Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Blunder Years With Eric Peacock

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

This week we head into one of season 13's weirdest and most offensive (to continuity nerds) with Eric Peacock of the great movie/music podcast Soundtracker! Eric chats soundtracks to films like Stand By Me which is parodied in this ep, as well we talk about finding corpses, screaming at work, annoying hypnotists, and so much more. Listen now while logging onto your internet! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

How much do you guys know about the things flying around in the sky under the ocean? I didn't know anything about it. I found a thing on National Geographic called UFOs Exploring the Unknown, a five-part series, and I was hooked. I started paying attention to the hearings, the fact that the Senate Majority Leader is asking for a UFO disclosure and none of the mainstream media is covering it. Well, Monday through Friday on my show, I try to cover all the stuff going on in the world of the UFO, UAP phenomenon. Check it out. Be educated. I ain't asking you to believe in all of this other stuff about what people are theorizing.

I'm just telling you to ask questions. So come on over, ask some questions, be part of Down to Earth with Christian Harloff. This podcast is brought to you by Patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more i heartily endorse this event or product ahoy everybody and welcome to talking simpsons the podcast that provides a comforting snugness i'm your host the podcast spokes jack bob mackie and this is our chronological exploration of the simpsons who is here with me today as always the always redorculated henry gilbert and who do we have on the line i'm eric peacock you know me on twitter as ube bollocks if you follow me on there and this week's episode is the blunder years

this week's episode originally aired on december 9th 2001 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby oceans 11 is first at the box office surviving nirvana members chris novoselic and dave grohl sue courtney love and creeds weathereded topped the album charts. That's the one with My Sacrifice. Oh. That's the number one album. Perfect for post-9-11. Yeah, we're two months out from it.

Such a dire time for music. It was such a dire time for music. Yeah, you didn't buy that Weathered album yourself, Eric, or did you? Okay, I will make a small admission. And so around where I'm from, we had one like cool radio station and it was 89X, which is, it's a country station now, which is what all of these stations

have seemed to have done. But you know, they played a lot of that new metal stuff. And so like 19 or whatever at the time. Yeah, I was really, really into some of that stuff and like that my own prison album like i remember thinking this is pretty cool but by the time weathered came out it was like uh and uh yeah i remember being sad at the time of the uh hearing of the nirvana members were suing courtney love and just all this like ugliness going on what do you know if the lawsuit was over uh it was

about a greatest hits collection or there was there was one like lost song of or like a never released uh nirvana song and they were looking to re-release it i forget which side didn't want to release it or uh it was certainly that they disagreed with Courtney Love and the estate of Kurt Cobain on what to do with this unreleased song and how to release it, which I think then got leaked to radio stations by one side or the other. And eventually it got settled in September and the collection with the unreleased track was officially put out for sale. Well, you know, she's got a good head on her shoulders. The 2000s, that's her century. Her in 2001, Courtney Love was only making good decisions.

Yeah, absolutely. It'd be funny to see how many lawsuits she's been involved in at this point. It's got to be at least double digits. She turned down being on The Simpsons anyway, but when she was offered to be on when they planned on her being in homer palooza unnamed other artists who were in that episode

who said they wouldn't do it if courtney love was in it which uh you know that could have been the smashing pumpkins that said it it could have been uh it could have been anybody you know but we're not i think it was cypress hill it was cy Hill. They have a big beef with Courtney Love. And I've never seen any of the Oceans movies. I'm sorry. It's too Rat Pack adjacent. I can't support that. But it's a Rat Pack for the next generation, Bob.

The generation before you, but the next generation. Yeah. I liked the movies, okay? I liked them all, right? I'm sure they're fine. Yeah, I didn't know if this was a safe place to say it. I already admitted to liking the first two creed songs i heard so i didn't know if it was okay to be like i actually kind of like the oceans movies but i don't want to like embarrass myself no i think we'll even get to the episode most people do but i'm just a weirdo well it's something about these days just

seeing movie stars in the movie is like you're seeing movie stars and they like acting stuff and there's not not a bunch of special effects it's just like a bunch of movie stars in the movie is like you're seeing movie stars and they like acting stuff and there's not not a bunch of special effects it's just like a bunch of movie stars acting i i will say the last time i watched oceans 11 which gave me the the highest opinion of it was when i was in las vegas like it was almost like they did it they put it on tv to uh like as a commercial for where you're like hey you're in las vegas here's them just walking down the strip like don't you don't you want to look at the fountains of the bellagio just like they do at the end of this is you but you're in flip-flops you know i replaced the the food that brad pitt is continually eating with a with a an all-you-can-eat buffet at Caesars. That's what I did. But yes, that's what was happening in the late 2001. And of course, I mean, look,

I could bring people down with updates of what was happening in Afghanistan every week or new stuff with laws, like the Patriot Act updates. Plenty of corpshoots to go around. Yes, yeah. These are the happier memories of late 2001. But yes, joining us today, our special guest is eric peacock of the sound tracker podcast welcome to the show eric thank you so much for having me on i really appreciate this and uh you know obviously

we'll get to it more when we talk about the episode but it it made me realize a few things about my personal history with the simpsons which i I know you're, you know, we're getting to that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is one that I didn't realize how familiar with that I was actually until going to revisit it. And then it made me realize like my timeline with when I kind of started to get out of the Simpsons is like way, way off when it stopped becoming a regular thing for me to watch every week. Like I had to watch simpsons it lasted way longer than i realized i realized watching this episode so yeah yeah you know this actually for me is one of the ones i first missed recording i had been recording this is the final tale of the tape every you know i think i picked it back up a little bit but this was kind of when the streak was broken and i was feeling less into the show as it went on i think i think

this was an episode that was maybe too harsh on back in 2001 as i say about a lot of them back then but uh yeah i i did watch this when it was new and i didn't like it for the candidate at the show but then i realized oh it ignores that forever and outside of that one addition to the history of the show which has been ignored as i I said, it's very, very funny. I think this is a very funny episode. And Mo is so funny in this episode. Mo is always good. But it's funny you say that because I definitely had notes on like just how much.

Yeah, Mo steals the show whenever he's in this episode. Well, Eric, you have similar age and background to us. I think even like bob you're you're from ohio and and grew up there i uh so i'm curious like well is your simpsons history the the typical one of growing up with it yeah so okay if i had to pick like obviously you know simpsons started when i was what year did simpsons start again it was uh christmas 89 89 okay so i was nine years old and around that time you know it's when I'm like forming my sort of like the sense of humor that I carry today.

And I think the biggest like my biggest inspiration, like the sense of humor that I have now is going to be like the Zucker Abrams Zucker movies, like especially Naked Gun. But I would put The Simpsons right below that in regards to like shaping the sense of humor that I have as a 41-year-old man. And Henry, you and I spoke about this. You know, my favorite episode of The Simpsons of all time is Homer Badman. And my girlfriend is a few years younger than I am. And you said your partner is as well. And my girlfriend's, you know, for her, her like prime era of Simpsons, for me, it would be like three through nine.

And it would be like where they nine, you could kind of start to see the cracks. I think that's where you could kind of start to see the cracks in like they're just tremendous run that they had for, you know, that number of seasons. And, you know, for her, when I asked her about that episode, she was like, I don't know that one. And she left the Simpsons. But her era i i wonder if this is the case for you know it's like people who grew up with the the star wars prequels they think the prequels are like that's that's star wars to them and you know i wonder if that's there's like an age thing here with you know somebody who was maybe younger thinks that their

prime era is seasons 8 through 15 or something like that but for me it's seasons 3 through 9 and as i said earlier watching this episode i realized that i i was still regularly watching the simpsons because i had forgotten me and i'm going to probably at some point during this episode i'm just letting you know 50 50 chance that i end up accidentally calling this episode the blurst of times for some reason i cannot shake that i don't know why I cannot get that out of my head. Watching The Blunder Years, you know, the Burley Man subplot is like the thing I remember the most from this episode because I love that little subplot. I love like anything that shows what a genuine weirdo Marge can be and like a lonely sort of like bored housewife that has sort of led to her being

just as weird as the rest of the family that you don't get to see very often. And as soon as I saw this, I was like, yeah, I was still like regularly watching the show at this point. So I think that for me, you know, I trailed off probably about season 14 or 15. But yeah, you know, probably the same as you where it was my my big years were seasons like three through nine. But I still think there's some very funny stuff going forward in more than I thought. You know, I was kind of like after season nine, it got, but there's some very funny episodes in those seasons, like the four or five seasons following season nine

that I did not remember there being. You know, obviously I think The Simpsons is a funny show. I don't, I think people are too hard on later seasons. I've caught episodes that I'm like, it still makes me laugh. You know, it's still funny. It's just any show that's been on for this long. It's not going to maintain the consistency that it once had. And I like at 41, maybe I'm old enough to accept that. You know, we're not as funny as we were 20 years ago, either. It's true. Yeah.

Go back to my old work. No, no, no. But yeah, I know that feeling well i think too there was this i i heard this about snl that some people had this belief that like oh what is your favorite seasons of saturday night live it's probably when you were in high school like that was but i do still feel with simpsons that even with younger people i've met like they're not as negative as we are of the like post 10 seasons or we were i think me and bob have reevaluated those feelings a bit but but i do think that mostly to people they can at least like oh these are the class the classic seasons are still classic to them or maybe a younger person is told these are the classic seasons and so they watch those because that's how they discover them perhaps but yeah

but uh you know eric yeah you mentioned i i want to bring up your your great podcast soundtracker i uh loved doing the mall rats one and talking about like a a teen years of being kevin smith maniac uh that i was and and reflecting on that that was a whole lot of fun it was and you know it's so funny i was i was just thinking about this the other day so just for a little background on that, Henry and I had to do that in two parts because when we went into it, I had an appointment. Somebody was coming to fix this cable or this electric line outside of my house. And I was like genuinely afraid somebody was going to die on. I had this like cut line that I was like, someone's got to fix this.

And I'm not I don't know anything about electricity. And, you know, I had said enough time. I'm like, no, we were going to talk about Kevin Smith and mall rats for that long and all of a sudden it was like it ended up being a three hour long episode but it's one of my favorites we I had such a good time doing that episode and like you know yeah like you said talking about Kevin Smith fandom and like as it organically became this yeah like one of my longer episodes that I I I love that one and I again appreciate you coming on and i i realized something here i have been thinking about tying in this day in history and

i didn't think about the fact that i subconsciously nicked that from your show i was coming we're hardly the first to do it so don't worry i know i know but i was like as soon as as soon as we were doing it or as soon as i was uh i was you know i was listening to a few leading up to this, too, and I was like, I had that idea like last week. And I was like, shit, I completely nicked this from them. This is something that I. We're stealing from other people, too. So it's all just a big cycle. I love on Soundtracker, something I really enjoy about it is like it's not just about talking you know, talking about a movie from, you know, that you enjoy or remember.

Like it's analyzing the album like it was using it was using muscles I don't normally use of like, wait, music history or like, oh, yeah, I have to review a song. Like I don't I don't think about songs in that way often in our normal animation podcast chat, which that was a lot of fun too. Well, and that's one of the things about that show too, is that when I first started it, like I genuinely will admit, like in the Boys in the Hood episode with Brian that I did, I had no idea, no idea what I was doing going into it. It was just like, I've been putting this off for so long. I'm getting a microphone and I'm going to make this happen. And, you know, Brian Quinby and I, who you've had on here before, have hung out in real life. You know, so it was like it was it made sense for him as a guest because I didn't feel like as pressured, I guess, because, you know, I knew him.

And I'm like, if this is a disaster, like at least at least I know who he is. I initially it was like, OK, I guess I'm just going to talk about the songs. And it actually worked the opposite way for me, where it became just as much of a movie discussion as it did the songs like very organically in that first episode and you know you said you don't think about music in that way and i do but i i think another thing that helps at least is that i'm not somebody whoever yeah i don't i didn't train in music i have no idea what i'm talking about so it's all like gut feeling sort of stuff you know i'm not like oh, he did the reverb with the, I have no idea what I'm talking about. Who are your guys?

Who are your guys? Now, speaking of Kevin Smith, 2001 was the year of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. And I was thinking, could I have purchased the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back DVD for Christmas that year? The answer, of course, is no. You couldn't chase away your 9-11 blues until February of 2002. Yeah. Boy, that was a double DVD set. There was like a second movie's worth of deleted scenes.

Oh, that's probably what took it. I was just about to ask if that's the one you have, the real thick case. Yes. I have that one, too. Well, head. Yeah. I shed all of my DVDs when I stopped being a Kevin Smith fan. I still have Clerks, though.

I still have Clerks on DVD. That's so funny. Yeah i uh that was a great uh mall rats was a fun one to talk about i am i'm especially interested in like 90s soundtrack movie soundtracks myself because whether it be like a batman forever space jam or mall rats like it did introduce me to a lot of you know musicians i didn't first hear on the radio. You know, like a lot of bands, as was the marketing purpose of the record company as well. Yeah. Yeah. Like cynically, you know, you can look at the soundtrack era as it was a way for.

And obviously, I don't kid myself with the show. But like cynically, you can look at it as this was like, yeah, record companies or even people involved with the movie realizing they could squeeze a little bit more money out of these things but you know henry you you point out something that i hear this a lot on the show and i like hearing it because it was kind of my whole reason for doing it is it was a place for people to discover bands that they probably had never heard before or in a lot of cases have never heard since you know there's a lot of songs like that, where it's like, they had one song on a soundtrack, and then, you know, that was that was their big moment. But for people who didn't grow up with them, I feel like that's something that you don't want to sound like an old man, like, look what

they took away from us. That's kind of how it is. You know, the era of not putting out physical soundtracks is is something that i think a lot of younger people are missing out on that sort of opportunity to discover bands that way yeah well hey now they're discovering it on uh tick tock i don't know how young people discover that's not how it works i don't know that's where you groom young women okay i'm so i've heard i you know tick tock recently taught me a quick way to clean your air fryer. Really? Okay.

I'm giving it a shot tonight. The Dawn soap and you turn it on. Is that the one you're talking about? That's the one. Yeah. I have mine soaking in the sink right now because I haven't gotten brave enough to try that yet. But we'll cook some chicken after we get off here. And I keep meaning to do it.

Actually, it's not that I'm afraid to do it. It's that my 41-year-old brain can't remember things. And then as soon as you said that, I was like, oh, shit, I've'm afraid to do it's that i my 41 year old brain can't remember things and then as soon as you said that i was like oh shit i've been meaning to do that uh i you know i saw it endorsed by drew barrymore on tiktok so it's got to be true it's got to be she must know she has nothing to gain from this yeah i want to talk about the episode up front though uh some certain references so it's named the blunder years it's a reference to the wonder years a show they've referenced before a few times but it's a slightly out of date reference. The show ran from 88 to 93.

A great show, a very, very quality Emmy winning show. There is a 2021 reboot. I think in the past I mistakenly thought it was about the 80s or the 70s. No, it goes back to the same time period, but from a black perspective. Oh, OK. So there you have it. Yeah. I guess, you know, if they did it for white

people in the 80s that's just the goldbergs pretty much right yeah yeah yeah i just have goldbergs on the mind because at the time of this recording they just did an episode where they cgi jeff garland into a scene very oddly put that guy in elden ring or something he's frightening i want to stumble across like the plane of gar. He does look like one of the guys who would be giggling to you, a giggling NPC. He should be calling me tarnished. I saw that out of context when someone posted that last shot of him smiling, and I thought that someone had face-apped a CGI Jeff Garland and then realized that was exactly what it looked like in the show.

It was always where I had to kind of work backwards. I was like, what is this CGI Jeff Garland? Why did someone face-app a smile onto it onto it well he's not allowed on the set for reasons yes yeah uh and this is this was al jean's idea this episode i believe there was like an index card pinned up of premises for episodes and one was labeled smithers's father's apparent murder right and uh that was the idea for this in my memory i thought this was an aljean written one because it is a lengthy film parody well one act is a long film parody which that's what i mean he made the an entire series for that the critic so i i always associate those so finding out in the commentary that it was

an aljean pitch given to ian maxton graham makes a lot of sense uh you know as a kid i did watch stand by me it was one of those like taped off hbo things but it terrified me as a kid like i was seeing kids in a movie who were you know i was six and they're like supposed to be 12 in the movie i think like river phoenix and others were like 15 when they filmed it but uh but i'm seeing these slightly older kids and it scared me the guns the knives the though honestly what stuck with me the most is the kids with leeches inside your underwear like that terrified the leech scene yeah and i'm sure you're a fan of the eating contest scene right yes i discussed it looks it looks so fake now if you go back to it in a hilarious way but yeah rob reiner uh on fire in

the 80s also uh princess bride that's right yep one after the maybe that's why my mom thought i should watch it because it's like oh you know you love princess bride which i did i watched it a million times in a row one and eric you went above and beyond before this recording you were you re-watched stand by me yeah and i you know it's funny because i watched the episode first and i knew that like i literally was no reason for me to like i love stand by me so it was just like an excuse to re-watch, which I actually had not seen it. It's funny because when you were talking about parts that freaked you out, my first thought was the leech thing. But it had been a long time since I had seen the movie.

So I had kind of forgotten the leech thing. And as soon as it got to that part, I was like, oh, God, that's right. The leeches. But yeah, I knew there wasn't really a ton of reason to watch Stand By Me for this because like you said, it's a small, very small section of the episode. But, you know, never really a bad reason to watch Stand By Me again. And Bob, you're right. The vomiting scene looks completely fake now. But I think that is good because if it's realistic it would be a little too much it's like when someone vomited on snl back in the day there'd just be a hose in their

sleeve and they're just putting their hand up to their mouth and the the bomb would be coming out the hose in their sleeve very very very cutesy i you know the it really took me back watching it being a kid and seeing it and remembering like oh oh yeah, I, Will Wheaton is slightly older than me. All these people are, except for River Phoenix. He's, I'm older than him now. But, but yeah, no, I, I like the movie too. Rewatch. I rewatched about, I kind of skipped around cause I, but it's a tidy 90 minutes.

I was watching like the beginning and ending and some key scenes last night. And yeah, it's, it goes by really fast. I know I'm stealing this observation from Family Guy, but i thought this before family guy did the joke on it but why doesn't keifer sutherland's character get revenge on uh gordy for pointing a gun at him like he says i'm gonna i'm not gonna forget this kid but nothing happens to gordy he grows up to be richard dreyfus like the the the hood doesn't like stab him at any point. That's his terrible fate. He becomes Richard Dreyfuss. Has the son, Ben. Oh, yeah. Ooh, an even worse fate. Ooh, that guy.

My theory, I hadn't thought about this, and I don't know the family guy joke, but my theory on this is that Kiefer Sutherland's character, in retrospect, maybe given some time to cool down, respects Gordy for standing up to him like that okay i could that doesn't hold water really but i could see that but yeah i mean he just says like i'm not

gonna forget this then nothing happens like he doesn't and and they and richard dreyfus's monologue is supposed to address like well after that blah blah blah so you would think he would say oh and after this uh i'm just calling him keifer southerner i forget the character's name but he doesn't he doesn't say like, and you know what? That guy never did get revenge. He got arrested by the cops the next week for something else or whatever. Nothing explains why revenge was not taken on him. I was trying to Google something here, and I want to make sure I'm not saying this wrong,

but Kiefer Sutherland's character, and I'm trying to, I don't think I have this wrong. Kiefer Sutherland's character, and i forget his name too in the stephen king universe is henry bowers from it is his brother and i think actually in one of the other stephen king books they explain that he died or went to prison or something okay i don't and that doesn't really answer your question as far as gordy goes but it's you know king liking to um tie his universes together. But yeah, as long as I'm not misremembering this, his character is supposed to be Henry Bowers from its brother. So they think they actually give an update on what happened to him after the

body or stand by me in one of the Stephen King books. That's cool. It's probably the extended King of hers. I bet in one of those weirdo dark tower sequels, all the kids show up again and dance around, talk about their futures. I also, I also, I remember richard dreyfus framing device but when i rewatched i was like oh right he's a writer of course he is like that's every every steven king story is like you know it's an approachable

job somebody to have a writer a right is he living in maine uh you know but what he's not doing is cocaine on screen that's the one different i also i do like that aljean jokes on the commentary like he admits oh yeah we just ripped this off from stand by me but then he's like but you know what the then the new novel of 2009 under the dome was accused of ripping off the simpsons movie from 2007 so aljean's like hey he got us back he ripped us off back for under the Dome. I forgot about it. I remembered it just as the TV show starring Dean Norris. I forgot it was a book four years before that.

Lots of dome-based entertainment in that era. Yeah, Stephen King, you know, I grew up, Stephen King was like probably what got me, not probably, he's absolutely got me into reading. Like a lot of Stephen King readers about my, it's like, actually actually a timeline almost lines up with The Simpsons where about my senior year of high school. I think it was Rose Matter was the one that I was like, oh, boy, this is getting this is getting bad. And I had given up on him for a while. But after I got hit by that van, obviously not counting Dreamcatcher because he was like hopped up on Oxy when he wrote that one after the accident. But it's like he's just like writing like he's going to die tomorrow and he has put out a few very good books since that accident that i've been going back and revisiting i guess i bring this up because it ties in with this this episode

of the simpsons in that i got disney plus strictly to watch the simpsons i was like oh all the simpsons are here and like maybe i'll catch up with some of these ones that i've not seen and all i've done since i got it is watch like the banger episodes that I know between like seasons three and nine. And this episode has made me be like, I do need to go and check out some of the stuff that I've missed because it's like Stephen King. I had given up on him and eventually went back and started checking out some of his later period books and have found some stuff that I really enjoy. So, you know, hopefully that hurts out with The Simpsons because, you know, I'm paying whatever Disney Plus costs a month to watch like the same like couple dozen

simpsons episodes so i only read it a little of the like a couple of his biggest hits as as a youth with stephen king i didn't keep up with the stuff and also there's just so much he just writes so much it's hard to keep up with yeah i i read his books in uh high school uh and i think like every precocious teen will read the stand because it's just so big and i did i read every page of that book wow the unabridged version same with that and needful things i was like man that's so much writing i'll just see the movie like i that's the thing i i read maybe like two stephen king books ever but i think uh I watched pretty much every movie adaptation of his stuff up to Green Mile.

I watched all of it as a youth. Even the ones where he wrote the original script for it, it wasn't based on a book even. I watched those, no matter how bad they got. But now, yeah, Stephen King's still at it. He's a bit of an epic liberal on Twitter with his tweets. Yeah. But it's like him and Mark Hamill and George Takei. Takei, sorry.

They're all part of the same like elderly liberal celebrity club. I know. Invigorated by Trump's election. And yeah, it's I think, yeah, the movie stand by me i think it it holds up really well especially because you know it does have this kind of eerie quality to it too in that unintentionally it's about remembering river phoenix who's dead like his character is dead and it it's you're reflecting back on his tragic death and that's uh it's it adds it adds extra stuff to you don't expect when watching it but yeah seeing all of these young actors, it captures them at such a perfect time in

their life, including... When I watched it too, I remember Jerry O'Connell's character, who is the fat kid of the movie. I remembered him fatter. He is slightly husky. I think you did the same thing i did and that's where i sort of i think i had combined his character with the kid in the pie eating contest in my head going back to it i had the same thought i'm like he's not nearly as big as i seem to remember him being no there's a fat kid for you yeah yeah well also like what i do like

about it is they're not half as mean as the kids are to the fat kid in Goonies. Like, that's a much meaner movie to the fat kid. Dance, you fat fuck. I know. And boy, being a fat kid who grew up in that age, I hate the Goonies. I never liked the Goonies as a kid because of all that fat kid stuff. Isn't it funny when he eats all the ice cream? Yeah, I know.

The little fat little piggy can't stop himself. Dance. Truffle shuffle. They also made him Jewish for some reason. Oh, I forgot that aspect. Boy, that's why that's extra mean. Why? No, no.

You know, a movie, a movie that handles the and it's not without its problems because it has that 80s throwing out homophobic slurs that you find in so many 80s movies but i've said before that the movie that if if in a just world the monster squad would be just as beloved as the goonies is and the fat kid in that the kid the friends aren't mean to him it's the bully kids you know when he gets his revenge and he gets that really sweet line my name's not fat kid my name is horace like they did a much better job with that character in the monster squad yeah i thought yes that as a kid i love that bit him because he gets the cool like shotgun reloading moment and also he reads accurate comic books to the day which i also appreciate it yeah no i i know if i could you know i i support your view

on that we need to replace it in the canon monster squad and goodies need to swap positions in cultural esteem i i agree the only positive on goodies is that its music video got to feature a bunch of uh wwf pro wrestlers that's the only it's a much better song than the monster squad song the monster squad rap good enough good enough yeah good that is a better song i like speaking of soundtracks hey we brought back the soundtrack i Yeah, yes. You know, I remember Stand By Me having more songs in it. Not that it doesn't have songs in it, but I was thinking it was like a big chill level

of record needle drops from the era. No, it's a 10-song album, if I remember correctly. 10 or 11. But one thing I will say about that soundtrack, because I don't own the Stand By Me soundtrack, but the songs from it, after we had discussed this i was like i'm gonna i also went above and beyond by listening to the soundtrack but it's you know it's a bunch of standards but what it does is and i think this is an important thing one thing about stand by me too is i don't know why they changed it to castle rock oregon instead of keeping it in maine but that movie nails the aesthetic like

it literally looks like it was filmed when it was supposed to be filmed in like a small town. You know, music's very important. And like the little, the very few needle drops that it has in the movie are perfect for the time. And I think it did a very good job as far as that goes.

And you know, one last fact about Stand By Me that is learned by all video game players. I was just about to say this. Oh, please, you say it. I'm sorry. I just, nothing to add. This is brewing in my brain. It's very popular in Japan,

this movie, and one of the first things, one of the first lines of dialogue you read in the first generation of Pokemon games is if you examine the TV, your character says, oh, there's three boys

walking along the train tracks. I better get going, too. Referencing Stand By Me. Yeah. And also, a florence and the machine covered stand by me for final fantasy 15 which was like the main theme of that game it's about four boys about four boys on an adventure yes yeah it is i mean they're like supposed to be like 23 or something the oldest one is 23 the elder of the group that's true true. Who really looks like a 30- I've got a new recipe. He looks like a 35-year-old man. He does.

Yeah. Yeah, I was shocked because when I played that Pokemon game and it said that on the TV, I would have always thought, yep, that must be the Americans put that in there. I didn't know how big Stand By Me was in Japanese culture. And I think the Mother series or earthbound is really referencing stand by me with like young people on an adventure kind of thing and uh it was thanks to that uh legends of localization website that uh explained that like no in the original it's the exact of pokemon red and blue it says the the description that's in english as well like it is supposed to

be stand by me my husband also showed me he's a big pokemon fan there was like a pokemon official music video about like history of pokemon kind of tribute and it starts with a recreation of the walking down the train tracks shot from from it like it's uh yeah stand by me very very big in japan at least for for a lot of people who make uh video games oh i can at least say for a lot of people who make video games. I can at least say that I don't really know what I mean, other than just it came out in Japan in the 80s around the same time it came out here. And it just really got big with the people in Japan.

I don't really know why. Another really odd stand by me connection that I learned doing the Boys in the Hood episode of Soundtracker is that John Singleton took like that whole first section of the movie and all the way up until the end, when dough boy fades away, when he's walking away and it says that dough boy was murdered a few weeks later, he took a ton of influence from standby me for boys in the hood,

which is a really strange connection. That's okay. That's, that's why I kept waiting for one of the other characters to vanish in the moment like that. Cause I was conflating it with other characters to vanish in the moment like that, because I was conflating it with the end of Boys in the Hood. I see now. Yep.

The Simpsons will be right back. Hypnotism brings back a shocking memory. There you go! hypnotism brings back a shocking memory the simpsons all new next on fox welcome back to the old swimming hole and a big thank you to our guests this week eric peacock of the sound tracker podcast please follow him on twitter and definitely check out the sound tracker podcast you know you can hear the mall rats one i did with him just a little bit ago it was super fun having eric on thank you so much and if you enjoy the talking simpsons podcast you should know that we're only able to do this thanks to the supporters at patreon.com slash talking simpsons those subscribers for five bucks a month

are why me and bob can do this as our full-time jobs and they get two bonus podcasts each month of me and bob covering futurama and king of the hill that's right if you signed up for five bucks a month right now you can hear next week's episode of talking simpsons a week at a time and ad free as well as this month's episode of talking futurama this month's episode of talk king of the hill and our entire back catalog of podcasts covering futurama king of the hill mission hill the critic and our 10 favorite episodes of batman the animated series you should sign up at the premium level of patreon.com talking simpsons their top level subscribers not only

get all the five dollar things i just said but also they get the monthly what a cartoon movie podcast where we talk about an animated feature film super duper in depth just like we do with the simpsons sometimes we go as long as six and a half hours i'm not kidding we just did who framed roger rabbit and it was six and a half hours long not a minute wasted we went super duper in depth into the history of that book the creation of the film and every single bit of trivia you could possibly want to hear us talk about head over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons to check out all of the previous what a cartoon movies as well ones like pinocchio south park bigger longer and uncut at the end of this

month we'll be doing toy story 3 a three-year long back catalog over 250 hours of what a cartoon movies in addition to everything else we've done everything from akira to a goofy movie we cover it all check it all out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons uh but all right why don't we get in the episode proper enough of this stand by me talk let's talk about paper towels yeah uh well so first off uh i do like the i think the chalkboard gag of bart saying he's not charlie brown on acid is like an attack on poorly written reviews it's just like he's like it's charlie brown on acid in springfield this week the the blank on acid became blank on crack for the aughts that's true yeah the crank brought they they brought it up to crack and also you know for late 2001 a matrix couch gag maybe a little little old little must didn't they reuse

this one this is this is an older one oh okay yeah because i noted that in the in sync episode the clothes with the matrix they don't do as much of a spin around as they do in the couch gag matrix right yeah this is more of a it's like a 180 in this yeah this is a question i actually had for you too because you're you're if anyone's gonna know it it's you disney plus are all of the beginnings exactly as they were when they aired on television the couch gags and the chalkboard bits? They should be, yes. Yeah, to my knowledge, yes. Yeah, they don't usually change.

And I know when something gets changed into Simpsons on Disney Plus, people notice and you hear about it. So, yeah. But yeah, so the episode begins with Marge coming home with the grocery shopping. I need to take that mentality in my own life coming home from the grocery store, like unwrapping presents for yourself. That's a good way to think. I do.

I like taking out my groceries, putting them away. It's fun. Yes. Yeah. You live alone as well. It's all I have. You know, as a kid, also, my mom did buy me many fruit roll-ups that was and i was a very brand conscious boy like if it was not the official fruit roll-ups brand i if i wanted fruit by the

foot i would ask for that specifically but if i didn't it better be a specific flavor of fruit roll-ups mom that's that i was very specific about that do you get the beer roll-ups now that you're older uh i wish you know i couldn't find that get the beer roll-ups now that you're older? I wish. You know, I couldn't find that there were beer roll-ups, but go to any dispensary around California. You can get weed-infused fruit roll-ups very easily. Yes. I mean, I think you can buy wine gummies, but they're not going to get you drunk. Yeah, yeah.

That's right. Yeah, see, we don't have the... We have it... Ohio... Well, Ohio just got medicinal. Michigan's where you could get recreational and medical, but we have not evolved to the roll-up edibles yet. I have not seen those anywhere.

The California edibles at the stores have really got moved up in the world, which is also funny to me because I kept hearing like, oh, I thought they couldn't sell things that just look like a Cheetos bag because the government would set them down out of fear of children would eat them accidentally or something. But they know how to market the dispensaries are learning. They need to market to adult children who just want to eat like Lucky Charms, but with some weed in it. Yeah, but this is how we end up with people putting edibles in people's Halloween bags

every year that they like to fear monger with. Every Halloween. Now, that's the new thing. Like people are giving away. Yeah, somebody's dumping out $300 of edibles from the dispensary to give to children as a prank the people writing those articles have no idea how much edibles cost no one would be that wasteful for some prank i'm not gonna see the kid get high what's the end game that's even the point yeah i'll dose my own children But yes

As Marge is putting away Her groceries She makes a discovery in our first clip here I'll just take them right back to the store And roll Look at those massive plaid shoulders Look at that absorptivity I've got to tell someone Bad shoulders. Look at that absorptivity.

I've got to tell someone. I came home as quick as I could. What's going on? Watch what happens when I spill this blue liquid. You pulled me out of school for this? Absolutely. You're about to get a lesson in value and burley still got soaking power spill something else mom i believe you spill it oh burley you're insatiable so yeah uh i love this set piece is opening set piece because march has lost her mind

yeah she's gone insane this brief bit of burly based dementia she's suffering with uh that will be over by act one actually it comes up in act three but yeah i think she's moved on this is a great they found something really good with scully that i wish they'd done a little bit more but they so this was in saddle sore galactica where marge bought all these home cleaning products and she's like uh she my favorite bit in that episode is she bought a a fire extinguisher and she lights the the curtains on fire to put them out and lisa's like mom what are you doing she's like look see look how good it is like marge going that insane at least lets her be like it lets her be as wacky as homer for a change which which i like and you need that because so often marge is

like you know the straight man to for lack of a better word to everyone in the show you know she has to be the one who's like normal but then you sometimes have to wonder like why would she stick with this lunatic like homer but then you see these little moments where Marge is just as crazy as the rest of them. And I love, I, I, like I said earlier,

I love when they let her cut loose like this. And the, the Burley man thing, the Burley man thing is something me and my friends used to laugh about when we would walk by brawny paper towels, like at the store in college, we would crack up thinking about, and I do want to say something too real quick.

As she was talking about big burly plaid shoulders, I just realized as she was saying that, Henry, you're in a plaid shirt. I busted out the plaid shirt for today. I did it on purpose. I'm just wearing a Vegeta shirt. Yes, this bit with the parody of brawny paper towels is interesting to me.

When Marge was mad, she bought the wrong brand. That actually was a joke that spoke to me more. My mom was very loyal to her brand of paper towels, which was Bounty. If I went to the store and did the shopping in my older teen years, I was like, oh, and I got more paper towels. She would say, you didn't get Bounty. What am I supposed to use these? It's the quicker picker upper. She was very loyal to them.

And I do think that spilled over to me too like if when i buy new paper towels in the you know cvs i go like well bounty i've known it all my life i better just get it well you know they they really changed the brawny guy i was looking into this and uh in the 90s he lost his like porny mustache and his axe over his shoulder although i couldn't find one of him with an axe i couldn't find an image of him with an axe maybe that's just the misremembering of the brawny man yeah i swear he had an axe too i i think what happened i did find an o2 article about like how they had redesigned him and again in o2 i think the culprit is we all made fun of

him as looking gay or like a 70s porn star guy that the brawny people finally like we're sick of being a joke by you guys we're shaving off his mustache well and he's going to be a more like conservative hetero looking guy yeah now he's just uh like the image is cut off like right under his nose but he's got like a stubbly like uh well-defined chin and like a broad torso but that's it but then i saw that in 2017 for certain reasons they put women on the brawny paper towel uh the packaging and it said hashtag strength has no gender or whatever which you know good intentions but it's like oh trump got elected inclusivity is profitable among certain demographics let's put women on brawny thank you brand yes saved us again yeah

yeah like you said a good intention but yeah the they don't mean it they're just like no this this will sell more paper towels you buy these paper towels now if we got a hashtag yeah it's always so transparent when companies do what was the big one just recently that uh everyone was mad about they changed damn it i can't oh the m&ms very recently the m&ms went through it recently yeah that's it that's it like who is that for like the people that they're trying to pander to are going to see right through that as being exactly what it is yeah people that are going to get mad about it are going to get mad about it regardless if i'm it's just such a disaster if i'm walking through target i see a bag with chester cheetah supporting the ukraine uh i'm gonna think he probably doesn't mean it probably doesn't know yeah well also the there was that one razor company also did an ad for like you know teach boys better values or

whatever and i was like yeah i guess that's good but it is as uh that great youtuber uh h bomber guy had a great point about this where you dig into these things and there i go well yeah these come from a good reason but when you dig into like oh this was probably like uh made by children in in child labor play stuff overseas or some other horrible thing is done in the name of this so but that's uh as sonic the hedgehog famously said there's no there's no ethical consumption under capitalism there's no ethical consumption yes uh but but yeah i like that marge is very turned on by this brawny you know that 2017 ad for it maybe that made march question some things about herself you know i was turned on i think march has some mopping up to do herself with this brawny man.

Just her saying, you're insatiable. I was like, wow, that's... I really like her bullying in that clip you played. Her like, spill it. Like getting that very aggressive with Lisa about spilling a second time to show how absorbent the paper dolls are. That's totally like a Homer fish shaking intonation yeah yeah they gave it to mark it's like two scully running gags the next one is in act three when she goes water eh it was it was the a era of the show i love it it's so such bad writing uh idea that lisa is just like oh okay mom like she's i just it's really great acting by yardley

smith in all those moments where you know she is used to her father acting in a cartoonish way but to get it from marge it's more disturbing to her she's like okay you called me home from school for this like yeah and also i love it's like a straw sound effect like that is how much the paper towel can suck up a spill so good and then it's a blue liquid just like the commercial like marge is acting out a commercial in front of lisa she didn't get blue liquid it's true yeah uh but uh but yes marge is still she's she's bought six whole rolls of burley to stare at across from the breakfast table this is where homer comes in and he's very needy a bee flew right by his ear and he's troubled by it he felt the wind of the bee that's good though i'm gonna be a real uh a downer on this of saying

like boy this is similar to a joke they did in a previous season but this is very similar to homer complaining about the spider next to his car keys. It's a joke on a similar theme, I will say. Yes, yeah. But, yeah, so Homer is getting a little jealous in our next clip. Fantasize, Marge. Fantasize about Burley. Hey, you're looking at that spokesjack.

Well, I can fantasize, too. Hmm. Ooh, Mama Celeste. You touch me and I catch you. Homer, I'll tell you what I told Redford. It ain't gonna happen. Dear Burly Kama, I've never written to a registered

trademark before. Are you a real person or just a composite? In either case, I would love a signed photo. Sincerely, Marge Simpson. Love? Signed photo? Marge hasn't asked me for a signed photo in months well i'll show her i love the animation of him rolling in and out of the scene he doesn't need to roll out of the scene also when he says love signed photo like marge wrote i would love a signed photo and so he just

went love signed photo i want to i want to feel like uh julie cavner added question mark yeah it feels like she just read that out loud it was something she just ad-libbed in there she's great i love that one of my like i guess deep thoughts in the you know i knew i had to think about like my thoughts on like simpsons episodes after a certain point and so one of the jokes that really like felt like them still trying to fire on their early cylinders that landed really well for me i love the idea that marge has asked homer for signed photos is very funny she hasn't asked me for one in months like i love that there's a later one that i'll get to when we get to it that doesn't land as well for me but and i think that's the dichotomy of these episodes where like there are still so many things where they can

hit that high like that and then there's times where it's like they're trying and it just doesn't quite work as well but him him saying yeah that she hasn't asked him for a signed photo is just one of those really weird throwaway lines that is like so in my wheelhouse as far as like humor goes uh that uh my i didn't have mama celeste growing up so i didn't know this was a real brian brand there it's garbage it's like even when i was poor the 99 cent frozen pizza she offered i i didn't i didn't go there i was like i will save two extra dollars to get a dijono so see it was so it's a grocery outlet kind of uh pizza that's it's bargain basement you can find this at the Dollar Store, I think.

Not to be a snob. I've eaten my share of Mama Celeste, I'm going to be honest. I've eaten my share of Mama Celeste in my time. You know, the Red Baron was usually the lowest of the pizza I would purchase. Leave that to the Baron in me, I say, as I open my oven. And that was actually Paul Newman. They got him. That's really impressive they got him and that he would do a joke about uh that robert redford at least once tried to proposition him for sex and he

rejected it i love that joke because i have said before i mean like i'm not kidding when i say i remember after paul newman passed away they had like an entertainment weekly or something had a cover where paul newman is probably the most handsome man that's ever lived like i'm dead serious when i say that so like that, that is just like that joke cracked me up too. It's just the idea that Redford would like try to make a pass at him because he was, he was the, I'm, I have no qualms in saying that Paul Newman is probably the most handsome man that's ever walked this earth. And Redford's pretty close behind, I would say too. But that's, that's just how handsome Newman was that Redford was hitting on him. He's like, you know what?

You're too beautiful. Even for me that I think it's a good Simpsonized version of the Newman's But that's just how handsome Newman was that Redford was hitting on him. He's like, you know what? You're too beautiful even for me. I think it's a good Simpsonized version of the Newman's own label, too. I think it's really well. And he's still on that label, too. Yeah. I hope they never take him off. I hope.

Though eventually, I mean, he'll just be like Mama Celeste, who was a real person, too. But people think that she's made up. Someday people will think, oh, this Paul Newman guy. I wish he was real. I he makes a good uh tomato sauce and of course he was also the main car in cars that's where the kids older car yes yeah and yeah the mama celeste she died in 1988 i looked up what's up with the now they just call it celeste they took away the mama that's cancel culture for you run amok here but but yeah if you can it, it's a Celeste pizza for one. And apparently only sold in select regional markets. That's funny.

I would have assumed that Mama Celeste, to borrow from the episode, I didn't know it was a real person. I would have assumed it was a composite. I had no idea that Mama Celeste was real. I would have thought the same, too. But in my research, I found her york times obituary in 1988 yeah she a chicago pizzeria owner who was one of the first in the you know selling frozen pizza market and she then sold out to quaker brands in the 70s and apparently the celeste brand has been like sold around like several times since then stuff probably passed down from like lower bidder to lower bidder uh you know so homer's scheme i feel like it needs like five

percent more parody to be a parody of a regular sitcom scheme like it's it's too similar to what they would just do on a home improvement you know i like the idea i like his uh his character chad sexington sure that's good i like that the my issue with it is this i actually had here i i actually watched the episode twice i watched it actually right before we recorded i'm like i'm gonna give it and something that struck me watching it the second time was that you know homer does a lot of like dumb shit in the show but i agree with you it needed just a little more parody because as it stands it feels too mean spirited for homer to do you know what i mean it goes beyond like homer's normal dumb stuff into and

i realize that's the point because it hurts marge's feelings but then it just kind of gets waved away when they go to dinner but it's like i don't know like i said for all the dumb things homer does none of them ever feel particularly like that's mean that whole joke is very mean well the idea of catfishing was new to us though in the year 2000 yes yeah i think i homer is always a jerk ass and we complain about his his meanness sometimes but like his i think his meanness works better when he at least seems thoughtless like this this is this breaks the rules of like well no this isn't thoughtless meanness of homer like him being like selfish in the moment and not thinking about someone else this is him going like i have a plan that has several stages to it to humiliate Marge.

Like this is to hurt her because I'm jealous. Like it's the level of thought that probably gets rid of one of your usual excuses for, well, Homer's not so bad. He didn't mean it or whatever. Like he means this and he does want to hurt her. You better get your hopes up.

That's a funny line. And the Chad sessionassing the thing is very funny but yeah like watching it a second time i was like and i think henry i think you nailed it like there's a lot of thought into this one where his normal like hurtful things that he does are just because he's like too like he's thoughtless to realize what he's doing yeah yeah i think it's just uh it's it's just a little too mean i i i do like marge's reaction that she thinks she's in the 40s of getting a call from the operator, like, person to person. In 2001, you did not get an operator giving you a person to person. So I suppose that at least is a parody of like, this is like a Gracie and Alan bit, really. Yeah, like Marge's even doing the old timey, you have a telephone call, like an old timey operator. But this is, again, this is where like Homer just does the bit from Blood Feud where Marge

asks, how did you get this? I don't know. Like it's even the same intonation, but it doesn't feel like it's meant to be a callback. It feels like they thought they thought of it for the first time, but it's a joke they've done before. Hey, they didn't have Frankie Yak. They couldn't have typed in. I don't know into Frankie Yak to find out.

This is why they needed nerds in the writing room to tell them like, hey, wait, wait, guys, you did that joke. If 19 year old Bob Mackey was there. You know, that's Mike Reese puts that in his book that he said that like Al Jean was usually better at that in the room of going like, wait, we did that joke before that he he had a better better memory of that maybe we shall see if there's less of that as we enter the al jean era in the very next episode but yeah i mean just homers i don't know it's such a classic line that i feel like somebody at least one of the animators or dan castellaneta would have remembered like hey wait we did this already like we we should do something else like i i wonder just how it hit slip slip

through i guess the twist is uh things have gotten so crazy he says i don't know but it still works in blood feud he says i don't know and then the scene's over it fails for him but he says i don't know and it still works for him okay you're right it tops it yeah okay i i give it that as comedy referee i forgive that as a joke now yellow card but yes it's revealed that they were doing this call from ned's living room and ned even tries to join in on the fun and homer just shuts him down just like it was a private phone call with my wife where i'm pretending to be another man i do also like as they tell march to get her hopes up the time cut of their laughter in the shot like that they yeah go from standing to sitting and wearing a suit that's good like

why why is my son and husband laughing uh constantly to each other it's nice that march is even uh inspired to take a painting again today i bet she has some uh some more risque versions of of that in the closet i bet of burley i think it's very cute that she rolls out a roll of paper towels as a red carpet for him as well that's sweet yeah she and she you know what she's wearing a new sexy dress i've not seen her wear before you know there's other formal marge outfits but this is a different one i like you know it's a strapless gown with like long sleeves on it. It's a good, Marge really,

Momer, I guess, should be a little jealous as her husband to be like, you never dress up like that for me. Like, how turned on are you by this, Chad? He's waiting for the humiliation. Yeah. And so, yes, Marge is pranked and she doesn't like it in our next clip.

Wait, look, it's Chad Sexton. Hi, baby! I'm that guy you like! Barney? Where's Chad? I... Congratulations! I feel ridiculous. Hmm.

You mean I was just a prop in some cruel joke? Now you've done it. You really humiliated Mom. It was hard on me, too. I had to wear a suit. Oh, you're right. I've got to make it up to her.

I suggest dinner and a show. How about Benihana, where dinner is the show? Disgusted. I get the sense from that scene that they were like, oh, right. Barney's not drunk anymore. Well, let's let's write him drunk, but don't have him burp because he's talking like drunk Barney. And only drunk Barney would agree to this plan and not understand it. Yes.

He's like, wait. Well, yeah. Why would he if he wasn't part of the plan? Why would he say i'm that guy you like like yeah that's why lg makes him drunk again because it's like no this is this is the funny character comedy's easier with a drunk than a sober person you know yeah that's that's as we all learn drunks are funnier people should be alcoholics i actually had questions about that so i they do make barney fall off the wagon eventually i

couldn't remember if they did or not yeah if he eventually ended up falling off the wagon again i believe season 14 so pretty soon he wasn't sober for very long i've seen al jean say that he pegs it is when they do a joke where barney is singing to the tune of respect he's spelling out relapse and i think from then on he's pretty much off the wagon i think uh which you know is sad but that i guess that does happen in real life too but it's depressing yeah is the portrayal of barney i genuinely don't know this is it considered like in some areas like a problematic thing i guess having like a joke at the expense of a dig i i don't it doesn't bother me but is there like people that think that that's a problematic fiction of

like addiction absolutely even within the staff i think that's why they wanted to quote unquote fix him because uh on the staff people had relatives that were dealing with alcoholism that went through treatment and things like that and they were like well this this stereotype isn't that funny in the year 2000 anymore yeah and then it was like, oh, it's 2002. Get him back off the wagon. It's fine. You know, and Dan Castellan wrote that episode too, where he got sober, which I think was,

though in his original script, he actually does fall off the wagon there. And I think it was Mike Scully's choice that he's like, well, I have family members who have tried and failed to, you know, extended family members, he made sure to say, who have tried and failed to, you know, extended family members, he made sure to say, who have tried and failed to get sober. And he felt that it was just too dark.

He wanted to actually give some hope to people then. And yeah, when we did that episode, that's something too of like, if you make Barney conscious of being laughed at as an alcoholic, the jokes aren't as funny. You're gonna like, oh, you're, if you feel his feelings like it's uh it's less funny you know though i mean as as you pointed out in that episode uh podcast we

did bob like the parody of him that works so well in the in like season three is that he is written as you know a drunk from the 40s except then they make realistic jokes about what we know about alcoholism in 1992 so yeah like i guess this character was always like a you know anachronistic they didn't have the funny drunk characters like they would on the radio in the 30s and 40s like like in the late 80s i i want to be clear too i just realized that probably sounded very callous when i was like i don't care if he's problem i've had relatives who have dealt with that whole thing too i'm just saying that like i wasn't asking that in a way that like i personally am i'm just saying that i could absolutely see where people are just so people aren't listening and like this guy's an asshole i don't care about that at all uh what have you have you ever been

to benihana i have not i don't i don't know if bob has if uh no never one of the first like uh asian restaurants i've ever went to in my in of the woods, it was the Benihana experience. It's like they flip the egg into their head. They build the onion volcano. They make fun of you. I don't like it. I don't like talking to other people while I'm with somebody I actually want to talk to. Also, yeah, you're seated with other people.

Yeah, I don't like that at all. What I'm saying is I'm a to talk to. Also, yeah, you're seated with other people. Yeah, I don't like that at all now. What I'm saying is I'm a dick. You're no fun. You're a bad day. Yeah, I don't like this food magic. I just want to eat. No, I have been in Tokyo. I've been to a, on someone else's dime on a business trip.

We did go to a Japanese steakhouse that was not uh like that actually was in japan that was similar seating but it was very no frills the guy was like so what's a slice of steak did you want to know that one okay they're not flipping a shrimp into your mouth none of that no no hey once you've seen one onion volcano you've seen them all okay so that's funny i it's funny you even asked me that because that was one of the things i was going to say is that i forget that benihana is a real place because it's used so often in shows. I've never been to one in my life. I also didn't realize it was like a hibachi

sort of Japanese steakhouse place because I've been to plenty of those. Ohio's got a bunch of them. They have the onion volcano. They make fun of you, toss the shrimp in your mouth, cover everything with yum yum sauce. They're actually kind of fun. Personally I can have fun at them once in a great while. That's something I can do all the time but I didn't realize that was what benihana even was i had

no idea what kind of food they serve you're also served about five pounds of rice per serving it's a lot it's a lot of rice and so yeah like you eric i remember this episode the burley stuff divorced from the stand by me stuff it it was one of those times it's like oh yeah a plot and b plot are separate in my memory and it i mean it it's probably because once this bit ends and they go to the dinner anything could have happened of like the simpsons go out to dinner that's where the story begins there's none of this stuff preceding it really results in why they go to dinner it's the pimento grove again which was established in uh a fish called selma this is the last appearance of this restaurant by the way oh that sucks but it feels like another magic castle joke it does yes yeah this they they were going to magic castle in la way too much all

these magician jokes man i tell you but because marge met with her mentalist right right now we have a mesmerist totally different yeah uh but then came something i totally forgot i completely forgot when this song came out i was like wait what the hell is this you guys like julia owen music uh what you're asking me who well that's that's harry shearer's wife the musician julia owen why are you leaving yeah that's uh that's i mean i mean she sounds like a fine singer but yes i mean she's been married to harry schurz since 1993 and releasing albums on the label they both own since 2005 yeah yeah hey she's not hurting anybody but at least make a joke have hummer go boy that sucked marge or something all right any comment on it i mean they do a lot of uh you know star fucking

this just feels like a favor to Harry. Yeah, 100% is what it feels like. Yeah, I agree. I guess it was a pretty funny prank. I like the ones where nothing catches on fire. Yeah, nothing is hurt except feelings. Walking to hell and back again. You know, I didn't realize that was Harry Shearer's wife. I looked up who that cameo was, but I didn't.

I just was like, I don't know who this is. You know, she has a Wikipedia page. I'm like, so she's obviously famous enough, but I didn't research it any further. And yes, that is 100% a favor to Harry Shearer. That's the only reason she's in this episode. Which is funny. Harry Shearer is such a grouch about the show that they don't do enough nice for him. And then it's like, well, they put your wife in the dang show and played her music to millions of people.

And did not even make a, like, that's my only problem with that. If you're going to do like this kind of thing, at least make a joke. Even when they bring in stars that they want to slobber over, they make jokes about it. But it's like, no, isn't our music nice? And the family enjoys it. Anyways, here comes the mesmerist. I know, it's just is,

it also, the way that there's no commentary on it or joke at all, like it feels like Harry Shearer was just very serious of like, no, you just play my wife's song in this episode. Like no jokes. I don't want none of your damn jokes. You draw her into the show and you play her song that's all i want and that song is helen back again from her album limited edition relatively new at the time so it was like it was her hot new track yeah like you said bob it's not hurting anybody she's a fine singer like when i

heard her sing i was like yeah she's good at singing but yeah it's just she's maybe her stuff's bigger in europe i don't know but yeah they've been married since 93 like it really is just if it was like like let's say uh i don't know yardley smith's husband i'd have the same opinion yes exactly which she does do a podcast with that husband though yeah don't want to hear it but i welcome both of them to come on our show yeah hey i've listened to it it's good i mean it's a true crime podcast which aren't as much my bag baby but uh it's they do a fine job with small town dicks i believe it's called yes uh oh but yes uh yes after we we hear a distracting song i do like homer uh march saying like you know i like the ones where nothing catches on fire and then over

says yes nothing is heard except feelings uh that's that's a good line but uh then boy like this is a hank azaria episode e i feel like he is riffing a lot in this not just as mo later but it's mesmerino like he feels like he's really riffing up a storm i do love when they introduce mesmerino that all of his credits are from shows that have been off the air for at least 10 years at the time like mike douglas the third one probably can't be real right art link later's house party that has to be the fake one yeah i should have looked that up but i think that's fake i and then also what's he got in his hand the hypno coin which was advertised in children of a lesser clod when crusty says if you can find a better hypno coin buy it that's a george meyer favorite i think the hypno coin yes yeah but actually uh that art link later thing is real holy cow i i thought they're making like oh my god are you serious i'm i'm serious

it's a real thing and i i thought that like they're making a joke about yeah art link later had like a hip-hop style show because i when i think of house party i think of kid and play of course but no it's real and that's all i gotta say do you have the dates and when it went off the air well at first it was a radio show so you can guess okay wow there you go 1945 to 1969 was the total run of that show again that's why it's it means mesmerino was like he's really slumming it like he is he's not been famous in a long time. And if you have such old credits, like that shows, it's one of those things you pity a comedian for. They're like, as you know him from Evening at the Improv.

It's like, well, that's been off the air for 20 years. And so that Art Linklater's House Party show, that is where Kids Say the Darnedest Things, that segment was originated on that show. So there you have it. All right, man. Wow. Wow. I would have assumed that one

wasn't real either so it has nothing to do with the kid and play films absolutely not art link letters not sporting a high top or anything i wish and uh and you know seeing this mesmerino stuff it certainly reminds me of that wonderful film of the last year nightmare alley it's uh all of this this cold reading and hypnotism stuff. You know, I never went to a comedy hypnotist. I only think of it in relation to, I saw Dave Attell in Jacksonville, Florida once, and he was mocking that before him were ads for two different hypnotists who were coming to the same venue later. And he was like, boy, you guys in Florida love your hypnotists, huh? On the commentary, Al Jean talks about how Mike Reese was called up on stage by a hypnotist.

The hypnotist said to him, just do what I say. As soon as he got on stage. Well, then Matt Selman has a great line on the calling Mike Reese very cheap. He's like, oh, you'll be cheap for the rest of your life. And Al Jean is like, boy, you're on crank today, aren't you? Taking these swipes at Mike Reese on recorded media. I think one of the funnier things about that little bit, too, is how susceptible Homer is to being hypnotized when it's his turn to go up. Like, he literally just, like, look at the coin.

And before he even finishes, Homer's already under the spell. Boss me around. I love that. Yeah. finishes homers homers already under the spell boss me around i love that yeah but but but first we have a little frank buddy love thing which again simpsons did do this on grandpa versus sexual inadequacy in season six it's true and the woman has the same response but i want to say it's not like a a stolen joke or a reused joke i think they're both making a joke on the same scene from the nutty professor but they forgot that they already did it yes because in in the um in the season six episode she goes anything you say professor and this one she says whatever

you say professor so right i i wonder i'm not i'm not gonna ever watch that movie folks i don't care about jerry lewis but i have to assume that is a scene in that movie when when he becomes buddy love he is certainly sexually harassing a woman like jerry lewis would that's for sure yeah though again these nutty professor jokes were completely lost on us like i was like wait why i never watched the original as a kid i knew the eddie murphy one in in my our teen years but not uh not the original okay so see i understood them because my so my my aunt who is she's you know early 50s but my grandpa loved the old jerry lewis movies thus did aunt, who I used to spend a lot of time with as a kid.

So I was at one time very familiar. I haven't seen a Jerry Lewis movie in probably 30 years at this point. But I was very familiar with the reference when I was like, I'm probably the only 11-year-old, 12-year-old who understood who Professor Frank was supposed to be. No one ever showed me the movies. They weren't like on TV. I just knew who he was based on the impression of him. And then later I watched like King of Comedy.

I was like, oh, this is him against type, I guess here, which it's just so funny to hear him in interviews say like, I don't know why people like me in King of Comedy. I didn't do nothing. They just told me stand here, do that, whatever. They wanted Johnny Carson to be in that movie. That would have been, you know, i think jerry lewis did a great job yeah his natural hate for everyone around him really comes through in that great great movie rage and anger when he

says to do when he says to de niro so did hitler i was like oh that's great he's he actually is just pissed off at robert de niro for wanting to take a long time to do a bunch of scenes and riff but uh but yes the act out of frank's transformation i think it's good too and again like it's great hearing them on the commentary say that his area is a jerry was a jerry lewis super fan and a few years after this episode they got jerry lewis on for a treehouse to play his dad and he actually did get childhood dream coming true of acting next to jerry lew then Mesmerino heads over to Burns and Smithers. And when Burns said, you know, he mocks them, he calls them Skeletor and Hercules, which

seems to confuse the whole audience. But like, I know what Skeletor was, I guess, you know, I suppose it was a newer reference then for younger, older guys. More of a family guy reference. And yeah, they're building a mystery. Okay. Smithers mentions, actually, my father passed away some time ago. older guys more of a family guy reference and yeah they're building a mystery okay smithers mentions actually my father passed away some time ago and if this story is going to be about smithers and the tragic loss of his father he needs to do more than say one thing in one act before coming

back i mean if you don't think this seriously it's a funny episode but if you do they really don't do justice to smithers character you know yes i i agree and they also say gay people are created by trauma oh yeah yep yeah i was gonna talk about that yeah we'll talk about it later that's the only way well one thing that okay so i you know again i didn't remember how this episode played out i did not remember that it was smithers father that was the body that he found and so when he said his father died i thought the joke was just that he that you know mesmerino saying can we have someone who's not a complete downer but i actually thought that scene was weird because it felt like what was going to happen is burns was going to fire back with some really scathing biting line like you would expect from burns so i

thought it was a little weird that scene felt really odd to me because i was just waiting for the other shoe to drop and burns to say something just completely awful to this guy or something like or at least to smithers about something awful that he wants to do to him or you know a bird sort of thing so yeah that part was really weird to me until i got to the end and realized as you said though it's like that one line that they put out that doesn't really set up the uh reveal all that well as i do believe on my first viewing that line was weird to me i was like oh i guess they have never said anything about like smithers's dad before but then uh as

soon as a corpse came into the story i put the two and two together not to not to brag or act like i'm a genius guys but it was i was smart enough to know about how mysteries work and then it's like wait he mentioned a dad he's never mentioned before and here's a dead body i hate that it's reflected on the wiki because the wiki uh his character name is waylon smithers jr they did that once as one joke yeah he's he's waylon smithers just i ignore it from then on i feel like i don't but yes of course fans of our podcast know i'm a continuity freak and yes certainly this bothered me back then this this changing of the history but but yeah so then mesmerino moves on to homer and it starts out good in this next clip is anyone here not a downer anyone do me do me I am in your power. Boss me around.

When I snap my fingers, you will transform into a famous historian. Look at me. I'm a famous historian. Out of my way. Thank you. Now you are Emily Dickinson. Look at me. I'm Angie Dickinson. Out of my way. Now, you are a young boy. Yourself at 12 years old. I'm 12 years old. I'm with my friends. It's a beautiful summer day at the old swimming hole. Oh, my God. it's a beautiful summer day at the old swimming hole oh my god

do something miss marino uh yes yes um oh that's better oh oh i i am the biggest sucker for cartoon characters screaming. So I love the entire end of this act. And just like the cutting to different parts of Homer's evening while he's still screaming, like brushing his teeth, tipping the valet. And Dan's really like, they're wearing out Dan this week. Dan Castellaneta with this amount of screaming. The animation of Homer screaming with a flappy tongue is also very funny funny, like his wide mouth tongue flapping scream that you see. But you usually only see it for a second or two.

So it's just like extended long scream of his. Yeah, it's very funny. I also love the giddy freak out Homer has of just like, I'm Angie Dickinson. Get out of my way. It's so good. Confusing the actress, Angieie dickinson for the poet but what a crappy uh hypnotist just like what does a famous historian do that would be funny for the crowd what would emily dickinson do what questions could you ask this this character smes marinos not

not the uh showman he should be mainly he's just there to insult people barely even do the hypnotizing but yeah homer homer is scarred by something in his childhood but he can't figure out what he's too busy screaming and there is a great joke too of mesrino getting in the pyramid he popped out of and then running away inside of it that's that's good i love that i love that and you know what homer properly tips the valet at least that's what you should do though we said this before when they went to the magic castle style place it feels too good the simpsons should be priced out of any place that has a valet you know well this was an apology dinner so you got to break the bank for those to save your marriage see think of it as an investment in your marriage yeah yeah steven need more and the rest of his team do a great job with like so

much the animation including hom Homer's constant screaming. And then when it comes back from commercial break, I also really like the finesse of Marge shuffling Bart's clothes like they're a deck of cards. Like it's really well done. And identical shirts and shorts for the week. And count them up yourselves, folks. It's seven sets. She is mathematically correct when it says it covers a week of bart because it's seven so it's uh it's it's an accurate joke the best kind of joke an

accurate one uh but but homer is dragged back from work uh he is barely interrupting their nap time and uh i i like just hearing homer screaming throughout the rest of this clip here. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Oh, no. Sorry, Mrs. S. He was kind of disrupting things at work.

Yeah, he ruined nap time and quiet time. Oh, Homer, you poor thing. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. Oh, cool. He's still mental. Yeah.

My hunch is he's struggling with some sort of repressed memory. Hmm. How do we un-repress it? Well, the Yaki Indians brew a special tea that unlocks memories. It would be a good excuse to use my Yaki tea set. Well, is anything coming back to you? Oh, there have been so many classic Simpson moments. I remember that time I tried to jump over Springfield Gorge. I'm going to make it.

No, Dad, everyone's sick of that memory. Yeah. Try to remember back when you were 12. Big gut laugh for me because they flash back to that moment at least three other times. It's so great that they they just should not did see or them explain how they did it in the commentary they're like they allowed two words from the old clip because they were worried if they play the clip too long it might actually make the audience think that oh this is a clip show time to turn off like i i'm not watching this episode anymore yeah that that got a again really big laugh out of me.

The thing that I laughed, I think, the hardest about in that little clip was it plays into that joke earlier. They said that I like the one where he said, you know, Marge hasn't asked me for a picture in months is when, for whatever reason, Marge has a Yaki tea set. It's very funny. And it cuts to it. There's a cut to her Yaki tea set sitting in the house somewhere yeah yeah normally it would be lisa saying like oh i've heard of this worldly thing and everybody else hasn't heard of it but marge is like well i do have the yaki tea set going unused all this time and i normally don't like this when shows do the thing where it's like no we all grew up together

we've always been friends uh venture Brothers called it super crazy no way school where Doc Venture points out like, oh no, we were all friends together in the past. And the kids are like, that makes no sense. You all went to college? Every person you spend time with today you went to college with?

Yes. But yeah, it infers that like Lenny, Carl, and Moe and Fat Tony and Legs and Louie were all the same age in Springfield. Fat Tony's like 20 years older than Homer. And also it's interesting to see that Barney is not part of this crew. Barney started out as the Homer friend.

They don't know what to do with him at this point. But, you know, once they got out of the power plant, Lenny and Carl became like the barflies at Moe's. Yeah, and the way we was, Barney was the only childhood friend, they would say. And, you you know the interactions homer and barney had up to the that point in season two it completely made sense like okay they would be friends since high school but it was explained in other episodes like homer met his nuclear power plant friends at the nuclear power plant and i i i don't hate it here but and i i normally can laugh at super crazy no way school but i do think

this is opening up a pandora's box to bad things in the simpsons of like they basically do simpsons babies episodes after this i mean the way we weren't i believe is the name of the episode where it's revealed like actually marge and homer knew each other when they were children when they were both at different camps and they were all in the camps together and every kid every adult in Springfield is their kid version and I it just got a little too Muppet Babies you know yeah that I and this is the start of that so I do kind of reject it a little bit see and I didn't realize that or I guess it's not that I didn't realize it I didn't think about that until you said it that yes barney was always the like kid friend of homers watching it now it made i was like oh yeah lenny and carl were his kid friends too but i did not realize this was like the first

time they had pulled that card and yeah the the designs are you know for all three of them are based on the the stand by me homer's wearing the same shirt jerry o'connell wears that lenny is dressed like river phoenix carl is uh i i think he's will wheaton and mo is definitely cory feldman's character who's the bad boy of the group are they singing a song together when introduced in stand by me or is this invented by the show yeah they're singing in stand by me the first time they're singing on the railroad tracks is the theme song to Paladin. Like an old, I think, western show for kids, I believe. So, yeah, they do sing.

They do not sing songs women normally sing, which that's the good joke there. Which, yeah, I mean, I also like that they don't do. I think it's a cowardly thing if you're covering a song and you change the gender to a heterosexual one when you're covering the song if the gender makes you sound gay when you sing it you still have to sing it you can't edit the song in your cover you have to sing Santa baby not Santa buddy yes exactly

that's real you can look that up if you want to so there's one big deleted scene and it's here in the episode and I have theories for why it happened but so as much as they parody stand by me in here the one thing they don't do is the train scene the big train action scene that is the deleted scene and so it is a big one the boys are walking down a train track which you can't see in this shot what they cut out is homer also does more um narration like richard Dreyfuss does, but

then it leads to them while standing on the track. Homer's going to put a penny on it. They then hear it coming and the train is right there and they start running. Homer isn't going to make it. He's the slow kid. And then the train hits the penny and derails and he splashes into the water and crashes. This sounds like a lot of complicated animation they just threw out it does yeah and and then it's revealed that captain mccallister was the engineer of the train and he's like you know what this feels right being in the water and so i like that

i like that scene because it felt like watching this that they got into the stand by me thing and then didn't do as much with it as they could have. So knowing that that scene exists because they don't, I don't think they had the deleted scenes aren't probably on Disney plus, and I don't have the seasons on DVD, but I'm guessing I'm sure some, somebody's, I want to see that scene now is what I'm saying. I want to see that scene because that, yeah, I don't know why, because I watching it again, I was like, okay, is the train, are they going to do something with the train? Or, you know know i was waiting for that shoe to drop but it never did so it was very complicated for a scene that got cut i my theory is so the other thing you'll notice if you watch it on the dvd is there's a lot of silence as they are walking and so i think they thought they were going to get a specific song

to play over it maybe even stand by me itself and then they couldn't get the song and they're like well this episode's going over anyway let's just cut 40 seconds of it since we couldn't get the song anyway that could be it yeah that's my guess but but certainly in the deleted scene the the length of the silence tells me they thought a song would be there and it wasn't and they couldn't get the rights to it. Good theory. I like that theory. This is when Fat Tony appears and they make a reference to the Cow Sills. I feel like Dana Gould's responsible for all of these obscure references.

I think you're right. The Cow Sills, an all family singing group, like brothers and sisters, they inspired the Partridge family. Oh, their story. But Mr. Sandman popularized by the Cordettes. And we just recorded Bart the Murderer recently. And it makes me think when Homer meets Fat Tony, he should be like Fat Tony. But like we were kids together. The tobacco patch, the wacky tobacco patch. Remember?

Boy, you're right. Yeah. They fucked that up. Well, yeah, I know. This is like literally a decade later. And again, this doesn't count. It's like, yeah, but I do like they got away with growing pot in the show and showing you like pot plants. That's the wackiest.

I like hearing Montaigne say the wackiest. But yes, then they are saved by Moe as Moe arrives in the story here in this next clip. Give him a lonely heart like pot. Check it out, Fat Tony. Those jokers think they're the Cowsills. And lots of wavy hair like Liberace. You guys have blundered into our secret tobacco patch. Wow.

Is that wacky tobacco? The wackiest. Let's punch and kick them. Not so fast. Uh-oh, he's got a daisy. We better scram. Eighteen more pumps. That could break the skin.

Hey, thanks, Moo. And that's how a troubled young Mo saved the day. Mo, what are you doing here? What am I? My bar is empty is what. Why ain't you guys there? We're trying to uncover a hidden trauma in my dad's childhood. What, you mean that time he wigged out?

Well, give me some of that Indian memory tea there and I'll tell you all about it. Mmm, that's good. Yucky. Okay. Mo has to clear his throat because he's like i don't normally talk like that so let me get back in my mo voice this episode pitched by lg a writer for johnny carson in the 80s contains references to both johnny carson characters art fern and the amazing karnak that's right yeah you're correct sir yeah i i always i want to call it i should remember it's

art for not just a Johnny Carson thing, but just like Carnac is a specific bit in the Johnny Carson universe. Yeah, even I recognized that one immediately. What was the other one? You said there was the Carnac, and then what was the other reference? Oh, Mez Marino in Act 3 when he holds the letter to his head. It's a Carnac. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mo saying that's good yacky

is the Art Fern character from The Tonight Show. And the clips are all online and it's him with a very busty woman making lots of sexual innuendo. That was the point of that. While trying to sell a product. Yes.

And imagine which of those women he was cheating on his wife with. The answer is all of them. I would think everyone who would say yes. I mean, that's something you learn as an adult of like oh wait this these weren't sketches to make you laugh it was to turn on your dad absolutely you know get him in the mood for love at 11 45 uh or your granddad i suppose too but

some lights off post tonight show love the uh the daisy bb gun line in this is one that particularly hit home with me because i mean i feel like you know again of a certain age bb guns were like the coolest thing you could possibly have growing up it felt that way like oh but unless you're like they were obviously like the little psychopaths who had those ones that came with the little cartridges that actually could like blow through your like arm or something if you had someone with them but typically it was like the most anticlimactic thing when you would get one because you'd have to like they said 18 more times and you could break the skin like that was that was what it was when you got one of those like they felt like the coolest thing in the world

and then you got one you could like dent a pop can when you shot it maybe like an empty pop can would take a small dent i as a nerd i was scared of the mo types in my life who had those guns i was like don't hurt me that could break the skin i that was my reaction i think i said up front but mo uh is so funny in this episode i love how he tries to basically like uh take over the story yes yeah just to get people back into the bar all right let's end it the end scene with him is great but also like wigum has a similar role where it's like oh wiggum is here let's have fun with him too so yeah a parade of hey gazeri characters i so bob i i shared with you my my photographic evidence of it but what do you think of my theory that i think they're using an older mo model sheet because this mo has a droopier lip upper lip and his eyes are

buggier in an earlier season way like if you compare him to the mo in the previous episode homer the mo this is not as tight to mo to me you know i like this mo it feels like a season two or three mo to me like like a more ghoulish mo maybe the layout artist was working from a different model sheet maybe somebody like a west archer style figure said no this is what mo should look like yeah i like it i it. I like it a lot. It makes him stand out from most other people in this episode. Okay, so I can't believe you actually mentioned this because I thought I was going to sound weird saying this,

but one of my notes is, you know, I know one of the big jokes is that Mo's supposed to be like a very ugly man. You know, like that's one of the like running jokes with Mo's character. But in this, I had like every angle that he's drawn at really captures it in this episode. Like it is like, because half the time in the Mo episodes with Mo, I just, I had like every angle that he's drawn at really captures it in this episode. Like it is like because half the time in the episodes with Mo, I just I never really like it's a cartoon character.

I don't think of it that way. But like in this episode, every angle that you see him at, like when he's staring from outside the window and everything, you get the sense that Mo is a very ugly man in this episode. It's a very ghoulish sort of drawing for his character. He makes a weird face no matter what angle you look at him yeah which you know i'm looking at the storyboard artists uh the one for act three is uh martin archer wesley archer's brother so maybe he's like hey martin make mo look like he should look like in this episode snuck in the old uglier mo i i like this theory man we got to talk to this martin archer if they get to the bottom of this you know he talked to Wes Archer I bet it just uh we could just ask like hey your brother want

to be interviewed uh but but yes uh so Mo explains that uh he saved the day and then they head off for more Stand By Me adventures they do the campfire scene that's also in Stand By Me of them all connecting which which, again, them naming, there's two jokes they reuse. Like, so in The Way We Was, they do a joke of like, could you imagine Homer working at the nuclear power plant? Ha ha. And then in The B-Sharps, they name all the names

and the handsome Homer Simpson plus three, I like it. This is a slightly worse version of that of like, how about Moe and the other guys? And then Carl's like, I like it this is a slightly worse version of that of like how about Moe and the other guys and then Carl's like I like that like the the most is like experience featuring Homer thank you thank you yes uh you know what similar joke but I think it's funny uh Lenny and the Jets uh kind of cheesy but it's fun uh and it does establish that the nuclear power plant is nearby like it's another important clue in this mystery it did set up the mystery more that's for

sure but i mean continuity this episode is just the treehouse of horror for me but in the continuity of the simpsons this plant opens when homer's in high school remember that's right yeah it's the brand new nuclear plant yeah well and also kaboom also in uh i married marge like smithers is as old as homer they're the same age he's not 10 years younger than him yeah yeah so yeah now but uh i do like them making a swear with their hands over the fire together and it all burns i'm like god we're stupid i hate you guys that gave me a chuckle i gave you a chuckle but yes i do kind of like the joke about like somebody made up the internet in the past but they're somebody made up the internet in the

past but they're actually talking about the internetting of a though sadly it leads to like an okay poop oh i love that poop joke i also like because there are i mean this is just a parody of how people talk in these things but you know what i'm looking forward to the future where it's just like when you're reflecting on characters in the past being naive about about what we know i like i like any kind of joke about that sure sure real quick before we i wanted to ask did you say that santa buddy is a real song i meant to bring that up before we yeah santa buddy's a real thing it's real it's like santa buddy put a harley under the tree for me oh my god yeah buy that way too quickly i don't understand why not go with like mrs santa baby if you're that offended by the idea of doing santa baby and like it hurting your sexuality or

whatever but sorry i just i meant to ask that we got past it too no it's okay before we go on that santa buddy is a real song it means santa's your bro you can be naked around each other in like locker room situations but that's as far as it goes. You know, it would be funny if they instead made the song about, like, no, I gender-aversed it. I am hitting on Mrs. Claus, and I want to fuck her. Hey, your man's out of town for the night. Let's go.

She's free every December 25th. Get out of the way. No, the... It then goes to them at the quarry. Theyry they mentioned too that the quarry thing is not really in stand by me they say on the commentary like no they took that from the dennis quaid jackie or earl haley breaking away film the cycling film from 1979 uh which i've never seen okay i was wondering eric if you'd seen that i actually have not seen it when i say i remember

it i remember it but i don't remember anything about it and now it's like it's like it's dredging up certain memories like this one of those just like homer in this episode i think it was i think it was a quarry based thriller no it's mainly about boys who hang out by a quarry sometimes but they mainly uh ride bicycles like that sounds pretty boring push one of those boys in as they're scared of jumping in uh carl says i think i just logged on to my internet meaning he pooped his pants uh which i you know then i don't think it was intentional but there is a you shit your pants metaphor in Stand By Me. Corey Feldman's character says, oh, I know what you were thinking. I just turned my underpants into a chocolate factory.

Yeah. We don't hear that one much, I think. Well, nobody ever says suck my fat one, you dime store. Bite my fat one, you cheap dime store hood. That's the line Gordy gives him. I said last night on Twitter after watching it i think we really need to bring back the term crazier than a shithouse rat because i really like that term and that's one that they throw out and stand by me at one point too that i was like that's a really

that's a great one that we've just let we've let die because it's it's a funny i don't know what it means i don't i don't know if shithouse rats are crazy or not but like well i would assume your regular rat you know in the bar and that's pretty it's kind of a crazy rat but if you're the rat who lives in the shithouse and only eats out of the shit you are a crazier rat i would think so too my uncle would use a similar expression uh if something was bad it could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon oh wow i've never heard that i guess they have wagons now shit wagon I guess in the old days when the buzzers would be hanging around, they'd sit on the shit wagon. What are we doing? But yes, the boys then jump into the water.

Can you imagine us working there? The whole call crew? Hey, I thought we were called Lenny and the Jets. You're both wrong. We're the most Sislak experience featuring Homer. I like the sound of that. Friends forever? Friends forever.

Ow! Ow, that hurts. Man, we're stupid. Thank you, guys. The next morning, we went out to the old quarry to have a swim. You guys really gonna dive off of here? Not me. I'm shaking like a French soldier.

Yeah, I think I just logged on to my internet. Only a moron would jump into that. Oh my god! And there's your what you recall repressed drama. I mean, who likes getting muddy? It's terrible. Okay, let's go to Moe's now. It's terrible. Okay, let's go to Moe's now. Wait a minute.

Okay, let's go to Moe's now. Hey, that is pretty dramatic, jumping into a muddy ditch. I mean, Homer should have broken at least one limb in that fall. That's a terrifying fall. He falls long enough to realize he made a mistake. It's really great animation. He's like, oh, my God. That was really good and i what you would call repressed trauma is such a funny sequence of words yeah

what you would call it repressed trauma i i really gained a new appreciation for homer's line something else happened in that quarry something else yes you think it's going to be like something deadly or like something like that but it's like no something else there's a lot of good turns of phrase that's a good one yeah i uh and so homer they have to let you know that homer would be the only one who remembers it because the other boys leave to feel the bras at sears so that's why they're not present for homer finding the body and uh when homer then i i kept waiting for the body to show up because I also knew like, oh, stand by me parody that it must be a body that Homer finds, though he has to dig around for it. And yeah, the water is gone because it got stuffed up with a corpse in there.

And then the way they drew the corpse corpse they say they actually drew it scarier and it already looks plenty scary like there's there's worms that coming out of that corpse i mean the guy shouldn't have eyes anymore but i'll give him that it's fine make it creepier but like the worms coming out of his face it is scary yeah first of all you brought up the something else line which is one of the like things that i absolutely highlighted in this i really like that something else but the corpse is genuinely just he's missing the top of his head like his skull like the whole scalp is missing and like yeah things crawling out of his nose i was pretty shocked by just how detailed they got with the corpse and the you know little it's supposed to be like the payoff for

what he found in a comedy episode and it's like yeah that's treehouse of horror stuff right in the middle of the episode yeah they they mentioned on the commentary they they often are scared or uh reticent to do something like that because they feel like for viewers at home there's an agreement of like if you're watching a treehouse one you expect blood and guts like you expect that but if it's not a treehouse a corpse isn't what you expect to see and the corpse is like, it is shocking. And it at least does explain, yeah, that would scar you for life as for Homer

and something he would want to bury. And then it explains his fear of corpses. I love that. Occasional overeating, my fear of corpses. Occasional overeating. Though, I mean, there is a reality to it of like, wow, Homer is like sobbing about a thing that scarred him when he was 12.

Like, actually, it's a very realistic thing that happens to people. This was another like the something else line. Another of my favorite lines is like, maybe there's murder afoot. Murder most foul. Maybe. It's a real shrug for Marge. Maybe. Maybe.

And so this sounds like a job for the Simpsons family. You found a corpse when you were 12? No wonder you've been so traumatized. It's responsible for everything wrong in my life. My occasional overeating. My fear of corpses. What I want to know is, what the heck was that body

doing there? Maybe there's murder afoot. Murder must foul? Maybe. You know, if Dad never told anyone, that body must still be out there. This sounds like a case that only the Simpson family can solve. Oh.

Okay. Well, we'll just be going then. Hey, you guys can come with us. No, no, no. He said Simpson family. I mean, you know, it sounded exciting, but, you know, we don't want to intrude. Thanks for understanding.

Oh. Oh, okay. Well, I'll see you bye mo not that that is that is so funny it's it's so realistically observed where one side of the party one side of the situation is waiting for an out when mo's like oh no no don't worry about me like okay see you later thank you oh oh okay his oh reaction is that oh oh that got a big laugh out of me last night and so like i i love when the care like i love when these certain characters take over the story bart's like well this is a caper now we're having like a fun caper bart declares that a caper that all four the family will go on it it is like the power of the story takes over

and they decide like no this third act shouldn't have mo lenny and carl at the quarry we're not they're not around for the ride i can i think i could see i think it comes out of a a plotting thing where they realize like when the reveal happens it's going to be explained to by burns to the entire simpsons family simpsons family and wigum and smithers if mo lenny and carl are also there that's a very crowded room that's a lot of lines to write for people yes in the same room but they they intentionally deal with it in a in a awkward way they could have actually just had this act to begin or like it resets the scene and the uh lenny carl and moe are gone and so they wouldn't have to address it but leaving them there so they can just be told like no you're not invited like please

please go away it could have started off with him saying the quarry is just an old sorry the old quarry is just a stone's throw away yes that's right uh quit stop saying that dad never that's great uh but uh but yes then they do the drive-by of mesmerino who does an old karnak bit which again it's uh al gene actually answered a question for me uh related to this on twitter but not about this episode but he brought up how i i always wondered why did they write that episode of alf for the tonight show parody uh so al gina mike reese wrote an two-parter clip show of alf which is framed as a tonight show parody and he says they had actually al gina told me on twitter they actually had quit the show by that point and were working on the gary shanley show but alf hired him back special for just those two episodes like like a bonus because like, you know how to write in Tonight Show.

Just do this Tonight Show stuff. So they just reused unused Tonight Show jokes that were rejected by Johnny Carson in that show. I mean, we've talked about it, but Carson was like brutal to his writers. He would just fire people left and right. You were working on like 13 week contracts. You had to write like a certain amount of jokes a day

and that amount was very big. And Al Jean was just, in our respect, Al Jeanan is like if you would have had us write less jokes the jokes would be better you threw away most of them so they had a lot of material from their carson days just sitting around to use on elf i like that in in memories al jean is a little nicer to johnny carson while mike reese is just like he's mainly talks about the warts of warts at all like our friend mark malkoff on the carson podcast he had great interviews with mike reese and aljean and i love that mike reese admits like oh yeah johnny was a jerk and he couldn't say he didn't want to make too gross assumptions about johnny carson's

hiring practices but he said that the only writers he didn't hire after meeting them in person uh were a man who was very overweight and a man who he didn't know was black until he met him in person and he didn't hire that guy either so but uh that that was all mike reese would say on that subject and you rarely interacted with him if you were a writer on the show yes yeah but uh but yes the the karnak bit of 1776 what is the what's in my bank account but i prefer the one they used reused on alpha saint elsewhere the message on mother theresa's answering machine very clever yeah hey you know what that alf is going to be re-released in uh in fancier form on shout factory soon they made that new alf deal i don't know if you guys saw that we could do one talking elf uh just as an experiment

just to see like a mike reese and al jean episode of al i feel we must pick the gene and reese one yeah but not the tonight show on because that's like a two-parter right yeah two-parter clip show so not worth it you know i had completely forgotten that al jean was a writer on alf until you started talking about that because i look alf was like my so my younger brother in particular was a completely an alf obsessive back in the day like had all kinds look alf was like my so my younger brother in particular was a completely an alf obsessive back in the day like had all kinds of alf like toys and blah blah but i did send him immediately a text about that shout factory release when i saw it pop up like that they're releasing it on blu-ray or whatever like i don't know he'll buy it i'm not sure but you know

what for true alf collectors they've had to settle at least for the North American DVDs being the syndication cuts and the shorter ALFs. Like, apparently this shop factory will be the broadcast longer versions of ALF. You know, we're going on a lot along about ALF,

but I will say that ALF two-parter was so popular that when ALF got his own talk show very briefly in the early aughts, Ed McMahon was his sidekick like he was on that ALF two-parter. Yes. I, you know, I maybe watched like two minutes of that ever but shout out to our pal nathan

rabin his article on uh accounting the entire insane uh elf talk show series i believe i believe the title of it is alf sleeps with prostitutes and other things in this show it was the early aughts yes yeah uh but but yeah so on their drive there they stop by uh the they stop at the quarry they also run into uh they run into wiggum there i do like march saying that it would be much safer to go there in the morning and then it leads to another joke that this was also in the uh the most recent treehouse we did from season 12 13 of when somebody says, somebody's yellow belly is showing and Bart goes, oh, sorry. They do several jokes of Bart thinking they're referring to him with a saying.

And then very similarly to Marge on the Lamb, Wiggum just walks into the scene. He's like, I'm here now, me. He's always very welcome in in an episode like this too like wig i'm bringing his well i'm sure we'll get to it in a clip later on but he has one of my favorite lines in the movie when they finally drain the water yes but you know he's just inept policing showing up to help with this just as because you know i like that it cuts it down to just the simpsons but it is nice to get at least one more peripheral character involved with this when they get to the end after booting Moe and Lenny and Carl out of the story for the rest of the show.

You know, it takes advantage of their full cast because you got all four of the voices for the family that he got in his area character. And then when Burns will join it, you got to share a character. So you got everybody. I like Wiggum. He's likable here looking for something to do. He wants free guitar lessons from the city for being a hero. I love that they just stare at him like, okay.

I'm kind of a crime buff. I love that, kind of a crime buff. But yes, they start trawling the water in this next clip. Chief Wiggum? Who's there? How do you know my name? It's us, the Simpsons. Oh, I saw your car by the gate and I thought you might be lost

hikers. Because then I could rescue you and be a hero and maybe the city would give me a coupon for free guitar lessons. So what are you doing here? We're investigating a possible murder case. Oh. You mind if I tag along? I'm kind of a

crime buff. If there's a body in here, we'll drag it up. Ah, heck, it's just an old shopping cart. Well, and it's empty. Put it back. I don't want to see it this way. We'll never find the body under all this water. Water, eh? Early to the rescue!

Water, eh? Give me a chuckle every time. And Wiggum, like a very ADR line, Wiggum goes, oh, that's so cool. Because I think they have to admit this is pretty outlandish to absorb an entire quarry's worth of water with like five paper towel rolls. But I guess they did establish its absorptivity in Act 1 it's still got soaking power i'm a big fan of reaction shots and reaction cuts in shows and the part when he says maybe they'll give me free guitar lessons there's a very funny it's like one second shot of the simpsons staring just it like not really sure what to think but they even i feel like they crank up the cricket

noise for it's just one cricket noise you hear that one cricket sound as they're standing staring at him it's just it gets very well cut the timing is perfect on it it doesn't hang on it for too long but it's just them kind of staring like okay i guess but like i feel like they crank up even the cricket noise to go along with that cut it's very well done i love the act out of his guitar lessons yeah that's so good uh also i it's kind of funny homer being heartbroken at seeing the empty shopping carts like he doesn't want to see it this way i do chuckle at wiggum saying i was just skull shaped rock and a bunch of white sticks like he's he's getting stupider by the the season as well just like homer and someone has eaten the flesh yeah of homer he's he's getting stupider by the the season as well just like homer and someone has eaten the

flesh yeah of homer he thinks he thinks marjorie lisa ate the flesh off of it uh and and also the the gun does look really small in wiggum's hand they note that on the commentary it's like that's kind of looks small but so i do want to say i almost held it in but the when i said earlier there's like a joke towards the end that didn't land for me it was the shopping cart one i. I don't know why it just the him saying, I don't want to see it this way. I was just kind of like, I feel like that's one of the ones that it's not that it's bad, but it feels like I don't know how to explain, like decreasing value in certain sort of jokes that they ran with. Like it's it's Homer saying something completely ridiculous.

I'm like caring about something like seeing a shopping cart empty. But that would be one of the when I said said that like the dichotomy of like the later episodes where it's like they can still nail these highs and then sometimes they try and it just doesn't work the shopping cart one was the one for me that did that that i was like i guess homer's famous for liking a bunch of food but not seeing a full shopping cart i guess that's not really his thing i mean i like following the logic where he thinks that when a shopping cart is full it's alive but when it's empty it's just like the skeleton of a shopping cart yeah it's okay that's that's a good way to look at it maybe and uh yes then there's also uh man i just have a very quick clip here but uh i feel that it's you know it's so mean to lisa i think that it uh

warrants the jingle. Maybe I've been a little jingle crazy on these last few episodes. The belief that Lisa had that dead rats don't float? Yes, yeah. Here's the jingle. Take that, Lisa's beliefs. Now do you believe dead rats float, Lisa?

Yes. Lisa's going to have repressed memories of her own after this i tell you at first i thought it was uh like an expression like does does a bear shit in the woods like i thought does don't dead rats float i thought that was an expression but no it's not it just they had this argument in the past and now homer has the advantage given her and i told you so and just the way it's too real the way yardley goes like yes like she's it's horrifying to lisa to look at this dead rat floating by i think i think they soften it slightly by bart having a friendly living rat on his shoulder i suppose that's also concerned about

the situation uh you know what i maybe i've been playing too much uh elden ring but them in the pipe here feels like dark souls to me but they're about to head into blight town everybody blight town hey blight watch out for that frame rate i i can't do elden souls i can't those like from software games are just i i can't i can't i i tried bloodborne it's i they're fun but it's too much for me i'm not i'm not good enough i'm not good enough i'll admit it i am not good enough to play those games i think you can get there with enough practice it's just if you want to give yourself the time to look it took me uh i'd say 70 hours of playing the souls games over the over uh the pandemic to finally get it like bob bob was on the trolley

way before me yes hey folks always be summoning if you need help don't be afraid to ask for help in dark souls or in real life something i meant to ask here and then maybe i missed this where where is maggie in this final act did they ever establish with maggie just be i mean i realized that like you gotta infer that maybe they got a sitter or something but it's like maggie's usually along for these things let's say mo yeah is watching her yeah okay there you go i can take your baby midge you know that it would foreshadow mo baby blues if they did that yeah the future one uh which one of the better one the better i always want to call it late simpsons you can't do it anymore one the better mid simpsons only 20 years ago yeah uh but yes uh a good gag is

wigum pulls out his gun points it at somebody and then pulls the trigger to turn on the light switch like that's a great joke yeah like i forgot the joke like because they opened the uh the the manhole cover or whatever burns has like a knife in his hand you think wigum's going to shoot the knife out of his hand but he shoots the light switch to turn on the lights and it's a it's a thing they've done before with burns like when he's got like a knife in his hand. You think Wiggins is going to shoot the knife out of his hand, but he shoots the light switch to turn on the lights. And it's a thing they've done before with Burns, like when he's got like a sharp letter opener to look threatening. Yeah, it's just they are reusing the gag from Blood Feud. Oh, and dear Lord, all the Burns stuff here is great.

I think Al Jean was bringing Burns back in a big way when he rejoined the show. And I love seeing him. He's really on fire in this scene. Yes. Yeah. Not to be confused with the cooling tower that's really on fire in this scene. Yes. Yeah. Not not to be confused with the the cooling tower that's on fire later in this. Yeah. No, I've I've got Burns explaining things to the guys in this next clip.

Yeah. What are you doing in my corpse hatch? Montgomery Burns, you're under arrest for murder. Did I say corpse hatch? I meant innocence tube. And how do you explain this? I've been expecting this day for 30 years.

In a way, it's a relief. But in another way, it's most unwelcome. Quit stalling, Burns. Who's your ice? I'm afraid that skull belongs to my dear friend Waylon Smithers. Senior! Mr. Smithers' father.

But I did not murder him. And I can prove it with this film. Oh, a movie. I call the coach. If you see only one film this year that proves my innocence, make it this one. I love his make it this one. love his make it this one a little laugh like he's in a commercial everything he says and i've carried the term innocence tube with me for a long time uh i also love the posing of homer on the couch like he he is your shitty friend who's

like i call the couch and takes the entire thing and on the commentary they point out what a cheat the surveillance footage is and that there's like coverage there's a camera inside of the nuclear reactor core dozens of camera no no camera is shooting another camera burns had a secret thing edited together you know yeah i i didn't even think of that as i was watching it i do so burns burns is probably my favorite, at least as far as secondary characters, absolutely my favorite, quite possibly my favorite character on The Simpsons. Burns is always, and I, yeah, I didn't realize that. So you said when Al Jean came back, he, did they have, had they lessened Burns' character for a while that I don't recall? Yeah. Mike Scully was not as interested in the power plant as other

writers based on his seasons. It seems like he was more interested in putting Homer into different jobs and also doing a lot of lampooning of like Hollywood and executive culture and things like that. So that's why like Lenny and Carl become Homer's best friends at Moe's and other places. And that's why we see very little of Burns outside of like the few episodes that he's in in his seasons. But Al Jean loves Burns. Al Jean is bringing Homer back to the planet in his seasons.

I think he's trying to put more in of what the show lost since like the late 90s. Yeah. I just love that line. In a way, it's a relief. But in another way, it's most unwelcome. Like, it's so good. With like the ominous sting, too.

Yeah, yeah. So then Selman points this out on the commentary, too, and Al Jean doesn't lie. He's like, yeah, this is pretty similar to Spock's death in Star Trek II. Oh, okay. Yeah, it is. Oh, yeah. A man shutting down the reactor and dying, and you see it through the window and all that. It's like the ending of Fallout 3.

Yes, that's right. But yeah, so this smithers a baby in this flashback like he has to be younger than homer like because i i mean that corpse could have been there for you know maybe like a few months but there's still flesh on the corpse when homer finds it is not that old of a corpse you know what this is like armin tamzarian level uh cannon fuckery but no one got mad about this except for me and it's like well if smithers was raised by burns from birth basically this changes everything and it's never referenced again really like this is way worse that smithers wants to fuck burns that's

for sure yeah yeah yeah i do want to say one of my favorite things about this show in the episodes that is that it really is like there's like a money ball aspect to the way you view the simpsons that was like you're i love how much you care about canon and things in the simpsons it really is one of the things that like i find so endearing about this show is that and like the statistics that you have and like just how much research it's just very impressive but i love how wrapped up in can you know i'm sure there are other simpsons fans who get wrapped up in canon stuff but it's honestly one of those things i had never even thought about even in this episode watching it stuff that i hadn't thought about until you're talking about it with like how it doesn't add up with smithers age and homer's age being there it's just yeah it's just

so i love i love how like into that you are on this show and i mean they realize they're being kind of flippant because i feel like if uh if bill oakley and josh weinstein were running this season and telling this story it would be like an emotional story about smithers that would still be very funny like armin tam's airing is like an emotional story about skinner and his character and uh it is moving and uh it really speaks to like the truth of that character And this one, Smithers barely talks. And there are big winks to the audience that they don't care. It's like, oh, Waylon Jr. Burns has never called Smithers that in his entire life.

But now the show acts like that's what Burns has always called Waylon Smithers. They make it a joke that when the reveal happens, Homer doesn't even care anymore. He's eating popcorn. This story about Homer's childhood trauma is he doesn't even care anymore he's eating popcorn this story about homer's childhood trauma is he doesn't care about this in this moment now the movie's a play yeah but yes smithers learns the truth in our next clip so you're a baby huh how's that working out for you he did it look at your heroic daddy in there. Making funny faces, falling to the floor, shedding his hair, lying perfectly still.

Oh, dear. Sir. Smithers Senior gave his life to save the plant And since cover-ups were all the rage back then I shoved his heroic corpse down the sewer pipe I never told Smithers the truth about his father Until tonight, sir Smithers Jr.

Busted Now the movie's turned into a play Still good, though I'm sorry I lied to you, Waylon But I wanted to spare you the details of your father's gruesome death. Well, I'm glad to know he died a hero instead of that other way.

I told him his father was killed in the Amazon by a tribe of savage women. I hope it didn't affect you in any way. Well, never know, sir. Okay, we can talk about that in a second, but they do try to go for a somewhat sincere moment when uh smithers jr grabs burns his nose and goes sir where it's like oh this is kind of touching

but the the rest of the episode does not take this seriously at all that's see that was my biggest problem when i saw this new because the it's like a joke line of burns describing look at your daddy and he's describing a man dying of intense radiation poisoning. At first, I wanted to laugh. But then when they bring in Sir, and they want you to feel bad, like, oh, this child doesn't have a father anymore. And he's going to grow up. And it's just like, wait, am I supposed to feel bad now?

Or am I supposed to laugh about his corpse? Which it just felt like mixed messages, even in first viewing. OK, so one of my big thoughts with this episode that I had at the end was, you know, Burns is very firmly established throughout this series. And I'm going to completely butcher this particular line that I'm referencing. But one of my favorite Burns moments, you know, even all the way up to insinuated murder or something along those lines. The line I'm thinking of is, I can't remember what it is that he's seeing. He's standing, staring off of the balcony from the power plant. And something is, fire or something.

And he says, the Shawnee are coming. They want their souls back. Like, it's just, he is firmly established as being like the most evil person who's ever lived. But this episode makes, you know, murder, not only murder a bridge too far when they explain that he didn't actually murder Waylon senior but he's sympathetic which you don't see from Burns very often when he realizes that he's dead you know he gives a sympathetic oh you know like he you don't see that from Burns ever so it was kind of a weird character beat for Burns's character to even before Smithers jr gives the sir line you know know, you see that he like, you just never see that side of Burns in this show. So it was one of those weird things for me

when he treated that with like the respect that it deserves seeing his friend die. Under normal circumstances, you might've felt like he would have been very flippant about it, even though he is when he talks about coverups for all the rage stories through his heroic corpse down that hole after he explains it.

But like, it's played seriously. And it implies that he's been a surrogate father to smithers his entire life like almost out of you know shame or or feeling bad for him and so it just it also makes burns like nicer in retrospect it makes him i i don't mind it in other shows of like actually futurama with hermes and bender has a similar revelation all right yeah which i at least i i found that a little more acceptable, but it also kind of crapped on some canon as well in that series. But at the very least, Burns is a black-hearted evil billionaire. He doesn't care about anybody.

He dreams that Smithers will be buried alive with him. He has no plans for his future. He sees Whalen. Also, if he ever thinks about Whalen, he's like, you're still here get out of here like he or he'll try to kill him for asking time off like yeah he doesn't love him I'm just glad

the show didn't investigate this anymore and doesn't really reference this part of the history because it doesn't work like literally but also it doesn't work emotionally and I like Smithers the way he is not as a man who was so traumatized by you know the circumstances that he became gay yeah so that's the implication with that joke which yes i as

the gay guy here i'll just say like i mean i can chuckle at the idea where they say like we'll never know which is their implication like it's obvious they'd made you gay because you were scared of women that killed your father so of course and of course men who uh have sex with men are do it because they're terrified of women that's why they do it that's the joke that's the only reason it happens i think it was an older way of thinking before we all just accepted yes yes children are gay there are gay little kids running around there was this idea like no something happens to you in your life and that's when the you go down the gay path yeah it's a pivotal point for you yeah Yeah, I don't.

I mean, it's a cute little line about like, we'll never know that it's lost on Whelan that he doesn't understand. Who's to say? Please, William. Whelan Jr. Whelan Jr. Sorry. Yes. The other thing is, if you drop that last part about I hope it wasn't too traumatic or whatever.

The idea that Burns explained it away by he was murdered by Amazon women is funny on its own. is if you drop that last part about i hope it wasn't too traumatic or whatever like the idea that burns explained it away by he was murdered by amazon women is funny on its own you know what i mean without adding that extra bit that turns it into you know like just that that's the best he could come up with is that yeah your father was murdered by amazon women like that that works on its own without having to turn it into the yeah the ugly joke that it becomes once he says that part about you know too much trauma that it made him gay the trauma made him gay yes that's uh that i think they would rethink that joke now i'll just say yeah but and yeah again like i said homer just sits back and eats popcorn

during the resolution of the entire traumatic event of his life too hey they made it into a movie for him so they made him happy uh but that's but i mean that that also like you say when they want to this episode wants to get your emotions a little but they can't they didn't get the ratio correct of heartwarming to not because like they already have homer is traumatized let him close the loop on his trauma but they're like nah we're not that interested in that or like okay can we have something heartfelt with like smithers is actually a an orphan through tragic circumstances like let's give him this kind of superhero origin almost and they're like well yeah but we also want to laugh at like a bandai yeah you know they want it both ways again like if this was uh like an oakley and weinstein uh story

and this is still a very funny episode but they would have had smithers enact one saying you know sorry i've been thinking about my father and you know asking questions investigating he would be like an active participant in the story at least for an emotional story I think they would have balanced it better yes and you maybe learn more about his life too which we don't in this episode

but yes so the episode ends with one final clip here though don't worry it's not the full two minutes but I do love Mo feeling like he missed out. Well, Marge, we solved the case of the haunted quarry. Homer, shouldn't we give that skull to Mr. Smithers? Why? He just buried it. Hey, hey, I found a clue

that's gonna bust your mystery wide open. Sorry, we already solved it. Oh, well, you want to found a clue that's gonna bust your mystery wide open. Sorry, we already solved it. Oh. Well, you want to take a look at it anyways, just for ha-has? Seems kind of pointless now. Yeah, I guess you're right. It's just that I went to a lot of trouble, you know, making the envelope and everything. Let's see what you have now. Okay, now this first thing is just gonna look like a used band-aid

And it is But the rest of the stuff don't make no sense without it So, you know, bear with me Wow, Moe, you've been doing a lot of sleuthing Oh, yeah, oh, yeah I sleut my ass off on this one Okay, this is a number six from somebody's address Or is it a nine?

You don't know This is gravel, six from somebody's address. Or is it a nine? You don't know. This is gravel. Okay? Gravel. And then he does it over the crack. Yeah. It's very well observed behavior of basically a little kid showing something to their parents and their parents just humoring them.

Like, that's a nice picture. Oh, wow. That is Spider-Man. I can see him. Yeah. I'm making fun of Henry's childhood, by the way. The funniest one to me is, it's a shell, but it looks like a helmet for a mouse. And when I asked the mice, they ran away, which, you know, yeah.

I think they were really getting into Hank's area. Just like, you know, the Pokey also ends with a lengthy like Wiggum. Him as Wiggum with Michael Keaton just goofing around too. And so does like the Simpson Tall Tales. It's Hank Azaria ad-libbing with Dan Costaneda. Although in the commentary, they're protective of the jokes that they wrote. They're like, no, no, no. We wrote the jokes.

He added the ums and ahs. We gave him the points to hit. So this is not all i mean his choice of delivery and like little comments he makes throughout are his ad lives but the choice of the items was like pre-written for him it's all off the page yeah they're there but i i like that they missed he homer even points out like so you made this envelope because it says this oh you got that's great uh no uh apparently in their original act three it was that chad sexington shows up late for his dates and uh it resolves that which i think would

be funny too but obviously they needed to make room for all of hank's improv which which is funny yeah they just let you know harry shearer got to let loose by having his wife appear on the show hank azaria got to let loose with a lot of improvisation. And one thing I noticed that the mouse won't let them do, that's what you call Disney if you're cool, by the way, the mouse, is that Homer, there's normally, or sometimes there's like a little clip over the Gracie Films logo, and this one, of course, it's Homer screaming.

He screams louder over the 20th Century Fox television clip at the end. So there's normally no dialogue over that logo for 20th century fox but homer screams even louder so biting the hand that feeds you they cannot do that with disney in fact they lick the hand that feeds them they like that hand they suck on the thumb a little it's weird you know it's that well the hand's got a mickey mouse glove on it so it's uh yeah it's at least hygienic when they're looking at it and kissing it. Smelling it. But yeah, I do like that Homer, he's so insane that he just like keeps Smithers father's skull in a box and won't give it back to Smithers. He also forgets the problem.

Like that solves the mystery of the haunted quarry. Yes, yeah. It's like, no, it was about your repressed memory. There was no ghost. It's, you know, it's, yeah, I didn't like this episode when it first aired, or I also didn't mind that I missed its first airing. And when I rewatched it, I was mad at the continuity stuff. But, uh, and also like, I don't know, a lengthy film parody felt a little flat to me, but

there's still good stuff in this. I just wish they honestly jettisoned any sense of emotion in this like parent rap is a much better just zany town episode with no emotion this tries to make you like feel bad for smithers in a way that's really unearned like you said he has three lines in the episode bob you know it's like he has yeah he's kind of a guest in his own story yeah no i feel the same way like i said up front uh this made me mad at first because you know continuity is nothing in the simpsons but sometimes they'll do an episode like this where they say well this is the new lore and i'm glad they didn't stick

with this really and i'm happy to appreciate this episode now as one that's just full of very very funny jokes and uh yeah i like this one a lot yeah Yeah, I'm really glad. I sincerely thank you for like having me on with one of these episodes that, you know, like I said, I have this idea in my head that I've been wrong about. It made me realize I've been wrong about as far as like when I stopped watching the set. Not it again. When I say stop watching, it's not like I ever like I still catch random episodes, but where it was like I have to watch every Simpsons episode.

And it went further than I thought my enjoyment of the show to where it was still a weekly thing. And because of this, I'm going to honestly, I think my plan is to try to venture into the uncharted waters of my Disney Plus subscription and watch some more of these seasons that I've kind of just been like, well, they're not as good because this episode was very funny. I'd at least give nine through 12 EPS a chance that you haven't given a chance in a while. I say watch them all and subscribe to the Patreon because we'll talk about them all. Hey, that's right. Yeah, that's a great. I like the way Bob thinks. Exactly.

Exactly. Because I will say certain well-meaning people have said to us, what are you going to do when you get past season eight, huh? You're going to go work at the box factory again? And the answer is no, because we're finding a lot of value in these. And you know what? There's not a lot of discussion that's about like 20 years worth of Simpsons. And we're finding so much to talk about.

You know, that's a funny thing as far as Soundtracker goes, too. Like one of the things that I realize I'm going to have to do, and same deal with the show. I'm sure you get people that are like, well, you know, as faracks go there's probably 150 maybe and that's probably being generous like real big ones but because of the movie discussion too you've got all kinds of other options but at the same time like i am excited like if i had if i were in your shoes i would be excited to venture into the ones that i'm not as familiar with because it's something that's like when i do shows uh the meet the deetles episode that i did i had had never heard that soundtrack, didn't see the movie. It was really fun to do, even though the movie was terrible.

But it was fun to like something I was not familiar with. There's tons of movies on that list that like, yeah, you just got to go beyond that. Like it's it's the adventure of that, I think, is the fun part. So like, yeah, sure. For both of you finding things that you enjoy. I'm sure there's going to be movies I've never heard of or soundtracks I've never heard of on that list that I'm going to come away with things that I either love about the movie or the soundtrack. And that's an exciting part of this.

So, you know, listen to those people. Yes. We provide a service. Any schmuck out there can talk about Mr. Plow. Yeah. And hey, we'll do it. We'll do it better than them when we redo it. But we'll also we'll also talk about Mr. Plow.

Don't go anywhere. Please. I can't do the crow every week you know what i mean it'd be like hey a new guest talking about the crow like no that's not what's fun about this so like yeah i don't know as i said it's just people with no sense of adventure like it's fun to venture into these things and like find episodes that find hidden gems it's a great time it's a great part of having shows like this if you do want to go high concept for a year you could do the crow every week with a different guest and just like see how you feel

at the end of the year one minute of the crow soundtrack every week two and a half hour episodes about the first minute of the cure song like how long is this soul asylum song i just assume i assume soul asylum is on the crow soundtrack i'm'm probably wrong. No, they're not. They're actually not. They've been spoken about on the show before. If I need to do a two and a half hour episode about a minute long clip from the Crow, Henry, I know that I can have you on to do something

like that. Oh, for sure. For sure. Eric, thank you so much for doing this with us today. Thank you for having me. Oh, absolutely. Please tell our listeners where to find Soundtracker and where to find you online. Okay.

So, oh, by the way, Bob, I didn't mean that as a, I was joking about Henry's length of his episode. I just realized it sounded like I was like, Henry, you should come on my show. I ignored you completely. Like I was riffing on the length of his episode. Hey, I get music. We'll talk, we'll make up a fake soul asylum song for the crow soundtrack that's what you and i can do that's the the rare japanese

version of the crow soundtrack that i have uh okay so if for some reason you've heard this and you want to hear more from me i am on twitter at uwe bollocks which is spelled u-w-e-b-o-L-L-O-C-K-S. Or as far as if you're into the idea of like discussions about movies and music and where the two sort of meet and soundtracks and nostalgia, you can find that at Soundtracker with an underscore at the end on Twitter. S-O-U-N-D-T-R-A-C-K-E-R with an underscore. I hope I didn't just insult you by telling you how to spell Soundtracker because I figure you probably all know that. But it's just in my habits to spell that when I say it. I don't really do much with the show outside of Twitter.

So Twitter is really where you can find me. I don't really mess with Instagram or anything like that. But the show itself is available anywhere you listen. And I do, as I said before, have an episode with Henry and Mallrats. So if that sounds interesting, you can find that. Yeah. Spotify, Apple, any place that you listen. So you have a ton of great episodes.

I really loved your one on Wet Hot American Summer, you know, because that's that's a true comedy classic. But I I don't think as much about the soundtrack of it. Same here. Yeah. And I was listening to Higher and Higher on my walk today just to get back, get in the mood for my my morning exercise. It's a great and when Donald suggested that to like my immediate thought was to like the license tracks, which are none of none of them are on the soundtrack, you know. So I was really glad that he picked that for the same reason, because that was one that I know the songs from listening to him in the movie, but like getting to listen to the soundtrack as a whole.

Yeah, it's one that I hadn't even considered because they really didn't get a physical release until like five years ago. So thank you. Thank you is what I'm saying. I'm glad that you enjoyed that one. Oh, no. And thank you so much, Eric, for coming on. This was a blast.

Thanks, Eric. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much to Eric for being on the show. Please check out Soundtracker. But as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month to get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes over 100 episodes of our mini series we've done behind that paywall and also includes access to our monthly exclusive mini series

talking futurama and talking of the hill those are all behind the $5 paywall at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you get all the $5 stuff, but also access to one super, super long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob is talking about the What a Cartoon Movie podcast. That's our premium podcast we do on patreon.com

slash talking simpsons where we cover an animated feature film super duper in depth just like we do on the simpsons which often means we talk for over four hours or even five hours about classic films at the end of april we'll be doing who framed roger rabbit in march we did the disney classic pinocchio and the month before that we did south park bigger longer and uncut those are all great podcasts to listen to if you want to hear the history of those films and just our chat about it and there's over three years worth of what a cartoon movies i'd say over 240 hours of what a cartoon movie podcast in addition to all of the other five dollar stuff bob just mentioned if you head over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons, you can see an easy to follow list of what you're missing out on.

So I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I have another podcast, by the way, it is called Retro Knots. That is a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro knots. Sign up there for two full link bonus episodes every month. And Henry, what about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-e-y-g stay up to date with my thoughts there you should

also follow on twitter the official twitter account of this podcast which is at talk simpsons pod follow at talk simpsons pod stay in the loop when new episodes go live on the free feed on the patreon when there's news going on in our lives also if you would like an easy to follow list of all the previous released free episodes of Talking Simpsons, go to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next week for Season 3's Homer Defined,

and we'll see you then. Okay, this is a number six from somebody's address. Or is it a nine? You don't know. This is gravel. Okay, gravel. This is, uh, that's more gravel. Okay, oh, this is a shell that, to me, this is just me talking, it looks like a helmet for a mouse.

Now, that sounds crazy, right? But if you ask the mice about it, they don't say nothing. I mean, they run the other way. At first I was just fishing with the helmet thing, but then't say nothing. I mean, they run the other way. At first, I was just fishing with the helmet thing, but then from the mouse reaction I got, I got a little more concerned.

You really made that envelope? Because it says hammer mill over here. Um, no. Shh. Ah! Ah! Ah!