like he's in like an old hard-boiled detective novel like you've been gunning for queen bees and you buzzed into this eye he's in a dashiell hammett book or something and yeah and then they use the word effigy again second time this season nothing burns like an effigy it was more of an editing joke but homer says now hit the ball at your mother and then when it cuts to these uh crazy drawings of them that's when lisa reacts like oh which is like no lisa you would have seen this this entire scene like it makes it funnier that they overreact to it she was aiming at it yeah before the reaction uh but yes then we we get some psyching at the table.

Dad, I don't want to enter the tournament just to hurt Mom. Oh, come on. You've been gunning for Queen Bee ever since you buzzed into this hive. Now serve. Lisa, did you make that awful effigy? Hey, leave my teammate alone. Lisa's your teammate? What's so funny? I'm better than you.

Now, Lisa, you know that's not true. How would you know? Your backhand looks like a rusty gate. You little... Come on, Bart. Babies. Telegram for lisa simpson don't listen it's a trick dear lisa psych psych psych psych sign super psych i think he's trying to psych you out look we're all trying to have dinner so why don't we just psych psych psych i like julie's delivery is psych psych psych that's uh i mean that's kind of kind of energy you don't hear on current episodes so much uh with marge i just love her psych psych psych yeah yeah i always like that like the like that's

the thing i like when marge like breaks character for a little like split seconds but this is such a radical break for the rest of this episode from who she is that i'm just like i i i can't enjoy it after this little psych out it's it's certainly a much meaner marge for sure and then we get to the the crusty charity class charity classic right which uh i mean uh k is a funny sound and uh the the funnier version of this i'm not saying they were ripping themselves off or they're referencing an old joke, but crusty comedy classic. He steps away from it, realizes it's KKK very big. He's just like, oh. Yeah, that is a better one.

Yeah. But I mean, it's trying to spell charity with a K. That's good. And also Burns' giant fluid-filled hand. Yes. They've done a lot of giant hand gags in their time. But I do love that the way he just shakes the a lot of giant hand gags in their time but i do love that the way he just shakes the fluid out of his hand that's good we know he's not a fan of the giant

novelty hands he wants the smaller ones yes it is rather ostentatious sir i think it's probably one of the maybe the most uh successful visual gag in the whole episode and uh i mean we heard it up front uh we get a real taste of aljean sense of humor where he thinks he thinks the racket earring joke is funny i was like would you have written this for carson yeah when you were writing for carson 100 yeah he's he's so defensive of it like no it's a it's a lame joke i i like the reaction is so muted of like yeah yeah yeah yeah it's good uh and the uh the tennis stadium is partially based on the one ian knew growing up in his childhood in forest hills queen fucking backyard this rich pig yeah

now he grew up in fancy old forest hills he went to a preparatory academy not a real high uh elementary school or high school so he'll never come on our show i have a state college degree so oh yeah but he did i like when they clown on brown because he is a brown graduate so he at least has some cleverness about that i do like the little bit of the ball boys bouncing off of each other and ending up in a pile that's a it's a cute enough joke yeah that was what i actually that one i was like that's going on a little too long like i i could do it twice, I was like, that's going on a little too long. Like, I could do it twice, and I was like, okay, that's funny. But that, like, what's the third or fourth one? Because I forget if it ends on a three or a four, but I was just like, that's a little too long.

It could be a little snappier. I think so. And then I also have to ask, how did Homer and Lisa qualify for this? Marge and Bart were invited because they won that championship what did homer and lisa do to qualify like and also they were definitely going to lose lisa may be good at tennis but homer never got good at it he never practiced or got any better also a better question uh is why are four tennis olympians here yes yeah it with bad seats yeah seats up in the round well okay two of them have bad seats and the other two are like on the court yeah i shouldn't there be a scene where crusty says

and all my famous friends are here or whatever like i don't know that's i always assume there's just like a an ambient cloud of celebrities following crusty everywhere he's their main conduit to being in springfield i guess if it's for charity that's i mean i don't think they would have written it in as charity if they uh it was their reason to find a way to get celebrities into the show sure sure i yeah it's it's either that or like a tennis bus broke down nearby and they just happened to find charity uh but yes we get our first pair of guest stars here of the four big tennis stars meeting homer simpson what are you doing that's our dad's seat hey that's great listen i need a new doubles partner my little girl's a lead weight you're

dumping your own daughter yeah but only to crush my wife and son. That's horrible. Yeah, that's pretty low. Hmm, you seem less disgusted. Let's go. Ah! Our next match is Marge and Bart Simpson... Boo! You rock! ...versus Homer and Lisa.

Sorry, that's Homer and Venus Simpson. Venus Simpson, you're replacing me? Now, Lisa, dumping is such a harsh word. Let's just say I'm replacing you. Classic bad athlete acting like you would also see on SNL, but I do like the spirit of it. I like later when she just goes, I just ate a personal pizza.

Yes. spirit of it i like later when she just goes i just ate a personal pizza yes i've used that excuse to get out of sports many times uh i also like homer just comes off as such an asshole here instantly losing confidence in his daughter and abandoning her but but this is just a smaller faster version of the softball episode because it is oh we're to play together a sport? I should get ringers on my team instead. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know

about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. And then it's an excuse for famous people to come in. I like the escalation where they're getting ringers on the team, but also it's just ringers. There's no actual members. Yes, yeah. They eventually are fully replaced.

And also Homer steals a drink from Martin Prince's mom. She's getting a lot in this season. That's true. And I also like that Homer says hello to Otto. But yes, that's Venus and Serena Williams, who are, I believe, both still active in the world of tennis and are winning championships even into their early 40s or late 30s. Yeah, at this point, they each had two gold medals

from the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics, and they would go on to have four total as of this recording. It's funny that they reference their father because that's the movie that's coming out is about him oh really right will smith is playing the dad yeah king richard like it's i was like it's just strange that that's what the joke that like the little entry joke was is he the rare non-abusive sports dad i think there's arguments but i actually don't know i remember because i assume you guys will learn from the movie but that's yeah like i assume since there's arguments, but I actually don't know. I remember because I assume. I guess we'll learn from the movie.

Yeah, like I assume since there's a movie being made about it, it's like a little contentious. But like, it's not just all like, he's great. No, he's great. Well, I would think it would be the kind of complicated starring role for that'll maybe finally win Will Smith the Oscar he's been wanting for the last like 25 years. Well, yeah, he's just been playing distraught father figures, like really emotionally severe father figures for a long time now. I hope this is the crowning achievement of that. Well, and usually autobiographical ones too, though. I've also heard that, you know, part of that reason is that often the Africanrican-american actors who get nominated for oscars are usually playing a real person because uh the lead roles and things that are not based on history they would just like

recast for white anyway they just like well no the lead in this is like a famous white person and so if you have something based on history and the person was black you can't change well you shouldn't change their race. And I don't think they would now. No. But, yeah, Venus and Serena Williams, I only hear about them usually on Twitter when they, like, win big and they just have another, like, very dominant win. They are two of, like, the best players ever.

But then seeing, like, racist people on Twitter, I'll see clips of, like, oh, my God, at this this racist guy's reaction to this uh a black woman winning i'm like oh she's a little too muscular isn't she or she's a little uh rough on the court wouldn't you say like a lot of uh dog whistles blown anytime this uh william sisters do anything i mean that feeds into the whole sports thing of just like critiquing bodies and talking about bodies constantly and what shape they're in what shape they should be in like i you know forget like whatever relationship uh the williams sisters have with their father i don't know anything about it but like that stuff like that i'm just like it's weird and at its root

like the the criticism like that is weird at its root. Well, and another of the tropes I've definitely seen show up with, I've seen identified as being used against Venus and Serena is that a problem in sports journalism is you treat a white athlete like, wow, they worked so hard. And then when you talk about a black athlete, they say, amazing natural ability. Like what a natural athlete, like with, with the assumption being, oh, they, that almost like a bio, a biological reasoning, not the like Venus and Serena, I'm sure practice quite

a lot. And, and, oh yeah. Yeah. It's all regiments and stuff like they, nobody likes to talk about the work unless it's like they always like talk about it in very, once, once they're successful, you, you hear a lot about the work unless it's like they always like talk about it in very once once they're successful you you hear a lot about the work but uh i think homer picks venus just because uh syllable wise it's the same number as lisa i think that's that's the only reason she was she was less disgusting i do love the bit of like homer thinks lisa, you're dumping me? But I like jokes like that. But then Venus instantly splits Marge's hair in half into bunny ears.

She requests a new teammate, which is when Wiggum pulls a gun on a man who tries to steal his cookie. That's what I like in this one, too. All the cops, it's funny enough to see wiggum is an idiot jokes but i like wiggum abuses his power all the time and would kill people wantonly like his his joke earlier about how it's easy to beat a man in shackles he's all over this episode is he like the ref like the tennis ref the tennis ref for some reason you know i guess we have at least seen it crusty loves tennis because he did go to wimbledon with the queen in Camp Krusty. Oh, strawberries.

Joke. Oh, joke. But yes, Marge needs some help herself. 15 love. Once again, I'm outraged by this last minute switch. We all got problems. I dropped my cookie. You sure you want to risk it?

It's totally unfair for one side to have a professional player. All right, all right. You guys can have Serena. Uh, I just ate a personal pizza. Oh, you're dumping me. Honey, I'll make it up to you in bottle rockets. Hmm.

Okay, swing. Run. Hit the thing. Now run across it. Yeah. Whoopsie. Marge, how bad do you want to win? Oh, I'd do anything.

Good. Yo, Pete. Pete Sampras. Get over here. Yes, I'm in. Are those his only lines of dialogue in this? He says he has to go film a ho-ho commercial. Pete, Pete Sampras, get over here. Yes, I'm in. Are those his only lines of dialogue in this? He says he has to go film a ho-ho commercial. That's his one other line.

Because Sampras was not like, I knew, again, I know nothing about tennis, but I knew Agassi, I knew Williams, I knew McEnroe. I didn't know Pete Sampras until i learned that he was married to the woman who played sonja played in mortal kombat oh wow okay you know good choice yeah and she's very funny in uh billy madison in billy madison as uh veronica vaughn oh you're right she's very good she's very good i was just like that's how i know him i didn't know him as a tennis star i also think of her as co-starring like one of the most sexist films i've ever seen the one uh with french stewart it was like french stewart's only starring role in a movie i gotta look this one up here it's

not inspector gadget 2 is it okay sorry he's second only starring role in a movie uh pete sampras trivia though uh his career ended at the 2002 u.S. Open where he defeated Andre Agassi, who was in this episode. Yeah, he was a big deal. He actually was like Agassi was his longtime nemesis, I guess you'd say. But I think they had a friendly rivalry. But he Sampras, I think, usually won most of them. He I think the last times like Sampras played was when he came out of retirement for like exhibition matches against him. Love Stinks is the movie I am thinking of.

Sorry, not Bridget Wilson's Sampras plays Chelsea Turner in it, who is like the worst woman in the world or only started dating a guy because she wanted to be like a rich wife. And she is like an awful monster. The entire film. It is a very sexist movie uh but and it also has bill bellamy and tyra banks as uh as their best buddies bill bellamy does not have a great uh track record as far as like uh misogynist movies uh either he's it's been pretty bad but honestly what do you expect from a movie that's named after a jay giles band song true yeah uh and also like a movie in 1999 like it's uh sexism was just like a joke like that's uh but yeah andre agassi uh he shows up

and just says yoink and i'm andre agassi you know what i will say uh baldness uh it strikes some of us but it really ruined his brand because he was once crazy sorry he was once famous for his crazy long hair ah yes yeah and then he was just the bald guy uh i think i was looking at uh his career at the time like he was on a bit of a comeback because like his he had a doing poor period which was also uh typified by marrying Brooke Shields. And then after he divorced her in 99, started making his return and still couldn't beat Pete Sampras, but he did pretty good. And, yeah, I guess Agassi, I really can't believe those. Sampras and Agassi, I think they probably won more than McEnroe, but McEnroe's the personality.

Like, that's who you get. I can't believe they went with Agassi and Sampras over McEnroe. I think they admit it was, you know, a mistake. Yeah. Well, I think that shows you, like, just how the personalities have kind of been tampered down in sports in general. Like, the original personality versus, like, focused talent was McEnroe and Borg, and then now it would be agassi and sampras like sampras

is the quiet focused one who's like obsessed with the sport agassi is a little bit more personality he marries a supermodel for crying out loud uh but it's so funny to hear him say i'm andre agassi so that uh hey can we hurry this up i gotta film to film a Ho-Ho's commercial. That also feels like a very Al Jean line. And I know Al Jean recorded with these guys. We're dumping all over Al Jean. Sorry. He's very rich. I don't feel too bad. Join our Patreon, Al.

Yeah, come on, Al. If he gives us $10,000 a month, I will only say nice things about him. But yes, then we get an ending that definitely pissed me off in the year 2001. Like I've said this about the ending of most of the episodes we've done in season 12, but this seriously did make me so mad because it just, it rubs it in your face so hard. I wish it would end a bit sooner because there's a line in this I really like. Which one am I, Serena or Venus? You're Andre. I'm Serena.

You're a girl. Why don't we stop this nonsense? I'm not mad anymore. Me neither. I'm just enjoying some world-class tennis. You know, there's a lesson here for all of us. It's better to watch stuff than to do stuff.

Amen. After the tournament, let's go out for a nice family dinner courtesy of pete sampras sorry sucker i like it at least ends with how we're saying sucker i would have preferred a better ending that would have been more effective is it's better to watch stuff than to do stuff credits yes yeah the the joke that follows is just kind of lame it's just like and then homer steals money and they call someone the sucker yeah now the that's a better moral of the story if there is a moral to this one then that going back for one more joke about the guest that feels like a lamer move like that feels like the safer bit of

like oh let's say a guest name one more time and homer steals from them like that that also just feels like you know very much like in crusty gets canceled where they have to say uh like oh and you're the funniest guy down except for him and then they cut to uh johnny carson like it it just feels like oh one more joke about the celebrity just so you remember can we bonk homer one more time also that smash him in the face one more time i i did like him being spanked by the racket to get out of there by venus that was funny yeah i think if you're gonna make the the sucker uh joke work you have to maybe even go to wherever they're gonna have dinner and have them be like oh the jesus this

bill and then he's like pete sampras's wallet is right there that maybe works but like in the same scene like the original like like you said like the original joke works better the amen yeah it's better to talk about stuff than to show them doing stuff yes yeah i mean also it is a clever idea of like, oh, wouldn't it be better just to watch like the most amazing doubles game ever of Pete Sampras and Venus Williams versus Serena Williams and Andre Agassi?

Or I should say Venus Williams and Andre Agassi because that's what the teams are. I mixed up the names there. Sorry. And it almost feels like a joke that Homer's replaced by another bald man. But I would bet Andre Agassi was not interested in doing a bald Jim. No.

Yeah, the ending, again, in 01 pissed me off of just like, if they're going to rub, now I feel if they're going to rub our faces in not caring about the ending, they should go more into that than going with one more joke about the famous person who's in the episode but uh overall this is a wacky ass episode that at least has a few good jokes in it uh which i've said about most of the season 12 i know uh but i uh man that i'm just so creeped out by the edible stuff and also just again i it's hard to forget the the pain of having the show finally

remind like say to my face yeah we do waste time in act one what you gonna do about it loser i i'm kinder to this i don't care about tennis and uh i think some of the choices are on display that are weird i don't like them and i wish it would have been about like one thing instead of all these different things but there are things i think are very funny and even if the show is whiffing in terms of storytelling they can still write very good jokes and now that there have been 20 more years since of the simpsons since this episode i'm okay with just like yeah we don't care this time like we have to write we have to write 22 of these in a year give us a break yeah the next one will be good it's fine i'd be talking it out with you

guys i've i've definitely remember more like lines that even if I didn't laugh out loud, I was like, oh, that's funny in my head. But I'm always depressed when I find I get – I'm reminded of an episode that was closer to when I know I loved it. I know I loved it up until when Brad Bird left. I know that for sure. And I'm pretty sure I liked season 10 and and at least part of season 11 but like whenever i'm reminded of how like where the line was where i just didn't like it anymore i get a little depressed like and this was one of those reminders of like yeah it was season 12 it was it was this bad already uh and just nothing made sense and yeah i i i do i do like i'm more

kind to something that is open about the fact that it's bad than not, but it's still a kind of disappointing. Well, you're going to really feel bad when you start watching post nine 11 episodes. That's the next time I'm here. I'm sure I'll get one of those. Uh, but,

but thank you so much, Chris. Yes. Chris, please tell us all about, we hate movies, a fantastic podcast and not just because we were on it, of course. Well, it's mostly because you guys were on it. Chris, please tell us all about We Hate Movies, a fantastic podcast. And not just because we were on it, of course. Well, it's mostly because you guys were on it.

We're We Hate Movies. We do a weekly show. It comes out on the main feed on iTunes and all your little podcast apps there. We have Patreon, patreon.com slash We Hate Movies. We do episodes on Star Trek on there. We do an animation show on there.

We do recaps of Melrose Place in 90210. We do a We Love Movies. We do all kinds of stuff. We recently did a big episode on Zack Snyder's Justice League. That was very exhausting and made me go to very dark places that I don't want to talk about again. But yeah, check us out. We'd love to have you. You know, Zacknyder would be

pleased that he darkened your mood with his evil visuals i gave him what he wanted i'll be honest and guys honestly thank you so much for having me on again oh for sure thank you we love having you on chris yeah i i really enjoy you know uh it's new now i just listened to your escape from new york one of uh love movies and that was so great like you you especially capture the feeling of being a carpenter fan who has to go like yeah okay that one is tough like yeah you have to do that sometimes like i i'm with the guy no matter what but like yeah some of them just don't work the way that the magic stuff works you uh you you can accept it and like well you know hey who is not every episode

of simpsons is great it's how it goes exactly so thanks again to chris cab and for being on the show please check out we hate movies we love the show so much but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and at free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there for five bucks a month you get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall. That includes all of our limited miniseries. The most recent one was Talking of the Hill, season two, part one, 11 new episodes of our Talking of the Hill series. That is a retrospective on King of the Hill. That is along with a hundred bonus episodes of other miniseries. We've covered things like The Critic and Mission Hill and Futurama and so

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and then at the end of the month we cover an animated feature film super in-depth just like we do on the simpsons now if you are on the free feed of that you can hear the preview but if you are a ten dollar level patreon subscriber you get to hear us talk often for over four hours about an animated feature film super in-depth into the history and every moment in the film. We have a whole bunch of fun, whether it's a great movie like Akira or Kiki's Delivery Service, or some of the less good movies we've talked about in the last couple months like Cool World, Hercules 1997, and Shrek for its 20th anniversary so please sign up at the $10 level to hear it all over 130 hours of podcast in addition to all of the five dollar things bob just mentioned all of that you'll find at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I have another podcast, by the way, that is Retronauts, a classic gaming podcast about

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You stay up to date if you follow at Talk Simpsons Pod on Twitter. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment. And we'll see you then. Okay, with mole insurance, your total comes to $17,000. What? Oh! Or you could just toss him in the woods and let the wolves carry him off. It's really up to you. Mr. Salesman?

Yes? We're gonna go with the wolves carry him off. It's really up to you. Mr. Salesman? Yes? We're going to go with the wolves. Feed it!