Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Bart of War With Brendan James

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

We're joined again by journalist/podcaster Brendan James, cohost of the leftist history podcast Blowback, just in time for an episode inspired by America's wars. After the unexpected reveal that Ned love The Beatles, Bart joins the Pre-Teen Braves. That then leads to an extensive F Troop parody that's a gateway to the secrets of one lead actor on the show. Then it all comes to a head with a line that Fox tried to censor. All that, plus Ralph crashing through a window is born in this week's nondenominational podcast! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a Movie Podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons featuring the bad boys of non-denominational community youth groups. I'm one of your hosts, the gracious and defeat Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Yours in Christ, Henry Gilbert. And who is our special guest on the line? I am actually not Brendan James, but I encourage the myth. And this week's episode is The Bart of War.

I feel like Lou Silver Medalist Barbara Niedenhuber. This week's episode originally aired on May 18th, 2003. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. What happened on this mythical day in real world history? Oh, boy, Bobby. The Matrix Reloaded tops the box office. Ruben Stuttered beats Clay Aiken to win American Idol Season 2. And the Iraqi army is disbanded for what I'm sure will have no consequences. Yes, I included that last one because our expert guest here brendan james debathification not one

of the good iffications of history as it turned out we certainly covered that back in blowback season one and then just to really put this in time this episode aired 17 days after george w bush declared mission accomplished just to really put it in a time frame here you sadly have lived through much of this through your research a lot and also in your previous season four that's true yeah we can't ever quite get away from the bush family i mean you know you got papa bush you've got junior in jeb as well actually quite in the background in our cuba season because it was florida connections the iraq season though was our first season of our show, and I remember reading about debauthification.

It was surprising that when you tell hundreds of thousands of guys that they're no longer getting paid and you know they still have their guns at home, that will not turn out to be maybe the policy you thought it was going to be. But jury's still out. Paul Bremer still thinks it was a good idea. Yeah, he probably does. He wanted to, I think he also had a policy where he was actually going to make Rudy Giuliani, he was on the short list to be mayor of Baghdad or some kind of like vice viceroy.

And that was funny at the time, so much so that even fellow Bush people didn't want to do it. But especially now, Rudy Giuliani, to imagine him as king of Iraq is actually kind of awesome. And I wish it had happened, truthfully. You know, I've seen those coffee ads. He's still got juice, Rudy. Don't count him out yet. He was putting so much mustard on those coffee ads. I loved it. I watched it about 14 times. I like everything about it. It looks like an on cinema, you know, universe sketch. The coffee cup that's on the counter, it does not exist in the same spatial universe as the counter itself. So the coffee like has one 3D sort of design to it. And then it's just sitting on like a weird diagonal counter. They didn't spare any Uncanny Valley

in that ad. Yeah. Someone should just go back into it and do Tim and Eric style editing editing and release it that way i think it would be a bigger hit it wouldn't take that much to do also it was classy outside of the fake digital universe window the new world trade center is behind him as he's pitching the coffee that's a little easter egg you know for the real heads now the ruben stuttered winning american isle season two not as big a deal as the season one but what I remember is that my friend's younger sister was really into it and she was really rooting for Clay Aiken and of course we all were joking with it like come on he's gay like we all know this she didn't want to believe so the Clay Aiken ever win I have not seen a second of American Idol but I am intimately familiar with I think the first three or four years worth of winners just because I was working regular jobs.

Everyone else was watching it. Everyone else was talking about it. I mean, back then, second place is still a winner. Like, you still became a famous enough musician. I was thinking about this recently because the Defunctland YouTube channel that's all about closed down Disney and Universal Rides did one about the American Idol experience that they did there. And it's a very interesting history of themed park experience and also the losing importance of American Idol over the last 20 years. Also, if I recall, Clay Aiken, though he came in second, was far more visible in pop culture after the show was over. I mean, I don't know what happened to Ruben Studdard off the top of my head. I just

know that Clay Aiken was doing cameos in shows and maybe he was in a commercial. I guess in a way, he kind of did win. He won the war if Ruben won the battle. I don't remember anything for Ruben Studdard after his song Sorry 2004, which is now a 20-year-old song. Now he needs to do Sorry 2024. The big thing for me this week was The Matrix Reloaded. I was so excited for the second Matrix movie, and I was playing Enter the Matrix this same week,

the video game. So you were disappointed twice is what you're saying. I liked The Matrix Reloaded. I didn't love it. I did like it. Other people came out of it more disappointed than me, but I enjoyed it. Here's the thing. I was either at an anime convention during the release of Matrix Reloaded or Matrix Resurrections

and some friends left to see one of these movies. And I thought, talk about poor life choices. And I was at an anime convention and I still have not seen either of these without the aid of Riff Trax. I remember I saw, you know, I get it, but all of them having the R mixes me up. Reloaded is the second one. Reloaded's two, followed by Revolutions,

and then Resurrections was the fourth one. Yes, I saw Reloaded in theaters. It's not that good. It does have the cool highway fight, and, you know, you get to see Monica Belushi and the architect is kind of interesting the third one i don't think anyone likes or maybe i'm wrong i don't know is there a resurgent there's a contingent trying to take it back even i still kind of like it but it is the worst of the three my co-host noah just watched the first one again and you know he said it really was a great standalone film and i don't know if they had plans to make sequels initially or if they're like Warner Brothers leaned on the Wachowskis, but

yeah, maybe I'd have to revisit them. I just know the thing about how the first one isn't supposed to be green and they color coded it green either retroactively or it was like an error or something. And now we all think of it as like this really deep green movie when in fact, it just looked normal at the time. Yeah i should give these a chance but when these matrix sequels came out it was right after i got incredibly blackpilled thanks to the phantom menace so i was just engineered to hate any big budget sequel or prequel that came along and i think everyone else was just ready to hate these films yeah i. I think last time I was on, the bit of news you said of the week

was that Attack of the Clones had come out. Yeah, I mean, if you weren't blackpilled by Attack of the Clones, I mean, you were a sucker. If folks want to learn all the history of the Matrix world and how they built it, we did a ton of that in our Animatrix podcast that we did deep in the pandemic. I think it was like April or May.

Something like that. It feels like to me in 2020, yes. But that's everything that happened the night this and another episode of The Simpsons of the season finale of season 14 aired. And joining us today is Brendan James from the Blowback Podcast. Brendan last joined us for the episode Little Girl in the Big Ten, which is the one that went live when Attack of the Clones was in theaters. Right. Yes. That was the Robert Pinsky guest star episode, if I'm not wrong.

Yeah. We're truly, truly in uncharted territory for me. I think I had seen a couple season like 11 and 13 episodes along the way of I don't know know like either at the time at a friend's house or not but i mean you guys are getting into the i guess this is the last of season 14 you're moving right along into 15 and onward right yeah yeah hey it's exciting it's exciting yes i learned a lot from this one well including in this was in the last 14 when we did i keep seeing things that are simpsons memes online that i do not think of as a season 14 thing. That includes in this episode, too. I recently someone had told me to watch it, and I don't know if it had like greater buzz,

but some video essay called The Simpsons is Good Again. I think the channel is called Super Eyepatch Wolf. And I gather it was an article that was written a year before in New York magazine. And I thought I would check it out and hear it out. And I did check it out and hear out the argument, but I don't think it's right. Well, he has been a guest. I don't often find myself on the same page as super eye patch wolf, but he does put the work in. No, it was very thoughtful. It was not like a ridiculous or, you know, unserious way to try to argue it. I just think that ultimately, if the standard is that it's doing some interesting things 20 years later with meta textual references,

which is really the only thing you could do that is at this point like novel or interesting about the show, it still is basically contingent on the fact that the original Simpsons was good and this would not be on your radar at all if it weren't the legacy of the Simpsons and to me I'm not persuaded that that means it's quote-unquote good again but you know whatever floats people's boat that's fine in that video I appreciated that I patch wolf dutifully watched like seven seasons in a row fresh to watch all the recent stuff and he came to it with a very you know research-based analytical rating edge he did reflect one of my general opinions in it which was that it has gotten better mostly does that reflect that the thing got so bad that they were

able to bounce back a little bit and also just accepting it it has been on too long. Accepting that fact, what do we do now? Like, other than if it's going to continue, I like that they seem to be trying harder. If it's going to keep going, at least on the aired episodes. It's almost like every episode should be a Treehouse of Horror episode where you can do anything. You know, like, I think one of the ones he cited that he thought was good, which did intrigue me, was the one where like hackers take over the episode and show unpalatable ideas that were never shown. And, you know, it's a bunch of like kind of strange or weird or unsettling stuff. And if that were all The Simpsons was now, where it was purely this realm of, you know, just kind of like meta grotesquerie, then they might be onto something. I think that's

kind of just a special case of when they can go hog wild in a treehouse of horror, you know. Even if I don't agree with the idea that The Simpsons is good again, or however you want to qualify it, we have been hearing The Simpsons sucks for 25 years now, I think. It's been 25 years and I feel like there's more nuance there. It can never be as good as, you know, the first decade for a lot of reasons, money, talents, brain drain, a lot of reasons. But I was, as someone who was very much saying the Simpsons sucks now for about 20 of those years, I kind of got tired of it. And it's nice to hear different ideas, even if I'm not always on the same page. I do like the new attempts to try new things.

I think they're doing it so much now, it seems a tiny bit desperate, but it's better than just kind of being in a rut. Yeah, and as you said, I mean, until the bean counters pull the plug, someone's got to do it, I guess, you know. As Troy said, to the point where it comes unprofitable, and that has yet to happen.

Quite impressive. There's a warehouse in Burbank with thousands of Harry Shearer clones, just encased in ice. They're ready. They're ready for the next thousand years of The Simpsons. They better break one out now, because I hadn't seen any recent Simpsons, and I saw that clip of him as Mr. Burns, like, giving his girlfriend Twitter or whatever, and it did not, it just doesn't even sound like Harry Shearer anymore. I love the man, but it was jarring. So maybe we should, I'd like an attack of the clones

of Harry Shearer now to show up because we need them. Yeah, I guess this December, he will be Mr. Burns' original age of 81 before he was aged up to 104, or he's about to reach that milestone, God willing. Yeah, that's nuts. Anyway. It was funny to see that clip get outside of the's that's that's nuts anyway it was funny to see that clip get outside of the bubble of regular simpsons viewers like me and bob because it's gotten to the point where when we talk about new episodes on our community podcast we do we just kind of have to take it as given like and yes harry shearer sounds ancient when he talks

like are we going to say this every time we talk about a new episode it gets repetitive but when people share clips like that we see oh not everybody knows what Harry Shearer sounds like these days. Absolutely not. I mean, anyway, just it was an interesting thing to confront, like in a thoughtful way, someone arguing that the show has actually improved despite the long decline. And again, I don't agree really on the same terms. But with you guys, you know, you love the show enough that where other people would simply say, okay, I'm just going to not watch it anymore. Someone's got to get in there

and see what has happened in those 20 years. You know, even if a lot of it isn't up to code and see if there's some gold in those hills. So, you know, I still salute you. I don't know if I'll be, you know, tuning into season 14 after having watched this episode, but. The next episode is a really

good one but it's the best one in season 14 the the mo baby blues now it's sounding like sorry we didn't give you that good one brendan but it's okay well this is like a somewhat political episode there's a more political episode in this season but i mean this is about war and warring tribes and stuff which the way the episode ends like how can it not feel like something of a political statement in May of 2003? How much of that era do you think is reflected in general in this episode? Like, since you know that, you live in that world in your research so often.

Yeah, it's still a strange thing for me, not to harp on it, to like watch stuff past the 90s ones because my brain still processes it as a show that belongs in that era, if you know what I mean. So there might even be things that I'm not even really recognizing for what they are at that time, because it's trapped in what to me is a 90s show. But maybe as we talk about it, it'll occur to me more like what's the different strains of

the contemporary events are plugging into the episode. Well, this one was written by the late Mark Wilmore, who's on the commentary. Though this commentary is one of the most like just a podcast they ever done. They barely remember anything about writing. It seems new to them as they're talking about it, right, Bob? Yeah. Outside of the fact that the last joke was very much challenged by standards and practices, they had to fight to get what seems now like tepid commentary on war to go on the air. But I'm sure I was alive then. I was an adult then. That's a much more heated statement in summer of 2003.

Is that the solves all of America's problems line? Yes, I see. Yeah, like Mark Wilmore can't even remember. He's asked, like, did you bring in all this Beatles stuff? And he was like, I, I see. Yeah, like Mark Wilmore can't even remember. He's asked like, did you bring in all this Beatles stuff? And he was like, I don't know. There's more behind the scenes info on the PJs, which I found very interesting about how the show was sued by a real life superintendent who did resemble, I believe his name is Third Goodmore says, and he worked on the PJ show, the Eddie Murphy, Will Vinton Imagine Pictures show, that the guy won or got a settlement. And that I was looking up because it just made me want to put a pin in it and be like, you know what? Me and Bob have covered so many of the shows that aired next to The Simpsons that had Simpsons staff on it, but we have yet to do the pjs so i'm gonna save that for a whole big search on how like okay did this

guy successfully sue eddie murphy and ron howard and get millions of dollars over the pjs but yeah mark wilmore also just fun to note again with mark wilmore if you're hadn't heard of him before in a show he is the first black writer on staff for the simpsons. There were previous freelance African-American writers, but Mark Wilmore was the first, and he was the brother of Larry Wilmore, the famous TV host. When did he come in as a writer? We did a bio on him at the beginning of this season. He came in for the first Treehouse of Horror of this season. We did a bio for him and Kevin Curran, and they're both dead now. So it was an

extra spooky episode that is very spooky this episode i do remember watching live i don't have as many strong memories of watching live season 14 episodes but this one i did because the ned thing really bugged me from a continuity kook in my continuity kooky brain and then also i couldn't tell with this opening bit with south park what they were now i think i get it but i couldn't tell that it's like okay do you guys think south park sucks or what i mean my takeaway has always been this is just a mean-spirited jab at south park who weirdly enough basically wrote a love letter to the simpsons with the episode the simpsons did it the previous summer and i thought the gist of it i get from this parody is like oh it's just this easy to make a South Park episode.

Look how lazy they are. Look at all the episodes write themselves. And there's a jab at how there are only 43 episodes. As of this airing, they were in season seven. So it was not a new show was almost a decade old. So this feels very tired, this parody. And also they're parodying the stuff South Park did in like the first 10 episodes. And after that, they immediately became a topic show. this parody and also they're parodying the stuff south park did in like the first 10 episodes and after that they immediately became a topic show well ironically it is the simpsons attempting to

keep up with south park which was known for being very topical and you know ripped from the headlines but not having the you know production schedule and or chops to do that and making a South Park parody that itself was antiquated by the time the episode came out. Because, yeah, it looks like a season one South Park thing of like the crude, you know, like someone's head getting chopped off and blah, blah, blah. I sense, though, that there was never any real bad blood long term, because I remember when Family Guy and South Park came to blows, Trey Parker and Matt Stone said the Simpsons people reached out to them and said, thank you for skewering Family Guy. And of course, as you said, Bob, they had openly on South Park

declared how much they loved the Simpsons. So maybe this was a one off thing by like certain writer or certain staff for this episode only. I don't know. And yeah, it's funny because they complain about how few, well, they make a point, oh, there's only 43 episodes. By the time this aired, they had done their 100th episode a month earlier. It was actually a much better take on war. I don't always agree with them, but I did really like the fact that, oh, Americans are just gigantic hypocrites. That's a good one. That's the point of the entire episode. Is that the Olympic country? Yes, that's it. Yeah, yeah. I think Norman Lear is a guest voice in that episode. He's Benjamin Franklin, I think,

because they were working with him on that season. Yeah, that's a fun one because it just means we can go to war, but as long as people at home say that they don't like it, everything works out and it's fine. That's a really funny take on war. Also, they did a comedic singing of the Canadian National Anthem in an episode before Simpsons, too. Yeah, it was the episode and then the movie. So I thought you guys are slamming South Park. You're not stealing the idea, but you came to the same idea they did to end your episode. Yeah, the role had switched at that point. South Park did it, not Simpsons did it. I mean, again, like as far as the stuff now, I was saying to Libby Watson, another friend of

the show, maybe before or after I watched that Eyepatch Wolf thing, I was like, if I had to guess, I've never really watched Family Guy, not in any kind of like anti-Family Guy way, but I've never just watched it. I would have to guess that of the three shows, you know, The Simpsons, we all know what happened there. South Park has been around almost as long at this point and doesn't really have like part of its sort of punk status anymore, which I think did make it special at the time. Whereas now if like, you know, Obama is tweeting like South Park is on point this week, you know, you've kind of lost that. I would guess that probably Family Guy may be the one that's the funniest of the three now still. I'm talking totally out of my ass because I haven't seen it, but its standards were always so much more crude and without any real like reliance on the South Park, you know, kind of

like edginess or headline chasing. That would be my guess, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Family Guy is now thought to be not good anymore either. I don't know. This line from Bart of like only 43 episodes for South Park, it made me think about how Family Guy just celebrated its 25th anniversary but how yeah see your reaction Brendan that shows that nothing gets to feel old when Simpsons is 10 years older than it and that's South Park too yeah exactly yeah yeah it was it was an odd thing I wasn't expecting the South Park jab. Though I wish they commented on it at all, but the timing is so specific because this is going by the written-by date

of the previous script. Nobody on Internet Archive has helpfully uploaded the script for this episode like they did the last one, but that one was dated August. If this was August or even into September, then yes, the episode The Simpsons already did it from June 26, 2002 would have been a month before it. So I do think this is

them intentionally getting South Park back on their radar because The Simpsons did it, was haunting the writers so much. They wrote an episode about how they can't think of any idea and this could have been more loving that's for sure but this has the feel of guys who heard about south park or watched one episode yeah a south park parody yeah yeah i think you're right and just to give you a count on where simpsons and they're at simpsons have been renewed up to at least 820 episodes it hasn't gotten there yet but south park has gotten up to 328 though depending on how you count the specials they've been doing lately which are just two parters they're more like at 340 here let's hear the simpsons take on south park next on comedy

central and all news south park i hear those' voices are done by grown-ups. There's nothing wrong with that. I just wonder how they keep it so fresh after 43 episodes. I can't believe we paid to see a band with Steve Guttenberg, Calista Flockhart, and Farty the Crippled Robot. Look who's in my fart, O.J. I'm gonna kill you all. Cartoon violence!

Cartoon violence! Now I'm going to find the real killers. Kids, that cartoon's not life-affirming. We're going to watch a show about the everyday problems of angels. Now, back to good heavens. Jesus called today he did it's also as far as them not being in touch with like what south park is it really wasn't about violence as much as it was the swearing like that was what really outraged parent i remember i definitely lived through that i was in third grade when south park came out and if anything that should have been a joke about like

you know gratuit gratuitous, horrible potty humor and language coming from little kids. It's like itchy and scratchy already exists in the Simpsons universe as senseless violence cartoon. South Park, that's not its real like bag of tricks, really. And I have to point out that the writers are living in a glass house throwing stones because eight years previous, they included steve gutenberg in an episode as an lol random celebrity joke in the stonecutter song we do yep a perfect use of it too it was funny but who made him a star and this joke about calista flockhart is too skinny or they're saying that south park would do a joke about calista flockhart's weight but they did have a uh one other dirty joke that I do wonder from this deleted scene if it

was cut by the censors just out of feelings of good taste. But here's one of three deleted scenes in this episode. You know what I've always wondered? What state is South Park in? Colorado. Whoa! Just like us! Sometimes.

This band sucks. They're worse than all the judge put together release the zombie mother theresa and then the zombie mother theresa comes out and fights people so they've cut a joke about relatively recently dead mother theresa i would assume them trying to write you know edgy south park jokes then turns into too edgy for fox censors at 8 p.m yeah it would have just been like just have them say a bunch of shit that's bleeped out you know and then that's the gag is that we can't do it but you know what we're trying to say yeah oh well south park you know they were the new kid in town at this point that was their golden era was like you know basically the same

thing as the simpsons like seasons three through eight at least for my taste maybe a little bit of envy there in this episode that deleted scene Henry makes the parody seem even more bitter it's akin to South Park making fun of family guy writing jokes with manatees selecting random balls yeah that's the gist it's like oh it's just a pick a celebrity out of a head and make them a monster or chop their head off or whatever it's's South Park. Who cares? Which not to get too polemical, but I got to say, I think one of the most noted, you know, aspects of the decline of the Simpsons is that their celebrity guests went from being interesting ways to use the voices and like make them into an actual character into just, hey, look, it's blank. It's Moby. Oh, hey, look, it's Tony Blair.

Oh, hey, look. And that became, you know, their use of celebrities. So, you know, another glass house thing where it's like, well, at least South Park would have celebrities get horribly mutilated. All the Simpsons would do is basically just like do a plug for whatever they were about to do. Well, also, I say Matt and Trey, at least at this time, definitely have a punk rock verging on libertarian politics, I say Matt and Trey, at least at this time, definitely have a punk rock verging on

libertarian politics, I would say. And one of those things that I think they did to good effect back then was they knew celebrities wanted to be on their show to get coolness, to be cool, and they wouldn't do it. Like on Team America, they had this story where Alec Baldwin offered to play himself in the movie and they turned it down because they're like, well, no, then it's not funny if you're laughing with us. Yeah, exactly. It's toothless at that point. And I do think that's what happens in a lot of shows, but especially The Simpsons when, OK, well, this can't be that cutting because the person signed up to do it with you. In the first season of South Park, I believe both Jay Leno and George Clooney

were guest stars, but George Clooney just did barking noises as a gay dog. And I think Jay Leno meowed as a cat. Yeah, that's great. That's the way to do it. You guys can hear way more about all this. Parents worried about cartoon violence

and the effect of South Park in our very in-depth South Park Bigger Longer and Uncut podcast where we dig into every... if you want to know why they were so cruel to brooke shields in that movie we have the answer again because they hated another celebrity we spent like half the episode now talking about the first 10 seconds well okay the pax network it's now ion entertainment okay i learned that for a time it was owned by scripts the company that also bought the podcast group midroll that then sold that to serious but scripts doesn't own ion anymore either though at

the time the pax network most of their programming that was original or old reruns were angel shows like highway to heaven and touched by an angel were two of their biggest reruns yeah and i guess now all they do is rerun procedural dramas that's info i got on them after about four years infomercials took over the channel because the wholesome christian programming really wasn't doing very well and so they kicked the jesus out of there though it also apparently had some success being a christmas movie channel though hardly on the level of Hallmark. For full disclosure, I probably should, I just remembered, Scripps also bought Stitcher at one point, which was the network we were making blowback for for the first two seasons, and therefore Scripps owned us and me personally. We left Stitcher a couple years before it died, so we're no longer associated. But yeah, Scripps is huge. That all makes sense now,

hearing that history. That was before they decided that they should not have a Stitcher app and instead just spend it all on Joe Rogan and only that. We were not sad about leaving Stitcher. I'll just put it that way. Thank you for the money in that moment, but it was much better to leave. Yeah, Stitcher's one of those words like see-so where a vague part of my brain lights up and I kind of forget what it was.

Yeah, that was part of the problem. No, Quibi will never forget. Honestly, I never will. And you know what? It's going to come back somehow. Like with the TikTok-ification of everything, like most people under our age, like want to watch five second things, somehow it'll reconstitute. And I don't know, it was ahead of its time somehow, maybe. Well, next year it'll be five years old. so it'll be old enough for nostalgic rebranding jeffrey katzenberg needs to invent an app that will add footage of both a runner game and family guy jokes to an existing

movie that is the future absolutely maybe people carving soap too well that's my favorite one to watch mindlessly i never knew about that until there was that clip of putting my dinner with Andre next to that stuff. It actually fully engaged me the entire clip. And I was like, oh, this is why it works on the children. The Simpsons will be right back. It's the biggest Fox Sunday ever, featuring the Simpsons season finale with two all-new episodes. First, when Bart gets busted, can he survive life in a youth group? The pre-teen boys.

Have we completely ruled out prison? That would at least look cool on my resume. Then, when Moby comes to kiss Babysitter, what could go wrong? Maggie's gone! It looks like Maggie crawled through these bushes, spit up over here, and crashed her tricycle into the wall. No, not with me. The Simpsons one-hour season finale at 8, followed by the one-hour Malcolm season finale next Sunday. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level

to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? If you're in need of quality new tires and have been searching the internet for a good deal, look no further than your local Big O Tires. For a limited time, when you buy three tires,

you'll get the fourth free on select set of tires. And because we know that tires can be an unexpected expense, take advantage of no credit needed financing made easy. They work with multiple lending partners, so the financing is tailored to you. Remember that when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free. Only at your locally owned Big O Tires, the team you trust. Welcome to the break fellow cavalry kids and a big thank you to our guests this week brendan james for coming on and joining me and bob on the podcast we're big fans of brendan we love having him back especially for this podcast very much set in the era he has covered so so much on his wonderful podcast blowback which he does with no Colwyn folks should check out the previous four seasons

of the blowback podcast wherever they find podcasts and blowback season five is coming really soon all about the Khmer Rouge thank you so much again Brandon follow him as deep beige on twitter as well and if you enjoy the talking simpsons podcast you should know it's only possible with the support of listeners like you at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because subscribers like you are how me and bob do this is our full time real jobs and for five bucks a month you get to hear podcasts a week ahead of time and without ads like this one plus you get to hear our monthly episodes of talking futurama and talk king of the hill us covering futurama king of the hill just as in depth as we do an episode the simpsons and monthly episodes of Talking Futurama and Talking The Hill. Us covering Futurama and King of The Hill

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and you can then tie a string around them and they'll wake up and start buzzing around probably before they like die after having been frozen don't try that listeners yeah i never tried this cruelty prank as a child. I think it was Viva La Bam. They did this with a bee. They caught like a bee and tied a string to it, I think I recall, on the jackass secondary show Viva La Bam, which now nobody should watch for many reasons. Henry's a real bam head. I think he grew up, he's a Pennsylvania guy, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's Western Pennsylvania. He was around my neck of the woods. I don't know if my family ever had a Bam Margera run in.

Certainly not while I was alive. I'm from Eastern Ohio. I could have had a Bam encounter in my lifetime. Absolutely. And it could still happen, Bob. Oh, God. You might have tried to take a shit on your lawn for some video back then. You wouldn't even know it.

I mean, the way he says water tells you where he's from yeah well it just occurs to me you're probably won't because you're safe now in in canada you're bam proof they won't let him in no i actually think he can't cross the border legally that's probably true then we get a joke about millhouse dreaming he could fly and also then wanting to die later in that joke a little bit later. Milhouse is in a dark place this episode. Now, the writers seem just as surprised by this Flanders cat as all of the viewers. It's a weird inclusion. Never before seen, never seen again.

There's just a cat. This cat doesn't even have a page on any of the Simpsons wikis I checked either. So that's how little I even was racking my brain. Maybe this cat has appeared. Subsequently, it doesn't have a wiki page so and they make wiki pages for everything on the simpsons wiki now i am you know so green to this territory that i took me a second to realize that maude must have been dead at this point obviously that was like season nine is that or ten she's been dead for a little over three years i believe at this point and has flanders

i know they made some big like change with flanders where then he became kind of like dark flanders has that happened yet in the show i think we're a long drive away from nedna the ned and edna pairing okay but outside of that i think that's the next big change for him yeah yeah he's still nice and christian but his wife is dead and otherwise he's the next big change for him. Yeah. Yeah. He's still nice and Christian, but his wife is dead. And otherwise, he's the same character. I just read they teased in season 36 they're going to write an episode. They have written an episode where Ned is dealing with his trauma of having lost two different wives. So get ready for a BoJack Horseman style introspection on Ned's trauma.

Sure. Sure. Why not? Also, the animation from the fly's point of view like the animators did a good job with that like they over delivered on first person fly animation of it looking at a sexy sandwich yep and you know that eyeglass repair kid my new optometrist showed me the importance of that because he just tightened up the screws on my glasses and they fit better than ever yeah actually brendan i think ned is slipping he is entering the dark place because he just left a nearly unconsumed sandwich sitting on a table

yeah see he needs someone to just kind of pick up and you know order his life and keep him on the straight and narrow that's not a good sign this cat's eating bugs joke this is just what bart said to snowball too and bart sells his soul like it's just like you're pretty full of yourself or someone who eats bugs all day yeah here this lets millhouse be borderline suicidal saying like sometimes i wish a cat would eat me but bart cheers him up this also is where i'm shocked to hear bart say this in the show well what do you know cats eat flies sometimes i wish a cat would eat me. Dude, we're in Flanders' house.

Unsupervised. Wow! Let's go nuts! Bright, brighter, brightest, off. Bright, brighter, brightest, off. Oh, that is so gay. I did notice that. Is this really like a kind of unique moment of that being a bardism that was not going to appear in a t-shirt thankfully as a society we did reach peak men

calling things gay by 2003 there was more of a drop off after that but i think that is the peak yeah i definitely think a 10 year old in 2003 was very apt to say, that is so gay about most things. And the joke is, Bart is saying that about a photo of his family and calling it gay. There's a better use of this type of joke when the bullies see Nelson kiss Lisa and they say, you're kissing a girl, that is so gay. That's a better joke about stupid homophobia. There's multiple things in this episode to me. And that's one of the first where I'm like, okay, Matt Groening, busy.

He would have vetoed that line. He would not let Bart say that is so gay. It is also 20 years ago. This episode reeks of 2002. Yeah. Yes. It's also just one of those things that is symptomatic of these years where just more and more you need to fill time. You need him to say something and

without the kind of old process of the layers and the layers going into every joke it's like would a 10 year old say that yeah is it the joke that needs to happen probably not you know just moving along keep it rolling because that's where i thought like i'm like oh is there a subtext to this like the reason he said gay with the nelson? But no, he's just, it's lame. I mean, Bart could have commented like a Cockney boot black, but he chose to just act like a normal 10 year old boy from the year 2003. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they mess up the Flanders house in kind of funny ways. Splatter peanuts and butter everywhere from an open top blender.

And these are slightly imitatable acts i suppose and then we have mild porn jokes of like girls gone mild and debbie does penance they they really it's the zoom in on it that makes you feel like these are okay you're too proud of it by yeah you should have been freeze frame funnies i don't need you to zoom in on them the only reason any american would ever go to the wiki page of barben humor is to try to figure out this joke that Milhouse says, which she did win the silver medal in luge in 2002. And I learned that the Germans and Austrian women have dominated that Olympic sport seemingly for at least this century. And only one American woman and one Canadian woman have bronzed in luge singles. All the rest are either German or Austrian women.

Keep those Germans and Austrians busy with something. If it's luge, that's great. Let's just keep them distracted. We got to close the luge gap as Americans for the National Olympic Olympics, though. Absolutely. During all this, they smash into a door and it is, know beware of god which if they didn't say it on a commentary i didn't even catch that's a pun on beware of dog sure yeah so i hated this joke back then i thought it was completely wrong i do not like ned being a beetle maniac it makes no

sense for him and they don't support it yeah what is the i just thought like am i missing something or is this just as non-sequitur, what's the deal with this whole joke? It doesn't come back again. I will say that I like that it's a dark secret that he's ashamed of. He's keeping it all in this room. And his parents were beatniks. Maybe he's ashamed because they would have been into the Beatles, too. But there is existing evidence that shows Ned could have been a Beatles fan.

It is in a Trios of Horror episode. So in the Trios of Horror 10 segment, life's a glitch and then you die. Everyone's in church during the end times and Lovejoy is decrying all of the vices of the world, including Beatle boots. And we see Ned wearing them and he says, I resisted these for

35 years. Why did I wear them today? Hmm. Okay. So the kernel of the idea was floating around for at least like five years yeah it's just him yeah ned having spent all his money which he gives to charity all the time he actually spent like hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions buying all of this beatles memorabilia and then on top of that the beatles jokes are like you know they've done better homer's

barbershop quartet which we'll be covering on a podcast not too long from now that is all beatles references all the time and they're all funnier than this like the only one that really gave me a chuckle was i'm fixing a hole in my drywall that gave me a chuckle yeah i chuckled and i gotta be honest i had not made a peep at this point in the episode. I have a couple lines I wrote down later that I thought were decent enough. But I was like, oh boy, what am I going to say on this episode? The bit where Bart, which is again a joke they've done before when they drink soda or slushy in the original, and it makes him see, you know, psychedelic images. When he sees the different phases of Milhouse as a beetle, then he becomes John naked, you know, in black and white next to Yoko.

I was like, OK, I didn't expect that. It elicited a chuckle. But again, you know, I keep thinking almost all the time, like I've seen this shit before in season six episode blank. But, you know, like it's hard, I'm sure not not to repeat themselves, but it could have been a better gag about what he was hiding. Like a Beatles fan. It should have been something like either way darker or just way more absurd and ridiculous. Like it's too middle of the road that he's a Beatles fan. There's not enough things here that are jokes. It's just the albums, the memorabilia.

There's the soda, which I guess is like lightly funny in the drywall book. But it's mostly just presenting Beatles memorabilia as it would would exist in our reality they're not trying to say anything about the beatles and i'm so sick of beatles nerd shit i'm just so sick of it good for you you know about the beatles i don't care anymore i did like them saying that the only way kids in 2003 would know the beatles is from their lullaby cover albums that people release for kids that was like approaching a joke you know like or if they had done more with that but I was like bemused by the whole Beatle you know on social media it's been a while since I've seen anything go viral of like kids today don't know the Beatles like I feel like if you're under 50 that doesn't get you any rage bait on social media now. One of the reasons that it's harder

is because they can't release like compilations anymore with like Spotify and streaming anymore. Because when I was in fifth grade, they released The Beatles One, which was just another greatest hits collection, but they just marketed it into like, no, this one's different. And of course it was an attempt to, you know,

reach a younger generation who thought, oh, well, if I buy one CD with all the good Beatles stuff on it, I'll know about, you know, the best band ever. But now it's streaming. It's like it's also diffuse. You can't do these like, you know, special moments of re-releasing the legendary collection of old artists or whatever anymore. So they can't Frankenstein John Lennon's old demos into a new song. Let's not even go into it. That horrible video that Peter Jackson made that just talk about baffling. Yeah.

I mean, that was nightmarish. I don't know what's, he's another one. I don't know what happened there. Speaking of John Lennon, this is how little I know about the Beatles. That parody of the famous Annie Leibovitz picture with John and Yoko, that was taken hours before he was murdered. Is that true true the same day yeah i had to reread like did i misread this no that photo session happened in the morning

that afternoon he was shot and killed wow yeah i had no idea either until looking up the photo for this and that like one of the articles on it i read said like this might have been the last time he kissed yoko was for this photo now if you wanted a joke that really went further, he should have morphed from this to this to the photo and then him getting shot by David Chapman. That's a South Park joke. That would have been a South Park joke. Yeah. But, you see, Simpsons wouldn't do that because they're friendly with, you know, Paul McCartney. They wouldn't want to hurt his feelings.

Paul McIste, it's okay. But they're sweaty names also they straight up say these are reference to funny faces drink mix that boomer youths knew about it's the thing that isn't kool-aid and it's only remembered in it to my listicle millennial brain because it had two racist flavors that are always on lists of like these were racist things in american history i see engine orange and chinese cherry those were the flavors in 1964 yes chinese cherry is that just because of the alliteration is it literally just because it's alliterative that's all there is to it yeah okay and to draw a very crude racial caricature on the fun packaging of course that's what we're here for

yes they then barf up the drinks. By the way, if you wanted to drink a 40-year-old novelty soda now for $90 on eBay right now, you could get a still-sealed can of new Coke. Just one can for $90. If you follow the account DinosaurDracula on Twitter, and I recommend you do, he is always finding, like, here is the Transformer SpaghettiOs from 1984, a sealed can. Should I open it? I remember when he ate the Garfield fruit snacks that I ate probably eight million of as a child. I remember those.

It basically turned into, like, well, raisins imply they were ever fruit, but they were like shriveled sugar, red sugar piles. Bart is freaking out at seeing this so much so that he quotes i am the walrus yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye and then ned and his kids arrive i do like that ned is so religious that it would be too prideful for them to see the seniors enjoy a peach tree they planted like it would be doing it for any of your own benefit and they then head into the panic room after they see the house is slightly askew this is like the third ned runs to a panic room with his kids joke since the movie panic room came out there was a lot of panic room humor in the early aughts it all fell away once we realized that it's really not a real thing for

most people yeah i think you have more jokes about bug out bags now than you do about panic rooms. Though he had to build this panic room inside the house because their outdoor shelter got destroyed by the comet, you see. Oh, right. Because I was about to say he had a pretty choice bomb shelter, but I forgot how that ends up. This is when the cops arrive and we get some good comedy with wiggum and eddie okay home invaders we don't want to hurt you we just want to talk well if you just want to talk why don't we talk about eddie sleeping with my ex-wife i thought the divorce was final when is a divorce ever final all right let's just move in this is the second reference to

lou's ex-wife amy who has yet to appear on the series. Oh, she has a name. Okay. In the previous one, they said like, you and Amy? Like they say that. Or he says she's with Amy. Though I also noticed Eddie barely talks. This does remind me that Shearer was pulling back at this time.

It feels like they just wrote lines for Eddie and they're like, well, Shearer has like a cap on time. So Hank Azaria doesn't mind talking to himself over and over again. So let's just have W for Eddie and they're like, ah, well, sure. Has like a cap on time. So Hank, his area doesn't mind talking to himself over and over again. So let's just have Wiggum and Lou talk. Wait, you mean like pulling back? Like Shearer was like over like negotiations or something. Like he wasn't, he was trying to pressure them or he just wasn't like involved.

What didn't want to show up? Oh, I mean that how at this time he was doing it remotely, even then a lot and i think it is two years after this is when al jean in response to sheerer going public with his disappointment in the show in a attempt to get more money right which i think he deserves but al jean said we paraphrasing on the show they were writing less for his characters to do because they knew he had less time available okay okay that's why we get one burn sentence in this and i think it

was also about him being difficult and not showing up for table reads and things like that it was like well he's not playing ball so we don't want to play ball with him okay yeah i don't even remember the burns moment in this i guess it was brief. It's about all the dead Pawnee who want their souls back. Oh, okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. They head inside, though the record is playing silently because you know they're not going to pay for a Beatles song in this. They have a joke later about why that's so expensive. I also like seeing Barton Milhouse framed in the yellow submarine. This time they actually color it yellow and it just looks like it instead of the purple submersible

that they did in Last Exit to Springfield in season four. Then Wiggum catches the boys and he has even more to say. Well, well, well. Looks like a couple of punks are going to be taking the last train to Clarksville. That's the monkeys, Chief. Go wait in the car. Fine. It was the monkeys.

Please don't call our parents. I'm afraid I have to for hijinks like these. Heh, hijinks. It's a funny word. Three dotted letters in a row. Is it hyphenated? It used to be, back in the bad old days. Of course, every generation hyphenates the way it wants to.

Then there's NSYNC. What the hell is that jump in anytime eddie these are good topics really weird act break but i like it just like a smug self satisfied wigum just waiting for eddie to engage with him now having just talked about harry sheer doing less it feels like azaria was just improvving this whole thing and knowing that sheer is not present with him to record it. And he's like, come on, Eddie, talk! It's a joke internally of like, well, he's not going to say more because Shearer's not here.

It almost, again, like they should have pushed it further. You know, like anytime there's a thing I'm starting to think may be a good joke, it's just kind of this little drive-by. But it'd be funny if they actually made a full-on bit about how the sheerer voiced characters are not talking you know and just push it to the limit but you're right it might have just been his area throwing it in as a little like inside joke it comes back from the commercial break and ned is pretty pissed off i just i get the shock value of it but i back then i really hated hearing ned say they were bigger than jesus i was like man it sells out Ned's character for nothing to me. Didn't like it.

They did a better version of that joke with the B-sharps where they had the album of all of them walking on water. It was the name of our second album. Yes. That's such a perfect joke. It feels like they needed to build in a justification for people wondering why he would be into them. But then it's just the jokey answer that doesn't really mesh with his character very well.

Yes. And that is another, I think, the more I'm watching these with you guys, I think my biggest problem maybe is that characters just stop being themselves. You know, like I was going to say Milhouse in this episode is also kind of, it's odd that he's like the leader of the other group. Like Milhouse is never normally a leader. He's never normally all that aggressive or bart's equal and then flanders like loves the beatles and then like doesn't find it blasphemous to say baby jesus it's all just kind of everyone's becoming this little joke dispenser rather than finding the humor from their characters i think they lost a plot point here though it's not

reflected in the other deleted scenes but when homer says i blame this latchkey kid and he points at millhouse in the next shot kirk van houten is there and i feel like he had a line replying to that and if you had that there you would at least have the reasoning for why he is so invested in the cavalry kids in act two and makes it his thing like that's why you retroactively can say oh that's why millhouse is in charge because kirk's taking the cavalry kids sure seriously sure he has petty revenge against homer recalling his kid a latch yeah if it's like the dads are doing a proxy war with their kids then that would explain it but i just realized like halfway through the episode i'm like like, why is Milhouse this like badass?

All of a sudden it's odd. It doesn't feel like Milhouse. Then we get another joke, how Ned has gotten darker in 2003 just to reflect conservative Christian values in the W era here. Oh, Ned, I am so sorry. I never knew you were such a Beatles fan.

Of course I am. They were bigger than Jesus. But your boy went Yoko and broke up my collection. Hey, boys will be boys. I am so tired of that tautology. It's not all his fault. I blame this latchkey kid. People, people, calm down. Both these kids are total write-offs. I assume you're pressing charges because I get paid by the charge. Oh, our courts aren't fit to keep children in line.

The only thing they're good for is telling women what to do with their bodies. What these boys need is adult supervision. You are so right, Ned. There won't be a single minute where Bart's not under the watchful eye of myself or... Homer, get over here. Look at me. I'm Brian epstein hi michael jackson i own all your songs losers yeah you know ned used to be a guy you could root for sort of like hank hill even if you wouldn't agree with him you knew he was a good person here because they're too afraid to

make fun of the george w bush administration they are making Ned a low-key villain. He kind of symbolizes everything they hate about this era, the politics, the fundamentalism, all that stuff. So Ned just becomes kind of gross around this time. Yeah, it's an interesting moment. I thought the same thing, Bob, where it's like, he would be a character, being so religious, that would believe that, but it runs against the like larger point of Ned, which is that he is, I mean, like Flanders, like the name Flanders is now synonymous with the exceedingly, almost like brain meltingly nice neighbor that no matter how fire and brimstone their beliefs inside never rubs anyone the wrong way, except for Homer, of course.

And now having him just kind of be like an open fundamentalist, that's not the point of him. Again, it doesn't make you root for him or like him at all. So it's odd. It's just like how earlier in the season he had the joke of saying, I haven't felt this good since we stole the election. Yeah, yeah. It publicizes

him in a way but i mean like yes he is a christian man in 2003 that was a very political stance then and i mean now we live in a post-war world that this ned was dreaming about so it feels more current than ever but yeah i just hate to see ned in particular be sold out in that way there should just be lovejoy's wife. Like she could serve the role. And obviously not in this exact moment of this episode. But if you want to have like a nasty fundamentalist, she is the more natural pick. But I'm thinking of like even the joke where Ned's like he believes insurance is a form

of gambling. Like Ned should be like the Benedict option guy. He should like not even vote maybe because he thinks it's like messing with God's plan or whatever. You know, he should be almost apolitical. Yeah, I understand why they thought he'd be the character to reflect Bush era theocracy. But come on, it's Ned Flanders. We don't enjoy that.

I do love Marge saying, I'm so tired of that tautology. That is like a classic Simpsons language line. That is a good line. Now we have a non-controversial topic. Michael Jackson. Especially with the show. I connected this to show a little. This was a relatively new fact to me back then.

I think I saw this fact on a VH1. Maybe it was I Love the 80s because they were talking about the very silly, not very good Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson duet song, Say, Say, Say. And then they connected that to Paul McCartney's side of the story of saying how when they were recording that together, Paul McCartney told Jackson that a great investment is in music publishing rights. And then two years later in 1985, Paul McCartney with Yoko Ono and others are trying to buy back the songwriting publishing rights to Beatles songs, to many of the Beatles songs. And Michael Jackson in 1985 outbid him and got the rights for $47 million, only $47 million. This is how I connected to The simpsons though in a way i never thought of before until this very time it's because we just covered it in the april fool's clip show the song golden slumbers was used in the 1992 simpsons episode they said it was very

expensive and now i think the only reason they even got it in the first place even for the expensive price is because that was the same season michael jackson was in stark raving dead and michael jackson greased the wheels on licensing golden slumbers for the simpsons and you'll have to forgive me i know you've probably talked about this but is it confirmed that that was michael jackson and not a impersonator oh yeah the voice was michael the singing voice was a personator and okay everybody knew but they actually came out with the truth on the commentary for that got it got it okay yeah i mean that's that makes sense if it was the same season you know that they got the song just from him and i know the epilogue to this story is that after he died the beatles bought back the rights

for almost a billion dollars or something, Henry? It was like $750 from the estate of Michael Jackson? So MJ, when he was in some money troubles, he sold half of the song rights to Sony. And then after he died, the Jackson estate sold the rest of it to Sony for $750 million. That's it. But then in 2017, McCartney sued Sony Music under some new loophole to get back the music rights. It was settled out of court for an undisclosed term, but McCartney seems to have some say in the Beatles catalog.

And McCartney does hate seeing Beatles music in commercials sometimes. I've heard him complain, like hearing Revolution being played over Nike's pissed him off in particular yeah though this also reminds me of like how dark things feel to me now the music publishing rights have you guys seen like Brandon have you seen how like Bruce Springsteen Katy Perry Bob Dylan they are selling their catalogs and their music rights to to cash out now to both sony music big companies like that and also things run by private equity hedge funds i had not heard of that that's deeply dispiriting yeah earlier this year bruce springsteen sold i believe his entire catalog for like over 500 million to sony music and bob dylan did the same and apparently

it's because they're saying like, well, music seems worthless now. So we're imagining a world where we don't get future royalties. So let's just cash in now with a big payday from these hedge funds that are going to give us the cash up front and then they can license it how they feel in the future. Wow. That's integrity there. I mean, the only one that I would really be like, yeah, that makes sense is Dylan. Because in my opinion, the great thing about Bob Dylan is that he is kind of just a complete sellout who was disguising himself as a sincere, you know, countercultural, you know, figure. I think that's sort of great in its own way. But Springsteen doing it, that's, that's too bad. That sucks. Yeah, I feel like some manager is telling someone like Katy Perry, They said there was another reason there's a major tax benefit to it. If you take a one-time multi-million dollar payout, you pay a 20% tax aside from the annual tax rate of 37%. That's a tip to all of our listeners.

Yeah. Yeah. This is getting on the ground floor, everybody. Sell your publishing rights now. Well, Brendan, it's time for you to sell out your great music catalog. God, yeah. Some private equity for her. You know what?

Blowback. I may not need it anymore as a job after I do this today. So you just gave me a great idea and single-handedly ended my show. Thank you. I'm sure Bain Capital will put up a good bit. Oh, we're having fantastic conversations with Bain Capital. Don't worry about that. So after that, Bart is going to sign up for something that isn't the Boy Scouts,

because he already did that in Season 5. Hey, that was the Junior Campers, Legally Distinct. That's right. The Future Veterans of Foreign Wars. That's a grim joke to make in May of 2003. I like that. I liked that joke. That was a good one then they have a

joke that the 4-h club is now the 5-h club because they've had to admit homosexuals which is a joke about the well it had been talked about for years but it did go up to the supreme court in 2000 where the supreme court upheld it as legal for the boy scouts to ban openly gay people from serving or working with the Boy Scouts, which they rescinded personally in 2015. South Park did a really crappy episode about it in 2001. With Big Gay Al. Where Big Gay Al gives a very impassioned speech about how it's a business's right to refuse. We don't have to agree with it, but a business should be allowed to refuse a gay person to work there. It's their business as so often happens especially in earlier but also the best period of south park their politics you gotta just you know breeze past it but i do think the really

funny part of that episode is that the new you know like masculine scout leader that all the dads think is cool is actually a child molester and is like you know their worst nightmare but they don't care because he looks like a scout leader should but yeah but the message at the end delivered through the gay character it's just not on though most people don't remember that because the the episode's name is cripple fight so most people just remember that same episode with jimmy and timmy i also think super funny they recreate the the fight from They Live. It's pretty impressive as well. But they settle upon the preteen Braves, which is intentionally, I'd say, the boomers. I wish they confirmed this on the commentary, but it does feel like the boomer writers mocking how very non-politically correct the branding of boy youth groups were when they were young. Yeah, specifically, Henry, I think this is a parody of Indian Guides, which was the YMCA

version of the Boy Scouts. It was less of a commitment than the Boy Scouts, which is why it was pretty popular. So in 2003, actually, that's when it was renamed, I believe, Adventure Guides. So this was on the brink of the name change for that outdoor group activity parent-child thing. And this was also made fun of on the King of the Hill episode, The Order of the Straight Arrow, because their Order of the Straight Arrow was basically Indian guides

where they co-opt the culture to be cute with their father-son bonding. Which I think they literally say, I think Apu says later in the episode. Yes. It's very funny Apu to deliver that line. That was them knowing what they're doing with Apu. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. And they decide that Homer should be the one running the group.

I will now give each of you your specially selected tribal name. Pick one. I am Burger with Fries. Man, is that uninspired. Let's see. What Native American activity should we do? Making wallets, f baking crop circles, respecting nature Geez, no wonder these guys lost the Civil War

Hey, lazy horse, find us something cool to do Hmm The noble chiefs outsmarted the treacherous cowboys with a seven-yard screen pass Unfortunately, after further review, the great father in the sky determined that the receiver's moccasins were out of bounds. I shall bet no more forever. I don't think that is accurately portraying Native American life. Yeah, Indians don't sit around drinking beer and watching TV.

That's a mean-spirited joke at the alcoholism in some native american tribes or indians to lay off the native americans we just did dude where's my ranch and there was a lot of let's call it f troop style humor which is funny because this episode has an f troop reference in it this is all f troop and they talk about but homer reading the book that has the introduction by larry storch that's them just shoving it in your face like, yes, this is a lot of F Troop. We as dumb kids watched so much F Troop, the writers are saying, and it did air on Nickelodeon when we were kids. So I did see some F Troop as a youth as well. Me too. just because the episode began with a little bit of competition or the spirit of competition or

something with South Park. I would also say the Native American episode of South Park, which is better than this. This is pulling its punches while also being, you know, a little lazy in its jokes. The one where the casino owners give the white people a disease or whatever, and their home cures are, you know, whatever, Gatorade or like white people things. Oh yeah, Sprite and, uh, that was the Sars episode. The Sars episode. Yeah. Yeah.

They give them Sars, which, you know, it's very South Park in its execution, but, you know, it just felt like, okay, they're taking this on. They're going to do, whether you like it or not, they're going to do it from top to bottom. And this one, the whole episode, I'm like, are they going to say something or are they going to like tiptoe around you know these little joquettes about the whole whatever appropriation or you know old racism coming back through the boomer obsessions i don't know it didn't ever quite fully hit for me i also think it's dangerous to have nelson say a line about how this feels uninspired and lazy. I think that's a dangerous thing to tell your audience.

They're not working hard for these funny Native American names. We said this, I think, the last time I was on, but it's like, just because you're winking at it doesn't mean you get a pass. You can wink and say, we know this isn't very good. It actually makes it kind of worse. I don't know. We are in a database renaissance right now in the show.

We are. And I noted that all of the boys in homer's group are all voiced by nancy cartwright that's right i do love database i was happy to see him he has like one line but i was happy to see him yeah we have database in this group and then a very silent cosign making a reappearance in the uh cavalry kids that's right he's the one who kicks ralph in the face i forgot that's cosine they just pulled an asian kid out of their previous use of them in a group but i forgot that was cosine from the super friends oh cosine tangent yeah okay yes i remember i don't know where his last name came from i'm guessing either a trading card or a bongo comic but yeah yeah we rarely saw the super friends outside of database after that debut right and as we've covered before matt

graining hates database so when they put him in the show they're having fun and like putting in the character matt graining hates why does he hate him i think it's the voice i think it is the voice he just finds it grating or he like just doesn't enjoy it yeah i just think he he thinks it's just too much but i love it i love it so much it's i have endless love for database oh look i'll close i mean that gets me every time the animators also worked very hard on the drum solo bit they were given the drum solo ahead of time and wanted to sync it up perfectly so it does feel like a family guy type rift except family guy would have done it twice as long but the animators were doing their best yeah i was like is this a reference to something is this like stomp or something like that yeah maybe also on the commentary they alerted me to

a thing i did not know before the rumors about forrest tucker had you heard this before pop no i thought i knew all of my big penis celebrities. Oh. So the lead of F Troop, or one of the leads, Forrest Tucker, the old man in it, he was rumored to have a very large penis. And from reading up on it, one source I read said that he called it the Chief, is what he called it. But I could not find any, like, somebody, no old famous person when they were talking to, say, Steve Allen

or the manager from the Partridge family, none of them would say, I heard it was 12 inches or whatever. Nobody gave you a real number. They all were just like, yes, it was very large. That's what they would tell you. Yeah, I'm mostly familiar with Milton Berle's huge dick because whenever someone over 80 was on the Gilbert Gottfried podcast, he would always ask, did Milton Berle show you his penis? The crazy thing is, is that conventionally attractive men did not start having huge penises until really the past 20 years.

Now you got your John Hams and, you know, maybe Bruce Willis. I think he was rumored to have a big one. I freeze framed that movie to see but it was in the pool the pool obscures in the color of night it's hard to judge bruce willis and shrinks yeah but up until then it was forrest tucker and milton burrell who had just you know massive equine um members and i don't know why that is but there you go i couldn't tell if it was a fake trailer for a youtube documentary that was just never finished or it would never exist. But you can look it up on YouTube.

Some guy interviewed every living person he could find 20 years ago who knew Forrest Tucker and asked, okay, did he have a big dick? And these were a lot of their quotes. And they're like, yeah, I heard it or I seen it. And one person did say that him and Milton Berle would argue about whose was bigger, but they wouldn't whip them out and just measure it. But I'm still saying, I think these were 60 standards of what straight men thought big dicks were before porn was as prevalent.

Maybe. I want an actual inch count on the chief. Dig him up. What if it's like, because it's so big, it's like perfect. It's so big, it's like perfect. It's like not as degraded as the rest of his corpse. It's still relatively there. We could be like, great, we have it.

Make a cast. That'd be great. Hey, I'm sure it impressed guys in the locker room in the 60s. But yes, it's also just funny to know that like this old drunk looking dude who was on F Troop was just walking around swinging a lot of rope. Until proven otherwise, I'm going to take him at his word. You know, he might have been a John Holmes figure. We don't know. It was also nice that Homer was watching football that was the Chiefs instead of the Washington football team.

So that was nice. A less offensive team name in the NFL. Then Marge decides to take over the group. She starts teaching them how to do smoke signals and homer just gives up on it on what could have been a actual like conflict like i was like oh homer's gonna be jealous that marge took the group from him he just gives up and wants to go drink talk normal these are tired writers who just and the however it reflects that, I'm just going, Yeah. It is like sort of an admission in the course of writing.

Everyone's like, let's just go to the next thing. Next. And around this time, it's when they really start digging into Nelson and his dad. Yeah. And it really picks up here, I think. But wasn't there an earlier episode with Nelson and his dad? Because I know he didn't have a dad, and then he did have a dad.

Like it was a continuity thing, right? So if people want a great rundown on it, I would suggest folks check out The Real Jim's previous guest on the show who did a whole YouTube video on the history and the mystery of Nelson's dad and how he's had five different character designs in the series though up to this point yes nelson's dad mainly had been seen as a cool guy who was the soccer coach for their soccer team in brother from the same planet yes this is a completely different look for his dad and this is more of them doing the 2003 joke weren't there so many jokes about like my dad left to buy cigarettes and never came home joke i feel like you heard those a lot back then.

Okay. And they would do those a lot with Nelson going forward. He'd in season 16, Nelson sings Papa, can you hear me about his father in an episode? So look forward to that listeners in a couple of years. I do like how much he's kissing the tree. He's really making out with that tree heart it's making everyone uncomfortable also we're getting into milf comedy with nelson saying marge is strangely attractive or like more attractive than you think yeah we broke the

milf barrier in 99 i think so now it's just terminology i guess they don't use the actual word here but this is like the second time that Milhouse says Marge is hot. Oh, well, Milhouse couldn't stop staring at a rack in Large Marge, yes. There's one line from some episode where Bart says to Milhouse, you think my mom's cool? And Milhouse says, I think she's hot. Right. And Bart just ignores it. Yeah. Despite Milhouse's known late homosexuality. Yeah, they can't decide if he's gay or if he loves Elisa and Marge equally.

It's all over the place. So after all of this kissing of a tree, they then head out to meet a real Native American. Our nature walk will be hosted by a full-blooded Native American. Say hello to Jim Proudfoot from the Mohican tribe. Mohican? I thought you guys were all gone. No, but we encourage the myth. Chicks really dig you when you're the last of something. Are we on Indian land?

It once was. My tribe's land stretched from that crusty burger down to Gary's water bed warehouse. Wow! The Great Spirit blessed us with beauty and abundance. Yeah. I'm a huge sucker for that vocal tick. Basically any character with a vocal tick, because we have database going, yeah,

we have Kirk Van Houten going, oh, before he starts talking. So we have both ends of the spectrum. I mean, if it's not clear, whatever it says about the show, that is the hardest I laughed in the episode. Just bar none. It's just a funny voice. And I always love hearing it. And I laughed again now because I forgot about it.

Yeah, it's great. Database is always going to be funny to me. He has to warm up his vocal cords. Yeah, he does. It's his signature thing. But he doesn't really talk in any other part of the episode again, right? He's just there for that one second. Yeah.

And, you know, we mentioned the Simpsons doing things south park did in the past in this episode there are two things that we'll see in the movie in a few years including homer polluting into a pond and then later the riding of motorcycles inside of a steel dome or steel orb or whatever you want to call that cage i guess i never saw definitely writing first drafts of the movie when this episode aired too like mike scully said it in our interview i forget the exact number it was at least over 75 drafts it drafts drafts of the script jesus each one better than the last i never saw the movie was that 2006 the movie come out oh 07, right? 7. Summer of 07, yep. Well, we've talked about it on Zoe Podcast.

It's not so bad. Ours is coming soon. I'm sure it's fine. It's down the pike. Yeah. I guess what the database is asking for is a land acknowledgement. He's trying to figure that out, which those have been funny to see in a hypocritical context lately. A lot of professors who uh conduct those before class not so keen on the principle once we're talking about other things yeah stolen land can happen 200 years

ago but in the last 75 years not so much no it's the statute of limitations on that the native man jim proudfoot he explains all of the stuff they used to have we get to see a moose being pulled away by birds and then a gorilla playing with a hoop which this is some all right wannabe swartz welder here from willmore or who whoever wrote it he's the writer of the episode and also the description of the wind is so gentle it would tie your shoes for you that i chuckled at that it's not bad yeah bob you're right this is just homer putting the silo of pig crap in thing, except this time I feel like it's the writers. They have probably thrown out their fair share of treadmills angrily.

Instead, they just become places to put your laundry. I don't think they're dumping them in local Los Angeles ponds. I chuckled at I'm giving it back to the earth. That was fine. It's a decent line for him to justify it hastily. It's fine. Then on the commentary, they fully admit jokes about the Keep America Beautiful commercial starring Iron Eyes Cody, the crying Indian commercials in quotes, that those, even they admit they were doing something too trite here and that every comedy had done a joke about it 8,000 times, including the Simpsons themselves in like the trash of the titans episode for instance just a reminder again the iron eyes cody guy he was in the news more than because he had recently died which is when it became clear that he had no first nations ethnicity and ancestry and was a full-blooded Sicilian man.

That is a great episode. Well, actually, it's a kind of a weird episode of The Sopranos, but I like it more as time goes on. I originally didn't like it in which the Italians, you know, the Soprano crew were getting angry about the bad stuff that the local Native American population of New Jersey are saying about Christopher Columbus. But there is a great bit where Ralph Cifaretto goes and tries to make a backroom deal with the leader and says, we know that your guy was Sicilian. You know, he puts on a face like, I don't know what you're talking about. But as soon as Ralph leaves, he goes, fuck, how did they find out? It's pretty great. That's the episode where AJ's reading Howard Zinn, right? Correct. It is the AJ Howard Zinn classic screenshot. That episode is more of like a polemic and not of a, it's such, and also that Silvio

has to act out of character because the actor for Pauly Walnuts had a hurt back or something. Absolutely. Silvio would never care about this stuff. He would be like in the bang, like counting money or whatever. But yeah, Sirico had like a bad back or something. So it would have been a better episode if it was Pauly screaming this ignorant blatherather but it also has already getting hit in the back of the head with a milkshake which is also pretty funny it's been talking sopranos here yeah sorry sorry there's already a yeah there's already a show for that i love that podcast but yes they decide they're going to clean up the

place thanks to liberal guilt which this is more of like the writers you know light left punching i guess or just in general like oh nobody would want to clean up things unless they feel liberal guilt sure dave shutton reappears season two is dave shutton he was just in something we covered this season he's making a big comeback yeah he was an old yeller belly he took the photo yeah they're remembering they have a reporter who isn't kent brockman i also did laugh. It felt like a classic Simpsons joke of the journalist's headline going, activity participated in by some.

That joke scanned to me. I like that. It has the cadence of the John Lovitz said joke, play enjoyed by all speaks for itself. Yes. So they head out to clean up, but this is when they see that somebody got to it first. What are we going to do to that field? Clean it first. What are we going to do to that field?

Clean it! And what are we going to do it? Liberal guilt! Yay! I'm so proud of what you guys are doing, I even tipped off the local paper. Yeah, she sure did. And I've already got the perfect headline.

Activity participated in by some. Hey, that's great. Let's go, boys. Make sure you use pine saw on those pine trees for that pine fresh smell. Papa? Oh, for God's sakes, I can see why he left. Now all of you, get cleaning.

Ah! There he is! Hey, some jerk's cleaned our field! It's awful! It looks like Wisconsin! I hereby declare this area cleaned up by the cavalry kids! Whoops. Ooh. Uh uh it was already dead boy i got up on the wrong side of the futon today i just want to say it's not a bad line but i don't think marge would say that about nelson i don't think she would say i can see why he left that's too mean marge would never say that does kind of break her character but maybe even she was pushed to the limit we don't see she would say, I can see why he left. That's too mean. Marge would never say that. Does kind of break her character, but maybe even she was pushed to the limit.

We don't see how many trees Nelson was hugging today. That's true. That's true. It makes the mean joke funnier in its painfulness that it's Marge who can see why a father abandoned his son. That's true. Because he's just so annoying. She totally feels it's justified.

And then seeing the pronouncement that like, it's awful. It looks like Wisconsin. Is Wisconsin known as a particularly clean place or state? I don't know. It might've just been a jab someone had that they wanted to get in on Wisconsin. I don't know. I just spent a week in Milwaukee. It is the beigest city I've ever been to.

Not a lot of greenery. And it was like deep in springtime too. If I hadn't just watched the film A Serious Man where the F Troop theme song is a major plot point, I wouldn't have realized that introducing the cavalry kids with that bugle, it's more F Troop. That's how the F Troop intro begins. Really F Troop is a major plot point in that Coen Brothers film? Yes. The man's son, a lot of his life is planned around being able to watch F Troop in the afternoon. And his dad needs to fix the antenna so his son does not miss F Troop. Hmm. You want to see the movie, Bob, if that pulls you into it. I didn't see it until recently. It is. I so sad I didn't watch it until recently.

It's one of my favorite Coens now. It's amazing it took me a while to see it I don't know why it just like didn't look like one of their wasn't a classic Coen atmosphere so I thought it's probably some little experiment they're doing but it's actually one of the most like just quintessential Coen brothers stories the ending I mean gives me chills like maybe no other of their movies so definitely check out a serious man it's great i was sad to learn recently that i'm gonna be out of town in a month from when we're recording this when richard kind is coming to seattle to do a q a screening of a serious oh that's great sadly i'll miss it but be out in a minute definitely check it out i forgot about the f troop thing until you just said it, though. And Kirk killing all of these animals is another bit of Matt Groening seemingly not being there because he really does not like animal violence.

Maybe they get away with it because Kirk says it was dead before. It was already dead. Like, that's his cover for it. Hey, I slept on a glorified futon for about 10 years. This joke is not mean. This man deserves it. They are finally remembering that kirk divorce jokes are funny they let off on it for a few years in the scully years

maybe partially because they lost the voice actress for luanne who still doesn't talk in this episode and they decide this means war because the entire south side is covered by the girl scouts they then you know even have like basically a perfect screenshot of the two sides facing each other though ralph is eaten by a wolf this is just a few episodes earlier he was pulled away by jellyfish so acts are ending with ralph seemingly being eaten by an animal i believe the wolf later throws him through the Simpsons living room window, so he's fine. When they come back from commercial break, we see that the Cavalry kids are getting top headline news, while meanwhile the president's wife is below the line, which is not like a W joke. It's a long runner where they just have that the president will do a crazy thing and it's barely

talked about in the news. It's almost a Cheney joke, but that had not happened yet, I wouldn't think. That's true, man. I also like how this is framed to show the newspaper and there's nothing behind it. And then Apu has to unnaturally jump up out from behind the counter to say his line just to make the layout work.

This is when Apu explains that he likes the cavalry kids and he completely complains about the cultural appropriation it's funny that apu is saying it and that marge is like yep that's right like marge just agrees with the entire concept that's a funny guy she sees no value judgment in his assessment she just says no that's accurate and i mean you're getting a lot of f troop trivia trivia from us. Now it's time to talk about Billy Jack. Wow. Yes. Oh, but right before that, though, there is a deleted scene here.

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Well, well, well. If it isn't Sack of Jawanaby. People, people, please. Can't we all just get a long stick and help me get those fruit pies off the shelf? We'll help you, Apu. Oh, no, you won't. Hey, come on.

Hey, hey. you Walt hey come hey hey why did I ever institute such a stupid policy and then there's a sign that the policy he's talking about is you break it I buy it hmm you know again F Troop style humor very dated do we need a Rodney King quote year 2003? Al Jean on the commentary for the deleted scene, he defends it as saying it is a West Side Story reference, though I do not believe that. I think it is a Rodney King reference, yes. But he says, no, they say it in West Side Story, so that's what this is from.

Though also, can't we all just get a long stick and help me get this thing down? Like, I can see why they just go straight to the Al Jean music montage instead from this. Now, I have not seen any of the four Billy Jack films. I just knew apparently Al Jean chose this song because it's such a corny song about togetherness. And he thought it would be a fun choice. I have never heard this song outside of this episode, by the way. It's Tin Soldier.

What's it called again? One tin soldier one tin soldier oh by the original cast i think that's the second group who performed and not the people who originated the song yeah this is the version that appears in the film billy jack which is about a native american tough guy character and i've never watched a billy jack movie though they always are funny to read about i think previous talking simpsons guest nathan rabin wrote really interesting stories about its flop status because almost like the fast and furious movies the star of billy jack took them over and just turned them into like billy jack goes to washington and cleans up congress guys have stories well billy jack is the one, because the first one is called something else.

It's called like the Born Losers. Born Losers? Born Losers. And then the second one's called Billy Jack. And then all the subsequent sequels are Billy Jack goes to whatever, you know. Yeah, the trial of Billy Jack. Billy Jack goes to Washington, the return of Billy Jack. He's all over the place.

Yeah, they Jackified the franchise. It's the extended jack averse yeah that one tin soldier song i can see why aljean views it as like a corny anti-war song because it's just you know a very broad parable about the uselessness of war and it came out in 71 so you can see why people people his age would remember it is that, yes, it originally sung by the Canadian pop group, the original cast with an E, C-A-S-T-E, though this is Jinx Dawson and or The Coven. It's one of those two. It's like Jinx Dawson was the lead singer of The Coven,

but then they needed to re-record the song for it to be billed as the full Coven doing it. So this was like a chart-topping hit in 71, and then it got delisted by warner records and then they re-recorded it in 73 and it became a mild hit then again so i don't know if this is the 73 or 71 version of the one tin soldier cover we can only do so much here folks but the important thing is that al jean loves music montages and he has them in almost every episode. And they had an incredible budget for music licensing back then, too.

Yeah, this is where the motorcycle cage bit is and which is in the movie. It's how Homer gets the motorcycle and learns the trick that will save the day at the end of the movie. My biggest laugh in this whole sequence is Homer being revealed to be in the booze line for the unhoused people. That was a fun one. I mean, I did think it was funny how the tricks are getting more interesting and the old people are loving it. But then when they're in the sphere of motorcycles, they're having heart attacks because it's too intense. Homer often confused for an unhoused person.

We'll do what we can about the smell. That's true. Oh, yeah. Yes, their performances are so good at the old folks' home, they're killing unnamed seniors there. At least one dies on screen. Yeah. Is Abe in the audience?

I felt like he is. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he doesn't get a line until later when he's talking about his bowel movements. Yes. So after that scene that also ends with them destroying two perfectly good houses, we then get Drederick Tatum introducing the final competition, which is selling chocolate to get in a slight joke about Mike Tyson's sexual assault history, which was a bummer. It didn't make me laugh.

I was just like punching rope. It's all I was taught. I was tickled by the incredibly low stakes of this contest in which the winners get to be honorary Batboys, which the prize is you kind of doing free labor for a minor league team, by the way. Sure. You're selling what is equivalent of band candy, which I did sell band candy the one year I was in the band. And by sell, I mean, of course, my mom brought candy to her office and sold it to coworkers. The rich get richer, Henry. I think maybe one day, let's say I went to like three houses just to be able to say I did it.

But my mom handled it mostly. It was nice of her to do. Yeah, I mean, I've told this story before. We all had to sell candy, even though it was private school. And it was an early, a very informative lesson for me in that all the kids whose dads owned dealerships sold the most candy and they won all the prizes. The already rich kids yeah i didn't win any prize though i didn't swoop in to take first place from anybody it was just to sell like any but yeah but certainly the upper middle class kids could do better in the selling

candy department for selling like as the joke goes it's double the price of what you'll buy in you know a gas station to buy the same candy bar, essentially. So Ralph then flies through the window. And I completely forgot it was in this episode. And it happened so fast that you do have to freeze frame it to make it the meme of somebody rushing to get to something fast. I laughed at Ralph coming through the window. That's very funny with a note, like he's a brick. The way they seem to write Ralph now

is he always says the thing that he's being made to do or is doing. And then I didn't laugh as much. It's like, it's funnier if he just is thrown through the window like a brick and they take the note. That's funny. But him having to do the requisite,

I'm just like, this is too formulaic. It seems like that's what he always has to do it would be funnier if he was silent and didn't move after that and also no one reacted to it or wanted to yeah i mean that's what i found funny him having to do his catchphrase was less funny but what do you when i looked this up on know your meme they charted its earliest use in uh meme culture as in 2014 but that it really took off in 2019 was when it became a very mainstream meme of using ralph though these days i feel like i see much more of ralph i'm in danger i i think i see that one way more and that's a real one because isn't one of the main ralph memes basically a misnomer like he never says i'm helping right i think there's one where it's ralph and he's saying i'm helping but he never actually

says that in the show i'm almost positive i don't know this one what's he doing in that meme it's just a meme of like it's just a picture of ralph and he's saying i'm helping and people will send it when it's like someone's waiting into a debate and they're not making a good point or whatever okay and i remember for whatever reason like being like i don't remember him saying that and looking it up and i don't think it's actually a quote from the show i think it's like a subtitle at the bottom yeah yeah you're right brendan i'm looking this up now and it's just sort of like a stock drawing of ralph or maybe a screenshot but he's not saying anything he's not assisting anyone but i guess ralph around this time his

thing is just these declarative statements like i'm in danger i'm a brick yes i'm in danger he really says in the show but the meme-ified ralph i think there's lots of lines that have become like stock images that he never actually says in the show but he does say i'm a brick we talked about this a couple years ago but bob especially and i agree with him there's an axe to grind with that lisa presenting a slide meme one i'm sick of that one too which one is that it's the one where lisa is in front of an audience presenting something in front on a screen yeah she looks angry and it's often redrawn to look even worse okay though i do like seeing the ralph one of go banana when people wade into a debate with a bad third option the go banana gives me a chuckle too they can't all be

winners so they get a message from the cavalry kids listed as yours in christ and this is when the chocolate battle begins okay, back up the truck. Mr. Leonard, Mr. Carlson, would you like to buy some candy bars for charity? Sure. We're just going to buy the same candy inside the store, but for less. Oh, man, that went south quick. I've got to find a bathroom. Your candy is tainted. The Batboy Prize is forever beyond your reach. Candy for sale. Get your unpoisoned candy. It's lexity free for today's lifestyle.

Melts in your mouth, not in your pants. Greetings, fellow Springfielders. It gives me great pleasure to announce the group which has sold the most candy. Could everyone please lean forward expectedly? I included that because this was also a runner this season that I've been enjoying of characters saying stage directions out loud. Interesting. Oh, and I like that Bart is the one who backs up the truck of laxatives not homer homer says back it up bart and bart is driving the truck instead of instead

of homer drive nobody comments that bart is driving like heavy machinery we really don't know how the laxative is added to this pre-packaged solid candy it's a mystery yeah that's true how did that though it's very fast acting and sideshow mel is there to pronounce their guilt and how they're never with sideshow mel another voice that always makes me laugh really regardless of what he's saying and millhouse calling lenny and carl by their last name shows you their last names have been officially canonized at this point i missed them what are they millhouse calls them mr leonard and mr carlson so lenny leonard and carl carlson okay okay got it got it i also looked up this is one of those things where you're like oh it's always been m&ms melts in your mouth not in your hands however in the commercials you pull up both commercials to see how it said

they always say the milk chocolate melts in your mouth not in your hands so they never just say m&ms melts in your mouth not in your hands now that branding has lost its time anyway because for 30 years now we've had the snarky cg m&ms like they never say that stuff anymore it's just about them being you know kind of annoyed at each other. Well, I stopped watching them when they went woke, as Tucker Carlson told me, because one of them is a woman now or something. I don't remember why he was mad about that. But yeah, I'm done with M&Ms. I think the catchphrase went away when they realized eating M&Ms is a bag to mouth transaction.

There's no hand involved. Yeah. Who's like, who's like individually, you know, shuffling out an eminem to then have separate from the bag you're just you're just shooting them back in the 70s people had smaller portions of eminems and probably just have like three eminems that's all i need it's my square meal the cg eminems well the definitely the big change was that the green Eminem was less sexy. And also she'd have a more friendly relationship to one of the other female Eminems instead of them being in competition, apparently. That was another of the changes. The most recent Eminem commercials I've been seeing are just, they just do the office now.

It's just like the Eminems work in the office with other people and they're like, hey, resting dad face much? That's basically the lines they say. That I do oppose. So it's funny because they have been the mascots for like 20 years now, the CGI ones. First voice by John Lovitz and John Goodman, then Billy West and J.K. Simmons. I'm pretty sure Billy West and J.K. Simmons still do Red One. Oh, wow. Okay.

I just remember the yellow one and the red one. I didn't realize they had added more until the controversy of the green lady. David Cross plays the caramel. No way. Good for him. Okay. Well, I'll have to go back and catch up with all the Eminem commercials I missed. By the way, if anybody out there else has watched any of the new David Cross podcast,

which is a fine comedians interview each other podcast i like that but he looks like he has a gun pointed on and when he is doing his ad reads like he is not having a good time on his ad reads i mean does anyone love doing the ad read you know it's not the highlight of your day it sort of reminds me of in a way the norm mcdonald video podcast ad reads. He would just bomb everyone to the point where advertisers were pulling out. It was mainly just one. It was called The Man Great. That's right. Yeah. He wasn't even hesitant. He was openly making a mockery of the product and they somehow let him do it for about three episodes. He would make fun of the copy.

He would make fun of the uselessness of the product. He would question the utility of it. Yeah, it's a good masterclass in how to lose a sponsor. It was very good. They pan over the groups. We see that the junior dandies are really hoping to win this, but it's the cavalry kids win again because they sold laxative chocolate to seniors who want to start pooping regular.

And so you had to think about Abe pooping a lot for a joke here. And Milhouse replies, looks like this is one time the Indians didn't win. Yeah. I do enjoy the reveal that this entire time the back of their vests have said gracious in defeat. And we've just never seen them. Yeah. After that, we then see that Homer made the pronouncement before that. That was where it felt like this was reminding me of bush

era politics where homer says you know you were a good peacetime leader but now you need a man of war like that's how everybody was feeling after 9-11 i feel like or that was in the air yep if clinton had done x y or z we wouldn't have had 9-11 yeah listen to blowback season four about how we actually did bomb the shit out of afghanistan still didn't work no the 90s were a peacetime oh are you talking peace and prosperity lots of dunkaroos yep then we see that kirk is so excited he's gonna start going to take bartending course including today's lighter drinks which this is i like that joke though it does come a week after in break my wife please mo does a joke saying he's going back to barber college so

adult men going back to school it's two jokes in a row on the show then we see a joke about how expensive los angeles parking is though i suppose parking's expensive everywhere these days especially go to a baseball game you're're paying $50 to park somewhere. I mean, I don't have a car to park. If I'm going to go to a baseball game and public transit is not an option, then a lift is the cost of your parking space anyway. And then you don't have to worry about parking a car if you're just going to take a ride. Or being sober. Yes, that too.

And you're definitely going to get drunk. Are you going to enjoy a sports game without drinking? Like Omer said, you don't realize how boring this game really is without beer but they get distracted because homer set up a fake sign for kirk to drive away head to the vip free parking they don't explain and it's not a deleted scene either kirk is driving a luxury car here it's not explained why like this is a fancy like it looks like a lincoln town car or something it is not his typical car maybe he celebrated after they won the prize he sold the futon yeah yeah yeah it really doesn't make sense how we would own that but yeah i guess we go to the baseball field and quimby is second guessing

the idea that baseball is america's favorite pastime that's a great joke yeah i did look into what major league baseball's viewership currently is apparently in the last year it has gotten some increased viewership thanks to some changes to speed up the game and make it more friendly for younger viewers though it's still i can't touch the nfl but even though its viewership is below the nba apparently it makes more from foreign right fees and advertising so the major league baseball is worth a bit i mean i don't know do people bet on baseball still like if the the massive influx of sports gambling you know legal sports gambling might just have guys being like fuck it i'll watch baseball just give me another game you know yeah i mean it feels like every team plays 800 games a season.

They're just more gambling opportunities with baseball. Yeah, that's a sign of a healthy society when you have to create the only way someone makes a financially stable life is to gamble constantly. Every famous musician is selling their music rights. Every sport is selling gambling. Yeah. Those gambling app ads, they do tell me there are safeguards built in so I won't get too into it call this hotline at the bottom which means that this is definitely a good thing to be doing in the first place if we have to put a hotline in case you fucking ruin

your life at the bottom of the commercial we talked about that in lisa the greek how crazy it is that they barely even talk about sports gambling in the episode and is treated as so like illegal and secretive. Yeah. And that now everything advertises it everywhere. Yep. Yeah. It's not good. So Bart and his friends decide they've got one final prank to play here.

Dad, we're going to be late for the game. Do you have five bucks for regular parking? Because I don't. Welcome, fans of America's favorite pastime, baseball. Here to perform the national anthem are today's honorary Batboys,

the Cavalry Kids, led by Milhouse Van Houten. After this prank, everyone's going to hate those Cavalry clods as much as we do. Oh, say can you see, back in Ro-double-Z, that the team sucks out loud, and you fans are all plowed. This is an outrage. The Cavalry kids must hate America.

Hey, show some respect. My dad died in some war. You call this a large beer? That's funny. Yeah. It's a hoax. I'm the real Milhouse. Time to knock off this knockoff.

Despite how much we've been trashing this episode That is a Lenny all-timer And I've carried that line with me Since I watched this episode 20 years ago Or 21 It's the perfect character to say it And it's a really funny line It's great that he's insulted on behalf of veterans But he can't

His father died in some war He doesn't know what and it doesn't matter what it was it kind of sums it up it really does kind of sum our whole thing up we avoided doing the rodney king joke with the cut scene but it does feel like they are referencing the 1990 singing of the national anthem by roseanne barr her putting her own spin on it and you know everyone the smart people in the room would ask well what did you expect why did you ask rosanne to sing the noted singer rosanne barr yeah aljean mentions on the commentary he does think the national anthem is crummy like as far as national anthems go if you're rating songs

his point is it's like it's about a boring flag who cares too many mentions of ramparts let's get those references out of there see my wife is canadian and she actually likes the american national anthem more meanwhile i love the canadian national anthem it's easy to sing yeah it's stirring it's just that the key change is better i'm all i'm into it ever since i heard it for the first time on south park i was like well they they figured it out they cracked the code now there there's a new Paul Schrader movie titled after it. You know, the O Canada universe is only growing. I guess it's a grass is always greener.

Well, hey, I'm not somebody who's like, oh, yeah, God Save the Queen is so great. Like, no, I don't give a shit about that. I'd say I prefer our American anthem to the UK one. But O Canada is pretty nice. I did some minor research on this because they do sing it. It was only the national anthem as of 1980. I don't know what it was before it. Was it God Save the Queen? It must have been.

Are we right? Yeah. In 1980, that's when it was formally recognized as the country's theme song. I mean, maybe it was unofficial for many, many years, and then they just put some kind of, I don't know. Maybe that's why we like it because it just feels fresher. Maybe. It's a fresh sound i've been to sporting events in ohio where instead of playing the national anthem they

would play i'm proud to be an american and that song is from the 80s right i believe so so hey i love that song in a baseball game it's extremely jingoistic i know well it's a national anthem i mean like at that point you know every national anthem is probably it's already dancing to that tune, you know, if we're the best. Being a David Cross in 2003, he had one of my favorite jokes about proud to be an American because he would say all the guys singing this at the baseball games go like, and I'll proudly stand up. Oh, well, no, no. Well, the kid next door, he'll do it. Like the poor kid over there. Yeah. I'd rather they play the Hulk Hogan theme song way better than the Lee Greenwood song. Yes.

Yes, I agree. Real American is better, too. Or the America the Beautiful. I think that's a better song, too. That's a good song. Yeah. So if we're going to be celebrating Americaica which obviously should be a crime in my eyes but if we're gonna do it let's have a better song though this song that i do think they even

joking about the national anthem back then probably seemed a bit edgier than than it might seem to us now what their song parody does not make fun of the national anthem it It's about the team being crappy. I mean, I'm thinking of the naked gun scene, which is the best botched national anthem singing scene beautifully done by Leslie Nielsen. There's a pretty good 30 rock joke where I think Tracy has to sing it and it's funny there. But yeah, I mean, for younger listeners of the show, I agree with you, Henry. I think just about anything that wasn't, especially in 2001 and 2, that wasn't just, you know, trumpeting the victimhood and righteous fury that should follow victimhood was going to cause some controversy. And for the Simpsons at that point, being the, you know, the institution that it was, you know, I don't think a whole lot about this episode, but I mean, good for them for just doing some kind of out of the box, sappy thing about how this is all, you know, at the end of the day, we should all come together. We all love America together. Yeah.

That's not the moral of the story. Just because we started it with the South Park thing. I remember South Park's episode was mixed in its ballsiness because they go to Afghanistan. The Afghan kids say, you bombed everything in our country. Some bold stuff. But at the end, it's kind of how America's the team to be on and blah, blah, blah. They kind of shrunk in the moment that they could be very punk rock. They kind of stepped back from that and said, well, we're still Americans. So everything that's about to happen is we have to do it or whatever so the simpsons didn't really pick a side either way that episode is interesting because yeah they talked to these afghani children their counterparts and everything they say like the south park kids are going like i

guess that is true yeah no we did do that that is is very Trey Parker, I think, especially who goes like, I have to agree with these true facts, but part of me still loves my country and has to support them in spite of these facts. Yeah. And that ideology really rolled over in the Team America World Police, which is an infuriating movie

when it should be silly. It's such a vile project. I'm going to disagree with you, Bob. I am entertained by that film. I think I completely set aside whatever message there may be saying. I mean, I haven't seen it in like 20 years, but like there's stuff in that movie that I think is very funny. And I just don't care that they had personally, you know, like noxious attitudes toward the war. I did think it was

over the top and silly that it kind of undermined anyone taking it seriously as a call to patriotism, but it's a matter of taste, I suppose. I love puppets. And if it was just puppets and puppets puking and fucking, I would have been way more into it. But I just remember my one viewing of it just fuming as everyone around me was laughing. It was sort of the old Addams Family comic, but in reverse. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it might be a better time now that its content is not relevant, or at least, you know, of the moment. Or I might watch it again and not think it was as funny. But I think The Simpsons, in any case, it's not going too far in either direction, you know. But certainly, it was probably a little dicey to make fun of some of the pro-war sentiment in the country.

So a big fight breaks out. I do like they briefly tease like, I'm the real Milhouse. Like, it's going to be like, who's the real Milhouse? The crowd is into it. They're all gasping in unison. There's also a good joke about how poor people don't have health insurance. It's still sad. When he says, I'm on federal assistance, though, this is, you know, a pre-Obamacare joke here.

Then Luanne is silent, but the writers remember pyro pyro the american gladiator boyfriend of hers runs to support kirk as lay off my girlfriend's ex-husband that line a happy to see pyro the line itself i thought was funny though this breaks some previous canon in season 13's i am furious yellow millhouse tells kirk did you hear mom is getting remarried i guess the wedding didn't go through uh okay but it could still be him who was maybe she was gonna marry somebody else that didn't marry him and got back with Pyro. On the commentary, Mike Anderson is there to say that he loves, as an animator, reading when the scripts say, everyone in town riots or everyone riots. And Al Jean says, well, we don't mean everybody when we write that.

Mike Anderson says like, oh, well, it would take a whole extra sentence to say that in the script. So I see why you don't do that. They nail like interesting pairings of characters where it's like Moe versus Dredrick Tatum. The sea captain I think versus Sideshow Mel when the brawl starts happening. We see Barney fighting Pyro and Mr. Largo fighting Disco Stu. Even Lenny and Carl get into a fight and talking about how the best is yet to come by Frank Sinatra that Carl covers is a predictable choice for a wedding. Lenny's wife rarely mentioned when Carl says, I sang at your wedding. I don't think Lenny's wife has an official name or they're still together.

But this all culminates in Mo being horribly beaten in a one-sided fight, which I do like him sound like he was fighting. Then we get a happy ending as Marge's tears cut through the chaos she says all i wanted was to glue feathers on feld and teach boys good citizenship when she said the feathers on felt line that's where it hit me that ralph the whole episode has his feather upside down it's a cute little character design choice it's true the whole scene is i have to say again it's pretty naked gun because in the naked gun, he sees the national anthem wrong. And then he gets into a fight with the Ricardo Montalban character. And then he gets on the Jumbotron and everyone else has at that point dissolved

into fighting because I think the baseball players start fighting. And then they all make peace when they see him and Priscilla Presley embrace on the Jumbotron. It's pretty similar. Wow, that's right. I forgot that part of the... Is that when Reggie Jackson takes that opportunity to kill the Queen? Okay, I thought so. Correct. He has been programmed by Ricardo Maltaban.

And then when he tries to do that, then the other team fights, and then everyone starts fighting. There's an Israeli and a Palestinian fighting. There's mailmen and dogs, et cetera, et cetera. So it reminded me of that scene. Did you rewatch it recently after one of the co-stars passed away, Brendan? I was about to say, what are you talking about? Not thinking about that co-star.

Yeah. No, I did not recently rewatch it. The great thing about that movie is that it's quite fun to watch O.J. in it because all that happens to him is he keeps getting mercilessly injured. It doesn't really age poorly. So Marge's tears cut through the crowd. This was the last time in my notes I wrote down, oh, Matt Groening clearly wasn't there again because Matt Groening wants one single tear. He says it on every commentary he's on where he sees a character crying. He always says it. And Marge has a lot of tears streaming down, not in a

natural degree. I think it looks fine, but it is a Matt Groening no-no. But the tears cut through the crowd, and this leads to a happy ending. Bossy, dry your tears. Then show us your boobs. Ow! Ow! God, help me!

Dear God, why are we fighting? I ain't doing any fighting. Let us end this mindless violence and join our hands in song. Aye, not a hymn to war like our national anthem, but a sweet soothing hymn like the national anthem of Canada. Oh, Canada, our home and native land True patriot love In all thy sons command With glowing hearts we see thee rise The true North strong and free

O Canada, we stand our guard for thee. Well Bart, we've learned that war is not the answer. Except to all of America's problems. Amen. And that was the club mix of the Canada theme song. You know, South Park, they wasted our time by doing the whole thing twice and i appreciate that i like the design of the maple leaf of everybody standing there i like the marge is holding up the quebec flag as well as the canadian flag too that's pretty cool that's

her trying to balance it out but this was also one of the few interesting behind the scenes stories aljean tells on the commentaries about this final line yeah it was like we said up front it was a big fight to get this on the air and they didn't see it as that controversial of a line they saw it as like well where the simpsons were subversive here's a subversive joke and fox was like absolutely not so a lot of back and forth over an okay joke but you know i'm in the end i'm glad they got to make it yeah but it's just a sign of the times you know that they even had to fight to do that. Yeah, I mean, this is two months after the March start point of the operations, the illegal war crime known as the invasion of Iraq. And I can see why especially Fox censors would take issue with it of like, hey, you're saying a war is bad or America goes to war too much?

You can't say that. And it should also be noted that in Simpsons history, for years since its beginning, the censor group in Fox is the only way the network can give notes. The original deal, as we've said it many times, is that James L. Brooks got a no-notes deal from Fox, so they can't get content notes from an executive who says you should do this instead of that. But the censors can do that by exercising a censor note. I think that too is why a censor note came in for this line. I'd be curious to see what the argument was, like on what grounds,

because it's not obscene. It's not, you know, in any way traditionally thought of as something to be censored, of course, except the political message such as it is. That's a bold claim for a censor department or individual to make. They're hurting the war effort. Yeah. I mean, the Simpsons, you know, they'd come a long way from H.W. Bush knocking them, you know, now they were a national icon. Though I also feel like if you were a hawk then, then Bart's saying, except to all of America's problems, like you could view that as a pro-war statement that Bart is saying, yeah, war solves feel like if you were a hawk then then bart's saying except to all of america's problems like you could view that as a pro-war statement that bart bart is saying yeah war solves problems it's

back to the south park thing it's like you could kind of interpret it whatever way you want because none of us have any power over this anyway we're just pretending we do so if we're going to go to war you know just drink that down whatever flavor you like and i bet that's probably why it got through at the end of the day. It's like, well, some people might think it is good that we're going to war, and they're agreeing with part, you know. Well, it is like how America, fuck yeah, turned into a people love it. And it's like, yes, this sentiment only means America, fuck yeah.

Yep. Or people saying Murica to make fun of patriots that just got adopted by patriots. Yep. The truest of patriots who are gallant. One of the many reasons why, despite the bizarre obsession with saying this, that comedy and art does not actually drive the engine of history or stop terrible things from happening at the end of the day. That's not really how it works. Wasn't it that Kurt Vonnegut quote about all the comedy resistance to the Vietnam War resulted

to basically like dropping a pie from the top of a ladder. It was about the Vietnam War. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon, he's talking about comedy or satire, turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high. It's not to say you shouldn't make stuff, but it's the SNLary clinton playing hallelujah or whatever you need to stop before you start doing that there is one last deleted scene though to play that happens during the singing of oh canada oh this reminds me of my boyhood in ottawa ottawa i'm from quebec

oh geez i was just about to say henry before when you were saying how they have the quebec Ottawa? I'm from Quebec. Ow! Ow! Aw, jeez. I was just about to say, Henry, before, when you were saying how they have the Quebec flag, I was like, well, that's funny because that could open up a whole new conflict just by even doing the Canada thing. So that's actually a pretty good joke. And more Mo facts. Yeah. And Drederick Tatum. We could have learned this for both of these guys. I mean, I wish they'd have used more of it, too,

because Mo being horribly beaten by drederick tatum in a mismatch were my favorite cutaways in this just them going like oh man how this happened yes he doesn't know how that matchup was created just a couple months ago i remember it was one of the latest like you know sort of horrible turns of israel's war on gaza and i went out for a drink started chatting chatting with this stranger. He was Canadian and he was fine, but he started going on about, I don't remember which side he was on, the French or the Anglo side. He was starting to get real, like worked up about it. And I just was thinking like, if you had told me I would walk out tonight and hear a big rant about xenophobia

and ethnic cleansing, I would not have thought it was Canada that would have been the country they would be talking about, but he was as stirred up as anything so that joke probably should have made it into the episode i first learned about the french versus british canadian thing from the aljean co-written co-created show the credit yeah viva j sherman viva quebec right man that was a great joke that that was going to be the political stance he would take when accepting an award yeah such a but my final thoughts on this one is that especially based on how much we've talked about it having south market the start of this episode was unintentionally i think showing the long shadow it was casting on trying to do an even slightly political episode

that like builds around F Troop, cowboys versus Indians, quote unquote. Tough to tell jokes about America, but thanks to the production of The Simpsons taking close to a year in some cases, that they can't be as sharp as South Park is. I do think that opening joke shows there's more jealousy out of that but there are still good

lines in this weird f troop episode yeah yeah brief closing thoughts i feel like this is just a listless end of season episode and it was a mistake for them to try to be political in this way because it just feels a little half-hearted although you know lenny's line show some respect my dad died in some war it's an all-timer and I love it. And maybe I was too hard on Team America. I think history will decide. Brendan, how about you? You know, give Team America another shot. I could be wrong. It's all a matter of taste. But yeah, I don't have anything profound to say about it. I will say it felt like it was five minutes long. I remember watching and I just felt like, okay, this is the first act, right? Like they're doing this little, you know, thing about the two boys teams fighting, but it never felt like it came to a climax that really like built

into something huge. And when it was over, I was surprised. There were some great lines in it. I guess that's kind of, you know, the name of the game now is some flashes of, you know, what the Simpsons can still give you, but it wasn't a slog. It was almost like I didn't even realize the episode had happened by the time it was over. So maybe I agree with Bob about the kind of, it was an end of season sort of one they just banged out and said, let's move on. I will be thinking about that Lenny quote. Good to see Database as always. Well, thank you once again, Brendan James, for being on the show. Please let us know where we can find you online and more about Blowback. This goes live in late June, so I feel like a new season is around the corner.

I'm not on it that much, but you can find me on Twitter at deep underscore beige. You should also follow at Blowback Pod, which is the account for my show with my co-host Noah Colwin. We're a history show. We've done seasons about the Iraq War, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the long saga of American meddling in Afghanistan. And season five, which will be out late this summer, we haven't quite put a release date out yet, is about Cambodia. And I think this is one that a lot of people have been waiting for,

because if you're doing a season about Cambodia, of course, it means it's also a season about the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, etc. And so it's been a challenge, but an exciting thing to weave all those different iconic and horrible things together for this saga that, you know, goes from a US war to the Khmer Rouge, and then to a war between two communist countries that I don't think a lot of people know about that comes directly out of all that. So it should be a good one. And if people want to sign up, they can just go to blowback.show. If they want to wait a little bit longer, it'll be out later in the year.

You know, non-paywall people who are dead to me, of course, they should be signing up. But if you want to subscribe, blowback.show. You know, just like with The Simpsons, we'll never run out of Simpsons episodes to talk about, and you will never run out of American-funded war crimes. Unfortunately, no. I'm thinking of a big U-turn for the show where it just becomes about recapping The Simpsons episode by episode, you know, for the indefinite future.

And I think people will respond to that well. But no, I mean, and it's always great to come on here. You guys always try to pick an episode that connects to my stuff, which I always appreciate too. So it's great synergy. No, we love having you on.

Thanks again, Brendan. Thanks, Brendan. Yeah, bye. Thanks again to Brendan James for being on the show please check out blowback we love it a new season is just around the corner ask for us if you want to support our show and get over 150 full-length bonus episodes head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up for just five bucks a month when you sign up once again you'll get access to over 150 bonus episodes from the past seven years of our patreon those episodes cover things like futurama king of the hill the critic

batman the animated series and mission hill and that five bucks a month also gets you regular monthly access to new episodes of talking futurama and talking of the hill again that's happening at the five dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you can access all of the five dollar stuff naturally but you also get one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level and what is that henry bob's talking about our premium podcast what a cartoon movie where we talk about an animated feature film as in depth as we do an episode of the simpsons for that 10 bucks a month you get to hear a sometimes six hour long podcast about a classic film last month in may you would have heard us talk about bender's big score the futurama movie we go super in depth into that if

you want to hear us talk about how dvds saved futur. And this month is the beginning of our summer of Disney Renaissance, where we again are covering classic 90s Disney films, starting with Mulan, and we go into a ton of history there too. Plus, we're getting close to six years now of what a cartoon movies that we have been doing. We mentioned several of our favorites on this one, like the Animatrix that came out around when this episode aired, or if you liked all this South Park talk i know you're gonna love our one for south

park bigger longer and uncut or even our longest podcast ever six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit check it out all for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter and blue sky as bob servo and my other podcast is retro knots that's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro knots and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and henry what about you i'm h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g on both twitter and Blue Sky. Also, I'm TalkingHenry on Instagram. Follow me there to keep up with all of my thoughts.

As well, if you're following me and Bob on social media, you should be following on whatever social media, at TalkSimpsonsPod. At TalkSimpsonsPod is the official account for this podcast. Anytime new stuff goes live on the Patreon, if we're doing a live show, if we're going anywhere else, you will learn about it first if you are following at TalkSimpsonsPod. And of course, if you want an easy to explore list of all of our previously released free podcasts, just head on over to TalkingSimpsons.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast,

Talk to the Audience, and we'll see you then. The fly's stuck in Flanders' house. I'll go contact the nearest adult. There's no time. We're going in. My eyeglass repair kit! Let it go.