Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Computer Wore Menace Shoes With Travis View

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

This week's episode is all about online conspiracy theories, and our guest is an expert: Travis View of the investigative podcast QAnon Anonymous! As Homer becomes the unknown arbiter of online rumors, this episode is all about the dangers of bull plop on a then relatively young internet of 2000. Learn how much things have changed and what stayed the same, plus a ton of stuff about the cult classic The Prisoner! So don't be a caterpillar in our buttermilk, 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!

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

White the caterpillar in your buttermilk, I'm Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? This is Travis View from the QAnon Anonymous podcast. And today's episode is The Computer Wore Menace Shoes. Your webpage has stumbled upon our secret plan. That's impossible. All my stories are bullplup. Bullplup! Today's episode aired on December 3rd, 2000.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy, Bobby. American McGee's Alice hits personal computers. Smashing Pumpkins play their final concert together until about 2005. And everyone is waiting for tomorrow because that Monday is when the Supreme Court

is going to announce their decision in Bush versus Gore. I can't wait. We have covered so much of this in our Talking Futurama series because Talking Futurama season two, I'm sorry, Futurama season two is running during this period as well. So we talked a lot about the election in those. But American McGee's Alice, that was back when the idea of what if Alice in Wonderland

was fucked up. That was still interesting. Or maybe it wasn't. I don't know. Some people liked it. I think American McGee, I appreciate that he wanted to be, the spirit of wanting to be an auteur of video games

to get, you know, like Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. It could be American McGee's Alice. But I think he kind of fell short of his artistic dreams as a video game creator. We've all heard about Bad Day LA. Or maybe we haven't. Boy, I have.

Probably the latter. And yeah, that's Smashing Pumpkins, Breaking Up, No Longer Together. Now, Billy Corgan believes in a lot of stuff, I think. He believes in lots of festive scarves. Yes. He believes in accessorizing. And he also believes in pro wrestling as well. That's true.

He's owning his own pro wrestling organization. Unexpected turn for turn for him former Simpsons guest star Billy Corgan. Yes, but yeah, that's what was happening when this episode aired. But joining us today is a first time guest Travis view of the QAnon anonymous podcast. Welcome to the show Travis. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very excited about this episode and we are big fans of your show of your podcast and the second i saw this on the schedule i was a newer uh listener to your podcast and i immediately thought we need to get somebody from that show and travis you seem to be the most simpsony of the crew yeah i mean that is fair i mean uh like i was i was a really a huge simpsons nerd at least uh back in the 90s uh i remember i was to watch two episodes a day actually after school because like the local Fox affiliate that we had in San Diego played one at six o'clock and seven o'clock, I remember. So yeah, it's a good time. I think you guys are all around the same age as us. You had the exact same Simpsons indoctrination where it was the syndicated brainwashing of an hour every day for, I don't know, four or five years of your life. Yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah,

it was like nothing else on television. I it was like it would it felt it felt almost like dangerous and subversive at the time in a way that uh the way it sort of how incredibly irreverent it was towards everything so that's what really kind of like drew uh a very uh teenage cynical travis view to it and i mean what did you think of like, not just this episode, but they've had a lot of episodes that deal with like revealing conspiracies or dealing with conspiracy theories, the stone cutters episode or the, the Ritalin episode that reveals that major league baseball is in control of everything. Yeah.

I mean, it's always a great, uh, I mean, it's like the stone cutters episode is really, really amazing because, you know, it's sort of, it's sort of parodies, uh's like the Stonecutters episode is really, really amazing because it's sort of parodies. Like the way these organizations are actually run. So often it's more degenerate and selfish and petty than anything actually controlled. I mean, The Simpsons are always great at sort of deflating these conspiracy theories in a kind of effective way. I wouldn't have heard of Lyndonon larouche and the bot jokes about him if not for the simpsons yeah there's what they're like two or three bizarre uh yeah lyndon larouche was right jokes yeah that's the first time i ever heard that name on television

probably or maybe in an snl sketch and i was like that must be a cast member i've never heard of nude conspiracies lyndon larouche was right right. And I guess, Travis, I saw in this episode some clear signs of things you talk about on your podcast. Can you explain your podcast to anyone who might not be familiar with it? Sure, yeah. The QAnon Anonymous podcast really dives deep into the QAnon conspiracy theory

and the culture and technology that sort of allowed it to rise. Yeah, we've been exploring QAnon for a couple years now. We started in around August of 2018, and we've been recording like two episodes a week since then. So yeah, we try to understand basically how this phenomenon is radicalizing so many people and how essentially this weird 4 chananon uh back in early uh back

in late 2017 uh got to a point where now it's electing members of congress and being featured very prominently uh in the capital insurrection i think it's very unfortunate this episode is about a vaccine conspiracy theory especially now and i think the uh the ties to mad drudge are just completely lost. Oh, at the time? Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, because, yeah,

I think that, yeah, Matt Drudge was a real web 1.0 kind of icon and showing the power of sort of individual publishing. And that he's been kind of like lost to time just because he's been sort of surpassed by the fact that everyone can be their own individual publisher online now. And this episode was called Homer the Drudge.

John Swartzwalder wrote it. And the third act, as it is in the final episode, was his third act. It felt like to me at the time, they must have rewritten this heavily because the third act is normally the thing that's the most heavily rewritten. It doesn't work at the table. So they rewrite it. But that was just in his script. It became the prisoner parody.written it doesn't work at the table so they rewrite it but that was just in his script it became the prisoner parody yeah uh curveball at the end there that's even crazier to find out from the commentary because like i'm so used to when they need to rewrite something especially in this era of the simpsons they're like we got to

rewrite the third act hmm a direct parody that'll work let's do that but apparently not that's the shot but but what wasn't shocking was to find out that john swartz welder was a big fan of the trudge report back then and writers on the commentary uh tom gammill and max pross who also are for seinfeld they knew matt drudge when he worked at the gift shop of the cbs uh corporation he was a very chatty cashier and in one of the episodes they based a character on him in seinfeld i couldn't find which one because they wrote a bunch, but whatever one has a very chatty cashier, he's based on Matt Drudge at the time. The secret with Matt Drudge is that he, like a lot of guys who get in the mainstream of

conservative press online, he failed in Hollywood. Like he went to, he's the worst kind of gay man, a conservative gay man. And I say that as a gay person uh but uh but yeah drudge moved to hollywood in his in his uh 20s and was working as a cashier in his studio cbs studio gift shop and was a very gossipy guy he wanted all this gossip and at a certain point i think he realized he couldn't make it in hollywood and he instead uh started an online newsletter to share gossip that usually more he also like has connections in dc his parents worked in in washington um not in like high profile stuff or anything but uh so yeah he started up the drudge report as his first big

break with it as a website i could i believe is he leaked that bob dole was picking jack kemp as his running mate in 96 but of course the thing that made him famous uh would be on january 17th 1997 when he broke the story that had been killed by newsweek that bill clinton was having a sexual affair with a then 23 year old intern and it would by the end of the year lead to an impeachment trial so that that made him a huge star not to mention that he was you know bankrolled by top level gop operatives like andrew breitbart david horowitz pretty much everybody else and from then on he was like the favorite platform for gop stuff when swift boat veterans for truth launched it was first through the drudge report, Whitewater things.

Even going up to like 2015, like he did break some stuff on the Epstein Clinton connections too. So plus also a bunch of bullshit. Like he did cover a bunch of things that weren't true. Everybody remembers the true things. But, and there was another shocking one I found out that like he was, despite all that shit he did to the Clintons, it was hillary clinton's campaign to drudge that they leaked that photo of obama in somali tribal dress in the 2008 democratic primary wow okay so yeah and he may and he was a regular source of birtherism content for a long

time yeah it's still online too although the animated gift sirens are not there so it's not the same for me but if you go to drudge report.com it's there the layout is the same as it was in like 1998 nothing has changed in terms of the content but from what i've seen i do think either drudge is retired from operating it or he's sold it to somebody else but uh in the last like i could see that 2017 like he was still doing things like that vegas shooting isn't what you think it is type stuff. Seth Ridge, Pizzagate even. But by 2020, he was not engaging in a lot of the Trump stuff and definitely not Q. And right now, if you go to their site at the time of this recording in February, they are against the January 6th thing, the the drudge report the insurrection stuff and leading like trump and tucker carlson have both said the drudge has turned into a secret tool of the progressive

left so it's uh travis i think it's like what you said that i think drudge turned into like a bill crystal type guy who just like he was a good propagandist for the republicans and the aughts but time has passed him by yeah yeah i mean he yeah he's he's entering a new age where now there's a lot of competition to uh you know like i said it's really difficult to imagine today the kind of internet environment in which the drudge report thrive this was before any social media this was before twitter this was before Twitter. This was before Friendster even. This was before MySpace. And so the idea that just a guy could have a website named after their own name, just the me report, and then all of a sudden start breaking huge stories. I mean, it sort of displayed the power of the the internet but also the threats associated with it in terms of like spreading these kinds of baseless conspiracy theories and disinformation yeah it was

before blogs or even the word blogging was mainstream i was just doing some research on the early 2000s i think wordpress didn't become uh officially available to people until 2003 and 2002 was the launch of things like gawker it was the big huge explosion of blogs but he was doing it before people knew the word i think in the Disney Plus description, it's just like, Homer becomes a blogger. And I don't think we were saying blogger in 2000. Maybe some people were. Yeah. Yeah. That wasn't a concept. This was like, I mean, this is why, you know, Drudge, even though it was an ugly website and very plain, even by the standards of the day, honestly. I mean, there were, you know, it was a

web design that time was very, very primitive. But even then, you know, sometimes they, you know, they tried to do their best to make it look good, but Drudge didn't even try. It was a, you know, it was a hideous, basic website with a lot of stolen graphics often. But it was still wildly successful because of the outrageous outrageous content and i'm old enough to have been called a blogger as an insult uh and uh and matt drudge will be in the news again very soon though because uh you may know the dramatizations of history series american crime story they did oj they're about to do the lewinsky one. And Matt Drudge will be a character in it. And he will be played by Billy Eichner.

Oh, that is kind of perfect. Yeah. To remember when the scandal was that Bill Clinton had like consensual sex with a woman of age is a different time. But anyway, the title of this, because we go over everything, I want to go over the title. The very tortured title of this episode, The Computer Wore Menace Shoes. It's based on the old Disney movie, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, starring Kurt Russell. I didn't know there was a trilogy of movies starring this character, the Dexter Riley trilogy, which includes Now You See Him, Now You Don't, and The Strongest Man in the World.

Although I was familiar with the remake of this movie with Kirk Cameron. I checked out IMDb. It was directed by Peyton Reed. What? Wow. Yeah. movie with kirk cameron i checked out imdb it was directed by peyton reed what wow yeah man i guess he he took every job he could until he could finally get into the marvel world why never i never watched any of these uh those movies because as a kid if it was disney live action that i steered very clear of it they always seem like the dreariest movies that were always three hours

long with commercials on saturday afternoons So no thanks. The Happiest Millionaire, get out of here. I'm not watching that. Not up for it. I will say when I first saw this, I didn't like this episode in the year 2000 because honestly, I didn't get the prisoner reference. I'd never seen the prisoner. I didn't get, and if you haven't seen the prisoner, the third act for me at least was incredibly confusing.

That like, I sort of knew some of the references they pulled just because simpsons had done those references before but yeah that was my connective tissue was the movementarians episode because they do a prisoner parody in that in which marge is being chased by the giant bubble and it smothers hans mole man and at the time i was going online and looking up every reference and then they said in the in the doc oh this is a reference to The Prisoner, a British TV show. So as soon as I saw the bubble, I knew what they were doing, but I didn't know anything about The Prisoner and I still kind of don't. Well, Travis, have you seen The Prisoner? I haven't. I'll be honest, like you, my whole understanding of The Prisoner mostly comes from The Simpsons and also, I guess, assorted clips I

saw online. but this is apparently a sort of a cult uh british television show that was already extremely psychedelic and weird before it was sort of parodied in this uh in this show it was kind of like twin peaks for the 60s or the today's wandavision yeah yeah just like that yeah i actually did there's many similarities in the story in wandavision and the prisoner yeah but i uh i had never watched it before but i did watch the uh the first three episodes of it it's it's all on uh prime video actually so pretty easy to watch and uh the yeah the series uh star and co-creator patrick mcguin who's in this uh it's the story of a guy an

unnamed man named number six who is trapped in the village and just simply cannot escape and when i've watched it now i mean i'm just trying to teleport my brain into being a nerd in 1967 who's never seen anything like this before and it's just such a it's a show that makes you paranoid like it's all about cold war paranoia and individualism versus the the collectivism kind of thing too but and like i just watched the third episode was probably a very novel concept for tv back then which is like what if we entered your dreams and tricked you with things you've seen like it's is this a dream is it not kind of stuff i now i know that we that episode of gi joe that we covered for what a cartoon oh yeah this is just a dream is it not kind of stuff i now i know that we that episode of gi joe that we

covered for what a cartoon oh yeah this is just a prisoner parody well thankfully our keyholes now are much smaller so no one can gas us in our own apartments in the intro to that the intro to that show is three minutes long it's so long you get to watch him drive his little car that little car is awesome although i think the second he bumps anything, he's getting decapitated. No seatbelt and this sharp windshield at a 45 degree angle. He's such a badass dude, Bob, that that would never happen. But I was reading Patrick McGowan was in some show called Danger Man, which I think was translated over here as Secret Agent or something like that. Yeah.

Secret Agent or Secret Agent Man. Yeah. I never, never saw that show either but just the just the the idea of a show called danger man is very funny to me i mean in the shadow of the bond franchise like every tv show is like we got our own bond here like it's a it is a classic show watching it now so many things make sense like also i think like oh venture brothers uh is a lot of this yeah this kind of like secret agent stuff and everything's a lie within a lie kind of thing yeah but uh but yeah i guess let's get into the

episode itself then so the episode begins with a big snoopy couch gag uh which they've revealed that was not authorized by the writers but just the animators just like did it and the writers like yeah okay well that is not how things normally go and the animators just like did it. And the writer's like, yeah, okay. Well, that is not how things normally go. And the animators do something the writers don't ask for. Don't let it happen again. But then the episode begins with a very strange Homer who actually wants to do his job. And he finds out that place is being fumigated,

which leads to the first joke in the episode about a person being gassed and knocked out. Oh, I didn't connect the two. Okay, the gassing's happened so far out oh i didn't connect the two okay the gassing's happening so happened so far apart that i didn't connect it to it's a real gassy script this one and i love the designs of vacation lenny and carl who drive up they're just like cool guys and uh and yes this uh starts with a very 2000 joke which is homer learning about email no one told me the plant was closed. Didn't you get the email? What's an email? It's a computer thing, like an electric letter. Or a quiet phone call.

I don't have a computer. Too bad. That's why you're at work while we're living it up on our day off. Hey, Carl, turn off the car radio. Why not? Anything goes today. And it's funny that, I mean, there have been references to computers and the Internet on the show before this. But we are at the point in history where it's not just for nerds. Because if you look at the characters who used the Internet in the past, it was comic book guy. It was the college nerds. But now we are in the post Dell and Gateway era where they send a box that's covered in cow spots to your home and you can be on the Internet for twelve hundred dollars maybe. Yeah, I think this really does represent that there was this transition point probably in the late 90s when like being on the computer was a sort of a thing, a hobby or a thing for, you know, people who are very entrepreneurial into something that you just had to have in toward in order to function society you started people who weren't uh sort of plugged in started to fall behind just a little bit yeah the the like the history of internet jokes on

simpsons like goes all the way back to the college guys you know ever goes to college they're using it to argue about picard versus shat uh shatner yeah shatner kirk yeah why okay yes you're a terrible nerd picard versus kirk and and also like uh our friend bill oakley he said that the one of the first ways they interacted with fans talking about the simpsons on the internet was uh an assistant would print out all of the things that were on the alt message board uh instead board instead of them visiting in themselves because they didn't have an internet connection. And now here it is, the year 2000 episode, where the joke is, Homer didn't get a work email because he doesn't have a computer.

And they bring up on the commentary, too, that they did have jokes before of like, Homer gets a computer, but this is the first time he really gets a computer. Yeah, and you see what the internet is like in this world, not just someone talking about it. I don't remember what brand my family's first computer is. I didn't get my own computer until I moved. When I lived with my parents, it was just the family computer. We had one. I didn't get my own until i moved out when i was 26 and that one

uh was a two i moved out in 2006 and got a 2003 imac and the one that is the monitor is the machine kind of imac that was that was my first personal computer our family computer was 96 i'm sure it was a gateway or hewlett packard or something like that gateway yeah and i think in 2002 i got my own when i moved out but uh yeah i mean when we go to the store later uh it is an exaggeration but computers were much more expensive in that time period and you did have to replace things constantly this is a way different era for computers for sure i mean yeah i remember my first computer was i think was actually it was a intel 386 uh process we had a personal computer and uh yeah remember we first connected to the internet using i think was actually it was a Intel 386 process we had a personal computer and yeah

remember we first connected to the internet using I think was CompuServe and yeah I also I got into like using bulletin board services and stuff so yeah it was it was seemed like the coolest thing in the world at the time yeah Travis I was gonna ask how early in your life were you posting yeah I mean I mean I was I was doing it maybe a bit too young. I mean, I remember like, you know, the, uh, I remember in a middle school, uh, a friend of mine handed me a phone number to a local, uh, bulletin board service, uh, server. And, um, this, this would, this allowed me to call in and then sort of see the kind of like games and content that they had on this particular server that happened to be in my hometown. Uh, so it yeah, I was probably like, yeah, 12 or so.

Wow, I think I was 14 and I was immediately an asshole because I got an AOL, my friend's account from my house and I found the Mystery Science Theater 3000 message board. And the first thing I posted was like, hey, Mike or Joel. And then one of the big wigs from the message board DM'd me or AIM'd me or whatever you call it at the time saying you do not post that kind of topic on this board. You are a newbie.

You pissed off a mod the first time you had a chance. Now we're constantly at war with the mods. Yeah. Every day is a mod war. That was the first lesson I also learned in the Internet is that the mods are gods. You know, I didn't. My first time being online was probably 15 or 16. I first had a friend who had the internet before me and he mainly used it to like show friends pornography or anime stuff too.

But by the time I got it, I was the first of my friends to have cable internet because my dad worked for a company that long ago got bought by comcast but essentially comcast so i was the first with broadband and uh and i was showing it off to all my buddies and yeah i think my first posts would have been a 98er uh on writing reviews for anime on an anime uh selling website just like oh what here's what i thought of the new cutie honey ova i wonder if those are still online i don't think i got on a forum until the uh 2000 or so when i got into the ign forums to really argue on behalf of nintendo consoles being the greatest consoles the simpsons will be right back. The Simpsons.

Simpsons figures and talking sets. You'll love them. Donuts. No, the figures. Stop. You're the man, Homer. Finally, Simpsons figures and talking sets sold separately. I can remember. the man, Homer. Finally, Simpson figures and talking sets sold separately. Ay caramba!

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance

personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Welcome to the break, everybody, from Mr.ry gilbert and a big thank you to our guest this week travis view from the awesome q anon anonymous podcast that podcast does so much great work debunking the many increasingly uh ridiculous conspiracy theories out there and hey you know if you enjoy this podcast every week of us talking about the simpsons then i think you would really

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i i also do like the very stilted way that Carl and Lenny celebrate. They're like, why not? Anything goes today. Listening to big band music or something? Yeah, that's a great joke. I'm glad it wasn't like, I don't know. Foreigner. ACDC.

Yeah, any of those. A hip band. I mean, I don't even know what it is, but just big band music. And so Homer heads over to Honest John's Computers, which that's a good little gag that it's obviously used to be a tire store that now sells computers. The inside of this computer store is very weird. Yeah. It's very sparse. And I mean, the artists on the show work very hard, but it's very sparse.

And then there's just like countertops surrounding the store with like cabinets. And it doesn't look like a store to me. I don know what's going on here but maybe it was a repurposed tire store and that is the joke it shouldn't look like what it's supposed to be in a way the design looks like it's almost like they're it would be a physical set on like a sketch show yeah yeah that they'd have to build they're like well we got like seven computers let's just put them in the background uh but yeah i did i did feel this intimidated by computer stores i mean that's also because in 2006 i just moved here and was uh working very part-time at a video store so i couldn't i couldn't buy a brand new computer for about eight years after i bought that one but i i was also just pushed away by, I don't want to build a PC.

I'm not, I'm too scared to try. And so I just want to buy them off the shelf. And I am afraid of salesmen like this one tricking me. I looked up the prices for computers in 2000. And today you can have someone assemble a pretty nice gaming PC for you for like 700 or 800 bucks. Kind of top of the line iMac at this time was around thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred dollars

and not adjusted for inflation but uh when the first Apple IIs came out in the late 70s I believe they were two thousand dollars in that money not in today's money so computers have just been getting cheaper over time yeah yeah I if you If you want the top of the line professional editing software, iMac these days, and want the best thing that's on the slider on the Apple Store, you might spend $6,000, $7,000. Yeah, and this was before, obviously, tablets, but also Chromebooks and eBooks. If Chromebooks existed, Homer could have gotten one for like $100, $200, and he could check his email that way.

But yes, in this case, Homer gets sold the greatest PC ever that will never get old. I guess I'll take that one. Well, do you need a paperweight? Because if you buy that machine, that's all you're going to have is an expensive paperweight. Well, a paperweight would be nice,

but what I really need is a computer. How about that one? Mm-hmm. That technology is three months old. Only suckers buy out-of-date machines. You're not a sucker, are you, sir? Heavens, no! Oh, good, because if you were, I'd have to ask you to leave the store.

I just need something to receive e-mail. You'll need a top-of-the-line machine for that. That's the same computer astronauts use to do their taxes. I was an astronaut. Of course you were. $5,000? You only have 10 seconds to decide, sir. This is the best computer in the world

and always will be, right? Absolutely. Just run the deed to your house through here. You are on your... Fifth. Mortgage. I love Homer's very nice reply of like, well, a paperweight would be nice, but what I really need is a computer.

And he is bringing up the correct fact that he was an astronaut, but nobody even believes him. I always love when the show brings up that the wackiest episode is still canon. Like, no, Homer was an astronaut. It did happen. And this view of computers is true. And to this day, people kind of still think it is, especially if you're in the world of console gaming versus PC gaming. A lot of people say, I don't want to get a PC.

You have to replace the video card every couple months. You need to buy new RAM all the time, et cetera, et cetera. Replace the CPU. I've had the same PC for five years. I only just replaced the video card because I was bored and we're in a lockdown. That's the only thing I've ever had to change and everything looks great. So yeah, computers at this time, things were constantly, you know, there was always new technology coming out and things were not always built to last. So at the time things were constantly you know there was always new technology coming out uh and things were not always built to last so at the time yes you could buy something and have it be out of date in six months yeah i mean yeah i remember there was there was always a um there was always controversy in like local schools and they they needed to like replace their uh their their computers because they were like three years old and that was ancient in the that time like a

three-year-old computer was way out of date uh that if you wanted to run you know soft new software because things were moving so so fast in that time in my totally underfunded catholic school which was underfunded by people paying tuition i guess uh we were still using apple 2es from i don't know donated 15 or more years before that before the mid 90s so uh i think we got one computer with the internet in 96, and you had to kind of book time on it while a librarian hovered over your shoulder. And you would ask her, can I go to the Spawn website? It's a comic book. I had, in my suburban public school in Florida, we did get a computer lab in like my, uh, in like 99.

And I look back on it now and there, there was this art teacher who I see now that he was a classic eighties nerd who became an art teacher. And he was so proud. Like when he got the computer lab, he's like, I've been fighting for this for so long. I finally got us a computer lab he's like i've been fighting for this for so long i finally got the computer lab but then the other nerds in the class would show off of like when his back was turned i remember at least one going like hey i hid pornography on this he doesn't even know like look here there it is uh but the classic the good old days there yeah i remember in high school later there would be one computer with internet in every class and uh kids going on to look at porn before class started.

Classic websites like, I believe, Steak and Cheese was a porn website. Oh, I don't remember that one. Try typing that in. I don't know what'll happen, but yeah. Things with non-obvious porn URLs were typed into the computer. Oh, yes. Back when URLs meant something, like the name. I mean, no.

Who thinks of a URL anymore other than the social media site that like sends you to another thing or an image board that does the same and every website actually had the word dot com at the end of it like like you always you always said it wasn't you never said you went to at amazon which is a very novel thing then you say i'm going to amazon.com or just the thought of like oh is there a coca-cola.com? What happens if I go there? Like, or any dirty word, like what's a dirty word, a dirty word.com.

Just that was the adventure of it all. I remember Wired or one of those magazines putting out like a supplemental issue that was, here are websites you should go to and listing all of the addresses, even fan sites, these crazy new ideas. Yeah, that's right. I remember there were physical books

full of email addresses, and they were called things like the Internet Yellow Pages. And it'll come up later when Lisa talks about copyrighted material on the Internet, but at this time in the late 90s, early 2000s, Fox was shutting down fan sites for The Simpsons. They would call it getting Foxed

if your fan site got taken down now they're much there's a much healthier relationship because they realize it's free promotion but at the time they're like what that picture of homer we own that you can't make an icon with homer's face on it that you click on to start your computer it was a much different time these days uh companies look backwards if they or or completely out of are completely out of step with the times when they shut down stuff like that. For example, I'm a big fan of Japanese pro wrestling. And the top company there that I really enjoy watching their stuff is New Japan. But New Japan, they would get so many new followers if they would allow video essayists to make these nice...

There was this one guy called showbuckle who did these great videos like here's why new japan's awesome i love it and it got like his channel got shut down i'm like every place because new japan saw it as as stealing instead of the best advertisement they could have gotten it was and it still happens to this day. But yeah, you're right. It's not most companies at least accept that this is a good thing to go viral. And recently our friend Drew Mackey compiled a list of all of the Simpsons gay jokes. Not a list, but a video. And it's just on YouTube. And there's two hours of Simpsons footage just on YouTube that he compiled together

and has not been taken down or copyright striked or anything like that. His only danger was the music. He had to cut around music because he knew that would get hit. But yeah, also this joke about the Simpsons hat. This was a real runner of mortgages jokes because I think like one or two episodes before this is Homer versus Dignity and his financial planner describes him as having several mortgages. So now he's up to his fifth one by this episode and uh yeah so

homer buys the pc drives it home by dragging it behind his car one of the stupidest things he's ever done uh but i will give them credit for they at least set up that pothole early like it doesn't just come out of nowhere and uh this is where the first there's a few deleted scenes of this this is the first one of note is that after Homer knocks his brain, in the deleted scene, you get a quick shot of the inside of his brain. And it's a droopy voiced old man version of Homer saying like, in about time to. It's weird that Homer talks to his brain and his brain doesn't talk back.

This is the first time finally the brain talks back to him. Homer then sets up his computer on the kitchen table in a very inconvenient place. And he only has one command for his computer. Oh, yeah. Perfect. Now then, computer, kill Flanders. Did I hear my name? My ears are burning.

Good start. Now finish the job. Oh, you're busy. Catch you later, computator. Oh, $5,000 for a computer and it can't handle a simple assignment. Dad, I'll set up your computer. Why don't you and Marco play in the backyard? Hear it.

Woo! I do like the Kill Flanders joke, but they inadvertently stole a Star Wars, sorry, Star Trek movie joke. Oh, yeah, talking into the mouse. Yeah, when Scotty picks up the mouse and talks into it. Yeah, that's right. It's from Star Trek 4. Yeah. It happens later, but it's really interesting how much of this episode's action is driven by lisa trying to be helpful

and uh in the sense that it's like it's like she's she's trying to like you know set up the computer later she gives advice about how to create a better website uh but uh it's like here she's trying to help things along but of course it sort of ends disastrously yeah i'm sorry they kind of write lisa in these seasons as a bit of a nag even though she is correct i was kind of getting tired of her walking into the scene saying dad you're not supposed to do this it seemed like it kept happening throughout the first two acts i guess marge isn't computer literate enough to be the nag in this case yeah yeah you know travis that touches on like a recurring theme i've in so much Q reporting of the younger, the children of adults trying to help them with the Internet that they don't understand, but failing at it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is yeah. I mean, you know, the joke was that, you know, you know, kids always have. I mean, this reflects something that happens in real life is that kids have often acted as a sort of tech support for their parents you know they thought that being computer literate was a you know an important sort of uh thing to do in the 21st century they taught them how to connect to the internet tell them how they use facebook and then they wound up getting radicalized and uh i i also now especially in 2021 i got a a darker chuckle at, what's the first thing Homer does when he gets online? Threaten to kill someone. Yeah.

That's his first plan. Now there are so many tools for that. Also, this is like the third episode in a row where Homer relaxedly is like, I want to kill someone. They've really sold out the Homer character. I will also say the Simpsons are kind of cheating off themselves again here. That's their second time they've used a joke about the idiom of my ears are burning. Okay.

Homer did it before in A Star Is Burns. He says like, my ears are burning. No, really. I tried to look inside, so I lit a Q-tip. That really is the best one. They should have stopped there. I did enjoy the second shot of the computer in the trash outside although i would have liked to see it more in the fireplace but then he couldn't have used it again

so i understand why i just like a shot of something being thrown into a fireplace from the older episodes uh and i love homer's uh way he goes like fine like uh so there's another big deleted scene right after that uh right before he goes on to uh the internet he has another scene of turning it on and he lets maggie randomly type letters into a url and it goes to a website that homer reacts to like so much nudity and bart and millhouse run into the room to try to look at it and then marge hits a button on it fast before they can see what's on the screen and they're like wow mom you're really fast at that and she says thanks to those killjoy classes at the y uh it sounds like a march joke they still make her nag in some way but um but yes homer turns on his pc i noted that that is like my pc turn on noise in the year 2000 was

certainly a clip from mst3k that was driving my parents crazy that they had to hear it every time they turned on the pc the the interface he's using and the sound effects you hear are all macintosh based but the computer clearly isn't so i guess somebody on the art side decided homer uses a mac or the interface will be the mac interface and uh yeah homer goes to his first website is watching dancing jesus which i guess was the thing and i really loved the midi sound of that website like that really took me back but we had a lot of dancing gifts uh i think dancing babies or dancing hitler uh hamster dance oh hamster started with a dancing baby right this was a big icon it was on ali mcbeal who was a big deal

when the dancing baby showed up on ali mcbeal you know because all of a sudden this show that internet culture was all of a sudden uh bleeding into prime time television and there was yeah there were lots of variations on the dancing baby like dancing jesus man the dancing hamster one that reminds me again one of my earliest trips to snopes was to prove to my friends like no this song is from robin hood the disney robin hood cartoon they didn't write their own song for it like so snopes was a valuable thing back then mainly i used it to prove friends wrong about things they're like well you know this disney movie this happens like yeah it's uh what snopes now is uh they're pretty much just dead

they're just mainstream lib stuff aren't they that's what they're up is. They're pretty much just dead. They're just mainstream lib stuff, aren't they? That's what they're up to. Yeah. I mean, Snopes is still is still kicking around. They don't have the I don't think they have the Internet clout that they used to. Certainly. And then Homer accidentally swats himself by going to the Springfield Police Department website. And this quick next clip.

Oh, dancing Jesus. Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee. If there's a better use for the internet, I haven't found it. If you've committed a crime and you want to confess, click yes. Otherwise, click no. You have chosen no,

meaning you've committed a crime but don't want to confess. A paddy wagon is now speeding to your home hey while you wait why not buy a police cap or t-shirt you have the right to remain fabulous the idea of a website selling you merchandise insane i don't see it yeah this is especially prophetic the idea that just everything would would be a brand and this every website even something that's supposed to serve an essential government function would be monetized one i mean this is you know less than a year before 9-11 where police department shirts just

became like a uniform for people to uh to support america and it's also funny watching uh the commentary because when they go to the wigum website that's when several of the writers are like man remember when we all thought we were going to be billionaires going to icebox.com and doing doing animation there oh god yeah i mean we covered the uh the critic episodes they made for that they were rotten they should have been on rotten.com i i also like that uh homer another deleted scene is right after it homer is seen wearing the springfield pd hat and he's then shopping at a virtual quickie mart which again the idea of like virtually shopping that but that was such the 90s idea of the internet that like i remember this in the shin megami tensei games too the idea

of like well the internet eventually will be a virtual world where your avatar will walk into a store and then buy a thing like that that's so in the past it turns out selecting things from a menu is much easier or just slamming a button in your bathroom to order more toilet paper homer's webpage really reminds me of this era of the internet maybe a bit before this because my first web page was uh there was a midi song playing in the background it was a mystery science theater page it was playing the ending theme and of course i was not obnoxious enough to include automatically playing wave sound effects i didn't go that far though oh yeah just the idea of a website that instantly like the second you click on it like

you had to brace for sound. Like, all right, what is making sound? How do I stop it? Did either of you ever build websites in this era? Yeah, not really. Not especially. I was really more of a consumer of content, I'll be honest, in a poster. poster i uh was taught in that aforementioned computer class uh in high school how to do simple html text on the screen how to put an image the colors of backgrounds and text and so

in class projects i did build uh i think uh something something spider-man related it's definitely what it was but i never had the guts to even put it on the internet i was so scared of like not probably because i saw this i was like oh watching the web counter not move would hurt so bad i had a few mystery science theater websites that i had not no patience to keep up with but i i joined those web rings oh i love i miss web rings yeah i remember yeah that's that that was a real feeling of discovery when you you came across a site that you liked and then you saw that they participated in the web ring and you just went on a journey to see uh what what other sites were in that particular ring

i remember those web rings uh well friend of the show virgil texas i i think it still is pinned tweet but yes that the image of seeing uh sailor uh jupiter like with arms crossed saying like if you've come here for hentai go somewhere else not here uh i miss that i miss that kind of like just uh graphic design style all the awards your website won oh yeah god uh and of course the under construction banner that's what's missing on homer's website it really is yeah yeah i uh also i i i don't know who owns it but homer's webpage.com somebody recreated it and owns it now it did exist at one time for fox but now another person has it and whoever they are good on them because they just made that page and then dumped in a couple Google ad widgets. And I bet they've made thousands of internet dollars on that.

At the time, they were making the fake websites you'd see on the shows. Previously in the season, they made the whatbadgerseat.com website. And there is a Mr. X website they made too. Yeah. This one, though, it also has a PayPal button on there, like, buy me a Duff. So whoever, I give you an A for your initiative there. And yes, in this scene, though, of Homer's website, I like this bit of Bart trying to start another storyline and being rejected. Here it is, everybody.

The world's greatest website. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, everybody. The world's greatest website. You'd think all the noises would be annoying, but they're not. I got suspended from school today. No kidding. What do you think of my page, Lisa? Be honest. It's great, isn't it? Go ahead and say it's great if you want to. They found a switchblade in my locker. Well, a web page is supposed to be a personal thing.

You've just stolen copyrighted material from everyone else. They could sue you for that. I took a swing at a cop. They can't sue me if they don't know who I am. I'll just call myself Mr. X. I'm just mad all the time. Yep, you can't go wrong with Mr. X. That's some real post columbine jokes with bart there too i think yeah i think bart also also captures something that has sort of kind of emerging in the internet it's an addictive quality

to the point where people are getting sucked into you know um all of the shiny new bells and uh the sort of new interesting experiences that the internet provided to the point that they are basically uh alienating alienating themselves from their immediate family which is a really something we see quite frequently with q anon i was there as a teenager because i watched an unhealthy amount of tv until we got the internet then i used an unhealthy amount of the internet so it went from nine hours of tv a day to nine hours of internet a day uh i saw it as supplemental to my tv watching at a certain point i was like well if i don't watch every show then

i can't i can't have the best opinions about this on a on a on a fan page it did help you appreciate tv more no you needed to impress the nerds at alt dot x files exactly yeah i oh i'm gonna bring up x files later for sure but i i i also uh yeah i like that lisa seems to think copyrighted material would actually like be punished on that homer was using it too and that everybody's first website is just stolen gifs from other people's webs or i guess it's before a gif even existed i think it's so cute because uh there is this tumblr account that has a snapshot of the last update of every geocities page and it's so cute because uh there is this tumblr account that has a snapshot of the last update of every geocities page and it's so cute to see what the internet was and it was like oh it's steve's web page hi i'm steve here are the things i like that's what every web

page was at this time man yeah it was was people just trying to capture basically basically trying to be social with the internet before like social media was available yeah it's uh it's why social media was perfect for so many people to get obsessed with because it just smoothed off so many of the barriers to entry for people that they could just and then it's so much easier to obsess about a number there when you don't even have to build the widget to count page views and it's not optional yes uh and uh and so yes in another very uh troubling for now scene uh the next scene lisa sees homer has been up all night and is trying to pull him away from the internet but can't do it uh and yes i also like that uh lisa describes the internet is for jokes opinions ideas which i mean that is that is what

social media is for for for good and for ill and uh and yes that bart comes into the scene appearing to be fine his troubles i i feel like he's repressed his problems at home we push them down yeah and and so homer realizes that he needs actual information and bart passes along a rumor uh that he heard from nelson or possibly jimbo that there is a secret pool in mayor quimby's house and that is why nobody get or in and that's why nobody has potholes fixed because it's all being stolen and it's homer's this is homer's first q drop yes yeah uh and that he that his double his two source confirmation is bart misr saying it might have been jimbo i like that too but though i mean

quimby it's funny they had to think of like a sillier thing they've done so many jokes that would have just been mayor quimby is cheating on his wife like that would be the obvious one i guess there are uh quote unquote floozies in his pool we see later the cheating is implied yeah extramarital affairs happen regularly in the secret pool it's more just like he he spent i guess they had to top it with quimby because they've been having him be a latch uh for a decade of the show now so they have to it has to be embezzlement as well uh but yes uh then comes up the mr x web page homer posts this thing i did check the drudge archives and uh surprisingly they did not report on this episode at least from from trolling through it the first mention of the simpsons in the the drudge archives i could find online was a 2002 post uh because in 2002 the rumor was the series was about

to end so well maybe if homer was wearing his tom landry hat it might be more like drudge because then drudge wear a little hat drudge loves it yes as as a pedantic gay conservative of course he has one of those dumb like uh stupid little hats yes but uh but yes mr x gets his first readers in this next clip let's see here X-rated girls already bookmarked. Dial X for sex. Mr. X. Hmm. Shall I cross the final frontier?

What's this? Stolen funds. Pod hole money used for swimming pool. There's no emoticon for what i'm feeling our mayor's corrupt oh mr axe has done this town a great service despite his poor grammar and spelling seymour are you looking at naked ladies no mother you sissy i guess conceivably in the year 2000 you uh it would have been possible to see all the porn. You could run out of updated porn websites by 2000. Yeah, but it expanded more and more from there.

I mean, this I think they really did capture a very like sad thing of the Internet that of like, I'm bored with pornography pornography like the feeling of huh i'm bored should i look at different porn i've run out of all the other porn i look at i think the video porn might have been very primitive at this time maybe like real player stuff or like flash player stuff i mean maybe yeah i didn't i i didn't i don't want to get too gross in this talking pornography but i that's the name of the show now i don't i don't think to get too gross in this talking pornography, but I... That's the name of the show now. I don't think I downloaded my first video file of porn until 01 or 02 when my friends told me Kazaa could be used for that. And then the second I had that information, boy, did I use it. But back then, yeah, it was very rare to see a moving image of pornography. Yeah, I think Kazaa and BitTorrent were both 2001.

And that really changed the limits of pornography on the internet. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the download capabilities of the internet for most users back then wasn't great. And so, I mean, any video, maybe it would be like a real-time video or something, or maybe an AVI. But yeah, it would take forever to download, and it was very poor quality. So, yeah, so I could see why you would feel a sense of existential despair at the amount of pornography that was actually available on the Internet around 2000. And, like, size was an issue, too, in terms of, you know, hard drive space.

I remember my first computer around this time, the hard drive was 1.6 gigs and now i can just buy a four terabyte hard drive for 80 bucks and then there's also the fears of having using the family computer for pornography you have to like how do you how do you clear history how do you delete all your cookies yeah all that stuff but i like the uh comic book guy becomes bi-curious out of boredom yeah and that it reminded me of a joke i hadn't seen until watching our friends drew's video on it the invention of the character comic book gay his cousin and there's a great joke where he's asked like oh so do you like comic books only certain kinds though this scene also echoes a scene from season nine in dos bus right downloading captain janeway yes yeah and it's he's going to the internet king which is

homer for faster nudity so uh yeah this uh i but then comic book guy goes through the other experience of the internet of like learning something and instantly being angry and like what do i do with this with his rage i read on the internet yeah he also yeah he also sort of that uh sort of talks about how like the internet the the nerds were really the vanguards of like the the scandalous information and they are important hubs and spreading it to the normies like principal skinner i i also i don't want to sound too much like a prude but i do wonder sometimes about our teenage years and every teen after that like how much are our brains melted by having unlimited amounts of pornography at our fingertips like i i don't know again i don't i don't want to sound like a prude but i think sometimes like we we probably didn't need

to have that much pornography available to us. Well, this show is, again, a real snapshot of who was using the Internet and for what 20 years ago. And I think the idea was like, oh, yeah, only sad losers jerk off to porn on the Internet. Now I think it's understood that we've all looked at porn on the Internet. It's just so available that it's hard not to sometimes, especially when you're locked up alone in your apartment and you can't go outside for 18 months. Yeah. But I think it's now understood. It's like, yeah like yeah we all do it we just don't talk about it i like that seymour is shamed for not looking at naked ladies i got to but uh but yeah so the reporters the mainstream media picks up on this internet rumor and quickly corroborates

the evidence busting into quimby's secret pool room i love that the fountain is being repaired with a bag that says pothole cement by a city worker labeled city worker that's great i love that and uh as it's exposed there's then a very funny uh reaction headline of uh the headline first on the secret pool and then the second headline is mr x makes headlines and uh but then it feels like that i thought that funny enough thing to go to on break but then they have like i don't know not as funny a joke of armor equating that with feeling like god and wanting two of every animal it's a very unrelated to the plot joke there yeah it's kind of a weak act break i feel like it's something they pulled out of the joke book of like, well, we cut this from another thing.

Just put that there. I mean, yeah, it is a weak joke. But I did like about how basically Homer, who very recently threw away his computer because he was so bored with it, all of a sudden feels all powerful because he's using the power of distributed information on the Internet in order to take down the mayor. Yeah, you know, you're right. Homer is feeling the high that everyone feels just from a viral social media post or just within a friend's group on Facebook sharing a thing that like shames everybody else or whatever. I mean, honestly, this is the kind of addictive feeling I think a lot of QAnon people get

because they like to imagine that them just sitting by their computer and posting memes, they can somehow take down Hillary Clinton. That's the dream. And so we come back from the commercial break and we have another, like, I think very prescient scene of mainstream media reacting to the Internet breaking news. I love hearing this from Kent. A new Internet watchdog is creating a stir in Springfield. Mr. X, if that is his real name, has come up with a sensational scoop. Darn tootin'. But we must never forget that the real news is on local TV,

delivered by real, officially licensed newsmen like me, Kent Brockman. Coming up, how do they get those dogs to talk on the beer commercials? Cowboy Steve will tell you. I'm happy you got the potholes filled, but it's still irresponsible to present rumors as facts. Maybe you should quit while you're ahead. No way. Mr. X is going to keep on digging and probing until every person in this town is in jail. He's going to lock up the sickos.

It's going to be the storm coming. All the pool sickos it's gonna be the storm coming all the pool sickos yeah yeah this uh this is very funny because now a lot a lot of cable news is our anchor is just reading tweets uh the last five fucking years every time i turn on cnn or like when me and you would go when we could go to a pizza place in between recordings and relax uh they'd have on the news and it would be cnn and it's like well this tweet just happened this tweet i'm like it it really is just reading me tweets as part of cnn content this is again another snapshot of the past in which i remember being in uh in college in the early 2000s and uh begrudgingly uh professors would say all right you can use two internet sources because they knew it was kind of the

future but they're like no the real information is in books. That's where all the real information goes. And then obviously Wikipedia, don't even go there, way off limits. Don't even touch it. But now I feel that Wikipedia is reputable. And you shouldn't directly cite the page, but if you look at the reference links, that's where all your information is.

Like follow that. They source the things and then you can sort. If people have heard us do histories on stuff and be like, mention a sourced page. I probably first used me or you probably first Wikipedia to take us to that page or the page that took us to that page. But I mean, even that terrible show newsroom, even in like five years ago, was doing lines on the show of like, oh, he got it from the Internet. Call me when a real newsman news is you about this uh and uh i also i want to see more of that character cowboy steve i want to

see that guy what's he i don't think he came back no i he doesn't even have a simpsons wiki page i could find oh that sucks uh and i think that talking dog beer commercial they're referencing is budweiser's 2000 super bowl ad of a dog uh talking about how much his owner loves budweiser when you really care about someone you shouted from the mountaintops so on behalf of dejardin insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care.

Did I mention that we care? You know what? I will borrow from Matt Christman because he had a really great point on a recent episode of Chapo Trap House in that before we had memes as we know them, the Super Bowl commercials was where you got your memes for the year. You got your five or six memes for the year and then you would disseminate them throughout your office. And that was it. You go in and talk about the Budweiser frogs or what's up or whatever. Yeah. Before the Budweiser frogs or the dog, there was the Taco Bell dog that said, Yo, Kiero, Taco Bell.

And this was very exciting for everyone. This was memes in like the late 90s. My mom had a talking Taco Bell dog that said that when you touched its little paw. Oh, wow. I think my favorite as a kid growing up were the Bud Bowl ads. I liked in this recent

uh they did an avengers end game of bud light ads ad this year and i didn't think i didn't get every reference but when i saw the bud bowl characters run by i was like yeah bud bowl that finally the thing that entertained kids that they had to stop doing because of like legal uh the government didn't like it uh and yes i do like that lisa's trying to get had to stop doing because of like legal uh the government didn't like it uh and yes i do like that lisa's trying to get him to stop while he's ahead he actually did affect good change so how about we stop there but no uh homer heads off to the quickie mart and stumbles upon his next big exclusive a coconut bagel like poison. All right, I'll tell you a secret. My bagels are nothing but weak old donuts.

Who am I to point the finger? I once ran over a guy in a parking lot and dumped the body on a golf course. What a bum show. In the interest of public safety, we have confiscated every donut, bagel, cruller, and bear claw in the city. And some coffee.

This morning, Mr. X reported that your own department... I know, I know, but I assure you the police do not take prisoners out of their cells and race them. Anymore. What about using the electric chair to cook chicken yeah all right this press conference is over go away no it's over phil it's over that sounds like an ad lib to me but it's very funny it's so funny uh i like that is very much

cop speak to of just like uh no we don't do that anymore we stopped it today when we heard the news was about to break so yeah we stopped uh i also i mean i i don't think you see reporters that can buy combative of cops these days no no but yeah i i gasp still hearing crusty admit to what seemingly is the very least manslaughter yeah at the very least i mean yeah what's i what's really amazing is that the show always kind of portrayed Krusty as kind of like a Hollywood sleazebag. But he wasn't really that bad. I mean, the whole premise of like Krusty gets busted was that it's like there's no way someone like Krusty could commit something as heinous as armed robbery. But here he's fucking confessing to basically vehicular manslaughter.

It's not the first time he hit someone. I was just thinking of when he was visiting Homer in the hospital because of his vroom, glug, glug, vroom, vroom, thunk, thunk. That's right. Incidents. He's killed so many people. Okay. Then that's not a huge line crossing for Krusty that I thought it was. I guess him whispering about it and understanding he killed someone i

guess makes it even darker yeah the other line unless he expressed uh like a little bit of shame or these likes like he's like yeah whispering to someone else like yeah i i killed a guy and hid the body just telling a poo this uh well you know he sells him gigantic asses and all other pornography so i i can see they have a special bond. They're pretty tight. That bagels versus donuts thing, it did remind me of back when I worked at a office. It was this very silly thing where well-meaning managerial dorks gave us bagels instead of donuts. It's like, no, it's bagel friday it's like i contend that bagels are just i are have

to be 95 as unhealthy as if they bought us donuts but they didn't like the optics of buying donuts instead of bagels i guess they're they're slightly unhealthy until you smear crap all over them and they're as unhealthy as donuts yeah that's so in a way it's your fault. I mean, I had coworkers who literally dug out the insides of bagels and be like, all right, I guess this is less carbs. But I remember there was a fight that some people wanted donuts, but not enough. And then other people started getting even the healthier option of bran muffin kind of stuff. And that caused so much upheaval that like they actually had to send out an email like okay bagels will be back next friday it's bagels again i had a protein bagel for breakfast this morning and i knew i was lying to myself

though for my nine months as an unpaid intern at that website those bagels kept me going that was those bagels were my payments at that very illegal work situation. But yeah, so Homer is affecting real change and he's getting famous. But can he enjoy that fame? Now that shot, the public should be warned. I wish Mr. X were here. Oh, I don't know, Carl. He might be closer than you think. Are you him?

Are you Mr. X? No. Oh, but you talked in that real sly voice. Hey, hi, everybody. Homer's Mr. X. I am not. Or am I? sink are you him are you mr x no oh but you talked in that real sly voice hey hi everybody home is mr x i am not or am i are you no well if mr x were here right now i'd buy him a tall frosty hey mo can you keep a secret no not even a little one no what if i just whisper it no i tells you oh mo even for his own self he should just lie and say he can't keep a secret and learn a secret but he he actually is too good natured there to be like no no i simply can't you

can't tell me yeah he's being i guess atypically self-aware and honest in this particular moment it is a good takedown of that sitcom trope that homer kind of does like maybe he's closer than you think carl and then carl immediately figures it out because it's so obvious only in fiction would someone not fall for that oh i love i love homer going like or am i are you no uh it's so i i like to i want to hear more about lenny's uncle with this scoop on miss springfield that she wears she wears makeup to improve her appearance uh then uh we cut to the next day homers at the plant uh i have to assume most days homers sits on the toilet at least a couple hours at work and burns using the employee bathroom we just covered the episode

where we see the executive bathroom that rarely returns to be fair yeah i guess uh this time burns just had to wash his hands very quickly but i i like that he says as burns describes a journalistic dynamite twice and a great weak burns joke of him being slammed against the wall by a hand dryer and still drying his hands off on his pants after all that anytime i give up and wipe my wet hands on my pants i do think of this shot of burns doing it of just this give up like whatever like just there on my pants i don't care i'm wearing dark pants today no one will notice and uh and then very shocking in the year 2000 to have a joke about selling i guess back to the future did do this too yeah but that was also 15 years before this episode yeah yeah but i i i like how as burns is selling uranium to clearly middle eastern terrorists uh he is delighted to be said be told he is a credit to the great satan i love that and uh we also see homer though is watching it all in the vents uh there's a very fun little adr line of

homer saying i love spying i love that line the funniest part of this outside of the cultural outside of the baggage that has been attached to this over time is uh the fumes from the uranium which i guess happens goes into the vent and homer gets knocked out and his pad slips out and then burns is like oh this place is falling apart and sticks the pad back in the vent so burns Burns has no idea what is even happening in his own office. I also have to think Homer's developed some form of cancer. Yeah, sure. But you know what? Again, second time knocked out by gas in the episode before he even goes to the village.

It's a real theme here. But yes, as Homer is reporting on it the next day, he has to double check his notes for who it is. And who's selling the uranium to the terrorists? Montgomery Burns. Now we wait. Let go of me. I'm innocent. Whoa, he's in trouble i love that joke but burns is not only arrested

instantly but outside homer's home for some reason or arrested far away and just dragged all the way to the police station or whatever great i uh there's so much in this episode that has to be non-canonical for the series to continue but that and that includes burn actually getting in trouble and going to jail for a long time for selling selling uranium to terrorists i mean we also learned in this moment that the fbi is apparently on mr x's web page looking for uh tips for criminal activity yeah they there's another turn in this story that could have been that homer just uh becomes a plant for the fbi uh but and would have happily done so i bet uh but yes so it then cuts to a pulitzer ceremony which normally those are done in new york city not in the front of town hall

it must be a local pulitzer uh and they accurately drew the pulitzer award. I looked into it. I don't know how much it was in 2000, but these days you get $15,000 along with a Pulitzer Award. About five, six years ago, they increased it by 5,000 bucks. But apparently the journalism one, you don't get money, you get that gold medal, I have read.

Or maybe you get the money in addition now. Sell on eBay for money. It's real gold. A very funny joke, and this I think is super subtle, in that Homer reveals his identity by disguising himself. It's a very funny joke. That's great. I love that. He is the Q figure then, unmasking himself.

Remasking. Remasking himself, yes. Yeah, yeah the picture with the question mark bag over his head reveals his true identity it it is a great joke on the mr x website that the bag is off of his head for one second as the image loads i do love that joke too um i mean yeah well it also likes like you know earlier in this episode you know the computer salesman kind of brushed off uh homer saying that he's been in space and now he's like winning a pulitzer this is a i guess i guess you know obviously a

constant theme of homer just falling ass backwards into incredible uh accomplishments you know you're right from then on in the series homer could be called pulitzer prize winner homer simpson like this this is canonical he will always have had a pulitzer prize they're not they're not making this point but i feel a lot of people have an immense amount of wealth because they were just first to the internet they made a website around this time they sold it for millions of dollars and that's all they ever needed to do just because they were the first one to have a url or the first one to have some gaming website they just sold it away and now they're comfortable for life or invest in pay PayPal, for example. Yeah, that too.

I mean, that's the story of Mark Cuban, right? Yeah. He developed Broadcast.com, which no one knows now, sold it to Yahoo for a billion dollars. And then that website was eventually basically decommissioned because it just didn't really work well with how the internet was developing. But he nonetheless became a billionaire because he was very early uh in developing basically uh products for the internet it's uh it's kind of amazing that those people now are just they they are the movers and shakers of now even though it sucks like they i uh i mean if it wasn't for paypal i wouldn't have to know who elon musk is like i'd be so much happier not knowing that and same with jeff bezos

who i want to i i look forward to living to the day when he officially becomes a trillionaire the world's first trillionaire beautiful day though um i uh talk about another subtle joke i always forget every time they're right after homer wins the award uh he what pushes him over the edge is knowing that it would go to starving children instead. Right. Then Marge bringing it back up. I was like, oh, yeah. I just love how I laughed too hard at Homer saying, like, they're with God now.

And then Marge going, oh, oh. Realizing that means the starving children have died of that starvation. Homer's fine with indirectly killing children. He is definitely not a save the children type guy. But also, I like that Scully on the commentary even dumps on how obvious the joke is that Homer with the bag on his head is going to walk into a lamppost. Like, they're like, well, who saw that coming? It is true.

Homer didn't hurt himself yet in the past 30 seconds. Let's do it. And so now Homer's walking around proudly with his Pulitzer Prize, but no one wants to share their secrets with Homer. I'm proud that you won the Pulitzer. Finally. But I do feel bad about the starving children. There with God, no.

Well, that's good. Hey, guys. How's it going? Oh, don't worry about the Mr. X thing. I'm just here for a beer. I don't know if I want you in here no more, Homer. I got a lot of secrets. I prefer to keep clandestine.

Terrible, disturbing secrets. So hungry. I smell another pullitzer. So Homer discovers a literal underground mole man being kept captive in Moe's place. That's pretty amazing. That is Hans Mole Man, right? Yeah. They were ahead on the mole people thing of the Q conspiracy as well.

Definitely. Surprised he didn't just go straight to the police with this information. Is Mo working for the Getty Foundation? I wonder. Right. But as a kid or as a teen, I did think that was almost too... There's no joke that's too dark for Mo, I know.

But the idea that he was holding a person captive under his floorboards and starving him, I was like, boy, that feels like an increase from keeping pandas who die in crates, you know. Are we before or after the episode where he says, I ain't never said no to a dead girl yet? This is after that. So, yes, you know, this isn't as bad as that joke's implication. But, yeah, I also like that in the next scene as homer's trying to collect gossip he is literally sitting on the sidewalk waiting for people to walk by saying secrets

uh and so the next day homer is very sad his website's collecting tumbleweeds uh and lisa makes a suggestion that again leads homer the wrong direction. Well, you can't post news if you don't have any. That's a great idea. I'll make up some news. At least take off your Pulitzer Prize when you say that. Let's see now. Bulletin. New race discovered.

Living six inches under Denver. Oh, Dad. All named Morton or Mortenson. This Mr. X says Spanish and Italian are the same language. Well, that's surprising. They're controlling our minds with flu shots. I knew it. Well, kids, now aren't you glad we don't believe in inoculations? Yay! Mommy? Hey, Mr. X, I got a tip for you. In science class, they're dissecting frozen hobos, and I have the bindles to prove it. Real news is great, son, but I'm getting a thousand hits an hour with grade A bull plop.

The joke of Todd seeing his dead mother in heaven was very very good and unexpected i forgot that capper to the joke it was funny enough to see them shivering and dying of the flu uh i'd never i always forget that one too like him just saying mommy is so so dark and awful but so funny too and homer is kind of stumbling into the denver airport conspiracies too right this uh this new mole people idea yeah man i think that this is such a i mean the way that the second act works is such a sort of a pithy kind of explanation the perverse incentives that sort of the internet publishing creates because you know it can lead to great things such as you uncovering corruption but then then then the people who have these

platforms, they're not incentivized to tell the truth. They're incentivized to get hits. And that leads to tabloid bullshit. Yeah. I mean, having worked in online media, Henry and I wrote about video games, so not as serious as politics. But now when I see people trashing a bad headline or a bad article i am more sympathetic because i think you know that person that was one of five things they had to write that day they have to find clicks or else they don't have a job and what job they do have will never be stable so i'm slightly more sympathetic in some ways depending on what the content is yeah if someone has a bad take or whatever just like is this game uh actually bad yeah like then you're

like i know you had to write a thing like that like this game that's the best is actually the worst like you got to feed the beast somehow but a homer especially like he is falling into the trap of like he started with some level of truth and he got addicted to the fame of it that now he's like well i don't have more truth i have to continue this i'll just make shit up and though i guess uh something i've learned from q and on and on is like the making up of things is i mean it isn't it it's both the search for attention but also like a prank or like trolling right yeah i mean yeah the point obviously is to make something go viral and and and spread

and then cause problems for the mainstream media i mean is that this sort of derives from you know from chan culture uh kind of a meme creating and attention grabbing and so it leads to this uh sort of improvisational um sort of newsmaking where they sort of construct theories. And the goal is to make theories that are catchy. It's not about fact. It's about what can you sort of inject into the broader information ecosystem that makes people believe it.

And I also, I think it makes a really interesting point that who are the first two people to fall for Homer's new lies? A doctor and a hardcore conservative Christian professional. a really interesting point that who are the first two people to fall for homer's new lies a doctor in a hardcore conservative christian professional they i think that might have been an accident but it turns out to be real and truthful yeah i think they were trying to make a joke that uh especially if you look in the background a diploma is right behind dr hibbert as he says oh spanish and italian are the same language like uh the joke is he'd be like you wouldn't

think he'd be so stupid to believe that but like doctor a lot of people are what you would consider a professional class like that yeah a surprising number i mean yeah we talked about the two q anon lawyers who are uh sort of uh sydney powell and lind wood who became famous because of their attempts to overturn the election. There are also a couple of QAnon doctors. In Australia, there's a guy named Dr. Russell McGregor, who is a psychiatrist who actually was struck from the medical register because he was so Q-pilled, and the medical board there didn't like it very much. I think, I don't know if this is bullshit. My own philosophy is I think people of our generation had an edge in that we grew up with the internet so we had the training to understand like oh that is complete bullshit

or that person's lying or that's a joke and a lot of these people did not come to the internet until they came on their phones so they did not have the preparation to understand certain contexts and certain you know untruthfulness yeah i mean like yeah when you're growing up with the internet you kind of like you kind of like appreciate like this information could be coming from a dipshit like me who has no incentive to tell the truth and maybe is having fun trolling or something like that. But if you're, if you're in, if in your entire life, all of the content you consume has been edited and by someone else who cares about the truth and you kind of assume that well there has to be uh something reliable about this why else would it be published then yeah that just

allows you know the the worst nonsense to get through your filters and uh make you believe the very very stupid things yeah not to say our generation is infallible oh of course not no but the no no no yeah but one of the uh positive side effects of being too online is a certain level of like deep cynicism and also irony that you can at least like recognize like that just sounds like a joke someone would say i don't think that's real also what what happens with nelson suggesting a thing to homer that's what really happens to the Drudges as well, that you become a place for other tipsters to bring you information. Once Drudge got famous enough after the Lewinsky thing, he became like, oh, every person who has oppo dump, they're going to hand it to him and he'll just publish it,

whether true or not. And so that's what nelson is trying to do for homer here with a very dark joke about they were doing a lot of dead hobo jokes back that is true actually this fits continuity because in homer versus dignity they say when do we come the lowest rung of society and homer says i think when that cold snap killed all the hobos so these frozen hobos could be the ones killed by that cold snap that had been kept on ice well it's a john swartz water script so there has to be hobos or at least a mention of hobos and a hatred of them yes that they are uh beneath

they are lower than human life yes uh i like the phrase bull plop as well but uh homer then heads into the quickie mart but finds out all is not as it seems. And he is being taken away in a false quickie mart. And there's when Bart then goes into the shop right after and unties Apu. It's a very old Apu joke for him to say, like, this is not a library. Like he he didn't do those jokes in a while. No, it was I guess it was a fun reuse of that old line because his his his mumbling underneath his tape was not saying you know save me help me he was mad that bart was looking through the magazines and uh homer's chant of save me mr x wait i'm mr x oh that's a good line to go out on and uh then we come to the prisoner filled third act which mark

kirkland the director and his team worked very hard on accurately designing like the characters homer first speaks to in the island not the village if i said the village earlier that's the name of it on the prisoner but it's the island in the in the show but all the characters he speaks to now that i've watched the just the first three episodes i'm like oh that's that actor's that actor. Forget about the internet from this point onwards. Yes. Yeah. And yes, that Homer wakes up, talks to a bunch of prisoner references, even says, so I'm

a prisoner, which is hitting it very much on the head. But I'd never seen the prisoner before, so I didn't get any of this as an 18 year old. What is the deal of all the birds wearing different hats and one smoking a cigar? It's just the general da-da view of it. Everything's supposed to feel weird in there, and that includes a lot of loose birds walking around in the village in the series. And a lot of special hats, bowler hats being worn. When I first watched this episode, I thought the third act was sort of like, I don't know, aler hats being worn. Yes. Yeah, I mean, when I first watched this episode, I thought the

third act was sort of like, I don't know, a turn to silliness. It's like I felt like they were trying, Schwarzwilder was approaching some kind of like commentary about the intersection of technology and information. But then he kind of, they diverged into this weirdness.

But I feel like in some sense it's like, what was this thing now this is the consequences of like so much misinformation on social media is that there is no concept of truth and things are just turning absurd and now there's kind of blue and on in which which people uh some who are maybe of the more liberal persuasion start buying into a lot of fake news and they start uh trusting uh sort of uh secret information sources and stuff so i suppose that you know the end in one one sense you could say that they know the end result of all this misinformation is that we do enter into a you know a dada subterrored kind of uh

world in which uh there's nothing at all makes sense i don't know if i see a twitter thread that starts with the phrase game theory i believe it that guy knows what he's talking about i just like that uh i mean i wish i had more context to enjoy this and i haven't seen the prisoner yet but i just like that this was forced upon 16 million people in the year 2000 they just had the freedom to do this and i kind of appreciate the audacity of it on that level oh sure yeah well and also i mean this vision of the island where people who are held back from society by i mean how different is this from the vision of the deep state that uh secretly already tried and executed people and replaced them with their clones you know and it's all run by jfk jr who still alive. You're absolutely true. I mean, yeah, there's lots of clone theories, especially in early QAnon.

There are claims like how did they try to reconcile the fact that Hillary Clinton seemed to be alive and well and Q promised the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton. And some of them reconciled this by saying that, no, no, Hillary Clinton is in Gitmo. But this is a body double because the public couldn't handle the truth of the crimes that she has committed quite yet so yeah this is a very again real q anon kind of uh thing but they're but they're basically implying that it's it's real and i love homer when he gets in the he says like well i'm getting out of here hello operator i'd like to report a really weird island this is one of uh i mean they're really going for overkill on here, but one of maybe six times he's gassed in the third act.

Yes, it's he's. So right after this, there's the deleted scene that is another gassing. So the phone gasses him, which I guess I thought I never knew that all these gassing jokes were specifically prisoner references. But definitely when they did it to tom jones in season four that had to be a prisoner reference too it's just after watching this i did watch the intro to the prisoner and i did laugh uh they did not intend for this to be funny but i did laugh at the gas just shooting through his giant keyhole into his flats uh well i mean how many times on a contemporary of the prisoner on Adam West's Batman did colorful gas knock out our beloved heroes?

But yeah, so in this deleted scene, after being knocked unconscious in the phone booth, Homer wakes up and he's riding a velocipede, the big tire bicycles, which is an iconic image of the Prisoner series. And then he falls off it and then a flower gases him in the face uh and uh and then i also have to give it out plus and the more we see of the the island uh him and his team really captured the musical stylings of the prisoner really well it later they will just play the music from it but this this is just a kind of motif of it and uh yes then homer meets the big guest star of the episode uh you know i haven't played the death jingle in a while but it is appropriate here death stalks you at every turn there it is death so yeah patrick mcguin who played uh number same character number six? Number six. Okay, yeah. By name and everything. So kind of this is it.

And he was co-creator of The Prisoner. So this could be considered in canon with The Prisoner. Okay. Died at age 80 in 2009. And I was looking, The Prisoner only had 17 episodes, so it's very watchable. Oh, man. I'm flying right through it. I could see why the nerds of the generation before us on pbs watched

the show over and over again and just all also it is an incredibly enigmatic show that didn't leave you with answers and so it was an early you know fan theory uh world for people to live in of like then who really is number one is it all a a dream? What could his real name be? All of these secrets. Like it was also the things, everything that you could say about Lost that people were like, is it actually that he's dead and in purgatory? Like, is it all a dream? All that stuff. People were saying that about the prisoner as well.

And there was no internet at the time, so you'd have to buy Starlog and join a sci-fi pen pal group to talk about it. And that McGowan, too, that he apparently was, he had a wife who was a realtor that worked for many of the writers on the show. And that she reported to them that he was incredibly proud of being on the show. And, but yes, here is our special guest who only goes by number six. Welcome, friend. I'm number six. I'm number six i'm number 15 what number are you i am not a number i am a man and don't you ever oh wait i'm number five in your face number six yes well done who are all these oddballs well they keep us here because we

know too much number 27 there knows how to turn water into gasoline. Number 12 knows the deadly secret behind Tic Tacs. And I invented the bottomless peanut bag. Wow. So, who brought us here? I don't know. Did you bring us here? No.

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? It's very much the same joke as are you Mr. X? I know. I do like it though.

It makes me laugh. It's a great gag about number six refuting a fan theory of like, oh, are actually you in charge of the island? No, I'm not. And in the series, it's very much, he is like, I am not a number. But in the show, Homer clearly embraces the number and then uses it against somebody that he's better than them. Yes, here's the original line

from the opening of every episode. I am not a number. I am a free man. There you go. There you go. And it's a very Cold War show. And also, I could see why a lot of the Atlas Shrugged crowd would be into it. Not to say that it's the, you can be a libertarian, you don't have to be a libertarian to like the show.

But I can see why that group would get into it. It's about how society holds down a rugged individualist like number six. But yes, Homer also instantly treating it as like, oh, these numbers are ranked like the five is better than six. You may be recalling back to his stonecutters experience. Oh, you're right. They're stealing another joke there. I think Homer is just adapting his stonecutters knowledge to this new group. He's like, oh, another secret society.

All right. Yeah. other secret society all right uh yeah maybe even would have if he had paid attention when he was uh the chosen one he could have learned all about this secret society through stone cutter connections uh but yes the all the the ideas to the bottomless peanut bag turning water into gasoline these the the funny ideas of what they don't want us to have and they put them on an island there's a lot going on in this five minute third act because we also cut back to the search for homer's body oh yes yeah which has another you can't escape blair witch jokes that the sign on the springfield forest is

like witch free since 1998 which like just it was a phenomenon was yeah uh it's a fun little joke but i kind of wish we didn't see it because i want the point of view to stay with homer in the village the whole time but i do really like that uh the name of the body searching dog is scraps and march just thinks that's cute i like that and also that wiggum will potentially make lou drown by not letting him take off his shoes when going in the ocean uh and yes then homer finds out where he's there when meeting a version of the number two character from prisoner how's every little thing who are you and why are you holding me here i want answers now or i want them

eventually fair enough i'll level with you please don't do that Sorry I'll be blunt, your webpage has stumbled upon our secret plan That's impossible, all my stories are bullplop Bullplop! Don't be cute, I'm referring to the flu shot expose You see, we're the ones loading them with mind-controlling additives But why? To drive people into a frenzy of shopping That's why flu shots are given just before Christmas But why? Drive people into a frenzy of shopping.

That's why flu shots are given just before Christmas. Of course. It's so simple. Wait, no, it's not. It's needlessly complicated. Yes, it is. And we can't have you out there mucking it up now, can we? No, sir.

I love how Homer quickly accepts, like, no, sir. No, that'd be bad of me uh man that also yes the homer saying like wait no it's not it's needlessly complicated it's something you got to tell yourself when learning about conspiracies yeah i mean yes it's funny that that homer here all of a sudden jumps to often the the best refutation of most baseless conspiracy theories is that it's so elaborate. There's no way that this makes sense to involve way too many people keeping a secret. There's no way that this information could be suppressed because thousands or tens of thousands as long as vaccines have existed in America, there have been conspiracy theories about them. as revealed in the episode paperclip uh which showed that the smallpox vaccinations that were spread around were actually by the secret shadow government to get dna from every person like so

and that i think is just them pulling from one accepted conspiracy theory about uh just the smallpox vaccine with flanders it has to be vaccines are giving you the mark of the beast that's usually the christian explanation as to why like all the fundamentalist christian the smallpox vaccine. With Flanders, it has to be vaccines are giving you the mark of the beast. That's usually the Christian explanation as to why, like all the fundamentalist Christian explanation as to why you won't get vaccinated. But then there are, you know, new age explanations or pseudoscience ones.

I'm hearing it today. I'm hearing it about the COVID vaccine. Yeah, I mean, honestly, sort of the anti-vaccination movement has been around, I mean, since there are vaccines, but like it got, it got a real boost in the nineties because of Andrew Wakefield, who, who published a really bogus study connecting vaccines and autism. And this was in 98,

which was again, that, that Lancet study was later retracted. But this was a time in which people thought that increasing diagnoses of autism was a result of vaccinations. Of course, there's no basis to it. But this is a time when parents were very, very worried about vaccinations generally. Well, and that wellness concern, I think, is how that one got so many famous people who you think of as like you know liberal hollywood elites like yeah well like robert de niro for example even being an anti-vax guy yeah jenny mccarthy was a huge anti-vax uh person yeah the uh the indigo children movement she was part behind that too at some point you have sympathy for them because they're looking for answers especially if they have an autistic child but also you're spreading this horrible information potentially killing

lots of people yes i do like that in this version it is just to spark consumerism that's why people get flu shots ultimately the answer is the all idealler uh and uh so yes that's also when homer gets uh served his syringe field ice cream I had mentioned earlier, which is a very funny drawing. He's beginning to enjoy being drugged, which I do enjoy that joke. He's really embracing everything about this island. The number, what he's done wrong, the drugs. He's all about it. All of this drugging stuff, too.

So I watched the first two episodes of The Prisoner, and he's knocked out like twice in those first two episodes. And so I thought, yeah, I guess that's a lot of being knocked unconscious but the third episode where they try to invade his dreams i swear he's knocked unconscious seven times in that episode so though some of it's drugged tea it's not always gas well homer's tea was drugged this is one weakness oh that's right yeah okay then all the ways he's drugged happened to that episode and it by the way the third episode rules like every i will say every episode of prisoner i watch i'm like i want to watch the next one this show is great okay then uh homer finds out that no one will miss him because his replacement has been sent home much honey frowline i'm home are you not my husband yeah please forgive my unexplained

two-week absence to make it up to you we will go out to dinner at a sensibly priced restaurant then have a night of efficient german sex well i sure don't feel like cooking so the joke is that march definitely had sex with that guy right yeah i mean it's uh i don't like that part of the joke uh because homer is gone for four months so she's living with this man for three and a half months yes uh i mean i do like marge's reaction like well i sure don't feel like cooking like that's good but and also homer's saying my family won't rest until they find my drug-bloated corpse i like that line too but i i'm just gonna say that marge knew enough that she doesn't have sex with him just to sleep at night i'm gonna tell myself

marge doesn't have sex with this guy where was lisa to point out this imposter it makes everyone look very stupid yeah everybody else has to bart has to be very stupid in the next scene as well too uh and then uh they cuts back homer's playing polo and instantly gets gassed while playing it for no good reason. Just just knocked out again. And then cuts back home. The guy's hair is starting to grow back, too. And he is shaving it in front of Bart. And I love that he all he wants to do is watch evil shows about islands, which is a real tip off to Bart.

But he says, like, I am a new tie wearing, which you know, it's true. Homer rarely wears a black tie. He's more of a purple stripe, that purple stripe tie he always wears. This is one piece of former wear, I think. And so yes, Homer finally is a way off of the island thanks to his new friend, number six. I'm tired of being drugged and gassed.

There's gotta be a way to escape. I've worked on this for 33 years. It's made out of toilet paper rolls, toothpicks, and plastic forks. And the sail is made of scabs and dynamite. It's small and it's smelly, but it should carry both of us too. Woo-hoo! smelly but it should carry both of us too that's the third time that's happened so yes the prisoner went off the air 33 years before this uh aired it's so perfect yeah yeah i love it and uh him saying that's the third time that's happened in episodes two and seven he tries to escape in a

boat and is prevented so that's great it really was the third time that has happened i and also just mcguin's delivery of like sail is made of scabs and dynamite it's like it's such a great delivery he's a really good voice actor scabs and dynamite was in the squartz world of script it's a very funny line but if you look at the sail it's just a gray sail yes yeah they couldn't figure out a way to render that on the screen and i'm glad uh and yes homer is trying to escape and that's when i had to google what the name of those things are they're called the rover or alternatively guardians they've also been called that and i will say in the show when it gets shot with bullets like it doesn't explode, so it isn't functionally actually a balloon.

But I do like that they finally answered what nerds have said for, you know, three decades at that point. Like, just use a fork. The thing will go away instantly. Homer almost kills himself with the fork first. He considers suicide. It's very subtle. That's a great joke. Yeah.

I mean, one of the more distracting things, but part of the fun of watching Prisoner, which has such amazing HD transfers in it, too. I sound like I'm just a commercial for it, but what a distracting but fun thing. And it is how clearly those things are balloons and how they're trying to film around how it's a balloon being blown around. And I know, no, it's this, you know know living ball of energy that is that seems to be sentient and can capture people it's like no i see the string attached to this giant white balloon uh but yes homer escapes and there's another great line that you identified the uh the writer of it too oh yeah dana gould he was on the show at this point and the uh shut up that's why i love that's his line uh and and that's also when you hear

the classic prisoner theme which is i mean it's such an iconic thing and it is a great screw you joke where yes you can escape from this island and they can't stop you yep you just need a just need a boat that's it uh and homer returns home why did you think a big balloon would stop people? Shut up. That's why. What a horrible four months. I ought to warn everybody. Attention.

Some crazy creeps on an island somewhere are secretly running the world. Hey. Sorry, old champ, but you're proving quite the caterpillar in our buttermilk. Huh? We're shutting you down. Not a chance. No one can silence me but me. That arranged can be.

Yes, fight and struggle. If I know me, he won't like being kicked in the crotch. Oh, didn't he? Oh, Marge, it's me, the real Homer. Oh, homie. Bravo, number five. But you know what happens to bad little fishies who wriggle through the net? Can I turn this off?

Absolutely. Hey. I love that it's like, oh, you just turn it off everything's fine it's uh i mean when sometimes when people come to me they ask um you know what do i do about my my q-pilled you know uh sibling or mother or something my my number one advice though is get them away from the computer for a couple days. Just turn it off. Turn it away. Think about other things. Fill your mind besides QAnon. That's got to be step number one. So, yeah, this is sort of the problem with technology

is that it rules our lives. It's very influential. But the only thing that we need to do to stop having so much influence is just to turn it off. But it's so hard. And I also like that Homer kicks him so hard in the just to turn it off but it's so hard and uh and i also like that homer homer kicks him so hard in the crotch it knocks him out like it that's a very

hard kick we talked about turning off technology and it makes me miss travel because there's a glorious uh you know two or three hours when you're in the air and you can't look at twitter you could just read your book or play your game or listen to a podcast and not have to just refresh twitter every three seconds. It was a glorious time to be alive in the days of travel. Yeah, there's a great gag in this scene in which we see that the boat that he used to escape the island is parked in the driveway of his home. He sailed directly to his garage. I didn't even realize that was a joke until i watched it a second time like oh right he he sailed home and then somehow sailed along the roads or carried the boat to his car

to his house yeah that was good that is perfect i yeah i know and and i also love how he says that was a long four months it's like wow lots of time even passed in this episode too uh and the fight scene is well done too just like this mouse cord strangulation really well done all these wired mouses it uh it also does feel like a line got cut or something when mark says oh homie and hugs him i feel like there's it feels missing that there should be a line that she goes like i knew that other guy wasn't you or blah blah blah like instead she's just like it's a hug to that end of it she's not questioning the situation at all and uh and yes everything seems like a happy ending even the

dog's excited but uh that's when in a very creepy drawing sin's little helper has gas explode out of his mouth and they all wake up on the island. Once you get used to the druggings, this isn't a bad place. Oh, it's wonderful. Truly God's country. See you on the island. Yes, the island. Now, is that a parody of a quote from The Prisoner or something?

I mean, they say, like, the village. Yeah, there's creepy. Endings were very creepy and weird. I mean, the one thing they didn't copy is every episode of The Prisoner ends with a picture of his head flying at the screen and then prison bars going over it, which they actually parodied in a reference in crusty gets busted the shot of crusty's face coming up to screen and then jail bars on it same kind of reference okay i didn't know but so they didn't do that but i i think there's definitely like weird intonations to the island or the village though yes 18 year old me when i saw this episode then with the koala shooting gas out of its eyes and just everyone saying the island. I was like, I did have the crusty like, what the hell is that reaction? It made no sense to me and I thought it was a bad episode or a bad third act.

So it was one I didn't go back to as much. Yeah, it was really polarizing at the time, especially. I remember dutifully going online to register my disgust for the Internet, going to all TV Simpsons and seeing people. They either really didn't get it or they did get it. But you couldn't just go to Amazon Prime and turn it on. You couldn't just go to your local video store and rent it for the most part. I'm sure it was on VHS. You might be able to go to Suncoast or something. I mean, to get that whole VHS set, that was back when they were like, finally, the prisoner on VHS, $200.

Yes. Yeah, I think sometimes it felt like the writers of the show, they expressed open contempt for nerds who were seeking continuity in the show and sort of a sense of consistency. And this, I think, is sort of a fun kind of dig at that. Sort of an invitation to not give a crap about those kinds of things.

Yeah. Like Mike Scully, he's in his last year of running the show. John Swartzwater will only write for a few more seasons. I think they're just having fun. Yeah, I I think I was getting I was one of those angered Internet fans, though, who was getting tired of it because i also recall it's this one and then the next one the great money caper which also ends with a real like fu ending yeah those should have been spaced out a bit it was two back-to-back screw you endings in a row uh though yeah as an adult now uh you know overall looking back on this episode i actually do like it one for i think it does a fine job of uh being a parody of the prisoner that actually got the guy in it, too.

And I think ultimately it is both an incredible time capsule for the year 2000 and late 90s internet, and also sadly presaging much of what the internet continued to be and grew into. Yeah, I'm on the same page. The positive elements for me are just that snapshot of the internet in the year 2000 and computers just because I was there. And it's nice nostalgia and some bad memories as well. But I love that. And I can respect the prisoner references, even though I don't fully understand them

yet. Any final thoughts, Travis? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that I mentioned this before, but yeah, it really is amazing how well Schwarzwilder kind of really saw both the great potential of the internet that allowed anyone to be a publisher without an editor, without any kind of gatekeepers. And that had the ability for us to basically hold the powerful accountable. In this case, it might even be seen as a kind of a prophetic about the coming of WikiLeaks. This has allowed people to post, you know, shocking state secrets and allowed anyone to see what was really going on behind the curtain. But at the same time, that potential comes with this dark side

that allows people to post just worthless nonsense. And because we, you know, we hunger for this kind of secret information, gullible people believe it. Even educated people believe it. So yeah, it is very, very sharp commentary on the internet for the year 2000. When they were doing jokes about the Drudge Report, they couldn't possibly imagine

how much farther it would go. What will seem quaint to us in 20 years about Q, I wonder. Oh God, I don't want to think about it. But thank you so much, Travis View, for being on the show. Please tell us where we can find you online and also about your podcast, QAnon Anonymous. Yeah, God. I don't want to think about it. But thank you so much, Travis View, for being on the show. Please tell us where we can find you online and also about your podcast, QAnon Anonymous. Yeah, yeah. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm at Travis underscore View.

And if you want to listen to me more often, my podcast is QAnonAnonymous.com. We do one episode a week in which we try to cover current events and sort of what's going on in Q world or what's going on with major Q figures. We also do a bonus premium episode every week for members of our Patreon. Awesome. And yeah, I've been a big fan of it since Bob introduced me to it. I've learned so much about the Q figures and even the Q representative. I've learned so much. And you guys cover a lot of other conspiracy theories too, which I've enjoyed.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes we like to cover like, you know, real conspiracies and cover-ups or sometimes we just cover UFO stuff or sort of old conspiracies from the 70s and stuff. I mean, I think that, you know, we try to cover broader conspiracy culture in order to put uh what's happening now in context because like a lot of love love what

about a lot of the things about q anon aren't entirely new they're just kind of uh sort of warped and accelerated by social media yeah i loved your one with dave anthony uh where when you were going through the the person you were showcasing over and over, you guys were just like, it always just goes back to that fucking Protocols of Zion every time. It is. Yes. When you when you explore conspiracy theories, you're basically waiting for them to say Jews because it's going to happen eventually.

But but thank you so much, Travis. Yeah, it's been a pleasure so thanks again to travis view for being on the podcast be sure to check out the q and on anonymous podcast but as for us if you want to hear more of what we do and get access to everything one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there for five bucks a month you'll get just that but also access to all of our limited mini series and everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes everything we've done behind that paywall for the past almost four years at this point. And currently on the Patreon behind the $5 paywall, we are doing Talking of the Hill

season two, part one, 11 new episodes of Talking of the Hill just for patrons at the $5 level or higher. And that is lumped in with all the previous episodes. So many to choose from. Over 100 bonus podcasts are waiting for you behind that paywall and also if you sign up for 10 bucks a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons get all the five dollar stuff but also access to one mega long podcast just for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry you're talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast see our secondary podcast we also do each week whatoon, covers an animated series in the same Simpsony detail that we do here. And once a month for premium subscribers at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons,

we cover an animated feature film in the same level of detail, often for over four hours, including once five hours that we did on the end of Evangelion. Other recent ones have included the DuckTales movie, the Studio Ghibli classic Whisper of the Heart, Dexter's Lab, Ego Trip, and a giant two-year-back catalog

is waiting for you. In addition to all of the $5 stuff, if you go to the premium level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. As for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And my other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two bonus full length episodes every month henry what about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g anytime new stuff happens in my life, I'm a tweeting about it. I am addicted, just like Homer in this episode,

but I'm not crazy. No, but if you're also addicted to Twitter, then you should really be following the official Twitter account of this podcast, at TalkSimpsonsPod. When you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter, you will know when new episodes go live on the free feeds for Talking Simpsons and What A Cartoon.

And you'll be up to date when stuff goes live on the Patreon as well. Plus polls or other news that we have going on. You know it if you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next time for the latest episode of our community podcast. Talk to the audience and we'll see you next time for the latest episode of our community podcast. Talk to the audience and we'll see you then. Okay, you're ready to go. I've written down the basic commands so that anyone can understand them.

Hmm. Homer, bring that back in the house.