Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Call of The Simpsons (Revisited) With Ian Boothby

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

Our return to the first season anniversary party continues, with returning guest Ian Boothby! (Check out the comics Sparks and Exorsisters, as well as the Sneaky Dragons podcast!) This week it's time for the iconic camping trip, featuring RV salesmen, anonymous guest stars, friendly bears, sasquatch sightings, and more! So grab yourself a little moss and listen now!! 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!

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That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we're all on the Bigfoot diet. I'm your host, the land behemoth, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, and this podcast has a fryer for every part of the chicken. And who do we have on the line?

I'm Ian Boothby, and I'll be doing couch gags at home to make up for the ones missing in this episode. Oh, wow. And today's episode is Call of the Simpsons. Everybody ready? I don't want to go. Not to the spirit. Ready or not, nature, here we come. Today's episode aired on February 18th, 1990. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. happen on this mythical day in real world history oh boy bobby bill bixby gets angry for the final time in the death of the incredible hulk tv movie the wayne's world aerosmith sketch happens on saturday night live quite a major moment in that show and in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history, Buster Douglas defeats Mike Tyson in their controversial Tokyo boxing match. And that match got him a bad Genesis game. It really did. funny because the Genesis guys, they were like, well, Mike Tyson's on the NES. So if we get the guy who beat Mike Tyson, then we've got the better boxing game. But by the time the game came out, Buster Douglas had lost his first defense. So they had to advertise like, yeah, we have the loser. It's the loser's day. Who's the second biggest sports star? Tommy Lasorda.

Well, that's why they get Evander Holyfield for the next Genesis box. They used to call him Fatso, now they just call him Stinky. Now, with the Bill Bixby thing, was that a team-up with any other superhero when the Hulk died? Was that a Thor or a Daredevil or something like that, or just was he on his own? I do believe Death had

no guest character in it. Daredevil was in Trial, and I believe the TV movie before that had uh thor in it or thor might be in the death of incredible hulk but i as i recall reading once upon a time they originally considered it as like a stealth pilot for a she-hulk uh show oh okay uh but then uh that just isn't in there and so they they simply kill him off. He dies at the end. But in a very, you know, Spock, Star Trek 2 kind of way that they knew they could bring him back if they wanted to in a future one. But unfortunately, he'd never play David Banner again, I believe was the name of him in the show.

Could not say Bruce on TV until 1992. That's absolutely right. Yeah, that was one of the weirdest things when they did the Hulk, sorry, just being a nerd off the top, when they did the Hulk-Batman comic book crossover and just had two heroes named Bruce. It's like, oh, that's odd. That is one of my all-time favorite

DC Marvel crossovers because just the art in it, the art in it by Jose Garcia Lopez, one of the best drawings. Like his Batman is the perfect Batman to me. More so than Neil Adams. I think his Batman is the perfect Batman. Agreed.

And that Wayne's World Aerosmith sketch. I think that's when Wayne's World truly arrived as the big sketch on the show. Because this was where the guests were playing along with them. Remember, it's Tom Hanks testing it before him, like siblings. That's right. But still two years before the movie, right? I wonder after that

they're like, oh, this is going to be a movie. Now that we've seen how the kids react to this, it's going to be a movie. Wayne is a weird character in Canada in that he started off as a weird character in canada in that he started off as a canadian character and was clearly canadian there's nothing not canadian about him from his love of hockey to everything else in his accent and then they had to make him american for the uh for the movie and we're like he's not america this is all a lie it's a dirty

lie but uh but we still like him every Everything about his hair and the hat and his accent, everything, he is fully the Canadian version of the rock fan. Garth is much more of the Californian rock fan, I think. That's true, yeah. But they're so great together, even though, I mean, it's rightly called Wayne's World because Wayne kind of drives everything, and Garth is just this silly sidekick. That's true.

I want to reboot, see what they're doing today. god they they appear in those wigs every now and then oh yeah for the 45th anniversary was it something recently yeah yeah well i do remember at the uh the oscars the year before they weren't in costume but they presented some award. No, they presented the Bohemian Rhapsody nomination section, and they did some quotes. That still was like, well, you guys are old. This makes me sad because it makes me know I'm old. I don't like this. If they were brought back, they'd be canceled for their homo says what routine. That's true.

That's true. They need to evolve. They need to evolve. How dare you, past. But yes, hey, by the way, our guest, Ian Boothby, welcome back. Yes, Ian Boothby of the podcast Sneaky Dragon and also of the upcoming book, Sparks, Double Dog Dare. He's the writer of that book. Nina Matsumoto, former guest of the show, I guess current guest of the show.

We haven't written her off yet. She is the artist. And Dave Dedrick, another guest of the show i guess current guest of the show we haven't written her off yet she is the artist and uh dave dedrick uh another guest of the show is the colorist so we've had all of the sneaky dragon crew and sparks crew on our podcast it's also fun to have you on here ian again because uh this isn't about age shaming or ages but but bob and i were and yet i'm sorry but i was gonna say just that you know that Bob and I were children, barely in elementary school when this series came out. You're a little older than us. So I was curious about the perception of the original Bart mania from somebody who wasn't in the exact Bart demographic of season one. Well, I was a big fan of Life in Hell

and Matt Groening's work before The Simpsons. So I was just thrilled that anything of his was getting on television. Then 1990, I took a bus, and I don't recommend this, from Vancouver to New York. Oh, that sounds bad. Yeah, with very few stops.

By the time I got there, I was loopy. And by the time I got there, Bart fever had kind of taken over. Like it wasn't there when I started the trip, but it was there when I got there. Three episodes had aired. Yeah. There was Bart shirts everywhere. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've got to get one of these because these won't be around for long.

And so I bought a couple of things. And then, yeah, that was the start of it. And it was just amazing. This obscure cartoonist that I was a huge fan of had a TV show. And now everyone seemed to like it. It was just very strange. It was like your most indie band possible all of a sudden becomes the most popular band in the world. Yeah, it's hard to think of a comparison of something that big going from indie to popular that quickly.

Yeah. Right. And America to me there was very reagan before then it was rah rah you know country uh hooray we're the best we're the best and this was a comic strip that later became a tv show that went maybe we're not maybe things are all messed up and uh and people got on board with it and again it was like oh this it was a real uh paradigm shift in uh in comedy in a very similar way to how Letterman changed talk shows. This really just changed comedy to the point where Disney cartoons became funny afterwards.

And they were never really funny for like years and years and years before then. That's true. It went until the 90s for the first funny Disney cartoon. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, Aladdin is so much more postmodern than even like Beauty and the Beast before it in a Simpsons winking kind of way, for sure. I'm also thinking like TV cartoons like Darkwing Duck was just like, oh, here's a fun comedy that's like fourth wall breaking and very clever. Ian, I think you're making the argument that Simpsons kind of paved the way for the Clinton era and ending the Reagan years. For acceptance of saxophones.

Yeah, I guess so. It's true. Loosening all of our morals. This is a completely side thing, but I watched the opening, and I don't normally, I skip over the openings usually. And maybe you've talked about this, but Lisa coming home clearly has a banjo case, right? The case that she's got is in no way a saxophone case. A saxophone would in no way fit in that case. What's with that?

You're right about that. I guess she's just a multi-talented at musical instruments. Okay. Or maybe it's easier to draw a banjo case than is a saxophone case. But just watching it was like, oh, wait, I never noticed that before. But this is completely wrong. It's a cool little bit of animation that they lost after this season. Yeah.

I wish, well, I can see, even though it was great animation that's sad to lose, it's some of the best, like, as far as the craft of animation, some of the best animation in the whole opening. But I think if they had the choice of like, the camera's going to pan in the season two and onward opening, the camera's going to pan over all the people of Springfield going in this direction. So the shot of Lisa that pans from the opposite direction, it doesn't really work with it. So they just have to drop it, which yeah, it is. It's a sad, it's the thing I miss the most about the season one opening

aside from like future Bart at the bus stop. Yeah. A lot of future Bart's and Lisa's hanging out together. But going to your question about what it was like being in the beginning of Bartmania, I would compare it to Beatlemania in that the Beatles were really good when they started, but then they got amazing and very experimental and then just kept changing and changing and evolving and getting better and better in such a short period of time. And then they stopped and The Simpsons didn't stop and it's gone on to be other things for better or worse. But I,

I find, I find that's what it's like. It's odd that something is so popular and so good. And at the same time evolving constantly and everyone just completely at the best, at the best they'll ever be. That's a really good comparison. Yeah.

I never, I never considered that, that yeah, that this is, I guess what their hold your hand, I suppose, is this episode equivalent for Beatles. Yeah. You go from their early, very teeny bopper stuff to just amazing experimental work and just great song after great song and every album being really, really different. And the only other thing I can think that evolved so quickly was The Simpsons.

Well, yeah, The Beatles started by doing a bunch of covers, in America at least, and doing a camping episode on a sitcom is kind of like doing a cover. They've been done a bit before, yeah, and there's a funny bit on the commentary where Reese just says, like, every animated series does a camping episode right around the seventh or eighth episode we're like we gotta get these characters somewhere new we gotta do something different and i looking back on it as i was doing like the background research on this episode i think this was like the most profitable episode or one of the most like influential

on merchandise and the selling of The Simpsons? And video games, at least one video game in particular. This was a big, big one for the series. And with clips that got replayed the most, I wouldn't call it the... It's close to what I think is the best episode of season one, but I think it is maybe the most memorable or had the biggest kind of impact, I think. I definitely say that it has the best scene of season one, for sure, which we can get to when we get to it. But it's one of those scenes that you go, only this show could do it. And that's an important thing to me. I'm watching, oh, I'm trying to think what it's called.

Is it called Dillentown or something? There's a new- Duncanville. Duncanville. That's right. I watched Duncanville and it's absolutely fine with very talented people. The animation is great. And I don't see a point that it's on the air. Like I see it and I go like, this is fine, but there's no reason for it. It's not doing anything new. It's just very good, high quality animation. It's fine. And there's a scene in this that, that I looked and went like, Oh, no other TV show could do this. And that's the reason this show should exist.

You know, it's the only show that could do this type of comedy. Uh, you know, a live show couldn't do it. A Saturday morning show couldn't do it. Only this show could do it. And it kind of, for me to find why, uh, why the simpsons was the simpsons but again we'll get to that when we get to it in your time is a you also have written a lot of simpsons comics if new listeners don't know that at the uh now no longer with us bongo comics uh did you ever touch on this camping episode or reference to it in your time there no i don't think that that we did i think i have such traumatic memories of playing the bear level of the Simpsons arcade game that I just didn't want to go back to it. That bear was

incredibly hard to beat in the game. Yeah. Yeah. It felt like they'd already covered the great outdoors. So the big trick with doing the comic was what hasn't the Simpsons done yet and trying to find that and going for those those going for those stories so this i did i never really did an outdoorsy one the merchandise thing i was talking about one of the big ones was that this episode and this episode specifically were used for a burger king kids club toy set oh yeah i was gonna bring mine but i forgot but they're in my apartment you can see them whenever you want henry but i'll stare at them the next time i'm a bird but uh yeah they're based on like the outfits they're wearing

and they're like little vignettes bart is carrying a ton of things marge is like looking at a like a bird watching guy and there are birds in her hair but they were meant to come with these little cardboard standees you put behind them but those all disintegrated like instantly yeah well it's like how the right before these toys at burger king there were the dolls you'd get you'd buy mini muffins and then for 349 you could get a simpsons doll with it i have the bar i got that at a flea market like 12 years ago but they they all came with paper like accessories of like lisa with her sacks but those are never with them anymore either because again they just all fall apart they're so cheaply made i have a distinct memory of how i got mine we went to burger king uh my mom brought me and my sister and her friend and my sister's friend and myself

we both got happy meals or kids meals kids meals kids club we were in the kids club and we we presented our cards and got in and And then we ordered the kids meal. I got the Bart one. I was ecstatic. Like, oh, man, I got Bart. I'm so lucky. He got Marge. And he was like, do you just want this?

And I was like, yeah, I'll take it. He did not want Marge at all. Jeez. And how sexist. That's terrible. I got Mr. Largo. All right, fine. He's somewhere in the background in this camping episode.

Find him. I collected all of these, but I should tell you guys that my mom loves collecting Happy Meal toys even more than me. So I had every Happy Meal toy, pretty much. She would go on lunch breaks at her work and go to McDonald's and buy Happy Meals until she got every figure from a set of them and she'd have many duplicates i i look back on this and realize she had an obsession with happy meal that's cool though i mean are they still in like a vault somewhere you know they must be somewhere in my stepdad and hers home but i i haven't seen him she's she in my teens she joked that this is your inheritance is these are Happy Meal toys.

But Happy Meal, so I was, even as a six-year-old, very closely knew Happy Meal toys and the competition from Burger King. And so these were some of the first Burger King attempts at copying Happy Meals. Like Burger King had done, I don't know if you guys remember the Crayola Bears you could get. Those were highly collectible. This was the first of the 90s. I was looking at a wiki trying to pin down the date

of when Burger King launched these toys. And I could not find anything more specific than 1990. I think late 1990. It felt like a summer thing to me. I remember it being a summer memory for me. Okay. But on the wiki it

did say that like these were the first toys of kids club like they started with a bang wow simpsons that's a good get i think they simpsons toys wouldn't return to burger king until 07 with those amazing treehouse car scenes yeah i love them what uh what season did these toys come out in second season it'd be the summer before season two then yeah timeline because it's a real risk if you're going like hey burger king for the kids things you want this spin-off of the tracy ullman show it's our interstitials you know just these weird bizarre you know that's for kids right like no kids are watching the tracy ullman show so there had to be a point where they went, oh no, kids, yes, they will be in on this. But at what point would they know

that kids would be down with The Simpsons? It's an odd connection when you look back at what it originally was. Yeah, who knows when they actually had to put that in the Burger King schedule. Because you have to have factories in China make the things, you have to build them. I know that based on video game research, the reason Sonic the Hedgehog 3 came out when it did, unfinished, is because there was a Happy Meal toy plan in the books, and they had to get it out for that toy plan.

Yeah, the Happy Meals were some of the most powerful marketing you could have for something. Yeah. A couple years after this, it was a huge get that Burger King got the Disney license from Happy Meals, and they did Aladdin toys, which Robin Williams was not happy about. But that's a story for another day.

That's true. But I will tell everyone out there, if you want to get these, fortunately, they're super easy to find because they made 200 million of them. And, I mean, you can even find them with the cardboard packaging they'll cost a little more but you probably get all of them for like 20 bucks or less i i want to complete my set honestly i was pricing them out i saw like you on ebay you could get a five dollar set but it had no maggie but

other than that full full set and there were also four collectible cups with scenes from the episodes on them. You will get leukemia if you drink from them now, though, unfortunately. You know, I didn't have those cups, though. I prized my Pizza Hut Garfield collectible cups, which were also plastic and bad. And I shouldn't have been drinking from them. No, that's the old plastic that would break down and get into your bloodstream. I much prefer the glass cups that were like the batman forever cups for glasses led for me uh but i do have the original commercial here oh i want to hear it uh so the original commercial was the 32nd one but the first 10

seconds was just a general burger king kids club thing of all our fun friends of Kid Vid and the one in the wheelchair and the basketball kid. His name was Wheels. Sorry. It's very inappropriate. Yes. But after that, we then got this commercial. Look out, nature dudes.

We're coming. Burger King's taking Homer, Marge, and all the Simpsons camping, including you-know-who. Now you can get one Simpsons character and camping scene in every Kids Club meal at Burger King. The Burger King Kids Club, just for fun, just for you. I'm impressing on Nancy to say like two lines or one line pretty much. The thing you didn't get visually there is when they said, and guess who? It's Bart when they say that.

They're pumping up Bart as they know the most popular character. And when they say, guess who? And they zoom in on the toy of Bart. Then they have stock footage of wildebeests running away in fear. I see. And these toys do not move or do anything. They're just molded plastic that are hollow inside. I remember taking them in the bathtub a lot yeah you know me too but that's probably what i think i remember the

paint really falling off by marge the birds and marge's hair were the first to go i think on my figures as i recall i like guess who and it's and it's bart it's like yeah and we got the x-men and guess who wolverine yeah it's yeah it's you're wrong it's mr dandy and yes also this episode was so popular it was also the basis of the uh woods level in arcade game that came out about a little over a year after this came out yeah 91 uh like a spring of 91 something like that yeah and fun interesting fact when you fight the bear at the end a bear at the end and then when you defeat the bear it turns out it was just like two of the bigger enemy guys i love that it's a weird reveal but i like it that feels totally like a graining note that he's like i

don't want you to beat a bear to death in this game and then uh when you win the level you all go over a waterfall and then the next level is the dream level which is really cool where they're all in like a jacob's ladder type uh death dream and you die in the dream you die in real life just standard rules that uh yes the game is so good so seeing this bit i think that's why maybe i didn't watch this one a ton in reruns either because it was just like so overplayed and i had it all memorized i i didn't watch this one too much well honestly in syndication reruns if it was a season one i'd probably just watch a tool time a whole tool time instead i only watch the tool time segments it's very difficult well for that pam anderson me yeah

i'm kidding i'm of course kidding for that al borland and he's in every season anyway well something for everybody in that show uh and i guess last like pre-chat uh thing we've covered already the writers swartz welder in previous episodes and the director wes archer on the commentary they bring up that like this sounded even crazier the original script like james l brooks pitched it as a camping episode where homer is held captive by a giant eagle who like feeds him oh wow but that script is not on the uh no no i wish they were all on the disc we learned so much from those recently yeah i'll uh i'll spoil future podcasts for you listeners but unfortunately on the season one dvds there's only one more script for an episode we haven't talked about yet and that's

some enchanted evening i thought so yeah you'll you'll be able to hear the differences then but unfortunately in this case no which is too bad because the way they talk about the ending on the commentary too like mike reese is like i'm surprised by this i don't remember this so i'd i'd love to see the differences but yeah i think you know we talked about part the general with schwarzwelder and how wacky that one is. This is like 10 times wackier. Like this is Looney Tunes in parts here. I think this is really- Going over cliffs, like characters falling off cliffs. It's great. Now, Homer, I mean, the insane ending too. This, I think, is a lot of what defined Schwarzwelder's take on Homer. And I did also, lastingly in the credits, want to shout out, only one credited

storyboarder on this future Simpsons director Stephen Dean Moore wow that's a lot of work if we have when we have David Silverman back someday I'm gonna ask him like I'm used to a let today 11 minute cartoons get two storyboarders Were these shows really for 22 minutes one storyboarder? Because that sounds like an impossible task. It really does. The Simpsons will be right back. Sunday, The Simpsons

hit the open road. That's the spirit. And if you thought spending a night Sunday, the Simpsons hit the open road. I hate this. I don't want to go. That's the spirit. And if you thought spending a night at home with them is funny, wait till you spend a night in the woods. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. Go camping with the Simpsons. Big thank you to our guest this week ian boothby we always love having him back and everybody should give a listen to his podcast sneaky dragon as well as reading his comics sparks

and exo sisters both a ton of fun you should really give them a read this podcast by the way is brought to you by our patreon me and bob are able to do this full-time thanks to the support of patreon supporters who are just like you they enjoy this podcast but they get to hear every episode a week ahead of time and ad free of talking simpsons the same goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon where we talk about a different animated series each week you can get all that for five bucks a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons beyond that you get access to our entire back catalog of patreon exclusive content including our recent interview with jay kogan telling us about the first season fun that he had back in 1989 also our many exclusive mini series covering

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at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so please sign up today uh but i guess why don't we begin the episode uh that the opening one i don't like that chalkboard gag i i don't like that bart draws naked ladies in class i feel like the care bart should be more innocent he's not sexualized yeah i don't like that no i guess you know they're still figuring out who the character of bart is and some 10 year old boys i guess draw naked ladies so sure fine it also seems like the kind of thing a kid actually would do in class to get in trouble for real yeah that's true it's not really a joke it's just yeah this is what a kid would do and be in trouble for the end and okay and honestly i

think it's kind of funny that the opening has a non-gag of like and then they sat down on the couch i thought i was like is the joke that the couch is kind of small for all of them but not really no i guess it could be a little of squeezing into the couch perhaps so we've talked about production order a lot on this uh revisiting of season one this is the first one in production order that follows the christmas episode yeah so technically the christmas episode was the debut of flanders yes okay yeah yeah which makes this his second appearance when they really i feel like once they did the christmas one they were like oh we like this flanders guy we're gonna be using this neighbor a lot so they use him in the immediate next one oh you know what though i don't recall that he has a line but he

does appear in the crowd shots and telltale head which is before the christmas special in uh release order so yeah i guess i would count that but it's uh it's it's a weird it's weird yeah yeah i believe ian you've worked with the uh the designer of flanders phil ortiz have you not yeah we did a couple of comics together. He's great. Yeah. Yeah, really good designer and an amazing artist. Yeah. It's weird seeing someone who made a character that's so historic. Though this is the first appearance of Rod Flanders. This is distinctly Rod and not Todd, the smaller.

In design, he's a smaller boy. Todd is in the Christmas special. So this is Rod. He's in his blue shirt and everything. But over time, they'll both be very infantilized. Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, some of the cruelest jokes are done at their expense, I think, especially after they kill their mother.

When you look at how they behave in these early episodes, they deserve it. They're real jerks, right? It would be easy for Rod to just go, hey, you want to borrow the lawnmower? Or I'll do it for you in five minutes while you're struggling? His hot enough for you is a jerk line. That's true. Same with Todd's like, you forgot your pork chop. That's mean.

That's not nice. I guess their only identity in the series so far is like look what they have the simpsons don't have so uh i'll get to it when we get to it but i think there's a telling moment that is the turn on the character yeah we we all noticed it yeah the simpsons are coveting the flanders in this first clip shut up hey dad how come we can't get a decent mower like the flanders have first clip. How do you like my new wheels, Simpson? Oh, wow, man. What an RV. Bart! I suppose it has various features.

Oh, it's got everything. Microwave dishwasher, big screen TV, deep fryer, and see up there on the roof? A satellite dish. Yes, indeedly doodly. But how can you afford something like this, Ned? I get your mail once in a while, and you make only $27 a week more than I do.

Oh, it's simple, Simpson. Credit. Ooh, credit. Homer didn't realize that you could spend into debt with credit. And that's the first appearance of Flanders RV, which would come back in Lemon of Troy. They remembered he had one. That's what they used to rescue the kids. They even remember the fryer.

That's true, yeah. That's right. Although, I think it was more of a rotisserie uh cooker in that one you're right yeah but when you go into the uh to the rv that uh bob has later you can see the four deep fryers yes yeah it's great design i and phil artis is a background designer credited on this so maybe that was his work i i'm not sure but it was really good it's weird seeing homer uh like everyone is opposite of what their characters would be later on like uh ned is selfish and kind of uh braggadocious and and and homer's a conformist

who just you know wants to be normal and have everything be normal instead of the extreme character he would become later everyone's everyone's exactly the opposite of what they would be like five seasons later no i this keeping up with the jones's thing is so un-homer to me now yeah it it implies a certain level of homer understanding his stature and what wishing to be above it that is like homer doesn't have the capacity to think of that normally, I think. Yeah, and then Ned's giving him very bad advice. Yeah. That he's got all this on credit. We learn later on there's no way Homer could afford this, which means there's no way Ned could afford this,

which means Ned's heading for trouble himself. Although Ned probably has better credit. That's true. Probably got a better interest rate or something on that, or better monthly rate on it. Yeah, I did the math on the $27 a week more than I do, which means $1,404 more a year, which in 1990 dollars, according to an inflation calculator I used, goes to $2,780 a year more. So not too big a difference between them.

And as we all know, at this time in the series, Flanders is a pharmacy rep, not a leftorium. That's right. I mentioned his income went way up after that opened. Well, it went pretty low at one point. But then once Homer saved the day, it's been going up ever since. It feels like Flanders got a side hustle going on with something. There's something going on because he's able to get, you know, if you look at Flanders,

you go, he's able to afford the RV. I get credit, but credit only goes so far. He's got the lawnmower. He's got this. He's got everything fancy in the basement. Like he's selling some drugs on the side. There's something he's got going on, which is, you know, how you you play this the straight guy is always going to be the breaking bad guy later on you know as a pharmacy rep he would have access to a lot of stuff he can i know later he opens a christian

hook rug store on the internet so maybe he's selling those you know just out of his basement internet uh yeah the i also saw the rv was apparently mentioned in grift of the magi like he suggests oh we could use my rv that's uh i i looked in on the simpsons wiki more than i normally do or like hey did this character ever come back or where this character come from and yes ned's rv the only other reference on the wiki is other than lemon of troy is that he said mentions it in grift of the magi you know know, my stepdad, he has an RV or had one. I think he eventually, he just wasn't camping as much as he used to, so he sold it off. But he used to be one of those people who had a big front lawn and with a big RV in the front of

it. Was there like a late 80s, early 90s fascination with the RV because they were in so much media. We just did a Goop Troop, Goop Troop, excuse me, Goop Troop for What a Cartoon. And Pete operates a used RV dealership. That's right, yeah. So, like, I don't know why RVs are very much in the zeitgeist around this time. They weren't a new invention by any means. I think what happened was people back in the day-day, like ins and 60s could afford a house on a regular salary you could buy a house and then i think when you got 80s 90s you couldn't really afford a house like without you know having very good credit or what

have you but you could afford an rv so it kind of went to the luxury thing that you could afford and and have fun with was was that and so that became kind of a thing if you were a lower middle class you could you could uh imagine yourself in one of those realistically whereas a house was getting just to be like a little bit of a pipe dream i i do have childhood memories of like friends of the family they had rvs or they were showing off like oh look at this rv and i mean to me as a child the idea of your car also being your home seemed really cool i mean still kind of i think it's cool but then i'm much bigger now though that yeah also i i hate driving i'm so happy i haven't driven in a car in

14 years now uh and the idea of driving i felt enough pressure driving a compact car to be driving this like thing that fills an entire lane full of like shit i am i i couldn't imagine it the pressure oh it's too much for me now was flanders rv did that appear in any of the simpsons video games oh boy not i didn't see that on the wiki i don't think so it's kind of rare when flanders even appears in the i think by the time any of the driving games like hit and run or whatever it feels like the behemoth would be like a really good vehicle to to happen one of those yeah you know i i didn't see that on the wiki i don't in hit and run i feel like by that time the behemoth was so in the past like if you're gonna do a flanders car it's the geo you know Yeah, I guess there's nothing very visually distinct about it other than the fact that it's big, too.

Also, I was thinking this opening scene with the lawnmowers. It's like they just fully use this as a jumping off point for the big Homer Flanders episode in season two. Oh, yeah, that's right. And so, yes, Homer heads off to buy an RV. And boy, oh boy, do we get a big scene here that kind of takes over the whole show pretty much. Yes, guest star A. Brooks. What's the A stand for? We still don't know.

We've talked about him before and still with us today at age 72. Wow. Wishing him well. Sadly, his brother passed away not too long ago. Bob Einstein, because his real name is Albert Einstein. Interesting fact for people whose parents hate them. I've just been reminded of it by I grew up loving Super Dave Osborne, which is who Bob Einstein played. Yeah, me too.

That's how I know him. And then when I watched Curb Your Enthusiasm, I'm like, it's Super Dave. Super Dave's on TV again. So there's a new season of Curb, and they just say that his character has moved to China or something. They didn't kill off his character in the show. One of the greatest voices.

I don't know how he got it, but yes. Bob Einstein's voice is like, I mourn the loss of any famous Bob one day I will be the last one he had a very funny character on the Smothers Brothers TV show which I don't remember first hand I'm not that old but

it was a police officer that would like stop scenes almost python like you'd have Liberace playing the piano and then he'd pull up in a motorcycle and just go a little fast and just pull him over and write him a ticket for going tooace playing the piano, and then he'd pull up in a motorcycle and just go a little fast, huh? Just pull him over, write him a ticket for going too fast on the piano. I wanted to go over Albert Brooks' appearances real quick on the show because you know what? He is so associated with The Simpsons, but he's had like five roles on the show in like 30 years.

So he appears twice in this season. So once as Bob, Cowboy Bob. Once as Jacques, the bowling instructor. And then four years later, season five, he's Brad Goodman. Three years later,

season eight, he is Hank Scorpio. And then you got to wait eight more years to season 16. He plays a character named Tab Spangler in The Heartbroke Kid.

I remember that. I did like that episode, though. Well, okay, yeah. Maybe it's well okay yeah maybe it's my favorite quote from that from him is like all signs are wrong okay okay there is good stuff in there yeah that name of it just reminded me like i wasn't that like a heavy film parody one uh it's it's one where bart had to lose weight oh yeah yeah uh he played hank scorpio in an opening gag in a season 22 episode called 500 Keys. But that's basically it.

Like, I think he flies a plane into the screen. He said it was either this or Porsche or something like that. He played a character named Dr. Ralph Bold in the episode Bull E, season 26, which I haven't seen. And then also we have Russ Cargill in the Simpsons movie.

So you know what? Not a lot of roles for him. Yeah. Like every eight years, we're like, let's get him back. I love that he was such a major part of the film as Russ Cargill. And he has a lot of fun. His improv in that movie is some of the funniest lines in the movie. Though, obviously, we've opined about this before.

Russ Cargill should just be hank scorpio yeah in function he is hank scorpio uh what and what would be the difference of him being hank scorpio or not to new viewers what but i don't need to reallocate this anymore and just like in bart's inner child marge's story is cut out so he could ad lib more that's right that's right i'm sorry bart's inner child which was a Marge story until Brad Goodman showed up. Albert Brooks, this was their first time using him in his... I mean, he's just such a great comedy... I mean, he's a comedy genius in general.

His films are great. He's a great actor when he appears in things. His improvisation is amazing. And I'm shocked he's not a cartoon voice more like he's famous as um mimo's dad uh oh you're right what's his name limo i only rode the disneyland ride that sucks okay well he's really good in that movie and yet i can't remember his name there's dory and and Finn? I don't think he needs to have a name. He's a fish. Why does he need a name?

What's he got, ID? Like, who's going to rent a car? Like, it doesn't matter. Nemo's dad. That's fine. That's his name. Has Albert Brooks, any of his characters ever met any of his other characters? They do that a lot with John Lovitz, where you get a bunch of the John Lovitz characters in a room together on The Simpsons.

No, in fact, I don't think he's been on enough for that to happen okay yeah i don't believe they have you know that timeline you mentioned there that that totally makes me feel like that in season 16 they had done enough of these commentaries that gene as showrunner was like whoa albert brooks is great why we got to bring this guy back why don't we do that? It's really good that he did, too. And yeah, if you want to see a great Albert Brooks movie, I think Defending Your Life is my favorite of his.

It's really great imagining of the afterlife and what it could be like and how you have to defend every choice you made in your life by watching it replayed to you know defend every choice you made in your life like by watching it replayed to you in front of uh either angels or the you know sentient beings that exist in a realm beyond your understanding no you're right henry i think the uh al jeans take over the show again in the 21st century i think his first like five or six seasons were totally inspired by him sitting down to watch all the episodes again because you see the return of so many characters. And Cowboy Bob came back in season 16 episode Mobile Homer, but he is redesigned so he looks like a modern character and also voiced by Dan

Castellaneta. Yeah, I watched just that scene. I pulled it up on the incredibly convenient Disney Plus app, only $6.99. But yeah, I i watched that scene i did like the gag that lisa and bart were driving to the rv place and they knew where it was because of the giant inflatable gorilla over it which would only be at an rv shop but yeah it's very it's very weird that he just make up a new rv guy if he can't get albert back for like one line it was nice to see him although he is unrecognizable without the uh non-simpsons square teeth in the giant ears also it's unfortunate on the dvd extras they do have cut lines from jock that uh that they didn't use but they didn't have any saved from his performances cowboy bob and they always say there's like 800 great line reads he gives and just over improvises

and it leaves them wanting to just have everything in there that's like hank scorpio uh you hear on the commentary like bill and josh we're losing their minds over like well what do we cut what do we cut to fit in this thing and the answer is cut every story involving a woman yes yeah that's always the right answer when you have uh albert books'm being facetious, of course, but that's what happened with Marge and Lisa. That's why they don't really have stories in this episode. Something I like about Albert Brooks is he makes the other actors better, which is what a good improviser does. Like if you listen to the very beginning scene that we just played, it's all set up, delivery, set up, delivery, and it's all fine. It's all done comedically and very

well but then when you've got albert brooks you can tell he's improvising so dan has to listen and so dan does little quiet things they're like uh-huh what like small things that you would never write in a script no writer would write huh what yeah oh you say uh-huh talks over nothing like that and it just makes it so natural and it changes the rhythm up. And because it seems like this personal conversation, you as an audience kind of lean forward and go, what? I feel like I'm listening to something that I, you know, that's real. And it just builds the comedy up and makes everyone around just so much, so much better. It's such a different style of comedy that you don't get on television because no one does that kind of thing on television except later on in A Curb Your Enthusiasm or something like that maybe.

But Albert Brooks just raises everyone's game. Yeah, well, and Dan Castellaneta is such a well-trained comedic improviser, but it's not a skill he uses all the time on The Simpsons. But once Albert Brooks is is there he's got somebody just bounce off of it's it's why a brooks most of his best scenes on the simpsons are usually talking to homer like no matter who yeah right because as a writer you write homer as belligerent or dumb but it's always broad and and albert brooks makes homer subtle and more human and so when he then blows up a little bit more later on it's just it's more effective like i i mean it's forever defined for me by hank scorpion's like get out of your shoes you ever see somebody yell your own shoes before

yes once like dan saying yes once like that is such a great moment very casually yeah it would never be written but it but improvised yeah absolutely yeah so it was really hard to pick with clips here honestly there's like three minutes of clips of just albert brooks but they're all great uh so uh but let's start off with the family arriving at the rv store thank you god may i help you we're just browsing thank you i'd like to see your finest RV. Do you have something that's better than the land behemoth? Yes, we do. That would be the ultimate behemoth.

Where is it? We are standing in its presence. Behold! Didn't you look at this thing? Can you man-built this? It's a vehicle. Does it have its own satellite dish, sir? You can tell your son it has its own satellite.

The VanStar One launched last February just for this thing. That's all. Oh, man. I'm not sure that we can afford. Does it have a deep fryer? It has four of them, one for each part of the chicken. I don't think we can afford this, Homer. Let's worry about that later. Come on, let's take a tour. Want to? Come on.

Like a grump. This is better than our house. Wait till Flanders gets a load of this. It all seems so expensive. Yeah, it's an interesting take on what could be just a tired stock character, like the sleazy salesman. Like they put Pete into in Goof Troop as well uh but he's playing him is just so like friendly he's like is this your fat lab this year it's so funny to hand that such a stock character to brooks and see what he can do with it and like his i love his delivery of seeing the suckers

arrive he's like thank you god uh and just I even laughed. I forgot that line there. He's like, a man built this. It's a vehicle. It's so great. And even this early in the show, his appearance is horrifying. I'll say that. Oh, yeah. It's very ugly.

In fact, he only had two more appearances as a background character, once in Barketson F and once in When Flanders Failed. So that's the only of the times he showed up again ever like even in the background i mean he is uh claskey chupo is all get out in his design i love it but he's yeah he is a wild looking character like if you watch a scene with him and homer talking it's like well your teeth are a different shape than every other human in this world what's happening uh and i love his thrown away line that he's just like does it have a satellite dish it launched its own satellite that speaks directly to it the van star one i i

just love that uh it's i like how they play it that marge is just like please listen to me this is too much and homers is like no no i want the most expensive thing sell it to me right now yeah it's a weird choice with with marge like she is just the uh to the whole thing worried about everything then does a real hard turn halfway through the episode and worries about nothing at all things that she really should be worrying about she stops being the worry wart and it's like lisa things are fine i don't know what your problem is she becomes too trusting that's yeah it's like you need a scene where like marge uh eats something she shouldn't or maybe she's out in the woods and now she finally gets to relax for the first time in her life and now it's like it's all cool she does a a huge personality turn and they don't justify it

but it's uh it's it's very distinct yeah it's uh there's not much care given to the consistency of Marge in this episode. No. I mean, I think people who work with John Schwarzwald have said that Marge was not really a priority for him in writing scripts. Also, when I talk about this episode being so influential and perfect for the merchandising of The Simpsons, Bart is so mascot here. He is such a mascot-y kind of character in that he says, I carumba and don't have a cow in this same episode. He's pitching t-shirts throughout this episode.

Yeah. They even make a mention of, hey, there's his lucky red hat. Remember? He's got the hat. That's the thing. All right. Let me know, Burger King. That's how you know when it becomes a box. I think as a kid, I didn't know that chickens were in four different parts either back then. So I learned a lot there as well. Is that like a scientific fact? There are four parts of the chicken? Well, I'm just talking about how you butcher that.

Okay. Legs, wings, thighs, and breasts. Oh, Henry, this is a G-rated podcast. I always feel weird ordering. I ask for a white meat combo i don't like saying a breast and leg combo when i go to a place i don't i don't know the science of it i just know i don't want to be that so the all white combo is what i want make my food as white as possible please thank you i need to just switch to the dark meat now just to avoid controversy. So yes, Homer is hook, line, and sinker on this.

And he loves it so much. He asked for a price. And I just love the exchange of how long he draws out telling him the price, even saying like, you're like a god. You're not Roman, are you? No. That's such a great... It's such a weird pull for him to do instead of as, well, how am I going to compliment him? I'll say he is akin to Zeus. Like that's how wonderful he

is. And it's all about getting him away from his family to make a decision without them. Yeah, you're right. It's one of these subtle, it's a more subtle thing than it seems like with the obviousness of the used car salesman kind of prototype here. And you can only do this with animation to this under the breath kind of are you with this? I know, like back and forth, like if it was live action, it would be it wouldn't work. But it's almost the Popeye under the breath mutterings that they're just picking up on and responding back and forth. And again, only only with animation, you can pull this off. I've really only had to buy a car once and I leased it.

Like my other cars when I was driving were like sort of hand-me-downs from like relatives who couldn't drive anymore, like a sister that got another car or something like that. All I did was say, okay, that's the car I can buy. That's the car I can lease. I'm going to have that one. But he was still like doing the salesman routine on me as I was like signing the papers. And it was really uncomfortable because I got a, I mean, it was just like a weird, like, kind of SUV style car, but because it had a French name in the Bush administration,

no one was getting them. It was a rendezvous. And he was like, this car is going to get you laid. And I'm like, I didn't respond, but I was like, I'm very skeptical. And it did not. nuts uh no i mean uh this that's what uh cowboy bob really profits off of here just using masculinity against a guy i was i didn't want to bro out about this car i did not want to leave a man has a car and he doesn't let a woman drive it that's for sure this exchange here uh over the credit test is quite funny, too. I think this is the best interplay between Brooks and Castellaneta here in this next clip. I'm not going to quote you a price until I check your credit rating. I want to make myself clear on this. This is a formality.

If you're saying to me, Bob, is this guy good for it? I say, yes. I don't check this machine, but I don't own the place, even though my name's up there. Long story, but that doesn't matter. I'm going to have to run it through the computer. Is that a good siren? Am I approved?

You ever known a siren to be good? No, Mr. Simpson, it's not. It's a bad siren. That's the computer, in case I went blind, telling me sell the vehicle to this fellow, and you're out of business. That's what the siren. That's the computer in case I went blind telling me sell the vehicle to this fella and you're out of business. That's what the siren says. Seems the ultimate behemoth

is a wee bit out of your price range. And wee bit is me being polite. You couldn't afford this thing if you lived to be a million. Don't you have something that isn't out of my price range? I don't want to go away empty-handed, Bob. Take it easy there. Don't ruin this

feeling i'm getting from you perhaps i can show you something a little more you dan's reply of like is that a good sign that mean i passed like uh so good i i also like the animation choice of starting the sales office scene with like the overhead fan shot yeah that's true it's good tone setter for a sweaty office for sure the siren on top of the machine like that's very silly but i i like that i i also like the cowboy bob even has an answer for like i even though my name's on it i don't know the place long story but uh it's uh and i also like that he's like we bit is me being polite you couldn't afford this thing if you live to be a million like uh

every every line just so great i i think fully the con that cowboy bob is doing is that he shows the promise of the behemoth to a guy he knows can't afford it yeah and once he is defeated he has to accept the worst thing he can hand off to him because he can't show his family nothing he can't leave with be a total loser yeah he's nagging him pretty good here yeah yeah you're right it's uh these techniques they're they're horrible but they they work in the in the rv world anyway homer's masculinity is questioned so much that he must buy probably the worst car on the lot that he can't uh that cowboy bob can't get rid of i have to say cowboy bob just so i i mean not sideshow bob homer presents his uh the new rv to the family well what do you think oh you gotta be kidding me used isn't it what do you think? Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

Used, isn't it? What'd you say? Is it used? Mr. Simpson, you're never going to own a better RV. And I don't mean that in a good way. I mean literally, buddy. This is it for you. It's this or a wagon.

How much do you want for it? This is yours. The price I'm quoting you, you're not going to hand it to someone else because I'm going to give you a price for you, not for someone else. Someone else, I'm doubling this. I swear it, Bob. This is you and me. Yeah. In other words, two months from now, I see this vehicle, your head's in that window. On my honor. $350 a month. Oh, well, I don't know. Would it be all right if I conferred with my family? Well, Mr. Simpson, if you have to go

talk it over with those humans out there, then there's something wrong with all of us. You look like a man who is able to make a decision or I wouldn't be wasting. See that man right over there? Yeah. He's buying this. Did you know that? No. Called me two minutes before you came in and said, save the little one. I'm coming down. Here he is. Now, you want it or not? All right. All right. I'll take it. Best decision you ever made. You are going to change your life.

I kind of wish they would have cut away to a guy. Oh, yeah. Just a random person just like walking by. Yeah, that has nothing to do with anything. Just like looking person just yeah just guy walking by yeah there's nothing just like looking over short like what and and yeah like he said the natural feel to the dialogue the way he goes like you uh yeah this can change your life like that's so great it it does remind me of how uh like say on rick and morty justin roiland like delivers a line you know it's really it's uh it's so natural I love and I love

too the uh March says is it used he's like what'd you say like he just completely ignores it like let's move on like 350 a month sounds pretty harsh in 1990s yeah yeah when I leased my car it was 188 a month wow that's nobody wanted a French car the French sounding car boy we need to get the French man at us again So I can get a cheap car in the future It's weird what poor was back then Poor represented by a person who owns their own house Probably has two cars

Has a job But you can't afford The way he's talking about him You're ridiculously broke You're the brokest man I've ever seen in my life But nothing else in his life really reflects that you know it just was a standard comedy thing back then was you know if you're married with children or rosanne or whatever you're just you're just broke you're just standard american broke that's the that's the yeah i mean

i was actually thinking of married with children you see the establishing shot of the bundy home it's like a nice two-story home in the suburbs of Chicago. For a single-income man who also has a wife who buys garbage off TV all the time, and that can't help him. Yeah, you work at a shoe store. How do you afford this? What's the story? At least Homer's is a semi-professional job. And have money for the nudie bar.

Oh, yeah, and all those Biggins magazines. I was thinking of biggins uh well i guess though the the joke too with him though that he has a much worse card than the simpsons oh yeah the dodge he's good old dodge but now this has turned into mary with children talk um hey it was the uh this is the lead into mary with children which was fox's big show at the time so yeah putting putting them together they were they were quite a one-two punch which fox foolishly broke up after just like four months of it which uh very very silly of them but anyway yeah so they take they buy the rv homer wants to show it off to flanders and that's the moment i was talking about that's a very big character moment from yeah i do love it how he's just like well that's great yeah he's i feel like it could have been played

as just like you know the obvious thing of the sarcastic neighbor like oh great car i think you'll have a lot of fun in this but it's so much funnier that ned flanders fully means that's great your family will have a lot of fun he just in good faith 100 means that if you just take away everything we know that happens to ned flanders after this episode it's just such a funny turn that the yuppie next door who has been making homer jealous legitimately is just nice to him and wishes him well yeah it was not showing off his material goods to rub it in his face. He just was excited about them. Yeah.

Yeah. I love that choice. It's such a funny choice. I think without that line, Flanders would have just been more of the stock, you know, a richer neighbor stereotype, but him being so nice here,

I do think that opens the door to him being so nice because his god tells him to and all of the the further things we learn about flanders from then on well if he was mean here you would need comedically to have some sort of payback for him something bad would have to happen to flanders otherwise it would just feel wrong as an audience it like you almost feel with the used car guy you want a little something bad to happen to him by the end like a little tag see what happened to him he tries to rip off the wrong guy or something something occurs it's just no consequences for the jerks you know as you go along uh yeah they uh also them in the rrv they have gone through a full costume change which

i think this is the first time in the series where all the family together is through a full costume change, which I think this is the first time in the series where all the family together is in a full costume change. In the Christmas episode, you know, Bart's in his cold outfit, or Homer too. How about No Disgrace? Weren't they all in, like, party gear or whatever? Yeah, right, yeah. Homer's in that awful shirt.

That's right, yeah, No Disgrace. Well, and actually they dressed up, okay, I'm completely wrong. In part the genius they dressed up to go to the opera. So I am wrong. But it's an interesting costume change. Feels like for the most of the episode. They're this or they're naked. Yeah, yes, that's

true. Though their choice on Maggie, it's like, well, it's just pink now. It's just a palette swap. Yeah. With Maggie. I don't know why she needs a pink jumper or whatever. Easier to see in the woods oh that's true yeah for all the good it does them later in the episode they really do have seemingly every possession that's inside the house is in the rv with them which makes it even more desperate that it gets destroyed too and so when they drive off with all their belongings in it uh that's when the music

throughout the whole episode comes in the the happy wanderer which is uh it's like a you think it's a like classical german folk song but apparently it was written like in right after world war ii i guess the lyrics were from something from like the 18th century, but the actual tune that they were set to is from like post-war. Yeah, it must have been a licensed song because it has a full credit in it too. Like in the credits, The Happy Wanderer by Friedrich Wilhelm Moeller. It's sung, performed by Dan Castellaneta, which I think that just denotes how early it was in the series that pretty soon after that, if a character sings a song they license, they don't do a film style credit for it. I wondered if it was something like, at least in Canada, when you have that,

you get paid separately when you sing a song in a show, as opposed to the show itself. When you get royalties for an appearance in a sitcom uh if you if you sang something in it that's a separate um set of royalties you get uh later on simpsons simpsons definitely has ass cap in there for sure the uh that that i've heard them mention many times like boy i'm glad i wrote this song this one-off song i've gotten more royalties from it than writing the episode i i recall that on a couple of commentaries. A couple of things I've written, that is the same thing, too. I still get paid for the songs I wrote and the episodes of Long Since Stopped Making Money.

On their way there, they play a very fun game in this next clip. Turkey farm. No. Skunks. No. Slaughterhouse. No. What are you doing back there?

We're playing What's That Odor? Dad's Feet. Bark. Youhouse. Nope. What are you doing, Batbear? We're playing What's That Odor? Dad's Feet. Bark. You win, Bark. Lisa! Are we there yet, Dad? I'll tell you when we get there. Go back to your smell game.

I'm telling you, this is not the interstate. Maps. Shouldn't we stop somewhere and ask for directions don't worry this is an all-terrain vehicle i like that they build on it but it is a very like even in 1990 familiar trope to have like shouldn't we ask for directions but the family driving through water was the uh i guess exaggeration oh that it gets quite exaggerated i forgot about that joke yeah which uh they didn't go this far into cartooniness until now so like i don't even know what i was thinking when i was watching it as a kid this is so looney tunes and i think it being

such a popular episode is part of what gave them the permission especially in swartz welder scripts to go so crazy in the future even though like they are fighting against i think both the wills of matt graining and especially james l brooks were like you can't do this cartoony stuff and over time they broke down the barriers i feel like james l brooks was like i don't know uh doing something else this week. Yeah, yeah. I mean, by the time they talk about it in the Mars versus the monorail, where they thought they couldn't get away with the teleportation

of Leonard Nimoy. Oh, yeah. But they were like, James L. Brooks must have been out of town that week or whatever. We just got to keep it in there. One thing I want to mention about Albert Brooks, not related to James L. Brooks, by the way,

but like two years before that, he was in Broadcast News, and that was the connection. Yes. So it was only two years before this episode. That's right. Or three years, rather. Sorry. It was 87, I believe. His Broadcast News co-star will be in season two of The Simpsons. The water coming in there, that's a fun escalation. Also talking about first in the series, that's the first Are We There Yet? They get to the repetition gag by the end of the episode.

I wonder if this is more fun for the animators to do than an episode where you have to be in the school with infinite children and chairs and all these other things in the background to draw. You actually get to draw the woods and trees. It was a break or it was a pain. I mean, it does seem like a lot of if it was a pain i mean it does seem like a lot of new designs you got to invent for the episode that seems tough but when i was looking at like uh homer and bart uh you know where they're just their heads are sticking up out of the water it was like oh that's that's a nice day of animation as the face is floating oh that's a good one there someone someone was pleased to be getting those scenes also this is the first time they do a joke about that Homer

smells very bad which they're just like that Homer not only is fat and stupid but he also smells terrible and that's part of the reason why he's mistaken for Bigfoot later that's right though especially making it about his feet I think it's too Al Bundy that really is

they're stealing his bits Homer can be smelly on another body part. Thankfully, there were no hemorrhoid jokes that I know of with Homer. I forgot that part of the Al Bundy gaggery. His body's falling apart, man. It'll happen to all of us. We're getting probably pretty close to what Al Bundy's perceived age was on the show. I think me and you, I think, are older than he was when the series started.

I think Ed O'Neill was like 38 when that show started. Me and you are getting close. My hairline's better than his, though. That way lies madness, when you think of sitcom characters and that you're older than that. It'll drive you crazy. I was looking at an old Barney Miller and just going,

am I as old as Abe Vigoda? I think i might be well that ain't right at all time to die henry and i are older than peg bunny was at the start of the show too so and i well i saw al jean uh he had a scary tweet saying like if you take it as given that bart was born in 1980 as was established in the episode then he's at least 39 now if not 40 and you probably never thought of homer as over 40 so bart is as old as homer always has been on the show so important update uh yes ed o'neill al bundy born in 46 he was 41 when the show was on the air so he's got a little more time a lot more hair to lose uh and in a very cartoony choice for swartz welder as the the water starts to leak in and then

homer instead of uh being more cautious as his family is scared he speeds up and just like starts stupidly whistling as he makes the car go far faster in the direction of the wilderness and uh him i really love the animation on their stop right at the edge of the gorge and the reveal of it teetering like that's a really good animation and by the way this gorge has a name it's not the springfield gorge from the uh barth the daredevil in season two later we hear a reporter call a tenderfoot gorge which i think is a joke because a tenderfoot is like a beginner or a novice a gorge this big wouldn't be for tenderfoots or named after a tenderfoot it'd be like the name like something much more immense and i mean that

feels very swartzwellery too to to have a cowboy reference in there. Simpsons are the only place I've ever heard the word gorge used, actually. Have you ever come across a gorge in your life? I think it's just like a comedy writer word for canyon. Gorge is funnier. It is funnier. I get you. I just wonder if I've never seen one in real life. I think I associate the word gorge with that Barth the Daredevil.

Yeah, I don't think i've ever been i driven by the grand canyon i've not fully visited it though every time i'm in vegas i see those signs of like grand canyon helicopter tour come on like but uh but i've been tempted but yeah they i can't recall going by anything that called a canyon a gorge like it's it's such a funny word it's much even though i mean canyon has the comedy sea in there too but gorge is funnier if it was cunning it'd be funnier sure sure but it's not yeah so they stop on the edge of the gorge homer tells all of them to safely leave and uh you can hear it a bit in this clip too, but the animation of them zipping out as Homer tells them to slowly get out is pretty funny.

Nobody move, nobody panic. When I give the word, everyone ever so slowly open your door and slide out on the count of three one it also doesn't make you know physical sense that you would not slam the door on the car when you get out because it might make it move but it's better for the execution of the joke so you know that they all left off screen really punctuates it yeah yeah it's a good the execution of the joke so you know that they all left off screen. It really punctuates it, yeah. Yeah, it's a good beat. I mean, Homer has nearly killed them, so I like that they don't respect his wishes.

They're like, no, I'm running out of this second. They're leaving him to die. Well, they've already figured it out. They don't need his instruction. We need to get out of this car immediately. But Homer safely gets out, and then it falls over, and Lisa gives a quick line in this clip that should have been in all the commercials,

but actually when I looked up the commercials, it's not in them. The Simpsons have entered the forest. Oh, you're killing me, Richard Gibb. Yeah, I wanted to include that music just so we could dump on Richard Gibb again. I'm just craving the Alf Clausen days. It's just such a different, I mean, because there are now, I guess, 30 years of Alf Clausen and one year of this guy scoring the show.

It's just so different. You can hear the way he scores action and comedy. It's all very different. I think there's a lot more music scoring things. Often, it's two on the nose, I think. Now, this is an obvious thing, but is that a Bambi reference? Oh. The man has entered the forest?

Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. I guess so, yeah. I think you're right. Oh, okay. All right, I thought I was going to... These guys are going to make fun of me because it's so obvious. But okay, good. All right.

I'm just disappointed that we hear the explosion, but we don't see it. Yeah, they take it a little easy there but no i i could totally imagine they'd bambi like not that bambi isn't a reference for us but for uh folks of mac reigning's age it is much more memorable of a film i think for for his generation so yeah i i get i think that's right i uh yeah but that music that takes you to the break is just funereal of just like it plays. this is the first time Maggie has made a noise in the series. I read this in the trivia. She did make noises on the shorts. But in the series, this is the first noise Maggie has made other than the sound of the pacifier.

Homer is trying to comfort them. Well, now we get a chance to be real pioneers. Yes, sir. This is a real adventure. Boy, I bet there are people who would trade everything they have in the world for an adventure like this. You mean like we just did? Well, somebody help her.

Look, Maggie. Birdies. Oh, my. What are we going to do? Oh, don't worry. Our situation isn't as bad as it seems. And you're forgetting, I'm an experienced woodsman. Now, you all stay here for a minute while I go over this way and try to get my bearings. What am I going to do?

I've murdered us all. I've murdered us all. I've murdered us all. I've murdered us all. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Don't. Don't.

Don't. So even though Marge hears that, throughout the rest of the episode, she's like, well, your father's an experienced woodsman after all. Yeah, you know, that doesn't make any sense. She's so credulous. I forgot she responds to hearing that. That grumble makes it very clear she knows he said that it's funny this is the problem with uh sam simon not liking women is is you would if you had one woman on this on uh you know in the writing group they would have gone hey how about marge what's uh yeah it's a pretty

obvious thing but if you don't think of the women in the show, you don't think of them and you just have them reacting and setting up the fellas and this ends up happening. And I think if they wrote this 10 years later, she'd have to say, our cell phones were in there or something like that.

There'd have to be some signifier of why they can't contact society. It really sets it in time there that they don't have any... I didn't even think of that because my mind just goes back to 1990 and I remember the realities of then.

I mean, it's so trite, but no Seinfeld could happen if people could text each other in that world. The show just can't be a thing anymore. And the X-Files wouldn't work at all. If there's a monster, take a picture of it. There it is. Oh, okay. You were right. It was a monster at the end. I should have believed you.

The sound of Maggie 2 are shaking i i like the reveal that it's like oh birdies and it's it's vultures that's that's a funny little joke but the bluntness of homer screaming i've murdered us all god damn so good like that that feels like a very Swartzwelder-y kind of line of just saying the most obvious thing, the darkest thing he could say in that moment. And I also do like that Homer builds them shelter and then their immediate reaction is just like, I'm done. You are? Yeah, it's good shelter for us. It is. It's like a log with some sticks piled on top of it yeah like a weird bad very bad lean to i guess it's uh i i mean the most joke they do with marge and lisa for the like 10 seconds

of screen time they get is that they are better at building things than homer ever could be and instantly become the swiss family robinson i guess you'd say yeah i guess that's uh it's like i'm glad you mentioned that because that was their plot line in this episode they were going to have their own like swiss family robinson sort of uh like get up or set up rather uh but we see like a little bit of that the tiniest yeah yeah that's that's the obvious joke is he says he's a good woodsman she is a good woodsman doesn't know she's a good woodsman but keeps doing things that are that are right that would be that'd be it like she's sweeping the ground with a stick and and and building things and rearranging the squirrels and it's like yeah that's that's it but

they never kind of pay that off yeah i i mean i think they're part of it is the joke about sexism that homer is this domineering man who just insists, I know everything. And I've definitely experienced Woodsman. While meanwhile, Marge fully doubts her abilities and underestimates them. And she's actually an incredible survivalist. But she just thinks, oh, I could be half as good as your dad. He says he's great. She built a fire in this episode. That's true. And I guess they find food like when I was watching this again for like the 90th time, I'm like, what are they eating? Oh, that's right. What's going on here? Homer eats honey at one point, but also a lot of bees. Yes. Yeah. Marge instead has to be very stupid for the rest of this. As Homer and Bart are going to go off on their little adventure,

Maggie is walking behind them in a way that obviously Homer and Bart do not see her behind them. And Lisa correctly questions this. And here's Marge's response. Should Maggie be going with them, Mom? Oh, I don't think they'll be gone long. And she's in good hands, Lisa. So, yes. Exactly, yes.

Especially immediately after grumbling that her husband just said he's murdered them all it's like ah she's fine he can watch the baby it's one of the things that when you're writing a script where you go why why are they doing this because the plot needs them to do it ah all right how much time have we got well we're on deadline then it's fine off it goes but you should be fixing it it's it's a weird. Like when you're saying like, Homer is this arrogant guy. I feel this all comes down to the Ralph Cramden, Honeymooners character. It was like, he was an expert on everything, but in the Honeymooners, at least he was married to a woman that wasn't like Marge. He was married to basically like a Patty or Selma who was always putting them down and wasn't taking any of that nonsense. When you've

got the arrogant guy, but the wife who is just, oh, he's fine. It's like, it just doesn't work. Yeah, over time they learn to build Homer beyond the Ralph Cramden classic sitcom writing. And I don't even think Bart and Homer notice Maggie's following them because they immediately lose her.

And it's not even part of the equation for them. know if they did they're monsters because they didn't uh care that the baby is lost in the woods then yeah they would have to not see her otherwise they're uh they're terrible I take it to mean when they think she's a rattlesnake or they mistake it for rattlesnake that's because they didn't know she was behind them. But it's all in service of getting Maggie with those bears. But they have to have characters almost sleepwalk through scenes to get her to be in that cave with the bears eventually. It's a lot of dumbing down of characters and happenstance just to get to stuff that's fun.

It's cute. It's cute it's cute but i i don't think you should sell out all of your characters in the show to get to it there's like a couple jokes in here me and bob been noting this a lot in season one is that there are jokes that were very clear on the script that when you watch it in animation you're like oh wait that was a joke but it wasn't fully expressed like the the gag that the RV is so slow, there's just a trail of cars behind it. And when it pulls off the road, they all start speeding up behind them.

Like you have to, it's a lot of work to even notice that. Yeah, yeah, I guess it wasn't that obvious to me. And another one to me is when Homer and Bart walk away, you see the vultures are circling Marge and Lisa. And when Homer and Bart walk away, you see the vultures are circling Marge and Lisa. And when Homer and Bart walk away, the vultures follow Homer and Bart, saying the vultures know they're more likely to die soon than Marge and Lisa.

This could have been the first time I noticed that when Bart and Homer walk off and Maggie follows, the vulture shadows follow them. I never noticed that. So indistinct. Yeah. It's one of those things that was probably very clear in the written word on a script but in animation sometimes you lose that or it gets

lost in communication about what the comedic intent was also speaking of the animation the design of bart in an all green suit with his yellow skin it's just it all melds together it's not his best look it's really weird it's a weird choice yeah i remember thinking that when i had even the toy of this i'm like yeah why is green on green on part this is so strange this isn't even you know a green shirt when they would change the shirt color for other merch they'd still keep his pants blue but in this case his shorts got greenified too but maybe they didn't think about it because he's barely i mean he wears them for maybe like two minutes in the episode

uh but yeah so as they they walk away bart and homer uh get scared by rattlesnake homer's bravado instantly shatters the second he's scared like like you said in a very ralph cramden kind of moment and then dan and nancy have to scream so much oh yeah that i i really feel for them but they they run off and they are screaming then homer says oh everything's safe i know i'm an experienced woodsman they take one step through some bushes and fall off like the biggest waterfall in springfield that they somehow neither heard nor knew don't they fall off a cliff and then fall off like the biggest waterfall in springfield that they somehow neither heard nor knew don't they fall off a cliff and then fall off a waterfall cliff into water and then waterfall yeah correct yeah it's like a double we have the little floating heads for a little bit

yeah though yeah the floating heads the that was the bit that most reminded me of like the shorts i think because there's like they have some very wild positions when they're falling and also the way they kind of um try to swim backwards to not go over the waterfalls both of those felt like scenes from the tracy ullman shorts specifically if you want to look them up there's the gone fishing one where bart and homer go fishing and they do go over a waterfall oh yeah no wonder And the Echo Canyon episode that also involves a lot of echoing and shouting. So this, you know,

it could be Schwarzwalder just saw the shorts and we're like, oh, these are good jumping off points or, or whoever did the outline of Schwarzwalder didn't do the outline and just got handed the story. And again, it did remind me of, as you say,

the video game where they fall off the waterfall as well and land. And then, of course, in the video game, as you say, it goes into dreamland. Like, you know, he's knocked unconscious. He's lying at the bottom with his half partly in the water. He's horribly injured, but now here comes a fantasy sequence. It's impressive they all have a shared dream, too, like Inception style. It's very union

uh and uh it's a cute line homer says like it becomes natural like a third sense uh but yes homer and uh bart fall seemingly to their deaths they do a quick cut back to marge and lisa i love how marge just places the squirrels like they are in a clock or something. And I wish the squirrels looked like the typical Springfieldian squirrel. They're a little too naturalistic. I don't know. Too many details.

I prefer the dog eyes. They're creepy looking squirrels. They're not really moving either. What I thought later on, there's a couple and the guy complains, we haven't even seen one squirrel. And I thought, oh, it'd be interesting if the gag was Marge is actually just stacking all the squirrels and getting them organized. And that's why he hasn't. with a bear which it works really well on first viewing of just you think oh my god a bear is towering over baggy what happens next but the instant she befriends him then it like all tension's gone and it's gonna be a long sequence here yeah i mean i think i like this as a kid but now i'm like uh too cutie poo as birds would say yes yeah and well and it's distracting how long

it goes without dialogue. Yeah. I don't know. If I was making cuts, I'd cut this before the Marge and Lisa stuff, I think. There's like some weird Peter and the Wolf style song playing in the bears. I find it irritating. Yeah, you're right. That's totally where Gibbs was going with that music. Though I do like the designs on all the bears. They fit the graining, the reinforced rule of it can't look cartoony and they can't do things that a human would do. And this would later be a collector's plate. Oh, that's right.

Destined to go up in value. Don't eat off them, though. Not a guarantee yeah uh you so yeah maggie i also like that maggie in a very cartoony moment just pulls an extra pacifier out of her pocket and puts it in the bear's mouth to to pacify it uh it's did it works yeah yeah i like that they didn't go with maggie and just do the the old uh oblivious baby never gets hurt by anything going through the construction site. And instead, her deal is she's just great at everything. A block, she's stacking MC squared.

She's good with a gun later on. She's just great at anything that she puts her mind to. And she can even command bears like a cult leader. I guess it is echoes of Sweet Pea from Popeye like an impervious baby yeah that's true yeah but though at least going with the bear thing instead of a dodging peril because they i mean they kind of yeah in the shorts they did that too with that's true harder with maggie on yeah on the run so yeah yeah but she's not yeah sweepy would uh is a dumb dumb baby that just doesn't get hurt but maggie actually is ahead of the game. She's smarter than everyone else in the family, really,

when it comes down to it. Maggie is the ultimate life form, as they have joked in many times. She knows. She's far smarter than Lisa many times. And I think the second that she talks, that's when she's going to get dumb. And then that's when she's going to lose it. I don't know if that's baby genius rules or how that works but anyway something happens where you become dumb where you were smart once uh and then we cut back to homer searching for bart among the water

and uh homer briefly grieves Bart! Where are you, Bart? It's Lucky Red Hat! Oh, dear God! No! Bart! Bart! Oh, Bart! Bart, my beautiful son! Why couldn't you have taken me? Of all the fates on heaven and earth, why did this one befall me?

Don't have a cow, Dad. What the? Don't! You're alive! And, he he, but naked. I'm not the only one, homeboy. What? Ooh.

Jungle man. Ah! Was don't have a cow one of the catchphrases you mentioned earlier yeah this is another catchphrase bart is a catchphrase machine in this episode don't have a cow but this is don't have a cow dad so he's he's mixing it up you know genius at work moment here how does water these rushing water like perfectly rip off all of their clothes i think they wanted to be naked yeah i feel like i don't know i don't trust it i mean i get why it's it's weird also to just have them nude together but it's really just to leave them with nothing and to make their situations even more desperate but it's also weird that homer's like oh yeah i'm

standing around naked hey and he thinks it's quite comical yes yeah yeah it's it's actually charming the attitude they have towards each other it's like you can tell they actually do really do love each other it's it's just this gentle kind of you know going back and forth with them but it is weird the uh naked naked from a fall you feel like there's other ways of doing that you could just go oh we've got to swim across this river to get to the other side. Oh, well, then strip down. We'll have our clothes here.

We'll go get the thing and come. And then the clothes get knocked in or something happens. But yeah, falling and becoming nude. You say it's full of leeches or something. Instead, it's perfectly washed away somehow in the water. But whatever. I also like to dunk on the music some more. That would be played so much better if there was just silence behind Dan going like,

get all the things in heaven and earth. But instead, the music is trying to back it up, but it really subtracts from the moment. Yeah, the music needs to get out of the way in some of these scenes. This also is the difference between say an al bundy sorry to go back to mary with children and a homer simpson is al would not be mourning his child's death like that whereas homer is this emotional guy that uh you know is cursing or cursing the heavens and being so over the top in in that way and it's just that he's just a gentler soul yeah i i like it well this also is the

swartz welder way of playing with homer that all of a sudden he has like a oscar worthy speech on hand to curse god and then he instantly goes like hey uh king of the jungle like he just does a silly thing after that this is the first time hom Homer is nude in the series. Bart got naked many times before this. Oh, yeah. Both in the shorts and even, like, Bart the Genius and Telltale Head, which in production goes before this. You see his butt in both of those.

This is actually quite restrained for Bart nudity at this time. I didn't see one crack. But they hadn't had the courage yet to show Homer's butt yet. We wouldn't see his behind probably until at least another couple years at that point. Also, Bart loses his lucky red cap. It's gone.

His lucky red hat is gone. It's not recovered by the end of the episode, so I have to think he buys another one after this. Sure. Slightly less lucky, perhaps. He remains hatless, repeat they're uh left high and dry and uh meanwhile there's a long scene with the bears which uh it's just uh them befriending her and convincing the other bears to like maggie it's just you know i think i think it's executed fine. But as a viewer, I was just like, when's this bear scene ended?

I'm waiting for it. It's just so silent. I don't like it. Well, there's no twist. You're like, the bears like her and they like her more. They still like her. There you go. We get it.

Yeah. All right. Moving on. But when we finish that bear scene, uh we then go back to homer describing how to survive to bart in probably the most memorable scene from season one oh yeah the first thing you learn about surviving in the woods boy conceal your nakedness yeah man okay slap a fern on there boy boy. Now some mud. There. Oh, that requires a little mollusk.

And some moss for me. All right, we're ready to hit the town. But, Dad, I am so hungry. Can't we eat something first? I'm starving, man. Ah, food. Good thinking, son. This young sapling ought to do the trick. What are we do hang ourselves no this is a trap it's gonna catch us our dinner come on boy

just watch so uh first off that all the descriptions of putting stuff to conceal your nakedness apparently that was only stage directions in the script and sam simon insisted on them being said out loud because they were just too funny i'm glad that choice was made also though the lip sync bart's like yeah man that feels really 80 yard or weird like something's a little off on that but i love homer's delivery of like all right we're ready to hit the town hit the town yes and uh we played this clip at our live show in January and people loved it. People still laugh at this 30-year-old clip

of a rabbit being murdered. I always remember the animal violence, but I forgot the... The thump? Well, no, I meant the self-harm joke. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. To me, again, this is the best scene,

to me, in the whole first season because this the best scene to me in the whole first season, because this is the scene that no other show could possibly do. There's no other live sitcom that could show this because the animal violence would be too realistic and too gruesome. Couldn't have that. No Saturday morning cartoon could do this. Even a Disney cartoon really couldn't do this. It was only this show that has this tone and it's just such a perfectly timed

bit of physical comedy and then their reaction to it afterward first of all yeah the setup of what are we going to hang ourselves okay that's just a nice little you know snide little bit of comedy great and it makes it misdirects you so you don't think you don't know what's coming next because that joke's been done now we're now we're having the rabbit it's a cute rabbit you think there's going to be something but you don't expect the rabbit to be flung to its death. Then it takes so long. And then the thump. And then you're like, oh, it's going to be a big reaction from the guys now.

Okay, then. And just the small little reaction. Perfect. And no other show could do this. This is why The Simpsons, you know, was so special. And yeah, what made it so unique to me. And you forget about the kind of lame gag that follows this, you know, was so special. And yeah, what made it so unique to me. And you forget about the kind of lame gag that follows this,

where Homer goes into the bushes and comes out and they just recycle animation. And I think speed up his screams. It just sounds weird. Oh, I have all that set aside so we can hear. I did want to say on the Nancy's line, like, what are we going to do? Hang ourselves?

Hang ourselves? I like her delivery that i think it could have been played more sarcastic but instead i think bart partially means it yeah it's just like oh we're gonna just kill ourselves and end it like which you know suicide's nothing to joke about i wouldn't do it now but in the past that was a very funny joke to me and it's it's still it still makes me laugh to this day, but yes, then there's also animal violence, which,

you know, again, not funny, except in this case where it is funny. Uh, but here, yes, let's,

let's hear that. And also Homer's, uh, follow-up plan to it. Aha. Got him. Okay. okay. This time, I'll just go into the bushes over there,

make a lot of noise, and flush out a rabbit. When he comes out, you step on him. Right there. Step on him. Get him off me! Get him off me! Get him off me! Get him off me! I hate those screams.

The sounds Dan doesn't make normally. I don't think he figured out Homer screams like high-pitched. No, not yet. I think a couple episodes ago, it felt like the first high-pitched scream. When Homer wakes up in the middle of the night from his bad dream, his high-pitched scream, that's, I think, the first time. It really felt like Dan discovered that. Also, Homer's command of, you step on him. You step on him. Just squish this rabbit. And what's your plan after crushing that rabbit anyway?

You're this squirrel you're gonna cook you're just gonna like eat the corpse like i think homer needs to have that kind of brutal of a thing to say so it's funnier that the animals are tearing him apart instead yeah but uh yeah it almost sounds like really mel blankey kind of sounds of like could have been going for that like when bugs bunny drinks a weird potion and he goes yeah yeah homer then just screams a bunch and uh then in the very next scene i uh clipped out what i call hank azaria's best acting in season one oh it's such a treat to hear him doing these uh side characters in this episode like i missed hearing his voice yeah this is

i think by this time in the script writing it's the ninth one they're nearing the end of the season i think they finally know what hank is area is good at and they've started to truly fall in love with him as uh as a voice actor like he doesn't become a full co-star on the show until season two like he's still he's on the level of you know pamela hayden or uh russie taylor kind of level of guest voice not full co-star and are these characters the gammels you know al jean says they are but i thought the gammels were the good family in um no disgrace like home they're not the same design and the wiki treats them differently i i'm getting the feel on these commentaries when

al or mike call out the Gamble family. They just mean any regular ass family. Like there's there's basically like five versions of that family is even down to the fishing hat they all wear. Oh, yeah. But they're not exactly the same. No. But yes. Why do we hear some some wonderful Hank Azaria active?

Great camping trip, honey. Traveled 800 miles. Haven't even seen a squirrel yet. Well, the ranger at the gate said we should watch out for bears. some wonderful Hank Azaria acting. Is that our first Maggie donut oh what the heck have me come and get all right all right you made your point is that our first maggie roswell i think you so okay so interesting it's really good i mean uh though only now when putting the sounds by itself is that pacifier noise incredibly distracting like it's so squeaky it's it's even worse than the maggie sound well they were all they were doing the pacifier noise over uh dialogue back now back in this season i don't know if they did that in the second season but it's so hard to listen to without the visuals but i just love i was like i eat me come on eat me like oh such funny delivery just the snideness of this dick

i know i love these characters i would love a spin-off series with these characters great camping trip honey yeah the sarcastic husband and the put-upon wife is just like okay you made your point like these two must divorce i don't think they're getting a second kid this it's already this tense on their first vacation as this is not they should not add children in this family i'm gonna say uh they call the baby on the commentary a graining baby too like oh yeah i think it looks like nibbler i i think it's the same one design they used in notice grace like home that uh that mac raining on the commentary shouts out like look i tried to design a cute baby okay i'm sorry it's not my forte then the bears while this guy is acting like there are no bears,

the bears kind of steal all of his stuff. And that's the closest to like a joke I feel with them is that they're able to steal countless toys across the entire day, like in the forest, which is seemingly impossible. So I like that. reminds me of i believe the easter sunday after this episode aired like i guess a month or so later i forget when easter was in 1990 uh i remember the parents talking about the bear subplot in this episode how cute they thought it was so the moms love this one and moms love it you can't uh you know maybe they made the right choice then with this adorable everyone so uh then they go back to marge and lisa who it is late at night they haven't seen uh three members of their family all day and they are not worried at all not one and they're not very cold uh despite

having no like uh blankets or real shelter it's a powerful fire. Yeah. Yeah, they just give up on even searching for them. While meanwhile, Homer and Bart try to get some shut-eye. I hope Maggie and the boys are all right. Oh, I'm sure they're just fine. After all, we built a fire and we don't know anything about nature. Imagine what your father, an experienced woodsman, has done. Yeah, I suppose so. Night, Mom. woodsman, has done. Yeah, I suppose so. Night, Mom.

Good night, dear. Good night, Dad. Good night, son. Sleep tight. Now, I will say, I totally forgot that even Lisa's a dope in this episode, too. Where she should be like, come on, Mom. Yeah, Mom, what are you, stupid? You're dead. And then you can just cut away

if you just want to leave it at that, but don't be like, I guess you're right, Mom. My father and brother are very smart. That would be a nice scene of Marge thinks they are dead, and is just trying to comfort her daughter and create this world where everything is still fine. And knowing they're all going to die.

Just go to sleep. Just go to sleep. Here, I have a drink for you, Lisa. Oh, no. Yeah, you know, that's a more fun headcanon than just reading it on the surface level intent. I like that. I forgot to mention it earlier, but the wayisa says to homer like well you know the big dipper always points to the north star he's like well this is an astronomy class lisa like she

knows yeah the homer's dad it's a big warning sign for lisa also them saying good night to each other another like real extreme sound design choice of just the loudness of their clacking teeth as they shiver in the cold like i feel like they should at least know like i don't know get some leaves and try to cover yourselves a little bit i guess they're that stupid or spoon each other for crying out yeah that's what marjorie's are doing it and they're you know they're they're warm i i could see both uh homer and bart feeling weird at that idea especially since they're both naked yeah yeah if hey if it was me and my dad i'd say no to that too i get that but the way they played it before is they seem to be there is none of that uh gay panic thing about it they're just like hey you're

looking you're naked it's just like it's laughing good goofy fun they're putting moss on each other everyone's cool and then it's like and we can't sleep together it just seems yeah go for it yeah this doesn't seem to be an issue with those guys i guess they're just too stupid to know to do that is cool and then it's like and we can't sleep together it just seems yeah go for it yeah this doesn't seem to be an issue with those guys i guess they're just too stupid to know to do that and uh then meanwhile maggie snuggles up with a big comfy bear which does look very uh very cozy yeah i want to take a nap there uh so then we come back with i think my favorite reply Homer's ever had to Are We There Yet? I really love at the start of this scene. Are we there yet? No.

Are we ever going to be there? Oh, what I know. Quit asking pointless. Look. Honey. Honey! We're saved. Uh, Homer?

Bees? How is it? Tangy. Water! Water! What? Water! Water!

Oh, water. That'll win, man. Oh! Oh! Ah! Oh, my God. Yeah, the episode's really in crazy town. Yeah. Now, during that scene, I'm always waiting for Homer to say, they're defending themselves somehow.

That's from Lisa's rival. You're right. It's a better bee joke, but you gotta start somewhere, right? Homer, in most cases, doesn't know what bees do. In this case, it's so early, Homer shouldn't be this stupid. You have to tell yourself he's delirious from hunger. But I just love how bark goes like dad bees like bees you know that those are bees right like but yeah he shouldn't

be dumber than winnie the pooh winnie the pooh knows bees are uh in a hive it's it's a very strange yeah if he said like they're more scared of us than we are of them or something something along those lines. Any kind of just offhand line. As long as you go in slow, subtly, anything, it would work. But yeah, he just dives in. It's just too dumb. Yeah, he just goes, honey, and then just basically punches through the beehive.

Not seemingly unaware of what would happen next when you do that. And this Bigfoot stuff was a uh i think it was one of the standout memorable moments of the season like homer being mistaken for bigfoot because of his design of course it's like an obvious joke we had the uh ape like dude uh right that's right uh but like i i don't know if i like this anymore it just it's such it was so weird and this early to stretch the credulity i guess or credibility i don't know i you know when he's uh bringing up that way it does make me feel more like what you stereotype late simpsons is having which is a ridiculous escalation in the third act that kind of leaves

behind any reality that was in the show before that. But it also feels like it was written backwards from this. Like, they go camping and Homer's mistaken for Bigfoot. How do we get there? I feel like that was written from that approach backwards. And then you get there in about 20 seconds. Yeah. Like, if he was just Bigfooting it up through the whole thing and little by little, he became more and more Bigfoot

until he was, like, full Bigfoot? Maybe. But, yeah maybe but yeah it's just okay the plot needs to happen now go but though you know in the late 80s bigfoot fever was as hot as ever and they they say on the commentary they were directly making fun of all the bigfoot specials that were on fox yeah i mean bigfoot is easy programming conspiracy theories in general easy programming at that time on television. I guess if there was some mention of Bigfoot before this, it would have felt more natural than just to be all Bigfoot for the last three minutes of the episode. Yeah, someone mentioned Bigfoot at all. When I moved to Vancouver from Montreal, I was 10 years old, and our big fear, me and

my sister, was, well, this is Bigfoot country. Wait, what are you, crazy? There's Bigfoots in the woods and because it was it was so bigfoot saturated back then that you know and you can tell the age the writers are that they still have as you say the bigfoot fever but when this came out bigfoot wasn't a thing anymore i this was definitely how i learned of the idea of bigfoot i think the bigfoot pizza would come not long after that's true yeah he sold out he was once terrifying and uh well i i probably around the same time saw harry and the hendersons i can't really it's fuzzy in my memory which i saw first but yeah there are some parts of america where bigfoot is enormous i had a i had a dinner once uh at a party with Bobcat Goldthwait, and he was filming a movie

about Bigfoot that was part real documentary and part fiction. And they had to actually talk to people who were really into Bigfoot. And there are parts of America where it is almost a religion. I love that. I mean, that's one of my favorite Futurama episodes is when they reveal that Fry is a huge Bigfoot fan. It also has one of my favorite quotes ever on the show. It's like, I get it. Like, I like to say that so people know that I get jokes or references. It's the human horn joke, right? Yes.

Human horn episode. Yes. The whole bit of Homer, he has to get stung in his mouth. That's also why he does it. So that's why he can't communicate audibly. And he sounds crazy too like yeah the bees stung his mouth uh so that's why he has to be so stupid as to put bees on his fist into his mouth i did like ian's idea i said earlier like it would have been better if uh slowly

he started being more like bigfoot like maybe someone could spot him like loping around naked in the distance like i think i see bigfoot you know just someone could spot him like loping around naked in the distance. Like, I think I see Bigfoot, you know, just like slowly over time, like he adopts more Bigfoot like features until this moment. Yeah. The couple who was complaining earlier, the guy about like not seeing anything, he's taking a picture and gets a picture of Homer sloping as Bigfoot and, you know, freaks out or something. And yeah, just build it up. I just know also Homer probably does have a bee allergy because once the bee stung his bottom and then his bottom got big that's true that is a sign of a severe b allergy that he has that's true he should have a worse reaction then he should be going into

anaphylactic shock i think it does feel like you can hear dan holding his tongue to say like uh what's the matter with you ah never mind like you can tell he's saying things instead of just like sounds uh and of course uh i identify bigfoot with canada because of the uh canadian super team alpha flight and their members sasquatch yes indeed yeah he's a teacher at sfu that's right yeah walter langowski i think oh boy we got a real fan here Well you know I'm Canadian we have to know all the Alpha Flight characters Who's your favorite member? Mine's Puck I like Puck the most he's fun

You know what I like Aurora Underrated very underrated You know as a gay man I should have said North Star but I really like Puck he's more fun He's also an elf sometimes when they don't want to deal with it he's gay so it's very odd. He stopped being an elfin man once they could just say he was gay.

I'm going to be doing an episode of Retronauts about Sam and Max at the road pretty soon, the video game. And that game is all about Bigfoot. And I have a theory. Ian, you were born in the 60s, correct? I was born in the late 60s. Late 60s. Okay. I feel like everyone born in the 60s is Bigfoot obsessed to some point because like the Simpsons writers, the same as Max, game designers, like it's all coming together for me. Something about that era. There was a movie and I forget the name of the movie, but they advertised it all the time on television. There was a woman who's sitting in her living room and she's just relaxing. And then this Bigfoot hand smashes in through a window and grabs her.

And it's the most terrifying thing and it scarred so many of us this this movie it just locked it into our into our heads and yeah i can tell like if people are bigfoot obsessed yeah about what age they are they saw that clip i remember too on the venture brothers there in the first season or second they do a bigfoot episode that is their takeoff on the $6 million man in Bigfoot episode. Oh, yes, that's right. There was also a Saturday morning show Sid and Marty Croft did, Bigfoot and Wild Boy. And it was a Bigfoot and kind of a Tarzan boy, and they solved mysteries.

Wow. Woods mysteries, yeah. That sounds fun. For us when we were kids, Henry and I, it was definitely like gray aliens. Yeah, the grays everywhere. The cool thing to believe in. Yep. I mean, you had the first episode of South Park and X-Files.

Yeah. Strong on that stuff. Yeah. The cuddly, friendly mystery of Bigfoot. That's more fun than, you know, probing gray aliens. That's more depressing. I don't like that as much. Anywho, Bigfoot has been found and the news is going wild for it.

And don't let your ears deceive you, listeners. This is not Kent Brockman in this next clip. Bigfoot, legendary half-man, half-ape, is no longer a legend. He's very, very real. What you're about to see is unedited video footage taken earlier today in the hills three miles southwest of Tenderfoot Gorge.

Now, the naturalist who took these absolutely extraordinary pictures was most impressed by the creature's uncivilized look, its foul language, and most of all,

its indescribable stench. A popular supermarket tabloid has offered a reward of $5,000 to anyone who brings in the creature alive. Naturally, we'll have more on this story

as soon as it develops. We now return you to the president's address already in progress. I like that joke. I mean, that's a running gag they would do on their news things

of like, oh, and also the president was indicted for murder, but that's after the movie. I don't think they underline it here but uh in the early years or at least in the first year uh you were never supposed to meet kent brockman it was like the kent brockman news hour starring kent brockman and then there'd be another newscast for like scott christian like kent brockman is on assignment or on vacation like you would never meet him but then they decided like oh kent brockman's funny this character is funnier. But this guy is just a news guy. Yeah, he's not even Scott Christian.

Yeah. Well, and they'll use the same design the next time the news is in the episode, but it's Dan doing the voice. So they start with Harry doing the Ken Brockman voice, and then he'll be Dan at the end doing basically the Scott Christian voice, but he's an amalgamation of both, but he's also neither. He's just a, I looked at the wiki. He will appear in like character background shots, but this newsman never returns because the next time they need a news reporter on TV, they just use Scott Christian or Kent Brockman. Now I'm blanking on this. Where was Bart when all this was going on? I guess Homer ran far away from him and then they kind of meet back

up together. Bart's just following him. Yeah. Okay. So there's no point where Bart thinks that this is just cool that they're thinking his dad... Because he would just let this play out. There's no way he would stop that. But I just wonder if there was any point where Bart reunites with Marge

or Lisa or anything anything it just seems like homer runs away from bart and then this uh this whole thing happens uh no the second act does end with them silently meeting back up together okay which explains why they're together in the next scene so homer runs away gets covered in mud and then runs back to bart which uh like we said before homer smells really really bad yeah and like one of the like this season had some weird act breaks this one is so bizarre just like the act break is homer is sulking on a log and bart is sitting on a log and then there's your commercial break yeah like it doesn't make me want to stick around through those commercials the joke like we now return to

the president's address already in progress like bam like blackout commercial time but that's like no let's go to like a like fade out on a sad scene of uh it's like messing with the tone of this wacky bigfoot stuff too you know maybe they just felt like oh we got to get it back to the family they don't you know but they didn't see how it would play out once it's finally all animated so like no we got to remind people the stakes of bart and homer we don't need to go out on a joke i think they get more confident on their ability to leave people laughing with an uh end of a scene instead of going to a sad moment that just diffuses tension like the music doesn't help like this just constantly happens in season one did you ever talk about matt graining's rubber band theory of

comedy you know i think we probably mentioned yeah yeah it just feels like a bit of that where like it stretches to crazy town and then and then snaps back obviously by the end it does and we've got a very realistic scene with them in bed together but i feel like sometimes they do that with the act breaks here too where it's like well we can't end the act break crazy we gotta like pull it back to reality so that we can be real when we come back as well so let's not act let's not end on the funniest or most exciting thing we'll just end on a realistic moment of which is kind of what they did you know with the simpsons you know enter the forest and then you get as you say the one because we got to really ground it and bring it down no ending on a joke just and same same thing here let's end it

on a downer so we can come back at a more realistic place and uh the newspaper offering the reward is springfield weekly not springfield shopper yeah though shopper had previously appeared in homer's odyssey so it's i mean obviously the it's a weekly world news reference when they call it springfield weekly and i think the artist did a really good job of drawing the imaginations of Bigfoot. Like the artists rendering of Bigfoot are really good. I like that a lot. And it's also funny to know that Homer, after being mistaken for Bigfoot by season five, will still believe in Bigfoot and want to meet him with Godfrey Jones.

Oh yeah, that's much. I like his style but yes we come back from commercial break an entire tent city has built up around sasquatch mania which is also the plot of a terrible movie called pottersville pottersville yeah i can't believe that movie's real it is is an unbelievable film. I can't tell you more about it because if you want to just enjoy a bad movie, watch that. Or, you know, listen to Friends of the Show, We Hate Movies, their podcast about Pottersville. That's how I did it. That movie is insane.

It has the best cast of a terrible movie that maybe has ever happened. Anywho, then we get to see the park ranger has just saved lisa marge off screen which that really saves some time yeah yeah it's like oh you actually were saved and you're fine anyway which it would have been a good scene with him showing up and seeing they were living great yeah and had a beautiful lean tube at that point it almost looked exactly like the simpsons home and she was cooking a nice meal like oh thanks for saving us and, and then being rescued. Though I do like the park ranger. I like how he's played by Hank. Me too.

And it's similar to the Mountain of Madness park ranger. But not as boring as that guy is like, well, he just lost away. But they had to get rid of that to make room for a bunch of jokes about the tabloid culture of the early 90s, late 80s. Which, I mean, you know, now we talk about going viral and all that stuff. But this was the celebrity trash culture of the time that they were commenting on. Before, tabloids were the most reputable source for celebrity deaths. It's like TMZ breaks deaths before anyone else any national news

service yeah that's true uh well because they don't care about families or any decorum they're just like we heard this person's dead right now let's tell everyone let the corpse cool off oh god yeah and this was something they could do in animation that you couldn't do in live action which was get people to read you would never have like a sign that you couldn't do in live action, which was get people to read. You would never have like a sign that you would read or a spinning paper that you have a lot of information on. That wouldn't be something that you would put in a regular sitcom at all. But, you know, because it's animation, there's something about that that just makes it possible. And you can actually like pay off a gag that way or pay off a plot point. I feel like in the next year,

they would have additional jokes on these newspapers too. These spinning newspaper gags are a little funnier than the ones in Homer's Odyssey that were just like a headline like this. They do a little more work here, but season one is them learning over time just how much information they can pack onto the screen and they haven't fully figured it out yet. But yes, Marge speaks to the tabloids. There's something horrible roaming these woods. There is? Why, that's my husband.

His name isn't Bigfoot. His name is Homer. What does it eat? I don't understand. What's this all about? Well, I suppose pork chops are his favorite. Hey, get those bears out of here. I'm trying to do an interview. No bears. We're taping all bears off the set. I love that it's an effeminate voiced man that chews away the bears.

He's not even worried about these giant bears. Off the set, please. And this is back when they tried to give Homer a food preference. This pork chops and applesauce thing would come up a few more times, but then they realized, no, he'll just eat anything. He'll eat a disgusting sandwich. He eat uh free soap in the mail he'll eat uh tulips or the daffodils or no tulips yeah holland yeah andy separate from the dish soap he also eats decorative soaps yeah uh yeah you're right there's uh he's not such a discerning eater uh after that but yeah i mean

for at least season one into two the crux of his love of pork chops is is very important to order those at unky herbs yeah yeah at any time of night and and same with um he loved marge's specific way of making pork that's right yeah the itchy and scratchy versus marge yeah it was a big pork chop and cupcake show for a while uh i won now as an adult who like you know buys pork chops i think the the extra joke is how low class it is for homer it's like pork chops are cheaper than steak it's the it's a budget family kind of thing but even even when Homer is in the lap of luxury with his half-brother, he still is like, no, I want pork chops any time of night. I don't want filet mignon any time of night.

I want pork chops. And applesauce, another low-budget meal. Oh, yeah. I mean, mixing them together, that is such a low-class thing to do. It's great. Marge just telling them all this stuff, and she doesn't. She's kind of dumb i think she gets her sense back at the end of this questioning sequence is when he she finally

realizes like oh wait this is for the news and you guys are using this like especially the guy that asks about uh his lovemaking yes yeah brutish brutish yes that's a very distracting design i think they said it's like basically the uh barber from the tracy allman shorts it's close so that's what they said in the commentary and wes archer did work on all the shorts but the guy actually he looks similar to the barber but who he actually is is if you remember when bart stops the candy store being robbed. Yes. He's interviewed by a news reporter and it is one to one. Very early beard lying guy. Yes. Yeah.

That's why even this far into season one, he stands out as a shorts character adapted. But, you know, you got to save some time. You got to produce 13 of these by, you know, January. It's tough. So if there's a news guy you already used in the shorts use them here homer and bart's in their search for food they happen upon bears i guess they smell the like dead fish that they're eating yeah uh but again they're very desperate they haven't eaten in days now it seems like and they then just stumble upon maggie and homer's reaction like maggie oh little girl

that's weird it's a weird reaction they gotta wrap things up we've got like 90 seconds left yeah it's true they they knew homer and bart have to come back to civilization with maggie so they just speed it up i do like homer's though pronouncement of when they get confronted by the grizzlies with praise the grizzly son praise maggie saves them from the grizzlies by commanding them to not kill bart and homer and then she waves goodbye to them and like kind of a sweet moment i think uh though you know my mom's we talked about mom's favorite scenes i think my mom really loved the bigfoot is my husband stuff she had a good laugh at that i thought as uh as you know time

wastes i thought the bear stuff was i did like the bear at the end with the pacifier yeah yeah that was cute it was still cute i'm i would have thought a single tear would roll down in size but that would break the macaroon and i also like to this is more headcanon i like to think that once they find maggie she directs them out of the woods and that's the only reason they find Maggie, she directs them out of the woods. And that's the only reason they find civilization. I like that. I like that headcanon. There's a thing earlier on where Homer tells Bart animals can smell fear. Just saying because he's doing the don't be scared of the grizzlies thing.

I looked that up, by the way. And animals cannot smell fear except in the same type of animal that they are. So if you do run into an animal, it can't smell your fear. Just letting you know. Be as afraid as you want. That's right. Fear it up. And so they leave the woods finally. Homer, just a nude man covered in mud.

Caked on mud at this point. They note on the commentary too, they're like, this really should be more mud. He looks like a human still, but not to the folks who are swept up in Bigfoot fever as they confront Homer. Look, it's him! It's Bigfoot! Get the gun!

Get him! Get him! Huh? We got him! We got Bigfoot! You are darn lucky we got here in time to rescue you. What the hell are you talking about, sir? He's getting away!

After him! We've got to take him alive! Junk, you got that tranquilizer gun ready? Dad! Oh, Dad! Avenge me, son. Avenge my death. Now that's more classic Homer there.

High-pitched screaming, telling Bart to avenge his death. I think what's supposed to make this work more in the reality of the show is that Homer has a lot of body hair, like back and chest hair and body hair. And they just can't draw it because it would just look terrible and be too much work so i think that's also what's selling him being bigfoot him being also being hairy that makes sense yeah but it's that makes it even weirder to think of homer as designed that he's like a big fat hairless man like completely hairless uh well also i think the net put over homer i feel like that is supposed to be a Planet of the Apes reference.

It could be, yeah. That's how several of the humans are captured by the apes in Planet of the Apes. And also, if you pause that scene as I did, you can really appreciate the many weird smiles and teeth on the men surrounding Homer as they capture him. It's a very weird drawing. And also, there's a lot of, again very like cartoony zips off screen like the when the hunters all see bigfoot they all like speed off screen like in like a big smear kind of this last scene with the um the scientists or whatever on the commentary algae and mike

reese did not write this episode but they said this this happened apparently before or like in post-production or something there's this final scene because like this was not the script that we saw like it's not the script that we worked on i don't know like how this was not part of their job or their like how it passed you know beyond them yeah i'm i'm not sure either i you know we talked to jay kogan about the function of the season one writer's room as compared to other seasons and he did mention that like well there wasn't like a full table read or full rewrite like they would do in later seasons but it was you know sam simon matt graining james l brooks and then gene and reese

were there for the reading of it and the notes of it but perhaps they gene and reese weren't there for a fuller rewrite that would happen after the script reading part. Maybe that's the part that happened after they left the room. Because this final scene, I guess, was not part of the original read-through of this script. Yeah, I mean, and it's so extreme. It's so crazy. All these international scientists weighing in on what Homer is and they don't know. We talk about how homer later

in the series becomes the most famous man on earth who everyone should know at least in america for his many times he's made national news but here he is right here like from this point on he would be the guy we all thought was bigfoot like that would that would be his he'd be on Remember the 90s, thanks for that, in the universe of The Simpsons. They're already breaking the simple reality of The Simpsons to have Homer be national news, and for them to go so far with the joke that to a committee of trained scientists, Homer is indistinguishable from a mythical missing link it's uh pretty crazy it's a lot of it's a lot of gimmies everyone to get here marge had to not act correctly lisa had to not act correctly uh nothing can really make sense at the ending with this ending but you know do you

find it funny okay fine push push push we got to get to the end. Get it going. Keep it going. Keep it moving. If you are to play it out realistically in your mind, once Homer is knocked unconscious, Bart tells them everything that happened. Marge gets proof of identification of like, well, no, this is my husband. This is a human man. Or the second they hose him off and see him, they're like, well, no, that's a human man. Here's his birth certificate. He's a human.

And even after that, once they put him in a diaper and they're feeding him raw pork chops at that point they should know he's a man because he can speak and it's just it's so weird and extreme it's it's not a raw pork chop though because there's a little uh food service cart like a room service situation with a little metal, you know, whatever you put the metal lid over your meal, that was off to the side. So they ordered something there. I think they're doing this in a hotel or something because that is a cooked pork chop. Okay. But it's, you're right. There is that little serving tray. It's, but it's still so crazy. And then even crazier. And also, yes, the the reporter that talks this is when it's

dan castellaneta same design of reporter it also makes me think that this reporter explaining things was added in late too because i think it's like late adr and they're just they forget that it was kent or uh harry before they just didn't do it and also for some reason marvin monroe has left the field of psychiatry to join animal biology. He's part of the Primate Institute as well. I do love the idea that Springfield is so big that they have their own Primate Institute just there. I found another Porkchops and Applesauce reference. That's what Kang and Kodo served him in the spaceship.

So, man, seasons one, two, and three, just his food of choice. It was also, it featured prominently in the Brady Bunch in an episode that all of these writers would have known very, very well and played for comedic purposes. And it just sounds funny. Pork chops and applesauce. Pork chops and applesauce. You know, I got pork chops in the fridge.

I'm going to have that for dinner tonight. But before I make pork chops, let me play the final ridiculous clip of this episode. They are now ready to announce their findings. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished colleagues, after extensive biological and anatomical testing, I regret to announce that the evidence we have is inconclusive. This thing may or may not be human. That's what he thinks. I say it's none other than Bigfoot in the flesh.

Oh, no, I disagree. I think it is a man. The eyes are the glimmer of human intelligence. Really, a glimmer in the eyes. What about the sloping ape-like forehead? All the guys at work are going gonna have a field day with this. Cheer up, Homer. At least they let you go. Gentlemen, gentlemen, Frau Lein, please.

This much I believe we can agree upon. This specimen is either a below-average human being or a brilliant beast. Stupid egghead. Oh, Homer. My brilliant beast. It's at least a sweet moment at the very end there. And I do love the drawing

of how Marge looks at Homer. Like, that's a good... That's a good drawing, yeah. But I do like homer's like oh the guys are gonna have a field day with this at work it's like you were a national news story because no one could tell if you're human that's they're gonna get a little razzed at work that made me laugh extra actually yeah because that is what ralph cramden would say at the end of an episode where he like you know fell into a pool of water in front of everybody like you're gonna have a

field day with this but he would never be a national news story about being mistaken for bigfoot so it at the very least that's a line choice is funny in how silly the situation is also in a very short design choice in the background where marge and homer are in bed are photos of bart lisa and maggie following the old shorts rule of if the whole family isn't in a shot then in the home there should be a background element of a photo of the rest of the characters who aren't in the scene and it's incredibly distracting yeah very glad they stopped doing that after season one but this does follow the rule that, you know, Gene and Reese joke about how they're like,

they do all this craziness and then they do, you know, 10 seconds of sweetness at the end and it earns them back any credulity. Yeah, Homer's motivation at the very beginning was wanting to be on par with his neighbor or better. And then he becomes a national news story where everyone, no one knows he's human or not. Just on paper, that is a hell of a plot. That's a very, very long way to go.

But again, no other sitcom could do it. So I'll give him that. Like, this is the only show where you could do anything like that. Yeah, I wish we saw a return of Flanders in this third act, though. Like, hey, Simpson, saw the news or something. Shut up, Flanders. Oh, he does say diddlydly in this too it's the first time that says diddly and the

first flanders is is yeah i also do like march calling a brilliant beast and also the kind of cuteness of the way she is kissing him but also looks behind her to turn off the lights like yeah it's a nice little acting move i wonder if that we're supposed to think they snuggled after that light well they're definitely making love after that for sure yeah 100 and uh and we dumped on the soundtrack the whole time but the choice to not have any music play as the cut to black for the credits that was good yeah. We didn't hear like, bum, bum, bum, ba-da! Ba-ba-ba-bum. I don't want that over sex, no. Yes, yeah.

They played the moment correctly. But yes, an insane ending. This is a weird episode, but definitely a memorable one. Yeah, it really pushed the limit to where the show would go even crazier places. But I like that they're testing it out

this early and it didn't break the show. So good job to John Schwarzwalder. Yeah. Made for a good Burger King toy. Several. That's better than any Emmy to know that you made a good Burger King toy. Those are the best little statuettes. So Ian, please tell us all about what you're working on now. Please tell us more about Sparks, Double Dog there, which is coming out, I believe, in August. People can pre-order that right now if they want to. Sure, yeah. That's a book coming out from Scholastic, as you said.

I'm doing that with art by Nina Matsumoto. Amazing. And coloring by David Dedrick. We have our original book, Sparks, which is still out. It's about two cats that want to be heroes, but no one takes cats seriously as heroes. So they dress up as a dog in a mechanical dog suit and save the world from an evil alien baby. And then in the new book sparks double dog dare there's another sparks that's out there and they gotta figure out what's

going on with that and nina did an especially amazing job on this one so please do check that out i also do a podcast with uh david edrick called sneaky dragon so you can go to sneaky dragon.com you'll see that and all of our more specific podcasts where we cover the Beatles, Tintin, the Marx Brothers and more. So that's at SneakyDragon.com. And I've got a book coming out from Image, second run of that, called Exorcisters. Story about a girl who when she was 13, her mom sold her soul to the devil. She got the soul back, but it was too different by the time she got it back. So now they pretend to be sisters and help others out in similar situations. And I do that with artist Giselle Legacy, who does a comic called Menage

à Trois. And again, it's just this amazing artist that I get to work with. And I get to work with my wife, Pia Guerra, on comics for The New Yorker and for Mad Magazine. Oh, man, those are all so great. Yeah, I read, since we last recorded, I i've read exo sisters and i am a big big fan of it i mean i also really love uh giselle's art in general i you know menage a three like ended or transitioned to another storyline and i i've still been keeping up with it but i just love her her art is like i joked with nina about it of just like it's sexy archie like it's really good well now Archie is sexy. You got to sex it up even more.

That's true. Well, you actually did quite a few Archie. She did the Archie gender swap issues that were especially good. Oh, yes. Yeah. No, she's great. You work with so many amazing artists. I do.

I'm very, very lucky with the people that I work with. Yes. But thank you so much, Ian, for coming on. Yes, thank you, Ian. I'm a big fan of this show i always listen to it and what a cartoon so uh real pleasure anytime you want me on i will be here so thanks again to ian boothby be sure to check out all of his stuff and as for us if you want to check out more of our stuff and support the show and get also extra stuff on top

of that head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and if you sign up at the five dollar level you'll have access to everything behind that paywall that includes over a hundred podcasts way too many things to mention here but the most recent thing that we did is a lovely jay kogan interview with a writer from the first four seasons also a little bit before that we did talking futurama season two part one that is 10 new episodes ofurama. And then if you hang on for a little bit, we're going to have a new miniseries coming up in April and one probably coming up in October. So two new miniseries in 2020 for our $5 patrons.

And also everything we did before that for the past nearly three years of this Patreon. There's so much stuff happening on that $5 level. And if you enjoy hearing our voices, there's so many podcasts you have not heard. If you're not part of the Patreon and it's really easy to sign up, just go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

And Henry can tell everyone out there what's happening at the $10 level. Extra long podcast once a month about a topic you decide. That's right. The What a Cartoon Movie is our monthly podcast where me and Bob talk for close to four hours and over about a different animated feature film. Most recently, we did The Great Mouse Detective, the underrated Disney classic, and we had so much fun talking about

the Sherlock Holmesiness of it. And we have a ton more in the back catalog that you can only hear over 50 hours of content if you're a $10 and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And you know, I just mentioned all the shorts throughout this episode. If you want to check out the shorts with me and Bob's commentary on it, you can get that as well in the back catalog of our $10 and up content

at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. As for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts. Check it out wherever you find podcasts to classic gaming podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts over there we have two exclusive episodes a month for five dollar patrons so if you like retronauts and want to hear more it's at patreon.com slash retronauts if you just want to hear the podcast for free it's anywhere you listen to podcasts henry how about you hey henry gilbert you should

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to stay in the loop at TalkSimpsonsPod. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next week for the Telltale head what do you think should Should we stop here? Yes! All righty.