Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Critic Pilot with Will Menaker

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

This week, we're taking a bit of a diversion to talk about the two-season also-ran created by former Simpsons showrunners, Al Jean and Mike Reiss. How did a live-action Krusty the Clown spin-off turn into a prime-time cartoon that mashed Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert together into one adorably pathetic, pug-ugly movie reviewer? Listen in as we explore the short-lived show that added "Hachi Machi!" to our vocabularies! Our guest: Will Menaker from Chapo Trap House Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking Futurama, talk king of the hill, the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I hardly endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's neither a pod nor a cast. I'm one of your hosts, the Kingdork Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today as always... Henry Gilbert, still mourning patches. And who was our special guest on the line? It's me, Will Menicker. And I stink.

And this week we're talking about the Critics' first episode, simply titled, Pilot. Hello? Jay, this is your mother. Your father and I are taking you out of our will. We feel you already have enough money. Oh, yes, and happy birthday. This episode originally aired on January 26, 1994, and as always Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real-world history. We interrupt Hee-Haw, the next generation, for a special news report. the next generation for a special news report. Hatchi-matchi, Bobby.

Actor Joseph Quinn is born. Los Angeles is recovering from the Northridge earthquake, and the top three films at the box office, for context, is Mrs. Doubtfire Philadelphia and Grumpy old men because it's such a movie show I was like okay just to let you know where we're at in American cinema at this point that's the top three and I think they're all leftovers from 93. Is Charles Napier also in Philadelphia? I know he's like a stock Jonathan Demme character but Duke Phillips the voice actor who portrays Duke is Charles Napier who I believe is in Philadelphia or if not he's certainly in Sounds of the Lambs and Something Wild. Oh man I

need to look this up I don't recall him in Philadelphia but it's been a while yeah I just saw Something Wild he's in it for about 10 seconds as a fry cook he's just one of those Jonathan Demme guys I love that he's Jonathan Demme guy he's one of the best parts of this movie I don't think Philadelphia got a parody on the critic. Mrs. Doubtfire definitely had, they did the joke where Schwarzenegger is starring in a version of it. And also Jay's dad appears as a Mrs. Doubtfire style figure. Oh that's right, they do that joke twice.

I'm surprised the writers of the critic, like Mike Reuss, didn't have the guts to parody Philadelphia, the movie about someone dying of AIDS. They'd have to wait for Family Guy for that. There is an actual funny Family Guy movie parody where Peter Griffin is like, Tom Hanks, he's hilarious. And then you cut to the screen, it's Tom Hanks saying, I have AIDS. And then Peter Griffin laughs a lot at that.

Early early Family Guy joke. The Northridge earthquake, that is a big one for anybody who lived in Los Angeles. We had our friend Scott Gardner we asked about it and it was like a terrifying memory for him in his childhood and it upset the production of pretty much everything in LA for a while there including the Simpsons at this time and now it's been a while. I think that's been the biggest earthquake in our lifetimes in Los Angeles. They've had other problems lately What's old is new again? I was like, okay

What actor was like born or died when this aired and the biggest one I could find was Joseph Quinn which you've seen the Stranger Things TV show he's the like long-haired Hescher dude who runs the D&D campaign in the most recent season or he was like The weirder brother in Gladiator 2, but he looks like Tim Robinson in an outfit to me. I think he's good, but he looks like Tim Robinson is doing a part in an I think you should leave sketch. Notable people who died in 1994, the early part of the year, Kurt Cobain

and Jeffrey Dahmer, RIP. 1994 is a pretty crazy year. This episode kind of hints at the Michael Jackson joke in this one makes me go Like boy, OJ is coming really soon. It's always Tonya Harding. All of these things are coming. They're not ready But yes joining us once again is Wil Meneker from Chapo Trap House. Welcome back to the show Wil great to be here Bob and Henry We couldn't think of a better guest for this one Not just the head of movie mindsets and the movement

of movie mindset, but also, you know, New Yorker number one for life. Perfect fit for the critic. I mean, I've been for many ways. This is a TV show that is really about Will Menneker representation because, you know, I'm also the I'm also sort of a despised and unattractive movie lover who is also a child of adoption who grew up in Manhattan so there we go wow it's me and Jay Sherman all the way wonder how much like if you identify now with Jay Sherman more or less than any of the Simpsons family well shit I mean like after rewatching this pilot episode

and like just all the great Manhattan landmarks in it. Yeah, I would say I'm definitely more well represented by the critic than the Simpsons, which is about regular normal America. The only real difference is Jay Sherman is a very young man of 36 and we're all ancient 40 year olds. I've already passed. He is the oldest 36 ever depicted on television. Thankfully, I'm not bald. That's the only thing I got going for me right now.

It is really interesting they give all these specifics in this first episode like instead of being like vague things like you have in some Simpsons characters ages you get like age, pant size, his annual income. You learn all this about Jay in the first episode. You know for me as a kid seeing all the New York stuff in this or in like the Marvel comic books I read this made me like dream of visiting Manhattan someday, which didn't happen until 2011, was the first time I ever got to go. I mean, I gotta say, the details that they capture

are actually like, the scene that takes place in Union Square, all those buildings are accurate. I really respect the fidelity to New York City that the animators and writers of The Critic endeavored to accomplish. And Will, what is your history with The Critic? Well, I was just saying, I'm as glad you guys asked me to come on the show,

because I loved The Critic when it was on TV, but I hadn't watched it in a long time. I swear, I remember watching this pilot episode when it first aired on TV, as you just informed me, 31 years ago, which is terrifying to imagine. But it's just one of those things where I remember very specifically watching with my dad and we both really liked it. And I was trying to remember, I remember the vague details of the plot, but the two moments

that I remembered that still 30 years later stick out in my mind when I've tried to recall it was the musical number Beauty and King Dork and the joke about how he bought his car from King Dorkenheim of Finland. And then I remember I definitely remember feeling like distinctly heartbroken for Jay Sherman at the end of this episode when the actress leaves on her flight. You watched it in first airing I wondered because you know a lot of people if you weren't watching it when it first debuted like it didn't get a ton of reruns until Comedy Central played it all of the time. So I wondered if you were a big like Comedy Central viewer of it, too Oh, yeah, absolutely

I mean, I think that's probably like most of the episodes of the critic I've seen I watched on Comedy Central almost certainly Yeah, I was definitely day one I was you know in love with the Simpsons you hear about this show from the creators of the Simpsons kind of comes the critic I taped it day one I watched it with my mom and stepdad I remember my mom really laughing at Jay singing take your genitalia right back to Australia That's the distinct memory in my head and I thought this is gonna be as big as the Simpsons And then it was a matter of me trying to follow the show for the next two years as it was buried by two networks

Yeah, I watched it on day one, too Though I think I missed some episodes in the first run. I always caught it in the second season because it was very easy to just keep to the same channel as The Simpsons was on. It was an interesting time for me. I wasn't enough, like I was 11, like I think we were basically Marty's age,

his son Marty vaguely in this, but I didn't know who made The Simpsons other than Matt Groening then, and I found in an old trailer or commercial they did back then, it was being promoted as from the people who made The Simpsons. So I think I was able to make a small connection to know like, oh this isn't just Fish Police or Capitol Critters, like this is a real prime-time cartoon. And you have the Gracie Films logo at the end. It really lets you know.

And you know, and I'm bringing in one of my favorite Simpsons guest voices, John Lovitz. I was just thinking as well of the Streetcar Named Marge is one of my favorite Simpsons episodes. I'm sure you guys have done ample, ample documentation of this. But something about John Lovitz saying, hooray for Hanukkah is just something that's always

stuck out of my head as well. Play enjoyed by all. So, love seeing John Lovitz get some burn in his own Simpsons-like cartoon show. Most of his jobs in the last decade have just been being made fun of on Saturday night library union specials. They just did it on the 50th anniversary.

They were like, hey everyone, look at this piece of shit, John Lovitz in the audience. I ate him. Fennor Macdonald famously was just like never let up on John Lovitz. This was peak John Lovitz to the point where he didn't want to star in a TV show because he thought he was too big. He was a recurring you know actor on the League of their own TV show I believe right before this so he was dabbling in TV but we're we've reached peak love-its with the critic. So he was like David Caruso after that Simpsons guest spot.

He was like, I'm too big for television. I need to be in... He just started my own films, like High School High. Also an interesting sign for films, and I mentioned that the movie mindset thing, Will, but what do you think of... This is like the early to mid-90s is is really of films and I think you get some of the 80s gets made fun of here too. But this era of American movies, how do you look back on them? Oh, with great fondness and affection because you know, like the strange way memory amplifies

things, you know, like the movies you see when you're like 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, usually like, I don't know, like they form the biggest impression in your mind. So like when I think of this era of movies, I think of like Terminator 2. I think of like those movies that blew me away when I saw them. And then we get the Schwarzenegger parody and this one. And I gotta say, that's a movie I would want to see. A movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger has to be go undercover as an acidic Jew. I think that would be a fantastic movie. But we get the Alien 3 parody right away. But this to me, like the early 90s, like a golden age for film, in my opinion, because it's like those are the movies that you love when you're a kid. And they last like that affection

lasts longer, lasts the longest and strongest. Yeah, when I first got Netflix in the early aughts, I made it a goal to see all the movies I hadn't seen yet that were parodied on the critic because something about them being on the feature on the critic made me think you know these are important movies these are movies I should see oh yeah This really graduated from the Simpsons for me were like as a kid I watched you know it's a madman man man world or the godfather or dr. Strangelove all of those were things I watched to get Simpsons jokes first and then came to enjoy them as their own thing and this like Levels that up like that's that's part of the story to of the making of it

but Jean and Reese were in charge of seasons 3 and 4 of Simpsons where they're watching TV and movie parodies constantly and Part of the appeal was we have a show where a critic just Watches movies and TV all of the time and they can just always parody these things. And Al Jean and Mike Reese, parody is their specialty. That's what they thrive on. That's what they did for the Harvard Lampoon. I believe their first job in Hollywood was working in a trailer on the set of Airplane 2, just punching up jokes and being hated by everyone. Yeah. You know, also with this time of movies, Will, you mentioned how age and nostalgia taints things. I mean, now a B movie from like 1993 means a lot more to me than a major film now. And I mean, yes, it is because I'm old and these things matter more.

But it's also because they are objectively better. Well, it's like when I watch a movie like Hard Target, I watched the 4K that recently. And when I was a kid, like I was like, oh, I guess that's good. But Jabu is so much better than this. Like that's my snobby opinion then. Now I'm like, nobody makes anything like this now. Oh my god. I felt the same way when I went back to watch UHF and 4K.

I was always kind of lukewarm on the movie, but then I watched it again. I thought, this is gorgeous. This $3 million studio comedy from 1989 is beautiful and like UHF is very much in the same vein as the critic because it was like a movie about watching movies and a movie like where like half of the jokes were references to movies and TV shows that they were parodying this is the start of 1994 like Jurassic Park was just the year before and CGI is gonna take over all the special effects and movies.

And I mean, this is the year of, you know, pulp fiction versus Forrest Gump at the best picture. But that's also like where Miramax and those films really kind of take over the Oscars and what an Oscar film is. So this is like a shifting moment in Hollywood, even at this point. And most importantly, the film critic is still important. People could name at least five of them and Siskel and Ebert ruled them all. I don't think any person off the street would know a critic now.

Thirty years ago, they could at least name Siskel and Ebert. Now, you ask them and they could never tell you. They would even ask you, are movie reviews still a thing? I think would be their question. We got a cameo from Gene Shallot in the pilot episode here, which is great. And I love the joke where Duke says, you're supposed to rate movies on a scale from good to excellent. And he says, what if I hate the movie? And he goes, that's what good is for. Well you guys have made a lot of hay on Chappell Trap House, making fun of the remaining institutions that still review

movies. It feels like the mainstream media, if they even employ a film critic anymore, they're probably in their like 70s now and then just kind of in a legacy position. I used to read the Leonard Maltin Guide to Movies, like really like thin paper, like thousands of pages. I remember just reading like the little paragraph review, like all of Leonard Maltin's thousands and thousands of ratings. I remember just reading the little paragraph review, like all of Leonard Malton's thousands and thousands of ratings from the scale of Turkey to five stars, or four stars, I believe was his highest rating.

This is before Letterboxx, where like criticism now has become so democratized as to be essentially meaningless. Film critic, that was a cultural institution that one could occupy and like be on TV. And I think the shermometer is way better than Rotten Tomatoes and the Tomatoes score. It has more dignity, I think. Oh yeah. It's a real interesting cultural artifact that can't really be rebooted for many reasons.

And they talk, too, about how they tried to make it different from The Simpsons, all these things. They view as mistakes, but yeah, I think people really didn't give it its chance until the Comedy Central reruns. And we should mention a reason we're doing this on our Simpsons podcast right now is because in sequence, this is when it debuted after the season five episode we just covered on Talking Simpsons. Which this is like the first real Simpsonsoff, and there's reasons for that, but I, you know, it technically is like, it's many of the producers and creators left Simpsons to make this.

In fact, we put together a whole history of the making of The Critic, let's hear it now. And now it's time to talk about the history of The Critic, and by the way, we have placed Will Minnicker across the room in a soundproof booth, he's just sitting patiently while we talk about the history of at least the first season of this show. And it's great to revisit this because when Henry and I first recorded an episode about the first episode of The Critic, it was almost eight years ago to this day, and we were still working our day job. So we did not have time to do as in-depth of research as we can do today. So it's a great chance to revisit this. And also a lot of new information has come out

in the near decade since we last talked about the pilot of The Critic. Yeah, it's so funny that when we covered it in 2017, a year later is when Mike Reese puts out his memoir, Springfield Confidential, that has an entire chapter on the making of The Critic, where he gets a little more specific than the things he would say on the, all we had to really go on back then were just DVD

commentaries and a handful of interviews and plus since then we ourselves have interviewed Mike Reese and John Vede and Laura McMullen and Susie Deed are asking them all about their time on the critic as well. Not to mention some other things I'll reference here we used Brian Van Hooker who has some many great Simpsons history pieces that the writer has done on Cracked, did an oral history on the series in 2023 that I definitely went to for this one too. And the now locked account of that guy, 3002, also had some very useful information too. And I guess when we first covered this, the critic was only 23 years old and now it's

31. Which was shocking to our guest as well. And this episode aired perfectly between Home of the Vigilante and Bar Kids Famous. So a perfect time to do it right now. All right. So in the history I pulled together here, let's have a little bit of stage setting in the Simpsons history, just so you know that it was December of 1992 when David Merkin is officially announced as taking over as showrunner. Al Jean and Mike

Reese, unlike a lot of other people though, did not leave The Simpsons when their time was up and they weren't showrunners anymore. Unlike a lot of other people, they stayed on at Gracie Films. And another important thing to keep track of in this is that James L. Brooks and Gracie Films had a whole lot of production deals. Gracie Films was started in the wake of Terms of Endearment being a gigantic hit for Brooks. Brooks was already a very successful TV producer. He had made the Mary Tyler Moore show. He had made Taxi. The year that Taxi is canceled, he makes his first film and it is the second highest grossing film of 1983,

only behind Return of the Jedi, and basically wins every Oscar. Like, there is no way for him to make a bigger hit in 1983 than Terms of Endearment. Yeah, I still need to take the leap and watch that film. I know it's like the seminal James L. Brooks movie that informs so much of his work, but it just seems like a weepy to me, and I'm not always in the mood for a weepy. The reason people make fun of movies or the parody, a critic-esque parody of Oscar bait movies usually were like a beautiful actress gets cancer

and has to suffer through it in the film. Like it's because of terms of endearment, it popularizes stuff. It is a great movie and a lot of people credit the quality of that film also to the work of the film's producer and writer on it, Polly Platt. I say it all the time, but listen to the, you must remember this season that basically is reading her unpublished memoir. But so Polly Platt and Brooks work

together so well that they decide that he with her at the core of it are going to start their own production company where not just Brooks will make his movies in the future, but he wants the future Jim Brooks is to have their chance to make films. And he had the idea for a show that would change television. It was called SIBS. Four letters, one season. Gracie is a very interesting, they have a very interesting record. This was in the, you must remember this podcast, but there is a before and after polyplot leaves Gracie films level of quality, I would say. Hmm.

And in the pre plat times, so Brooks signs a huge deal for Gracie films to make their first films for five years at 20th century Fox. They're given a bunch of money and investment. Brooks is going to make his next film there, which will be 1987's broadcast news, which is because he loves the story of people who make the news or the people who make TV. That's what Mary Tyler Moore is about. I have to remind myself.

It's a show about TV. So it's not like he only did this later in his career. Yeah, it's like the newsroom, but what if it was good? And funny instead of- Funny too, yeah. This is another one that I never watched because it wasn't on Nick at Night, but Lou Grant was like the more serious

spin-off of Mary Tyler Moore that's like newspapers instead of news TV. Right, yeah, that was never made available to me. So like I only know it through references on Mystery Science Theater, basically. And so he makes this big deal with Fox. He makes broadcast news, which also does very well, though not as well as Terms of Endearment, but it gets nominated for a bunch of stuff. Also at Fox, they're starting up a new TV show, a new TV network, and they want a show, so he sells the Tracy Ullman show, which will have ugly cartoons on it. Okay, so he's doing all this stuff, but he loves the behind the camera things. Then they also put out at Gracie Big, Say Anything, and War of the Roses, all that do really well. And this leads us to December 1989, before the first episode of The Simpsons Roasting

on an Open Fire airs, Brooks signs a $30 million production deal with ABC. And ABC says they want to work with Brooks and whatever he wants. As Mike Reese says in his memoir the deal is that ABC must order 22 episodes of whatever is brought to them. Wow, wow, so I guess not to skip ahead but it seems like four sitcoms came out of this deal ultimately. Yeah and I was shocked in my research on this one to see that like that the archived newspaper from the I think it was variety if not variety Hollywood Reporter, talking about this deal,

this deal was signed before The Simpsons came out. Like this was on the power of just the Brooks name. This wasn't even them trying to sign him for new TV deals off of the power of Bartmania. So it was his grand return to television, in other words. Yeah, maybe ABC was jealous that they let him get the Tracy Ullman show, which was doing pretty, it was doing good, not great Ullman show which was doing pretty it was doing good Not great like the Simpsons would but it was doing good

So ABC was looking to get into business with James L. Brooks maybe too This was on the following the success of Twin Peaks and they're like, oh, you know We should get in the more prestige e oscar e realm on ABC with James L. Brooks So he signed to that deal then Then he signs an even bigger deal five months later. This is in a really good book on an era of Hollywood I did not really know that well called Hit and Run is the book written by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters is about what happened when Sony bought Columbia TriStar and put in charge like a couple of crazy guys and who spent a lot of Sony's money.

Yeah, I guess that's why the critic DVDs are a Columbia thing. Yes. Yeah. Columbia. So basically these two producers, one of them being John Peters, like insane a-hole John Peters, who is famous for he wanted a giant spider to fight Superman. That's how nerds like us know.

Formerly a hairdresser turned into a producer, right? Yes. And one time romantic partner of Barbra Streisand as well. So John Peters wanted to sign big names Sony Columbia wasn't known as an a picture studio and with Sony bankrolling it he convinces them to Get James L. Brooks and Gracie on an overall deal at Sony He outbids Fox. Basically, Barry Diller, you would think, would not want to lose Brooks at Fox,

but it was a ludicrous amount that he was offered that Barry Diller was like, I don't want to match this just because it would give everybody else a raise. Hmm, okay. It apparently included, on top of just very favorable money towards Brooks and Gracie, $100 million for funding for their films, lots of creative freedom, and important to James L. Brooks

apparently was getting to use Sony's private jets to fly around. Hey, pretty nice. Yeah, I guess I never realized that all of the James L. Brooks TV shows for ABC were Columbia Pictures productions or Columbia TriStar too. Yeah, they were all in the Columbia Sony family. Also, this is why I think you mentioned it a little in your podcast with Nina, that this Sony buying Columbia TriStar was seen as a huge, like Japan is buying everything,

we're scared moment in the US media. Oh yeah, absolutely, because it was a late 80s deal, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. Then in 1990, that's when the checkbook is open to try to build up the new studio. And so Brooks is there and part of it was they overpaid for Brooks to try to show other directors like, Hey, we got James L. Brooks, we're important here.

So he must actually have liked working at Sony. People thought, Oh, this will like blow up in five years and Sony won't even be around anymore. Brooks stayed at Sony until 2011, and only because they didn't renew his contract after How Do You Know, bombs. He was really disappointed in the PlayStation 3. That's why he left. So then the first effort under Columbia at ABC was SIBS, completely forgotten, but it did get 22 episodes.

They had to make them. Yeah, it's crazy. We are threatening everyone out there with a SIBS episode Let us know if you want us to torture you with SIBS. I know I'm sure it is a very Cromulant sitcom. I'm sure it's inoffensive and I'm sure it might even be funny But it stars Alex Rocco and Dan Caslanetta in this sitcom developed by Sam Simon And also there's a lot of Simpsons writers like Frank Mueller, Jake Hogan and Wally Walodarski

Neil Scovell writes an episode too. So it has a lot of Simpsons DNA in it. I'm just curious, like, is any part of this good? I watched almost every sitcom as a kid. I didn't think I watched this one. I'm sure it was something else might have been on in the same time slot, so I didn't sib it up. John Veeley and David Emstern too were on it also.

That's right, yeah. The reason David Emstern wrote some Simpsons is probably because sibs failed. Yeah, yeah, and maybe that's why Frank Mueller, maybe Frank Mueller left the Simpsons to do Sibs, who knows, but again, we are threatening everybody out there, let us know, are you at least curious about Sibs? There are only so many Sam Simon sitcoms

that star Dan Castellaneta and Alex Rocco. I've watched about 15 minutes of Sibs and it is very much like co-created with a Cheers alum, Heidi Perlman, yes, the sister of Rhea Perlman, co-creator of the Tracy Allman show. It is the type of James L. Brooks, like women of varying ages having big monologues about their lives. Like it feels like a Brooks style thing, but it didn't fit in on a channel known

for a Roseanne, Coach and the debuting Home Improvement that same year. SIBS got killed by Home home improvement among other shows. When we actually looked into the creation of Sibs for Talking Simpsons, I think we discovered it launched the same night as home improvement. That's true. So nobody ever thinks about Sibs. And how dare you?

Home improvement is the greatest enemy of Gracie Films at this time. I'm not surprised there's some pointed jokes about Tim Allen in Simpsons andie films at this time. Like I'm not surprised there's some pointed jokes about Tim Allen in Simpsons and the Critic at this time. So, Sibs doesn't work. They do try repackaging it with a second pilot in 1992 doesn't work. But Brooks is pretty busy with his own even bigger mistake.

I'll do anything, which is, we talked about that before in the Yellow Album one, but then this takes us to 92 as guess what happens to Sibs? It is taken off the schedule in early February We talked about that before in the yellow album one, but then this takes us to 92, as guess what happens to SIBS? It is taken off the schedule in early February after being deemed not good enough ratings, and the rest of the episodes are burned off right before the summer, not during the summer.

Yeah, and there are no DVDs, so there's no rescue SIBS campaign. Save our SIBS. I'm appreciative of any person who uploaded their VHS tapings of sibs to YouTube that allowed me to even watch a minute of sibs. So 1992, I believe it's early 92, Gene and Reese are working on season four. They're wrapping up their time on season four of Simpsons and that is when Matt Groening approaches them to develop a spinoff for Krusty the Clown. And I'll go with what Reese said

in his book. We developed the concept. Imagine Krusty as a single dad in New York with a crabby makeup lady and a crazy Ted Turner like boss. Matt turned it down deciding he'd rather do a live-action Krusty reality show in which Dan Casolinetta would go around having adventures like working on a tuna boat or delivering a baby. I want to develop a machine that will send me to this universe. I desperately need to see this show. Everything I hear about it, everything we hear about the one episode they wrote, it just sounds like, can you have at least made the pilot? Can you have at least made that available online? Nothing was

actually filmed of course, but God just imagining him in that role. Do you think they at least did a, we would have heard about it, but like a makeup test of Dan Castellaneta as Krusty. They might have tried it. I really feel like I didn't get beyond the one script that they wrote, but yeah. I don't want to jump to the end here, but you can, I'm not sure if you can read the script, you can read about like what happens in it, at least.

Yeah, but this is where the seeds of the critic come in at least, the Gene and Reese do like, it sounds like they were not very happy to like, thanklessly, maybe they were paid extra for this, I don't know, but to put all this work into developing a crusty spinoff and then it sounds like other stories we've heard where Matt Groening can be a bit of a mercurial artist type who bounces from idea to idea and though James L. Brooks is guilty of that too. And yeah, we've heard from talking to various writers of The Simpsons from this era that the 90s were rife with potential Simpsons spin-offs

that were never made, which I guess is why maybe Oakley and Weinstein did the spin-off showcase because they were trying to get Simpsons stories off the ground, which was going to be a spin-off show about other characters and their adventures. I remember Bill or Josh talking about that as one of their potential ideas. But nothing happened. That would have ideas, but nothing happens. Yeah

Yeah, Bob you directed me. I totally forgot about it that guy 3002. He's still on other social media platforms But this was a thread on Twitter. He had apparently had access to a Draft of the pilot script for that live-action reality show version is right Mike Reese called it that Groening wrote with writer Michael Whitehorn and in the plot, Krusty accidentally kills somebody in Springfield, then runs off to Los Angeles, then does a talk show where he accidentally kills the talk show host and instead of being arrested, he is given the talk show and it's now his show. It just, it really sounds like it would have been in the same league as Get a Life,

as you know, what am I even looking at? I bet they would air maybe eight of the 13 episodes and that would be it. And that guy pinpointed that this was really of its time and they were writing it the same year the Larry Sanders Show debuts, which was the behind the scenes show of a late night talk show.

Though also they point to the reason it not getting picked up was the debacle that was the summer of 1992 show Circus? Yes, which nobody remembers, but it was a show created by Kevin Curran, who would later write for the Simpsons, and he was a married with children writer, the first voice of Buck Bundy. And the funny thing about Circus is it's this nothing show that no one remembers, but some of the most talented Simpsons writers came out of it. It feels like Dave Merkin inherited them. So people like Greg Daniels, Jace Richetail,

Jonathan Collier, there might be one more. They jumped from circus to Simpsons, but I believe it was also Greg Daniels' first time on a sitcom. Yes, yeah, Kevin Curran hired all those folks for it, and there's a hilarious story I then read that the late Kevin Curran talked about of him saying it was because he blew up and made fun of an executive who mistook or called Judd Hirsch, Judd Nelson or thought that Judd Hirsch, if someone was talking

about Judd Hirsch, they were talking about Judd Nelson who are very different people and he screamed them that's Judd Hirsch or to the effect and I got his show killed but so with that negativity also I learned that apparently circus he current said it was partially inspired by when he wrote for Letterman in the 80s and they had a character called Flunky the clown who was played by Jeff Martin yes yes I guess there was gonna be a crusty style character on the show so with that kind of negativity about clowns going around at Fox they didn't want to make it and at some point in the production, they're like, well, what if we made it a cartoon?

And so it starts, it goes naturally back to a cartoon. And in that guy, 3002's opinion, it was that there was some difference on budget or profit sharing or the like in between Fox and Gracie on that, which would explain why it did not move forward. Also, by then it was like 93, I would guess, and Bartmany is cooling down. Yeah, we're not putting on the T-shirts quite as much anymore.

We're getting ready to put on our circus shirts. The kids who bought Underachiever and Proud of It shirts, they're going to middle school, and they'll be made fun of if they wear those now. So that though, the Krusty Pilot sitting in the Gene and Reese backlog and this is where it picks up in 1993, Mike Reese says that James L. Brooks came to them to develop a new show about a makeup artist. Quote, in 1993 Jim came to us with an idea for a live action show about a makeup woman for the

Today Show. Honestly, we didn't love it. It didn't sound like our kind of idea, but we kicked it around and tried to make it work. There could be a fat weatherman on the show and there could be a movie critic like Gene Shallot. That got us excited. We were having fun with the idea of doing something with a film critic on a daily show. We fleshed it out with all of the rejected crusty ideas. Single dad in New York, crabby makeup lady, Ted Turner boss. Comedy like composting involves smart recycling. So it all starts with kind of a Larry Sanders style show. I also think having just watched broadcast news, I think this was in James L. Brooks's mind that one of the characters kind of ends at a today's show style programming and

so I'm wondering if he's just following like, oh, you know, what if I continued with that, not that it was gonna be a spinoff of that character, but you know, what if I visited that type of area? And also, I don't think it's a coincidence that James L. Brooks' idea is like, what if it's about a woman? And then Gene Reese are like,

what if it's not about a woman? Yeah, we have problems thinking of names for female characters in our script sometimes. So this is still at Fox, and Fox is like, we're not doing clowns anymore. Think of something else. So they're still at Fox with this idea, right? Well, Krusty is still at Fox, but now this is becoming a pitch for ABC. Like, ABC is the intended... I think my belief here is that Gracie gets to stay at... Simpsons will always be a Gracie production on Fox, but ABC, at least for this chunk of time,

this five year window or so, they have first right of refusal of a Gracie films idea. So, you know, Gene and Reese, they're under an overall deal at Gracie, they get handed this idea and they're working on this pilot. And while working on the project and their final episodes of The Simpsons, this is where Gene Reese meet with Brooks and he says like what do you think of John Lovitz because I just saw a League of Their Own

and he's great. Yeah that was his breakout role. It wasn't the brave little toaster. It was League of Their Own. I think it helped too that it was I think James L Brooks mostly if he's watching a new movie, even back then, it's because a friend directed it. So that's Penny Marshall, her next film after big. So gives that a watch and yeah, they loved working with love. It's on his three episodes of the Simpsons. So of course they are like, let's do some more with this guy.

But again, this idea of a script that they are working on, it's live action. They're still thinking live action the whole time. And it seems like based on the commentaries and interviews, John Lovitz was going into this in very, very late stages thinking it would still be a live action show. Yes, yeah, it sounded like he, I mean, I've seen some recent interviews where it still seems like he doesn't know

what animation production is or how it works. Yeah, no, John Lovitz, who we talked a lot about before, but he was, you know, I just watched a great documentary on the 11th season of SNL, the bad year where he was like the only thing people liked on it was his liar character. This was the, you know, Robert Downey Jr. season of the series. And so he was the breakout star and he was now starring in movies. And so, you know, now seen quotes of both sides of the story, but basically they presented to Levitz and they wrote the script to his voice. This is what Gene

says, wrote it to his voice. But they did the mistake of writing for him before he agreed to do it, which they felt really screwed him. As they said when they met with him weeks later, that they offered it to him as a live action show and that as sitcoms are very long days, like if you're the star of a sitcom, you can't do movies. And that year he's doing City Slickers 2, Trapped in Paradise and North. He's a very busy actor.

There's a great story on the critic commentary where Billy Crystal is one of the guests on the critic, I believe in season two, maybe season one, I forget what season it is, but ultimately they're on the set of City Slickers 2 and Billy Crystal agrees to it, but as the recording goes on, he is not aware of how much they want him to record and he kind of wants it to stop and they almost lose him. He's his agent in the LAJ episode in season one, yeah, yeah. And they only got him as a favor from Lovitz, who's just like, hey, but because basically to cut ahead,

when they're recording a lot of season one, he's on the set of the City Slickers 2, and so they have to be there and record with him. I don't have time for your TV show, no one will remember. I'm making City Slickers 2. We're looking for Curly's gold, we're going to find it. It won't be friendship. They didn't need to release the movie, the only thing that people remember is The Legend of Curly's Gold as a bad title.

We finally had a better sequel title than Electric Boogaloo. You always like, well what was Curly's Gold? So yes, as Reese recalled, his response was, I can't do a TV show, I'm a movie star, said in the most love its way possible was his direction. Give it five years, John. And this is someone who saw High School High opening weekend. Apparently it was Brooks who suggested,

what if we got Martin Short, he'd be good. And so there's another universe where the critic is a failed live action sitcom starring Martin Short instead, as maybe he wears a Jiminy Glick-style fat suit even to play Jade Sherman. Well hey, Martin Short did an entire season of an Ed Grimley cartoon, so he had done voice acting. Though I think they were still trying to make it

a live-action one when they suggest Martin Short for it. And so this is when Gene and Reese were like, no, we really wrote this for Lovitz, we think it should be correct for him. And then they say that they suggested then, what if it was animated? And apparently this was Reese's memory. Lovitz is one reason he didn't want to do it was he feared that if it became big, he'd end up like Alan Reed, the original Fred Flintstone. And it's all people wouldn't think about him

when they see him acting in movies. And maybe he was kind of right, because isn't this the first thing you think of when you see John Lovitz or think of him? I mean, we host the Simpsons podcast, so obviously, but I feel like if you are over the age of 35, someone says Lovitz, you think of Jay Sherman. The only other thing you think of would be him having cameos in Adam Sandler movies

that were very generously handed to him by his friend Adam Sandler movies that were very generously handed to him by his friend Adam Sandler. The Critic will be right back you TV addicted couch monkeys. Critics love The Critic and you will too. I'll be reviewing Home Alone 5. Aaaaaah! People calls it slyly amusing. That's me on the set of Dances with Wolves. I played throws like a girl. New York Magazine says The Critic is very funny.

His butt sticks out like an air conditioner. And TV Guide calls it fresh and sharp. I do believe his nose is bigger than my foot. Look. He's The Critic, the first new animated show from the people who brought you the simpsons premiering next we're building a special wednesday with home improvement at 8, 7 central, the premiere of the critic and an all-new home improvement first, home improvement in a special time

then, from the people who brought you the simpsons, the critic i'll be reviewing home alone five we left kevin home alone and he's only 23. Ah! And an all new home improvement. Lucky that I brought an extra set of clothes.

What do you call these? One size fits all. Home Improvement, the premiere of the critic and an all new Home Improvement. Wednesday starting at eight seven central. ["Home Improvement Theme"] Hachi bachi listeners, that's right, it's Henry Gilbert saying hello to the break here. And a huge thank you to our guest this week, Choppo Trap House's own Will Menaker, who helped us re-explore the critic in a whole new context with a ton of new history. We are super thankful to Will for sharing his movie mindset and New Yorker status with us

for this classic episode of The Critic, the first spinoff of sorts of The Simpsons. If you don't know Chappo Trap House, come on already, but you should definitely know that Will hosts their great side series that's only on their Patreon of Chappo Trap House where he hosts with HESA Movie Mindset talking about a bunch of awesome movies. So please check all that out and a huge thank you again to Will for his time for this week's episode. And if you're enjoying us talking about The Critic and The Simpsons and all the other stuff we do, you should know it's only possible because of supporters of Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, who for five bucks a month get ad free podcasts.

No ads like this one or the other ones you've been hearing. And every episode a week ahead of time, you can hear next week's episode right now. If you signed up today and we do a ton of other bonus stuff, do you like us talking about the critic? Well, we eight years ago covered the entire series and that was just the first of our many exclusive podcasts that are only on Patreon in our collection of podcasts. There's every episode of Futurama up to right now on Talking Futurama. We're covering the Comedy Central years.

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be envious of it? You should sign up at the premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons where for ten bucks a month you get all that ad free stuff I was just talking about and then you also get our monthly premium podcast more like three podcasts in one what a cartoon movie where for at least five hours most months we talk about an animated feature film as in depth as we do an episode of the critic or the simpsons and that means full histories and scene by scene deconstruction of the great animated feature films of the past and recent past.

Last month we covered 1986's An American Tale, the Don Bluth and Steven Spielberg film. The month before that we covered How to Train Your Dragon. And this year started with us covering Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a hugely important film in animation history. And that's just the most recent of our over six years of What a Cartoon Movie podcast. If you want to hear those of us covering films from the entire Disney Renaissance, other Disney classics, a bunch of Warner films, a bunch of anime, including a bunch of Studio Ghibli films, even crappy things like Cool World and our longest podcast ever,

six and a half hours on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. You can only hear that. If you sign up at the $10 level to get the entire ad-free back catalog today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons where it is so easy to sign up when you open up that url in a tab once more that's patreon.com slash talking simpsons I do want to give Lovitz's recollection of this, which he gave in a 2024 interview. We first met about a live sitcom. They told me the idea and I said, well, this sounds great. Is there a script? Jim's like, well, we're not going to audition for you. And I go, well, I'm not asking you to audition,

but you're just telling me an idea. I don't know if what I have in my head is the same as what you have in your head, and you're asking me to commit five years to something without a script, you know? I agreed to it anyway, but we couldn't make a deal work. They ended up writing the script, but said, now we want to do it as an animated cartoon.

I think I had heard the like, well, I'm not going to audition for you thing quoted before in some other context about James L. Brooks. That's Brooks big time and Lovitz there. Yeah, yeah, I think I hadn't heard something like that before. Does Lovitz remember this better than Gene and Reese? I wonder.

So they signed the deal and this is where they're deciding to make it an animated show and they will come to regret deciding late in the process to make this an animated show. And just to pose it more like, yes, this is also, we talked about Sibs. There's also Phenom. Oh, you know what? I wasn't a Sibs watcher. I was a Phenom watcher.

I probably watched all the Phenoms because I'm sure it was like between Roseanne and something else. Were you also a Judith Light fan and you wanted to see what she was doing after Who's the Boss? Yes, there was the smallest girl in Growing Pains was the Phenom, I believe. A lot of people were available for this new season and it was like we mentioned it with Margot or we will mention it with Will. But the Margot being a teen girl was, Brooks was the father of teen girls at the time. He wanted to do stories about teen girls.

So it's a story about a divorced mom of a tennis prodigy and also her older sister. So you get to have like sexy dating stories with the older sister. And hey, in the end, they only had 23 episodes of The Critic, so they did like two Margo stories. Yeah, I mean, again, there's a lot of stories in here that are James L. Brooks wanted this, so we had to do it.

So they're working on the Phenom, like Phenom does get the 22 episode order from ABC, and I think this is why, as Mike Reese puts in his memoir, ABC contractually had to do 22 episodes. They couldn't say no, and yet when they go into the meeting to pitch The Critic to them, it's like, well, we're gonna do The Critic, it's animated. They couldn't say no. And yet when they go into the meeting to pitch the critic to them is like, well, we're going to do the critic. It's animated. They said no. They're like, no, we're not going to. And James L. Brooks was like, what's this word you keep saying? I've never heard it before. I do think it could be, you know,

22 episodes of a cartoon is more expensive than 22 episodes of phenom. I would bet for one season. Not to mention ABC in particular, let's say they're pitching this in say March of 93, it was early 1992, just a year earlier, that Capital Critters debuted on ABC. Yes, and please check out our What a Cartoon podcast feed. We covered Capital Critters four or five years ago at this point, but it was one of the most wretched things

we've ever looked at. And we looked at it thoroughly. So bad, and it was a huge failure for ABC. It left them with, they did a 13 episode order, they aired like four, I think, and they didn't air the rest even. So you can see why ABC boss Bob Iger was very reticent to Greenlight, a new cartoon show.

Now I have heard that name before. So look, I'm not gonna say I think Mike Reese or Al Jean are like, they're lying. I do think they said they had a better time at ABC than they do at Fox where they end up with the season two. They even say that like, oh, Bob Iger and other executives did like the show, they just didn't think it fit on the ABC network.

And I can believe that, but also Bob Iger is still a very powerful man, and you don't want to insult him. Yes, but I mean, we're not covering the Fox history. We will in the future again, I believe. Spoilers, but they seem to have been going up against a very aggressive president then, who was just very mean in ways

that you rarely hear about these days. So maybe Iger was a little more professional. I do have that feeling. I think that Bob Iger, at least, even if he canceled them, had a cooler head on it. And the diagnosis is correct. Like this shouldn't be on ABC. It's wrong.

Like it should be on Fox. Even though ABC had something like Roseanne, Roseanne was really the outlier. They were not basing shows off of Roseanne. Outside of like Grace Under Fire, they were trying to recapture that magic again, but things were a little more wholesome on ABC for the most part.

And Disney's about to purchase some, only gonna get more wholesome then. Though as Al Jean remembered it, he actually did welcome getting 13 instead of 22 because they had just done, I think it was 24 episodes in season four and just about died. Yeah, they nearly died.

Then they cut back their order a little bit for season four. They put their foot down like, let's do a clip show and maybe one less, so it maybe was 22 for season four and it was 24 for season three. Yeah, I think you're right. That's definitely why the clip show happened for sure. When they were at the same time negotiating season five with Merkin, Merkin was also very insistent of,

it's 22, we're not doing more. So, Gene and Reese regret the fact that they did not work from the beginning with a singular artist to develop the look once they made it in animated series, and it really did screw them in season one. Yeah, they do say that, but I think they maintain a pretty consistent visual style. There are a few characters that pop as more of,

oh, that's Everett Peck doing the designs. But I believe it's, it's David Cutler who has most of the designs for the characters. And then weirdly enough, David Silverman is the guy who only designs Jay and that's it. Yeah. The story of Jay Sherman's design is so crazy to hear. Like it sounds like he was first and that they were told don't make it look like John Lovitz, which they then joke about like, but it does kinda look like John Lovitz.

Yeah, when you tell me think of John Lovitz, I think of Jay Sherman first, and then I remember, oh right, he's not quite the same guy. Though apparently one of the first places they went where they said it was an Andy Kaufman, I saw this like in two different quotes from Al Jean, he's like, we want an Andy Kaufman kinda look for Jay at first, and I'm like, I don't see any of that, I mean, unless this is Andy Kaufman like in two different quotes from Al Genie's like we want an Andy Kaufman kind of look for Jay at first

And I'm like I don't see any of that I mean unless this is Andy Kaufman like in costume or like any Kaufman with his less hair in his later days Yeah, maybe that's where they started but never really those elements did not make it to the final design for Jay for season one And so they recount the David Silverman freehand almost made a design for a short round small-eyed Flat-headed J. Sherman and the James L. Brooks loved it There was apparently no changing his mind like it seems nobody wants to talk bad about James L Brooks on there

But it definitely sounds like if they could have fully redesigned the character they would have been but the Brooks loved his Silverman's design So much they simply couldn't I mean I, yeah, go back to our Patreon episodes about the critic, prove me wrong, but I really feel like I like season one J more. And I don't think season two J is bad. The characters are redesigned to make them more cuddly and marketable, but yeah, it is just a funny drawing you're looking at, and I think that's where

a good character starts. I mean, also to a streamlined designs to make it a cheaper show too. That too, yeah. On the first episode's commentary on the DVD, they're constantly going like, man, his head is so flat. And then meanwhile, the rich more who cleaned it up, he's like, I've made it as less flat as possible. So Silverman though, he's busy.

He doesn't come in as the designer. I think the next guy they hire is Everett Peck as a freelance designer who, he did several major characters. The only ones I could find names for were Doris and Vlada are definitely him. And then, I mean, everyone knows this, of course, if you're listening to our podcast,

but then Duckman premieres in a few months. So I guess he jumped ship pretty early after nailing these designs down. I wonder if they thought he'd be their full-time art director on it, and then he's like, no, they're making my comic book into a full television show. Isn't this insane?

And it would kill the critic, it would outlive it. It got like more than three times the amount of episodes. There are 70 episodes of Duck Man, there's only 23 of The Critic. So they don't have Silverman, they get the next best thing, they get Rich Moore as the supervising director, and I would definitely think that after a season of Marge vs. the Monterey, the Front and Cape Fear,

that Rich Moore proved he could level up to supervising director and especially do the kind of movie and TV parodies that the critic definitely relies on. So Moore is kind of reworking that art, but this is when he's able to hire Disney veteran David Cutler as the art director, who you mentioned. He and Rich Moore, though I think it's Cutler more than more, is responsible for the rest of the character designs, including a lot of the like, you know, oh, it's the same waiter all the time or the same like black executive with glasses you always see in the background. Yeah. I mean, despite all the different cooks here, it does really maintain a visual design that's

consistent to me. Maybe they're really close to it, so they're too attached to the differences, but it never struck me as like a bunch of different people working on one look. But I guess for The Simpsons, it's like Sam Simon created some characters, Matt Groening created some characters in terms of the webisodes, but in season one and two of Simpsons changed drastically and is upgraded too. If there were only three seasons of The Simpsons, we could more easily delineate, oh, they changed this from that season to that season,

and you and I still do that, but it's not as obvious as it is with The Critic. Yeah, and it's interesting, they took a few artists from The Simpsons, but no writers. You were gonna see some people on The Critic that would eventually go on to write for The Simpsons, but no writers. You were gonna see some people on the critic that would eventually go on to write for the Simpsons in Futurama, but John Vede makes a few appearances.

I guess he was co-executive producer on Phenom, but he is a freelancer, it seems. Yeah, part of the cost-cutting on the show, or trying to keep it as contained as possible. They definitely seem to have a smaller staff, certainly smaller than Simpsons. I am basing this on the credits of the first episode But I believe the only staff writers on it not freelance writers who did other stuff would be their old pals

Tom Gamble and Max Prost they finally hired them their full producers on the show a national Lampoon youngsters Steve Tompkins and Ken Keeler and some loser comedian named Judd Apatow. He'll never go anywhere. It's funny because we're talking about the connection to the Larry Sanders show. That's where John Vede goes next after the critic is cancelled. So it's like, well, I've kind of done the thing over here. I could do it over there. That's where he finally got to do the filthy story he wanted to do with the character of Princess Kashmir.

Right, right. Like making the actual version of Homer's Night Out that makes sense for Larry Sanders. But yeah, you're right, they had John Vede. They had other Harvard pals too, like Nels Govel, Patrick Verone, and Tom Brady, AKA the creator of the Hot Chick. Not the football player. No, sadly, Tom Brady, the football player,

didn't also write the first Hot Chick. They hired the right freelancers with what they had, and they had a good, you know, if they could only have seven people on the writing staff, them included, it's a good list of only men, but a good list of men. Yeah. And the animation side, it sounded like Richmore was discouraged from hiring away people from the Simpsons. You know, they got Susie Dieter off of it, but it was Laura McMullin's first job among other people too. A lot of people got their first opportunities to direct on the Critic that they weren't getting on Simpsons at the time. And this was also the first network prime-time animation job for Rough Draft Korea as the main studio.

They had worked on season four of Simpsons, and in my opinion, episodes like Mr. Plow and Homer's Triple Bypass are so well animated as their audition for the critic. Yeah, they're really showing off here with this gig. This is around the time where they're doing Ren and Stimpy and B was in Butthead and they'll be doing the max for MTV just like really showing off like how good they are at what they do. And then they'll eventually get Futurama in the late 90s. The US side is still working out a film Roman like on Simps Simpsons, but this is Rough Draft's big break.

And they did such a great job on this. I don't know how their deadlines were, but remember when we interviewed Peter Evans, he did mention that on Futurama years later, there was still doubt from Fox of like, can you hit all your deadlines for this show? Can we hire you, Rough Draft, as the Futurama guys? They had done so much,

it's crazy that they were Fox hire you, Rough Draft, as the future Rom Up guys? They had done so much, it's crazy that they were a fox was skeptical about Rough Draft. And this is full of like, beautiful Rough Draft stuff in it. They knew this was their big chance and I think they killed it. We talk a lot about the cast on the main one, but I do want to mention that when they hired Maurice LaBarche and Nick Jameson

to do the job of three men, that's what they say on the commentaries of like, oh yeah, you guys sometimes did 40 to 60 combined voices and you did the job as two guys that we would have given to Casalnetta, Azaria, and Shearer on The Simpsons. Yeah, they picked the right guys and we mentioned it on the main discussion but it's Maurice LaMarche's big bump up to the big leagues. He was formerly doing a lot of kids cartoons and this is really the first time he gets to stretch his legs and then he'll be a regular player on Futurama in about five years.

And unwittingly, they became a huge force in shaping the comedy in the show because Gene Reese admit, the reason Dudley Moore or Orson Welles appears so much in the show is because those are their favorite imitations that they like hearing their actors do. That's why there's like three Scent of a Woman parodies

in these 23 episodes. Yes, so many. All of the Dudley Moore Arthur ones, I'm like, guys, come on, man, this is too old. Too old, but hell. Oh, look, there's a piano. And they were doing the first season of Love It when he was on film set, so he's not around for it. And I was trying to find this actual clip.

I couldn't find it. But apparently when they were promoting the show on Entertainment Tonight, they went to like, here's how they make an episode and they filmed the actors doing it. And Maurice LaMarche is filmed doing the temp voice track for Jay. And that apparently really pissed off John Lovitz that it made it look like Lovitz wasn't working on the show. I can see that. I think in 1993 or 94, it's impossible to provide the context of your, at that time, would need to understand like what they're doing. So I just would have not included that footage. I think I might have seen that as a kid, which made me think like, oh,

is it really him doing the voice that he is like this other guy stepping in? So it kind of fooled me too as a little kid. Yeah, I feel for Lamarge too, that he was put in this bad situation of like, entertainment tonight is here. Like this is huge publicity for us. Lovitz isn't here, but they need like, just do that impression. We need the voice for the clip here. Just do it. So I also think that it definitely sounds like 10, 20 years ago on the commentaries, Lamarche was still bothered that he didn't get to do Woody Allen on the show because Lovitz like pulled rank on him and said like, no, I do. Well, apparently they're still friends. You can hear on the commentary because Lovitz pulled rank on him and said, no, I do judge. Well, apparently they're still friends. You can hear on the commentary that Marley Slamorish

will often call Lovitz and leave him voicemails in his voice, in Lovitz's voice. I hope they're still friends to this day. I guess it's 22 years since the commentaries, unfortunately. It's a rough time while they're working on this show. Lovitz is not available. They're making this like how they made the first season of The Simpsons, a small staff pumping out the scripts to get quick

in to get it off to rough draft to animate it. I mean, that's another problem too, of like, they have to do movie parodies, you know, with a nine month at best lead time on writing the jokes. Yeah, yeah, so it's like, here's the trailer, maybe, get to work, but that's why a lot of the parodies are like 18 months out of date because it's like okay We saw the trailer and now we have to wait for the movie to come out the movie could be delayed, too I

Think another thing that hurt them at the time was the James L Brooks His film I'll do anything is the exact thing they would have made fun of in the show But they couldn't at the time it was the biggest boondoggle in Hollywood in 1993. There's a later episode in season one about like focus testing and it being unpopular. I'll do anything very publicly like went through a focus test. It was reported in the news. Everyone hated this movie. It sucks. And James L. Brooks like tries his best to work with the media to be like, yeah, we're reworking it, but it's fine. It's going to be great. It will not be great. It's a terrible movie. So bad. We'll get to it in the main discussion. They should have shown them footage of Hitler and say, do you like this guy more or I'll do

anything. And also by this point, phenom has been taken off the schedule too. Like it's not doing good either. So 1994 is a very bad time for James L. Brooks creatively. He's being paid more than he ever has been paid, but it's not going so good creatively. As all these things are going on, the episode debuts and they get some good reviews. And I have the clip. Siskel and Ebert reviewed it after I believe the third episode aired because they're reviewing three different episodes of the season here. Why don't we give a little listen to what both Siskel and Ebert had to say about it. It didn't surprise me, a new primetime TV show about a movie critic, a natural subject,

wouldn't you say, Rog? But what did surprise me, and I like the concept, it's all animated from the same production company that gave us The Simpsons. Unfortunately, it doesn't have as many memorable characters as that series. Just one self-loathing movie critic with a head bigger than mine and a body smaller than, well, he's losing weight, so we'll see. If the critic is going to succeed, and I hope it does, it desperately needs to refocus itself on the movies and the way critics interact with them. Obviously, the show needs two things, a second critic and for Roger and me to write some of the scripts. We could save the show and I for one would like to.

Well I'd be happy to give them some free advice and one of them would be to build up some of the other characters and especially, I think you're wrong, I think the station boss has a lot of potential. He's obviously kind of modeled on Ted Turner and I think there are enormous possibilities there. There are possibilities. Make him sharper. Make him smarter like Ted Turner.

I also feel that the very best thing in the show so far has been the satires of movies. And they ought to have two or three of those in every show. Current movies or kinds of movies. And also, I'd like to see Jay Sherman watch television so that he can satirize and discuss what's on television these days. In other words, focus this show on the media and not turn it into another sitcom about a guy and his son and his ex-wife and his girlfriends and so forth. They have to focus on the movies. That's what the show should be about.

So yeah, is Siskel and Lieber liked it? I mean, of course they would. I wonder if by this point, now I think the offer only came once the Fox production started, so they wouldn't have known they were gonna get offered to be in it by then. Yeah, and to be fair to the show, it really would double down on the parodies. You mentioned

this in the main discussion, of course, but first episode, very conservative. The parodies are limited to just coming attractions. By episode two, Jay is living in movie parodies and they're not just for the sake of appearing on the show. So they really learn like, oh, this is the most fun part. Let's just indulge in them. Yeah, I think Siskel and Ebert would have been satisfied as this series went on, not just because they got employed in it and this thing. Also, I mentioned it in the regular episode too, or in other parts of this episode, but that Roger Ebert is very complimentary of Duke Phillips in it, but doesn't say, played

by my friend, Charles Napier. Full disclosure, this man has paid me. Hey, they they were right the boss is one of the best characters. So Ciscal and the Evening and lots of other reviewers did enjoy it but gave a B to B plus or they also say like you know others said to this is like the Simpsons but not as funny. If you can say that ABC wasn't the right fit for it you have to say they were given a chance like Home Improvement is the biggest show they had and being sandwiched on opening on its first night, being sandwiched between two Home Improvements, that is giving something a big boost. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Even though the show is so tonally different and much better still like we're going to give you the

boost of our most popular show on the network. And 94 is the year of Tim Allen. The Santa Claus will be coming out. He's got a really popular book, the most popular sitcom on television. You wanna be on the Tim Allen train. But you could not imagine like this pilot written in the James L. Brooks writing style, especially like made for live action first. Like this does not feel the same as Tim Allen.

He says some lines in this like, boy, this is far too smart for the Home Improvement audience. Many viewers are like, oh? I can also think that the negative reaction to adult situations in this probably stem from being put between Home Improvement episodes and it being a cartoon, you already have the assumption, this is a cartoon, kids can watch it,

and it's between Home Improvements. Well the cool parents were laughing along with their kids like mine. Though you know, right after it was Home Improvement, it's between Home Improvements. Well, the cool parents were laughing along with their kids, like mine. Though, you know, right after, it was Home Improvement, The Critic, Home Improvement, and then Grace Under Fire, which that is like a naughtier, sexier show. Yeah, yeah, it feels more at neighbors with that than it would be with Home Improvement,

or maybe like a Roseanne critic team up in terms of an entertainment block. If especially the sexuality bothered the viewer so much, you know, on Roseanne, characters had sex out of wedlock. They were sexually active characters. Same on Grace Under Fire. And divorce, Grace Under Fire, also a divorced parent story, just like the critic as well.

I mean, it's just insane to look at the timing of this again, if you're James L. Brooks. This comes out, first episode airs. It does not match home improvements ratings, loses some of it, and every week lower and lower ratings into February. And February is when I'll Do Anything comes out and loses tons of money and is savaged by critics. So this is back to back. Oh, and then Phenom is getting canceled. So all of this pretty much in one month for Gracie. And it won't be long before a lot of these episodes are put on the summer back burner, which is why at least one of them was new for me until the DVD era.

Yeah, I didn't see all of them until the DVD era either. And this was basically despite the good reviews, faltering ratings and just like what happened to SIBS in February, at the start of February, Bob Iger and other execs at ABC are like, these ratings are not what they should be. Mike Reese tells the story of Bob Iger asked, where should we put the critic on our next fall schedule? And then Mike Reese says on Fox after the Simpson. Yes. It's where it should have been from the beginning. But yes, it gets canceled, burned off in the summer. That would be the end for many series like say, Sibs or Phenom, but is that the end for the critic?

That's really all of the first couple of years history of the critic in the lead up to basically you can date it back all the way to at least 1992, like two whole years of development. If you count the Krusty pilot as how long they were working on the critic as an idea. And yes, that was the history of the first season of the critic. Now let's go back to our main discussion to talk about The Pilot. I love The Critic. It's such a fun time capsule.

And I think all of the parodies here, like right from the start with the first one of the Alien 3, like they were fresh, but I did have to check of like movies felt more recent then because I was like, oh, that was, must've been like right the year before. I was like, no was must have been like right the year before I was like no that movie was 92 so this is like an 18 month old parody they're doing yeah they're still working about nine months behind and we should let everyone know especially will that we're very familiar with all of the critic because we covered it eight years ago for a patreon miniseries called talking critics so that's patreon.com slash talking Simpsons but it's fun to

see how different the series would be from this pilot because the pilot is still very grounded it's promising you're gonna see movie parodies housed within Jay's show but outside of that it's going to be Simpsons gags but like a higher level of comedy achieving the James L Brooks or Woody Allen level of sophisticated New York comedy by episode 2 Jay is living in movie parodies. He is part of a misery parody, and then that only increases from there. So the movie parodies break free from Jay's show

like almost immediately. He walks down the street in a scene from Do the Right Thing Happened. Yes. Mookie returns his trash can. This premier episode was given as big a boost by ABC as they could, but also in a terrible spot for it, sandwiched between two episodes of Home Improvement, a rerun and a new episode.

And the new episode more than doubles the rate. It does much better Home Improvement, the one comes after it. And all the ratings are downhill from here for the critic. They were on the wrong channel for sure Yeah Like this and the Dana Carby show both shows that were way too funny and good to be placed next to home improvement Yeah in the timeline and destroyed by Bob Iger the same ABC executive who ruined Twin Peaks But he also fucked over this one, too Well actually to put into perspective what a bad spot it was, I did find this was

the week after they did this ad that aired between Home Improvement and The Critic just to let you know what a bad spot the show was in. If you just tuned into Home Improvement you missed this audience review of The Critic. That's not so bad. Oh yeah? Kind of mere height virgin and manner setzen. so bad. Oh yeah. I'm worse than Hitler. Not worse. Just less warm and cuddly. Next week tune in a half hour earlier for the critic. Oh my God. Well that's great. They're like if you enjoyed home improvements have something as funny as Adolf Hitler. Like one, knowing what was happening behind the scenes, that one especially feels like it was made cynically or snarkily to be like, fine, you fucking hate our show.

We are worse than Hitler. If you like Home Improvement, we're worse than Hitler. At that point, Home Improvement was really phasing out the Hitler jokes, so it was not a good pairing with the critic. The opening of it is just gorgeous like you said Will, like all of the shots of like the Guggenheim, the UN, they really did get like a filmic look and and it's already a huge change from The Simpsons, like not only is everybody you know natural skin colors instead of yellow but also instead of the crazy anything goes place of Springfield, this is like this is the

New York you walk through every day. Doesn't Jay's son go to the UN school? He does. Oh yeah that's a real school I think I played them in basketball or something like that. But a kid who had an Easter Island head didn't go there right? No unfortunately not. It would be hard to defend him. And the opening theme is by Hans Zimmer, back when he gave a damn is how I feel. This is really good. That was one of the other things that I remembered like 30 years and time passing. The opening theme of The Critic was one of the things that like immediately came back to me when I started thinking about it. The little clarinet, like little jazzy tune. Yeah, I guess he was working with James O'Brooks on the, was it the dude musical, I'll Do Anything? Oh, yeah, it's such a I maybe did mention this a little in the history,

but 94 is a terrible year to be Jim Brooks. So you're still extremely successful and can do anything you want in Hollywood. But you have the critic do very poorly. You had another TV show do very poorly. And you also have I'll Do Anything. Everybody is talking about how like, hey, this is a musical where they cut every song out of it and it's shitty and then he hires Hans Zimmer late to be like hey can you write a score for a musical that's not there anymore and even Hans Zimmer

publicly said like this is impossible like I can't do this the critic theme was probably a nice break for him yes Hans Zimmer does the theme for this and then 25 years later he's hired to ruin the music of The Simpsons because the show just sounds miserable now. I guess Hans Zimmer in bleeding edge music are now the composers of The Simpsons. It's the Hans Zimmer factory of music. I mean he was a very successful composer in the 90s, but I blame the success of the Nolan films of his work with Nolan why he just became so in demand. And he replaced Alf Clausen who does a great job on this series as well That's true Zimmer does the theme but it's still Clausen doing all the heavy lifting the day-to-day stuff, which is great. Yeah

And you know, it's funny on the commentary track. The DVD is is a great DVD get it's full of it's not as complete as a Simpsons DVD set But there's commentary on about a 40% of the episodes and it is recorded in 2003 Like I think the day or some of them are the day Schwarzenegger is elected to the governor, which is pretty funny Yeah, many of the jokes are about that if there's a Schwarzenegger parody someone will say that's our future governor So I know multiple jokes about Donald Trump in this pilot episode of The Critic. Oh yeah. Like a mainstay of American culture.

And on top of that, they keep mentioning like how on the commentary they're like, there's the Twin Towers again. There's the first thing you see. It's the first thing you see, yeah. And it's the last thing you see when you hear the nice little sting at the end of the episode.

It's all over the place. Totally makes sense. Yeah, yeah. It's all over the place. Totally makes sense. It's the establishing shot. Which I don't know, I feel like in movies do they now use the new twin tower or the freedom whatever? Is that an establishing shot in movies anymore? It's really not. I can't think of a single one. Yeah, it's like, I mean, just Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building. Brooklyn Bridge, those are all still there. They learned so much from Simpsons, including using... They wanted multiple interchangeable things, so they got...

Their equivalent of the chalkboard is answering the phone. They kind of changed that to his alarm going off, too, if they want to instead have the radio come on. Yeah, yeah, those are swapped around. And then there's, of course the the couch gag is the watching the parody footage and it stinks afterwards. I think it's funny that the first moment they give you in like the opening to the audience is Jay's mother hates him and wishes him a happy birthday after cutting him out of the well. Like their problem, I love how cynical it is,

but as far as a likeability issue, every joke in this episode is about how your new character, your star character is a disgusting, hideous monster and no one could love him. But it's the genius of the show that of course we all do come to love Jay Sherman. Yeah, a lot of the show is about his failure and I think they're working through the struggle of making a television show and being worried about it because again Henry and I have covered everything all 23 episodes and I swear half of them are Jay has been fired or his show has been cancelled. That's the recurring plot line that keeps happening.

Nobody loves him. Yeah I mean especially in the first season. Every other episode is either a woman he fails at dating or he's about to be canceled. He won't have a TV show anymore, I should say. Also, well, what do you think of him having a Close Encounters of the Third Kind poster over his bed? Doesn't that seem like he'd be more pretentious than that? I'm not sure, but I think Jay Sherman, I mean, I don't know, maybe he should have Bergman film, like the Virgin Spring or something, which would be a good joke for him having sex with that woman. But Close Encounters of the Third Kind is also a funny visual gag

To like signal a Jay Sherman hookup and then also when he comes to the door wearing a robe That's a purple robe that says the color purple on it. Also a funny movie gag He's got a Lawrence of Arabia poster in his apartment So I feel like he is very much at Ebert in where he loves populist movies But he will stray into the artistic realm every now and then. I always think back to his taste in movies. It does fluctuate, but there was that one

where he made his list of his, like, top 10 films, and he was told to cut everything that was, like, foreign crap. And so he had one entry, and it was Citizen Kane. I had to say, who? Kane? We had the Alien 3 parody, which I feel like that's a joke you can just make from watching the trailers. It's now known as like, you know, it's not as good as the

first two but that moment that was all over the trailers people still do remember that. You know, I think David Fincher hates it too even. So. Then we start the episode with Hair in a Can which that seems to be advertised to me a lot on X the Everything app these days. Oh so Hair in a Can is back. I keep getting ads for like a hat, like some sort of like hat you can wear with lights in it that regrows your hair. Oh, lasers, yes. Yeah, yeah. It turns your scalp into like a planetarium, kind of.

But, uh, yeah. The red light penetrates your scalp and encourages brain and hair growth. The makeup lady who's spraying his hair on, you know like, Simpsons heads will recognize that voice as lunch lady Doris, right? Am I correct in that? Yeah that's a script supervisor Doris Grau who they hired because in the script it says a Doris Grau type and they thought we have her here everyone loves her. I mean if they made a season 3 of the critics she would not be alive for it so yeah she did pass away in 95. But I just saw her recently

She makes a few appearances here and there movies She is in babe although she is on the screen while dubbing another woman who actually speaks. It's very strange She had tons of funny stories also Yeah When you talk about her death like they do a joke with her like literally comparing her to the bailiffs on night court But this is the exact situation they put themselves in with this casting. But me and Bob harp on this all the time.

You never hear voices like this anymore because people don't chain smoke the way they used to or most people don't. We gotta get more funny cartoon voices. You're like a pack of Lucky Strikes a Day. Actors should know that for the cost of, you know, 20, 30 years of your life, you get to have an iconic voice. And isn't that worth it? Do you want to and 30 years of your life you get to have an iconic voice

And isn't that worth it? Do you want to just sound like anyone or do you want to be the next Tom Waits start smoking now? She's not even 70 when she's doing this voice by the way. Oh boy. That's rough. That's right So yeah, Doris is giving him a spray hair and like this is your introduction to the character America. I'm sad, I'm fat, I'm old, I hate myself and I'm ugly. It's just like wow like I love it but the algorithm in Netflix would certainly say this isn't the first thing you this is bad first impressions for a show. And as far as the hair in the can this is a reference to the Ronco product GLH9 or great looking hair formula number nine

popularized through a pretty popular late night infomercial back when we still had those. Ron Poppio, what can't he do? And then we get our first movie parody which is Home Alone 5 which is about the like you know the quickly aging Macaulay Culkin of 1993. You know I got to give him respect as far as I can recall I don't think he's ever even for like a Super Bowl commercial He's never come back to do like a legacy cool for home alone

And you know Disney is on his phone calling for it and home alone 5 actually came out in 2012 They had dropped the numbers by them, but we were on our third cute mop it by then You know now McCauley Culkin he does weird internet videos that's his main thing It was Reverend baby Billy's estranged son on The Righteous Gemstones. Oh, I... I didn't see... Oh, that's awesome. See, Kieran's getting all depressed these days. Yeah, yeah, he's cleaning up. Get him in a Home Alone movie. Get him... I'm sure that's what he'd love to do.

After getting nominated for like six Oscars and Emmys. Well, Macaulay's more important because he's a friend of online content creators. He's always making appearances on Red Letter Media stuff. So we salute him. If we play our cards right, we can get him too. And here then in our next one where he then watches and reviews an Arnold movie, like this is another stark difference of Simpsons and Critic. And they talked about a lot, you know, specific place, specific age, divorced dad, urban setting.

He's a rich guy. He's smart. Here it's like, this is not a McBain movie we're watching. This is an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It's not Rainier Wolf Castle. These are the real people. I kind of like in The Simpsons world, there is that remove of like, you know who Rainier Wolf Castle is parodying. You don't need to know it. But here in this world, no, that's directly make fun of Arnold. Castle is parodying, you don't need to know it. But here in this world, no, that's directly make fun of Arnold. And like it works for the critic, the choice to do like the direct parodies of real celebrities

and people rather than their sort of stand in like Grineer Wolf Castle or Jereadric Tatum. It does date the show in a little way. And like I think like the Simpsons strategy does make those like classic era The Simpsons a little bit more timeless, even if like, even if you know like exactly who the person, the stand in is supposed to be. The critic really is fixed in the world of 1994 in a way that The Simpsons doesn't like feels more unmoored from time. It's funny because in the Critics Simpsons crossover, he then will meet Rainier Wolf Castle and Rainier Wolf Castle later becomes Arnold Schwarzenegger

in The Simpsons movie. Yes, in The Simpsons movie, yeah. It's very complicated. Well also, The Simpsons is a TV show in the critics world that can be changed to on a channel flip, so I'm having to map out the cinematic universe of The Simpsons and critic and how this crossover happened. Honestly, that's what they should do,

multiverses, that's the only movie that gets to be made now. That's The Simpsons sequel. We see that they're mocking Arnold. I feel like The Simpsons and shows... I was probably just thinking this too because I watched the SNL 50 thing, but like, is mainstream American comedy this mean to any movie star anymore? Yeah we were just mourning mad TV and how mean it was. We didn't know how good we had it. I think in our current age of like of like half celebrities sort of like there are people that are like our huge movie

stars but they don't really feel the same way. It's because they don't have the court jester provided by television to take them down a peg or two. And like Arnold like you're right Arnold has been probably the most widely lambasted movie star in history, but that's why he became governor of California and is like still one of the greatest movie stars of all time. I think it's because like he had such a good sense of humor about it. It's like all of the parodies of him only added to his strength rather than diminished him in any way. I think they like further solidified his role as a cultural titan of our times.

Also, now the Super Bowl just happened too and every commercial is just famous people. They just do the jokes themselves now. Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing when I was just watching this latest Super Bowl because I feel like back in the day there'd be one Super Bowl ad where you'd have a famous person and you'd be like, oh, that's so and so it used to be like, you know, if you were like a big movie star, you would have to go to Japan to do a commercial because it would be like very embarrassing for you to be seen doing a TV ad for like Doritos in America. But every single Super Bowl commercial was like, here's Harrison Ford selling you a Jeep celebrity has gotten so diluted in 2025.

I think they came up with this parody for two things. One, well, I think it's funny, they are seizing on something that's funny about our Don't Swort Snagger movies is that in a lot of them, he plays a guy like John Matrix or like, oh, he's a Chicago cop. He's always Arnold, like he's not really. And so they take it to the extreme of a son of Nazis

being a Hasidic Jew, that's the real extreme to take it. And I think up front, they're trying to do dirtier jokes in this show. Well, Jay is single so he can sleep with women, he can date women, but I think they have the mindset of there are no real children in this show outside of Marty, so maybe kids won't be drawn to it, but we were all watching it day one.

We were like, it's a cartoon on a 30, I'm watching it. I think also they came up with Havan Aguila, baby, and then just went backwards from that. Like, okay, I'm watching it. I think also they came up with Havan Aguila, baby, and then just went backwards from that. Like, okay, that's our out. We see him sing the dreidel song, and this is when Sherman is interrupted in our first clip of giving out his first review. Heh, anyway, to get to the part of the show

you like the best and I find humiliating, on the shimometer, this film rates an absolute zero. Brrr! And cut! Ah, this new stuff feels great. Where'd you get it? Some kids were painting King Dork on your car with it. Why the hell do you have to be so critical? I'm a critic.

No, your job is to rate movies on a scale from good to excellent. What if I don't like them? That's what good's for. Mr. Phillips, we go on in five seconds. I own this network, boy. Just put up that picture of me on a horse. God, I look fabulous. Look, this isn't art. God, I look fabulous.

Look, this isn't art, it's just mindless pablum for losers who can barely read. Oh, that reminds me, I've got an interview with People magazine. Ah, man. Yeah? You were saying it well, he's the best. Like, yeah. Even Siskel and Ebert identified, they reviewed this show and they said the boss character is the funniest character

And I just loved his material I love Duke and like this is an example of the critic doing kind of the Simpsons thing where they take like a well-known Cultural figure and like just shaded by one degree by giving him a different name Whereas like I don't think they could just have Ted Turner as a character here But like when I was a kid I didn't understand that this was like a one-to-one parody of of Ted Turner and isn't there isn't there something on a later critic? I said what makes fun of the footage that Ted Turner had created in the event of the apocalypse That would play on all of the Turner channels

He says that he like I had a motor in my boat when I won the America's Cup. Yeah About basically Turner colorizing old movies instead It's called Phillips vision and he gives old movies better endings with product placement in them. I was going to say, I read the recent great book, Opposable Thumbs, about Siskel and Ebert, the history of their show and their partnership, and it really signifies just how large they were as a cultural force. But one thing I didn't know because I started watching in the 90s is they had their own

kind of shermometer style segments segments like very embarrassing demeaning segments played for laughs and I forget what the shermometer was for them but they did have the dog of the week which was the worst movie of the week and literally a dog would come out and they did not like that and they wanted to face it up but before they did there was the stinker of the week and they literally had a descent-glanded skunk sitting next to them for one of these segments. That's awesome. I guess the joke behind Jay is that we all know Cisco and Ebert, what if you mash them together?

It is a fat and bald guy. What if you put them through the Brendle Fly teleporter? That was great. I read Ebert's review, his written review. I also watched the video one is written review It's funny because he says oh people say he's a mashup of me and Jean Jean's bald and I have a Pulitzer Though also to you know, here we are the he praised Duke and deservedly so but Roger Ebert was friends with Charles Napier

like he was in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls that Roger Ebert wrote like they were buddies. He was the Jeremy Hawk for well maybe not that far but they were friends and I'm saying he should have disclosed that. This episode is really about disclosing friendships and cronyism in reviewing things. Let's talk about nostalgia as well like now I read stories about Ted Turner, and I do think like, you know, man, billionaires used to be better too. You know?

Oh, man, so much better. I would take 10,000 Ted Turner's over a single Elon Musk. Yeah, Elon Musk is not out there creating Captain Planet for us. No, or trying to manage the Atlanta Braves. Like, he's trying to manage the fucking government. Yeah, or WCW Pro Wrestling. You know, he's dating Jane Fonda.

You know, these are the cool things you do. Elon Musk could afford to buy the Hanna Barbera Library a thousand times over. Does he? No. No. God. What a waste. Yeah, I mean, again, it's like, you know, do I think a guy who was a billionaire

when I was a kid is better? Like, yeah, of course I do. Well, actually, he's suffering, you know, do I think a guy who was a billionaire when I was a kid is better? Like, yeah, of course I do. Well, actually, he's suffering from Lewy bodied his dementia, but he's probably riding horses all the times today, even now. I love the delivery of like, it's them telling their ABC audience to like, this is mindless pablum for folks who can barely read. That's what TV is for you people. Film improvement is what they're saying.

Yeah, that's man. He's so good. I also just love, like, he's sleeping with his reporter, which, you know, that's another thing today. Like, now they're just having, like, emotional affairs with Robert Kennedy Jr. They're not even really sleeping with the guys anymore. I envy you for having someone like me to envy.

All of these things, Trump comes up later in this, but you know the episode where Duke runs for president also is like another like Simpsons predicted it type. Yeah too. Duke. I mean it's just pretty awesome for a pilot. Pilots are all about explaining every character as best as they can and having Duke Phillips just kick in the door and be like hey fuck everybody. I own this place. This is CNN. I'm Ted Turner. Nobody envies me. Like it's just, you know, him immediately in like 40 seconds. And you know what, despite that mean review or despite that mean reference to people magazine, people magazines, David Hiltbrand gave the show a B saying that the humor sputter, the meanest thing I could find was the humor sputters when the focus is personal detailing Sherman's dating woes or his relationship

with his son. They want only movie parodies. They want non-stop movie parodies. No humanity. The show would have kind of become that in season two, so I think he got his wish. Did he re-review the series, Henry? Did he look this up? Oh, I didn't see if he reviewed the soft reboot in season two.

I'll dig this up. Yeah since we covered the entire series once again, and I'm used to the faster speed of the later episodes, so when there's an entire maybe 90 second scene with just Jay and a woman having a conversation, I'm thinking why isn't Willy Wonka here? Where is the Godfather? Is he showing up?

They're existing in reality, it's crazy to me after watching the entire series. This is where Jay Sherman, they cut back, he's doing Star Poop, another segment he hates. I mean, I love its delivery of Star Poop. And also it's like, ugh, so much hatred into staying there. And this is where we meet Valerie Fox. I think they did a very good job designing an original, like, hot actress by early 90s standards for the moral dilemma of this episode. And played by Jennifer Lean, who would go on to play Kes in Star Trek Voyager, and I

believe she would have to have been 19 when she voiced Valerie Fox here, so very, very young. Will, you're more of a Trekkie than us, I think. Or, do you remember her from Voyager? I remember her character was not like... Yeah, absolutely. She was the character that got written off the show, right? Yeah, yeah.

She was written off the show so they could bring in Seven of Nine to be like, you know, the hot one. Voyager was like suffering in the ratings and they were like, get this dorky chick out of here. Let's bring in the hot robot. Jerry Ryan did save the show. I mean, apparently too, she had some personal problems that go undetailed that were also why they needed to write her out of the show apparently but the reason she's in this is

Almost certainly because she was in Brooks's other big flop of this season of television Phenom she was the older sister on Phenom. I was a Phenom viewer Sorry folks it did end with the Gracie Films logo so that brought you up at the end at least I had to look up Phenom now I want to watch Phenom because like John Vede wrote three episodes. I want to at least watch the John Vede episodes. So we learn a lot about Jay here, though not her. And so I guess I'm trying to deconstruct this the entire episode, but I feel like from the beginning, the way she changes the subject to like him instead of her movie, that already tells me I think she knows a bad review is coming and she has plans here it feels like say Harrison Ford having to promote a Marvel movie and telling stories that are not

about working on that Marvel movie also we see more jokes about their audience and how much they hate them drunken frat boys who make fun of me that's who they think watches their shows what do you guys think of Valerie? Henry, we watched the entire series. We talked a lot about it and this is not a show that is great at writing women. I will say they give her a name at least. Some episodes don't give Jay's women names and I feel like the twist at the end, I'm not sure what to think of her throughout knowing where this leads to, but I feel like they try to do a lot more with her than they would do with women in the future in this first season when Jay is

single. It's a question of like was she just into Jay because she wanted a good review for her movie? Yeah it's like the question of the whole episode and I'm trying to deconstruct it from the beginning here even of just like she's like no I want to talk about you and I think smart is sexy does she actually want to have sex with him and then turn on him or like but she's a bad guy sorry I'm just going in circles here she's a bad actress as based on the review but only a good actress could pretend she wants to have sex with somebody she doesn't want to have sex with only for career purposes right? Maybe she's very good at that part of being

an actress but not good at the actual being on camera. Well, one thing I'm proud of, I may be older than Jay Sherman now, but I wear smaller pants sizes than him. Instead of a tight 42, I'm down to a 34. I was probably above 42 when we did the last one of these. So oh, and then also like they even directly compare to Sharon Stone, which like this is definitely at a time when people were kind of like ragging on Sharon Stone is like not a good actress and just a sexy That's heresy. That shows how sort of misjudged people were in the 90s because it was like yeah they do the basic instinct joke on when she's being interviewed by Jay but the

idea that Sharon Stone was a bad actress is insane to me. Yeah she's even wearing the Sharon Stone dress or at least you know a white dress to indicate that's the parody they're going for but she's even wearing the Sharon Stone dress, or at least, you know, a white dress to indicate that's the parody they're going for. But yeah, the press really hated Sharon Stone around this time, which is why The Quick and the Dead failed, because the attitude was, how dare you be in a movie again? Yeah, no, it's like the way she was punished

for that scene in Basic Instinct is a travesty. And she's also same year as The Quick and the Dead. She's in Casino and rules in that. Yeah, like one of the best performances in a squished hazy movie of all time is Sharon Stone in Casino. And here they have to have, yeah, just the, because she opens her legs for one scene in the movie, which then you immediately see Wayne Knight's face in that scene. I always love that about that.

Like they easily cut to Wayne Knight's sweaty face. But here they show that Valerie is going beyond Sharon Stone because she just keeps her legs open for everybody to look at here. Which can we get a shot of that? That's a very dirty joke for ABC in 1994. We head out for the date he promises. She makes him promise a date on the air, which is also like that was something I feel like in the 90s.

You still see it today, but where you can see a woman flirting with the host of like an interview and you're like ooh what's going on here like is Rebecca Romaine really that in a Conan O'Brien like that's what I'm thinking of here they head over to the basically the most of the series Lane Richey or the wealthy jackass and we meet Vlada the euro trash mo it's to make fun of a guy James L Brooks really hated yeah it's a parody of gab or Chupo right yeah we shouldn't know this series has a lot of character designers I'm sure he mentioned it in the history but Rick Peck is one of them he is the creator of Duckman this is a

duck man ass character right here in this series yeah it's funny he would make duck man with gab or Chupo and then design the character mocking gab or Chupo in the same year. I like that he is so vaguely like he can be whatever European joke you need to make about a weird guy and that his name is named after the Gina Reese's Harvard film professor Vlada Petrish. A Yugoslavian born professor who died in 2019. I had not heard of him before. I had watched a 10 minute video of him deconstructing

Andrei Tarkovsky scenes. Immediately I was like, oh, this is too smart for me. And I turned it off. I'm not laughing at this guy. Their arrival there is interrupted by the arrival of Conan O'Brien, which the joke, they wrote that before his show had debuted. Though the show's been on the air now for a few months when this comes on the

Late night. Yeah, I think it might have been written I mean they love Conan and they went to Harvard with Conan But I think it was written with the idea that he would no longer be on the air Because he didn't think he'd be on the air by mid-94 or by early 94 And so they get shuffled to the critics section, which I love pelican brief more like turkey too long That's very good. That's a very good one. Gene Shatlett makes an appearance. Now I will say he did retire in 2010 and I must underline as of this recording underline

he is 98 years old so still alive. Assume he still has got the same haircut and mustache. How could you lose that? And that's your iconic look. Last time we did this I thought he was dead too. I always have to Google this and be like he's dead right and I'm wrong every time. The 90s these guys knew they needed to have a gimmick like his ridiculous look is what made him a memorable TV critic even if he was known for like not the

best for he wasn't respected like Pauline Kael for example but he was memorable. Will did you and you ever spot Gene Shalit out in the New York? No, but my dad was Pauline Kale's editor at the New Yorker for many years. My goodness. Wow. That's amazing. See, you were living in the film. Actually, she would have looked down on TV film critics. I imagine in like 1990s New York, you would see the hair poking up out of the crowd. You'd think Don King or Gene Shalit. I'm rolling the dice here. Which one am I getting? John King or Gene Shalit? I'm rolling the dice here.

Which one am I getting? I think they said with Shalit and Rex Reed and Ebert and Siskel that all of them would do anything you asked because they were like, oh yeah, we want to be on TV. We'll say any line, we'll do anything, we'll sing, whatever you want. They were easy guest stars to get apparently.

This is where we learn her background, Valerie. I mean, boy, Valerie's story, like, she was a model, turned beauty queen, and the scare quote she puts on, dated Donald Trump feels weightier than ever now, I would say. A critic predicted it? We got two now, we got two. Somebody should write that listicle,

because no one else has. Like, Donald Trump was such an old, he had been around in the New York news for over a decade at this point. Also the joke about Trump Tower being in foreclosure. This is the funny thing to, when you encounter parodies of Donald Trump in the 90s, is that he was, even by then, a laughingstock.

He was known for being a guy who keeps going broke and is just the definition of a charlatan and a fraud and Valerie Fox's of the world's worthy future. Mrs. Donald Trump number like three or four Yeah, I mean when I started buying Mad Magazine It was the late 80s and I've been rebuying them now and just looking at them and thinking what did I think of these parodies? And I swear to God every issue from I don't know 87 to 1991 has a Donald Trump going bankrupt joke. Somewhere in a parody. I also feel like Valerie must,

if she ever was attracted to him and thought he was the smartest man on TV, which when they pronounce that, that's more of them going like, see, this isn't The Simpsons, this isn't stupid Homer, this is the smartest man on TV. But as soon as she goes on a date with him and cannot hold a conversation

and only is staring at her chest, I feel like she should know then like, Oh, I was wrong about you. You are not. I were a vapid man. When he refers to her breasts as her McGuppies, it sort of punctures the bubble of his erudite cosmopolitanism. Maybe if she ever had real attraction to him, this is where it goes away and she decides, no, I'm just sleeping with him for a good review. Like this is when the choice is made perhaps. So we go to Jay's incredibly giant apartment. It's crazy.

Penthouse apartment. It must be a condo he owns, right? He can't just be renting and his huge bed. Like he looks so rich. Like, and this is again, we learned later, he's basically like Andrew Cuomo, I would say. That was my first thought of what type of nepo baby he is. We get another bit about Jay is that one he had a cameo appearance as Dances with Wolves as Throws Like a Girl which I hope he recused himself from reviewing that one since he appears in the film. He has a lot of conflicts of interest that he seemingly doesn't care about until he sleeps with an actress. And we also learned that Jay is divorced. There's another

like Simpsons thing they wouldn't do. They don't like having divorced characters on that show because they seem pathetic. Like that's what Kirk Van Houten is for later on. Yeah we meet Ardith. I'm learning for the first time is played by Brenda Vaccaro. I guess we never look into that. Wow. She's mainly... El Jean was recently divorced and he jokes about it on the commentary that he's like, these alimony jokes seem so low to me now, like he says. Did his wife have a personal trainer? I'm having affiliated.

That joke is still relevant today for, I guess it makes him more of a David Portnoy type. Right. And yeah, they even have Jay canonically be a Pulitzer Prize winner, which Roger Ebert was. He always loved telling Siskel that I have a Pulitzer and you don't, and lording that over him. Have they given out Pulitzers yet for podcasts? If not, better get on that.

I'm still waiting. It's going to be someone from NPR. It has to be. I guess they would have done it. Or Conan, the inventor of podcasts, drawn into this episode. Oh, right. Yeah. Actually, for the Obama interview that Marin, you would think it would be that one or something like that. But that was now like a decade ago.

I'd have no problem with Conan getting a Pulitzer Prize. I mean, I'll just say that for podcasting or anything else. This is another thing about the critic that when people say like Family Guy ripped off the Simpsons, it did certainly in format. But the critic has even more cutaways and movie parodies than the Simpsons. Family Guy really takes a lot from the critic. We get our first cutaway flashback thing of Jay being a food monster at the pie eating contest. Yeah, it sort of picks up the cutaways from Simpsons season four and then even builds on those, the amount of those as the series continues.

He killed a bear is the lie he tells here, and this is where Valerie makes her play to spend the night with Jay Sherman. I guess I should be going. But I just can't leave. Do you get that feeling? Yes, but I live here. No, what I mean is this door is going to close soon, and whether I'm inside or outside could change our lives forever.

Say, what do you do in your movie? I play a woman who seduces chubby men, then kills them in their sleep. Interesting. in their sleep. Interesting. And I like he makes the choice, he puts the hand on her of like, hey, you know what, let's do it, let's go for it. But this was scandalous to ABC viewers in 1994.

A lot of hate mail from a lot of home improvement viewers who were not expecting to see adultery on television. But like he's not married. Oh, you're right. I guess that's the biggest problem for them. So wait, home improvement viewers were furious that the two adults were having a second sensual sexual relationship. Yeah, I guess ABC said the show was too filthy. They were getting a lot of pushback. And then when they brought the Fox, they said the show was too tame. You got to make this spicy.

Yeah, God bless. God bless Fox. God bless the Fox network. God bless you, Robert. For making great strides in television entertainment. Like Reese talked about how they were so proud of it. And then like two days later, his assistant shows up with like two boxes of hate mail and just say like, yup, this is the hate mail. Everybody hated it. And specifically it was he sleeps with a woman after the first date, like out of wedlock. What was this? 1894 when this

premiere good god recent his memoir said they'd hate it even more if they had kept in the line even my orgasms feel better they were made to cut it well yeah I suppose saying the word orgasm on network television to this day I don't know if they can do that well it's also like this is why to the second episode they in production they wouldn't air it in the first airing because that's the misery parody where he also has sex with a woman he just met. That's where like the ABC execs were like, all right, this is too much, too much. You know, I mean like it just underscores I think for the American television viewing

public sex is a dirtier word than fuck. Oh, yeah It's trying to deconstruct how Valerie feels She wakes up and it's a great fisheye drawing of Jay and she just screams and bloody hard It's like is it just her shock of like, okay, wait after my myself I had sex with him and I liked it or is she going she forgets the game she's doing and it's like, oh god I liked it or is she going she forgets the game she's doing and it's like oh god What's going on? I think Jay just needs to start being funny and smart immediately because that's what she's attracted to This is where we get our next big bit here too that boom Marty shows up So we get to see Marty is visiting. He ate all the Doritos

He's a fat kid just like his dad. And that looks a lot like Mike Reese, but surprisingly not designed to look like Mike Reese. It was just a coincidence. Mike Reese lost a lot of weight since they designed Marty. So he wants you to know that I think. I love how on the commentary he says like, yeah, they wanted a fat nerd with curly hair and they drew me. Though the opening would reveal that he had a kid, but if you didn't see the opening, this is a big act to, like, whoa, he's a dad too? So a divorced single dad, Brooks really wanted to get the family angle. Do you think this would be a better show if Jay was just a single man?

I like him with a kid. No, I like him being a divorced dad. I like this in character. And it lets him do fat kid stories, which I always identified with as a kid as well. So they escort him out of the room after he sees them together. This is where voice by babe, Chucky, Dexter, Christine Cabanaugh, the late Christine Cabanaugh. She's great, too. Everybody in the show is dead, by the way. Everybody is.

And John Lovitz is dead. Somehow John Lovitz is still around. Hey, Garrett Graham, he didn't die, right? Okay, I think you're right. I think you're right. He's pretty old though. Judith Ivy? I think she's still alive. Park Overall? Okay, fine. It's just three principal cast members are dead.

It's not everybody. Yeah, three essential cast members. And I guess, Roosie Taylor did play Penny in season two. Oh yeah, so there you got another dead body there. So yes, they're in love. We get a love montage. This is where we get Trump Towers being foreclosed, but that's still around there, right? And unless another truck is bombed in at this point. Not the one in New York, but yeah, of course Trump Towers still there at Columbus Circle. This is more of these like beautiful things like this walk around. This is a specific

area of like Central Park West or something they're in here, right? Yeah, Trump Towers right on 59th and Central Park. Right of Central Park West or something there in here, right? Yeah, Chung Pya was right on 59th and Central Park. Right when Central Park West begins, right at the bottom of Central Park. And then the scene where he says, I love you, is that's supposed to be in Union Square. And that's when I really noticed that, because I went to high school not far from Union Square, and every one of the buildings around there, because it's a pretty nondescript shot and there are no New York City landmarks there. Every one of the buildings that frames Union Square is exactly as it should be.

They had reference materials, but no internet. This is a very LA based show in terms of where the writers are, where the animators are, so that they can't really like look out their window and see what New York looks like, which is why they eventually bring Jay to LA for an entire episode to write what they know. This bit here of them, her confessing her love,

this is again where I caught, there's great animation in this all over the place and there's this little moment I caught this time where she has her back to him and she's about to say I love you and she makes this face and I think it's like it could be read as she's working up the courage to say this or she's like, okay, get in the zone, you're gonna pretend you love this guy, turn around and say it, but she makes a face that tells a lot, I think. And she's telling him she loves him. Basically a week passes in this, right? Because he hasn't seen the movie

when she does the interview. They, this is at best two days later, after their first time sleeping together, Jay moves fast. Jeremy is right later to tell him like slow down buddy Though I guess if you're Jay Sherman and you're able to land the equivalent of Sharon Stone you lock that down Yeah, wait up immediately what I was saying watching the show is like it's self-sabotaging nature But it's also his commitment to ethics as a film critic because like if you are Jay Sherman and

Are hooking up with the equivalent of Sharon Stone, I would just give her movie a good review. Yes. Or don't mention her in the review either. Just say like, you know, the directing was bad. Oh, a terrible script. Anyway, just lie by omission. The thing they set up for it is such like it feels they don't, on the commentary, they

don't say who came up with it. It absolutely feels like a James L. Brooks Brooks choice of and then we learned the ethics of this character by he's put to the test at the very end love or his art what will he choose though speaking of how cynical the show is I was surprised that the jumper they talk he accidentally talks down by shouting I love you in the megaphone. That guy gets back in the window and doesn't like fall to his death. I can think of him to slip. Yeah.

If it was Moe, he would fall again. Oh yes. And I think we've seen that joke before. Just as dated as any joke about a Schwarzenegger Stallone movie, we have a joke about red eyes in a photo when they take his photo. Though this is another like, when we interviewed Mike Rees, I think I even mentioned to him like him like boy they really make a lot of jokes about

him being ugly but this is three in a row he's hideous in this photo that his old photo is a cutting board that disgusts people and then a woman mistakes him for being a hunchback like three people in a row like you're a hideous. And Valerie screams when she sees him upon waking. He's gross do you get it? He's disgusting. Though this is what happens when you get the season four Simpsons writers who they do get crazier and zanier but they're already starting at season four zany even in their first episode. But this is where we meet Jay's best friend in the show the

Australian actor Jeremy Hawk. Mr. Hawk could I have your autograph? I just loved you in Crocodile Gandhi. You see people did like that picture. I, could I have your autograph? I just loved you in Crocodile Gandhi. You see, people did like that picture. I'm sorry, I just didn't think you made a very convincing Mahatma. I will bring peace between the Hindu and the Muslim. But first, a tasteful glimpse of me bottom for the ladies. Don't look so smug, I've got my fans too. Excuse me, could I rub your hump for luck?

I don't have a hump. You hunched bats are so selfish. Get away from me! My lousy... Jay! I'll be right over. Oh no. What's wrong, mate?

I'm afraid if my girlfriend meets you, she won't want me anymore. You've got a point there. Women love me no matter what I do. I've tried not shaving, I've tried not bathing. I've even tried talking like this! No use. Surprisingly, Maurice LaMarche has never done an official Bullwinkle party, even though he's great at it there. It's pretty good. And yeah, this is... Maurice LaMarch's really leveling up as a voice actor previously only doing kids cartoons and now doing late night shows he would go on to be a major player on Futurama of course so yeah. Re-watching this now the Jeremy Hawke character

is interesting to me because like this is another like you know one degree separated from like the person it's obviously a stand-in for but like in 1994 was Paul Hogan that famous in America? Right? Because I mean like he made like he made the Crocodile Dundee movies. But like the way Jeremy Hawke's character is presented on the show, it's like he's Matthew McConaughey or something. I don't remember Paul Hogan being like a universally acclaimed heartthrob based off of the Crocodile Dundee movies. This character especially just a bit out of date maybe. It was a fresher idea a few years earlier, but they kind of do every Paul Hogan joke possible with him

and then he just becomes a repository for jokes about Australia. And he does not really feature in the second season that much. Well, it's funny in 1994, they marry themselves to such a dated parody then of Crocodile Gandhi. So they put together like two huge hits of the eighties in 94. And there's more than like, this isn't the last time you're

going to see clips from Crocodile Gandhi in the show. They go back to it several times. They talk about him showing his bum for the ladies. That's where it hit me that like, oh, he's kind of, there's a little Mel Gibson in there, too Like it's like Paul Hogan and Mel Gibson's career. Yeah, and hey a little Ted Danson based on a upcoming. Oh, that's you. Yep. Yeah, I Guess it's more like if Paul Hogan had Mel Gibson's career up to that point Though also this is when they made fun of like oh that it was rare that an actor like showed his butt in movies now Or back then. I don't know, like though, well, that's a whole other discussion. Like what is sex in movies now anyway? Like what are horny movies? How horny are movies allowed to be these days? So I just saw,

speaking of Schwarzenegger, I just saw his son's butt on the White Lotus season three. So we're keeping it going there. TV is where you get sex now. Movies are shorn of all human sexuality, thank God. We see that she's not interested in Jeremy, which I can totally see that. She says it later, but she has her pick of actors probably. She doesn't need, though also her goal is a good review from Jay, seemingly. And she's totally nodding to him, leaves,

and this is where he gets taunted with take your genitalia right back to Australia. Anytime love that's can sing is great. Yeah. They usually find a space for him to sing, or I guess he will just sing a line, even when not instructed to. Jeremy is telling him not to marry an actress cause actresses are crazy. And certainly if you're an actress on the show, you should be like, so I'm crazy or

you shouldn't marry me. This is bad. I mean, they're not really making their own Duff or anything in this scene here, but we see that they're sharing a bottle of Johnny Stagger, which will come back. Well, that's right, yeah. They haven't introduced their Bloat beer yet,

which is their Duff, right? Yeah, I think it is Bloat's. And yes, he references, don't do blackface at the Friars Club, or sorry, he says the NAACP image awards. Yes, even worse. Even worse venue to do that. Ted Danson was doing that to be funny

at the roast of Whoopi Goldberg, by the way. Who he was with at the time, and apparently thought it was hilarious. She is like a collector of minstrel. Yeah, she collects minstrel and like vintage, like minstrel depictions and like advertisements and things like that. Hey, going back to SNL 50, you watched it too, Will.

I think they really had their cake and eat it too. They had the bad makeup montage, except they blurred everybody's face in it. Remember that? I mean, actually, I have to confess, I only watched the concert. I didn't watch the actual sketches. Henry, you're saying that when an actor did blackface, they blurred the face in the montage. So conceptually they had a really funny concept, and I did think it was funny, but basically they faked doing an immemorial, but it was an immemorial for badly aged material in it.

And during it they have- Like all those years Fred Armisen played Obama. They have that in there, but they also have like, you know, times people played Asians or Mexicans or all that. But specifically near the end, they get to a montage of when everybody literally darkened their skin to play characters. And that's when they put mosaics over the performers' faces to hide it. Yes. It was also in that one where they were like, Oh, hey, they said questionable guest stars. And it was like, Oh, J Blake, Puffy, and R. Kelly, like all in a row. This is also where we see that Jeremy, on top of doing Blackface, he constantly uses

Yiddish words for some reason. Calls him booby. We hear about Australian drinking songs. This was the first making fun of Australia things. The Simpsons episode will be like a year after over a year after this I think the Barber's Australia and then we also see Vlada wishes him well He's gonna dive into it and he's gonna let them meet the parents and this is where

He takes him to their estate and this is something well. I don't know if you remember this is revealed in other episodes Franklin Sherman was governor of New York in universe. So it's like a Roosevelt thing. They're Franklin and Eleanor and like this really does that's why I was like oh he's like Andrew Cuomo then. Like it's even above a Vanderbilt. I gotta say Jay's parents are like two of my favorite characters from the critic and I think Jay's parents were like one of the only ones that I can think of like talking

about representation It's one of the only like pure wasp parodies that you get in like the 90s or like modern American television Because that archetype seems so dated as well the classic depiction like pseudo inbred Ridiculously upper-class wasps and they're like they tell everyone Jay's dad has had a stroke to account for his behavior Even though it's not true people have gone potty from just like being so rich and like disconnected from everything for so long. Yeah. And the origin story is James L. Brooks told Algenia Mike Reese, bring in your Harvard yearbooks.

We're going to pick out the waspiest people in here. And that's where they got the designs for Franklin and Eleanor. I really want to know which people they were in real life because they're such great people. They're always drinking and just like being mean to everyone and the way they hate their son. It's also a perfect combo of Gene and Reese and James L. Brooks stuff because Brooks as a writer is great at acerbic mothers like, acerbic mothers that you're like, do you hate me or what? Like so that's what Eleanor is and then Gene and Reese love to write crazy old men.

They write them so good. This is their Abe Simpson except he's super rich too. It's also kind of their Ralph Wiggum as well because he's just full of non sequiturs. He has no grasp on reality, especially as things continue, he gets crazier to the point where his memories are Popeye cartoons. In our next clip here, we meet the family,

including Jay's younger sister. This is my sister Margo. She's a junior at Miss Hathaway's school for untouched girls. Margo, this is Valerie. She loves me. I saw your show the other night, son. Doing the weather now, are you? No, dad. That was the shermometer.

So, my boy, do you think it'll snow tomorrow? I don't know. Well, we sure could use some snow. Had the chains on since July. My father had a stroke a few years ago. He didn't, really. We just say that to explain his personality. The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut.

So I hear you're an actress. Oh wait, it is a nut. Yes, my first movie comes out next week. Oh, I see. You're just dating my son till he gives you a good review. Then you'll drop him and he'll be back here with one of those nice girls from the escort service.

Also really selling out Jay here that he frequents escort services a lot apparently. How come that reference didn't get, did that reference get people, ABC viewers mad or was it just him like having a normal sexual relationship that he's not paying for? I'm sure that was mentioned later, like five paragraphs in.

And another thing. As a kid, escort service flew right over my head. It's also Nancy Cartwright who plays Bart playing Margot. I guess they really couldn't find the right voice, so they went with her because she was dependable. But this is one of the few times she actually plays a young woman. Yeah, Margot is very interesting.

We talked, now Bill Oakley didn't say names of people, but he did say that somebody very high up in the Simpsons said you guys should have a teen in the show and James L. Brooks also is very much into having a teen character as made like the Phenom show is about Raising teen girls to put in perspective When this episode aired his first daughter Amy was 21 his second daughter Chloe was 12 so these kids he's pulling from this this is definitely why he wanted a teen girl be a major character in the show and was up for it but and now you know Chloe's doing great she wrote a movie that just happened to be

produced by Gracie Films it's so interesting so good for her but Margot in Reese's book he says they hired and fired for Margot's though The only actress he'd named was Margaret Cho at one time Margaret Cho is Margot. Oh Yeah, she's actually got a voice credit in this episode I think she just plays a random background woman, but at the time her sitcom was on ABC So maybe they were just trying to find something else for her to do She'd have been dating Tarantino around this time too right? This is my installment of star poop here.

I think Nancy does just fine and I feel good for her. It seems like they almost went with her just to like satisfy Brooks so Brooks would like because it really sounded like Brooks was like no you know what fire her hire a different girl like he seemed to be the indecisive one and I think they get some good stuff with Margo but but I don't know Her best story is the Cobain episode. Yeah. She gets maybe two episodes after this and never becomes a strong character. There's some funny lines written for her, but they don't really know what to do with her. Oh, actually, her Debbie Don episode. That's the best episode. What am I saying? Not the

Cobain one. Yeah, yeah. Everything Garrett Graham says is he's just so funny and his they said he always was miming holding a scotch in his hands and like so is it is part of it it's not a stroke is it just that he's pickled by scotch all of the time and he's wrong peanuts are not a nut they're a legume i feel like they made that yeah that daffy this dinner ends this is where he's taking a walk around of his estate and you know if i'm val here, I'm thinking I should be noting, I don't care what this review is, I need to marry into this family,

get a piece of this action. Yeah, they have an amazing estate here. I'm saying she's short-sighted. If this is just for her personal enrichment, she's very short-sighted leaving him later. All the women in his life have got him on this. The mom first identifies it. Margo is like no seriously You must not love him. Like there's no woman loves my brother. He's disgusting

No, also she's an equestrian which is the sign of being a rich kid as seen in the lives of Destry Spielberg or Jessica Springsteen or Michael Bloomberg's daughter. All right. She's another one Yes, another equestrian. I mentioned at the beginning, feeling very heartbroken for Jay at the end of this episode. But it's just like, I guess I related to a character who is repeatedly reminded how much women despise him. I felt I wanted the love to be real. And it's just, well, we'll get to the end.

But I remember feeling very bad for Jay. Yeah, it's why in season two, they give him a steady girlfriend who is just there to let you know he's loved. That is not a factor in these first 13 at all. I also give them credit for an 830 on ABC. They kill a pony. They're like, here's a cute pony.

We're killing it. It's broken back by a fat child. Great Foley on that pony crushing. Poor Patches. Reddit tells me that the general rule for a pony is 20% of its weight is about the limit and you really just need to know your horse weight. But they say like 80 and 160 don't put anything heavier on a pony. So most of the staff at this estate knows Jay as a pants-wetting pony killer.

I think that's why the stableman, the guy in charge of the stable still calls him Wee Wee. He's a man that he murdered patches, his beloved pony. Also, the ad team working on this show really loved his butt sticking out like a radiator, or like an air conditioner, because it's in every original commercial for it I found. They were like, oh, this is the joke. This'll get America to tune in. Got a shelf back there.

I mean, his butt becomes even more ridiculous these Fox years, I think. A less preposterous posterior, he said. I don't know if his butt ever talks, but how Homer's brain talks, Jay's stomach eventually starts talking. But Valerie seems, when she convinces Margot she wants to be part of it,

and she's like, welcome to our crappy family, she smiles realistically. It makes me sad to think that this is all just a lie by Valerie. No, I buy that she's in love with him. I just think in the end she's fickle because they're not really thinking of what's going on in her head when they're writing her.

I don't think it's deceptive. Yeah. That's my take though. So we see them playing a video game. This is another thing they did a lot on Simpsons. This time it's Escape from the Big Apple, which hey, Al Sharpton still going strong. He was also on SNL 50. He's still a boss with a lot of hit points.

He has his second phase where he gets skinny. Oh yes, that's true. Hey, you know the track suit worked. Y'all laughed at it. His hit box is much smaller. See, this is how he looked on talk shows back in the day. The one of the smoking asshole. God, why can't I remember his name now?

Morton Downey Jr. Thank you, thank you. This was how he looked on those which now but this Al Sharpton joke again as a kid flew over my head I feel like most people knew him as a New Yorker and I guess his danger is he'll talk I mean also now I really get the joke that this is about suburban flight because they're like the last trip out a lot you have to escape to Long Island as part of the story of the game. Like I know it's like Yankee Stadium's getting out and then like you're assaulted by guys with baseball bats. It's Nickel Beer Day.

We see Marty and Jay are talking over the date. I loved the joke earlier where he says like, actually, I would want you to tell everybody you saw a woman in my bed. They're at the ice cream shop that Marty was talking about earlier, I think, the one where he pretends it's his birthday to get free ice cream. And I think here's Jay's mistake. He is saying, this is the turn here. Jay is like, you know what? I am going to lie to her and call in sick. Like this is my plan here.

Could it be that she just knows, oh, you lied about being sick? That's what she's mad about. Though, I mean, again, I'm just saying recuse yourself from the obvious conflict of interest. Don't review it because you're dating the star Yeah, you wouldn't even have to lie about that then she could have broken up with him for not reviewing the movie Yeah, they fit a lot into this pilot It'd be great if there was another scene with Duke just to have more Duke in the episode But also Duke shooting down the idea that Jay can't review the movie that could be something fun built into this one Yeah, like I think the equivalent of squeaky Voice Teen tells him the boss wants you to do this, so it's

like that's implied. Yeah, I guess in a way he's still forced. Also it seems like a mean joke at Dustin Hoffman's expense. Yeah, this guy that everyone's been saying is like the most hideous, unattractive man. Are you Dustin Hoffman? I'm gonna say it's them ribbing a friend because like Hoffman did the Simpsons partially because he's friendly with James L. Brooks. I've also heard Dustin Hoffman is kind of a dick and that's why he's not like in movies anymore. Like nobody wants to work with them. We also get late ADR of Michael Jackson joke and it's the Michael Jackson News Network. Everybody's talking about him. This is when the first allegations

were very fresh in January, 94.. It was only like three months earlier. Like a year and a half before this, Gene and Reese are the ones writing the Michael Jackson Simpsons episode. Oh yeah, yeah. Star Creeping Dead no longer exists. Don't try looking for it. It never happened. Never.

And the Disneyland Bureau is about him being a creep at Disneyland 2. But yes, this is where he makes his excuse and also where we get the first of his many famous noises. This is MJNN, the Michael Jackson News Network with bureaus in Bangkok, London, and Disneyland. Knock, knock, knock. Sweetheart. Honey, I heard you were sick. Oh, yes I am.

Much too sick to see your movie. Ah, ah, ahem. Honey, I heard you were sick. Oh yes I am. Much too sick to see your movie. Ahem. Oh poor baby. Valerie, I want to tell you how happy you've made me. Something's opened within me. We men have petals too, you know. That's a filthy joke.

Yeah. Ahem. The J Sherman, ahem, is another thing that stands out. It's one of those constellations that are pinned in my head 30 years on is the J. Sherman throat clearing. How do you not make that noise yourself when clearing your own throat? I swear to God, sometimes I do unconsciously and I don't even know I'm J. Shermaning. And he's wearing the free clothes he gets from movie premieres, which like, yeah,

me and Bob, we used to be in the game industry, and you'd get some free stuff from time to time. I'd wear them. Oh, there was a constant source of free shirts because you couldn't actually afford to clothe yourself if you're writing about the new game. So I think I've phased most of those out of my wardrobe by now,

although I am wearing a convention shirt for a convention. I feel like Jay wearing all of the movie merchandise is like a sort of a precursor to Greg Turkington on on cinema. Maybe borrowing a little bit from the critic as well because like every time you see Greg he's wearing a shirt that's like him like that's what I love about on cinema is like all the movies that like he's the clothes he's wearing or shit that like nobody remembers but then like when I see it on the shirt I'll be like oh yeah I do

remember the movie My Dog Skip. It's so great with Turkington, because you know that there's so much storytelling just in the universe of On Cinema that you know he's buying these off eBay to get like, Jay has them because he was giving them for free. Greg Turkington buys these actively. When I moved a few years ago, I threw out my 2011 water bottle for The Darkest Two coming

to Xbox 360. You know, I think I probably, I don't have household goods anymore for it. I think I've maybe saved a magnet or two, but yeah. Now we don't, well, the last time we got sent a free thing I think was the Disenchantment alcohol. I think we got, that was a freebie we got. Yeah, the Mead. I have a bottle of it behind me with the famous character Lucy. Oh, Lucy Lucy anybody. Well in the chapeau industries

Do you get any freebies? I have a bunch of like t-shirts from other podcasts T-shirts and hats from other podcasts. I think I have with me right now I have the pot about list shirt with Subulba that says smoking cigarettes cures cancer No, it's smoking cigarettes cures cancer. No, smoking cigarettes cures COVID, sorry. This is where the King Dork joke they've been setting up the whole episode pays off here. The full King Dork song. It's just beautiful. Happening in New York He's a lemon, she's a lime Beauty and King Dork Is Adam to her Eve She's Mindy to his Mork

Her hair's like silk, he's had a weave Beauty and King Dark What did you say? Oh, I said how useful is the spork? You know, that spoon-fork thing you get at Kentucky Fried Chicken? I covered that up pretty well. Yeah, written by Simpson's song-smith, Jeff Martin, by the way. That's why it's so great! I mean, it's beautiful.

This is the height, and this is the promise of the critic that was so hard for their animators. The writers wrote parody the most beautiful and like gorgeous animation that up to that point Beauty and the Beast ever did. They even copy like the famous shot in Beauty and the Beast where like the spin-out to the top of the chandeliers which I think was one of like the first instances of like computer animation to to be integrated into an animated feature. But yeah, they even do that in Jay's apartment where the toilet is singing to him. Yeah, and folks, Reboot won't even be on TV for eight months. This is pre-Reboot.

No one had seen anything like this in TV animation before. TV CGI was not a thing, unless you're talking about like the logo of Spider-Man at the end of Muppet Babies cartoons, but otherwise, it's not really. And here they were asked, the writers gave the animators an impossible task of, you know like what was cutting edge in 1991 for the Beauty and the Beast film? Do that on our TV. Yeah, can you recreate that with one one millionth of the animation budget of a Disney movie? And they pulled it off really thanks to two people and one of them is Scott Vanzo who's

showing off why they hire his company for Futurama. Like Futurama is all about TV CGI and so he oversees this digital animation but the animation is done by David Cutler, the art director of the show who is a Disney veteran so he knows how and he has done tons of character animation at Disney at this point. So that's why the 2D animation is so fluid and beautiful when Jay soulfully says, beauty and King Dork, like I am like almost in tears.

It's like, oh, this poor man. I feel so like it's gorgeous. I love it. And shout out to them because the animation on Futurama as well is first rate. Now on a weekly TV budget, they make miracles as animators. Yeah, and Jay doesn't know it. He's ripping off Mr. Burns because when he is trying to lie about what he just sung, he says, I covered that up pretty well, which is exactly what Mr. Burns says with bathing YouTube.

Yes. Oh, you're right in King Homer. So he doesn't know he's referencing King Homer too. I was going to say if that was an ADR joke in King Homer, then they would have been doing it at the same time as they were producing it. But I think that was like, that was a non ADR joke, the way it moved. It's hard to tell sometimes in King Homer.

Jay Sherman looking at the camera to say it. That's a very love it's like SNL take. Like the liar character. And Sporks were new then, right? I feel like also though, Simpsons had And Sporks were new then, right? I feel like also the Simpsons had a Spork joke like two weeks before this. I think this is around the time when I saw this I thought oh that's what they're called. I had no idea. They are the best. I feel like spoons, forks, go away. Only Sporks from now on. Oh you get that KFC

mashed potatoes with just little prongs on the end of it. It makes it makes it more of an orchestra in your mouth when you imbibe the gravy. It's great that it can only like he's like, oh, you know, Kentucky fried chicken, not just the other things like now sports are everywhere. It was like KFC's killer app then. So yes, he thinks he dodged a bullet by skipping the premiere. Now, if I'm Valerie, too, I'd be like, hey, homely film critic, I invited you to the premiere of my movie and you called in sick for it. Now if I'm Valerie too, I'd be like, hey, homely film critic, I invited you to the premiere of my movie and you called in sick for it?

I think she should break up with him just for that. Valid grounds, I say. And so this is when their equivalent of squeaky voice team delivers the tape, he's gonna have to watch it, Duke is forcing it on him. Another great line, my shrink was right, God does hate me. Another great line.

We see more of the merch theme, my own private Idaho t-shirt. This joke really peeked at the back draft boxer shorts though I think they could not never really top that I guess the use of my own private Idaho is their closest to like calling Jay gay joke in the episode I'm gonna say that yeah the home improvement viewers if they had known what that was referencing they probably would have been even more even more outraged. Having a normal sexual relationship with a woman outside of wedlock that's unbearable but the fact that Jay Sherman and the writers of the show are aware of

a movie about like you know gay for pay sex work in the Pacific Northwest and Henry the fifth that would be probably too much. Luckily no home improvement viewer had ever seen my own private Idaho. Henry the fourth. Sorry, excuse me Oh, actually, I guess also River Phoenix would have just passed away like a month when this aired Yeah, I mentioned a hack them, but there's also another catchphrase that makes his debut as he's watching the film Sorry, you missed a screening of kiss of death tonight, I'm a very sick man Oh, well anyway, they sent over a cassette of the of Death tonight. I'm a very sick man.

Oh, well, anyway, they sent over a cassette of the movie. Boss wants you to review it tomorrow. Ah, come on, how bad could she be? She's wonderful. Come on, baby, give me a kiss. Oh, I'll give you a kiss, all right. A kiss of death! Ah, gee, my, gee! She's awful!

My darling, I'm going off to review your movie. If you're here when I come back, I'll know our love really meant something. If you're not, I'll know why. In case you are going... No! Get out of my way! Did you ever love a woman so much that look at sign yes Hachi machi micrease explains he was once taken as a child to see a group of tumbling little

people and they would shout Hachi machi when they would do their little tricks so that's where it came. And I think after the critic was taken off the air, Milhouse inherited this catchphrase, didn't he, Henry? He said it a few times. I love when Milhouse says Hachi-Machi un-ironically. It's them making fun of themselves for so intentionally giving him a catchphrase here. Just in that clip there, two semi-problematic jokes.

The first one is Jay photographing a woman sleeping in his bed just on the offset that like it'll be the last chance he has a woman in his bedroom. So he's like, I'll just covertly photograph her without her knowledge. Just save that for later. And then of course the taxi driver, the sign he alludes to says driver only speaks three words of English. Him screaming look at sign always gives me a laugh. But that's Nick Jameson

who their equivalent of Harry Sheeran Hankazeri is Maurice LaMarche and Nick Jameson. Jameson was counted on for accents. So he was more of the accent man. Let's say. And occasionally playing Spike Lee. Oh yes, that's right. You know, I think at least one time they did get a black friend of theirs to voice Spike Lee. I think they at least did that once. Michael Carrington, right? I think he was the Spike Lee equivalent. Yeah, yeah.

In the LA episode. But yeah, no, I mean, I was thinking that too in the crocodile Gandhi joke. I was like, it's funny that these Simpsons writers are making a joke about a white guy playing an Indian character. Oh my God. You're right. That's really good. But so she's a bad actress he can't believe it he's testing himself what will he do with this and he's talking over it with Doris and this is where he reveals the specific number he gets a year 271,000 a

year which is apparently today according to inflation calculators worth six hundred thousand a year or two so he's not like crazy rich but he is unapproachable to middle America on ABC watching this makeup ladies are right to set them on fire but you see that's a difference I think of it being next to home improvement Tim the tool man Taylor has the same job basically as a TV critic but for Power Tools. He's just Jay Sherman except like you know he has a family that loves him. But he would never say on TV, they would never have his character say, I made this much this year.

Yeah. Host of a TV show, you gotta be pulling in at least 40 grand a year doing a gig like that. He makes enough to restore a hot rod for his chains. Just like Tom Paris on Voyager. Whatever amount that is. Well, and also he's basically a pitch man for Bin for Tools, so they're giving him a bunch of like back pay as well.

Chill. Yeah. That's the difference. They want you to feel distant from him. Like, to a shocking amount, I mean, I love Doris's delivery of, you know, so what if I did? You can't fire me if I intentionally burned your scalp anyway. This is where, also, this is nothing about his design. Very flathead. They call him Frankenstein sometimes. It's why he has a very circular,

happy face in the second season. It's a major redesign they do on him. And first, they have a joke about the crazy idea that they would reboot the TV show Family Affair as a movie It's also like an old joke about how Marlon Brando got paid a lot like ridiculous amounts of money to do very little in movies For the last 20 years. I suppose this is most specifically about Superman Which he's in for like two minutes tops and apparently got paid like he got a percentage of the movie like Like some people think he made like 20 million dollars off of the Richard Donner Superman. Remember the story from that is that like Brando being like notoriously like impossible to work with at this stage in his career that like he demanded of Richard Donner that like when Donner explained that his character was like an alien from another planet Brando was

like why do I have to appear as a human being like aliens wouldn't look like human beings? Why can't my character just be a briefcase that talks because like, you don't know what aliens look like. It could just be a talking briefcase. And they were like, Oh, can we get back to you on that Marlon? I think after that he was in the freshman the Matthew which also is famous for like, he didn't learn any line. And I think that I heard the story, they put his lines on like billboards, right? He just has like an earpiece or something.

Yeah, yeah. Though he hasn't yet made, when this came out, The Island of Dr. Moreau, which I think is the most, though also he really hated working with Frank Oz as well. That heist movie, what was that called? The Scorer. Thank you. But in the real world,

it didn't Family Fair only got rebooted as a TV show starring Tim Curry in 2002. I remember really, I can, I remember the Brando joke really landing for me as a kid. I'm not familiar with the show Family Affair. I think Mr. Belvedere overrode it in history. It's the better show. It's one of the fancy butler moved in with a family and one's got Bob Euker and one don't. So I mean, hey, which am I going to watch? I mean, Brando, they learned, was their easy receptacle of fat jokes. And also, his career was basically over,

so it wasn't like they were going to hurt the feelings of somebody that could attack them or damage their careers. This is where Jay has to deliver his review, and this is the big test for his morals. She just wasn't very good this time. But many actresses started badly and got better. Brilliant even! Sally Field, Cher, um... Those adorable Olsen twins on Full House.

Oh... On this TV, I do believe his nose is bigger than my foot. Look, see? Isn't that incredible? Ha ha ha ha ha ha incredible? I love that drawing. His giant nose. That moment is great, but he just has his foot on the TV. See? And they cut to Valerie watching this, and it's a very ambiguous look on her face. Like she's not angry. It's just they want you... I just think it's such a strange choice It has to be for comedy sake that they leave it so ambiguous Until he opens the door after this and then it's like oh, I'm beginning

But like her reaction is like there's no telling what she's doing there Also, like what was Sally feel bad in earlier in her career. I always smokey in the bandit. I don't know That's what I'm career. I always smokey in the bandit, I don't know. That's what I'm guessing. I mean, Gidget? When she was playing, was she Gidget? Oh, I think, I think so. Definitely making fun of Cher, like that's easy.

Like they love making fun of Cher winning an Oscar and how that's, yeah. Yes, Sally Field was Gidget, I'm confirming it now. Thank you, Bob. Well, the Olsen twins, still not great actresses, though now it's like, oh, Elizabeth Olsen. She's doing great. I mean, they're fashionistas now andes though. Now it's like Elizabeth Olsen. She's doing great I mean, they're fashionistas now and incredibly rich. They don't need to act anymore. I think I

Said this on another podcast. We did research for but one of them is married to like a French billionaire. That's the level they're at But so Jay race is home I mean he left her a note too So she read the note and she decided what her reaction was gonna be. We see that his drunk doorman didn't know if she left or not. And this is where we see how Valerie took it. Valerie!

You're still here. You're short, you're fat, and even for a film critic, you're ugly. Oh, I see, You want me to beg. Well, there's one thing you didn't count on. I have no pride. Please, please, please, please, please. Denise, if you come back to me, I'll give up gambling for good. What a loser. Soon-yee, I'll give up gambling for good. What a loser soon

Ye I swear I didn't know she was your sister You know a lot of people think I'm a cynic, but I'm not you know why because I know you're coming back to me now Now Now It's that moment there of Jay at the airport going, I know you're going to come back to me now. Now. And then the last one is just like, now.

And you like hear his heart breaking. That was the moment that took me back to watching this when like 30 years ago, where I just like, I felt my heart break for our boy Jay there. Just like when a woman leaves you and she's never coming back and it's just like you ow it's like now all his control is gone he stayed there all night is this JFK I don't recognize yeah that's that's the old JFK well so again we talked about the Twin Towers this also is like he goes with her to the gates and sees her leave you could only do in 94. Here's another then very recent joke. Woody Allen jokes. This show, I think it's because John Lovitz loved imitating

Woody Allen, but there's a lot of Woody Allen in this show. Yeah, hot off the presses, this stuff. Again, totally over my head as a kid. I didn't know Woody Allen. I saw these jokes before I ever saw a Woody Allen movie. It's worth noting, I feel like they are meaner to, I'm gonna say I think that they are getting to unload their Woody Allen jokes here in ways they didn't on Simpsons because major cast member Julie Kavner worked with Woody Allen a lot

and would be in Deconstructing Harry three years after this. Guy I think are being friends with Witty is why they didn't. But hey, but I love, I mean, how can you not, he fucking his stepdaughter, this is insane. How can you not make fun of this? There is the great Woody Allen joke on The Simpsons where I forget he's actually filming a commercial in another country and it's humiliating.

He's like, what did I do to deserve this? Oh right, that's the joke. I guess they don't say it, but you could say like, well, he made a bad movie or fill in the blanks. We all know what the blanks are filled with. Yeah, that was in the Tokyo episode. So that was like five years later. And also in the critic crossover episode, they do have, I'm a neurotic nerd who likes

to sleep with little girls. That's the joke. Or the one where Flanders says like, I'm a fan of Woody Allen's movie, but I don't like that neurotic Jewish villain that's always in them. Actually, that's on the commentary too. Maurice LaMarche is joking about how Maurice should have been doing Woody Allen, and it was like John Lovett said, hey, my Woody Allen impression's better. You're using mine.

And overrode it. I mean, he has a good one. We'll get to it. The Seinfeld joke stands out to me because I feel like few good comedy shows are willing to take a- Yeah, take a swipe at Seinfeld. Mac at Seinfeld because they were too respectful.

Yeah, and I like it because Seinfeld, very funny and one of the best shows of all time, but I can see the frustration where these guys are classic joke writers and the sentiment I get behind the joke is like, oh, it's so easy. You just write these heightened conversations. Try writing an actual joke, mister. That's kind of the sentiment. And then the joke is like oh, it's so easy you just write these heightened conversations Try writing an actual joke mister that that's kind of the and then like Kramer walks in the room and like the Sun says to Jay Why aren't you laughing?

Yeah, this is how people actually talk that is like I've complained about this all the time Nobody's mean to the popular things anymore in shows like this taking a swing at Seinfeld is funny to do and same with like in season two they talk about like oh a talking bud ha ha ha with Jim Carrey like they're like Jim Carrey sucks like that was their take then now you can't do that anymore. I mean also I like when the Simpsons made fun of Twin Peaks where Homer's watching it on TV and he's like a horse dancing by a stoplight and he's like this is brilliant. I have no idea what's going on. The joke on Seinfeld here, I mean Seinfeld employs several of their friends so I believe like Gamel and Prost, Tom Gamel and Max Prost, but I'm sure he's done

with some love but I think of this, Reese is the one who laughs at the joke on the commentary so it makes me think Mike Reese wrote this joke. This also is another thing different from Simpson at the time. They had a commercial break there because that's how the format was on ABC then. You have one joke before the credits to make people stick around for a fourth act break. So that's why there's a fade to black at the airport and then fade back in here. We see that Jay finds his confidence in our final clip here. I thought you were taking Kathy out tonight. Why do they call it taking out? I Jay finds his confidence in our final clip here. I'm sitting on top of a volcano of rage and I've got nowhere to direct it There's a critic screening of the new Sylvester Stallone movie tonight. What's it about? Let's see. He plays a concert pianist to Yeah, this is the stopper my mom will shoot era of Stallone movie

Oh, yeah, he's a ripe god. I love if it's not true. I don't want to know it Yeah, this is the stopper my mom will shoot era of Stallone movie. Oh yeah. So he's the right guy. God, I love, if it's not true I don't want to know it. I love that story that he only did it because like Schwarzenegger outsmarted him. Yeah, yeah, Schwarzenegger just completely psyched him out by pretending it was the best screenplay he'd ever read and he really wanted it. And basically got Stallone to like call his agent to be like, we need to take this from Arnold right now.

Have you ever seen Pumping Iron? That is exactly what Schwarzenegger does to Lou Ferrigno in that movie. Oh, Ferrigno. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at the lead up to the critic, the years preceding the critic, and we have Rocky V, Oscar, and Stop or My Mom Will Shoot.

There's a recovery in 93 with Cliffhanger and Demolition Man, but when they're writing this, they don't really know about it yet. Will, is this how you guys pick yourself up after a bad day, but not a Stallone movie, but with a Megan McCardell article? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, exactly. It's a sweet ending that him and his son, it pulls them together. This is also what Gina Reese talk about it. Their cheat in Simpsons was 20 seconds of lightness after dark depressing things the entire time. So they're like, oh no, this is a happy ending. He's been miserable and called ugly by every person around him, including the woman he gives his heart to,

slaps him in the face and tells him, you're ugly even by film critic standards. But he's happy with Marty. That is a harsh burn to say you're ugly even by the standards of film critics. Yeah, and he's happy via hating things. So it's a happy thing for everybody. And then we get the credits where they get their one last version of the couch gag which

is he says a different thing at the end of each one. My favorite is but I have nowhere to go. When it goes on the depressing side that's my favorite of the critic there. Yes my final question is verdict wise guys do you think did Valerie leave him here because she was mad about the bad review immediately or was it always her plan and when she had a bad review and it failed that's what she's like all right I've given up this this act and now I'm leaving. I mean like watching it again this time like if she were sincere in her belief that she is attracted to funny, intelligent men and men who have

like Pulitzer Prize winning critical faculties. It makes it harder to believe that she would be that furious or surprised or shocked or hurt at him giving her a bad review. And I mean, from that view, yeah, that makes sense. But it makes her so much more insidious character. I mean, that's why it's hard for me to buy it because like, talk about writing women. Yeah, me too. It was just like, it's harder for me to believe they would write a woman character who's just

that bad. Makes it feel a little seedy. I don't read anything Insidious happening throughout the episode. I think she is like ill-defined for the most part and it just, she turns on Jay for the sake of a joke or for the sake of a downer ending that they can make fun of and have fun with and then bring you up in the end. So I feel like throughout she's totally on board, then she ultimately is fickle and flawed and that's why she goes back to LA. I'm gonna give my most generous to Valerie's character fanfic of this reasoning.

Mine is that when she read the letter, she's like, oh he was lying about being sick and he wasn't being honest with me. And so I can't trust him anymore. And that's why she leaves where they value honesty in Hollywood But again, she screwed up get part of that Sherman fortune. Clearly you're not gonna be successful as an actress You're getting all these bad reviews just marry Jay Sherman and but clearly that would mean she doesn't really love him That's why she left. But you're right, Bob, I think it is just, for the shock value of, it's ambiguous this whole time, and then slaps you in the face to say, like, no, you're fucking ugly, I hate you.

What a great pilot episode for the show. Yeah, I think it's a good pilot. It's sort of like the Futurama pilot in that it is a very good pilot that introduces the characters in a very great way But then it sets up a show that never really exists So the show is immediately different after this and that's fine But I really love this as a singular piece of work and it's a great mix of the sensibilities of both James L

Brooks, Al Jean of my grace and even John Lovitz. You can hear him his own voice Not just literally but how he's choosing to perform this character I feel like that had a real influence on how he would be personified later. So yeah, I love this episode. It makes me want to go back and just keep going into the series because I remember I really loving the critic. And as you said, I remember the show gets funnier as it gets more out there. You mentioned the episode where Duke runs for president.

I remember being one of my favorite. But you're right, this is an interesting one in that it is a little bit more grounded and just something a little bit different than what the show would turn into. But I thought it was very interesting to see what they were doing in that era of 1994, coming off the heat of The Simpsons,

to do a show that is Simpsons-like, but also very different in a number of interesting ways. Yeah, I mean, you look at, there's the story of The Simpsons is but also very different in a number of interesting ways. Yeah, I mean you look at there's the story of the Simpsons Is that it took them until like mid season three to really? Get away from the James L Brooks groundedness and get really crazy and make stuff like the monorail of Mars versus monorail This is more like they're doing it on This is the grounded starting point and by the end of this season They're already at Mars versus the Monorail level

of zaniness. It is a great first episode, but it only shows the promise of how insane it would get. To its, I guess, negative benefit, based on how poorly the ratings would go after this. Well, thank you for coming back to the show, Willem and Kurt. Can you tell everybody out there about Chapeau Trap House, and also the mini-series, Movie Mindset?

I think our fans would love to hear about that, too. Well, yeah, if you'd like to hear some of my film criticism. I'd like to hear some of my film criticism and you know, a peek into my sad life. Movie Mindset is sort of an ancillary series that I do that's available at Chapo Trap House, the Patreon slash Chapo Trap House. Just look up Chapo Trap House,

but if you subscribe to Chapo, you will also get, you know, with that subscription, all of the movie mindset episodes that me and my co-host Tessa did. So like you want to like take a look into like, because obviously we've done a lot of stuff on the show making fun of bad movies. And I love talking about bad movies. It's like one of the funnest things to do. But movie mindset is a little different because it's my attempt to be funny

and informative about art that I think is really important to me, or really interesting, or maybe a little bit overlooked. But it's just, I don't know, it's my attempt to give sort of like a film class based on my study of film and my taste in film. And you have a lot of talk about the critics' era of movies. You've had some great episodes on 90s films

and early 90s, late 80s films. Yeah. Both the regular show and movie Mindset is, yeah, just Patreon slash Chapo Trap House. And we thank you for all of your insights as a New Yorker, film critic, adoptive son, all the things that. Thank you.

You chose wisely for this. Thank you, Will. Really, thank you for thinking of me. It's always a joy. So thanks again to Will Minnicker for being on the show. Please check out Chapo Trap House. We love it, as well as Movie Mindset. And before I give my plugs, I will ask everyone out there,

we had a really good time covering The Critic Gigan. Would you like to see us do this every once in a while with a movie-knowing guest? Because I think it could be fun almost a decade later, going back to these episodes with what we know now, with our honed podcast skills, and with new guests coming in, bringing a fresh perspective on things.

So let us know. Sound off in the Patreon comments, let us know on Blue Sky, et cetera. But yes, as for us, we've been Talking Simpsons. You can support us at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And if you sign up for just five bucks a month, you can access all of these episodes completely ad free and also one week at a time. So if you don't like ads, that's what the $5 tier is for, buddy. But on top of that, we have access to our entire back catalog of mini series episodes

Over 200 today covering things like Futurama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman the Animated Series And yes, the critic if you want to hear us visit the entire run of the critic even the web episodes way back in 2017 It's all happening at patreon.com Talking Simpsons at the $5 level along with new monthly episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill and there is a ten dollar level as well. If you sign up for that you get access to all the five dollar stuff naturally but then you can also access one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that Henry? That is our What a Cartoon Movie podcast. If you also love hearing our talk about animated feature films in this episode and the history we did Steven Spielberg film. The previous month we had covered

How to Train Your Dragon and we have talked about so many great films including we mentioned the character animation in this episode by the art director David Cutler. We've covered multiple of the films he worked on at Disney including The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under. You can hear us talk about that and all the other Disney Renaissance films and so, so many other films like Space Jam even. We cover it all at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons for over six years we've been covering the animated feature films.

And that's all ad free, just like the stuff you get at the $5 level. So please see all of the awesome stuff that we do at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. You can follow me on Blue Sky as Bob Servo. And hey, we're talking about movies. Follow me on Letterboxd as well.

I'm Bob Servo there. I'm watching movies all the time, leaving my thoughts over there. And I have another podcast. It is called RetroNauts. That is a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash RetroNauts and sign up there for five bucks a month to get two

full-length bonus episodes every month and Henry what about you? You can still find me on Twitter as h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g and that's also what I am on letterboxd I'm not as active as Bob on it but I definitely log things on there too h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g but I do all my really fun posts as Talking Henry on Blue Sky. So you should definitely be following Talking Henry on Blue Sky and that on Instagram too. And of course, if you're following me and Bob on any and all of those places,

be sure to follow the official Twitter account of this podcast at Talk Simpsons Pod. That's where you stay up to date whenever new podcasts happen, whenever there's news in our world, follow at Talk Simpsons Pod on all those social medias. And finally, if you need a list of all of our previously released free podcasts, you can find that at TalkingSimpsons.com. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 15's and Celebrity voices are impersonated.

No celebrities were harmed in the filming of this episode. Excuse me, sir, the show's over. Get away, zit face.