Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Crepes Of Wrath (Revisited) With Kat Bailey

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

We all take an unplanned trip to France and our guide is returning guest/USG Editor-In-Chief Kat Bailey! We discuss the power of cherry bombs, the first appearance of Agnes, and how we forgot this is a king of aimless episode of the series. Plus, we learn a thing or two about wine, antifreeze, and classic French literature in this week's international episode!! 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 podcast listener we've got an exciting new podcast coming just for patrons of patreon.com slash talking simpsons talking futurama season two part one has begun exclusively for our five dollar and up patrons on the talking simpsons network that's the first 10 episodes of futurama coming to you once a week so just sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and you'll get Talking Futurama season two and all of our limited miniseries, including the entirety of Talking Futurama season one. That's 13 episodes.

That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product ahoy everybody and welcome to talking Simpsons where we transcend incorrigible. I'm your host, furious political thinker Bob Mackie and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Je suis Henri Gilbert. Je ne parle pas français. Very good. And who else is here with us? Communist spy, Cat Bailey.

And today's episode is The Crepes of Wrath. Rogi, I'm home! That is Bart's classic catchphrase. Oh, I love it. Today's episode aired on April 15th, 1990, Tax Day, and Henry will tell us what happened on this day in real-world history, as always. Oh my god!

Oh boy, Bobby, In Living Color debuts the same night as this episode of The Simpsons. I thought I explained this longevity. People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is the debut studio album of American hip-hop group The Tribe Called Quest. And for the third week in a row, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are number one at the box office. I know I saw that as a child. For my birthday, actually, coming up in May.

So it was still in theaters then. I also saw it in theaters. And I just remember that everybody would be yelling Raphael's immortal line, Damn it. Damn it! Gotta know what a crumpet is to enjoy cricket. I mean, that movie. That movie came at the perfect time.

You hear the stories about how they made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that they thought they couldn't sell it to any movie studio in America. They got funding from a Chinese, the Raymond Chow Company, that mainly does kung fu films. And they produced it, and it's dirty and darker, much darker than the cartoon. It's very confusing if you came in from the cartoons because you're like going where's krang where's bebop and rock steady i recently saw a tweet where there was somebody selling one of those decaying animatronic heads from that movie and it was just a nightmare like if you saw that in your living room you'd burn the house down but they did a great job with those suits they look really good in that movie here's

the problem though now when you watch those movies on blu-ray you can see the man's face in the mouth it is terrifying yeah you don't want that it's like that turtle just ate a man uh yeah i believe they in future in newer editions of it there's a big one i always remember my friend pointing out like it's when michelangelo is doing the turtle wax bit and it makes Donnie laugh, his mouth goes backwards and you can see the eyes in there. And they like blacked them out on later editions. But it's just like the Terminator movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not know how much of his penis you would see in the future. And now we can see all of it just shaking back and forth.

Not bad. I watched that Ninja Turtles movie eight million times. It was one of my prized VHSs's with the fhe at the beginning yeah it's in the and then like cran like a child drew it in the pizza hut commercial yeah with a baseball playing kid yeah and it came with a pizza coupon as well i believe which is funny too pizza hut paid all that money to get on the tmnt video but it was dominoes that was in the movie like oh it was yeah i bet they passed early and didn't realize like this you need to get on board this thing so yeah there was also a coupon on the um ninja turtles the arcade game for nes as well so no pizza hut they learned their mistake and they uh

for the bay michael bay produced ninja turtles movie it was a pizza hut pizza and that too but uh yeah no that man that movie with its violence and like uh just seeing the puppety turtles walking around like in the like in somebody's backyard or whatever it just felt so real and all the teenagers being evil yeah stealing things that's what also sucked in the sequel is that too many parents complained and they're like no no this is too violent now you gotta use yo-yos more pie fights more chandeliers a lot more slapstick yeah as a little kid though i was a little pet in which is why i have a podcast today and i was mad that uh not only were the foot soldiers humans but they also changed the name of april o'neill's news station they changed the

number oh yeah it was channel three in the movie something like they also changed the name of April O'Neil's news station. They changed the number. Oh yeah, it was Channel 3 in the movie, right? Something like that. They were originally humans in the comic, weren't they? And they changed them into robots for the cartoon, because you can't have the turtles literally stabbing people. It's true, but I wanted to see it. Me too. And it stuck with the

comic book idea that Splinter was a rat that grew large instead of a man who turned into a rat like it was in the uh in the animated series his name was hamato yoshi yeah instead he was owned by hamato yoshi and i also remember his great line like every father loves his son thank you kevin clash i made a funny did you know a few years later they went back in time that's the worst one did you know the guy who did the voice of Splinter was also Elmo and the baby from

Dinosaurs? I did not know that was Kevin Clash. Did you say the baby from Dinosaurs? Yeah. That voice is just Elmo, right? Oh, yes. It's like Elmo plus 3% meaner. Elmo's actually kind of mean until he became a real superstar. But

also, I want to talk about a tribe called Quest people love quests these days what quest parts you mean uh no just the idea of quests like people are always doing quests they love them in games well the hip-hop group at tribe called quest is is really great this is the album that has can i kick it and el segundo uh i will admit that i am the white dweebazoid who listened to beastie boys first and then when q-tip was on a beastie boys uh track i was like oh where's this q-tip gentleman from my first rap was uh deep deep trouble well simpson's own rap i definitely didn't get this tribe called quest out when it first came out and uh in living color as well uh that that was uh quite quite a show very uh ribald oh quite

ribald the like yeah it was just the way it was the wayans brothers were get their gift to the world wasn't living color i think it it did really like hip up sketch comedy like it seems so much more plugged into uh popular culture than snl was in 1990, that's for sure. I did love the Jim Carrey characters. That's what brought me to the theater to see Ace Ventura. Now look, like most comedy, if you go back to from 1990, it's full of ableist and homophobic and transphobic stuff because it was a long time ago. Yes, and it was trying to be edgy.

Yes, yeah. But anyway, I guess that's all the memories we've got for this week's episode uh welcome back cat hey hello cat when was cat last on our podcast boy must have been that super bowl episode in season 10 right it's been a minute yeah sunday cruddy sunday right yeah no sports in this episode though no the sport of child abuse plays an active role in this episode but i guess we did ask you though to come because unlike me and Bob, the very uncultured men, you've been to France, haven't you? Yeah, I've been to

France a few times at this point. It's a very beautiful country, actually, despite what the Simpsons would have you say. Full of very normal people just trying to live their lives. But I've been to Paris, and I've been to Lyon, and I've been to Nice. Actually, my partner spent like three

months in Nice, which is south of France near Monaco. It's a very beautiful city. I really enjoyed my time there. I almost went to France when I worked with you, Kat. I don't know if you remember that. Oh, right. Yes. And then you got horrifically ill. Yes, I had some sort of lesser COVID. Everyone, everyone. So I went to the United Kingdom first. That was my first international trip at like age 33 for a RuneScape event. And it was awful. And everyone there got some massive super flu.

And that knocked me out for like 10 days. That's insane. And I had like a trip to France right after that to see the makers of Life is Strange. They're making a vampire game

that's out now. And that was the grand preview event for that. They were going to fly me to France. I wanted the early aughts games journalist treatment but i was too sick for that so yes uh well cat do you speak any french oh heck no i'm terrible at french i think the only language that i kind of speak is japanese unfortunately okay well how how easy is it to get around not uh not speaking french in france not too hard actually because if you know english you know the uh pardon me the lingua franca of the world so you can kind of get

away with anything i think the trick is when you address somebody in french you should probably start by introducing yourself and saying bonjour and they will like and that's just the polite thing to do and then they will kind of loosen up and then you can ask for whatever you want okay they'll be more willing to talk to you because you're being polite uh do they they don't look down on uh rude americans oh they so look down on rude americans but as with anything as long as you're not the ugly american they will kind of roll with it and help you out just don't't be bad. Okay. That's why I think it's pretty crappy that Bart in this episode meets like a gendarme who can't speak English.

That seems unlikely to me. I don't know. I think there are plenty of people in France who can speak English and in a lot of countries as well. But the channel's right over. Like, England's right there. The channel.

Jump in. I'm never going to assume that somebody speaks my language just because my language happens to be the dominant one in the world right no i look yes i agree but i guess i was dangerously close to saying like learn english frenchies when i was uh in germany actually uh pretty much everybody spoke english except for one person and i was like okay so this person cannot speak English. And honestly, if I were German, I would probably be that person. I'd probably be like, I can't speak English. Come on. One of my trips to Japan, I hung out with my cousin who worked in the JET program,

and most of her friends were Europeans who were there to learn Japanese. And they were all speaking to each other in Japanese and I couldn't follow at all and they felt they were looking at me like they took pity on me being so left out and they all begrudgingly spoke English so I could be included in the conversation This episode is accurate in one way

total immersion is the way to learn a language because when I went to Japan I had taken three years of Japanese, I did not know it very well but once I went to Japan I did not I had taken three years of Japanese I did not know it very well but once I was there and I was just surrounded by signs and I was having to deal with the general kind of phrases that everybody uses every single day it started to click with me a lot more and then if you're just speaking to people who are going to speak to you in French or Japanese eventually you almost can't help but learn it.

I'm not saying that Bart would just click the way it does in this episode. Especially because he seems to only be around Cesar and Ugale who do not really speak French that much around him. No, not really. My tip for learning a language is date someone who knows another language and just be like,

what's that say? Good strategy, yeah. Now your partner is trilingual at least. That's true. French, Japanese, and English. Puts me to shame. So embarrassing because I'm an American who doesn't have to try. I mean, to even learn one language is a lot for America.

In high school, for most American high schools in my time, you could either learn Spanish or French. And I chose Spanish. I was like, it seemed easier. Yeah. I don't know if they still do it this way, but it's like, okay, welcome to high school. The language center of your brain is shut down. Time to learn another language, folks.

Sit down. You should really be learning in elementary school. Definitely. Yeah. Just like biologically, it makes the most sense. Yeah. really be learning in elementary school definitely yeah just like biologically it makes the most sense yeah i can just see the uh reactionary move though about learning another language like teaching it to children they'd they'd see it as evil if you go to the netherlands they know like five languages at least and so i'm just going so what are they doing differently why don't we do

that well they instead uh had us you know memorize certain dates and state capitals important stuff that we can't just look up instantly now i mean it's democratic socialism i think is one answer there i have a lot of propaganda in my head though so does lisa simpson in this episode no i love that lisa has to defend america from a bad position she's like uh look we got land of opportunity manifest destiny though though all the spanish learned, pretty much all gone. I mean, I could read a menu of meats, perhaps, but that's kind of it at a restaurant. The problem is that Spanish language in a lot of schools, I mean, it was useless in mine because they just keep teaching you the basics over and over again.

And at a certain point, it's like, okay, but we're not moving to the next level. You don't go to the next level unless you actually talk to people and hang out with people who speak Spanish or you go to like college or something. That's why you need that bird on your phone to teach you, right? That little bird. Duolingo. There you go. But yeah, your French study is all gone in your brain, Bob. Oh, for sure. I had to take it in college too. And then I had to take a French equivalency test in grad school to get a master's degree they just let me have a dictionary oh they're like it's a formality to just translate this essay and uh the entire time i think i talked about this before the entire time i was distracted because i was staring at a signed star trek the next generation poster

because i was taking in the professor's office so just staring at the entire cast that and it was signed it was signed by them all of them them? Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. What a cool dude. Clearly you remembered the most important thing of that. Exactly. Le Wolf. Jean-Luc. Oh, Jean-Luc, yeah. Do you want to talk about this episode, though? I guess. It's written and directed by everybody.

Everybody in America had a hand in this. I think you said this before, Henry, it took these showrunners a while to learn, like, hey, you're a showrunner. Don't put your name on a script. Yeah. Even if you rewrote a lot of it. So that's why Sam Simon and Sam Simon's name is on this.

But also George Meyer, John Schwarzwalder and John Vitti. And we covered John Vitti last time. But it's got a ton of writers this is just so many writers which i think this is why i think this is the worst episode script wise of the season there's worse animated ones and worse looking ones and poorly more poorly executed but as a story it feels so stitched together when you see those four names on there really it's home like oh yeah these things are all a few writers all coming at it from different directions and especially like there's there's a real arc that's lost in like bart uh bart's life i think especially here i think so and i think uh we might

have covered george meyer when he came back for his grand return in sunday cruddy sunday that was cat's last episode but he was hired he had worked on SNL and David Letterman. He was hired to basically do punch up on the show. But that turned into a full time writing gig when he liked it so much. So he sort of kept that punch up role for his entire reign at The Simpsons. He does not have a lot of credited scripts. Quick story I love about George Meyer is on the Mr. Show DVD commentaries. I think it's in a first season episode. Bob Odenkirk just points out like, oh, there's George Meyer in the audience.

He's the funniest guy in the world. And Bob says like, he heard a story from George that in like season one writer's room, George pitched a joke. And he's like, well, and then Doug says this. Doug, he's like, Bart, whatever. Who cares?

Who cares? The kid. It doesn't matter but yeah he is one of the writers on here and uh we talked about he's the comment it's him and wes archer in a lonely commentary just those two yeah and wes archer is the one of the directors who took over from milk gray and we talked about him in simpson tide his only like solo episode i gotta say go to wes archer's instagram it's called archer mation and he is currently i mean he's posted a lot of old great art but currently as

of this recording he's posting like the storyboards of moaning lisa oh and it was funny because i was like oh he did the storyboards who directed it oh right he did yeah they did a lot of work on these shows well and i mean behind the scenes miltilt was one of those Saturday morning guys who were fired off of the directing. Like, I think it's, my guess would be it was Guild laws, like, or Guild bylines that he gets to keep his director credit. It just gets with an and put in it. But I think they scrapped most of it. I think there's like one or two shots where on the commentary, Wes Archer says, oh, that

was Milt Gray's. Like, this setup was Milt's. It's very nice to to give him credit even though it didn't really work out for him as director i mean he'd still be on the show forever doing other stuff but yeah yeah the scene of bart in the rain with the police officer that was one of milk grade's like uh directorial shots yeah so they didn't scrap the whole thing i think it definitely seems like um there was more antipathy towards kent butterworth in uh simpsons offices of milton gray but he went on to delight us with the adventures of sonic the hedgehog yes yeah yeah if kent hadn't stayed if kent had stayed on the simpsons for years to come he could have never directed all

the chili dog fun we saw you know i flip that's the better sonic cartoon no yeah yeah no go back there's not a horrible frenchman stinking up that Saturday morning cartoon. Speaking of French people. We're going to be very anti-Frank. By the way, I wasn't saying he was horrible because he's French. He is intentionally a French stereotype and all the jokes are about how he's a coward

because it's making fun of the president of Deke. There's a character in Sonic the Hedgehog Saturday morning cartoon that is just to make fun of a French guy they know. Oh, really? That's why Antoine or whatever his name is. Antoine, that's right, yeah. I watched the theme song for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog not too long ago,

and I got embarrassed just watching it. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Yeah, public domain. It's very Looney Tunes. They were trying hard the hardest. Let's talk about where this episode came from, which I'm sure we talked about in the original episode, but I did not know this until 2001 when I first heard these DVD commentaries. So this

episode is kind of loosely based on the French movie Manon of the Spring, including characters named César and Ougalan, who are the two people in this episode. And so this is based on the second volume of a two-volume novel by Marcel Pagnol. And I asked Nina about this because I guess in school they read these or saw the movie or something. So I have some comments about what these two movies are about based on these two novels. Oh, boy. So Nina says, first one is about a hunchback named Jean, played by Gérard Depardieu, who inherits property with a convenient spring. He doesn't know about the spring because two greedy guys named César and Ouglon had plugged it up and hid it to decrease land value so they could buy it unblock the spring and expand their carnation growing business

jean doesn't know about the spring so he has to drag water from much further sources to stubbornly keep his rabbit farm going he eventually dies in an attempt to dig for the water source so i guess maybe bart carrying the water might be a reference to that. Who knows? But the tricky Cezar and Oogalan. Good villainous names. Yep. Yep. And in the second volume, which is what this show is based on, the show is based on the movie that's based on the second volume of this two novel series.

Very complicated. But in the sequel, Manon of the Spring, Cezar and Oogalan have bought Jean's land on Block the Spring and their carnation business is a success. But Jeanne's daughter, Manon, saw them on Block the Spring as a child

and she grows up to avenge her father and it's pretty badass. Oh, awesome. So it's like the first book sets up the revenge and the second book

is just revenge. I see. Like Count of Monte Cristo kind of thing. I like that. I'm impressed that Nina remembers all this. I don't remember any books

I read in high school. She was assisted by the wiki, but I was like, you saw this before, please help me out. And thank you, Nina. I believe Jean is played by Gérard Depardieu. Before he was pooping in airplanes. I mean, not in the toilet. He was just pooping. I forgot about that. He pooped on the

drink cart or something? That sounds like old Jerry. Swigging bottles of wine. Sad end for Gérard Depardieu.ue still alive but still oh boy okay he's uh not not doing too well so i think this is the first time i've seen this episode ever yeah holy cow so back when the simpsons was in syndication i would generally skip the season one episodes because they were so roughly animated and their pacing was completely different. And they're very understated compared to the zanier episodes that came out somewhat later.

So it's kind of an interesting experience for me to go back to this episode and go, OK, well, it's a lot more low key. The animation is kind of strange. The fade in and fade out like that you guys have mentioned in other episodes was very apparent. It definitely reminded me of the shorts. fade out like that you guys have mentioned in other episodes was very apparent it definitely reminded me of the shorts you can hear the comedic timing a little bit like the very dry wit of the simpsons but it's really dry like so dry in this episode yeah it really is for so much of season one the dry wit spirit is having to like claw its way through like this just morass of animation that doesn't understand how to express it you know so they keep trying to be like hey

here's a clever turn of phrase well it's delivered really lightly and the in the character isn't really framed well for it so it just kind of goes by and you don't even think about it there was a line that got a guffaw on me, though. Okay. Well, we'll get to that. We have not recorded Homer's Night Out yet. You already heard it. We have not recorded it yet.

One thing I noticed in this episode, I'm not sure if it's present in that one, is that they've really figured out the layout of the house. It's the one thing I noticed. It's a major improvement. I was like, oh, it's pretty consistent now and it's well drawn. Yeah. You know what? I think Homer's Night Out, you see a little bit of that there, too, though. This makes it really clear of up the stairs and there's part's room yeah and then

when homer's on the couch you can see like through the doorways until like the logical places these rooms exist most of the time so yeah i did notice that i i think it's really comes together in this episode yeah which is is good because the first act is just like all in the living room yes uh roger sorry roger meyer george meyer calls it langorius it's like wow this scene is so talky especially the skinner the skinner homer march conversation and i think another uh place this came from or they talked about how in bart the genius that skinner keeps his dream is to get rid of barn and to get him out of school. And so this is the second episode where they want the starting point to be like,

well, how does Bart get to France? Well, Skinner wants to get rid of him. Once more, it's another plot by Skinner to get Bart out of Springfield Elementary. And I think that's, they really dropped that by like the third, I guess with Super Nintendo Chalmers, he does expel Bart but it's he does he doesn't really want to do that yeah celebrate it is there do you know what production order this was uh this is it's pretty much in production order from here on out homer's night out does come before life on the fast lane but this is next like this is the this had to have been after the christmas episode because they have santa's little helper yeah it's the again we have not done homer's night out yet

but it's the first time i remember seeing him after that special uh no i looked uh i looked that up this appearance in the opening by santa's little helper is his first appearance since the christmas special and his only other season one appearance it's funny like they get him the christmas special and it's the eighth production episode right yes so that airs first and you don't see him for like two more months so i'm sure viewers thought like oh yeah the dog's a plot point we're not going to see him again so they might have been surprised seeing him for a joke in this yeah yeah he comes back with a vengeance in season two like he's in a lot more episodes the cat's there too uh yeah yeah this is the third appearance of when they remember that the Simpsons

have hats. When there's a need for a joke. Yeah. The Simpsons will be right back. If you thought he was a troublemaker at home,

wait till you see Bart in Paris. The Simpsons, Sunday at 8.30 on Fox 5. Hope you guys are enjoying this week's episode along with our cherry bomb of a guest, Cat Bailey. We always appreciate her coming on the show. Follow her on Twitter at the underscore KatBot and check out all the cool stuff she's been doing about Final Fantasy 7 Remake

and tons more cool podcasts. On the website, she's the Editor-in-Chief of US Gamer. And if you guys enjoy this podcast but want to hear even more content and a ton of stuff early, then you should really consider joining the Talking Simpsons Patreon at patreon.com

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and also we have a ton of interviews with folks who have worked on the simpsons some as early season one including our most recent one brand new with john vd one of the writers of this episode he had so much to tell us about his time on the simpsons it was amazing you can hear that right now along with over 20 other interviews at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for just five bucks a month but if you want something even fancier than the life of a frog you should sign up at the ten dollar level to get all the stuff we just mentioned for the $5 a month folks plus our exclusive monthly podcast what a cartoon movie where me and bob talk often for over four hours about a different animated feature film we've covered films as diverse as toy story akira a

goofy movie spider-man into the spider-verse beavis and butthead do america iron giant the animatrix and more and our most recent one is the spongebob squarepants movie and this month you'll be hearing very soon our podcast for the loop on the third movie the castle of cagliostro hayo miyazaki's first film as a director you can only hear that if you're a ten dollar and up subscriber over 60 hours of podcast right at your fingertips 10 bucks a month patreon.com slash talking simpsons but yes the the episode opens with bart arriving home from school seeing his wonderful frog that he always has his beloved frog froggy they they only gave him a frog to make french jokes right

it's true that's the only reason and i didn't know about this whole frog frenchman thing until after uh 9-11 when that became popular again. I thought for me it was... There's the bullfrog joke from... I don't know if I got that at the time, but I started hearing all the frogs don't want to go to war. I didn't know it was fully a slur

I guess, but in the Simpson, in the treehouse where they hit Springfield with a neutron bomb, he's like, that will show you for calling us frogs. And then they're stuffing. I joked about that one forever because I had poor taste in comedy, but whatever. And Bart's room is very messy.

I feel like my mom probably told me my room looked that bad when I was seven. Her back to Marge going, don't do that. Don't do that. It's very Dennis. You need to clean up! It's very Dennis the Menace. He's got all the toys everywhere. He's got to clean it up. But yes, Homer has a little accident. Jeez, Louise, look at this mess.

I told that boy a billion times to pick up his job. Ah! Ah! I like to play with you. I like to play with you. pick up his job I like to play with you. I like to play with you. I like to play with you. I like to play with you. Oh, Maggie, my poor bag. I like to play with you.

I like to play with you. Dad! Homer, What happened? It's a boy. Bring me the boy. Oh, good. I love the wearing out of the crusty voice box. It's like a rake joke.

Yeah? That reminds me of... We lived with my grandma for a while, and she stole some of my mom's old toys, including this Mickey Mouse pull string thing from the 60s. And it sounded like a demon when you pulled it, because it was just so worn out. So Mickey Mouse goes, like, see you real soon, or whatever. He goes, see you real soon. I like that this one, the record, by falling, it set the record on repeat.

And it just, it constantly is turning and turning and turning until it wears it out in front of Homer and drives him insane. Like Bart, Bart apparently didn't leave his room for like three hours or something. Too much frog watching. He's just staring at frog. Pretty good pratfall by homer i feel like they had to keep one-upping themselves until finally he was going down the mountain and then out the ambulance and all that i i love that his his stairs are like five flights tall for him to fall that long i it's one of my favorite like animation gags in this episode and you can hear real homer in there when uh dan is reacting to the screams yeah yeah once homer has to scream that gets

dan in the spot of like oh this is homer it's like they they find that you're figuring him out and santa's little helper's appearance is basically just a lassie joke about how he's like oh lassie would have gotten help and instead he just lays down next to him once having a real nap next to homer i love they think it's a nap party they They're like, oh, you're sleeping here, Homer? My cat would totally sleep. Would just crawl into my chest and just sit there. Or under my face. One of the two.

They'd be like, oh, now you're back so hurt you can't push me away from your face. No, this looks comfortable. I've been wanting to eat that face for years. Now it's my chance. And I mean, also, Homer's famous trick back. It always, it's acting up, as we all know, happens to him all the time. So Homer's torture here is pretty funny. And I think it's kind of supposed to set up that Bart, like, deserves some comeuppance.

That, like, he causes this pain to Homer. And that's why you're supposed to not feel terrible that he then gets tortured. Like, kind of an A really asap style punishment of like the mean prince is brought low or but he's just being bart i know it's asymmetrical well that's why it doesn't it that's why i'm trying to figure out why they'd be so mean to bart and like it that's the only reason i can think of it's like they are trying to teach him a lesson no i think they just want you to be sympathetic toward him or yes and i will get to it but i think the tonality of that entire scene is pretty insane and it goes for a

long time there's just an easy way to turn it and it can start in the opening here where bart could care less about homer and march can even give him like a part of us all type speech to him of just like you've got it pretty good here, mister. You are, maybe that's a little too obvious. So he's being a big old prankster in the first couple scenes, in other words. Yeah. Well, I mean, this isn't even a prank. Like this is, they.

But in the next scene, he is totally doing a prank. Yeah. I guess when you think of like, we watch this now, we think of how Agnes Skinner is currently. And we're like, yeah, she deserves to be exploded. But in this episode, it's like, no, he hurt that old woman. That poor old lady.

Also, like, a weird shot. I love the, like, squiggly line face of Homer when he's talking to Maggie. Like, oh, Maggie, my poor back. Though also,

Homer should not be left alone in the home with Maggie. And is Maggie, the baby's just walking free while Marge and Lisa are not there? Seems like a problem, yeah. I mean, we've established that both Marge and Homer are kind of bad parents. Yeah, yeah.

Irresponsible, I should say. I also wonder where Marge and Lisa are coming back from in that shot. So you got beats. I was expecting a we got beats kind of thing. And I also like where Marge tells Bart to start cleaning up. When she pops into the room, her hair is real springy on the doorway. That's always fun to see that and yes uh bart much like me just throws things into the closet when it's time to tidy up it's like oh there it's out of the way no no problem i just want to say like the

first two scenes feel like much more classic simpsons and i imagine that one of the people that you were describing like one of the four people probably wrote those scenes and then dramatic tonal shifts in the next like whole bit and it feels like somebody wrote those entire scenes it reminds me of like star trek 4 where they're like okay all of the comic scenes and start in san francisco that's nick meyer and everything in space that's somebody else okay yeah yeah those do feel very different well that's also in star trek 5 man the turns from like there's the weirdest we're talking about tonal shifts in star trek films in star trek we are now we're in my territory now in star trek 5 the bit where scotty takes a comical like smashing his head

into a girder and falls down but then and then like right after that like oh my god scotty's unconscious we they try to play it as a dramatic bit. I'm like, but no, you just did a Charlie Chaplin-style pratfall with Scotty. And then Aurora's hitting on him or something? Oh, yeah. She did that, too. She also does the Dance of the Seven Veils as well. That was a movie.

Sure, yes. Is that the worst Star Trek? No. Star Trek Into Darkness was the worst one. Okay, come on. Please look forward to our what a cartoon about star trek into darkness but why it's the worst star trek by far is that a cartoon no it's not i mean benedict cumberbatch is kind of a cartoon you'd never expect it my name is

spoiler alert geez everyone knew it the second he was cast in that movie there was an audible groan when he said that by the way we all were like oh they just lied the whole when everybody guessed it was con and jj was like no no it's not no no no it's not con and then once he says it you're just like oh so you just lied and uh and that's why he got to do good star wars movies all those wonderful stars from hey sorry that was not a that was not a yawn for effect it's a later recording this is the danger of having Kat and me on a podcast together. Sorry. Hey, Bart has a cigar box, too. That feels very dated as well.

I had one to put stuff in. I think I was just given one. I got one in my teens. I had a couple, and I didn't keep stuff in it because that's when my dad... My father became a cigar aficionado uh in my teen years i think it's i think cigar boxes were the kind of thing that could be just floating around say your grandparents house sure sure and you just end up having it in your possession not even knowing how and they're a nice sturdy place to put you know fireworks and uh baseball cards the exactly i

can't you know i feel like a season later They would have said Bart can't have a cherry bomb Like this This feels like a standards And practices thing They would not allow There were kids with Cherry bombs in the 80s right Oh for sure

But it's like this Here you're showing kids That your hero Bart Can blow things up With an explosive This is very much Imitatable I mean I think this

Like prank was like An antiquated prank too Of the time But also now we're like in the world of zero tolerance. Bart would be in jail, like in child jail. I mean, honestly, for what he does to Agnes, Skinner should call the police on him and put him in the jury. When he's going, I think we're way beyond incorrigible. And I'm like, is he going to call the cops on him?

Because he probably should press charges. And those cherry bombs would appear in a lot of Simpsons merchant games as well. I mean, especially Bart vs. Space Beings. Oh, yeah. There's an item in that. They're like, oh, what does Bart do? Throw cherry bombs. All right.

Eats cupcakes, throws cherry bombs. Actually, Adil is one of the bosses in Space Beings. Oh, really? I forgot that. Or something. No, I think he's a boss. Yeah. Man, we're going to have to give that a play at some point, I think.

Do you? Do you need to give it a play? Maybe if we're on somebody else's podcast about bad video games. Could happen. Or perhaps at another live show. I don't know. But yes, we head to the school with Bart and his cherry bomb. And that's where we get to meet, for the first time, a certain lamb of God.

People, people, no roughhousing on the monkey bars. You there. Tuck in your shirt. Watch it. I saw that. You certainly have done awfully well for yourself, Spanky. Mother, please don't call me Spanky on school grounds. Wow, a cherry bomb. What are you going to do with it, Bart?

Watch out, Bart. It's Skinner. Uh-oh. Good morning, Mr. Skinner. Morning, boys. Why haven't you introduced me to any of your students, Spanky? Well? Mother, I would like you to meet Milhouse, Lewis, Richard, and Bart Simpson. This is the Bart Simpson you're always talking about?

Mm-hmm. But he looks so sweet. I am, ma'am. Simpson, let's move on now, mother, shall we? Bye, Spanky. Ooh. Spanky. Yeah, as I recall in the comics or in the cards,

they kept that Spanky thing going a bit longer. They thought it was funny. I think they had a joke about he starred in comic books as a kid called lil spanky uh but now as we all know spanky was not his nickname it was uh the real seymour skinner's nickname oh yeah oh my god so he's just accepting that spanky being handed to him just another of the pains put on him by agnes and agnes is way different here and she wouldn't be used again until they were like uh let's make a psycho reference and that and that defined her like that relationship defined them from that point onwards like making one psycho joke was just like okay now she's a horrible force in his life remember that a terrifying scene they cut from uh the b sharps episode does it does it imply like he lives in

the baits mansion yeah yeah baits hotel sorry hotel and she is just like cackling at him and telling him like uh now you didn't uh you kept your promise he's like that's right i didn't uh i didn't have any sex on tour she's like good and she was voiced by dan castellanet i assume she would have been voiced by tress if they had kept that scene in. But I'm glad that Skinner canonically does not live in the Bates Motel. Yeah. The closest they inched towards that in scenes that were kept in the show was him talking out the window. That's similar.

She doesn't fit anymore, mother. We should go. I think the commentators, in the commentary, they joke that it was the cherry bomb that broke her brain and turned her into the horrible woman she became that's her like origin story yes i mean honestly she got like a super colonic there like she's she's messed up downstairs from now on i mean honestly what what bart does to her is criminal like she's rocketed into the sky so maybe that's also what turned her also on bart she's like oh but he seems so sweet but also the scene the scene of them all hiding the bomb from him that feels like a hogan's hero scene to me no you're right about that yeah uh with bart as as hogan of course uh but yeah bart

drops the cherry bomb down the commode and we get quite an explosion. So you're gonna flush it? What can I say? I got a weakness for the classics. I think I need to make a stop at the little girl's room. Okay, mother. This way. So long, sucker. Thank you. Also, I feel bad for Agnes just having to use a child-sized toilet, too. Child-sized?

All the toilets at my school were just like, well, a teacher can poop in this, too. Really? I remember them being lower to the ground when I was a kid. Especially the urinals were lower to the ground, as I recall. Let's go to a children's school to investigate. They're all closed, Henry. It's a ghost town. We can pee in every toilet if we want. So then we come back to home.

Homer's on the couch. It's not very funny that Homer rings a bell and shouts Marge. It's just annoying. It just shows he's uh homer's not it's not very funny that homer rings a bell and shouts marge it's just annoying it just shows he's an annoying asshole at the end of the scene we find out his back is fine yeah he's been faking it the whole time yeah i homer gaslighting marge again yeah yeah actually i guess that that bell is kind of his gaslight i suppose i i also though i got a little chuckle that homer's tastes are so childlike that he wants a squish down he could have anything he could eat ice cream he's he's a grown-up he can eat anything he wants but he he wants a fruit cocktail cup with extra syrup he wants a squish down crunchy

uh grilled cheese sandwich like he wants uh wieners specifically out of a can like all the wieners yeah all the least fancy things it's it's funny how he's uh how childish child is he is the doorbell rings and homer is like screaming louder than the doorbell again it's just annoying we get a nice uh classic gib sting when we uh see skinner through the eye hole he does that i mean like they replace him we trash him a hole he does that i mean like they replace him we trash him a lot but man that sting is like his trademark just like overplay everything the season one uh drinking challenge is every time you guys take a shot at this guy just take a shot those music steve yeah yeah uh and though i do like the draw the drawing of skinner and the

people is very well done yeah he looks like the brain from animaniacs honestly i think you're right about that and a cloud like it's very it happens very fast but like it's implied that he was dragging barth there by his ear the entire time like a very classic like 50s 60s monkey shines kind of it's the menace like you said george meyer references the length of of this scene being very atypical. I timed it two and a half minutes of conversation. Just to get Bart to France. Maybe Bart could have not been abused in France for like a minute if they had just, you know, gotten to the chase. It's, God, it's crazy how long it goes.

Like they would never be this wasteful with time or they'd want to speed up all these things. Like there's a comparative scene is in when Bart is going to get shipped off to the boarding school that Lisa also wants to go to the military academy. And like that conversation is like a minute. And most of that is them screaming over echoes going through the city. That's right. The best scene in that very boring episode that I was also on. Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah. See, this is one, it's not about sports or girls.

I mean, it was a Lisa episode. No, no, I mean this one. It's not about sports or girls. It's a rare non-sports girl appearance. Sports girl appearance. But yes, Skinner arrives and he has some bad news. Homer, Principal Skinner's here. Oh, hello, Principal Skinner.

I'd get up if a boy crippled me. I understand completely. The disturbing incident I was referring to happened this morning when your son flushed an explosive device down the boys' lavatory. That old gay. Unfortunately, at the same moment, my mother was in the girls' lavatory making use of the facilities. That old gay. Unfortunately, at the same moment, my mother was in the girls' lavatory making use of the facilities. Oh, dear. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, we have transcended incorrigible.

I don't think suspension or expulsion will do the trick. I think it behooves us all to consider deportation. Deportation? You mean kick Bart out of the country? Hear him out, Mark. Well, perhaps I was being a tad glib. Let me explain. Our elementary school participates in a foreign exchange program. Now, normally a student is selected on the basis of academic excellence or intelligence, but in Bart's case, I'm prepared to make

a big exception. So he's really gifting Bart for crippling his mother, like, or doing that horrible thing to Agnes, in a way. I think Skinner is in on this and i always have you think he's with this chateau maison guys i think he knows like what bart is in for if he sends him away yeah i you know i'm sure that he signed up for this extremely shady program because it was free and why not it's true it's free yeah because i most so the if exchange programs i've

participated in or i've been aware of cost money. You got to pay your own way. It's not free. Well, so the season one Skinner, I think, would actually be in league with these guys and probably getting a kickback. I like to think of the innocent Bill and Josh Skinner is a sweeter skinner who just fell for the same lie those guys gave to bart of just no we're it's a wine cellar it's great here you go so how did this whole scheme come together because those guys seemed a little should i say short-sighted because i mean okay bart's done after three months how he come back? And how do they not end up getting arrested by the police?

I would assume they just think no one believes children and they'll get away with it. And in 1990, if a kid says, I was treated this horribly, I think a lot of people didn't listen. You think so? I guess there should be a lengthy trial in France where Bart is the key witness. I guess that happened for like the other month of the three months he was gone, I suppose. No, perhaps this more sinister Skinner is in on it to a degree,

but yeah, I guess that takes away some of the gift of this, of him to get rid of Bart. I could just see Skinner being approached by a representative from these two creeps and then telling him about this whole thing. He'd be like, you know, mother doesn't allow me to have wine, but I heard it's delicious. Or some joke about him being a loser.

That would be the future Skinner thing with this scene. I think they really only define Skinner as that starting with like Bart the murderer where he's the lick how many envelopes in an hour and see if he can break that record. I assume neither of you have ever participated in an exchange program. No. Nope. I didn't travel internationally until I was 33. Fair enough. It's a pretty privileged thing, I want to say. But I did not get to go in college because I was broke.

But my partner got to go. She went to Japan for the summer. It was a great time. She studied over there and she got to stay with somebody who were not a couple of criminals that were forcing her to make wine well that's nice she stayed with a very nice uh japanese housewife uh who had a family and everything and was kind of a surrogate mother to her and showed her all of the wonderful kind of cultural things in japan was called a cultural ambassador as it were oh that's the dream yeah it's uh no uh our previous guest on that tokyo episode of the talking simpsons

was maddie she had just come back from doing the exchange student program in uh a college age one yeah and she just made it back into the jet program or into the jet program rather so congrats to maddie four weeks later good for her yeah that's wonderful the jet program rules apparently it's super super hard to get into oh it is i didn't get exclusive i've known many friends who did not get in yeah i was in the akiwa system which is basically the mcdonald's of english teaching schools so i met a few exchange students like in high school and junior high i do remember a couple there and in junior high there was a japanese exchange student she was cool i she was staying with my uh gifted history teacher and her and her husband and they were teaching her and i she told a funny story that like on the last

day the exchange student was there she was like, you helped me learn all this English, but you didn't teach me swears. Come on, teach me swears before I go. We had a German exchange student in our high school. And I feel like she was getting the short end of the stick coming to suburban Minnesota and actually pretty bad high school. Yeah, yeah. Well, in my Florida high school, we had, I think they were Austrian, this pair of Austrian girls who were there for a couple weeks. And I remember we all giggled that they called what we call nightclubs discos when they said like, oh, we all go to the disco. We're like, you're dumb and not from America.

Did you ask them if they know Arnold Schwarzenegger? I'd ask them if they'd seen the uncut version of the Robbie Williams music video where he strips off his skin. They had. Oh, well, there you go. So you got to see his dick. Wow. Only in Austria. The posing on this scene, too, is like, it's kind of boring.

And like, Marge just like, she has really odd posing when she goes, oh, dear. She just looks weird. And then there's also weird front-facing Skinner where his hair, normally a front-facing Skinner, his hair sticks to the going to the left. But in this time, it goes to his right. I think that was the rule in the early days when he was supposed to have a toupee i think that was like it's supposed to look unnatural because it's a clearly a rug on his head which uh i showed you guys the classic simpsons comics number two right before we recorded in which it was confirmed that it was a toupee they were allowed to make that joke in the comics in a 1994 comic they could make the joke that skinner glues a toupee to his head and know everybody everybody thinks it's a toupee and then when it isn't ripped off thanks to all the glue bart has to have been like oh it's not a rug wow i just like that they

got really self-conscious about this joke that they had kind of written in they're like it's actually a really stupid joke let's just kind of forget that ever happened yeah i mean like a goofy movie does that joke like that's the level it's written on. And that's a perfect film, but I mean, it's a boner comedy joke. It's a super lowbrow and a non-creative play. I was gonna say, I just listened to your Goof Troop episode. I thought Goofy Movie was good.

No, we love Goofy Movie. We're pro-Goofy Movie. Have you heard our three-hour Goofy Movie podcast? I have not. Okay, well, it's all there. What I mean to say is that Goofy Movie is written as a kid's, you know, hijinks movie podcast i have not okay well it's all there i i'm what i mean to say is that goofy movie is written as a kids you know hijinks fest it's on that level simpsons doesn't write on that level so having the the gag of the principal losing his toupee just feels a little too easy i mean

one movie is on the level of goofy movie hard to say uh but double indemnity uh so yes parts uh get sold on the france trip uh as they are talking about it too i like that homer gets defensive like wait are we know that you're not we're gonna get scammed by another principal and uh the whole thing won't cost you a dime as long as you're willing to take in a student of your own. Wait a minute, Skinner. How do we know some principal over in France isn't pulling the same scam you are? Well, for one thing, you wouldn't be getting a French boy. You would be getting an Albanian. You mean all white with pink eyes?

No, no, no, no. A student from Albania. It's a country on the Adriatic Sea. Well, going to France sounds like a fantastic opportunity. But I think Bart should have a say in this. The life of a frog. That's the life for me. Bart, how would you like to spend the next three months living in France?

France? Wow! He makes me crazy. Twelve months a year. At least you get the summer off. And I'd get to take a plane there, wouldn't I, Mom? Yes, Bart. Wow. And I'd get to take a plane there, wouldn't I, Mom? Yes, Bart. Wow. And one back?

Mm-hmm. Wow, a plane. Well, Bart seems very enthusiastic about the idea. Yes! Yeah, baby! Oh, way to go, boy! Oh, boy, oh, boy! Loud.

Hey, I was excited about plane travel as a kid. I know, I know. I was a very privileged child. Yeah, Kat, we're learning this with all of your extravagant trips to France. I didn't think I'd ever get on a plane as a kid. I think I rode a plane for the first time when I was like 18. I was on Twitter going, oh, what were we doing 20 years ago? Oh, I was wondering if I should go to France for a band trip

because I didn't want to give up my spring break. And you were like, Jesus Christ, Kat. If the right person wins the presidency, we're taking Kat's money. No, I think I flew a couple times before I was 10 on trips. Not a ton, but my family went on some trips. I was flying from

a very young age. You've got some little rich kids here. I guess, yeah. This is racism towards the middle class. Who's a comrade in this room? I'm wearing my not-me-us shirt. Well, I'm a class traitor. It's true. You turn on the right class.

But, yeah, the interactions between Homer and Skinner are some of the funniest stuff in this episode. Like how they kind of understand each other, but they also are both like, well, I want to get rid of Bart. No, he's your problem. He's your problem. The yes and the high five was awkward yes yeah it's uh i kind of like the movements on it not a skinner thing skinner would uh be too square to ever do a high five i think so yeah uh but yeah the the main crux of the joke is just the very obvious thing i'm like oh homer is faking it the whole time but when they're saying that it's a scam to get out, a lot of the times...

So, again, when my partner went on her exchange trip to France, it was actually kind of a scam. We're taking her money too, kid. Oh, really? Yeah, because it was just an excuse for the guy who was organizing it to take regular trips to France.

Ah, pretty good. Man, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I mean, yeah, i like how homer is so defensive like hey we're just gonna get another bad kid but from france instead though once he hears this albanian homer just kind of gives up i'm like well then whatever that kid is i'll take him in sure i'll have some stranger and uh i don't think me and you bob have learned any more about albania than we knew the last time we know uh john belushi that's the only reason they did the albanian thing yeah uh the belushi the belushes are uh

of albanian ancestry it's appeared in other media right like whenever it gets mentioned it's usually as like well that's kind of a weird funny country it's pretty rare to hear about it it's a it was a mediterranean former communist country that like when the soviet bloc fell they kind of went with it so he's he is a communist spy in this though uh by by 1991 like they wouldn't really be communist anymore though they they still have a pretty communist background i and also um you know back then apparently they it was very restrictive who could leave alia and who could even travel overseas. Yeah, so maybe that's also why they picked it, just because you never hear about Albanian exchange students or Albanians walking around America, perhaps.

I was reading about it, and I saw some pictures of it, and the Albanian Alps look pretty, like, quite pretty. But it was like, here's a picture of an Albanian bunker. There are thousands of these spread throughout and I'm like, why are there so many bunkers?

And I never explained it. They're making more Belushis for the future of comedy. Toga, Toga. Jim, exactly. 2000. 2020. I mean,

I've seen, you know, the stats on, you know, men like Jim and their diets and, you know, heart problems, so we need a new Belushi. We need, we got a Belushi. Where is the third generation of Belushis? Does Jim Belushi have children?

I gotta think so. Should they be trained in the art of comedy? I know he had fictional children in the world according to Jim, but, or sorry, just according to Jim. I'm making up an extra name for that. That was the John Irving novel it was based on. Let me Google this here. Jim Belushi. Three children, including Robert Belushi, an American actor who's best known for his work in Sorority Row, One Small Hitch, and Valentine's Day.

And he was Alan the Buddy on Spike tv's the joe schmoe show and also linus the bartender in the final season of how i met your mother so robert baloosh that is the baloosh of our balooshy future comedy he's he should be leading the way for all all the best uh frat jokes there are so it's definitely a joke though the bard's like the life of a frog that's life for me and he's instantly like the good of france yeah not a great joke i'm just saying that counts as a joke we're just getting to france and that's my least favorite part of this whole episode and uh yes marge when you think back on this how worried marge is she's worried before he goes and is not worried for an entire three months that she never hears from Bart the entire time.

Marge's not looking too great in this episode. You must be having a good time, Bart. Oh, boy. Yeah. I guess it's the same level of naivete that she showed in Call of the Simpsons. Yeah, I guess it's characteristic of her personality. Maggie's been missing for three days. That's fine.

Yeah. Your father's very smart. But yes, Bart is heading off to France, and they show him off at the airport in this next clip. Goodbye, my special little guy. You will write us, won't you? All the time. What do you know about France? I know I'm going and you're not. I'm gonna miss you, son. And listen, while you're seeing all

those great sights, always remember that you're representing your country. I guess what I'm saying is, don't mess up France the way you messed up your room. Okay, Dad. Is one of you going to be on the charter flight? Yes, sir. Come along. Bye-bye. Be good. I was like, charter flight? What? The best part of it is him being thrown onto the plane. It's ridiculous how far he's thrown.

Well, I love the comedy. It's more clear at the end of the episode. But there's a direct Springfield to Paris like once a day at the springfield airport like that you can that it's that busy of an airport that they'd have international flights that often i mean they have flights from all over the country apparently yeah yeah as uh they have a direct new york to springfield flight and also new delhi they have a direct new... Hey, I'm landing here. I also do like there's a little bit where they show that Lisa's jealous. They kind of just completely let that go after that one line.

But Lisa should be jealous. This should be her getting to go on this kind of trip. Bart, through terrible action, gets to take the good student exchange program, at least as far as Lisa knows. And yeah, Homer's like, don't mess france the way you mess up your room then i don't know i feel like i kind of is too clever for homer march should say it instead of just being like i'm a sad mom goodbye i think the scene is kind of useless oh yeah yeah like show bart having fun on the plane do we need to say it's like it's like the driving or parking scene of this show just like we don't need to see them get to the airport and get on the plane just like show bart on the plane yeah they're learning they're learning

taking advantage of what he can on this free international flight or also how scary it could be for a 10 year old to fly by himself to france that that also sounds illegal like that skinner should have someone should have questioned this that bart has no escort to fly to a foreign country by himself. Yeah, it's actually pretty intense for a 10-year-old boy. The tossing of Bart onto the plane feels so cartoony and silly. I wondered if that was a leftover from the Milton Gray one. I can see Wes Archer doing that choice, too. It might be in the script, you know?

Yeah. He's throwing on a piece of luggage, essentially. And then they go to the albanian family and uh they are apparently speaking real albanian there but only in this scene yes yeah i uh no i bet in the um radio scene i think he's speaking i read in the later scene it's not real it's just gibberish but it is real in this one bullshit yeah that sucks that's according to some wikis okay i couldn't find a translation of the uh the dialogue yeah i do like that it is a mirror of the previous scene that so at least through context you can guess what's happening you know you can be like uh i guess they're saying

the things they just said to bard except an albanian and like the soldier looking guy that's by the stairs of the plane looks like a buff moe oh and we see him get the photo of homer later oh yes yeah you're right that looks like a buff mo it's most giant older brother they're both gorilla men mo is more of a malnourished monkey man i want my monkey man yeah the albanian they uh it's george meyer uh credit sam simon on the commentary for insisting they get the real Albanian there. But yes, Bart arrives in France. Oh, hey man, it's me, Bart Simpson. Okay, kid, let's go.

Hey, little baby. But we, birds in a tree, seem to be. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Ooh, la la la. How much longer, sir? This is where we're going, right? Shad to my son. Ah, Maurice.

Dès que le garçon américain arrive, tes jeux d'esclavage sont finis. Okay, so Bart rides through four paintings. I'm not going to list them because they're just very hard to say Oh, I've got them I've got them too I mean, if I said it out loud Would you know what I was talking about? Oh, why are they translating? Of course, it's Dajanay Saylour by Edouard Monet

I've seen that all the time I see it in my dreams Van Gogh and Monet paintings, basically It's, you know, Water Lilies by Claude Monet Rousseau Are they references to paintings in the Louvre? Is that the thing? It's, you know, Water Lilies by Claude Monet. Rousseau. Yeah, Rousseau. Are they references to paintings in the Louvre? Is that the thing?

Well, I mean, they're just famous French Impressionists, I think. Okay. In general, French paintings, yeah. I was just shocked to see nudeness as a kid. That caught my eye as a child. Like, wow, they can do this? I think they got it. It's art, yes.

But just seeing Bart react to a naked woman as a seven-year-old, it was just like, what's happening on my television? I think they got away with it the same way Monty Python got away with it. Yeah, it's classic art. Those are artistic breasts. But I found this episode distressing as a child. I wasn't crying or clutching a pillow. I was like, this makes me feel sick and anxious because it's just like, from here on, it's a bunch of jokes of Bart being abused. Sorry, a bunch of scenes of Bart being abused, but with no jokes. It's like, there's no heightening of the abuse. There's no take, a funny take on child abuse.

It's just like, make me that water. Stop these grapes, pick the grapes. It's just like, and then Bart is sad and then he cries a little bit. Yeah, you're right. There's no silliness to the abuse. There's no extra level to it of, say, cleaning a horse's ass with a statue of a horse's ass with a toothbrush. Or being industrial chimney sleep for a day like Homer.

Yeah, those things are at least silly. These are just how a child would be abused by evil wine owners. The word I'm looking for is harrowing. It is actually weirdly intense. I guess, I mean, from what you said of that tragic story from the French original, I guess they're sticking to the feel of that and the sadness of that. It kind of reminds me of Taken, where kids go into France and get taken advantage of

by unscrupulous locals. Homer should rescue Bart from France. He should give a call to... The thing is, I hate the movie Taken. I mean, it's a great movie, don't get me wrong, but I find that it has kind of a xenophobic attitude. Well, let's just know that every country is full of murderous kidnappers.

Because as soon as she's like, I'm going to go to France, he's like, France, what are you doing going to France alone? What are you doing? Only dads can save us from other countries. Your strong dad can save your Christian virtue from the hordes of the world. No, I mean, that's...

Great action film. Most action films are fascist. So it's something you accept with watching them, you know? Well, also, that song Bart is singing is a uh i looked that one up okay maurice chevalier's louise is the song first sung in 1929 and uh quite precocious this bart's part should not know this song like it i looked at the references on wikipedia of when they would have referenced it at any in other stuff maybe bart watched the i love lucy episode where they

sing it in the mar Maurice Chevalier. Probably the we'd only know him from Looney Tunes caricatures of him, I would bet. I must say this Louise sounds quite fetching. The birds in the trees are whistling for her. I mean, that's pro-bird right there. That's got you, Bob. Well, the birds in the trees are whistling for her i mean that's pro bird right there yeah that's got you well the birds are pro louise uh send pics uh also chateau maison that's house house i like it yeah it's like masoni koku right uh yeah same joke i love masoni koku what a great anime someday on the what a cartoon we'll do that one oh boy and that'll that'll be a great day you

cannot watch it anywhere except uh on youtube for free like it's not available how convenient in the u.s yeah uh but also there's some wild bart drawings in this one i mean they're more on model than they were in the first few episodes but like if you pause it as bart in the sidecar rides up like oh yeah he looks wacky in that like but i mean in a moving shot like that i can see it's a little harder to keep art on uh when they're asked to recreate these paintings on the tv budget oh my god how the detail of the wheat fields uh won the van gogh one like come on that's uh i i definitely feel for all the artists at acom who who had to put that together. And yeah, also they mentioned on the commentary that Ugolyn's nose is the droopiest nose they ever drew in the show on a character. It's just too crazy.

But yes, as Bart is getting acquainted, they, Simpsons, meet the Albanian. You know, in Albania, the unit of currency is called the lek. You gotta be kidding. The lek. And the national flag is a two-headed eagle on a red field. Give me the old stars and stripes. And the main export is furious political thought. Political what? Flight number two, Toronto Spring, is now arriving.

Welcome to your new home. Escape is impossible. My name is Cesar. This is my nephew, Huguelin. You may find life here at the Chateau Horde, but if you shut up and do exactly what we say, the time will pass more quickly. He's right, you know.

Well, okay, sir. A deal, mother? Well, I guess for the next few months yes i will be your mother and this must be lisa and maggie and you must be my new father homer a passionate little albanian isn't he our little albanian udder yeah you know you mentioned udder right before we start recording cat and i for some reason i didn't think of udder once in this episode even though he is the most famous exchange student in in american history i'll say introduced around kid yeah and introduced in a treehouse of horror

episode yeah yeah das is good yes yeah the i i love lisa reading this just innocuous facts about albania to him and homer just in the most like xenophobic way like the lack that's not what makes the lack of less legitimate word than a dollar to explain currency you know and same with the same with the flag and then homer's never had a political thought in his life so the idea of a furious political thought is just nothing like as homer says voting is fruity man they're shoving in jokes whenever they can of like they just pause on a chateau maison sign oh and say escape is impossible and that's from the prisoner right the tv show like i think you'll find escape is impossible that's right uh but it goes so fast it's barely uh you can barely even catch it i i also wonder is it normal in albania to

greet someone by kissing them on the cheeks or is he just supposed to come off as like kind of just generally for it might be a mediterranean thing yeah if i could see that day though also it could just be homer trying or a deal already trying to get homer ready or i think he's buttering up the family yeah but being the most precious little boy So did he know that he was going to the family Of a nuclear technician Like did they think Did he know Get placed there to spy on it

Or was it just a lucky coincidence Skinner is working with the Albanian government He's playing every part of this Here Wow he was the mastermind behind it all All along He was the villain Bart should it all, all along. He was the villain Bart should fight.

I mean, Bart does fight him in the Space Mutants game. He's playing three-dimensional chess, four-dimensional chess. He's not a boss in the game. I looked it up, but he does throw cherry bombs at you. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Well, at the shoe store or the mall, right? It's in like the Krusty Land level. Not the arcade game Krusty Land, but the NES one. That's way way better crusty if you just try to think about the mechanics of the episode it completely falls apart so it's best that you don't well we have to that's what we gotta do people pay us uh well then again talk

about the sadness of bart in this episode like he gets freaking robbed like we just watch him there's not a joke to it i guess the joke is they put a hat on a donkey but they his lucky red hat but it's also just like just uh showing him no respect yeah they're just like oh hey look we're rich i took these are my cameras now and seemingly since his clothes just get more and more tattered as the episode goes on they just steal all his clothes too like and they don't wash them i think it speaks to a fear of going to another country and having all of your stuff taken and being in the middle of nowhere with like no particular way to get home. It's actually fairly scary. Yeah.

And has been a real fear of mine in the past when I've actually traveled. So maybe it's why I found this entire sequence a little more visceral than maybe intended. It's not why I watched The Simpsons, though, even back then when it was still figuring itself out. Like maybe it is a series of seeds of of child abuse who knows where the series could go every episode is just bart is tortured in some other way by some new foreign adults well it seems like they had this idea for the episode was like okay bart goes to france and he's being taken advantage of by these guys but they didn't once they actually wrote the script they didn't really know how what to do with it like, how do we make this funny?

The characters aren't even funny. They're just mean. There's nothing funny about them. I mean, they're funny drawings, but there's no hook to them or gimmick to them or no interesting take on this kind of a criminal. It's just like, no, they're mean criminals who abuse Bart, and that's it. Yeah, I feel like later simpsons would have heightened them considerably and leaned way more into the french stereotype yeah like one of them would have been

a mime or something i don't know yeah yeah something silly well i mean their late their next appearance in the show there are they changed the channel from the super bowl to jerry lewis like that's that's a better joke with them so they had like a two-year sentence apparently according to this timeline uh but uh But they do speak real French. They did put the effort into that. And I think, I don't know if Harry Shearer might speak French. I don't know. I don't.

Maybe Dan does, too. But if they're just doing it phonetically, then they do a good job. They are, yeah. This episode is the beginning of the simpsons's long tradition of hating france yes yeah the the group of people they defined as cheese eating surrender monkeys as a joke yeah that was not the show's perspective it's like this insane character thinks this is about france right yeah yeah it was the the joke was that willie hates the french as a scotsman he hates the french and so by teaching them french

it's really about him expressing his hatred for the french i can i just say that the french were one of the most ferocious and warlike nations for a very long time for hundreds upon hundreds of years and they'll save our ass in world war three uh no that's the brits the brits are gonna do that they almost conquered the world damn it yeah. Yeah, they had a few of those. Well, I will say the Adele stuff, the Adele stuff is actually funny. You know, this episode was a lot of things, but I don't know if boring is the word that I would use to describe it. It just maybe wasn't loaded with jokes. The France stuff just does bore me.

It's not boring, it's sad. Maybe I just didn't want a sad episode. I mean, I just wish there was something clever to it. Just like Bart is abused until he's not boring it's sad maybe i just didn't want to set up i mean i just wish there was something clever to it just like bart is abused until he's not and then he goes home i mean i wouldn't want to watch it again because it's too sad i mean i was not looking forward to doing this one again uh just the watching of it i like talking about it and i like making a super long version thanks for giving this episode to me. Everyone should up their Patreon by $1 because we're suffering. But I do like when Skinner introduces a deal to the school.

He can't not editorialize and just like these backwards. In this way and only this way can we hope to understand our backwards neighbors. There's this weird strain of patriotism through this entire episode where everybody is kind of taking their patriotism up an extra notch while dealing in various circumstances like homer talking to bart and be like you know you got to represent your country and lisa's argument with albanian uter later and all that kind of thing though i think through the lines that Adil gets to say, that they get away with saying some stuff

that you wouldn't normally get to say about America on 1990s television. Weird, just like right before the Desert Storm, Desert Shield stuff. So there would be a surge in patriotism. We would have been ramping up right around that. Yeah, yeah. And all the Bart shirts were getting made.

He's going to pee on Saddam. He's going to pee on Saddam. He's going to pee on Iraq. I do like how Adil also says, I've seen Americans are so trusting. He's guilty from the second you see him. But I also like, no one would describe Americans as a trusting people. Not even in 1990. And so then after that, it's time for Talking Politics at the Dinner Table. How can you defend a country where 5% of the people control 95% of the world?

I'm defending a country where people can think and act and worship any way they want. Cannot. Can too. Cannot. Can too. Please, please, kids, stop fighting. Maybe Lisa's right about America being a land of opportunity, and maybe a deal has a point about the machinery of capitalism

being oiled with the blood of the workers. Your father is right. We should not fight, friends. Well, okay. Well, now that that's settled, I'll just clear the dishes. No, no, Mrs. Simpson. You have been oppressed enough for today. I will clear the dishes. Oh, no, Mrs. Simpson. You have been oppressed enough for today. I will clear the dishes.

Oh, okay. Did you see that? You know, Marge, this is the way I've always wanted it to be. We've become a fully functioning family unit. We've always blamed ourselves. But I guess it's pretty clear which cylinder wasn't firing. Homer. Your paper-thin commitment to your children sends shivers down my spine.

May I be excused? Lisa. No, she's just jealous. She'll get over it. And if she doesn't, we can always exchange her. Homer. Just kidding. May I be excused is almost Lisa's catchphrase.

She's disgusting. I say, yeah, it's close to anything that's about leaving a scene angrily. That's kind of Lisa's catchphrase uh but yes him getting to say on 1990s television the the real fact that then five percent of the people controlled 95 of the well oh i wish it was five now right now it's like five guys it's the one percent of the one percent homer's line about the machinery of capitalism being oiled by the blood of the workers actually got a loud guffaw on me. Because it kind of caught me off guard. I don't know why.

Because it was so matter of fact and a really descriptive and fairly visceral line. I like that Homer is so susceptible that he just likes a deal so much. He instantly is like yeah you know communism has a lot of good points let's just agree to disagree which he is like as american as it gets homer who he's is the ugly american just like two minutes earlier but now he's like communism might have some good points if he gave us a deal it's pretty good which i guess yes this kind of argument was written at a time where the USSR was still a thing. Within like weeks of collapsing.

Berlin Wall had fallen by this time. I mean, yeah, it went down. I mean, Soviet Union collapsed in 91. Yeah, yeah. So the clock is ticking on it. But when they're referencing these communism, Albanian communism versus US-style style democracy it uh it was a more the cold war was still kind of going though it was basically it was over oh no uh berlin wall was 90 right 89 89 damn oh okay i know i know why i know this because um of the super mario brother super show

oh right they had they had on fake gorbachev like the same like day or week the berlin wall fell yeah sorry god i was thinking something else. I apologize. Mario led me in the right direction. I like, too, that Lisa is the one who's left to have to defend. She's like, well, we have freedoms that you don't have. And he's like, no, you don't. But Lisa also said that she really admired the stealth bomber pilot

that bombed all those mosques who was also named lisa that's true is like doing heritage foundation talking points like america has a opportunity and choices so she's basically hillary clinton she's a big hawk she's very hard surprise that was 90 liberalism when she becomes a president she's gonna be drone striking all over the place if lisa was president i'd be having brunch right now uh yeah that lisa does have to just go back to the choice thing i'm just like and i like they even have an answer to that freedom of choice thing in a later joke that i do enjoy but uh also there's the bit of bart like basically training in a martial arts movie with all the water he's carrying behind the uh the french men but it's also not a joke it's just like bart has to carry water and it's heavy and it's hurting his small child body and they don't care and according

to uh the wikipedia i read uh alouette uh the that ugalan is is humming that song is of french canadian origin not french origin and it says that uuglon, a man of his stature, would not be singing that song. It would not be something he remembers. Maybe that's the joke in the scene, that he's singing a children's song. Maybe. Actually, Nina told me that song's about plucking a chicken. Oh, really? Ouch.

That's more cruel. I think it's after you kill it, you pluck the chicken. Oh, I see. Well, I mean, that's how it's got to go i guess but uh damn i hope there's no secret behind ring around the rosie my favorite children's song the the pure innocence of that i hope is never destroyed or puff the magic dragon yeah only only about magical dragons there so i also do like that a deal says to mars like you've been oppressed enough like that's a funny way to put it uh homer seems too clever to make that kind of metaphor

that bart was the misfiring cylinder but lisa has a very realistic reaction of just like you're attacking your own child like i'm out of here this is disgusting i mean homer forgets about maggie most of the time or lisa yeah he pretty much doesn't know one of his daughters exists at any at any time but you know in homer's defense he's had a lot of brain injuries after this episode it's true as they're having dinner then cuts to bart having dinner which is he's eating a single turn up as cesar and ugalin are eating a pile of sausages like multiple sausages for dinner it's a lot uh bart's just treated so awfully here it's just sad like you can't even sleep in a pile of hay uh the floor is good enough for you and also like the if you i mean the cruelty of saying like

if you when you work like a man you can eat like one which is like he did all the work all day. Dark. Yeah. But there's not a joke to it. It's just mean. It's just mean. And you got to feel that for like a third of the episode. And it's just a bummer. To knock the composer once more. Yay.

The very melancholy alueta as Bart is laying down. It's just so on the nose. But I do like that it cuts to Adil going to sleep in Bart's bed. They at least are matching up these stories. They're showing how they mirror each other, how they rhyme. Yeah, it's just intercutting back and forth the entire episode for the most part. So yes, as Bart is being tortured, Adil's plan truly begins. Do you think I could come visit you at the nuclear power plant?

You want to see where I work? Oh yes, very much. None of my biological kids ever wanted to see me at work. Then I can go? Well, I'll have to pull a few strings with the boys in security. But sure, you bet. Excellent. Now, watch me.

You grab the grape between your thumb and forefinger and gently twist it off and wrap it in the bucket. Now you do it. Very good. Now, do it a million times. See these? American donuts. Glazed, powdered, and raspberry filled. Now how's that for freedom of choice?

Dad, do you think I might see your plutonium isolation module? Maybe. Hold on a second. Hey Lenny, does this place have one of those plutonium isolation deals? Yeah, over in sector 12. Sector 12? Third floor, by the candy machines. Oh, that's sector 12 sector 12 third floor by the candy machines oh that's sector 12 come along a deal so we get the first uh true excellent although burn said it before in homer's odyssey like excellent yes though not with steepled fingers yeah and that was uh taken

from the snl and letterman writer although he was on snl for like 30 years uh jim downey yeah and you might recognize him as the quiz master on Billy Madison. The guy's like, we are not, we are all not stupid for having heard you or whatever. Wow. Like he was in some sketches and he did like some bit roles in these movies,

but that's like one of his funniest performances. No, that, uh, I see that meme going around a lot these days. The, uh, we are all stupider for having heard that.

Yeah. I didn't know that was Jim Downey. Wow. That's him. I, I just knew him as a name you see in snl stories or like not not just in the you know gigantic oral history we all know about but also like in uh sarah silverman's book she talks a lot about working with jim downey and how he was the uh the head writer for her in her time there too uh it's funny that on the commentary meyer just fully admits like yeah we he did that and it was funny and so we just had a character do that and then

we decided what if burns did that instead well they write all those funny excellence for him they may as well do it uh honestly i'm shocked how much lenny's in season one carl barely is at all they figured out one guy he could work with and they're like, put him in every scene. I mean, maybe they were just like, was he just in the character pack? And they were like, oh, this guy works, I guess. I think they went from just everyone being in radiation suits

to actually just drawing characters in the plant. So like Lenny was one of the first ones that they drew and they liked and they liked the voice. So I was like, if Homer talks to somebody in the plant in season one, it's going to be Lenny. You can already see Lenny replacing Barney

as the preferred friend to write for. Like Lenny's not a depressing slob like barney is it's a very uh different setup you get for him yeah just more cruelty of like now do it a million times on the zoom out though that vineyard looks honestly too good for chateau maison to have yeah how'd these guys land this they have to kill a hunchback? They definitely... Gerard Depardieu's corpse is on the premises there. Yeah. So perhaps it was a family business and it was created by their parents, but as the kids, they kind of suck.

So they just kind of come up with a scheme where they import American kids and get them to work on their chateau maison for three months at a time while they don't have to do anything. I had forgotten that Oogalan is the nephew, so he's the younger one. Like, Cesar is the older uncle bossing him around. Oh, yeah, that's his nephew, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that situation between Cesar and Ooglon doesn't really play out too much in the episode.

I think there's like one other scene where it feels like Ouglon is deferring to Cesar as his leader, as Mo is the leader of the Three Stooges. So the implication is that this is the first time they're trying this because they say to the donkey, Maurice, you don't have to work anymore. Yes. Yeah. This is definitely the first time they've done it. They love that donkey They're actually That's the one weird thing about them

They're like finally this donkey that we bought to work He won't have to work any longer Member of the family I think so and if this is like a season 6 episode The donkey would be like sitting at the table in a big chair or something Eating with them I have some non-interesting trivia about Adil His full name actually

So his name is Adil Huxha H-O-X-H-A On the commentary Meyer's like this is how his name is spelled I don't know how to say it But his name comes from two different Albanians Let me see So Adil comes from the name

Adil Karkani Who was Prime Minister of Albania From 1981 to 1991. So the current prime minister was named Dil when they were making this episode. And Haksa comes from the Communist Party leader and de facto ruler of Albania from 1945 to 1985. 40 years. Yeah. Yeah, man.

I mean, the heads of state would probably be the only Albanians Americans would have ever heard of. So that feels like if we watched an Albanian cartoon and they make up a character named like George Lincoln or whatever. I'm sure that they were like, Albania, I don't know, John Belushi was from there. We can do a tribute to him. What do we know about Albania? I don't know, get the Encyclopedia Britannica. Yeah, we have like an almanac in the writer's room and basically what lisa says is what they read out of there i think meyer uh said also when lenny appears i think he like breaks his neck to turn

to homer it's really bad uh it doesn't really match up his uh anatomy for that head turn and i also really like that homer when he's showing off what freedom of choice is in america it's like look at all the different types of garbage you can eat. How do you like that? Not one type of donut. Dozens of types of donuts. And even a raspberry filled. Homer likes jelly filled donuts.

That's a big favorite. He does. Although the default Simpsons donut would just be the pink one. Yeah, with sprinkles. Yeah. Well, sometimes though that has, it's like it's lined with jelly, even though it's one with a hole in it. I've seen, well, that's how it was on the, that was the exact same donut design they

had for the virtual Springfield disc. But then when you take it off the disc, there would be like a bite out of it and there'd be jelly coming out of it, which physically doesn't make sense. So mistake there, virtual springfield as they are touring around then we go back to bart in the vineyard and it's not again not a real joke bart just gets like slapped for trying to eat one grape like you know what ouch i think is a better version of all these scenes and i wrote it down just because it struck me for the first time like camp crusty is a better version of this yeah Yeah. Because it's not these two cruel Frenchmen.

It's their school bullies making them, you know, stitch wallets together and making them eat pine cones. Like, it's funnier versions of abuse. You're not thinking, like, Bart and Lisa are being abused. Like, this is serious. You're like, oh, funny jokes about cruelty. Yeah, you're not thinking about how they're starving to death. You're thinking about, like, oh, they're eating imitation gruel.

That's funny, the idea of imitation gruel. That's funny. The idea of imitation gruel. I haven't seen Camp Krusty in ages. Do their clothes progressively fall apart and they look haggard and horrible? They get pretty ragged. Yeah. It's pretty. And also Bart, instead of just being fully hopeless, he goes insane hoping that Krusty

is going to come. And he gets a better comeuppance on the guys too. Though I guess the actual punishment much more comes to say czar and ugalan than mr black yeah he never comes back mr black uh he could have changed his entire identity he could have been on the show for years now it's true uh but yeah the meanwhile they cut back to homer He's showing a deal around and he has no idea how many laws he's breaking by letting him take photographs of all this stuff. I think Albania in the last decade or so has gotten nuclear power. They were allowed to open up a nuclear station.

I read an article from 2016 about how the IAEA had given them approval on their safety and security They're in NATO Okay, so they'd be allowed to have it, yeah I think I just got the joke this time that it's bad for Homer to take off his radiation helmet Oh yeah, that's true I think a modern version of this would just have Homer's skin frying Or just like something funny happened to his face But just like, Homer shouldn't do that We'd see a green skeleton perhaps yeah the class even like in season four

yeah oh for sure no i mean in uh in season four we have like but doctor i didn't add the dye yet oh my god yeah they then cut all the photographs are funny too that how a deal is just trying to get the plans and homer just shoves his face into him so it's just his smiling face in these spy photos and uh then it cuts back to barty stomping grapes old school style and channeling his hatred for france as he stomps the grapes i thought of that stupid meme from like 20 years ago of the lady stomping grapes yes yeah oh god yeah yeah i boy was it i think it was like 10 years 15 years ago. Well, I remember watching it. An early one.

I remember watching it in Florida, and I moved here in 06, so it was definitely a long time ago. I'm glad she survived. Yeah, now I feel bad for that poor lady. She just fell down, and wouldn't we all groan in that way if we smashed our feet? I do that when I stub my toe. I like Bart's uh i hate france i almost made that the uh the opening clip from that but this this would be too mean to the french cesare nougalon and maurice are all sleeping under the tree in the background oh yeah yeah that feels like a reference of some kind to that visual but yeah the joke i guess mainly the joke is they make him do all this stuff and

they're not they they don't do anything the camera pans down into the bed for a homer and marge bed conversation scene the uh the ceiling seems to be 15 feet high they do have vaulted ceilings now and uh a visual gag i didn't get till this time is that Adele's photo is right above Homer and Marge. Like Homer's added it to their wall with the kids. And that's when Homer just can't stop talking about his new favorite son. Cheese! Cheese! Oh, wait a minute. Stupid grapes. Bunch of creeps. I hate France.

You sure have taken a shine to little Adil. Well, he sure makes life a lot easier around here, you have to admit that. Well, okay, I will. If you admit you love Bart. Okay, okay, I love Bart. Well? What? Well? Adil's a very sweet boy. Darn tootin'. It's pretty cruel he has to be, like, pushed into saying he loves his son.

Yeah. This is Homer we're talking about. Yeah. But this is season one Homer. It shouldn't be that hard. He's more of a human. You've always said Homer's always kind of been a jerk. Yeah, yeah.

He's been jerk ass in different ways. He's in his honeymoon period with this young spy. Yeah, that's true. He loves this kid in a fatherly way. I mean, it would be just like the monkey, the helper monkey. Oh, yeah. If you were allowed to keep a deal for a long time, he would break a deal, too. He'd eventually, you know, that's an episode.

A deal turned to the twisted gluttony of America eventually. And he goes rogue from Albania. All those donuts. Once he tastes one, he's like, America is great. This is capitalism? Sign me up. Out of all the weird characters they bring back, including the two Frenchmen in this, Deal's never come back.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, Uter covers a lot of those jokes you can do with him and also i mean they do much better stuff of like this with old peppy and uh brother from the same planet that is true also trust mcneil voices him yeah in a cuter way but also in a similar like foreign weird looking kid way i mean adil's hair to me it always reminds me of like a muppet like uh like i guess scooter specifically yeah sort of like rests on his top of his head yeah yeah it grows out from the center this is when it's revealed that adil isn't just a sweet boy he's secretly a spy transmitting nuclear secrets

to the communist country of albania get another famous gibsting yes god no so heavy uh and the beard line on an albanian official mo's brother it's like yeah it's all wrong like especially the beard line goes above his nose it's weird it's real weird this character would never return uh though watching these secret transmissions in another language too it reminds me of stranger things season three right i haven't seen stranger things season three i haven't seen stranger things season one well there's a plot line season one is the best one that's what i've heard uh season three is pretty good and i watched three episodes of season two and then my husband and i decided it's time to watch a uh explainer on what happened in the rest of season two because it was getting kind of boring actually it kind of reminded me of the americans oh for sure yes yeah so in the next scene uh bart gets

a letter from marge and uh it's a real sad one honestly this is more bummer i hate it it's just uh i poor bart i know he gets out of this i've seen like 50 times but when is bart getting free it's like the scene where lisa gets the letter in the military academy. Yeah. Or in Lisa's letter home from Camp Krusty in that episode. But at least the Lisa said message from home. It's an act break. And you're like, okay, time to watch some Domino's pizzas commercials or whatever is coming after this. Dear Bart, how is France?

I don't know why you haven't written. I guess you're just having too much fun. Oh, yeah, right. Silence! Everyone here in the United States is fine. We think Maggie may say her first word any day now. Lisa got an A in math, which I'm only mentioning as news I'm not putting you down

And your father Well Last night he went to sleep talking About how much he loves you Remember to dress warm And try to be as helpful as you can To your adopted parents All my love, Mom

That's not good i don't like it when you're just like oh uh i i did like the line where marge says i'm just bringing that up as news not to bring you down like that that was nice i like that yeah marge should really be like contacting skinner about how she hasn't heard from Bart in months. And that's kind of dangerous and scary. And there's a scene like this in Camp Krusty where Marge sends a letter from home, but it turns out the bullies are reading it. It's like, tell your mom her cookies suck. Yeah.

Much better scene. Yeah. They found a way to make all this abuse funny. And Marge is wrong. Maggie wouldn't say her first word for another three and a half years. And they wouldn't even hear it. And then once again in the movie. Yes, yeah.

Though it was a first for them in the movie. And it wasn't like even in continuity. No, no. I mean, yeah. But by the time we get to the movie, what even is continuity? You're not wrong, though. If I sent my kid to a foreign country and I did not have the internet or any way to contact them and i hadn't heard from them in ages i would be losing my mind yeah like worry that something had happened to them and i mean i know this is 1990 and there's fewer options so in 1990 you could have gotten a phone card and you could have called home yeah but those are very expensive not the the small budget

of the simpson family they couldn't afford that. I mean, that was like literally the first thing I did when I was in Japan was I immediately found a way to call home because on a pay phone, actually, using a phone card

because it was just like, well, I should tell my parents that I'm safe, you know? Man, now you can just like Skype for free,

basically. Skype was a game changer. That was amazing. Is it ad for Skype now? Actually, I never use Skype. We don't use Skype for this podcast. We're all here in person, but when there's a remote guest, never Skype.

But yeah, that's an interesting point, though. It's made the world a lot smaller. Because when this show was made, France really did feel so far away compared to now. Where I go over to France and I'm just checking my phone and reading my email and seeing all the headlines from the U.S. and maybe talking to people on WhatsApp or even literally texting them. Whereas people go over to another country and just disappear for a year. It made it easier to abandon people and change your- And commit crimes.

A lot of different identity thefts could happen in that way. I mean, that would have been interesting if Bart went over in 2020 and they were trying to perpetrate the same scheme. Like, hi, mom. Yeah, they got me working in the winery. At least they could have had jokes. You know, here's another place for jokes. Them doing silly things to trick Marge into thinking Bart is fine. Like one of them impersonating bart on a phone

call or forging letters home oh yeah it's like hey man yeah there's there's those are jokes they could have put in but they they just didn't want cesar ugalan to even be like kind of funny yeah uh so yes they love that donkey though bart depressingly collapses on a pale bile of hay uh then we get to the next scene, which is inspired by a 1985 crime, is it not? Yes, apparently several Austrian wineries were illegally adulterating their wines using the active agent of antifreeze to make it taste more full-bodied. So that actually happened in the 80s. It was a scandal.

The diethylene glycol wine scandal scandal which i feel bad for the french in this that if if you're uncultured americans like us you think like oh the french did it it's like no it was austrians austrians did this and i think like there's some of the humor is coming to the fact that like uh they've only been aging the wine for three days but they're being very impatient like no we need to sell the wine now so add the ant antifreeze, too. Add lots of antifreeze. I think that's part of the joke, but it's just too subtle. You have to know about, like, you have to be thinking about how long wine should age, not like

you're really thinking about, like, poor Bart. Someone stop these men, not like, that's not long enough to age your wine. Wine takes longer to make. Yeah, they're gonna blind them. Well, and I think the people who pour, who put the diethylene glycol in stuff, they didn't pour antifreeze from a jug into a wine bottle either. They didn't go to the store and buy antifreeze, as far as I know.

Bart should die instantly, or at least he should be in incredible intestinal pain. He should be drunk. He should be stumbling to the antifreeze store. Yeah, he does that weird animation where he's like, and he throws it right down his throat and burps yeah like he drank like three glasses of wine in that giant it's not like a sip no he just throws it down his throat and his child metabolism and body that he just be plastered i i also like how they instantly tells like see he's not blind see like which i think the danger is not that you instantly go blind from drinking antifreeze. It's that it'll happen over time.

Like, it's not. But I guess that's a joke about Cesar's carelessness. He's just like, ah, look, he's fine. They're very much in a hurry. I've been talking this entire time about, like, how the winery isn't very funny and how they've just been abusing Bart and all that stuff. And I keep thinking back to the shorts, which had a very different energy from the rest of the series in that it was very low key, like very low key energy and also often very dark in its like particular brand of humor.

Like I think about Homer scaring everybody about World War III, for example, or Marge singing the lullaby to maggie basically going you're gonna die right and it's it's that kind of humor in here right where we don't even really recognize it as humor they're just going really dark here just to show how unfair life is to a child yeah or i guess like the gimmick of like what if a cartoon could be this mean and cruel in 1990 but yeah i mean that was kind of a thing, right? I mean, you were talking about the main point of comparison for The Simpsons in 1990 was The Huxtables.

It was a Cosby show. So this would have seemed really like, wow, I can't believe what I am watching right now. This is so far removed from everything else on TV. This is so far removed from freaking Full House. Yeah. I think, I mean, no Full House. Yeah. You know? I think, I mean, no Full House episode

would send a character to France, I don't think. They go to Disneyland. Yeah. Well, because France isn't paying for that trip to France.

So if you put it in the context of the times, this would have really set Fox apart and made it seem really edgy. Yeah. I mean,

they're about to roll into Married with, sorry, not Married with Children, In Living Color. Yeah. Well, actually roll into Married with Children in Living Color. Yeah, well, actually it is. Married with Children, then in Living Color. Oh, man.

Quite a ribald night. Fuck. But you're starting it with this lengthy parody of a French film and book series most Americans have never heard of. So on other channels, you're watching the Zany Hijinks, so the Tanner family.

And here you see young Bart being poisoned with antifreeze in a French winery. I mean, it does make me feel really bad to watch Bart be literally poisoned. Like, that's pretty horrible. And even Ugalan is just like, oh, this is too far. Like, you're going to kill people. Like, that puts him in the subordinate role there. I was like, no, this is too far. You're going to kill people. That puts him in the subordinate role there. I was like, no, I won't. But then they're doing the eye check

and they're like, it seems fine to me. And apparently the antifreeze works or the active agent of it works as a sweetener to wine that I think makes it taste fancier or aged in a different way. It's a good trick, I think. Well, somebody who had her worst bottle of wine

ever in Austria can say, I totally believe that Austrian wineries did that. I'm not the biggest wine fan. I'm a rosé basic bitch. Kat showing off her metropolitan nature. It's like, don't go to Austria and drink their wine, people. I mean, come on. Oh, I've canceled my plans right now.

I was a wine drink people. I mean, come on. Oh, I've canceled my plans right now. I was a wine drinker when I went to Austria and Germany and I was a beer drinker when I went to France and Italy. Yeah, that does sound backwards. Yeah. What is a French beer? A French beer is very light,

like it's a blonde. Okay. I'm talking my language. I think they're basically the equivalent of Budweiser's 1664, which is, it's not great. So yeah, just don't get beer in France. I'll steer clear of that.

Though in Lyon, good beer in Lyon. But yes, Bart drinks some antifreeze. Drink again, tifu. Ahem. What are you doing? Get out of here! Sorry. On second thought, Bart.

Bart? Come here. Regarde, c'est pareil, que ça va même pas le rendre aveugle. Drink this. Oh, I know, thanks. Do not worry. This is France.

It is customary for children to take a little wine now and then. Yeah, but it's got antifreeze in there. Drink it! I wonder if they did like the fun of getting away with showing a child drink alcohol on TV. Maybe, yeah. It is slightly edgy. I mean, it's like edgy and transgressive TV for 1990.

And then after poisoning Bart, they then sent him on a bike barefoot into town in the rain like it's just again quite cruel but their final cruelty goes so far and that is their mistake like they trusted their hostage to leave and come back i guess if you break them they'll come back yeah yeah well also they probably don't they think he doesn't speak french they were just speaking french in front of him, and he didn't follow it. That's true, yeah. So they probably were expecting him not to know it. But yes, Bart heads into town.

That's where he meets a fancy French cop who looks like. A 19th century cop. I know. Like Jean Valjean or something. Oh, no, Javert is the cop. Jean Valjean is the expert. Oh, my bad. I've been exposed as

a fraud uh javert i am the same as you i i love les mis so so much but i was thinking of like when i saw the cops in matilda books as a kid like that's it well that's what they look like to me well he's like in a 19th century kind of village it looks like yeah yeah, yeah. It's with a lotisserie, la lotisserie. But yes, Bart meets a cop and he learns a little something about himself. You're a policeman, aren't you? Excusez-moi, je ne

parle pas anglais. But you gotta help me. These two guys I'm staying with, they work me day and night. They don't feed me. They make me sleep on them. Tiens, petit garçon. Voilà un bonbon. I don't want a piece of candy. I need your help. Come on, mister.

Can you help me? Je suis désolé. J'aimerais vraiment pouvoir vous aider. Oh, forget it. I'm so stupid. Anybody could have learned this dumb language by now. Here I've listened to nothing but French for the past two months. And I don't know a word.

Hey! But I don't speak French, do I? Incredible! So, yes, Bart realizes he speaks French. And a skill he would completely lose after this episode. But he's fluent in it. Did we get a new voice actor in this episode playing that cop? It's not like Dan or Harry or Hank.

But I do think that's an original actor, like not a guest actor to speak fluent Parisian French, I think. Well, I don't know the dialect. Please, French speakers, tell me what dialect is is french is but i what i do know is that um the twitter user metomic matt amic like atomic uh they did a collection of clips of simpsons being localized into multiple different languages and that twitter user set a user clipped out a separate scene of Bart in this, but it's for the Quebecois French localization of it. And Bart is speaking Quebecois French to the officer who's still speaking French, and they still aren't able to talk to one another. And Bart even apparently says the line like, I thought they spoke French.

I thought they spoke French in France. And so it was just a funny way that they localized it into a joke that they didn't make in the original version. And everybody should look that up. That's M-A-T-T-O-M-I-C on Twitter. Search that in Quebecois and you'll probably find it. Or that in French. You'll find the clip.

Yeah, also the officer pulls off a piece of taffy, I guess that was. He seems very old-timey in that way, too, with his ancient candy. The schiss bonbon. And yes, Bart instantly learns French, explains everything to the cop he's like oh my god what like he's he i think there is a joke that bart names all the things they did and the last thing he says is and they gave my hat to a donkey and that's also this is the second time bart loses that lucky red cap like he lost it in call the simpsons that's right he's more famous for losing it than wearing it and like the joke here is the cop only really cares when he hears the wine has been uh you know oh yeah he said it's a joke yeah he's like

the wine oh no that's super low-key energy yeah that's true he did i i think he does go like oh there's a law against that like it's seeming to imply that like oh they abuse children all the time but why snore tell me something i haven't heard he's from 19th century france apparently they didn't have child labor laws then no i mean they work bart in a normal way for probably how a child was worked on in a vineyard back then yeah when it comes to bart being able to suddenly speak france french i know people like that and i hate them because i'm so jealous break out french and they're like oh yeah they go to a country and they come back and they go you have to speak for portuguese now and you're like what huh how i memorize facts about tv shows that's where that's uh i don't need verbs in other languages uh but yes as uh bart is saved

but meanwhile homer comes home with a bunch of plans uh he even says nuclear i think it's his first nuclear in the show though man talk there's some bad not some great layouts in the show or just very basic ones the way homer enters the room with honey i'm home like it's just it's it's very simple also honey i honey, I'm home. Oh, yeah. Not very funny. I mean, I think maybe it's Taco Bart's froggy I'm home. Yeah, I guess so. As the first line of the episode. Or it's a joke that Homer is being a typical sitcom dad, and it's like a comment on that.

And also, the ceilings are very high on that scene, too. Like another wacky background. But as Homer comes home, he sees that Flanders is getting swatted. Oh, God. Honey, I'm home. Oh, Homer? What's that?

Oh, just some blueprints Adil wanted. I'm telling you, he's such a curious little dickens. I bet he could build a nuclear power plant if he wanted to. All right, Sparrow, we know you're in there. We'll give you one minute to surrender. Oh, my. Ooh, trouble in the neighborhood. Let's check it out.

I'm his neighbor. What'd he do? Well, sir, we've been on the trail of a spy transmitting highly confidential information to an unfriendly nation. Ooh. Through the use of radio triangulation, we tracked him to exactly this point. Wow. That's all I can tell you. Aw.

All right, well, the name of his country starts with the letter A. Mmm. Time's up, Sparrow. We're coming in after you. Oh, gee whiz. A deal would get a kick out of seeing this. A deal? Sparrow.

Better pull it, Idrid. God, like I'm thinking of the jokes they could have made with Flanders getting his house swatted. Yeah. We hear a window breaking, but there's no like, oh, how's it going, boys? Or something funny like that. I don't know. What can I do you for? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Like him being maced or hit with a beanbag gun or something. I guess they didn't really know Flanders yet. They didn't. He was just the guy who owned a bunch of stuff and was very good natured about it invited him to the rumpus room and given them some beer yeah oh well he hasn't built the rumpus room yet he built the rumpus room and invited homer over the first time later in the series so oh i'm sorry but if i forgot i'm on talking simpsons i may be highly pedantic here we're big big on Ruffus Room history. But no, the SWAT officers with Flander.

Yeah, there's more comedy there. There's at least some jokes of the FBI agent just telling Homer everything or like 90% of the facts. He's like, oh, like Homer's kind of sad. He can't tell. Oh, all right. I'll tell you. It starts with an A. Okay.

But also in like weird animation choice, behind the fbi agents are all drawn to look the same which feels very cartoony very g-men like yeah like the 40s but also like there's a cop just eating donuts behind them like very it's just drawing your focus in a in a silly drawing kind of way that doesn't really back up though i could see the script said homer's next door neighbor's house uh is being broken into but they didn't say flanders because they're just like well whoever his neighbor is it's just about it being his neighbor but then on the animation side they're like oh we already have set up who his neighbor is let's draw flanders's house uh i i could see it being that situation yeah i think in the script it was like homer's just excited to see carnage

happen to any neighbor it wasn't just like oh good they're gonna get flanders this is great like what did flanders do you know what have they made up another neighbor that we we would have known about i guess well no we know he's surrounded by the winchels and the flanders but uh yeah that fbi guy never came back either and that i like meyer on the commentary he dumps on the episode even too he's just like there's no reason for a deal to drop that mic and draw attention to him. But he just does. You just drop that at a very inopportune moment. And then they found him.

That's bad luck on his part. Yeah. But yeah, it is, you know, talking more about the poetry of this episode. All the cops show up at the end of that story. And then it cuts to the cops showing up to chateau maison at the same time so at least they're they're mirroring each other in interesting ways cesar and galan are arrested they they curse instead of those meddling kids they curse the student exchange program and uh they would not come back very often they would just be like background weirdos i like i

wrote down some of the appearances they appear in last exit the springfield as robbers when burn shuts down the power plant and like you know robberies start happening oh i missed that yeah i mean i'm sure they're just in the background with a bunch of like uh snake type characters and then they appear as in a minor role both of them in season 27 to courier with love okay listen up aljean you can't make a two sir with love reference in the 2010s you got to cut it out no more west side story no more um what was the the last short the parody of it was west side story no i mean the last short before onward what was the name of that oh uh play date with destiny yeah date with destiny let's let's cut it out let's move our references forward a bit but they played uh characters in that in that episode okay all. They were using season one episode characters in 27 season episodes? Yeah.

And that was the first time they returned in almost 25 years. More than 25 years, actually. I'm just imagining they must have been really jarring because of those designs. They're like French comic characters. I should have looked it up on Disney Plus because I don't know what they look like. I have to assume they weren't redesigned because Cesar's weird whiskers. No other character has those side whiskers. They look like characters from Tintin or something.

Yeah, maybe that's what they were going for. This entire, all the France scenes look like they're from Tintin. And Bart becomes briefly famous in France. He seems to get the Legion of Honor, even. And does the family know what happened to Bart? No. Seemingly not. It's weird.

They don't. They just seem to treat it as he's coming back at the appointed time. And he had a great time. Look, he's got baguettes. They make no reference to it. I guess that makes it feel very weak, too, that they like oh and bart returns and nobody cares there'd be a lot there's a lot to cover here if he's going to talk to them about this yeah and they got to speed up to the end when you see skinner getting arrested uh but yes bart uh seems to get the legion of

honor which many americans have received that honor including uh cleve eastwood josephine baker alexander graham bell miles davis and bob dylan to just name a few but not bob denver well i didn't skim that far i think maybe i i bet he didn't but uh i maybe they love gilligan over there he's right up there with uh jerry lewis yeah he's a an oaf a classic bumbling oaf then we get a very brief uh handoff of a deal to uh trade for an american spy who he just looks like he's a cool kid from like the the spy kid show of 1990 and i swear like most of the dialogue of the family was done after the fact and it's just so weirdly paced like he meets me there's so many silences here that uh or clear adr that then when you read it as adr they're like oh this

was just a very sterile scene of silent hugs and they they realize no homer's off screen and we can't see bart's mouth so let's add that in there but uh first, let's say goodbye to Adeel in this clip. So he's going to prison? No. We've arranged an exchange for one of our own men caught in Albania. So, Sparrow, we meet again. Yes. Sometimes I think I am getting too old for this game.

Okay, kids, let's hurry it up. Goodbye, Simpsons. Thank you for your hospitality. I hope this experience will not sour you on the student exchange program bye have a nice trip goodbye Adil I'll send you those civil defense plans you wanted

Air France flight Dix-Neuf-Saul Cap-D'Avant-Rivre, Paris to Springfield is now arriving another Paris to Springfield direct flight that's funny as somebody who likes Cold War spy thrillers is now arriving another paris to springfield direct flight that's funny but as a somebody who likes cold war spy thrillers i found the whole sometimes i think we're getting too old for this between the two kids pretty funny yeah i did like that and it does point out both countries are just

as bad yeah so it echoes the argument that was had earlier like oh yeah we were sending spies over there so we did it too yeah yeah i uh know, that kind of scene reminds me of that recent movie, Atomic Blonde, that's really good about the same kind of trading spy craft and everything. If you'd like to see a fun, violent, and sexy spy movie, that's a really good one. Wasn't there that movie, Red Sparrow or something like that? Yeah, yeah. Those species, but with a spy boy i yes i'm drawing a blank i think you're right on that and that i'm drawing a blank but um but oh yeah i mean atomic wand also if you love if you love the john wick movies it's very similar in

like you know an older badass like with realistic violence kind of thing char Was that Charlize Theron? Charlize Theron, yes, yeah. Charlize Theron. Well, that's high praise because John Wick's hard to top. And it's also quite bisexual as well. Ooh la la. But yes, as the family and the series says goodbye to a deal never to be seen again,

Bart returns home and we get a cute little ending here. Look, Mom, there he is. Oh, Bart. Hey, where's the big guy? He means me. Hey, boy. Hey, Homer.

He brought us gifts. His first unselfish act. So basically, I met one nice French person. Bart, I have something to say that's going to bother me if I don't say it. It's good to see you. Same here. I'd love a glass of that wine Bart brought us. Sorry, Marge.

Some wise guy stuck a cork in a bottle. Oh, my bear. He'll be full. You hear that, Marge? My boy speaks French. God, that music when Bart is... No, not that music. That music's also bad. But the music when Bart is reunited with the family

sounds like he just got a piece of the Triforce. It fell from the sky and he grabbed it. It's like this triumphant fanfare. Like, Gib, you gotta cut down on the coffee, buddy. We know. We get the point of these emotional scenes. Faget is a Triforce. Yeah. He's paid for every note. I want that bass.

Bum, bum, bum, bum. And I hate that, too. Listen, we're gonna move past Gib very soon. Alf Clausen is a gift to us all, but I'm glad that they were like, Gib, hit the road. We got an Alf guy coming on. Remember Alf? It is really bombastic in a way that's distracting in a very low-key show. It's true, yeah

That last bit, it's good enough to like But even then he has to have like After that Just have like, boom, it's over And Homer clearly is about a place in life Where he's never had a wine that doesn't have a screw-off cap I guess that's the joke Or maybe he's just never seen a bottle of wine before

So he thinks it's supposed to screw off I think that's the joke that's the joke or maybe just never seen i had a bottle of wine before so i think it's supposed to screw off i think that's the joke yeah that's the joke uh yeah uh emin homer is uh i i like he's wearing a t-shirt it's weird to see homer wearing a t-shirt with that kind of design but uh uh and you also like his first unselfish act the same that and where's the big guy that's's all ADR. He meets me. I think originally that just played fully silently, which isn't funny. I think so. They added in the lines. They should have added jokes to those lines to every scene in France.

It's hard to bring anything out of the turn up that is those French scenes. I guess so. There's very little meat in these French men. But the bags of stuff that Bart brings bart brings one they look like the same props that were used in the life on the fast lane when marge gives lisa and bart their bags or at least like grocery bags of items yeah but but also they all look like stuff bought at the last second at the airport as part was leaving for sure yeah the the Paris airport. But as for other references in there, Maggie's hanging off of a red balloon

as a reference to that film. Marge seems to be wearing a fancy Chanel dress or something as accidentally foreshadowing a future Marge episode. And fittingly, the most left wing of the group has the guillotine.

That was a good visual game. Those are very popular these days. The French showed us. The French. I made it that far with saying the French without doing my beloved parody. It's a cutesy ending, but boy, I think this is my least favorite season one episode.

I really do. I think so. And some massive loser by the name of david bowder in 1997 he wrote a list for tv guide uh what are the best episodes of television ever uh 1997 and there are these are not this is not a proper listicle where it's just like headline here's a description of the episode and why it's funny and just like uh twin peaks mod golden girls and they're just like episode episode episode episode one with mary tyler moore at the top uh yes chuckles the clown like uh chuckle says goodbye sorry chuckles bites the dust is always like uh in that era that was like that was a gold standard yeah that was the tetris of uh old video of old old show. Yeah. And I think in,

in 10 years, it'd be like Seinfeld, the contest. We'd be far enough away from that. Like we, no one has seen Mary Tyler Moore in like 20 years. I know it's good, but that's no longer the gold standard.

But he said that this was the best episode of the Simpsons ever in 1997. And I want to know like what's going on with this guy. It was in June of 97. So season eight was over. The quote unquote golden years, I don't believe in that, but the quote unquote golden years of the show were over. And he still thinks, maybe did he just stop watching in season one? I think it was just The Simpsons was the most popular.

And he was like, well, I got to have an episode of The Simpsons. I'll pick this one from season one. Yeah, this one is crazy. Twilight Zone, best episode to serve, man. Oh, come on. No way. It's all bad, and you know what? So, I mean, this guy's... This is classic listicle stuff, though. It's just getting us angry. They're getting you.

Yeah, they got us. They got you. And guess what? He is on Twitter now. I won't tell you his name. Oh, no. I won't tell you his name on there, but you can just find it for yourself, but I have more followers of Who Won? I want to yell at him for his listicle in 1997. No, don't do that. Yes. I but uh you can just find it for yourself but i have more followers so who won i want to yell at him for his listicle in 19 no no don't do that yes i mean you can politely ask him say hey look i just read this tv guide article like why did you think this i'd like to know it's

like it was 23 years ago but i bet he was paid more than any of us have ever been paid oh my god i bet he made two thousand dollars for that for that wasn't, like, it's probably like fourth, like, writing for TV Guide in 97, an article, a feature, that's crazy. Okay, now we're going to ask him, how much did you make from that article? He could have paid his entire rent. But he seems like a nice man, and he says, his profile says, television writer for the Associated Press, he's still doing it, married with daughter Sophie and son Ben, long-suffering Mets and Syracuse fan.

He's not including terrible opinions about the simpsons well i also saw on the wikipedia like a different list had said this was the best episode of season one i was like how dare you how dare you i didn't hate this episode that much but it's not the best episode of season one or the show's first eight years what is the best episode of season one i think crusty gets busted yeah oh okay yeah it's the best well but that's the most traditional one i think uh no way no i mean it's the one that's the closest to the voice that you start to see in simpsons that's the best yeah whereas craped wrath is kind of this interesting historical curiosity and it has a lot of really dark jokes and kind of bone dry humor and i guess i was watching it with this kind of mindset of like well it's season one simpsons it's gonna be definitely different

from what i'm expecting and like i came out going that was interesting you know it had its moments here's the thing there are episodes of the simpsons that are really boring and i've talked about some of them on this episode like we were mentioning the one where lisa goes to military school that's a pretty boring episode i wouldn't necessarily call this episode boring it's not it's not boring it's just a bummer yeah i guess more more sad i'd suppose yeah i think the people were making the point that this was an animated show that had suddenly this grand sweep like bart's going to france like he's having this crazy adventures well not adventures so much but this crazy escape from these guys are running a winery in france and it is there's this cold war spy thriller and people are going i've never

seen anything like this in a cartoon show are you kidding me no i it it is boundary pushing in that way and it is the first simpsons goes to a place. I'm just confused. I'm reading more of this list now, and there's another Simpsons on here, a 66. The episode he calls Gabbo is Fabbo. What? What the hell? Was he given incorrect information? I'm really confused now.

He means Krusty gets canceled, so that is further down the list from Gabbo is Fabbo. All right, now you, by permission, go at him. No, I'm kidding. Satire. It's a joke. It's'm kidding satire it's a joke joke joke be nice to this guy but okay like i this isn't like a horrible episode but it's just it was flat in a lot of ways and it also felt like uh i think it showed them they can't do just bart adventures as much as they thought they could when they started this season too i think they need a little more fun. But also, you know, I think when it was her pie, it just had way too many cooks in the kitchen. You had two different directors, four credited writers,

lots of ADR. Like I think they'd even say they didn't know what they wanted this to be really. Like I said, you can really feel the difference in just the intro, which is much more kind of traditional season one Simpsons. It's obvious that they're like, how do we even start this thing?

How do we get Bart to France? What's going on here? We got to have an excuse. And then they wrote this, this scene that really does actually kind of drag. I mean, you said it was like three minutes where.

Two and a half minutes. Yeah. That's a long time by Simpsons standards. So get him to France for heaven's sake. Such a long circular argument. Like, I think he should go to France for heaven's sake. Such a long circular argument. Like, I think he should go to France.

I don't know about that. I'm a fifth-ass boy. And there's a frog. Yeah. Yes, yeah. But I guess that we've said enough about this. Yeah, sorry. Vinny.

I think we were a bring down, and I apologize for that. But this episode made one boy happy, a little boy named David Bowder. It touched his heart Even more than Gabbo's Fabbo And we like it Kat, you're our special guest Please let us know where we can find you And what you do and how we can support you

Hold on, I need to get in one more reference About how I'm rich and stuff Oh wait, so I apologize for making fun of your privilege, Kat You are a patron, so you are paying it forward You learned the lessons that you should have learned in life. I appreciate it. But you should up your Patreon because, frankly, you travel to Europe too much. I do.

And we know what you're worth. So 15 bucks from you, Kat. I'm expecting it. Well, if I can do the $50 level, does that mean I can choose the episodes? Let's just give Kat an extra slot. Yeah, you know, let's talk about this off mic. Does that mean I can finally do Tailspin with you guys? Ooh, we're making deals. All right. There you mean I can finally do Tailspin with you guys? Ooh, we're making deals.

All right. There you go. I'll do Tailspin. Sure. Yeah. Anyway, I'm the editor-in-chief over at US Gamer making the big bucks. And I also have a podcast called Acts of the Blood God. It's our RPG podcast that I host with Nadia Oxford.

And we're best buds with Retronauts. So if you're a big fan of Retronauts, you should come over and listen to us. We're doing a series called the Console RPG Quest. The last one we did was the PlayStation 2, which, oh my God, what an episode. I mean, just the RPG library of the PS2 alone was well more than an hour of podcasting time, and we could have gotten a lot longer than that, honestly.

We just had to keep the episode under control. We should cover Wild Arms 4. It's a hidden gem. Oh, man, I mean, we should have. Why was it a hidden gem bob it's uh it was overlooked it's a it's an rpg where the uh there are traditional battles but the actual levels are like platforming it's interesting very interesting dragon quest 8 where that land on there oh man we were talking about that one for quite a bit but i don't know. If I think back to the best PS2 RPG, I think I probably have to say it's Persona 4. I probably would agree with you.

Boy, PS2 was such a long lifespan. The thing that was interesting about that console, and I promise I won't go on too long, but the thing that was interesting about that console, as we were talking about, was the Super Nintendo had the absolute peak, but the ps2 had kind of the breadth and the depth of the rpg true yeah so so yeah look for that on axe of the

blood god yeah and follow me on twitter at the underscore catbot so yes please support cat check out her stuff but as for our stuff if you want to support us and get all of our episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and if you sign up at the five dollar level you'll get just that, but also access to all of our episodes behind the $5 paywall, over 100 at this point. That includes all of our miniseries,

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And we have so many other miniseries available for you, Like let's say Talking Futurama or Talking to the Hill. If you enjoy King of the Hill and Futurama, we have entire miniseries devoted to the earlier seasons of that show. And we have one more miniseries happening in 2020 in the fall. So we have two total miniseries to treat you to if you are a $5 patron. But Henry can tell everybody out there what's happening at the $10 level. One extra long podcast every month for patrons that's voted on by patrons that is correct every month on our what a cartoon movie podcast ten dollar and up patrons get to hear us talk about a different animated feature film sometimes for over four hours we most recently did spongebob squarepants the movie where we talked about the originally

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you listen to podcasts henry how about you hey you can follow me henry gilbert on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm sure to tweet all the updates about my life there and you'll stay in the loop and you should be following on twitter the official Twitter account of this podcast, at TalkSimpsonsPod. Anytime new podcasts go out for this or our sister show, What a Cartoon, you'll learn about it there on at TalkSimpsonsPod. Please follow it today. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We will see you next week for our favorite episode of Season 1,

Krusty Gets Busted. And we'll see you then. We're worse, suckers!